2ktog

Please scroll down to the bold section to help Omar with my birthday gift!

When I was a child, I spent a lot of time at my grandmother's house reading Redbook and McCalls and other such magazines. Nothing racy, just homey and heteronormative. Nothing that questioned the gender roles I would later, in college, learn to deconstruct. I remember vividly the wooden magazine rack filled with "Hints from Heloise" and "Can this marriage be saved?"
When I got much older and wiser, I vowed that i would never be like the women who wrote those articles, women who believed in the great divide between men and women, and who spent most of their energy trying to bridge it and explain the mysterious other side.
But now that I am an old married lady (6 months at the end of the month!), and my partner happens to be male, I find myself coming to terms with certain eternal truths about straight men. Perhaps the most unfortunate one being this: they can't pick out gifts for their female significant others worth a damn.
I am trying to train Omar. Let's talk about him like he doesn't share this blog, like he hasn't blogged here in months! He is sweet in so many ways and does many things for me, but after five years I have finally taken a gentler approach and am slowly teaching him the art of gift selection, which is one of the things I pride myself on.
February is a rough month for the boy, as I was born on Valentine's day, there's a double whammy of gift-giving pressure.
Thankfully for him, I have a suggestion. As I was knitting away at Tempe Yarn and Fiber on New Year's Day, my eyes alighted on something so amazingly red I can't stop thinking about it. Now when I was a teenager, I hated everything associated with Valentine's day and pink and red. They did not jive with my goth image. But I have grown up to love these colors, although it still takes a lot for me to wear a true pink.
But we don't want to talk about pink, we want to talk about red. A red so dazzling, it is too real for roses. It's Chinese lacquer and expensive, coveted lipstick on floozy blondes. And I must have it!
This red is of course Lacey Lamb. The picture does not do it justice. The coral had almost captivated me as much, my mind would drift to it. but I know knitting obsession when I feel it, and it's red, red, red.
The thing is, I don't have the time or inclination to knit lace right now. What I do have is a deeply romantic streak. How wonderful would it be to receive a baby soft blow-your-mind red lace scarf knit by my darling boy? He is hankering for a new project. The others he has started as gifts for me are on hold for various practical reasons. (Need more yarn, lost pattern). Omar has the soul of a lace knitter, I can tell. How much different can it really be from php?
But he needs your help, fair readers. I have told him what would make Feb. 14 special, but I want him to choose the pattern for his first lace project and my gift. We don't know much at all about lace and aside from a little feather and fan action and maybe a little eyelet, I haven't touched it. He has done less than I have (but is better at patterns).
For your reference, here are some laces that I like. You can email him your suggestions at wbmook@dadahero.com. Sometimes it doesn't do any good to fight the Redbook reader in us all. Boys need help with presents.

On a sad, wistful note, we located the last and only picture of the completed Noro garter entrelac scarf that was lost in the move. I think there are 7 or 8 skeins of Silk Garden all in gorgeous cool tones that he lovingly selected. He has looked everywhere and we don't think we're likely to find it. We just have NO idea what happened to it, could it have been left behind, or accidentally donated? Some things are in our storage space but most everything has been unpacked. So here's the last tribute to this lovely FO from 2006, barring a miracle recovery. I wish we had a better picture so you could see all of its glory.