Knit Sisters

I’ve realized why I like Denver so much: everyone here behaves exactly like they do in the Midwest. It feels like home. Except with a lot more spectacular landscape. (Sorry, Missouri. You’re beautiful too, but it’s hard to compete toe-to-toe with the Rockies.)

Example: I’m at Starbucks yesterday morning and this guy orders a grande half caf/half decaf vanilla latte with soy milk. The usual complicated early 21st-century American coffee order.

As an aside, I sometimes wonder if we were better off when we just had the choice between the stuff that came in the brown carafe and the stuff that came in the orange carafe. You know what I’m talking about here.

But you had choices even then. Sugar or saccharine.

Or, if you cared to, you could add half and half from those small white plastic containers with the rip-off paper tops. The tops that said, “Needs no chill,” right there bold as day. Proudly pronouncing their close and profitable relationship with homogenization and sodium citrate. And everyone was happy and life was simple.

Except that they weren’t and it wasn’t. So now we have complex coffee. Back to my story…

The man gets his complex coffee, he takes one sip, and he says to the barista, “You know, I hate to say this, but this just doesn’t taste right.”

The barista checks the order, then says, “No worries, I’ll make you another one.”

Then the guy says—and this is what makes me feel all warm inside—“I’m sorry. I don’t want to be a trouble causer.”

He doesn’t want to be a trouble causer. Isn’t that lovely?

Here’s a man who has obviously understood the basic tenets of Midwestern psychology and world view: you aren’t entitled to anything, you should be grateful for what you get even if it isn’t quite what you wanted, and if you put others to additional trouble you should acknowledge that you are a “trouble causer.”

As Garrison Keillor once said, “Life is what you make it. Make the best of it.”

You may remember that I lived in New York City for 7+ years and that I loved and still do love NYC. But I must say that no one in NYC would ever say to a barista, “I’m sorry. I don’t want to be a trouble causer.” (Unless he was visiting from Iowa.)

They don’t mind being trouble causers on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. And much though I love the city and I carry it in my heart everywhere and every day, I never really got used to that. I never ceased to be shocked by the average New Yorker’s willingness to be a trouble causer.

None of that here in Denver.

You may have noticed by now that there are very few pictures in this post. That’s because I’ve been spending almost all my time at the Denver Federal Center, home of our National Archive’s Rocky Mountain Regional Office and an array of other federal agencies, among them heavy hitters like Federal Homeland Security.

As you go into the Federal Center, which could be more accurately called an armed camp a “compound,” there is a large sign that says, “Visitors Welcome!”

And this is so true. The feds welcome you with open arms by eyeing you suspiciously, photocopying your government issued I.D., searching under the hood and in the trunk of your car for contraband, and running a mirror underneath your vehicle to look for suspended ordnance.

I don’t know about you, but that kind of special treatment certainly makes me feel like an honored guest!

So I have extrapolated from the behaviors of the Federal Welcome Wagon that it might not be the best idea to take photographs of the federal buildings. Photography of that sort could easily be classed as “suspicious behavior.”

When push comes to shove, I just don’t think they’re gonna buy my story about a so-called “knitting blog” and the need for exciting visuals. And I gotta tell you, I don’t want to cross these federal agents.

Because you know and I know where they are going to search next. And I do not mean my backpack.

Besides, I think that one guy on the morning shift already suspects that I am one of the key authors of the notorious terrorist plot: “Operation Addi Turbo.” (See here if you missed the details.)

Icarus, for his part, is refusing to be photographed until he is, “given a pair of loaded dice and put on a plane back to Vegas.” Unbelievable. I had to sneak up on him while he was sleeping in his bag:

The flash woke him up, but the howling and bitching was muffled by the heavy gauge plastic.

I’m actually quite ready to go back home, even though I’ve had a wonderful time on the road and my research has been extremely productive. For one thing, I’m sick of eating this paltry combination

for lunch because I’m trapped at the archive where there’s no food source within miles and I have no kitchen in which to produce a real bag lunch.

I never thought I’d say it, but I can’t wait to start doing my own cooking again.

I can hear your collective gasp echoing off the Rockies.

It’s also just a tad bit lonely at the hotel in the evening:

Note absence of men, dogs, and all other carbon-based life forms. I’d even welcome a charmless cat at this stage.

Besides, when you are on the road, you constantly have to demand service of various kinds. You have to bug people for directions, you have to order complex coffees, you have to request special itemized receipts, you have to impose yourself and your semi-suspicious vehicle upon federal agents who don’t want you around, and so on and so forth.

By the strict Midwestern definition, you have to be a trouble causer. In spite of all the places I’ve lived and everywhere I’ve wandered, at the end of the day, I’m still a Midwesterner.

And there’s nothing I hate more than being a trouble causer.

Next week, from Boston…

I have to report that, though the I-cord edging on Nicola did not take as long as I had feared, it did take longer than I had hoped.  Nevertheless, I did not find it necessary to stick a pin in my eye this time, and I was able to finish the sweater last night.  (Well, the ends are not worked in, but that hardly counts after all that I-cord.)

Here she is:

                                                    (I apologize for the absence of a picture of me actually wearing Nicola, but it is just way too hot and muggy this afternoon to even think of donning a woolly sweater.)

A detail of the I-cord edging around the neck:

 

I had a hard time figuring out what sort of closure I wanted to put on the fronts.  I ended up leaving two “holes” up top where I didn’t attach the I-cord,

                                                   so that I could close the sweater with some sort of pin or clasp.

                                                (This second pin is a shawl pin from Designs by Romi, and it is truly a beautiful thing.  That’s a big chunk of turquoise there.)

I can also just leave the fronts open with nothing closing them, and the openings between the sweater front and the I-cord don’t show at all.  Or I could find two cool buttons and attach them to each other in a cufflink sort of way and poke the buttons through the openings.  I feel quite clever about this hedging of my bets.

The stats:

Pattern:  Nicola cardigan, adapted from the Nicola pullover in Simply Shetland

Yarn:  Neveda Alpaca 70% wool, 20% acrylic, 10% alpaca

Yarn source:  Elann

Time to finish:  2 weeks and 2 days

Words cannot express how much I wish I could claim that I came up with that pun, but alas, I cannot be so deceitful. Here in lovely Denver, Colorado,

there is a wonderful radio station at 101.5 on your FM dial (I do not know its call letters, but I’d put my money on KMRT) that goes by “Martini on the Rockies.”

Normally, I don’t have a lot of truck with commercial radio, but Martini on the Rockies is something else altogether. It’s as if you had a really, really cool friend who called you up and said, “Hey, baby, why don’t you come over and we’ll spin some discs?” But it’s on the radio. Available in your car!

Shirley Bassey singing Goldfinger.

Anyone at all singing Mac the Knife.

Elvis Costello singing Let’s Misbehave.

And then, just to keep you on your toes, a little Chris Isaak or Sarah McLachlan.

At least eighteen times an hour, the DJs work “Martini on the Rockies” into their patter. But to me, the joke never gets old. Every time, I think, “How unbearably clever. I wish I’d thought of that.”

Martini on the Rockies pretty much captures my whole sense about Denver. It’s cool and mellow and sophisticated and witty and beautiful. Here’s the view from my room:

I am considering taking up residence here. I shall change my name to Eloïse and order every meal from room service.

There are abundant fountains,

prairie dogs that are disturbingly tame,

city parks that look like this,

and creeks with exploratory children:

It’s nothing short of idyllic. I really have no complaints. If it weren’t for significant sentimental attachments back East, I might see if they’d hire me on at the hotel or the archive and simply stay.

This research is good, and Icarus is coming along (though he misses his life in Vegas):

Beware! If you fly too near the sun, you’ll end up in the suburbs of Denver.

As they say on 101.5 FM, a martini is not a drink. It’s an attitude. What a cool (although almost totally empty and meaningless) thing to say!

Martini on the Rockies. Dry. With three olives.

Cheers!

The baby judging last Friday evening at the Fairfax fair turned out to be not quite what I was expecting.  Although there were babies,

                                     we did not actually judge them.

Instead, we judged the aspirants to the Little Mr. and Miss Fairfax crown.  These were 4-to 6-year-olds who were dressed to the nines.

                                       A few hopefuls waiting for their turn on stage.

I had two fellow judges:

                                             Rob and Jesse, who will be a sophomore at the University of Missouri this fall and is studying nursing.

Our scoring sheet.

                                                            And you can see from this that we actually were to take points away if the kids were crying!  (Although thankfully none of them did.)

There was quite a crowd there. 

                                  (This is about half the crowd; there was a roughly equal number sitting on the other side.)

And this guy:

There were also homemade funnel cakes, which looked pretty darned good.  I was lucky I didn’t have any money on me.  (Or unlucky, depending upon how you look at it.)

We finally picked our winners, and they seemed a little stunned.  (This little girl is indeed going to be in Rob’s kindergarten class this fall.) 

 

All in all, it was a good time, and especially good to see a small rural town that is still a vibrant community, whose occupants seem genuinely proud of their tiny town.  Fairfax seemed idyllic that night–the rural America that we would all like to believe once existed and might still exist if only we were lucky enough to stumble onto it.

P. S.  I’m a little stalled on that I-cord edging for Nicola.  I picked up the stitches around the borders,     

 

and started the I-cord, of which I have about 6 inches done.

Now I’ll be sticking that pin in my eye.

As you may have noticed, I really enjoy being on the road. I’ve always liked it. When I was in my twenties, I had a job that involved a lot of travel. I liked it then, I like it now.

Okay, maybe not the plane rides, but everything else: the red convertibles, the new sights, the cacti, new yarn shops… I even like living out of a suitcase. I like it because it cuts my clothes and shoe choices to a bare mininum so that it is very easy to get dressed in the morning. (Yes, I realize that I have just revealed that under normal circumstances, I have a hard time performing the minimal task of dressing myself in the morning, a task that even low-functioning individuals are expected to master. Try not to bring that up too often and when you speak of me, speak kindly.)

It’s true that I do miss

Alex

and

Shelley

but on the other hand, as long as I’m out here, someone comes to my room every day and cleans it. I hear that’s how they do things in heaven.

And did I mention that I don’t have to cook?

Of course, some of the food and libations that you can get around the casino are not only not “home cooking,” they are downright dangerous. They sell margaritas by the yard here. I asked the bartender exactly how much margarita is, ahem, in a yard of margarita and he replied, “Forty-eight ounces.”

The guy next to me at the bar said, “Heh, heh. I like to drink a couple of these to get kind of relaxed.”

I said, “Funny you should mention that, because I like to drink of a couple of these to get kind of hospitalized.”

But back to my original point: there is, however, a downside to being on the road for a long stretch of time on your own. And that would be that you start to go just the tiniest bit insane.

Just the tiniest bit.

You know you are slipping over the edge when you start engaging baristas at Starbucks and cashiers at CVS in long, inappropriately involved conversations because you are so starved for live, human interaction.

Thankfully, knitting can come to your rescue. When I started to get a little weird, I just hopped in the car and cruised over to Gail’s Knits on Sahara. This is the place to be when in Vegas. Not only did Gail set me up with a fine little travel bag for Icarus, but she put me onto some Cascade Fixation:

Sarah, take note. I now have a respectable bag for my portable knitting.

Even better, though, I was welcomed into the little group of knitters who were hanging out at the shop. It was a better corrective than Prozac. And in such good company, I made considerable progress on Icarus:

Hello, I’m Icarus and I am notoriously difficult to photograph.

Revitalized and rehumanized, I drove back to the Strip in a much better state of mind. All thanks to the fine knitters of Las Vegas! And I gotta hand it to them, these people knit in temperatures that routinely reach 105 degrees. That’s some serious commitment to the fiber arts.

On my drive back, I saw a Chevy truck with a special Nevada license plate that read, “Nevada: Rich in Art.”

Huh.

Let’s play a game, shall we? I will say, “Nevada,” and you say all the words and phrases that come to your mind in the next 60 seconds.

Did “rich in art” make the list?

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Back on the Strip, I made it down to the Palace of the Mighty Caesar:

Rich in art. Or whatever you’d call that.

And leaving no Vegas stone unturned, I caught the Bellagio Fountain in full eruption:

Drought? What drought?

Alas, the time has come to leave Fabulous Las Vegas, but I will certainly never forget all the fine people I have met here and the good times I have had.

Viva, my friends.

My husband Rob has a new job starting this fall.  He is going to be teaching art at a small school nearby, and when I say “small,”  I do mean small.  160 kids K-12.  (The 4th grade has 6 kids.)  He is also, because everyone does double duty at these small schools, the librarian.  And because he is the librarian, he has an extended contract and has been at the school working all this week even though school doesn’t officially start until next week.

So, Monday or Tuesday, he was asked by the school secretary if he wanted to judge babies at the town fair on Friday night.  “People in town want to meet the new teachers,” she said.  Also, apparently, the new teachers’ spouses, because I am going to be judging babies tonight as well.

How in the world does one judge other peoples’ babies?  Are they going to give me some criteria to follow?  A rubric?  Do I take off points if the baby cries?  It’s great that the community wants to meet the new teachers; I give them full marks for that.  But this particular activity seems just as likely to make enemies of the townsfolk as friends.  What if we place the mayor’s baby dead last, for example?  Or worse, the president of the school board’s?  The pitfalls are numerous and hidden. 

Oh, Lordy.  Good thing we both have natural charm and good looks. 

I finished the first sleeve of the Nicola cardigan the other night.

                                                    As you can see, I did decide to make these 3/4 length.  (My sister-in-law Pam agreed that this would be a good idea.  Thanks, Pam!)

The other emergent sleeve:

                                           Not yet very emergent.

Here’s the I-cord edging on the sleeve.

Did I ever mention that I really dislike knitting sleeves?  I don’t fall prey to second sock syndrome so much, but I definitely have second sleeve syndrome.  In fact, I believe I have first sleeve syndrome.  It’s unclear to me why I feel this way; no doubt it’s some deep seated moral or psychological deficiency, but there it is.  Yet I am pressing on with these sleeves.

The back:

 

I’m hoping to finish this weekend.  I’ll need to lay in some Honey Brown for that I-cord, though.

(OK, Rob just told me that apparently “babies” means children age birth to six years.  This is not reassuring.  Six-year-olds could actually be his students in Kindergarten.  Oy.)

I’ve been here in Vegas for a week now and the pyramid is starting to feel like home.

If you lived here, you’d be a dead pharaoh home by now!

The Luxor really is special. It really is. You might not know it, but at night they turn on these huge klieg lights at the top of the pyramid to create a massive shaft of light that rises up into the night sky, a column of white light that is a beacon to all those who have lost their way, who stumble in the darkness without a slot machine or a cocktail to call their own.

My friend Jen e-mailed me to call my attention to the fact that the Luxor light attracts a “solid column of very large, buzzing, flapping bugs, stretching towards the sky.”

I checked last night after dark and you know, she’s right! Oh, what a magical sight!

Next to a solid column of roiling and swarming mega-insects, these other casinos, with their phoney-baloney Statues of Liberty,

Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses yearning to bet their entire life savings at the blackjack table and take in a topless show!

their fake castles,

That is so not a real castle, dude.

and their cheesy knock-off Eiffel Towers,

Ceci n’est pas une Tour Eiffel.

just don’t measure up. Hey, when those places can show me the bugs, then we’ll talk. Until then, I’m hanging out with Cleopatra.

Cleo and I have been doing a little knitting:

This is actually the Fetal Icarus. The previous one was embryonic, but I didn’t realize that at the time.

I’ve discovered that if you take your knitting down to the poker tables, all the guys seriously underestimate you and you can really clean up. Something to keep in mind for your next trip to Vegas!

Of course, there’s more to Vegas than just gambling. There’s also the

Thunder from Down Under Show Atomic Testing Museum, conveniently located near where I am working and highly educational regarding chiselled pecs and abs an important chapter of this great nation’s history. (Hi Alex!)

I was able to pick up a couple of nice picture postcards from the Atomic Testing Museum shop, which features all sorts of strange and wonderful products having to do with nuclear weapons and the Nevada Test Site:

Irradiating the bejeezus out of Utah since 1951!

Look close. There’s a different mushroom cloud in every letter. Someone, at least, has stopped worrying and learned to love the bomb.

Well, I gotta tell you, today I got nothing.  Nothing, nothing, nothing.  Plus I’m feeling just a little cranked out over this whole “back to school” idea.  My free days are growing short and I’m beginning to feel a little frantic, running around madly trying to cram in as much relaxation and fun as possible into these last precious days of summer.  That can make a girl tense and prone to snap at her loved ones.

So, in lieu of true blog content, I offer these photos of the day.

                                                                                         Harvey, with his brand-new backpack laden with brand-new school supplies.  He’s ready.

                                     Hugo, who says, “I don’t really want you to go back to school.  I like it when you’re home all day.”  I do too, Mr. Puppy, I do too.

                                   My progress on the Nicola cardigan.  I’m coming along on that first sleeve.  I think I’ll make these 3/4 length.  Also, I decided to finish all the edges on this thing with applied I-cord.  I know that I will want to stick a pin in my eye regret this decision 5 minutes after I start the I-cord and discover that I’ve only knitted 1/4 inch of it and then do a quick mental calculation of how long it will take me to go around the whole durned edge at that rate.  Good times ahead.

                                      Brown wool and chocolate angora combed together.  I want to spin this up real, real bad.  But first I must finish spinning this:

                                            Lime green superwash wool that I’m spinning to a sockweight 2-ply.  I have a plan for this which involves planting little tufts of the combed waste fiber into the 2-ply as I ply it.  Won’t that be fun?  (Picture the tufted yarn as the sock cuffs with some plain 2-ply for the feet.)

And finally,

                                               Rob.  With an egg. 

‘Cause nothing’s sexier than a man holding a hard-boiled egg.

Just to prove to you that I still knit, that I don’t just go from desert town to desert town zipping around in red convertibles, drinking whiskey sours, and shooting craps doing serious research on Cold War history, I give you Exhibit A:

Fetal Icarus, made from luscious Alchemy Haiku, color 41a—Vermillion

And isn’t it fitting in a town like Las Vegas to be knitting a pattern called Icarus? Icarus, the boy whose hubris led him to fashion flimsy wings out of $100 bills and fly over to the high stakes gaming tables where he proceeded to lose everything and was subsequently forced to work as a male stripper in the “Bareback” show over at the MGM Grand. His personal humiliation became complete when he was asked to perform in backless feathered chaps.

Or have I got that wrong? I always did get kind of mixed up on my mythology.

Anyway, I’ve been getting accustomed to my surroundings here in Little Egypt:

The Sphinx, looking vaguely perplexed, watches planes land at McCarran Airport.

The Luxor wedding chapel was hopping over the weekend. It is conveniently located right across the way from the food court, which means that you and your wedding party can enjoy a round of Big Macs right before the big event.

No, I don’t want any fries with that, but can I get the Honorable Estate of Holy Matrimony?

The Luxor chapel pledges to organize your dream wedding, to make it a day that you will never forget.

No matter how hard you try.

But seriously, I don’t think a Vegas-style quickie union is necessarily less likely to work out than any other marriage. My great Aunt Mary Frances and my great Uncle Boone were married in Reno at one of these kinds of chapels and they were together for decades. Until he died at an advanced age just a few years ago, in fact.

In the spirit of full disclosure, it must be noted that sometime fairly early in their marriage she threw a massive lead crystal ashtray at his head in an attempt to kill him, but he nimbly ducked and all was forgiven in the long run. And they do say that successful couples need to learn how to fight.

But the best part of being at Luxor over the weekend was watching these two energetic musicians perform at the Nefertiti Lounge. One plays keyboards and the other plays saxophone. They do mostly covers, but they do them with such verve and energy that their performances often outshine the originals. I can’t stop photographing the saxophonist because he’s so mesmerizing.

Here he transmutes into pure energy.

I was out early on Sunday morning for a run on The Strip, which turned out to be a nice way to get some time to myself. Note the general scarcity of people in this photo:

I reckon everyone was at church.

Unfortunately, cell phone reception is not that great in my hotel room. But what do you expect? I’m smack dab behind the Sphinx and one of the great pyramids. There have to be some trade-offs.

So I’ve taken to calling Alex from the outdoor pool area, which has given me the chance to say something that I’ve wanted to say all my life:
“Hey, baby. I’m calling from the pool.”

Living the dream, living the dream.

More news and, with any luck, more Icarus, on Thursday…

Last Tuesday evening, seized by a wild and restless longing, I started a new project.

 

This is the Nicola pullover from Simply Shetland, and I hadn’t even really been contemplating making it.  So, I found some likely yarn in the stash (that I had already swatched in stockinette) and cast on.  Of course, being constitutionally unable to leave well enough alone, I turned it into a cardigan and made a few other changes to the pattern:  set in the sleeves a bit more, included short row shoulder shaping, changed the neckline shaping, and naturally I plan on knitting the sleeves from the top down.  Other than that, it’s just like the picture.  (Except for the color and the yarn.)

Here’s my progress as of last night.

 

I started the first sleeve last night while watching The 4400.

Here’s a detail of the stitch pattern.  Simple, yet effective.

The yarn is Neveda “Alpaca,” 70% wool, 20% acrylic, 10% alpaca, which I bought several years ago from Elann.  Some while back, I tried to coerce this yarn into becoming an Alice Starmore Aran sweater, with somewhat limited success.  Alice Starmore, knitting genius notwithstanding, knits everything to a stunningly tight gauge, and this yarn, while making beautiful cables, had approximately the hand of cast iron at her gauge.  Plus, my hands cramped so bad from knitting to that gauge I could scarcely hold a pencil.  I ripped it out.  Now it is becoming the Nicola cardigan with very good grace.

And, because I spent a good portion of my weekend outside in 1 million degree heat watching Rob play tennis in a local tournament, (and he kicked some booty, I might add!) and one cannot reasonably knit a woolly sweater in 1 million degree heat, I also started a new pair of socks.

 

Isn’t this just the prettiest, girliest sock cuff imaginable?  Even Rob, secure in his masculinity as he is, has not been tempted to say “Are those for me?”