Will Work for Yarn

Off on the next great adventure!

2009-03-30T08:49:00.004-04:00

I have started Lillie's Little Sweater. If you're on Ravelry, it's here.

After knitting so many Babies & Bears, I felt it was time for a break. And I'd heard wonderful things about this pattern from different people.

At first I was going to use this yarn, acquired during a recent trip to the LYS:

But then I got to worrying. I'm so anal about the striping matching from side to side and that's one thing I love about Babies & Bears...it's so easy to manipulate the self-striping yarns to match. Would this pattern be the same?

I looked on Ravelry to see what it might look like in a self-striping yarn and saw a few examples that persuaded me that I might not be able to control the striping as I like to, so I decided to go on a stash dive and find some different yarn. And this is what I came up with:

The sweater is to be a gift for a pregnant friend. I'm doing the 12 month size and the mother doesn't know the sex, so I thought this tweedy red/blue/pink/yellow would be a nice gender-neutral choice without going into pastels, which are more for tiny babies, IMO. I decided not to do the all garter stitch hood, so I'm working the stockinette version instead.

One thing I was shocked to find was that I only have ONE tote full of Encore! I could have sworn there were TWO. Hmmm...

Dan said something really funny the other day. He said, "Hey! I know a place where you can get rid of all your yarn!" As Scoobie would say, "Ruh Roh!" Get rid of yarn? Why would I want to do that?!?!?

I cautiously said, "Where?"

And he proceeded to tell me that someone at work knows about this charity where they knit hats and mittens for poor children. Phew! I was able then to say, "I do have some yarn that I could donate, but a lot of what I have is not suitable for hats or mittens"

Poor man. You can't blame him for trying. The yarn wall lives on his side of the basement and he wants more room. I'm knitting as fast as I can, is all I will say!

I haven't been knitting a whole lot because I am still sick with these darned ear infections. Three courses of antibiotics and it's still going on. I decided not to mess around and have made an appointment at the ENT for Wednesday. That's the earliest I can get in.

BTW, William's teacher LOVED the sweaters and the box I made to put them in, which you can see here.

On the importance of the right buttons

2009-03-19T12:50:00.008-04:00

You all know that the right buttons are SO essential for your knits to look their best, don't you?

I've had a thing about buttons for years now. Back when I used to sew my own clothes, it was the same. I like buttons that are unique, yet complement the garment. They don't fight for attention, but make you go "YES! THOSE ARE PERFECT!!!" Yes, you know this, I can tell...you are nodding your head, aren't you?

If you are not, then you need to learn this, because it helps your hand-knit garment look much better.

When I first started knitting, I made this bunting for my oldest child:

The buttons are wrong. Yes they are! They are little Beatrix Potter buttons and they are just all wrong for this garment. Why did I select these? I wanted something pink and subtle, so the stitchwork would be the star of the show (after the baby, of course and this particular baby always looked PRECIOUS in everything she wore. Really!) And the owner of the knit shop talked me out of it.

I am not naming names and I will say that that owner is no longer owner of the shop. But she had this thing where if you made something for a baby, then you had to buy cutesy buttons to put on it. No ifs ands or buts. I still regret giving in to her, but hers was a forceful personality. And at that time, mine was not. I'm much better now.

So recently I went on a quest for the perfect buttons for that little Babies & Bears sweater I made a long time back and I found the perfect buttons, IMO. Lookie:

Aren't these just way perfect for this little sweater! I knit this out of Sirdar Denim DK about...4 years ago??? Can't remember! Who this was for I can't remember either, but it's getting given to the Squatter's teacher who is having her second child and this one is a boy. Remember how I told you I wanted to make her another in a bigger size and started another Babies and Bears?

I have finally finished it! I've been sick for weeks now with ear infections or it would have been much faster. But since the Squatter's teacher is due next month and she'll probably be going on maternity leave any day now, I figured I better get with the program. Lookie:

I was very careful about the striping sequence and managed to start the second sleeve almost exactly where I should. And I was very careful about the front panels so that they would match. And I engineered the back panel so it would be all one color by joining yarn in the middle of the panel so that the next color sequence would not start. I am so dang clever and yes, I do love myself very much!

But I'm particularly proud of my button choice:

Aren't those just PERFECT? And didn't I sew them on in just the right way, alternating the diagonal lines! I love myself, yes, I do!

I had gone to the LYS with Mary, because I have created a knitting monster. Mary wants to be going to the yarn store all the time now. She has already finished one baby blanket and has two more on the needles. So I feel that I have done my duty by creating a new knitter to keep our yarn economy rolling along. But since she made me go with her to the yarn store (no, she didn't have a gun! Mary does not need a gun to get what she wants!) I had to do something there, so I ended up buying these buttons. And some yarn. I think maybe I have gone too far and now she is making me spend money on yarn and patterns and buttons that would maybe not have been spent before!

Okay, okay...it's my own fault, I admit it. But I did need the buttons. And one of my friends is pregnant, so the yarn will be used for that. But not another Babies & Bears...instead, I'm going to do Lily's Little Sweater...just for a change of pace.

ANYWAY, I tried lots of different buttons with this sweater, both blue and turquoise and nothing seemed just right. Until I had the brilliant (yes, I love myself) idea of using the brown in this colorway and once I found these square buttons with the diagonal line, I knew that once again, I had chosen wisely. (yes, I love myself!)

Well, it's time to go put my feet up. I'm sick of these ear infections which are stealing all my energy...I *have* gotten lots of knitting done in the doctor's waiting room, but I'd rather get it done somewhere else. Here's hoping this third antibiotic does the trick. Ta!

It's only natural...

2009-02-16T11:54:00.007-05:00

Isn't it? That when you get to the point where you have been working for something for a while and you are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel...

I'm almost to the bottom ribbing!!! Only 2 1/2 more inches to go. That's a lot of lunch monitoring, I tell ya! So it's only natural that...well...

I would start SOMETHING NEW!!!

Yes, I said I was going to stick to UFO's, but...somehow...it just HAPPENED!!!

Yes, it is yet another Babies & Bears Sweater (Cottage Creations). I have lost count of how many of these I have made; certainly I have run out of room on the page in the back where you are supposed to list the ones you made and to whom you gave them. And this is my second copy of the pattern, so it's possible that there were more listed on the one I lost.

I blame Mary, my friend, who wanted to learn to knit. Remember how I took her to the LYS for Superbowl Sunday and we bought her stuff to make a baby blanket? Well, we decided to go to the local library's knitting night and I got her started...and before I left, well the yarn and pattern for the B & B just jumped right into my knitting bag when I wasn't looking!! And the needle too....and then it seemed like I couldn't start it, since I had forgotten that you start at the cuff and you need DPs for that, but it was like KISMET! The right sized DP's were in my little tool box I keep in my bag! It was a sign!

So I caved. I could also blame the yarn, since I have a thing about Plymouth Encore and I also have this thing where every time I see suitable yarn for the B & B, I really want to see just how it will work in one. Because of the interesting construction, self-striping yarn and variagated yarn does really unique things.

I love what this one is doing.

I am also blaming the squatter's teacher, since I got to thinking about the newborn sized B & B I already have made and am going to give her...thinking about how the baby wouldn't be able to wear it for very long, since she is due in April. It will get too warm for the baby to wear fairly quickly!

Yeah, I know this is Michigan and we will still have chilly days into May if this cooling trend we are currently experiencing keeps up, but I am in the middle of my self-delusion, so please don't interrupt! So I thought I really should make a bigger one for the fall/winter, right? Right?

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Pumpin' Out Da Knits!!!

2009-01-27T10:51:00.005-05:00

Really. I don't know WHEN I've gotten this much knitting done, at least, not in recent memory. Lookie:

This is the Neck Down V-Neck Cardigan from Knitting Pure & Simple. Now that I've put the sleeve stitches on yarn holders, it's really going fast! I was a bit worried that the way the yarn pooled would change once I did that, but it hasn't really. Is very pretty, no? I've been working on it every single day, during lunch monitoring, church coffee hour, waiting for kids to come out of school or the bus, and while at home.

AND that's not all!!! (Can you tell I'm excited?)

Here is my Celtic Braid Socks! I turned the heel on the second sock during our church's annual meeting. Soon this pair will end up joining the smug married socks in my drawer. Cannot wait. Because this will be the first sock-weight wool socks I have ever made and KEPT. All the other ones were either cotton, given away, or worsted weight. Yay me. Booyah!

Once these socks are complete, I will return to the Jaywalker socks I started a long while back:

Silly me! I didn't even remember turning the heel on this sock! This may go faster than I thought!

Well, off to get ready to go lunch monitor yet again. Oh joy.

Progress is a many splendored thing...

2009-01-17T16:34:00.008-05:00

I really feel like I'm getting somewhere!

It's been so long since I have knitted and the urge to start something new is pretty intense, but I am also feeling the urge to get many of the UFO's cluttering up my stash done and out of the way. So I am happy to announce the near completion of one, the better-than-I-thought progress of another, and the resurrection of a third.

First, here is Laurel's poncho:

It's finished except for the I-cord drawstring for the hood and the fringe. Now I hate fringing things...hate it with a passion, so it might be a couple of days before I wind myself up to doing it. And then I will have to block it and since it is almost all acrylic, that's going to be a bit of work. Holding a steam iron close enough to help the edge relax and uncurl, yet not so close as to melt the thing. Ugh. Not looking forward to it.

For a while, I wondered if Laurel would even get this thing, since she told me, "I will probably just wear it to bed, because now I have different ideas about fashion." Oh. Well, maybe someone else would like this thing. But Laurel is pretty possessive, so she says she definitely wants it. She's tried it on and it is very warm and soft, so I can see she will probably wear it around the house, at least. Because it's been so stinkin' cold, anyone would be a fool NOT to wear a nice poncho like this one.

I did something interesting at the neck. The stitches at the neck opening were getting pulled this way and that by the hood, so I did a bit of buttonhole stitch to stabilize them with the tail end of the yarn I used when I started the hood. I think it was a marvelous fix and did exactly what I wanted it to:

I also have been working on one of my lonely singleton socks. I find this pattern (the Celtic Braid sock by Cabin Fever) to be difficult to work...all those cables with these tiny needles! So I've slogged away at the second sock since I finished my last pair of Ann Norling socks, thinking it was going to take forever to finish this, the second sock. I had to run out and buy a new cable needle, since the one I was using for this project disappeared somewhere. I was thinking it might just go back into the UFO bin, but when I pulled it out today with its mate to take a picture, I found that I was much farther along that I even thought to be:

Hooray! It looks like I may only have one, maybe two more full repeats of both cable twists to get to the bottom of the cuff, then it's just a matter of doing the heel and running down to the toe. Easy peasy lemon squeezy! So it looks like this sock will be spared from the UFO vault after all!

Finally, once my idiot knitting project (the one that I can do without thinking about it much, i.e. the poncho) was off the needles, I needed another. The Celtic Cable sock is not, by any stretch of the imagination, idiot knitting. I needed something to take with me to lunch monitor, an activity which requires eternal vigilance, lest the students start throwing food, standing on their desks and generally acting like monkeys in the zoo. And I like to read at the same time, if only to entertain the students, who are fascinated by my knitting, but also because I have a horror of being bored. I also found myself very popular on Friday with the lovers of cat's cradle, since Emily has been teaching all her friends how to do it. My spare ball of waste yarn furnished many girls with the necessary "string" for this activity. I'm so dang popular, LOL!

So with the thought of idiot knitting yesterday, I dug this out of the closet:

This is the V Neck Neckdown Cardigan for Women from Knitting Pure & Simple #994. I am only about 6 inches down from the neck and have about 14 more rows until I can divide for the sleeves. This will be the perfect idiot knitting project as it is just stockinette, with a few increases on the knit rows. Once I divide for the sleeves, I won't even have those! I love this colorway of Plymouth Encore too. This sweater is for ME. The last sweater I made myself (from a kit) makes me look like a puff ball waiting to explode. I needed something a little sleeker and this seems to fit the bill. But since I started it in 2005, the question is, "Will it fit ME?" Because ever since I had my thyroid removed, I have been steadily putting on weight. Sigh. It sucks to get older.

Well, I better close this out. I have successfully resisted yet another week from going to the yarn store. I am full of intestinal fortitude! Booyah!

FO!!

2009-01-05T09:33:00.002-05:00

I'm over the moon that I have completed these so quickly!

The Happy Socks have been flaunting themselves everywhere: they went to church a couple of Sundays in a row while I was working on them and I packed them along yesterday after they were done to show off. I worked on them on our trip to Kalamazoo; unfortunately, my days of car knitting while going to the 'Zoo are over, since Dan cannot stay awake when he drives long distances any more, so I end up driving both ways. But I was able to do a bit while there and finished the second sock shortly after coming home. Now my feet will be Happy Feet in their Happy Socks!

My mom is always interested in what I'm knitting, being a knitter herself. My kids all got hand-knit slippers and mittens for Christmas and she also gave the girls scarves she knit for them. William was bummed, because he didn't get one. The last time my mom gave him a scarf, he was less than thrilled, so she decided to save herself the effort. Honestly, the scarves are garter stitch made with Lion Brand Homespun, so they are a bit girly (she gave me one too.) But I could still see that he wanted one anyway. So I told him I'd make him a scarf and he could come down and pick out the yarn from the stash. I'll just have to be careful what I show him!

So after I was done with the scarf, I pulled out Laurel's poncho and have been going to town with that. But it isn't the most thrilling knitting, so the question becomes, "What should I do next? Start something new or finish a UFO?" I voted for the latter and decided the Celtic Cable sock should be the one, since it is the project closest to completion in my array of singleton sock projects.

BUt then, oh then...I found that my favorite skinny cable needle that I like to use for socks (not the ridged Brittany ones, but a skinny metal cable needle with the crook in the middle of it) is missing!!! I combed the house to see if it would turn up in any of those places I stash things I find and don't have time to put away properly. I went through my living room knitting bag and it wasn't there either. Poot. Guess I'll be heading out to Michael's to get one with my 40% off coupon!

The ridged Brittany one is just too thick and grabby for use with socks and makes cabling a PITA. So I really NEED this new needle!

In the meantime, I started cataloguing the stash and putting it up on Ravelry. I love being able to do that...and it's fun to take a trip down memory lane in the stash.

Dream....dream, dream, dream....

2008-12-29T09:24:00.004-05:00

I know when I'm getting excited about something when I dream about it.

I don't usually remember my dreams, mind you. But this morning before I woke up, I was having a dilly and it had a lot of knitting content. I was packing for a trip I was taking for work (I don't work outside the home, though I have been looking.) The trip was going to occur on a bus (fancy travel bus, not school bus) and we were supposed to meet up at the local high school. We had to wear a black suit with a white shirt, though when I looked at what everyone else was wearing, they were getting around this requirement in very creative ways. But not me, I had my suit...if only I could find it.

I had to get to the high school by 11:30 so I wouldn't miss the bus leaving. So I'm frantically packing, telling Dan he has to get ready to take me there so I wouldn't miss the bus. I'm looking through my knitting projects trying to decide what to take with me...the poncho? the sock? Oh, take 'em all, I decide. Where are my snips? Do I have my instructions?

I'm trying to charge my phone, which changes it's backsplash and announces it belongs to Sparky's Taco Shop instead. Wha'? I don't even know where that is, much less why my phone is doing this! And come to think of it, this is my OLD phone, the one I got through AAA with the black and white screen...how very strange!

I'm frantically looking for all the stuff that needs to go in my suitcase, my knitting tote, etc. and my husband is leisurely getting himself ready. I keep telling him, "Hurry up! We have to leave, it's almost 11:30 and they aren't going to wait for anyone!!!" It's 11:25 and he is just getting in the shower! I'm never going to make it!!!

He gets mad and I get mad, each time I think I'm ready, he's not and when he seems to be, I think of one more thing I need and the result is I wake up grinding my teeth. Weird.

So what does this mean? Is the bus trip wearing the black suit symbolic for death and my husband's stalling tactics to prevent me from going on that trip? Or is a subconscious expression of a desire not to leave the home to work (my favorite explanation, obviously) and my husband is trying to stall that as well? Or is simply the result of too much thinking about knitting before bed?

Anyway, interesting that I had so much knitting in the dream. It's not the only knitting dream I've had lately, though I can't remember the others, only a vague impression that there was knitting somewhere!

Here's the Happy Sock, happy to be finished and even happier that it's mate has been cast on and has a modest inch to it's name:

And I pulled a UFO out of the big knitting bag and worked on that as well:

THIS is Laurel's poncho, using Plymouth Encore and Knitting Pure & Simple's Women's Poncho pattern (#246). I am 18" on this sucker and have 7 1/2" to go before I can do the border and bind off. Then it's just a matter of knitting the hood. Laurel is not as eager to get this garment as she used to be, but let me know, in that infuriating way that teenagers have, that she is still open to receiving it. Oh, thank you, thank you, Laurel, for letting me have the priviledge of knitting for you! Pheh!

Happy Sock

2008-12-28T13:41:00.003-05:00

Yes, I could not resist starting a new sock. It's all because of these:

These are my sad sad socks. My last pair of completely wool socks. After this photo they eventually just got way too felted to wear (you can see here that they already stood up by themselves!)...I used to force my feet into them, but at some point, they just got felted beyond my ability to do that, or my feet got fatter. I like to think the former.

So with the advent of winter and no warm, cozy wool socks to keep my feet happy, I felt (oops! the F word!!!) I mean I thought it was a good idea to make a new pair. I went down last week to rummage through the stash, where I was sure I had another skein of Mountain Colors Weaver's Wool and so I did and so I did. Start knitting, that is.

I went with my favorite Ann Norling sock pattern (#12) and proceeded to cast on. The wool felt a little under worsted weight, but remembering how quickly the other ones had "bloomed" after wearing (the bottoms felted the first day just on contact with the sole of my Birks), I decided that I would stick to the worsted weight directions. The colorway is "Columbine". And I really love how they are turning out:

And since this yarn knits up so quickly, I can be confident that this sock will soon be a happy twosome. And not be left a lonely singleton sock, like so many others.

Well, I'm going to go do the toe of this sock and cast on the next one ASAP! And resolutely NOT look at anything else in the stash, nuh uh, no way, no way....

More than a year!

2008-12-16T16:51:00.005-05:00

Since I posted to this blog!

I have been knitting a little bit in that year, but I haven't been finishing much is my lousy excuse.

A while back someone asked about this:

Yes, I finally did finish this mitered baby blanket a year ago in November! It took FOREVER. Sigh...I worked on it betimes while I was lunch monitoring at the kids school. It was gifted to the crisis pregnancy center this past spring.

So it's been a long dry season, knitting wise. I've taken a bash at the poncho I started for Laurel, but that is also taking a long, long time and is not the most inspirational knitting. And I did a dishcloth, somewhere, sometime. But recently I began to feel the urge to knit again. And since my children's school has a mitten tree for needy children in the lobby and I don't really have the cash to buy anything to donate, I decided to dig some yarn out of the long-neglected stash and whip up some mittens. And since the pattern I used (Sirdar 294) with Kool Kidz Chunky, of which I had a few odds and ends leftover from other projects, knits up really fast, I was able to make a hat as well.

I've already cast on for another pair using the hot pink yarn that you see tying the mittens and hat together so they can be hung on the tree. I took these up to school today when I was lunch monitoring and found a nice spot, front and center, to put them. They are the only hand made items on the tree. I have until Thursday to get some more done and hope to at least have the mittens ready by then.

Well, it's off to cook dinner for my husband's birthday and to bully my son into doing his homework! A mom's work is never done!

Life is what happens...

2007-05-09T19:55:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone!

I have been feeling guilty for not posting to this blog for so long and don't have a hope in heck that I have a single reader left on the planet. Didn't help that in February I came down with influenza and by March I had pneumonia...it's hard to knit when you are sleeping and when you're not sleeping you're coughing.

Life has been galloping along at a great pace. And I have finally picked up my knitting and started giving it a bash every now and then. It's very puzzling to me, a person who was so totally obsessed by knitting for years and years, that the desire to do it can leave so suddenly and almost absolutely.

I know that the decision to stop attending knitting classes (and class is a loose term...more like a social club in a yarn store with buying discounts) played a big part in it. And my addiction to knitting magazines also is gone, which is a good thing in a way, I have far too many of them. But I've got all this YARN and I hate to give it away and don't think I'd ever be able to sell it for anything like it is worth. And when I open the tubs and look it over, I think, "But I don't WANT to get rid of this! I love this yarn! I want to keep it!" So I must just manage to reinspire myself somehow, but stay out of the yarn store so I won't add anymore to the stash. The stash is monolithic, it looms ahead on the landscape like a standing stone, demanding to be regarded, but not requiring any more action than awe and admiration. But when it is looming ahead, it remains the stash and nothing is done with it...it's useless. Time to start carving it into pleasing shapes

So I have decided to finish the project that seemed to be the one that killed the knitting drive, the Mitered Baby Blanket. If I can only finish this, I decide with magical thinking, I can remove the knitters block and get going whittling down that huge stash downstairs. Here it is as it is now. Compare it to the next photo which is what it looked like the last time I posted about it:

Someone tell me please...I've gotten some more done and it looks like it, doesn't it? The problem with knitting things in units is that it begins to feel like running in place, you do the same thing over and over and never get anywhere. Only 15 squares to go! Then the border of course, but that will be a RELIEF to get to that. Our church is holding it's annual baby shower for the crisis pregnancy center through the end of May and I *will* get this done to donate as I originally planned. I will, I will, I will......

Still alive...though not knitting

2006-12-18T10:36:00.000-05:00

Yes, I'm still around. Did you miss me?

I have not been knitting, not even a little bit. I don't know what happened. Usually I am at least putting a few rows on the current sock, but I just can' t get myself going on anything, not even at the doctor's office.

But I just had to post this, because I saw it featured in the Detroit Free Press on Sunday and thought it was a real hoot:

Gotta wonder if Carol Duvall has seen this?

IKEA...wow

2006-10-05T08:54:00.000-04:00

Mary wonders what I thought of IKEA.

I thought it was great! And I managed to get out of there only spending $13 (plus my lunch cost.)

I wanted to look at dining room chairs since ours are mostly broken. Funny how you can have furniture for 8 years and it remains fairly intact until your children are old enough to start abusing it and then it falls to pieces. We've had an oak dining room set that we bought in 1990. 3 of the 4 chairs are now broken and the fourth has gotten mighty wobbley. We've tightened all that can be tightened. Time to get some new chairs.

And at IKEA you can find some fairly decent ones starting at only $20 a piece. They aren't really big, but they would be better than folding chairs, which is what we're using now. So I went to *look* at them. In fact, the friend who went with me drives a Mustang, so I asked if she minded driving since we wouldn't be able to buy anything big at IKEA since her car is so dinky! I just wanted to *look*, then I planned on coming home, consulting the catalog again and making a list to come back with.

I found a couch I really liked...again, I *looked* at it. Not bought, looked. And I *looked* at a lot of stuff. It was quite overwhelming, but not as bad as I feared. It would be easy to get lost in there, but they do provide maps and since I don't have that chromosone that prevents my asking for directions, I didn't.

We had lunch at the little restaurant in there and it was quite delicious (roast beef & potato salad.) In the end I walked out with some kiddy cups, little bowls to match, and a jar of lingonberries for my friend, Mary, who had asked me to pick some up. Like I said, I *looked*.

Why all this emphasis on *looking*? Well, I got home and talked to Dan about what I had found. Immediately, he assumed that a) I was itching to buy everything I liked immediately and that b) I had not really properly considered the kind of chair we should buy. He got online and proceeded to show me all kinds of ridiculously overpriced chairs that were no better than the ones I had *looked* at at IKEA for a lot less money. Grrr...

He is always telling me we should wait to buy anything nice until the kids have moved out. So this was my solution: cheap chairs from IKEA that will last long enough to get our kids out of the house. And if they break, they are only $20 to $40 to replace! And IKEA stuff DOES last a long time; I have a friend who has been furnishing her house from IKEA for years and she has 6 kids and the stuff has held up!

Now he tells me we should buy something nice that will last. I'm sorry...my neck is sore from being whipped back and forth watching that tennis ball...and they say women can't make up their minds...

I definitely am going back out there and I will go for the cinnamon roll next time, Mary!

On the knitting front, I have worked a bit at the Celtic Cabled sock...I'm gonna have to suck it up and reprint the Jaywalker pattern, since I still can't find it.

All woods must end....

2006-10-03T09:06:00.000-04:00

I think that's the verse in the song that Frodo sings in the Old Forest in the Fellowhsip of the Ring...the one that the trees don't like...

But it's what I thought about as I worked on the Mitered Square Baby blanket on Saturday. My kids school parish had their annual festival and I got to work at the Tin Can Raffle booth selling tickets. Natch, I brought along my knitting bag and decided that turning a heel on That Sock was probably a very bad idea. Better to knit on something easy to pick up and put down. So the blanket got the nod.

I managed about to add about 4 or 5 squares and honestly...the project is at that stage where it doesn't look like anything has been done to it AT ALL despite all kinds of progress. I apologize for the crummy photo. Like Saturday, where it practically PEED rain, today is grey and gloomy again. I tried taking a picture in natural light and all I got was blurry pictures. So I ended up using the flash and making it look flat.

OF course, KIPping got the usual questions, "Is that crochet or knitting?" and comments, "I don't have enough patience for that." Give me strength. Lucky thing I have patience to deal with that patience comment...otherwise more people would be walking around with knitting needles sticking out of them than there are now.

I kept looking at this thing and thinking, "When is it going to be DONE already?!" Well, never if I don't get down to it and try to seriously finish it already! When I think this was supposed to be my Olympic knitting project. Gar! And my darling, darling daughter, Laurel, had to pipe up with, "When are you going to knit me my poncho?!!?!?" I love my children, I love my children, I love my children.....

Diane asks where I got the pattern; it's a Plymouth pattern which I got from my LYS...the pattern number is P263.

Along with the work on that, I also took a bash at my second Celtic Cable sock while waiting in the car for my kids yesterday; I had forgotten to bring my book, so I had to do SOMETHING. I got a few rows in before I discovered when it was time to turn the cables that I had not put the cable needle in this particular knitting bag. I know there is a way of doing without, but I had never done it and didn't feel like figuring it out on the spot.

I admit it, I'm rather cranky this month. My business has really fallen off this month, so I've had a ton of free time, which I've occupied by trying to learn to play the piano better than I do. I had about 1 year of lesson in high school, but I do play other instruments. Our organist died last year and now that I finally have two ladies who are taking on lay reading, I've been playing organ on the days when we have morning prayer and our regular organist does not do those Sundays. I can play simple chords and the melody and I do okay. But I've had to change a few keys to accomodate my limited abilities to play keys that have lots of flats or sharps.

I'm coming along...slowly. My hands are finally starting to work together instead of being separate entities with their own agenda. Amazingly, it's a lot like knitting, playing the piano is. If you get your hands to work together instead of trying to do their own thing, you can produce something really beautiful. But unlike piano playing, you get to keep that beautiful thing around; music instead dies slowly away and you are left with a memory of it.

My other mountain that I've been climbing with this is trying to overcome my performance anxiety. I've had problems with this just forever. I used to have a problem with speaking in front of people, something that God took away when I started to read the bible in church. And it's carried over into my SU! business, for which I am grateful. But for some reason known only to Him, God has seen fit NOT to remove it for organ playing. So that I shake dreadfully at times and make tons of mistakes. Despite the fact that I've TOLD Him that I am really quite humble about my abilities as an organ player and my only desire is to be competent, He has allowed this thorn to remain in my side. I finally bought some anti-anxiety herbal supplements that did help a lot last Sunday. Maybe once I get used to playing, I won't need them anymore. And they didn't make me sleepy, which is what I really worried about! I had visions of everyone hearing a thud and looking over at me lying on the floor next to the organ, fast asleep.

Well, time to hop in the shower. A friend and I are going to IKEA for the first time...should be a blast!

Progress

2006-09-28T09:59:00.000-04:00

Well, I did get some knitting done. I had a workshop on pastoral care to attend on Saturday, so I spent some time working on That Sock.

I have the heel flap done. But I don't know where I put the directions...sigh...at least it is an online pattern, so I have saved it to my hard drive and even if I lose it I can go back to MagKnits and get it again.

Now I will be doing that little pocket in the heel before picking up the stitches on the edges of the flap and turning the heel. That's the part where I always think that a sock looks like some sort of mad demented puppet...kind of like the Alien with those weird teeth that moved sideways instead of up and down...and all that drool coming out. It's exactly how my daughter looks when she is getting her braces worked on (don't tell HER I said that, it would produce a chorus of "MOTHER!!!! HOW COULD YOU SAY THAT!!!" that I don't really want to hear!) They put this kind of plastic thing in her mouth that holds her lips away from her teeth and I always think, "Alien!!!" while she has it in...

Not a whole lot of knittin' goin' on...

2006-09-18T09:55:00.000-04:00

Okay, there has been some! Evidence:

I added a couple of squares to the Mitered Baby Blanket, my one-time Olympic knitting project. I'd like to finish it and get it done, already!

I also added a few rows to That Sock. I'm amazed to say that it is time to start the heel...I was beginning to think I'd never ever get there.

This week is promising to be rainy...AGAIN. Yesterday was beautiful...I had to enjoy it while it lasted, but since rain is threatening, what better time to pull out all those UFO's and try to polish off as many as possible? None!

And while I'm at it, I might as well celebrate "Talk Like a Pirate" day tomorrow. Never heard of it? Check out here: Talk Like A Pirate

And while you're at it, check out the knitting pattern available on a link on the website! Then go visit here: Knit Like a Pirate

I had to get the windex after I read the opening paragraph on that site! I just wonder if I have to nerve to go to the chiropractor tomorrow and when he says, "How are you doing, Janine?" I can say, "I be fine, arggghhhhh!!!"

That Sock Goes to the Dentist

2006-09-13T09:46:00.000-04:00

Here is That Sock again. Since I haven't really been knitting all that much, I had to look again at the last photo I took of it to tell if it has grown any.

Today.

Last month.

Eeehh....not much, eh? I guess I need to get my rear in gear! That sock got to go out and flaunt itself at the pedontist and, I have to say, as usual it garnered lots of attention. I got your standard, "I can't do that, I don't have the patience" from one of the office workers. I told her that, for me, it took up a lot of time that would ordinarily be spent waiting...essentially, I knit to promote my own patience because if I didn't have knitting, I would not be able to sit and wait with any grace whatsoever. Does it mean I'm any more patient than a person who sits and reads magazines? No, but the person who reads magazines doesn't end up with a gorgeous pair of socks. And again, the dentist assumed I was knitting them for my daughters; she's long admired my knitting and loves seeing the sweaters my daughters love to wear that I made.

Laurel sailed through with flying colors. I didn't even get the usual recitation of wrongs and griefs afterwards. A large Frostie and a large order of fries from Wendy's (they are nice and soft so she could manage them) seemed to make everything cool (even if I had to run her uniform blouse and skirt through the laundry to get the inevitable stains out...chocolate milk/ice cream is the WORST for staining!) and I've promised that the tooth fairy will provide money to go to Barnes & Nobles in exchange for the two teeth. Laurel has finally accepted that I am the tooth fairy...she hung on to the story for longer than I ever thought possible.

Tonight we get to go to the school open house, so I am going to spend some time stamping today. I just finished cutting and mounted almost all the ones I ordered. I'll save the knitting for this evening. Slowly I am getting into the mood to do more; I pulled out my Monica Ferris mysteries and that always helps and I managed to find my elusive Page Minder so I could read and knit at the same time.

A Dishcloth is a Many Splendored Thing

2006-09-12T10:23:00.000-04:00

First, let's get this out of the way.

What happened to September? It doesn't seem to be working anymore. This is our tree, which I have shown you before. This is early September and I'm starting to see a few leaves changing on the tree.

This is almost unheard of. This tree usually doesn't start to show color until the end of September at the very earliest. And this rain. What the heck is up with that? This month has been incredibly gloomy so far...I don't much like this, though I love the temperatures. I'm happy not to pay to air condition my home and not to have to turn on the heat...yet. But I'm wondering if the furnace is going to have to go on this month at the rate we're going.

Okay, now that I have officially complained about the weather (the sign of a true Michigander), let me show you my Pinwheel Dishcloth!

I finished it last night as I watched the last show on 9/11 I hope to have to watch for a while.

Isn't it nice? And it is fun to knit, though I screwed up a couple of times and had to rip back, but only a few rows. This is a very sturdy and attractive dishcloth. The pattern is on my pattern blog.

So now what? I guess I need to poke through my UFO's and finish something, since I *think* I am probably out of Sugar 'n' Cream to make dishcloths with...of course, there is always THAT Sock, which is going to get some airing at the pedontist today...I have to take Laurel to get two teeth removed...this kid has more teeth than mouth, apparently. I'm really not looking forward to this; pain always brings out the worst in Laurel; she moans, she groans and she tells me everything that is wrong with her life...it just comes pouring out. She has always been exactly the same...it was cute when she was little, but now that she is 11, it is a little not so cute anymore. I remember when she got shots when she was 4 years old...I heard everything about what was wrong with her life (she was 4! What is wrong at 4?!?!) at preschool and at home. Doesn't help that she has always been very articulate and has always been precocious as far as vocabulary. Oh well. She can be a lot of fun at this age and I am enjoying watching her bloom into a teenager...slowly.

Easily amused, that's me

2006-09-08T08:50:00.000-04:00

Is it wrong to be so dang pleased with myself over this?

I finished the second Idiot's dishcloth last night as we watched the Tigers win over Minnesota. Sorry for you Twins fans but....YAY! (Okay...back to our regularly scheduled program....)

I'm also geeked because I got a copy of my other dishcloth pattern after appealing to the KnitTalk list I am on on Yahoo groups. I had posted the pattern to the KnitList back in February 2000 and had subsequently lost my files. The group archives only go back to November 2000 and the archives on the previous list host are long gone, so I thought I was out of luck. Happily, Mary Mort had saved my pattern from way back when and was able to supply it to me.

It's now uploaded to the pattern blog and I plan on knitting another one now that I have this one finished.

In which the author proves she still remembers how to knit...

2006-09-06T21:28:00.000-04:00

I tried to post about this yesterday, only to have the evil internet gremlins eat my post and turn off my internet connection, thereby insuring that I lost every thing I typed. Computers suck, man.

And now, with my kinders all in bed, my man off to jam, and me here listening to "Everybody Loves Raymond", I crack another Diet Coke in a futile attempt to keep myself from going out in the kitchen and finding something to nibble on and get to work yet again, in a, mostly likely, vain attempt to amuse my readers. I hope you appreciate it.

This past weekend, I actually finished a knitting project. Don't all drop dead, now! Reach for the paper bag you keep next to your computer monitor for such moments. Breathe...breathe...

There. Feel better? I know I do.

It was a dull weekend, as Labor Day weekends go. We had promised to drive to Kalamazoo for the day. And having thought about the 2 hour drive there and the 2 hour drive back and the parlous state of my dishcloth collection, I decided to bring along a dishcloth to knit and actually get something done. Most of my dishcloths date back to my last dishcloth knitting frenzy and have been developing holes at an alarming rate, to the result that I am down to one or two. The original color of this yarn has long disappeared and they are all a uniformly ugly tan color from their contact with tomato sauce and ketchup in the dishwasher, where I hang the current one over the edge of the upper rack to sanitize it.

So I jumped on the internet in the morning on Friday and searched for the ubiquitous diagonal dishcloth with the eyelet border that everyone and their grandma makes. I don't keep a copy of this thing in my pattern books...why should I when everybody obligingly posts it to their websites? I found a copy, went stash-diving for some Sugar 'n Cream (in shades of pink), found my short #8's and loaded up my little Vera Bradley bag and I was all set.

I was 1/3rd done before we even got out of metro Detroit. Because Friday wasn't considered to be part of Labor Day weekend, the road construction crews were still hard at work, with the usual one man digging a hole and ten other men standing around and watching. I don't mean to dis' construction workers, really I don't. But imagine how much knitting would get done if there was only one of us knitters actually knitting and ten of us standing around watching? Not much.

So we reached the M-14/96/275 interchange and it had backed up as usual due to construction work. I said, "I think you should get on 275 and take Ann Arbor Road to M-14...it would take maybe 10 minutes more than usual, but you'd get around the construction."

"Naw," said Dan, "I'm going to take 275 to 94 and go that way."

All was well until we were about to Joy Road, when the rot set in. We ran into a huge traffic jam. By the time we were south of Ford Road, we finally saw an electronic sign that explained it all: 275 was closed at Michigan Avenue. Closed. Not narrowed down to one lane. No lanes. None. No wonder we were just crawling along.

Well, we finally reached a turn around and we did just that and headed back to Ann Arbor Road. Dan said, "I guess I should have just taken this to begin with." I practically had to jam my knitting needle through my palm to keep myself from saying, "I told you so!" but I managed to keep my jaws clamped together firmly. There are some thoughts that are better left unexpressed.

By the time we got to Kalamazoo, I was almost done with the dishcloth. I finished it while we visited with the in-laws. My MIL expressed surprise that you could actually knit a dishcloth; all the ones she had ever made were crocheted.

I was kerflumoxed because I have made dishcloths for a long time. She's seen me doing it before. I gave her one. Granted, it was maybe five years ago or something like that.

This was so upsetting to me, that someone would actually not remember that you can knit dishcloths or that they would totally forget getting one from me, especially since I clearly remember her telling me it was the best dishcloth she had ever had and she dearly wished she could have another, that I totally lost my head.

I gave her the one I just finished.

So now I'm knitting another. I've spent some time looking for the patterns for the ones I have invented and I found one and posted it to my pattern blog. I'm still looking for the other one; based on a unit used in a Just One More Row pattern that I posted to the Knit List long ago...it's not in the archive on the Yahoo group site, so I am lost as to where to try next. I lost my knitting files when the zip disks I'd copied them all to got corrupted. Like I said...computers suck.

In other news....

My son is developing "wit". This is an amazing thing to me, since we have been used to his limited verbal skills for some time. I've often wondered just how much he understands of what he says himself, but thankfully, he's proved himself more than intact in the intellect department.

The other day we were watching the Lord of the Rings - Fellowship of the Ring. He appears, by the way, to have gotten over the nightmares he had watching this last year. ANYWAY...

Mr. Squatter was watching with all of us as Gandalf, on the top of Isengard, catches a moth and sends it off to fetch Gwahir, the eagle. The moth flutters off, the camera zooms down the tower and into the pit below Isengard where the fires are burning and the orcs are making who knows what....

And Billy said, "Meanwhile, down in the hole...."

It took us all by surprise, so that we laughed like crazy. Who knew...my son, the raconteur.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh.....!

2006-08-29T15:32:00.000-04:00

It was quiet here today. They all were in school, every blessed one of them.

I am happy!

I love my kids and my husband, I really do. But by the time the end of August rolls around, I am ready for them to get out of here for a certain amount of time five days a week. I like solitude; I crave it. I like to listen to the radio and not watch television. I like to clean something and have it stay that way, for a while, anyway. I like to be able to post to my blogs without interruption while I let the words flow out of my fingers and onto the screen.

And it's hard while they are here to do that, because they are nosy and want to know what I am writing and I *hate* people reading what I am writing over my shoulder. Our computer is smack in the hub of activity all the time, as it should be. I don't really want to be shut away with it and when my kids are old enough to be online, they are definitely going to be out in the middle of everything while they are using it.

So it was with joy and thanksgiving to God that I delivered my children to their school. After I dropped them off, I turned on the radio and listened to a wonderful praise song which sang "Hallelujah!" and thought "YES!!!"

So, now that I finally have privacy to post my little projects, here is That Sock:

That Sock has been cavorting in the pediatrician's office, where it attracted attention. Funny that people always say, "And who are you making that for?" Like I would say, "My daughter." Hah! As if!

My daughters have perfected losing socks to an art form. My precious socks are not adorning the feet of these girls, since they will not love them as they ought. My daughters walk outside in their stocking feet! They push their socks off in bed, then the socks go over the side and are never seen again unless you move the bunk beds. And these are maple...they are HEAVY. So no way, no how am I knitting these socks for them. I always say, "For me!" For who else would love my socks they way they need to be loved?

The other day I went to get my hair cut, so I stopped at Old Village Yarn which is nearby and picked up my Helen's Laces, in the shade called "River".

You may recall this is for a shawl. I paused before putting it in the stash to admire it properly and wonder just when the knitting bug was going to hit again. Probably once the weather gets colder.

Since it's down in the 70's here today, my guess is that won't be long at all. Good. I like fall. It's my favorite time of year!

Knit happens....

2006-08-17T13:11:00.000-04:00

when you have to take your kid to the emergency room.

I have a daughter who is currently, shall we say, experiencing all the full glory of womanhood, but is not enjoying it very much.

So yesterday, when she went into hysterics about the abdominal pain she was having, was running a low-grade temp, and had had some other gastrointestinal issues that might point to a wonky appendix, yours truly had to make an ER run.

The hospital we prefer is a 30 to 40 minute drive from here, depending on traffic, so I grabbed my current mystery ("Five Bells and Bladebone" by Martha Grimes) and my little knitting bag that has what I have decided to call "That Sock" and off we went.

I have visited enough ERs to know you spend most of your time waiting for something to happen next. And knitting is necessary to wile away the time and to calm the nerves.

Of course, by the time we got up there, Missy Sahib was feeling better. If I had stayed home, she would have died, fer sure. And once we got in there she was feeling very little pain at all.

We should have turned around and gone home right then and there. But, you don't wanna take chances with your child's inner organs, so we stayed, had blood work, x-rays, the works. For nothing, because she was fine. Sigh.

I told her that every child gets one ER trip that turns out to be nothing every 5 years and that she had just used hers up for the next five years. Don't do that to me again until you are 16 or 17!

At least I got a few rows done on That Sock. It's happy. And I did get a nice comment on That Sock from one of the nurses. So That Sock not only got a few rows knit on it, it got to get complimented as well. Lucky sock.

Faint stirrings

2006-08-13T12:45:00.000-04:00

Old Village Yarn Shop called me this past week. Remember that Lorna's Laces stuff I ordered to do that shawl? Well, it's been in for, um....quite some time. Was I coming to get it soon?

Yes, I said...I've just not gotten out to that part of the world lately, but I was planning on picking it up. Really.

In the meantime, I'm going great guns on stamping and having a lot of fun doing that, but I only get the urge to knit every now and then. Maybe I should go through my yarn bins again or maybe I should just decide to finish all the projects I have started with the idea that then I would get rid of all un-knit yarn and projects (but really trying to jump start the urge to knit again...that's what always ends up happening, anyway.)

In the meantime, I'm spending my life shuttling children to appointments, trying to fit in everything that needs to be done by August 29th, when school begins and my life can get back to normal.

I'm really tired of having a constant mess in this house...I can vacuum, but a few hours and it looks just the same. Same for the kitchen floor. With 5 people at home almost all the time, nothing stays done for more than 2 minutes unless I do it late at night before I go to bed. And then I don't really get to enjoy the cleanliness...as long as rats and roaches are not moving in and I'm keeping things sanitary if not absolutely neat, we will manage to live until school starts again.

This week we've got a dentist appointment for me plus pediatrician appointments for the kids. I have to take them to buy new shoes for school....I've already done uniforms in the very first days of the month and school supplies this past week. I really, really hate shopping for these things. Everyone is talking at once, throwing things in the cart, I'm standing there with the supply list saying, "Have we got one of these for Billy yet?" or "You only need 3 of those!" I tell them to make an inventory of what they already have so I don't have to spend money on stuff we bought last year and is still good. They all want stuff that is NEW, so I have to fight that, "NO, you don't need a new pencil case if last years still works. So what if it's a little dirty? Take a rag and clean it or throw it in the wash if it's washable!"

Uniforms were equally stressful to buy. How big should it be? How long do the skirts have to be again? Do you really need new shirts, or will last years do? Okay, if I buy these, I might as well buy 3 of them, since I will get $5 off if I do that...arghhhh!

In addition to this, my oldest child is getting braces. That was a big check to write, let me tell ya. If I hadn't carefully put aside some of our tax return, we would be making much larger payments on them than we will. We went and got the top braces this past week. And then the orthodontist says, "She needs to have two of these teeth out ASAP." Why didn't he tell me that in the spring, when I could have made an appointment in advance? Sure he said they would have to be removed, but for some stupid reason, I thought HE would do it. SO I call my kids' dentist and she's booked through October...so much for ASAP. We're on the cancellations list at the top...hopefully, she will get one this week and we can get these teeth out and be ready for the bottom braces appointment next week. If not, he is going to have to work around the fact that the teeth are still there.

So...anybody got cheese to go with this whine?

There have been *good* things going on this week. I'm trying to think of what they are...oh, yes: my kids went to vacation bible school every evening this past week. So my husband and I were able to go out for our anniversary on Tuesday evening...THAT was good. It was nice having a bit of a break from them every evening. But we're back to full time parenting this week.

And I got a lot of new stamps from the Holiday Mini to play with. So if you'll excuse me, I'll go play with them now....

Blog guilt

2006-08-05T22:40:00.000-04:00

Hi everybody!

Yes, life has been rather hectic lately. Filled with anything BUT knitting. After I ended up ripping back that sock shown in the last post and fixing it, I got kind of fed up with knitting and went into what I call "yarn hibernation". Almost always happens in the summer when the thought of warm fibers next to my already too-warm skin gives me the heebie jeebies.

And the approach of a mini catalog change-over for my business and stamping swaps, swaps, and more swaps and then convention! Yikes!

Can you believe I didn't even take knitting to convention this year? Just did not feel like packing my usual sock for plane knitting that I usually do.

And then there is this blog. Every day I have felt guilty for chattering on like a loon for months, then suddenly dropping off the face of the planet! Wondering what everyone must be thinking...where did she go?

I've been debating about starting a companion blog for my stamping/scrapbooking stuff and just linking the two together so that I will post on one of them at least and you can check out what I'm doing with either or both crafts.

In the meantime, yes, I am alive and well...just not knitting right now!

Really, I should not be allowed out of the house...

2006-05-08T09:32:00.000-04:00

I'm such a clutz lately.

I went for a walk this morning. Hey, fate, this is an effort to get healthy!!! Are you trying to sabotage that?!?!? How come you never intervene in those doughnut eating moments? Anyway...

I didn't get too far before I decided my MP3 player needed to be turned up just a tad. As I reached in my pocket and was fumbling with the buttons, I tripped over a section of sidewalk that was raised and pitched straight forward.

Luckily, no bones broken, but two nasty scraped palms, one bleeding (don't worry...you don't have to look) quite a bit, plus scraped knee that is not bleeding. I guess I had the sense not to fall on my elbows after the last time.

Ordinarily, a trip and a fall wouldn't stop me from continuing, but the scrapes needed to be washed, disinfected and bandaged. Continuing to walk would have made them bleed even more with the swinging action I take with my arms as I walk. And I'm going to have to sit tight for a while so that the scrapes heal up a little, so I won't be continuing my walk this morning. And it's a glorious morning to be walking in...ah well.

I had a heck of a time getting my keys out to get back in the house because they were in my right pocket and my right palm was the one that I got. I didn't want to bleed all over my pants...which happened to be beige corduroy Land's End trousers that I'm very fond of...it's hard to find pants that are that comfortable these days.

I am grateful that I had the forethought to refill our Band-Aid stores...with three kids in the house, we go through so many Band-Aids that I would buy stock if I didn't disagree with some of the company's charitable efforts.

Now, you're probably wondering where I've been. Not knitting...not after discovering this:

and this:

What's up with this? Well you may ask!!!

It happened as I was waiting for the orthopedic surgeon to come in and talk to me one last time about my wrist and elbow. I had brought the sock along and as I zipped along knitting, I noticed that one of the ridges in the decrease position in the center of one needle had shifted over one stitch several rows back. "Well, I can fix this!" I thought, "I am the boss of my knitting!!!"

And I am, usually...I have fixed errors in lace by dropping down and redoing, successfully too, even though it was a PITA. On one of my first knitting projects, a vest with a patchwork of texture work, I had successfully dropped down and fixed so many errors that they no longer intimidated me. So I dug through my little knitting bag and even though I didn't find a crochet hook, I had a cable needle, I was game! So I fixed the boo boo...it took a lot of thinking about just where I had to change things and which rows were increase rows and which were plain knitting, but after a couple of false starts, I was happy to see that I had managed to fix it! I now had 19 stitches on the needle, 9 on one side, the ridge stitch in the middle and 9 on the other side.

Then I decided it would be a good idea to count the stitches on the other needles to make sure they all had this delightful evenness on each side of the ridge stitch. And that's when I noticed it....can you tell? Have you figured it out?

The first picture shows a needle with the required 19 stitches, but instead of having 9 on each side of the ridge stitch, there is 10 on one side and 8 on the other. And it goes all the way down to the ribbing...it would have to be ripped all the way back, or fixed in the same way as the last error, except there would be more of it.

The second picture shows one needle with 17 stitches, meaning I missed two increases somewhere...increases are a lot harder to add after you get past them than any other type of fix. So while the first error could be fixed without ripping back, I don't think this one can....all the way back to the ribbing I would have to go, negating many hours of happy knitting...sob...

So you can see why I flung the whole shebang aside and said "Poot!!! Dagnabbit! %&$* knitting!!!!"

As a result, I've gotten a lot more scrapbooking done lately.

Yes, I know, I could simply accept the flaws as they are, figure a way of adding the missing stitches, ignoring the fact that the one ridge is not exactly in the center and forging ahead. But...then I'd have to remember to knit that one needle differently than the rest and it would spoil my rhythm...rats...

Maybe it's time to start something new....

Oh joy, oh bliss, oh crepes Suzette!

2006-04-24T09:04:00.000-04:00

They are gone.

Not forever...just until 3 PM, but it is enough. I am breathing a large sigh of relief. I love my solitude, I crave it and having everyone here makes it hard to find. I know, I know, summer is coming with 2 1/2 months of them being here 24/7, but until then I am going to savor every moment.

And it's been too hard to blog with them here. It's like I can't talk about them with them in the room and they are always in the room!

Okay, some pics...here is the tree in front of our house. I always have to remember to notice these little green leaves, because it seems like in no time at all they turn into big dark green leaves...not as pretty.

We've had beautiful weather for our spring break, I will say. Most days were sunny and in the 70's. You can't ask for better than that! But, just in time for school to be back in session, we've gotten our more normal spring weather back...lots of rain with a few sunny days stuck in there now and again and lower temps...60's and 50's. I'm okay with that. I don't like jumping right from winter to summer...I like to enjoy some spring weather.

And in about ten minutes, I will be right out in it. Yes, I am going to start walking again. I actually have lost a little weight, I don't know why. I don't question weight loss, for fear it will reverse itself out of sheer cussedness: "What!!! She dares question why the Body shed some pounds...well, we'll just show HER!!" I only am thankful and hoping it will continue. I did have some weird sort of flu thing that did a number on my appetite. Or it could be the new supplement I've added to my morning line up. Ours is not to question why, ours is but to enjoy and enjoy. Life without a thyroid has taught me that weight is not for losing easily most of the time.

Now, here's that Jaywalker sock...amazing isn't it? I've gotten a ton done because this yarn and this pattern together are just so much stinkin' fun to knit! The pattern is not so difficult that you can't memorize it and do it without thinking too much and, with the few brain cells that motherhood has left me with, that is a boon. I worked on it at knitting class and a number of women asked for the URL so they could copy it themselves. I like this yarn with this pattern; the Harlot did some in a very contrasty yarn and for me that was too much...but this is subtle...it doesn't bang you over the head with the zig zags.

And here is my birthday present...well, one of them! Two balls of sock yarn and Nancy Bush's latest tome, "Knitting Vintage Socks". I expect to have lots of fun with this. The red, white and blue knits up into red and white stripes with bands of blue with white spots...too cunning! Gosh knows when I'll get around to knitting them, but since my knitting speed seems to have improved dramatically, maybe sooner than I think?

And if you look closely, you will see the other ball is treated with Aloe Vera and Jojoba oil. I love how that's expressed in German: "Mit Aloe Vera und Jojoba Ol!" It just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? I think it's a gorgeous color...not my usual blues or purples, but a girl needs a change, doesn't she?

Tell me they all will go back to school soon?

2006-04-18T10:28:00.000-04:00

Okay...I'm sneaking this chance to update the blog...shhhhhhh....don't want to alert the natives that I'm actually writing about them since most of them are still in the room with me.

My kids have all been off since the 13th...they get Maundy Thursday off as well as Good Friday at their school. Dan has been off since Good Friday as usual. So far...I haven't gone insane yet, but it's only a matter of time.

Maybe it will be having to listen to Zoe on Roly Poly Ollie one too many times that will drive me over the edge. Or, that horrible bete noire of my existence, Caillou. I hate Caillou! I hate the whiny voice he uses...ugh. Zoe is not much better...hate the way she talks. Yuck. My kids all love these shows, but they are horrible, horrible....

Could be having to listen to Patty on CBC Kids (out of Canada) sing "You're my best friend and we like it that way." Sorry...she has a kind of thin voice that goes right through my head. Oh, no...now they've got Nanaland on...I can't stand it!!!

Dan got up first this morning and turned on "Imus in the Morning" and promptly fell asleep in his chair. I had to turn it off when the kids got off because Imus gets a little raunchy. Now Dan went back to bed and the parade of annoying kids shows has been going on for a while now.

Now, not all kids' television is bad. I can tolerate Arthur pretty well...mostly because they put some jokes in that are meant for older people and so it can be very funny to watch! They had an episode once where Arthur's parents were watching a knitting marathon on television...it was a real hoot!

And I'm very grateful that I weaned my children off of Nick Jr. We removed it from the channels viewed when you use the up or down channel arrow, so they have forgotten all about it. No more Blues Clues! Just think of it! The freedom from the horror of listening to that little blue pooch say, "bowowowowowow!"

I don't want you to think my kids do nothing but watch television all day. But during spring vacation, especially when you have a husband with a nasty cold who wants to do nothing but sleep, then a little television is a welcome way of keeping the natives from getting too restless.

Think I'll head downstairs to scrapbook after I take a shower...I can't hear the television down there.

In the meantime...knitting content:

I didn't mean to start something new...but somehow...rampant curiosity got the best of me and I started the Jaywalker socks using the latest sock stash acquisition. I have a knitting class tonight, so I think I'll work on it there.

On Being the Mother of a Boy

2006-04-08T08:31:00.000-04:00

If anyone had told me how different it was being the mother of a boy, I would probably not have believed them.

But it is very different. I really enjoy watching my son and his essential maleness developing. I can understand the girl things going on with my daughters, hey, I've been through it myself, but watching the Squatter growing up has been fascinating.

We were watching our new DVD of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe last night and I was thinking about this yet again. We saw it in the theatre and really loved it (especially me!) I read and read and read the Chronicles of Narnia when I was a child...I spent a lot of time wishing that Narnia were a real place and I could go there. So when I saw the movie, it brought back lots of happy memories for me. I actually cried at the end, it made me that happy.

Billy's reaction to the movie was definitely different than the girls. While Laurel watched it last night and tried to make a few snarky comments (teenoidism is creeping up!) and Emily watched raptly with wide eyes, what did the Squat do? He went and got his "sword" which happens to be the handle of a kids' golf club with the head knocked off. He swished it around and said, "The witch is mean...I'm going to kill her!" He put his sternest expression on and made light saber noises as he went through his moves.

I know that women can do most of the things men can do, but you can't tell me there aren't differences between boys and girls. Billy loves the adventure movies the best; the ones where the characters are active in overcoming evil, even when it isn't always certain just what evil is. He loves Star Wars, Harry Potter, the Lord of the Rings (even though it freaks him out), and now the Chronicles of Narnia. When we were in the theatre watching it and he didn't have his sword, his was making moves in his seat like you see in men watching prize fights...like he wanted to jump up there, grab a sword and fight a few wolves himself.

But he's still a little boy. When the first wolf came on the screen earlier in the movie as we were watching it last night, he went in his room. Wolves are scary...he only stayed in a minute, then crept back in the hall and watched from there a few moments. Pretty soon he was back in the living room. He has a huge imagination and movies hit him harder than Emily, for instance. Laurel also has always been more easily frightened by movies...Emily seems to be much more pragmatic.

Yesterday was memorable for other reasons as well. Our tax returns landed in our checking account, allowing me to pay off the big credit card bill we had, pay the registration fee for the kids' school next year, and start planning on where the rest needs to go. Laurel is getting braces this summer, so part will go towards the deposit on those and will be refunded by the insurance, hopefully rather sooner than later. I'm hoping there will be enough left to do the kitchen floor, my bete noir. It is sheet vinyl and very worn...impossible to get it clean looking no matter what is done to it. So I'm going to make measurements and start pricing.

And I ordered my birthday present, an Epson Picture Mate. I'm hoping that being able to print my photos easily on the fly will get me to scrapbook more than I have been. I'm excited...can't wait for it to come!

And yes, I did some knitting while I was watching the movie last night. The mitered square baby blanket has a couple more squares added. Yawn! I'm really, really thinking I need to start a small project; something I can get done quickly and get the knitting juices flowing again...

Yeah, rationalizing, aren't I?

Alone again...naturally

2006-04-05T09:25:00.000-04:00

Here I am, coming back from two days of two children home sick. It was a close call today, but I managed to get them all off for school. Phew!

Laurel stayed home Monday and Tuesday. She always felt really, really rotten in the morning and her condition always improved quite rapidly once she knew she was staying home. Of course, she did have a fever (tiny one...99.9) or she wouldn't have stayed home at all. But this morning she had no fever so off she went. She was not happy.

Emily, on the other hand, went to school on Monday. I had to go get her on Monday afternoon because she wasn't feeling well. And when she got home and I took her temp, it was 103.7, so she definitely wasn't feeling well. When Emily is sick, she gets very quiet and doesn't say anything at all. She doesn't even have the strength to be cute!!! Emily sick generates far more sympathy than Laurel sick. Laurel is noisy about being sick, she moans, she weeps. Funny thing is, I'm much the same way. Now that I see what it looks like, I'm trying to be more like Emily.

When the girls got up yesterday and were hovering around 100, we let them both stay home again. But neither one had a fever today so both went to school, Emily quite cheerfully and Laurel moaning and sulking.

Of course, having them home was not fair to me, considering next week they only have a 3 day week because of Easter and the following week is spring break. I'm luckier than most, since Dan's school vacations have been coinciding with the kids' vacations. So I can leave the house alone and not be arrested for child endangerment, since he is there to watch over them. So this week, I have 3 free days before the weekend and 3 free days before next weekend. I must use them well.

I have myself had some sort of something that has caused fatigue (besides the usual madness, that is!) I slept half the day away on Sunday and in the morning on Monday...read my email and said to myself, "Is there any reason I shouldn't just go back to bed?" Couldn't think of one, so off I went.

All of this has not been good for the knitting bottom line or for any bottom line. There are a host of things I *should* do, but whatever it is I end up doing, I better be moving around because sitting still for too long and I will probably fall asleep. Knitting is definitely in that category; especially knitting because it tends to make me sleepy anyway!

So hopefully I will soon have something more interesting to report. My wrist continues to improve. I'm almost caught up with laundry! I know, fascinating stuff, isn't it? Hey! You didn't fall asleep...did you?

Sock Yarn Anonymous

2006-03-30T09:56:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the first meeting of Sock Yarn Anonymous.

The first step in the process of kicking the habit of sock yarn is to admit you have a problem. Anybody want to start? No one???

Very well, I'll start: My name is Janine and I have a problem. I can't stop buying sock yarn.

It was never a problem, at first. Yarn didn't come in all kinds of groovy self-striping colorways when I first started buying it. Oh, there were a few variagated varieties along with the usual solids. And socks took sooo long to knit that it seemed silly to buy a lot of sock yarn.

But then, oh then....

There was the Koigu, found at an LYS in another city. And then came the Regia. And the Lorna's Laces. Then came more and more sock yarn, each ball more delicious than the last. It was hard to choose just one or two balls when I wanted to buy it all!

But, Janine, you ask, surely you know that at the rate you knit socks, you could spend the rest of your life just knitting what you have now, much less buying more!?! Why do you do this? How many feet do you have?!?!?

What can I say...I simply CAN'T RESIST!!! So when I went to knitting class on Tuesday night, I succumbed yet again. I should have stayed away from the sock yarn section. I figured I was safe; I didn't think she'd gotten any new sock yarn in lately. But I was absent for one week and she snuck some in behind my back and left it there to ambush me!!!

Here it is...this ball is destined for the Jaywalker pattern on the MagKnits site. I'm afraid at this point I may be beyond a cure. Oh, and I bought a couple of magazines too. You know you have a problem when the LYSO says, "Do you want a bag?" and you say, "No...I'll just slip this into the bottom of my knitting bag so my husband won't see it...shhhhhh!"

Anyone else ready to admit they have a problem?

Sucked into the black hole of motherhood

2006-03-28T09:03:00.000-05:00

Again, I apologize for not posting in a while. Motherhood is a black hole of everyday joys and annoyances and sometimes the annoyances overwhelm the joys. Last week was like that. But things are looking up. I think.

Okay, progress on the knitting front. I've done a little bit, not a lot. Yesterday, I got to blow a whole morning going to the orthopedic surgeon, so I was able to knit quite a lot. I got three and a half squares of the mitered baby blanket done just waiting to get into the exam room, then waiting for the xray technician, then waiting for the doctor. Good news is that I don't have to wear the brace anymore except when doing heavier chores like laundry. I don't have to wear it to bed anymore, which is a big relief! (If I could actually sleep in a bed, it would be even better. Dan was snoring big time last night, so I spent the night on the couch.)

Anyway, I'll go back in a month for a final check up. Apparently the brace was irritating the tendon that passes over the thumb, causing rather than curing most of the tingling, numbness and pain I was experiencing at the base of my thumb. Already I have left the thing off since the doctor's yesterday and there is a big improvement.

As far the Squatter's electric yellow sweater (can't really call it a hoodie if he doesn't want a hood), I've gotten this far and I think I'm going to have to rip back. I need 1/2" more on the body to the underarm and this stripe is going to be in the wrong place. It will look incredibly stupid. So I am going to have to bite it and get it ripped back. Gag.

Yesterday, besides blowing the morning at the doctor's office (not helped by road construction on our highways, necessitating escaping from M-14 and taking back roads to get to the hospital area where his office is), I had a class to teach. Due to the fact that my husband has been playing his guitar in the basement every chance he could get, I didn't have but one project designed and had to spend the afternoon stamping, cutting cardstock and cleaning the stamping classroom. I had a bowl of cereal for dinner, eaten standing up. My children inhaled around 3 boxes of cereal (how do they eat it so fast????) and Dan ate leftover Taco Bake, then left the remaining 1/2 of it sitting on the stove for hours so that I had to throw it all out last night. Grrr...

The weekend was also busy, including a trip to Guitar Center where this was purchased for the squat. Yes, now I'm going to have it coming at me from two different directions. This is a junior Fender Stratocaster, sized for kids. It was meant to be a birthday present, but Mr. Bill had to get his behavior grade up in school before he could have it, so he worked very hard and we are very proud of him. We presented it in a small ceremony in his room. The yellow paper taped to the wall is his report card, so he can remember the hard work it took to get it.

The squat also got a small amplifier, which Dan assured me I would hardly be able to hear. Hmmm. When, on Sunday morning, the squat started playing this red beauty, my dear husband got out of bed. I asked him if the guitar playing had woken him up. He said, "Yes!" I said, "You mean you can hear that? I could hardly hear it!" He gave me a dirty look. Revenge is sweet.

So since the weekend was so busy and yesterday was simply impossible, this is what I'm facing: the detritus of the weekend plus Monday. A new crop of crumbs is ready to be harvested by the vacuum cleaner and ten million of my kids' possessions are waiting to be picked up and either tossed in their rooms, or disposed of secretly and gladly, as I consign to oblivion those toys I have been dying to toss in the trash because of their miscellaneous broken pieces or simple driving-the-mother mad qualities they possess. Life goes on. Eat chocolate.

Nothing is certain...

2006-03-20T09:01:00.000-05:00

Well, sorry for disappearing into a black hole for a few days there. It is that time again and it took me about 4 days to complete:

THE TAXES

I sometimes think nostagically of the days before I started my own business. I used to think gathering information for our taxes was a real drag. Now I know it is a real drag!

And it's my own darned fault. Because I vow every year that I will start collecting the information every month so that the following year I'll be ready without the superhuman effort I have to make each March to get all my income and expenses entered into the spreadsheets I designed for tracking them, plus figuring out the value of my non-consumables inventory. Last year I even bought some special software designed for stamping demonstrators to track their businesses, but did I use it? NOOOOO. Ah well. Some people make resolutions at the beginning of a new year. Mine are made the day I fax my tax information off to my dad. And like most resolutions, mine are doomed to failure.

My dad has been doing taxes for years and specializes in direct sales. If you are a Mary Kay lady it's even possible you've seen him at one of your meetings; he often travels to talk about taxes to Mary Kay consultants. So I know my stuff is in good hands. I haven't gotten my returns back yet, but I know I'll get a nice refund!

The other thing that occupied my time was making our traditional Irish dinner. I'm part Irish. In fact, I've always held that if you have some Irish blood in you, it ends up contaminating the rest of you until you are ALL Irish. So I do try each year to make corned beef and cabbage. Yes, I know they don't actually eat this in Ireland (they make something called Cottage Ham instead), but we Irish over on this side of the water DO. Plus soda bread, which is always great right out of the oven and really loses something after it gets cold.

This year St. Patrick's Day was complicated by the fact that it was on a Friday. So while we're not Catholic, my kids do go to a Catholic school and we attend the fish fry there during Lent. If we stayed home and ate corned beef we would a) have to deprive our school of the income from our dinners and b) I would miss a day where I don't have to cook, a very important determination! So instead we opted for our dinner on the Sunday after St. Pat's, or yesterday. Here is the result...sorry the photos are not as good as they looked right after I took them. I will say that I am a dab hand at making this dinner, especially since I started relying on my cooking instincts that have developed over the last 20 some years (yes, I started cooking as an infant!) instead of blindly following recipes.

You'll notice no knitting appears in this post; because I have done very little in the last week. I guess I am in a mini slump. None of my projects are appealing to me, but I refuse, yes, I REFUSE to start something new, even though that sock yarn continues to whisper my name. I'll just have to lump it and pick up that afghan or the squatter's sweater and force myself to continue. Quit laughing!

In the meantime, a Happy Belated St. Patricks Day! May you be in heaven for 20 minutes before the devil knows you're dead!

Maybe I should have chosen....

2006-03-15T09:34:00.000-05:00

to give up buying yarn for Lent!

I gave up buying scrapbooking stuff instead. And I've done pretty well. This morning, after I finished getting some blood sucked out of my arm, I drove right by the scrapbook store I usually visit on such occasions (and with no thyroid, blood draws are a regular thing.) Granted, it was 8:50 a.m., but I'm pretty sure they opened at 9:00, so I wouldn't have had to wait long. But I had intestinal fortitude and I didn't stop. I didn't stop in to my usual scrapbooking haunt on Saturday after I copied the church bulletin either...dang, I'm good!

However, last night, I did order some new yarn. I couldn't help it: Linda, one of our knitting class members, brought in a shawl she had made from Lorna's Laces Helen's Lace and raved about how much fun it was to knit and I caved. Here's the shawl:

And here's the colorway I ordered:

The color (River) is a lot softer than it looks in the picture. It was hard to choose a colorway; they were all soooo pretty.

I just wanted something....frivolous. The last shawl I knit I gave away, after all, and I only have one UFO shawl and I don't know that I will finish it anytime soon. It's the Fibertrends Spiral Petal shawl, only begun because, well, yeah, everyone else in my knitting class was doing one and I picked white as the color of choice. What was I thinking? Who is going to wear this thing if I ever finish it? I guess I would put it away for one of my girls to wear with their wedding dress and that means I have a good long time to get it done!

I can't hear you...lalalalalalalalala!

2006-03-13T09:35:00.000-05:00

Dear Socks That Rock Yarn,

I must ask you to cease your campaign to get me to start a new project.

I know you just arrived in the mail the other day and that you need some time to get used to your new home. It must have been hard to arrive and find out you weren't the only yarn in the house and that you had to share me. My oldest daughter expressed similar sentiments when her sister and brother arrived, but she knew what was about to happen even if she didn't fully grasp it. It must have come as a nasty surprise for you.

I know you are really yummy (geez I hate this word, but since I have had children I find myself using it all the time...must stop (make mental note: self, stop using the word "yummy")), I mean a really delicious looking yarn...I could almost eat you, especially since you have the word "watermelon" in one of your colorway names, but I know you would not taste good at all and would mess my digestion up. But I know what I really want to do, thanks to your waving yourself in front of my face daily and singing seductive songs, is to knit some socks out of you. Well, it isn't going to happen.

I am a person of integrity. I have other projects that must be finished first. I have a 7-year old boy that wants his sweater, a baby blanket for charity that must be finished, and two, count them, TWO ponchos that my daughters are both expecting me to finish in only one or two hours (that's what they think, anyway.) Not to mention the two lonely singleton socks who really have a prior claim on my attentions.

So cut it out! I'm not listening! Quit telling me how much more fun you would be to knit and how good you will feel on my feet. Just stop already!

Oh dear...

The Knitter

Sock Intervention - A Modern Fairy Tale

2006-03-09T10:30:00.000-05:00

First, to warn you...little if no knitting content follows. Read at your own risk:

Once upon a time there were two young girls named Laurel and Emily who lived in a room with a deep, dark secret. It was a room where socks disappeared without a trace, much like the Bermuda Triangle and boats and planes, but with socks instead. Oh, and on dry land too.

Their mother was extremely puzzled; she would buy her daughters new socks two or three times a year and the socks would disappear, often before they even got washed once! The more socks she bought, the more socks disappeared into the room.

This year, the sock eating room must have had a real feast. The grandmother had sent over her yearly sock money (aren't grandmothers wonderful?...they know that socks are the things that are most frequently replaced and they send money...just for socks!), the mother had purchased more socks, and the room had devoured the socks almost immediately as usual.

One day, the father complained to the mother about a horrible odor was emanating from the sock-eating room...turned out that there were so few socks to be worn that these two girls were wearing the same socks for days on end! The whole house smelled like dirty feet. Eeuuuuwwww!

It was time for a sock intervention! The mother stormed into the room and said, "You must discover where these socks are going! Take off all the socks you are wearing and put these on!" The mother had gallantly sacrificed two pair of her own socks to the sock eating room...just to get that smell out of the house! And what really scares her is that her socks now fit her daughter's feet...only a matter of time before clothing starts being borrowed! But I digress....

So the girls treated their feet with the deoderant spray their mother forced them to use, with many shrieks of "It's so cold! Eeek!" and put the clean socks on. They took all the dirty socks and put them in the laundry chute and then proceeded to pull out the bottom drawers of the bunk bed and lo and behold! There were socks under there! Socks that had not been seen in months and months!

The only explanation was that there were tiny sock fairies who liked to play tricks on these girls...those fairies stole the socks and hid them! Yep! That must be it! More socks must be lurking in even more hiding places...the saga of the sock search will continue!

So, the mother, as usual, had saved the day (and the socks) and the daughters learned that dirty socks and warm feet make for stinky smells!

OKC

I have gotten word that my Socks That Rock order finally has been shipped! Originally, the shop that I ordered it from ran out of the colors I ordered and the latest batch of yarn to be dyed had been rejected due to pilling, then Stitches West socked Blue Moon Fiber Arts with all kinds of business, but I am assured that the yarn is now on it's way.

Otherwise, I have put a lazy row or two on the Squat's sweater, but I've been doing a lot more stamping this week: with the new mini catalog out, it's time to work up some new samples, plus I have a workshop on Saturday with 14 people coming...I'll be working on that today! Here's some pics just to show that something is being done...just not knitting!

On good acrylic yarn

2006-03-06T08:57:00.000-05:00

Glinda, the good witch of the North, comes floating down in her bubble and lands in front of a ball of acrylic yarn:

"Are you a good acrylic or a bad acrylic?" she asks. The acrylic yarn just sits there and says nothing. And Glinda, frustrated, floats off in her bubble.

Glinda should have known that it's impossible to know whether an acrylic yarn is good or bad without knitting it or at least consulting ME! :-D

I've knit with a bunch of acrylic yarn, 'cause I have kids. I love wool, don't get me wrong, but having children that are extremely hard on their clothing, I want to be able to throw their clothes in the washing machine without worrying about what comes out afterwards. I'm not much of a handwash person myself...in fact, I have sweaters that were given to my children that have wool in them that they have outgrown waiting for me to get around to washing them. So I really prefer to knit their stuff out of acrylic and save the wool for myself and others who are worthy.

I used to think that touching acrylic yarn would tell me a lot, but 'taint necessarily so. Red Heart and Paton's Canadiana feel awful, they really do. But they do soften up when you wash them and they wear very well. A lot of people choose these for their projects and I don't blame them.

But since I like a pleasant knitting experience, I usually avoid both of these and spring for Encore. Encore has a little wool content mixed into the acrylic and is soft to the hand, but is very durable and easy to care for. That's why I tend to collect the stuff...I love, love, love Encore. I have two full Rubbermaid totes full of it to prove it.

Yes, Lion Brand Woolease has a similar content, BUT...Woolease does not knit up to a true worsted weight gauge. It's just a tad bit thinner and it just doesn't come in all the groovy colors that Encore does.

So naturally, when it came to knitting the Squatter's hoody, I chose Encore. But I had to scrabble in my stash for the stripe colors. I had black in Encore, and the purple I scrounged up actually turned out to be Paton's Look at Me (a favorite for baby stuff)...it's DK weight, but since I was only putting in two one row stripes, I decided that would be okay. But the grey for the majority of the stripe is Canadiana. I had it left from making the Fibertrends Baby Poncho that the squatter wore for a few years...I had bought it originally when the Berkley Knit Shop was closing down and so it was a bargain.

I never was so glad to get 7 rows of knitting done. After knitting with the Encore and the buttery soft Look At Me, the Canadiana felt like jute. Ick.

Now I have about an inch to go until I get to the underarm, at which point I will start the sleeves. I'm beginning to think I should have put the stripe up a little higher...I held it up to the Squat to see where it was hitting him and it seemed to be right BUT...maybe I should have gone for more length so he would grow out of it so fast. That would mean ripping back...and the thought of having to reknit that grey stripe makes my teeth hurt.

Otherwise, I'm pleased with the stripe. It works the purple the Squat requested in without looking girly in any way, an important thing for a very manly 7 year old boy. You can see the Wookies approve as well, can't you?

Despite the fact that the Squatter is so very manly, we had to cut him off on watching "The Fellowship of the Ring." This movie has freaked my child way out...far more than any other movie. He's watched all the Star Wars movies and the Harry Potter movies and never had a problem, but since seeing the Lord of the Rings series, he's taken to following us around and being frightened of being left alone. Despite that, he still clamors to watch the thing and Dan and I decided not to allow him to anymore. But we still had to deal with the fear.

So I dug out our ancient copy of "Where's God When I'm Scared?"; one of the first Veggietales movies and I made him watch it on Saturday...so far, I'm seeing some improvement in his fear level. But he's still pulling the covers over his head when he gets into bed. We've talked about it and I think he's getting better at being brave and leaning on God when he's frightened.

This isn't the first child to freak out at movies...Laurel is my most fearful child. She wouldn't even watch "The Little Mermaid" because the Sea Witch was just too, too scary. But Emily is a whole 'nother thing: we were cruising past channels yesterday and she got a glimpse of Pinhead from that really weird movie which even I would rather not watch. "Cool!" Emily said when she saw Pinhead...she likes scary books and scary movies. Guess there has to be one in every family!

Tomorrow night I have to go to a church meeting and Dan is going to be doing a special gig, so I have to bring the kids with me. Fortunately, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" will be coming out on DVD on Tuesday, so my kids have made a date with the church nursery attendant, who is also a HP fan, to meet at the church, set the television up in the office with a DVD player and watch the new DVD and eat popcorn. Which means I will be at Target on Tuesday, buying the DVD, microwave popcorn and suitable drinks.

I took the scarf to the kindergarten teacher on Friday, by the way. She loved it and when I told her $10 for making it, she insisted on giving me $15. I also got the extra skein of yarn and the crochet hook with it...not bad for a few hours of work.

Finito

2006-03-03T08:44:00.000-05:00

I finished the Fuzz That Ate My Teacher scarf!

I decided to finish at the end of the skein, although she gave me two skeins. She had bought with crochet in mind and it always takes about twice as much yarn to get the same total fabric area, so I figured one skein would do it. This is a very easy and fast scarf to knit, I will say, and I would probably do more of them. It was fun designing it, as well. I've started a new blog for my patterns...the link is to the left.

I know there are knitters out there that sneer at the "scarf people" (or so I have heard them called.) These are the folks that got their knitting start making a novelty scarf and have not progressed beyond that point. They come into the yarn store and head for the novelty yarn immediately and that is all they ever do.

Well, why not? If you enjoy knitting scarves and you have no desire for more, far be it from me to say you MUST learn to knit a sweater or you HAVE TO learn how to knit socks! I've done all these things and enjoyed them, but they are not for everyone.

Sometimes, it's just nice to knit something that works up quick, looks beautiful when it's done, and doesn't challenge you in any way. It's soothing, it's gratifying and it is DONE. When I look at the box of complicated projects that have never been finished sitting in my stash, I really do appreciate a project just like this one.

I did take the small portion I had knitted to school on Tuesday afternoon, just to show the teacher what it looked like and as I walked up to her she said, "Oh...don't worry about getting the scarf done! Make sure your wrist gets better first!!!" Hmmm....either she doesn't think everything through that she says, or she plays a deep game. Frankly, after my experiences with her when the squat was in her class, I would suspect the latter. At any rate, I assured her that knitting is one of the few things I can do without killing my wrist and I would be happy to keep knitting. I showed her the pattern and the width and she loved it!

I'll be delivering it to her this afternoon. She is a short lady, so I think the length should be just right. My biggest concern is that the width is a little wider than I'd choose for a decorative scarf to be worn with a sweater, but she thought it was just fine. It's the sort of scarf she'll have to simply drape around her neck...flipping one end over her shoulder is not going to work with this width, but this lady really doesn't have a long neck either, so tieing a scarf around it wouldn't flatter her at all.

I've been thinking of what to charge her; on the one hand, I don't want to devalue the craft, but on the other I don't want to look like someone who is trying to put the screws on a teacher and deprive her of her small income. It probably took a couple hours of dedicated knitting, so I will charge her $10.

In the meantime, the yarn for Laurel's poncho has come in. I'm calling this project Poncho Got The Blues, because surely I will by the time I'm done. I love blue, it is in fact my favorite color (though not this particular shade), but I expect to be quite weary of this by the time it's done. I'm not starting it yet, mind...the squat's Electric Yellow sweater comes first and there is the Olympic baby blanket, which I worked on at knitting class on Tuesday night.

The yarn I bought the other day at the superbowl sale for a sweater for Emily is also going to be a poncho. That's what Emily wants and what Emily wants, Emily almost always gets one way or another. Instead of using the women's sized pattern, I'll have to get the child-sized one instead; it uses worsted weight while this one uses chunky.

I was very proud, though, that Emily chose her new colorblocks sweater to wear for her spring school pictures today. I don't usually buy these pictures, but might have to buy just one with Emily and her sweater. Laurel also put on her Tango sweater I made her a few years back for her pictures...it's getting much too small for her, actually, but she won't give it up and pass it down to Emily.

The squatter is the only one not in a hand-made sweater today, but he does have a home hair cut to make up for it. I managed to cut it so he doesn't look so very much like Moe on the Three Stooges...I'll take him to Great Clips this weekend and get it cut better, but he honestly looked like some sort of elf or even an Orthodox Jewish boy with the long locks in front of his ears, so something had to be done!

Some people...

2006-02-28T09:53:00.001-05:00

have got a lot of nerve.

My son's former kindergarten teacher is one of them. You may remember from a few posts back about how she gave me some yarn to make a her a scarf with, for which I will be paid an unspecified amount.

So yesterday, she asks my daughter how long it will take me to finish her scarf.

Let it be known that this woman KNOWS I fractured my wrist. So even though this woman knows NOTHING about knitting (or crocheting for that matter), you'd think she would at least get the idea that knitting has something to do with the hands, which are attached to the wrists, thank you very much. And that it might be hard for someone with a fractured wrist to even tie their shoes, much less knit. So why is she buggin' my daughter about the scarf? If it were me, I would think to myself, "Hmmm...she fractured her wrist, she's in pain....I won't bug her about the scarf right now."

Oh, well. I decided since the blanket no longer has a deadline, I can work on the scarf as well (gee, three projects at once...oh, why not?!)

So I cast on with this...this...this FUZZ and tried the stitch pattern I had thought about using: purl one row, then purl two together, YO on the next row using size 15 needles. This made for huge gaping holes...not exactly what I was looking for.

I switched instead to this instead: knit 5 rows, knit one row wrapping the yarn around the needle twice on each stitch. Then on the first of the next 5 rows, when you knit, you drop the extra wrap. So far I like it, as much as I can like this yarn...which isn't much. It's very grabby and isn't smooth knitting. But it does go fast, so the teacher should get her scarf faster. I'll show this to her this afternoon and make sure she likes it before I proceed.

Until then, I have to knock out the Ash Wednesday bulletin today and just bask in the finish of a good Sellabration period for my business. My wrist is feeling some better today; knitting is the one thing that doesn't hurt my hands after doing it a while, so I will be indulging in it as often as possible. Tonight is knitting class and I'm looking forward to that.

I'm also going to avoid the dreaded Paczki which are everywhere in the Metro Detroit are today. They are 750 calories each and after being weighed at the doctor's office the Friday after my attempt at wingless flight (proving once and for all that although my last name starts with TINK and the fact that I always have some glittery dust around on me somewhere, I still can't fly), which weighing in demonstrated to me that the sneaking suspicion that I had gained some weight recently was a stinkin' reality, after that I'm going to spend precious calorie burdens on things that are worth while...like chocolate, for instance.

Your eyes do not deceive you

2006-02-24T12:08:00.000-05:00

That's right...you are looking at PROGRESS. Not much, but progress none the less.

I went to the orthopedic surgeon yesterday and guess what? He doesn't think my elbow is fractured. He thinks my wrist may be, he says it is definitely sprained, but the elbow he thinks is probably okay.

If this seems incredibly fuzzy to you, it is to me too.

However what this means is no more big honkin' splint from mid upper arm to fingertips! When the doctor peeled that sucker off my arm, I felt like kissing him. It lay there, with it's various components of stretchy bandages, fuzzy padding, and hard fiberglass, looking as loathsome as it had felt while I wore it.

If you want to torture me someday, just wrap my fingers together like that...they were squished and so uncomfortable I was pulling up on the bandages just so I could wiggle them. And when the stretch bandages started to unravel themselves, I finally decided to amend the splint where my hand was by tearing out some of the fuzzy packing and wrapping the bandaging a little looser. Even so, when the doctor took it off, my tortured fingers could not even bend down to the palm...it took a bit to get the flexibility back in them.

After a few more xrays, which apparently did not make anything crystal clear, the doctor decided to let me have the use of my elbow back so it would loosen up (still can't straighten it or bend it totally) and to have the hand therapy place make me a nice wrist brace, which you see here. It's a lot like the one I used to have when I had tendonitis. I got to pick which color straps and I picked purple, just to be outrageous.

I'll go back in three weeks to see how I'm healing up. In the meantime I have to wear the brace when I'm using my hand strenuously (I decided typing qualifies and so does stamping), and I have to keep it on while I sleep, but otherwise I can take it off.

I then asked the $50 million dollar question: can I knit? The doctor said, "Definitely! That's great exercise for your hand!" For the second time, he came very closely to being kissed...I think I love this man.

Knitting with the brace is pretty much impossible as it does not allow my wrist to rotate the right way, but knitting does not seem to place the strain on my wrist that other activities do and I can knit without causing myself any pain whatsoever! I'm taking it easy, mind you. I have no illusions about finishing the blanket by the closing ceremonies, but I can at least knock a few more units out of the way by Sunday night.

I'm back, baby!

If I only had known

2006-02-21T16:08:00.000-05:00

Isn't that a sad title? Are you crying yet?

Well, don't. This whole fiasco with my arm has now entered the realm of the ridiculous.

I waited all weekend for the results of my x-rays. Come Monday and two calls to the primary care doctor's office later and they finally call at 5:15 PM to tell me that my elbow is fractured.

Ya think? I mean, Dan only had to listen to me yelping trying to pull the covers up so many times, I only had to recruit my children to zip up my coat or robe or pick up a freakin' can of biscuits since I was unable to do it, even though carrying a full cup of coffee did not even hurt and you would have suspected that there was something busted in there somewhere, right?

So why didn't the PC doctor tell me to hie my butt to the ER, instead of assuring me that once I got the results of the x-rays, that I would be able to get into an orthopedic surgeon that day to have a splint put on? Because, let me tell ya, that ain't how it works.

Instead, I went through a huge run-around. The first OS office I called (the number the nurse at PC doctor's gave me) was naturally closed by the time I called. When I call today, they don't take my insurance. Ohhh-kay....

So I once again call the PC doctor (hope yo don't get too confused with the abbreviations, but I'm typing with only one hand) and get another name. I call. They take my insurance, but can't fit me in until Thursday. They give me ANOTHER name. I call them. Same story, except they don't have any openings until Friday.

So I at this point got upset. I was told that I needed to go in today and that any OS would see the urgency and get me in. I am supposed to be at least splinted and the prospect of going for two or three more days with this fracture doing gosh knows what to the nerves in my hand, a very vital part of my anatomy, not to mention enduring the pain of the odd unplanned movement causing me to make noises reminiscent of a hound with its ear shut in the door ala The Christmas Story movie did not, for some strange reason, appeal to me very strongly.

But it gets better. Despite the effort I made to calm down (hey, I even CLEANED to try to get the anger down), when I called back I blew my cool asking the triage nurse what I was supposed to do now? I didn't yell, btw, I cried. I know that triage nurses and receptionists are just trying to do their jobs. I don't blame them. At least not until after this next response.

So what did she do? Did she ask me if I was having more pain? Did she ask me if I noticed any coolness, numbness or tingling in my hand? (all of which I was experiencing, though not constantly.) No, she did none of these things. She gave me two more names.

At this point, I know this is useless. No one is going to see me today. But I call one of the offices anyway. I get the same response. I explain my plight. She says, "Did you go to the ER?" I say no and explain why. And she says the first sensible, workable thing I've heard all day: "You still should go in ANYWAY. Today."

So, dear reader, I did. I drove myself to Ypsilanti, since my doctor is out of there, and there are barely any clients there. They get me in and out in about 40 minutes. They splinted me and sent me on my way with a referral to an OS to get a cast and, as seems to be the norm, I will get in there on Thursday.

While I was in the triage, they asked me, "Why didn't you just come to the ER to begin with?"

Well, maybe because my previous experience with the ER involved HOURS of waiting around. I hate the ER. Usually I can knit to pass the time, but not this time. I also am married to someone who hates going to the ER even more than me. I thought it would be EASIER just to wait and see my PC doctor the next day. Hah! If only I had known. I asked the nice ER nurses if they could treat self-inflicted butt-kick wounds.

If only I had realized that our medical system has become so specialty driven that your PC doctor can't put a cast on your arm anymore and you have to have a specialist, I would have not even waited. If you don't go to the ER for any suspected break, you are left in limbo for days until someone tells you to go where you should have gone all along.

Now, why the PC doctor didn't just say on Friday, "GO TO THE ER! DO NOT PASS GO! DO NOT COLLECT $200!" I may never know. Oh well!

Despite the fact that the splint covers my fingers, knitting is not impossible...just different that's all!

So what color of cast should I get? Blue to match my eyes? Or a livid yellow to match the bonk on my head?

Michelle and Me...we be mates

2006-02-17T21:41:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm out of the competition.

I fell last night and really did something awful to my left arm and hand. I don't think it's broken, but I won't know until Monday when my xray results are finally given to my primary care doctor.

It was totally stupid...it was just peeing rain outside and I was bringing my stuff to the car after my workshop at church. Coming back inside I tripped over the concrete apron around the stair well and fell forward down the steps...there are around 8 or 10 of them I think. Luckily I didn't really roll down them...mostly I flew down and landed on my left arm and smacked my head on the cement.

Here's the pics...not too gory, so the squeamish should feel too bad looking at them. Amazingly enough, I was able to drive myself home and I have the use of all my fingers, as long as I don't try to grip anything too tightly. So my thought is that the worst would be a fracture and a cast.

BUT, while knitting is certainly possible (and I proved it while I was waiting for Dan to pick me up after X-Rays), there are two problems:

a) I don't have anything like my usual speed or stamina, so there is no way I can finish the blanket in time for the end of the Olympics.

b) My husband is going to ream me a new one if he catches me knitting at any time, or so he says. Given he is on mid-winter break, it will be hard to sneak any knitting in, though I will probably do a little. I have a feeling that the more I use my fingers, the better at this point...I have this vision of them stiffening up so much that I won't be able to use them for a long, long time. I can type, but not for long periods of time and I can knit...just not for long periods of time.

So those of you who are still in the running, I will be cheering you on from the sidelines for now!

Keep on keepin' on

2006-02-15T10:50:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm keeping up with my olympic knitting schedule. Well, sort of. Kind of.

I only got 3 units done yesterday, but I caught them up this morning, so I am right on schedule. But I'm not sure I will get 6 done tonight. The problem with knitting at night is that knitting is a sleep-inducing agent for me. If I'm tired, knitting will enhance my fatigue and relax me to the point where I have to sleep. I have RLS (Restless Leg Syndrome) that only comes out at these times and once my legs start to twitch, it's time to hit the hay or I'm shaking my legs to get rid of that feeling all night long.

But my darling one has been playing his guitar EVERY night lately, so that's when I am knitting since I can't stamp downstairs when he's playing...the volume is way too loud. He played last night until after 10 PM, when I finally gave up and went to bed. So only three units instead of six, but I'm caught up now and got lots of sleep for a change too. He told me today why he spent so much time down there last night: he changed a speaker in his amplifier and got the TONE!!! It was a VINTAGE TONE!!! TONE to the BONE! If you have a guitar player for a husband, you'll understand this; once you get that tone, the normal limits of human existence disappear and the world stretches forth before you, limitless and you, the guitar player, become all powerful. Ooooh-kay...I think I can understand that. It's kind of like when the UPS truck gets here with my new stamps...

So if I need to get stamping done, I have to do stamping during the day. I have a workshop tomorrow night (!!!) so I spent part of the day yesterday preparing the scrapbook page that I'm going to demonstrate. Cute, eh? This is for a memorial recipe book the hostess is making about her mom; she's been asking people who knew her mom to contribute a recipe and a memory to put in a 12 x 12 album. I thought that was a great idea and would be great for me to contribute to (her mom was the sexton at our church) and make into a stamping demonstration at the same time.

As far as other things, the chickens have come home to roost. Remember those people at the roller rink who wanted to commission me to do things for them. I figured they would forget; well they didn't! In fact, they remembered immediately and with a vengeance, so now I have these projects added to my list of must-do's:

The Stinky Afghan Project

I am calling this the stinky afghan because it's obviously been around a smoker. As such, I can't bear to work on it for very long. I have played with different ideas for the repair of this afghan, which is crocheted. I can either crochet an entire new block to replace the damaged one (which would minimize my exposure to the smell), or I can try to repair just the damage on the block. The yarn was fairly easy to match; it was obviously a bargain acrylic, most likely Red Heart, so that's what I bought along with this skein of Caron's. Figuring out the pattern is easy enough, so it shouldn't be a problem once I get down to it. It's just getting to it. The teacher who requested this (Emily's teacher) told me she wasn't in a hurry. That's good.

The Fuzz That Ate My Teacher Scarf

The kindergarten teacher at my kids' school sent two balls of this home. This is what she would like her scarf knitted out of and it should be easy enough. She says she would like it 6 inches wide. I'm leaning towards doing the same stitch I did for the scarf I made Mary: purl one row, then slip one pearl one on the next row. Very easy, open and lacy and quick.

My Valentine Gift

You wondered if Dan got me anything, well, yes he did. He doesn't know that he did, mind you. But he did. A visit to The Fold online and a quick fax and I will be the happy recipient of these once the people at The Fold ship them out:

That's right, two skeins of Socks that Rock (Watermelon-Tourmaline and Farmhouse) and a pattern that should keep me happily knitting socks for a while, anyway. Yep, my guy...he sure knows what I like, even when he doesn't know that he knows!

Happy Valentine's Day...yeah right

2006-02-14T08:28:00.000-05:00

I bet some of you have husband's or significant others that actually DO something on Valentine's Day, but I don't. I have one of those "I don't need a Hallmark holiday to tell my wife that I love her!" guys. I think it's a club they join in high school, honestly.

I used to try to extort something out of Dan by telling him I expected him to do something or else (the else part being vague, but threatening), but the resulting offerings were not exactly wonderfully given in a spirit of love, so I just gave up after a while. The last flowers I got were in 1990 and those were red carnations he bought at the last minute which croaked the next day...didn't even last a day before they started turning black at the edges. Truly a waste of money if he doesn't even know well enough where to get a decent bouquet.

So while some of you may be getting candy, flowers, dinner out, or at least a card, I will be getting SQUAT. Remember me while you enjoy all that.

Thinking of the barreness that lay ahead, I tried to treat myself to a nice Caramel Macchiato this morning. But I went too far; I did too much. I decided to treat myself as well to a Sausage McMuffin extra value meal at McDonald's. Apparently this was tempting fate way too much. Or perhaps the Cholesterol Fairy saw this and said, "This woman must be rescued from herself...all that fat in the coffee AND the sausage! Time for action!"

Pulling away from the drive-thru at McDonald's, I saw a perfect opportunity to get across 4 lanes of traffic on Telegraph Road, so I gunned it. Turned out the driveway at McDonald's has quite a bump at the bottom of it. I got across traffic, but my Caramel Macchiato took a header. All over the bottom of my car! Sob!

So you can see what a great start my V-Day has gotten off to. And no chocolate in the house except a little bit of Valrhona...nice for nibbles, but way too dark for the kind of stuffing-it-in-your-face comfort action required after you lose a $3.55 coffee on the bottom of your car all the while looking forward to a barren Valentine's Day.

Gee, should I have a little cheese with that whine? Or perhaps, a little bit of yarn shopping online would go far towards comforting me...some of that Socks That Rock yarn would be exactly the ticket!

And I think my husband should know I've got other offers. Just yesterday, a 7 year old boy told me that he wants to marry me. I had to turn him down, gently, as I am already married to his father.

Half-a-league, half-a-league

The Olympic knitting challenge forges onward. I decided that six units a day would be the right amount to get done with the center of the blanket and leave me three days to knit the border. There are 80 total units and I have 24 done; right on schedule.

In the meantime, doing units has ceased being a bag of potato chips...the novelty has worn off and I find myself, instead of looking at the clock and saying "Just one more!", counting what I've done and saying "How many more until I can stop for the day!" It is not torture to do them...at least not yet.

Today I must do some stamping; a workshop looms on Thursday and I haven't even decided what projects to do yet. It will be amazing if I manage to get six units of this blanket done today unless I stop whining and get going. Tah!

Knitting is like a bag of potato chips....

2006-02-11T17:49:00.000-05:00

At least modular knitting is.

Hi again. Bet you wondered what hole I fell into. Well, let me tell you, it's been pretty busy here at the Tinklenberg ranch. What with Emily having her birthday this past week, the anticipated visit of the grandparents (now over, thank you Lord!) which entailed a bit of cleaning up, and the arrival of a large stamp shipment, some of which were for me, I was kind of tied up. I mounted all my new stamps and then was hoping for some time to play with them, but it hasn't happened yet.

Instead, my husband has been downstairs playing his guitar every single night. The volumn gets pretty loud down there, so I usually don't venture to try to stamp while he's playing. And by the time he's finished, I'm too tired to do anything but stare stupidly at the stamps, trying to come up with a great idea for using them.

I live for Monday mornings.

However, I did have this commitment, like many of you, to start my Knitting Olympics project. The opening ceremonies came on, I cast on and here I am.

Doing these little units is addictive. I did 6 of them last night and I've already done 5 more today and will likely do at least 2 or 3, if not more, by the end of the evening.

The instructions for this blanket are a little sketchy in places. For instance, once you've made the first square, it tells you to cast on 11 stitches, then pick up 10 on the top of the first square. Well...which side is the top? One of the non-cast on sides, but it's not really clear. I kind of had to figure out that YES, you were supposed to cut the yarn, then cast on 11 new stitches, then pick them up on the side that would be logical.

This sort of bummed me out, because you have to cut the yarn every single time you start a unit, which I didn't remember doing for my last mitered knitting project. But that was a long time ago and I probably just forgot. It's a bummer because I am going to have a lot of ends to weave in on the back, which on a blanket is kind of a stinky thing to have to do. I have started out by weaving in the ends when I have 4 corners all meeting, but I should probably do the ones hanging out where the squares meet on the outside edge to reduce the work at the end.

Otherwise, it's kind of fun...like eating a famous brand of potato chips, it's hard to stop at just one. I was "just one more"-ing myself until 1:30 AM this morning, egged on by watching "The Invisible Man" with Claude Raines on AMC. The acting was just so kitschy and over the top that I greatly enjoyed listening to Claude laughing his maniacal laugh as he pedaled what looked like an empty bicycle down the street while I worked on the blanket.

I also enjoyed the appearance of one of my favorite Warner Brothers character actresses from the 30's: Una O'Connor. Una always played maids, cooks, and similar supporting roles. She had a face that really looked like the face you used to see on a Kitchen Witch (a popular kitchen accessory in the late 70's and early 80's) where the nose and the pointed chin almost seemed to meet, what they call "a face like a nutcracker." But I've always thought that Una was one of the better actresses in any movie she was ever in and I have fun spotting her in movies I haven't seen before.

In "The Invisible Man" she was just as over the top as Claude Raines...they made the whole movie fun to watch. So I managed to finish watching that and doing "just one more." Finally the movie was over and I just had to finish that last unit before I went to bed. Fortunately, the movie that followed (a 70's pulp horror flick with Robert Culp) was not bad enough to be good to watch and not good enough to be good to watch either.

But Janine, you say...why aren't you watching the Olympics while you knit? Well, I did watch a bit of the opening ceremonies. And we watched a bit of speed skating and some of the mogul skiing today. But I really only enjoy watching the figure skating and since that's the part that Dan doesn't like watching, I don't get to see it unless he's playing his guitar and I get the remote.

He's down there right now, actually, but the kids are watching Lord of the Rings and I have a stack of receipts and bills that really must be dealt with today or I'll start getting phone calls....sigh. Why can't I just knit or stamp and let everyone else do the cleaning, cooking, paying bills, laundry, etc.?

Responsibility

2006-02-08T10:20:00.000-05:00

First I want to say that the knitting done between yesterday's post and this one was so much like the knitting that was done the day before that, that I decided to spare everyone the tedium of looking at it yet again. I feel for you folks, I really do. Plus, I feel responsible. After all, if your boss (assuming you are looking at this at work...folks at home do not need to worry about this) comes across you, flat-out sleeping in your chair, head cocked back and snores issuing from your mouth and looks at your computer screen and sees my blog with it's incredibly dull (to him/her) pictures of knitting, who knows what your boss would think!? I wouldn't want to be responsible for a) your being fired for sleeping on the job or b) someone thinking that knitting (in general) was boring or c) someone thinking that *I* was boring. Let's not go there.

I could have just not posted, something I notice that other people, who are not, perhaps, as obsessed about talking about themselves as I am, actually do on their blogs. I admit it, there are days that go by where I haven't posted, but it's not because I can't think of something to say. It's because I've gotten busy doing something else.

Now, you ask, what the heck am I going to post about, since I'm not showing pictures of yesterday's knitting. Two things:

On fortune cookie fortunes

I got this yesterday in my fortune cookie. First, I want to say that I usually don't bother even eating the cookie, much less reading the fortune inside. But for some reason, I did yesterday.

Isn't this infuriating? What is this supposed to mean? That's why I don't bother to read these things.

What does this have to do with knitting, you ask? Well, reading this I could see all sorts of implications for people who knit. "The gift without the giver is bare." Does this make sense? It does not make sense to me. In the terms of giving knitted gifts, I think it should read "The giver without the gift is bare"!

Of course, I know that some of these fortunes are meant to be "deep" and convey some sort of philosophical meaning. We here in the West often assume that oriental people have a bigger handle on this sort of thing than we do. Why else are there umpteen million books called "The Zen of...."? This was covered extensively in an episode of Seinfeld when George's mother assumes that Jerry's girlfriend, whose last name was Chang, must know so much more about life than other people. Then she was mad when she found out that Ms. Chang wasn't oriental after all. ANYWAY....

Looking beyond the surface, I suppose that this fortune means that if we don't invest some of ourselves when choosing gifts for people, that the gift does not have a meaning. Yeah, well. As knitters, we automatically do quite a bit of that anyway. Plus, I've gotten lots of gifts from people who have invested themselves in the gift by picking out something THEY would like to have and giving it to me assuming I will like it too. Er...

So, if there are any fortune cookie manufacturers out there, pull this one from the repetoire, won't you? Go back to "You will soon meet a tall dark stranger." I'm hoping to do that today. The UPS man should be here with my stamps sometime.....

The other thing

Since I don't have anything interesting to show that I'm currently knitting, at least without boring you all into a state of sonomulence, I'll do some walking down memory lane:

Isn't she cute? This is Laurel at age 4 months. She's a little butterball in this picture, but she was born thin and caught up quick.

I knit this bunting for her out of Plymouth Encore. The LYSO suggested making it extra long to accomodate the car seat buckle. Laurel wore this quite a bit...it was perfect for cold days when it wasn't quite cold enough for her big thick bunting that her grandmother bought her.

You can also see how very beautiful she was...she's still beautiful, but when Laurel was a baby, she just had this glowing beauty that made total strangers come up and tell me how gorgeous she was. And while this is a nice bunting, Laurel could make any clothes look extra special, just by wearing them and looking so beautiful. Sigh....

See how happy she is in her bunting? These are the sorts of pictures you love to look at on days when your tweenager has tossed her head and stamped her foot and demanded that you do whatever it is she wants you to do at the moment. This is what I look at in my head when otherwise I would be wondering why I let her live as long as I have. God has reasons, my friends, for making babies as cute as they are. Babies know this too. They know that by being cute, their mothers are more likely to knit cuddly warm garments for them. Tweenagers and teenagers alike should remember this when they are campaigning for ponchos. I wonder why they forget this vital information and at what age it happens?

Now Emily, for instance, told me this morning that her new yarn wants to be a poncho and that it needn't have a hood. But she did it in such a cute way, with no sulks or petulance! When will the rot set in?

Mellow Yellow? I think not!

2006-02-07T12:26:00.000-05:00

It's yellow and it's going to eat me.

I think I need sunglasses to work on this thing, even though, technically, I don't have to LOOK at it while I'm knitting it. It seems like after I've been knitting it for a while, everything in the room starts to take on a yellowish tinge, like the whole world has jaundice and I am the only one who is immune.

Plus it's dull. It's stultifyingly dull, it's so dull that it's dullness cannot be measured on Janine's Standard Scale for Dullness. It broke the meter. Sigh.

Luckily, it does go fairly quickly, WHEN I can bring myself to suffer the dullness. Which is mostly while I'm reading online, where dullness is not a factor, it is an advantage. When you think of all the mistakes I made on the ~~project from hell~~ colorblocks sweater which WAS interesting while I was working online, you'd think I'd just be grateful not to have opportunities for mistakes now.

I'm perverse, I know.

But last night, while I was alternating reading and knitting (book comb went to ground AGAIN...where could it be???) the dullness of the Squat's Wallaby became absolutely unbearable.

So I pulled out this. It's the perfect antidote. For one thing, it's a UFO, so it is a virtuous project. I'm not buying new yarn and I'm not starting yet another project which has a high statistical chance of suffering the same fate as this sock did.

Plus the pattern on this cabled sock requires absolute concentration. Clenching your teeth and other parts of your body is definitely called for. I can get through one repeat of the pattern before I run screaming from the room. I worked on it for one repeat last night and tried to remember HOW I managed to get through one whole sock and this partial one without giving up. I'm mystified, honestly. The span of my life when I worked on this is a blur and I'm not sure I want to know what is under that blur.

I have it on four needles too, which normally I like, but it's really, really a pain this time. I do have to wait to stop after the pattern repeat, though, so I know where I am the next time I start. I am required to finish the repeat.

I figure, if I can manage a repeat of the pattern a day (at least) I'll have the cuff of this sock done by next week. By then I should be on the interesting part of the Wallaby. Life will balance, all will be right again with the world.

Yarn love

Last night, I summoned Emily into my room. I was going to save the yarn I purchased for her and show it to her another time, but I couldn't resist.

I said, "Emily! C'mere!" I beckoned to her mysteriously. She followed me into my room.

I reached into the temporary yarn stash, aka my clothes closet, and pulled one skein of the variagated Plymouth Encore from the bag. "What do you think of this?" I said, handing her the skein.

Her eyes lit up and she impulsively hugged the skein to her chest, put her cheek down on the skein and cuddled it like a doll!

See? I know what I'm doing! And anybody who loves yarn THAT MUCH is bound to be a knitter when they grow up, don't you think?

She was even happier when I told her it was going to be a sweater for her. I love knitting for my kids...they appreciate it so much! I must be doing something right!

Yarn Hangover

2006-02-06T09:28:00.000-05:00

I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of yarn shops all over the United States held their annual Superbowl sales yesterday and my favorite shop was certainly among them.

Like hundreds, if not thousands, of other women, I made sure I had at least one other errand I had to run and thus just sort of slipped the visit to the yarn store in with it. Hey! I had to get my prescription didn't I? I had to pick up that book case for the squatter's room from my friend too, didn't I? So I just sort of moseyed about 15 miles out of my way between the two errands just to check out the sale. I didn't bother to mention that to Dan...all he had to know was that there were errands to be done, right?

20 percent off is hard to resist and I had justification too! I was going to buy the yarn for Laurel's Pure & Simple Poncho: 9 skeins of Plymouth Encore Chunky in Royal Blue. I'd save a lot buying it at the sale, right? It is her turn for a sweater after the Squat's electric yellow Wallaby is done and I don't have enough yarn in the stash to do it. Yes, I do have chunky yarn, just not enough of one color! Or the right fiber...must be acrylic, since Laurel is notoriously hard on her clothing and I am notoriously lazy about hand washing. So you can see that I HAD to go to the sale, can't you? Yep, I could tell you'd understand!

So what happened? Why did I end up coming home with a bag of yarn, NONE of which was Plymouth Encore Chunky in Royal Blue?

I'm not sure, really. I do know that they did not have 9 skeins of Plymouth Encore Chunky in Royal Blue. They only had 4 skeins. So I will have to special order it. Rats.

So while I'm there, since I drove all that way, I look at yarn. It's 20 percent off and it's going to be a WHOLE YEAR before it is 20 percent off again! It wouldn't hurt to buy a little yarn, right?

Next thing I know I'm standing out on the sidewalk with a bag of yarn. I'm feeling slightly dizzy from the sensation of pulling out my credit card and watching them add yet more debt to it. I'm feeling even more dizzy at my actions. Here I had chosen 3 skeins of regular Plymouth Encore to do a Babies & Bears sweater for charity and I actually went back after I got in line at the register and added 3 more skeins by reasoning that it will be Emily's turn after Laurel's turn and she would love a Wallaby out of this yarn; it's so pretty! Why not buy it now so you can do her sweater after Laurel's poncho? It's 20 percent off, for Pete's sake!!!

The rest is just a blur. I now have a whole bag of yarn to be added to the stash, since none of it is for immediate consumption. Sigh...

So...you want to see what I got? You do, don't you?

6 skeins of Encore in this pretty variagation...isn't it pretty? Wouldn't a 9 year old girl love this? Yes, she will.

2 skeins of Berroco Foliage for a hat for me. I need a hat! I have a burgundy coat and this will coordinate, yet stand out. It's so soft!!!

3 skeins of sock yarn, each of which will make a pair of socks. Here is where it became a blur. I have sock yarn...I don't really need any more! What happened???

Oh, well. Sales are final, the receipt says. I can't take it back, so I guess I will just have to lump it.

On the fickleness of children

If anyone had told me when I had children, that it was the BOY who would end up being the pickiest one when it came to clothes, I would have thought they were off their rocker.

Alas...it is all too true. The Squatter is the boy who will not wear anything I pick out, at least not without a struggle.

The girls are fairly easy. When they were little, I just color coordinated what I bought. Laurel always got pink and Emily always got purple. Easy. Simple. Now, of course, that Laurel is a tweenager, she is heartily sick of pink. So my one stricture is to avoid the pink stuff for her, but otherwise, they always love whatever I pick out for them. I put it down to my exquisite taste; who wouldn't love what I pick out?

The Squat, that's who. AFTER I changed his sweater over to the Wonderful Wallaby pattern, I thought he agreed with me. Then he came up to me Saturday while I was knitting on his sweater.

"Is that my sweater?"

"Yes, this is it!"

"How did it look?" Here you have to understand that Mr. Bill's grasp of past, present and future tense is not too good yet, due to his speech delay. I understood he meant, "How is it going to look?"

"See, here is a picture. It will have a hood and if you like, I will put this pocket in the front. Isn't it neat?"

"Mom, I don't want a hood or a pocket. I just want a sweater."

Ooops. So it looks like I will be making major alterations to this sweater. I can leave the pocket off without any problem at all, but now I have to figure out how to put a different collar on it. Ah, the fickleness of children. But I've been knitting now for 13 years! I have confidence! I am the BOSS of my knitting! I can do it!

I think.....

So...this is supposed to save me time?

2006-02-03T09:27:00.000-05:00

I admit defeat, foule machine. Thou hast conquered me.

'Twas not that I did not a valiant effort make, foule dwimmermachine! Thou wert spawned by foule orcs and thy nasty pointy hooks and fell weighted hem wert ever made by he whose darkness knows no end!

I renounce thee, O stinkin' ISM! I will save thy pointy hooks for scarves and suchlike. 'Twas in vain that I bought the 30 needle extension for thy foule plastick frame so that I might expand thine horizons and knit larger sweaters than thou couldst previously do. 'Tis apparent that adding the extension to make your foule body more productive does not bode well for those sweaters whose width only exceedeth thy previous capacity by one or two stitches! Long did I labor to hang both thy foule weighted hems so that evenly they did hang! Hours did I spend putting my fair knitted piece on thine pointy hooks, making sure that I skipped no hook and every latch was open!

But alas, thou hast defeated me! When I had finally satisfied myself that thine foul weighted hems were hanging evenly and that my jaunty knitted ribbing was placed correctly on the aforementioned pointy hooks and didst push thy carriage across to knit the first row, loud was my cursing and wailing when I discovered that thou didst not knit at least 20 stitches where the two foule weighted hems did meet. In vain didst I try to knit these stitches by hand, foiled by the tight tension on the working yarn! For every stitch that couldst be coaxed through the loop on the hook, another previously completed stitch would pop out! Alack!

If only I had been able to knit those stitches and proceed, I knew that all would be well! Once thy weighted hems were hanging well below thy pointy hooks, the knitting would proceed in a smooth manner, in spite of thy foule machinations! Yet, it was not to be! After wasting 2 precious knitting hours fussing with thee, O dwimmermacine, I have decided that knitting was meant to be fun, not to be spent toiling and cursing over plastic and metal.

Thou shalt not despoil my fair Plymouth Encore yarn. It shall be saved from thy snagging ways and thy refusal to knit stitches where two weighted hems must meet at thy extension point. I shall no longer waste the precious hours of my life that I have spent trying to coax thee to do what, after all, thou wert designed to do. Thy capricious refusal to cooperate shall doom thee to the furthest corner of the basement, where thou shalt dwell until, at my pleasure, I choose to grapple with thee yet again.

Observe, foule dwimmermachine, I have switched mine pattern to be one which I can knit with joy and satisfaction! Behold the Wonderful Wallaby! Circularly shall I proceed, taking my knitting where thou canst never go, in the car, at the computer, to the church meeting! Look on this thy nemesis and despair! The Paton's pattern, while claiming to be for 8 year old children, dost have 12 inches of ease chestwise! Consulting the Knitter's Companion chart of sweater ease allowances, I find that loose fitting sweaters call for a 12 to 15 percent ease and the Paton's designer hast made for double this amount! The Squatter boy wouldst swim in the Paton's hoodie. Far, far better to enclothe him in a Wallaby and be happy in the knitting. Thou hast won our battle, O foule machine, but I, I have won the war!

Am I Crazy, or What?!?!?

2006-02-02T09:15:00.000-05:00

Albert and Debbie Regiasock would like to announce their wedding, which took place recently. Debbie said, "I've had my eye on him for a long time and I'm glad he's finally mature enough to make a commitment to our relationship."Albert said, "Get out of my face with that camera...we're going on our honeymoon now!"

These socks join the slim ranks of smug marrieds in my sock drawer, but there are still two lonely singleton socks waiting. I hope you'll be rooting for them...they need all the help they can get!

I will have to be careful about which shoes I wear these socks with because the bottoms of my feet are stupidly sensitive and I don't think these will work with my Birks without rubbing my feet raw (they are a cotton blend.) But they are still MINE! I don't know too many people who are sock worthy, so I'm not giving them away.

And if you think I have some sort of sickness, that would lead me to run around my stamping room to make a cardstock bowtie and searching for tulle and fake flowers to make a veil and a bouquet for a pair of socks, you may have something there...I'll be watching for those guys in the white coats to roll up at any moment!

Two finished projects, both UFO's, in a week! I'm on a roll!

My hands have improved quite a lot and I was able to knit without the brace yesterday. It helped that I am now working on the Squatter's electric yellow hoodie and no longer have tiny needles and yarn between my fingers; the fat feel of the Encore and fatter Inox circular don't seem to produce the drastic symptoms that knitting sock yarn with size 1 Brittany birch needles does. Last night I slept without the brace. I meant to wear it, but by the time I crawled into bed I had forgotten to put it on and I was too tired to get out and go get it. Mea culpa. Since my hands are hardly bothering me at all this morning it must have been okay.

I took my kids to the roller rink yesterday afternoon; their school had a skating party, an annual event. I was happy to pack up a couple of skeins for the hoodie, plus a skein for swatching the mitered baby blanket that will be my Olympic knitting project. I made sure to send Laurel with the squat to pick up his skates; there are only so many booths on the other side of the rink available and I didn't want to get stuck sitting on the tiers that are the only other alternative. You gotta move quick to get a booth!

I managed to grab one, so was able to spread my work out on the table. I had some interested spectators; teachers who already know about the stamping that I do, but did not suspect about this side of my life. Got the usual questions about whether this crocheting or knitting? Emily's teacher told me of a beloved crocheted afghan that she needed to have repaired and could I do it? She would be glad to pay me! I said I would be happy to look at it. She doesn't have the yarn used to make it, so it will mean trying to match colors. She said as long as it looks reasonably the same, that would be fine. I do know how to crochet, in fact, I used to do quite a lot of it, it's just that I prefer knitting.

Another teacher told me of the yarn she had gotten at Joanne's that she wanted a friend to crochet (again with the crochet!!!) into a scarf. She asked me how long it would take ME to make a scarf. I said a day or two, depending on the yarn and the needle size. Then she said if she couldn't get her friend to make the scarf, would I? She would pay me! Who knew that KIP (knitting in public for non-knitlist folks) could be so profitable? Naturally I said I would be happy to, provided her friend was not forthcoming.

Another teacher asked me if this was a new hobby for me and I had to confess I have been knitting for years. I've kind of been hiding that fact, thinking that if they knew exactly how many crafts I do know how to do, I would be roped into teaching these crafts to young people, something I'm not that great at, honestly. I can teach adults, but when it comes to kids, I don't have much patience...I barely have enough for my own children, much less anyone else's! I deeply admire those who can teach kids, including my husband, who has to deal with teenagers every day, more than 100 teenagers, to boot. He deserves a medal!

At the roller rink, I swatched for the hoodie, finding that the designer and I were gauge twins and cast on for the bottom. I've finished the ribbing, now there comes the moment of truth; putting the thing on the ISM and doing the stockinette.

One of the weird things about this pattern (Paton's Hangin' Out!) is that it calls for 4.5 mm needles and 4.0 mm needles, but never tells you WHERE you are supposed to use the 4.0 mm needles! I've read through the pattern a couple of times and have yet to find out exactly where I'm supposed to use them. Usually you use the smaller ones on the ribbing, but looking at the photograph, I don't think it's likely, as the ribbing does not pull in at all and, in fact, looks a little looser than most ribbings. Even so, I would think that if they had made an error on the needle size for the ribbing, they would only make the error on one piece and it would be correct on the other pieces; instead, they all say to start with the 4.5 needle. Strange.

I was happy at the roller rink knitting with my favorite yarn and watching the squatter making his way for the first time out on the big wooden floor to skate. This is the fourth time we have been to the roller rink and previously he would only skate on the carpeting around the outside of the rink. By the end of the 2 hours, he was actually rolling a little bit instead of just moving his skates in jerky little motions. All in all, an experience that paid off, despite having to listen to what amounts to disco music pounding louder and louder and smelling greasy pizza wafting from the snack bar. A little knitting and a boy who now likes to skate, what could be better?

The Power, the Power, bwahahahahah!

2006-01-31T09:48:00.000-05:00

First let me tell you that absolutely no knitting was done yesterday, which is probably just as well. My hand has improved immensely and only hurts a little bit. The brace has definitely helped along with the knitting rest.

I know this is my own damn fault. I've always suffered from an excess of enthusiasm for crafts. Just visiting a yarn store or craft store has always had fairly embarrassing effects on my physical state of being which I refuse to discuss here. So, naturally I must throw myself into knitting with reckless abandon, with the result that I injured myself doing it. So stupid, really. I may already be sidelined from the Knitting Olympics if I can't get over this!

At this point, though, I'm contemplating trying to improve my gauge when knitting continental. I'm a loose knitter knitting English style, so that I usually have to go down a needle size to achieve correct gauge, but knitting continental...then I need to go down two to three needle sizes because I'm ultra loose! But if I knit continental I won't be using that forefinger/thumb pincer position that is probably the cause of my particular repetitive motion injury. I just can't stand purling continental because I've never gotten the hang of it. Maybe it's time to get out a skein of junky yarn and just start practicing....sigh.

In the meantime, I will knit with the brace on, as horrible as that is. Are you feeling sorry for me yet? If not, you have a heart of stone. Don't laugh! I can hear you laughing!

But on to the topic which heads this post....THE POWER!!!

Today my kids' school had Crazy Hat day (plus mismatched shoes.) I have the perfect hat for them to wear for this. Look at it! It's the Debbie Bliss Christmas Tree hat from Heads, Hands & Toes! Isn't it perfect? I spent $35 just for the BUTTONS for this hat! I knit it when Laurel was 4 years old (making this hat 7 years old.) Back then, I think she wore it ONCE. I paid $35 just for the buttons for a hat she only wore ONCE. I'll pause to let that sink in...

So you think that SOMEONE would love to wear this hat for Crazy Hat day, right? It is crazy, right? So why would no one volunteer to wear it today, not even the Squatter? It did not make any sense to me, so you know what? I put it on and wore it myself!

"Erm...Mother!" Laurel said. (You know you are in trouble when your tweenage daughter calls you "Mother"!) "You're not going to get out of the car, are you?"

Oh, the POWER!! I have finally reached that stage that all parents hope and dream for, the power to EMBARRASS their children!

My children have been embarrassing me in public regularly for years, so now it's PAYBACK TIME!!!

"Not only might I get out of the car," I said, "I might just go into the school and show everyone my hat!"

"Noooooooooo!!!!" All three children exploded into cries of horror at the thought of their mother walking into school with a Christmas tree hat on her head. It was a sweet moment and I savored it.

"People will laugh at you!" the Squatter exclaimed. I explained that once you get to be my age, what people think of you simply ceases to matter as much and you don't mind being laughed at. At age 7, he's just beginning to get the idea that being laughed at isn't always the great thing it is when you are 5.

Somehow, the fact that I would not be embarrassed at all by people laughing at the spectacle of a 44 year old woman wearing a Christmas tree hat did not improve the prospect of the same for my kids. So I relented and simply dropped them off at school. No one could see my hat in the car...sigh.

I thought about showing the people at Starbucks my hat as I stopped for my Caramel Macchiato, but I decided they just wouldn't get it. But you do, don't you?

Do you think I should wear it when I pick them up? I have to get out of the car to do that! Or should the threat of embarrassment be enough without the deed itself? Bwahahahahah!

Where's ET when you need him?

2006-01-30T08:39:00.000-05:00

I have a picture of my puffy looking hand with its evil brace on it, but I didn't want to horrify anyone so early in the morning...assuming that's when you are reading this, but I assure you it is almost as horrifying looking at other times of the day too. I need that little alien with his glowing finger to touch my hand and make it better. Ouuuuccchhhh!

I saw the chiropractor on Friday for my sore hand and whatever she did has made it feel worse, to the point that I went out and bought a wrist brace yesterday. I'm wearing it off and on during the day and definitely at night and it is helping....slowly. It's actually feeling pretty good this morning with the brace off (typing is very hard with it on, but I assure you I am very good about keeping my arm positioned correctly to avoid more injury!) I'm debating about going back to the chiropractor this week; the one I saw is not my usual guy, so I'm hopeful that he would do a better job. If he can't make the cut, I'll knuckle under and PAY my old chiropractor, whom my insurance will not reimburse since he's out of network, to fix my wrists. He was a dab hand at doing it before, so if it costs me $40 to get his healing touch, I'll pay for it.

The chiropractor told me not to knit for 24 hours, and I almost made it. I have tried to rest it quite a bit, but yesterday was our church's annual meeting. To my horror, not only was I put back on the vestry, but it looks like I'm going to get stuck being senior warden, something I definitely did not want to do. If you're the praying sort, pray for me!

However, one good thing about annual meetings is that they are perfect knitting opportunities. So here I am, in utter astonishment, contemplating the end of the second Ann Norling sock. The completed one is beside itself with excitement, as you can see! I think we're going to make it and a second sock will be done. The curse of the second sock WILL be broken!

You can see that in spite of my trying to start the second sock in the same place in the striping sequence, I didn't quite make it. It's close, but no cigar.

I'd love to sit and knit this morning and gaze in triumph at my finished sock, but I have a stamping class tonight. Four cards and only one of them designed! I'm going to have to spend the day stamping. Actually...I'd really love to just go back to bed. For some reason, I'm dog tired today. I stopped at Cholesterol Heaven (aka McDonald's) and got myself a hot breakfast to try to get myself going this morning and it is not working! I was good and went to bed at 11 PM after frosting 24 cupcakes for the squatter's classroom birthday celebration. We went out to dinner Friday night and had a big cake at church on Sunday. Next week my in-laws will come to celebrate on Superbowl Sunday.

This presents problems...the LYS's Superbowl sale is on that Sunday! I must go to buy Laurel's poncho yarn, so I will probably have to take my MIL along. I hate it when worlds collide.

In the meantime, I will show you a picture of the squat opening presents yesterday. I am not one to post pictures of my kids on the internet willy nilly, but this picture doesn't show a very recognizable view of his face, so I think it will be safe. Notice in the lower right corner, Emily is wearing her new sweater and it tried to sneak some of the limelight.

Even though his face is contorted with the joyful "Wow!" he is shouting over his Hot Wheels G-Force, I think you can see how very cute (ooops...handsome!) and irresistable he can be. Dang, but I love that kid!

Boys aren't cute

2006-01-27T08:40:00.000-05:00

Ouch. I guess I overdid the knitting.

My hand is hurting today. I've had tendonitis, so I know what that's about, but this isn't it. This is probably plain and simple arthritis. The Squatter said when I told him I was 44 years old, "I don't want you to die!!! Are you going to live until you are 100?" Yep, that's the plan, but some days it doesn't feel like it! However, my imminent and impending death (obviously I'm so old it's inevitable) fills my small boy with terror, so we must forge on to 100 and beyond.

The squatter is now practicing to be a television spokesperson. He'll come up with a couple of dominos in his hand and say, "Do you have pain? Do you have trouble with getting up in the morning? Here is One-a-Day Cholesterol and it will help you." The medications vary. Some days is Avadar (prostate drug heavily advertised right now), but it almost always has the word "One-a-Day" or "Cholesterol" in the name of the drug. And he says it in this deep, round announcer voice. Cracks me up, but I try not to laugh.

It's hard to believe he's going to be seven years old this weekend. Scary. He told me yesterday that I couldn't say he was cute anymore.

I said, "Boys can be cute."

"No, they can't!" Said in an emphatic deep voice full of outrage.

"So what can I call you now if I can't say you're cute?"

"A BOY!"

"Can I say you're a handsome boy?"

"Okay."

Apparently, only girls can be cute. I keep telling him that his grandpa (my dad) has cornered the market on cute and that his motto is "ABC" or "Always Be Cute." But Billy will have none of it. Cute is out. Cute is for girls. Boys aren't cute.

Knittedy-knittedy-knit

Well, here is what I have been working on. I know, I know, it's not the Squatter's sweater, but the hand does not want me to knit at all and I've been trying to fool it with this. It had gotten to the point where I had to divide for the heel. Not something that can be done while reading email and since this is my email reading project, I needed to get it to the next level. The heel flap is done and I have to start turning the heel. Once I get past the heel, it can once again be mindless knitting for list or email reading.

The Yarn Harlot (my model of blog writing) often photographs her knitting with her cat to make it look interesting. I don't have a cat anymore (and Dan's allergies now preclude any fur people in the house), so I have to resort to using my kids' stuffed animals instead. There are some advantages to this. Stuffed animals are always willing to pose, staying still for hours at a time. They never mess with my knitting. And I don't have to clean up their poop. I like this. But they don't purr. I miss the purring. But not the hairballs. Or the hair. Or the poop. Or the suddenly startled cat leaping off my lap, leaving claw marks in my tender flesh as he goes. But the purring...definitely miss that.

I always think a sock looks a bit funny at this point, like the heel flap and the surrounding edges are a big open mouth. I guess that's why I posed it with these two fluffy critters. Watch out, fluffy critters! This sock is HUNGRY and it has a BAD ATTITUDE.

Calloo! Callay! O Frabjous Day!

2006-01-25T13:40:00.000-05:00

It's done!

I put the last mattress stitch in last night around 12:30 PM. I got quite a bit done at my knitting class, but I still had to finish the bottom edging and sewing up the final seam.

You are lucky to see it...Emily did not want to take it off after she tried it on this morning. I had the school on my side, though. They wear uniforms and peach/pink/lime green/violet sweaters are not on the list of approved uniform components.)

You are also lucky to see it because Dan stayed home sick today. I had to wait until the afternoon before I could even open the curtains to get enough light for a picture. Dan likes it dark and private in here when he's sick. He's in bed right now, so I finally managed to take this!

On to the next project...the electric yellow hoodie for Mr. Squats.

Tagged? What's that?

2006-01-24T08:49:00.000-05:00

Okay, I've been tagged by Gretchen over at Cats-n-Lace (I dunno, Gretchen, sounds like a dangerous combination, but I digress....) I will say I am not the person to send these things to in emails...I don't believe that I will have the worst luck in the world if I don't send the prayer of St. Teresa on to 10 other people and I don't fall for the idea of something wonderful happening 45 minutes after I send whatever else is in the email on to 8 of my friends. But Gretchen's tag contained no such threats, so I will indulge her...just this once!

Four jobs in my life [best to worst]:

1.) Stampin' Up! demonstrator - I've been doing this for three years and it's been a blast.
2.) Programmer at an automotive supplier...I worked my way into that one, having started as a parts controller and knowing nothing about programming. The least boring job I had, but it was frustrating dealing with the users of my programs since they always changed their minds about what was needed AFTER they got the actual program! I enjoyed writing programs though...it was like solving a puzzle. I was there for 7 years, so it also qualifies as my longest held job.
3.) Church secretary since 2002 - still doing this, but for no pay now.
4.) Absolute worst job? er....I've done a lot of different things, but it must be the one day I spent as a waitress at a tiny cafe. The woman who ran it expected me to automatically know where everything was and just to step in and do it. Never went back after the first day (and never got paid either.)

Four Movies you could watch over and over:

1.) When Harry Met Sally
2.) The Chronicles of Narnia: the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - saw it over Christmas break and want to see it again and again
3.) Groundhog Day
4.) Moonstruck

I like Harry Potter and Star Wars too, but with three kids who are crazy about both, believe me, I've watched them over and over!

Four Places you have lived:

1.) Kalamazoo, Michigan - born there, went to Western, still visit often.
2.) Bloomington, Illinois - Dan's first teaching job, we lived there from January 1986 to mid-1987.
3.) Canton, Michigan - where we lived when we first moved to the metro Detroit area in an apartment.
4.) Our current house in another suburb outside of Detroit (not going to be specific, sorry!) We bought it in 1990 and have lived here ever since.

Four Places you have been on vacation:
1.) Upper Michigan - where we have been most often on vacation, including Sault Ste. Marie, St. Ignace, Petoskey (our honeymoon) and Traverse City. All from 1983 up until last year.
2.) Chicago - ultimate destination on our very last B & B crawl before we had kids...started out in Michigan, went down through Union Pier and ended up in Naperville. That was in 1992 or 1993.
3.) San Diego - our last trip w/o children in 1994. Loved it!
4.) Orlando & Salt Lake City - both places I was not on vacation, per se, but was at the Stampin' Up! Convention the last couple of years.

Four websites you visit daily:

1.) Stampin' Up!'s demo website to check my outstanding orders and see if I made it on Stamper's Showcase (hey, it happened once, LOL!)
2.) Splitcoaststampers - great website for stampers
3.) Yarn Harlot's blog
4.) Knitty Cafe - this is a new one for me.

Four of my favorite foods:

1.) Chocolate - brownies being the ultimate expression of same.
2.) Watermelon
3.) Strawberries
4.) Filet Mignon

Four places you'd rather be right now:

1) Back in bed ;-) Yawn!
2) Someplace warm and temperate, like San Diego would be cool!
3) Some days I'd love to be about 8 years old, back in my room at home with no kids, no husband and no responsibilities!
4) Otherwise, I'm pretty content being home with all my kids and husband at school today and having the whole house to myself!

Four Bloggers I am tagging: I don't KNOW four bloggers to tag, so it ends right here!

Now...as to knitting:

Looky!

The sleeves are done!

I'm doing the neck ribbing!

All wrong...I was supposed to only seam one shoulder then work the ribbing as a flat piece, but I got carried away and did both shoulder seams (I love, just love, grafting shoulders...I love watching the two pieces come together and look like one piece!) So I'm working the ribbing in the round instead. The needles is just a leeeetle too big, so I have a lot of scrunching and skootching to get the stitches to stretch around it, but it is coming along. I hope to have it done today!

And I want to tell you that the brownie I ate (with the Diet Coke I drank to cancel out the brownie calories) actually did contain housekeeping motivation! In fact, I could not sit down for more than 15 minutes after I ate the brownie yesterday without feeling restless...hmmm...not sure I want THAT much motivation. I did get the basic cleaning done and I thwarted the Dust Menace from Above (read that as "I cleaned the ceiling fan in the dining room") which had been a threat ever since we turned the fans off because it got cold and we could actually SEE the dust. Some of that stuff looked like it could eat a small child or a dog, so it makes me rest easier knowing that we are all safe in our beds without worrying about the Dust Menace eating us....there's still our bedroom ceiling fan, though!

It's 10 AM Monday Morning; Do You Know Where Your Motivation Is?

2006-01-23T10:16:00.000-05:00

More importantly, do you know where mine is?

I was motivated yesterday thinking of all the cleaning I would get done today. First, I must have been sick. Cleaning? Moi?

But Monday is the day I usually take a stab at a more involved cleaning project. "Get the worst out of the way first" is usually my motto.

So I've been trying to find that motivation I had yesterday. Where is it? I looked here:

This is the second half of my second cup, liberally spiked with International Delights Chocolate Cream coffee creamer...which shouts at me from the label that it has 0 grams trans fat! Isn't that exciting? It whispers on the back of the label that while there may be no trans fat in this stuff, it definitely has FAT. I have FAT already, a plentiful supply...I'm looking for motivation. Disregard the coffee grounds visible behind the coffee cup...remember, I lack motivation for cleaning!

I don't know...I've looked everywhere...I dimly suspect that there might be some motivation in one of these:

But how do I know which one of these has my missing motivation unless I eat them all? But if I eat them all, I will definitely feel ill...I can't chow down the brownies like I used to! Maybe just one...the sun isn't quite over the yard arm yet, but that really only applies to alchohol, right?

Progress

I am motivated to knit the rest of these sleeves. One stinkin' inch until I can shape the top and be done with these sleeves! Only one! I think there may be plenty of motivation for that...what do you think?

Only problem is that I knit so much yesterday evening that my left hand hurts. I need to find those Hand-eze gloves...but I can't remember where they are. I used to have two pair...off to hunt!

Let the Games Begin!

2006-01-20T10:50:00.000-05:00

The decision is made and the die is cast. This is what I am going to do for the Yarn Harlot's Knitting Olympics. I decided that a) it had to be something I had never made before, b) it had to be knit from the stash only, c) it would have to be something that I actually might finish, and d) it would be something for charity. So I chose this project after taking a romp through the stash (more on that later). I had the pattern and I had the yarn. The design will hold my interest long enough (which is why I have avoided baby blankets up until now because they look sooooo boring!) And we do a baby shower for a local crisis pregnancy center at my church every spring and I will be able to donate this. Whaddya think? Did I choose well?

Stash Romp

You probably will laugh at me when you realize just how ~~anal~~ particular I am about my stash. Did I mention yet that I have 15 Roughtotes of yarn in my basement? A veritable wall of yarn? Well, I do.

I went down there this morning to check my Encore boxes (yep, I have two boxes devoted just to my favorite yarn) for a yarn request on the knitlist. I have a (ahem) rather large collection of Encore due to the fact that I have rarely seen a color or color combination of this yarn that I didn't like! I often adopt the odd skein that ends up in the sale bin at Old Village Yarns, 'cause I hate to think of them getting lonely in there. I put them in boxes with other skeins from the same company so they'll feel right at home.

I didn't end up having the desired color (why not? Heathered blue/green? Sounds like something I would have bought...hmmm...), but I discovered that one of my boxes that I thought was devoted to Encore actually had [gasp] Woolease in it! I couldn't have that, could I?

So I got the generic worsted weight acrylic box out, plus my other Encore box and sorted it all out. I made one of the boxes of Encore for groups of 3 or more skeins of the same color, and the other one was 1 or 2 skeins plus odd balls. I found that I had a lot more Woolease than I had ever remembered buying. I also went into that closet in the laundry room where I had remembered putting some Woolease for some reason and found about 6 skeins in there. One had fallen on the floor and rolled into the space under the stairs where it had collected quite a lot of fluff and debris. It was hard to tell just what belonged and what didn't, since it was black with color neps in it, so I vacuumed the yarn with the vacuum we keep in the laundry room! Worked like a charm!

I had fantasies while vacuuming...maybe there was a way of inventing a vacuum-style gadget that would suck the end of the yarn out of center-pull balls! I could invent this gizmo and make millions! Millions!

However, Cold Reality (a invisible person who has a nasty habit of hanging around my house) intruded with a vision of this gadget totally crammed and jammed with yarn and thousands of irate knitters and crocheters beating me to death with jammed gadgets, so I got rid of the idea immediately.

After I was done romping through the yarn, I put everything back, making sure that the same color lids went on the same color boxes. It makes me uneasy when I put a blue lid on a purple box. Can't do it!

WIP

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I'm at the top of the heart patch on the ~~project from hell~~ colorblocks sweater's sleeves and soon I will be back to only one skein per sleeve and it will be cake from then on, cake I tell ya! After the sleeves are done, it's on to the neck ribbing, then sewing up and doing the bottom edging. It will be done, done, done. I can't wait! And I can tell ya, it will be a cold day in h-e-double-toothpicks before I ever knit another one like this!

However, I did have to cheat just a little bit. I found that I forgot to do a couple of the increases while experiencing the thrill of knitting the heart into the patch. So, I went ahead and hooked up one of the increases with a crochet hook and fudged the other ones so that they were there...they just weren't exactly in the place they should have been. But this is going to be on the underside of the sleeve and no one will see it anyway. I just could not, could NOT face frogging back to where the increases needed to go. Doing it this way creates a couple of columns of tiny tight stitches, but only I (and you folks!) will know they are there and you aren't going to tell, are you?

Back to Snow

2006-01-18T08:29:00.000-05:00

Well, we had a good two weeks without having to look at any white stuff, but this morning this is what we woke to. Pretty isn't it? Enjoy it, 'cause it's bound to melt tomorrow; it's supposed to get up to the low 40's tomorrow.

This has been an unusual January. It was like we had January in December and now we're having our usual December in January. Not that I mind! I'd rather have more of the dreaded white stuff by Christmas and then it can all go away. Usually we have at least one big snow storm in January, which is the month where we will get a snow day if we get one at all. This winter we had a snow day in December, the first I can ever remember since we moved here.

Yesterday it was warmer and it rained all day. That was actually much more depressing than snow; it's wetter, for one thing, and it just went on and on. There was maybe an hour or so break in the afternoon, then it started right back up again. I ended up taking a nap in the morning because it just made me so tired and achy. Bleh.

Saved by Common Sense

I've decided to participate in the Yarn Harlot's Knitting Olympics. To do this, I need a challenging project. My first thought was for the Great American Aran Afghan. After all, I have all the yarn for this (bought at a Super Bowl sale at Old Village Yarns in Plymouth) and I have the pattern. It certainly would be a challenge! I was starting to get excited and then I noticed that this pattern has 20 squares. The Knitting Olympics will last 16 days. I did the math. I realized I was nuts to think I could knit more than one square a day, given the complexity of the patterns in each square. Poot!

So now I am trying to think of just what I should do. Socks are out, I've done socks. I've made baby sweaters, kid sweaters, adult sweaters, vests, mittens, a shawl, scarves, hats galore, purses, and dishcloths. I've never made an afghan, a pillow, or a tea cozy (though I don't have a tea pot, so that seems like a dumb idea.) Hmmm...must fink! Any and all suggestions are appreciated.

Progress

I went to knitting last night and got some work done on the ~~project from hell~~ colorblocks sweater, which is just as well, since I got so little done during the day due to my nap and Dan taking me out to lunch and hardware store hopping. As you can see in the background, I did buy something last night. I really like this book by Sally Melville, which is the third in her series. I didn't buy the first two, but I liked this one. I also picked up a pair of short straight 2's for Emily. She had sat on her knitting bag and broke one of the cheapo Target needles she had gotten for Christmas from her grandma. So I bought some nice Inox needles for her. I'm such a NICE mom!

In addition, since the ~~project from hell~~ colorblocks sweater has been demoted from computer knitting (too headache-making with all the skein juggling), the purple Ann Norling Sock has been enjoying its new role as computer and car knitting project and I am getting closer to dividing for the heel. Could it be that the curse of the second sock will be broken?

Yarn for Brains

2006-01-16T10:25:00.000-05:00

I'd like to know where my brains went. Seems like I used to have some, but something happened. ~~Evil yarn companies destroyed my brain cells!~~ I think motherhood is to blame. After all, I took one online IQ test just out of curiosity when Emily was a baby and got a nice score. I took another one recently and it was LOWER. Hmmm... you'd think since I am not nursing any babies, which is notorious for making you kind of dozey and thick-headed (not to insult anyone who is nursing a baby now, but it is a temporary effect, or so I have been told) that my IQ would have gone up, now wouldn't you?

I think it's the battery effect, which works on a mother's energy levels as well. The more energy your children have, the less you have since you are their battery and they are suckin' you dry every minute. Maybe it works the same for brain power? I do have very bright kids...

To illustrate my lack of brain cells, I spent 30 minutes looking for my keys this morning!!! Luckily, Dan was still home when it was time to take the kids to school...his district has MLK day off, but the teachers had to go to a program on poverty at 9 AM, so he didn't have to leave until 8:30 AM. I ended up taking his keys so I could get the kids to school on time. Wasn't any help that I was taking my neighbor's kids as well as my own and they were witnessing my frantic key search as well.

I last had the keys (I thought) yesterday when I got back from the grocery store on Sunday. So when I got back from dropping the kids off, I looked in my car on the floor, I looked on the floor of the garage, I looked on the ground between the garage and the back door, I looked in every place I ever put my keys and even some places I don't (like the refrigerators!) I looked in every knitting bag and turned the couch cushions out and the reclining chair I sit in to knit over to look underneath. I looked in my laundry basket, on my dresser, in my other coat, in the pants I was wearing yesterday. No keys.

I had just removed the key to my car from my husband's keychain, figuring I'd find the extra house key and at least have a basic set of keys when Dan came out of the bedroom ready to go. He said, "Did you check the kids rooms?" I'm like, "What would they be doing in there?" I walk in the Squatter's room and wouldn't you know, there they were on the bed! I had had them in my hand when I went in there to get something of his this morning and I had put them down and left them there. Doh!

~~Can't be a coincidence that I had touched YARN before I did this, could it? It's the yarn companies...it's a plot!~~ I think I need some of that memory herb...now what is the name of it again? Can't remember!

OKT (Obligatory Knit Content)

I've made progress on the ~~project from hell~~ colorblocks sweater. I'm about halfway up the sleeves. My brilliant idea of knitting both the sleeves at once seemed a great idea until I got to the point where I knit the lavender colored patch on the sleeves. Now I have to have three different yarn ends attached to each sleeve. I have three skeins of orange yarn, so I have to knit from both ends of one ball. 5 skeins of yarn dangling from the needles tend to get tangled...grrr...I can't wait until this is DONE!

I've determined that Laurel will be next in line after the electric yellow sweater for the Squatter. I think I've persuaded her that she wants a poncho. Poncho's are in now, poncho's are cool (and mom doesn't have to seam anything on a poncho!!!) Unfortunately, the one she likes is the one from the new magazine "Knit Simple" and it is a bulky weight yarn with an eyelash yarn called "Baby Monkey" on it for trim. She's trying to decide on the color right now...she likes either turquoise or lime green (not the wool called for, but Plymouth Encore instead...Laurel is not wool-compatible!) So if I get those clip-on sunglasses for the squat's sweater, I should keep them around for this poncho.

Somewhere in there, I have to sneak in some dishcloths...mine are all falling to pieces!

Other Stuff

I spent the weekend feeling vaguely melancholy and a bit fatigued, all chalked up to PMS. Saturday night I was SUPPOSED to have people over to stamp, but they all backed out (you know who you are!!!) So instead I hauled my spinning wheel up to the living room to indulge myself. Dan had a gig, so I could watch whatever I wanted ALL THE WAY THROUGH!!!

I'll pause to let that sink in a little bit. Amazing, isn't it?

Naturally, since I got the TV to myself, there was nothing on television, so I popped Ground Hog Day into my DVD/VCR combo and mostly listened to it since it's hard to look at the screen while spinning. Spent much time putting that dang new plastic belt back on...it must have doffed itself at least three times before I figured out I had to oil it again...either the plastic is sucking up the oil, or the wheel itself, being wood and naturally thirsty at this dry time of year, is drinking the oil off the belt. Managed to spin a bit more before I got too cranky. I had knit my hands into a spasm or I would have knit and watched television instead.

I spent the day Friday at my friend Eve's house. She has been making clipboards and wanted me to make one with her. I had the best time! Sometimes, when you are making things from your own supplies, you hang back on using something because you want to save it for another project. But when you are using someone else's supplies, especially if that someone is as nice and generous as Eve is, you feel very free to put whatever you want on your project. And if you aren't restricting yourself to your own companies' products, you feel very free indeed. This is my clipboard so far...isn't it cool? You hang these on the wall and put pictures on them. Obviously, I will have to put a picture of one of my kids with a friend on this...just haven't figured out which pictures will be best and whether it's finished or not!

Today, I don't know what I'm going to do. The bathroom is STILL dirty so I guess that could be my project for the day! And since the thundering herd went through here this weekend, I should spend some quality time with my vacuum cleaner and broom. But first...detangling my skeins...that should take TOO long...right?

Yarn Victim

2006-01-12T08:53:00.000-05:00

I am a victim of yarn.

I decided that since this is the victim culture, I should just jump on the bandwagon and announce my victimhood. It is yarn. It is out to get me.

Yarn has been pursuing me all my life. Like many other victims, I was introduced to this habit by an enabler who is usually a victim herself. We can save a lot of time by just calling my enabler MOM.

Yes, my mom got me hooked on yarn. She's a knitter herself and sometime crocheter (but only popcorn stitch rugs) and she believed in getting us hooked early. Mom gave me a kit for Christmas one year that had a skein of ponytail weight yarn with some wooden needles, plus a picture of a chicken to be done in cross stitch. I remember it well...the yarn was bright pink and I knitted a garter stitch doll blanket. I loved it. I did the chicken picture as well, but it didn't have the staying power or the impact that making that doll blanket did.

I continued to play with yarn as I grew older. Mostly, this was through the medium of crochet, though I also pecked at knitting every now and then. Most of those projects were baby clothes for siblings that couldn't seem to stop popping out progeny. I made yarn daisies with a gizmo my grandmother had in her own craft stash. I had a huge (at least it seemed so at the time) crochet ripple afghan that I dragged about in junior high...beautiful (yes I'm being sarcastic) sayelle yarn from Zayre's in the stunning color combination of turquoise, royal blue, harvest gold, and black. I never did finish it, I think my sister ended up finishing it and keeping it. She was welcome to it!
The knitting projects were far less successful, I will say. A pair of white worsted acrylic garter stitch gloves knit flat and then seamed together(!!!). Little pouches. And a sweater that suffered from twisted purl disease from which it never recovered. Things started and never finished.

Although in college, I managed to focus on counted cross-stitch as my main obsession, yarn never fully let me go. I took a fiber arts class in college and was introduced to weaving. I loved weaving and bought myself a rigid heddle loom that I produced even more botched projects on than I had managed to knit. I also tried knitting again. A pair of mittens so large they fell of my hands when I walked. A sweater for my DH that he would never have worn if I had finished it...and I didn't finish it. After all of this discouragement, I let the loom and needles sit idle for about 5 years. I thought I had managed to kick the yarn habit for good. But nemesis with fuzzy waving tendrils was lying in wait...

Then we bought our house in 1990 and after moving the loom to this house, I thought it might be a good idea to do a project that someone had commissioned from me; they'd bought the yarn for a runner and I had never made it. I figured I could make the runner and then I could sell the loom. Well....

The loom didn't get sold; instead I was catapulted back into the yarn habit. Sunk into my victimhood yet again, I bought a new bigger loom, which led to a spinning wheel. The spinning wheel deepened my yarn addiction; I now was spinning more yarn than I would ever weave. So naturally, I decided I had to relearn knitting. That was it. Yarn had won. My victimhood was complete.

Someday they will find me down in the stash corner of our basement. Maybe I'll be buried in Rubbermaid Roughtotes, which will topple over in an avalanche of plastic cocooned yarn and roving. Or I will be buried head first in a Roughtote, smothered by yarn while digging for an elusive skein at the bottom. But remember this: I will have died happy, surrounded by the substance which makes life bearable.

WIP

I didn't post yesterday for three reasons:

a) I wanted to finish the front of the colorblocks sweater that I had posted before and I did! The sleeves were cast on last night...I'm doing them both at the same time so I will make the same mistakes in the same places and they will be exactly alike!

b) I actually thought I should do some housework before the Board of Health condemned my kitchen as a slime pit.

c) I wanted to figure out how to put my poetry up here. I managed to do it! Look over to your left and you will see a link that says "My knitting poetry". I have managed to find almost all my poems, including a couple I had totally forgotten that I'd written! One more remains; it was published in the subscriber newsletter for Interweave Knits and is buried in a box in the basement; but I will be getting to it soon and will post it. My poetry isn't high art; it rhymes, for one thing, but I find it fun to write and hope you enjoy reading it. I also have a couple of dishcloth patterns that I unvented, so I will be making a pattern blog and linking that as well; hopefully by next week.

You will also see a new button that says "Knitting Poet". If you are a knitting poet as well, feel free to copy my button for your own blog. I made it myself...it's not the snazziest button, but I will improve it one of these days!

In other news, I went to my knitting class at Old Village Yarn on Tuesday night and had a great time! I was going to take a picture, but felt a little too shy to ask this time; maybe next week. I will also report that I was very good at resisting all of the drug-soaked yarn in the shop; I only bought a magazine and one more skein of yellow Encore for the Squatter's sweater. I looked at a lot of stuff, but knowledge of just how much yarn is in the stash right now (as well as how little money is in the checking account) kept me on the straight and narrow. I feel darned smug today. The sun is shining and my stash is replete. What could be better?

2006-01-10T13:52:00.000-05:00

Suspicious Minds

Last night, Dan came home from work and said, "So, what have you been doing all day, BLOGGING?"

I think he's suspicious.

I think I threw him off the trail...I said, "Not all day! I went out in the afternoon; I bought some glue for the floor. I did some laundry." (half a load, but that is still LAUNDRY, right?)

Dan: "So what are you going to do tomorrow, BLOG?"

Me: "Uh, maybe go to the grocery store."

Dan: "What else are you going to do?"

Me: "Um, more laundry."

Dan: "Aren't you going to glue the floor?"

Me: "I thought you might do that."

Dan: "I don't have time to glue the floor."

Hmmm...this is a man who spends so much of his time sleeping or playing his guitar that I was kind of speechless at that point. (To be fair, the man works very hard teaching teenagers...he deserves his sleep!) The grilling about what I was going to do today went on for a few minutes. This is totally not like Dan...I think he's suspicious. Maybe he thinks I should actually be cleaning this place? Hmmm...

Spinning Wheel Pit Stop

Okay, this is most of what I did today. I glued the floor first, though, because I wanted to get it done. I have the world's ugliest kitchen floor and it's coming apart at the seams, so today I had to glue it down. I would much rather tear it all off and get a new one, but for some strange reason, Dan thinks we should wait to replace it until the kids are older. (Why?!?!?!?) But I digress...

It's really the Harlot's fault. The Harlot spins every Tuesday. The Harlot shows all her spinning projects and new fiber on her blog. And since I have been reading her archives, finally catching up yesterday, I have seen everything the Harlot has spun for the past two years. It's her fault, I tell ya! This is what I did when I should have been cleaning!!

Yesterday (when I went out, remember) I bought a can of MinWax and a staining pad with plastic gloves. I had decided to finally stain the new flyer I had bought for my Ashford Traditional Double Drive spinning wheel, aka Bessie the Yarn Cow. Laurel had broken Bessie's original flyer exactly 3 years ago (though I had stopped spinning a few of years before that.) I ordered the parts then, then when they came I stuck them in a drawer.

When I started thinking about finally staining and installing the flyer, I suddenly remembered: I had bought a jumbo flyer attachment for this wheel years and years ago and had never stained that either! I could get all the staining out of the way in one fell swoop!

It is a testament to the size of my house (small) and the photographic nature of my memory (sometimes compared to an elephant's by my husband, though if he compares anything else to an elephant's, NO MORE LASAGNA!!!), I was able to find the box with the jumbo flyer attachment in about 15 minutes in the utility room.

So now instead of the amount of staining I had to do with just the flyer, I had this much staining to do instead. The jumbo flyer (which allows you to spin bulky yarn) comes with it's own maiden (the piece all the way to the right on the bottom), whorl (circular piece) and bobbins.

After sanding all this to get rid of any rough spots, I laid brown paper down on my stamping table and got busy staining the pieces. I had bought "golden oak", which is what I thought I had used to stain my wheel when I put it together from the kit I bought. I had taken the whorl along to the hardware store to try to match the color.

Funny thing is, it didn't really match on all the pieces, but it did on some. The original whorl is the circular piece on the bottom and the flyer matched it perfectly, but the jumbo flyer, the new whorls, and the bobbins were much darker. Hmmm...

Then when I was trying to put the old whorl on the new flyer, I found they had changed the flyer. The old one had a whorl that screwed on, this one just slid onto a slotted piece. I was pleased, since I had often had trouble with the whorl unscrewing itself.

Once I finished assembling the new flyer, I decided to install the other thing I had bought at the same time as the new flyer: a plastic drive belt. I had gotten tired of the cotton string ones coming apart. It's made of very thick plastic and you string it around the wheel, cut the ends so there is a slight overlap, then weld the ends together using a cigarette lighter to soften the plastic and sticking the ends together. You'll be glad to know I didn't burn myself...much. I did resolve, though, that if I ever had to buy another one, I would get someone with much steadier hands than mine to do this part. It took me a couple of tries to get it right.

After starting the wheel, the belt proceeded to doff itself immediately. Reading the directions, I oiled the band to prevent this from happening again...this necessitated going to the stash to find the bottle of spinning wheel oil. This was in my spinning bag, which coincidentally contained the last ball of wool I had been spinning before I stopped. My, my...what a coincidence! Funny how that wool is now lying next to the wheel, isn't it? I also found...well, I'll tell you in a minute!

ANYWAY. After much cursing under my breath as I adjusted the wheel to accomodate the new drive band. I stood back to admire Bessie. I had told myself, "Just put the thing together, get it done, then put it away so you can work on that sweater! You don't want to get caught up in spinning when you should be doing something else, now do you?" I dusted Bessie carefully and oiled all her little joints and adjusted everything so it lined up right. She's not the most beautiful yarn cow out there, there are many nicks on her as well as the place where Spanky (our late cat) chewed on her (note: if you ever have a cat that likes to chew on the maiden of your wheel, wrap rubber bands around the top of the maiden...works like a charm) but she is a faithful yarn cow, a contented yarn cow.

Good yarn cow. Time to go back in the barn now, faithful Bessie, because I really should work on that sweater. Though I could spin just a bit to make sure you are working correctly...but not much, just a leetle bit...

Um....what happened? I sat down to spin just a little bit, thinking that I would have to remember that at least the first two or three yards of whatever I got would be absolute crap and suddenly, I have half a bobbin full! Funny how that wool was lying right there next to the wheel and pieces of it just kept JUMPING into my hands, predrafting themselves and making their way onto the bobbin.

Funny how I managed to blow off a whole hour just spinning this, isn't it! But I know who to blame...

THE HARLOT!!!

Yarn Harlot
Toronto, Ontario CANADA
http://yarnharlot.ca/blog

Dear Madame,

I wish to inform you that as of 2:30 PM this afternoon, that I began again that fibre addiction which I had previously been so grievously afflicted by. You are to blame with your enticing blog and your indecent pictures of spun fibre.

Yours respectfully,

Janine Tinklenberg, aka JanTink.

P.S. from Bessie the Yarn Cow: Thanks Harlot! I was wasting away before you came along and now I am a lean, mean spinnin' machine!!!

Now here's what else I found in my spinning bag:

Sigh...looks like I have some more staining to do!

2006-01-09T08:43:00.000-05:00

Totally Gobsmacked

I'm still reeling from the shock. What an amazing thing! Something I had begun to wonder whether it would ever, ever happen.

Yesterday, I decided to make the supreme effort for my lovely family, especially Dan. I decided to make lasagna. This is the food of love, the dish I always made for Dan when we were dating. I used the time-tested recipe from my red plaid 1960's Better Homes & Gardens cookbook. I tweak it a bit, since I like mushrooms (fresh only), ricotta better than cottage cheese, and I don't like Italian sausage because it makes it way too rich, so I use ground beef instead.

It took me 2 hours to construct this meal; it takes 45 minutes to simmer the sauce, (15 minutes to get it ready to simmer), then 15 minutes to construct the lasagna, 30 minutes to bake, then it has to stand for at least 10 minutes to set the filling. We had a salad (bagged) and garlic bread made from leftover buns.

The lasagna was delicious, the best I have ever made. Of course, my children didn't like it, am I surprised? Nope. The pickiest kids on the planet are in my house and they were born that way. I always envisioned children like Laurie Colwin's (the late novelist and food writer) daughter who loved everything the minute she tasted it, including steamed zucchini. My kids? You couldn't get them to look at steamed zucchini, much less put it in their mouths. It's a puzzling thing to see in children whose father likes casseroles (unlikely in most men), home-made soup, and almost everything I make ('cause I have spent 22 years figuring out what he doesn't like) and then there's me, who will try almost anything once and likes a large variety of foods.

The prince of picky, however, is the Squatter. The squat's main meal is, of course, chicken nuggets, though he will accept chicken tenders, chicken strips, or chicken patties. As long as it has breading and NO BONES, he's there with his big bottle of ketchup, the perfect vegetable. He will also consent to eat skinless boneless breast meat, as long as the ketchup is on the table. He'll also eat ham, steak, pizza, hamburgers and hot dogs. We've been trying to expand his horizons and have made him try new foods recently, limiting his chicken nugget consumption. It's been an uphill battle, but we've seen some modest successes (he'll now eat baked potato, for instance.) We give him a dab of everything and most of the time he'll only eat the one thing he likes (assuming there is one thing he likes.)

Yesterday, when I asked mr. squat's whether he wanted some salad, he said yes. Now, this did not excite me much, since he has taken salad before and just let it sit. Laurel put some salad in his bowl and I actually told her she put too much in. So I was fully expecting to see most, if not all of the salad go down the garbage disposal. But this time....wait for it....the squat ATE it. He ate ALL of it. Without dressing (or even ketchup!!!!!)

Of course, he didn't touch the lasagna except for a tiny bite. But salad!!! Half a bowl of it! I'm still in a happy dream this morning...

WIP

A good name for it, actually, since it has WIPped me! I finally found out just why I left those two rows out at the end of the first row of blocks: I knit across one lavender heart block, across the middle plain peach block then turned and knit back at that point. So one heart block in that row has the correct number of rows, and one block is short 2 rows, making the whole thing lopsided. I will say, though, it doesn't show. Of course, when I went to do the second row with those heart blocks in it, I copied the shorted block instead of the correct one.

Of course, if ~~that evil yarn company had just provided a chart~~ I had been paying better attention, I might have actually managed to knit it correctly. As it is, I am not fixing it because it looks fine and I so want it over with. Boredom and obsession with just getting it done already wins over perfectionism. If this were going in the state fair, it would be entirely different. But Emily will love it just the way it is.

I'm on the home stretch on the front, so only the sleeves left now. Hallelujah!

This, however, is making me nervous. It's what's left of the pink skein. There is still a partial block to be knit in this color right below the neck. I'm worried. What if there isn't enough? What am I going to do???? ~~Evil yarn companies...why do they do this to me!?!?!~~

My dingy friends

See these? These are the only socks I have ever finished for MYSELF. I've knit baby socks, I've participated in a sock exchange, but while I've started many socks, these in Mountain Colors Weaver's yarn are the only ones I managed to finish. They have a habit, unfortunately, of crawling into the laundry basket and leaping into the dark load unbeknownst to me, resulting in the fact that these are no longer socks, but have turned into fairly ugly felted slippers that actually stand on their own. They are just a hair on the small side when I first put them on, but they stretch to fit my feet after about an hour in my Birkies. These are the only socks I like to wear when it gets really cold in my house. I put them on and warmth races up my legs. These socks are friends.

I read on the Yarn Harlot's site that the Harlot washes her socks by wearing them into the shower. What a great idea! I am so totally resistant to hand-washing ANYTHING, that I have leapt upon this idea with great enthusiasm. There is one problem, though. I have nothing to wear while waiting for these to dry. Guess I'm going to have to get a move on and finish some of those socks!

2006-01-08T00:19:00.000-05:00

I have two smiles

This is Saturday night and I decided to start my blog now and post it in the morning. Tomorrow is church and I will be busy biting back my deep disappointment at the bishop's not showing up for his visitation (fires to be put out in another parish, apparently), dealing with a strange (well, unknown rather) supply priest and wondering why I busted my rear trying to get an organist for the bishop when he ended up cancelling after all. I succeeded in getting an organist...a good thing, since otherwise the bishop would have been treated to my one-handed rendering of the hymns on the organ...piano lessons were long, long ago and I can't really play the left hand very well. But all for naught...drat! I had a feeling of doom about it all along.

One good thing, though, is that the salad lunch we were going to have for the bishop has been cancelled. This got me out of making a large quantity of macaroni salad. Not that I mind making it, but salad in January seems unlikely somehow. You wants something hot in January.

BTW, I've tried to tell this software that I live in the same time zone as New York, but it persists in thinking I live about 2 miles off the California coast with the whales. While I may be the right shape as well as being a mammal, I definitely don't live in the ocean.

Tonight I knit and read more of the Yarn Harlot. I am gradually working my way forward through the archives. I'm ~~anal~~ particular about reading things in ORDER. It really makes me cringe watching my oldest daughter start a series of books in the middle and it makes me even more uncomfortable when she doesn't read one of the books in the series.

Me: Aren't you going to read Farmer Boy, Laurel? You really should!

Laurel: Nah, it didn't look interesting.

Me: You really should...you'll understand so much more about Almanzo after you read it! It's a great book!

Laurel: Well, maybe someday.

Me, barely restraining myself from locking her in a bare room with a wooden chair and a copy of Farmer Boy with no food and only letting her out when she can tell me the name of Almanzo's pig that got its teeth stuck together with taffy: You really should...really.

She finally did read it and had to admit I was right...and I could breathe freely.

So I knit, read the YH blog, obsessively checked my own blog at intervals and I watched Sleepless in Seattle all the way through! (Dan had a gig.) I saw this in the theatre in 1993 when it came out while my husband and I enjoyed a pre-parenthood trip to Chicago. We saw two movies in a row. The first was Jurassic Park, where I distinguished myself by loudly screaming when the raptor ran into the stainless steel door in the kitchen. I was so freaked out by that movie that we went and got a stiff drink before we saw the next movie, which was SIS.

I've never been really impressed by SIS, I guess because it is very light-weight. I mean, I like it, it has some nice moments and I like both Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks. It's just now when I watch it, I am aware that this is one of those dangerous movies for me. It has a mother dying in it, well, actually she's already dead, but still. I find it hard to watch this, because I had cancer myself...thyroid cancer. This is why I have two smiles...the one on my face and the one on my neck where they took out my thyroid.

Before you start feeling sorry for me, don't. Because I feel really guilty about the fact that I hardly suffered at all with my cancer. It was just two surgeries and no radiation or chemo. I've been cancer free for almost three years now and it's not that big of a deal. People assume that it is when I tell them, though, and that makes me uneasy. I don't deserve the sort of sympathy that someone who has had any other cancer should have. They say if you had to pick the kind of cancer you get, thyroid is the one to pick because the treatment is relatively simple and the survival rates are really good, like 98%. So when people get that look on their face at the mention of cancer, I start babbling about how it's not that big of a deal, yada yada yada but they persist in thinking that I am very brave and putting on a good front.

I actually suffered more emotionally rather than physically, though not for very long. While the survival rates are very high, there is still that 2%, plus I had a rare form of thyroid cancer that not much is known about, so it's hard to tell how it will behave. I wasn't scared of dying, but I was freaked out by the possibility (however slim) of leaving my children without a mother. I seem to have retained some of this fear, because whenever I see a movie like Terms of Endearment or Steel Magnolias I have a hard time with it. That's when knitting comes in handy...I can concentrate on knitting and then I can get past the hard bits of the movies. The part that always gets me in SIS is where Jonah says about his mom, "I'm starting to forget her." Excuse me...I have to go blow my nose. [Sniff]

WIP

In case you're wondering, since no one commented to tell me what to do with the ~~project from hell~~ colorblock sweater (though I highly appreciate the other comments; thank you, ladies!), I went ahead and left it as is and knit on. There is already that stupid knot in the back trying to work it's way to the front of the knitting, not to mention the squatty heart error in the pattern ~~thanks to evil pattern-writing yarn company scum!~~ so it lost its chance at perfection a long time ago. I'm feeling a little nervous, though because the pink skein is shrinking rapidly and I only have the one ~~thanks to the evil yarn company telling me that's all I would need.~~ I have about an inch left on two blocks and there has to be some left for the partial block near the neck.

Gifties

Since today I had to go photocopy the church bulletin, I was able to run to Mary's house to take her her scarf. This is what I put it in. Yes, it is a paint can. I taught a class in how to decorate them to make gift containers. This makes for a great gift package for a scarf, because it puddles up in the can and looks like the most gorgeous paint you can imagine. Mary has seen the can before, since I have them in my stamping class room and she is my downline and is in there a lot. So I thought she might be more in love with the can that she would be with the contents...a tense moment.

But...she loved the scarf! In fact, she told me that her dog had recently eaten her scarf and she was currently scarfless. She loved the colors, she loved everything. I told her I didn't put fringe on it because I really don't like fringe all that much and she told me she hates fringe too! It was truly meant to be, one of those massively intuitive moments that I have on occasion. Logic dictates that I would give her something scrapbooking or stamping related for Christmas, since that's how we came to know each other. But something said, "She needs a scarf!" Thank you, something!

Here's Mary...sorry the photo is so blurry. I think it's safe to say she likes it! She really likes it! In fact, she pulled out the leather coat she had recently gotten and showed my how perfectly it would go with it. And she told me she wanted hats and mittens next!

Well....

That might be a challenge. Because I only had one ball of this yarn, which would be good for a hat if I had any more, but it definitely would not work for mittens. So I would have to find something that would match one of the colors in the scarf and go from there. Hmmm...

Of course, I did freak out a bit when she said her dog ate her scarf. I immediately envisioned my lovely gift disappearing down the gullet of this scarf-eating creature (his name is Boomer and he likes to lick me.) So I got her to absolutely promise to put her scarf in non-dog-accessible quarters and to defend it against Boomer at all costs.

You may wonder why I would want to knit more things that could possibly be eaten by Boomer, but you've never had one of these. This was my Christmas gift from Mary. These are the apples that Mary makes and sells and they are to die for. I got my first one in July of 2004 when we went to the Stampin' Up! convention in Orlando, Florida. It's customary to give your roomates at convention a gift, so this is what Mary made, not only for the three of us who shared the room with her, but for the 3 other people in our group. They are huge (hence the Diet Coke can to show scale) Granny Smith apples, covered with caramel (this one has DOUBLE) and then melted chocolate or candy bars. She also does them with Nestle's Crunch bars and those are...well, words fail. This is my third apple and I have yet to share them with anyone...it's mine...don't even think of asking for a piece! It's impossible to eat it all in one sitting. I've put mine in the back of the refrigerator so Dan won't see it when he comes home from his gig tonight. It's mine. I will do almost anything (except consent to be licked by Boomer, among other things) to make sure that the flow of giant chocolate/caramel apples continues to come my way. I guess I'll be taking that partial yarn ball to class next week to see what would match it....

2006-01-06T19:33:00.000-05:00

Brain Cells Rapidly Decreasing Due to ~~Evil Yarn Companies~~ Motherhood

As I wound up another knitting and blog reading session last night, I reached the end of the first set of blocks on the front of the colorblock sweater. Hooray! I can finally change to different yarn colors! I'm desperate for some variety here, because like any knitter, I'm sick of working on the same thing for more than 2 days in a row. ~~I think it's a plot by yarn companies, frankly. They soak the yarn in some sort of DRUG that makes you want to go out, buy more yarn and start something new. They're all in it, I tell ya!~~

I checked the already completed back piece to make sure that I was ending the heart block in the right spot. I counted the rows up to the point where the heart started and the rows after the heart ended and noticed that while the rows before the heart numbered 11, the rows after the heart numbered 9. "Gee," thinks I, "you'd think that ~~these pattern writing dweebs would know enough to~~ the lovely designer would center the heart in the middle of the block, now wouldn't you?" So I had a look at the pattern again and realized that ~~the tricksy evil pattern writers deliberately wrote the pattern so I would make a mistake~~ I had stupidly not done one repeat of two of the rows after the heart and since I had done a visual check of the previous block instead of reading the pattern again, now the whole sweater was going to be 4 rows shorter (because there are two rows with this block in it) than it should be!!!

As I realized how ~~cruelly I had been used by the yarn company, with their intent on my abandoning this project in disgust and buying more yarn~~ stupid I had been, I ~~threw the pattern down and kicked my knitting bag around the room, cursing and wailing~~ gently laid the pattern down and lamented the fact that there was no chart in the pattern ~~because evil yarn companies are too cheap to provide one~~ because they are probably just not as popular in Britain, I ~~gnashed my teeth, vowing vengeance~~ sat for a moment in utter despair.

What has happened to me!? I used to be sharp as a tack, until I ~~started knitting and evil yarn companies warped and twisted my brain~~ became a mother. Since then, I have gradually noticed that I am ~~hooked on yarn, it's a plot!~~ getting stupider and stupider. Must be something ~~that they put on the yarn~~ in the hormones.

So the big question is now:

Do I fix this ~~total travesty of a project~~ lovely sweater so that the pieces are the right length? Or
Do I leave it the way it is, 'cause frankly nobody but me will know that ~~evil yarn companies tricked me into making a stupid mistake~~ I made a mistake? It's not really there unless you know where to look, right?

I know how to go about fixing it...I would have to thread thin straight knitting needles or thick pieces of yarn through the stitches on the row above the block and two rows below that. Then I would pull the stitches out in the row in between, take the bottom piece and knit two more rows on top then graft the two pieces back together. This appeals to me in a twisted sort of way, because I'm one of those strange knitters who really enjoys grafting. But it would take soooo long to do this twice and I'm already getting tired of this project. What with the squatty heart error in the pattern ~~evil yarn companies again!~~ and now this...faugh!

Decisions, decisions...

The whole day yesterday was fraught with complications. After much groaning and shuffling of bank statements and receipts, I did get my bills paid and my checkbook balanced. Before that, though, I did work on the ~~project from hell~~ colorblocks sweater. The skeins of yarn were misbehaving...the outside ends were unwinding and tangling with the working ends...what a mess! So I imprisoned them in yarn bras, something I had found in my old gatemouth bag (knitlisters of an antique nature will remember when we were all buying them for knitting bags) when I was reorganizing my stash. If you've never seen a yarn bra, you can get them at Patternworks.

Funny thing is, skeins of yarn don't appreciate being put into bras (I can relate!), so they immediately retaliated by developing massive internal blockages, forcing me to partially disembowel them so I could resolve the blockages. Blech!

And all of this without any chocolate in the house worth consuming...how is a woman to survive? The bathroom, though, is still dirty. In some ways, life still makes sense.

2006-01-06T08:35:00.000-05:00

Blog Envy

I really have to stop looking at other people's blogs. Well...at least one:

The Yarn Harlot

This is Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's blog. She's very funny. I've been a fan for years of Stephanie's...she's had me rolling on the floor many of time with her wit. She's a hard act to follow. We have a lot in common actually. We both knit. We both have three kids and big husbands who like to fiddle with sound equipment. We both have pieces in KnitLit Too.

Of course, she's younger than me. Thinner too. Much more fit. She lives in Canada, I live in Michigan, but we are in the same latitude, so that's something. I like her hair better than my hair. And she knits faster than I do. She's probably funnier too. Oh dear.

However, reading through Stephanie's blog, I've found there are days when she's more funny than on other days, so maybe there is hope for me? All I know is I have been popping to my own blog so often to see if anybody is commenting on it that:

a) I can't depend on my hit counter to tell me how many people have looked at the blog, since I have been adding to my hit counter every time I look.

b) It really makes me wonder about my own need for external validation. I admit it. I've got a competitive streak about a mile wide. I want to be successful. I like to get nice comments (thank you to those who have commented so far!) and emails on the blog...what other people think matters very much to me. I get this from my dad, so at least I can blame it on someone else, right? My dad is good at EVERYTHING he does, probably because if he tries something and is rotten at it, he simply does not do that thing. He gave up golf because he just could not satisfy his own standards for excellence. Yep. Rampant perfectionism, got in the blood and no going back. There's probably something in there about being the youngest in my family and wanting all the attention for myself. At least, that's what my sister always said and she should know.

But don't worry. I have a friend named Mary who is excellent at deflating my massive ego. She's sees it as her prime duty, along with bringing me Starbucks...and I reward her with hand-knit scarves. I can't tell her about this blog yet, because I haven't given her that scarf pictured below yet. Once I tell her, I'm sure she'll set to work making sure y'all don't give me the "big head."

By the way, I've fixed that thing where no one can comment except other bloggers...now everyone can comment...I need my validation, come on now, give it up for me! :-D

WIP

Work continues apace on the color block sweater. Here is the front, all 4 whompin' inches of it. Emily is already champing at the bit to wear it. Believe me it's hard to resist big blue eyes and curly hair. Emily knows this...she knows almost everyone caves in when she "turns on the cute." She is really, truly sweet, absolutely sweet...but she's also very aware of her essential sweetness and has no problem using it to her advantage.

I really thought I'd be farther on this dang thing, but I spent so much time fiddling with the blog, going to look at the blog, comparing it to other people's blogs that I neglected to actually knit, the reason I have the blog in the first place. And when I did knit, I was trying to read blogs at the same time and kept making mistakes. There is something very, very wrong with me.

This morning I woke up with new resolutions: I will knit more, I will take a nap so I can shake this cold that makes me sound like one of the sand people on Star Wars (a worry, since I have a son who walks around making light saber noises, half convinced he is Aniken Skywalker), I will do my blog and not check it until...well, until later today...maybe in the afternoon? I will go through my collection of knitting mags and winnow out the ones I don't want anymore. I have to do my checkbook and pay bills too. Clean the bathroom would be good as well...knitting sounds better all the time, now, doesn't it?

2006-01-05T09:04:00.000-05:00

I told my husband I signed back up for knitting classes. He didn't take it that well.

He said that I told him with a grin that said, "Take that!" Huh?

I said the grin really meant, "If that's okay with you?" He said, "Of course it's not okay with me! But you're going to do it anyway, aren't you?" Uh...yeah, I am!

Then he said, "I can't remember why you stopped in the first place." "I wasn't knitting very much and it didn't make any sense at the time." "Well, as long as you have the money for it!"

So, you guys are going to have to keep me on the straight and narrow. No new yarn until I knit some of what I have! Right? Right? Guys? You're not answering!

Yesterday, I had a heck of a time getting the front of the colorblock sweater started. I started it in the car while I was waiting for my kids to get out of school. First I didn't change down to the smaller needle like I was supposed to, so I frogged the first 8 rows of knitting. Then I noticed that I missed one of the repeats on the ribbing, so that it was 6 rows long instead of 8. Rip back to the ribbing. However, NOW it is going fine and I hope to knock out a bunch of it today.

I guess the problem was I was trying to read a book and knit at the same time. Most people enjoy watching (or listening really) to television while they knit; but this does not work for me. Why? I have a hunter husband. He rarely stays on one channel long enough for me to really be able to follow any program...unless he falls asleep. And then he usually has stopped on a program I have no interest in at all, like sports!

We only have one television and I intend to keep it that way. I don't like the idea of children watching television in their room, the father watching television in the bedroom and the mother watching television in the living room. There isn't that much I really like watching anymore, anyway! People wonder how I get as much done (stamping-wise) as I do...it's because I don't watch television! During the day I rarely turn it on unless I am sick and then I usually fall asleep watching it.

So instead of trying to follow whatever Dan is watching, I have my trusty book comb holding my paperback open to the page I'm on. I can't read very fast while I do that, but at least it keeps my mind occupied when I am doing long stretches of stockinette. But when I'm doing something that requires more attention, like changing from one needle to another and changing colors at the same time, I guess I should just lump it!

Singles Mate-Up! Your online sock mating service.......

Welcome to Singles Mate-Up! We provide a service unknown to the online knitting community heretofore: we find mates for lonely singleton socks! Have you got some? Consider subscribing to our service...we guarantee results in 90 days or your money back! Would you like to meet some of our lonely socks?

These good-looking socks are looking for a mate. If you know of a lonely sock who needs some company, maybe you could refer them to this site:

First, there is the Girly Girl sock from the Spin-Off book "Socks, Socks, Socks". She is intensely feminine, loves watching old movies, walks on the beach and adores getting flowers and jewelry. The knitter who was making this sock has not even cast on the second one, can you imagine? Some reason like, "The pattern takes all my attention...I can't do anything else while I am knitting it." Boy, she has some nerve, doesn't she? Knit in Trekking Color, she would make any sock a beautiful and loving mate!

Next in line at Singles Mate-Up! is the Celtic Braid sock from Cabin Fever. He's getting sick of waiting for his knitter to finish the second sock already! The knitter's lame excuse is "It just takes so long to do those dang cables!" It's a handsome sock that loves listening to Irish music, drinking Killian's Red, and dancing a jig! The Celtic Braid sock is knit in a beautiful blue Lorna's Laces yarn.

Our final singleton, the Basic Sock from Ann Norling, is actually hopeful that the knitter working on her will actually finish her mate sometime, since this project gets to ride around in the car with her. She's a fun girl, down-to-earth, likes to laugh and watch comedies, and she certainly isn't waiting until she is old to wear purple! She's knit in a beautiful Regia cotton self-striping sock yarn! Isn't she purty?

If you've got a mate for these socks, please email us immediately to arrange shipment of your sock to a secure facility where they can meet in a neutral setting...no pressure to actually accept the other sock as a mate if they don't want to! Your successfully mated sock will find a permanent home waiting for it in my sock drawer!

2006-01-04T15:52:00.000-05:00

There must be something fundamentally wrong with me.

I have begun a new yarn obsession and this is okay; I've been obsessed with my rubber stamps for a long time. I'm a person of obsessions...this is the way I am and God wills it to be thus. Let me tell you how it starts:

Usually, I get over my previous obsession before I start a new one and may go for a period of time with no obsessions at all. It's a strange way to be...it must be how normal people actually live!

When the obsession starts, it may start innocently enough. But suddenly, I am struck with the necessity of reading about my new obsession every day, of talking about it, and looking at all the little tools and stuff associated with it. That means a visit to the yarn store when it comes to knitting. Considering I have almost enough yarn in my stash to start my own yarn store, this is not a good thing at this time in my life. Considering half of my basement is covered with the tools and materials of my previous obsession, this is definitely not a good thing.

But I thought I might be safe this time. Looking at my yarn in the past few days seemed to satisfy the need to look at yarn.

That fell down today. I ended up going to the yarn store.

I used the Squat's desire for a yellow sweater as an excuse and the fact that he had the stomach flu yesterday seemed to cement the need to go today. After all, the squatter's lovely sisters would probably come down with this malady either tomorrow or the next day and then there would be no going to the yarn store for me.

So, even though I've finally caught my husband's cold and feel like excrement, I did my blog, took a nap, then decided I had to clean enough to at least look like I do something around here during the day. This was the first day that everyone was back in school since December 22nd, and the living room looked like swine had been making their home there for a number of days. I rationalized that if I got the living room picked up and vacuumed, I would at least have earned my yarn money for the day.

By the time this was all done, I had two precious child-free hours to spend. I headed to the yarn store.

You'd be proud of me. I looked at a lot of stuff, but I only ended up buying this:

The pattern is one I had already...at home. So of course, once I came home and showed my son this pattern instead of the Upside-downer I had shown him previously, he liked this better and I need 6 skeins of yellow instead of the 5 I bought. So I called up and had them put one aside for me. I'll pay for it when I go in next week.

Yep, I signed up for my social knitting class, the one I used to go to regularly, the one responsible for the massive stash residing in my basement. I did not go to the yarn store to sign up...but somehow I did. I'm still not sure what happened.

I also looked at other yarn, books and patterns and I didn't buy any! This is also a deep mystery. I did sabotage myself purposely by going without lunch before I went, reasoning that hunger would drive me out of the yarn shop before I did too much damage. And I think that once I complete a survey of the books and patterns I have now, I may be in more danger. But as it is, they were out of the current magazines and that is usually where I start doing damage first when an obsession starts.

In addition, there was a woman there with a really reeky perfume on that made me feel sick, so since she was hanging out near the books, I couldn't tolerate being next to her for long. Providence steps in and rescues me from myself.

In the meantime, I've finished the back of the color blocks sweater and have cast on for the front. Life is good.

Welcome to my blog

2006-01-04T09:06:00.000-05:00

Good lord, that sounds so dang technical! I have a blog!

Twenty years ago, if we had heard this phrase we would have thought a blog was some sort of strange disease.

Anyway, I got to thinking that anybody who likes to yak as much as I do about knitting ought to, really ought to have my own blog. So here it is and I hope you enjoy yourself while you're here.

Now on to knitting content. This is what I am working on. It is a Sirdar pattern and I started it maybe 2 years ago. It is for my second daughter who is 8. I am almost done with the back.

I haven't been knitting in a long, long time. Luckily, I pulled this project out of my knitting bag and it will still fit my daughter. I'm pattin' myself on the back. I know me and I always start sweaters for my kids 2 sizes bigger than they are wearing just in case I don't finish what I start right away. When I stopped last time I was about 1 inch into the second set of blocks, so for only working on this for a few days, I'm smokin'!

The yarn is Sirdar Rio and it is a cotton/acrylic blend that is very nice to knit with. I hope to finish the back today and start on the front. Why is it that patterns always start with the back? I have a theory:

It's usually the biggest piece to knit, so once you get that out of the way you feel better about doing the other pieces, i.e. the theory of delayed gratification or getting the worst out of the way first.

Plus, if you make big howling mistakes, you are more likely to make them right away and since this is the back of the garment, at least they won't show as much.

Anyway, that's my theory and I'm stickin' to it.

Yes, I really had mostly stopped knitting, except for a pair of socks I kept for emergency waiting times. Recently, though, I needed a gift for a friend. I remembered a scarf I had stuck in the stash; one that I thought she'd like, so I managed to churn that out in 2 days and I was back, baby! Here's the scarf:

Pretty, yes? This is a Sassy Links scarf from Wool in the Woods. I had 4 hours of drive time over the holidays and most of this was done during that time.

What I have been doing in the past couple of years is tending to my Stampin' Up! business. I've been very busy and creative there, but knitting is still important.

Some of you may remember me from my Knitlist days. I've been a member of the Knitlist since 1995 or thereabouts. I'm also now a proud member of KnitTalk.

Now, back to the current WIP. I'd like to you to observe this:

On the cover photo, these hearts are shown as having 15 rows, but in the pattern, there are are only 13. I am already to here and I look at the cover closely and see that my hearts don't match the models. This is the sort of thing that knitter's just hate. I like the model's hearts better, but no way am I going to frog all of this just to change it. I even contemplated dropping down each stitch to expand the heart into the existing rows, but it's too headache-making. I'm just going to have to keep going the way it is.

Once I finish this sweater, my son has already put his order in. If you are from the Knitlist, you will remember that he is the famous Squatter. The Squatter got his name in early 1999 while yours truly was waiting for his arrival on January 22nd. Since the squat's lovely sisters had each arrived 3 and 2 weeks before their due dates respectively, I was really thinking that this baby would get here at least two weeks before his due date and when he didn't appear, I posted to the list that this child was a "squatter", i.e. someone who was occupying premises without a lease. It stuck and he remained the Squatter on the list ever since. Naturally, I don't call him that to his face!

He even had his own e-newsletter for a while, but after I stopped writing it, it disappeared from egroups and I've lost all the content from it. So if you have a Squatternews archive you've managed to save, I'd be very interested in hearing from you!