five years and two days and one lesson

Grief is like



Grief is like...



I'm staring out the window. I'm half done the thought before I even realize I had started thinking.

There's no manipulating it.


There's no rewriting it or changing its nature or...


I'm looking down at my empty hands. The house is quiet.

There's no changing its nature or...



Both doors are open. Front and back.


We don't have a fence in the front. We haven't had the door open; standing open, thoughtlessly open, for seven years.


But it stands open now.

There is no changing its nature or cutting it short.

I was distantly surprised today when I felt, in a shock of painful, visceral recall - an ear-piercing moment of echoing, microphonic feedback from a past life - the need to hurt myself.

There is no escaping it.


There is no changing its nature or cutting it short. 

In fact, here is the truth.


Grief is like nothing.


Grief is itself.

Grief is itself, and only itself. It doesn't have a simile because it is the metaphor. And you cannot change it and you cannot move it and you cannot escape it, or negotiate or plead or remonstrate with it.


You can only feel it. You can only sit with it and in it and through it. You can only let it be in you and around and through and over you.

It is the sole defining process of our lives, the learning process, the growing process.


You are inside it, and filled with it, and whether your eyes are closed or open, you cannot see or find or imagine a way out. You can only wait.


And you must wait.



So I will wait.




Piper, I will miss you until I see you again.

Warm Fuzzies.

Aw, y'all are so sweet! Thank you for being so staunch in your defense of my right to post about knitting. You made me all verklempt. (Well, I'm just joking about that part. I'm not actually crying.)

Today is a special day. One year ago on this very day, our little Piper slithered into the world, probably hogging more than his fair share of placenta, and already claimed by us. Happy birthday, buddy!


What a sterling visage.

And in Sheltie Appreciation Part II, Messy Tuesday is visible - thanks to Anna who commanded I post more messy pictures, to cheer her up. Look behind the dog, friends - that's my living room. I usually crop those bits out.


I have some jobs to do today - mostly involving cleaning up getting ready to leave tomorrow for a week-long family visit. I won't be blogging until I get back, so you can just wander through the archives if you're looking for something to distract you from your own life.

Here is the promised picture of my first bobbin of singles.....ain't it pretty? I realised I forgot to take a picture of the fibre, so I'll have to do that for next time.


Everyone else seems to take pictures of their spinning using a dime for scale, so here is the Bluenose to provide a little perspective.





I'm off to Postes Canada Post now, to mail this:



and then I will be absent until next week. (Barring a Friday post I've got queued up - isn't scheduled publishing wonderful?)


Kiss Kiss

Good evening, Renée. Are you in any pain?

I started Christmas cleaning today, and the whole tragic farce reminded me of the rigorous grooming we girls undertake before the first swim every summer: there's a lot of catching up to do. I go through vacuum bags in December at approximately the same rate as I go through waxing strips in July.

I made a chai latte yesterday, and Em wanted some, so we went to the buffet to choose a demitasse cup for her. AND FOUND THIS.




Care for a close-up?


No sign of any other disturbance, and no one has opened this cabinet in like a month. It's a complete mystery to me, though I suspect that my friend, who deeply covets this cabinet, has put a hex on it so it spontaneously smashes my china at random intervals. She's trying to get me to give it to her and tells me that the hutch will not be happy until it finds its rightful home. I'm thinking of knitting one of these with curly black hair - see how she likes it when I run a few red-hot needles into her little woolly gullet.

Piper is nine months old now. Mr HSBoots happened to read the contract we signed when we bought him, and apparently we promised to neuter him by 7 months of age. But with Christmas coming up and the trip we just took but haven't yet paid for, I'm eyeing up that rubber mallet and Xacto knife. Or I suppose I could just tie 'em off with one of these ouchless elastics that keep clogging up my beater bar.

The Sleep of the Just

I guess Piper has a clear conscience because this:

is an extremely relaxed dog.

I'm glad he's fuzzy or my demure readers might be a little embarrassed.

Glass Half Full.

Will somebody please come over here and teach my stupid dog not to eat fridge magnets?



Look at him. You'd think he wants what's INSIDE the fridge, right? Wrong. He wants to finish the snack he was having when I caught him earlier today.



On the other hand, scooping poop is really easy - you just walk around the yard with a spade held a few inches off the ground, and Zing!

Don't Be Afraid to Let 'er Rip

Thanks everybody, for your well wishes on my anniversary post. Mr HalfSoledBoots even read it, after I told him his anniversary card was online and he'd have to go to the blog to see it.


These photos are very dark - I took them outside hoping for some natural light, but there was just enough to disable the flash and not enough to show the colours.

Drifting is coming along beautifully. I've finished the sleeves and the front, which means I would be completely done the knitting except that I need to knit another back since I ripped out the first one.

When you're knitting fair-isle, as everyone knows, you have to be careful to keep your floats loose or the knitting pulls in and ripples the surface of the work. To make tensioning easier, the designer calls for a needle change just for the colourwork band - you move up to a 4.5mm from a 4mm. The problem was, I usually handle the tension issues myself, by pulling the stitches along the right hand needle as I work. This, combined with the larger needle, made the colourwork band simply too loose and sloppy-looking. You couldn't tell from the picture, but it just wasn't good enough for Ruby.

So I ripped and I'm now one inch into The Back, Part II. I should be done it by this weekend, and then I can block, seam, and knit the button bands.

The pattern itself is a good one - these vivid colours really keep my interest. I also like the natural sections of the pieces - it keeps you knitting to the end of that section. You knit merrily along, enjoying the feeling of the wool, then suddenly the purple is over. So you start the colourwork, and then you feel like you really should carry on just until that's over, but then the beautiful blue starts and the decreases begin, and you think "Well, it's only a few inches, it would really be a shame to stop now." Then it's 1:00 AM and you bind off in triumph.


The front.

I do have two criticisms, though. One is for the book in general - I really do feel that "Fair Isle" should be done in finer yarn. It looks pixelated and clunky when it's in anything above a sport weight.

The second is that this pattern (and, probably, other patterns in this book) should really be knit in the round. A steek would not be necessary - you could knit in the round from the hem to the underarm, then divide. That way, you do the colourwork band in the round and save yourself the torture of the purl rows, not to mention the abhorrent looseness at the edge of each piece, when your yarn ends are dangling there looking pointless and sloppy. I think no matter how carefully I block, steam, and seam, there is going to be some rippling at the side seams. AND THAT BOTHERS ME.

This shows the colour better.

-------------------------------------------

Piper is six months old now.

And after putting up a 6+ foot fence to keep the hateful deer at bay, I have blooms on my hydrangea for the first time in three years.



So altogether the world is spinning nicely today.

Sting, Stang, Stung

More on this fuzzy fellow later. Click to embiggen.

My sister has been asking what Piper looks like now, at the age of four months. He's gotten a lot taller:

but mostly he has become kind of a handful. You know how puppies chew, right? Well, Piper doesn't chew so much as he eats. The other day he was lying beside me in the living room when i heard a funny swallowing sound. Sticking out of his muzzle were 2 inches of a 12 inch collar. I had taken it off him earlier and put it in my cardy pocket, and he pulled it out and swallowed most of it before I caught him.

Dealing with that was disgusting, really (kind of foamy-slimy), but the larger issue is that we have to be awfully vigilant about this dog. Stupid animal has a death wish.

Our house has also become home to another kind of pet: honeybees have set up a hive in our crawl space, between the floor and the insulation. I first noticed them coming and going out their front door, a gap in one of the wall vents to the outside...

We have called the local beekeepers' association, and they gave us the names of five beekeepers who would probably love to come and collect the hive. I don't know how long it will take but the bees are not bothering us - I quite like having them there actually.

However, on Saturday Emily fell down into a patch of clover in the front yard (our lawn is about 70% clover now) directly on top of a bee. She got a bad sting in her leg, which got red and hot very quickly. Within a few minutes she had an alarming network of welts all over her calf.

My mother is anaphylactic and carries an Epi Pen for bee stings, and I was a bit concerned about it as Emily has never been stung before. I had homeopathic Apis in the house, so I gave her three of them within ten minutes of the sting. The welts disappeared completely, and by the next morning all that was left was a tiny little stinger hole.

So I'm definitely keeping that remedy in the house. It's part of my growing Family Kit. So far I keep Arnica (for trauma, bruising), Apis (for stings and bites), Aconite (for panic), Influenzinum (flu), Hepar Sulph (for earaches, congestion and infections) and Ignatia (for worry and stress).

The last thing I wanted to show you is Charlotte's Christmas stocking. Remember this?

I have picked it up again, realising uneasily that it is halfway to Christmas and I've barely touched it. I really need to get it done this year, but at this rate I might not make it. I'll have to sacrifice some knitting to the cause, eventually, but I'd like to finish the Cap Shawl first.

Maybe I'll show you guys a picture of this thing every week, and if there isn't enough progress you can set up a hue and cry in the comments to get me going.

Now I'm off to clean up that coffee table...it's moved to the top of my priority list because I want to knit for a while and I need a place to set my teacup.

How many chew toys can you buy for $140?

I don't have a good feeling about this.

Have you spotted it?

Woman Against.

Edit:

All's well that ends well



although he hasn't finished with the rocks yet...there are three still to be passed. I have to watch for them. Goodie.

===============

Two things happened to me today.

I refused to turn a blind eye.
and
I realised I love my dog.

Poor little Piper started having some problems this afternoon. He was acting funny: weak-legged and faint, he staggered around the yard listlessly, drooling copiously and crying actual tears out of his eyes. He wouldn't eat and he kept retching up water. When he started having a bit of diarrhea I phoned the vet and took him down.

I was afraid it was Canine Distemper Virus. I looked at the symptom list online and saw that he had all but one - the fever. The timeline for CDV didn't really match up, but since the breeder had told us that he didn't have his full immunity until his second shots (which were scheduled for next week), I was paranoid.

First of all, I have obviously been spoiled by the beautiful and wondrous thing that is the Canadian Health Care System (although I did get a $57 ambulance bill once when my daughter and I were taken to hospital following a cataclysmic car wreck), because when the vet told me it was going to cost $300 just to DIAGNOSE the problem, I almost fell over sideways.

After some bloodwork (all perfectly normal) and some x-rays (perfectly NOT normal) they phoned to tell us that he had been eating something he shouldn't have.

Our puppy is basically a warm, furry bag full of rocks.

Thankfully, in the course of nature the rocks have already begun to return to the outside world. There is no blockage. HOWEVER, the poor little thing is dehydrated and has a very irritated and inflamed GI tract, so he has been HOSPITALISED FOR THE NIGHT to be administered IV FLUIDS AND ANTIBIOTICS.

So here we are at 10.00 PM, and the house is quiet. We had the sliding doors between the kitchen and the living room open tonight because there was no little furry, foxy muzzle poking around the corner looking for his chance to bolt out of his puppy-proof area. I left my shoes right inside the back door, with no fears that they will be reduced to a few fragments of damp, shredded canvas.

And you know what? I miss him. I miss him a lot. I am worrying about my poor little pupster, separated from his family and stuck in the animal hospital overnight, where he will probably be bullied into doing the bigger dogs' chores and have his, you know, kibble money taken or whatever. Alternatively, he'll cry through the night and be convinced, by tomorrow, that he'll never see his family again. In the morning he'll be practising his hitchhiking technique and tying his few meager possessions into a bandanna on the end of a stick.

Seriously, I'm so anxious...do you think he'll be okay?

And when I go to pick him up tomorrow afternoon I'm going to let him lick my pewter inukshuk necklace as much as he wants to, and I'm going to let him have Lean Cuts for breakfast AND supper.

===============

Okay, now the not-so-nice part.

I was sitting on a sunny bench outside a local elementary school today, reading "A Thread of Grace" and waiting for my daughter's Guide meeting to finish. Suddenly I heard banging and yelling coming from a house a few doors down the street, then a woman screaming. I looked up to see a man forcing his way into the house, shouting something I couldn't hear. Through the front window I could see a woman leaning against the door trying to keep him out. She was crying "No!! No, don't!! Get out!" He pushed her backwards into the house. I could still hear her screaming.

I immediately reached for my cellphone and called 911, just as I heard another male voice shout "Get your hands off her, @sshoIe!! Get your hands off her!!" The speaker was a neighbour, running over from across the street and following the first guy into the house. The dispatcher answered and I told him everything as it played out. He asked me to get the address...I had to walk down most of the length of the field to see the number. He asked whether there was a vehicle - I couldn't see past the hedge.

Just as he was finishing up my address and phone number, the first guy - the violent, abusive oppressor - came out of the house. I heard a truck start, then saw a beat up Range Rover pull out of the driveway and take off down the street. I told this to the 911 dispatcher who seemed, unlike me, completely NOT relieved by this latest development.

His voice became suddenly sharp. "Can you see the female?"
No.
"Can you hear the female?"
No.
"Can you see the other male who entered the house?"
No.
"Can you hear anything at all?"
I can hear a baby screaming. Maybe a toddler. (And now I've just realised what he is thinking.) You should hurry.
"The boys are on their way, I promise you. Please tell me anything that happens."

It seemed like a really long time. I mean.....a really long time. But it was only a few minutes. Two cars came roaring up, with huge men in bulletproof vests who strode into that house like they owned it, to find who-knows-what. They were unafraid, but wary. I tell you this: in my entire life no man has ever laid an abusive hand on me, and even I was relieved and reassured to see them.

I don't know what happened, but judging from the lack of an ambulance, all was (physically) well with the woman. I hope all was well with the child, too.

I could write a lot here about what it must be like for all these people. The girl behind the door. The children in a house where such things happen. The dispatcher who gets calls like this every single shift. The "boys", heroes of our time, who jeopardise their marriages, their sanity, their health and their lives following up on every call. They go right up, knock on the doors, walk through the house room by room, check on everyone. They ask the woman if she's okay, if she knows her attacker, if this has happened before.

If she wants to press charges.

They look at the little tear-stained child keeping well back, or maybe sitting on the couch with a neighbour or a sister, and they ask if she is all right. They assess. They think about Victim Services, wonder if a call is appropriate. They ask about license plate numbers and places he might be found. They take names, and numbers, and talk about restraining orders and safe houses and shelters and do you have someone you can call?

And then the worst part - or what I imagine must be the worst part. They give one last piece of advice, take one last look around the place. They glance over at that little person who has seen what no person should have to see, and they walk back out the door. Drive away. Make their report. Finish their shift.

None of us can really do anything, can we? I mean, nothing changes. This probably won't be The Last Straw that causes a complete break between them. This probably won't be the thing that convinces her that he's a worthless sack of shit who should be kept away from her and her child. The best I can hope for is that they track that abusive bastard down, arrest him, and in the process intimidate the hell out of him. I can hope the coward realises that someone will hear, someone will see, and he will have to answer for it.

But, whether it changes anything or not, by God no man gets away with that kind of crap anywhere near me.

I Bruised my Butt Falling off the Wagon

All right, I really let you all down today. It's supposed to be Messy Tuesday and I cleaned up.

What happened was, I realised yesterday that my sister was going to be in town this week - she arrived last night, actually, and she is not one who wallows in the disarray. In consideration of her preferences, I cleaned up.




Sorry.


Anyway, look! Over there! It's a cute doggie!

Aw, he's so cute when he smiles like that!

Don't tell me it's just gas.

Snuffly kiss for you.

Awwww! and Brrr.

Whew! Okay, having a puppy is exhausting.

And, obviously, being a puppy is equally exhausting.

I have finished one of my Amy March's Slippers, and hope to do the other tomorrow. My one foot is kind of cold.

Amy March's Slippers - Day One

Good afternoon everyone! Today is the first day of the Amy March Slippers Knitalong, with your kind and attentive hosts, Bethro and Challoner. I know some people jumped the gun and did their slippers early - and test knitting is always constructive, so good for you.

As for me, things have been busy around here the last 24 hours, so I don't know how quickly I'll get these done, but I have begun precisely on schedule.

I had to buy some chunky weight yarn for these slippers, as it's a weight I don't normally keep in the stash. I was in MichaeI's last week and got these.

The Shetland Chunky is the colour I prefer, but I thought the weight wouldn't be quite right...since I wanted to make more than one pair anyway, I picked up the Wool-Ease. It's got a lower wool content than I normally like but it takes all kinds to make up a stash...or something.

Anyway, I cast on today with my beloved magic loop method, using Meg Swansen's Turkish cast on. I think. I'm never sure what the difference is between the Turkish and the figure 8 cast on.

And here I am modelling the first twelve rounds against the backdrop of my Messy Tuesday post. This is what happens when a puppy prances into the house and you immediately discover the fifteen or twenty things you thought were up high enough but weren't. (And when you have tea twice and forget to put both pots away, and pin out your Cap Shawl and forget to put the pins away, and....and....and....)

More tomorrow.

Ain't it something?

Piper, meet Everybody.





Everybody, meet Piper.




Charlotte is his favourite person so far.


Taking a sniff and a nibble of every thing in my yard proved to be an exhausting feat.


You'll be seeing a lot of him, I expect.

I'll be back tomorrow...right now the old cross-trainers are calling me and I need to go get my heartrate up for a bit.

In Which I Show Fondness for My Readers.

I've been meaning to post a progress picture of the Cap Shawl for ages, but the whole process made me tired just thinking about it. You slip all the stitches on as many needles as necessary, being really, really careful not to drop any of them, and you pin the whole works out, take a picture, and slip the stitches all back on to your needle. It takes ages.

And you see, my darlings, how much I love you - I did it.

I used five long circulars for this, and didn't get the entire thing done, which is why you only see a photo of about 45% of the outside edge. The rest is all bunched up on one needle at the bottom of the frame.

I am on row 107 of about 170, which is deceptive because the rows get longer and longer as you go. Then there is the knitted-on border, which will take tons of yarn and FOREVER to do. A more accurate idea of my progress would be to say, I have used up almost one of the three required balls of yarn.

Pretty, though, isn't it?

And tomorrow, precious poppets, is Puppy Pick-up Day. Pictures forthcoming!

Someone’s in the kitchen with Dyyye-NAH.

We went for a drive today. We went here and here and stopped to walk around here for a bit. On the way there I did one of these, and on the way back I did the other one.

Above was the post I originally wrote. I think I was going for succinct (though links would have been provided) but ended up just sounding tired and thought I should rework it.

I've been working in the garden, meditating on the teachings of St Alsatius, watching Buffy by night, and planning my spring knitting. Things calmed down a bit in the last few days but right now my oldest daughter has an attitude that would curl your liver. I thought we're about 9 years early for this kind of crap, but apparently 6 year olds are known for it. So I will trudge on, hoping desperately that it's a phase that will pass, and in the meantime flexing my disciplinarian muscles. I have developed several strategies for causing her various degrees of pain and anguish depending on the severity of the offense, so as to avoid having to come up with something on the spur of the moment and, as likely as not, ending up either yelling at her until we both burst into tears (been there, done that, resolved never to go back, but went back so many times I ended up with a frequent customer punch card) or taking away all her toys FOREVER.

By the way, GREAT sentence structure there.

So we are dealing with the six year old. Then there's the saintly almost-4 year old, who has cultivated this lovely nice-as-pie expression which she uses as she's cooing to me "Whatever you say Mummy". She might as well just say "I'm the good daughter" because that's exactly what she means. She puts on this toddlerised smile and cavorts around, pretending to be all innocent and daisy-chain-making, and though she's not fooling me, her poor sister grinds her teeth into a fine grit watching this display of disingenuousness.

Anyway, between the two of them I feel like my mental faculties are always on the brink of mutiny. One of these days I will answer the door wearing a tinfoil hat, playing a paper banjo and chewing on my own hair.

So, this drive. We went to look at the teensy doggies!! And may I say, they have NO RIGHT to be that cute. They wooed me. They chewed on my fingers and lost their footing on my lap and fell asleep with their noses in the crook of my elbow. They did not wee on my jeans (no doubt they've planned that for later).

We left my daughter's cotton rag quilt with the breeder. She will put it into the puppies' kennel for the next month and on April 20, we can go pick up puppy and blankie and bring them both home. It was tricky talking to her and bringing the blanket in and whatnot without alerting my children to our plans (as far as they knew, this was just a friend of ours that offered to let us look at her puppies), but they were luckily absorbed enough in the dogs that they weren't listening too closely to the adults. I didn't manage to get any pictures for you, but there will be plenty after April 20.

On the way to and from, I did this:

This picture makes it look like the baby is half Lilliputian and half Brobdingnagian. I assure you the booties are not so disparate in size as they appear.

Isn't this yarn scrumptious? It's the beautiful Icelandic "Tinkerbell's Wings" colourway that darling Lizbon sent me from Rhinebeck.

We stopped at a place called "Coombs Country Candy and Creamery". I saw the billboard announcing it, then there was one of those highway signs, or whatever, saying "Artisan – Candy". Sounds promising, doesn't it? Well, it was okay, but not fantastic. They were playing this really loud music so you had to almost shout to make yourself heard by the (vacant, barely-civil) girl behind the counter.* But they had a sale where you could get three slabs of fudge for $11. So we got chocolate peanut butter, vanilla, and maple walnut.

The kids wanted an all-day sucker but I'm not such a chump.


We also stopped here. Enjoy the photos (click to embiggen), as well as your first ever (sideways, blurry, distant) glimpse of Mr HSBoots' handsome visage. I have used him as scale for the root system of one of the "Fallen Forest Giants" we passed. (So dubbed by the Forest Service, or maybe Environment, Lands and Parks, or maybe just the dude who writes the text for the nifty signs.)

Boy it's dark in there under the canopy.

This tree is practically roaring "Clumsy Ox come home!"

Where's Waldo?

Too bad I can't provide scale for this fallen tree. I can only tell you it is HUGE. Like, I don't know, maybe a hundred or so meters long? Dunno. HUGE.

Duh.

"...opened the forest". I like that.

I'll be back soonish. I just realized tomorrow is Monday, and if I can dredge up a book review I'll post it. I'm sure you'll understand if I don't get around to it though….I might be busy cutting out my banjo.

*Note: I have bad luck with these candy-counter girls, don't I?