In Which Knitcrit Contemplates Giving Up and Finds Herself Wondering What, Exactly, That Would Look Like

What is wrong with knitcrit? Surely she can't be unhappy about this spectacular sweater, which is all finished but for the blocking and weaving in:























It's the Elizabeth Zimmermann bottom-up sweater from _Knitting Without Tears_ with a yoke design borrowed (and modified a bit) from a ski sweater in _The Opinionated Knitter_. The whole thing was done in Princess, a merino-angora-synthetic blend with great stitch definition. I realized somewhere in the middle of the yoke that I had inadvertently chosen the colors of the Indian flag - so patriotic! - but I think/hope that what the colors will say to the average viewer will be more along the lines of "early spring" - because nothing says spring like a fairisle ski sweater, right? It's for db, and it's big enough so it should last her well into next winter.

And db might need it, because it's possible we'll be living in Montreal. Basically, I went on the job market this year because Todd's been underemployed for several years and we really can't continue being this poor in Manhattan. There are also some issues at my university - a top-down restructuring was pushed through by the a*shole chancellor; what it amounts to is a dumbing down of the general education curriculum in order to boost graduation rates. The restructuring's been savaged in the Chronicle and now some of the junior colleges are just plain old refusing to implement it, which bodes well for us at the senior colleges in the system, but still, overall things are not looking too good for public education in New York City. Ugh.























If only the photo would display properly. Hate blogger. Hate iphone.

So the past three weeks have been consumed with job talks - one at a fancy University in Montreal and the other at an an Ivy League school in Philadelphia. I had less than a week's notice for the Montreal talk and I don't think I did a great job; for the job in Philly I gave a slightly better talk but there are some issues with the school as a whole that make me worry. I don't know. I feel totally spent and somehow sure that neither one is going to translate into an actual offer. I'm trying to be happy and grateful for the opportunities, but really what I feel is tired and mad at myself for not doing a better job, and that combined with garden variety annoyances with Todd and our apartment have conspired to put me in a bad mood.

That and today I got db's first preschool rejection letter, and I know that there's nothing more going on here than a huge number of kids vying for a very limited number of spots, but I was haunted by the fear that this was somehow all My Fault and We Could Have Done Something More. And of course the evolving preschool situation also makes me feel like we can't stay in Manhattan - we can't even really afford any of these freaking preschools unless Todd suddenly manages to get a full-time job - but where would we go? The northern jersey suburbs where we can feel isolated and I can enjoy the hellish commute to Manhattan? Somewhere in Queens where we can feel similarly isolated and the commute would be even worse, not to mention the schools?

Is it ridiculous for someone like me to feel trapped and hopeless? Probably.

On the bright side, the British version of Being Human is pretty good and Todd's making a nice dinner even as I type this grumpy post.

Delhi ate my brain and then pooped it into an open sewer

Ah, Delhi. Who knew that you would be ravaged, wrecked and otherwise generally destroyed by the upcoming Commonwealth Games? It didn't have to be this way - with the right management, you are capable of producing wonders like the Delhi Metro: built on budget and on schedule, clean, fast, beautiful, air conditioned. But the Indian government has had seven - SEVEN, count 'em - years to get ready for the games and it's come to this: the entire central part of the city is a torn-up dengue-mosquito breeding construction site from hell and the games are a week away. Today in a rickshaw I passed one of the games venues and noticed that the games countdown clock had stopped working: it's possible the clock just broke, but it's equally possible that someone disabled it since at this point all it's doing is reminding everyone exactly how hopelessly behind schedule everything is.

I wish I could conjure up the energy to say more, but setting up a household in Delhi has basically rendered me catatonic, and all writing energy has been directed towards field notes. I considered setting up a blog for posting my field notes, but for now anyway I think that's a little more pressure than I need, given everything else.

No knitting has happened except the hour it took to put the finishing touches on this sweater, modeled by a walkin', talkin' ever-changing, ever-charming db. This was my first knitting kit: it was a gift from a friend and while I normally don't use variegated yarn, I am happy with the result. The yarn was, I think, misti alpaca sportweight 50 pima cotton/50 silk: nice to knit with amazing drape; it's also incredibly soft, and what I like most about it is usually a yarn this soft has pilling issues (Debbie Bliss Cashmerino, anyone?) but this one is wearing like iron. The pattern was Spring Garden Tee by Alana Dakos (aka Never Knot Knitting).























I hope I get my blogging grove back soon - I do genuinely love writing, but so much happens in a day here that I generally don't know where to start. That and after a while I find that speaking Hindi puts a real damper on English. Not that my Hindi is setting the world on fire, either. So basically I don't speak anything well at the moment.

Cardigan Confessional Redux

I had this plan to make db a blanket; loyal readers will recall that there was a lot of pattern research and swatching and hand wringing and finally a decision to make db a blanket in Blue Sky Alpaca Silky Alpaca (50/50 silk/alpaca) in the most beautiful silver-gray color imaginable.

But then my aunt gave me a hand knit blanket that I had made for her son, and Todd's mother gave me the blanket made by Great Aunt Nettie and Todd's mother's friend gave me a hand crocheted blanket and THEN the mother of one of my oldest and closest friends gave me a jaw-droppingly stunning hand knit blanket.

































The photos are from January, which is a sad meditation on how busy I have been these past few months. Anyway. How many hand knit blankets does one baby need, particularly given the fact that all we ever put her in anyway are those overpriced Halo sleep sacks because we are paranoid about SIDS?

I did make some limited progress on the silk alpaca blanket, but upon realizing that I had made a slight error 20 rows after the fact, I kind of lost interest and drowned my frustrated sorrows in a little worsted-weight instant gratification - so there was the aviator cap phase and also the pink top-down raglan, which is now finished and adorable.


















Cute, eh? Db is currently obsessed with buttons, so I am leaving them off for the time being.

So I decided that there were better uses for my beautiful silk alpaca; currently I'm about 3 rows into this vintage-esque cardigan for me -

http://www.garnstudio.com/lang/en/visoppskrift.php?d_nr=88&d_id=17&lang=us

It's a freebie from Drops. I'm hoping that I finish it by Christmas.

Cardigan confessional

I decided that I wanted to knit db a cardigan for spring. Because spring has more or less sprung here in the city, I also decided that I needed a pattern written for worsted weight in order to have a chance in hell of finishing it in time. Enter Little Coffee Bean, a top-down baby raglan freebie pattern on Ravelry.















Yeah, I know it's pink. In fact, it's two shades of pink. Technically, the colors are "Mulberry" and "Orchid," but I think we can just call a spade a spade here. Next thing you know I'll be buying db Disney Princess products. I'm so ashamed.
















Maybe my taste has been warped by extreme sleep deprivation. About three weeks ago, db's sleep pattern changed - basically, she no longer sleeps for more than 3 hours at a time and when she wakes up she almost immediately becomes hysterically upset. Teething, growth spurt, developmental leap, night terrors, hunger - take your pick. The almighty boob normally calms her down, but of course that has meant some pretty rough nights for the bearer of the boob.

Finally free from striped sweater jail

I must preface this post by saying Ash and Turner, I love being able to give dear friends handknits and the all the griping that will follow this disclaimer is mainly for posterity's sake, just in case I ever feel tempted to make my own child a sweater like Alexander's. Which is to say I loved the finished product. It was just the process...















Everyone on Ravelry who noted that this is the most BORING and ETERNAL knit ever is right. I am still trying to figure out why this is the case. In terms of product, the sweater - an online freebie from Drops called b14-27 Jacket - is a clear winner. It is wearable. It is effortlessly unisex. It is adorable. It is not without reason that it's a reasonably popular knit on Ravelry. In terms of process, the sweater has novel, clever construction, being knit sideways from one buttonband to the other, and yet it is simple enough to knit while listening to music, watching movies, etc. It is easily adaptable to a wide range of yarns. It is endlessly customizable. All of these things make it potentially a great knit. And yet...















The pattern is written for alpaca, but I used Zara merino on a size five addi circular. Zara has more stitch definition than alpaca and I think it worked quite well with the pattern. However, the sweater is a huge yarn hog - it consumed nine balls of Zara and is quite heavy as a result. This is not really a problem for a sweater knit for a Canadian baby, but I think the fact that it sucked up yarn and never seemed to grow may have been the reason I felt like I would die before finishing it. It was boring right up until the last green stripe, which is saying something since I had exactly this much green yarn left:

















So broken was I by the end that I didn't even care that it was looking likely that I was going to have to buy more Zara in a no doubt different dye lot. I think maybe I believed that there wasn't enough green yarn left in the world to finish the sweater and it therefore wasn't worth getting upset since I was clearly going to spend the rest of my life and my child's college fund searching for and purchasing ball after ball of green yarn. And when it turned out be just enough green yarn, my immediate thoughts were more along the lines of "Now where are those damn brown buttons...?" rather than any elatedness over having completed the green stripes without having to switch dye lots.















The last third of the sweater was knit over a one and a half day marathon session immediately following the submission of my final grades. I took a good hard look at the sweater and then my belly and realized that if the sweater wasn't finished before my baby came, it was NEVER getting finished. And then I grabbed two seasons of Buffy and sat on the sofa and only got up to pee (a somewhat more frequent occurrence these days) and order food for delivery.















The ends were woven in and the buttons attached sitting in Central Park on a particularly golden day. My brain was possibly not entirely recovered from the marathon knitting session because I sewed on the three buttons and held up the sweater to finally, FINALLY admire the finished product only to realize that I had sewn the buttons on the wrong side of the sweater.

Nooooooo.

But the good thing about knitting is mistakes are always correctable, if not always painless.















The postal service employee I dealt with when I finally got the sweater boxed up and sent to Canada was uncharacteristically spectacularly helpful, so at least the door didn't hit me in the ass on the way out. And it really is a beautiful sweater, and it will look smashing on Alexander, so all is well that FINALLY ends well.

Except in the course of knitting this sweater I have also sadly learned that my love for my unborn child is not quite up to the boundless maternal ideal since I am absolutely certain that I will not suffer this sweater again, even for my own flesh and blood. Oh well. Better to know one's limits sooner rather than later, I guess.