No Knit Night Tonight + A Musical Revue + 8th Grade All Over Again

Lark has a choir concert. I’m meeting Firstborn and Middlest at the snooty high school. I like their auditorium much better than the one where most of my girls went. More leg room, and adequate parking on-premises.

I emailed Middlest and told her that if she’d bring her knitting, I’d teach her how to bind off.

When Middlest and Fourthborn and I were tooling about in the car before Saturday night’s birthday dinner, I was telling them about my dinner with Trainman. Fourthborn said, “For some reason, I have this bit of song stuck in my head.”

We are amazingly good at mis-hearing the lyrics of a song [deliberately or otherwise] and taking turns at building a parody. This is what we came up with, to the tune of “Mr. Sandman”.

Fourthborn:
“Oh, Mr. Trainman, bake me a cake
I’m going crazy, for goodness’ sake.”

Middlest:
“All of my children think you’re nifty.”

Me:
“Oh, how I really wish that you were fifty!”

At which point we were all giggling hysterically, and I could barely see to drive. I don’t remember if that was before or after my cell phone [which had mysteriously set itself to always vibrate, and I hadn’t been able to get it switched back] went off in my pocket and caused me to whoop. Sometimes I forget how ticklish I can be. Or how easily startled.

I’m sure that the friend on the other end of the line thought I had lost my ever-lovin’ mind. I plead the Fifth. The girls got my phone fixed for me. No more goosey surprises, I hope.

I compared the stats on my first swatch for Eleanora back in December or January with the new swatch. This swatch is looser. [Do I knit more tightly in cooler weather? Or was I peeved about something?] I think that if I want to get the gauge she recommends, I would need to knit this on 0000’s and 000’s. But I also need to knit the sock larger. I may end up doing the heels and soles on a smaller circ, like I did with Anastasia. I think I’m just going to have to cast on and work a few inches and try it on and be prepared to frog it and start over.

When I went to bed last night, I had a bit over 16 repeats to go on Secondborn’s scarf.

I finally figured out who Trainman looks like. Harry Potter, all grown up, minus the scar. How did I figure this out, you ask? We had a client sign in recently, with a first name similar to one of the minor characters in the HP series, and while I was asking him if he got teased because of the similarity, I suddenly had this flash of recognition where I saw Trainman’s face superimposed on Harry’s, or maybe vice versa. Et voici: enlightenment!

OK, I’ve already blogged about the bare facts, but let me just say that how good it felt to hand off all my renaissance costumes to my kids, because if I ever go back to Scarborough Faire, I’ll just buy or make new costumes, or rent them, or do without. Yes, it’s way more fun to attend a renfest in costume, but right now there’s no time, and really no money. I was [finally] ready to let that go.

It was great to find lots of other things while I was looking for the fingerless gloves to give Willow. Yesterday I wore a favorite silk charmeuse kimono that had been in a box since we packed to move into the interim apartment. I know where my black gloves with the red rabbit-fur cuffs are; I don’t need them yet, but I know where to find them when it gets cold enough. I took pictures of a long-finished object and completed a geriatric blog draft.

I am making new piles of things to give away. I hope to empty a few more boxes during the week and keep or distribute the contents appropriately. I found a box with oddments of papers to file or shred. That sounds like a Saturday afternoon project, after I help clean the meetinghouse in the morning, and before I join my friends at the dance on Saturday night.

And I am finding more bits of yarn stash, which I am cataloguing and stowing appropriately. The yarn that a friend gave me to make a sweater for BittyBit. The grey cashmere/silk that I ordered from Celtic Memories Jo, which I think would look great stranded with the ladder yarn ~ miles and miles of ladder yarn ~ leftover from LittleBit’s Purple Fluffy Scarf and my Fluffy Purple Neck Ruffle Thingie, or maybe just knitted up on its own.

After carefully slipping the ladder yarn out of its yarn bra and rewinding it, it is neatly bra’d up again and ready for business. Since teal and grey are both big players this fall, a smidgen of teal amongst the grey might be just what the fashion doctor ordered. Or I could try a strand of the grey, a strand of the teal Gloss Lace, and a strand of the ladder yarn together to make a tweed scarf. That could be fun. I wonder how it would work for a chunky smoke ring scarf? Or with my vintage teal yarns?

I wish I could have an extra day in every week, a day that nobody else knew about, where I didn’t have to be at work, and I could just putter and play. When I used to get up at 4:00 am six days a week, that gave me the equivalent of an extra working day every three weeks [based on an 18-hour day], or 17 extra days a year. And I got a lot done, until my middle-aged body began insisting on more than four or five hours of sleep a night.

All the candle-burning that I did before I joined the church, and when the girls were little, is coming back to bite me in the tush. Or more accurately, the eyelids. I used to say, “I can sleep when I’m dead.” But I am learning that if I don’t sleep, I will just feel dead until I give in and get some rest. And that if I’m too stubborn to sleep, then I can count on getting sick, and I will be sick until I have gotten enough rest.

So it seems smarter to go to bed at a reasonable hour and aim for six hours of sleep. A little frustrating in the short run, and a lot less frustrating in the long run.

I caught the laundry up last night. It was either that, or get a new nametag for the front desk, one that says Ms. Godiva.

Had a nice if somewhat distracted visit with my friend Ms. SMU on the train home last night. I was not expecting to see Trainman, as he works in the financial services industry, and I figured his office was closed for Columbus Day. So I was surprised to see him get on the train and sit down. And he seemed surprised to see me sitting there already deep in conversation. I had to keep reining myself in to the conversation at hand, reminding myself to “love the one you’re with”. She is a dear young woman and great company and deserving of my full attention.

Nice matters.

But I was having a real tussle with the four-year-old inside of me who wanted to leap over Ms. SMU’s neatly crossed ankles and bound up the aisle and plop down next to Trainman and talk to him. When we pulled into the station, he stood up and turned around and smiled at me. Then he was off the train, and I was out the back of the car and into the elevator, and I just felt a little wistful.

I put on my happy face and walked up the ramp to the parking lot, and as I was getting ready to cross the aisle where he was parked, he pulled up and waved at me, and we talked for a couple of minutes.

He said, “We’ll talk more tomorrow. Oh... You have Knit Night.” I told him that actually I would be going to Lark’s concert but that I would be on the train Wednesday, and I would save him a seat?

He seemed to think that was a good idea.

Maybe he missed talking to me as much as I missed talking to him?

I have no idea what is going on here, or not going on here. I don’t know what I want, so I’m just praying to want what is best and what would be pleasing to God and fit in with His plans for me and to please oh please not make an idiot of myself.

And now if you will all excuse me, I am going to find someplace quiet and sit down with my knitting. Knitting, at least, makes a certain amount of sense to me, particularly when the rest of my life does not.