Dude looks like an Autumn.

In which I admit something slightly embarrassing. But only slightly.

The truly wacko things, I'll admit to freely. Like persisting in knitting a Rowan cabled chunky thingy for my husband in a colour I know that he doesn't like now, but he will love once he has (a) put it on and experienced the fabulousness of merino and (b) I've told him he looks completely hot in it. Which he will. How do I know this? Is this yet another case-study in that long-moaned-about Life Studies course called LoveIsBlind 101? (I should have a freaking PhD in that by now, I think.) Uh, nope. You see, when I used to wear pearls and neon red lipstick...

Yep, I worked in advertising. The lipstick was horrendous, it came off on everything, including my media reports, (so attractive) within about two minutes from the time I applied it, and I swear to you that lipstick accidentally leaking down the corner of one's mouth does not make one feel "Worth It."

My current "product" for Spiff,
which I am marketing heavily because, duh,
who doesn't want such a lovely sweater?
Don't answer that.

Anyway...when I was deeply concerned with the fact that I was not getting any, I did a lot of dumb things to try to pump up the volume, as it were. I will never again, for example, drink gin, but I will say that one of the only things I do not completely regret doing was going to a place called Color Me Beautiful (shut up) and I "had my colors done." (For all you non-American types out there, I "had my colours with a 'u' done.") Because I was utterly clueless about what looked good on me. And I found out I am a Clear Spring.

Well, hot damn. That was the first time in a long time anyone had used "clear" and me in the same neighborhood, let alone the same phrase (did I mention I was in advertising?) and I was absolutely elated to know that burnt orange and I did not get along because we were simply not meant to be, NOT because I'd done something wrong in a past life and all the burnt orange clothes I deeply wanted to wear had suddenly figured out I would be better off on the mortician's table instead of in the makeup chair if I wore them. I was sure they'd decided to have an emergency meeting about my burnt-orange status, whereupon it was overwhelmingly voted that even though I claimed to love them, I was, deep down, not worthy. Hell, I couldn't even wear "brick red." Sniff.

I was less elated to discover that, while favourite colours that look like shit on me were, in fact, not having secret meetings, I COULD wear "hot salmon" with abandon. When the nice Color Me Beautiful (damn, it's hard to leave out that "u") Personal Color Consultant (whom I'd paid a few hundred bucks to drape swatches on my shoulder and say, "Now, see? Not good, is it? You're NOT going to wear that again in public, are you?") draped the salmon swatch on my shoulder, I had a wee little personal crisis. Some people look dynamite in salmon. And in the mirror, against my skintone, woohoo, baby, I was hot salmon-bound, ready for silk-scarf-around-the-face status and maybe even a tight sweater or two. Except that, in real life, every time I see that colour, I think "Synthetic Tahiti." Don't ask.

(And some people wonder why I wear black all the time. Geesh. It's because my Color Profile gives me the heebie jeebies, and it isn't just the missing "u".... Still, please refrain from calling What Not To Wear just yet, because I ain't cuttin' my hair and that Carmindy chick gives me the heebie jeebies even more than "hot salmon." And what is up with all Stacey's hyper-pointy-toed shoes? That girl is going to put someone's eye out someday...sigh....)

So you can imagine that I pulled out all my Color Me Beautiful stops when I decided to knit this gorgeous sweater because Some Lucky Bastard can wear "brick red." Because you know what he said when he first saw la couleur (with two "u's," an "e," and a "la," even)?

"Oh, nooo, that's not for me, is it? I CAN'T wear that. It's PINK."

(Insert me rolling on the floor laughing, tears running down my face, practically shouting, "You CANNOT be serious...pink? PINK?!? WTF???")

He's serious. He thinks it's pink. People, work with me, here. It's BRICK RED. Okay, lightish brick red, almost orangish-brownish, what-the-hell-do-they-put-in-bricks-anyway red....

This is SO not pink. Right?
Rowan 36, "Lars," by Martin Storey.
It's so hypermasculine you want to smack
the smirk off the Bonoesque model wearing it.

My reply? "Spiff, it's brick red. You're an Autumn. You'll look hot."

That, um, made it worse. "An Autumn??? What the hell is 'an Autumn'?"

"Nevermind, darling, it just means that kind of fall colour makes you look hot. That's all you need to know." (Oh please oh please don't make me get out my purse-size swatch portfolio and explain myself here....)

Hey, if the "you look hot" comment worked with a dark autumn red sweater I bought for him, why can't it work here? And if, once he's worn it for a week, taken an office opinion poll, and also taken into account the fact that his wife has told him he is a hottie in it, he still hates it, I'll give it to my brother, who loves that "color," and can therefore be forgiven for dropping the "u."

Okay, so my exact words were, "I'll just give it to one of the other men in my life if you hate it." Sorry, sweetie. You're really the only one for me. And you WILL like that sweater. Trust me.

In other bizarro knitting news, I'm making a hat for Spiff. Why? Well, after years of saying, "Darling, would you like me to knit you a hat?" and him replying, "I have a hat. A perfectly good hat. I don't need a hat," something's changed. To wit: Last night in bed he rolled over and said to me, as part of his "Why Are You Knitting Me Something Pink" campaign against the sweater, "Why don't you ever knit me hats?"

I'd like to blame the language barrier for this, but I can't. Hat. Chapeau. Duh. T'en veux? Non. You want one? NO. Nope, ladies and gentlemen, it's not the language that's telling me we have clearly not been reading the same bedtime stories....

The reason he suddenly wants a hat is because he heard me saying his current hat is a cheapo Canadian Tire special (I should know: I bought it out of he-wants-black-it's-40-below-zero-NOW desperation) with a weird-looking seamed crown that makes him look like he's got a pointy head, and it just plain looks dorky. He's upset that I think he looks dorky in his hat, and he wants me to do something about it.

So now my bedtime stories now involve Barbara Walker, a fucking awful a highly useful set of 4 (auuuughhhhhh) DPNs because I'm too lazy to get another set with 5, like sane people have because I should use what I have in my toolbox, non? and a large glass of whine wine to dull the pain and stop me from stabbing someone encourage my creativity by allowing me to knit from the top down and insure a good fit no matter what method of self-delusion pattern I choose to incorporate.

I'm knitting this ribbed, cabled hat
(I know, looks like nothing yet) for Spiff
in dark pine green Peruvian Sierra Aran,
which he, luckily, thinks is black.

Official colour commentary from Spiff regarding the hat yarn: "It's not too pukey. By the way, "degeulasse" means pukey, in case you were wondering...."

Thanks, Spiff. See, told you I can't blame it on the language barrier. I know how to say "degeulasse" inappropriately in front of my new great-grandmother with the best of them. I wonder if she'd like a brick red sweater....

January 23, 2006 11:26 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (39)  | Print

There's a typo on my tights.

And a stripe in my bights,
Not to mention the fact
That my pants don't fit right.
Dr. Seuss would be proud.

These are "geek" tights I bought in France.
They contain a typo in a place which I will not share
photographically. Oddly, it occurs right above
the word "proofreading." In France, even tights are ironic.

We came home from France yesterday after an entire day of flying and dragging our asses (mine is significantly bigger after too much foie gras) from terminal to terminal, waiting in line to say, why, yes, indeed, we did think "two bottles of wine per person" included the seven-year-old in our family (just because she's too young to drink wine doesn't mean she's not a person, right?) and carrying too much luggage (my husband is convinced that my three pairs of shoes weigh at least twenty kilos, are the reason for our overweight baggage fee, and will hold this "fact" over my head for the rest of my life). Then we had to find the car, which I unburied from its two-centimeter-thick layer of ice plus several centimeters of snow. Good thing I have a sticker that says my car is imported from Mars. I never would have found it otherwise.

Nice to be back, actually.

Some highlights from the "Home for the Holidays" trip:

1. I spun in public. Couldn't bring the wheel, but I have spindles, hehehe.... It is, by the way, possible to stop the conversation of a group of 35 or so French people if you pull out a spindle and start spinning. This, in itself, is remarkable. There is not much else, I can assure you, that will completely stop 35 French people from talking. Also, one of our friends has a nine-year-old daughter who is a beginning knitter and seriously wants to learn to spin. She will (soon, I hope) be the recipient of a small spindle and some wool from me, if I can find a suitable beginner kit for a little person. And if anyone can help me with finding good, simple spindling instructions in French, let me know.

2. Yes, they thought I was a bit of a freak for spinning my own yarn. Kind of cool, but a freak nonetheless. Still and all, a freak who eats foie gras and talks about food even while eating it (this is the all-time favourite hobby of French people, I think, to talk about food nonstop, and I love them for it) cannot be all bad.

3. I read M.F.K. Fisher's How To Cook A Wolf for the first time. She is my new literary hero.

4. Except for Cari Luna, who is my new other literary hero. If you haven't already read her story at failbetter.com, go read it. Not only is she an amazingly generous person (her gift of laceweight merino from Habu plus a bunch of incredible sleep-inducing bath products and a chocolate bar with a poem inside was the reason my stocking was full), but she's one hell of a great writer.

5. I cried when I had to leave my husband's friends. They're that nice.

6. My daughter's room at my mother-in-law's house was magical. It had been a room for laundry and storage, but was turned into a little blue and yellow haven, complete with bluebirds, storybooks, and a ballerina music box.

7. Guess what I'm going to have to find for my kid's next birthday.

8. I live in Canada. I know from cold, people. But I have never been so cold in my life as I was in Cote d'Azur in winter. Wet cold. Inside houses that were not meant to really be heated cold. "Don't turn on the radiator, it will make the air too thick" cold. I froze my ass off.

9. I will be exercising my ass off starting today, because there is significantly more of it to freeze off. Everyone Spiff knows cooks, they are all good at it, or at the very least good at finding amazing little restaurants where the chef thinks you need an aperitif and an extra bottle of wine, you'd be a fool not to clean your plate plus have dessert, and on the French table, it seems that vegetables are an endangered species. Need I say more?

10. There is always more to say. Foie gras and Sauternes. Several nights in a row. Be still, my arteries.

11. Have I mentioned that I am very thankful for Lycra?

12. My father-in-law gave me his old Palm Pilot as a Christmas gift. He is in on the conspiracy to wean me from paper. But I love him anyway.

13. I met my husband's grandmother, who lives in Savoie, and she was a sweetie. She gave my kid a Spirograph, which was a great blast from the past for me and an excellent toy for Twinkletoes, who loves to draw.

14. My husband's aunt helped his grandmother pick out a necklace for me for Christmas, and it is so trendy-cool I almost don't think I'm cool enough to wear it. But I love it.

15. People who live in the mountains in New England only think they live in the mountains. Holy moly, them Alps are wicked big...damned good thing I'm not afraid of heights and Spiff's a good driver (he told me this is new..."I decided not to be nervous while driving anymore, now that I'm older...cuts down on the accidents...." Ya think? Gulp.)

16. I knit a lot, too. It kept my hands from freezing. So, without further adieu, I give you the knitted results of the holidays:

This hat is knit from the handspun I made using the Grafton Fibers batt.
The motif is the three-bight sign of happiness from Viking Knits,
mirrored with cables. Good practice for rune-knitting.

The only problem with this hat is that there is a big freaking stripe right in the middle, thanks to my inability to cope gracefully with colour variations in my handspun. Also, Madame Lavold did not include instructions for the flat-topped hat pictured in her book, because she felt her selected motif was too tall for a pillbox hat. Unfortunately, I didn't get that far in the reading, selected my own motif, knitted merrily along, and discovered when I got to the crown that there were no instructions for the crown of this particular hat. Oh great. Happy times six. So I came up with something as I went along, hoping for the best. I did not do as good a job as I would have liked on the crown decreases, but it's not horrible. I kind of overblocked the hat, though, in an effort to flatten the crown and get rid of some curling, so I might have to unoverblock it. Hopefully the hat will survive the abuse.

A close-up of the bights.
How much DK handspun does it take to make a girl happy?
Oh, about six bights. (You knew that was coming....)
Should of thought of that with the foie gras.

I also started the Ruffles scarf from Scarf Style, using the bunnyball handspun, and made some decent progress. Here t'is:

For the curious, when one loses one's nostepinne
in the sea of luggage, but one still would like
to wind a center-pull ball, the middle finger will do.
Same technique, different tool. You're welcome, Franklin.

It's wonderful to come back and read so many great things on other people's blogs. People have been posting up a storm, it seems, with so much progress in both spinning and knitting, and I'm thrilled to be able to read it and comment on a keyboard that was not invented by an insane person (can I just say that it is truly sadistic to have to press shift to type a period? The inventor of the French keyboard should be hung by his toes and slapped. Tabarnak, I hate that thing.). I'll post more when I've had a few days of salads and yogourt and I surface from the sea of laundry. I'm sure there's a nostepinne in there somewhere....

January 10, 2006 3:16 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (31)  | Print