Tangling with Procrustes, or No Gold Medal this Year

It will come as no surprise to people who know me that I often do not know myself as well as I think. A lineup of the men I've dated would be a good indication of that.

So when Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (The Yarn Harlot) alerted her readers that the 2010 Knitting Olympics were on, I decided to sign up. It wasn't until late on the day of casting on, when the Olympic Torch was probably already cold, that I even decided which project I would take on.

I considered mittens (I've knit one pair before; they are MIA and my hands are colder than they like), a baby sweater, a vest for Afghans for Afghans, a slew of things. I tore up Ravelry trying to find a pattern for a vertically knit, preferably seamless sweater for my generously sized self that I could make out of the shitload of this yarn (in the Natural Denim color) that I have been squirreling away, skein-by-40%-off-coupon-skein at one of the Big Box of Yarn stores. I looked at shitloads of patterns for lots of yarn that's kicking around (or, more likely, floundering lonesomely) my house and car. That I do not (yet) have a stash at work is one of my last tenuous arguments for any sort of sanity.

Then I remembered this yarn: Wasonga by Curious Creek Fibers, in a colorway they no longer have: Emerald City. It is the color of true love; of intellectual curiosity piqued, satisfied, and piqued again; of joy and creativity and spiritual renewal and....

And I had no blinkin' idea what I would do with it, but when I saw A. the color, B. there is no silk in it, C. that it is not made in China, and D. the name of the colorway, I knew it had to come home with me. The price tag made me balk briefly, as I don't usually spend this kind of money on myself.

So, when I had that yarn in mind, I began looking at Ravelry again, and found The Garden of Alla shawl. At first I thought it was typo, but, if Wikipedia is to be believed, The Garden of Alla was a bunch of famous apartments that used to be on Sunset Boulevard, owned by Alla Nazimova (unfortunate last name, nu?), an actor who is alleged to have had affairs with Oscar Wilde's niece and one or two of Rudolph Valentino's wives. And, most scandalous of all, she was the godmother of Nancy Davis Reagan.

The shawl hooked me in the heart, I fear. Here, for the Ravelry crowd, is a bunch of pictures that may help to explain my obsession: here's a slew of people who have made them, and here are some pictures I especially like. There's something about the arches of yarn-overs, the spaces between the knitted portions, that makes me think of cathedral domes or something.

Here's the punchline. Tomorrow is the end of the Olympics, of the snow-and-ice variety and of the wool-and-swearing sort, and I have most recently finished row 37. That's the sort of half-circle at the nape of the neck that looks like leaves. The rest of the shawl bears little resemblance to the start.

This is where adjustable expectations comes into play. See, when I made the commitment, I was not aware that the original was knit in worsted weight, while mine is sock yarn. So I am, essentially, creating the Golden Gate bridge with spider silk instead of I-beams.

The day after I cast on, I stopped at a local yarn store and was assured that a size 4 needle was perfect AND that I didn't need to punish myself if I didn't finish the shawl by the deadline. I had already been considering gold, silver, and bronze medal dates, and when I got back that day to the folder with all the project stuff in it, I wrote the following:

"Gold---I finish the shawl by Feb. 28
Silver--- " March 28
Bronze---" May 1

AND I don't kill anyone. It is not fair to get more knitting time by sitting in jail."

It has occurred to me since that I have taken on a task that is not merely a stretch of my knitting prowess and ability to manage my time well, it is a Procrustean bed of a project, requiring its own folder for pattern, pep talks, swearing, planning, and ribbon band. But the facts are that I am still trying, I am making something for myself, I am also knitting what is likely to be the first of many projects for kids in Haiti, I am still working that pesky day job, feeding the dog, and seeing to other commitments. And no one has died at my hands.

Those are seventeen pretty successful days.

On the wing

On Thursday, I stopped in for a visit to a local knitting group for the first time, and had just given up hope that others would show, when I saw a woman giving up her recon mission for the same crew. What gave her away was the wooden knitting needles (old old old Susan Bates' straights, as it turned out) sticking out of her bag. She joined me at the booth I had set up house in, and, later on, so did a much younger woman whom I had met during a huge, much-hated grading binge two weeks before.

We knit and schmoozed and knit and schmoozed some more, me working on the huge frickin' Felted Bag of Doom referred to in my previous post, then made plans for Saturday's Worldwide Knit in Public Day. (As if I don't do this most days of the week, if only at stoplights.)

It has been striking me upside the head every now and then that if I used something roughly the same sizes as the suggested yarn AND the suggested needles, I wouldn't be here. So now, as I write, the Denial Fairy is taking a vacation to pester someone else, and it occurs to me that I may be making something that will hold exactly two LP records or a set of twenty 12" x 21" index cards. Christ.

I'm going to have to measure it, revamp the directions to make a base that is mathematically related to the sides, and rip out the whole shooting match. Shit. The good news is, I will have enough yarn this time, as I won't be trying to knit a windshield cozy.

And ever more good news is that on Saturday, while knitting in public with glee, talking with a friend whom I have not seen for quite a while, talking with new acquaintances, talking with some of the most charming, enthusiastic, inquisitive little kids I've met in a long time, I saw this season's first ladybug. (One landed on me and rode for a while many years ago when I was walking to campus. I was on my way to find out if I had been accepted into grad school. I had been. I love me some ladybugs.)

It felt as if the Universe were smiling on me.

Today, though, I fear I have pissed off the protector of winged (read as two syllables, please) beasties. When I got home today, my mailbox showed evidence of the presence of squatters. Well, not exactly squatters, as they don't squat. But a couple of birdlettes (sparrows, I think) had taken advantage of the fact that I haven't removed the mail for a couple of days, and they had built a 6" x 4" horizontal twig condo in my mailbox, between a human rights group's invitation to contribute and a big-craft-box store sending me coupons.

I looked for eggs, wondering what I would do if some were present, then removed the nest as gently as I could, even though my head was filled with childhood wisdom about birds smelling the presence of humans and avoiding the egg/chick/bird toys ever after.

I felt bad about destroying the beautiful spiral construction, and considered leaving a few scraps of nice wool yarn for nest insulation, but then realized I had a more primitive, equally usable alternate close to hand, all of the same dye lot. I scrubbed my hands around on the icky carpeting on the stairs and next to the discarded nesting materials, I added my donation of a handful of the Doglette's hair.

Boydog likes birds. If he caught one, he'd try to get in its lap, I'm sure. He will be glad when I tell him he's acting as a long-distance incubator.


In other news, now that I've been reasonable for several days since the end of the strike, now that I've rented two Bollywood movies that did NOT actually have English subtitles as advertised, and now that I've seen two parallel cinema movies that were very good but were utterly fluffless, it's time for a Punjabi wedding or a dancing case of mistaken identity or something, y'all.

Bring out the Bollywood, folks, or someone may get hurt.

Halle-bloody-lujah!

Now that this news has arrived, I can breathe again.

We have been undergoing a monumental technological clusterfuck at work (e-mail and phones out for most of a week, and it's not completely right yet---can anyone imagine this happening in the private sector and people not lose jobs left, right, and center?) which means that they had to quarantine the work-owned laptops. I don't have a TV (mostly by choice but influenced by an amount of twisted pride, I'm discovering), so I watch movies only on my (borrowed) laptop. So imagine me, visibly tense, perhaps flush with anxiety, grinding my teeth, trying not to whine, trying to fool them into thinking I'm a grownup, when they take my computer for two days and overnight. During a Bollywood strike.

Hai Ram, shouldn't that be illegal? In addition to the fact that this is a time when having a computer is vital to where we are in our work-year, and that it is one of the three or four highest-stress parts of our calendar, there's not a new Bollywood movie to be found. My local Bollywood palace did come to the rescue: they ran Jodhaa Akbar for $2 one week, and Swades the next. I went to both, even though I saw the first one twice in the theaters and I own Swades on DVD and have watched it three? four? times, perhaps. (Enough to absolutely dread SRK's a capella rendition of Foreigner's "Waiting for a Girl Like You" even though he sings it while bathing, bare-chested, outside. Sigh. Maybe he never heard the original. Maybe he learned it by listening to someone else's off-key version. Maybe he just can't sing. Just before I saw the movie again at the theater, it suddenly struck me that the song was by Foreigner, which doesn't seem accidental anymore.)

But seeing those movies again only slowed down the twitchings of withdrawal, preventing convulsions. I'm still down a couple quarts. Let it be known that I am not happy, Mumbai movie mavens. Mai khush nahi hoon. And my already bad Hindi's getting worse.

Working on this, in Lamb's Pride bulky in a gorgeous turquoise, is helping to keep nausea at bay. I fear it will be mammoth even after being felted, but I can't stop knitting. There are no new Bollywood movies out this week, and if I were to frog four skeins of bulky yarn, I would cry as badly as SRK was directed to overact when leaning against the gazebo at the wedding in Kal Ho Naa Ho, one of my least favorite scenes in one of my favorite movies. The heat of my tears might felt the half-knit yarn, and then where would I be?

I don't know how much more vicious and rambling the parenthetical interjections are likely to get; so next week's new releases had better be good, Mumbai, because I'll learn how to say "shit list" in Hindi, and then you'll be sorry.

The Musical Stylings of Knit King Cole

"Malabrigo, Malabrigo, I adore you,
Yarn that I would like to eat, read, knit, and purl.
I’d give up tofu and dark chocolate just for you,
And become your cute and sweet and loyal sweater girl."

"Damn, damn, damn," she said, awestruck. I recently bought two skeins of Malabrigo worsted in a Duke-esque blue to make a hat for a friend who loves his alma mater, and it's perfectly cracklike. I mean, this is consider-selling-the-books, occasionally-rent-out-the-dog-for-children's-parties, and eat-nothing-but-pasta-for-three-weeks-a-month yarn. It's like knitting with well-conditioned dreadlocks offered when there's no money for yarn by someone you love who has read "The Gift of the Magi" too many times. Maybe dreadlocks don't strike you as soft, and perhaps the image of someone donating dreadlocks to be knit into a hat doesn't cue the romantic music in your head.

I dated a guy with dreadlocks once (he had been adopted, and his birth certificate claimed he was white, even though his baby picture looked like a little James Brown) and, after I convinced him that maybe he didn't need to bury a half-cup of shampoo in his hair with every washing because his hair wasn't dirty, regardless of what his white suburban parents who didn't know shit from dreadlocks told him and after I had him dunk his head in a sink full of a water to which a liberal dose of vinegar had been added before rinsing it several times and after I administered a much-needed hot oil treatment, his hair was wonderfully soft. Yum.

What was inside his head needed more intensive therapy. He's just another few entries in The Diagnostic and Statistics Manual of Mental Disorders VI; you know, the one that will be completely illustrated with pictures of my ex-boyfriends.

Maybe it's because he was so skilled in the sack that I think of dreadlocks as being intrinsically sexy, which affects how I feel about this yarn. Don't worry, there's nothing sick going on here; the yarn just makes me sigh occasionally.

(This is as close as I will get to giving excuses for not posting for so long: When I tried to get Blogger to remind me of my password for this blog, it wanted to be clever and tell me that I have other accounts, and to link them to this one. But my other accounts are for work, and I don't need the little darlings having access to all of my fucking life. I can't remember how the solution presented itself. It did. Here I am.)

So I'm in the coffeeshop, which ought to be one word, damn it, listening to Algerian rai music, some of which sounds pretty Bollywoodish to me. (Related to Aishwarya Rai's name, perhaps?) I recently discovered two musical distractions that may keep me permanently plugged into the Internet: here and here. The first is from National Geographic and has information about and videos of music from all over the world. This is one song that I have to hear a few times every week. It's that good. The second is an all-Indian music station from (where else?) Paris. So far, I have heard no more than three songs in a row without knowing or recognizing a song from a movie I've seen. I've also figured out that I know Sanjay Dutt's singing voice. I'm good.

The good folks at the coffeeshop are closing up, so I must go. Topics for the next go-round may include: rewatching Dil Se and actually getting it, what I'm knitting and what's waiting to be knit, why the urge to shop for yarn is becoming troublesome, being a single white woman in Bollywood theaters, the book covers I'm planning on knitting, why I never want to knit anything with the hair of my dog Gabriel, Shah Rukh Khan's biography, and why Kunal Kapoor should just move to North Carolina.

What Would Rani Mukerji Knit?

Welcome to my new blog. The title of today's post is the old working name for the entire blog; fortunately, a friend helped me see reason. (Thanks, Kelly!) Bollywool is a little less obscure. It is a combination of Bollywood (itself a blend of Hollywood and Bombay, the old name for Mumbai, one of the movie-making capitals of India) and wool, and so is my life, once I have left work and am not in a coffee shop.

Who is Rani Mukerji, a.k.a. Rani Mukherjee? She's a remarkable actor whom I had mistaken for a half-witted ass-shaker until I saw her gutsy performance in Veer-Zaara a second time. Here's a web site.

My answer to the question of what she would knit is this, which is one of the projects I've got on the needles. She would most likely knit it as a wrap, as I am doing, by multiplying the cast-on number by three. Being a woman of glamour, she might knit it in hand-painted silk. Because I am a vegetarian who gets irreparably gacked out by the thought of obtaining fiber by boiling wee beasties alive in their cocoons, I am knitting it in this alpaca yarn (yuuuuuuuuuum) in black. I even gave in to the urge to buy Addi Turbos, the Maseratis of knitting needles. I was hesitant to use them because I have little tolerance for high-pitched noises, especially metallic ones, but I'm pleased with how quiet they are and how nicely the pointed tips help with this fine yarn being knit on big needles (US 10.5, 6.5mm, UK size 3).

Sadly, my knitting attention has been hijacked, mostly by the sizeable stash my mother bestowed upon me when I visited my folks in July. Said stash, which includes mostly solid-color wool yarn and some odd colors of acrylic, weighs in at several paper bags and a couple of boxes, and is probably 35-40 years old. Fortunately, it's permanently moth-proofed. I've got two red and gray striped hats going, waiting for me to locate an unoccupied set of dpns so that I can finish the tops. I've also been knitting small log cabin blankets (from this book) for the local animal shelter from the Red Heart acrylic yarn that's from a time when I had less money and a lot less faith in myself as a knitter.

My mother used to transcribe Braille; she would read and re-format printed texts and transform them into Braille through diligence, magic, and a tremendous knowledge of the English language. She still uses Braille-esque abbreviations in writing, and I am her child. I always read "dpns," knitting jargon for "double-pointed needles" as "doupons," to rhyme with "coupons." For non-knitters (what's wrong with you?), bamboo dpns look like dowels sharpened at both ends. They are used for knitting in the round or for small back-and-forth knitting. They also keep annoyed knitters with long hair from becoming raving murderers when they have been beset by hot sweaty hair sticking to the back of their necks while trying to puzzle through a challenging pattern. Here's a picture of them in their natural habitat.

After an epic clusterfuck battle with FedEx, I received a package the other day that includes six Bollywood and Bollywood-esque movies (Omkara, Mangal Pandey: The Rising, Monsoon Wedding, Mr. and Mrs. Iyer, two older movies I got on the cheap) and a song-sequence anthology. I still haven't watched Dil Se, so if the Bollywood pickings at my very favorite theater (Galaxy Cinema) continue to be summer throwaways, with the notable exception of Chak De India, which was excellent, I will still be able to get my fix of good movies.

Soon I'll cajole Sarah into teaching me how to post pictures from the not-so-hot camera on my cell phone. To be just, she has agreed to help me; I keep forgetting to follow through on it. I'll see if I can get dog pics and knitting pics on here, too, and a few Bollywood movie reviews.

I'll leave you with this; if you're thinking of seeing Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag ("Ram Gopal Varma" is the director and producer and "Ki" is a possessive, so Aag is the title of the actual movie, as well as a pretty good onomatopoetic review), I have a few ideas here for more entertaining and fruitful pursuits:

• use a spork to cover a clay canary with Cheez Whiz, paying careful attention to creating realistic feathers,
• write an epic poem describing why the movie is not pride-inducing enough to justify including one's name as part of the movie's title (I mean, it's not William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, fershitssake),
• use the same gifted cast and bearable, if uninspired plotline, and write a movie worth actually watching, AND/OR
• knit a movie-screen-sized warning (extra points for knitting the lettering in reverse stockinette and in larger needles so the writing appears to be backlit) about the horrid waste of talent and time that audience members are about to undertake.