Join Mary on her adventures in playing with string.
A cursory tour of the facilities this morning revealed to me that you can tell everywhere I've been in the last few days:
The keyboard on my desk
My knitting chair in the Living Room
The Upstairs Book Nook
My Nightstand
It's as though I've been on some Yarn Bender, and awakened groggy, disoriented, and surrounded by the empties. Everywhere I look, there is evidence of my debauchery.
I'm okay though. They tell me the first step is admitting you are powerless over Yarn.
Gentle Readers, please forgive this brief intrusion into the blogosphere. My lovely wife is buried under a pile of yarn, sketches, mechanical pencils, and patterns, so she asked me, the husband and accidental fleece-loser (if I haven’t yet, let me apologize to you all for that incident: I really am sorry) to guest blog. So here goes, and she will helm the next post, I promise.
This might surprise some of The Mrs. Beloved readers but…she wasn’t always a knitter. Oh she was always busy, creative, and obsessive, so the characteristics for knittitude were all there, but she hadn’t found yarn yet. When I met her she built costumes and wedding gowns to work her way through school. That developed into her making really cool clothing for us when we first started dating (I remember a purple silk shirt she made for me to wear for a friend’s wedding. It was rock star chic, and if I could fit into it today I’d wear it again in a heartbeat). She gravitated to quilting, and would go back and forth between that and kidswear when our children were born.
Then in 2003, we traveled to the bay area to visit some friends and take in a Peter Gabriel concert. During our trip, our friend Jen took Mary into a yarn shop because she had recently taken up knitting. Mary had dabbled before, and she jumped back in with her trademark enthusiasm (a polite way to say obsessiveness). Well…the rest is history: no more quilts, costumes, and our cool Mary-exclusive threads have become far more ‘exclusive’ (though she did make me three kick-ass vests last Christmas). She hasn’t stopped knitting since.
As I look back on our life together, I divide it into two periods; Before Yarn (B.Y.) and After Fiber (A.F.). I realize that not only has my wife undergone a transformation in the AF era, but I have too. Living with a dedicated knitter changes the daily interactions of husband/wife/family in ways we don’t even think about. Bill Engvall tells a story where his wife simply says “I’m cold” and he realizes he’s gotten out of bed and is getting a blanket…he’s been ‘trained’ without even realizing it (his rendition is funnier). This is just like me with the knitter. I have been trained to live the AF world.
For Instance:
When I’m giving a time estimate (dinner is ready/we have to leave in…) I no longer use times, but rows. During our BY life I would say “Dinner is ready in five minutes”, unconsciously I have switched to “Dinner is ready when you’re at the end of your row.”
I am more careful picking out the movies we watch whilst Mrs. Huff is immersed in yarn (which is always). Mary mainly gives me ‘control’ over what’s on; it keeps us happier (mostly) and I’ve got pretty good taste (mostly). I used to love watching foreign films, and not just the stuffy pretentious ones, but the outrageous Jackie Chan films from the 80’s and 90’s. Yeah…watching a mile-a-minute-action-film…in another language…with a knitter…Super.Bad.Idea.
MSH: “What just happened”
Me: “He’s fighting four guys at once, and now he’s hanging off the end of a bus”
MSH: “How’d he get there? What’s he doing on a bus? Where did the bus come from?”
Me: Sigh. Roll eyes. “Look, let me just rewind it…but you’ve got to watch it, okay?
MSH: Nods head. "Let me finish this row.”
I think it took us five hours to get through “Rumble in the Bronx”.
For the last couple of days I've been trying to decide on a color palette for each of the stitch dictionary segments in my book. I keep spreading out the yarn on top of the bed (the only actual clear surface in my home at the moment).
I'm smitten with the way the yarn looks on top of the whitework quilt. As is MacTarnahan, though you have to look closely to register his enthusiasm:
But of course, people keep needing to get IN the bed, messing up my swell arrangement. So every night I've relocated the color wheel to the top of the low bookcase that lives at the end of the bed. This morning Phillip had a root canal, necessitating an unscheduled bed occupation, and further delay in reassembling the yarn wheel. Bother. I turned around after getting dressed, and was greeted by:
Bailey, who has clearly found his place in the color progression, Paisley, still thinking it over, and Mac, who remains categorically unconcerned. That's Phillip, writhing in agony under the pile of pets. Don't worry - the pain meds knocked him out right after this.
Just another day in Paradise.
Oh, and speaking of Paradise, for those who asked; the picture of the galley slaves rowing in Monday's post is from "Ben Hur", starring Charleton Heston. Thanks for noticing.