ME. Tra la. Not.
Another—ugh—another really sodding rotten awful-bad ME day. I knew I was pushing it, and the forty-minutes-late-starting last night plus the superfluous half hour walk back to the car put me emphatically over the line.* Today has been about . . . trying to get hellhounds hurtled. Managed. Just.
It’s interesting the compromises you make with chronic anything, to the extent that you almost don’t notice them any more. A few of us bell ringers have been having an email chat about ringing education courses, specifically the several-day residential ones. I don’t think I even remember what it’s like not having No Stamina as one of my chief organising principles—and some of you may remember that I started trying to learn to ring the first time during that grey, lurking-shadow period of regularly-recurring glandular fever, over a decade ago now, when I’d had to give up riding again because of the unreliability thing. You can’t keep a horse fit when you keep having to spend days lying on the sofa. And then full-onslaught official horizontality-enforced ME closed me down completely for about eighteen months, and I stopped ringing too. I’ve mostly figured out working compromises since I started ringing again, but a several-day residential ringing course? Not a frelling chance. But they’re very popular; the good ones develop mythic status and are regularly oversubscribed. The only sweetener to this bitter pill for me is that I don’t really learn all that well by this kind of intensive system: you can cram me, but it’ll all fall out the holes again. And that was before the ME—although I find myself wondering if that might be one of the signposts for ME vulnerability. Those of you with significantly holey memories: keep taking your vitamins and get lots of sleep.
One of the compromises that mostly does work for me though is grimly maintaining a level of physical fitness that will help paper over the bad days. This is one of the best examples of the fact that I have a mild case of ME. The people who have it badly can maybe get out of bed on a good day. But the use-it-or-lose it aspect of all physical training is acute and merciless with ME: take a holiday and find yourself having trouble brushing your hair or tying your shoes by the end of it.** This isn’t the only reason for having a dog to walk, or hellhounds to hurtle, but it’s a good one: dogs don’t take days off either. I admit it’s also risky, since on a bad day hellhounds could knock me over and be not merely in Kent but Sweden by the time I crawled to the nearest tree and climbed hand-over-hand till I was more or less upright again. In hindsight I’m not sure how we did survive puppyhood. But now that we’ve been together almost five (!) years . . . I was going to say now that they’re adults, but that’s a variable concept, adulthood, and what matters more in this case I think is that we’re imprinted on each other. I am their hellgoddess. I may be a fitful and temperamental hellgoddess, but I am their hellgoddess. When we’re out tumulting about the countryside they keep checking back. On my bad days they check back more. I’m not sure what it is that they know, but after five years they know it pretty well.
Anyway. Pretty much the sum total of my attainments today has been getting hellhounds hurtled. But I did—because my body is used to it, and to a certain extent, if I have the sense, when I’m bad because I’ve been pushing it, not to push it any more, I can (probably) go through maintenance motions, like hellhound hurtling. It’s a strange sensation, hurtling when you’re made out of old deflated inner tubes: perhaps a bit like being Elastigirl without the snap.
But now there is knitting. Emoon has talked about the soothingness of knitting when you’re under stress, and how it gives you something to focus on and feel productive by doing. Yes. It’s also good on a bad ME day, when your world gets very small and wobbly: you have no brain, and you’ve just tapped yourself out getting your dogs walked, but if you can knit you can not think about the fact that it’s probably about the only thing you can do.*** And—unlike cruising the internet and clicking all the interesting-looking links on Twitter—you end up with something to show for it.
blondviolinist
… belts in photographs of knitwear are a flashing neon sign for: “These sweaters are shaped like a box, and the only way to show your waist is by finding a big belt!” Mind you, a big boxy cardigan is a good item of clothing to have (and soooo cozy!), but sometimes the way photographs are styled can hide the true shape of the pattern.
(Other big warning signs: only side & back shots of the model? “We can’t get the front of this garment to look good no matter how we try!” Pictures of the model sitting, but none standing? “The hem and/or bust line of this garment hit our model in an unfortunate place, so we’re hiding that.” Of course, sometimes the photographer simply went all artsy with his shoot, and there was absolutely nothing wrong with the garment, but what photos don’t show about knitting patterns is as important as what they do show.)
Yes. Part One: Before You Begin to Knit: Chapter One: You Can Always Tell What’s Wrong with the Garment by the Way the Model is Posed or, Slender Five-Foot-Ten-Inch Models Look Good in Anything, KNITTING IN PLAIN ENGLISH by Maggie Righetti, and I’m sure elsewhere too, but that’s where I met these warnings first. In this particular case I’m expecting the resulting sweater to be big and boxy—and my other two First Sweater projects (COUGH COUGH COUGH COUGH COUGH) were bought having seen the thing knitted up in the yarn shop.† But I’m sure I’ll fall afoul of this, ahem, artistic license some day. Although I’m already developing sales resistance to some of the more egregious examples of designer-over-romanticised. Get real. I want to wear it, whatever it is. I suppose the worst offenders should remain nameless, but my problem is that roses lend themselves to over-romanticising, so I keep falling in the ooey-gooey-hooey knitwear come-ons.
Diane in MN
I think almost all newer pattern books give you schematics with printed dimensions in the instruction section, so you can see the actual shape of the garment. This is extremely useful.
Hmm. This one doesn’t. They clearly don’t want you to know you’ve just bought a book of twelve Big Boxy Shapeless Sweaters. It’s okay. I wasn’t planning on making the one with buttons.††
You don’t want to be making hellhound squares forever–BORING.
And actually, that’s the bad part about sewing up. It’s not that it’s so hard, it’s BORING. Weaving ends in is BORING.
Um. Says in a very small voice: but I like embroidery. Which is pretty much one stitch after another. Well, so is knitting, in a different way. But I’m still not too worried about sewing up. I am worried about weaving in ends. Weaving in ends looks really boring.
blondviolinist
I’ve known several cases where the drawing of the schematic didn’t actually match the shape of the finished garment. (Sigh.)
That was going to be my next question. I’m also being pretty unnerved by the number of errors in knitting books. I’m not a big fan of amazon’s customer reviews, and I rarely look at them for fiction, but I do run an eye over them for practical nonfiction like knitting, and if every other review mentions errors, I cross that book off my list. I’m too young a knitter to cope with pattern errors—I’m going to have had a nervous breakdown before I’ve thought to look on the author’s/publisher’s/ravelry’s web site for corrections.
ETA: I’m one of those freaks who actually likes seaming. It’s so fun to watch the various pieces come together into a cohesive whole.
Oh good. I plan to be another one. I need to like seaming if I’m going to make a long-term habit of things based on squares.
I will completely agree on the boringness of weaving in ends, however. I have to have something good to listen to or watch while I do that task.
Sigh. Well, I can catch up on my podcasts.
* * *
* I still want to give you a rant about the staging^, but . . . not tonight.
^ I especially want to give you a rant about the staging after several people have told me that the delay last night was because The World’s Largest Rotisserie jammed.
** This is pretty standard, whatever level of ME you’re on. If you can just about get out of bed, then you need to keep getting out of bed, or you’ll lose it.
*** Hellhounds may end up with a lot of blankets: nice plain knitting. I acknowledge that I find acquiring a new must have genre way too easy, but I like the number of squares-based knitting projects, styles and books out there, because a nice little square is so doable when you’re not very do-worthy. Although I hope I don’t end up in twenty years or so with closets full of squares that I’ve never quite had the mental acuity to make into what they were destined for. —Lots of hellhound blankets, as I say.
† In one case I wouldn’t have so much as paused at the pattern, draped over a sulky sixteen-year-old anorexic as it was.
†† Buttonholes! Arrgh! No, I’m not ready to think about buttonholes yet.
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