Boink.
So this knitblogger walks into a bar...
It's dance show season. I look like I've been taking
fight-club lessons from a drag queen.
Yes, I know. I haven't appeared in this space for an extremely long time. And since randomosity is really the only flight path I can follow in order to re-enter the blogosphere after such an extended break, you'll have to fasten your seatbelts, kids. I have approximately twenty things to say, in no real order of their occurrence along the journey. If you have a hard time following along, don't worry. It's not your four bottles of in-flight jesus-that-is-NOT-wine, it's just me getting my blogging wings back. Thank you for not smoking the life-vests.
1. I thought I would have more time to myself once I pulled the lance of the free from its once-permanent place in my thigh, but it's not true. My time is now far more structured, which leaves me far less wiggle room to do things like cook, pee and read blogs. Also, deadlines still suck rocks. I had deadlines before, but with good snacks, real coffee and comfy pants. Deadlines in heels and a skirt with a mug of battery acid permanently attached to my hand seem more painful, somehow. And when I get home, I am a 2.25mm dpn away from comatose. At which time I miraculously transmogrify into SuperMomChefTeacherKindnessOfMyHeartWife and supervise homework in French while I create something halfway edible for two mere mortals and me from one egg and a three-week-old asparagus spear. My daughter is learning some very creative linguistic phrasing, that's for sure....
2. When the scientific progress goes boink, we order sushi.
3. We order sushi so often that the last time daughter decided she would rather have the egg-and-three-week-old-asparagus-spear-miracle plus toast, the sushi restaurant people called us back to make sure we had not made a mistake in our order because her standard rice bowl and crabstick wasn't on it. They even knew it was for the kid.
4. You know things have gone from weird to downright wacked when the takeout sushi restaurant people are worried that I'm neglecting my daughter's nutritional needs and call me back to double-check.
5. I turned 41. It's like 40 with crappier-tasting vitamins and lycra jeans.
6. I ripped no fewer than three knitting projects. Ripped them right down to their three-year-old-bad-yarn-day selves. It felt good in a way, but now I just have piles of curly yarn, which feel less like possibility than the unfinished pieces did, you know?
7. Moping aside, the lace-armed sweater is next on the ripping block. I plan to transmogrify it into something solid and simple and v-necked. Great Big Sea in a semi-solid needs a simple pattern, and the photographic evidence will show that I do not need square necklines or sausage arms.
8. Muscle still weighs more than fat.
9. Everything still takes longer than I think it should. See number 5.
10. Yet I'm just as strong as the 20-year-olds I dance with. They don't believe I'm 41.
11. My husband, however, believes I'm 42. It's a French guy thing.
12. I try not to take it personally. Also, he can't do the MC Hammer thing and I can. Nyah.
13. I started lifting weights again.
14. It is absolutely incredible how my daughter, who has a talent of disappearing into her room when I need her to do something for me, suddenly appears out of nowhere to conduct an extremely lengthy dialogue right next to my head involving a question-and-answer session about where squirrels go when they die and how would you say "decaying flesh" in French? just as I lift enormously heavy iron dumbbells over my face.
15. It is very sad, what I consider to be enormously heavy in the way of dumbbellness. I used to deadlift twice my weight. Now some of my dumbbells are...lavender. Ewww.
16. I have, however, decided to enter the next phase of physical fitness in my life with a modicum of grace. The dumbbells are lighter, sure, but I have finally mastered a Downward Dog that doesn't embarrass me.
17. Much. I mean, dude, you have to point the business end of your ass directly to the sky and everything else directly to the ground. It's as if you're flashing the universe a big ol' "Kick Me" sign. ("Kick" being a euphemism for whatever version of universal shafting you see fit to express...) Modicum of grace? Not exactly.
18. Speaking of grace, I finally, finally got that bouncy thing going in hip-hop. "That bouncy thing" is the technical term for the subtle difference between Dorky Dancing and Missy Elliot.
19. I did that bouncy thing over the past two weekends in public: eight full-house shows in front of a total of nearly 8,000 people, including, for the first time ever, my mother. It felt insanely good, and I will miss it terribly for the next month...but the dance school is now going to offer adult classes in the summer for the first time ever, because many of us are totally addicted to that bouncy thing.
20. My husband has resigned himself to the fact that Miss Demeanor's in da house, along with dudes like Justin Timberlake and Kanye West. We make up for it, though, with late-night name-that-ABBA-tune office karaoke. Also, we're going to see Rush in concert this summer for the third time, at which time we will sing at the top of our lungs, jump around wildly, and marvel at how even though Geddy Lee, Neil Peart, and Alex Lifeson look truly old now, they still have the power and the talent to blow the audience away, every time. "Closer to the Heart" never fails to make me cry. Actually, so does "Red Barchetta." Leaves falling, a red convertible, and I am feeling seventeen, freewheeling, and way better looking than I actually was back then. And I can have a beer without lying about it. Also, the guy next to me is superhot, he knows all the words, AND he's my date AND he's staying. Doesn't get better than that.
21. I apparently have more than twenty things to say. How unlike me!
22. I miss you all terribly. I need a fiber fix, bad. I feel a quick and dirty knit extravaganza coming on. It probably will not be a sock, though. That damned 2.25mm dpn is the only thing between me and the end-of-day coma, dudes, so I'm afraid I can't spare it. Stay tuned for June's knit fix. And hopefully, this time, it won't make me look like a silk sausage or the loser of the Glitter Gladiator Smackdown.
June 2, 2008 5:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (36) | Print
Bring Out Your Blog...
"But I ain't dead yet..."
My husband told me that my blog is officially dead, since I haven't posted for two months. But dude, I ain't dead yet, and while I have indeed been rethinking everything from what goes on the blog to what goes in my mouth, I'm still here in the blogosphere...I've just been reading silently, biding my time, thinking about what I want to do and say next, and thinking about whether it's worth it to post about it. I'm also overwhelmed with a variety of life-related things, such as completely retooling my attitude, schedule, wardrobe, and general running-of-household to accommodate the wearin' of the work pants, but I am alive nonetheless.
I have often thought of things I'd love to post about, but I've kept the blog posts in my head. You see, over the past few months, I've had a bunch of people, mostly family, say that it's not okay to talk about the personal on a knitting blog, and that I talk way too much about my life and not enough about knitting. So I've been thinking a lot about how I want to represent myself in this blog...in fact, I've been sort of forced to think about IF I want to represent myself at all apart from the knitting, or if I simply want to show my knitting and talk about the craft.
All this came to a head over the holidays when I had a family member tell me that a friend who conducts orchestras but is not a knitter stopped reading me because the blog was far too personal. O RLY? What I find absolutely hilarious about that is the logical conclusion that he might have continued reading on a regular basis, just for the knitting, but because I got personal, it's over. Uh huh. Right. Just think...if I had only shut up about myself and my kid and my desire to have less of a belly and my total panic at having to speak human, stop talking to myself, and find a pair of pants that fits, we might have converted another non-knitter, folks. Ah, missed opportunities....
But seriously, as a writer, first and foremost, I can't say to myself, "This is a knitting blog, I can only talk about knitting, I'm here to show I can do it and prove it with pictures, and I should be teaching someone something about my craft." If that happens, great, but dude, I write about what's on my mind, and what my craft does for me, and how the two are related. Creativity involves life, by necessity. My knitting is simply a part of a bigger picture. Sure, I have to strike a balance between the personal and the knitting on my blog, but I would feel inauthentic if I squelched my voice and forced myself to talk about what's on my needles and nothing else.
In fact, here's a nice balance of the personal
and the knitting for you: I finished Lacy Waves.
Dude, it makes my boobs look like I suddenly developed pecs of steel
or stuffed my bra. Since the family has stopped reading me,
I figure I can post a Not For Prime Time Sweater Boob Warning.
Oh, look! Knitting content! Except that now that I've finished Lacy Waves, I'm debating the wisdom of knitting a sweater with lace sleeves. I can't remember who posted about that very issue, but whomever it was took the very smart route of knitting plain sleeves. I, alas, did not. Also, when I put it on, my husband told me it made me look "athletic." Anyone who knows French men knows that this is not a compliment. But I've got biceps, dude. Shoulders, too. I can't help it. And under lace sleeves, which in theory should look elegant, it merely looks like I'm trying to squeeze sausages into blue silky wool nets. Here's a wee word of warning to any of you out there with arms bigger than sticks: you might want to switch to solid sleeves if you knit this sweater. The blogger whose name I forget was absolutely right to go solid. I might reknit the sleeves to do exactly that.
The picture quality here sucks big rocks.
The only time I could get a photographer other than kid
to take a picture, it was in the hallway at night.
So, yeah, I'm thinking that my next sweater for myself is not going to involve form-fitting lace arms. However, the waist-shaping was a good idea. And the detail right above the boobs? Really pretty, but on me, like a neon sign saying "Hormones do this after forty, baby." Still, the biggest problem with this sweater on me is that I can't wear a bra with it without the bra straps showing, no matter what I do, because the shoulders are made for people who...how can I say this...don't have shoulders. The shoulder strips and caps barely cover me. Which exposes whatever over-the-shoulder-boulder-holder I'm wearing that day, unless I hold my arms up like I'm about to belt out an aria. And I am SO not going braless in public just to make this sweater work. Also, I try to keep my arias to myself. My family will be very happy about this decision, I'm sure. Oh, wait. They've stopped reading me. Nevermind.
I love this sweater, but I'm not comfortable in it, and that's a shame. So I will put this in my drawer and come back to it later when I have the courage to reknit the sleeves or when my arms become sticks. But since I have discovered that it takes a freaking long time to slim down now that I'm forty, I am of Dutch and Irish heritage, and I'm also on to the next sweater for someone who really deserves it, this sweater could be in time-out for a long, long time. We'll see.
(Personal (!) note: Muscle weighs more than fat. This is NOT fair. It makes impatient people like me feel like we're making no progress whatsoever. Also, Gin Miller's interval workout is HARD, but at least she has an ass. Also, she does not wear leg warmers or tell me I'm SO hot, OH yeah, we're WORKIN' IT. Thank you, Gin Miller. You make exercise tolerable.)
Back to the topic of what I should and should not say: my final feeling is that, in order for me to continue this blog, I need to remember that it's MINE. While I try to keep out the personal details that will identify people in my family in ways they don't wish to be identified, I am, above all, a writer, and I write this blog for myself and for a particular community of people. That would be YOU, knitters. And you all have lives that involve things other than fibre (you just fit the furniture around the yarn rather than the other way round...).
If a nonknitter comes here and wonders why in hell I'm talking about something other than knitting (dear GOD, she said BOOBS), well, that person clearly hasn't been hanging around the knitting blogs for very long. Life enters in, dude, and I'm a far better person for being priveleged to share other knitters' lives with them through their blogs. I've been given a lot of love and assistance at times when I felt very much alone with difficult patches, whether they involved wool or people or the explosion of laundry that is currently masquerading as my livingroom. I'm grateful for the responses I received each time I opened the door, regardless of which door that may have been. (The door on the stash, she will not close. I tried. Maybe I should just leave that one open....)
There are plenty of far more talented knitters than I who can teach you all how to turn a heel nine thousand ways to Sunday or how to perfectly shape your sweater regardless of how much beer you drank last night. Me, I'm here to tell you about my entire process. Which may involve complaints about body parts and illogical thinking and painful lessons learned for the next exercise in outfitting oneself properly, whether it be reshaping one's knitting or reshaping one's life. Both involve changes, mistakes, utter silliness, things thrown across the room in frustration, mundane steps you wish you could skip, wicked high learning curves you're afraid to scale, and more frequently than not, moments of sheer joy. I can hope that a nonknitter will get something from that process, but if they don't, and if they feel that my personal life has no place in this blog, well...they need to look elsewhere for their entertainment, or they need to start their own damned blogs.
I'm happy you're here, whomever "you" are. And while you're here, you can try and guess, knowing what you do about my beautifully balanced personal/knitting life, if this sweater part for the next sweater, which is for Spiff, is a sleeve or a back. Hah. Bonus points if you can guess which sweater I'm making for him. Hint: the answer to the first question directly affects your answer to the second question.
I am hoping that alpaca blooms,
because this "aran" weight yarn
is knitting up as if it were DK.
Also, it's not this red. I blame Canada. (Winter dark
and snow are totally kicking our asses here, folks. Also, our arses.)
February 24, 2008 10:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (80) | Print