20th Anniversary Countdown: Guest Post #11

In celebration of my 20th Blogiversary, I'm doing guest posts every week leading up to the big day.

Today's guest poster is CCR.

CCR blogs over at Knit Read Cats Hockey and, as you will soon learn, that title describes what she writes about pretty thoroughly. She lives in Florida with her mother and her cat and I’ve gotten to know her a bit better because she sometimes comes to the virtual stretch classes that my healthcare system holds at lunchtime. She reads sci-fi/fantasy books like me, talks about her cat as lovingly as I do, and always has a fabulous knitting project going on. Please welcome her!

News flash: 20 is a lot! Congrats to NGS, because 20 years is a lot of years, for blogging or for anything, really. 

Relatedly, 20 of anything is a lot to talk about, and I wavered: books? But so many! Things I have knit? But again, 20 is so many. I finally decided that since my blog is named Knit Read Cats Hockey (I know, not the most creative title), I would talk about five items in each category: 5 knit, 5 read, 5 cats, 5 hockey.

Buckle in: it, uh, got a little long…

Five Things That I Have Knit

In no particular order, just items that came to mind and I thought might be of interest.

1. Squid/octopus/Cephalohedron

Yes, some clever person came up with a pattern to knit a squid! I have now made a few of these, but the first one was for my brother, as a gift that I thought would amuse him. Which it did!

2. Sweater. I have actually made two sweaters for myself, or should I say I have “completed” two, as I have one that has been stuck in limbo for a few years now. I did make a vest once as well, but the Comodo sweater I made last year is definitely my proudest garment. It fits! It swirls! It has attitude, and color, and I’m so happy with it. [Note from NGS: I would like one of these in every color.]

3. The Simple Skype Socks—60+ times. Part of the reason I was hesitant to learn to knit socks in the first place was the complexities inherent in getting something to fit my feet, given all the possibilities of yarn and needle size and pattern. Fortunately for me, early on I happened across this pattern and fell in love with it. It is absolutely perfect for me, in that it’s interesting, but also binary: the patterning is made by creating the same two rows over and over, and I can tell which one I’m at by looking. This means I can carry a sock project around with me (they’re so portable) and work on it without counting rows or consulting the pattern. Just go! So I keep making them, and making them, and making them. Enough that the designer is a friend on Ravelry.

4. 2-in-1 socks, aka the War and Peace socks. Socks can be knit one at a time, or two at a time (generally on the same long circular needle), but there is an advanced method in which one knits two at a time with one inside the other. When you’re done, if you did it right, you pull one out of the other with a flourish. (And if you did it wrong, as Stephanie Pearl-McPhee aka the Yarn Harlot describes it, you then learn that you have two socks that are “fused in one spot, joined by one stinking stitch.” Which is why it’s smart to check regularly as you go along.) I took a class to do this, and though it’s very fiddly, even more so than regular sock knitting, it is an impressive knitter’s party trick. Yes, that is a real thing. [Note from NGS: This sounds like witchcraft. Also, that Yarn Harlot link goes to her own celebration of the 20th anniversary of her blog and I'm verklempt over here.]

5. Tardis shawl (aka Bigger on the Inside). One of my most-recognized and commented-on knits, as it turns out there are a lot of Doctor Who fans out there! 

Five Books I Love

Is there anything harder for a book lover than to be asked to name favorite books? These days, I often dodge the question by saying that I mostly read science fiction and fantasy, which is true, as in my experience, most people don’t want to know more than that. But I’ve now done this to myself, haven’t I? Well, here are five books that I have loved reading, with no promises that this is the top five ever (because ha), just five of the infinitely larger number.

(I will note that I have chosen books that should be currently in print, which is actually quite a challenge given the number of old books on my shelves. As much as I love, say, The Innocent Wayfaring by Marchette Chute, which is “a lighthearted and refreshing medieval fantasy about a girl who runs away from a convent with a monkey and goes wayfaring throughout Chaucer's England,” no one needs to be searching for a used copy of that—though there is a first edition for sale for just $500, if you want [I can’t believe they charge $7 for shipping on top of that].)

[Note from NGS: I took this as a personal challenge and was able to find lots of copies through my university library system. You might be able to find it if you're willing to do some legwork.]

1. The Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard. I love this book! It’s an epic fantasy novel about a bureaucrat, which isn’t something you get to say often, and I loved Kip from the start, then more as his story, his background, his ambitions to better the world, were revealed and grew and developed. I don’t know how to put it, why it struck such a chord with me, but I wish that someone else would read it and love it and want to talk it over (preferably after they then read The Return of Fitzroy Angursell and At the Feet of the Sun).

Note that you really should get the ebook version. I got the hardcover first, and wow it’s heavy, over three pounds; my hands don’t like that. Go for the pixels. 

2. The Gilded Hour by Sara Donati. If you like period-accurate historical fiction, Sara Donati is an author you should know. I first read her Into the Wilderness when I worked at Barnes & Noble (so that’s a long time ago), when an advance copy came in. While I very much enjoyed it and the rest of that series, I find I reread this one and its sequel, Where the Light Enters, far more often. Set in New York City in the 1880s, the story starts with two cousins who are both doctors, a rarity but not unknown for women at that time. Their stories and the issues of the time are woven together in a way that is both entertaining and thought-provoking.

3. The Down Goes Brown History of the NHL by Sean McIndoe. All right, it’s a long shot that anyone reading here is going to be interested in this, but if by chance it sounds interesting to you, or to someone you know, let me give you a wholehearted recommendation: He knows his stuff and he is funny! It came out in 2018, so it doesn’t cover the continued lunacy of the last few years, but hey, there’s plenty in the league’s first 100 years to cover!

4. Mandy by Julie Edwards. I have to include a kids book, as I still read them to this day, and have many fond memories of ones I read as a child, as well as enjoying new ones now. When I was reading this as a kid, I had no idea that the author of this book was actually Julie Andrews—yes, that Julie Andrews! 

All I knew was that I loved the story of this orphan girl who finds herself craving a little place of her own, all hers, and what happens when she starts working to make it a reality. It’s such a good story.

5. Audiobooks. Kind of cheating to make it a category instead of an individual title, but I love a good listen, and can recommend so many; I remember buying my first book on tape in the 90s, The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul, by Douglas Adams, read by the author, and nothing beats Adams reading his own books. Also:

*The audio versions of The Gilded Hour, read by Cassandra Campbell, and McIndoe’s book, read by the author

*The Murderbot series by Martha Wells, perfectly read by Kevin R. Free

*The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison, read by Kyle McCarley

*The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, multiple readers, perfect for the epistolatory nature of the book

I’m stopping, I’m stopping!

Five Cats I Have Been Owned By

In chronological order, because there’s no way I could rank my babies! I have had a couple of other cats along the way, but these are the ones closest to my heart.

First was Honey. When I was, what, 13? 14? I finally convinced my parents to get a cat; they had had at least one or two before but either BC (before CCR) or before I was old enough to remember. Mom saw an ad in the local paper for someone giving away kittens, and we went to their house. This tiny orange-and-white kitten raced under the couch and I said, “I want that one.” She was a total sweetheart, not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but sweet and loving. She died in 1997 and it broke my heart. [Question from NGS: Has anyone ever met an orange kitty who was smart?]

Next, Pan and Harold. It was over a year after Honey died before I was ready to get cats again, and I went to the Humane Society to pick out a pair. I fell in love with Pan pretty much at first sight. He was in with a litter, but I was only told after that they weren’t related; he had come in with another kitten and when she died, he cried until they put him in with other kittens, poor baby. Harold was in with a different litter, but he was the runt, and so little and wobbly that I was afraid no one else would pick him (at the first vet visit, he was 3.5 pounds and Pan was 5). 

Ha! He got very big (he and Pan were each around 15 pounds as adults), and where Pan was medium-smart and a good cuddle-buddy, Harold turned out to be scary-smart, but was also so laid-back and relaxed, I used to say he should have gone to a little girl who wanted to dress him in doll clothes, because he wouldn’t have minded at all.

Next on the cats-who-were-loved list is Carlos. Pan was 10 and a half when he died, and Harold and I were both bereft. I wasn’t ready to “replace” Pan, but Harold needed company so badly that I went looking for a cat who was good with other cats, found one through a rescue org, and brought her home. Harold was appalled at first, but quickly grew to take comfort from her, though she never stopped being afraid of me, which got old very fast. 

Harold died a year after Pan did (and almost exactly in between was when my dad died; wow, that was a bad time), and now I had a doubly broken heart and a cat who was scared of me but also desperately lonely, so in short order, I was cat shopping again. That led me to Carlos, and hooray for him. My big-pawed orange buddy was the most laid-back cat EVER.

I had expected to bring Carlos to Florida when I moved, and was looking forward to seeing him enjoy the lanai, but he died before the move. Heart broken again. (Pets, they bring so much love when they come into our lives, and so much pain when they go.)

Finally and currently, there is Maggie. About six months after the move, I felt settled enough to bring a new cat into my life, and the Humane Society here hooked me up with her highness. She is sweet and spoiled and loves laps but hates being picked up, and I can’t imagine being without her. Hopefully she has many more good years left; according to the paperwork they gave me, she’s 12 now, which is not young, but not old, surely! [Note from NGS: Zelda and Maggie are roughly the same age and I refuse to believe they both won't be here forever.]

Five of My Personal Favorite Hockey Moments

1. The Bruins winning the Stanley Cup in 2011. Obviously. I was too young to remember them winning in 1970 and 1972, but not this time! I hope they manage it again in my lifetime.

2. Going to games when I was a kid, in the 80s. For a while there, my mother worked in an office that had season tickets and a few times a year, she would be given tickets to that night’s game. Going that often was so much fun!

Fun fact, that office also had Celtics tickets, and I went once with my Dad, who was a lifelong basketball fan. I couldn’t stop giggling about how weird it was to be in the Garden and not having it set up for hockey! Dad was not particularly amused.

3. My first-grade, learning-to-print school paper that starts “I love hockey. I love Boston Bruins. I love Bobby Orr.”

And yeah, I can’t tell you why Giles Gilbert ranked second in my mind to Orr (nothing against him). My mother hung this paper near where we watched TV, and during games I would run over to add names as I heard them. Leading to the classic spot on the back where I spelled Bucyk* right but got John wrong (Jhon). 

*I probably asked my parents how to spell Bucyk and didn’t ask about John, but it’s still funny.

4. Going to two games, in the years before I moved away, when I got to sit at ice level! You get a better overall view of the game from higher up, but there’s something about the intensity of being Right There as the players go by. 

At least, for most people there is. One of those times, the man next to me spent part of the first period on his phone, telling a friend about how he put his patio furniture together. Not sure why he was there if he cared so little for the game.

5. Favorite fan moments:

*At training camp one year, watching the Bruins skate, and listening to a teenage fan of Tuukka Rask calling his name, sounding like a love-sick cow: toooooooookkkkkkkaaaaaaa. Just thinking about it makes me laugh.

*Getting on the T (subway) after a game I went to with a non-hockey-insane friend: we were packed in like sardines, and as the train pulled out, someone near us said, “If anyone wants to get on at Haymarket, let’s laugh at them.” The look on my friend’s face as she realized I thought it was funny.

*The Stanley Cup parade in 2011. I often get claustrophobic in big crowds like that, but something about it being all excited Bruins fans made the difference. Exciting from beginning to end.

All right, I’m stopping, I’m stopping! My goodness, I got a bit carried away there. But once I got into my 20 things, it was hard to stop. Any questions, comments, experiences to share?