If you’ve been around me at all in the past few years, you’ve probably heard me say “weird is the new normal” so many times that by now that notion of the New Normal is pretty Old News. (In a related story, I’ve been hearing rumors to the effect that pink is no longer the new black. Sic transit.)

So in the aftermath of death, with the Old Normal long gone but by no means forgotten, we are all trying to get our bearings and figure out just what the New Normal is; not surprisingly the clues seem to be few and far between. (This is as good an opportunity as any, though, to thank you, both on Lauren’s behalf and on my own, for all the kind thoughts and wishes. I don’t claim to know how or why that helps; it does, though, and that’s what’s important.) I don’t really expect a clear resolution on that question any time soon; it’s probably enough to identify the elements as they come along, to welcome the good ones and deal with the rest as reasonably as is, well, reasonable under the circumstances. Whatever that turns out to mean.

Here, then, in no particular order, are some of those elements, at least the ones floating nearest the surface of Tsarskoe Tsocko.

• The New Normal will include… Any Minute Now… a new Club Tsock that is ANYTHING BUT NORMAL. Mind you, this is not to suggest that previous tsocks have been particularly run of the mill, but if I do say so myself (and I do) I rather think that I’ve gone farther over the top this time than ever before. Not for nothing was Jennifer heard to remark to someone, at MAS&W, “she’s so far outside the box, I don’t think there even IS a box.”

  As regards the Any-Minute-Now aspect of that - I’m out of Pattern Purdah and am just awaiting the all-clear from the shipping front before I blog it. This year we actually have an Official Internal Schedule, and we’ve been pretty much meeting it. And even though I effectively lost a week of work to the business of the funeral, I managed (thanks in no small part to the great good-will and adaptability of my dear Test Knitter) to make up for lost time to such good effect that I only missed my part of the deadline for Tsock #3 by a few hours. But - aha! you knew there had to be a BUT, didn’t you - fat lot of good that did, given that during that same time of craziness I, um, neglected to order toner for the printer. So there I was, panting at the finish line, with the pattern all dressed up and nowhere to go. Apparently the New Normal includes a healthy admixture of irony. (Fair enough - so did the Old Normal. Irony - oh yeah, I know how to do irony, all right.)

  Fortunately, and largely thanks to presence of mind on the part of The Tserf, that crisis passed fairly quickly. She is off to her well-deserved vacation, and Any Minute Now… I’ll get to unveil what I’m tempted to think of as The New Abnormal.

• The New Normal, as you may recall, includes kittens. That may in fact be one of the best things about the New Normal to date. I’ll give you the full run-down on these two one of these days soon; for now here are a few more pictures. I’m afraid they’re over a week old (the pictures, that is, not the kittens - the kitten are about eight weeks old). I tried to take some new ones today but ended up with one blur after another - these two move FAST.

  

  That’s Fosdick (as in Fearless Fosdick), reaching down to beat up his little sister Annabel (as in… Annabel; it’s just her name).

  

  Fosdick almost always sticks out his tongue. He’s going to be long and lean and lithe - at eight weeks he already is. And he is bold and fearless and impudent. I think he’s going to give Ptolemy a run for his money.

  

  Annabel is Fosdick’s littermate and his temperament’s polar opposite. He is a thoroughly boyish little boy, and she is the girliest of little girls. She’s soft and cuddly and confidingly affectionate.

  They’re settling in brilliantly, eating voraciously, growing like the proverbial weeds. The New Normal has its silver linings - or at any rate its fuzzy black and grey and white ones.

• The New Normal is going to include a lot of spinning and knitting. (Just as well, what with this being that sort of blog, don’t you know.) Just at the moment spinning is uppermost, because I get a few days’ break before I leap back into the Pattern Purdah backlog, and during that break the Tour de Fleece begins.

  This year I actually have my own team: Team Russian Underpants. It’s fielded jointly by two Ravelry groups, both of which I moderate; Antique Spinning Wheels and CPW Lovers. The team name is based on some of the deeply bizarre stuff we’ve seen eBay sellers do to wheels by way of adding value, including transforming them into lamps with outlandish shades that look like a cross between the Winter Palace and Great-Great-Grandma’s bloomers.

  Our team badge, courtesy of the lovely and gifted Blogless Fran:

  

  As you can see, we take ourselves and our spinning VERY seriously.

  I am also spinning again for Abby Franquemont’s Team Suck Less, and this year I’ve also joined the Completely Pointless and Arbitrary Group Group’s Team Bacon Cakewaffle.

  The serious. I am all about it.

• Incidentally, I can also foreseee that the New Normal is going to include frequent repetitions of the catch-phrase - or rather the catch-up-phrase - “oh, that’s right, you haven’t heard about that yet, have you.” For instance, I was about to start telling you about the warm-ups I’m doing for the Tour, and I realized that they all require referring to backstories that I’ve never gotten around to blogging. If I have anything to say about it the New Normal is going to feature reasonably frequent blog entries (hey, I’ve done it before; I can do it again), and for a while they are going to be studded with that phrase until… it stops being true.

  To wit: As part of my warm-ups I’ve plied up all the Teeswater singles (oh, that’s right, you haven’t heard about the Teeswater yet, have you) and finished the yarn; it’s drying now and will be skeined and tagged and photographed tomorrow. There’s still about another bobbin’s worth of Teeswater left to spin (oh, that’s right, you haven’t heard about the Teeswater yet, have you), and I’ll probably do that during the Tour itself. I’ve also started a timed trial with the Cheviot (oh, that’s right, you haven’t heard about the Cheviot yet, have you), so I can estimate speed and grist both for the Suck Less mile-in-a-day challenge and for the 18-ply (oh, that’s right, you haven’t heard about the 18-ply yet, have you) that I’m doing as part of the Russian Underpants challenge (oh, that’s right, you haven’t heard about the Russian Underpants challenge yet, have you). This time I’m spinning it, not from the lock as I did for the Infamous 8-ply (oh, that’s right, you haven’t heard about the Infamous 8-ply yet, have you), but from hand-combed top (oh, that’s right, you haven’t heard about the combs yet, have you), so I figure a trial run is in order to see whether I think I have a prayer of getting it all done in time and of squeezing the resulting yarn through the tiny orifice of an antique wheel.

  Note to self: Blog the Teeswater, the Teeswater, the Cheviot, the 18-ply, the Russian Underpants challenge, the Infamous 8-ply, and the combs.

Hrmph - the New Normal is starting to look like a lot of work.

Good thing it has kittens, is all I can say.

A few days ago.

A few days ago I was working away as usual - among other things on writing a massive catch-up blog post, complete with already-edited pictures, to bring you up to date on the events of the past month or so (new kits, sheep & wool festivals, other gatherings, knitting, spinning, etc.).

And then two things happened; one tiny, one huge.

In strictly chronological order: I adopted a pair of kittens that a close friend had been fostering; and the close friend’s husband was killed in a car accident.

I know it’s almost outrageous, maybe obscene, to mention those two events in the same breath; but apparently the universe has no such sense of proportion or decorum, or they couldn’t both have happened on the same day, within a couple of hours/miles of each other, to the same small cast of characters. Could they?

Very obviously I don’t know, and I don’t expect to know. But I keep coming back to that question, and it doesn’t make my world seem any less random or surreal.

This is a crazy time and a busy one - I’m thankful every hour that there is so much stuff to DO when somebody dies. The show, of course, goes on; at some point soon I intend to finish that blog post and to follow it with others in what used to be the normal way… and there’s still the current tsock to work on and the next one to plan, and then there’s all that other stuff that makes up daily life and that doesn’t have the courtesy to put itself on hold when daily life is violently interrupted by personal tragedy.

But I still keep asking the question. And then at a certain point the best thing I can do is to go hang out with the kittens and try not to try to figure it out.

So yesterday… I had an unusually tough row to hoe.

Pity me. I spent the afternoon on Liam Duty.

Yup - for those of you who were wondering, Liam is the kid’s name. And as you can see, he and I do not get along at all.

He’s eight weeks old now, with a voracious appetite and a rudimentary vocabulary;

he’s pretty much got us all right where he wants us - and he knows it.

There’s rather a lot of him for his age, I’m told,

and I can’t say that’s anything to object to.

You’ll notice that he’s easily entertained. Well, one of us is, anyway.

His mother was very impressed with my multi-tasking abilities…

… until she caught me getting distracted.

Eight weeks is maybe a little old for this, incidentally, but I trust you’ll be pleased to know that I finally got a chance to perform the all-important initiation ritual; dunno if he’ll actually grow up to knit and spin (though if I have anything to say about it…), but at least the seeds of fiber-friendliness have now been planted - officially.

(It was a tough choice, but I figured I couldn’t go wrong with a Bosworth Mini and my default Harmony circs.)

Overall, I think he took it pretty well; at any rate he seemed suitably impressed with the solemnity of the occasion.

Sir… it is a very solemn circumstance; and I love to see it so reverently and awfully entered upon. It is a most excellent sign; for the most thoughtful beginnings make the most prudent proceedings.

You may have observed that there is something missing in these pictures.

Lauren.

Yeah, well - she gets to play with him after I go home.

Fair’s fair.

So.

Remember Lauren? (If you don’t, then CLEARLY you have not been paying attention.)

Well, lookie here what she’s just been and gone and done.

Yup, that’s hers. He arrived this morning, under carefully controlled circumstances (these past few months have been a hot contender for Most Monitored Pregnancy Ever); he’s 8 pounds 3 ounces and perfect, and he comes with all the standard equipment - except a name, which I am told will be forthcoming shortly.

Everybody is fine. Tired but fine. Mamma is still kinda loopy. Which is a good thing.

And right about now… if you’re sitting there noticing that not only have I not finished blogging about Sock Summit, not only have I not touched Rhinebeck yet (not to mention that I have not even started packing for SOAR), but here I am posting pictures of this kid when I haven’t even gotten around to blogging his parents’ wedding yet…

… yeah, I noticed that too, and you know what?

Doesn’t matter.

Doesn’t matter that that puts me into the running for Worst Blogger Ever.

So what.

Right now… for once… I just don’t care about the Backlog.

Nope. Sorry. Backlog Schmacklog.

Priorities.

Let the knitting begin.

OK, at least I have a good excuse this time. Right? We all know what’s coming up this weekend - Rh*n*b*ck. So it’s been a little crazy for a change. I’ll post again before the weekend, I hope, with some enticing details - meanwhile I am SO IMPORTANT AND BUSY BLAH BLAH BLAH that I have a guest blogger filling in for me today. (You’ll know who she is, right away. But as long as I’m being all introductory, and stuff, I would like to commend to your attention her two most recent blog entries. This one, and then this one. Go look, srsly.)

Anyway… you know how much I love my dog, right? I do. Very, very much. But with all due respect to Luke I have to admit that it is really nice for once to have a guest blogger with opposable thumbs - one who can do her own typing and take her own pictures. Makes me feel like I’m hitting the big leagues.

 
Dear Lisa,

Okay, who am I kidding? I can find a stamp? A pen that works? A piece of what used to be called stationery, unless it’s stationary? Get a photograph out of the e-ether and have it developed onto paper? No. Not without stretching this project out longer than it took to make the Dirty Bird socks themselves. Therefore, herewith, the Official Proper Thankyou Letter, in improper form.

Image #1: Dirty Birds Assume the (First) Position. At first I thought the socks were too beautiful to wear, so I draped them artfully over my vintage cowboy boot collection (ed. note: damn, now that’s a picture I’d like to see…) and gazed for a few days. Also brought visitors in to gaze. Then I contemplated buying a shadow box at Hobby Lobby, but it would have had to have been 3D. Suddenly the temperature dropped–from 96 to 50–and I found my feet in a state of chill and my socks in a state of both dirty and crummy Walmart tube. I donned the Birds. (If they ever need darning, that’s another story.) Whereupon I discovered these socks were made not just for admiration, but for occupation. Why? Read on.

Image #2: Revelation the First: I have never had a pair of socks that fit. There has always been a range (fits sizes 3 - 17). Therefore, no heel-cradling as I now know it. I have worn woolen ski socks, which were warm, but also created itchy cable welts and blisters. As you can see from the expressions on the birds’ faces, these socks were meant to work hard for me, and no one else. Size 10.5, by the way. I gained 1/2 a size with each nine-pound daughter.

Image #3: A Sidelong Glance: luminous yet non-garish colors blending with patina of Home Depot bamboo flooring and the paint techniques of Old Mexico. Also note a certain springiness in the limb of the wearer.

Image #4: The Crisis: about to leave on a freezing cold bicycle ride, I’m tormented by competing impulses. Get some exercise in the freezing drizzle, but without the socks? The idea of getting them spackled with road mud is too repugnant to contemplate, although all the high-end cycling catalogs have recently begun selling high-end wool socks, even wool jerseys. This is what cyclists wore fifty years ago and the poobahs seem to have re-discovered that wool beats poly-anything. Still, I can’t do this to the boids.

Image #5: The Three Friends Come Home To Roost: it’s really no contest. With one bird folded beneath me and one outstretched on the coffee table, my feet and I settle in for a long morning’s work and exercise avoidance on the comfy couch. My arches are cradled, my toes parented–don’t we all try to raise children in an atmosphere of loving warmth while letting them have their independence?

A parting shot: But stay! Something is not quite right! What if no one pops by for some innocuous reason? If a Dirty Bird nests in a living room but no one arrives to admire it, does it still exist? And so I mount the crude podium that is the coffee table, giving pedestrians an excellent view of me, especially my feet, when I hold them out at waist level. (Which is no small trick, let me tell you.) I’m sure they notice the artful below-calf dip that actually makes my ham-sized lower legs look delicate.

In short (or long) I love these socks, and would love even more if you could post this award-winning slide show on your blog. Important: how do I wash them? I have a feeling that’s going to have to happen soon.

Really, I love you for making me these socks and plan to show them to strangers at the airport on Wednesday.

Love,

R

 
Addendum:

On Mannequin Feet, Being Stalked by the Local Fauna