A Variegated Holiday

Lest ye think I am ignoring the holiday season, let me put your fears to rest. I know you all are just dying to know what I've been doing! Well, there was the aforementioned ice storm which tried to ruin not only my party but the entire Christmas of many, many Torontonians. Power was out for two or three days for some folks. The Daughter and I were warm and well lit throughout so I feel I have no right to complain about a poorly attended party. Other than that, the season was a surprising and unusual whirlwind. I didn't see many people I had hoped to yet ran into many others I hadn't expected at all. There was extended family time (stressful), some quiet romantic time (delightful) and one very, very scary time when The Daughter had a fall and I thought she had been severely injured. After a hospital visit and a sleepless watchful night, it was determined that she'll be fine. Thankful, thankful.

Amid all the chaos, (let's not forget all that vermin vacuuming!) there was no time to just sit and knit. My first opportunity was on the train to visit my parents on Boxing Day. I cast on some Sweet Georgia sock intending to knit an Arrowhead Shawl. But this yarn is too variegated to show off the textured pattern with all its increases, decreases and yarn overs. The colourway needs a flatter surface to highlight its beauty. So after knitting Arrowhead all the way there, I ripped back and started Traveling Woman on the way back. Much better.

sweetgeorgia Tough Love Sock: Stillwater

I'm still committed to knitting Arrowhead. I may just have to pop into Knitomatic for the Boxing Week sale and pick up a nice tonal. Hey, I lost a lot of stash from the beetles. I deserve a little Christmas present.

Ice, Ice Baby

Toronto was hit by a big ice storm yesterday. Unfortunately, this was the day of our Christmas party and with little to no public transportation available, only 7 of the expected 30 people showed up. We were a small but happy group. Despite the best efforts of the young people to eat everything in sight, I am still in the possession of a massive amount of food. Anybody hungry?

My office stayed closed today. With this unexpected free time, I decided to go for a weekday morning walk in High Park; something I've not been able to do in a long while.
The ice was destructive. Yes, disruptive also. 
Still, one can't deny that it is pretty.

MOTHS!

Yes, they are every knitter's nightmare and now I have first hand knowledge as to why.  Before I begin my sad tale, let me tell you I have just confirmed that what I have been treating as a moth infestation is actually a carpet beetle infestation. Same result. I am down stash and have a much cleaner apartment.

It all began last week when The Daughter, who has just returned from 3 months at her Dad's, went into her long unused sock drawer and found holes in every single pair of her hand knit socks. After dealing with the initial nauseating feeling of shock, I flew into action. Everything in her drawers was laundered, the drawers were vacuumed and scrubbed with hot water and bleach. Every corner of the room, including the mattress, was vacuumed meticulously and then sprayed with lavender. Thus I thought the problem could be controlled...

Until I checked my stash a few days later. I'll spare you the gross details but will admit that I cried - a lot.
I realize I've no one to blame but myself here. I kept large amounts of stash in pretty baskets, arrogantly assuming that wool eating critters could never happen to me. Thankfully, the luxury yarn stored in plastic bins seems untouched. Those bins are still sitting out on the frigid balcony as we speak, freezing for 24 hours, just in case. Other stash has been rotating through the freezer and microwave all week. The yarn with visible larvae (brown larva means carpet beetles) has been tossed.
I no longer own baskets. Instead,. I am the proud owner of many, many new Ziploc bags and plastic storage bins purchased at my local hardware store. All of today, a Saturday, was spent turning my apartment upside down, getting into every corner. Diatomaceous earth is supposed to be effective and is non-toxic so I've spread it around the baseboards  Tomorrow will see more cleaning, more vacuuming. Supportive knitters who have had similar experiences assure me that my vigilance will get results. 

I am exhausted but determined.

Even More Red

My local knit night is at my chosen LYS, Eweknit.  One recent Thursday while there, a lovely, lovely thing happened. Connie, a lovely, lovely woman, who I know only from this weekly gathering, approached me saying, 
"You are just the person I'm looking for."
She was holding a paper shopping bag. She explained that she had bought some sale yarn a while back but now realized it wasn't really for her and that she would never use it. 
"You should have it," she said.  "It's your colour." And she handed over the bag.
In it were ten skeins of Marks & Kattens Alpaca. It's a luscious, loosely spun bulky weight that, being vibrant poppy red, can most certainly be described as my colour. I was unbelievably surprised and touched that Connie would think of me this way. Wow. All I could do was say thank you and give her a hug.

Knitters are nice people.

New Mitts

Like many knitters, I have a large collection of sock yarn partial skeins. It's difficult to know what to do with all those bits and bobs. I've seen some Ravelers make wonderful stripey socks but that requires the yarns to be all the same brand if it's to work well. One can also use up scraps with the old contrasting heel and toe trick.
When I was knitting my Summerworks Socks, I remember thinking that the Schoppel-Wolle Cat Print yarn would look so pretty on my hands and how unfortunate it was that there wouldn't be enough left over. Then I saw this pattern in Veronik Avery's Knitting 24/7. The original pattern is done in dramatic red and white. My version is far more subtle, using solid Cascade Heritage to offset the variegated yarn. My cable pattern is knit incorrectly as well. There were slipped stitches within the cable crosses that I just couldn't master so I knit everything on those rows. I think the effect, though quite different from the original intention, is quite fetching.

Conclusion? I call this experiment in stash busting a success and see many more stripey projects in my future.

Word On The Street: Sara Peters

As I do every year, I went to Word On The Street, last month. I always try to catch a reading or two and this year, it was local poet Robert Priest I went to hear. Little did I know I was about to be knocked on my ass by the young woman reading with him.
The session was entitled "Out of the Darkness" and supposedly invited "you to reflect on emerging from darkness" or some such bullshit structure forced upon art to give it a sound byte. Sara Peters arrived with her blond hair pinned on top of her head, wearing a simple skirt and red, red lipstick. She sat on her stool and evenly read lines such as:

"And Goldilocks said My life is broken, my heart is over
Snap my neck like a broccoli-stalk."

I fell immediately in love.
After the too-short readings, there was a Q and A moderated by some dude who asked pointed, often inappropriate questions. Whether because she does not know how to play the literary interview game, or because she was deliberately subverting it, Sara paused after each question, then quietly, simply, answered, "Yes," or "I don't know." in her beautiful voice.
My affection deepened.

I bought her book, entitled 1996, and had her sign it. I mentioned that some of her lines sounded familiar to me and it turns out she had made a recording for the Poetry Magazine podcast that I had heard. She seemed genuinely pleased that I recognized it.

Over the past weeks I have spent quite a bit of time with the book. This is serious work - elegant and mysterious - about tough subjects; cruelty, eroticism, abuse, youth and self discovery. It speaks to me deeply, to the person I once was and to the person into whom I have evolved. I get more meaning from each reading and look forward her next book.
Some other favourite random lines:

"I'm not sure why I'm convinced
That expressing contempt is my life's work -
And I should have been back at the party."

"     ...The air smells
Like the mulch of primeval concupiscence! I cried,
and what could you do but agree?"

"but up was the only unoccupied direction, 
so how else to get there? And always
these questions. Who set those fires?
Who broke those mirrors? Is that your blood?"


1996 Sara Peters
House of Anansi Press, 2013