Chptr 37: In Which Our Narrator Takes a Good Look at Herself

Mirror in the Bathroom

Probably, this posting will make more sense if you read this.

Or I can provide this mobile-device friendly synopsis (but you are missing a ROCK-STAR picture if you don’t click through): 5-year-old loves Scooby-Doo. 5-year-old wants to be Daphne for Halloween. 5-year-old gets acceptance from peers at pre-school over the costume, but Mom gets grilled by other moms – cuz, you see, 5-year-old is a boy-child.

So. How does this relate to a knitting blog focusing on knitting and crocheting and all-around-yarning in the DC area? This is how: I am scared of knitting meet-ups that don’t originate in Takoma Park, Maryland, or Dupont Circle, DC.

Anything else yarn-related, and I am there (if I feel like it): craft fairs, Saturday markets, LYS crawls, classes, Alpaca festivals.

But meet-ups scare me. And this is why: I’m a gay woman who wears a lot of handknits and a lot of pink, and I’m not totally femme but certainly not butch, and unless you are a Jedi Master of the Gaydar, I will probably present as a white, middle-class, soccer mom (who wears a lot of handknits).

I’ve been to a few local knitting meet-ups. There are some monster ones out there and the people are fun and I’ve never met anyone icky and not worth talking to, and I’ve even been welcomed and emailed personally for not coming back to one really sweet meet-up in particular once I stopped going.

I stopped going to meet-ups because I got tired of coming out to new people. Being someone who doesn’t present “gay” to a good portion of the world, when I talk honestly and openly about my life (which I try to make a personal code), there can be some double-takes and confusion. Knitting circles, or knitting meet-ups, are about bonding – yes, over knitting, but also over LIFE. I have a lot of great knitting connections where I am myself – Ravelry connects me to other yarnies honestly and forthrightly, but I don’t have to see their faces when I post a message where I mention “for her” or “my girlfriend” or just flat-out say, “I’m gay, and…”.  The people in my condo community regularly see me walking with my gorgeous girlfriend hand-in-hand, and kissing her hello and good-bye with affection, and if it bothers any of them, I sure haven't heard anything about it.

When I think of going to knitting-crocheting-yarnie meet-ups where there are likely to be some-to-many folks who present as morally conservative or very very straight (yes, I know this is hypocritical) or evangelically religious, I get tired. I get tired because for 20+ years, I’ve been coming out. To family and co-workers and online friends and medical care professionals and high-school buddies and anyone else who has reason to know about my LIFE. I just have to do it once, mostly, and have that moment where I just don’t know what’s coming at me with their reaction.

You see, I’ve had everything from “I figured” to “Would Jesus be happy with the way you’re living your life?” to "But you look like guys would like you - haven't you found one that does?"  I've had high-school classmates cross to the other side of the street to avoid talking to me after the rumors got out a few years after graduation.  I've had a male co-worker assume that my being gay means I'm a guy without a dick and ask me, co-conspiratorially, who has the hottest rack of our colleagues.  I've had a high-level executive, when confronted about using phrase, "butt-boy" in a business-related conversation several times in a loud voice in a main hallway, tell me, with utter sincerity and cluelessness, that he is sorry for affronting my sensibilities (because being bothered by his lewd analogies makes me hyper-sensitive, don't you know) and that he, personally and professionally, supports my "choice to be gay and sleep with whomever I want."  I've been the one who says, over and over, "it's not a choice," "who I sleep with is not the point," and "no, thanks, I don't want to chat with you about my female boss' great ass."  I've had the looks, and the stares, and to be fair I've also had the "whatever"s and "yeah, so"s and hugs.

Are you there God? It's me, Lindsay.

And, yes, the folks I'm likely to meet at knitting meet-ups tend to have a little less testosterone than the folks I mentioned above, but sometimes girls are worse.  I still fear Mean Girls syndrome, 24 years after graduating from Rockville High.

Meet-ups scare me primarily because I don’t have control of who’s at the meet-ups. I’ve gone to a couple and just kept my mouth shut while the folks around me were talking about their husbands and kids and pre-schools and driving lessons, and I didn’t have a lot to contribute (having none of the above). I’ve gone to a couple where I was out to a few people, and just didn’t feel like participating in the wedding shower and baby-bootie corner.  And I can come out once in a meet-up and then as new folks fold in, over and over and over again.

I really want to cover meet-ups for this blog, and I am just going to have to bite down and do it. Exploring all things yarn in the DC area doesn’t require me to wear a gay-badge, but sometimes I don’t know when I’m holding back the full spectrum of my identity for reasons of easy assimilation.

I wish I had that little man's mommy to walk me into meet-ups and take on anyone who would make comments about my sexual orientation

Crafting, yarnie, knitting, crocheting peoples are a welcoming bunch, I have found – just like the rest of the society and culture I move around in which is an almost urban (technically I live in the suburbs), middle-class, blue state demographic. And sometimes you just have to be a big girl and pull up your own panties and participate.

And that’s what I plan to do.

Gay girls get glam, too, dammit!

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The top of-post-picture is of me in the Rive Gauche from the Colinette Parisienne pattern book.

The yarn I used was Colinette Parisienne in Adonis Blue colorway.

More notes about the Rive Gauche sweater and the knitting of it on my Ravelry page about it.

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SOLD: Will Knit for Coffee. Or Money. Or Coffee Money...

So. This is the first sweater I made and sold - to a dear friend who is now starting to knit!

SHAZAM!

(Can I tell you that I am feeling excitement dangerously close to the kind I imagine I would feel if I was in a cult and scored a bonus-points convert - ? The kind of convert with a large trust fund and no heirs.)

Looking back at my notes on this project on Ravelry, it took me slightly less than a month to knit. I'm thinking I was fairly devoted to the project, and wasn't knitting on a lot of other stuff at the time.


Pattern Designer: Colinette - of course!
Pattern Book Title: Nostalgia (Colinette #63)
Pattern Name: Millais
Yarn Brand: Colinette
Yarn Type: Parisienne (in Fire, color #71 ) and Tao (in Windfall, color #149 )

Come to think of it, looking at the dates (March-April), I betcha this was knit with yarn I purchased at Woolwinders in Rockville (no longer carrying Colinette - but who is in DC these days? *sniff*) after getting a sweet little tax refund. It came out a little small for me, but I wore it a few times anyway, and when Leslie saw it her eyes lit up, so when an offer was made, I accepted.

Some notes on knitting this up: Pay attention to the Tao stitches. Also, they are a little tricky - the pattern is written for right-handed yarn throwers (English style) and I am a picker and knit in the Russian Continental style (more about that someday, it is such a pain to figure out stitching, let me tell you, and I am going to at some point get up and going on that; I need to do a page transposing stitches for those of us like me). I've even had English throwers contact me about how to do the stitch. Not that I'm much help.

Also, the way I knit, the pieces have a lot of horizontal give and not a lot of vertical give. So, I would go a tad longer than you think you need, at least on the body, and maybe go a little narrower in the body pieces.

Finishing: this was pretty darn easy to finish. I used the Parisienne to stitch together and because of the nylon or whatever man-made base is in that yarn, it's quite strong and disappears nicely. Just did simple mattress stitching (article with pictures from Knitty.com here), and it worked just fine.

Leslie mentioned this as a beach sweater - something nice for evenings in summer on your vacation when a chill is coming off the water... I have to say that the pattern dresses up and down, makes a great preppy-style shoulder wrap as well as a nice little pullover.

Work. Not at the beach today. Damn. Oh well...


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BTW, poking around online it looks like the pattern and yarns are being kitted and sold as of the date of this posting. If you are thinking about it, it is probably a good way to get a great color combination for this project, especially as not many US shops are currently stocking Colinette yarns. A state of affairs I would like to see changed! You really have to touch and feel and SEE Colinette to get it. Amazing stuff. (I know. Foaming at the mouth is not all that attractive. Sorry.)

Lace is So NOT My Bitch*

You can't really tell, but when it's stretched out, what Chester is wearing looks like this: Wing O' Moth shawl. Kind of. Pretty much. If you squint.

After knitting a few things with Colinette Parisienne in stocking stitch, I really thought I was ready for the big leagues: Knitting Lace.

You get into knitting with big yarn and big needles. If you are not OCD or actually have a life, you probably stay there, or maybe size down a little. To sane projects, like socks. For the rest of us, we matriculate to knitting lace. If you are contemplating knitting lace, this is a favorite tutorial on it... Majoring in Lace by Eunny Jang, who apparently is now with Interweave (but I'm happy her postings are still available).

My words of advice, fair knitters in the first blush of enchantment over needles and yarn: enter the Chamber of Lace with a small project. You could be like me (training for your first marathon, having never even run a 3k) and go for the big mo-fu project as your first one. Not advisable. Although I HATE HATE HATE swatch knitting - you should at least do a couple repeats of the pattern stitch for one full set of rows.

Things I have found out by NOT knitting lace swatches:
1) this really expensive yarn doesn't look good in this pattern (especially with yarns with color shading or multiple colors)
2) one can spend precious hours of knitting time on rows 1-3, find a mistake in row 1, and risk having a foul aura for the rest of the day
3) this pattern bores the crap outta me and my chances of finishing this project are minimal to slight to none
4) frogging lace yarn, especially when it has kid mohair or other fuzzy fibers, can be its own visit to a Very Dark Place

If you heed not my words of warning, be prepared to (it's a list day, can you tell?):
1) learn how far you can actually throw a whole project
2) be tempted to go Letterman and really, really throw it out the window
3) sigh, and cry, and almost die, and consequently require massive infusions of Really Good Chocolate

I should have a picture of this project all spread out, but I don't. The yarn I used was Colinette (shocker) Parisienne in Moss colorway. Green with flecks of rust and pink. Sounds a bit odd, but is actually a pretty cool colorway, as it goes nicely with pale pinks (the red stuff kinda turns dark rose) or more orangey stuff (where the red stuff kinda turns coral).

Chami calls this my spiderweb. As in when I wear it she says, "you are wearing your spiderweb today." Gentle reader, and fellow knitters, we have been tempted to go Letterman on Chami and throw her out the window, but thus far have exercised restraint. (and are quietly plotting our revenge....)

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*Apologies to Ravelry group "Lace Is My Bitch" (where we cheer each other on through the dark disasters and glorious triumphs of knitting crazy intricate patterns with itty-bitty needles and itty-bitty yarn) for co-opting the headline for this post.