Tender Walls

Everyone keeps saying that they're the last one to post about Rhinebeck, and isn't it time we all just shut up already about who we saw, what we got, etc....

I've been putting off my post about Rhinebeck because while I've got a lot of "who I saw" and a few of "what I got" (dude, you can't have thought I exercised total self-restraint at Rhinebeck. I'm not that stupid), all that can wait. My deal with Rhinebeck is mostly about what I learned.

Normally I take the mickey out of every damn thing that happens to me because if I didn't I'd either cry too hard or get too serious, and we can't have that. But I'm about to actually say something totally serious and even image-less here. Mark your calendars, it doesn't happen very often.

When our wedding anniversary happened in September (our third), I said nothing, mainly because my husband is a private person and he feels that the wedding day is no more special than the day we met, or the day we...uh...anyway...

I let it pass, even though I'm a total Anniversary Person. I'm very emotional, you see...especially about him. The moment I first looked into my husband's eyes, which was before we even met, was a moment that is burned into my memory and is my favourite moment of all time. I could go on forever on that one, and I drive him crazy with the storytelling to total strangers. It embarrasses him. It's kind of a problem.

But there's one feeling, one recent event concerning my husband that I can't let pass. I just spent a whole weekend immersing myself into a crowd of people I know but don't know, opened myself up to total strangers in the name of wool, happily discovered that many of them are the type of close friends I've craved but haven't had in a very long time, and had in general a weekend that was all about my interests, my goals, my direction in life. And along the way, I fell completely, utterly, unequivocally in love with my husband.

My husband is not a knitter. He's not a spinner. (He had a brief dalliance with crochet to prove to himself that he could do it, but it was only once and although we've caught it on film, it has not happened again since.) Sheep are not his thing. He needs a major cheat sheet to figure out who the hell I'm talking about when I say "That's (K)(C)ate." But he spent every moment of the weekend finding things that entertained him anyway, talking with people, making an effort to integrate into a world that's not his, in a language that's not his, taking care of a small person who was totally overwhelmed by the whole situation and a bigger (sort of) person who was also pretty overwhelmed, and he did it beautifully.

This year has totally sucked for both of us, in many ways, mostly medical, frightening at best and downright horrible at worst, as recent as the day we got back from Rhinebeck to find that a close member of our family was in hospital. In most of these situations, I've asked him to set himself aside and be the caretaker for me, and when I was supposed to be his caretaker, his support, his person to turn to, because of my own crapola, I frequently fell down on the job. I still do. I've never loved a person more than I love my husband, but I'm very clumsy lately, and this seems to apply not only to the physical, but the emotional. It extended to me being a complete pain in the ass on, of all days, his birthday, and all I could do was sit quietly and hope the hell my brain freeze passed and I could regain a sense of what was important.

My husband sometimes drives me batty. Insane. (Okay, I don't need too much help to get there, but you know what I mean.) He's stubborn as hell, the online games sometimes completely take over his life, and I can't remember the last time he cleaned a bathroom or did laundry. He mishears me, I mishear him too, and we have misunderstandings and near-miss communication snafus that make both of us wonder briefly who in hell we got involved with before we hash it all out and discover again one simple truth. Or at least this is the simple truth I learned at Rhinebeck and I hope I never forget how to tell him...

In the immortal words of Peter Gabriel:

Accepting all I've done and said,
I want to stand and stare again
Till there's nothing left but
what remains there in your eyes
Whatever comes and goes,
I will hear your silent call
and I will touch this tender wall
until I know I'm home again
Home...it's in your eyes.

Spiff, every chance that I get to look into your eyes is a gift. I would be utterly blind without you, and that's no spinner's tale. Dude, I ain't that good.

October 28, 2006 12:44 AM  | Permalink  | Comments (56)  | Print

Spin too long,

Open the goddamned door.

We at Fuzzy Logic have the unfortunate tendency to live out punch lines when we didn't even know there was a joke to be had. Sometimes this saves our butts. Other times, it kicks them.

(If any of you don't live with an eight-year-old who is trying to learn, with extremely mixed success, to tell knock-knock jokes, you are not only lucky, but you need a cheat sheet. So, Knock Knock. Who's there? Spin. Spin Who? groannnnn....)

And for the three of you who are horrified that I am teaching my daughter to say goddamned at the tender age of eight, calm down. You have nothing to worry about. She already learned that one when she was two. That, along with shit, which she said quite liberally and with great glee in grocery store lines. So we're way past the swearing-in-English issue, I assure you. We're into the French, and if you think English swear words are creative, whooooboy. Raise a kid in Québec.

So, why has it spin too long? Especially when I told you that I thought I'd be posting more often now that there was a good two months between me and a swift crack in the head?

Well, folks, I plied lied. Dude, even I can't go through with a joke that bad.

When the doctor said I'd be exhausted and it would last a long time, he was not plying. He doesn't even know how to spin. He does, however, know how to do his proper job, and he did it so well that I'm following textbook rules of what happens after someone cracks your skull open and messes around in there, no matter how light the messing around is. To wit: I am, in my husband's words, Astonishingly. More. Blonde.

I have some memory problems, which are not long-term, luckily, but the short term crapola is a bitch. Oddly, this does not extend to knitting or spinning. I have retained my original inability to forget everything negative I've ever done in both fiberly pursuits, to the point of repeating them again and again, just like I did before the surgery. Huh. However, remembering the separate but equally insane schedules of the entire household is a huge challenge which has been met with oversized calendars, thick markers, and lists before bedtime which get checked against lists before kid goes to school and husband goes to work and I continue to launch the Lance of the Free directly into my increasingly pudgy thigh (ouch) and STILL my husband has missed his dentist appointment and there may or may not be a parking ticket to pay, but I DO know where the silk is. That's easy. It fell off the fucking spindle and has become damned near impossible to ply. I work on untangling the singles every few days and add a few rungs to the Andean bracelet before I have to lie down and/or scream.

My daughter's theory for this change in energy level and coordination as well as my forgetting that I apparently promised her not one but two chocolates after every homework session appears to be as follows:

Note the artist's astute observational skills.
The top of my head is completely gone. (But I swear on everything
that is holy and a few things that are decidedly not
that I have never, ever worn little blue ribbons in my hair.)

I have done a few fiberly things since the last time I posted, such as write for Vogue Knitting (they renewed my contract, so I get to keep talking), and witness the opening of the best thing to happen to Montréal ever. That would be Effiloche Sewing Room and Knitting Lounge, the brainchild of my friend Ginette Verdone. It's located on 6252 St. Hubert, and is accessible by the Metro (Beaubien). There were 20 people at the first Stitch and Bitch, and this was on a Friday night, so it's clear that the city is hungry for a place to hang out and ogle yarn.

Ginette also sells Fleece Artist roving. (God, I love that woman.) Okay, so there's fabric and buttons and a roomful of sewing machines you can use but ROVING, people. BFL and merino. In MONTREAL. Pure bliss. As if that weren't enough, her son makes some of the best tiramisu I've had in a long time. It's a place I'll be visiting a lot.

My coordination skills, or lack thereof, have made me a bit worried about picking up, say, the lace patterns (dude, I need a 12-pack of paper towels every week just to handle the coffee travesties I appear to cause simply by looking at a cup.) But oddly, this lack of coordination does not extend to spinning. Much. Unless I ply. So it will not surprise you at all to know that I watched the Navajo plying video that some insanely fast and coordinated woman linked to a while ago, thinking it was a solution to my multicolored roving woes, and after wiping the tears of joy from my eyes, proceeded to convince myself that it was (a) elegant, (b) the perfect method for the Fleece Artist mohair I've been avoiding, and (c) do-able before Rhinebeck. Knitting included.

Twinkletoes thinks it would have made better hair,
because you don't have to ply hair.
(Yep, she said, "Look, mom, it's Mo Hair!" Sigh...)

Now, I've never spun mohair. Ever. And the multicoloured stuff has the danger of turning into mud. I actually bought the roving just to stare at it.

You'd buy to stare, too. But I succumbed to actual processing.
So this is step one of the Stephanie Separation Shuffle.

And then we have the singles. Wicked Slightly overspun.
All good so far, except for the WD-40 incident with the new wheel.
Did I mention that I decided to do this on
a new wheel I hadn't even oiled yet? I am stupid.

I forgot how much I hate to ply on a wheel. Plus I'm doing it on a brand new Hitchhiker which needs oiling every two seconds but I think it should perform like I've had it for years (did I mention I'm stupid?) and I've realized for the ninety-four thousandth time that I deeply need a tensioned Kate. The lazy Kate on my wheel just lets that single fly off and catch on itself like it got a look in the mirror and stupidly fell in love with its own reflection. And this is mohair, people. Untangling an escapist mohair single is like frogging a Birch, only I didn't even get to knit a few rows and spot the mistake yet. Fucking goats. How do they get through a day without catching on each other? I mean, does the goatherd have to pry apart an entire herd of the little buggers at the end of every day? Lonely goatherds, I salute you. (Oh, no. I am deeply sorry to have put that song from the Sound of Music in your heads. But it's better than Climb Every Mountain, right? Uh, oops...nevermind....)

Then there is the small matter of never having Navajo-plied. Ever. And I have no one but the video to teach me. So of course I decided that this would be elegant and easy and fast and I'd have it done in no time at all. Just a human crochet hook, that's me. Yeah, right.

Don't look too closely. This is, by far,
the worst plying job I have ever done.
I may be easy, but in Navajo plying I am neither elegant nor fast.
I did, however, preserve the colour pattern.

So I am now knitting the world's fuzziest bandaid. I have 109 yards of badly plied mohair (Still in its same colour pattern! Be impressed! It's the only impressive thing I've done in weeks!) and no idea whether the three-hundred something stitches I cast on are going to make a lengthwise scarf or the prettiest stripey cord with which to strangle myself you ever did see. And I am going to try to get it done on the way to Rhinebeck.

Just a side note to those of you who wish to follow in my footsteps: Wine may or may not help, having a sick child who gives you what she has does not help, WD-40 plus swearing fiercely and then trying to wipe "plying face" off your repertoire of facial expressions by the time your partner comes home are absolute necessities, and if you are a face person, wash your hands first.

I think that last one may deserve some explaining.

True confessions time. I love my husband's face more than cashmere. I kid you not. I don't know what the hell I'd do without that face to turn to, even when it returns the favour by telling me I have completely lost my mind, and gently suggests that I could use another roll of paper towels. As such, I tend to lean over (bad idea in an office chair...don't ask) and touch his face with my hands and tell him how I could not live without his face.

Um, spinners? Mohair comes from goats. When is the last time you smelled a goat and though, mmmmm, that would make a fabulous cologne? Never? I thought as much. Spin a couple of ounces, smell your hands, and get back to me. Consider this a public service announcement to the face people of the spinning world (it can't just be me, can it?). Tell your partners as much as you can that you love their faces, because it's important and it's nice for both of you, even if they roll their eyes and look at you like you're crazy. But dude, wash those hands first. You're welcome.

See you at Rhinebeck, and if not, I'll think fuzzy thoughts for you. I've gotten very, very good at thinking in a thoroughly fuzzy manner. Just ask my husband.

October 17, 2006 11:10 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (53)  | Print