Hunkering Down

One of the eccentricities of the town where I live is that it snows very infrequently.  At the first sign of a flake, they close the schools, milk, bread and tire chains fly off the store shelves,  and the local TV news stations compete for who can come up with the catchiest weather event name.  I am not exaggerating:  This year's snowfall has been christened "Arctic Blast 08".  With a name like that, I feel entitled to stay inside indefinitely. 

To tell the truth, this completely feeble attitude toward snow is one of my favorite things about my city.  The snow falls so seldom here that we are, municipally speaking, ill-prepared.  There aren't enough snowplows.  We don't keep large stocks of de-icing chemicals.  There are even problems spreading gravel around in the rare event that snow falls very quickly.  So when it does really come down (every decade or so, whether we need it or not), the whole place comes to a screeching halt.

When this happens, we hunker down.  Not being accustomed to driving in the white stuff, people around here just stay home.  "Scared to drive in" is a totally legitimate excuse for not showing up in many workplaces.  The children in our town are so delirious with joy that they will play in the snow for as long as their parents will let them.  Knowing their chances are few and far between, the snowmen come to life RIGHT AWAY on my street. 

For all of this to be happening right before Christmas is even more rare.  Our Christmases are known for gale-force windstorms, or rain of Biblical proportions, but not the Currier-and-Ives stuff.  Imagine the excitement at my house when our ice-skating children learned that the pond in our neighborhood has frozen!  (For the record, I do not poses the parenting chops to allow them to try skating on it, much to their dismay.  I still hold the title for Meanest Mommy In The World.)

So my immediate plans are just to stay in and knit.  I want to tell you that this is pretty much my dream vacation:  Nobody needs me at the office.  The smallies and I baked cookies.  Husband has adequate sports and movie media to keep him entertained indefinitely.  And I have the Faery Ring.

In case I have failed to mention it, this project is WAY FUN.  Imagine wool of such uncompromising gorgeousness that you would blow off any and all commitments to keep knitting with it.  Visualize color at once so subtle and so complicated that just staring at is meditation.  Contemplate an afternoon spent throwing the rugged yet delicate strands, and understand just what a bonus this snowstorm is for me.  If the weather keeps up this way, I'll have it finished in record time.  That means that you could be knitting your own Faery Ring by New Year!  Keep thinking snowy thoughts.

 

How To Turn a Cable

1.  Design your own cabled sweater so that there are no instructions to follow when things get confusing.

2.  Work said pattern until time to twist the first cable and then realize that you have no idea where you put the only cable needle whose shape you like.

3.  Wonder whether you lost that cable needle after the time you used it to pick the lock on the bathroom door because your three-year-old had locked herself in.  Realize that your three-year-old is almost Ten and feel decrepit.

4.  Locate the cable needle after a miserable review of abandoned and semi-abandoned WIPs and resolve to complete all of them, just as soon as the Faery Ring is done...And the book is finished.  And the children are grown...

5.  Lose the cable needle after about three cables and declare that you shall find it at any cost, unleashing the wrath of an unfulfilled knitter on every crack and crevice in the living room.  Fail anyway.

6.  Venture out in a snowstorm to the only store in town where your favorite cheap-ass cable needles might be sold.  Smugly purchase their entire stock of 3 as insurance against future loss.

7.  Settle in to work on cables again in your favorite chair with a cup of coffee (that snow was cold) and all three new cable needles arranged within easy reach.

8.  Spill coffee on favorite chair, causing you to strip slipcovers and discover lost old favorite lock-picking cable needle under cushions.

9.  Resume work with all 4 cable needles arrayed in glory at your fingertips.  Leave to answer phone.  Return to find all 4 cable needles missing.  Blame @#$#%! cats, and sister who inflicted them on you.

10. Relocate all 4 cable needles at price of family harmony and your last remaining non-gray hairs.

11. Leave house, find yourself with time to knit and notice that you left all the cable needles at home.

12.  Resolve to learn how to cable without a needle.

13.  Fail utterly at cabling without a cable needle.

14.  Cleverly press a bent paper clip into service as a cable needle:

15.  Realize that a bent paper clip, while managing to look somewhat authentic, actually fools no one, least of all you, and doesn't work very well.

16.  Resolve to buy every cable needle ever made and stash one in every pocket, purse, desk drawer and shoe you own to forestall future emergencies.

17.  Think better of putting cable needles in your shoes and decide instead to swear off of cables in disgust.

18.  Fall in love with the Faery Ring and its yarn again within minutes of swearing off and return to battle with the crappy paper-clip-cable-needle-wanna-be.  At least you're still knitting.
 

A Face For Radio

A media professional with whom I corresponded for the first time yesterday informed me that with regard to promoting my book next year "of course, radio is out."  "Out"?  As in, "Of the three or four major media in which books are promoted, you should be automatically discounting one"?  Why, I wonder? 

When I was around 8, I began a course of singing lessons which ended up lasting for more than 25 years.  In my previous life, I trained as a classical actor.  Part of this training prepares performers for experiences in media outside the stage, notably: Film, TV and Radio.  For over 10 years, I have been the resident voiceover artist at a major teaching hospital.  If there are recordings to be made, I'm their girl.  I know the international phonetic alphabet, and I can even speak languages for short recordings, with the help of an interpreter.  Heck, I talk all the time, and not just stuff like "Please stop poking your sister with a fork" (although, that one is an old standard).

Now, the person who eliminated Radio from my media outlets yesterday does not know anything about that background.  What they know is that I am a Knitter.  So my real question is, what is it about the word KNITTER that automatically means I can't talk compellingly?  Maybe it's the idea that a book about knitting would be visual by nature.  I could understand that, but I listen to the radio all the time, and I have heard painters, photographers, and even cartoonists interviewed about their projects regularly.  I'm pretty sure these people somehow made the leap between making their art and talking about their art.  Shouldn't I be able to do that too?

No, I'm afraid that the real problem is that I have slammed up against my first case of Knitter Profiling.  This is the notion maintained by some unevolved (or just uninterested) creatures that the only people who work with sticks and strings are tightly-bunned little old ladies with too many cats (okay, I'll concede the too many cats issue - that is me, but it's my sister's fault).  I know I should not be surprised.  I am surrounded all day, every day, by non-knitters.  I have learned to tolerate their ignorance, and even to sometimes find it endearing in the way that naivety can sometimes be.  But something in the immediate assumption made by this stranger is completely crazy-making.  With exactly two facts, that person made a vast array of mistakes about me, and then paraded them with impunity. 

My indignation is both complete, and useless.  That this professional has alienated themselves from both my esteem and my employ will probably never bother them in the least.  I am the one who will have to grow a thicker hide and wise up a bit.

For the first time I can see that I have chosen a very steep hill to climb.  My little world of fiber and the people who love it is about to be exploded by a series of events that I set in motion myself. 

Now, I academically and intellectually can accept that my frame of reference is narrow.  I really do understand that not everyone I meet will embrace the work I do or its importance to my life and well-being.  I think these people are profoundly ignorant, but I do know they are out there.  In fact, I usually regard their gentle enlightenment as my personal responsibility.  But in spite of my experience with the existence of unapologetic non-knitters in the universe, I was not prepared to find one where I did yesterday. 

I guess we knitters never think it can happen to us, until it does.  If anybody needs me, I'll be in my happy place.  Wool, anyone?