Perfectly time

A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.

-General George S. Patton

A quote like that can only mean one thing is afoot Chez Harlot, and that thing, my stalwart friends, is my old nemesis... home renovation. I've spoken before about the fact that my house has, to be rather frank - some problems. It's a tiny Victorian semi, 120 years old, so some things about it are a given, and It's about a thousand times better than when we came to live in it, when there was a hole in the kitchen wall that went to the outside and allowed every single raccoon in the neighbourhood to use this building as their local whorehouse/crackden -but it wouldn't be very hard to upgrade a family home past that, if you know what I mean. An eviction notice to any mammals who weren't us - coupled with a piece of plywood and a few nails made us feel like we were living like royalty. We've got new walls and some of that fancy "insulation" in most of the house now, the kitchen was redone 8 years ago, the piece of crap lean-to on the back of the house became my office, we redid our bedroom, laid new floors in the downstairs... It's very slow going, but we get there.

Now, this wee house is only a 3 bedroom and they aren't big bedrooms, so Meg and Sam have shared for years, and Amanda had her own room. Amanda moved out recently (months ago, actually, but I didn't want to mention it in case she wanted to come home - I didn't want her to have to 'fess up to the blog that she had changed her mind) she's happy, 19, in her second year of college and doing just fine, and as much as sometimes I wish she would come back... I don't think she's going to.

I know I should be happy about that, motherhood is, after all - about putting yourself out of business and creating functioning humans who do leave you if you do it right, and most days I am thrilled that she's moving along properly, because we were totally starting to drive each other crazy, and she's not quite out in the big bad world, since she's moved in with my mother - who is closer to the college and work, and is making for an excellent intermediate step towards total and complete independence. (It has taken me a while to wrap my head around the idea that moving in with my mother is a step towards independence - since for me it was moving away from the same woman.. but I'm learning. My mother is a very different grandmother than she was a parent - the proof of this being that she has given my children cream soda floats, which when I was growing up were treated as the nutritional equivalent of heroin and turned up with about the same frequency.. but I digress.)

In any case, Amanda moved out and I just let her room sit there. I moved nothing. I didn't even close the door. Her room sat there (since March, if you must know) and her sisters (still crowded into their one wee space) eyed this room with the focus of vultures circling a carcass - and they had absolutely no regard for my emotional process. They argued and dreamed continually about the day that they would no longer share a room, and the room taunted them. I couldn't commit. I don't know why it was hard for me, but it felt unfaithful to Amanda, who was understandably hesitant to see her room in our home wiped from the earth - and so the room still sat there.

Eventually, Amanda took most of her stuff out, and Megan started talking about just taking the room. A guerilla move. Just waltzing in there and installing her things like a squatter and that would be that.. and while she was talking about usurping property right out from under me, that's when I woke up and smelled the coffee. Our house was too tiny to have a room unused, and Meg should be using it. It wasn't reasonable to hold a room for the possibility that an adult child who was totally old enough to be out of it would want to come back, and waiting for it to feel right, or for it to be perfect just wasn't going to happen. Amanda was absolutely not going to say "Yeah man, give my sister my room, I don't need a safety net, I'm sure I'll never, ever need my mother again." (or at least she was never going to say it like she meant it.) I was never going to feel like I should close that door on her. I was never going to want to paint over the yellow daisies I painted on the walls for Amanda when she was 14. I was never going to want to see the loft bed torn down, even though there isn't anybody in this house who's short enough to sleep in it anymore. It was never going to be perfect. It was never going to feel right...

but it is time, and now while the room is empty is the right time to rip down the loft bed, paint and tidy up the room and make it Meg's. Time marches, and we renovate in it's wake.

So that's what we're doing.

Many Questions, Some Answers

Since I am still busy knitting the worlds most beautiful scarves, which also happen to be the worlds least bloggable topic (I am finding it hard to be intriguing about 1x1 rib for days on end) I'm going to do a little Q&A.

Katie:
I went to my local LYS to look at the Noro. I thought it felt too much like straw to knit into something so gorgeous. Does it soften in the wash?

The Silk Garden does for sure, although it's never going to be as soft as a pure merino or something like that. I find it totally approachable after a wash, and I have a couple of hats out of it an don't find them itchy at all, though I have a high wool-itch threshold. I'm willing to sacrifice that tiny bit of a rustic nature for the pretty colours and the way it wears like iron. The Kureon's another story. It softens some too, but always feels a little more scratchy than the Silk Garden. It's the nature of the beast.

Alia:
Would The Scarf work as well in Kureon? I've got a lot of singles in a variety of eye-popping colours and I'd love to stash-bust rather than running out to buy Silk Garden. (Oh, gods, MORE yarn?!?!)

Sure it would work, though have a slightly different look. Mick made one. Hello Yarn has a pretty one, Saartje did it too. Check it out.

Dianne:
Seriously? Sculpted butter?!?!? Well, I suppose it doesn't melt like ice, but I'm curious, what happens when it softens? Does it still keep it's form?

Seriously, sculpted butter. It's even got its own wikipedia page here. I'm sure that these dairy glories do lose their shape when it warms up, but they keep them in refrigerated cases at the Royal. (Also, Canada is cold.) I'm seriously interested in what they do with a multitude of kilos of butter when the thing is over though.

Knittripps:
Do they use real butter for the butter sculptures? The Iowa State Fair has butter sculptures but I think it is actually colored lard.

They do use real butter, and the Iowa State Fair should be ashamed of itself (if they are using lard, and we'll just consider it a filthy rumour until it's confirmed or denied) if that's true. Butter is the one true medium - and doesn't "lard sculpture" just sound wrong?

Karen:
Could you share the hat specifics? All the how to's? I'd love to make that hat to match my scarf.

Sure. I started with Le Slouch (a great pattern, Meg's made a bunch of them, just as Wendy wrote it. Also - have you seen Wendy's new book? Custom Knits? Very nice, and worth the price of admission just for the instructions on how to make a duct tape mannequin.) and about 74 stitches and worked 1x1 rib in the round on 4mm needles, striping as I did for the scarf. When I had about 5cm, I switched to 4.5mm needles and began to work in stockinette, increasing to 114 stitches in that first round. (Increase as you like. I used a simple yarn over, and worked them through the back loops on the next round to close the hole.) I carried on, still striping, until the hat measured about 12cm from the cast on edge. When I was there, I decreased at six equal points around the hat. (k17, k2tog - six times) then worked a round plain. On the next row I decreased at one stitch less (k16 - k2tog) and kept going like that, alternating a plain round with a round of decreasing -with ever fewer stitches between the decreases. (Interesting fact: If you k2tog for the decreases, the spiral on the top of the hat moves clockwise. If you ssk instead, you get a counterclockwise one.)
When I had got down to the last few rounds I worked only rows of decreases because I don't like hats to have nipples on the top, and that's the only way I know how to avoid it. The last round was just K2tog six times, then I broke the yarn, drew it through those six stitches and bob's yer uncle. Hat.

(Disclaimer: I winged this sucker, and I'm not guaranteeing those instructions are right. Your mileage may vary.)

Kim:
Can you tell us how you are doing the slipped stitches at the beginning and end of each row? I feel like that will make a big difference in how polished the finished scarf will look.

It does change it, and it hides the colours you're carrying up the side beautifully. I'm doing it by slipping the first stitch of every row purlwise (or tip to tip, depending on how you like your phrasing) with the yarn in back. ( I think that Brooklyn Tweed said that he slipped the first and last stitch of every other row, but to each their own, and the end result is similar - though if you do it my way you don't need to know what row you're on when you come back from getting coffee.)

I'm being a little bit careful to keep the tension even...it's easy to give it a tug, especially on the yarn switching side, and have one selvedge tighter than the other. Done right, it's pretty slick.

Convivialiddell:
What's an apple dumpling? Like a turnover?

Nothing like a turnover, and I feel tremendous pity for the empty, shallow husk of a life you have been leading if you've never had one of these. I just so happens that I took pictures of the process. (Once a blogger...)
The whole shebang starts with a whole apple, that's cored, peeled and spiral cut into a continuous slice.

The the core gets stuffed with brown sugar, butter and cinnamon, and wrapped in a piece of pastry (and more butter, sugar and cinnamon.)

Into the oven they go, right there at the fair, and the sugar, butter and cinnamon melt into the apple as it cooks and makes a sort of yummy sauce. The outside is crispy and has more cinnamon and sugar on it.

When it comes out of the oven they put it in a tin while it's still hot and add ice cream and top it with butterscotch. You can get it without that stuff, but frankly my dear, I don't know why you would. Granted, you have to skip nine meals to make up for the calories, but who cares? It's once a year. (Although really - that's only because I don't know where to get them the rest of the time - but I'd rather pretend I'm virtuous enough to limit it. )

Many people:

Did you know your feed at bloglines isn't working? I didn't know you were posting. Please fix it.

I know. Ken knows. The problem is on the bloglines end and they are working on it. Apparently the "RSS feed is stuck". Probably has butterscotch on it. Sorry about that.

Randomly on a Monday

1. I finished the scarf.

2. I sort of made a hat to go with.

(Loosely based on Le Slouch, but not slouchy and with more stitches to account for the different gauge.)

3. Me, Rachel H and Denny went to the Royal Winter Fair. Denny plied on the streetcar. (Being able to ply on the streetcar is one way that spindles have it over wheels for productivity.)

Nobody made direct eye contact.

5. We went to the fleece auction to not buy fleeces.

6. That didn't go very well.

We bought 4. (I am sharing them with Denny and Rachel H, so it's not like that's really 4. It's like... 1.3, and besides we sent them away with the Wellington people to be processed so it's not like we have them, so they don't count.)

7. We were not the only ones.

(Our group seen here making the spinners gang sign. We invented it last year.)

8. We saw the world's largest rutabaga.

The best cows.

Ate the best apple dumpling.

Saw the best butter sculptures.

8. Rachel made friends.

9. We got advice.

10. Then the cows went home.

So we went home too.

(Sort of.)

I just love the Royal.

(Ps. Idon'tthinkIcanstopwiththescarves.)

I used to have other projects

The scarf.

It's all about the scarf.

It's so much about the scarf that last night, by the time I got to Lettuce Knit for knit night, I had fully accepted that it is so much about this scarf that I was going to have to make at least one more, and I headed straight for where the Silk Garden should be.

It wasn't. Megan is out. She doesn't have any. I was so shaken by this, having become so involved with the scarf, that for several really weird moments, all I could think was "Oh man, what am I going to do? I'm not going to have anything to knit."