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Petey's Birthday Punkin Hat

Pattern: Kurbis baby hat from Sonnentaler
Yarn: Vanna's Choice in Terra Cotta and Kelly Green
Needles: size 7 dpn

Started this last night and finished this morning. The only mods were the yarn substitution, and the fact that I used size 7s for the whole project. I think it turned out adorable, and I plan to use the rest of the yarn to make one for Cali, too.

I finished it literally on the way to the birthday party (which, appropriately, was at the pumpkin patch) so there was no time for any good finished object photos, but this is a cute picture nonetheless.

Two years ago...

...I wrote this post. How things have changed. Proof that life moves on, change does happen, one day when you least expect it. Happy birthday, Little Pete. Your auntie loves you so much. I'll never forget that rainy October morning when I held you for the first time and danced with you to the radio in the kitchen.

Rainstorm

It's storming all over California today. Between energetic bouts of rain, the wind blows in warm and restless gusts. My heart sings out to this weather--I've loved autumnal rainstorms all my life--but my soul feels worn and tired. I, myself, am as unsettled and groundless as the wind, looking for something to hold on to, waiting for the weather to settle. I'm desperate for change.

It all makes me rather melancholy. Last night the power went out, again, and for some reason I panicked, lying in the dark silence, listening to the wind tapping at the window. I felt alone in a void; not even the soft brush of Cali's hair against my cheek or the deep regular breathing of my husband next to me made me feel any less isolated. I prayed for the power to come back on, for the glow of the bedside lamp and the soft whirr of the ceiling fan.

For some reason all this darkness, of thought and feeling, is making me think back on my life's most contented moments. I sort through them, like a mental stack of photographs, as if looking at them enough will unlock the secret to happiness in my present.

Most of these memories are not extraordinary in and of themselves, they're simple moments, some even mundane, but they each hold a specific feeling of serenity that I would do almost anything to recapture.

Stepping off a curb in front of an antique shop in a little Texas hill country town, the notes of the Stones' "Dead Flowers" drifting on the hot evening air from a dancehall nearby.

Leaning against an overturned boat on a Spanish beach smoking a hand-rolled cigarette and watching the sunrise over the Mediterranean.

Taking a hot shower in the first apartment my husband and I lived in together, and having him bring me a glass of wine.

Driving home from work one evening back in Santa Cruz and seeing the bonfires dotted along the beach.

Making love on white sheets while gauzy curtains blew in the breeze.

I study these moments, trying to put a mental finger on what about them was so exquisite, while other, more outwardly remarkable moments, fell short. I wonder if I will ever learn to be happy.

Night Workers

If I were a poet, that's what I'd write about. People who worked in the middle of the night. Men who loaded trains, emergency room nurses with their gentle hands. Night clerks in hotels, cab drivers on graveyard, waitresses in all-night coffee shops. They knew the world, how precious it was when a person remembered your name, the comfort of a rhetorical question, "How's it going, how's the kids?" They knew how long the night was. They knew the sound life made as it left. It rattled, like a slamming screen door in the wind. Night workers lived without illusions, they wiped dreams off counters, they loaded freight. They headed back to the airport for one last fare.

-from White Oleander by Janet Fitch

I've always loved this passage in Fitch's book, having been a night worker of one sort or another for most of my life. I come by my preference for being up at odd hours honestly; my mother was a night nurse for years, and even before she graduated nursing school and began working true graveyards, she would stay up late, especially when my dad was traveling for work, and she would keep me up in bed with her. I'm rather famous in family circles for having entertained everyone with my Ed McMahon impression ("Heeeeeeeere's Johnny!") at three years old.

All my life I've been most productive during the hours when most of the rest of the Western Hemisphere is asleep. I've written many a college paper, organized a kitchen cabinet, knitted a sock and even labored with Cali at three in the morning. I remember a night, long ago, when I was travelling in Europe. I got off the train in an underground station in Barcelona, and came up into a street filled with music, dancing and revelry. I asked around to find out what time it was, and to my surprise found out it was four in the morning--on a weekday! I felt like I had come home to my people. I still have an especial fondness for Catalonia and the late-night hours of its citizens.

A couple of years ago, after years working as a bartender, I took a true third shift job in the emergency room, and found the real truth in Fitch's words. It is impossible to hang on to illusions when you spend night after night looking into the eyes of the dying, the suicidal, the desperate and afraid. What illusions can be left when you've seen the reality of the homeless and drug-addicted who come to ask for a prescription for a sandwich? The elderly for whom an ER nurse is the first person to change their blood and feces-soaked diapers in days? The wild-eyed and grief-stricken mother who would give everything she had to see her child take another breath? No, there are no illusions after one has seen such things.

Emergency room workers, especially those on nights, are a hardy and humorous bunch. They have to be, to keep coming back to clean up blood and vomit while the healthy, in body and mind, sleep. You would never know from their crass jokes, and careless demeanor how each incident adds another grain of sand to the weight they carry in their chests.

At six am, after the last cup of coffee has been drained, the half-eaten donuts thrown in the trash, the report given to the freshly showered and shampoo-smelling day staff, they leave and get in their cars. The wry smiles fade from their faces, the upright and gritty posture slumps. They drive home through the misty dawn thinking of the night just passed. And alone in the car, with no one to share with, the humor and bravado ebbs, leaving sadness and exhaustion. And when they get home, they hug their children tight.

February No-Longer-Pregnant Lady

Pattern: February Lady by Pamela Wynne
Yarn: Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece in Cavern

When I first started this sweater, I chose it with my big pregnant belly in mind, but as you can see, the sweater's finally done, and the belly is now a laughing, crawling, mischievous, six-month-old.

My Ravelry notes tell me that this poor little sweater sat dormant for nearly eight months waiting for its second sleeve to be bound off and its ends sewn in. And it's finally been done.

I am so happy with how it turned out. It fits just beautifully, although I'm a little worried about stretching, what with the cotton content in the yarn. Hopefully the fact that the yarn has already been washed (it's frogged and salvaged yarn from another project) will minimize that.



I knit the smallest size on size 7 needles for an even slightly smaller size, and I'm glad I did. I prefer a snug, cropped look for this sweater.

I've been saving these pewter-looking buttons for this sweater, and I think they suit it perfectly.



Overall, a perfect, versatile little fall coverup.

Mother

Hands cool and dry

Brushes hair off a small forehead

Heart heavy with the sweet piercing love

That makes beauty something to weep over

How easily she could lay her life down

For this child

She lives for its peace

Its happiness

She shares her body with it

Her belly a pillow

Her breasts comfort

Their milk nourishment

Her voice a serenade and a promise of safety

She wishes sometimes that she were the child

Securely sleeping its milk-scented dreams

Untouchable to the world outside