Aunt Lois, is that you? Uncle Jimmy?

No, not THAT light. I hope.


The light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter and brighter, but I mean the tunnel that is my skirt.

I finished and bound off the bottom tier at Thursday's knit night and then picked up the 205 stitches for the top AND last tier. The pattern for this ruffle is quick and easy and there is a chance that I might have it finished by this Thursday's knit night. YAY!!!

Then I can stop whining about this project and enjoy having it finished. Finally!!!

Baxter

These are the toys I bought for Baxter to play with:


These are the things he plays with:

carpet fringe

leaf debris

paper bags

sticks

throw rugs

and this is the one thing I bought that he DOES play with.

He has killed it many, many times.

I should vacuum more to get the dust, leaf debris and small sticks off the floors, but then Baxter would be bored!

Baxter

He arrived yesterday.

Isn't he cuuuuuute????

Whew...

I am capable of finishing something!!! This is the sweater I started last week for Elizabeth, and I finished two days ago. Now it has been blocked and as soon as I add a button and loop, I can put it away for Elizabeth's birthday. It is wool...perhaps not the best choice for a little Texas girl, but I love the yarn (Rowan felted tweed) and I love the color.

It is the Rita sweater from Noro Kids by Jane Ellison.

AND I was able to repair the damage from the dropped stitches on the Sasha Skirt. I cast off that tier, and I am now finishing the bottom of the skirt. Four more rows. Then I will pick up 205 stitches for the top tier. I see a light at the end of the tunnel!

And I don't think it's another train coming at me!

Just Walk Away

This happened last night. I was happily, really, really happily, binding off the next to the top ruffle on the never-ending-skirt project. I was using one end of a size 6 circular needle along with a size 7 needle so that my cast-off would be loose. After I had finished about 3/4 of the cast-off I looked at the end of the knitting and discovered that the other end had come off of the needle.

How the...? What...? Why...?

I have no idea how this happened, but I have about 14 inches of the mess above to sort out - two rows, at least, of yarn-overs, pssos, knitting and purling and ....

I picked up what I could, in some cases just guessing where the yarn-overs might be.

Walk away, Knittergran, just walk away.

And that's what I did.

It's So Fluffy!!!!!

But it's not a unicorn.

I'm pretty sure it's a raccoon, and it has made a home in the soffit over our deck.

I'd prefer a unicorn.

A Break

I'm taking a break from knitting the skirt. I swear that I just keep knitting and knitting and never seem to make any progress. I have no idea how SallyKnit finished hers so long ago and I'm still struggling. (She's a faster knitter, perhaps?)

The LYS has this sweater on display and I love it. So I'm making it for Elizabeth's second birthday in October.
But I'm not using Noro; I have problems with Noro. The yarn breaks on me. Where there are changes in the strand and one is tied to another, the staff at Noro seems to make no effort to match up the colors, and I end up with an abrupt color change. I love the colors but not the yarns. Instead, I am using Rowan felted tweed, which I love knitting with. It's a beautiful raspberry color, which doesn't show up well in the photo, but it really is pretty!

I do realize, however, after spending a fair amount of time this afternoon frogging rows of the lace, that had I used the Noro, mistakes wouldn't have been so obvious as they are in this yarn, and I could have CHEATED and faked the fixes!!!

Elizabeth will just have to be happy with a perfect sweater.......

It is knitting up really quickly and I may even have it finished by the end of the weekend!

Babyland

While everyone was here, my younger daughter and two of my granddaughters made it to Babyland General Hospital in Cleveland, Georgia. It is in the middle of NOwhere.

Remind you of anyplace you saw on television in the 80s?

It is a 70,000 square foot hospital where Cabbage Patch dolls are born.

I think 69,500 square feet are devoted to the gift shop...really!

But there are deliveries, and we were there for one.

Here is the doctor, showing us the sonogram:

Once the Cabbage has reached ten cabbage leaves dilated and has had her easyotomy, the baby arrives.

(Don't blame me; these are not my jokes.)

This event is pure magic to the kids. Here is Lily holding the newborn and she was just thrilled to hold him. (The doctor said he was a boy.)

The limited edition babies are in the $200.00 range, but the folks at Babyland are smart. Because practically the whole place is a gift shop, there are dolls...ooops...I mean babies at every price point, and fortunately, the coveted newborn is not for sale immediately after birth. He has to have his APGAR score determined, you know.

So Lily and Elizabeth each brought home a baby - one who laughs when her stomach is squeezed for Lily (Lily's mom was thrilled), and a preemie for little Elizabeth.

The Thrill of Victory

All of the houseguests have left. It was wonderful to have everyone here.

One houseguest had a birthday. Guess how old?!

Ella climbed at Nationals.

Lily and Elizabeth went to Babyland.

Campbell, well, Campbell just plain had fun.

The kids were great! No whining. No temper tantrums. Their mother claims that they do these things at home, but I don't know that I believe her.

Their mother says that there is no reason for tantrums, crying or whining when every single whim, wish and desire is met.

Yesssssss!

Knittergran Rocks!!!

If I Buy It

They will come.

Tomorrow seven house guests will arrive. (two daughters, one son-in-law, four grandchildren)

Friday four more arrive. (sister, niece, her two children)

Am I CRAZY???

Not yet.

Progress?

This may look like progress but it doesn't feel like progress.

I've been knitting, purling, ssk-ing, psso-ing, inc-ing, dec-ing and all the other 'ings there are, but I feel as if I'm working on the same round over and over and over and.....

I ran out of yarn for the bottom ruffle and had to order more. The yarn has arrived, but I'm waiting until I finish the whole skirt (if that should EVER happen) before I knit the bottom in order to make sure the skirt is the correct length. Too short - that I could fix...just add more. Too long - run screaming from the house.

I almost ran out of yarn for the next ruffle up, but just made it, I hope. The bottom of that ruffle has to hide the top of the bottom ruffle.

The ruffle I am working on now just goes nowhere. I swear that it doesn't get any longer, no matter how much time I work on it. I'm almost out of yarn from the first skein, and that yarn must be going somewhere, but I don't see it. The second skein better get somewhere...

Really, it had better get somewhere. I am both bored and annoyed by this project, and it's getting more and more difficult to look forward to the end result. I started a second project to break up the boredom and it's pretty and a nice break. It's on size 2 needles (Signature needles with the stiletto point and so far I've managed not to stick them in my ears)knit with sock yarn and it's a scarf, so it will be a long-term project. A very long-term project. But it just needs to be finished by cold weather in LA, so I'm OK.

But the skirt??? Sweet Mother of Purl, let it end!!! Please, just let it END!!!

Warning!

Well, OK. Hadn't thought to do that, but ..OK.

What She Said

Proves that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Sorry, H.

Lifting My Head Up Off The Table

long enough to tell you why it was on the table. But this is whining, so be forewarned.

I went to the bank. No problems.

I went to the grocery store. Tried to buy plain yogurt. There used to be such a thing. There may still be but I couldn't find it amidst the FOUR MILLION containers of yogurt flavored of everything else that isn't yogurt (banana yogurt-blechhh...).

Settled for vanilla yogurt. It's going into a recipe so no harm done, I hope.

I did NOT go through the check-it-and-bag-it-yourself aisle. I will not go into what happens to me when I end up in a fight with that fresh hell.

I did go to buy gas at Kroger since it is right in the Kroger parking lot. (Why on earth can't we pay a couple of cents extra for gas and have someone pump it for us, I would like to know.) The machine wouldn't take my Kroger Plus card, so I had to go get the attendant. He came out of his air-conditioned booth and fixed the problem. Then it wouldn't take my debit card, so I had to go get the attendant out of his air-conditioned booth and he fixed that problem. Then it wouldn't take my code for the debit card, so I had to go get the now-kind-of-annoyed attendant. He wouldn't come out of his air-conditioned booth and made me pay at the booth.

How much gas do you want? he asked.

A full tank, I answered.

Nope, pick an amount. $30? $40?

How the h*ll would I know? I picked $30.

I pumped the gas, and as I put the pump back in its holder, I heard a woman's voice. I turned, said Pardon? and she said:

When you drip gas on the ground, it hurts the environment.

I looked at the ground, didn't see any gas, looked up puzzled, and she explained that I had dripped gas and that if I shook the nozzle into the holder, gas would drip back into the holder instead of on the ground.

I'm a good person. (First of all, I wasn't even tempted to deck her.) I recycle. I drive a low-emissions vehicle. I feel bad that the LYS where I shop throws the cardboard boxes in the trash (but not bad enough to offer to recycle the boxes myself and I'm a good enough person to feel guilty that I don't offer to do so). But baby Jeebus, Mary and Joseph, on my worst, huge-carbon footprint day, I don't even register on the scale of the damage currently continuing and continuing and continuing in the Gulf of Mexico (NOT the ocean, newscasters), so give me a break, please.

On the way home, a rock hit the windshield, but didn't break it, and I arrived home to find a box from Knit Picks.

Things are looking up. I hope. Or I'll go back to trying shots of tequila.

Fitflops

These are my new Fitflops. Aren't they gaw-jus???!!! (OK-maybe a bit gaudy)

A couple of knitters had talked about them: how comfortable they are; how they are good for your feet; how they will make your legs and butt look really, really good. (I'm fifty-something, so that particular ship has sailed. Not gonna happen...)

So off I went to buy some. They are really comfortable, but very soft and they kind of bother the foot I have not had surgery on. I live in Chacos and they have saved me surgery on my right foot, so far, and so I worry a bit about what these may do to my foot. But I've read reviews that say they help plantar fasciitis, so I'm willing to try. And since I have lost the receipt that I had intended to save for a return within 30 days if the shoes didn't work out, I guess I HAVE to give them a try.

Older daughter did say that she wanted to try them when she visits this summer, but she may have been humoring me.

Progress

Of sorts.

I'm not going along as quickly as I would have thought on this skirt, but then, I wasn't thinking too clearly when I decided to make this. There is the underskirt and then the various ruffle layers attached to the underskirt. This means I am knitting the skirt twice, and it is 40 inches long. The bottom ruffle is on the right side of the photo and I have run out of yarn. Once I finish the ruffle above, I will try it on again to see if the skirt is long enough or if I will have to order more yarn.

What keeps me going, aside from sheer stubborness and the fact that I do love the finished skirts I have seen, is that Sallyknits is making one too, and she is far, far ahead of me. In fact, based on what she was knitting at last week's knit-night, I'll bet her skirt will be finished by this Thursday's knit-night. It's beautiful and it serves as motivation for me to keep going, even when I am tired of working on it. I spent the weekend frogging nine rows, then knitting four rows, then frogging three rows. I apparently think of the feather and fan pattern as so easy that I don't have to pay proper attention to what I am doing.

Here is my new invention! It is a homemade bobbin to hold the yarn for the bottom ruffle. I'm sure it's just like the bobbins people made before there was plastic, but I did feel like a genius when I came up with the idea. Doesn't take much, does it?

Frogging

No, not hunting these: Ripping out this:

This is miles and miles, well ok, hours and hours, REALLY, of ripping back knitting.

Knitting Lesson # 417 (or thereabouts):

Do not knit while talking with a friend on the phone about why you are NOT in Blowing Rock, NC as you had planned to be because the air conditioning in the car gave up the ghost in Greenville, SC and you turned around and drove back home in the hot, hot car even though the car had just had $103.00 worth of Freon put in it on Monday and was supposed to be just fine and had in fact worked fine for the first hour and a half of the trip and how you didn’t get to go to World Wide Knit in Public Day yesterday like all the other kids because you had to go car-shopping instead because dH wanted you to test drive the cars since you will be the primary driver of said new car and frankly, unless you are buying a turquoise Thunderbird convertible, car shopping is about as exciting as buying a water heater, and you do realize that you are NOT buying a turquoise Thunderbird, so really, all you do care about is that the car is comfortable and has functioning air conditioning and, wow, I am all about stream-of-consciousness today, eat your heart out, uh, what’s her name? - and I have discovered that ripping out purl stitches is easier than ripping out knit stitches and that I need to learn to read my knitting because if I had read my knitting instead of depending on the row counter which I had neglected to click a couple of times because I was on the phone I wouldn’t be spending HOURS ripping out stitches-oh, yeah, eat your heart out Virginia Woolf - and I hope all this ripping out does not cause me to put rocks in my pockets and walk into the nearest river because that would be the red, red Chattahoochee and …..yuck, and then I would miss a nice dinner at Bonefish with the friend I was talking with on the phone when I messed up my knitting and why are there quotation marks in this sign?

What Do They Sell?

The Echo Park Time Travel Mart.

Younger daughter sent me this photo from LA, and I don't have a clue what they sell, unless they mean this literally, and that could be. Only in LA perhaps, but it could be. After all, someone out there sells spells!

I'll let you know what they sell when she lets me know.

If the squirrels don't get to it,

looks like the raccoon will.

This Friend of Mine -

-let's call her Kathy - protested when she called me today that she does NOT make some wonderful, delicious, exotic, and different meal every night. I don't live near her, but I talk to her almost daily, and we talk about what we're doing. I'm usually knitting; she is usually cooking. Even when her husband is not home for dinner, Kathy makes something wonderful for herself.

Who cooks just for herself?

She mentioned that her husband was not going to be home tonight for dinner and I asked her what she was going to have for dinner - all by herself. Baked salmon with mango salsa (which she made herself. Of course).

I rest my case.

Let's Have Mexican!!!

I have a friend – let’s call her Kathy (that’s her name) - and she loves, loves, loves to cook. Me? Not so much. I see making dinner night after night after night as supremely b.o.r.i.n.g. She sees it as an opportunity to try something new and different. Every night! I think that is a good attitude to take towards something you have to do anyway, but I can only very occasionally manage it. Like once or twice a year. Cooking for guests is an entirely different thing. It can either be intimidating or fun depending on what I choose to try to make. But the day after day stuff? Bleaahhhhh.

Yesterday, however, was one of the days I decided to emulate my friend. I picked out recipes from the Pioneer Woman's cooking blog: tequila lime chicken, Mexican rice, pico de gallo, and homemade tortillas.

[Oh, let’s just kill the impulse to cook in one meal, let’s do. ]

Step one: the grocery store. No problem. I found everything I needed.

Step two: mix the ingredients for the tequila lime marinade. Uh, no tequila. Good thing I decided to marinate the chicken overnight. Liquor stores aren’t open in Georgia on Sundays. Why? I have no idea. Probably the legislature protecting us from ourselves: getting blotto drunk six days a week is enough, perhaps.

Step three: dH volunteers to go to the liquor store and get tequila. What kind? he asks. I have no idea. When I was in Mexico with my friends the first year, they sent me into the store to buy some -I asked what kind? Just not rotgut! they shouted. So that was my answer to dH.

Step four: Since dH bought better tequila than I probably would have, I decided that it must be good enough to drink a shot of. I see people on The Good Wife do that, so I tried it.

Whooooo---eee!….probably won’t do that again…

Step five: Mix the ingredients for the marinade, put the chicken in it, and put it all in the refrigerator. Done.

Now today:

Step one: make the pico de gallo. EASY! So easy and so good that I don’t think I will ever get store-bought again. (But the fumes from the cut-open jalapeno? Yikes!)

Step two: make the dough for the tortillas. Easy! Except for the stick form of Crisco which expired in:


Oooops!

Fortunately I had a recently-purchased can of Crisco (I hate measuring that - dry method? submerged in water method?) so I used that and the dough sat covered by a towel for an hour; then the dough was broken up into ping pong sized balls and sat another hour in a towel-covered bowl. There is no yeast in the dough, so I have no idea what it’s doing in the bowl. Siesta time? Conspiring against the cook?

Is there a collective noun for tortillas? If there is, whatever it is, I have it. FUN! The trick is to roll out the dough so thin that you can see the counter top through the tortilla (black counter tops rock!) and then to cook them for just 20-30 seconds on each side with the heat just right. And that’s pretty easy to figure out after you end up with the first one either burnt or pale but cooked through. In the time that it took to cook one, I could roll out the next one. Honestly, I don’t think they taste any different from store-bought wheat tortillas, and there’s not a round one in the bunch (maybe that’s the collective noun?), but it was still FUN to make them.

Dinner:



Results: delicious.
Prep. time: two days
Cleanup time: don't ask

Tomorrow night: takeout.

Measure How Many Times? Then Cut Once?

Is puddling still in vogue???

Is this considered puddling???

OOOOOOOOOPS!

Seems Fair to Me

Don't Bet Against a Squirrel

It took him about a week, but he's figured out how to get the top open.

Knitting

Knitting and I are not getting along lately, and so I am taking the day off. We’ll see how that goes…

First of all, there is the $%^&* skirt. It is a bit snug. It’s more than a bit snug. The swatch is lying in the bottom of my knitting basket, abandoned, lonely, and angrily shouting at me:

I told you so. I told you so. But did you listen??? No, you did not, and look where you are now.

I admit it. I did do everything involving the swatch correctly, but when it told me that I had one stitch too many over two inches, I scoffed and thought, “No big deal.” But it is a big deal over 205 stitches. Maybe I’ll try blocking it before I start the bottom ruffle, where the knitting becomes fun and interesting, using a lace pattern and hand-painted yarn.

But not today.

And the gorgeous raspberry colored yarn? That too is at the bottom of my knitting basket, shouting out, Make a decision already!

I meant to use it for the Glitzy Cat's Paw Wrap with more stitches so it would be wider. But after I made a bit of it, I just didn’t see the pattern as well as I would like because the yarn is so thin (lace weight). So I took that out and started on a Bit of Fluff wrap, using three times as many stitches so that it would be wider. But on two different sizes of needles the fabric was SO light and fluffy that I wasn’t sure it would stay on my shoulders; I’m pretty sure it would just lift up and float away.

Then I checked on Ravelry, entered the type of yarn and found over 500 projects listed. I checked through some of them, found a pattern I liked, downloaded it, studied it and decided it wasn’t something I would like to wear.

So I am stalled on that project as well, and that is it for today. No more knitting.

As a bonus to my day, I received an e-mail this morning from my nephew, who is getting married in November, and I thought the link he sent was for a wedding site. There was nothing in the message line, so I should have known better, but I opened the e-mail and the link anyway. The link took me to a pharmacy in Canada that has, so they claim, great prices on Cialis. Obviously some program has hijacked my nephew’s address book. Yay.

I’ll run the anti-virus program and the spy-bot program and then draft a letter of apology for anyone who gets an e-mail from me offering them a great deal on Cialis!

**********************************************************************************

And now for something completely different. In one of today’s NYT wedding announcements, the groom, in discussing the couple’s first meeting, said “It was not a good first impression,” adding that they were each dating other people then, and glad to be rid of each other.

All righty then.

Unfaithful Knitter

I admit it; I am fickle. I really, really intended to do no other knitting than the $%^&* skirt until I had finished the %$^&* skirt.

But at Thursday's Knit Night, another knitter was making a beautiful wrap from this Cascade 100% Baby Alpaca Lace yarn. (Made in Peru, color 1410) It is so soft, so delicate, so everything good that I was powerless to resist, and now I am starting a wider version of the Cat's Paw lace wrap that I finished just before I started the $%^&* skirt.

It will be nice to knit with something other than thick, stiff, waxed, colored dental floss for awhile.

Knitters Can Be Strange People

At least this knitter can be.

My Mohs surgery went well yesterday except that it took an hour and a half less time than it was scheduled for (3 hours). And this seriously cut into my knitting time!

Mohs surgery involves having a microscopically thin layer of tissue removed and then waiting for the biopsy results to see if the surgeon needs to remove more tissue. It's all done in one appointment and the goal is to remove as little tissue as possible. The doctor performed the surgery and then told me it would be a half an hour before she had the results.

So I settled in to knit on the Satan Sasha skirt. My phone was off; Dh had not come with me; I had nothing to do but sit and knit. Perfect....... But then there was a knock on the door and the surgeon and three other staff were there.

Me: It hasn't been a half an hour.

Surgeon: No, you're lucky. We were able to get to this right away. We got it all. We'll bandage you up and you are set to go.

Me: But it hasn't been a half an hour yet.

Surgeon: (probably thinking "Bless her heart, she must be a bit slow.") No, you are LUCKY. You are finished!

So home I went, with far less knitting accomplished than I had expected.

I can't do anything strenuous for two weeks-knitting is not strenuous, right???

And it's a good thing I can knit and knit and knit because I think I might have to rip out the fifteen inches or so I have knit on the skirt. Before I started working on it, I was a very good knitter and made a swatch. (I NEVER make swatches!) Then I washed and dried the swatch. (I NEVER wash and dry swatches because I NEVER make swatches!) My knitting was just a bit too tight. So I ignored the swatch and started knitting. (This is why I NEVER make swatches!) Somehow, the circumference of the waistband was correct, so I went ahead with the body of the underskirt, which is now FOUR inches too small. I'm calling the store I bought the yarn and pattern from later to see if by any sort of blocking miracle, this will work.

But I suspect that I should have paid attention to the swatch and changed needle size. I think I will be starting over.............................

This and That

I was out late (8:45) last night at a pre-pre-wedding dinner where I had lots of fun and possibly too much wine. So my mind is not working well today.

Topic one: The Satan Skirt

I really am knitting and knitting on this and on no other project, but I seem to be making little progress. I hope to have it ready for an evening wedding in October, but .... I just don't know. I am only into the second of TWELVE skeins.

Topic two: Consequences of too much time in the sun

I have to have Mohs surgery on Monday for an "active" type of squamous cell skin cancer. I've had this surgery before, but on apparently lazier forms of squamous cell cancers. So I'm a bit put out by all of this, but today the paperwork arrived for the surgery-permission forms, etc. and along with them was a question/answer section. One question was:

Q: Can I die from this?
A: Squamous Cell Carcinomas and Melanomas can spread to other parts of the body and may lead to death under certain circumstances.

And even though I did know this, and even though my dermatologist told me that I caught mine really early (it's small), seeing this in print did not improve my mood.

Topic three: The weather

According to the hyperventilating weather forecasters on television, we are about to get clobbered by terrible storms. It's dark out, and now I hear the first of the thunder. I just hope that no Oklahoma type tornadoes go through here.

And a bonus - some advice: If you know where something is, leave it there. (I can't find my glasses.)

Persistence

is a synonym for squirrel.

Dh has wired the bird feeder closed but this squirrel is determined to get back inside. I've been watching him for awhile, and he tried to get the top off again so that he can climb inside and eat everything, but so far, no luck! He can get some of the smaller bits of nuts from outside, and that will have to keep him happy for now. I don't think he will be able to get the top off, but I've learned not to bet against a hungry squirrel.