Genius. Fucking genius.

Remember that scene in Amadeus? The one where Mozart has some paper on a pool table (billiards?) and is writing out a new work entirely from his head, with no piano, no humming, no hesitation? This one? Well, knitting this doily, I get the distinct impression that's exactly how Herbert Niebling wrote lace. No swatching, no fooling around. Just sit down with a graph, write out the pattern. Maybe have someone knit it for an example to show. This guy was the freakin' Mozart of lace knitting. Now I want every pattern he's ever written. I'm not compulsive or anything.

My mother-in-law today told me she's knitting herself a wrap sort of thing with the skein of Sea Silk that I gave her for Christmas... I kind of casually said "So you wouldn't mind a lace shawl sort of thing from me?" and she oohed and aahed and said she'd love one. (She's got about three of my doilies in her house, she knows it'll be cool.) The pattern I've got my eye on looks kind of Art Nouveau, and Niebling was designing lace then, so it's possible he did it on purpose. I'm thinking black silk with peacock iridescent beads as accents. Small beads. Don't want it to weigh a billion pounds.

Of course I'll probably change my mind in a week and go back to Newgrange.


Otherwise, it was a week of crankiness and lung snot. The hub's job has been really irritating lately; they're doing a repair job he has to inspect. Yet no one seems to know quite when he'll need to inspect it, so he has to hang around the house, waiting for the phone call. With cell phones it's a bit easier, but still, we could hardly haul the kid off to the waterpark or something, with that hanging over his head. So he's cranky because his weekend sucked, waiting for phone calls that never came. The Goob has a molar coming in and is cranky, but at least she's finally figured out that she can tell us her teeth hurt (Mumma, my teef hut.) and she'll get some Tylenol to take the edge off the pain.

Me? Well, I've got a nasty cold, have had it all weekend, but... you know... otherwise it was kinda nice. I like hanging around the house. I did all that dyeing yesterday, spent today knitting. Listened to the Goober and the husbeast chasing each other around the living room, giggling. It wasn't much different than any weekend, but I like most weekends.

It's hard to motivate myself to get out of the house. I like it here.

Except when the Goob has an innocent look on her face, and I don't know what she's broken.