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!!!

Dust Bunnies

(photo: Wikimedia Commons. Definitely not mine! I swear!)


I was just doing a bit of cleaning up and I need to make one thing very clear to whoever or whatever rules dust bunnies: Dust bunnies belong under the bed, not on the furniture.

Got that?

Thank you.

Bear Hair

Because I am always on the lookout for unusual sources of yarn, and because we knitters use yarn made from all sorts of things - sheep, alpacas, bison, possums, llamas, angora goats, angora rabbits, silk, soy, milk, and ....shudder....human hair - it was no surprise to me when this information from Yankee Magazine came across my desk (well, OK, across my kitchen table via a letter from my sister). Clark's Trading Post grooms its bears to get hair to make into yarn and this woman, Maxine Taylor, is the official bear hair yarn knitter.

All it takes is bears willing to be groomed and someone willing to groom them.

Bueller? Bueller?

I'm Pretty Sure That This Is Icky....

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_3211188.html

I know that technically, it shouldn't be. After all, we knit with stuff from all sorts of animals, but this???

Eeeuuuuwww....ick.

Two Movie Reviews for the Price of One

Synecdoche, New York

(Disclaimer: I only watched half of the movie because, well, what the #$%^&*() is this about?)

Starring: lots of otherwise talented people.
Review: What the $%^&*() is this????


Mamma Mia!

Starring: Meryl Streep (I love her.)
Review: Someone, please, please stop Pierce Brosnan before he sings again.


The End.
You're welcome.

It's looking a lot like lace

and that's a good thing, since that's what I set out to knit! After my last lace-knitting adventure, I thought that I might never try lace again, but I'm nothing if not stubborn. Which is why, when I decided to learn to ski, I ignored all the crying and bruises, and kept going back up mountains (small ones) in order to fall over and over again on the way back down. After lots and lots of effort, I became a very-below-average skier. Yay me!

So this is my newest attempt at lace and it's going sort of well: not much swearing, lots of counting, no crying or bruises. The pattern is called, plainly enough, Peruvian Tweed Shawl, and the pattern calls for - surprise, surprise - Peruvian Tweed yarn. It's great soft yarn, 100% superfine alpaca, spun in Peru, and a skein of it has a whopping 600 yards of yarn. I had named it Hank and was keeping it as a pet, but it kept calling out that it really wanted fulfill its purpose and become something.

It's becoming a shawl but I'm not sure I am old enough to wear a shawl. Maybe I'll call it a wrap instead.

Happy Fourth All Y'all!

The Cat Days of Summer

Sleep.......

That's what my almost-fourteen-year-old cat does all day.

Sometimes he moves.....head towards the west....
head towards the east.....

The cat's life - ahhhh.....

Summer Jobs

A few weeks ago I was listening to NPR and heard a portion of a show on jobs that people had had in their youth. The interview I heard was with a man whose one-time job had been at a race track where he had to collect horse urine - directly from the horse - to test for drugs. While that sounds horrid, sort of, at least he got to work with horses. I like horses; I wouldn't have minded being around them for a summer, depending, of course, on HOW I had to collect the urine.

When I was in college I had summer jobs, bad summer jobs, the kind of jobs that keep you in college when you decide after your sophomore year that you want to "take some time off to travel in Europe." One summer, for no particular reason that I ever heard, my mother decided that good jobs could not be found through classified ads in the paper; they could only come from friends of friends of friends and that's how I got two really bad jobs.

The first I found through my college roommate. She had heard about a job interviewing homeowners about their childrens' schools. How difficult could that be? It sounded fun, really, meeting new people, sitting in their living rooms, drinking offered iced tea and chatting. We interviewed and were hired.

However, what we discovered at our training was that our job was really selling encyclopedias. (Does anyone still publish these?) So off we went, in teams of two, dropped off at neighborhood entrances. Our canned pitch gave the impression that we were from the school board, taking a poll of homeowners about the education their children were receiving. Getting in homes was pretty easy; getting out was REAL easy, once the homeowners realized what we were up to.

The first and only night out, we got through our assigned neighborhood VERY quickly (imagine that), and our boss left us for a really long time sitting at the drop-off point. Finally, he picked us up. There were three of us college kids in the back seat and one in the front. The boss and the woman we thought to be his wife were also in the front seat. The boss drove astonishingly recklessly and at one point, his wife said something to him that set him off and he smacked her really hard across her face. We all looked at each other in alarm and each of us quit that night, by phone, once we were safely home. The boss was angry with us and threatened to charge us for our training. That never happened, but whatever he would have charged would have been worth not getting in the car with him again. I hope that woman quit whatever her role in his life was too.

The second job that summer came from word-of-mouth, again from my roommate. We were hired to make Avon perfumed candles at a candle factory that had received an order that they could not complete without temporary help. We worked in a huge un-air-conditioned, tin-roofed warehouse space. It was hot, really, really hot, in order to keep the candles from hardening too quickly to allow the workers to fix any imperfections in them.

The individual candle containers arrived on racks on benches in front of us and we had to then put in the wicks, pour in the wax, and pull on the wicks to make sure they were in the center of the candle. The scents of the wax changed throughout the summer. Ugh. A thirty-something man was our supervisor and he was tough. The candles had better be perfect or he would threaten us with firing. At the same time, we had a quota to make and if we didn't, he would threaten us with firing. After a few weeks there we would have welcomed firing I think. I sure knew that quitting college was not an option. Who would do this job for life?

There were plenty of people there who did. I felt sorry for them. We were snotty college kids, probably making snarky remarks about the job. We made LOTS of snarky comments about the supervisor. But no doubt we were working with permanent employees who were there so that their snotty kids could go to college. The only skilled job that I ever saw there was making the hand-dipped tall candles. That required talent. Other than that, it was hot, mind-numbing, boring work.

And smelly for those of us making the perfumed candles. I wore the same shoes each day so that I would only have to throw away the one pair at the end of the summer. Repeated washing did not get the scent out of my clothes and those I threw out too. I said for years that I could recognize any Avon perfume from one-hundred paces. I don't know if that's still true, or if Avon even still sells the candles.

But lots of other companies do sell scented candles, and I feel sorry for the people who make them - I suppose they're all in China, and any job is better than no job, but still.....

The summers after that one I worked in offices, still doing boring work (that I found through classified ads), but I was really grateful not to be in a factory.

Horse urine or scented candles?

Honestly? It's a toss-up.

STOP IT!!!

I turned the news on at about 10:15 p.m. and

it wasn't about Michael Jackson!

But then it was.

Enough already. OK?

We were young, we had no money, we possessed the world through sheer enthusiasm.

Isn't that a lovely sentence?

It's in an essay by Garrison Keillor and I wish I had written that sentence. Just sayin'.

Well, I'm back to Georgia, where it is almost as hot as it was in Austin. Yikes!!!

I had a great time in Austin. It was such a treat to see grandchildren (and their parents, of course) EVERY day for two weeks. Little Elizabeth even changed during the two weeks; her body is telling her she must stand up even if her mind doesn't know what the heck she is doing. She gets quite frustrated by her body these days.

I had many knitting-related experiences. I went to three yarn shops and bought things I absolutely must have at each. And I met a blogger. On three separate trips to Austin I have met a blogger: the first was Barb Cooper, who is a wonderful writer and who has even published a book, The Mermaid's Purse, a collection of essays; the second was Wendy Aarons, who writes a really funny blog, but who is sort of shy and understated in person; and on this trip, Suna, who writes about her amazing and prolific knitting. We met her at the shop where she teaches, and she was kind enough to take time to chat with us and to show us around the shop. She is very talented, and I am especially envious of her lace knitting.

The only problem with the trip was my flight back. Why knit? Why knot? That's what I say, and I was very happy to have knitting with me on the flight. We all boarded a full flight, and once the doors closed and we were all trapped in the plane, the pilot announced that there was a thirty-minute ground stop in Atlanta. So I cast on a sock and happily started knitting. Time flew. Then the pilot announced that there was another thirty-minute ground stop in Atlanta. So I kept knitting, just muttering a few not-so-nice thoughts quietly so my seat-mates could not hear me. Then there was a bit more of a ground stop. Grrr......

Once we got going, the flight was short - until we were put in a holding pattern over LaGrange, Georgia. More quietly-muttered not-so-nice thoughts.

And then we landed. Everyone bolted for the exit. As did I. And on the way home, I remembered that I had put the extra dp needles, my favorite dp needles, my Knit Picks Harmony dp needles, in the seatback pocket. And I had left them there. RATS!

So I'm off to the Knit Picks site to order replacements, and a few other things I just must have.....

Austin, Texas

Day.... uh....??????

It's 6:15 in the evening and it's 105 degrees outside.

I don't know what $%^&*(&*#$ day it is.

It's one hundred and five friggin degrees!

Woo Hoo!

A couple of weeks ago, my granddaughter Elizabeth met Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, the Yarn Harlot and was photographed with her. Today, older daughter, Elizabeth and I went to The Knitting Nest in Austin, Texas, to meet Franklin Habit, photographer, knitter, designer and author of It Itches, a collection of his knitting-related cartoons and essays. He is a big fan of babies and was happy to hold Elizabeth for her second famous knitters/writers photograph. He was at the shop to teach a class, and then, since it is Worldwide Knit in Public Day, he stayed on to knit with all the people who came in to spend some time knitting.

And shopping! I scored two skeins of his new yarn color, called Franklin's Panopticon, which is also the name of his blog. The yarn is made by Lorna's Laces and comes in several weights. It is blue, green, khaki and all sorts of shades of each. Mine is sport weight, but I think it will turn into socks....

Anyway, it was fun to knit at such a friendly shop and to meet Franklin, who was very gracious, and whom Elizabeth just loved!

Austin, Texas

Day Four

I have been unfairly accused of there not being any discipline when I watch the grandchildren.

This is not true.

When they are doing something I consider to be a questionable activity, I ask them, "Would your mother say it is OK for you to do this?"

They say "Yes."

See?

(And if Lily cries, I let her do or have whatever she wants.)

Austin, Texas

Day Three

Babysitting for older daughter:

Chaos reigns because I apparently cannot rein (hah, hah, hah) in the activities of four children at once (ages: 8, 6, 2 1/2, 8 months). They are well-behaved children, but there are four of them and that means constant NOISE.

Fighting noise, playing noise, crying noise, screaming noise, laughing noise, assorted noise.
ALL THE TIME!

But they sure are cute and it sure is fun....

Austin, Texas

Day One

Cost to have locksmith pick the lock on older daughter's neighbor's house where I am staying/housesitting so that I can get back in: $52.00.

Cost to spend two hours in my jammies, teeth unbrushed, at older daughter's house while we wait for the locksmith - and explaining WHY we are allowed to go in the absent neighbor's house to begin with - to arrive and successfully pick the lock on the neighbor's house: priceless.

Just in Time for Texas

First of all, I finished the second sock of my sparkly Berroco Sox Metallic yarn, but the sparklies don't show in the picture. I know they are there! And so will all my friends and family (not you, younger daughter) when I wear them.

These are not blocked. I don't block socks; I figure that's what feet are for.


And second, I finished my second attempt at the Bitty Bolero sweater. THIS one will fit Elizabeth, I am sure. But she doesn't get it till her first birthday, in October, and even if I gave it to her now, it is way too hot in Texas to wear a wool sweater, even one as soft as this one. It's made from 100% merino wool, and I am starting to think that out of all the wonderful fibers that are made into yarn (wool, angora, bamboo, milk -yes-milk, cotton, soy, alpaca, mohair, silk and ???? I'm sure I've forgotten some), I love working with merino the best. It is just SO, SO soft! This is Malabrigo, colorway Cuarento 237. And have I learned my lesson about the importance of making gauge swatches?
Probably not...

I've also bought yarn for a new project to work on while I'm in Texas, because, you know, there are just NO yarn shops there!

Oh, and I do have a new camera. Phew. Without pictures, how can I blog???

Rats!

My camera is broken. It's not a dead battery or anything else that I can diagnose, so I think it's really broken - or deceased.

So, I cannot show you my latest sock, knit from Berroco Sox Metallic yarn. There are sparklies in it! It's so cool! Really - just imagine the most gorgeous, sparkly, perfectly-knitted sock you have ever seen, and that's my sock. Soon there will be two of them.

As I have written about in the past, I love sparklies. I love bling - not big expensive, gaudy diamond bling, but normal bling. Sparkly things. So it just figures that I had to have this glittery yarn. And no, younger daughter, I will not wear these socks when I am in public with you.

And speaking of what I've written in the past, I was, ages ago, tagged by Calicobebop (love the name, and wouldn't caliopebebop be a good one too?) to write ten things about me. But since I had recently written seven things for another tag, I put it off. But now, with no camera, I'm forced to write. So here are three more things:

8. When I was a kid, I tried to play three instruments. My father owned a violin and a flugelhorn and believed, I guess, that his kids should be musical. We started off, as grade-schoolers, on a piano. My sister was quite good at it; my brother was too young at the time we took lessons; and I was horrible. I mean, there is separate music for each hand, AND there are the foot pedals. For our first recitals, the teacher gave my sister and me the choice of two pieces by Beethoven. (What WAS she thinking? We were KIDS.) My sister's lesson was before mine, and she (rotten little sister that she was) chose Moonlight Sonata, by far the easier piece. That meant I was stuck with Fur Elise, an impossible piece for me. I struggled with it and then finished it off by butchering it at the recital. AND I was the oldest student there. It was awful.

So, on to the violin. I tortured that poor thing, and my father must have wondered if I truly was his child. The orchestra conductor/music teacher at the high school even put me in the orchestra. I have no idea now how long I lasted in it, but it couldn't have been long. In addition to reading the music and doing the appropriate fingering, I had to pay attention to the bowing instructions. You can't just saw in any old direction (and believe me, I sawed, not bowed).

Next came the French horn. That belonged to the school and I picked it thinking that there were only three (I think it was three) thingies to push, so how hard could it be? For someone with apparently no musical talent, just as difficult as the piano and violin had been.

That was the end of that, and except for a brief unsuccessful attempt in my thirties to take lessons from the same teacher who was working (successfully) with younger daughter, I've left music-making up to others.

9. My name. My first name is spelled differently (incorrectly, in my view) and I have always hated the spelling. I read once that when parents spell a girl's name differently from the norm, it's because they think that girls will not have the same success in life that boys will, and hope that by making their daughter's name unique, she will have a better shot at success. So I imagine my parents looking at sweet little newborn me and saying, "What a loser. We'd better do something to make her stand out. I know! What about misspelling her name?!"

It's been a nuisance all my life. I have to spell it out all the time, and my last name is also spelled differently from most people's. It's the correct original Irish spelling, but lots of immigrants dropped a doubled letter when they came here. So I spell my first and last names for everything I do. I had to send my passport back when the people who processed my application misspelled my name. And there is no form for this problem; I had to fill out a name change form. Once at a drugstore, when I spelled my name correctly for the clerk, she couldn't find it (this happens all the time) and when I gave her other possible misspellings and she did find it, she asked if I wanted her to enter the name correctly in the computer system. Huh? I told her that since I tend to spell my name the way it's actually spelled, yes, I would like her to do that.

10. Hmmmmm....Can't really think of anything else. Well, I like junk food (who doesn't) but I rarely eat any since I don't like going to the grocery store and that means I don't buy much of it. I LOVE salty, crunchy stuff the best. And candy. And chocolate. And my favorite word is mellifluous, because it sounds like what it means.

And that's all she wrote.

Peonies!

In years past, I've had armfuls of peonies, and I just love them. But the past two years, I had exactly NO peonies. The drought killed some of the plants, and the rest just didn't flower. The watering restrictions were so strict that it wasn't possible to water enough to help much. This year I've gotten a few of my favorite flowers. Peonies aren't a given this far south; the winters aren't generally cold enough long enough for some plants and flowers. Lilacs stand almost no chance, and the varieties that do grow here aren't anything like the lush lilac shrubs of the north.
But I won't complain. This year I have my favorite flowers: peonies.

(and one rose)

But wait! Did I say peonies are my favorite? I forgot the roses. Even through the drought I had roses, and I love them the most.

Especially my David Austin antique roses:

Oh, did I say roses are my favorite? I forgot my true favorite, the lacecap hydrangeas!

Well, OK. I love them ALL. I have no favorites.

Need a Laugh?

Check this out: Four Laughing Babies.

When Will I Learn?

Here I've been, happily knitting along on this cute little Pixie Purls Bolero sweater for Elizabeth's first birthday (in October). But when I finished binding off all of the ribbing, I noticed that the sweater looks a bit....small?...for a one year old child. Hmmm....

It is sitting next to a dollar bill, which is, as we knitters know, a good substitute for a tape measure, since it is six inches long. Which means that this sweater is TINY!

Did I make a gauge swatch? Good doG, no. I NEVER make gauge swatches. Sometimes, if I remember, I count the rows and stitches in the actual garment soon after beginning a project, just to make sure I'm on gauge, which I always assume that I am. But did I do that here???

Nope.

So I just did. The correct gauge is: 18 stitches/24 rows = 4".

My gauge is: 24 stitches/32 rows = 4".

OK then. A frogging we will go...unless Elizabeth needs a worsted weight merino sweater in the heat of a Texas summer. I'm guessing she doesn't.

The Knitter Doth Whine Too Much

Yes, I admit it. I did whine more than a little about knitting all the loops that Shaun required. I tried to get older daughter to knit the loops for me, but she apparently:

a. is not easily fooled

b. remembers Tom Sawyer

But once I stopped whining about all the loops and started knitting all the loops, the project didn't really take very long. I sort of got the knack of making the loops more and more quickly.

So now Shaun is finished and perched over my only teapot. I usually make tea with teabags, but maybe I will have to become more traditional.......

May 10, 2009

Dear Older Daughter,

Wow! I can't believe I've been so selfish. Here I've been, happily knitting away, making loops for the Shaun the Sheep tea cozy, when I suddenly realized that you would love to learn how to do this. And as you know, I'll be visiting in June.

This sheep takes hundreds, hundreds of loops, and I've been selfishly keeping them all to myself! Well, no more of that. I'm bringing Shaun and all the supplies to Austin; I'll teach you how to make loops and you can have the FUN, FUN, I say, of making the hundreds of loops remaining.

I'm nothing if not generous.