So, in think about the impending Estes Park Wool Market, I’ve been pondering what I’d like to get this year. My first year was sort of higgledy-piggledy and I just bought lots of stuff. Last year I went with the intention of buying yarn for Eris, and succeeded fabulously. So what about this year?

The first thing that came to mind was A FLEECE.

Oh. My.

But after taking spinning classes with the inestimable Maggie Casey, and after helping watching Miriam pick out her gorgeous fleece last year, I couldn’t shake the thought from my head. I want a fleece. A glorious silver fleece, or maybe a rich caramel, or a white fleece as pure as the driven snow, but I must have a fleece. FLEECE.

Ahem. There are a few problems with this plan.

1. I have nowhere to put a fleece. Seriously. We still have a huge pile of wedding presents in the corner of our bedroom because we’ve run out of places to put stuff. Bradon would not look kindly on me adding a huge bag to our pile of stuff…especially since that huge bag would smell distinctly sheepy.

2. I don’t have carding equipment of any kind, and the prospect of buying some is expensive. Yes, I know I can send it away to be prepared, but I don’t really want to. I want the joy of preparing it all myself, totally from scratch. Even once that joy fades (and we all know it will) and I’m crying into the endless locks of wool still to be carded and praying for the sweet release of death…I want to be able to get to the end of it and know that I carded in all by hand. It’s an accomplishment sort of thing.

Now, both of these things I could disregard…I’m real good at ignoring impediments to me buying fiber. But then I reached problem number 3:

3. I haven’t been spinning. At all.

And there you have it. The real problem. I haven’t touched my wheel in months. The crazy, the wedding, the fact that I can’t leave my wheel set up and ready to spin, and a rash on my fingers that caught at loose fibers all led to a serious decline in spinning.

A fleece is a big commitment. That’s a lot of fiber, and it would be criminal to just let it sit and get ruined. If I’m going to buy a fleece, I want to do it right. I want to buy it, wash it, prepare it, spin it, and knit it. I want to hold up my end of the bargain, and with my recent history I’m not sure I can.

But I still want a fleece.

So I’ve made a bargain with myself. I’m going to spin at least once a week for a year. My aim is for Wednesdays, but that can shift as my schedule does. The aim is for one night a week of spinning. I’m not worried about getting through X ounces of fiber, or X yards of yarn, I just want to spin once a week.

If I can do that for a whole year (with reasonable exceptions for moving, severe illness, etc.) I will buy myself a fleece (and whatever preparation tools I need) at Estes in 2009.

That’s the plan. I love this plan. I’m excited to be a part of it.

After the…ahem…minor frogging incident, the nuptial socks continue apace. They appear to be the same size this time, which is heartening, but I know better than to let my guard down.

I’ve been trying to work on them when ever I get a chance, so they’re going pretty quick, and I expect the leg to go even quicker - it only took me a few days on the first sock. The black yarn has been rewound and seems to have recovered just fine from its premature trip through the washing machine, so I suppose that all’s well that ends well.

As I was peeking through Ravelry the other day, I noticed that I never posted when I finished the RPM socks that were my Rhinebeck knitting. They took me quite a while, since between being crazy and wedding planning I wasn’t working on them much, but I did eventually finish them.

They are now one of my favorite pairs of socks. Very nice yarn (Lorna’s Laces), very nice pattern…and I have a shirt that matches them perfectly. The sock knitting trifecta!

The other day Ellie sent me off to read this blog post. I started to leave a lengthy and weighty comment on her post, then thought better of it.

I really recommend that you read the original piece, but in summary it is about public displays of affection between homosexual couples, and about how even very “out” couples still hide their orientation, depending on the audience. It’s a very touching piece, and very thought-provoking.

I am bisexual. I don’t hide it. Bradon knows that I’m bi, all of my friends know that I’m bi…for pity’s sake, the whole internet knows that I’m bi. It’s not a secret. I’m not ashamed of it. I’ve never tried to hide it, never used wiggle words, never played the pronoun game.

Because I’ve never had to. Let me explain.

I have been attracted to girls. I have flirted with girls. I have been intimate with girls. I have been truly, madly, deeply in love with a girl; a girl who inspired poetry, a girl who drove me mad, a girl whose strength and beauty struck me dumb. A girl for whom I would have done anything - anything at all - if only she’d ask it of me.

And so, when she asked me to go…when she asked me to set aside my feelings for her, ignore her feelings for me, and go back to my boyfriend and let her return to hers…I went. And of all the decisions I’ve made for love, that’s the one that hurts the most.

But the point is, I’ve never really had a girlfriend. I’ve never had a girl to bring home to my parents for Thanksgiving dinner. I’ve never done “the dating thing” with a girl. There were friends I loved, and friends I fooled around with, but never a real girlfriend. That’s just not how it fell out.

And now, as it happens, I’ve found true love with a boy. I married him, easy as can be, with no legal impediments. If it had turned out to be a girl I’d found this kind of love with, I’d have had the ceremony, I’d call her my wife, and I would fight for every inch of my rights I could wrest from the government. I’d travel to foreign countries to make it as official as I possibly could. I’d sign her up as my domestic partner, put her on my health insurance, make her the beneficiary of my life insurance, and do whatever else I’d have to do to make her mine in everyone’s eyes.

But I fell for a boy, so all I had to do was head down to the county clerk’s office. No one tried to stop us, no one said we couldn’t, no one said we were unnatural or gross or sinful. It was too easy.

Here’s the thing - my parents don’t know that I’m bi. Okay, maybe they suspect, but it’s not anything we’ve ever discussed. It just never came up. Most of my relationships with girls took place while I was in college, and the girl I loved…well, I had a boyfriend, she had a boyfriend, and the whole thing was way to complicated to try to explain to my parents. So I just let it go. I always figured I’d cross that bridge when I came to it - but now there’s no bridge. There’s nothing to discuss. I married a man, and my parents never need to know that there was another option.

On the one hand, it seems disingenous. I’m bisexual…shouldn’t my parents know that? Even if I’m not actively hiding the fact…even if it just “never came up”…doesn’t that smack of deception?

On the other hand…what difference does it make? Why should my parents need to know? If I’d had a girlfriend in the traditional sense of the word, I would have brought her home, introduced her to my parents. It probably would have been a little weird, there would probably have been some tears and some long talks, but I’m their daughter and they love and support me, no matter what. It would have been okay. And if I’d loved her, and she’d loved me, they would have loved us together. Since there was no girlfriend, it never came up, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Right?

It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot. I’ve discussed it with Bradon. I’ve discussed it with Bill. I’ve hemmed and hawed and gone back and forth, and come to no conclusion. If I come out to my parents now, is it an empty gesture? An, “oh, by the way, since it doesn’t matter now…” sort of thing? If I don’t come out to my parents, am I hiding it? Does that mean I’m ashamed? Is it better to spare them the trauma (Yes, they love me, but there would still be a bit of trauma. My mother doesn’t “believe” in bisexuality. She thinks bisexual is another word for confused. I’m confused about a lot of things in my life, but not this.), or is it better to finally come clean…even if I never have a “real girlfriend”?

I don’t have an answer - I’m not even sure I need one - but I’m still thinking.

I just want to make sure there’s no misunderstanding.

Everyone makes typos. Everyone misspells something every once in a while. Everyone occasionally mixes up a “your” and a “you’re.” Everyone has incidents where their fingers are moving faster than their brain, and everyone sometimes gets lost in the “which” and “that” conundrum.

Lord knows that my informal voice is a grammatical nightmare. I have this love affair with parentheticals and ellipses and dashes that makes editors cry. I tend to run on and on, and get a little friendlier with commas than is really appropriate. My semicolon use is suspect (when I find that I’ve used too many commas in sentence, I start looking for a place to stick in a semicolon to break up the monotony.)

All of this is fine with me. No one is perfect, and I often find that “perfect prose” loses much of the author’s voice. Spelling boo boos and the occasional slip up don’t bother me.

Here’s what does:

1. Sentences should begin with a capital letter and end with appropriate punctuation. when i read something like this it makes me crazy and makes it really really hard for me to understand what the sentence is trying to say dont you think When an entire blog post or forum entry is written that way, I skip it.

2. Blatant disregard for the distinction between “their” and “there,” “your” and “you’re,” “to” and “too” makes me want to cry.

3. ThIs PiSsEs Me RiGhT tHe FuCk OfF.

4. Texting shorthand makes my teeth itch. “ill meet u 2nite bring ur friend cya!” is an affront to my beloved English language. Plus, it almost always takes me forever to translate it into something I can understand. Ironical uses of l33t-speak, “teh,” “pwned,” and the like are fine, but if the whole sentence looks like that I break out in hives. Strangely, lolcats don’t bother me (but I do have to translate some of them for Bradon.)

Does this make me an old fart? Maybe. Is this the way the language is going to evolve? Are they going to starting teaching texting shorthand in schools? Boy, I hope not.

Now, all this being said, rudeness is never okay. I would never go to someone’s blog and post a comment that says “Man, you can’t even type! And your spelling is atrocious! Didn’t you graduate from the sixth grade?” That’s totally unnecessary. If I stumble upon a blog where the disregard for the rules of grammar is so offensive that I feel it necessary to make that sort of response…I click away and don’t go back. There are a lot of people on this here internet, and those with a less visceral reaction to bad grammar may really enjoy that blog. It’s not for me, and that’s fine.

On forums it’s a bit trickier. The issue becomes one of community standards. For example, I may curse like a sailor in my own home, or at a close friend’s rambunctious party, but not in a family restaurant, and certainly not in a church. Similarly, the community of the forum sets the tone for the necessary exactness of language. My very favorite forum, the Straight Dope Message Board, sets a very high standard for grammar and spelling. When new people with outright poor writing habits join the board n start 2 rite like this, someone usually steps in and mentions that we, as a community, strive to write clearly and conform to the standards of English. If the newcomer does nothing to improve their communication…well, yeah, the snark starts to flow, and I don’t feel all that bad about it. The erudite writing on that forum is part of what makes it so special. Again, typos and goofs are fine, though there’s quite a bit of good-natured ribbing that goes on when someone’s post isn’t up to the usual standards; unparseable gibberish is right out.

On a forum like Ravelry, however, the community standards are a bit different. Love of fiber rules the day there. Good writing and clear posts are certainly appreciated, but are not the end-all and be-all. Now, at least 95% of the threads I’ve seen there are perfectly fine - I can read and understand the majority of the participants, and everything’s hunky-dory. Every once in a while though, I do see a post that makes me cringe - usually it’s lack of capital letters and punctuation, sometimes a few “2″s and “u r”s sneak in, and I’ll admit that it sets my teeth on edge. 99% of the time, I don’t say a word. I’m not the grammar police (as much as I would love that job) and I’m not going to call someone out for writing a post that doesn’t conform to my exacting standards. The other 1% of the time I’ll respond with something to the effect of “I’m having a hard time understanding what you wrote. Did you mean….” It’s respectful, it’s helpful, and it will hopefully lead to greater understanding for all involved.

Other forums, like the boards for The Sims 2, are desolate wastelands of language, rife with incomprehensible garbage…which is why I avoid them.

I love words. I always have. Words, phrases and sentences have always been my friends - sometimes my only friends - and I don’t like to see them abused. I’m not going to apologize for preferring a well-constructed sentence…but neither am I going to be rude when confronted with poor grammar. I’m simple going to take my mouse firmly in hand and click on.

1. First seen on Erika’s blog: Gin, Television, and Social Surplus. An essay that explores the possibilities that arise when we, as a society, stop watching so much television (among other things.) I really don’t want to be seen as a zealot, but I have to say that cutting television out of my life is one of the best things I’ve ever done. Especially in this day and age, when it seems like all shows are eventually released on DVD, I really don’t feel like I’m missing a damn thing. (Bradon and I just finished watched the first season of Dexter - I can see how it wouldn’t be to everyone’s tastes, but we loved it.)

2. Don’t you “hate it” when you see people using quotation marks “incorrectly”? So do these folks. And if that’s not enough grammatical self-righteousness for you, I humbly direct you to Typo Eradication Advancement League (first seen in the Ravelry Language Lovers group.) I was so disappointed that the Grammar Avengers webring closed before I could join it…with the Language Lovers group, I feel like I’ve come home at last.

3. Rabbitch turned me onto The Fail Blog. I can’t look away. Some of them are a little too mean-spirited for my tastes, but most of them are hilarious.

4. So, my best friend Bill came out here for my wedding from ColumbusDayton, Ohio (my sincerest apologies, Darling.) One evening while he, Bradon and I were sitting around chatting he mentioned that in Ohio, just off the highway that runs between Columbus and Cincinnati, there is a megachurch that has a huge statue of the top half of Jesus emerging from a lake. We were talking about how weird that was, and how weird it must be to come upon as you drive down the freeway, and I went looking around the internet for a picture. The Wikipedia page (linked above) mentions a song written about the statue. Well, of course I went looking for it. I now present: Big Butter Jesus. (YouTube link.) (This, is really, sincerely, not meant to offend.)

5. I would really like a yarn that looks like this. Could one of you indie dyers please get on that? K thx bai.

And now…a picture that has nothing to do with anything!

Outside my work, yesterday. What is this “spring” you speak of?

First things first! She who taught me to knit, the wonderful Taelixev, is celebrating her two-year blogiversary with a contest! Stop by and weigh in on what makes a great blog, and you can walk away with some sweet loot.

Speaking of sweet loot….

Last year at the Estes Park Wool Market, under the sage guidance of Miriam, I purchased several skeins of Brooks Farm Solana in a glorious blue-violet, with which to knit Eris. I worked on it that summer and finished it just in time to wear it at Rhinebeck. (Which was silly, because it was swelteringly warm during the weekend of the wool festival, but I would not be dissuaded. I’d knit a Rhinebeck sweater, and damnit, I was going to wear it.) While I was there I stopped by the Brooks Farm booth, and when I went up to make my purchase I grinned at the woman helping me and asked “recognize this yarn?” She did, of course, and we had a lovely chat which ended with her taking my picture to feature on Sherry’s blog. (It’s a bad picture of me, as most pictures of me are, but what can you do?) Anyhoo, at Rhinebeck I picked up three skeins of Fourplay in a lovely slightly variegated orange.

My intention was to make some sort of wrap-y, shawl-y thing with it. Lacy, but nothing terribly intricate, since the yarn weight is too heavy for “true” lace. Something a little light, but still substantial enough to keep chilly shoulders warm on brisk evenings. I didn’t have much of a plan beyond that.

Today, Kristi invited me to join the Estes Park Wool Market group on Ravelry, which got me to thinking: since the Brooks Farm ladies were all so impressed that I had bought yarn in Estes and turned it into a sweater to wear at Rhinebeck, perhaps I should knit the yarn I bought at Rhinebeck into something to wear at Estes.

But what to make?

I want something relatively simple, both in consideration of the weight of the yarn (Brooks Farm calls it worsted, Ravelry calls in Aran) and the variegation. Perhaps something a bit geometric? I’m just not sure. I looked up the yarn on Ravelry, and looked at the projects that have been knit with it - far and away, the winner in Clapotis.

Which, all told, is not a bad idea. I am one of the few remaining knitters on earth who has not knit a Clapotis, and it’s a simple enough pattern that I could knit it during our Sunday tabletop gaming sessions…which would greatly increase the likelihood that it would be done in time to wear to Estes. (It will be way too hot to justify a scarf at Estes, but I’m nothing if not stubborn.)

But before I make any firm commitments (and to keep me occupied while I finish Bradon’s damn beloved socks) I’m soliciting suggestions. If you had three skeins of Fourplay, what would you knit?

What is wrong with me?

(I wonder how many knitting blog posts start out with some equivalent of that question. How many times in the course of our knitting and blogging do we sit down in front of the computer and start a story with “I’m a dumbass, and I’m going to tell the world why?” Maybe it’s just me.)

So, I’m working on the second of the nuptial socks. I’d finished the first, and before starting the second I took a good, long, hard look at it, to ensure that I would have two matching socks. Now, the smarter route would have been to look at the detailed and meticulous notes I’d taken during the knitting of the first sock, but since I didn’t have any of those a good, long, hard look would have to do. I counted the number of stitches I started the toe with, then counted the pattern repeats in the leg to figure how many stitches I’d increased up to. Five stitch pattern times *counts* seventeen pattern repeats equals….

So, I start. I increase my toe, get to 85 stitches, and switch to the purple. Knit knit knit knit knit knit knit. The foot grows. When I start to think I’m getting close to the desired length of the foot, I hold the sock-in-progress up to the finished sock.

Huh, I think. The toe of the second sock seems longer than the toe of the first sock.

Now, there are a few decisions I could have made after that realization. I could have recounted the stitches on the first sock. I could have recounted the stitches on the sock-in-progress. I could have counted the number of rows in each of the toes. So what do I do?

I think, oh well and charge boldly forward.

Because I am a DUMB. ASS.

I keep knitting and I count the how many rows of purple I put in the first sock (because “knit for six inches” isn’t good enough for me!) and I knit that many rows of purple on the second sock. Then, in preparation for the short row heel, I go and grab my copy of Sensational Knitted Socks. (Short row heels are not my preferred heel, so I still need directions to reference. And thank gawd for that!) As I flip to the short row heel instructions, I notice that I have (in a moment of brilliance) circled a bunch of numbers to keep track of what I’m doing. A bunch of numbers…which correspond to an 80-stitches-per-round sock.

Why, why, WHY did I keep knitting after realizing that the second toe was bigger? Why must I be a dumbass?

And then…disaster!

Bradon, bless his sweet little heart, did a couple loads of laundry today. He washed the sheets and the towels, and the big black blanket we keep on the living room couch. The living room couch, where I was doing all this knitting and cussing and frogging last night.

The living room couch where I accidentally left the ball of black yarn in the black blanket.

Hey, I know to count my blessings: at least it was superwash!

Now, if you’ll pardon me, I have to go untangle some yarn.

Once upon a time, when I was a little kid, I would spend up to ten hours a day during the summer on the back of my bike. I wasn’t going anywhere in particular - just around and around my neighborhood - but I loved the freedom, the exertion, and the time alone to think and listen to music on my walkman and make up stories in my head. I was young and angsty, and riding my bike was the perfect way to blow off all that self-righteous steam.

In my neighborhood was a set of two big hills, with another road going through the “valley” between the hills. Because I was young and stupid and immortal, I never bothered to stop at the intersection - the street wasn’t terribly busy, and if I stopped I’d never have enough momentum to get up the other side. So I’d coast down one side and pump up the other, a dozen times a day.

I don’t really have to tell you how this story ends, do I?

I was extraordinarily lucky in that I hit the car, instead of the car hitting me. Nonetheless, I hit it at a pretty good clip, flipped over the trunk, and went sprawling on the other side. Truth to tell, I was more worried that I’d done permanent damage to my walkman than I was about permanent damage to me. I was sore and bleeding, sure, but nothing seemed broken…except my bike…and that nice lawyer’s brand new convertible. Damn.

The lawyer really was nice, and helped walk me home, and everyone made sure I was okay before they started talking about damages. Thankfully the damage actually ended up being covered by our homeowner’s insurance, but still; Dad was none to gentle while he scrubbed the gravel out of my torn up knees and elbows.

As you might imagine, that sort of put an end to my bike-riding days. My bike was beyond repair (especially since I’d have to pay for it myself,) and my parents instated a strict no-walkman-while-riding-bike rule, which took all the fun out of it. I did eventually get a new bike, but I think I rode it all of a dozen times. I was done with bikes.

Fast-forward many, many years later. Bradon and I are discussing our appalling lack of fitness, and trying to figure out what exercise we could do that we wouldn’t hate to the very core of our beings - especially one we could do together.

“What about bike riding?”

Well, my biking career effectively ended with the crash, and his had dwindled through high school and finally died when someone stole his bike in college. Nonetheless, we both had fond memories of days spent pedaling all over creation.

So, when my birthday came and went (It was April 20. There was no fanfare. We’re kind of fanfared out ’round these parts, what with the wedding and all.) we talked it over and agreed to get bikes.

Mine’s an Electra Townie 21 (much like Claudia’s, though not quite that spanky,) his is a Giant Sedona, and we’re both totally smitten. A little sore, but totally smitten. There are great biking/walking trails around our area of town (which is great, because roads scare the bejeezus out of me) and we’re having a wonderful time exploring them. Not only are we getting some fresh air and exercise, but we’re seeing all kinds of cool things, too. Like…

…birds! Of some sort. (Any ornithologists want to help me out here? When I first saw the white ones, I thought pelicans! Which tells you that 1) I grew up near the ocean and 2) I know nothing about birds.)

And…

flowers! Of some sort. (Botanists? A little help?)

Obviously my bike riding skills are not the only thing that need brushing up.

Regardless of my taxonomical failures…we’ve gone out riding after I get home from work for two days now, and it’s wonderful. Enough work to get the heart pumping, not so much work that I fall over at the end of it. Which, I suppose, leaves me with just one question:

When is the hard seat going to stop making my ass hurt?

I don’t know if it was a spring cleaning thing or what, but all last week I was itching to tear my stash apart, look at it, then put it all back together. My stash and I seem to have a very out-of-sight/out-of-mind relationship; while I have a few clear memories of some much-beloved yarn, for most skeins once they’re put in the big plastic bin I get stashnesia.

So on Saturday I locked the kittens in the office with Bradon to keep them company and I dragged the boxes and bags full of yarn into the living room.

Working clockwise from the bottom left corner, that’s worsted, bulky, DK, crochet cotton, lace/cobweb, a plastic bag full of sweaters I intend to recycle, and fingering/sock. The little pile in the middle is my handspun, and the big blank spot is where I was sitting. The spinning fiber is on the couch off the left side of the picture.

A few things I learned from this exercise:

1. I have a lot of sock yarn.
2. I also have more than my fair share of lace-weight and cobweb-weight yarn.
3. This is because when I’m buying yarn, I never know how much I would need to knit a sweater/shell/bag/whatever. I do know that about 100 grams of sock yarn will make a pair of socks, and one skein of lace-weight will make a shawl (if it’s a fine yarn or a big skein), a scarf (if it’s a heavier yarn or a small skein), or an unfathomable amount of incredibly fine lace (if it’s cobweb weight.) I don’t have to have a plan or a pattern in mind, I don’t need to measure or do math - socks and lace are easy.
4. My current under-bed bin and huge plastic bin set up for stash containment is not working for me. I so very desperately want glass-front cabinets so I can view the stash. A while ago Bradon and I found the perfect cabinet at Goodwill, so I’m hoping that once we have a house to put it in we’ll stumble on another great find. Here’s to hoping.

So, after the stash was sorted and I reacquainted myself with my yarn, I totally lost my mind and set about photographing it, yarn by yarn, for my Ravelry stash page. It’s not a glass-front cabinet, but it’s better than nothing. And I didn’t quite photograph all my yarn - I skipped the little balls left over from finished projects, mostly because I was disinclined to hunt down information on the yarns when the ball bands were long gone.And glancing over my stash page, I come to my final conclusion

5. I’m a big fan of blue.

I mentioned once, long ago and far away, that my mother does tole painting. She’s a wonderful artist in general, and can draw and paint in almost any medium, but tole painting is her passion. She taught it for years, and now mostly paints for herself, doing a few commissioned projects every few years for the hell of it.

While I admire and envy my mother’s skill, the fact of the matter is that most tole painting is just not to my taste. (Google’s image page for tole painting will give you a good idea of what most tole painting looks like.) Most of it is aesthetically pleasing, and my mother’s skill is superb, but that’s just not how I decorate my house. It’s a little too country, a little too twee for my tastes.

Nonetheless, every once in a while I can coax my mother into painting something for me that isn’t your standard tole style stuff. I’ll usually give her an idea of what I want, and she’ll either find a pattern that approximates it, or she’ll make something up. When I say I like Celtic knots, she researches Celtic knots and designs her own.

Or, sometimes she’ll find a pattern with a design element she knows I’ll like, and tweaks it to be more to my tastes. When she found a wonderful pattern for beautifully detailed roses, she knew I’d like them much better on a black heart-shaped box than on a frilly, “girly” background.

And then, every once in a while, she finds a pattern that she knows I will love exactly as it is.

My mother worked on this for months, always tantalizing me with a promise that she was painting something for me, but it wasn’t done yet. When my parents came out for the wedding, she finally gave it to me. Isn’t it wonderful? In case you can’t tell, that is painted on the flat top of a long box - all the perspective and depth that you see is illusion. I am utterly smitten. My mother rules.

ETA: To answer Deb’s question, the knitting box is 17′’X4.5′’X3.75″ - a perfect size to hold needles!