Good-bye, Sweet 29

Dang. Thirty? Really?

Oh well!

Today I turn 30. I did it quite well, in fact.

Yesterday, after work, I drove about an hour south of Austin to stay by myself at the Mountain View Lodge, near Wimberley. I got there just after sunset, and I had my priorities in order: first I sat out on my tiny private balcony and read a book* in the fading evening light.

This was the view in one direction:

Then I went inside and knit as I watched My Fair Wedding, which is a guilty pleasure and an insult to one's sophistication and intelligence, because really, David, do you need to have all that drapey white muslin? Again? And are you seriously comparing these hardworking, basically smart and well-focused ladies with a pre-Higgins Eliza Doolittle?

Gratuitous knitting shot of the Whisper Cardigan:

Shrugs look weird when they're only half-done, don't they?

I continued knitting during the Daily Show, then read some more before turning in.

In the morning, I woke up to see the view from my balcony in the morning light:

I love the Texas Hill Country. A playwright whose name escapes me at present once talked about always missing Texas, and always longing for one's "childhood geography." This is mine, and I'll always love looking out over the distance to see the faint outline of more hills on the horizon.

Birds chirped a lot.

I went for a hike on the short nature trail:

Regular readers know how I love the color blue. Perhaps this is why:

I drove back into town, stopping (uh oh!) at the Knitting Nest. It's never in my direct path on an ordinary day, but there I was at the Slaughter Ln. exit, and their lovely supply of Cascade 220 called to me. In my own defense, I totally know what I'm making with it: yes, wedding stuff. (Knitzilla strikes again!)

Now I'm back home, enjoying a day off of work and preparing to hit the town tonight for an Arts the Beatdoctor show. (Did I mention it's SXSW? Batten the hatches, folks, this town's been hit by a storm.)

I'm lucky in many ways. I have good people in my life, and I have things to look forward to. It doesn't get much better than that.


* The book is Guy Gavriel Kay's Sailing to Sarantium, and I don't know how that guy does it, but he writes these rise-above-the-genre fantasies that somehow deal with all of life's evils and brutality and human mortality, and then they leave you feeling a little bit better about all of those things at the end. A serendipitous literary pick for the occasion.

Whisper Cardigan: When you're in love...

This week, I cast on for the Whisper Cardigan. After at least eight hours of knitting time, this is all I have:

The reason why I only have so much is that I must have cast on about six times.

It's been a long time since I cast on so many times for one project. But here's the thing: I want to wear this cardigan to the rehearsal dinner for my wedding in June, precisely three months from the day I cast on. I want it to be perfect.

(Remember my "knitzilla" theory?)

First I cast on with a backwards loop cast on, because I intended to work a hemmed edge to reduce curl. Then I observed my swatch and saw that it wasn't really curling, and besides, a hemmed edge would increase the thickness in what is supposed to be a whisper-thin cardigan. Hence the name.

Frog one.

I did a cabled cast-on. I bungled the number of stitches.

Frog two.

I did another cabled cast-on, and somehow twisted things up so that there was a big bump on the edge. Plus, given that I'm subbing a cotton/silk blend* for the laceweight merino yarn, I decided I should cast on a couple fewer stitches than the pattern says.

Frog three.

And so on.

Normally, I'm the kind of knitter who just says, "To heck with it, let's roll" to a lot of mistakes. But this cardigan must be perfect. I want it to represent everything that is good about my knitting.

Moreover, you know that pleasure you get from knitting a gift for someone? You spend the whole time thinking positive thoughts about them, which feels good. In this case, even though I'll be the one wearing it, I'm thinking about my fella, and I want it to be just right for him.

(Cue the awwwwws.)

But after the sixth cast-on, I figured something out. I hope it's not too much of a stretch (because I can't stick the cotton/silk blend in the dryer to put it back into shape), but knitting this cardigan is like a good relationship. You try your hardest, and there is lots of starting over. Ultimately, you decide to accept the imperfections as best you can and love the entire product for what it is.

That is, unless you eff up the decreases on row 31. Dang it!

* I'm using Bristol Yarn Gallery Lyndon Hill. It's a little thicker than what's called for, and the cotton/silk content is making me knit it at a tighter gauge than the pattern says so that I can account for the droop.

Yet, as in any long-term relationship... can you really account for the inevitable droop?

Hanami: I've got this much...

I've gotten some tips on photo-editing software that ought to tide me over for a little bit. Please munch on the luciousness that is almost half of a Hanami:

This Hanami is on my impossible wedding knitting list, as a gift for someone who's helping out a bit. It might get done, but then to be perfectly honest... and I feel just awful about this... I don't think I can give it away as a gift after all.

Here's my reasoning:

Row 1: "I sure hope _____ likes this stole. It looks like a lovely pattern."
Row 35: "_____ will love this stole! The pattern is phenomenal."
Row 50: "I would love a stole just like this one, if it weren't pale pink."
Row 120: "Maybe pale pink isn't such a bad color after all."
Row 185: "I bet _____ wouldn't like pale pink at all. Nope, I better keep this one and buy her a handbag instead."

I'm not claiming to be a nice person.

In the meantime, I got hit with a wallop of project-lust when I stared too long at the Whisper Cardigan and went blind to all other knitting. I ordered my yarn, and the swatch is drying just a few feet away from me at this very moment. My justification for throwing over all other WIPs? Wedding knitting, of course! Like everything else. It would be the perfect sweater for the Friday night rehearsal and such.

Knitzilla, anyone?

I hate Windows Vista

I have a new laptop. This is good.

It does not have any graphics software. This is inconvenient.

I have the CDs for Microsoft Picture It! Publishing. This has potential.

Microsoft Picture It! Publishing 2001 doesn't work with Windows Vista. This is irritating.

Beyond belief.

See Cobbalicious run. See Cobbalicious take pictures. See Cobbalicious plot to turn Microsoft into the multinational corporation-sized crater it deserves to become.

See Cobbalicious sigh with resignation and poke around the harder-to-use, less-equipped photo editor software that came with her laptop.

Wish her luck.

War of the Roses/Carnations

Happy Valentine's Day!

This evening, the fella and I went to see Coraline. After, we left the theater and were walking to dinner around one of those dark, windy sidewalks around the perimeter of the theater, where just about anything could be waiting for you. (After seeing Coraline, you hope it's a black cat.) We were moving at our usual brisk pace.

Suddenly, from around a corner ahead of us emerged a young woman and a young man -- say, late teens, early twenties. She was carrying a pink flower. Without anyone breaking stride, we had a brief exchange.

She held the flower out at arm's length towards us. "What kind of flower is this?!!" she demanded.

"A carnation," I told her. (Unsure, my fella didn't say anything.)

"THANK YOU!!!" she said, as if she'd been waiting for someone to say those words for quite some time. The young man behind her followed wearily as all of us went on our ways.

After a bit, the fella and I reconstructed the conversation they must have been having all night.

He: "Hey. Happy Valentine's. I, uh, got you this rose."

She: "Awww! Thank you!"

He: "Sure."

She: "That's so sweet! I really love it."

He: "Awesome."

She: "You know, it's a carnation, not a rose."

He: "Huh?"

She: "I really love it! But it's a carnation."

He: "No. I think that's a rose."

She: "No, I'm serious. That's a carnation. But I love pink."

He: "But that's a rose."

Fifteen minutes later.

She: "Look, a rose has thorns. Everybody knows that."

He: "Don't they, like, cut those off?"

She: "Look at the edges of the petals. They're all ripply."

He: "Roses do that, right?"

She: "Look, it's a carnation. Okay? The next people we see, I'm going to ask them what this is, and they're going to tell me it's a carnation."

He: "Fine. Ask them."

From around the corner emerge two very tall people on their way to dinner after seeing Coraline and hoping for a black cat.

She: "What kind of flower is this?!!"

Me: "A carnation."

The very tall fella with her stares blankly at the flower.

She: "THANK YOU!!!"

And, scene.

The Pit-falls of Cooking with the Flu

I've got that nasty bug/cold/flu/whatever's going around these days. I had to go to work anyway yesterday -- there was too much my boss couldn't do on her own without destroying the office along the way -- but she let me go home early.

I came home, planning to fix one of my favorite lunches: juice, some tomato soup with a little bit of cream and some basil, crackers, and an avocado, followed by a couple Thin Mints. The plan is, I'll eat it as I read Stephanie Pearl-McPhee Casts Off and then put myself to bed.

It was the avocado that did it to me.

Everything is going according to plan. The juice is poured. The book is open to where I left off. I've got the pit out of the avocado as the soup is warming up. I use my fingers to remove it from the point of the knife when --

squirp!

It does not merely fly from my fingers. It decides to play pinball with my kitchen.

It was a high-scoring game.

Here is, I kid you not, the exact path taken by the squirpy pit:

And here's the thing: as I'm madly trying to catch it, two steps behind, the whole time I'm completely aware that it is going to fall between the fridge and the counter. There is nothing I can do to stop this.

So as my tomato soup looks on forlornly, I am, with a fever of 99.4, moving a refrigerator by myself out from the wall enough to get a disgustingly dusty pit out of there before the next cockroach comes along and decides to have himself a round feast. I even gave myself a minor strain in my right pec as I rocked the thing to and fro. I took a break so I could throw a pretty sizable temper tantrum, but that didn't get the effing pit out of there. So I had to keep shoving and pulling and pushing until I could free the stupid thing. Eventually I did.

And yes, the soup was cold.

Springtime Knitting: Hanami

The other day I took a quick glance through my 2008 FOs, and it struck me that nine of fourteen projects were predominately blue or green. Of the others, we've got two brown, one gray, and (ta-da!) one yellow.

2009 shall be the year that I go nutty with colors! Yes, it shall.

It shall also be the year that I learn to crochet.

It shall also be the year for which I must first file a joint income tax return.

Here are some thoughts related to the above three points:

1. I have created an insane wedding-knitting list. The list includes a Hanami as a gift, a gift for someone who reads this blog, a whole bunch of crocheted fan bookmarks, and a counterpane clutch (yes, that's you, Erin!) for me. That's so much knitting (and hooking), it's stupid.

In my own defense, I've discovered that with a few exceptions, a gal who has produced theater events and who combines forces with a guy who has produced several live music events can manage wedding planning very well, by and large. So when I really want to be doing something for the wedding, I sometimes discover that there's really nothing to be done at present. Wacky, I know, but it's been the truth so far.

I've created a whole bunch of wedding knitting that simply must be done so I can feel productive towards planning a huge event to which I'm looking forward, very much.

Here's how far I am with my Hanami:

It's delectable. The lace is lovely. You'll also note that it is neither blue nor green.

2. I am staring straight in the face several hard-to-wear colors for this year's projects: pink, orange, yellow... These are springy colors, and with Hanami (a very springy project relating to cherry blossoms), I am clearly ready for spring to come along.

This has nothing to do with the fact that I've lost both pairs of winter gloves that I own.

3. This has nothing to do with knitting or taxes or color, but I'm attempting to cut back on or cut out high-fructose corn syrup in my diet. I'm pretty heatlhy, thankfully, but I think my system might be happier if I avoided the stuff.

Now that I'm making the effort, I've noticed just how much of the stuff is in all of our food. Apple juice? Some brands, check. Cereal? Check. Granola bars? Check. Everything I enjoy snacking on and eating for lunch? Check and check.

Please tell me if you have suggestions for fructose-free lunches. I'd love to hear.

4. How many Schedule C's can you file with a single 1040, anyway?

5. Those ladies who are not yet married: my tragic mistake thus far in planning has been to avoid choosing a single "wedding color." "Pshaw," I said at first. "Why pick just one? My fella is a graphic designer. I knit and adore colors. Surely we can pull this off without limiting ourselves to white and green, or white and blue, or white and fuschia, or whatnot. Let's have lots of colors!"

/rude buzzer noise/

My fella is near the point of tears with the effort of figuring out how to coordinate a groom and two groomsmen with bridesmaids' dresses that are dark blue with ivory lace and flowers that are peachy/coral-colored. I think some of this has to do with his work as a graphic designer and his sincere love of unified looks; my pointing out that this wedding is not a final verdict on his aesthetic philosophy (actually, I think it's a verdict on mine) is not helpful.

Honestly, I never thought it would be that hard. Lesson learned.

Got any good reference points for telling men how to dress in a manly, formal fashion that incorporates either a mid-range to dark blue or coral? I am told the groom must stand out from the two groomsmen...