Happy Valentine's Day...yeah right

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....

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

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!

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

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?

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?!?!?

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!

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?

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

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!

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?

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?

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!

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

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

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

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?

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!

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!

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....