Dear Ted:

I very much appreciate your restrained response to my current situation and your gentle exhortations to finish what is a less-than-enjoyable task which, once completed, will open the door to countless hours of enjoyment.

(If anyone can diagram that sentence, could you please scan your diagram and e-mail it to me?)

If you would indulge me further, I would like the opportunity to restate and clarify one point.

The fault for any confusion is entirely my own. As the philosopher Emo Phillips teaches, "Ambiguity is the devil's volleyball." So when I wrote "I left my knitting -- all three WIPs -- at the office...", what I meant to say was, "I left my knitting -- all three WIPs including the dogforsaken, mothra-freakin' lace I was going to rip back before I can start anything even vaguely approaching interesting -- at the office."

Again, for your grammarians out there, diagrams would be appreciated.

I contemplated your underlying message, however, and took to heart your advise. I live a mere 10 minutes from my office. I have a key. I am neither disabled or under house arrest. I am a strong, confident woman. Or something like that. No "awfulizing and catastrophizing" here. So after lunch today I am going to hie my little hiney downtown, retrieve my knitting, and return to my abode, at which time I plan to park my tuchas in an easy chair, prop my feet on a pouffe, and listen to Midnight Special on WFMT while drinking a pot of decaf Ceylon and eating some chocolate rice cakes. And I'm going to knit. (Oh. My. Dog. I believe I have officially become an 80 year old woman named Lavinia living in Ogallala, Nebraska.)

In closing, my dear Theodore, please accept my sincere gratitude for your sensitive yet forcible guidance. I am forever in your debt. If I might ever be of service to you, please allow me the opportunity to make good on my debt. I am...

Your obedient servant,

A. Gilbert

P.S. How are you enjoying your new job? I can't remember, which job did you decide to take -- Britney Spears' personal assistant, or the one with the White House? And aren't you glad you passed on the position as Senator Craig's masseuse?

MISH MOSH

There used to be a restaurant at Clark and Belden called Max's Deli. It had some pretty good food, as I recall, and little buckets of half-sours on the table. Money was tight in those days, but Myfanwe and I managed to eat out once a week, and Max's was usually our restaurant of choice.

One of the reasons we liked Max's was they served a pretty incredible bowl of chicken soup they called Mish Mosh. It was a huge bowl of well-made chicken soup with a matzah ball, a kreplach, fine egg noodles, rice, and kasha. It cost $6.95, came with a generous bread basket, and was enough to keep a person satisfied for many hours.

The only reason I'm telling you about this is that this post is going to be a mish mosh; a little beit of everything, mixed together.

1967

I've been doing a little work in my spare time on organizing my family tree and going through pictures. This photo is from a family reunion in 1967. I was three years old. That's me, fourth from the right in the front row. My mom is in the fourth row from the front (I think -- it's hard to count the rows in this picture) and fourth from the left. She's the one in glasses looking off to the side. My father is two rows back -- separated by my Uncle Joe, my Aunt Nan's husband. This is only significant in that, when this photo was taken, my parents' marriage was literally crumbling. My mom moved out within weeks.

My parents had me as a last-ditch effort to save their marriage. (What -- they couldn't tell from the first four kids that number five wasn't going to be able to save them?) Anyway, when this photo was taken, I was failing at my reason for living.

There are very few pictures in existence wherein the three of us appear together. And even where we appear in the same photo, there is a distance between us. Hmm. Go figure.

ON THE NEEDLES

I am still stuck on the Swallowtail Shawl. It's psychological at this point. I just can't pick it up and rip back the last two rows. I just can't do it.

Though I may have stumbled upon the proper incentive while perusing Ravelry.

I just downloaded the pattern for Evelyn Clark's Labyrinth Lace Shawl. The pattern was $11.99, but well worth it -- it's 25 pages long! Every row is written out and charted!

I haven't decided if I should make it in my extra cone of gray silk from ColourMart or in the olive cashmere -- also from ColourMart -- that I am frogging and starting over. The two fibers both have great things going for them...the silk is amazingly drapey, and the cashmere is as soft as a baby's bottom. So choosing is going to be difficult. But one thing is for certain -- I am not going to do anything with it until I have ripped back the two erroneous rows on the Swallowtail. As Mrs. Slocombe used to say, "I am unanimous in that!"

WHAT I SAW ON MY SUMMER VACATION

Sorry for the prolonged silence. Myfanwe, Norbert and I were on holiday in the middle of nowhere, doing as little as possible, and eating as much as possible.

It was a glorious success.



We stayed in a little (4 bedroom) cottage in Southwestern Michigan. This is the view of the woods from the dining room. The view from the other rooms looks basically the same. And yet we are only a short walk down a private road to a lovely private beach on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan.

This has been a very wet summer we can remember in the 15 years we've been staying here, and almost all of the woodlands around us are back-dune wetlands at the present time. The mosquitoes are worse they have ever been. And water seems to have gotten into the phone lines, giving all communication and very loud crackle and preventing even the most rudimentary (i.e. dial up) internet connection.

This was difficult for me. I discovered that a laundromat in town (5 miles) offered free wifi. You could see me at odd hours, parked outside the laundromat, checking my e-mail on my laptop. That presented its own problems, since apparently my laptop battery only holds 10 minutes worth of power now. As Roseanne Roseannadana would say, "If it isn't one thing, it's another."

I'M IN! I'M IN! I'M IN!

Just call me LaceWeightGuy.

My Ravelry invitation came in the mail whilst I was away. Thank Bob! I thought it would never arrive. But it has, and it is absolutely everything I had hoped. And almost none of the things I had feared! I've already identified several lovely projects I can't wait to start!

If you are already in Ravelry, will you be my friend?

Has anyone knit the Kiri shawl? I can't, for the life of me, understand the cast on and setup instructions. I'd be much obliged.

NOW I DUCK OUT AGAIN.

I am cooking the food for the bat mitzvah of a dear friend/neighbor next Saturday. They are expecting 200 people, and I'm not exactly what you would call prepared. Oh, and I forgot to get help, and most of the people who assist with prep are out of town. So I probably won't have time to blog/knit/read/sleep or do anything else until after the bat mitzvah. And then, after a day of solid sleeping, I expect to be back to normal.

Quote of the Day

"Did I tell you I rode in a car last week with a woman who was a professional elephant trainer?"

-- Words you never expect to hear come
out of your wife's mouth...ever.--