As Fast as You Can

Every year the Grove Park Inn in Asheville has a gingerbread house contest. We try to get there if we can. We went tonight. We didn't see as many houses as we usually see, but there were some pretty spectacular ones.











The best I can tell these are basically 100% edible ingredients, though many of them are only a little gingerbread.










The dentist changed his mind. He's taking out my infected wisdom tooth tomorrow. I think this is what Jim Henson died of. Or maybe not. Anyway, if you don't hear from me again, and you find this little out-of the way blog, remember me kindly.

Instruction headaches

My problem is that when I work from a pattern there are terms i don't understand. I have been knitting for about thee quarters of a year and I am getting some techniques but these terms that people just toss into the instructions are killing me. They may not mean anything.

My proposal, and I bet I'm not the first to have this idea, is that anyone putting instructions out into the public domain run the instructions by a person at the lowest level of familiarity with the operation. This goes for assembling tricycles, for cooking perhaps, but definitely for knitting.

My specific problem at the moment is Eunny Jang's anemoi mittens. They are really splendid. I am knitting them and, as usual, am learning a lot. My problem is that I keep coming across expressions I am unfamiliar with. They are not defined in the glossary.

1. "Begin working mitten body chart (first four chart rows should be worked as slip-stitch rounds; use only one strand of specified yarn)."

The first five words I understand perfectly. The term "slip-stitch round" I am unfamiliar with. I put it out at the circle on Saturday and no one had the slightest idea what it meant. Yes we all know what slip stitches are. What is a slip stitch round? One of the knitters suggested I ignore the term and just knit. "Use only one strand of specified yarn." What? What is she saying? I'd feel stupider I hadn't asked all the knitters what she meant. I just ignored this and kept knitting.

Fine. I got past it and knitted a couple of dozen rows. Now:

2. "Slip 25 thumb gore sts between markers to scrap yarn."

Sorry. I think I know how to slip stitches, and yes I have 25 between the markers and if she really wants me to slip them I will, but what does "to scrap yarn"mean?

This is not a pattern reserved for 10-year veterans, at least according to the terms of the pattern. "This pattern is a good project for knitters comfortable with colorwork in the round."


Comfortable with colorwork in the round describes me to a T.


Google pretty much gives me all these references to scrap yarn and what to do with my scrap yarn. I don't think that's what this pattern has in mind; if it does I'm even more in the dark.


I'll put it aside again until Saturday and see if anyone else can figure this out.


In the meantime I'm just making some slippers on a little nothing cable thing of my own devising. I pull them out whet I get to a wall.

Wisdom Literature

I went to the clergy spouses' retreat this weekend. It was pretty fabulous. Yoga, massage, meals, a little night theater, and whatever else we felt like doing. Fortunately, and I say this in complete modesty, we had me along.

I never ever like to talk people into doing things, exactly, but I was ready for anyone to knit who wanted to. When I get excited about something I think I just get infectious about it. My friend Cheri, who is a clergy spouse but was at the same center for a different retreat, remarked that I was always pleased to find myself the center of attention. I replied that she had certainly nailed that aspect of it, although I said (and she agreed) that I really did want to knit and the knitting aspect of it was what I wanted to do, and I would have been there knitting even if I were the only one. But yeah, that other thing too.

Eventually, anyway, there were lots of knitters doing their stuff, and, although they had brought their projects just in case, I don't know that everybody expected to knit when they came. It all turned out well. There were more knitters than hikers even, which proves my theory that good sense will always prevail.

Unfortunately I lost a pretty massive filling in my molar, and I think the molar or the jaw or something is getting infected, and the lymph node is swollen, and it feels as though there is a hard-boiled egg lodged in my neck. I called the dentist and he prescribed some penicillin and I hope he will see me on Monday and probably take this stupid molar out, which he has been wanting to do for 15 years.

The great news is that I finally, after 15 or 16 false starts, have my daughter's mittens underway. It is by far the most times I have ever started a project, and of course it's not through yet, even the first mitten, in fact it's just past the cuff ribbing, but I feel as though this time it's going to take. It was mostly a matter if the right needles and the right tension.

Here's what it looks like at the moment:

So that was the first annual clergy spouses' retreat and I think everybody had a really great time, and I'm expecting it went well enough that there will at least be a second one. One of the cool things about being with clergy spouses is that they don't take the priests and bishops and deacons nearly as seriously as their congregations do, and, in many cases (I suspect) as seriously as the clergy take themselves.

I have a photo I took of a bunch of the group in the dining hall.