Hippo Doggie

oh my, I feel a post coming on

2009-01-27T07:09:00.007-05:00

On Sunday morning, I had to make a mad dash to the grocery store before Daughter left for work. Mr. HD had already absconded to Starbucks for the day to grade his 70-some essays, and I had some plans for my afternoon (toward subsequent plans for another day)(as it happens, today!), but I didn't have all the ingredients to go with my beautiful chicken from Faith Farm.

I came back with these.

As I was checking out, the cashier, who could be the quieter, blond sister of Flo from the old TV show Alice, handed me a dozen. "Um, thanks -- wha ... ?"

"You just look like you could use them."

I wondered fleetingly what that meant, but the fact of the roses themselves was more interesting than the question.

And then I made this ...

My first-ever omelet. Pretty, no? Four of them, actually. Breakfast burrito-inspired omelets (I was going to make breakfast burritos for lunch, and I had the chorizo defrosted and onions chopped before I realized I had no tortillas).

Ingredients: 8-10 eggs, beaten (started with 8, whisked in more as I ran out while cooking)
3 links chorizo, squoze out of casings (this task accomplished by 13-year-old boy, who had great fun likening the experience to ... well.) (I told him afterward what the casings were made from -- or at least used to be. Heh.)
oil
1 med onion
fresh spinach
butter
grated cheddar (or whatever cheese you like)

Sautee the onions in oil until soft, add chorizo and push around until browned, and keep warm. Melt butter over medium heat in a non-stick skillet, and ladle in enough eggs to cover the bottom of the pan 1/4 inch deep. When mostly set, spoon some of the chorizo mixture onto one side, sprinkle some cheese on the other, drop a little handful of spinach leaves in the middle, and fold the cheesy side over onto the other side in whatever way you can manage it (there may have been some flipping and flopping and a near-disaster), then slide the thing onto a plate, pop some salsa on the side, and serve. Lather, rinse, repeat until you run out of stuff or everyone is full, whichever comes first.

Even The Short One liked it all right.

Life is pretty good. And there has been knitting. Maybe I will post about it before more than another nine or 10 months pass.

untitled

2008-04-12T09:00:00.001-04:00

I'm astonished that it's been seven months since my last post. I don't know what I'm doing here. I want to write. I have thoughts. I have knitting FOs and near-FOs to post. But I'm not sure this wants to be a knit blog. It'll be whatever it'll be. And it may be another seven months before I post. Anything is possible!

In the last few months, I've become almost addicted to some political blogs, trying to find people who do their homework and who think through what's going on these days with heart, brain and finely honed bullshit detector (Obsidian Wings, The Edge of the American West, some others)(pretty much pro-Obama, but not shrill) (and why did I feel compelled to add that qualifier?). (There are also a couple that are rarely if at all politically oriented, but are just fine, fine reads.) I just added them in my sidebar. Their commenters often make magnificent contributions to any given discussion, and I feel as if I'm learning a lot. On the other hand, it also causes me some stress, because I really don't have time for such. There's work, there's kids, there's knitting, there's home, there's ... so much on my mind that I don't even know who I am right now. That's fine -- it just makes it so that I don't know what the hell I'm doing here, in blogging, or what I have to contribute. I just want to. So there.

So today, what I really should do is face my taxes -- having been self-employed, I really should have done the quarterly estimated tax thing, but I couldn't get myself together to do so and of course it's biting me on the wallet. Another thing I should face is my house, which is chaos. And I suppose I will do those things. But I also want to go and purchase some herbs and plant them -- cilantro, basil, lemon verbena (ahhhhhh!) -- and I want to yank out the wild blackberry from among the azaleas out back, though I might let that wait til after tonight's rain. Should should should. Nag nag nag.

In the words of that great philosopher, The Short One: "I can't find my shoes, and I can't find my candy. I'd much rather find my candy."

Here's to finding both.

just thinkin'

2007-09-08T21:30:00.000-04:00

... about how surreal it would be to be George Bush, and have all these really smart people thinking about you SO MUCH, burning so many calories over you, writing so many words. And how surreal it is that he's hearing so little of the wisdom flying through the air at him.

Government of the people, by the ... what? Idiots? Psychopaths? ... for lining a few folks' pockets.

It's scary. But not nearly as scary as what we don't know yet.

I'll be watching Obama. Relative lack of experience, maybe, but he seems to have both a brain and a heart. A letter writer on Salon.com made a comment about how Clinton (I am hating that she's the only one perpetually called by her first name -- yes, I understand the confusion re. the other Clinton, but it's still this thing where women get referred to in text by their first names or as Mrs. [husband's first name] [husband's last name], and it annoys me. I keep wanting to call her Rodham), every time she's asked a politically loaded question, seems to have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, counseling her as to which answer will preserve electability.

I am so done with politics. And so addicted to them -- it's like watching a train wreck.

Obama, at least, seems like something new. And he can write.

for the halibut

2007-08-08T20:00:00.000-04:00

Today I worked with a chef at a photo shoot for a piece for a magazine, and we got to talking about the process-versus-product thing. He talked about how, when he was in the local nuts-and-berries store picking up ingredients, he ran across figs and suddenly knew what he was going to do. How beautiful is that, to find a fig, and your day falls together? Passed a display of a zillion pints of blackberries and "wanted to lie down and take a bath in them."

He's at a pretty lovely place in his life. Just turned 50 and had a doc's appointment and carped about old man's plumbing and yadda yadda.

Meh. Fifty is the new 30.

Then again, I'm 43 and gimping around like I'm a hundred. This "living the life of the mind" -- i.e., sitting on my ass and writing and editing and putting out online fires -- is not living. I go home and stagger around or drive children from A to B, and sit and watch them do what they do ... .

I need a new relationship with my body. How to find it? I felt a real difference when I came back from the Galapagos -- I'd really used my body, hiking a couple miles a day, swimming (and freezing in 60-degree water -- surely that burned significant calories?), and I did feel fine. Ate perhaps a little too well. But I MOVED. And I lived.

I need to live differently. I'd like to live better.

Push that boulder up the hill.

...

oh yeah. That's real hopeful. So, back to where I started: Process. Being. Doing.

Hep.

Turned the heel on the sock, and the fit looks like it's going to be beautiful.

Words are too small

2007-07-20T20:13:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I feel as if I have too much to say to say anything at all. So I should just shut up.

I went here:

and saw this

(yes, it's tortoise porn! Super Diego, at the Darwin Research Center, being Super with a capital S.)
And I broke a toe photographing this:

or maybe it was this one:

...I don't know, I don't care. (It's my third or fourth time breaking a toe, there's nothing you can do, it's no big deal.) I went to the Galapagos for 8 days, first week of July. I'm not quite back yet. There was knitting -- a toe-up sock, a lá IK summer 07 (I guess? It's the most recent IK mag I purchased, and it was warm when I did so), in Trekking, Oilslick colorway (lost ballband, but it was mostly blue with iridiscent stuff. Teal duck colors?).

A trip memory: trying to do that damn something-or-other cast-on, and making more than a dozen attempts, at least six on the plane from Miami to Quito, during which I discovered a horrific miscount, then the other half-doz in the Quito airport the next morning, waiting for the flight to Galapagos; apparently, I endlessly entertained one of my future boatmates with all my bad, bad faces.

You know, I'm not sure where that sock is, now.

The thing is, I had great fun telling people, before I left, that I was going to the Galapagos. And then I came back, and I still don't really much want to talk about it.

Eight days in wonder.

can I post now?

2007-05-07T20:43:00.000-04:00

I noticed a while back that Blogger had gotten this new Google account thing going, and it was an option, and I, like, need simplicity wherever possible so I let it slide. And then tonight I don't have a choice other than to create a Google account in order to get on, and I did, and it leaves me no time before the one ridickerous TV show I allow myself in my life, and the boys need to go to bed, and I have cool pictures to post, and I'm tired of having System of a Down songs in my head at 3 a.m. ("I'm just sitting in my car and WAITing FOR my GIRllllllllll!") after having been woken up by the 6-year-old with bad dreams because his brother felt compelled to recap The Grudge to our neighbor girl within his hearing. Little toothless one was talking about it again just now before DH took him up to bed.

High hopes for tonight.

Quote from my 16-y-o daughter: "We're not being compatible today."

It is to laugh.

So ...

2007-04-10T19:09:00.000-04:00

... my snow-capped tulips survived, only to be gobbled by Squirrel Buttkin. DH saw it with his own two eyes: "I just watched a squirrel chew the heads off our tulips."
...I can't post photos of said tulips, because my laptop is fried. Under warranty, and backed-up, but fried nonetheless.
...I'm in my house with no family members within 100 miles of me. This would be a beeyootiful thing, except that
...I'm sick.
...bleh.

Welcome to the mid-Atlantic

2007-04-07T19:38:00.000-04:00

You just don't see this very often.

But this is what visited us this morning.

I have forty-odd azaleas in my backyard. I don't much care for azaleas. But en masse, by golly, they are something to behold, and I'm glad they're there. The first year we lived here, after they bloomed, I pruned them -- they needed it -- and made a double-minivan-sized pile of brush in my driveway. About due for same this year. Will it happen? Heh. Yep. In all my spare time.

But it would be satisfying, all that hacking.

In one shady spot, a previous owner apparently set out to add a water feature, even to the point of sinking a ring of tulip bulbs around its perimeter. The first couple of years we lived here, I'd see these random tulip leaves shoot up out there in the shade. But the third year, one bloomed. We could see it out our kitchen window -- the morning light would catch it, light it up. Last year, I dug them all up and moved them, sprinkled on some bonemeal, waited. Those two up top, those are the yield. There are three additional random tulip leaf upshoots. Maybe next year.

Okay, Blogger apparently doesn't want me to add another photo, to steal fire from what's already here. Fine. Finefinefine. But I wanted to put up more flower photos. And yarn purchases. Not knitting, mind you, although there is a baby hat in the works.

Wordless shout

2007-03-26T07:55:00.000-04:00

I don't know muuch what I want to say this morning, just that I want to say something. (Warning: Complaining ahead.) I've been working too much lately, and a lot's been going on, and it's been hard. I've been working both my job and my former editor's since the end of January -- will continue to do so until the position is filled. It could be another month or more. It's been very interesting, and it's grown me in a lot of ways, but I haven't had a weekend in weeks -- been working more than full-time. And four kids plus two full-time-working parents do not make for ideal quality of life. I'm not as nice a person as I was (I'm not that nice, anyway) and, when I'm home, I mostly just want to be left alone. Heh. Here in the House of Noise.

At the end of one particularly long, frustrating day, a teary M said, "I don't like it when you don't feel good." I was already on the verge of flying apart, and I almost screamed at him.

And, of course, there's been the requisite illness, and M had surgery on his foot, and S has an eye doctor appointment today and M gets stitches out Wednesday and and and.

If one more thing is asked of me, I'll blow, I swear I will. It all makes me almost WANT to get sick, so that I can just fecking SIT.

But there has been knitting. Three rows of it, I think (during M's procedure), on the eternal tunic thing from Nora Gaughan's book. It ain't gon' happen in time for Mom's birthday next month. Maybe in '08. I did hit the LYS spring sale and bought a hodgepodge of Manos in various colors -- thinking a colorwork cardigan -- and a bag-and-a-half of yummy Rowan Cork, deep winey purple -- finally, DH's sweater. No idea about pattern yet.

I think I need a small project, though -- I need to design something wee.

Won't happen anytime soon. But it still feels good to think about it.

And the fairy flowers are back.

my quotable boy

2007-01-21T10:15:00.000-05:00

The other morning, as I drove The Short One and Little Neighbor Girl to school, we had the first snow of the winter -- 10 minutes of fat flakes flying at us.
TSO: Thank you, weather.
LNG: Thank you, God. He made everything.
TSO: Yeah, like that forest ... you know, that forest ... there was a tree?
Me: The Garden of Eden?
TSO: Yeah. What was that tree called?
Me: The Tree of Knowledge.
TSO: Oh. I thought it was the Table of Contents.

One tired mutha

2007-01-02T17:26:00.000-05:00

Are the holidays over yet? Please?

Actually, they were wonderful. We stayed put, because we do not currently have a vehicle that will fit all six of us (not to mention the canines). But there was just too much going on -- dense traffic of beloved in-laws and sister and more in-laws and work and, you know, an article due. A big one. I got it done, but I hate that, I hate the pressure of having bitten off more than I can chew and knowing that I'm not giving my best.

Speaking of which. There has been knitting. My sister's birthday was on December 5. She lives in southeastern PA and has a horse farm. One of my main mental pictures of her is in the barn before sunrise, pulling her mitten off and holding it in her teeth while she ties a knot or some damn farmer-type thing. I found the Broad Street mittens and thought they would be swell, so I got cracking over Thanksgiving, with some Trekking and some bamboo 2s. What a wonderful, huge learning curve--it's a fun knit.

But I very quickly realized I damn sure wasn't going to get them both done by 12/5. No worries! I would give her the first in time for her birthday and finish the second by Christmas. The pattern begins with the left hand, she's lefthanded, it was perfect.

There are 10-hundred ends to be woven in in eacy Broad Street mitt. I've got wicked second-mitt syndrome. I got the first one done in time to get it to her for Christmas, but barely. I even took it to work to tackle those ends as I could and work out those wonky holes that happen between fingers, finger and thumb, each of which means a couple more ends to weave in ... and I have trouble keeping track of my reading glasses. So the day I needed to mail it, I was cleaning up my desk preparing to leave the office, and I threw my lunch bag into the kitchen garbage--we can't throw food garbage into our desk cans, because the boss has a couple of inquisitive dogs--and my other bag with the finally completed mitten in it into my bag.

Yeah. There was Dumpster diving.

And that has been the extent of my knitting in the last month. The remainder of the Trekking and those wee, skinny needles sit on the shelf staring at me. I need to read more--I've stopped reading, except for work and bedtime. I need exercise. I ... I ... I ... need to give myself a break.

Happy new year. I know in my bones that I am well and truly blessed.

a last first

2006-12-07T06:44:00.000-05:00

The Tooth Fairy did visit. She left a dollar, and Short One was very excited. Then he told his mama that he wanted his tooth back. The mama said she thought the Tooth Fairy would understand, it being his first lost tooth and all -- maybe he could leave a note under his pillow that night.

So the Short One set about making a lovely card with a big, bloody tooth on the front, a picture inside of a little guy apparently putting something under a pillow, plus more pictures of relevant objects such as a toothbrush, a pillow, another tooth and a dollar bill floating around. The note read, "Dear Tooth Fery mae I have my tooth back? I wood like that."

That night, the Tooth Fairy left a note saying she was sorry, but she had already planted his tooth in her garden, where it would turn into a beautiful flower the next spring, and she would think of him when she saw it, and would he accept in exchange this special stone from her garden? Folded into the note was a small, smooth, flat, white stone.

(I hope my washing machine is okay. Something that small wouldn't ... would it?)

When he told me about the Tooth Fairy's response, I asked him how he felt about it. "I like it," he said, rubbing the stone, then rumpled his brow. "But it looks familiar."

My birthday card from him this year was a marine wonderland, with a happy whale and some fierce piranhas. The note on back:
Happy Birthda
y! I luve you. I
hoop you have
a good day?

my first meme!

2006-11-29T17:37:00.000-05:00

I like this one -- cribbed from Melanie. And no, she doesn't know me from Moses. I just like her blog.

How it works: bold the ones you’ve read, italicize the ones you might read, cross out the ones you won’t, and underline the ones on your book shelf.

Um. Except I can't figure out how to underline or cross out, so the ones I won't read, I'll make small, and the ones on my shelf I'll and ... all-cap (SHOUT!) the ones on my shelf. The ones I might read? More often than not, this means that I've never heard of them.

The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger

The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J. K. Rowling
LIFE OF PI- Yann Martel

Animal Farm: A Fairy Story - George Orwell
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHTTIME- Mark Haddon
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
1984 - George Orwell (I don’t know!)
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - J. K. Rowling
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

THE KITE RUNNER - Khaled Hosseini (full disclosure -- not ACTUALLY on my shelf, but it's a plan)
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
Angels and Demons - Dan Brown

Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
Neuromancer - William Gibson
Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson
The Secret History - Donna Tartt

A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C. S. Lewis
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides

Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
THE LORD OF THE RINGS - J. R. R. Tolkien
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
Good Omens - Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman
Atonement - Ian McEwan

The Shadow Of The Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
Dune - Frank Herbert

teachable moments/very thanksgiving

2006-11-22T07:14:00.000-05:00

My girl and I went to the wonderful Hand Workshop (sorry, but I can't call it anything else) Craft and Design Show this weekend. It was one of those large afternoons, full of beauty, inspiration, a dash of toxicity (old men ogling my almost-16 daughter, who had inexplicably paired a short plaid schoolgirl skirt with spike heels -- toe cleavage! -- and she's got gams, by God. I had no idea what to say, because I've said it all before, so I figured I'd be there, she'd be safe, and I'd just let her have her experience. "That was creepy," she said after one particularly odd moment. "Well. Um. Yeah." [HelLO???] I mean, what's a mama to do?). And wonder.

Afterward, on our way out, as we walked that cavernous hallway that wraps around the facility, I saw coming toward us an old friend, E, and her mother. I don't know E very well, but her sister, A, worked with me years ago at the women's prison and is one of those people who, when I see her every three or four years or so, feel like Old Home Day. I met E at my youngest's former preschool and recognized her because she looks like A. We never really connected -- we were just sort of extra-happy to see each other whenever we did. I hadn't seen E since N finished preschool, about a year-and-a-half ago.

I had heard from her, though, that summer, when she called to ask me about my midwife, Nancy, who delivered my three boys at home. E was pregnant, and unhappily so -- I think she was around 40 by then and had thought that the childbearing phase was over and done with. (Ohhh, I felt her pain.) As I always do when Nancy comes up, I sang her praises, told a bit about my experience -- how important it was to me, how empowering. I don't know what the hell I said. I tried to hear her and comfort her as best I could. I encouraged her to call Nancy -- whatever I said, its underpinning was this: One of the most important things about my experience with Nancy was how holistic it was, how she engaged so seamlessly with my whole self, because the process of pregnancy encompasses way more than the womb. I think that this issue was jumping up and down on E's head at the time, and she knew she needed to have a different kind of experience. Due in November, she was planning on working with Nancy in the hospital setting. I hadn't heard from her since.

So here she comes toward me last Sunday, her beautiful mother in tow. We greeted each other, introduced our people, and I asked her about how things had gone. Some broad strokes, "Nancy was great," yadda yadda, and then she said, "I ended up having him at home!" It had become clear to her at some point in the process that that was what she needed to do, and it was the best ... oh, I don't know what superlative she used, but she had the experience she needed to have, beyond expectations. "And you were the one who started me on my journey to my homebirth!" she said. I was very moved, very happy for her.

"And you know," she continued, "J was born with Down's Syndrome."

My heart went splash in my stomach, but she was still glowing as she said it. "Okay," I said. "How is he?"

He's wonderful, his grandmother is addicted to him, all is well. They'd had no idea that he had Down's, because there were no odd heart sounds and they hadn't done amnio. E told me a bit about the birth, how extraordinary Nancy was (of course), how "we just hung out for a couple of days and celebrated him," and then went on to the pediatrician after that. We imagined how, if she'd been in a hospital, they'd probably have wafted him away to try to fix him or something, off in some white room away from her arms. But things went exactly as they needed to, with exactly the people who needed to be there, exactly where they were.

We hugged and said goodbye. I almost cried.

Remember, my girl was there. I filled her in on a little of the background, including the part about E's early unhappiness, and she said, "Why didn't she just have an abortion?"

Gawd.

Me, I'm pro-choice in principle -- which is to say, I don't want government legislating women's choices about their bodies. But I could never abort, myself. My daughter knows we had a hard time wrapping our minds around our fourth pregnancy, and I'd told her we'd even thought about thinking about abortion -- for about one-fifth of a second -- but, and this is basically what I said to her as we walked, having had children already and knowing what you make makes it exponentially harder to consider getting rid of an unexpected, unwanted pregnancy. And she knows perfectly well that by the time he arrived -- actually, quite a while before -- he was most distinctly wanted. And she's glad he's here, in spite of herself. She sees us being completely overwhelmed with the sheer volume of drama and stuff and dirt and things and energies and extracurricular activities of four kids, and she knows, as I reiterated to her right then, that I wouldn't trade a bit of it. "Well, maybe some of it," I added, because she's not stupid.

I wonder what she took away from that. I'm glad she was there when I ran into E, because it was magic and made me glad to be alive.

That evening, my girl got down to work on a mandala she had to make for her English class. She put her heart and soul into it -- it was to include quotes about what matters to her, which includes trees and music and being imaginative and ... I don't know. But she did say, "Yeah, I felt all inspired after going to that show."

big sack

2006-11-21T20:10:00.000-05:00

Exactly what I wanted. Touchable, wrap-uppable-in, huggy. I left a mistake on the back so I could tell back from front.

I had a moment yesterday that reminded me that I'm here for a reason or two, and I'm grateful. And I want to write it, and I will, another day. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone and no one. Be safe.

Like my soap dish?

Rhinebeck, schmeinbeck

2006-10-20T19:43:00.000-04:00

I'm so jealous. So many people I want to meet.

I was going to link every word of that, but I'm tired and I have to pee and you can probably find everybody else through those blogs what I linked.

In other news, I only have a few inches on the second sleeve and the pits to sew up and blocking. And blocking. Oh, me, I hope this goes well.

Oh, and a 200-page magazine to put to bed.

Knock wood on all the above.

Call me Tinkerbell

2006-10-02T10:13:00.000-04:00

because I have now tinked and reknitted the equivalent of half of what will be the Brainfart Raglan. Honestly. I keep running across yarnovers I've forgotten to do -- two rounds or five rounds or 13 rounds back, and I don't think it's possible to ladder down and create a yarnover where there was not one before, and frogging and reknitting are probably quicker than all the searching I'd have to do to learn how, and I'd rather be knitting, so. (I have no idea why my earlier laddering down a couple posts ago was successful. I am continually humbled and amazed.)

So this second ball of yarn? I'm knitting it for the fourth or fifth time. You'd think it would be looking pretty beat-up and frowzy by now, but I'm not seeing any ill effects. And this stuff -- Rowan Soft Tweed -- is wonderfully obedient. The first few times I ripped back, I ran a lifeline through the row just before the error row, but I always screwed it up around the yarnovers so that the line would jump up or down a row, which made the ripping back ... complicated. So I finally just said to hell with it and frogged without the lifeline, and the yarn held the stitches so that I was able to easily get the thing back on the needles.

"You must really love knitting," said my husband when he saw me doing yesterday's big frogging (today's was only about an inch-and-a-half, thanks).

"Shut up," said I.

But you know what? I guess I do. And one of these days, it'll love me back.

if she only knew

2006-09-29T22:55:00.000-04:00

A quote: Mom, why are you taking pictures of your knitting?

(It was not pretty. Brainfart Raglan living up to her name. More ripping. More laddering. Back on track.)

Quote continued: You should start one of those freaky blogs you're always reading. You've got more than enough stuff for it.

heehee. Here she is, with two of her brothers, dancing in last night's hail storm with a bowl on her head.

TGIF, by gum.

I can't stop

2006-09-27T19:49:00.000-04:00

I can't tell you how glad I am that I'm not George Allen.

well, blow me down

2006-09-27T19:16:00.000-04:00

twice in one day??? Nah.

But at this moment I am watching a bit of The Thief and the Cobbler with my kids, and I am once again struck that I need to tell anyone who loves art and design and attention to detail and humor and classic films for children -- that's the thing, here, is respect for children AND the grownups who love them -- that you must see this movie, with or without your kids.

two steps forward, two steps back

2006-09-27T07:06:00.000-04:00

It's a very good thing I'm a process knitter. Have I already said that somewhere here? I've been thinking it a lot lately. I'm also beginning to think of the linebacker raglan as the Brainfart Raglan. Yep, I capitalized it; it's official.

What I like:

Isn't that nice, how the knit stitches of the 2-by-2 rib of the neck band dovetail neatly into the two-stitch bar running between the yarnovers? I had no idea that would happen -- or, actually, that there would be that nifty bar there between the yos at all, actually. Gives me a little shiver. (I know, I'm easy.) Alas, it's the only of the four potential instances of that serendipity --

the rest of them all look like the photo to the right, with a dogleg from the neckband rib into the raglan bar. I considered yanking back (yet again) and redoing the math, but I don't want the neckband any bigger or smaller than it already is, and I couldn't figure out how to make it break correctly, and life is too short. At least the nice one is on the front. And then there's this:

See how the raglan bar thingie is only one stitch wide at the beginning? I don't quite have my mind wrapped around why yet, but I suppose it's because that's the beginning of the round. I'll use the Stephanie Pearl cheat method to create a faux stitch there later, when I'm doing the very nominal finishing that this thing will require.

I was less sure of myself when it came to what to do about this:

See that stray hole, low and to the left? I'm new at yarnovering, I don't know what the hell I'm doing or how to fix it, and I had doubts as to whether this thing would evaporate with blocking, but I was not about to frog a third time unless I had to. So I laddered down to the offending glitch.

Here, enormous gratitude to Elizabeth Zimmerman, whose words in Knitting Without Tears give me heart:

... contrary to superstition, a dropped stitch does not immediately zoom down the bottom of your work like a ruun in a stocking. At the most it will slither down one or two rows, and cling there, moaning piteously, and waiting to be picked up; if it is to descend any further, it must be helped. When you get it to where the trouble is, fix the error, and crochet-hook the stitch up again. Your intelligence will tell you when to hook it to the front and when to the back ....

But would said "intelligence" tell me what to do when yarnovers were involved? For a while, it didn't. And then, somehow, I knew that I needed to ladder down not one stitch but two.

'Twas an alarming sight. But I picked up stitch by stich, trying to figure it out based on what the opposite-side yarnovers looked like, and then I did the second column, and ta-da --

It came out just right, and now I'm roughly back where I was before the first frogging. And I don't really know how or why, but it's fine with me.

(This has just GOT to be the MOST FAScinating post in the history of blogdom. Makes me glad that very few people who know me know I blog.)

Here's the Vintage Velvet, felted:

I think it came out dandy, and I look forward to wearing it once I won't melt in it. Although I'm not absolutely sure I felted it enough, and it has a couple of weird sticking-out things that I'm not sure as to whether they are woven-in ends or worms. And am I supposed to see through it when I hold it up to the light and stretch it the teeniest bit? Still, it feels cool and sinuous and luxe. Ooo-lala. (Thankyou, hon'.)

And for anyone who thought the pooch shots were cute? You wanna see fo-real cute? I give you serious cuteness. Meet Florence Foster Jenkins.

Hour of the Wolf

2006-09-25T19:38:00.000-04:00

Lately I've had a problem with waking up at ridiculously early hours with my brain going clackety clackety about all the things I haven't been getting done or doing well enough or dealing with or whatever, and it's always pointless, because in doing this I exhaust myself so that later in the day I don't remember all the things I was beating myself up at 4:30 a.m. about not remembering to do during the day and ... you see my problem. I've tried having a pen and a scrap of paper on the nightstand, but I've never been good at keeping track of notes to self.

So, these days, I'm working on this linebacker top-down raglan, right? And, if I may say, I'm rather pleased with the stand-up, 2-by-2 rib, inch-and-a-half-high, kind of loosey-goosey neckline I've done (tubular cast-on!), and I'm also pleased with the decorative, paired yarnovers marching down the raglan, and this yarn is yummy. So, this morning, at the usual ridiculous hour, I thought, oh no, I've done -- what -- 10 or so increase rounds? And each of those increases things by 8 stitches? With a 3 st/inch gauge and starting with 76 stitches, that means I've now got 156 stitches, which means 52 inches, and each increase round adds 2 2/3 inches, and I've got several more increases to go before I hit my raglan length of 11 inches ... I planned a linebacker sweater, not a tent, oh nooooooooooooo!

I was on the verge of frogging the whole thing yet again (don't ask), except I had 4 kids to get out the door to school and yadda yadda. Finally, a couple hours later in the shower, I made the connection that the whole terrifying number of stitches includes sleeve stitches, which will not be part of the body stitches, and all made sense. After work today, I frogged only the 10 rounds back to before the stray extra yarnover that I decided I wasn't willing to live with. (I love freaking my husband out by ripping back what he knows to be at least a couple hard-won hours of work.) Ready to rock and roll again, if I can just figure out where that 144th stitch went.

Mary, thanks for the tech help. On a less frantic evening, I may go back and fix that. (Heh. Who am I kidding? But at least I've got it for future reference.) And that scarf looks wonderful. Don't throw your back out or anything.

Mags, the pooch is Bogart, 3/4 chi, 1/4 poo. The wee man dog always seems to be around at those opportune photographic moments.

My Vintage Velvet scart is lovely, as expected. I've got some questions about it still -- may run it by my LYS (that would be Lettuce Knit, at Stony Point, nearest my neck of the woods in Bon Air). Pix later, when my dorter isn't hogging the laptop, wherein the pix reside.

Patience

2006-09-22T18:30:00.000-04:00

So what do I do while waiting for a swatch to block? The coral-colored stuff draped on the Boggart -- Rowan Soft Tweed, Reading the Ball Band Involves Locating the Reading Glasses, 50-odd % wool, something % viscose, something % something, 10-ish % silk, ahh -- the color is Bramble.

(Bramble? Um, whatever.) I'm looking to make a top-down raglan linebacker sweater with an open-ish neckline, sort of a cross between this and this, with a bit of striping, Bramble up top, another color down below. I got the yarn at a seasonal sale at my LYS, enough for an abundant sweater ... not all in one color. I got one bag of the Bramble (sigh) and one bag of Blanket (grey, with blue fliths), each 10 balls of 87 m, and I already had one ball of a color I believe is called Sprig, although I can't be sure.

That lonely ball is how I discovered this lovely yarn in the first place. DH was given a wonderful hemp-wool sweater by the Outlet Shopper Queen, my sister (D in the last entry -- hereafter known as OSQ), and one day last winter it turned up with a horrific hole in the back, down low. Called the company, sweater discontinued, no idea where to get the yarn, yadda yadda; I went to LYS, which had no hempy stuff, but did have this in exACTly the right color, which was the Sprig.

As I made my gimpy attempt at darning, using probably 7 inches of the $9-ish skein, folks, I fell in love. Months later, when I saw said yarn at the LYS on sale, even though I was looking specifically for something for DH's first sweater from me and it just wasn't happening, and I saw a basket of the Rowan stuff and couldn't find enough in any one color for a sweater, by golly, I still had to take a bunch home. I do so look forward to wrapping myself in it. And DH, this man, he's just the kind of man who totally understands this kind of thing. He'll be getting a nice ... something-or-other for Christmas. (I managed to make him felted clogs without him knowing until he unwrapped the enormous things -- we felted them Xmas a.m., adding to 4-kid X-mas stress, but we're used to that.) (Suggestions, from the void? Something less than a sweater? I do have ideas, but I welcome help.)

So, for now, what do I do while I wait out the blocking? Maybe a few rows on Diamond (she needs a name). This, of course, involves a half-hour of trying to figure out where I left off, not to mention, you know, finding the copy I made of the chart, on which I wrote out my system. Which is to say, never mind.

Heh. Yeah, by the time all that happens, the swatch will have blocked, kids will have slept through a night, two football games will have been played, and I will have nailed down the specs for my partially self-designed sweater.

It's a good thing its gauge is 3 st. / in. ... Innnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnstant grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrratification!

Son, now THAT's using your head. [subhead: this is actually Sept. 22]

2006-07-15T19:32:00.000-04:00

[I saved this as a draft in July but edited it and finally posted it today, Sept 22 -- I don't know how to make it reflect accurate time!]

For weeks now, I've been planning a post with that headline. It owes to my 6-year-old's very first swim meet, in which he was actually 5 at the time, and in which he was fastest 5-year-old in freestyle and the 2nd-fastest in backstroke, his other event. And, by god, he swam a legal race, and I can say that because I'm a strokes-and-turns judge. He didn't use his arms, but damned if he didn't stay on his back all the way. His bangs were even dry all the way up to about 5 feet from the finish. See?

And then here's the source of the title of this post.
...
You don't see that one, one of my favorite pictures of all time, the one of him just out of the pool after the race, holding onto his head because that was the point of contact for his big finish, poor guy, because I CAN'T FIND THE PICTURE . My computer ate it. Or, actually, let's be more specific here: My 15-year-old daughter CAUSED my computer to eat it. I don't know what she did.

[Back to real time, September 22:]
Amazingly, there has been knitting.

This is many hours of work on the Diamond Tunic, from Norah Gaughan's gorgeous Knitting Nature, which I've set aside (read: stalled out on). I'm doing it in Rowan Calmer rather than the recommended yarn, because I got gauge in the Calmer ... which I actually had it on hand before I had my little accident at Amazon and got this book. This is for my mother, a joint gift from my sister and me -- D bought the yarn; I do the work (and I like my part much better, thanks) -- but it's kicking my butt. A 20-row cycle, with 20-stitch repeating cycles within each row that reverse halfway across the row, creating a mirror image across the garment, and the stitch cycles themselves seem random -- the brain wraps around the pattern a little bit by the time you end the row (kpppkkppppkkkpkkppppOrSomesuch), and it feels like you're getting a break on the even rows when you knit the even rows knitting the nooses and purling the purl bumps, but then you have a whole new series of cycles on the next row. And it's really cool to watch the fabric shape up -- I love the fabric, I love the Calmer -- but ye gods. It feels glacial. And, as we need a lot of ease here, it is vast. And it's not for me. And I wasn't having any fun, and I needed to, so I set it aside and picked up ...

...the wet spaghetti. Er, the Vintage Velvet from Scarf Style, which I finished this morning and is now waiting in the washer for my dryer to finish its current load. I did weave in the ends, but I have to wonder how well they'll hold -- Muench's Touch Me is slick as all get-out. Must say, though, I had a lot of fun knitting this, much more than when I started, and it's been fun watching my darlin' man smile when he sees me working on it.

Maybe I'll put up a post-felt shot less than three months from now, eh? For now:

As I waited for that photo to load, I realized that the dryer had stopped. So I got the scarf out of the wash, and -- urgh. Wet cat. It ain't pretty. I did read some other bloggers who reported similar alarm at this stage, and all was ultimately well, but I still think I'm gonna be sick.
Or maybe I'll just go work some more on me next Diamond Tunic avoidance project:

Hippo Doggie needs a friend

2006-06-11T21:35:00.000-04:00

and she's getting one, before too much longer. For moral support through her surgery. As soon as I survive the next 10 days.

I've actually been working on it (him? her? her.) for the last couple weeks, in front of evening TV or here and there at the many swim practices that now fill my life outside of work. "What are you making?" people ask, eying this long, dark blue highly irregular scarf-looking thing. "Ummm ... yeah." A creature? A little guy. Girl, I mean. Guy. I don't know. Yep, color me a process knitter. I love this old saying from grad school, on teaching composition, where a little girl says, "How can I know what I mean until I see what I say?" Always loved that. So true. How can I know what I knit until I see what I ... knit? Doesn't have the same ring, somehow, but hey.

We just had our first swim meet of the summer, and my little one swam his first two races. In backstroke, his bangs remained dry until 3 or 4 feet before the finish. He was the second-fastest 5-year-old, and that's without even having used his arms. I couldn't be prouder! Or more exhausted. G'night.

Checking In

2006-06-06T21:39:00.000-04:00

I don't really have anything to say. But I'm grateful to have a place to not say it in.

I have an acquaintance who's really, really hurt, and far from home. In my niece's high school, where my husband teaches English, two families have lost children -- one of those children apparently responsible for the loss of the other.

I am about to drown in my work, and I've got a mysterious health thing that's probably fine but still worrisome.

But all of this shall pass. Plenty of nourishment out there. Thanks to all from whom I draw.

help me help me help me thank you thank you thank you

2006-05-22T09:06:00.000-04:00

Next to "I hate him. He's scum," that's my favorite Ann Lamott line ever (my stripped-down version of it, anyway). The "scum" line is from Operating Instructions, referring to her colicky infant whom we know perfectly well she loves desperately--I remember reading that and thinking, YES! Permission to feel what I feel.

She does it again in a wonderful essay at Salon (if you don't have a membership there, go ahead and watch the little ad for a day pass--worth it). That colicky infant is growing up and still kicking her butt. But Ms. Lamott? She kicks ass. Annie, thank you, thank you, thank you for helping me, helping me, helping me yet again.

WIPs? I got 'em.

2006-05-18T17:58:00.000-04:00

It occurs to me that, for a knitting blog, I don't write about knitting, so much. This may be because lately I've done relatively little knitting. The items from the last post? The coffee cup? Last summer. The Dog? Maybe a year and a half ago.

And she's still not finished. To wit: the big ridickerous flap under her chin, which I need to just saw off and then sew her up.

But she does have a tutu.
Still, I've been stuck for a long time, because she needs more extensive plastic surgery. See how her arms and legs are splayed just a bit too far out? My plan is to cut wedges from her armpits and ... what is that place? Legpits? Anyway, I need to draw her extremities in toward the front a bit. Then perhaps a spot of nipping and tucking so as her bottom is more flat, so she can sit more comfortably.

But I'm so stuck. I had the BEST time making her -- knitted all in one piece in Lamb's Pride, then when I guessed I was about at her neck I added in the purple frufru stuff, then where the tutu would probably be, orange and fuchsia eyelash, and so on, and then sew her up except at the neck, and gather the edges of the ears, then the hot wash in the lingerie bag. She was actually cuter, more interesting, before I stuffed her -- her face had more structure, more personality. Lately, I've been working out in my head in more detail what I need to do, and then I'll give her another hot swim. That will be a delightful day, I know. For now, though, she lives here:
(Look carefully, and by her butt you'll see another WIP -- a scarf from the Scarf Style book, the Vintage Velvet cable thing in Muench Touch Me, which my Darlin' Husband gave me for my birthday in November and which will be delicious but is like knitting with wet spaghetti and makes me want to shoot myself. [But not so badly that I failed to kind of enjoy my first foray into cabling.] A worthy challenge, indeed.)

Basically, I have this problem -- I'm pretty swell at beginnings, but I suck at follow-through ... although it helps if it's on a deadline for some outside entity or person. My first sweater, for myself? 10 months. Now, mind you, it was endless miles of stockinette in COTTON -- this great, tunicky, long-sleeved THING in this marvelous tomato color. (More on this later.) My second and third sweaters, both for my sister? A couple months each. (1: Teva Durham's Weekend Unisex pullover thing in Noro Big Kureyon, the subtle blue-purple colorway, and 2: a very simple Oat Couture pullover pattern -- front and back are the same -- slip stitch ribbing? Pattern written for both chunky and worsted weight? -- in Linie Iceland, the fuchsia-cranberry colorway, and I was happy to find that those little plicky things do not shed. Both sweaters were delights to knit, and no, I don't have pictures, and they're in Pennsylvania. Maybe next year.) Christmas before last, a couple pairs of Bev Galeskas' felted clogs, one of them for my husband, and I managed to do it (and a variety of other knitted gifts) without him knowing.

But since last Christmas, I realize, I've been on a long, slow slide into that knitting fug. More WIPs:

This is my in-laws' Christmas present. LAST Christmas ... six months ago? The WIP is under the yarn tornado, which is the result of my chihuahua-poodle mix Bogart having spiderwebbed the downstairs one day in my absence. Eventually, this will be a pillow cover, intarsia in Lamb's Pride like the coffee cup, a rendition of an oil painting by my father-in-law, a landscape with fields and a barn in the foreground, the Blue Ridge and a threatening sky in the background. See the threatening sky in the bag? I'm actually almost halfway done -- through the fields and part of the barn (thank you Jay-zus -- I needed that crazy red after all those earth tones). I pooped out at Christmas, knowing I'd never make it, and hoped to get it done for Dad's Feb. birthday. Oh, well.

I did, however, finish one pillow cover -- this one for my brother-in-law.

I like this right much. It's roughly 13 x 13, and I had a blast working it -- and no, I don't know what the hell I did -- no pattern. Looks finished, right? The back is even sewn on and all that. But astute readers (craft nerds) will have picked up on the difficulty here. Which is that there seems to be no such thing as a 13 x 13 pillow form.

You see my problem.

There are 12-inch pillow forms, which don't work. This is a 14-inch pillow form. Now, my mother-in-law has given me a perfectly logical solution, which should take all of about 20 minutes: Rip open the pillow form, remove filling, cut an inch strip off two adjacent sides, refill and sew up. But that involves FINDING the sewing machine. So.

(Yep, that's the Bogart. I want it known that, while I generally dislike small dogs, I like Bogart. The Boge rocks.)

And then there are these.

On the left, with the CD perched on top, an example of severe Second Slipper Syndrome -- these will be for my aunt in Canada but were originally for her friend she is visiting in Germany -- I didn't get them done in time because it wasn't humanly possible, so she's giving the slippers I made for her to her friend, and she will take these. (I gotta get cracking -- she comes home in about a week.) To the right, behind the weird chocolate-smelling lotion that DH bought by accident, a random hat thing out of gorgeous Manos (knit round and round for a while, get bored, start ribbing, get bored, learn how to bobble and make a bunch of warty bobbles, get bored, do a raised zigzag thing, etc., until I have a long Dr. Seuss hat for next winter).

And, last but not remotely least but ... well, I guess it depends on your perspective:

Hard to see, and this may be very sad, but this is my duffle from my Easter weekend visit to my mother in Georgia, and it remained thus until a couple days ago, but with more and more laundry piled on top of it. If you look carefully, toward the upper left you see a ball of glowing, chocolate brown Rowan Calmer, the yummiest cotton anything I've ever touched -- one of several, bought by my sister to be knitted by me for my mother into a vast, sleeveless tank thing. Mama is not small, and she needs to be comfortable and she's a little partickler ... yeah. I'm swatching, and I've picked a couple stitch patterns from Barbara Walker. But you know? I'm having a hard time.

A baby step this last weekend, though -- on Saturday, I taught myself how to yarn over. I don't know why, but I have been crazy-daunted by that.

And I find myself wondering what a wiggly rib would look like felted in Lamb's Pride.

So there.

FO

2006-05-16T19:38:00.000-04:00

In this case, "FO" means Found Object. I can't say "Finished Object," because I don't really know what this is. A potholder? A trivet? A mini wall hanging? (I took it to an office I worked in for a stretch, but I had to hang it by one corner, tilted, for it to make sense. It still didn't.) But I found it. Actually, my husband did, under a towering pile of books and magazines and papers and god knows what else on an end table in our living room. (We really LIVE in our living room.) Ann? This is it, that mysterious project from a couple of posts ago with a buncha bobbins hanging off it, my first foray into intarsia. This is from last summer, when I had this intense hunger for color and a new skill and a puzzle, so I sort of laid out the basic shape on an excel sheet and then pillaged my stash for every Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride color I could find ... and then went to Lettuce Knit (Richmond) and supplemented.

Have I waxed about Lamb's Pride? Nothing felts like it, nothing is so gorgeous. My dream sweater may be an Aran mess (new skills!) out of That Red. I don't know what it's called, but it's the red around the border in this thing.

And finally, a WIPFTL (WIP for too long): Here She is.

More on Hippo Doggie later.

I went to the zoo today and was present within 15 minutes after the birth of a pair of Armenian mouflon twins. Wish them well, and happy googling. Speaking of twins, visit Melanoma Uberalis, linked at right, and then make goo-goo eyes at the fathers (and friends) of your children.

Sanity is ...

2006-05-08T20:07:00.000-04:00

... not trying to create a post while the two youngest are semi-arguing. (Full disclosure: a few minutes later here, past both of their bed times, they're quiet. I'm of the mind that if it ain't broke, don't fix it.)

My third kid, previously known as 3 (I can't be sure, but I'm not willing to look it up, because life is too short) and now known as Malarkey, is too much like me. At least in some ways. I don't feel right unless I'm doing something creative; Malarkey, who started crying as soon as I woke him up this morning because it was 8 a.m., whereas I usually wake him up at 7:30 because ... long story, but circumstances allowed longer sleep today. Why was he crying? Because he wouldn't have enough time. (The bus comes at 9.) Time for what? Time for "everything."

Poor little guy, little hummingbird.

I am SO visiting with my homeopath friend on Wednesday.

Anyway -- so he informed me that he wanted to make a bear, and I said sure, fine. On Saturday, his old Waldorf school (he's now a public school kid because, you know, freelance writer + public school teacher + 4 kids DOES NOT = private school tuition) had its wonderful annual May Faire, with May pole dancing and flower wreaths and drumming circle and old friends and extraordinary food (damn old hippies and vegetarians and foodies, oh my), where he bought, with his own money, a sewn felt mole. He wants to make a bear like the mole. So I went online looking for patterns -- found myriad teddy bear patterns (don't you want to knit one, honey?), but he said, "no, I want ... nevermind." I asked him to tell me what he wanted to say, and he drew a pic that looked remarkably like his mole. So I basically traced his mole and extrapolated the rest, found some brown felt, got him sewing it with purple embroidery thread, because that's what we have ... and a little while ago he went to bed with a mostly sewn bear, and he's miraculously healed.

Don't you know, I should have been saying good night to my boys while I was writing this post. I'm going to go kiss sleeping babies now. (Babies ... my second child is 5'8". Oy.)

The Tooth Fairy Is a Bad Mother

2006-05-03T21:44:00.000-04:00

And she's in a knitting ... fug.

As of a couple days ago, my third child had lost two teeth in two days. Yesterday, he notified me that he still had two teeth under his pillow. This morning, as I was waking him up, I realized he still had two teeth under his pillow. So what did I do? As he staggered up the stairs -- from his basement bedroom all the way up to our second floor because he can't tolerate the eau de new paint of the first-floor bathroom -- I stole two bucks out of his packpack and stuffed them under his pillow. His teeth are in my pocket as I write.

I broke a $20 at the tolls today, so I've got some one$.

How do you spell that noise Lurch used to make in The Addams Family?

As for "all will be revealed," Ann, it may be that I lied: The FO that was the result of that last photo, with all those crazy colors and hanging-windy-thingies (why can't I think of the name for them???), seems to have disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle that is my house.

Er, that would be the Tooth Fairy's House.

I love knitting people

2006-04-26T18:26:00.000-04:00

For want of a comma: I love knitting, people. That's true, too, but I'm saying exactly what I mean, here: I love people who knit.

(I are an editer. Didja know?)

I'm just sayin'. I love knitting people. I love, for instance, going to the Harlot's blog and seeing her seeing knitters, and then I go down the rabbit trails she provides (Update: I learned to add links to the sidebar! What's next???) Endless. And from these I find more knitters. Plus, I want to share stuff I find on my own. These are just a few of the folks I want to list HERE, and in my sidebar. (Mwahhhhhhhh!)

Argh, argh, and double argh. I think I'm going to have to take a mental health day sometime soon.

People, I love knitting. I love knitting, people. I love knitting people. I love people. Well, some of them. I love. People I love, knitting (WHAT could be BETTER?). Knitting people love I. (That one makes my teeth itch, like that Paula Cole song that makes me want to shoot myself: "Open up your morning light, and say a little prayer for I.") You get it. You're smart. You're KNITTING PEOPLE.

Beautiful Ann, all will be revealed. Eventually. On the mental health day. Probably sometime in July.

The Short One: Mom. What does exercise do?

Me: You are SO asking the wrong person ....

get me outta here ... or not

2006-04-14T18:39:00.000-04:00

Okay, this photo is supposed to appear at the end of this post. One of these days I will wrap my mind about this positioning-photos thing.

Last week, my sister and I flew down to visit my mamaleh in Georgia (me from Richmond, my sister from Pennsylvania) (my having left my cell phone at home made the airport-finding-sister thing exciting, let me tell you). In a little town south of there, Watkinsville, is a wonderful [how to do that scratching-out thing The Harlot does?] little ... no, not little ... wonderful (yes, it bears repeating: wonderfully wonderful) yarn shop called ... the name escapes me. But I can assure you there is only one yarn shop in Watkinsville, Georgia, and it's right downtown. My point? I was there exactly 29 hours and I went there thrice. And I wanted to stay. In fact, that place made me think I could live there if I had to.

Thank God I don't have to. And that's all I need to say about dat.

For now, here's this, actually an old project:

Yes, this is where this photo was supposed to appear.

Actually, I wrote this post WHILE I was in Georgia, and I just now went through and changed all the tenses so it wouldn't sound stupid. So sorry, but I don't have the energy to fix the headline.

A new thought, though -- I love knitting people, and I love reading anything they have to say, and I love how we share each other, and I look forward to figuring out how to link to other blogs and all that. Guess that's not a new thought. But it's important to me.

And another thing: I'll miss looking at darlin' Ace. But I won't miss listening to him. I admit this freely.

somebody tell me how to get this in my sidebar

2006-04-01T18:39:00.000-05:00

Bootie Call 2

2006-03-30T21:08:00.000-05:00

Lookie lookie:

Yo. My first uploaded photos. The booties.

More to come. This photo-uploading thing is frighteningly easy.

Baby steps

2006-03-30T18:44:00.000-05:00

This last weekend, I was in a hotel room by myself for a night. Woulda been two nights, except Darling Daughter showed up on the second night, collapsed into the other bed and asked, "Can you turn off your light?"

It was a volleyball tournament out of town, a bunch of 15-year-old girls in a hotel ... yes, drama did ensue. But I did get ONE night by myself in a room, and you know what I did? I did not work. I watched the last half of My Best Friend's Wedding , went to bed whenever I damn well pleased, woke up whenever I damn well pleased (6:13 a.m.) (hesh up!), went down to the lobby and got myself two cups of 24-hour-complimentary coffee (yum!) and sat my butt down and learned how to use my lovely, complex digi-cam my dad gave me a couple years ago.

Mind you, this means I learned how to take pictures with it ... sort of. This does not mean I have yet learned how to post them. But they do now reside in my laptop, which is in the clutches of my newly-13-y-o boy.

All of this is to say that before too long I will be able to post pix, and part of the point of this blog will have been conquered. Somewhat. Part of the nature of the beast is that I'll be learninglearninglearning, so perhaps the more accurate thing to say would be this: I'm on my way. Look for some color, soon. Because color is a really, really, really important part of what I'm about, here.

I have a feeling I may be inflicting some gardening on readers as well, so look out. All you folks out there in the vacuum. Seeing as I've told exactly one (or two, maybe? See how organized I am?) folks that I even have a blog.

TK: Herself ... Hippo Doggie, soon to undergo plastic surgery, but not without appropriate documentation ....

Bootie Call

2006-03-14T19:47:00.000-05:00

Proudest knitting moment so far: (it's been so long since I posted that I don't even know if I'm being redundant or not) I made booties. Not only did I make booties, but I made my own pattern. I had a bootie emergency, and I couldn't find a pattern I liked in time to make said booties, so I wild-guessed it and loosely based my pattern on Bev Galeskas' felted clogs pattern, down to newborn scale (but who remembers how small newborns actually are?) with extra rounds on the uppers and then a ribbed cuff. Turquoise soles and cuff, chartreuse uppers.

I am now the kind of knitter who can figure out her own pattern. I'm so happy to be able to say that.

Note: This does not mean that I can actually replicate this pattern. I'll try, at some point, but I don't know when. Not just due to the time issue -- I made an honest effort to record what I was doing (CO 19, K19, K1, M1, Kwhatever...), but the number of stitches dictated by what I wrote down never matched what actually transpired on the needles. There was also some asymmetry going on. So. You know.

But I did take a picture of them with my DIGITAL camera, after learning how to delete things off of a full memory card ... progress. One day I'll post it. Postus vomitus in the offing.

Meanwhile, I've been reminded that I promised to return MY computer to that boy from whom I wrested it.

Gnight.

i ask you

2006-02-20T21:35:00.000-05:00

what IS this thing about knit bloggers and their cats?
(would include 19 links to exemplify this phenomenon ... if I knew how.)

Got It!

2006-02-20T17:27:00.000-05:00

The new name is (drumroll, please) Hippo Doggie. (Rim shot?) Which will become clear just as soon as I learn enough about my very nice camera to take a picture, let alone post a picture. Let's just say that the name "Hippo Doggie" embodies what I am about, here. Do I have to articulate what that is? She (why do I know she's a she? Well, DUH) is my favorite UFO. She is my favorite knitted/felted creation thus far. She is the harbinger of things to come, even of things to be finished.

One day, she will be finished, as well.

I'm just afraid I'm going to screw her up.

(Actually, who am I kidding? I'm just flat not getting around to finishing her. Life. Too much of it. All that.) (Sorry, HD.)

I was just about to explain what I needed to do to finish her, but I don't think I can do that and be NOT appalling without posting photos (description involves phrases like "cut wedges out of groin area to bring in legs"). And you know what THAT means. It means posting photos ... and learning how to take them. Not necessarily in that order.

See? HD's already doing her job, inspiring me to get off my butt. ANYthing can happen, now!

Now, if I could just figure out how to change that banner ....

D'oh!

2006-02-19T08:29:00.000-05:00

I have to change the blog's name. When I created it, blogspot wouldn't let me have "Procrastiknitter," so I tried it with the 'ing' ending and it worked. I'm honestly not sure why I didn't make the connection that there was an extant blog called "Procrastiknitter" out there -- apologies to Holli -- but I didn't. (Slaps self on forehead.) So I'll be thinking furiously on what the new name should be.

But it ain't gon' happen right this minute.

5 needs me to watch him throw Bogart's toy for him, and to narrate every move: "...Then he's going to stare at me, and then I'm going to throw ... you need to see his eyes! Mom, can you see his yittle eyes, now? Darn, he charged!"

One Tired Mother...

2006-02-16T18:37:00.000-05:00

...is a really fun thing to say to one's 12-year-old son and then watch his eyes widen. He looked at me for a beat, and then he repeated,"One. Tired. Mother." Then plunged back into Runescape.

Trust me to begin a blog and probably the worst time to begin a blog. Times like this, I'm really glad I haven't told anyone about this yet -- I'm still not sure why, but it will be fun to see how people find their ways here. Or not. Anyway, I just finished a job -- not a tough one, but lots of hours for one who has the home life that I do, Wonder Husband notwithstanding -- and, today, started a new job.

And it is good.

I've freelanced for these folks for three years now, and they're bringing me on part-time and giving me not one title but TWO. The welcome today made me feel like I was attending the Oscars or something -- a $100 gift certificate to a local hooty-tooty beauty salon, then an enormous bouquet of flowers delivered .... It is good.

So no, no knitting today. I have been frogging in front of the Olympics (and, okay, American Idol) every night since my last post, though -- still a tangle that I don't understand, but I may finish frogging those seven (!) rows tonight, whereupon I will celebrate by purling a row. (It will probably be a purl row. I hope it's a knit row, but I don't know which end the working yarn will end up on.) Beyond that, I should probably wait until I have the time and the brains to make sure I'm clear on what I need to do for that slip-stitch rib, back-asswards. I'm sure it's simpler than I think.

Did I mention I'm tired?

One of my favorite things: Surviving a big fat work push, and then rewarding myself with big fat knitting. (And, of course, knitting in dribs and drabs throughout, just to get through.) Add to the reward knitting the following: learning how to add links, learning how to post photos, learning how to TAKE photos ....

Don't Mind Me

2006-02-13T18:41:00.000-05:00

It's dinnertime, I'm recently home from the second-to-last day of my current nearly-full-time gig, I have very little to say, but I want to at least check in every day in the early days of this blog. Which I haven't told a soul about. So I'm basically writing into the void. That's fine -- it's a matter of discipline. For some odd reason, I'm still excited.

Looking forward to learning enough about this alien universe of blogging to be able to integrate links in text, and to pop a list into the sidebar ....

No knitting today. A couple more rows to frog on the sweater. It may happen during the Olympics tonight. It may not.

And the Olympics? As in the Harlot-instituted Olympics? I'm on Team Guilty Toward Ongoing Projects.

I'm doing it. I'm really doing it.

2006-02-12T19:07:00.000-05:00

Pardon me for being a tiny bit cranky in my first post, but I’ve just been frogging the bottom of the back of my sister’s sweater, and it’s landed me in my own personal hell. Before I started, I guess I thought that once I picked open the slip knot, it would just go zip-zip, and I could reknit the seven rows in question quickly, then get on to the first sleeve. Very quickly, I realized that getting through the cast-on bit was a more complex operation and would take some time. That was fine, almost meditative, and I had a fine time thinking about the blog that I apparently am beginning (I've been afraid of the idea for a while, and I have a lot to think through before I really know what I'm about here ... but that may be for another post), but then I reached the second row and it was even more difficult. Why? Whywhywhy?

The pattern is ... missing at the moment. I'd put it nearby, because I knew I was going to want to include the details, but then my boys, ages 10 and 5 (hereafter known as 10 and 5, respectively) arrived at the front door soaking wet from playing in the two inches of wet snow we got overnight here in Virginia, and I had to peel them out of their layers and negotiate about hair washing and hot coacoa, and the pattern has wandered off. Oat Couture? A raglan pullover, very simple, that can be knit in either chunky or worsted. I, being an instant gratification kind of gal, am of course doing the chunky rendition, in Linie Iceland 97, in the reds -- a loosely plied beauty with little white plicky things all over it that I expected to shed but don't. A pleasure to knit. And not cheap -- my darling sister, tagging along to the LYS with me one day, fell hard for a sweater the owner had made in the same yarn, different colorway, and promptly forked out the $150-odd for enough for this sweater.

So maybe I didn't pay complete attention to the instructions about the slip-stitch rib, and maybe we had family visiting and I was a wee bit in my cups. I realized this when I started the front, which is the same as the back, and checked the instructions again and saw the part where it says to knit the slipstitch rib until 1 1/2 inch and NOT 1/2 inch, as I'd thought. In looking at the photograph, I also realized that what I had knitted didn't look like the picture, and I figured out that I'd ended the ribbing on a purl row (or knit -- whichever one I was NOT supposed to end with) so that what we see on the right side of the garment is the wrong side of the slipstitch rib.

Sigh.

So I worked out this whole scheme where I would finish the front and then take my circular and pick up the stitches eight rows up so I could just frog it and (viola!) there it'd be, ready for me to knit back down to the end, correctly. I felt very smart. And now I have a tangled mess.

But you know what? I'm going to get through it, and it will be right, and all will be well.

This blog. I suppose it's going to be yet another knit blog, although it certainly won't be limited to knitting. My reasons for doing this, as I know them so far, are:
1. I want to write about my knitting, and I can't seem to do it by hand. Isn't that weird?
2. I'm hoping it will get me off my butt enough to learn about my very nice digital camera my dad gave to me, so that I can take photos and upload them and open up that whole new world. I've been itching to take some pix, and to document my knitting as I see other knit bloggers do. I love that.

Please to excuse me; 10 needs his hot coacoa.

3. I want to explore the creative process ... but not in a particularly intellectual way. More in a mindful way. I don't know. Never mind.
4. I want to see what happens. Things always happen.

Speaking of things happening: I just had to get up and help my 12-year-old son (12) because he stepped in dog vomit. Barefoot, of course -- and he tolerated it surprisingly well, as he is the one of all my children with the squirreliest stomach.

Did I mention I have children? Just one more, my 15-year-old daughter (who has yet to forgive me for 12, 10 and 5). And a husband, for whom I'd like to take more time to come up with a pseudonym. Dogs, a cat, a bird, a rabbit, some fish. Before long, I may be nattering about gardening almost as much as knitting. I'm also a writer and editor and proofreader, and I love words, so ... this is all kind of exciting. Welcome. And thanks. Whom am I thanking? I don't know. Just putting it out there.