Stick with me

The next few weeks are likely to be really busy with window cleaning. This is good and bad. Good because we are lucky to have work and are physically able to work. And bad because if I have just enough energy after work to either knit or blog post, I'll probably choose to knit a row before sleep. It doesn't mean I don't love you any more. We need to work full tilt when there is work to make up for the times when, for whatever reason, people don't get their windows cleaned. Our winter rainy season, when we get one, can last up to four months or so, and people generally wait it out. At some point the rain and winds and pollen and salt spray reach critical mass, and then suddenly we are inundated with jobs.

We had one of our annual giant-ass window jobs the other day, just as the current heat wave was getting started. Heat wave + window cleaning=not much fun. I did have an interesting supervisor though:

I'm used to all the spiders that we normally deal with in and around windows. We even had a pet spider living in the car, for whom we would bring the occasional fly, so that we could sit and eat our lunch while she ate hers. This little garter snake was just chillin' out, and more nervous about me sticking my camera in his face that I was of him sneaking up on me and running up my pant leg. The owners said they had recently killed a rattlesnake near the house, but after living in the Missouri Ozarks and dealing with copperheads and rattlers and moccasins underfoot, never mind the mosquitos, horseflies, ticks and chiggers, I guess I'm jaded.
There were also some gorgeous flowers, including this rose.

We can't grow roses here, too cool and too much fog, but I'm happy with the trade-off.
On the way back from the job was a pasture with fiber on the hoof.

Two llamas, rolling in the dirt, and a shorn sheep. The big brown guy was very friendly and came right over to the fence. He'd be a great addition to our back yard. I wonder what the cats would think?


I'm still squeezing in time for knitting. Almost done with the Tesserae Socks in Somoko. I've started the arch shaping on the Francie sock in Pagewood Farms yarn, and discovered an error clear back when I turned the heel. Sigh. Will I ever learn to count? I'm not ripping back. I've also done about 40 rows on the VLT shawl. I forget the name, I can only call it the catbutt shawl. You know which one it is (I think it actually called the half-curved shawl). After 15 tries at the cast on and first row, I finally got the hang of it, although I am putting in lifelines every few rows, and stitch markers with every pattern repeat. No pictures, no one wants to see errors in socks and lace on the needles.

Knock your eyes out

Flowers everywhere, just going nuts. And some demonstrating a floral sense of humor.










Maker Faire

(pictures here) was fabulous, but so overwhelming. Like some bizarre museum, it is stimulating and fatiguing at the same time.
The place was packed, there was a traffic jam all the way out to the freeway. The Faire was bigger and better than ever this year. Having the Yarn Harlot there was the icing on the cake, and we held each other's socks-in-progress:
She made us laugh, and her book, "Things I Learned from Knitting" gives me hope that I may yet learn something. I'm dubious at the moment, having again tackled a project I suspect I am genetically unable to do: lace. I got talked into a VLT knitalong, and have cast on and knit the same 3 starting rows about fifty-eleven times in two days. I am pretty sure putting in a lifeline on row 1 shouldn't be necessary. I did finish a pair of socks for a friend's boy baby, who just turned 6 months old, in leftover merino/cashmere yarn.
Maybe I am meant to churn out only socks. Heaven knows I have enough sock yarn to keep me busy for a few months. (Define few?)

One nagging question has remained with me since the Faire. Where did I go wrong: none of my children got tattoos and joined the circus. I have hope; they are still young.

Drama queens

Not enough hours in the day

I'm on a cleaning-out binge. I have spent several hours going through random piles of things in random rooms and closets and drawers and cannot see any difference. So here I am, doing something much more enjoyable. Hooray for the internets!

Tastes of India class was wonderful as always, and Sangita and Arijit give us more than culinary tastes. History, geography, philosophy and humor mixed into a nourishing garam masala.


We had cholar dal, a spicy stew with chickpeas, fresh raita and paratha, which Sangita miraculously makes exactly the same size and thickness, and each one a perfect round. I guess after 999,999 she has it down.
For dessert there was a wonderful halwah, or pudding, make with milk and bottle gourd.



It's a very nice group of students in the class, I'm looking forward to the next field trip.

On the knitting front, I finished the April 2008 Mystery Socks, from Goddess Knits.
These will be a gift, but I don't think the recipient reads my blog, so no danger of a spoiler there.

I also finished another gift, a silk scarf made from Schaefer Patty, in the colorway Rosa Parks. Quite beautiful, but a nightmare from start to finish. Ten knots in two skeins, and color running like crazy. I have read all the tutorials on how to set dye and done my best. Fingers crossed and I will warn the recipient not to get into a hot tub wearing it.

Break time is over, back to the closet monsters.

more knitting, less blogging

I realized today, after reading someone else's blogiversary post, that this week marks two years for Cats Knit and Tango. Hopefully what I find still entertaining and inspiring to post is amusing to others, though I mostly do it as a form of visual and verbal exercise. I have wondered occasionally, what happens to someone's blog after they die? I've never kept a journal or diary, that might be found and read 100 years from now. What will become of all the online
murmuring of blogs in the years to come?
I guess my knitting projects will survive, at least for awhile, but they too are ephemeral in the end.
I finished the toe up socks, thank you again, Amy, for the yarn.


I've also continued to race along on the Mystery Socks, from Goddess Knits. Love the yarn from the Knittery, in Australia. Who wouldn't love cashmere and merino together? I think these will be gifted; I hope they wear well.




I am plugging along on the man socks in Fleece Artist Somoko. The yarn fabric is beautiful, it fairly glows with the silk content. Mohair, silk and merino should make it long-wearing, I hope so. I just hope it is up to the challenge of daily wear in Dansko clogs by hard-working man feet.




Work on Imogen has resumed. From zero. I nearly had the whole back done when I realized I had made a hideous error. Again. Again with not fully reading-understanding-following instructions. Straight stitch does not = knitting straight. After a night spent trying to dodge the inevitable, I ripped out a month's worth of knitting, and began again. This photo is all that remains of the "wrong" version, there's not enough worth showing of the restart, but it has promise, and the yarn is so lovely, Blue Moon Fiber Arts Peru, from the Raven series, Thraven.

I also cast on for a scarf for Wendy for combined Mother's Day and birthday gift. Since she cannot wear wool, I'm always on the lookout for the right combination of color and agreeable yarn. I found Schaefer Patty, which is 100% silk, in the Rosa Parks colorway, gorgeous stuff. No picture yet, not enough progress to be picture-worthy.

I'm also noodling on a sock design of my own, in Shibui
with cables and other nonsense. Given my penchant for not being able to follow anyone else's instructions, and having 811 projects going at once, there are no promises.
And finally, instead of blogiversary cake, a view toward Cypress Point:

All I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by...

...And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking..." John Masefield
We were cruising to find a lunch spot between jobs the other day, and around the bend of the road, spotted this out in the bay:


It's the Privateer Lynx which spends six months of the year sailing up and down the West Coast, and will, for a fee, take on apprentice sailors and students willing to live in very tight and spartan quarters, with no mutiny allowed.
As we watched, a mysterious puff of smoke appeared, and then drifted away, and the sound of a cannon finally reached us on shore.




A few days later we took the dockside tour. She's a sleek and dangerous seductress, even tied securely at the wharf.







I spoke with the captain, tan with a graying queue and calloused hands (even the girl crew member had incredibly tough hands); we talked about Monterey's sailing history, and Richard Henry Dana's dismissal of Monterey citizens as "the laziest creatures he had ever met, they'd rather ride a horse than walk 50 feet." I asked him if he knew about Hippolyte Bouchard, the Argentine privateer that sacked Monterey in 1818, and he did not, so he was delighted to hear the little I knew.
There's a shorter voyage that's almost tempting: from Half Moon Bay to Oakland, the end of the month. Ah to sail beneath the Golden Gate Bridge, with the cry of the gulls, the slap of waves on the hulls and creaking of a living ship breathing beneath one's feet. And the guaranteed sound of me, retching over the side.

Tastes like home

My mum never cooked like this, but when I step into Sangita's kitchen at school, I feel like I've just come home after a long, hungry time away.

The fifth session of the Tastes of India classes has just started up. Sangita has been away in India working on projects and visiting family for six months, and she was missed. She and her husband, Arijit, form a great team, making the classes a multi-media presentation that stimulates all our senses, and enlightens and enlivens the evening.

This week she taught us to prepare Alu Makha (seasoned mashed potatoes, Bengali style), Moong Dhal (thick dhal soup made from split green gram), Sada Bhat (plain rice, also Bengali style), Mach Bhaja (Marinated spicy fried fish), and Ghoogni (Garbanzo beans cooked in spicy sauce).

The fragrances from the spices being heated, as well as the sauces and cooking rice were intoxicating. From the first bite to the last morsel cleaned from the pan, we were all glad to be home again.



I was inspired to try and replicate it a few days later at home. Practice, practice, practice.