First things first

It’s been a busy weekend here.

On Friday, we celebrated our nation’s birthday by taking a trip to our nation’s first zoo. The Philadelphia Zoo doesn’t hold a candle to the zoo I grew up going to—both in terms of animal habitats and entrance fees (the St. Louis Zoo is free, whereas the Philly one is a whopping $18 for adults and $15 for kids 2-11)—but it’s what we’ve got. And Sylvia loves it, so there you go.

Yesterday morning my brother arrived for a two-day visit. He lives in Greenwich Village and almost always brings us a dozen fresh bagels that he picks up at the shop around the corner from him on his way to Penn Station. We’re so grateful for this gift, because even though it’s possible to get decent bagels where we live, nothing compares to New York bagels. (Seriously. They’re standing on the summit of Mount Everest, with all other bagels in the world stuck in the Mariana Trench. They’re that good. The other bagels aren’t jealous, though, because they’re in so much awe of New York bagels that they can’t help but admire them.)

This time, in addition to bagels, he brought a special treat that I’d asked him to find: vegan marshmallows. (Real marshmallows contain gelatin, which is made from animal bones and pig and cow skin.)* A few days earlier, I’d told him that Whole Foods stores in NYC carry them (but not any stores in my area), and because they need to be refrigerated it’s very expensive to get them by mail-order during the summer. “Don’t go to any trouble, but if you can find some, that would be great,” I told him. He took it as his personal mission to find these for us, and after visiting a few stores, scored two boxes of them (each holding about a dozen marshmallows for $7, if you can believe it). Thanks to her uncle’s efforts, Sylvia got to enjoy her first backyard s’mores yesterday evening. Which she loved, of course!

Once Sylvia was in bed for the evening, a few friends came over for some serious geeking out. Nine of us played a board game until 2 a.m. Yeah, I’d say we had a good time.

I also managed to get a lot of knitting done. Last night I finished knitting one new piece, and this morning I seamed it; it just needs a few more embellishments. Right now, I’m blocking Sylvia’s new sweater and hope to finish it up (finally!) this evening. A more detailed knitting update—with pictures—will be forthcoming later this week (I hope!).

I hope all of you, too, had a great weekend!

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*A few years ago, the excrement hit the fan in the vegetarian world when it was revealed the Emes Kosher Jel, which had marketed itself as a vegetarian gelatin substitute, actually contained animal gelatin. (CNBC did a story about this: part 1, part 2.) The few companies that made vegetarian marshmallows using Emes products went out of business, and since then only a handful of companies in the world have figured out how to make vegan marshmallows.

Today’s mail brought not one but two delightful packages.

First, wrapped in even more packing tape than even I use (and I like to use enough to ensure that any package I send will survive a nuclear winter), was a small envelope from my friend Mary Ann, whom I’ve known since we went to college together. About a month ago, she sent me a birthday card in which she’d written a promise to send me another tacky magnet for my collection. When she and her family went on vacation to Great Smoky Mountain National Park a couple of weeks ago, she made doubly good on that promise by picking up two of the cheesiest magnets she could find. (Note the use of Smokey, a misspelling that ratchets up the tackiness quotient for this duo.) I’m putting these on the fridge right next to the Bass Pro goodies that another college friend, Frank, sent me in April.

The second box contained lots of yarny goodness. About two weeks ago I won a contest at Yarn Is My Metier. Karen asked people to compose haiku poems for her birthday (which was May 29), and the random number generator chose my entry as one of the winners.

Next thing I know, I get an e-mail from Karen asking my for my snail-mail info and all about my yarn preferences. Sending along my address was simple, but answering the other questions was tricker. I had a bad case of option paralysis. It was like standing in front of the counter at a Baskin Robbins. Fortunately, Karen was very patient and, after a few e-mails back and forth, announced that she would send me enough burgundy yarn for a shrug (a project I’m interested in trying) and enough taupe yarn to make something for Sylvia.

The taupe yarn? Four balls of Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran. I received a Jo Sharp book as a gift from a friend in Australia two years ago, but have never tried any of her yarn before—or even handled it, for that matter. This stuff is so soft. It’s 85% wool, 10% slik, and 5% cashmere. (Interestingly, the care instructions say “Dry flat in shade.” That’s the first time I’ve seen that variation. What happens if you dry it in the sun? Does it get a sunburn?) I’m thinking I might turn this into a little vest for Sylvia, or perhaps some legwarmers for her. Ooooh…maybe cabled legwarmers!

Also in the box were a panda pencil sharpener (which was of course immediately appropriated by Sylvia) and three balls of Jaegar Shetland Aran in a beautiful burgundy color. This yarn is 80% wool and 20% alpaca and it, too, is very soft and totally new to me. I haven’t quite decided what to do with this yarn, but I’m eager to get it on the needles. Karen suggested I look at her Mia Shrug pattern (available in the sidebar on her blog, and also a popular knit on Ravelry). It’s awfully cute and may be just the sort of dive-in-head-first plunge I need to get over my reluctance fear sheer terror of lace knitting!

So thanks, Mary Ann and Karen, for making my day!

One of Jan’s coworkers is a guy named Frank. He’s always very friendly whenever Sylvia and I stop by the office to meet Jan for lunch, and never takes it personally when Sylvia gets a case of the toddler “shies” and refuses to talk to or look at him.

He’s a hardcore Mac user and an amateur photographer, so when he learned about my own interest in photography, he started sending digital photography books home with Jan. For me to keep. What a nice guy.

I wanted to repay his kindness, so with Sylvia’s help (she chose the projects: “Frank needs mittens and a hat!”) I did some knitting for him. After verifying that he can wear wool and loves blue, I used Patons SWS in Natural Indigo, with some stripes in Natural Wood. (I should mention that I am forever in debt to Lynnette, my upstream SP9 partner, for introducing me to this fabulous yarn.)

The mittens and the hat are both straight out of Ann Budd’s Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns. I knit the largest size in each pattern (making Jan try them on from time to time), and I think that worked out pretty well.

Sylvia and I went to Jan’s office last Friday, and she eagerly presented the box to Frank. I’d wrapped it in some white packing paper saved from IKEA, and she’d decorated the box with ink stamps, stickers, and crayon markings—including an S for Sylvia and an F for Frank. He seemed pretty pleased, so I think this is one knitted gift that will definitely be worn!

Thanks so much for the happy birthday wishes, everyone! (And yeah, Jan is really great!) Here’s a photo of one of those cupcakes. To answer the question Chris posed on a comment on the previous post, Jan did not manage to hide the tell-tale smells. I just didn’t figure out what they were.

After I got Sylvia up and dressed on Tuesday morning, we were ready to head downstairs when I thought I smelled some sort of baked goods. I called Jan and asked him if he’d had cinnamon-raisin toast for breakfast that morning. He, of course, denied this and added that I must be imagining things and how weird it was that I would call him to inquire about his breakfast.

There were other signs, too. In the kitchen a little later, Sylvia pointed out a brown smudge on the floor near the dishwasher. “That’s from the cream puffs,” she announced. (She and Jan had made chocolate-covered cream puffs a couple of weeks earlier.) I thought, “I can’t believe that chocolate spot has been there for two weeks, and I haven’t noticed it until now.” Yup, I had no clue whatsoever.

Last night, my local knitting group met at 7 p.m. for our weekly get together. At about 7:45, I felt someone poke me on the side and looked down to see Sylvia standing there. I did a double-take. Maybe it was a triple-take. She’s usually in bed by 8. What was she doing there?

Then I saw Jan appear with some boxes in hand. My friends were grinning madly, and Jan said, “Happy birthday!” Sylvia, unable to contain the secret any longer, shouted, “Cupcakes! Cupcakes!”

With help from Gina (who communicated with the other knitters), Jan had planned a surprise birthday celebration for me. My birthday is still a little over a week away, so I had no idea this was coming. He woke up at 4 a.m. yesterday morning to bake (and clean up afterward, to hide the evidence), and I slept through it all—even the KitchenAid mixing!

We enjoyed the chocolate cupcakes with chocolate glaze and mascapone icing (Jan is a terrific baker, and everything he makes both looks and tastes great), had a little video chat via Skype with one knitting friend who’s in Belgium for a couple of months, and (once Sylvia headed home to bed after inhaling her cupcake) even did a little knitting. I had a great time!

In February I won a contest that Lucy held to see who could predict when she’d finish a quilt. Since it was intended to be a Valentine’s Day gift for her husband, I naturally guessed February 13 (’cause you know, these things always take as long to finish as the amount of time you give them)—and I won! The prize was a bundle of fabric pieces (leftovers from another quilt project—she does amazing quilts, as you can see here, here, and here).

Lucy and I happen to live only about ten minutes apart, so rather than get the USPS involved it made sense for us to meet in person. Sylvia and I stopped by her house last week, and while our two toddlers played together Lucy helped me choose (read: I asked her to figure out which things would go together well and just give me those, as I really had no clue) fabric squares to make into a patchwork tote. She showed me her crafting area, too, which was very inspiring—and very tidy, with stacks of folded fabric carefully arranged on shelves and a yarn stash to die organized into a wall of plastic totes.

I received gifts from an old friend, too, last week. In the post announcing the contest for the IKEA bags, I mentioned a friend of mine from college, Frank. He lives in southwestern Missouri, far far away from any IKEA, so I sent him some bags and in return asked for the tackiest fridge magnets he could find. A package from him arrived late last week, and he certainly did not disappoint. An enclosed note described his quest to find them. After looking in shops in downtown Springfield and not finding anything cheesy enough, he headed south. And then: “I saw the large rump of a huge bronze deer getting ready to leap over Campbell Avenue. I knew then that I had found the right place: classic Springfield and sure to deliver on tackiness.”

As soon as I read that, I knew exactly what he was talking about: Bass Pro Shops. And not just any Bass Pro. This is the queen mother store—the original one. The magnet on the left is the store’s logo. The one on the right was obviously made by someone who grew up in the Land of Hunchbacked Deer. They’re both just perfect for my collection.

Now that the packages are on their way—and the recipients aren’t likely to read this post before opening their gifts—I can reveal what holiday knitting I’ve been up to.

For my mom, I knit two ball-band washcloths, with the colors reversed in the second one. While I was visiting her in October, she admired one I was making, and I decided then and there to knit some up for her. The small sachet is made of a linen-cotton yarn and knit up in linen stitch on something like size 3 needles. I filled it with dried lavender—yum.

My dad has a Sunday-morning ritual of going to a bookstore and browsing the shelves (and usually coming home with a new book) while drinking a mocha latte. For him I knit up a (reusable!) wool sleeve for his coffee cups; I used the Noro Kureyon that was left over from Kevin’s hat. I cast on 32 stitches and did a simple k2p2 ribbing all the way up, which is just right to keep this snugly on the cup. This wool sleeve will surely keep a beverage warmer much better than a paper one!

For my brother I knit some fingerless mitts out of Cascade Pastaza, which is 50% llama and 50% wool. I liked working with the yarn (though the tips of my needles split it occasionally), and I knit everything except the thumb on a 12″ Addi turbo. (And let me just say this: I am never again using DPNs to knit in the round unless I absolutely have to.) My brother lives and works in Manhattan, so he does a lot of walking around outside. I figured full mittens would be too “dorky” for him, but these will keep his hands warm while preserving some of the manual dexterity necessary for key/coffee-cup/cellphone handling.

I’ve been fortunate to stay in touch with four friends with whom I went to college. (We even have our own Google group.) Over the years the five of us have kept in touch through law school, graduate school, marriages, babies, cross-country moves, international travels, deaths of family members, career changes, and pretty much any life change you can think of. This year, I knit them all moebius scarves (these are short—more like cowls) out of KnitPicks Suri Dream. I asked my friends about their favorite colors at the beginning of the year (I bet they’ve completely forgotten this) and chose the yarns accordingly.

These last two items, a small pouch made of bamboo yarn and a drop-stitch scarf made of recycled silk sari yarn, were made for someone I’ve never met but who’s on my mind pretty much every day. Her name is Heather, and she’s one of my mother-in-law’s oldest friends. In our office at home we have a watercolor painting that Heather made of the Dutch irises that Jan’s dad took to her house when he had dinner with her one evening while Jan’s mom was in the hospital after giving birth to Jan. Heather very generously gave us our beloved All-Clad LTD cookware when we got married, and she gave us Sylvia’s super Britax car seat when she was born. She’s been so generous to us, and I really wanted to send her something in thanks. She lives in Santa Barbara, where the weather is pretty much perfect year-round—no need for woolen knits, but hopefully she’ll enjoy and be able to use these.

I’m all for recycling and limiting consumption, but one practice I cling to is sending out holiday cards. I love the speed, ease, and low cost of e-mail, but there’s something so delightful about the tangibility of snail-mail. I’m sorry to say that I don’t have nearly as much time as I’d like to devote to old-fashioned, pen-and-paper correspondence, but when I do I get such a thrill from retrieving a letter from my mailbox or sending a note on its way to a friend.

Around this time of year I send holiday (no mention of any particular holiday save the start of a new year—there have been times, though, when I was so late with my card-sending that my greetings ended up being perfectly timed to acknowledge the beginning of the new lunar new year) cards to most of my friends and family. We make the cards ourselves (Sylvia’s contribution this year is “patting down” anything that’s been glue-sticked onto the blank card), and I handwrite all of the addresses (recipients’ and ours) and notes inside.

Sure, it would be quicker and easier to print out address labels and stick them onto the envelopes. But I enjoy the slow pace of writing by hand and thinking about each recipient as I prepare his or her card. Most of my friends are scattered throughout the country (and in far corners of the world), and I don’t see them nearly as often as I’d like. Our interactions are infrequent, but I treasure those friendships nonetheless.

But some friendships just don’t last, unfortunately. People change, time and distance make it harder to maintain relationships, and sometimes there are even fallings-out. Sometimes you just have to let go.

For several years, I used a Palm Pilot IIIxe PDA as what I called “my electronic brain.” Mostly it functioned as an address book and calendar for me, and when it ceased working a little over two years ago, I was able to print out the address book backup file from my PC. Since then, this stack of papers has functioned as my address book, and it now has handwritten corrections and deletions all over it. This year, as I prepared our holiday cards, I also wrote addresses and whatnot into the still-blank address book Jan and I bought for our anniversary three years ago. The printout will be tossed into the recycling bin when I’m done.

At the same time, I took this opportunity to remove (well, in this case, “remove” means “not write in the new book”) the names and addresses of people I was no longer in contact with and didn’t think I would be again. There are a few people I don’t miss—a handful of former friends who have become unfriends. There are lots of people I’ve just lost track of and think that the gap between us has grown so great that the casual friendship we shared a long time ago isn’t a strong enough base for renewal of that relationship.

And there’s one person who’s died. She was someone I went to grad school with (she had started in my department two or three years before me), and although we weren’t close friends who made plans to get together socially, we had many great conversations when we ran into each other on campus. I remember sitting with her in her office for a couple of hours the week before I left for Oregon, talking with her about fieldwork (she had already completed her own dissertation research, in Indonesia) and the Nikon SLR I’d just purchased from her. She’d bought it while in the field but found that she could not use a fully manual SLR because she had a slight tremor in her hand that prevented her from adjusting the focus accurately.

After I moved to the Mid-Atlantic several years ago, I didn’t keep in touch with her, but her contact information stayed in my address book. Last summer, I heard from another grad school colleague with whom I’d been out of touch and who told me that our mutual friend had committed suicide nearly three years earlier by stepping in front of a freight train. I was stunned to hear that news. And now, coming across her name on my printed-out address list, I was a bit taken aback again—and saddened not to put her in my new address book.

I first met my friend Tina in 1996, when the National Science Foundation decided to give me money to do some predoctoral research in Oregon. I needed a place to stay for the summer, so I looked up the University of Oregon student newspaper’s classified ads online and found an ad for a sublet. The person who placed the ad, Jeff, was himself going to be doing predoctoral research that summer, but in the South.* He said, “I think you’re fine, but my housemate, Tina, is the one who’s going to have to live with you, so you’ll need to talk with her, too.” I did, and we hit it off just fine.

When I drove out there by myself a few months later and arrived at her house, a yellow house with pink trim (next door to a pink house with yellow trim) in the Whiteaker neighborhood in Eugene, the first thing I saw as I walked through the wide-open front door were two kids jumping on the sofa in the front room. One looked about five years old, and the other looked to be around three.

“Um, hi,” I said. “Is Tina here?” “Tina!” the older one yelled, “your new housemate is here!”

She came downstairs, introduced the kids (who lived next door)**, showed me around, and then was off on her bike to her West African dance troupe practice. She was a fabulous roommate, and we had a great summer together. We kept in touch, and a few years later–when I was back in Oregon for a year-long stay to do my doctoral fieldwork–I visited her in Portland (where she’d move to pursue a graduate degree in social work), and she visited me in southern Oregon (where we hiked to the summit of Humbug Mountain and created huge sculptures on Lighthouse Beach with driftwood, seaweed, and other stuff washed up by the sea).

Since I left Oregon, we’ve still kept in touch through lots of changes: my cross-country moves, her four-mouth solo backpacking trip through Latin America, my marriage and the birth of Sylvia. A couple of years ago, she fell madly in love with an Irishman named Kevin, and last year they got engaged. In August, they were married at an organic farm in Hood River, and though I very much wanted to be there, time and money just wouldn’t permit it.

I wanted to give them something handmade as a wedding gift, and my first thought was to knit something lacey–perhaps a table runner or picture-frame mat (like the ones in Melanie Falick’s Handknit Holidays. I tried it a few times but found that the tiny needles and wispy yarn were just not my cup of tea. I have no inner lace knitter (at least not now–maybe one day, though…). So I gave the lace yarn to a friend who is a lace knitter and starting thinking about other possibilities.

After much deliberation I finally settled on matching-but-not hats: a duo knit in the same pattern but of different yarns. (It seemed a fitting comment on marriage as the union of two distinct individuals.) For hers I used Loran’s Laces Revelation, and his was made of Noro Kureyon–both lovely yarns to work with, made of wool that will keep their heads warm during cold-weather excursions into the Oregon wilderness. I used the Valerye pattern in Cathy Carron’s Hip Knit Hats; if you click the link, you can see the original hat in brown and black on the cover. The yarns I chose knit up tighter, though, so the resulting hats are a bit shorter and less droopy than the original.

Shortly after this photo shoot in my living room, the hats were packed up and sent on their way to Portland. I hope Tina and Kevin like them. (And I hope the hats fit!)

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*I asked Jeff what his research was on, he said, “Environmental history in the South.”

“Oh,” I said, “I have a friend here in Illinois who’s also working in history in the South, but he’s interested in race relations and politics.”

“Really? What’s his name?”

I told him.

“You’re kidding! Tina and I went to college with him in Florida! We’re all best friends!”

It’s a small world, indeed.

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** Those kids were pretty sweet. I saw a lot of them that summer, as they loved to play in my garden. I also saw a lot of them in that they often liked to run around naked.

I’ve mentioned before that I have a very good friend who lives in Australia. She and I have been pen-and-paper penpals since January 1993, and when we first started corresponding, she lived outside Montreal. We’ve never met, but she’s one of my best friends–maybe one day we’ll meet, maybe not.

Our daughters were born three days apart, so it’s been fun to swap parent talk with her. (She has a son who’s three years older, so this isn’t her first time around with diapers and toilet training.) She recently told me how much she liked some of the clothes Sylvia wears (lots of earth tones and simple lines) and mentioned how difficult it was to get non-pink, non-girly stuff where she is. We chatted back and forth about this, and the upshot is I volunteered to do some end-of-season hardcore sale shopping for her kids–just a few things, whatever I could find that was ridiculously inexpensive–and send them to her.

So a few weeks ago, in about an hour I managed to score some great, high-quality, non-girly stuff for her kids–for almost nothing. Seriously. Something like five shirts and two pairs of pants came out to under twenty bucks. (Clothing is cheap in this country!) The best part is I bought summer stuff that was on clearance because summer is over…here. It hasn’t even begun where she is, so these items would arrive just in time. I wrapped it all up in the smallest possible bundle (brown paper secured with packing tape–not even a box or envelope) and took it to the post office.

I handed over the package and the customs form I had filled out at home. (Pet peeve: people who take up time at the counter filling out postal forms, and the postal employees who don’t attend to other customers while waiting for said forms.) “This can go surface mail. There’s no hurry on it.”

The man behind the counter shook his head at me. “There’s no more surface mail. Only air mail.”

“Are you kidding? When did this happen?”

“Mother’s Day. Wasn’t making any money.”

“Hmmm. Okay, then air mail it is, I guess.”

“That’ll be thirteen dollars.”

*gulp*

Um, hello? That’s almost the value of the contents! I took my package home, deciding to send it when I had more things to add (since the first chunk of postage is the most expensive, a slightly larger package shouldn’t cost a lot more to send).

Now, I’ve been pretty good about defending the USPS in the past. When I was in college, a friend of mine told me about the time he got a letter addressed simply to “Todd Davis, Belleville, Illinois.” That’s it. It was for him, and it arrived something like two years late, but it did arrive. And on the envelope, some postal employee had written “Are we good or what?” Wow.

In light of that–and in light of the stellar service I’ve gotten from the USPS–I’ve been a bit of a fan. Rate hikes have been mildly annoying, but I didn’t mind them that much. (Postage in the USA is still pretty cheap.)

And then the employee at the local post office hassled me when I tried to send a package without a return address. (This was for my first Secret Pal swap, SP8.) Okay, this wasn’t really the fault of the USPS. I blame this one on the Bush-Cheney war on American civil rights, er, I mean the war on terror.

The rates hikes earlier this year didn’t bug me much, until I found out that the international postcard rate was going from 70 cents to 90 cents. Whoa! What’s up with that? That’s one heck of a jump–and since then my Postcrossing has ground to a halt (a temporary one, I hope).

But completely scrapping international surface mail? USPS, you’ve really let me down now. For shame, USPS. For shame.

P.S. You can try to suck up to me by issuing a set of knitting-themed holiday stamps, USPS, but it won’t work.