Knit Sisters

The Red Mojito in Wonderland

Post by Ellen
Thursday, September 21st, 2006

A big hello to Westside PC, The Green Caipirinha, SuperMouth Beatty, and Blackberry Villa from me, The Red Mojito! May we knit long and prosper under our various new aliases, all thanks to The Blue Cosmo!

Westside PC, aka Diane, noted that my mother has refused to tell us any of her funny names. I suspect it’s because my mother actually is a superhero. So if she reveals her superhero name, well, her cover will be blown.

I’m basing this suspicion on my observations of her in the 70s and early 80s when she was raising two daughters, teaching 8th-grade English full time, running a household, seeing that we all got something to eat three times a day, and keeping up with contemporary literature and current events.

If that’s not super-heroic, I don’t know what is. Superman and Batman are both shaking their heads in wonderment still.

The Red Mojito started work on Tuesday at Woolcott and Company and is pleased to report that it was absolutely delightful. By definition, working at the shop means that I am surrounded by yarn and knitters. The Red Mojito in Wonderland.

This coming Sunday afternoon, I will be at the Woolcott booth at the Boston Knit Out, so come on over and see me now, y’hear?

A lot more than usual has gotten done on Icarus because—are you ready for this?—if it’s a slow day at the shop and there’s nothing else pressing, we are encouraged to knit during work hours.

I must have done something good in a previous life.

Remember that last skein of Alchemy Haiku?

Now it looks like this:

You cannot hold back the inexorable tide of progress! Especially with a swift and a ball-winder handy there at the store!

Icarus is now large enough to form a valley wherein the remaining yarn may dwell:

And, even more importantly, I am now ready to go on to the second chart!

You cannot imagine how eagerly I have awaited this day. Or, if you’ve been reading the blog lately, maybe you can…

Meanwhile, Alex is taking his big “General Examination” next Tuesday, so things are tense Chez Wax Wings ‘R Us. Under the circumstances, a certain amount of stress is perfectly justified.

Because basically, if you do a doctoral degree in any branch of history, one of the requirements will be that you pass an oral examination administered by a panel of four to five professors who sit in a room with you for two to three hours and grill you on approximately 250 books that you were supposed to have read in the previous five months.

This is the exam he has to take next week.

Under the terms of the Geneva Convention, this is actually classified as “unlawful torture,” but they slide it through on the grounds that it is “traditional.”

It’s traditional torture.

No one thinks it is actually educational, but—like Marine boot camp—it shows that you’ve got guts, by God. That you are the kind of ~~soldier~~ student who can go into a room with four or five dazzlingly learned (and occasionally sadistic) people and come out in more or less one piece two or three hours later.

You have to go in there—and here I can’t do any better than to quote a friend of my parents who was given to rather crude turns of phrase—and “show them that you’ve got more *ss than they’ve got teeth.”

(As an aside, don’t you secretly love that quote? Even though it…how shall we say? Lacks refinement?)

It’s just the tiniest bit daunting. In precisely the same way that the fifth ring of hell is just the tiniest bit daunting.

So let’s all wish Alex well. And hope that our household can get through the next few days gracefully, calmly, and with no futher skunkings. There’s not too much more, frankly, that the traffic can bear.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 21st, 2006 at 8:10 am and is filed under Icarian games, Lace it up. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

6 Responses to “The Red Mojito in Wonderland”

Sarah Says:
September 21st, 2006 at 8:55 am
Good luck, Alex!
Oh, and Ellen, don’t forget that my birthday is coming right up and I always appreciate gifts of yarn, now that you get a discount and all. Just sayin.’
lorinda Says:
September 21st, 2006 at 11:12 am
Having grown up in academe (my father being a perfesser and all), I can vouch that you forgot the key adjective for the committee–arrogant. Although Alex is probably too trim physically to have more *ss than their teeth, I know that intellectually and spiritually he is up to the task. Saying a prayer for you, Alex. Knock them dead. No, literally, I mean it.

How can I even comment on your early ascension to paradise, Red Mo? A job at a yarn store. Since it’s at Hahvahd, do you pahk the cah in the yahd to work theyah? Oops, a little Maine accent slipping in on the end.

Knit long and prosper. May you find the perfect yarn to buy for your stash (and your sister’s and any sundry friends’ you have collected as you blogged).

And Icarus, perfect. Straight to the heavens with you, do not pass the sun, do not melt wax wings.
Mother Says:
September 21st, 2006 at 8:24 pm
Thanks, Ellen. I appreciate your kind words. Although I’m still short of aliases for myself, I did a bit of “internet reasearch” today and came up with some superhero, all female, aliases. Does anyone know the “supername” of these women? Donna Troy, Kory Anders, Diana Prince, Karen Starr, Selina Kyle, Dinah Laurel Lance, Holly Robinson, and Dinah Drake Lance–
There are probably many more, but I ran short of intellectual curiosity at this point!
lorinda Says:
September 22nd, 2006 at 9:57 am
Hey Bales girls, what a fun mommy you have! *runs off to google superhero secret identities*. And Ellen, I loved what you said about cat ruminations. Fortunately for everyone, when we ruminate, we don’t spit up hairballs! Just wordballs. Have a super fibery weekend!
Ellen Says:
September 22nd, 2006 at 10:23 am
Thanks for your comments, Lorinda, Sarah, and Mother! I’ll have to check into those superheroine aliases…

Meanwhile, it will be a good weekend because, well, it’s the weekend of the Boston Knit Out! Yay!
Juno Says:
September 24th, 2006 at 12:58 am
Hee. Not even secretly. But then I’m not refined.

Best of luck.

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The Red Mojito in Wonderland

6 Responses to “The Red Mojito in Wonderland”

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