Ennui Or Emotional Exhaustion?

My cousin left on Friday morning and I've plunged into the shallows of ennui, except that it may just be emotional exhaustion. My mother's funeral is over, her body is buried, and there's nothing urgent for me to do right now.

The Red Scarf Project is over for the year, my scarves are sent off, and there's nothing urgent for me to knit right now.

The books I'm reading are good, but not as compelling as the John Ringo books. There's nothing I'm dying to read.

And I'm 15,000-plus postings behind in AFCA! That's alt.fan.cecil-adams, a newsgroup on Usenet, that I recommend to all my clever, intelligent e-friends. Reading the postings there, like participating, will lead me out of this ennui. The intelligence, the curiosity, the friendship, the humor--all of them will speed my re-engagement with life.

As a sign of this re-engagement, I just started casting on a scarf made with blue India ribbon. Every knitted thing begins with a single stitch, usually a slip knot.

Now and then, as I knit, I think about topology and Knot Theory. People who study knots would define a knitted piece as one big knot. Even the simplest garter-stitch potholder is, as I understand it, more complex than they can handle. A lacy shawl would bring their tools to a standstill. Yet we knitters produce such complexity routinely, never worrying about theorem or axioms.

Of course knitters aren't special in doing complex things without concern. When we've gone on a cruise we've liked to sit up near the bow of the ship and watch the water solve the Naviér-Stokes equations in closed form, in three dimensions, in real time. That's vastly more than aerodynamicists or hydrodynamicists can do, even with best and fastest computers.

Red Scarf Photos

Here, courtesy of my Xmas-present digital camera and The GIMP, are some reasonably sized photos of the scarves I knitted for the Red Scarf Program. I had planned on sending two red scarves and a dark rose Moebius scarf, but I changed my mind and sent a white mohair/acrylic Moebius instead.

These had to be in Virginia by the end of the month, so I sent them UPS second-day air. I was running way behind getting the box packed up, so it wasn't ready to go until 1600 or so. I printed out the shipping label and realized I'd forgotten to schedule a pick-up, so I did that and taped up the box. About five minutes after I'd set the box out by my front door, a UPS guy came by and took it away. Now that's real on-call service. It couldn't have been more than twenty minutes from when I hit 'return' to schedule the pick-up.

This is the first red scarf, knit in cartridge ribbing. It looks kind of orange in the photo, because I took it in the afternoon sun and it's a little over-exposed, I think.


You can see the chain stitch edging produced by slipping one stitch at the beginning of every row and purling one at the end of every row.

Here's a close-up of the scarf, to show the pattern stitch better.



Here's the second, which is almost the same color as the first. They're both bright red. This one is "red", the first is "tomato", and the colors are very close. The pattern is Argosy from the latest issue of Knitty. As I mentioned previously, I didn't quite follow the pattern perfectly. Again, there's are chain-stitched edges, as you can see. There's also a systematic error in the knitting, where I didn't look carefully enough at the pattern. It's not really visible, though.



Here's a closer look at the scarf. Before I washed and blocked the scarf it had a beautiful rolling texture that got flattened out. However, the way the light hits the scarf here exaggerates what little of it remains, so you can get an idea of it. This was a fun scarf to make, being knitted on the diagonal. It's quick, too. I'm going to make more.



This is the third. It's a Moebius scarf, knitted from the center out, using Cat Bordhi's technique. The scarf has only one side and one edge (there are no seams). The yarn is mohair, acrylic, and something synthetic, making a light, fluffy, warm scarf.



Here's a close-up, where you can see that it's knitted alternately with stockinette and reverse stockinette. This is to keep it from rolling up into a tube from the center to the edge.

Off The Needles

Well, I finished the third red scarf for the Red Scarf Project. I knitted it in KnitPicks Wool of the Andes in (surprise) red. The pattern I started with was Argosy, which appeared in the Winter 2K6 Knitty. The reason I say I started with this pattern is because I wasn't paying quite as much attention as I should have been and I knitted my version a little differently.

Rather than saying that I screwed up, I'm going to say that I created a personal interpretation of the pattern. What I did was knit two together (k2tog) after every yarnover on the right side of the square, even though the pattern omits that for the first yarnover in the first right-side row. I didn't figure this out until I was about twenty rows from being done and I certainly wasn't going to rip it all out and do it over.

I also did something I almost always do, which is to add two stitches, one on each end of the row. I slip the first stitch purlwise and purl the last stitch on every row. This gives a nice even chain edging up the side and prevents an uneven edge. Of course, I could do the same thing by slipping the first stitch knitwise and knitting the last stitch, but slipping purlwise is the default.

So now I have three scarves. One, a dark rose Moebius scarf, is completely finished, washed, and blocked. The other two, the red Argosy and the tomato cartridge rib, are knitted but not finished. I haven't darned in the yarn ends or washed and blocked them. I'll finish them up as soon as I post this. I'll take snapshots tomorrow, after they dry, and then bundle them up and send them to Virginia on Monday. UPS is my friend.

I also picked up three $25 Visa gift cards and will enclose them, with washing instructions and a brief note, with the scarves. All my life I've had pretty much everything a person could expect, with loving, supportive parents providing resources. I had a friend in high school who was a foster child and it was a pretty miserable life. I'm quite sure it hasn't improved one bit.

Speaking of college students, my goddaughter is a freshman at Penn State. I'm sending her a bunch of scarves. One of them is the Moebius scarf I knitted for her and the rest are the scarves I knitted while visiting my mother. I sold five of those through a friend who has does craft shows but the show season is past and they probably won't be in style next year. My goddaughter lives in a dorm and has a lot of friends, so I'm sure these scarves will find good homes. Apparently some of the students from warmer climes, like Puerto Rico and Florida, haven't been quite prepared for how cold Pennsylvania gets and scarves will be welcome. I'll take snaps of them, too.

I'll accept requests for scarves from readers, too. As soon as I finish Boron's and Kim's scarves and the Cashmere Moebius Cowl by Cat Bordhi, I'll be taking new requests. I've got some really nice yarns, including cashmere and alpaca, to use, too.

Back To Normal, Sort Of

We had my mother's funeral on Monday and it was very well attended. The odd thing was that everyone but the family sat in the back rows and there were about five empty rows between the family in the centers of the two front rows and everyone else. The flowers were quite beautiful, even though we'd included her two volunteer groups in the obituary for donations in lieu of flowers.

My one uncle, one of her brothers, sent a beautiful wreath with ribbon streamers that read "Soaring With Eagles". This so baffled the folks at the church that they checked the card very carefully to be sure it was delivered to the correct funeral. What they didn't know about her was that she had been the office manager at the Antelope Valley Turkey Growers Association plant for over 25 years. The reference was, of course, to the aphorism "It's hard to soar with eagles when you work with turkeys all day".

The service and everyone's remarks were very comforting to me. I knew she was held in very high esteem by some people, but I hadn't realized how many or how high. My cousins' eulogy and remembrances were wonderful; their remarks really resonated with everyone.

The luncheon afterward was also well attended. The menu was lasagna, tossed salad, and cake. Comfort food, in short, and it did comfort us.

We inhumed (buried) her the next day, in a very brief ceremony with only five attendees. The weather wasn't too bad on either day, actually, but it was still cooler than I liked.

My cousin from New Jersey's wife has stayed on to help me. We went over to my mother's house yesterday and she took some books and clothes. I was really pleased that the clothes fit her and were to her taste because I know she'll think of my mother every time she wears them. That means a lot to me, knowing that my mother is fondly remembered.

We went and saw a lawyer on Wednesday. We'd gotten the appointment to put our estates in order with a living trust and wills, but we spent most of the hour discussing the probate of my mother's estate. I'd bought the Nolo Press book about probating estates in CA and decided that I didn't want to do it myself. I'll be the executrix but they'll do all the work. The state has set the fees and they're very reasonable. It'll take about six weeks to set everything up and get the probate court's approval, so it should be finished up this year.

We're going to go down to Palm Desert in about two weeks. I'm just going to pack up and leave everything. It won't be long before it gets so warm there that we want to come back up here. I want a little time away before I finish clearing out her house and dealing with everything.

Details, Details

I've finally finished everything I needed to do for my mother's funeral on Monday. The last thing was to submit her obituary to the local newspaper. They'd run a death notice already, with minimal information; this was the actual obituary, written by me, with more details of her life and family, etc. I had to submit this before noon on Friday to have it run on Saturday. I also had it run on Sunday.

Then I had to finish getting my house ready for company. We'd been planning to go back to Palm Desert in October when she was diagnosed with cancer in August. We put our plans on hold immediately and bought some winter clothes, but we'd been packing things up to go south and now we had summer clothes to add. I'd also been buying yarn and turning it into scarves, because knitting was such a comfort to me as I sat by her bed every day. Plus I'd been hitting Amazon kind of hard, what with buying John Ringo and David Drake books, as well as some werewolf books (no, I don't really believe in werewolves, but escapist literature has its place) and Overstock.com had offered several items that were just perfect for the new house. So I had a dining room and living room full of stuff. My friend Pat and I spend three days scurrying around, picking up the house for company.

My cousin and his wife, from New Jersey, got here about 4:00 pm, after checking into their hotel. We had a lovely visit, with dinner from Black Angus to-go, and they left about 8:00 pm, an hour and a half ago. It's really wonderful to have them here, as they are easy to get along with and tremendous support. He's going to be a pallbearer and give the eulogy. They'll both be here through Tuesday and then he goes back to work and she'll stay for the rest of the week. She'll go down to Joshua Tree to see her mom and sister for a couple of days and then fly home.

My other nearby cousin, his sister, and her husband will come up from Yucca Valley tomorrow (Sunday). We'll all have dinner together Sunday night, which should be really nice. My cousin's husband is going to play the organ for the service and be a pallbearer. They'll go back Monday as they both have to teach the next day.

Those two cousins are from my mom's side of the family. Their father is her oldest brother, about two years younger than her. I have two more cousins, with spouses, from my father's side who are going to come. One lives in Clovis, up in the CA Central Valley, and the other lives in Utah. The CA cousin and his wife will be joined by two of their (six) sons, who are in Los Angeles this weekend for a gift show. These two sons are pharmacists, as was their father before he retired, and live up near Fresno, where they have a small chain of pharmacies.

I have a lot more cousins than that, since my father was the youngest of ten and my mother the oldest of seven, but a lot of them live in Utah and Colorado and are concerned about the weather for driving. I told everyone, quite firmly, that my mother, who was a very practical and pragmatic woman, wouldn't have wanted them taking too big a risk to be there and they were to decide accordingly. The cousins younger than me have jobs to consider and the ones older than me worry more about the road conditions, so I don't think they'll come.

However, I expect the turnout to be fairly high, as people from both her volunteer organizations are going to be there. She had volunteered over 15,000 hours to the hospital auxiliary and knew pretty much everyone. Ditto the Friends of the Library. This is part of the reason the interment is going to be on Tuesday. Our weather has been pretty cold for us and I really didn't want to drag all the volunteers out into it, since so many of them are older women. As I've told people, I don't want to be known as the woman who single-handedly wiped out the two biggest volunteer groups in town.

Oops, I just realized that I've left one thing undone. I forgot to order cards announcing her death to mail to everyone non-local who won't hear about it otherwise. Fortunately, I've got her address book and all the Xmas cards people sent, so I'll know who to send these to. I've got a lot of thank you notes to write, too, so I'll have to order correspondence cards as well. I'll get these ordered next week, while my cousin's wife is still here to go with me. The announcements don't have to go out immediately, of course.

We've got an appointment with a lawyer who specializes in wills and trusts and estates and stuff on Wednesday. We'd made the appointment to set up our own trust and get new wills, and I'm going to have them handle her estate for me. We're probably going to go down to Palm Desert for a few months and when we return I'll deal with emptying out her house and getting it put on the market. I'm not looking forward to that at all, but she had gone through and cleared out a lot of stuff when my father died, which should make things easier. I told you she was practical.

I miss her dreadfully.