Betrayed by a Towel

Hi there!

So tonight, I'm talking to a friend and teaching her to knit (inject quick dance of triumph and glee), and I mentioned some story or other. She said, "Right, I remember reading about that on your blog."

And I said, "I have a blog?"

Not really. But you know.

Tonight, I'm going to interject quick pictures of knitting - mostly WIPs, 'cause that's all I got - with a story that I personally find hilarious.

My husband has been sick the last few days with a fever, poor thing. (That's not the funny part.) Last night, he felt so achy that in a fit of desperation, he slathered himself with Icy Hot.

Unrelated knitting picture #1:

Later, I followed him to bed. I washed my face, and reached for a towel to dry myself off.

Unrelated knitting picture #2:

My first thought was, "This towel smells like Icy Hot."

Unrelated knitting picture #3:

My second thought was, "WWOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWW!"

My husband managed to get a picture of me:

(I bore a strong resemblance to Tommy Lee Jones in Batman Forever, I think.)

The Challenge on the Back of the Cheerios Box

We went to visit my parents last weekend. On Saturday morning, I got up before the fella and went in to breakfast. There was a plate of Cheerios on the table. I thought they'd been spilled, but as it turns out, it was a logic puzzle.

On the back of the current Cheerios box, there's a challenge:



Take away six Cheerios, but every row and every column must have an even number of Cheerios left.

My father, then my mother, had attacked this first. Then they tried it out on me. None of us figured it out, and I need to say here that we are a family of very intelligent people. (You just have to trust me on that one, sorry.) My father had even tried Googling for the answer but couldn't find it in such a way that didn't require him to fill out mailing list info. So we were stuck. In fact, we were drafting letters to General Mills telling them about the irritating typo on the back of their cereal box.

A bit later, in comes my fella. He sits down, asks about the Cheerios. We tell him. He stares at it for a bit, occasionally poking a Cheerio, here and there. Meanwhile, we start talking about how positively careless and cavalier those cereal box people are, how they shouldn't allow a problem like this onto the back of the box without thoroughly checking it, and don't you think there's a better way to spend a morning than to --

"I got it."

Huh?

Yeah. He got it in about three minutes.

(Jerk.)

Here's the answer:

Step 1



Step 2



Step 3




There you have it. And I didn't even ask for your contact information first.

The Creatures You Meet

Yes, it's been a while.

So we bought a house.

And I didn't want to say anything, because for a while there it looked like it would all fall through. Then it didn't, and we had a house, and we had to move into the house. And I was like, blog? What? Do I have one of those?

But we're moved in now. It's way more suburban than we'd prefer, but there's this thing about price ranges and location.

On the upside, we have a yard. I've planted some things that will hopefully survive, and there's room for us to take crazy art projects (more on that later) outside where we won't destroy the wood floor.

On the downside... we have a yard. DANG it.

And suburban though this might be, I'm learning that having a yard brings you a little closer to nature. You take care of the lawn and observe every critter you see, in case its behavior turns invasive.

In fact...

We chose this morning to attack the lawn. I went as the vanguard, trowel and gloves at the ready, pulling weeds so the fella could mow. (And by the way, there is no faster way to age yourself and face the sudden reality that your hipster days are like so totally finished than to push a lawnmower around the place. Again: DANG it.) Everything was going swimmingly - and then, I spied something unusual:

At least, I thought it was unusual. I don't know, we're new to suburbia. Maybe these things crawl out of the sewers all the time.

But that's probably Florida. And this is Texas. Do they have free-range crawfish in Texas? Um.

He was still alive, too - he was crawling through the St. Augustine. I was willing to pick up the guy, but we had no idea where to put him. Should we be humanitarian and give him a shot at life? Or boil him ourselves?

Turns out, the neighbors are having a crawfish boil. He'd set down the cooler for a few minutes next to the house... and a couple escaped, and tried to make a run for it. Quite fresh and healthy little buggers, too: they were like five feet from where he'd set the cooler. The neighbor kindly picked up the stray crawfish and returned them to death row.

We combed the yard to make sure no more renegade crustaceans waited for us. After all - and I'm no expert - but I think that would gunk up the mower.

(DANG it.)

Pledge Drive Won't Keep Me Down

Nothing kills your buzz like pledge drive on PBS.

But, I have just the thing. Let me explain...

I went into Thanksgiving blissfully free of any and all Christmas gift knitting. It wasn't that I had finished it -- it was that I never promised to do any in the first place. Smart, n'est-ce pas?

Yet somehow, by the end of the weekend, I had gotten myself tangled up with a promise for four gifts. That three of those gifts are promises I'm keeping with myself and nobody but me has to know if I fail is beside the point; they'd make great gifts! Y'know?

Here's the list:

- two ______ ______ hats for ______ in _____
- a _____ _____ for my _____
- a pair of _____ for my _____ in _____

The second on the list was the one I went for. (Obviously. I mean, who can resist knitting a _____ ______?)

Okay, I'll give a hint that is _____-proof: The Harlot recently knit sixteen of them in, like, two days. Yup: according to Ravelry, over 3,000 people have tread this stripey path before I, and while conformity is irksome... sometimes you find that everybody is doing a thing because it's a really awesome thing!

The _____ _____ is especially awesome. In fact, it's much like reading a novel, in that you can't wait for the next transition. I'd call it very Dickensian in pace: slow, thorough, plodding, rhythmic, and just when you're about to toss the thing down the disposal and go turn your lights repeatedly on and off to remind yourself you're living in modern times and not a Victorian debtor's prison, something completely new and beautiful comes along.

If you have patience, that is. I do not. When I read Dickens, or anybody else for that matter, I tend to jump ahead to see when the next neat thing happens.

Translated to the terms of the _____ _____, that means that every so often the suspense gets the better of me and I yank out about twenty yards of yarn, just so see how long I have to wait until I get a little kick of green.

And I keep knitting. In fact, last night, after Stephen Colbert signed off (his Christmas special was so disappointing, wasn't it?), I switched to PBS, only to be insulted by the inane blabber that it pledge drive. Didn't realize it immediately, although my first hint should have been that I was being shown a long succession of nature shots with trippy narration about the Wonderous Power of Nature over a New Age synthesized soundtrack.

The second hint was the comparison between the Grand Canyon and PBS, made by a guy who I had pegged for working at a GM dealership. (Until last week, when there ceased to be any work at GM dealerships.)

However, the _____ _____ didn't want to be put down, even just long enough for me to channel surf my way to safety. Can you blame me? I was just around the corner from purple!

And onto the temperate rain forests of the Pacific Northwest, and more idiotic philanthropic nonsense. I'm telling you: boom, ten inches. And I'm barely out of dark gray on one of my skeins.

This is one Christmas gift that will surely be done in time.

Hill Country Yarn Crawl 2008

Or, Not the Thing I Did Today

Today, my fella asked me if I'd partake in a labor of love. He wanted me to go digging with him at the Austin Record Convention for hard-to-find vinyl records, in particular some rare hip-hop finds plus one or two soundtracks that usually go for around $50.

There's these moments in relationships where you look at the other person. You blink, and in that space of a blink, you must determine whether it's worth (a) an argument, (b) loving acquiescance, (c) tears, or (d) chocolate cream pie.

I almost had my answer. Then he said, "I'll go to yarn conventions with you."

I chose (b).

Quick: Can you find the only other female in the entire room? (Hint: I'm the one you can't see.)

(My fella is reading over my shoulder now and he wants you all to know that it really wasn't that bad, and that he was very sweet to hold my place in line for me to get a couple hardcover books signed by Michael Chabon for about two hours with nary a complaint or a request for chocolate cream pie. He's right, and I have treated him very unfairly. The above passage is a good example of hyperbole.)

Predictably, I didn't find anything to buy. However, I found the convention to be a veritable safari of fascinating people to observe.

I wanted to Kinear two of these guys especially, I really did. For complicated reasons, that didn't happen. One gentleman was quite tall, a black guy with what must have been a huge pile of dreads atop his head, which bobbled about on his neck under the weight as he walked. The dreads were tucked far inside a white crocheted rasta hat that looked like one of those giant, overnight mushrooms that shoots out of the ground after a hard rain and stands twelve inches high the next morning. It was as if the guy hadn't yet figured out how the mushroom had sprouted on his head, and it would be nice if no one mentioned it.

But the winner of all the goofy-looking people in the place (and keep in mind, this is me saying this) was a gentleman in the true sense. In an under-air conditioned room full of cut-off denim shorts and sweaty t-shirts, he wore a double-breasted suit, a tie, and a felted Sherlock Holmes hat. He was also spry and wirey, and he intrigued me so much that I had my fella (patiently, lovingly) follow him around with me for about fifteen minutes. Some of the things we overheard him say:

"Yes, I weigh the same amount that I did in 1967. In fact, four pounds lighter!"

To a large lady on crutches: "Have you decided? Are you going to run away with me yet?"

To my fella: "I must say, I don't think your lady friend there is finding a lot of these records to her liking."

Quite observant. Fortunately, there were other pleasures to be had.

Call a duck a duck, even if it's naked.

There's something known as a True Austin Day. Anyone who's ever had one knows it on sight.

I had a True Austin Day my first weekend in college, when a friend I'd literally just met invited me to hitch a ride with her from San Antonio, where we (1) met up with some friends of hers, (2) saw that Princess Diana had been killed via a newspaper box on the Drag but didn't have any quarters to find out more, (3) watched a bizarre bunch of people we didn't know rehearsing in their living room for a Rocky Horror show that night at the Alamo Drafthouse, (4) were witness to a meltdown over a Key Lime Pie involving a long-haired, goateed fellow in a broomstick skirt, argyle socks, and a chef's hat, and then (5) fell asleep on someone's floor as more people we'd just met watched Ghost in the Shell with the volume on high.

That's a True Austin Day.

It's impossible to define in specifics because the major identifying characteristic is its sheer unpredictability. (Bonus points if you wind up sleeping on a stranger's couch.) Essentially, a True Austin Day is the kind of day where you wind up somewhere you could never have predicted when you woke up that morning. One guy I know wound up at three different parties one New Year's Eve, including a biker bar, a barbeque, and then a political pow-wow at a state senator's mansion. Hard to say which was roudiest. A dear friend had a True Austin Day recently when she and her husband went to pick up a used drum set only to find themselves the recipients of much free booze, and you can imagine where that's going.

Having said all that, I'll admit that yesterday wasn't really a True Austin Day. I mean, I slept in my own bed and went to work, so already I'm out. But I had a glimmer in the evening, when I went to see Girls Girls Girls, a friend's improv troupe, perform.

After they were done, another group took the "stage" (in fact the back patio of an Eastside bar, next to the dumpster). They were called Kitty Kitty Bang Bang. As I learned shortly, they are a burlesque group.

Now check this out: when you say "burlesque," the French linguistic roots apparently make it different than stripping. I had no idea the power of language.

First there was a song by a short girl in skimpy lingerie and pincurled hair who flashed her parts (rather clumsily, if you ask me) at the audience, which happened to be made up of actors, singers, writers, and musicians (it was a theater party). They all watched very politely, but I wonder if I wasn't the only one who was thinking, "Damn, if I only took my clothes off then I wouldn't have had to spend all that money on voice lessons."

Then there was another woman in a wig and I think she was African-American, but she was dressed up in a purposely cheesy Native American getup -- faux skins (very tight across the bust), doofy headdress, mini-tomahawks, a few feathers, and a dinky fake fire on the ground. She did a little dance that mostly involved arching her back and spinning the tomahawks on strings around in the air.

Uh.

Okay, part of me wants to get into the problem of whether that's considered disrespectful or not to Native American peoples, and whether or not the fact that the dancer was something other than Caucasian gets her a free pass... but really, I'm just kind of stuck on the fact that there was a nine-year-old boy in the front row who looked like he wanted to be ANYWHERE ELSE.

I'm told that these ladies perform in respectable venues -- coffeeshops, famous 6th Street music clubs, and so on. And I'm really working up a sweat trying to see how them calling it "burlesque" means they don't need a nudie bar permit.

At first I thought this was the second sign of the week that I'm getting old. (The first was the serious pain in my right knee while roller skating, thank you college track and field.) But no, I would have thought this was ridiculous even when I was that 18-year-old college freshman wandering around the Drag in a haze of confusion over the fate of Princess Di.

Man. Artistic sensibilities apparently go out the window once you find a group of girls who like showing off their boobs in public. Because look, they weren't even good. (The girls, not the boobs.) If they were really good performers, or if they'd found some great, interesting way to appropriate the burlesque formula or whatnot, then maybe I'd go along with it.

But really. Call a duck a duck, and don't use its feathers to hide your hoo-has unless you can really back it up.

So to speak.

Cross-posted at Letters from the Orchard

Overheard

At Central Market's bakery counter:

Lady Patron: Excuse me, are those muffins any good?

Male Employee: They're better than sex with 90 percent of the men you've slept with.

(Pause.)

Lady Patron: I'll take two.

Springtime, darn it.

I'm going to pass on trying to come up with an originally worded apology for why my blogging has been so scatterbrained and sporadic of late, because too many knit bloggers have been saying that sort of thing and dude, I still read you. Besides, I have a dinner date, and I still need to pack because I'm getting on a train first thing tomorrow to Dallas.

And by the way, yesterday I had a hurried conversation with my former college roommate. It was hurried because my cell phone battery was dying out and I'd forgotten my recharger in the car, not because she was in line for tickets to the Met and about to board a plane the next morning to South Africa to do research into deadly infectious diseases. Do you ever just totally get put in perspective? I hate that. And here I am, hurried because I'm getting on a train to Dallas and I might go grab a burger. Ho-hum.

And since we're telling transit stories, I rode the bus to and from work today, and today's crazy driver stomped on the brakes on the way north today, then leaned on the horn. I thought she was about to hit a student, since we were right by the University of Texas, which gives out BAs in not looking both ways. Actually, no. It was a black chicken trotting across the street. Which leads one to wonder, (a) where did it come from? (b) why was it crossing the road? (sorry for the obvious) and (c) how long did it take before someone in West Campus decided to have some poulet en casserole for supper tonight?

ANYWAY.

Tired of the non sequiturs? Too bad, it's in fact a great segue into a discussion of my current knitting, which is equally unfocussed and illogical.

It's also falling sadly victim to my poor photography skills. To compensate, I blew out the whites for the sake of color accuracy, which gives the impression that these WIPs are sweet angels appearing to us in holy visions. I say run with it.

I present Exhibit A:

The aptly named DROPS 103-1 Cardigan. That's actually the back, two fronts, and the cuff of a sleeve, but I lacked the space and lens focus to spread all pieces out. Rest assured, the hefty pile of Southwest Trading Company Gianna is in fact a sweater-to-be.

Exhibit B:

Bamboozled, in bamboo (SWTC Twize). This sucker's going to be too big. I can tell already. But do you see me stopping, starting over? Nooooo. I defy all mathematics, and if you want to help, then give me lots of compliments. This is supposed to be worn round the head, and my cranium simply isn't big enough.

Exhibit C:

The most beautiful yarn I've encountered in months, Plymouth Royal Silk Merino, in a pattern called Helleborus, for which I didn't buy enough yarn and started out two needle sizes too small. I noticed the problem, frogged it, then started again. Now, do you think I moved up to the right needle size? One bigger? No. Somewhere in my brain, I thought, "It will be fun to knit this on size 8 needles, rather than size 9 which the pattern clearly requires."

It is this frequent failure of logic which so wears on my poor significant other. Lucky for him I'm cute.

Exhibit D:

Wicked, in Cascade Sierra. I'm not sure why I stopped, but I think it had something to do with the fact that all the stitch markers were across the room and I had lost the ability to hit "pause."

Exhibit E:

Oh, wait. Leyburn Socks, but not sure where they are. I fell asleep while knitting them the other night, and they're probably somewhere in the bedsheets.

I know, mother, I know.

I am astonishinly unrepentant, however. Completely, totally content! Because everybody's starting too many projects. It's springtime! ADD is the new yoga. Besides, did you see these colorways? If you ever see me going nuts for the yellows and the greens, then you know I've got seasonal affective disorder or whatnot. The thing that makes it impossible to open a dictionary to look up the name of the disorder, among other things.

And you know what? It's fun. Tra la freakin' la!

A Gentleman and a Philosopher

There's only one man who works in our small office. Yesterday, he brought all of us a dozen roses.

Upon coming back from lunch today, he saw the roses. "Do you know," he called out to his assistant, "a rose by any other name would not smell as sweet? For instance, if I said, 'Hey, come smell this sack of f***in' horse-s***,' do you think you'd like it?"

Happy Valentine's Day.


p.s. I made Gena's day! It's that award that's going around (and around, and around...) Dandy. Especially because I recall we "met" when I accosted her with questions about her Cardigan for Arwen (Ravelry link). What a nice person.

I'm sure I'm supposed to do something elaborate, like send a knitted tea cozy to 16 people in the first 3 minues after receiving this honor. Whatev. Those who are looking for new crafty blogs, check out Girl Who Knits, six one seven, Tres Chic Veronique, Knitting Sunshine, Cozy's Place, Moon Tea, Sally Comes Unraveled (and the other blogs by my Meetup knitting group. Sorry I'm behind on the list, ladies.). Don't have time to transcribe the rest of my bloglines list right now, so if you ever get a comment from me, then poof! You've made my day, too.

Overheard

(At my day job yesterday.)

ATTORNEY 1
I'm going over to the courthouse. Does anybody need anything?

ATTORNEY 2
You can have me declared incompetent.

ATTY 2'S ASST.
Please do.

Wish I had a camera...

All the times this week I wished I had my camera with me, and not once did I swing it.

1. Tuesday. I tutored a student who, to be honest, was smarter than me, in ACT Science. Not picture-worthy, but still.

2. Wednesday. Lunch with a theater producer with many helpful things to say and more energy than most four-year-olds. While waiting behind his South Austin house to walk to Guerro's, we chatted for a bit with a couple firemen, who had just finished a footrace through the neighborhood, ending at their firehouse. They were very nice, and one even scaled a rope hanging from a tree without warning while continuing the conversation, which was about bagpipers and (what else) fires.

Attended half of a sacred music concert at my church, and very much enjoyed the Anglican chants and other traditional music. Our choir is superb.

Then I jaunted off to a rehearsal for the Backyard Plarty. More later.

3. Thursday. From 4 p.m. to 6:15 p.m., we rehearsed for the Plarty outside, on what I'm calling the first real day of summer in Austin. In other words, you have to keep drinking water or else you'll have one of those hyperthermic seizures.

Then a lovely, enjoyable $8 boat ride on Town Lake to celebrate the birthday of my fellow playwright and collaborater, Aimee Gonzalez, and to watch the bats emerge from under the Congress Avenue bridge. The bats, oddly enough, just sort of dribbled out this time, unlike the fantabulous swarms that I've seen twice before. Maybe they were hungover?

Then the fellah and I dropped by the Salvage Vanguard opening night party for 15 minutes, long enough to get our picture taken for a certain publication's blog which gets no link because, let's face it, not the prettiest shot of either of us. But can you blame us? Check out what else we did that day! We're allowed a little smudgy frizzy frazzledness.

4. Friday. The Plarty was a roaring success! The scripts were silly, but I have nothing but compliments for the people who worked on it. The members of Full Service have never been in a play before and yet worked so earnestly and with such dedication, and it really did show. They were joined by two teenage neighbors, one of whom even learned his lines (we'd said it could be on-book). Our one professional actress, Laura Heidinger, of course did well, having just come off of playing Sonia in Uncle Vanya.

I am so honored by the hard work of the entire cast. They all tried different things, they took risks, and they offered their own ideas. As a playwright, you don't always get that much dedication from professional actors.

Then Full Service played a set from their CD Recess. It was lots of fun.

5. Saturday. Book sale in the morning! A charity event sponsored by Literacy Austin. I got four books for $8! That includes a $1 copy of Le Petit Prince in French, with a French-English dictionary of the vocabulary and a guide to the grammar at the back.

At night, I attended the bachlorette party of a lovely friend. Not my thing, but she's a sweet person, and I was happy to celebrate with her.

However, the next time I go to 6th Street, I'm taking a bunch of girls and sticking a dopey little mock-veil on somebody's head, because you would not believe how many free drinks we got. The bars there pay people to walk the streets and recruit girls to come and drink at their establishment, and bachlorette parties are top quarry. (Yellow Turtle: you game?)

Saturday was also the one-year mark for my fellah and me. I think that's just neat. Now, why, you ask, didn't I do something with him?

I wrote out the little dialogue of the amusing conversation we had on just that score, but it didn't play. So really, it boils down to a committed anti-sentimentalism combined with a shared bad memory and poor advance planning skills.

We were going to do something tonight, but then when I called him last night, he reported that his high-end monitor went kaput, and there went our budget for dates.

My opinion is that even peanut butter and jelly sandwiches can be romantic, if served properly, so I'll just put on a pretty dress and bring the Smucker's and Jiffy sometime this week.

Finis.

Absurdism reaches fresh heights

My fellah gave me a DVD copy of The Princess Bride as a little Valentine's gift. On the commentary, Carey Elwes (Wesley) says that during the shooting, Andre the Giant told him a story about when he was younger.

Andre suffered from gigantism, which is exactly what it sounds like. By the time he was a teenager in France, he couldn't fit on the school bus. His parents couldn't afford a car. So, the neighbor, a nice fellow, gave him a ride in his large vehicle.

The neighbor was Samuel Beckett.

I don't want to know if this story is not true. It's too beautiful to dismiss.

I can imagine it now:

SAM: We must go on.
ANDRE: I can't go on.
SAM: We must go to school.
ANDRE: I won't fit.
SAM: Shall I give you a lift?
(He doesn't move.)

Was Mamet always this crazy?

Last night, I caught David Mamet on Charlie Rose. He said, among other things, that young writers should not get a university education, because universities teach antisemitism.

Dang, I knew I shouldn't have skipped that class.

He also made a lot of political assertions, both before and after he complained about Hollywood celebrities who make public political statements. When Charlie Rose pointed out this contradiction, and asked him why he feels he can comment on Isreal's politics, Mamet snapped, "Because I'm Jewish." Okey-dokey.

It reminds me of an interview I did with the fellah in charge of Artspark, here in Austin. Sometimes, you can tell when the person you're talking to has wandered into deep waters but forgot to bring his floaties.

It's just that, well...

I had to create a blog. Everyone else who knits has. (Seriously.)

Call it self-promo, call it simple fun, call it whatever. I knit, I write, I perform, and I sometimes tell funny stories. Now I'm going to share online.

Thanks for visiting. I hope to update at least once a week.