SeaFlower and so many socks

I've reentered the land of the thinking people. After six years dormant, many of them happily so, I'm back in the Ph.D. swing of things. I'm enjoying it, too, sort of. I like my field (Criminal Justice) tremendously. And I think I like my dissertation topic.

Anyway, we've all been very busy up here in the Adirondacks. E has her first business. She named it SeaFlower, and she makes one-of-a-kind (as she puts it) earrings. It reminds me of my many businesses as a child, ranging from elaborate sidewalk bakesales with my special friend Al, to a short-lived industry of velour doll blankets, from scraps my Grandpa Ozzy gave me. He was a dry-goods merchant (fancy for he sold fabric and notions at a booth in a bazaar, the Busy Bee Market). My mom was also put in mind of her own summer business, making personalized macaroni letter pins, which she collected money for but never delivered to her customers...

E's earrings are quite pretty--she's been selling them mail-order, five dollars a pair (which I think is a bargain!) to an assortment of friends, and I promised her end-of-summer booths at both the craft fair and the local church lawn sale. Here are some of her offerings;





In the meantime, I've been working on socks. I'm well on my way to many single socks--I have a fear of the second of the pair--so boring to knit!










And here are my beautiful rosewood Lantern Moon sock needles. I treated myself at my new beloved upstate yarn shop:



I'm also working on baby gifts for the many enceinte among you...but those I can't post pictures of, because they're to be surprises.

Now I must return to the articles on rural policing, which call out to me their siren song...

North Country Bound

Back upstate...city errands accomplished, Charlotte's Web half-finished, new fall Ripple begun and then abandoned in spare room (too hot to work on it)...I'm also officially back in the swing of the long-fallow Ph.D. August will be devoted to dissertation work. I'm hoping for long evenings of guilt-free knitting and tv DVDs that, finally, I will have earned through diligent literature review...

My Life in the Fairy Ring

Lest I ever make it sound like parenthood is unmitigated lightness of being,






let me say that Hedgehog is a high-spirited little one. Sometimes sounds come out of her six-year-old self such as I've never heard--half-banshee, half-wolf. At least, this is how I expect such creatures sound. Her moods are mercurial as Adirondack weather. Yet, she can be such good company, and funny too. And she fits into our family so well, with her book obsessions and all her eccentricity.

Today, it's raining again. Hedgehog and I drove to Walmart (I realize from my past post that it's apparent we spend a little too much time within the dark fortress of the evillest of empires) for a little traveling tank for VeVe and Lily, the Beta fish. Yes, tomorrow morning, I haul Hedgie, Pippin, two fish and a hamster back to Brooklyn for a few days to accomplish some city errands. When we were little and traveled, my dad sang a song called "We're the Bedouins and We're Here!" My life has come full circle once again.

Hedgie and I worked on a necklace of her design, tentatively called "Fairy Ring." We like to name things, in our family, and these names tend to change as different moods strike. Hedge had some mixed emotions about our handiwork:



She registered some dissatisfaction:





But I think it's quite a necklace. And I'm just glad to use up some of my bead stash in pursuit of trapped-indoors peace, however fleeting.

Knitting Forsaken for Potter

As I write, E is practicing outside in the Adirondack dusk with her new "Legends of the Wild West" bow and arrow set--I took archery (!) in college, and damned if this thing isn't scary, despite its misleadingly innocent plastic-and-rubber-tipped appearance.

A and I plowed through our copies of "Deathly Hallows" simultaneously. A stayed up all night and finished; I sagged at 3 am, leaving a wake of caramel popcorn bits, watery iced coffee dregs, and tears...and finished next evening...all I can say is, JK is my spiritual soul sister. I loved this book. And now I can barely even think of my five half-finished pairs of socks...well, maybe in honor of dear, brave Dobby.

And might I add, seeing as Veresna Ussep herself appears to have left a comment, I will now more freely admit that yes, I am a fan of her illicit Severus! Okay, there, the truth is out!

Potter Approacheth

Well, two weeks turned into a month...I'm still in the Adirondacks, and will be here for the foreseeable future, despite terrible weather and blackouts and sloooow internet connection. The dial-up service in the mountains doesn't bother me so much...after all, who cares about the internet really...I hate to admit I do! But it's not a necessity. For me, though, lights and hot and cold running water are. We were without these for a very dark sixteen hours or so last week...the power went down as I approached checkout in AC Moore with E, my arms full of Peaches and Creme to make "warshrags" galore from "Mason Dixon Knitting." The lights dimmed and died, leaving a gaggle of ladies thwarted in their crafting needs. We drove away, disheartened, right into an insanely busy intersection with no functioning traffic lights! Wow, Kamikaze-style left turn! I attached myself to the bumper of the car in front and followed her lead back to the highway, returning home to nineteenth-century darkness, a freezer full o' melting food, and NO FLASHLIGHTS. E was excited, and Sissy and I put a bright face on it. The candlelight was pretty loverly.

The weather has been uniformly gloomy, H.P. Lovecraftian really. The Adirondacks do get eerie in perpetual twilight--the trees are so tall around our house that they block out the light anyway, and now we're in a gothic novel. I adore rainy days, but the fog and mist and thunder have become unnerving.

I have gotten a perfect rainy day UPS shipment, though: a Charlotte's Web kit with five lovely skeins of Koigu, a busload of aforementioned Peaches and Creme for disclothes, and...drumroll please (well, in my yarn-addled mind, at least)...a box of Debbie Bliss Cashmerino for new Ripple. I shall call this one Debbie. Sissy finished her immense worsted ripple--it's fantastic and so cozy. A named it Gorgar, and the nickname "Gorgo" has stuck, after my sister tried out "Elmer" and "Madge" to no avail. Gorgo seems like the newest pet in a household of pets...his softness is so alluring that we've all slept under him at one time or another, even in his incomplete stages.

And finally, the ultimate rainy-day treat: the new Potter. How I've longed for this day to come. A and I are buying two copies at midnight, and then going into a total media blackout. Let no spoilers sully the experience. I am rooting for Snape to be ambivalently non-evil. My crush on the dark professor has been vindicated by an article my friend sent me, discussing Snape as Byronic hero, and some of the sexy fan fic surrounding his mythos. My friend warned me that I might be scarred by reading some of this online s&m stuff, but of course that couldn't keep me away...I read, and was duly scarred, not to mention blushing. However, it does tell me that I'm not alone in my maybe misplaced luv.

If you dare, google "Veresna Ussep." Not for the prudish, or the blushing, the faint-hearted, the J.K. purists, or even for me. But it's pretty darn well-written. Wonder if Jo has read this stuff?

Well, happy Pottering to any fellow fans who happen here...

Vacation

My blog will be going on vacation with me for two weeks. I'll be in the mountains, no internet access, just me and sissy and E and pets and craft projects...

I have finished Rowan Ripple and will post photos when I return!

Firebird

Firebird, my new love, moved in with me today...my Sock Club package for June arrived today, from Blue Moon Fiber Arts. I think this colorway may be my favorite I've ever seen in variegated yarns, and that includes the often hauntingly beautiful Koigu colorways.

I also loved the April colorway, but wasn't too partial to the sock pattern that came with. Someone commented that the colors got lost in the shading created by the pattern's mesh sections, and I agree totally. So, I'm going to use that yarn to make a plain-Jane pair of socks from Nancy Bush's "Knitting Vintage Socks", which I cannot recommend highly enough for a good understanding of sock-making, toes, heel-turning, kitchener stitch and all...for sure, this beautiful yarn can be shown off to great advantage in simple stitches. That said, I do love the fancy June pattern that came with the Firebird yarn, and will use it.

"It is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all"*

I received my package from Gina, my delightful scarf pal from ISE4. How I love my sweet pink ripply scarf. I wonder if she made a ripple pattern on purpose, because of my ripple obsession. Well, it is divine. A true, cheery pink alternated with a beautiful pink variegated yarn, so soft, the stitches so pretty, the scalloped edging so true...there is something unbelievably touching about receiving a bit of coziness from a total stranger! And handmade just for me!

My new scarf posed for some glamour shots. As you can see, it has many moods.

Languid:



Insouciant:



Bold:



Introspective:



My pal sent along as well the generous amount of leftover yarn (I can't wait to see what it becomes), some dainty stitch markers, a terrific little knitter's reference to tuck in my workbag, and some calling cards she ordered from Moo.com, which came to me all the way from England. These cards are so magical--tiny little fairy calling cards--with a picture of my ripple afghan on one side, and my info on the other, with a quote from Laura Ingalls Wilder*. But the really nice thing about this gift is the reason for it: my pal noticed my love of Laura, and because she herself is a fan, remembered the bit in "Little Town on the Prairie" when Laura's ma and pa allow her to buy "name cards"--costing a whole quarter, they were truly a luxury item for the Ingalls family--so that she can have the things of other girls her age. So my lovely pal found me my very own name cards!!! But how could she have known that this is probably my favorite part in all of the Little House books? I am so incredibly touched. I often muse on the differences between my modern life and Laura's old-fashioned one--and compare them unfavorably--maybe I romanticize the past, but our world is so noisy and fast and somehow corrupt...yet, my new calling cards are the way I want my life to be--of necessity, modern ("new-fangled," Pa Ingalls would say), but like my knitting and crochet, rooted in the good things of the past.

Here are the special gifts:






Thank you so much, Gina.

Vive L'Enfance!

As we near E's Goodbye Day at her little local kindergarten, I'm definitely melancholy. I've come to realize recently, more and more, how much I like things to stay the same, at least in their trappings. I live in the neighborhood where I grew up, in the house of my adolescence; E goes to my old preschool, and will move on next year to the school I attended for 12 years, along with my sissy. She spends summers in the very houses where my mother herself was once a child. I've brought A and E along with me on my quest for continuity; and, largely, it's worked out for all of us. E is going to have a mostly sweet growing up in this neighborhood--she's already known the daily walk through the calm streets, through the iron gate, down the church walkway under the overhanging trees and past the blooming roses, up the marble steps to her classrooms full of kind children and lined with casement windows. I took that walk, and sat in those classrooms, when I was five. I know, I know, it won't always be perfect, I romanticize, but as long as I can recognize my surroundings, and recognize myself there, how well it fits! And childhood, although we are moving tomorrow out of one phase, can last as long for E as it rightfully should.

E has a little corsage for Goodbye Day, orchids for her refinement and innocence, and rosemary for remembrance:



Long live childhood!

A New Afghan and Some Random Yarn

I've almost completed the second scarf for E's head teachers--the first a red feather-and-fan pattern from "Scarf Styles," and the current one in moss green, a simple lace pattern from Knitty. This is the one I used for my scarf pal's scarf. I'm using the other recommended yarn, a silk-wool mix, a little more warm-weatherish than cashmere.

In the meantime, have begun a vintage striped blanket in a relatively inexpensive Paton's pure merino. Anyone reading this, you really should check out this link. Her blanket is so evocative and appealing. Plus, there's a very clear picture-tutorial. I love my palette, but as crochet can do, the wool is working up into a sort of rough, unyielding fabric. I remember some of Grandma Eva's afghans having this texture, and I guess I'm willing in this case to forgo the tactile for the aesthetic...





I'm also wondering what to do with two balls of VERY cheery cotton twist given to me by Megan--who ultimately rejected her first ripple in favor of more subtle hues. I still can't help but love these, and I really want them to become something:



Any suggestions?

Also, a word on dinner. I must air my grief. How to please everyone all the time, expediently and even healthfully? It just doesn't seem possible. How many times has E rejected my offerings and made herself waffles for dinner...tonight, however, I've been inspired by Faycat, whose lovely blog always has incredibly appetizing food pics as well as great recipes. So, I'm now off to concoct my version of her latest pasta dish and accompanying salad. I really believe that tonight, we'll all be eating the same food. Thanks, Faycat!