Mossy Cottage Knits

Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar

While I personally hesitate to include this next in the blog, I fear my retreat housemates will hunt me down if I don't at least mention the retreat’s One Tasteless Gag That Wouldn’t Die. Let me just say that, quite innocently and with the best of intentions, LindaK brought one of, er, these to the house, merely to help with the post-dinner wash-up, no more, no less.

Certain housemates (you know who you are) soon noticed that it was of a suggestive size, heft and shape…

…runs on batteries…

…vibrates…

…and spins.

Need I say the jokes were endless?

And just when the jokes did die down, some new innocent would join the household, the dish scrubber would be proudly trotted out from the kitchen, and the insanity would start all over again. Suffice it to say that if a Chippendale dancer had inadvertently stumbled into the house, he would’ve been torn from limb to limb.

No, this was not your grandmaw’s knitting get-together.

'Nuff said. Now, on to the more civilized, sensitive and compassionate side of my retreat companions.

One of the women who was slated to attend found herself instead undergoing an emergency appendectomy. During the retreat, we learned that the appendectomy Did Not Go Well and she had to have a catheter installed. Thus was born the Communal Catheter Cozy, otherwise referred to as The Pee Bag:

Each person knit a few rows in a pattern of her choosing and then the two sides were tied together with ribbons and the bag was embellished with buttons, shells, and a tassel. Despite the bag’s dubious aesthetic qualities, let the record show that, thanks to expert advice from one of the housemates, the dimensions of the Catheter Cozy were scientifically accurate and it would, indeed, have fit a catheter bag.

Along these same lines, because she knew our Absent Friend has a passion for beach rocks, MaryB collected beach rocks and beach glass, crocheted a small drawstring amulet bag and put her finds inside it.

All of these items, plus a card (and a bell? I heard rumors about a bell…), were carried home by the woman’s sister, one of the housemates, and, last I heard, were received with smiles and tears. Sure they make crude jokes about dishwashing implements but, when push comes to shove, those ladies’ve got heart.

Besides making salacious jokes and knitting medical waste bags, rest assured we did do some “regular” knitting and crafting. I say “crafting” because one of the women is a miniatures buff and spent her time needlepointing Persian rugs for her dollhouses. Here are some examples of her breathtaking work. (Note the dime for size comparison. The stitches on these things were infinitesimally small. They are best seen in the black rug at the bottom.)

These non-knitting distractions aside, we were still all about the sticks and the string. In fact, here is the ugly truth: I arrived on Wednesday at about noon. I reacquainted myself with the ladies, got all my shtuff hauled up into my room...and proceeded to knit from 1pm to 10pm—9 hours—nonstop. My hands were literally swollen by the end of the night. On the positive side, by noon the next day I had made three of these for Dulaan (the other two were knit by other women in the house):

These hats are knit by combining one strand of mohair with one strand of any kind of worsted weight wool yarn. Some of the housemates asked me to write up the pattern so I named it the Dulaan Cloud Hat, cobbled together a pattern, gave it away at the retreat to whoever wanted it, and am posting it here for youze guys. A very simple hat, lightweight but extremely warm, and a great stashbuster!

During that time period of intense knitting, I also started and finished my sister’s by-request Typing Toasties, here modeled by TMK the day after I came home. These are knit from a scrumptious merino, silk and cashmere blend yarn.

These Typing Toasties, although simple to knit, did lead me to one of those moments when I wonder why I knit at all. I made a ridiculous number of changes to the pattern including making the ribbing on the finger end ten rows long instead of the original eight. However, by Toastie #2, I had a senior moment and made the ribbing shorter. I was very frustrated because, in order to add the two rows, I would have to tink something that was completely finished, add on a new strand of yarn, knit two frickin' rows, and weave in extra ends…and I didn’t wanna do any of it. TMK took one look at the Toasties and said, “Why don’t you just take two rows out of the 10-row one?” Dude.

On Friday, more contributions to Dulaan from my housemates and from the folks at the Knitters Review Retreat (wait till you see this photo!).

P.S. For those folks who may not have caught this in the comments, I found copies of the Snowman pattern here and here. Also, the housemate who knit the pattern sent me this link to the Sirdar site. Click on Collection, then Miscellaneous/Toys/Books and then Miscellaneous/Toys to see their long list of toy patterns.

Posted by Ryan at November 9, 2005 10:56 AM