Mossy Cottage Knits

Weekend Hijinks

Since I’m sure all of you have been lying awake nights wondering, worrying and fretting about the goings-on in the life of someone you’ve never even frickin’ met, yupper, I did finish The Socks That Kicked My Kaboose. I calmly slid into home plate on said kaboose [sic] Friday night, waving my Chibi gleefully in the air, and snipping errant yarn ends as I went (which, technically, I know, requires three hands; you hush up). TMK pronounces them quite the success. I am happy. Who knows? 365 days from now she may even get another pair. Ooooooooo.

What I love most about giving TMK socks is the Post-Sock-Completion Debriefing. This debriefing, which she initiates and which she takes very seriously, delves deeply into all aspects of the care and feeding of the new socks, and includes such questions as, What yarn did you use to knit them? Is it superwash? Will the socks shrink? Do I need to hand-wash them? Can I wash them in the washing machine? How do I dry them? Should I roll them up in a towel? Can I put them in the dryer? Should I hang them in the closet to dry? If they’re a little bit big, can I felt them? If the toe wears out, will you be able to replace it? Ladies and gents, if your handknit socks have ever, to your soul-searing horror, been dissed and abused by a family member, and if you ever want to knit socks for someone who will appreciate them with a surpassing appreciation, knit TMK a pair. I can assure you the socks will be treated as carefully and tenderly as Frankie is. I believe some of them are even scheduled for their rabies shots next week, and one or two of her favorite pairs have been micro-chipped.

Except for a one small hiccup, what a wonderful, very autumnal weekend we had, starting with the lovely Dulaan knit-in at MaryB’s house, attended by about 15 people at its busiest. Not many photos*, I’m afraid, but at the very least you can take a gander at this amazing display. Everything on this table was knit by “Steppe Sweater” Irina. Everything.

Here, the busy hands of Elaine and her wifely unit Leslie churn out hats. Charmingly, Leslie’s hat was technically an “Avalanche Cloud Hat” since it combined some Avalanche yarn with a strand of mohair, a la Cloud Hat pattern.

And here, this pile of black, well-loved shoes, which had just grown quietly by itself on MaryB’s porch out of respect for Mary’s beautiful hardwood floors, amused me greatly.

TMK attended the party as our honorary Dulaaner, of course, and spent the time trying out a new—more correctly, new used—Schacht wheel she’s considering buying. “Trying out” is perhaps an understatement since, by the time we went to bed that night, she had spun for 7.5 hours. Here, the fruits of her labors, the groovilicious merino roving now in its single-ply form:

And the hiccup? Well, that came when I lost Rabbitch—who was following my car from MaryB’s to TMK’s house so we could continue our international, cross-border merriment—in a morass of post-collegiate-football roadblocks, detours, flashing police-car lights, and police officers waving bright orange batons in nonsensical fashion. I came a leetle bit unglued since, although I had considered the possibility that Rabbitch's and my vehicles might part ways, it never occurred to me that it would be in the middle of such a nightmarish, metropolis-gone-awry mess. I was convinced that I had lost “our” Canadian forever, that something horrible was going to happen to her or that, at the very least, she’d be lost in the bowels of Seattle for hours and would never completely recover from the hideousness of the experience. This caused me to behave, when I arrived at TMK’s house, in a Not Nice fashion. Elaine and Leslie, who were there, can attest to this.

Guess who appeared at the door a mere five minutes after me, and made me feel like an arse, although in a good way?

Oh, how I had underestimated the self-sufficiency of one Ms. Rabbitch. She had been fazed not one bit by the lights, the police, the college-football fans wandering indiscriminately across the avenues, the unfamiliar roads, and the absence of me. I gave her a Big Squeeze—no lame-ass, milquetoast Princeton hug this time—and proceeded to apologize all around for being Not Nice.

Then it was pizza all around, more knitting, and more spinning. Lovely.

*Although *I* didn’t take very many pictures, as luck would have it, pal-o’-mine Supergirl Knits did take some more, so see her blog entry here and her Flickr page here.

Posted by Ryan at October 30, 2006 01:35 PM