It’s the birthday of my beloved friend Mia. Pop over and leave some good wishes for her, especially since that *&#$%^ Wells gave up a three run homer and lost the game — no one deserves that on her birthday. Mia is a totally excellent person, and she’s also responsible for my learning to knit. When we were roommates in college, she gifted me with some size 8 aluminum straights, a ball of yarn, and a book of basic techniques. Then it was off to the races long enough to make a 2×2 ribbed scarf in Lamb’s Pride for each of my dad’s parents, after which time I got too involved with my last semestre of college, my teaching certificate, and my terribly compelling boyfriend (now husband) and put down the sticks. And then I moved to the Bahamas, and let’s just say that wasn’t conducive to even thinking about wool. But here I am back in the saddle again, and I still say it’s thanks to Mia that I’ve become a knitter. Who else would have been there for me with a crochet hook when I’d forgotten to weave in the ends on my wedding stole? Cheers, Snugglepie. I loves ya.

And I know Mia won’t mind if I hijack her birthday post to add this, which I’ve been meaning to follow up on since I first saw it on Norma’s blog:

another type of MEME

1) Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, liposuction and air conditioning.

2) Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.

3) Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.

4) Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn’t changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can’t marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.

5) Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of Britney Spears’ 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.

6) Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn’t be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren’t full yet, and the world needs more children.

7) Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.

8) Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That’s why we have only one religion in America.

9) Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That’s why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.

10) Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven’t adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans…
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Re-post this if you believe in legalizing gay marriage

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Tomorrow, a return to our scheduled knitting content with the pattern for the moonbooties.

The weather was cool enough this morning to wear my Clapotis to a sidewalk cafe for a meeting with a potential author. Although I hear it’s going to be another sticky weekend, it was the first hint that autumn really is approaching. And that means it’s time to take stock of the fall projects, of which there are many: too many, in all likelihood.

1. Rosalind. She needs her fronts and her edging, and fast – hopefully I’ll be able to wear her a few times in September, although she’s really a spring garment in color.

2. Baby stuff. I’ve got to dash off another pair of booties and a little hat by the end of next month when I see my baby cousins at the family reunion.

3. Dad’s gansey. I’m still tinkering with design elements, but I’ve got the entire lower torso to reel off in the round and patternless before I have to make serious decisions. This one is going with me on the bus to DC.

4. Lightning. All she needs are sleeves, and she goes fast on the #11s as long as I don’t make bonehead screwups – this one is definitely getting finished before the cold weather.

5. Lotus Blossom Shawl. I won’t reveal where it’s going yet, but it’ll need to be done by Christmas. This is a project that will need a lot of time.

6. Clapotis #2. An indulgence, but I don’t know how much longer I can wait to sink my teeth into that new Malabrigo.

7. Fiery Bolero. Noro Cash Iroha…yum…another indulgence, but an item I could definitely use this fall.

8. Ene’s Scarf…maybe two. One needs to be done by Christmas.

9. Footwear galore. I’ve got at least four pairs of socks in the queue. But socks don’t count as real projects, right?

10. A sweater for my darling husband? I really think he’d be so dashing in that Teva Durham pullover with the variable ribs, and I’d love to work with the Rowan kid classic.

11. Charlotte. The poor dear needs to be frogged and reknit in a smaller size. This will probably be a post-Christmas project.

It’s official: I’ve got my work cut out for me! Let’s hope I don’t stumble across too many must-have knits between now and the end of the year. At least there’s a fairly respectable balance here between gifts and gluttony, right? I’ve been a rather selfish knitter this summer, and after I wrap up the Lace-trim Bolero and Apricot Jacket, I really do intend to focus on things for others. I’m determined to knit some Dulaan stuff later this winter, too, and hopefully organize an effort among the knitters at my office to put together a good box full of woolies to send to the Mongolian street kids who need them.

I’ve been tagged by Joy for the “Five Things You Miss About Childhood” meme, and the timing is pretty appropriate, considering that as of Friday I’m into the second quarter-century of my life. So here we go:

1. Falling asleep in the car and being carried up to bed by my dad.

Or even pretending to fall asleep, really. My parents always knew when I was faking, but being great parents, they carried me up anyway. The house is up on a knoll in the woods and we used to park the cars down below, so my father would scoop me up against his shoulder and take me up the winding path with the mostly broken footlights (they didn’t stand much chance against falling branches, but we all knew that path by heart, even in total darkness). It was the best feeling, to have someone else slip you into your pajamas and tuck you snug into bed. On late nights out in the city, I savor those memories.

2. Baking days.

Every now and then my mother would find the time to bake fresh bread. And she always let me have a piece of the dough to shape into an animal or a heart or, once, an airplane a la Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen. In my ideal life, I’d get up early on Saturday mornings each week and bake bread.

3. Catching frogs under the dock.

My aunt and uncle had a fabulous pond on their property, and we’d be over there all the time in the summer. My favorite part was clambering into the cool dark under their dock, clay squelching delightfully between my toes, in pursuit of the big bronze-speckled pond frogs that lived there. We had great times at that pond. My mother likes to tell the story of how my little “boyfriend” (I didn’t think of him that way, I assure you) convinced me to go out with him in the tiny inflatable boat. He proved to be pretty inept with the oars and I got tired of aimlessly bobbing around in the middle of the pond, so I ditched him and dog-paddled back to shore. I think my mother reads something about my character into this, perhaps. We were probably about four.

4. Dad’s woodshop and the lumberyard.

My parents owned a lumberyard for the first sixteen years they lived on the island, and I grew up scaling the lumber trees that hold the big stacks of boards, playing hide-and-seek among the giant coils of plastic pipe, riding the forklift at my father’s side, and playing games with screws and bolts and wing nuts as counters. Even better was my father’s woodshop at home, in which we lived for the first three weeks of my life before the house was finished enough to move into. He’d set nails in a piece of scrap wood for me to practice hammering, and I couldn’t have been more entertained. He helped me make birdhouses and secret mailboxes in which to leave coded messages for friends and handsome boxes to hold the brushes for my horse.

5. Summer outings on the Aimee-O.

My best friends growing up had a fishing boat, the Aimee-O, a seiner they took up to Alaska every summer to fish the salmon runs. There were four daughters, the eldest my own age and my closest companion. When the boat was in Friday Harbor and the weather was fine, a number of families would go on picnicking trips to smaller islands. We’d scamper all over the boat named for my friends’ mother, wearing our weather-worn and salty orange life jackets. Then we’d row ashore in the dory my friends’ father built with his own hands, and the grown-ups would ferry coolers across and build driftwood cookfires while we children dashed off for the tidepools. Minnows, rock crabs, hermit crabs, sometimes a small eel – we’d capture them in our hands and put them in buckets attractively furnished with seaweed and rocks to make them feel at home. There was hardly anything more fun to do on a summer’s day. And then there would be Polish sausages and hamburgers (none of us were vegetarians, then) ready on the fire, so we’d put the creatures carefully back in their tidepools and rinse our hands in the sea. Later we’d jump off the Aimee-O into the shockingly frigid water, a long plunge of about fifteen feet, and splash breathless around to the ladder to do it again. That was island childhood at its best.

I’m tagging Mia, if they ever let her put down the laparoscope long enough to update her blog.