Knitting and Jazz

I like to listen to Podcasts in the morning. I have a 20-40 minute commute (depending on traffic on 101), so I get through quite a few every week. There was a dry spell in October where none of “my” Podcasts were updating. I had seven hours of driving ahead of me (to and from Grass Valley for a 75^th birthday) and NO Podcasts.

So, I went into iTunes, searched for Knitting in the Podcast section and downloaded a subscription to EVERY single one. Since then, I consistently have between 65- 75 Podcasts on my iPod at any given time. The goal is to determine which ones I like, and which ones I don’t. When my “regular” Podcasts run out, I move on to the new ones. It’s a system.

This morning, I listened to IrieKnits, and she likened some aspects of knitting to jazz- mostly, the improvisation in both. Irie mentioned that improvisational knitting didn’t always work in her favor.

Disclaimer: I am not a jazz musician. I’ve dated a couple of jazz musicians, and I am (at best) a recreational musician.

Improvisational jazz is not for people who have a rudimentary knowledge of music theory. You have to have a relatively strong grasp on theory before you can be certain that what you’re playing will sound good. I think its 90% knowledge and 10% art.

Jazz isn’t a “simple” genre, not by any means; I think that’s part of what makes it so appealing to listen to. There are guidelines to give the musicians some structure, but that is heavily rooted in theory. I keep saying it. Theory, theory, theory.

The same goes for knitting- if you have a strong design/theory background, even if you screw up a piece, you should be able to compensate without much ripping. In my opinion, it takes a combination of experience and general knitting knowledge to be an effective improvisational knitter.

Part of me believes that if you’re a knowledgeable enough knitter, you WON’T indulge your whims because you’ll know that they won’t work. I’ve met a knitter like this, so I know it’s possible, but I’m not there yet. I’m working towards it.

Though I do create, I don’t consider myself to be a creative person. I am an editor, through and through. I take other people’s ideas, and I make them better. (Well, I think I make them better.) When it comes to building a piece from the ground up, it is usually – at least – inspired by something else that I have seen.

I don’t really improvise; I do the math, chart out the pattern, and take the measurements before I begin. I’ve learned that “just going” results in “just ripping”.

Improvisation takes a balance of brains and “balls”. It can be risky, but it can bear incredible fruit.

Sleep and knitting mojo

I haven’t been sleeping very well- Sleep and I have had a tumultuous relationship since I was in college. Sleep is my elusive mistress, if you will. For the last week, either my own poor judgment, or outside influences have interfered with my regular sleep schedule. I know that everyone is affected by lack of sleep, but I feel like unless you have had problems sleeping, you can’t really understand the effects of chronic sleep deprivation.

Currently, the sleep deprivation is manifesting itself in an inability to focus, lack of appetite, and holes in my memory. The inability to focus is making work more challenging, not to mention that it’s put a serious kink in my knitting. Oh, and the kicker of this whole thing is that I’m exhausted, but unable to nap.

Part of my sleeping problems are stress-related. My brain can’t shut down because I’m still working through today’s issues, and tomorrow’s issues always follow. The other major problem is that it seems that my subconscious is very susceptible to suggestion. When I have nightmares, the line between “real” and “dream” disappears. The terror is palpable, the threats are real.

So, three nightmares in three days (with similar themes) tipped me off that maybe I should be watching (and reading) less Law and Order-y stuff, and more fluff and comedic stuff.

Last night, I was proactive about getting more sleep. I went to bed two hours early, and slept through the night (until Andrew’s alarm went off). I had really awesome dreams, and had a gloriously restful night. When I woke up, the sun was shining, the birds were singing, and Zac Efron brought me my morning coffee in bed. Okay, maybe not that last part, but you’re getting the gist of it, right?

Well, while young Zac Efron did not bring me my morning, Niki did join me for our morning routine. Since Andrew gets up an hour earlier than I do, he cuddles up next to me and we sleep for that extra hour. I’ve started calling him Niki the NyQuil, because snuggling with him works better than a dose of anything I’ve ever been prescribed for sleep issues. He also stays put as long as I stay in bed, more or less. Elphie will usually join us at the end, since she has dog ADD and needs “active” cuddling (versus passive cuddling).

So, I thought the sleep deprivation was why I wasn’t motivated to knit. Granted, I have a thousand things mentally cued, and four projects that my fingers are itching to cast on.

But.

I have three projects that have to get completed for Christmas, and one of them is a large, predominantly garter-stitch project. Garter stitch kills my mojo. Last night, I finished the bulk of the knitting on the Top Secret project. I read the directions, and it appears that there is maybe an hour’s worth of work, and then blocking, and it’s done. Could it be a coincidence that once the unpleasant project is finished, I’m sleeping better? Possibly.

Next on my “obligation” knitting list are the two hats for my father, and my grandfather’s aran scarf. My father’s hats are super-easy, so those won’t take any time, but my grandfather’s scarf is… challenging.

I love cables, but somehow, knitting cables is harder for my brain than knitting lace. I also chose something more challenging because, well, I’m a show-off. He was so thrilled with the relatively simple cable and seed stitch scarf I sent him four or five years ago, that Mom’s upcoming trip spurred the need to do another one. I’ve managed one of ten repeats- so I’ve got quite a bit of work ahead of me.

There were some initial problems with this scarf- mainly user error. Evidently, I can’t count. Not shocked? Neither was I. Once the initial error had been resolved, it moved more quickly, but it still doesn’t move as quickly as I would like.

On my list of items to cast on, I have the Juno Regina shawl from Knitty, which I am going to knit out of my Pumpkin colored Sea Silk (shown above), and the Clapotis out of the Tess Yarns cultivated silk and wool in “Banana Split”. I’m hoping to get Juno Regina to the “mindless” stage by the end of the weekend, and Clapotis up to the intended width soon after that.

My Dress

Some women are really invested in all things Bridal. Not me.

When Andrew and I decided to get married, I wanted to elope. Andrew wanted a wedding. As a compromise, I said I would agree to a small wedding, but I wouldn't plan it. This worked for us.

Here is one of our wedding pictures, which has a full body shot of the dress:

I bought the dress on a whim while I was out in South Dakota, doing my internship at XRX. It was $10 and my size. I wore it when I got back, for our third anniversary with the most awesome red shoes.

When my wedding dress fell through the week before the wedding, I had no reason to worry; I had a white-ish dress. We had a very intimate wedding, 53 people total, including our immediate family, closest friends, and our officiator. Everyone had a good time, and we both managed to chat with every guest.

The total cost of the wedding was under $2000. That would include the dress, the tux, the photographer, food, cake, everything. For one big party, that's not bad. Especially since the phrase "But it's my SPECIAL DAY!" never crossed these lips. A big wedding is on the list of things I decidedly did not want, and since we paid for it, we weren't obligated to invite anyone or do anything that we didn't want to.

Now, honestly, I didn't really care for the dress when I bought it. I was overwhelmed by the killer trifecta: Sale, my size, and poor impulse control. The same day I bought a black and pink dress and a black and pale blue dress. When we decided on the backup dress, this dress was chosen because it was white.

I think it was intended for some sort of spring formal purpose- the fabric was all right, and the construction was solid enough, but this is not the wedding dress that you pass on to your kids, really. It's the equivalent of passing on a polyester leisure suit on to your son to get married in- the future child is unlikely to want it. If this had been something that my mother had made, or a vintage dress, I would have kept it. Not so much with this dress.

But, it's not about the dress. Andrew and I are coming up on our three-year wedding anniversary, and we still love each other. He expressed some of your concerns about getting rid of my dress- mainly that our eventual daughter may want to wear it someday.

My solution is this: See the pearls in the picture above? I'll save those. They're exponentially nicer than the dress will ever be, and I wear them at least once a month. I've taken good care of them, and I bought them because I loved them. Though I lack the attachment to the dress, I love these pearls.

I suppose the biggest part of not saving the dress is that I don't want my daughters to dream about weddings and getting married as children. I wasn't a little girl, young woman, or adult who had a dream wedding- unless eloping to Vegas is considered a dream wedding.

I think that there are more important things; getting an education, finding your path, and developing the relationship that leads to a lifelong commitment. I've seen marriages fall apart because the wedding eclipsed the relationship, which is a travesty. I'd rather have my daughters dream of using my lucky briefcase, getting an amazing piece of my jewelry, or inheriting my winter-weight Orenburg shawl.

After all, every girl should have an Orenburg shawl.

Purging, Round 2

I’ve done more purging. Anything I haven’t worn in the last year, or that looks like I’ve worn it every day for the last year- GONE!

Some of these items include:

• My marching band “travel uniform” pants. Size 3. (Don’t hurt yourself laughing trying to remember how long ago that really has been)
• Most of the sweaters I’ve knit for myself. Two are cropped, two are super-bulky, and the rest I just don’t like anymore.
• Three pairs of combat boots. ‘Nuff said.
• Three skirts that are too short to wear anywhere without fishnets and vinyl boots.
• A wool coat that my mother bought when she first came to the US. 30 years ago. It’s lovely, but too tight in the armholes.
• A raincoat that also is a little too tight in the armholes.
• My wedding dress. I’ve worn it twice. That’s plenty for a $10 dress, right?
• My first pair of “ugly shoes” that I bought with Christine in 1996. I’ve worn them, I’ve loved them, but I’m too old to wear them.
• Two ugly, cheap, and incredibly functional purses.
• Two sweaters that were beautiful when I bought them (ahem, four years ago), but have had the “pretty” worn out of them.
• One sweatshirt that the sleeves “aren’t right” on. (Those with OCD will understand.)

Some days, it just feels better to donate the stuff that weighs you down.

Enchanted (a review)

As part of our “get rid of our movie tickets” campaign, Andrew and I have been venturing out into the world and experiencing popular culture in real time.

Since I’m the misanthrope, Andrew lets me choose the movies- but I’m picking things I think we’ll both enjoy.

In order, we’ve seen:

-Dan In Real Life
-Fred Claus [Note: This was so unremarkable that I had to look up what was currently in the theaters.]
-So You Think You Can Dance? [This was live, but we did it in lieu of a movie. It still counts because we got free tickets for BOX SEATS.]
-Enchanted

I’ll be the first to admit that commercials work. I saw the ads for Enchanted immediately thought it would be fun. I mistakenly thought it was a kids’ movie.

It’s not. It’s much, much better.

It’s Disney lampooning their movies while simultaneously making the point that fantasy/dreaming/positive thinking DOES have value, especially for children. It’s HYSTERICAL.

I’m not going to go into much detail, except that Alan Menken [Little Mermaid, etc] and Steven Schwartz [Wicked, Godspell] wrote the music for this. It’s truly a gem.

Resolving to be resolute

I have a lot of things. Don’t get me wrong; I like having things. Recently, I’ve been feeling like my things own me, rather than the other way around. The battle for dominance has been fought with purging, but the fact is, I have not yet truly begun to fight.

The first step is a yarn and wool embargo. I have more of both than I need and storage space is at a premium in the new house until we get around to installing the cabinets. If I spend time knitting out of my stash and can make a significant dent in it, in the future, when I see really breathtaking and special yarn or roving, I can buy it without that “I can’t start this until I finish 25 other things” feeling. I’m not a FIFO knitter or spinner by any means, but having a room full of these things takes some of the joy out of spinning, knitting, and buying yarn.

I’ve been on yarn diets before, but like actual diets, my goal is to develop better habits. People with good habits live happier, less complicated lives. This is good. I’m aiming for a less materialistic way of life; I don’t need another pair of black shoes, or another wool coat. I’m striving to buy what I need rather than what I want.

I think this is all stemming partly from watching “Six Feet Under” and partly from “Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style”. I was thinking, “If I only had a year to live, what would I want Andrew to sift through?” Not a metric ton of yarn or roving. Not a thousand pairs of shoes that I never wear. Not a hundred handbags that initially got heavy use and then forgotten. If I can give up on impulse buying ten pairs of shoes on sale, I can buy one super-nice pair of shoes. Still on sale, but super-nice shoes nonetheless. I have a compulsion to buy things on sale; it’s a blessing and a curse.

So, there’s my New Year’s resolution.

Oh, and also to eat less sugar. Sugar turns me into a monster.

It’s Hairspray!

I love musicals. I love that the movie industry has produced some really excellent movie versions of some of my favorite stage productions.

Sure, I had some problems with the producers of “Dreamgirls” missing the message of the show by writing Beyonce her own stupid song. (Hello? The whole message was that her character wasn’t a REAL star.) I forgave this act of theatrical transgression ONLY because they wrote Effie/Jennifer Hudson a terrific song for the movie. (That would be “Love You I Do”, available on iTunes.)

I Netflixed “Hairspray”. The stage show is full of athletic dancing, amazing singing, and the usual musical theater fare. I was very excited- we saw Hairspray in June of 2006, and it was stellar. With the resources that movie producers have, the movie should have been A-MA-ZING.

Not so much.

To start with, the casting was sub-par. Michelle Pfeiffer can’t sing, and shouldn’t be in musicals. Anyone who saw Grease 2 knows this. John Travolta made a mockery of Edna Turnblad; why put him in a fat suit? His stupid “Baltimore” accent made the character more of a caricature, and the whole combination managed to cross the line from “funny” to “offensive”. Amanda Bynes can’t sing either and couldn’t sing the book, or dance.

Some of the casting was excellent: Zac Efron as Link, Christopher Walken as Mr. Turnblad, and Queen Latifah. The best actors were seen the least.

What I found the saddest was the lack of large ensemble dance numbers- and that the lead girl wasn’t in a single one of them. The changes in the plot made the movie heavy and trite without adding anything positive.

Oddly, I still found it to be a fun film.

Zac Efron plays a delightfully narcissistic Link, and carries his singing and dancing roles off flawlessly. In the stage show, there was nothing shameful about having a crush on the Link character. I think that’s because the actor was 35 years old. Imagine how creepy I felt when I realized that movie-Link is a Disney kid and BARELY legal. I probably wouldn’t feel this way if I hadn’t seen High School Musical, but alas, that bridge has been crossed. Twice.

The best part of the movie is the closing number- “You Can’t Stop The Beat”. I have to say, John Travolta does a mean, full-body shimmy. After seeing his shimmy, I feel like less of a woman. Seriously. I cheered for the shimmy. I told my family about the shimmy. This shimmy is what shimmy legends are made of.

If you were considering renting it, do. Do it for the shimmy.

WRD

That’s right. My sweet little girl is officially a WRD.

That stands for “Weapon of Rat Destruction”. Let me back up.

[Memory montage sequence]

It’s 8AM. I’m out of bed, getting ready to start my day. I hear Elphie barking. Elphie isn’t a “barker”. When Niki barks, I don’t run to see what he’s barking at. When Elphie barks, I run. She’s more discriminating with her “alert” mode. I wandered over to the sliding glass door and see her barking. At the ground.

Oh. No.

I rush out the door, and Elphie turns to face me. With a rat in her mouth. A stiff, dead, rat. I screamed. I couldn’t help it. I quickly pulled myself together.

“Drop it!” I commanded in my Alpha voice. Nothing.

“Elphie, drop it!” Still nothing.

“Drop it, NOW!” Clearly, we have some training to work on.

Somehow, I managed to get my fingers behind her back teeth and pried her jaws open without touching the rat. When it hit the ground, I saw the it was no longer in possession of it’s head. I get Elphie in the house, barricade the dog door, and grab the phone to call the vet. Dead rats can mean a number of unpleasant maladies for dogs, and I wasn’t about to risk anything. Especially with the (possibly) ingested head.

The vet instructed me to keep an eye on them for any weird behavior, and while I dealt with the vet, Mom went and dealt with The Rat. She found the head on the opposite side of the patio, so there was less to worry about, but corpse detail is never pleasant.

This may have tipped me off that getting a cat might not be the best idea; the dogs keep their treasures outside, where a cat would artfully display the remains on a pillow, or in a shoe.

The funny thing is that we’ve been calling her “Tiny Cujo” since she was a puppy, since she has a pretty menacing “mean face”. I had someone at the dog park object to me calling Niki “vicious beast” (with a singsong, baby-talking voice), claiming that it would turn him into a vicious beast. Her empirical evidence was that her nephew’s nickname was “Tiger” and now he’s a troublemaker.

Clearly, the behavior was caused by the nickname.

This is the new face of terror:

Watch out for the butt-breath.

So long, Blogdrive, hello Blogger!

That's right, readership!

After wrestling with the RSS feed issues, I've decided to migrate the blog over to Blogger. You can now find Better Than Yarn at:

http://betterthanyarn.blogspot.com

Now, there aren't e-mail notification options, but you can set up an RSS feed on your computer by doing the following:

1) Look at your address bar. It should look like this:

2) Click on the RSS button. It looks like this:

3) This should take you to a page with this as the header:

4) Click "Subscribe Now". It will ask you where you want the feed to appear. I have a "Blogs" folder.

Alternatively, you could also add me as a friend in Ravelry- I'm cuteknitter - and the RSS feed will pick up my blog posts.

The “IT” List

I mentioned before that I wasn't going to participate in the madness that is holiday knitting, and that my list of things to finish before December 25^th was limited to three items.

Item 1: The Top Secret Project

The recipient of the Top Secret Project reads the blogs, so there aren't any photos here. But I KNOW they aren't on Ravelry, so it's up there.

Item 2: Dad hat number one:

Item 3: Dad hat number two.

My father asked for two hats, and wanted them to be positive and negative to each other, in tan and brown. Despite my suspicions that he is color blind, I agreed. He also specified that the predominantly tan one have a dark brown edging so as not to show dirt as quickly.

Totally manageable, right?