Knitting is, for a writer, a sublime way to multi-task. If one is lucky enough to find an engaging project that isn’t too fiddly and doesn’t take up too much of your brain, and lucky enough to have a cool room to sit in with only the bubbling of an aquarium for company, one can knit away, writing in one’s head, and come out at the end with a sock and something to say.
As I was knitting along on my sock tonight, I finished the ribbed cuff (the easy part) and confidently began a rather complicated herringbone stitch pattern for the leg, a 12-stitch repeat with all manner of YOs and PSSOs and to-ing and fro-ing. Things went well for the first row, then faltered in the second. I decided to un-knit the offending area, and quickly got into a tangle of un-YOs and semi-PSSOs and I was uttering “oy”s and becoming PO’d and things devolved until the sock was completely FUBAR*, then it was not a sock at all anymore and I started meditating on swears.
I grew up in a mostly swear-free household. In the early 1960s people didn’t just toss off mating slang in a cavalier fashion the way they do today, at least not the people I knew. “Crap” was a daring term in my crowd. “Fart” was about as far as anyone would go, as in, “That old fart!”
My dad was a repressed Methodist, and the worst I heard him say, at the times when he was banging around in the basement trying to fix something, was “hell” or “balls”. I was too innocent, in those days, to understand what the latter term meant exactly (I was probably about 7 or 8 when I first heard him use the word this way) but I knew it was not nice.
My mom was a little more creative. She was something of a potty-mouth, which was probably a result of hanging out with 3 little kids all day. “Poop” rolled off her tongue easily, though only figuratively, of course. Another of her favorites was “foop”.
Somehow we’d never picked up that standard Midwesternism, “shoot”. “Heck” wasn’t for us, either, nor “Jeez”, “Jeepers”, “Gosh”, “Golly” or any of the things even wholesome kids said in Disney movies. Mom said “Oh, dear” a lot, and we gave her a lot to say “Oh, dear” about.
It was only after about 1969 or so that Mom started saying “shit”. One of her favorite lines became “She wouldn’t say ‘shit’ if she had a mouthful”.
I didn’t pick up the habit of swearing till after I was married, and even then, I didn’t swear much. It always seemed much more fun to call someone a “blackguard” or a “scoundrel”, to describe specifically what was wrong with something than to toss epithets around. It was only when I lived alone for several years that I began to swear in earnest.
This dark period coincided with a Presidential administration I didn’t much care for. In fact, every time our Supreme Leader’s face appeared on TV, I was tempted to throw footwear, or at least the remote, at the screen. Since I didn’t want to damage my sole companion (and I had TiVo, for goodness’ sake!) I usually settled for shouting a resounding F***! at the screen and turning off the TV. This is what humans devolve to in a short time without the benefit of polite society.
My vocabulary constricted. That one four-letter word, like a smack to the chops, was so satisfying to say in so many situations: The talk-radio caller who goes on and on, the annoying commercial played for the fifteenth time in an hour, the horrible ‘70s song playing in the supermarket, the blown fuse, burnt toast, dust, you name it.
And then I moved in with housemates, including a young child. Now, even when I had a mouthful, I could not say “shit”. I could not say F***. I could not call someone a thing that rhymes with “gas-pipe”. I could not refer to someone as something that shares a shape and a first syllable with “dill pickle”.
For a while, I had to think carefully every time I opened my mouth. I found myself uttering the ever-useful “oh, dear” a lot, feeling more and more like my mother. But after I had been in the household several weeks, something awful popped out of my mouth.
Yes. You guessed it. I said “shoot”.
*If you have been asleep or off the grid for the past 60 or 70 years or so, FUBAR stands for F****d Up Beyond All Recognition.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Of icons and palookas
My dad spent most of his career editing copy at the StarTribune, and doing a damn good job of it. He is known as something of a crank on the subject of English usage. I am my father's daughter.
I think the words "icon" and "legend" should be given ten years of prison time without parole. Usage would only be allowed if the former referred to a religious image or small picture on a computer screen, and the latter to a mythic story.
"Iconic" would be permitted, as in, "Michael Jackson was an iconic figure in the black community, representing ..." "Legendary" would be permitted, as, in, "Walter Cronkite was a legendary newscaster, doing everything from [blah] to [blah blah]."
But can't we think of better ways to describe famous people? Paris Hilton might be more accurately described as an overprivileged, underweight, peroxided, promiscuous, partygoing heiress than a "society icon". Tom Cruise might be described as a religious nut, a famous actor, debatably a control freak, rather than a "legend" (or do you have to be over a certain age to be a legend?) Maybe he is only a celebrity at this point; maybe he'd have to be dead to be a legend at this stage of his career.
Although the excess of coverage of Michael Jackson's death would have been hard to put up with in any case, hearing him called either an "icon" or a "legend" every other sentence -- or even in the same sentence -- is what made me feel like pulling my hairs out one by one.
When singer James Brown died (I had to resist saying 'legendary singer James Brown'), one network news station was interviewing people standing outside the Apollo Theater. Person after person stated, as the reason they mourned him so, is that he was "such an icon". What did that mean to them? An icon is only an icon if it's an icon of something, if it represents something larger than itself. I'm sure Brown was an important figure in those peoples' lives, otherwise they wouldn't have turned out in such numbers to stand outside the theater all day. But I still don't know, specifically, what he meant to them.
Call a guy a palooka or a king. Call him fop, genius, stooge, gentleman. Call him anything. Just don't call him a legend.
I think the words "icon" and "legend" should be given ten years of prison time without parole. Usage would only be allowed if the former referred to a religious image or small picture on a computer screen, and the latter to a mythic story.
"Iconic" would be permitted, as in, "Michael Jackson was an iconic figure in the black community, representing ..." "Legendary" would be permitted, as, in, "Walter Cronkite was a legendary newscaster, doing everything from [blah] to [blah blah]."
But can't we think of better ways to describe famous people? Paris Hilton might be more accurately described as an overprivileged, underweight, peroxided, promiscuous, partygoing heiress than a "society icon". Tom Cruise might be described as a religious nut, a famous actor, debatably a control freak, rather than a "legend" (or do you have to be over a certain age to be a legend?) Maybe he is only a celebrity at this point; maybe he'd have to be dead to be a legend at this stage of his career.
Although the excess of coverage of Michael Jackson's death would have been hard to put up with in any case, hearing him called either an "icon" or a "legend" every other sentence -- or even in the same sentence -- is what made me feel like pulling my hairs out one by one.
When singer James Brown died (I had to resist saying 'legendary singer James Brown'), one network news station was interviewing people standing outside the Apollo Theater. Person after person stated, as the reason they mourned him so, is that he was "such an icon". What did that mean to them? An icon is only an icon if it's an icon of something, if it represents something larger than itself. I'm sure Brown was an important figure in those peoples' lives, otherwise they wouldn't have turned out in such numbers to stand outside the theater all day. But I still don't know, specifically, what he meant to them.
Call a guy a palooka or a king. Call him fop, genius, stooge, gentleman. Call him anything. Just don't call him a legend.
Friday, April 3, 2009
A Big Fat Goose Egg and a Dime
The pussy willows are out at the Springbrook Nature Center in Fridley, Minnesota, and the Canada geese are nesting. Red-winged blackbirds are staking out their territories in the wetland, trilling their songs from atop reeds and cattails. A few early green plants are poking out from under the oak-leaf litter.
My friend L., her daughter E., and I took a walk around the wetland this morning. It's a short loop that takes us over a float bridge across the wetland, and through the woods and across a couple of small streams.
I was the first to make a find: A dime, half-buried in the mud near the picnic area. As we walked along the muddy trail, we looked for signs of deer, but only saw shoe-prints, and a few marks that could have been from anything.
L. had the next find, a dead tree that showed marks from both beavers and woodpeckers. Then, at the first stream crossing, we noted that there was still ice among the reeds, even though the ice is out in the big Twin-Cities lakes already. There were several sets of animal prints in the mud under the bridge: raccoon pawprints, goose footprints, and some paw prints that could have been from a small dog or perhaps some other small mammal.
I remarked that I didn't see any green shoots yet, but E., aged 6-1/2, pointed out plant after plant that was peeking out from amongst the leaves. My excuse is that she is several feet closer to the ground than I am.
Once we got to the wetland itself, we saw a pair of mallards. The geese, too, were paired up already, and we saw several that were deep in the reeds, presumably sitting on nests. One gander motorboated angrily at us through the water. The footbridge was messy with goose poop. As we were crossing, E. exclaimed, "An egg! Look, an egg!" I thought she was misinterpreting a splotch of white bird poop as an egg, but indeed it was an egg, a big fat goose egg sitting right on the planking. That must have been a very misguided goose. We all felt a bit sad for the abandoned egg, but it is early in the season, and there's plenty of time to start another clutch.
There were gulls out near the water, too. As soon as we re-entered the woods, we could hear a variety of bird-chatter in the trees. Crossing the next creek, we could hear the water trickling over a natural rock-dam. There was a lot of ice still in the creek; the spring sun hasn't yet been strong enough to melt it under all the trees, bare though they are.
Later, going home in the car, we recapped who had seen what, and who had been the first to make a find on our nature walk.
I was thinking of the pussy willows and the beaver tree when E. said, "Well,Carol found a dime!"
Yes. Well.
I'm waiting for turtle season, which is better than 10 dimes in my mind.
My friend L., her daughter E., and I took a walk around the wetland this morning. It's a short loop that takes us over a float bridge across the wetland, and through the woods and across a couple of small streams.
I was the first to make a find: A dime, half-buried in the mud near the picnic area. As we walked along the muddy trail, we looked for signs of deer, but only saw shoe-prints, and a few marks that could have been from anything.
L. had the next find, a dead tree that showed marks from both beavers and woodpeckers. Then, at the first stream crossing, we noted that there was still ice among the reeds, even though the ice is out in the big Twin-Cities lakes already. There were several sets of animal prints in the mud under the bridge: raccoon pawprints, goose footprints, and some paw prints that could have been from a small dog or perhaps some other small mammal.
I remarked that I didn't see any green shoots yet, but E., aged 6-1/2, pointed out plant after plant that was peeking out from amongst the leaves. My excuse is that she is several feet closer to the ground than I am.
Once we got to the wetland itself, we saw a pair of mallards. The geese, too, were paired up already, and we saw several that were deep in the reeds, presumably sitting on nests. One gander motorboated angrily at us through the water. The footbridge was messy with goose poop. As we were crossing, E. exclaimed, "An egg! Look, an egg!" I thought she was misinterpreting a splotch of white bird poop as an egg, but indeed it was an egg, a big fat goose egg sitting right on the planking. That must have been a very misguided goose. We all felt a bit sad for the abandoned egg, but it is early in the season, and there's plenty of time to start another clutch.
There were gulls out near the water, too. As soon as we re-entered the woods, we could hear a variety of bird-chatter in the trees. Crossing the next creek, we could hear the water trickling over a natural rock-dam. There was a lot of ice still in the creek; the spring sun hasn't yet been strong enough to melt it under all the trees, bare though they are.
Later, going home in the car, we recapped who had seen what, and who had been the first to make a find on our nature walk.
I was thinking of the pussy willows and the beaver tree when E. said, "Well,Carol found a dime!"
Yes. Well.
I'm waiting for turtle season, which is better than 10 dimes in my mind.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
A good blog; More lace
For your daily dose of hilarity, check out the Cakewrecks blog at www.cakewrecks.blogspot.com. 'nuff said.
It's been sort-of snowing yesterday and today. Yesterday it rained, sleeted, snowed, rained, and even hailed for about a minute. Today the snow is coming down in big, lazy, fluffy hunks that look like polyester stuffing. It's nature's April Fool joke.
I am still under the spell of lace knitting. I ordered a beautiful kit from Fiddlesticks Knitting called the Daisy Meadow Scarf, which uses 1 ball of Fiddlesticks' "Exquisite" lace yarn, which is 50% merino and 50% silk.
It's a triangular scarf / shoulder shawl which starts at the back point and increases at either side. I got through row 50 twice (ouch) yesterday. That's what I get from working without a lifeline. The yarn is, indeed, exquisite, but both slippery and sticky at the same time. (It's easy to lose stitches, but when you try to rip out, the yarn sticks to itself similar to how mohair behaves. Grrr.)
I started knitting it on Addi Turbo Lace needles, but it slid around too much. Also, the sharp points on the Lace needles split the yarn. The second time around, I used my size 5 Plymouth bamboo circulars, and they work much better for this yarn and pattern. And I am putting in a lifeline every 8-10 rows. Those "slip 1, knit 2 tog, PSSO"s are just too hard to unwind without disastrous results in this cobweb-weight yarn.
I am so proud of myself, however. For the second time in a row, I managed to put aside my project when I started to get frustrated, instead of barreling ahead and causing further destruction and rage.
Now, for an update on "Children of Lir". I figured out what my problem had been. (Recap: It starts with a provisional cast-on. You knit down one side, then pick up from the CO, then knit down the other side. When I went to pick up from the CO, I thought a plain row to pick up in was missing from the pattern). I was right; a plain row was missing. But not because the directions were flawed, as I thought. It was because I had blithely proceeded without reading the directions for the specific type of provisional CO to be used. If I'd used the one specified, (a long-tail CO with one strand of waste yarn and one strand of project yarn) I would have created the plain row in which to pick up. Given that I made a crochet chain and picked up in that, I had a "raw" lace row to pick up in, and an upside-down lace row at that!
It took me most of a week, but I finagled and fudged and twiddled and dang if you can find where I made the join. Now I'm happily about 8" past the midpoint. This is a good advanced-beginner lace project. It can be knit in a DK weight yarn (I used Elsebeth Lavold's Silky Wool), it doesn't have anything more complicated than YOs, K2togs, and SSKs, and you can easily see the pattern forming as you knit. It's only patterned on one side, so you have WS purl rows to "rest". The pattern is in "Traditional Knitted Lace Shawls" by Martha Waterman. However, you will want to chart the pattern on graph paper for yourself, as the book only includes written-out instructions. Graphing it makes it much easier to work.
I've been stalking the aisles of Borealis for a couple weeks, plotting other lace projects. There's a small half-circle shawl in "Victorian Lace Today" that's shown in Jade Sapphire's Lacey Lamb in red that I've gotten the itch to do. And I want to make something out of one of the Isager yarns we have in the store, but I just haven't put together the right combination of yarn, color, and project yet.
I'm happy to have such woes as these. I could be sandbagging in Fargo, or waiting in an unemployment line; instead, I'm dithering about re-knitting and project selection. See you at the yarn shop!
It's been sort-of snowing yesterday and today. Yesterday it rained, sleeted, snowed, rained, and even hailed for about a minute. Today the snow is coming down in big, lazy, fluffy hunks that look like polyester stuffing. It's nature's April Fool joke.
I am still under the spell of lace knitting. I ordered a beautiful kit from Fiddlesticks Knitting called the Daisy Meadow Scarf, which uses 1 ball of Fiddlesticks' "Exquisite" lace yarn, which is 50% merino and 50% silk.
It's a triangular scarf / shoulder shawl which starts at the back point and increases at either side. I got through row 50 twice (ouch) yesterday. That's what I get from working without a lifeline. The yarn is, indeed, exquisite, but both slippery and sticky at the same time. (It's easy to lose stitches, but when you try to rip out, the yarn sticks to itself similar to how mohair behaves. Grrr.)
I started knitting it on Addi Turbo Lace needles, but it slid around too much. Also, the sharp points on the Lace needles split the yarn. The second time around, I used my size 5 Plymouth bamboo circulars, and they work much better for this yarn and pattern. And I am putting in a lifeline every 8-10 rows. Those "slip 1, knit 2 tog, PSSO"s are just too hard to unwind without disastrous results in this cobweb-weight yarn.
I am so proud of myself, however. For the second time in a row, I managed to put aside my project when I started to get frustrated, instead of barreling ahead and causing further destruction and rage.
Now, for an update on "Children of Lir". I figured out what my problem had been. (Recap: It starts with a provisional cast-on. You knit down one side, then pick up from the CO, then knit down the other side. When I went to pick up from the CO, I thought a plain row to pick up in was missing from the pattern). I was right; a plain row was missing. But not because the directions were flawed, as I thought. It was because I had blithely proceeded without reading the directions for the specific type of provisional CO to be used. If I'd used the one specified, (a long-tail CO with one strand of waste yarn and one strand of project yarn) I would have created the plain row in which to pick up. Given that I made a crochet chain and picked up in that, I had a "raw" lace row to pick up in, and an upside-down lace row at that!
It took me most of a week, but I finagled and fudged and twiddled and dang if you can find where I made the join. Now I'm happily about 8" past the midpoint. This is a good advanced-beginner lace project. It can be knit in a DK weight yarn (I used Elsebeth Lavold's Silky Wool), it doesn't have anything more complicated than YOs, K2togs, and SSKs, and you can easily see the pattern forming as you knit. It's only patterned on one side, so you have WS purl rows to "rest". The pattern is in "Traditional Knitted Lace Shawls" by Martha Waterman. However, you will want to chart the pattern on graph paper for yourself, as the book only includes written-out instructions. Graphing it makes it much easier to work.
I've been stalking the aisles of Borealis for a couple weeks, plotting other lace projects. There's a small half-circle shawl in "Victorian Lace Today" that's shown in Jade Sapphire's Lacey Lamb in red that I've gotten the itch to do. And I want to make something out of one of the Isager yarns we have in the store, but I just haven't put together the right combination of yarn, color, and project yet.
I'm happy to have such woes as these. I could be sandbagging in Fargo, or waiting in an unemployment line; instead, I'm dithering about re-knitting and project selection. See you at the yarn shop!
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Ah, the Glory of Spring
It is officially spring. Last week we had some lovely sunny days in the 50s and even one day near 60. It is Minnesota. This morning there is snow on the ground.
To put a positive spin on it, though: more time to get caught up with woolly projects that are too hot to knit on in the summer.
Last night I pulled out the Parrot House wrap (modeled by Lewis, below) to work on some more. It's still in the same state it was when I took the picture.
I also pulled out my half-finished "Children of Lir" wrap from Traditional Knitted Lace Shawls by Martha Waterman. I'm doing it in red Silky Wool by Elsebeth Lavold. It is half-finished; it starts with a provisional cast-on. You knit half of the wrap, then pull out the provisional cast-on, pick up those stitches, then knit the other half down in the opposite direction. I didn't do a good job of picking up from the provisional CO, or maybe it's just that I had a migraine beginning and didn't know it yet. At any rate, I'm having trouble figuring out how to get it going again, so it's currently resting quietly in preparation for the next onslaught.
My Sonoma Mountain Wrap is also resting quietly. (You'd think I was running a project infirmary here; maybe I am.) I have to pull out and re-do the applied I-cord border and then it will be FINISHED. But I do have to pause to reflect before that final step.
Although I am not a parent, I do play one on TV, so to speak. Favorite Child, who is now 6-1/2, lives in my household, and I spend a lot of time with her when her parents are working. And, as you bona fide parents and grandparents know, 'tis folly to try to work on lace or other intricately patterned projects, or to do high-risk frogging with children around. I might just catch myself uttering one of the "swear words" on her list, e.g. "stupid" or "shut up". (Those, in case you didn't know, are the two 's' words. The other night, when a show was on cable TV, the more usual 's' word was uttered, and it went right by her.)
My mom's proprietary swear word when we were kids was "foop". One of my housemates prefers "sugar bumbles". I usually go with "oh, dear", "oh, no", or the ever-popular "shoot".
I think I'm going to give the Children of Lir mess another go now; the migraine seems to be gone, though if I run into more trouble, it may be back. If I have to say "oh, dear" more than twice, it will go back into the infirmary.
To put a positive spin on it, though: more time to get caught up with woolly projects that are too hot to knit on in the summer.
Last night I pulled out the Parrot House wrap (modeled by Lewis, below) to work on some more. It's still in the same state it was when I took the picture.
I also pulled out my half-finished "Children of Lir" wrap from Traditional Knitted Lace Shawls by Martha Waterman. I'm doing it in red Silky Wool by Elsebeth Lavold. It is half-finished; it starts with a provisional cast-on. You knit half of the wrap, then pull out the provisional cast-on, pick up those stitches, then knit the other half down in the opposite direction. I didn't do a good job of picking up from the provisional CO, or maybe it's just that I had a migraine beginning and didn't know it yet. At any rate, I'm having trouble figuring out how to get it going again, so it's currently resting quietly in preparation for the next onslaught.
My Sonoma Mountain Wrap is also resting quietly. (You'd think I was running a project infirmary here; maybe I am.) I have to pull out and re-do the applied I-cord border and then it will be FINISHED. But I do have to pause to reflect before that final step.
Although I am not a parent, I do play one on TV, so to speak. Favorite Child, who is now 6-1/2, lives in my household, and I spend a lot of time with her when her parents are working. And, as you bona fide parents and grandparents know, 'tis folly to try to work on lace or other intricately patterned projects, or to do high-risk frogging with children around. I might just catch myself uttering one of the "swear words" on her list, e.g. "stupid" or "shut up". (Those, in case you didn't know, are the two 's' words. The other night, when a show was on cable TV, the more usual 's' word was uttered, and it went right by her.)
My mom's proprietary swear word when we were kids was "foop". One of my housemates prefers "sugar bumbles". I usually go with "oh, dear", "oh, no", or the ever-popular "shoot".
I think I'm going to give the Children of Lir mess another go now; the migraine seems to be gone, though if I run into more trouble, it may be back. If I have to say "oh, dear" more than twice, it will go back into the infirmary.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
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