Assault

I

I had forgotton how the frogs must sound

After a year of silence, else I think

I should not so have ventured forth alone

At dusk upon this unfrequented road.

II

I am waylaid by Beauty. Who will walk

Between me and the crying of the frogs?

Oh, savage Beauty, suffer me to pass,

That am a timid woman, on her way

From one house to another!

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

My father and I felled the 30′ mimosa tree in my back garden. Thanks to a combination of good fortune, my weight on the end of some well-placed dropes, and Dad’s mad skills with a chainsaw and a come-along, we did this without damaging the cars, the fence, the garage, the house, my mother, or ourselves. RIP, mimosa. Its pink blossoms were a sheer delight, but it split down the bole during the wind storms and couldn’t survive.

I acquired a fabulous little oil painting from Yves, a French art dealer with whom I’ve become chummy.

I took my parents to the Portland Art Museum.

We watched The Queen (for me, a second time). Helen Mirren rocks my socks, but the Corgis steal the show whenever they’re on screen. My parents liked the movie almost as much as they liked the novelty of $3 movies + microbrew, a staple of Portland entertainment.

We hung my grandmother’s beautiful needlework tapestry in my entry way.

We went up to the island and picnicked on my parents’ property, from which you can see Mt. Baker, Mt. Rainier, and the Olympic range. We also saw some of the first hummingbirds of the season.

I forked horse manure.

I helped my friend Eliza’s delightful five-year-old collect half a sheep skeleton for her “bone museum.” If only I’d had my camera to help you visualize this wee elfling tramping down the hillside with a hock joint, a skull, part of a rib cage, three vertebrae, and a pelvis cradled in her short little arms.

I dug into a juicy treat: Nancy Milford’s Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay. It was recommended by Rebecca, and I mentioned it to my book club as a possibility for our May read. I’m finding it hard to put down.

I listened to the Capitol Steps perform on NPR. They sang my favorite number, “God Bless My SUV,” and a ditty about the attorney scandal to the tune of “The Lonely Goatherd,” complete with yodeling. Awesome.

I carpooled home to Portland with my cousins. I was the Dispenser of Peanuts, Sandwiches, and Stroopwafels (if you do not know the manna that is the stroopwafel, you haven’t lived) and the Changer of Discs of The Trumpet of the Swan, as read by E.B. White himself (be still my heart).

I knit a lot on Glee (pictures of that soon: I’m working in the round and inventing waist shaping now).

I met my girl Katrin for coffee and more knitting. Katrin is making this, so we scratched our heads over Kim Hargreaves’s utterly baffling directions for picot cast-on. Following them precisely, I produced a bizarre spinal column of stitches on two needles that looked nothing like a picot edge.

I caught up on past episodes of Dancing with the Stars and cast on a Chevron Scarf ala Domesticat. I try not to stick my thumb out for too many bandwagons, but since I began this project more than two years ago, I’m forgiving myself the lapse. Cat’s zaggy version was so much cooler than the Old Shale start I’d made that I tore out my sad ten inches of abandoned scarflet. It should be the perfect birthday present for my mother-in-law’s 60th in May. Unfortunately, although I’m using the same Koigu and size 3 needles, my scarf isn’t lying as obediently flat as Cat’s. It wants to fold up along the increases and decreases. I’m hoping a vigorous blocking will persuade it of the errors of its stubborn ways. Has anybody else had this problem?

Oh fie, oh spite! I was dividing up the stitches for the arm and body of Rorschach’s right half last night when I realized the numbers weren’t coming out aright. I spread it against the left half and was dismayed to find the body a good two inches shorter. Much invective-laced counting ensued. Could my gauge have changed? Nay, my haphazard notes were to blame. I had jotted on a crinkled scrap of paper, “CO sts for M size.” However, EZ does not label her sizes S-M-L. She gives them in inches, sensible woman. And when I cast on for the second half, I used the stitch counts for the 38″ size rather than the 40″ size I’d followed for the first half. (I’d correctly worked the width for the 36″ sweater on both halves, in case you’re ever trying to recreate my dimensions.)

There’s nothing for it but to frog Half the Second. While there’s a sting in undoing so much work, my real concern is for the Unspun Icelandic to survive the experience. It’s delicate at best, and I’m going to have to unknit and wind up my two little mare’s-tail strands with great care if they’re to survive being knit a second time. Also, I want to have this sweater finished for my trip to New York at the end of the month, in case it should still be wintry there. The good news? It’s the second week of Spring Break and I’m working at my little elementary school every day, but it should be very quiet. If I get the best of some long-term projects, there should be a bit of time for knitting.

Wednesday afternoon begins a new seminar at the university on art & religion; I’ll now have Tuesdays and Thursdays free for my other work and for knitting and pattern drafting. Huzzah for the spring term!

The Elizabeth Zimmermann Rorschach Jacket is half done. I’ve just finished the black stripe on the second half. We’re off to babysit my small cousins, and since I have completed all the freelance work and I sat for my final exam in Art History this morning, there’s nothing ahead of me after their baths and bedtime stories but knitting and HBO (or maybe Grey’s Anatomy, which I’ll admit I’m kind of hooked on, even though I think it’s gone downhill). This sweater is coming together quickly, although I’ve made some modifications to EZ’s suggestions. I’m making the medium-size length but the small-size width, and I had to reserve a lot more stitches for the sleeve than the directions indicated. EZ says to parcel the stitches out in thirds, with the middle third becoming the sleeve, but that would have given me an uncomfortably snug sleeve when I wanted this blousier effect. She also says to K2tog across the whole sleeve for the cuff, but I couldn’t get my arm in when I did that (and I have pretty skinny arms). I can’t imagine how it would have worked if I’d been knitting the sleeve with the smaller number of stitches the pattern suggests. But this is the way EZ wants us to knit: with sense. If the directions seem suspiciously ill-suited to your body shape, don’t follow blindly along. Change them until they please you. Half the benefit of making your own clothing is that you can customize it to your needs instead of living with not-quite-long-enough shirts and too-snug armpits and a-little-too-Flashdance necklines.

I’ve also been working on Glee, because I can’t go long without casting on for whatever Lisa happens to be knitting. It’s coming together nicely in a nifty indigo shade of Garnstudio Silke-Tweed that I found on sale, and I’m experimenting with a few short-rows on the bust. I hope they’ll prevent majorly revealing busty gappage in between the hook-and-eye closures. If anybody has tried this, I’d love to know what you did and how it worked out for you.