Mossy Cottage Knits

Brave New World

In March of this year, I wrote:

“Since small talk and socializing have historically not been TMK’s cuppa tea, it has always been my habit, when we are at parties or gatherings, to touch base with her, even if just through eye contact, to make sure she isn’t getting overwhelmed by all the badinage. This means that there is always a faint but definite “live wire” between us; the one of us always knows where the other one is and how she's holding up.

About half-an-hour into Monday night’s [Ferals], I noticed something odd. There was no “live wire,” no hum, no “invisible connection,” no pull between me and her. How could this be?! I looked around for TMK and discovered, to my horror, that she was—there’s no good way to say this, so I’ll just get it out—perfectly happy. Mon Dieu! And sacre bleu! She had quickly been absorbed into the spinning group and was, in fact, quite contentedly chatting away while fondling different fibers (cashmere, silk, alpaca—yummers!), looking at the different types of spinning wheels and, at one point, using Andrea’s wheel to practice plying. In short, she didn’t need the faintest bit of rescuing. Huh.”

Well, ever since that shocker, things have gone from bad to worse. During the last couple of weeks, TMK had been making some vague noises about perhaps going to Village Yarn & Tea’s monthly spinning night. Not surprisingly, “we” were going to go, because I assumed that she would need me to go with her to make introductions, be the icebreaker, be the bridge between her somewhat-non-fibrous world and the insanity that is the world of knitting and spinning.

As the days progressed, though, I noticed a strange phenomenon: She stopped saying “we.” And started saying “I.” As in, “I, TMK, am going to voluntarily go to a social event and spend time with a room full of strangers, engaging in small talk. Alone.” Whuh?! Had the world gone mad?!

Once I realized that she was, in fact, determined to go to the spin-in alone, I started taking mental bets on when my little introvert would chicken out. 2 days before? Nope. 1 day before? 1 hour before? Nope. 5 minutes before? Nope. Right on schedule, off she went, lugging her (borrowed) Louet and a handful of aqua blue-faced leicester. And there were no huge claps of thunder and lightning did not strike the earth.

Then I entertained myself by taking bets on how soon she would come home. Would she make a sharp u-turn halfway there and be back on her doorstep in 15 minutes? Nope. Half an hour? Nope? 1 hour? Nope. 3 hours later I get a call from a perfectly happy and chipper TMK saying so-and-so, so-and-so and so-and-so had all been there, and she tried different wheels, and she spun, and she talked, and…

Yes, the world has definitely gone mad.

What did I do while the world as I knew it fell apart around me? I stayed home perfectly contentedly and Kool-Aid dyed some of the avalanche yarn. I opted for grape (9 packets; after all, we were talking majorly bulky yarn) and came out with an unsatisfying, blotchy, slate-gray purple. However, a large pile of green Kool-Aid packets and another four skeins of avalanche yarn are still burning a hole on my kitchen counter. This Dr. Frankenstein ain't done yet!

I also started doing yet another design of the Avalanche Vest. My most favorite style of knitted item, bar none, is anything that has a cable band running around the bottom like Coronet, Kepler, or Samus or has the cabled look and feel of Rogue and Eris so I’m trying to design a version of the vest that has a horizontal cable around the bottom, vertical cables bordering both sides of the front, and a stand-up cabled collar. The results so far have been, um, interesting. It doesn't help that, for my experimenting, I'm using leftover bits and bobs of avalanche yarn, so the cabling along the bottom is a dark terra cotta and the body of the sweater is a bright acid-yellow. Not a good look.

Posted by Ryan at September 15, 2006 11:31 AM