Dogs Steal Yarn

Peony isn't so pitiful

Sidewalk kitty is feeling much better today. Her eyes don't feel so raw anymore, and there's no more goop coming out of them. She's a big fan of antibiotics now. Even better, she's going to have a permanent home! The wonderful Iris is going to adopt her. She's going to her new home tomorrow and she's all excited. Look how big her blue eyes are when they aren't all squinty from infection.

Next step is to try to clean her face up again, now that the flow of goopy yuck has stopped. Then we'll pack her bags and get her ready for the big move tomorrow.

"Isn't this a knitting blog, Cari?" you ask. Why,yes it is, mostly. Well, erm...in large part, anyway. That is, I sometimes talk about knitting and often think about how it would be nice to have more time to do it. So there's been some knitting activity since school ended the other week. I've been working on the Debbie Bliss ribbed-collar jacket. The back is finished and I'm three inches away from finishing the left front, so that'll probably get done today. (The left front, that is. Not the whole jacket. It's SLOW ribbing on slippery splitty yarn.) That baby sweater has been wanting only the second side seamed for weeks, so I really should finish that one up. Maybe tonight. The LL Flames second sock has been languishing, three inches into its leg, in its project bag. Maybe I'll pull that one out this afternoon too.

We're having some of Billy's friends over this afternoon so he can break in his charcoal grill, now that we have a backyard to grill in. The boy, he loves his grilled meat. What can I say? I've been a vegetarian for well over 15 years now, so I can't say I'm looking forward to it. He has promised to pick up a little hibachi that will be for veggies and tofu pups exclusively, though. If I'm lucky I'll be nibbling on grilled asparagus and a tofu dog this afternoon when the menfolk tear into their grilled meat.

One of the men will be accompanied by his delightful knitting, vegetarian wife, Fernanda, who some of you know from Knitting Tuesdays at the old apartment. She's the fastest knitter on earth. Really. She's from Argentina and knits on the longest straight needles ever seen, tucking one under each arm and shooting them forward to make the stitches. I love to watch her knit because she looks like a cricket when she does it. And she makes beautiful things.

So that's something to look forward to. Grilled asparagus, knitting company, an afternoon on the deck if it doesn't rain too much...

But mostly, hurray for Peony, pitiful no more!

Introducing Pitiful Peony the Sidewalk Kitty

Peony had a very good visit to the vet yesterday. The doctor said that apart from the obvious upper respiratory infection, she's actually remarkably healthy. She's five weeks old and 1.5 lb. She tested negative for FIV and feline leukemia. She's on eye ointment and antibiotics and her little eyes seem to be much less painful now. She's also started to purr and to play. I think she feels a lot better now that the crusty stuff has been cleaned off of her face. Her low energy when I first found her was probably hunger and dehydration because once she ate she perked right up. And she's happily eating kitten food now. No more formula...

The dogs aren't pleased that I keep disappearing into the yoga room (that's where she's staying now) and coming out smelling like another animal. They'll get over it, though.

Attention New Yorkers

Anyone want to adopt a kitten? Walking home from the train this evening, I came across a VERY young kitten. Clearly a stray. Well, either a stray or belonging to someone who deserved to have their cat taken away. By me, that is. She was in the middle of the sidewalk, hunched up, bewildered and wheezing. Eyes half closed and crusted over with conjunctivitus. I think she's probably still a little bit too young to be away from her mother, but of course there was no mother cat in sight. I picked her up--way too easily. She didn't try to get away or wriggle at all, which is worrisome...

Anyway, Billy is bringing kitten milk home this evening, and she's safely tucked away in Sadie's crate (minus Sadie, of course) happily sleeping in Sadie's smelly bed. Both Sadie and Diego think cats are delicious, so the kitten has to be locked up for her own safety. That's also why we absolutely can't keep her, as much as I want to. We have a vet appointment tomorrow evening (yes, I will still be very happily keeping our KnitNY date, Em and Iris) and I'm hoping there's nothing wrong with her that some eye medicine and maybe antibiotics won't cure. Once she's healthy, we'll be looking for a home. If you're in the area and want her, please do let me know. She looks a little crusty right now, so I'll post a picture tomorrow after she hpoefully gets cleaned up at the vet. I tried to wash her face but she wasn't havin' it.

consider yourself warned

quick post on the way out the door

I'm off to that old school. (Bard. My undergrad alma mater. Bad reference to a Steely Dan song about said school. Sorry.) It's graduation weekend and there's going to be a memorial service for a favorite professor who died this year. Clark Rodewald...I took a great class with him on The Faerie Queen and Paradise Lost. Sigh... Strange to think that class happened in '92. It seems only a few months ago... This will be my first time back to Bard since my own graduation weekend in '95. I'm a bit excited and a bit apprehensive. I suspect it's going to be strange to be back there and be surrounded by kids with funny hair who are the same age I was when I had funny hair and thought I was terribly adult. Okay...so the funny hair thing hasn't changed, but now I really am terribly adult. Terribly. Really. It's just awful, in fact. Um...what was I going to say? Sorry...spiraling a bit out of control today. Avert your eyes. You don't want to see the inside of my head.

Okay. So... End-of-the-year party at MC's last night. Last time we all snuck covetous looks at the Pulitzer but this time it was tucked out of view. Guess he realized we found it in the bedroom last time. Pesky kids, we are. It's true. Don't leave writers unattended in your house. Ever. We're nosy critters with a poor sense of boundaries.

The party was great, though bittersweet because the people I'm closest with, who are my best readers (outside of faculty), are graduating. They'll still be my close friends and still be my best readers, but they won't be next to me in class anymore and I'll miss them.

So, off to Bard I go. Or rather, off to Grand Central to catch the train. My friend Anina is flying in from Austin for the event (Clark was a favorite for her too) and she's picking me up from the train station. Haven't seen her in three years, so I'm really looking forward to that. We plan to pretend we're twenty. She's in an MFA program while working full time and also about to marry. Sound familiar? We're both in desperate need of a weekend of childishness. I'll report back on Sunday or Monday if the stories aren't too incriminating.

Meanwhile, Billy gets the house to himself for the first time since we moved in, and gets some quality time with the hounds.

Old Nick Cave, older Patti Smith, and a generous dose of Elliott Smith on the iPod for the trip up... I've got pages of a friend's novel to read on the way, but sometimes I get sick reading on trains. If so, I've got the DB ribbed jacket tucked into my bag for train knitting.

Happy weekend to all.

Time Regained

Oh. My. Proust. It's true. It's all true. I've just finished Time Regained, which is the sixth and final volume of In Search of Lost Time. I could have never anticipated the power of the final 250 pages, which absolutely require the weight of the preceding 4000+ pages... My professor promised that Proust would change my life, and he has. I can't begin to put into words exactly how... I'm speechless. I'll let Marcel tell you, but really this will probably seem so hollow without the echo of the five volumes that came before:

"Yeah...it'll be a little bit of a wait for that second sock"

Here's an interesting article by Cliff Frasier, a friend of Billy's. Cliff, a pastor here in New York, recently spent six months in jail as punishment for having trespassed on government property during a nonviolent protest. It was the maximum sentence allowed, as I understand it.

The first time I met him was at his going-away party a few days before his self-surrender. The next time I saw him was at a small gathering at his apartment the night he got home from jail. It was like meeting two different men. His time as a prisoner of conscience (a term I hadn't heard before meeting Cliff) of course had a profound effect on him...but that's his story to write, not mine. I hope one day he will.

I'm very happy to say that Cliff will be the officiant at our wedding. He's an amazing person.

I've been holding out on you...

Just when you thought you'd seen the last of Rachael and Bethany's great East Coast adventure... Here's one last picture of their visit to Brooklyn. I'd forgotten I had this one.

It's Diego trying to seduce Bethany. Sadly, it didn't work. She left him anyway. Went on to Maryland to pet sheep, or something like that. He'll be over her any day now. Any day now. Yep. Thanks, Bethany. I'm nursing my dog through his first broken heart!

Evidence of (mindless) knitting

I've managed to get a small bit of knitting done in the last few weeks. Finally, here's some photographic evidence:

The baby sweater I've been making for my friends' daughter is half-seamed now. It's wanted only finishing for weeks, so I really need to just bite the seaming bullet and get it done before the kid outgrows it. I used Debbie Bliss Wool Cotton for this one.

The Debbie Bliss Ribbed Jacket also falls into the category of "Can Be Knit While Reading" so that one's gotten a bit of attention as well. Here's a shot of the back.

I'm two inches away from shaping the shoulders and casting off. Using Debbie Bliss Cotton Cashmere. It's the first time I've ever bought the exact yarn and the exact color as in the pattern photo... And yes, apparently I'm on quite the Debbie Bliss kick lately. As much as I curse her for the errors in her patterns, I do love her designs and her yarns are amazing. In fact, I have three more DB designs planned for the reasonably near future.

I went out to Jersey yesterday to visit my mom for an early mother's day and wanted a small project to knit on the train. (I can read on the subway no problem but get sick if I read for too long on a regular train...) Several months ago I'd knit three inches of a sock and then put it down because I was just coming off a sock-knitting binge and had had enough. I picked it up again yesterday and got a good bit of it done. It's Lorna's Laces, in the Flames colorway.

I've got 300 pages left of Proust. That's halfway through Volume VI...when I first cracked open Volume I, I wasn't sure I'd be able to make it through all 4500+ pages in one semester...but I have, as have the majority of my classmates. Out of 15 of us at the start, ten of us are still hanging in there and close, so close to the finish line. It really is brilliant, and I'm so glad I've read it. I'm not sure I can call it a novel, though. I guess the novel is the form that it most closely resembles, so that will have to do for now... So yes, the semester ends on the 20th and then I'll just be working and writing. The time that's been going to classes and Proust the last few months can maybe go into knitting... At least some of it, anyway. I want to finish the first draft of my novel by the end of the summer, so a good amount of time and energy will be spent there. I'm really only good for six hours a day of writing at most, though. After that I'm just useless, so I'll be forced at some point each day to stop and knit. What a shame, hmmm? I've forgotten what it's like to have several hours in a day to give to knitting. I'm looking forward to getting back to that for the summer.

Yarnhead

I went to get my haircolor freshened up today, and did what I'd promised Rachael, Em, and Iris I would do. I handed my stylist this as an explanation of what I wanted. I found it at Downtown Yarns during our yarn crawl last week. And you know what? She did brilliantly. Last time she did a great job with two shades of violet red, but with the yarn in front of her today she really outdid herself. I now have hair that contains my favorite colors for yarn. You may or may not be able to spy in this photo (let's see how good your monitor really is!) a true primary red, a bright orange, and a warmer violet red. Sadly, red dye fades fast and I'll only be able to enjoy this intensity for a few weeks before it becomes more muted. Sigh. I have yarn hair. I'm ridiculously pleased with myself.

When graduate programs attack

The semester is almost over, three weeks left (including this one) but it's going to be an uphill battle kind of three weeks. Busy, folks. Sorry. It may or may not continue to be rather quiet around here.

For a change of pace, why not take a little sidetrip outside of the knitblog universe to check out what my friend Sutton is up to?

I'll try to post again soon, maybe even in the next couple of days. That baby sweater wants only seaming now, so pics of that soon.

Until...

Soundtrack of a sleepless mfa student? Elliott Smith and The Shins. Oh yeah--and "The Needle and the Damage Done" over and over and over. "Every junkie's like a setting sun," baby. If loving songs about heroin is wrong, I don't want to be right. (No, I never have and never will, though I do have a weird fixation with songs about it...) I am getting a wee bit maudlin. Ok. Off to work I go. (Hi ho, hi ho)

Ack.