Some people fix their hearts on their goals, map out a plan to achieve them, and toil relentlessly until they’ve become doctors or successful entrepreneurs, artists or builders of schools for girls in Southeast Asia or published authors. I truly admire those people, and for a long time I lived with the gnawing worry that I didn’t seem to be one of them. I’ll be 28 years old this summer, and so far I’ve been employed as a teacher, an editor, a construction worker, a paralegal, an administrative assistant, a college admissions intern. I have degrees in anthropology, environmental studies, and education. I’ve contemplated further schooling in art history, astronomy, architecture, literature. When I was a kid I thought I’d be a veterinarian, an archaeologist, or a marine biologist. Sometimes I think I’d just like to go be a woodworker with my dad. At any rate, my career path seems to have the trajectory of a windblown dandelion seed. As I said, this used to bother me.

But the upside of lacking the drive and vision to pursue the kind of quantifiable success that gets you introduced by your vocation at cocktail parties is that you’re generally more free to follow the interesting overgrown offshoots from the trail. And you never know what’s down there.

Because I have a blog and a knitting habit, I drifted into a job at one of the greatest schools around. Because of said blog and habit, I met Katrin, and we began to take weekly knitterly refuge in one another’s company. And on Sunday, waiting for her at our usual haunt, I was suddenly offered a job in a yarn store (cue Holy Grailish choral music). Could there be any greater felicity than spending a few days a week fondling yarn and helping other people to fondle yarn and getting paid for it? I won’t even tell you about the discounts. You’d cry.

So Tuesday and yesterday I spent four and a half hours up to my elbows in luscious yarny goodness, happy as a pig in a slop trough. As if this weren’t enough, the powers that be needed someone to model a gorgeous silk sweater for a quick photoshoot while I was there. For Vogue Knitting. (I assume just for their advertisement in the magazine, but Mr. Garter is getting maximum mileage out of the notion of his wife as a model.)

Still, it gets better. Here’s a teasing peep at a pending addition to the ShibuiKnits pattern line (imagine the green as richer and less yellowy than it insisted on being here, despite my best efforts):

Designed and knit by yours truly. Now excuse me while I go do a little boogie dance. I may be blundering around in the woods nowhere near a career path, but I’m not wholly without ambition, and becoming a designer has been a dream of mine for the last couple of years. Life, though not without its heartaches, is ultimately very invigorating these days.

Thank you all so very much for your kind words and fervent kitty-go-home wishes. There’s been no sign of the little stinker yet, but your support means a lot to me and it was comforting to read your comments the last few days. Mr. Garter is home now, which is awfully nice. Apparently I would have had fodder for ten more posts about TDWTBL and his kinfolk if I’d been on this trip (including stories about my darling unsupervised husband three sheets to the wind on SoCo and Jaeger bombs… he’s such a babe in the woods about alcohol), but I don’t think I’d have been able to enjoy myself knowing the cat was lost and I might be missing opportunities to find him. And anyway, this is a knitting blog, despite recent evidence to the contrary.

So let’s see some knitting!

Yep, it’s another Chevron Scarf. Yawn, I know. But I started this darn thing two full years ago. Then it was a basic feather-and-fan scarf in two colors of Koigu, with reference to no pattern at all — this is the second time I’ve inadvertently ripped off a Last-Minute Knitted Gifts pattern, the first being a hat for myself that’s a dead ringer for the cute baby hat with the i-cord bow. I swear to you on Pride and Prejudice that I had never yet seen the book when I began either project. Anyway, it’s really Miss Domesticat who deserves the credit for this scarf being finished at all – I was so taken with her edgier, zaggier version that I ripped out my ten inches of feather-and-fan and began again immediately. This time it was a quick knit, and I gave it a no-nonsense blocking to open up the holes and make it look a little more delicate. And are those wee beads you spy in the photo above? Indeed they are!

I got those little guys as a free giftie from Earthfaire almost two years ago when I ordered sock yarn from them. They’ve been waiting for the opportunity to adorn something, and their colors were perfect with this scarf (which is really a little more green than it looks in these photos… #1 is most accurate).

The extra gussy-uppedness seemed appropriate on a present for my mother-in-law’s 60th. I’m happy to report she’s delighted with her new scarf. I made her a little silk one the first Christmas I knew how to knit, and she’s worn it so often that it’s starting to look a little pilly and sad, so it was high time to bring another into the rotation.

I have more to show you, so hold me to my word to post at least three times this week: Glee is waiting damply in the wings, and I have rather thrilling news to break tomorrow!

I meant to be writing this on Monday. I had pictures ready. Pictures of knitting, finished knitting, made by me. But as it turns out, it’s been a week of anxiety and lumps in the throat, sore feet and the glum blues. Mingus the cat went missing on Sunday night — maybe it’s spring fever, maybe a dog chased him into an unfamiliar neighborhood, maybe it’s something worse. The not knowing is worse, for one. Mingus is a prime booger, up to no good at least once a day, usually looking for trouble and finding it, but I miss him… I can’t even write how much. I’ll get snot all over the keyboard. This week I’ve done everything you can do — visiting the shelters every two days, posting fliers all over a ten block radius and the internet, calling for him everywhere, talking to neighbors (you can meet a lot of really nice people looking for an errant cat), pouncing at every new message on the answering machine, running outside in a bathrobe at 2 a.m. without my glasses because some cats were snarling at each other and maybe it was my bellicose little pisser disturbing the peace. Mr. Garter left for Texas and his sister’s graduation at the crack of dawn on Wednesday, and it’s lonesome here without either of my boys.

Tonight I finally broke down and wept a little weep. I was already kind of unhinged about the cat, and then I got the news that Lloyd Alexander died. Most of you probably don’t pay a lot of attention to children’s literature, but he was one of the Truly Greats. And as Kristen put it, there won’t be another writer like him. Lloyd was an old-fashioned storyteller, and his books were marked by innocent joy and skillful craft, always wise and gentle and true and fun. No potty humor, nothing racy or edgy — and they still capture kids’ imaginations by virtue of the peculiar and simple magic of good story. I loved them growing up, and I loved them even more when I was assistant to his editor in New York. It felt like private admission to Xanadu to open a box containing his typewritten manuscript, and how I glowed when he adopted my suggestions. In my little experience of him as an author and as a person, he was witty and generous, scholarly to the point of endearing nerdiness, and a great lover of cats. On my mantle is an Edward Gorey stuffed cat he gave me for Christmas a couple of years ago. I propped it up there when I was unpacking because I didn’t have another place in mind for it, and somehow it’s stayed. I like its funny eyebrows and its red & brown knit sweater. Lloyd always drew his own Christmas cards; invariably they were cats standing in for the figures in famous works of art, and we all had to guess what painting they spoofed. I hadn’t studied art history yet and I wasn’t very good at guessing; I like to think that this year I would have gotten the reference.

I don’t know what Lloyd’s thoughts about the afterlife were, but I like to think of him as having gone to dwell among his many vibrant characters — with his wife and all their cats, of course. And I kind of hope he’ll keep an eye on Mingus for me, and maybe remind him that it’s good to return home after the journey.

I have a Tall Drink of Water Texan Brother-in-Law. It’s one of those spicy twists in life I never could have foreseen, like living in New York City or marrying a boy I met in high school. TDWTBL is more than your average Coor’s Lite-drinking, Stetson-wearing, two-stepping, fence-mending, calf-branding desperado: he’s also a math genius who turned down a Harvard scholarship, an engineering wizard who can build custom work vehicles out of his head without ever drawing up plans, an ace golfer, a state-ranked marksman, a good cook, and a helluva gentleman. He married Mr. Garter’s twin sister a year ago, and we all met up in NYC for the wedding of our friends Ian and Cindy.

Cindy is Italian-Canadian and Ian lived in Italy for about eight years studying and practicing architecture. Here they are:

What I like most about this picture is the paparazzi in the background. Now you want a full shot of Cindy’s awesome dress, don’t you?

It’s Carolina Ferrera, but not from the actual wedding-gown line. The underlayer has green and yellow stripes, and there are little sprays of yellow and green floral motifs on the outer layer of organza. At the reception she wore a wide green belt that goes with it. Cindy and Ian always look sharp. It was quite the mix of people at this wedding: uber-fashionable Milanese designers, urban New York types, Idaho back country kids, Montreal cosmopolites, everybody’s parents, and TDWTBL in his spanking new white Stetson — the first new cowboy hat he’s ever purchased, because he wanted to do New York City right. Here’s the closest Mr. Garter came to capturing the Stetson on film:

TDWTBL grew up in Terlingua, Texas, which is marked as a ghost town on most maps. It’s just outside Big Bend National Park, the least visited of the national parks and also (or perhaps because so) one of the most worth visiting. Parts of it look like the surface of the moon. Drive for five minutes and the desert is suddenly riotous with blooming cacti and other formidable plants, or a towering range of vermilion mountains heaves in sight. At the southern perimeter is a lush belt of cottonwoods full of bird life and javelinas, and the muddy Rio Grande muscling through. It’s literally a stone’s throw across to Mexico (we threw stones). I grew up on the Canadian border (or rather with the knowledge that it was about three miles offshore, that that some of the islands were arbitrarily on our side and some on theirs, and that you could see the headlights of the cars driving north from Victoria at night), but the border at Big Bend is a national border as borders have only ever existed in the folkloric section of my imagination. There’s the river, and a few scrubby yards of shore, and then there are the Cliffs of Insanity. Seriously. The face of Mexico thrusts up so vertiginously that you feel you could break against it. You feel small. You wonder at the fortitude of anyone who ever eked out a living in that landscape in the days before air conditioning and indoor water faucets. This is where TDWTBL grew up.

The trip to NYC was his third airplane ride. The first thing he and Mr. Garter’s sister did on arrival was to whip out the ironing board. They are obsessive ironers. Anything that will lie prone long enough to be soused in starch gets vigorous and daily ironing. They iron socks. TDWTBL’s blue jeans can stand up by themselves: I have seen them do this. Once everyone was pressed and armored to brave the big city, we all went down to Ian’s mother’s house for a big wedding-eve party. Afterwards, it was suggested that the groom ought to do a little drinking on his last night of bachelorhood. Some of his friends went out to scout the area for a bar. The area in question is the East 30’s, and anyone who’s lived in New York knows what that means: all the bars are basically extensions of the college frat party scene, but with smarter clothes and more disposable income. Most of them are meat markets with no character and bad music, and it was one of these that Ian’s friends chose. We knew what we were in for, but we didn’t want to be party poopers.

First we needed to meet with the approval of the two colossal bouncers, so we dutifully presented our IDs. I still have a New York driver’s license, so they let me right through. I squashed myself between a couple of budding investment bankers and tried to make my way to the bar; then I realized I’d lost the rest of my party. I squashed back out again. Sure enough, the bouncers were giving my Stetson-clad brother-in-law a hard time. He’d taken the test for his commercial driver’s license a couple of weeks earlier, they clipped his old license when he passed, and he’s still waiting for the new license to arrive. Knowing that many establishments won’t accept a clipped license as valid ID, he presented his concealed weapons permit. The bouncer took one look at this Texan with a handgun license, called his colleague over, and pulled TDWTBL aside.

“Are you carrying, man?” one of the behemoths asked him, sotto voce. TDWTBL does a very respectful “No sir”, and fortunately the bouncers bought it and didn’t insist on patting him down. (Not that they’d have been able to feel much through all that starch.)

We lasted about a minute and thirty seconds in the bar — long enough for TDWTBL and his Stetson to draw a lot of astonished and rather appreciative looks from the clientele. We decided Ian would understand if we opted out of the debauchery. As it turned out, TDWTBL’s favorite part of the trip was a night stroll through Battery Park to see the Statue of Liberty all lit up and listen to the waves lapping the pier and the night fishermen conversing amicably between casts. Afterward we ambled up past Ground Zero and St. Paul’s and City Hall (TDWTBL said the gas lamps made him think of Jack the Ripper; I was busy exulting over the Calder stabiles on display down there), and a couple of us developed a craving for noodles. We found a little place in Chinatown that was still open at midnight and cranked TDWTBL’s horizons just a little bit wider.

He was a tremendously good sport about the whole trip. He patiently suffered the Italians to take pictures of his hat, but he was disdainful of his overcooked filet mignon at the wedding supper. He plucked the rosemary sprig from the center with distaste and remarked, “I ain’t never seen a steak grow grass before.” After the wedding, I helped him find a place to buy some Copenhagen. This is a habit he’s trying to quit, but I believed the man when he said he needed more than gum to handle New York City. I’ve never bought chewing tobacco before (in fact, I’d sooner pack my lip with rabbit turds … and I’ll thank my mother not to bring up what I may or may not have done in this line as a country baby), but I like being the kind of girl who knows where to find things people need, and I did live in the neighborhood for two years.

All in all, a fulfilling trip. I’ll save my reunion with my knitting pals and my indiscretions in Habu for next time: if you’ve made it this far I applaud your stamina and bow in thanks.

I hope all you mothers out there had a wonderful day and felt fully appreciated.