MarQ1

With great fortitude, and little else to do this muggy June weekend, I have successfully navigated Feather & Fan through round 52.

There were no serious errors. The minor ones have been fixed—fixed and not glossed over. I have only resorted to a crochet hook once.

I’ve managed 52 rounds and have used only a bit over one-half of a ball of yarn. Is this normal? The outer rounds must chew through yarn for this shawl to consume the reported yardage.

Gay Pride Recap

We participated peripherally in Gay Pride this year. It was raining after all. Our friend C— had a few friends over for pre-parade mimosas and bagels. It was a small group, so there were more mimosas per capita than usual. C—’s twenty-five-year-old, straight, cute, tall, thin and half-naked—baggy shorts and flip-flops—downstairs neighbor dropped in too. He was very nice and friendly, but I prefer my half-naked 25-year-olds at a distance. Having them seated next to you on the sofa is distracting at best. Not to mention the making-me-feel-old-and-dumpy thing.

J & then went to brunch at Mi Cocina, where we stopped at one margarita a piece. The best chilaquiles I’ve had. We then went off to find the subway on the other side of the parade. That way we could go home and see some of the parade and some of the boys. In the true spirit of Gay Pride, J stopped along the way and bought a nice shirt on sale. I couldn’t find anything I wanted in a small. We saw a cop, not in the parade, disco dancing alone in the middle of 4th St. Odd. We crossed the parade at 5th Ave and 9th in a break in the religious groups, I think. It was pretty well attended despite the rain.

It’s still wet and sticky. Did I say it rained all weekend?

Y’all

I’ve left the pink thing on the 60″ Addis—I’ll get back to it later—and begun the real thing. As I suspected, the J&S laceweight is more controllable than the Grignasco Merinosilk, because it is wool and will stay where I put it and because it is not as fine. The rosewood dpn’s help too, being less weighty than the aluminum ones. The corners do not stretch out as much.

On Tricky’s recommendation, this time I cast on with Emily Ocker’s Circular Cast, which is one of two cast-ons described at the back of the book, and managed to avoid the larger hole at the end of the first round hole. I avoided the Ocker cast-on the first time because I am a disaster with crochet, save for fixing dropped stitches. I’m still a disaster: it took me four tries to get eight stitches on three dpn’s.

The pink thing may sit for a while. I won’t need the 60″ for weeks.

I’m stuck. I’m done with the practice Feather & Fan. I’m ready to move on to the real thing. But I don’t know how to bind off the practice lace and get it off the needle. I’ve transferred it to the 60″ Addi circ to look at it stretched out, but I will eventually need that needle.

These are the first sixty rounds of the pattern. Not perfect, but only one truly wonky bit: the large hole near the center.

My conference call knitting is a ribbed coverlet for my disgustingly spotty office chair. It goes slowly because I’ve lately actually had to participate in the calls. My subway knitting is a baby hat in turquoise elsebeth lavold silky wool. It goes slowly because the commute isn’t really long enough—ten minutes—to get much done.

But mostly I’ve been reading Wikipedia and The Codebreakers by David Kahn, the revised and updated version. I gave it to my mom for her birthday earlier this year—she did want it—and decided I wanted to read it too. It is an interesting history of cryptanalysis, 984 pages of text, with another 197 of endnotes and indices. I’ve made it through WWI, but that’s only about a quarter of the way through.

I’ve been slogging through Feather & Fan with my practice yarn, Grignasco Merinosilk in Coral Pink (#335), which upon inspection is actually thinner than the J&S Shetland Laceweight the pattern calls for. Slogging is not quite the right word, since I am enjoying the construction of the lace. It would be ever so much more fun if I could count past four without being distracted. Funny, I could do it when I was three-years-old.

It looks like something that died on the beach.

It will look better when I block it. I’m not sure I want to show you my mistakes. I’m stopping this after I finish chart 1, and moving on to the real thing, which will not be as horrifying as I as I thought, except for the k1-p1-k1-p1-k1-p1-k1’s into the triple yo’s, which, in fact, are as terrifying as they sound. There are only eight of them, and I can survive, provided I am sober.

I did bike today. The return trip took me directly into the northwest wind, 21 mph, gusting up to 32 mph—according to the Weather Channel. The last forty-five minutes were brutal. Second gear—just to keep from going in reverse. Legs dead.

Can’t believe I’ve never seen it.

Can’t believe it hasn’t been remade. Meryl Streep. Ron Livingston. Reese Witherspoon (the reader). Sean Hayes or Ryan Philippe (the gay boyfriend, Artie), Victor Garbor as Max.

I came up #3 on this Google search string. I’m so proud.