Out of the Sketchbook

I'd like to have done a more finished version of this, but–well, read the caption and draw your own conclusions.

Up to My Neck

Feh. Blurgh. Yuck. Five days laid up with a cold. And such a cold. Such a cold as I would not wish on my worst enemies, not even parents who let their five-year-olds push the grocery cart.

This was no pissant, garden variety, off-the-rack sniffle. It was epic. Five days of ceaseless misery; of labored breathing; of lying in bed and looking up to find a flight of angels beckoning toward a bright, bright light.



And I was like, Are you kidding? Have you seen all the Christmas knitting I have left to finish? And they were like, Whoa–nevermind.

So I was not gathered to my reward, and am expected to make a full recovery; but Dolores is working on a screen treatment of my story. We're hopeful that HBO or Lifetime will option it for a new picture in which I'll be played by either Steve Buscemi (if the former) or Valerie Bertinelli (if the latter).

I'm back on my feet just in time to trot up to Madison, Wisconsin to speak to the Madison Knitters' Guild (details here). The topic will be Antique Knitting Patterns. And you can wipe that look off your face because that's what they asked me to talk about. Those knitters up in Madison are hardcore. They appreciate the entertainment value of this kind of thing:

You just know it's going to be a wild night.

Calaf

I finished knitting something. It's the neck warmer that launched a thousand swatches, and was begun in earnest while we waited in New York for the flight to London.



I could have skipped the swatching and been done with it in a week, if I hadn't decided it would be fun to work out my cable pattern.

And then I thought, wouldn't it be fun to work the cables the long way so they'll wrap around the neck? And then I thought, wouldn't it be fun if the cables flowed out of the edge treatment? And then I thought, wouldn't it be fun to make the edge treatment flow out of the cast-on edge? And then I thought, wouldn't it be fun to make the cast-off edge the mirror image of the cast-on edge?

And then I thought, wouldn't it be fun if I stopped swatching and knit the damned thing?



Look, children, at all the fun.



It still needs buttons. I haven't found the right ones yet. I'm being hyperfussy about the buttons. Surprise.



It has, to my eye, an air of chinoisérie, therefore I'm naming it "Calaf" after the hero in Puccini's Turandot. Calaf tells Turandot the Ice Princess that he thinks she's groovy, and she threatens to have his head cut off; so there's a subtle jest in using his name for a neck wrap. Okay, a very subtle jest.

Shut up. I bet they're laughing in Madison.

P.S. Lorna's Laces Fisherman Yarn in "Pine." Good stuff.