two knits of ivory

We're still on old pictures here at Chez Yarn. This one is an oldie but goody from last winter. Three skeins of Sundara Sock. Yum. So what has me blogging the day after I blogged? Timer . Vicky Cristina Barcelona . Scarlett Johansson. Wikipedia has just informed me that Scarlett Johansson is Jewish. I knew my Jewdar was failing, but this is not the product of diaspora. I loved Scarlett in Manny & Lo when she was just a child, but I never would have guessed she was Jewish. (Technically she is only half Jewish, but it's the "important"* half, her mother's half.) And why should it matter? Because that is what I grew up doing, the age old conversation filler of "is she/he Jewish, or isn't she/he?" I rarely think on this, because I am so culturally removed from where I grew up (Long Island), I come in contact with so few Jews, and the climate of political correctness has changed. To tell you the truth, I am really uncomfortabl...

Thoughts for the day... 1) I've only knit one gift this calender year, a ribbed hat for my niece Meaghan. 2) Be careful what you wish for. I wished for a day doing nothing on the couch yesterday and that's what I received. I couldn't get out of my own way; I was molasstic inertia. The list of what I didn't do with all those voluptuous hours of freedom is long and sad and whah whah whah all the way home. It really pisses me off when the precious hours and days of my life are squandered. What some people wouldn't give for the leisure and bounty of my small life and I don't take advantage of it. I am unable to take advantage of it. What causes this paralysis? What makes me inert? Is it guilt or trauma or stupidity? Maybe that's why I've always been unsympathetic to the travails of Hamlet. I don't like what I see, because I see it in me. No matter how bitter the above tone, I am not really miserable, just exasperated with myself...

What do you call a man with no arms and no legs who happens to be hanging on the wall? Art. Or as we say in the patois of my adopted homeland , aht. What I do know, and have known, for a long, long while is that I don't know my aht from my elbow. What is aht? No friggin' clue. I only know what I like to look at. And what I like to look at is photos I take of my knitting. Or to be more accurate, photographs of things I have knit at some point this summer. I've since tucked these sleeves, knit in my favorite Jo Shark DK tweed, away in favor of some really mindless knitting: A Shetland triangle in Malabrigo sock, Primavera colorway: But to be perfectly honest I have been sucked into the vortex known as Facebook gaming, specifically Kingdoms of Camelot. Oh woe betide my knitting life.

The funneh is missing in action at chez yarn. At least we have yarn, though. I bought some new-to-me yarn from a couple of Ravelers last week: Bugga . The dusty coloring reminds me of Dream in Color's yarn. In fact, the top skein, Orchid Mantis, is near identical to a skein I have of Smooshy in the Butter Peeps colorway. The Bugga, being 20% cashmere, is deadly soft. It is going to make some fabulous scarves. So where the heck is the funneh? Well, a weekful of documentaries on American industry, and my continued ignorance of the BP situation, have been leaching all of my joy. I'm back to morose seriousness as I come to terms with some conflicting beliefs. The theme this month can be summed up in dialogue from Cold Mountain (the movie, I never read the book). Renee Zellweger's character, Ruby, is up to her eyeballs in the hellhole of a life of a woman in a rural mountain town during the Civil War: "They call this war a cloud over the land. But they...

When I was a young'un I was entranced by multiple personality disorders. Where most children spend their time learning gender and societal normative behaviors, I was drawn to all that was non-normative. Now that I've come to see my past and present through the prism of post-trauma, I am realizing that multiple personalities are the sign of a healthy mind, not just a mental illness caused by abuse, as immortalized in popular culture by the books and movies about Sybil and Eve . I think I shall call my inner berator Mrs. Norris, after Jane's uber-bossy, illiberal, and admirably indefatigable Mansfield Park character. She thinks she knows what is best for me and up until this year, I've ceded to her all too often. When Mrs. Norris says "Complete this knitting project; you started it - now finish it." I have the good sense to question her admonition. No longer do I obey, meekly and miserably, or rebel, just as miserably. Case in point, I began a new s...

I think my subconscious is telling me to pick up some old Judy Blume books. That's the second time this spring my muse called forth a title punned from "Are you there God, it's me Margaret." So I bought more yarn. Who'd a thunk? This most recent acquisition is filed under retail therapy. I was in need and it did the trick. Five months ago I darkened my hair considerably. When I was going more natural with the color, my clothes color range was as narrow as my palate: green to blue to beige to white. These colors have been my steady companion for at least 10 years. A couple of years ago I bought my first non-blue coat, and it's just been chaos at chez yarn. Absolute chaos. Now I'm wearing PINK. Me in pink. But you know, I think pink goes great with my hair. So, I'm trying not to let ms. inner kool kat laugh in that snide, condescending way she has, making me feel 12 and inadequate, and clutching for the fortification of an all black w...

Sometimes I'm mortified by what I write here. Mortification. Shame. Self-loathing. Part of me tells me that's the lesson. Be you. Expose yourself. It's the only way to build armor against a world that is designed to dislike you. Or should I say a species built entirely different than you and designed to dislike you. The snark is just armor too. Yeah it's learning to be funny and quick and highly intellectualized, but it's still fucking armor. I was beginning to fool myself that it was something else. And I'm scared and proud to have derailed that subterfuge. So what interesting thing has derailed me this week? Jane fuckin' Austen. Last week I read a few chapters of Mansfield Park and the world was right again. Light, crisp snark. Every sentence a gem. As I read I let the precise perfection of her prose envelope me. Until it abruptly stopped and I was unwittingly unmoored (why is this not an antonym of moored?), untethered, disjointed...

OMG do I need to get that self important drama llama ding dong from Tuesday off the top shelf! It hurts to look at it, but look at I do and do and do. I'm obsessed with my own experiences. I'm obsessed with squeezing every fucking drop of meaning out of every gosh darn thing. Hello, calling Mrs. M. Umm, that's how you roll. So deal. And deal I do. But today (yeah!) I am beginning to grasp at the fringes of self mockery and it feels awesomesauce. A.W.E.S.O.M.E.S.A.U.C.E. Ring around the drama llama. I've decided to blame Wharton for this recent setback. I finally took out a book and used my eyes to read it and it wasn't about Bella fuckin' Swan. Miracle of miracles! (OMG! what's that song?!? - "vanity of vanities the whole thing is a vain parade" - Hand of God, Soundgarten.) (Yes, welcome to two knits, the home of the vain parade. Snerk.) I haven't picked up Wharton in many years and my perspective on her writings has cha...

It is the fate of a sarcastic bitch to be, well, considered just a plain old coldhearted bitch. Our humor is dark and oftentimes inappropriate; inappropriate in pitch and inappropriate in content. I've changed a great deal in the past year. I feel I am both a better me to me and a more selfish me to everyone else. And I'm happy about that. But there remains a part of me that feels responsible for everyone and everything. If someone hurts, I need to make that hurt go away. Even if it is my enemies' hurt. I want to snark and cut things down to size but then I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. Politically correct and snark spells o.x.y.m.o.r.o.n. Or just plain moron. This morning I followed my heart down a road it's been too timid to travel for two decades or more.. I drove past a cat that had been run over and I did not keep driving. I sated my impulse to care and to be responsible for this helpless creature. I cried at the trauma drama t...

New interim look. Not finished but at this point so preferable to the old look. Went to the movies, saw Ridley Scott's Robin Hood . WTF was Scott thinking with this reimagining of the Robin Hood myth? I haven't wanted to walk out of a movie since 1999. The penultimate mis en scène: It's aproximately 1199 AD and it been hours since the movie started and Robin has yet to take to the wood. That's because: 1) The French are storming the cliffs of Dover in transport boats , a la Omaha Beach, aka D-Day . Look at the picture in the link and then watch the movie. I am not shitting you. It was D-Day in the theatre tonight! 2) William Wallace Robin preHood, a commoner, and an archer in the crusades, (an infantry position that lacks swordsmanship and horse riding skills) astride deceased King Richard the Lionhearted's snow white steed (which he has been in possession of for at least an hour and yet no one seems to notice the horse is bedecked in ye Plantagenet...

There are changes afoot at Two Knits. Usually change is very difficult for me. In fact learning how to make the upcoming changes has been difficult, but when the change happens, it should be easy as pie for me to acclimate. You see I've been trying to teach myself a little html in order to redesign my blog. Every few weeks or months I get wholly absorbed in the project, pore all of my time, and 110% of my mental energy, into learning this trade and then before I know it I become super saturated and loath everything I just learned. Time passes. Rinse. Repeat. But I haven't given up. So maybe it'll be this weekend, or maybe this summer or fall. Who knows, but the cyber home of chez Yarn is getting a facelift.

Many, many, many moons ago I went through a Herman Hesse phase. I devoured, rather than savored, each book of his I read. So it is no wonder that I remember very little. Only one idea I came across in his writings took root in my chaotic mind and this was the supposition by a character that the act of biological reproduction is a necessary psychological step, or evolution, for man. The narcissism of youth must make way for the selfless devotion, an all important transformative experience, of parenthood. Now that I am an adult, and a little less naive, I can plainly see all around me that birthing babies doesn't cure narcissism. My birth sure as heck didn't cure it in my family. But that doesn't mean there is no truth to Hesse's belief. I still believe in his theory even though I was never able to test it out myself. By the time I was healed enough to embrace motherhood my body no longer could provide for me. I am both proud and angry about the four years I ...

April? Just a smidge betta than March? Okay, that's laying it on thickly even for my drama llama tendencies. I'm doin' pretty darn good, all things considered. And there are considerable things iterating. I haven't been knitting much. Once I birthed the two ideas, my knitting became fun again, with the demanding task master hibernating. All I've knit upon is my latest lace paneled raglan in the darker Cove colorway of the Tosh DK. I am in no rush to finish this sweater. This is a new feeling for me. Usually I'm so sick of the sweater at this point I'm doing marathon runs to get it off the needles. What's different this time? Well, it's my latest love, this Tosh DK, and this colorway. Depending on the light the color gives off a sun bleached hue, like so: In other light (and with the vagaries of my photo editing skills) it looks to be emanating a mossy glow: No matter what color it actually is, I don't want to stop knitting with ...

So back to March. March. Yeah. Hmmm. In March I went to Vegas. It's not my kinda town, but it gave me an opportunity to take a helicopter tour of Lake Mead, the Hoover Dam, and the Grand Canyon. I much prefer the majesty of the naked earth to the glitter and glam of Vegas, its air diffuse with schmaltz, smoke, and despair. I don't know my Canyon geog, but I'm pretty sure we toured what is known as the west rim. The desert landscape was awash in what looked like green mold. We oohed and aahed over the fact that Vegas recently received a whopping five inches of rain. Little did we know , our basement was filling up with 18 and one half inches of water. Maybe even at the exact moment I took the above picture. 18 and a half inches. Oh March, first you murder Randy Rhoads when I was just a young bubelah, then you go and, well, you know what you've done over many, many years. Now this? March, you are so dead to me. Or not. Oy.

March was a unique month in my life. I am not sad to see it leave. We watched the first half an hour or so of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings on TV last night. It made me think of my attachment to size 2.00 - 2.50mm sock needles. I waxed so decisively on the lesson learned on January 17: I should stick to 2.75mms if I want to actually enjoy knitting a pair of socks. My ravelry project page indicates I started the Escape to Russet Moon Mountain socks on size 2.50mms on January 24. That is a mere seven days later. WTF? Are you there brain, it's me Morticcia? I didn't even consciously realize they were 2.50mms until I had gotten halfway through the foot bed. I kept contemplating why I wasn't as attracted to this project when the luscious Sundara sock yarn I'm using electrifies my heart and mind. And there is Bilbo, being mesmerized by the ring. But this is authorial fantasy. What, pray tell, is my excuse? My inner knitter has her own agenda? ...

I definitely view the world differently than other people. Sometimes I view the world differently than myself. For the first time in my life I am able to catch glimpses of the "real" world, as it stands apart from my world. And sometimes my mind and body go off on their own. For at least a week one part of me has been mentally berating myself for not taking an interest in photographing my FOs and wips. Another part of me has been guffawing at miss berator, laughing at her rigidity (I need a better word here...). Knitting and photography are my joys, fuck if I'm gonna do them when I am not going to enjoy them. The pictures herein were taken by Focused me, but edited by Fugue me. (I definitely need to name my different mes. That's a project in and of itself.) As I was saying, Fugue me edited the photos on my laptop. My laptop sucks for photo editing, but I love my laptop. How do I reconcile these things? I dunno. Yet. Sweater, sweater, I knit a ...

I am knitting. Not a lot, but some. I finished the laptop condom last week. It is nearly perfectly sized after two felting washes: I haven't decided on whether I'm going to add a button, or some other closure device. And though I feel the nascent pull of spring cleaning my knitting WIPS, I was compelled to cast on the new Madtosh I purchased in the lighter of the two shades of Cove: The colors remind me of my hometown, Long Beach, NY. I don't usually look back fondly on Long Beach, as the dense congestion of it's streets is a poison to my constitution. But these colors? Herein lay the colors of the wet sand, the multifaceted Atlantic Ocean, and the earthy hues of the life-supporting jetties. I loved playing on the jetties. Alone. Jumping from one boulder to the next, challenging my agility while imbibing freedom with each gulp of the salty air. Or I could crawl along the beach floor and look at the myriad life forms that called the jetty home. Would ...

My mind is all over the place these days. One minute there's some funneh , the next there's national socialism . These are the daemons I can't control. And I have to remind myself I am not responsible for them or the repercussions of their crazeh. But then there are the daemons I can control: Sundara Sport in LE color Time Travels Sundara Sport in Glacier Two different intensities of Madtosh Sport in Cove Madtosh Sport in Violin There are as many opinions about stash as there are people. I have, in fact, two paradoxical opinions. The first opinion is that "one should only have the yarn one needs to knit now." The second opinion is "Pretty! Wowza! Pretty! I wanna, I wanna, here's my money give give give it to me now! NOW!" The latter opinion has been the dominant one at chez yarn for over almost two years. I now have no more room for yarn. Or should I say, I don't want to make anymore room for yarn. The amoun...

Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me; The Carriage held but just Ourselves And Immortality. ~ Emily Dickinson This is the thought that came to me as I opened the "new post" window. My muse speaks and I never understand her. 'S okay. I'm used to it. I am growing more and more devoted each day to giving her free reign. Or, should I say, my capacity for indulging her is growing each and every day? Some days she takes on mythic proportions. Other days? Notsomuch. There was a bit of a lull in knitting at chez yarn. 'S okay, too. I'm listening to my inner knitter agitate over the fact I haven't had an FO in forever and I've cast on a new project. She can suck an egg. Yeah. That's the ticket. Wow, there's a tone change. This project, another pair of Waving Lace socks with Sundara sock yarn, has been given the frothy name "Escape to Russet Moon Mountain." (If you're into Twilight snark, tak...

True to form at chez yarn, we are now on day who knows what of ignoring the suffering in Haiti. I am catching glimpses of it when the Hubster puts on the news here and there, catching the cover of a newspaper at the gas station, hearing an interview on NPR. It seems like the world is really coming together to help Haiti and the pessimistic cockles of my heart are warming. What I am left with is my internal struggle. Because, ya know, the Haiti disaster is all about me. You mean you didn't know? It's about how I am incapable of facing it. How I am incapable of being the person I should be/should have been on the one hand, and in the other hand, how the world is inadequate, deserving of my inert, self-righteous scorn. I am as helpless in this as I am in my knitting. A mute passenger on the Morticcia express. Someday maybe I'll learn how to transmogrify my shortcomings into strengths, as I have begun to with my knitting. Ginger Waves Socks I spent a good porti...