Beseiged

Well, illness has beseiged us once more, so we buckle down with fairy stories (mine by Maggie Stiefvater, my new favorite author ever how did I miss out for so long but lucky me because now I can read her collected works, and Willow's by, um, Golden Books Anonymous, but still a very touching story of a merbaby saved by a fisherman) and so, I give you the Lily Beret, for it is delicate and lacy-fey.










I treated myself to yet another Madelinetosh yarn for this one--Tosh Merino Light, to be precise.  It was originally meant to be a cloche, pinned up with a contrast color flower, and I do still want to make the cloche one day, but the Tosh did not want to, and so on a long-suffering eight-hour car ride to New Hampshire, this is the hat we could agree upon. 

It's knit on US 4's, so not a quick hat, but it won't take you absolutely forever either, and it isn't long before the lace gets going.  We discussed the shape of that lily several times, Tosh and I did, and finally settled on something rather spiky and sharp.

And here's our Queen attempting to seduce a hapless Thomas Rhymer.   Doomed forever.

Rippling River

I have attempted, this time around, to use yarns that are machine-washable, if not dryer-ready (I couldn't bring myself to go quite that far) but sometimes some rakish skein of yarn came along and seduced me and I strayed from the path and frankly it was worth it every time.

This time, it was particularly worth it.  Acadia, by The Fibre Company, with its nubs of silky color, is so beautiful, and so soft, and who doesn't want something soft and beautiful around their neck?!  So it might get drooled on a bit.  Who cares.  Toddlers deserve beauty as much as anybody else.

 

This is a loose cable pattern meant to imitate the ripples a river makes as it winds its way around the rocks.  I knit a cowl too, because some of us are cowl people, and some of us are scarf people, and we declare ourselves young.  (I like scarves.  Willow likes cowls.)

High Expectations

Willow started asking about going to the High Line around March 1st.  "To get a strawberry rhubarb popsicle!"  "To see the flowers!"  "To splash in the water!"  "To hear some music!"



Now I know the High Line is where people who don't live in New York go.  I know this.  But I love it.  It's beautiful, it's clever, it has great food and great street performers, and when it's not overly crowded (haha) it can feel like you're in a secret garden set off from the city.  Plus, you know, they have really good popsicles there.

Maybe it's just something about seeing your kid so delighted.  Within a block or two, we came across our first street performer, an amazing tap dancer.  A few steps later, a cellist.  Then a mime.  Which, okay, not my favorite, but Willow was entranced.  He had a "magic ball" (a la David Bowie in Labyrinth) and a red nose and he made her laugh and jump and want to be a clown when she grew up.

But best of all was the moment when we came across a jazz trio.  And mind you, this was not in any way "easy listening."  Willow halted in her tracks, cocked her head, and listened suspiciously for a minute or two.  And then she went crazy.

 

She danced and jumped and moved in ways we'd never seen before.  It was like Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face. 

 It was wild and free and totally without rhythm or, frankly, grace, but it was beautiful.

We tried and tried for a month to make this visit happen, but something kept getting in the way--weather, illness, etc.--and it is shockingly difficult for us to make such a simple thing happen, but it was totally worth it.

They didn't have the water going yet, though.  Oh well.  We'll just have to go again.

Kalen Sweater

My cousin’s son Kalen will sleep through anything, is happy to be held by anyone, and is generally the most easy-going child I’ve ever met.  You know, precisely not like Willow.  But Kalen is Irish for warrior, so this cable-knit is for him, even if he is an entirely peaceful soul.

And anyway I had so much fun with this one.  It made me want to knit cables, cables all the time, cables in a much smaller gauge than this so there could be more cables!  Cables Cables Cables!

As you can see, it's a raglan knit in pieces and then sewn up.  I probably could have made it so it was all in one piece, but nobody likes bottom-up raglans because the sleeve join is such a pain, and top-down the cables would have braided in the wrong direction and that bothered me and I really wanted braided cables.  Plus, with so many cables the sweater is pretty heavy, and the seams give it a little more stability (that was the real reason, I swear.  The braided cables weren't that important to me.  Honestly).

This yarn, Hikoo Simpliworsted by Skacel, is a real find for kid knits.  I'd originally envisioned this sweater in a DK-weight cotton (I love cotton and cables.  I know they don't hang as well, and as you see I resisted the impulse, but I can't help it), but the Simpliworsted is pretty great.  It has some acrylic, but enough merino to keep it feeling like yarn instead of plastic, plus a little nylon, and it's just a nice, squishy yarn.  I used a US 10 needle, as the yarn calls for, expecting it to be too drapey for this sweater, but it wasn't at all. 

But that DK cotton cabled sweater is going to happen someday.  I swear.

Eli Vest

I had a high bar to reach for the Eli Vest.  Eli's mother is a knitter/seamstress/crafter extraordinaire, and I couldn't help getting really ambitious when designing a sweater for Eli. 

So despite all my intentions (which consisted of a simple drop-shoulder v-neck cardigan, maybe with some pockets for storing Eli's ever-present cars and trains) I ended up with a dapper herringbone shawl-collar vest.  What can you do.






I wanted something with a smallish gauge that could handle the tight weave of the herringbone, and so I settled on Rowan Handknit Cotton.  And lo and behold, everyone, that yarn is a gift from the gods!  Remember Rowan Calmer, that magical yarn that disappeared suddenly though we all loved it so?  Well, this seems to be Rowan's replacement yarn.  It is not quite as magical; it doesn't have that weird oily sheen, nor is it quite as stretchy.  But the gauge is a bit more forgiving, and frankly I'll take what I can get. 

It stood up to the herringbone, though I had to go up to size 8 needles to make sure it had enough give (and even then, this is a tight and not particularly stretchy weave.  Hence the wide rib edging). 

The herringbone is tough to work with, and to those who will knit this design when it comes out, I say: don't worry about keeping everything perfectly in pattern.  The decreases will come, and they will screw things up.  It'll all work out in the end. 

Pluck

Willow has been working on overcoming her fears.  Being Willow, of course, she does this in a very idiosyncratic way:

Willow: I don't like sweet foods.  I like really spicy foods!
Mommy: Really?
Willow: Yes!  I'm brave about eating spicy foods.

 
Willow: I just love Red Pufferfish Man!
Mommy: The guy you had a nightmare about four months ago?
Willow: Yes!  Red Pufferfish Man is my friend!  I have a lot of pluck!

Willow: You skipped a story.  You skipped the ghost story.
Mommy: Yes, I skipped the story about the ghosts because it's bedtime.  I thought we'd read the story about flying a kite instead.
Willow: No!  Read the ghost story!  You have to!  I'm very plucky* about ghost stories!

And so forth.  It's awesome, except that she freaked herself out with the ghost story and I had to sit in the room with her until she fell asleep.  But I have tried to take her as my inspiration, and overcome some of my fears.  Not fears of snakes, or of talking to people I don't know, because lord knows those aren't going anywhere, but more practical fears that really need to be handled, like stepping out of my routine and trying crazy things because they seem like they'd be fun, even if they might be disastrous.  I am trying to embrace that small side of me that is spontaneous.

Therefore, last weekend, Dave and I followed through on a plan we'd had back when I was pregnant, of driving down to Seaside Park during the off-season, spending the day at Island Beach, staying at a cheap motel, spending the next day at the beach, and then driving home.  Just a quick getaway, something inexpensive and still wildly different from what we normally do.  Great idea!  Let's do it!

It was beautiful.  It was also really freaking cold.  Like, huddled from the wind in a fleece and a vest and under a towel and still shivering.  Shockingly, not many people were on the beach with us.

But Willow had a blast--she dug in the sand and poured ice cold water everywhere, and Dave and I were happy as very cold clams watching her play and chatting.

Eventually, though, it got a little too freezing, and we packed up to head to the motel.  Which is where we really needed our pluck.

On the phone with my parents telling them this story, I was reminded of all the places we stayed when I was a kid.  Places where the light fixtures fell down from the ceiling, places where slugs crawled across the bathroom floor, places that, in my childhood memory, had no electricity and moldy walls.  But even with that hardy upbringing, I had a hard time with this place.  For one thing, it was literally fleabitten.  I have flea bites.  It was also, for a non-smoking room, so rank with smoke that everything we brought needed to be laundered as soon as we got home.  There was a small nail sticking out of the couch.  I was able to report that the people next door were watching The Goonies.

And both Dave and I, separately, were having internal arguments.  "Don't be so snotty.  It's fine.  You're imagining the germs.  Of course it's clean.  Of course nobody died here in a horrible and violent way.  Quit being such a drama queen."  Willow, of course, thought it was the most awesome place ever, and ran around and jumped and hid her toys in drawers we really didn't want to go poking around in, and was generally a maniac.  We spent about 20 minutes in there before hauling her out to go get some dinner.

At dinner, we went back to ignoring the motel, and had a blast--Willow marched up to the hostess and demanded to be served crab and fish and birds for dinner.  Which is, of course, so charming.  Dave and I took turns dodging the linguine worms they actually gave her (and Daddy pretended his dinner was a goldfinch, so she ate that too) and laughed and felt relaxed and carefree, a feeling we almost didn't recognize.

But then, of course, we had to eventually leave the restaurant, and we went back to the motel.  Where we got everything settled for sleeping before I finally confessed to Dave that I was having uncharacteristic germophobia issues.  Dave said, "Thank God, me too."  And we discussed leaving, and just driving home...and we really considered it, but it just seemed so cowardly.  It was one night.  We tightened our stomach muscles, and decided to stay.  I put Willow down to sleep in the bedroom and went out to sit with Dave and we drank tequila to sterilize and played Gin Rummy and actually had a blast.  We didn't do much of anything differently than we do at home, but for some reason, it was so much more fun.

And when, the next morning, it dawned even colder than the previous day, we drove home and took crazy hot showers and scrubbed everything and decided that it was great!  But we would never do it again.



*I don't really know what to do about the overuse/misuse of the word "pluck."  She really likes it.  She also misunderstood my explaining to her that physics meant that she'd fall out of her swing if she leaned way back like that, and so now when she's crazy in the swing and giving her mother a panic attack, she claims she's doing physics.

Tell Me A Story

One of Willow's more notable foibles since she learned to talk has been her insistence on narrating the world around her.

Willow: "'The wind blew the leaves sideways,' she exclaimed!"

Mommy: "Yes, honey, the wind did blow the leaves sideways."

Willow: "Her mommy replied."

Dave and I joke that the world is her novel, we just live in it.  It's a very charming and endearing trait, and I have never had cause to complain about it, and instead spend a lot of time patting myself on the back, thinking what a wonderful mother I am, that I read to her so often she sees the world as a book, and hey maybe one day she'll be a famous writer, and we'll live off her proceeds and she will thank me on every acknowledgements page and be so very very grateful that she'll buy me a house on some secluded mountain and send me boxes of books and chocolate.

But there has been an unanticipated, well, I hate to say flaw, because that would indicate that my plan isn't going to happen, and I'm not ready to give it up yet.  But certainly....annoyance.  I'm having to work a little harder for my boxes of chocolate than I thought, because now it's not just a matter of reading a lot of stories and explaining to confused children and adults that she's simply narrating what just happened...now I have to tell the stories instead of just reading them.

Which, fine.  I can tell a decent story.  I've read really a lot of fairy tales in my day, and I can concoct a well-plotted but simple and not overly wordy tale and invent it as I speak it.  This can be tiring, but it's not so much to ask.  Except that's not what's being asked.

Instead, Willow concocts the story.  (And I hate to sound all judgmental, but mine are way better.  They have a plot, more than one character, and something actually happens in them).  And then she asks me to re-tell it.  This may not sound annoying, but allow me to demonstrate:

Willow:  Tell me a story about how there was an owl named Peep who was a snowy owl and she was a girl owl and she flew all around Honeysuckle Hollow and through the trees and above the leaves and across the branches and down the colored road and all around.  Tell me that story.  Tell me a long story!

Mommy:  Okay.  Once upon a time there was a little owl named Peep.  She was a beautiful snowy owl.  She lived in Honeysuckle Hollow.  She loved to fly all around her hollow--she would fly through the trees and land on the branches and her wings would brush through the leaves and she would fly over the colored road.  It made her very happy to fly so far and so fast.  The end.

Willow: No, tell me a long story about how there was an owl named Peep who was a snowy owl and she was a girl owl and she flew all around Honeysuckle Hollow and through the trees and above the leaves and across the branches and down the colored road and all around.  Tell me that story.  Tell me a long story!

Mommy: Okay.  (Thinks for a moment.  Hits upon The Ugly Duckling).  Once upon a time there was a little owl named Peep.  She was just a baby owl living with a family of great horned owls, but as she got older her mommy and daddy owl realized that she wasn't a great horned owl after all--she was a snowy owl.   They were so surprised to learn that they had a snowy owl living with them, but they loved Peep so much that of course they wanted her to stay with them always...

Willow: No!  Tell me a story about how there was an owl named Peep who was a snowy owl and she was a girl owl and she flew all around Honeysuckle Hollow and through the trees and above the leaves and across the branches and down the colored road and all around.  Tell me that story.  Tell me a long story!  It's a very long story!

Mommy: Uh.  A long story just about that?  Okay.  Once upon a time there was an owl named Peep.  She was a snowy owl, and she was so glad to be a snowy owl.  Her feathers were white and speckled with brown spots and she had such a funny call for an owl.  She would say, kackackackack screech! kackackackack, and her call would echo all over Honeysuckle Hollow, which was where she lived.  It was a very warm place for a snowy owl to live, but she liked it there.  She loved to fly through the trees, because there aren't any trees in the tundra, where snowy owls normally live.  She loved the way the leaves would hit her wings, and she loved being able to land on a branch and see all of Honeysuckle Hollow from so high up.  Then she would swoop down and fly along the colored road--because the road in Honeysuckle Hollow has lots of different colors.  Red, and blue, and green, and yellow, and she would fly all down that road and then zoom up into the trees again.  She would fly and fly and fly and fly.  The end.  Did you like that story?

Willow: Yes.  Tell me that story again.

And again.  For an hour.