Dogs Steal Yarn

Happy New Year!

Sweets from the sweet

When Thumper and I arrived home today from a grueling morning spent playing very hard with Tereza and Jonah at an indoor play park*, we found a package waiting for us. And inside the package...

Yes, Norma has spoiled me again. Those are her famous Dutch letters, every bit as delicious as they sounded on her blog. And equally delicious oatmeal cookies. And chocolate covered pretzels from her sister's company. And yes...that's right... A jar of her pear-ginger jam. I am the very luckiest sweet-toothed kid in all the land today.

The kid is now conked out, and the challah dough is rising, and I'm trying my very best not to eat ALL the goodies before Billy gets home. Have a great weekend, everyone.

*There are indoor play parks in community centers all over Portland in winter (and maybe in other seasons? Dunno yet.). Because it's so wet here, it's hard for kids to get time outside to run and jump and climb and all that good kid stuff. For $1 you can go to a community center where the gymnasium is set up with riding toys, climbing structures, push toys, wagons, balls, slides, play kitchens, etc etc. And tons of other kids. It's kind of brilliant.

The sweater I forgot to blog

I never quite got around to taking pictures of it in progress, and I kept forgetting to mention it, and then it knit up so quickly that…well…it’s done.

Oh look. I knit a little jacket. (Sorry the photos aren’t so clear. If I’d waited for a sunny day to take better shots, I wouldn’t be posting this until spring):

Obviously I haven't gotten around to that haircut yet.

I love the bell shape of this jacket. It reminds me of the women's jackets in some of my favorite Vermeer paintings.

Thumper is a demanding photo director

I’ve had visions of cute little 3/4-sleeve flared jackets dancing in my head since fall, but I couldn’t decide if I wanted a refined jacket or a more simple, casual one. I did a bunch of sketches, couldn’t choose, and decided to design and knit both.

I started with the simple, because I knew it would knit up quickly. I used Manos that had been in my stash for something like five years now. It was the yarn that was too good to use, you know? I never found a pattern that was quite right for it, and I didn’t want to “waste” it.

I’ve taken to calling this sweater Trilce (TRILL-say), after the book by the Peruvian poet Cesar Vallejo. (Trilce is said to be the combination of “triste”—sad, and “dulce”--sweet, though not all scholars agree that was Vallejo’s intention. Of course, that’s neither here nor there as far as knitwear is concerned.) With the thick and thin nature of the Manos, and the kind of romantic, tousled feel of this sweater, Trilce just seemed to fit.

Speaking of the thick and thin nature of Manos…I was determined to embrace the quirks of this yarn, rather than fight against it. The shaping of the sweater allows for the imprecise gauge of the yarn. Imprecise can be a lovely thing in a sweater. I’m rather happy with the results. And because it works so well with the Manos, I think this sweater would be a good use of handspun as well.

As for 3/4 sleeves on a wool sweater…besides liking the look of it, I’m finding it to be more wearable than my full-sleeved sweaters. We keep the thermostat at a pretty chilly 67 F, so we wear layers around the house. Full-length sweater sleeves have to be pushed out of the way for cooking and eating and toddler wrangling. Not so with the 3/4 sleeve. It’s a warm, soft, comfy sweater for around the house that looks good enough (if I do say so myself) that I can happily wear it out of the house as well. And yep…I keep it closed with a wooden cable needle. A shawl pin or a brooch would probably be more attractive, but I don’t happen to own either. One of these days perhaps I’ll stumble across the perfect pin to close this sweater. Until then, the cable needle is working just fine.

Yeah…pretty damn pleased with the way this one turned out.

And on the other side of the 3/4-sleeve jacket coin, we have the next design. The more tailored, refined jacket. The one that won’t be worn for toddler-wrangling and egg-scrambling. I’ll scan in the sketch for that one soon, so you can see what I have in mind.

There will be cabled bands at the hem, the sleeve cuffs, the front edges, and the collar. There will be frog closures. There will be no thick and thin, no loosey goosey hippie coziness. I’ve taken to calling this one Karenina. I imagine Anna might have slipped out of the house in something like it, on her way to an assignation. (No assignations required for wearing it, though. I'm sure Billy will be happy to read that.)

I’ve started swatching for it, using Reynolds Candide, and have chosen a cable pattern. I’m really excited to see how it turns out. Can’t wait to wear it. I may have to dream up some opera-length mitts to go with it.

Dispatch from Utopia

Completely unrelated photo so you don't have to suffer through yet another pictureless post from me

We went to a neighbor's solstice party last night. Most of our neighbors were there. It's that kind of neighborhood. I'm not sure how we lucked into landing in precisely the right place for us in the city. We knew we wanted this general area, but we somehow managed to stumble upon not only the right neighborhood, but even the right block. Last night I sat on my neighbor's couch, one of four women squeezed comfortably together, the neighbor's dogs circulating, and watched Thumper ramble around happily from one friendly face to another, making the rounds under Billy's supervision. Petting the dogs, flirting with the women, tolerating the enthusiastic play of the bigger kids. The older kids and teenagers seemed happy to be there too, rather than sitting around and rolling their eyes and waiting to be released from adult company.

We made lists on red paper of the things we want to leave behind with the old year, and those lists were burned in the fire. We made shapes out of clay to symbolize what we want to draw to us in the new year. It was real clay, not plasticy toxic crap. Just dirt. Just good red clay dirt. Everyone stood around, kneading their clay, shaping it...and no hint of self-consciousness. No one seeming to worry about being too earnest, or too revealing, or making the "right" shape, etc. It was just...comfortable. Familiar. And we've only been here for three months. This far from our own families, it's important...necessary...that we find other forms of family out here. We found a bit of it last night. Even if Thumper did try to eat the clay.

So there's one more thing in Utopia's favor. We had some great neighbors in Brooklyn (especially you, Celine), but I can't imagine last night's party happening there. There's an openness, a down-to-earthness, here, that I've never found in New York. Maybe because we have to spend so much time in New York protecting our necks, our soft underbellies. I'm tired of protecting my soft underbelly. I'm tired of always looking over my shoulder. I'm still on the listserv for our old neighborhood in Brooklyn, and the news is always the same. Another mugging, someone else followed home from the train at night, everyone's holiday wreaths are being stolen... I don't miss it. I don't miss that layer of stress and fear always just beneath the surface.

(Now that we don't live there, I'll tell you that we lived in Lefferts Manor. It's a great neighborhood in many ways, but it's not nearly as safe as I would have told you it was back when we still lived there. We heard gunshots nearly every night. I don't miss that either.)

So here's to a new year in Utopia. And to the return of the light.

oh yeah...I used to blog about the dogs a lot, didn't I?

Well, Diego is doing very well. He's getting to be a little old man, though, and sleeps a whole lot. Hence not a lot of photo ops, and not a lot of blog coverage. He would like to thank those who continue to ask after him, and when asked for comment, said this:

"They keep making me go out in the rain. I do not care for rain. Could someone please maybe do something about all this rain?"

I know the spambots are just robots, that there aren't humans deciding to target my specific blog and specific posts, but it still bothers me no end to find 15+ spam comments following the post about my aunt. I closed comments on that post late last night after deleting the spam comments, and reopened them this morning. Within one minute of reopening the comments, there were two new spam comments. So...fuck the robots. The comments to that post are closed. To the many of you who left legitimate comments offering condolence, thank you so so much. It's a comfort to know our family is in your thoughts.

And as to the spam...Wordpress and Askimet, here I come. David and I are working behind the scenes (okay...David is working behind the scenes and he lets me peek behind the curtain as much as I want) to get this blog migrated to Wordpress. My beloved Xina has designed a new banner because I get a bit sad everytime I see Sadie's face up there in the old banner. And it's high time for a redesign, anyway, since this current blog was cobbled together with my circa-1996 html skills. (oooh! Tables! hello world!)

I'm not sure when we'll be doing the big move, but I'm glad it's in the works.

And a public service announcement for the day:

A quiet toddler in another room probably means trouble. I was right around the corner in the dining room, and he was alone for less than one minute. That, my friends, is one pound of whole wheat flour.

My aunt died last night.

I won't eulogize her here. Those are words for those who knew her, and those who knew her don't read this blog. All I'll say is that I love her, and that I will miss her. I'm grateful that her pain has ended. Grateful that her (grown) children were at her side at the end. Mentally she was up for the fight, but her body was just too tired.

Good bye, Aunt Joan. And thank you.

Grrr... spammers

I got SLAMMED with comment spam while I slept last night. Comment spammers are the reason I close comments on each post after a week or so. I'm sick of them. Movable Type has been great, but I think I'm ready to move on to WordPress. Same people, anyway.

He who makes my blog go has been encouraging the switch for a while. Hey, David! Ready for that migration? It's time.

&%@%&( spammers.

The high cost of yarn hair?

If you've been reading this blog for a while. You know how I've loved my yarn hair. Really love it. It's how I remember myself when my eyes are closed, you know? Inside my head, I'm a perpetual ragdoll. And for a long time, the outsides have matched the insides.

Well...I got lazy/busy/cheap with the hair once the baby was born, and have really let it go since we moved, mostly because it's hard to find a hairdresser who cuts curly hair well, so I don't have a stylist in Portland yet. And now I desperately need a haircut and my hair has faded to a totally natural-looking auburn shade, with about two inches of mouse-brown roots. And a healthy smattering of gray as well. It's time to do something about the hair.

But here's the thing... I've been thinking about that hair dye, and what's in it, and what it may or may not be doing to me. I go to such trouble to eat organic food, use healthier cleaning products, and healthier beauty products to reduce my exposure to chemicals. We don't drink out of plastic cups. We reuse jars instead of putting food in plastic containers. We're pretty mindful of such things. And then I go and slather some rather nasty chemicals directly onto my head on a regular basis. Does this make sense?

But you have to go with the toxic stuff to get the really dramatic color. You just have to. (I think? Am I wrong?) I don't want that stuff anymore, don't want to keep exposing myself to those chemicals. So what are my options? I could let my natural mousey brownblondnothing grow in, along with the gray, or I could find a healthier hair color product and maybe let go of the yarn hair concept, maybe be happy with a more natural shade of red.

I used henna a few times back in high school and I remember the results on my lightish hair being a pretty harsh orangey color. Has henna gotten better in the intervening years? Or is there another vegetable dye any of you recommend?

Going back to my natural color doesn't seem like the right choice. I just don't look like myself in the mirror without the red. Sadly, red does not grow naturally from my scalp, so... Open to suggestions.

And if anyone in Portland can recommend a good hair stylist, please let me know.

I've got nothing for you today

It's well after 3pm and the kiddo is still resisting his nap (normally around 12:30), which means at this point there likely won't BE a nap, which means I'm not getting a break today. And damn do I need a break today.

So instead of watching me bang my tired head against the wall (while eating much more than my share of the chocolate cherry bread that jumped into my cart at New Seasons this morning), why not go read this great post by Sutton?

The challah is in the oven and the little guy is napping. I'm about to sit down with my second cup of coffee and some knitting.

Thank you all for your thoughtful responses to my previous post, both in comments and in private emails. I certainly know my blog is a public space, and I'm grateful for the large readership I have, commenters and lurkers alike. Thank you all for reading, for coming back each time. Your company is appreciated.

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone. I'm off to knit a hat for a friend's baby-in-progress.

I, CyberStalker

I don’t often think about the nature of blogs. Odd, maybe, since I’ve kept this blog for quite a while now. I don’t think too much about why I keep it, or why you read it. (Okay, I do sometimes wonder why you read it.) This past week, though, I have been giving it some thought. Blogs are open to the public. Anyone can stumble across it and there’s your crap, right out there for all kinds of strangers to see. Your angst, your not-so-great photos you posted anyway, your badly knit sock. Pictures of your partner, of your baby… Particularly in a community like ours, this friendly knitblog world, it’s easy to forget that people other than knitters might be reading what you’re up to, that it’s all very public. I try to keep this in mind, using Thumper’s fake name, blogging our road trip a few days behind our actual progress so no one would know exactly where we were who shouldn’t have known. (Did you know that? Yeah…when you thought we were in Yellowstone we were already here in Portland, etc.)

I think that people who set up blogs for a very small audience—say a baby blog intended only for family and friends—may also forget how public an act it is. Because they only share the url with people they know, they may forget that a Google search can lead others to the site. And so you may find yourself looking at photos of someone’s baby, seeing what they keep in their refrigerator, reading about their visit to the in-laws…and getting the sense that they have no idea anyone other than family is reading it.

Which is to say—I was Googling names of men from my distant distant past the other night and came across someone I’d been Googling off and on for a long time with no luck. Someone I was nearly certain was dead, I should add. Someone I’d last seen in Amsterdam, and who I never would have expected to find in the States. How did I find him? His baby’s blog. He’s alive, apparently well, married, and has a beautiful son. And he’s here in the States, not in Europe. In fact, he’s only about a four-hour drive from here. I read back through the archives, watched the YouTube baby videos, read the birth story. Saw photos of his wife. Saw photos of him. The baby. Etc.

And then I started to get the feeling that I was trespassing somehow. When does lurking cross the line into some kind of cyber stalking? I was so happy to find that this man is still alive, so happy to finally have news of him, and to see him doing so well. I was hungry for information about this lovely life of his that I never expected he would have…and I gathered up as much information as I could from the blog. But that information? The photos and stories? They weren’t posted for old girlfriends from 1994 and a different life in Amsterdam. (Girlfriend—such a sweet term and so not the right one to describe what we were up to back then. Old lover, I guess, would fit better. Or dalliance, even. It was a short-lived thing, and I don’t mean to give the impression that we were terribly close.) They were posted for friends, and for family far away. They use the baby’s real name, first AND last. And there I was, pawing through it all.

I decided to leave a comment, just to let them know that I was there and I had read the blog. That I was pleased to see him doing so well, and remember him very fondly, and that I wished them the best. Because to stumble across these private acts made public and to not say anything… It’s a public blog, but it still felt/feels like a kind of transgression to be there without them “knowing” it. And I find myself going back to the blog and looking at the pictures again, checking often to see if they’ve posted or commented back or deleted my comment. (And I guess that’s where I start to feel like I’m doing more than lurking. Where I feel like I’m crossing some kind of boundary.) I haven’t had a response to my comment, nor have they posted since I left it. They don’t post often, though, so maybe it’s coincidence. Or maybe they’re freaked out to find a comment on their baby’s blog from an old flame and now they’ve been reminded of the public nature of the internet and so are feeling exposed. Or maybe I overthink everything (from things like this to the way a neighbor receives a loaf of bread) to a ridiculous degree. (They aren’t posting, so it MUST be about me. Because what isn’t about me? Oy vey.)

So…yeah. Old lover not dead. Looks happier and way healthier than when I knew him. Lovely wife. Gorgeous son. Fantastic. Would I love to hear from him? Just an acknowledgment of some kind? Of course I would…but now perhaps I should just lose the link and be about my own life again, the one he hasn’t been a part of for well over thirteen years, and leave them to theirs, and stop looking in through their window, even though they’ve forgotten to draw the curtains.

And if you want the challah recipe...

...I can't post it here, because Amy slightly adapted the recipe from a cookbook, but I can point you in the direction of the book and tell you what modifications she made.

It's from the New Jewish Holiday Cookbook by Gloria Greene. Amy changed the recipe to use real eggs (3 large) instead of egg substitute, and increased the amount of sugar and oil to use 1/2 c. sugar and 1/2 c. vegetable oil or canola oil. (I've been using raw sugar and canola oil, because that's what I have in the house.)

Bread with strings

Leaving New York for Portland meant leaving a place with a large Jewish population for one where we would be in the extreme minority. We joked that once we arrived here, there would now be ten Jews in Portland. In reality, there are more than ten, but it doesn’t feel that way. At times it seems like the Portland version of diversity is to have more than two brunettes in a room. (Yes, a downside to Utopia. There had to be SOMETHING.)

Though I’m Buddhist by faith, I’m Jewish by heritage, as is Billy. When I was a kid, my father was the temple president and my mother (born Protestant but converted when she married my dad) was active in the temple as well. We lit the Shabbat candles and said the prayers over the candles and the challah every Friday night. Though I found the religion a poor fit for me, and chose not to practice as an adult, I have really wonderful memories of those Shabbat dinners with my family.

Billy and I don’t intend to become practicing religious Jews, but we do want our kids to have a sense of their heritage. If we were to leave New York for Portland, where Jewish culture is so much a part of New York culture that it’s hard to find the seams, Thumper would not absorb any kind of Jewish identity by osmosis. He would most likely be one of the only Jewish kids in his classes at school, etc. We decided that we would start to have Shabbat dinner every week, the candles, the challah, the big family meal.

I cook dinner almost every night as it is, but for Shabbat I go to a little extra trouble, make the meal a little bit more elaborate. And, inspired (and instructed) by Amy, I make my own challah. Amy gave me two recipes—one where you make the dough in a bread machine and then shape it by hand, and another made entirely by hand. The first few weeks of the Great Challah Experiment, I used the bread machine recipe, because it’s tough to get time to make bread entirely by hand while chasing after a little guy. It turned out okay, but not great. Edible, and definitely bread, but not the delicious stuff we grew up with. For the past two weeks, I’ve been making it by hand instead, and the results… well… fantastic. Absolutely delicious challah. Either the bread machine doesn’t knead the dough well enough or the recipe Amy gave me to make it by hand (the recipe she uses herself each week) is just much better. It’s worth the extra time and work, and I’ve just decided that Friday naptime is for breadmaking. If I don’t expect to get anything done besides the challah and prepping Shabbat dinner during Thumper’s nap on Friday, it turns out I do indeed have time. And this recipe makes two loaves, rather than the one loaf you get using the bread machine to make the dough. Traditionally, there should be two loaves for the blessing, but in the reform temple of my childhood there was only ever one loaf, and we certainly don't need two loaves for the three of us.

Which brings me to the strings. We don’t need two loaves of challah each week, so I’ve been keeping one for our family and giving one to a neighbor. I thought I was making this gift of freshly baked bread entirely without strings or any expectations, but apparently I gave myself too much credit there. Last week, the first week of two loaves, I gave the second loaf to the neighbors who had had us over for Thanksgiving dinner the day before. Thumper and I walked over to their house and gave them the loaf, still warm from the oven, on a wooden cutting board with a tea towel draped over it. I was so proud, so happy to share the bread…and I guess a bit too proud and maybe happy to share the bread because of how it would make me feel more than happy to share the bread for the sake of sharing. The neighbor smiled and accepted the loaf graciously but seemed a bit perplexed. When Billy ran into them the next day, they didn’t mention the bread at all.

Still no word from them or sign of my cutting board this past Friday. The second loaf this Friday went to our next-door-neighbors who have been so warm and welcoming to us. The loaf was received with delight and surprise, the wife lifting the bread up to smell it, showing it around to the rest of the family. Genuinely pleased and happy to have it. I felt great, found myself comparing their reaction to the reaction of the week before. “Now Shelley knows how to receive a homemade loaf of bread,” I told Billy.

Yesterday, a full eight days later, the first family sent their 11-year-old over to return the cutting board and tea towel without any message of thanks of any kind. I know the bread was really damn good, because we had the other loaf, so that’s not what’s going on… But what it comes down to is…if I’m giving away this second loaf because it’s a good, delicious thing that I want to share with our neighbors and friends, something they aren’t asking for… If giving the challah away is done in the spirit of sharing and community and not about my ego, then the reaction of the recipient shouldn’t matter one bit. If I’m stung by the lack of enthusiasm for the bread, then I’m giving it for the wrong reasons.

I want to share it for the right reasons. I will continue to share the second loaf, and when I do it, I’ll do my best to keep in mind the reason I’m doing it. Something to work on, anyway…