Dogs Steal Yarn

What I haven't been telling you

I'm in my twelfth week, due June 17th. This sonogram image (I assure you the baby was much less fuzzy in live-action) was from 8 1/2 weeks.

Oh, the knitting I'm going to do. I've already bought a few Dale of Norway baby books and am dreaming of colorwork sweaters with ducks and ladybugs and chickens, and am definitely going to be making a pullover with a sea lion on it. I'll post photos of potential baby projects in the days to come.

And hell yes, we want to know the sex. Life has enough surprises. I want to know who's in there as soon as possible. (For example, who is this person who drives me to consume and enjoy large quantities of orange juice when my logical brain knows damn well that I don't like orange juice.)

Bad blogger! No cookies for you!

Alison and I had such a great time while she was here that we completely failed to take photos. Here are some of the things I didn't document for you:

• Sadie and Diego dancing with doggy glee when Alison first walked into the house, followed by me dancing with knitterly glee
• Alison at play in Habu
• Alison with Koigu fever at Purl
• Sadie trying to bury her entire muzzle in Alison's ear
• Alison meeting my stash and ratting me out to Billy by telling him it's quite large, even by knitter standards
• The...um...stash...erm...enhancement we both indulged in...
• A serious pile of chocolate
• Billy and Alison making the Thanksgiving turkey together (those wacky meat eaters)
• Pie for dessert. Pie for dinner. Pie for breakfast. A lovely snack of pie.
• Alison meeting Cassie, Jackie, Jenn, and John at The Point
• John wearing my monster sweater and looking better in it than I do
• Cassie knitting the most covetable pair of socks in all the land
• Popping Alison into a cab headed for JFK. (sigh...)

It was a really lovely visit, and it ended much too soon. Taking photos--when you and the subjects know the photos will be posted on a blog--can sometimes intrude too much on the moment. Kind of like, "Let's stop having fun for a second so we can document all the fun we're having." So I suspect that's why neither Alison nor I thought to bring out the cameras. Now that she's back home rather than sitting on my couch, I do wish I had a photo or two. Ah well.

Alison arrived yesterday safe and sound. And she really did bring as much chocolate as she'd been threatening to. She wasn't exaggerating about that one bit on her blog. The chocolate stash was somewhat reduced yesterday evening. You know how it goes. Two knitters, cold weather, hot beverages... You need to break out the chocolate.

I dragged her (kicking and screaming, I tell you) to School Products, Habu, Purl, and The Point. A very important stop was made at Once Upon a Tart, so that our baked goods needs could be met. Yarn was fondled. Yarn was purchased. No photos were taken whatsoever. It makes for a dull blog, but there's a certain comfort in hanging out with a fellow blogger and not breaking out the camera. Know what I mean? There's a time and a place etc etc. I will take some photos before the visit is over, so you won't assume I've made the whole thing up.

Today I'm at work (boo! hiss!) and Alison is exploring the city. Tonight there will be cooking for tomorrow, and knitting, and most likely a bit of chocolate-eating. And I will take photos, I promise.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving, those of you who are here in the States. Everyone else, please have a beautiful Thursday.

Nothing says "Welcome home" like chocolate and yarn

The wonderful Lee Ann sent me a care package to help ease my re-entry to the real world. Look how utterly fantastic and yummy. No, I won't share the chocolate.

Please take special note of that fibery goodness there. Guess what I'm taking to the hair stylist when it's time to get the color redone?

In other happy news, Alison will be here on Tuesday! She's my closest friend who I've never met, and very very soon she will be sleeping under my roof. Very exciting. There will be yarn fondling. There will be chocolate eating. There will be Thanksgiving. There will be more chocolate eating, and probably more yarn.

All the knitting I've been doing lately has been gift knitting, so I can't show it here. Let's just say some folks are getting socks and some folks are getting lacey mohairy scarves and one or two folk are getting hats and leave it at that. And yes, I did say I wasn't going to knit for the holidays ever again, but somehow it seemed like a good idea the other night when I was making gift lists and...well...

I've been back from Ragdale for a week now and already it feels like something that maybe happened to me once a long time ago. Real life has nothing in common with artist colony life, and I felt completely removed from it once I stepped off that plane last week. Clearly I was there, because there are photos and there are 63 pages of the new novel that someone wrote somewhere. So it must have been me, and they must have been written at this weird place I disappeared to for the past month... But it all feels very strange and disconnected.

I met wonderful, talented, fascinating people while I was there who I see now are phantoms (as I am to them) because they aren't nearly as solid as the people in my real Brooklyn life. A couple of them (one for sure. Yes, you, Christina) will most likely convert to real-world friends and thus cease to be phantoms but...I don't really know any of them, and they don't know me. There's this illusion that happens when you live closely with people in intense situations. This feeling of a bond, of friendship long before any friendship has actually been earned. It's just strange. It's not quite the same as that alternate reality that summer camp could be when we were kids. Maybe because I spent so much time writing, and thinking about writing, and thinking about my characters. I indulged myself in a lot of time spent in my head. Maybe that's why it doesn't seem quite real, looking back.

I went to Ragdale with an idea for a new novel and some loose character sketches. I went there with the first novel submitted to my first-choice agent, but no answer yet. I went with some stories circulating on the literary-magazine submission circuit but only a pile of rejection slips to show for it. I walked away from Ragdale with 63 pages of the new novel written and a very clear sense of the story and the characters. With my first-choice agent having said yes and having sent that first novel around to some amazing publishers (fingers crossed! We're waiting for news!). With a story sold. I had a short story accepted by failbetter while I was there too. (Cool hunh? Don't knock the online publications, by the way. Stories in failbetter have been included in the Pushcart Prize anthologies, thankyouverymuch.)

Now, I can only credit my time at Ragdale with the work on the second novel. Everything else that happened while I was there I had already set in motion long before I left New York. But still...lots of good news grew out of that time...

Where am I going with this? I don't know... I guess I'm incredibly grateful that I had that time there. And incredibly grateful to be back home. I haven't written in the week that I've been home. I think I'm ready to get back to it now.

Attention, Stupid Humans

Oscar Madison, Impossibly Cute Kitten here. Disregard the numbskull dog in the background.

I understand that some of you are skeptical of the Girl Human's claims that I've become enormous over the course of the four weeks that she dared stray from the boundaries of my benevolent control. She may be a stupid, easily manipulated human, but she is a decent judge of kitten growth. My doctor confirmed it at my check-up on Friday. I have grown to a massive 3.8 pounds. That's right. I tripled in weight while she was away. Behold my massive size.

Wait...bet you can't catch me! Watch my speed! You're in awe of my feline reflexes, aren't you?

I'm well on my way to world domination. You have been warned. Stupid humans that you are, you'll chuckle and disregard this warning. Which all fits in with the plan. Now begone. I have ankles to bite.

Stupid humans. Bring me food. Pet my belly. Go away. Come back. Feed me.

I'm home!

Back in Brooklyn, safe and sound. It's so good to be home. Billy was still at work when I got in yesterday afternoon, but I was greeted at the door by the dogs. Sadie was very excited and had lots of kisses for me, but Diego alternated kissing me with sitting back and crying and howling... Clearly he wasn't pleased about my going away for four weeks and had to let me have it. So Diego and I just sat on the couch and cried together for about five minutes while Sadie danced around and when it was over and done with we all felt a lot better.

Billy gets bonus points for cleaning the house before I arrived, and for leaving orchids and a love note. He had to treat patients so couldn't meet me at the airport.

Oscar is as big as a barn. Photos soon. Tomorrow most likely. Maybe even tonight if I can get it together. I'm trying to do a gentle re-entry into the real world.

"I thought I saw something in the woods today..."

I thought about hiding in the closet so I could stay a while longer

...but then I realized I'm really ready to go home. I'll be flying home on the 9th, and I'm starting to look forward to it. I miss Billy and the dogs and the cat. I miss the house and I miss my friends.

Four weeks goes by fast, no? It seemed like such a long time when I was planning the residency and when I first got here. Why did I think I needed to pack so much knitting? So many books? So many art supplies? I got the amount of clothing exactly right, but as for everything else? I could have left home with yarn for two pairs of socks and that would have filled the knitting time I've had.

I still have some days ahead of me, and I'm trying to make the most of them. I'm trying not to pressure myself too much, to worry about how many pages I've written (57) vs what my goal was (100). I set that goal based on my productivity in the home stretch of the first novel. I forgot how much slower the progress is when you're starting a new novel, when you're still feeling your way through and there's no momentum to carry you.

It's been a good residency. I can honestly say I made the most of the opportunity. I guess that's about as much as I can ask.