Swampwater Debutante

Friday nights for the last two years or so have fairly invariably been me hanging out at Kate and McNewts’ place for dinner, a comfortable and friendly custom that is so inviolate in my mind that I actually scheduled my Las Vegas trip so that I could be home for it. Yes. I did.

I will change it for no one. If ever I date again, he will have to get used to Friday nights very damn quickly.

But I digress. This Friday, I elected to buy dinner for us, so I called Kate and told her to phone in an order from our favorite Mediterranean place. I would swing by and pick it up on my way home from Fort Worth, where I’d been (finally) paying off one of my big honking traffic tickets. Then we would gorge ourselves on hummus and spanakopita. Opa!

It took longer than I expected to get to the cafe’, because…traffic. I got started late, and it was rush hour. I am stupid, I know. But I did get there! I scampered in and panted out that there was an order for Kate. They were pleased, because it had just come out. Perfect timing! Thanks, sucky traffic!

Except. Debit card? Which I had just had? Nope. Nowhere to be found. Not in pocket of hoodie, not in pocket of jeans, not immediately to be seen when I opened up my purse. So I started tossing things out of it – starting with one half finished crocheted bath puff, one quarter-knit sock, one pair of pretty dress mitts, far too many twists of Smartie candies, several crochet hooks and knitting needles, my passport, two iPods and five lip balms. As you do.

The seating hostess – who has always reminded me of a younger, prettier Lainie Kazan and so I have always called her Lainie in my head – was sitting next to me waiting for the next customers to come in, and touched a finger to the Clementines I was wearing. For the record, these are my Clementines –

I knit them in 2006 out of dollar a ball acrylic mohair substitute as my first DPN project. They were inspired by Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and while I have completed several pairs of prettier, dressier mitts, these are the ones I wear most. I love them fairly unreasonably for such a cheap, easy project – I knit a tube, I narrowed the tube at the wrist, I thwacked a hole in it for my thumb, voila done – and people LOVE THEM.

“Where did you get these AWESOME GLOVES?” asked Lainie, bright and excited. “I love them.”

“Aren’t they great?” piped up the waitress who was waiting to take my (finally located in the front pocket of my purse damn it) debit card. “They’re so cool!”

“I, um, I made them myself.”

“SHUT. UP. YOU DID NOT.”

I pointed at the knitting and crocheting detritus spilling out of my purse. “No, I really did! Look, I made these, too.”

I pulled out my Veyla mitts, knit out of gorgeous MadelineTosh sock yarn in Baltic. Veyla, of course, is a pattern by Ysolda Teague, a brilliant little fillip of a thing. The combination of pattern and yarn – and maybe some of my own competence as a knitter – has made a stunning product, if I do say so myself. And I do. They’re the prettiest thing I have ever knit. Witness –

I love them, but I don’t wear them because they’re so dressy, to me. But I do like showing them off. So I handed them to Lainie, who tried them on and gasped.

“They’re beautiful. I need a pair. In black, to match my Dickens on the Strand dress…but you’d never have them done in time for that?”

She looked hopeful. I said I’d have to get the yarn, but I’d try. TRY. I’ve actually only just realized December 1st is much closer than I’d realized (FUCK! Thanksgiving is Thursday!).

To be honest, if I had had the yarn on hand I would have had them for her by Friday. They’re quick. But I don’t keep black yarn on hand, so I ordered some Malabrigo sock and crossed my fingers.

But even if I don’t have them by then she will still get a pretty pair of black lacey gloves for future Dickens endeavors.

It turns out Lainie is really named Teresa.

And dinner that night was awesome.

So. Let’s hope the yarn comes very soon and that I knit very fast.