Two Finished Projects!

The advantage of working on several projects at once is that when you pick up one you've had going for awhile, you discover that it's almost finished. That's how I have finished so many things lately, and these two items are among the projects I have finished recently.

The first is the copycat Reese Witherspoon Sweet Home Alabama wrap. It's the first and so far the only project I've done without a pattern. I had some help from Lucille, and it finally came out ok. I had to start over a couple of times to get the needle size (10) and stitch choices (stockinette, seed stitch, yo increases) right, and then I had to start the finish over three times. That's my own fault; I decided that the instructions were so easy that I didn't need to read them.

I had to have an angled end, and on my first try, I started the decreases at the stockinette (top) of the wrap. Nope. The angle was going the wrong way.

Second try: I did the yarnovers on the right side, the decreases on the wrong side. Hmmmm...Odd that the edge is all wobbly.....What's causing that?

So then I read the instructions. Ooops. On the right side, when I did the yarnovers, I needed to knit two together so I wasn't increasing a stitch. What I had been doing was on the right side, increasing one stitch and on the wrong side, decreasing one stitch. Hence the wobbly-ness.

So on the third try, I got it. Whew.

It's finished and blocked and I'm quite happy with it. After I show it off at knit night tomorrow, I'll ship it to younger daughter.

The second project is my sparkly scarf. I love all things sparkly, so I especially love this. Knitting with sequins on the yarn is a little tricky, but just takes patience (which I didn't use to have, but knitting is encouraging me to learn).

Can you see the sparklies???

And on the bad side, Cat has peed on the laundry room floor two nights in a row. We thought he had stopped, but he was just messing with us. Rats...

I'm Nothing if Not Generous

And that’s why I’m sharing this little-known information with you.

From *A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson:

Your skin cells are all dead. It’s a somewhat galling notion to reflect that every inch of your surface is deceased. If you are an average-sized adult you are lugging around about five pounds of dead skin, of which several billion tiny fragments are sloughed off each day. Run a finger along a dusty shelf and you are drawing a pattern very largely in old skin.

Well, that puts a whole new spin on dusting.

{{{{{{{{shudder}}}}}}}}

Oh, no, no, no. No need to thank me. You’re welcome!

(Photo NOT taken at my house)

Swooooon....

My camellias are blooming!

Elizabeth's Hat

My poor, sniffly self needed an immediate-gratification project and this is it. It's a hat for Elizabeth, knit from Seacoast handpainted yarn (Raymond, New Hampshire). It is called Panda, Thistle colorway, and it is 60% merino wool, 30% bamboo, and 10% nylon. I doubled the strands, since it is sockweight yarn, to see what would happen with the colors. Instead of getting straight stripes, I got this cloud-like blend of colors. I think it's pretty! I pulled the strands, one from the inside of the ball, and one from the outside, and somehow the colors were almost the same in the same spots. But there was just enough blending to make it interesting to knit. The bottom few rows are in seed stitch; the rest is stockinette.

Now back to some of my longer-term projects....

Please, Make It Stop!

The rain gauge in our yard has recorded 15" of rain so far, just since last Thursday, and it's still raining.

Actually, it's pouring, and thundering, and lightning. And it's dark all day, every day. It is starting to feel sort of end-of-worldish.

Supposedly, in the world of Men are From Mars; Women are from Venus (whichever way that goes), one of the differences between men and women is that when women have a problem they want to talk about it, have someone say they understand, sympathize, blah, blah, blah but men want to solve the problem.

So I asked dh to please make the rain stop. He said OK.

But it's still raining...........

As the Heel Turns

Finally! I have turned the heel on this second sock of the pair I started in June. JUNE!

I’m now working on the gusset, and then I’ll be in the home stretch. Socks are my carry-along project, and this pair is taking the longest of any pair I have ever made. But now I have a motive to get them finished; I need the yarn for a project I started for older daughter, this center of a circular blanket made from leftover sock yarn:


I say I started it, but that’s not entirely accurate. The reason I volunteered to do it for older daughter is that it is nearly impossible to do, and I always like a challenge. It’s a chance to learn something.

But in this case, what I learned is that I can’t do it. I tried, over and over and over. I took the yarn and size 2 double point needles to knit night last Thursday to take advantage of the advice and help from the knitters who have already started these blankets. The center of the blanket requires a circular cast-on, which everyone says is really difficult, so difficult that they advised me to instead make a crochet chain of nine loops, and then attach the beginning and end of the chain to make a circle. From there I needed to pick up nine stitches with the double point needles. And then start knitting yarn-overs? Yarn-overing? Making yarn-overs? Doing yarn-overs? OK, it’s like this….
K1, yo, K1, yo….and so on until there are eighteen stitches.

Only I couldn’t do any of it past the making a circle of nine loops. I spent about an hour and a half struggling with it. Ever try to yo between dp needles??? I say it can’t be done, but Lucille, bless her heart and soul, took over and got me started. Now I can work on it since there are more stitches and I’ve rearranged them so that NO yarn-overs are between the needles.

Once it is large enough to fit on 16-inch size 2 circular needles, I’m mailing it off to older daughter. It’s a great project because it requires little attention, and with four children in her life, she sometimes can only devote partial attention to knitting. It will be beautiful when it’s finished – all the different yarns randomly used throughout the blanket make for a one-of-a-kind, colorful project.

Have fun, H!

Murder

I love language, and I am always fascinated by words, especially when I learn of a new (to me) use of a word.

Last night I learned a new word: Murder.

No, not that murder. Of course I know that word. I watch the news. This murder refers to a group or flock of crows! I learned this from knitting buddy, SallyKnit, at last night's knit night. (Hi Sally!) and I am fascinated by it. How did murder come to mean a flock of crows???

Now I'm off to research this....

One Red Shoe

This is the cute shoe I found under the bed in the guest room yesterday when I was pulling out my old blocking board in order to store my new blocking squares and wires from Knit Picks there. When I pulled out the board, this single shoe was on it.

I checked with younger daughter, and the shoe is hers. She said she had wondered where they had gone. If she can find the other shoe, I will mail this one to her.

She moved to LA three,THREE, years ago this month. What finding this shoe yesterday says about my cleaning prowess I don't know.

I'm not going to think about it.

Oh Rats! Oh Rats! Oh Rats!

My cat just killed, well almost killed, but close enough for horseshoes and hand-grenades, a beautiful male goldfinch. He brought it to the back door, where it is lying, breathing its last breaths.

Maybe the cat meant it as an apology for all the out-of-the-litterbox peeing he has been doing lately, but I would just prefer he use the litterbox, thank you very much. No nearly-dead birds!

I know that this is what cats do, but I hate, hate, hate that they do this.

D*mn.

Mistakes Were Made, Again

My older daughter, the writer/copy-editor, calls that sentence an example of the use of the past exonerative verb tense. (There is no such tense, but I like the idea of it.) No one MADE the mistakes; mistakes were MADE (not by me, not by you, not by anyone apparently. They just happened! Really!)

So that's what I'm claiming about the hole you see in this scarf I'm making. It is the Ripple Scarf from Luxury Yarn One-Skein Wonders: 101 Small Indulgences. I had said that I would never make this scarf again. I had said that I would never work with black yarn again because of this sweater, which I long ago attempted to make in black mohair. And yet, here I am, again, making the scarf from h*ll with not one, but two, black yarns knit together, the perfect storm of misery.

I had been zipping right along, making no mistakes, and feeling that I had conquered the pattern that was so deceptively easy that making mistakes had just been too easy the first time I attempted the scarf. And suddenly, I looked at the whole of what I had knitted, and there it was...

the huge hole.....

How had it gotten there? Obviously, I had dropped a stitch, but then how did I have the correct number of stitches to work the pattern from that point on? I had counted each row...twenty stitches...and just kept on knitting. It's a mystery.

I was going to shove the whole thing in its project bag and take to to the LYS on Wednesday, when Jan, our Yoda, is there to solve problems for us. But then I thought that if I am, as I sometimes claim, a process knitter more than I am a product knitter, why should I object to taking the rows out? Certainly that's what Jan would tell me to do (or offer to do for me, not that I'm intimidated by ripping out lace or anything). And if I don't mind knitting, stitch by stitch, why should I mind un-knitting, stitch by stitch?

So I did, and it took about forty minutes to go back the five or six rows I had knit after the dropped stitch. I had been warned by another knitter when I picked out the sequined yarn that I had better be careful with the knitting because frogging it back was difficult with the sequins getting caught in stitches. How much fun was ripping this back? Exactly none. My knitting friend was right.

But in another twenty minutes or so, I re-knit the rows I had frogged, and now the scarf looks just fine. But I am being really, really careful from now on.

And I still don't know how I continued to knit, having the correct number of stitches for the lace pattern, when I had a dropped stitch unravelling.

And I'm sticking with the past exonerative tense. It just happened, all by itself. Really!

I Might Be Simple-Minded

My family would ask "Might be?" but don't listen to them.

But why do I think I might be?

Because I’ve just been watching my washing machine….again. It has a clear top, so I can look in while the machine is running...and I do. I’m trying to figure out how it works. It’s a top-loading front washer and it is a mystery to me. I put the clothes in (in heaps, per the instructions) and the soap in, and the washer sprays in a small amount of water, then spins really, really fast, then suddenly stops, sprays in some more water, and on it goes, repeating the whole process for almost half the cycle. Then the drum wobbles back and forth, then spins, then……never mind, it’s boring, I know. But so far, it works just fine, and I am convinced that there might be magic involved.

The instruction book says that this washer has an “invisible agitator.” I am not making this up – an invisible agitator. Doesn’t that mean it doesn’t exist, since something like that can’t really be invisible???

A friend of mine wants me to put in intentionally-soiled items: an old towel with blueberry and strawberry stains, a cloth with salad dressing on it, and the like. A pop quiz for the washer. But if I am to believe that there is such a thing as an invisible agitator, then I would just prefer to believe there is magic involved.

So, no pop quiz, and I’m off to resume watching the laundry….

Coooooool!

Well, cool for what they are: portable outhouses!

They are at a three-day Art in the Park festival in Marietta, Georgia. There were glass artists, painters, photographers, jewelry artists, basket-weavers, shaker box makers, and what did I take pictures of? Outhouses, of course!

And There are More!

Are the interiors similarly painted? Couldn't say. We admired them from afar.....
because.....maybe Mona Lisa is right:

Painting

Not as much fun as you would think.

We are in, I hope, the final stages of mission creep. You know about mission creep, right? It's when you do one project (new countertops) and then realize you need to do another one (backsplash) and then a neighbor comes over and says: You should paint that door to the deck black so that it continues the color into the family room. Hmmmmm..... you think....what a great idea!

And then you try painting it. Sand it lightly so the primer coat goes on. Check.

Paint the first coat of the black paint....uh, oh, why is it sort of bubbling up? Too humid to paint? Maybe it will dry out better. (Sort of like blocking out knitting problems, you hope)

Nope. Didn't work. Take the door off the hinges and put it on the deck to sand. (Should have done that to begin with, really.)

Dh starts sanding and notices that the paint is gumming up in the sandpaper. Rats. Sands down to bare wood.

Paint door with primer....again.

Paint door with black paint.....again.

Paint second coat....and watch the paint sort of gum up.

There is paint on the glass, paint on me, and paint on the deck (oooops).

I'm sticking a fork in it and calling it done.

I give up.

Mea Culpa

or My Bad, whichever you prefer.

I admit it. I almost never, well, really, never make gauge swatches. I agree with the Yarn Harlot who said in one of her books that sometimes the item itself can be the gauge swatch: a pocket, a sleeve, whatever. I say that the item itself ( if I actually bothered to check gauge on the item itself) can always be the gauge swatch, and since I usually knit wraps and scarves, I haven't been caught at this omission....until now.

I promised younger daughter that I would make her this hat:

and I did. But the pattern (from One Skein Wonders: 101 Yarn Shop Favorites) called for size 6 double-point needles. I don't have size 6, but I do have size 7, and, I thought, how much difference could the extra half millimeter in needle circumference really make?

So when my daughter called and asked how she could shrink the hat - could she wash it? - I knew the jig was up (whatever that means) and I had been found out. I didn't admit what I had done, just told her to gently rinse the hat in coolish water in the sink and allow it to dry.

I sure hope it works and the hat fits. Otherwise, I think I will be frogging the whole thing, buying size 6 needles, and knitting it again.

Rats.

fire water burn

I have borrowed this post from my younger daughter, who is just about at the three-year anniversary of moving to LA. The fires burning now are the worst she has seen since she has lived there. We check with her every day to see how it is affecting her-she has had to get an inhaler to breathe normally now because the smoke and particulates in the air are so heavy.
Anyway, here is her take on it and a link to some time lapse photography of the smoke.

i still have not adjusted to fires. i know they are a fact of life in southern california, but to me, it is a complete oddity to be driving around with smoke filling the air around you.

tonight's drive home from work was the best/worst of it yet. more of the hills are on fire and it is more visible from where i am. the smoke is filling all of the hills north of me, and almost every ridge is filled with spots of flames. what's unfathomable to me is that they keep saying, "this would be so much worse if the santa anas were blowing. if they were, this would be the true disaster that we've been predicting."

and because it's so odd to me, i don't see how the city keeps on functioning. in my mind, we should all be standing outside just watching. or if i had my way, i'd be up on one of the high floors in one of my mid-wilshire buildings watching.

i can't imagine that just 20 miles north of me, people are losing every thing they own. that the landscape is being scorched. that firefighters are waging what has become an unending battle against the flames. every day we wake up and find out it has only gotten worse in the night. i'm trying to find some good side, and I’m not able to.

Check here for the time-lapse photography. It's pretty frightening.
And here for this morning's pictures from my daughter's blog.

The Copycat Reese Witherspoon Wrap

I am finally, after five starts, making progress on the wrap I promised younger daughter in exchange for her putting all that mohair fringe on my wrap when she was here in July.

This is the first project I have ever made without a pattern, but with, instead, just an idea: the wrap worn by Reese Witherspoon in one scene in Sweet Home Alabama. I started out knitting it completely in garter stitch, but that was boring and kind of plain. Then I went through sizes 7, 8, 9, and now size 10 needles until I got a fabric I liked. On tens the fabric drapes nicely. I took the whole thing to last week's Knit-Night and asked for help. Thank goodness for kindred knitters!

Lucille (thanks Lucille!) showed me a project she had started using a stockinette border, seed stitch body, and increases to get the angled side. On my first attempt, I used a knit or purl into the front and back of the next-to-the last stitch on the front side for the increases and ended up with a wobbly edge. Lucille suggested a yarnover increase, and that has worked beautifully - giving the edge a tiny bit of the look of lace.

The yarn is Cascade Pastaza (50% Llama and 50% wool) in color 289, a really pretty sort of blue/gray. I started with three stitches and increased on the front side until I had forty-five stitches. The wrap will be about fourteen inches wide. I'm not sure how to do the decreases on the other end in order to have the same lace appearance, but I'm very sure that Lucille will know!

Leonard Cohen

Has anyone heard of this man? I hadn’t until I came across a concert that my local PBS station was playing during a pledge drive, or begavision, as it’s known to some (me). I had expected a different show to be on, but then when I heard this man sing, I stopped dead in my tracks.

It turns out that he is very famous – duh, where have I been - and is a poet, songwriter, singer, artist, and Buddhist monk. He has been all of these things for decades (he is 74) but apparently I’ve been clueless.

I’ve listened to a lot of his songs now, and I enjoy his gravely, deep voice. I feel as if I should be in a dimly lit, smoky bar, drinking a glass of wine, or, better yet, a really, really smooth scotch straight up, when his music is playing.

An odd thing about his music is that the words don’t always make any sense (to me) but they do generally rhyme. I don’t know if rhyming is his main goal in writing and I’m not sure that coherence and meaning should be sacrificed for rhyme, but then I’m no poet:

And just when I was sure
That his teachings were pure

he drowned himself in the pool

His body is gone,

but back here on the lawn

his spirit continues to drool

(from "One of Us Cannot Be Wrong"

Anyone? Anyone?

Yes, I know - it’s out of context - but believe me, context doesn’t help here.

What surprised me, in addition to Mr. Cohen’s existence, was that the local station was selling a membership for $1,000.00 and that the membership also included two tickets in the front rows of the Fox Theatre for a performance by Leonard Cohen. They sold quickly. Then the station offered the same deal, but with the seats farther back, for $800.00 and they sold. Then for $600.00 and they sold right away. I have never seen anything offered by our local station for these amounts of money, so I guess Mr. Cohen has a lot of fans.

I'm still not sure if he is:

a. talented or

b. a case of the emperor has no clothes.

I guess I will have to listen some more... Where's the scotch?

Genius!

Whoever invented blocking wires, or saw wires lying around and thought “I can use these for blocking," should get some sort of prestigious and valuable award. They are simply genius!!!

I’ve just used them for blocking my second Peruvian Tweed Shawl and it was so much easier to block something so large than it was with just pins as I did with the first Peruvian Tweed Shawl. It was blocking that one with millions of pins that convinced me to order the wires from Knit Picks.

And here's the shawl!

Update: The saddleback caterpillars are dead, dead, dead. I'm sorry for the damage that this causes the whole cycle of nature and the ecosystem and whatever else they are a part of, but those suckers HURT! Dh squished them. Whew......

Owwwwwww......ch!!!

(in real life - an inch or so long, but still scary and creepy ...and I did not take this picture)

Yesterday afternoon I was cutting back a nearly-dead-looking tree rose that sits on my front stoop. I was gently holding the tips of branches I wanted to cut back and as I moved my left hand around the branches, I kept feeling pricks and thought I had been touching the ends of thorns. But suddenly, I realized something else was going on. These CREATURES, hiding on the underside of the leaves, were biting or stinging or whatevering me, over and over and over.

Day...um. It HURT!

I called for backup and dh came and captured a couple of them to look for them on the internet. Turns out, they are saddleback caterpillars and they can s.t.i.n.g.

The website also said that there is no real control for them, and that we should just "stay away from them," since they turn into butterflies.

"Stay away from them" my Aunt Fannie - I want them to Die! But I'm afraid to get near enough to them to spray them with bug spray or smush them or something.

I took some expired Benadryl, and by last night the pain had subsided. But these $%^&* things had better be some drop-dead gorgeous butterflies or any of them that show up next year will be in big trouble (if I can figure out how to kill them....).

It's a Sock!

Yes, it's only one sock, but the second is already on the needles and ready to go. This took forever; I started it, hmm...one, two, no three months ago, while I was in Texas. This is a record-breaking slow sock. But I was distracted by grandchildren, a sha...wrap, grandchildren, and a couple of bits of fluff.

It (they) is made from Pagewood Farm Hand-Dyed Sock Yarn, Yukon, and the color might be called Serendipity (the label is smudged). I love the yarn despite the fact that there was a knot in it.

Now on to the second!

Well, I swan!!!

But I don't swear...

What my inquiring mind wants to know is: Do people really buy a washer and a dryer at the same time? The stores all sell sets of them, matching in style and color.

It turns out that my washer isn't leaking water; it is leaking transmission fluid (who knew a washer had transmission fluid?) and if I continued to use it, said the salesperson, the next place it would leak was up through the agitator and then the fluid would spray out over my laundry.

I researched and researched, compared and compared, and bought a new washer. A top-loading front-loader. Yep, such a thing exists; it works the way a front-loader does but loads from the top. It uses 16 gallons of water per load instead of the 40-50 gallons my dead washer used. We have been through a multi-year drought here, AND the courts say that in three years, the Atlanta area will no longer be able to take its water from Lake Lanier. Where we will get water from is anyone's guess right now. So the less water we use, the better.

But for each washing machine, there is a dryer. And I repeat, does anyone buy these things in sets? My dryer died a couple of years ago, and I bought..... a dryer. Now my washing machine is dead, and I've bought ..... a washer. Who says, "Oh, my washer is dead. I'll go buy a new washer and dryer - so they'll match."? (Not sure that punctuation is correct-hokgardner?)

My new washer arrives tomorrow - Yay! - and my at-least-twenty-five year-old one goes to a better place...recycling I think.

to swan

My cat has been swanning about the neighborhood since he returned from having a bath at the veterinarian's.

There is nothing true about that sentence. I have always wanted to use swanning about in a sentence but have never had any occasion to, so I decided to just make something up. It's Old English, and I'm older-ish, so maybe that's why I like it so much.

But, speaking of my cat, while I heart my cat, I don't want to wear my cat, if you get my drift. However, if I did want to, here is a business that could make it happen: Pet Yarn Chic.

You can send them your pet's hair/fur/whatever, and they will make it into yarn. Ick, I say, but whatever floats your boat. And if you don't knit, Pet Yarn Chic will supply someone to knit for you.

If my cat would like to swan about, he can; I won't be stopping him to collect his hair to turn into yarn.....

She sells spells?

Down by the seashore?

Nope, in LA.

When I visited younger daughter in LA last year, we came across this business as we drove around sightseeing. I wanted a photo of it, but traffic didn't allow us to stop. We planned on going back to get a picture, but weren't in this area again.

Two days ago my daughter was in a garage across the street getting work done on her car and took this picture for me. I asked her to go over and buy a spell and she said, No, that it would probably be expensive.

Expensive!!!!! For what? She would essentially be buying.....uh.....NOTHING!!!

Candles, incense, oils....those you can buy. But spells??? I don't believe so.

When I go back, I'm going to go here (apparently they will still be in business recession or no recession) and see what's up. What can I say - the idea of it fascinates me.

And on the topic of all things nutty: older daughter told me that she saw something about one of the Atlanta housewives going regularly to a palm-reader. Just how much can her palm change from one appointment to the next?

But maybe I'm wrong and Hamlet was right when he said,

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Sorry, Hamlet. Spells? Palm-reading? Nope. Nutty.

Would you like some wine with that whine?

Yes, please.

While I generally try to be, if not a positive voice in blogworld, at least a neutral voice, today has gotten on my last nerve. Dh is out of town. My two children live in different states. So fair warning: whining ahead.

For a little background, for a few years I have had a friend I'm not especially fond of. She's nice enough. There is really nothing I can put my finger on that would explain my feelings. But I just sort of don't like her much. So last year, I started refusing offers of activities - not all of them - that might seem rude or something. But I hadn't heard from her since the end of last year, and I felt quite satisfied with the painless end of our socializing.

Then on Monday, she called. Could I go see Julie and Julia "today, tomorrow or Wednesday"? Oh great. There really is no way to turn down three days in a row by saying that I am busy all three days; I'm not very good at lying, and actually, that really had been true once last year and her response then had been, "I'm going to think you don't like me." (Gosh, you'd be right.) How very middle school of her.

So I said I could go today. But this morning I was greeted by a puddle in the laundry room and it wasn't from the washing machine; it was from my cat. He has had his "on purposes" in the past, but they were always on throw rugs, never just on the floor. He drinks lots of water, and my first thought was that he might have diabetes since the same thing had happened last week. I made an appointment for 4:30 with our veterinarian, giving me time to get home from the 1:30 movie.
I went out, did errands, and came home to find my friend ringing my doorbell. She said she was bringing me tomatoes. OK. But when I went in the house, I had a phone message, from her, recorded eight minutes before. So she had called, I hadn't answered, and she had assumed...oh, I don't know...that I was screening calls??? (I will now.) And drove over???

She said she would pick me up at 1:00, and she did. But then, instead of putting the car in reverse, she put it in drive and drove. into. my. garage. door, breaking it. Please, just shoot me now.

And then the movie ran long and we had to leave so I could make the vet appointment, and as a result, I don't know how the movie ended. SISTER MERCY!!! (Thanks, Bossy)

My cat doesn't have diabetes, but he may have kidney disease. We will know when the $258 of test results come back.

I don't believe in karma. We live; good things happen, bad things happen. That's what I believe. But really, am I being punished for being happy that the friend I didn't much like and I had gone our separate ways??? Really?????

I'll stop now and won't tell you all about the hand-me-down i-phone that dumped all my contact information. I promise.

Back! By Popular Demand!!!

Well, not really. No one even asked, let alone demanded this re-run, but I'm too lazy to write today and since today was my first day at the pool all by myself - because school is back in session - this is the right time to re-visit this post. So here goes:

Can You Say "Paradise"?



That’s what our neighborhood pool felt like today. For some reason, once the end of summer vacation comes and the kids are all back in school, no one comes to the pool, and so I have it to myself. It was lovely this morning: the bluest, cloudless skies; no noise except for the birds and whatever the noisy insects in the trees are; perfect temperature and humidity; and the occasional, silvery corporate jet gliding noiselessly overhead, very high in the cloudless blue sky. I have said for decades that the only thing I would trade my soul for is my very own swimming pool. Natas, are you listening?

When I lived in Florida, I was a regular long-term substitute teacher in a school for the gifted. It was a separate facility, on its own campus, and the students had to meet IQ and other ability requirements to qualify for the school. The kids were amazingly bright, smarter than most of the teachers probably, and teaching there required that the teacher’s ego could stand knowing that if a student questioned something, it was OK to say, “I don’t know, but let’s find out.” We couldn’t fool these kids. Since it was a separate school, the kids weren’t bullied by the types of people who would call them “geeks” or “nerds.” They may have called each other that at times, but all in teasing fun. They tended to spark off each other so classes were never dull and it was a blast to teach there.

One student has stayed in my memory. His name was Joe, but when I took over the class for the remainder of the year at the start of second semester, I couldn’t figure out who he was; he signed his papers “Natas.” I asked Natas to let me know what his real name was so that I could record his grades correctly in the grade book. Turns out, he was signing "Natas" because that is "Satan" spelled backwards. It was meant to shock, I’m sure, but I just said “OK.” Let’s just say that Joe was dancing to his own music. He was sort of Goth before Goth was even in existence and occasionally got in trouble for his behavior and his appearance, but all in all, he seemed like a nice kid.

His poor father was called in once for a conference after Joe had done something wrong, and he certainly was rattled by his son’s behavior. He said to me, “Do you know he signs ‘Natas’ on his papers?” Well, yes I did, and I told him it didn’t worry me, that it was just meant to shock and it wasn’t working. He finally bought his son a computer (before the days when every home had one, let alone multiple, computers), hoping that using it would inspire better work. Oddly enough, Joe started signing his papers “Joe *anonymous*, 3rd.” I guess he liked how his actual name looked in print.

We teachers wondered what would happen to Joe. Would he end up a bored office worker? An ultra-conservative, right-wing Republican? Very strict with his own children? I hope not. I hope he’s found a creative and fun way to make a living, and is able to use his sort of odd outlook on life in a way that he and those around him can appreciate. It’s just one of those things I will probably never know….

Knittergran?

What? Who’s there?

It's me, Natas.

Huh? Wha…?

Quitcher bitchin.

What?

Didn’t you just go on and on about how no one is at the pool and the weather is perfect and blah, blah, blah?

Well, yes.

So you already have your own pool. Stop bugging me. I don’t want your soul. Geeze, you’re practically circling the drain aren't you?

Uh, well, I hope not, but...

Well, you're old. So there's not much soul there for me to work with, right?

Well, Ohh...kay . I see your point.

Good.

Yikes!

Massive

Friday has come and gone, and I've had my hair cut. I like it; it's short and it's very curly. My husband said he liked it. Here are before and after pictures.

But at dinner last night, I noticed my husband staring at me from the other end of the table.

This was the conversation:

me: What are you staring at?

dh: (although not so d right now) I just noticed that with your new hair cut, some of the hair curls down and covers your massive forehead.

me: Uh, I have a massive forehead?????

h: Well, yes, and this haircut covers part of it.

me: Glaring. Not speaking.

h: Don't you want me to be honest?

me: No, not really.

Did I know that I apparently have a massive forehead??? No, I didn't. But I do now.

Good times at Knittergran's, I'm tellin' ya.

A Bit of Fluff

That's what I would have named this scarf had I been the designer. It's a more, I don't know, ethereal, poetic name than Airy Scarf, which is just too literal and utilitarian-sounding .

Anyway, it was fun to knit and certainly doesn't take long. There is a mistake in it; I mis-interpreted the incredibly easy instructions...leave it to me to overthink something so simple.

But it doesn't matter. I love the scarf, and since it has a flaw, it's mine rather than someone else's gift. (Once I get it away from Shaun, who loves it too.)

Blocking is, as Suna says, magic, but like any magic, it requires practice. This was my first time using blocking wires, and they sure make things easier; how can you not get a straight edge using straight, stiff wires. But I found that I kept pulling the wires out of the ends of the scarf when what I was attempting to do was tug the scarf to make it the 36" in length it was supposed to be.

I've already started a second scarf! I love knitting it and the soft, soft mohair is just a treat to work with.

I'm a Genius!!!

Older daughter, over at The Days are Just Packed, writes that she feels like a genius when she turns a heel, and now, when she has almost completed her first more complicated project, a very cute dress for a very cute Elizabeth.

It takes much less for me to proclaim my genius - I don't have to actually accomplish anything. I just have to recognize the talent of someone else. And that is why I feel like a genius for making this scarf from Last-Minute Knitted Gifts.

I am genius because I saw it, proclaimed that it is gorgeous, and am now making one. I love this project. It's quick; the book says it can be finished in two to four hours. I haven't timed myself, but I started it last night and will finish it today. Immediate gratification is me! I?

I also wanted to have my hair cut like this, but my whole family has vetoed it. I have LOTS, LOTS of what I call crazy Irish hair. It curls on its own. It does whatever it d**n well wants to do. It's longish, because I like long hair, and I hope that the weight of longer hair will calm down the curly/fuzziness of it. But I'm tired of dealing with it and want short hair. Unfortunately, shorter hair curls even more, and I look, as a former hairdresser told me, like a pencil with a large eraser on the end. So who knows what I will do. I may end up like Mrs. G., wearing a paper bag on my head. I'll let you know on Friday....

Friday Fragments: Monday Edition

Really, so far, just a couple of questions, one fact and one observation:


Questions:

I really red-puffy-heart Mrs. G. over at The Women's Colony big time, and she uses Photo-Shop so I want photo-shop. But is it user friendly enough for this user to use ? Or would I need one of my daughters to talk me though every step because, believe me, neither of them wants to do this. And do I buy it at a store or download it? Is it expensive?

Are blogger and igoogle related? I changed something on my igoogle settings and the change showed up on my blogger dashboard. I'm confused.

Are subscribe and please, please join my followers redundant?

Is Magic Johnson so desperate for money that he really has to do radio ads for Rent-A-Center or does he just not mind helping rip off poor people?


Fact:

I have an iphone, a hand-me-down iphone from my husband because he needed the newer model because it has a longer-lasting battery and since he travels on business and is not near a charger when he is in meetings and such all day and he keeps losing his charger anyway, leaving them in motel rooms, phew, he has the new one. I know everyone loves iphones; I know they are amazing. I know I did sort of want one when I read that I could download a Kindle reading application which would let me read a book completely on impulse if I were someplace where I didn’t have a book or knitting with me (it could happen), but I’m still not sure what to do with it. I love, love, love my ipod and want to take it and my knitting with me when I go to a better place, but, so far, I think that my iphone can stay behind. I kind of miss my little phone that made phone calls and received phone calls.

The iphone, however, does have a level in it, which I completely appreciate because I am pretty much OCD about everything in the world's being level, so I’ll give it (the phone) a chance.


Observation:

I learned last night that pushing the enter key on the computer is not the same as pushing the up or down button on an elevator, which SOME people (not I) do to make the elevator get here faster. Doesn't work.

BUT, pushing the enter key a number of times when the internet won't open, and then giving up and going to Word to write a blog post, doesn't just get you the internet once. As I was typing, I noticed that the letters and words I was typing took a l.o.n.g. time to show up on the screen. Then I noticed that in the tray was: 12 internet. Oops. I had opened the internet twelve times, not one time more quickly.

Pushing the up or down button on the elevator twelve times gets you one elevator. Pushing the enter key twelve times on the keyboard gets you twelve internets and in the process, makes you think that your computer is dying. Going to a better place, as it were....

birthers, Elvis

I encountered a birther yesterday and before I started to say anything, I remembered the wisdom of an old friend: You can't argue with ignorance.

Especially intentional, proud ignorance.

So I didn't bother.

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

But in other news, Elvis is still living in the trailer park in Arizona. He works part time as the handyman and does odds and ends of jobs for the other residents there. They say he's a nice old guy, pretty spry and sharp in spite of his age and past drug use.

Nice to know, really.

Back to Knitting

I have finally begun a new project, so now I have four, no, five, ooops, no four projects OTN. This one is a hat for younger daughter:

It is the Basic Tam with Flowers from One-Skein Wonders: 101 Yarn-Shop Favorites. I'm using size 7 needles, 7 inches long and I'm having a hard time with the stitches coming off the needles. My LYS was out of 8 inch needles when I checked last night, so I'll make do. Thank goodness I don't panic/freak out the way I used to when I drop a stitch.

I'm using Noro Silk Garden, color 47, which is a mix of browns, grays, and a few colors yet to show up. This is the first non-baby hat I've ever made, so I'm having fun with it. And if I decide I love it, don't worry younger daughter, I'll still send this one to you and make a second for myself!

Two TV Show Reviews for the Price of One

Two times zero is still zero, right?

Wallander
Stars: Kenneth Branagh.

Wallander, a PBS Masterpiece Theatre mini-series, shows Mr. Branagh concentrating, observing, worrying, seeing, thinking, pondering, sleeping, studying, being comatose (now stop that, Knittergran), and ....well, I don't know what else because his face looks pretty much the same no matter what he is doing. Because most of the running time of each episode shows Branagh concentrating, observing, worrying, well, you know, there isn't much dialog, action, or even plot, really.

As a result, I've had lots of time to notice that Kenneth Branagh has a freakishly small mouth and almost no lips. It's quite odd.

Burn Notice

Stars: Jeffrey Donovan, Gabrielle Anwar, Bruce Campbell, Sharon Gless

Sigh.

The sky is beautiful.

The ocean is beautiful.

The palm trees are beautiful.

The nighttime sparkly Miami is beautiful.

The people are beautiful.

The plot is irrelevant.

And it's funny!

Every time I watch it, I want to move back to Florida. Florida without the humidity.

The End.

Housework is Dangerous

HAH! I've just figured this out.

How on earth did the hassock get where I would trip over it? I wracked my brain, and then realized that I must have moved it where it was while I was vacuuming, then went on my merry vacuuming way and forgotten to put it back out of the way. Which still wouldn't have been its original position, but it wouldn't have been in my path either.

And how did I re-injure my knee??? I washed mini-blinds in my bath tub and then cleaned out the tub, and I was on my knees to do this.

So, I deduce that housework is dangerous.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it. No more housework for me. (fat chance)

Isn't this pretty?

Isn't it? Sure, but I'm not too fond of it today.

I bought it a few years ago in Austin, Texas, picturing my grandchildren playing on it. And they did, last week, especially grandson who has never found anything he didn't like jumping off of. We had worried about him here - all the new potential dangers for Danger Ranger. I reassured myself and my daughter by remembering that the nearest ER is only 1.6 miles down the street from my house.

The week went by; no injuries to report; no trips to the ER. Success!

But last night, in the dark, I fell over it. It hadn't gone back to its normal spot in the room, because the coffee table is still out of its place. I can't help lift it - it's some sort of stone slabs on a wrought-iron base and it's really, really heavy. So I came downstairs late at night, fell over the hassock, and to protect my already-injured knee, let my face break the fall. O.U.C.H. I lay on the floor for a minute or so, waiting for blood or the pain of a broken nose. Nope. Just the normal pain caused by FALLING ON YOUR FACE from 5'10".

So no trip to the ER, but I look awful today. Fat lip, odds and ends of cuts, swollen nose. My husband is in Louisiana on business, so he doesn't get to see his vision of beauty.....He returns tomorrow and I hope my face returns to normal by tomorrow also. It's knit-night and I can't miss that!

I have moved the hassock to a safer (for me) location, and I swear I will not walk downstairs in the dark again.

And even though today is not Fragments Friday, which I learned about from Mary Ellen, I am adding a story to this story. The hassock is from Egypt, and I bought it in a specialty import shop/belly-dancing studio in Austin. I knew it wouldn't fit in my luggage so I asked for a bag to carry it on the plane in. I didn't notice until I was in the Austin airport that the bag had a website on it: http://www.wmdproductions.com/. (World Music and Dance Productions-but I didn't want to have to convince security of that) The rest of the writing was in Arabic. And there I was, going through security. I put the bag with the writing-side down and hoped for the best. I made it, but the store really needs to get a different web address.

Maybe I'm the real Danger Ranger ....

Whew!

-Dr. Johnston-(photo not the result of stalking : http://www.sos-atlanta.com/)

I just returned from an appointment with my very cute orthopedic surgeon (although I think he may be just barely out of high school so forget I called him cute) and I do NOT need surgery again on the knee I had surgery on last summer. What I thought was a repeat injury (torn meniscus) is instead two injuries: an inflamed bursa (which in those people older than I is called bursitis) and patellar tendinitis. I injured the knee about two weeks ago, and because I believe that most things get better on their own, I ignored it until today, when there was an available appointment.

So now I have a weird strap that goes across my knee in order to help the tendon heal, but also sits right on top of the bursa area - OUCH! - so I may have to give up wearing it.

Anyway, with some ice and ibuprofen, this will get better almost on its own. Again, WHEW!

Hee, hee, hee...

We English majors love puns and wordplay.
And my favorite play on words is from Groucho Marx: Time flies like an arrow but fruit flies like a banana.

Obsessed Much?

I have written before about my thing with the Post Office, and now I am at it again. It will not surprise anyone in my family that this is how I spent today, the day after my two daughters and four grandchildren returned to their homes.

I have been packing up everything that needs to be shipped to each of them, but before you think that my children have early-onset forgetfulness, I will explain:

Because older daughter was flying by herself with her four children, ages 8, 6, 2, and nine months, she shipped a lot of clothes, stuffed animals, books and other necessities ahead of time. She had enough to handle in the airport with four children, backpacks and car seats without hauling all the luggage she needed. Because UPS destroyed the boxes, I have had to repack in new boxes and I hope they arrive in Texas in better shape than the originals arrived in here.

Younger daughter moved to Los Angeles almost three years ago, and left LOTS of things here even though she filled her car to the top with her belongings and also shipped many, many boxes to herself. While she was here this past week, she went through what she left behind and sorted out what to ship, donate, or toss. SHE would say that my ideal basement would have lots of sturdy shelving and nothing on them. (Actually, she's sort of mostly right.)

And so my predilection to get everything that's not mine out of the house and TO the post office post haste explains my activities today. If only the post office had been open, these would have been there already, but alas, they must wait till tomorrow.

Hey!!!!!

What happened???

It's eerily quiet here...

Oh, rats. My daughters and grandchildren went back to their respective homes. And we were having such fun!

See???

Poor older daughter was so tired (Elizabeth just wouldn't sleep through the night) that she fell asleep on the floor and her three older children attacked her. (Not really - though I bet she could have fallen asleep on the floor!)

They all arrived on Saturday, and on Monday, my HERO, the dishwasher repairman came and fixed my dishwasher. Yay! But now my washing machine is leaking. It's a million years old, so it may just be begging to go to "a better place," as younger daughter's abridged copy of Little Women said about where Beth went when she died. Years later when we were discussing the book and we mentioned Beth's death, younger daughter said, "She died!!! I thought she went to the beach."

For grandson, though, a better place is his own home, with his daddy, his bedroom, and his bed. The poor little guy was so homesick that we once found him at the front door, trying to get the door open while crying, "I want to go home."

So now they are all home, and I'm off to do laundry......or not.....

Sniff...sniff...sniff.....

My shawl...ooops...wrap is finished, and so, nearly, is the visit from my two daughters and my grandchildren. Poor, poor me. I will miss them all. Four children are a lot of children, and a LOT of fun. They are really funny and don't even know they are funny. And Elizabeth is just every kind of sweet:

Elizabeth (9 months old) with younger daughter

Younger daughter has a talent for the fiddly bits of any type of project, and she put all of the eleven-inch fringe on the sha....wrap. Doing that is sort of beyond my natural patience. Now I owe her a wrap like the one Reese Witherspoon wears in Sweet Home Alabama. I hadn't really wanted such a large project, but believe me, getting that fringe done by someone other than myself is well worth it.

Shaun (aka Sean) says

that is he is quite comfortable in his new home: soapstone countertops and tumbled slate backsplash. He says he prefers natural to man made (formica and drywall), so these natural surfaces make him feel at home. He is complaining a bit, though, about the lack of a grassy field to graze in, but he'll be ok. I'll feed him tea and scones instead.

With a Nod to Spongebob

(© Viacom International Inc. )


Oh tartar sauce!!!

My dishwasher is broken. It was fine until the team putting in new countertops pulled it out to put in something to reinforce the cabinets so that they could hold the weight of the soapstone. When they put the dishwasher back in place, it started flashing all its lights and now won't run.

The repairman is supposed to show up tomorrow and I hope he does and that he can fix it because

I have two daughters and four, count them, four grandchildren arriving Saturday for a one-week visit

and boy howdy, will I need my dishwasher.

Or paper plates and paper cups. Spongebob Squarepants paper cups and paper cups, of course.

It's Lace!

I am so pleased, and sort of surprised, too. The six-hundred yards of alpaca turned into lace! It wasn't even terribly difficult. The pattern was over ten stitches, with repeats every eight rows. The wrong-side rows were just pearl stitches, which gave me a place to go back to when I made mistakes, which really was pretty rare with this. I think I found it easier than the last lace project (which drove me nuts) because I HAD to pay attention; this pattern is more intricate than the one for the simple scarf I made.

Now I'm blocking it and it's my first time blocking lace. Lace fights back! Thank goodness it's not as fragile as it looks to me because I really had to tug on it to get it to size. I'm starting on a second wrap from the same pattern but with a different color of the Peruvian Tweed Yarn, and I think I am investing in blocking wires before I block the second one.

Yay!!!