UFOs, Not-Yet-FOs, and Stash
I am the queen of Unfinished Objects (UFOs), and this week has been no exception. I've been working on a Knitting Pure and Simple bolero for a little girl, in chocolate brown Plymouth Encore, to match her fall wardrobe (she's a 5-year old fashionista). I've finished the body and the front/bottom band, and have the collar and sleeves still to do. All I need is a few quiet hours in which to finish it, but since I've been chief child-wrangler this week (the fashionista's parents are out of town) I haven't gotten much done. Having now played the role of single parent for a few days, I will never look askance at a busy mom's wobbly knitting again. Hey, moms and dads, how do you manage to knit at all, much less turn out some of the stunning work that you do? I bow down to your stamina and willpower.
The other thing I've been hacking away at is the Sparkly Shadow Shawl. The main color is Cherry Tree Hill Supersock Java, and the contrast is Kid Seta mohair in a medium orange variegate. I'm stranding Cotton Gold sparkly sequined stuff along with the Kid Seta. I wasn't sure how this would work out, but it's really coming out nicely. The sequins are really making the mohair "shadow" well. Photos to come -- when I have a moment off from dominoes, Candy Land, craft projects, and Spaghetti-Os.
Just a note here: It's been several days since I succumbed to any new yarn. Working at a yarn store, it's hard not to dally with every new temptation that comes in. I've been trying hard to think about what I would make out of a given yarn, whether I NEED it (what an idea!), and whether it duplicates anything I have. Then I try to visualize my stash, which is hard to do, because to get it to fit into a single image, I have to shrink it to microscopic size. Okay, so I have to imagine a camera panning across the acreage of my stash. Hmmmm ... there's all the Rowan Magpie I bought when it went on closeout several years ago ... the several Hanne Falkenberg kits (including a coat knit in fingering-weight yarn) ... the 10 colors (2 bags each) of yarn I bought at a historic mill in Scotland in the '90s (I couldn't decide which color to get, so I got them all, and had my friend, then living in Scotland, bring it over in bits every time he visited) ... well, you get the panoramic picture. Too Much Yarn. (I'm actually starting to believe there is such a thing.)
So, I haven't brought any yarn home. Not even the ooooooh-la-la Sheep Shop #3 in juicy new colors that we got in at the store this week. Not even the Ranco sock yarn by Araucania that's been like a crazed capuchin monkey on my back for weeks (quit lookin' for bugs in my hair, ya monkey!) Not the Araucania Aysen, which is so soft that I want to buy it just to cuddle with it ... oooops, I drooled on the keyboard!
I Can't Dance
I got no rhythm. In aerobics, I was always the one stumbling left while everyone else was Grapevining to the right. I can't boogie down, shake my booty, do the Mashed Potato, or even polka my way out of a Polish party. I don't even have a Groove Thang.
I was 9 years old in 1964 when the Beatles became popular in the US. I'd wait till everyone else was out of the house, put on Meet the Beatles, and try to dance like the kids I'd seen on American Bandstand. Once, my family came home from an outing and discovered me "dancing" in the living room. Let's just say that families can be merciless. I didn't try dancing again until I was married and in my 30s and my then-husband conscripted me into Community Ed ballroom dancing lessons. He may have salvaged his toes by now.
I got to thinking about this last evening when I took my favorite 5-year-old to her Creative Movement class. She's a natural dancer, and can pirouette, boogie, and breakdance. She gets it from her mom (no relation to me!) As I watched her pretend to be a kangaroo and a snake and a frog, then skip and fly and leap, I envied her. She seemed so happy just to be out there, flinging herself about, almost flying.
I was feeling quite envious, and quite sorry for myself as a dance-impaired individual. For a few minutes. And then I thought back over the day. Earlier, I'd helped someone rip out and reconstruct a piece of knitting, picking up dropped stitches, straightening twisted stitches, clearing up the mysteries of decreases and bind-offs. I'd helped someone else interpret a pattern. And the day before, I'd showed someone how to sew up a sweater. Not difficult stuff, surely. But I'm good at it. Just as E. is good at dancing. I got my knitting genes from my maternal grandmother and my mother. She got her dancing genes from her mother. I could as easily have been born to someone in Cameroon, someone from a long line of people with no eye-hand coordination but a great facility with healing the sick. Or I could have been a transplanted Texan with lots of charm but poor language skills. Or... a Yukon Gold potato. But, as Peter and Lou Berryman say, "We could have been dipsticks, or lavender lipsticks, but we happened ... to be Us." I guess I'm just the non-dancing dipstick that I am, knitting-talented, but destined never to do the Two-Step. And that's ... OK, I guess. I'll take it.
