This week has been exhausting as it is play production week for both The First Born and The Sprite. I have a new appreciation for the statement that “All the world is a stage.” Sure feels like it to me. Bill demurs on breakfast but the rest of us indulge. This week it has been a challenge as we have endeavored to point the toast in the general direction of our mouths with one hand while holding our eyelids open with the other. But we look forward to a weekend of performances. I leave for a conference in Florida on Sunday and JetBlue has confirmed that knitting needles are on the permitted list of carry on items [at least for now], so I am content.

You think you know someone and then they surprise you. Take my husband, for instance. Before we got married, I made full disclosure; he knew about my knitting, my love of The Lord of the Rings, the fact that I drink tea and my other quirks. But now, NOW, after more than 20 years of marriage, he tells me that he is still waiting for me to get tired of knitting and …get this…”stop.” Stop? As if. I think he was actually serious. I should say that I am not a little old lady making tea cozies [Not that there is anything wrong with that!] but a sophisticated career person with ideas and opinions. Despite the fact that many other glamorous and famous people knit, he persists in his bias against it. I just don’t get it. Your sweater just got shuffled to the bottom of the to-do list, Buster.

But enough about me, let’s talk about my knitting! I first taught myself to knit when I was about 12. I found a paperback book, appropriately enough at Woolworth’s, and I was off and running..er..knitting. At the time, I was doing a lot of sewing and quilting and knitting just seemed like the next logical thing to do. I have always loves textiles and fibers so knitting was been just one more way to indulge this mania. While in college, I started weaving—that was a ton of fun. Then law school and a real job and my knitting, along with all other hobbies, got pushed to the bottom of the list.

Having children was my inspiration to start knitting again. Here were little people who were fun to dress in little clothes that didn’t take an inordinate amount of time to make which is good because, of course, you don’t have any time because of the little people [See: above]. I went through a definite Norwegian pattern mitten phase, turning them out at a fast and furious rate. In fact, I finished them almost as quickly as the children lost them. Hats, sweaters, so much fun!

My recent return to knitting was prompted by my Aunt Angie. Actually by my Aunt’s move into a nursing home. Aunt Angie was a beautiful and prolific knitter who never finished anything. She was always knitting, or reading about knitting, or planning her next knitting project but the problem was that the next project was always the best project. She truly made exquisite parts of things. I shouldn’t say she never finished anything because that is not quite fair. She made some beautiful baby blankets and sweaters for the girls but when my Dad broke up her household, there were rooms, literally rooms full of yarn. Beautiful yarns. Too beautiful to let sit. She is no longer able to knit so a good deal of this yarn is now in my attic. And, it is also because of my Aunt that I endeavor to have no more than two projects at any time. This, my theory goes, will insure that they get done. I understand how my Aunt accumulated such a collection. I understand the allure of the colors and textures and the thrill of a new project. I understand it too well. When we lived in NYC, Aunt Angie and I would yarn shop together. Trouble. Ok, I still have a few unfinished and as yet unstarted projects [mostly circa 1980s] of my own. Those don’t count. So far so good on my plan. Excelsior!

This week marks the stage debut of the Sprite and the excitement has reached fever pitch. She sings, she dances; she has actual speaking lines [3]! The play is The Music Man and her role is that of Gracie Shinn, the Mayor’s youngest daughter. You may recall that the play is set in approximately 1912.

Yesterday was the first dress rehearsal and we sure were prepared. Prepared for us, anyway. Dropped waist, lace trimmed dress? Check. White stockings? Check. Fancy shoes? Check. Ringlets? Ringlets?? This could be a problem. Of my three daughters, only Mona Lisa has curly hair, of course inherited from me. The other two have hair just like their Dad--thick and very, very straight.

In a rush, the memories of the girls’ Traditional Irish Dance days returned. No, we didn’t use the curly wigs. We made our coifs the old fashioned way. Not the old fashioned way my Grandmother curled my hair with strips of cloth, but with foam curlers and lots of different kinds of bionic strength goop. And then we sprayed and sprayed and sprayed it with this stuff that smelled like bananas and, on contact, congealed the hair to form a hard resinous shell. Even then, the Sprite’s curls would last maybe ten minutes.

The directions on the sheet clearly indicated ringlets and the Sprite had her heart set on authenticity so we endeavored to achieve the pinnacle of 1912 coolness. We did achieve some success. After dousing her head with extra strength styling gel and repeated curling iron application we managed to get her hair to remain, if not exactly curled, at least sort of bent. Hoping against hope to preserve this result, if only to prove that we actually accomplished this amazing feat, I reached for the hair spray and let loose. By the time the aerosol fog had lifted, the curl had vanished, never to be seen again. Plan “B”? Bows. Really, really big bows.

Instead of spending the weekend knitting, reading, and trying to figure out how to add a blogroll to this page, which is what I wanted to do, I spent a good part of the weekend preparing for a mediation and driving around [theater games, dance, grocery shopping …you get the idea. This, shall we say imbalance? …failure to fulfill expectations?…made me very crabby. It was one of those weekends that made me rant through the house declaring how if I had an ounce of imagination, I would have quit practicing law years ago. And then, of course, the mediation went really well and a lawyer that I barely know stopped me on the street to compliment me on my performance in a particularly knock down, drag out, this time it is personal piece of recent litigation. Okay. I guess I will stay. For now.