I’m Not Even Going To Offer An Excuse for My Blog Absence This Time, Frakking April

So I woke up one day last week and decided my life needs something.  I’m missing something, a je ne sais quoi, a joi de vivre that defies me at every turn.  I’ve undertaken a quest, if you will, to find that elusive thing I’m missing.  It has so many names, but it boils down to one: happiness.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty happy most of the time, but in a self-deprecating way.  I’m more inclined to make fun of myself for my inabilities and if I’ve learned anything from reading Linda’s blog it’s that I should be asking myself why I immediately jump to the conclusion that I can’t/won’t/shouldn’t do something.

I’ve spoken about this a bit on the fitness website I contribute to, My 15 Minutes to Better Fitness that I have special circumstances regarding an old injury that I have to consider when working out.  (If you’re interested in it, it’s under the Andrea Wrote This category.) I’m bound and determined to be a runner, but after going well for a couple weeks, my bum foot would swell to the point where I nearly couldn’t wear shoes, so I’d rest it.  It’d shrink and I’d feel good again, start running again, and boom. Balloon foot.  After three times of this, frustration and bitching to my husband about how I just wanted to run for crying out loud, he very gently (yes, gently, there will be no Mike-bashing today, but stay tuned. I make no promises that I won’t make fun of him in some capacity in the future.) suggested that perhaps if I lost some weight before trying to run that the impact to my bad foot would be less and therefore my foot might be able to handle it if I weigh, say, 150 instead of 210.  He has a point.

So I’ve been researching things to do that have low impact so I can sustain a workout that won’t kill my foot to the point where I have to stop.  I’m playing it by ear, but so far have tried yoga, elliptical machines, and weight machines. When the pools open, perhaps I’ll finally learn to swim (I can only doggy paddle, and drink heavily while floating happily on a noodle) and do some of that.  I have an exercise ball I’m going to blow up tonight.  I may swipe the husband’s bike and go on a ride.

Thing is, I need to believe in myself.  I’ve done some pretty cool things in my life.  I’ve published a poem.  I’ve won writing contests.  I’ve learned to play piano pretty well.  I was a kick ass catcher on a softball team in my teen years, until I blew out a knee.  But all that stuff was done when I was a teenager.  Yes, I was published as a teenager, and by a publishing house, not by a blog software program.  But all my potential has stagnated and I have slothed around enough to get up over 200 pounds and lose all belief that there are awesome things I can do.

I need to prove it to myself again.  I need to believe.  So I’m giving it another go round.  This wouldn’t be possible without the assistance of the Babysitter of Awesome that we now take Daughter, from here on our referred to Renuzit as a result of a shocking and clandestine few minutes left alone in the bathroom, to for our workdays.  This Babysitter of Awesome has earned herself TWO pair of handknit socks in just the two months she’s been watching Renuzit, one for volunteering to take on my stomach bug ridden daughter because four of her six biological children (yes, I said six) also had it.  She took Renuzit so that I wouldn’t miss any more work with the sicknesses.  The second pair comes from our agreement to drop Renuzit off an hour earlier so I can work out before work.  I love her.

I don’t have any pictures for you today.  Maybe if I can get this ball rolling, I will have the nerve to post some before and after pictures when I have some progress to show.  But for now, just my talking about it will have to do.

I’m going after it, that elusive belief in myself, that I can do something other than slut around on the couch with my knitting and the TV.

Adventures in Kitchen Disasters

I once set a stock pot on fire. A few minutes after that, I burned the crap out of my hand, requiring ice.  Don’t believe me?  I have pictures to prove it.

This was after we used flour to put out the oil fire from me reading a recipe wrong.

This after I transferred the food to the crockpot, then burned my fingers on the little metal strip of the heating element beneath the ceramic insert when I pushed the crockpot aside.  It was not a good day.

Last night, the kitchen disasters were almost as bad.  It all started when I ran out of olive oil.  We were having pork sausage and hashbrowns for dinner, and the hashbrowns require a good bit of oil. I looked for vegetable oil before remembering that we took it to our camper for use and it wasn’t easily accessed.  I wasn’t driving across town for it, nor was I going to the store in the middle of cooking dinner.  Mike was covered in grass clippings and new oil was not to be procured.

Then I remembered some peanut oil we bought for frying a turkey.  I retrieved the giant, 3 gallon jug from the top of the fridge where we keep it, spinning my wheels about how to pour out only a little.  I know, I thought.  I’ll get a cup and then use the cup to pour it into our oil decanter.  Brill.  Tipping the giant jug, which inexplicably comes wrapped in a box that we, for some unknown reason, hadn’t removed, I got some oil between the jug and the inside of the box. Whoops.  I hurriedly tipped it back, trying not to spill any more.  For some reason, though, I tried to tip it back while holding the cup to the lip of the pour spout, which then emptied the cup back into the jug, but not gracefully, so there was now more oil in the box. 

Turning on the faucet, I rinsed my slicked hands for better grip and tried again.  Same thing happened.  Shit.  Then, I looked closer and saw a steady stream of oil falling from the corner of the box onto the floor, spreading out on the counters, and splattering up on the front of our dishwasher.  Double shit. 

By this point, the paper towels were flying, the oil was slicking everything, my grip on the floor was fading as was my patience, and my daughter decided to come in and demand a drink. 

To keep any more oil from spilling I quickly poured my cup full, hauled the box, streaming, from the counter and put it in the garage on our crap rug we use to wipe our feet, leaving an oil slick behind.  I turned in time to see the cat coming to the open garage door.  I could just see it, my own version of a tar and feathering.  Only it would be an oil and furring.  I managed to scare the cat off without getting his fur tangled up in the mess and turned to hurriedly get Daughter’s Drank Drank!  As I turned, my feet slid, and the kitchen floor became a skating rink.  Woo!  Barely remaining upright, I banged my elbow on the counter trying to keep from landing on my butt on top of Daughter.

Luckily, then, Mike returned from retrieving our son from the neighbor’s house and was able to help me clean up without injury, further mess, or any other oil slicks.  Unfortunately, the hash browns still didn’t make it.  In my hurry to get the damn dinner done already, I poured too much oil into the pan and drowned them.  Mike ate them, but he was the only one, prounouncing them edible and good, but could be better.  I quickly transferred what was left in the cup to the oil decanter, whipped up a batch of mashed potatoes from the box and called it good. 

At least when I burned my hand and that pot I’d still managed to salvage our dinner.  After that, I bathed the kids and settled in to knit.  At least there’s no way to fall while sitting down knitting.  Or, I haven’t discovered it yet.

Resurfacing

My apologies for the extended absence.  There was some shit going down and my state of mind was not worth sharing in more than little bits and bobs on Twitter. I also didn’t trust myself to post about anything else because I figured my bitter would show through even the most benign of topics.  I don’t know if things are better.  But I do know that I need blogging, bitter seeping in or not.  I need to feel connected to others and a place where I can be open and honest without worrying about super judgy people in my real life. 

So! Onward.  Have you seen these socks?  I saw them and damn near fell over.  How awesome are they?  However it’ll have to wait.  I’m still in baby blanket hell, though I’m staring down the last curve and looking forward to the home stretch of seaming and blocking.  25 blocks is a lot of knitting.  Well, apparently baby blanket hell isn’t enough to stop me.  I’m going to be in baby blanket hell for a few more weeks, so I took the time out to do some selfish knitting.  I’ve kept exactly one thing in the year and a half that I’ve been knitting, so it was high time.  I did the Skew Socks and I love them very much. 

Yarn: Malabrigo Sock in Carabeño.
Needles: 2 US 1 24″ circulars, US0 DPNs for ribbing.
Satisfaction level: astronomical. I love these socks.  I will be wearing them as much as possible.

Not digging the holes on the sides, but knitting them on the bias like that made it hard to keep the increases from having little holes now and then.  I think of them as ‘air conditioning’.

I have also joined the Evenstar Mystery Shawl Knitalong.  It’s engrossing and lovely and the yarn is The Unique Sheep Eos in Silverlode.  I didn’t get the entire gradience set, just the skein second from the left in the picture.  The yarn is delicious and I want sheets made of it, it’s so soft.  I would wear Eos underwear if I dared make such an animal.  It’s that yummy. 

 

I also have finished another baby blanket.  I do not like the colors of this blanket very much.  I thought they would be great together, but the green and charcoal are not contrasting enough for my taste.  Alas, the blanket is done and I’m not redoing it. 

What’s everyone else up to right now?  I need to get back in the loop.

Self-Pep Talk

The ho-hum of life continues humming along in Conniption Land.  We get up, prepare for our weekday exoduses (exodi?) that ferry us to our respective job/school/daycare situations.  We endure.  We eat during prescribed eating times.  We play during prescribed times.  We’re allowed to leave at prescribed times.  Once home, we do dinner and clean up, homework, baths, and bed.  I squeeze in a little knitting before falling asleep, and we lay down only for the alarm to kick on at the beginning of the same thing the next day.

I understand the kids’ lives being dictated in this manner because without a schedule, they become heathens of which there is no stopping their quest for personal gratification, but when did Mike and I submit ourselves to such interference from the powers that be?  It’s revolting.  It’s disheartening.  It’s gross.

It’s also January.

I recognize this time of year as my least favorite.  Perhaps it was my subconscious that set it up so that both my kids were born in January so that I would have something to keep me busy (their combined birthday party next weekend) and help me get through this most trying of months, i.e. their faces as they glut themselves on our family’s generosity in the form of toys upon the toys of Christmas.  Perhaps it was to add some happy into this dreariest of times.  There’s nothing better than fresh new baby when all else seems so bleak and sad.  Despite the limitations of birthday activities in the Month of Icicle, it’s something to which we all look forward.  So, there’s been a hub of activity in my land, from watching sale ads to see who is putting soda on the cheap for Super Bowl a wee early (another timing coup on my part, I do believe) to brainstorming decorations I can make from common everyday items.  Never underestimate the power of Styrofoam. 

We’ve been watching an inordinate amount of TV lately too.  How, without new episodes of Glee, you might ask?  Well, that does leave a pretty bleak wormhole to fill, but we’ve been trying.  We got Uverse a couple months ago and are fully in love with it.  Four shows can record at once. We can watch recorded shows on any TV.  We get Showtime without paying extra.  What’s not to love?  Mike is gorging himself on both the Military Channel and Military History Channel.  If they had a channel named Cojones Engorging Testosterone Fulfilling Big Guns and Machines with some Hero Thrown In, I’d never see him again, for the flicker of the screen would have sucked him in the first week of the new programming schedule.  I’m watching movies, some guilty pleasures (Confessions of a Shopaholic is a horrible movie…that I can’t stop watching. What can I say, I have a weakness for accented men that look good with some five o’clock shadow.)  I’m watching kids’ shows with Son and Daughter.  The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe is a new favorite, as well as Race to Witch Mountain, though I will go to my grave swearing it’s for the special effects rather than watching Dwayne Johnson, a.k.a. The Rock, bulge his arm muscles trying to open various and sundry portals to Earth’s catacombs.  Hubba Hubba.  The Biggest Loser continues to inspire me, infuriate me (why do they insist on bringing people who need help losing weight to the Ranch only to send them home immediately and make them compete to resume their place? That’s like telling a heart patient, here’s your medicine, but hey! you’re going to have to EARN IT, Sit Ubu, sit! Good dog), and move me to tears, but after last season’s contestants I don’t know that I can be as moved by anyone as I was by Abby Rike’s story, losing her whole family in one fell swoop.

I’ve been reading around blogland a bit here and there, watching weight and exercise dustups blow out of proportion.  I’ve been writing at a new site, My 15 Minutes to Better Fitness.  And I’ve been dreaming of warmer weather, busy summer plans, getting out more.  But we always do that.  Our summers are packed to the gills in a way that sometimes gets uncomfortable, both in terms of stamina and wallet strain. 

I feel like it’s all been done.  I don’t want to watch another year pass in the same manner, ho hum.  Taking to heart things that I’ve said lately about my physical lack of fitness and my commitment to doing better, being better, I’m choosing to make this year different than it was last year.  Everyone has their anchor catchphrase that gets them through.  My sister’s is, “It’s not an option to skip working out, to eat junk food.”  Mine has become, “What are my choices? Status quo or better eating/exercising? What will make a difference?” 

I don’t have any answers but I’m hoping that one foot in front of the other, one choice at a time, one decision to get up and moving will be the first and second and third in a chain of decisions that will have me looking back on this time as the beginning of the end of my sloth and the beginning of the beginning of my testing myself, challenging myself, working myself.  Mostly, I want to believe in myself again.  I will believe in myself again.  I want to run a 5K this year, maybe even a 10K.  I want to grow a greater portion of my own food.  I want to have enough to preserve through leaner months.  I want to feed myself and my family healthier.  I want to feel better about the adult I’ve become.  I want to mentally prepare myself for the idea of going back to school for a different degree, something that will shoot my career in a whole different direction.  I want to be someone I can be proud of, instead of a lump on a pickle watching episodes of Biggest Loser while stuffing nachos in my food-hole thinking about someday, maybe when the weather is warmer.

I’m doing it now.  Have been doing it for a few weeks, but I need to keep up the commitment.  January will suck less next year.

Beginning…Again

Son eyes me warily but with a twinkle in his eye.  We’re in a standoff, him on one side of the table, me on the other.  Whenever I move, he moves in the opposite direction.  His 37 pounds is lightning fast and I’m gasping for breath, but I haven’t caught him yet.  I ignore the ragged sound and inch a little to my right.  He inches to his right, and we move in circles.  Daughter stands at the room entrance and screeches with glee.  She’s next.

There! His eyes shifted just a little in her direction.  He looks to be planning to dart out the door.  I wait, my fingers splayed and my stance ready for whichever direction he chooses.  He bolts.  Damn, he’s fast.  He squeezes past his sister and into the living room, me hot on his heels as I pursue.  He screeches a laugh of his own.  “You can’t get me,” he taunts.  He’s probably right, but for the fact that I can out think him, which won’t always be the case.  I lunge.  Grab.  Snag his shirt.  He’s off balance, and I take that second to regain my own balance and close the distance.  Yes!  I’ve got him! 

I pin him to the floor, hold his hand high above his head, exposing his tender underarm, and wiggle my finger in there until he’s crying with laughter, begging to be let up, promising the world just for a little tickle relief.  Daughter has climbed on my back, showing her brother that she will stand in solidarity with me, protecting him regardless of the cost to her physically.  I concede to his promises of early bedtime and eating his veggies after I feel I’ve gotten enough childhood belly laughter to recharge my own batteries, and I let him up.  Gently, I peel Daughter from my back so I don’t conk her on the head or set her down too far from a soft landing.  I lay back.  I breathe, in and out.  I’m sucking wind, cannot breathe, my throat on fire and I need some water pronto.  I groan, roll over, get to my knees, brace my hands on the couch and heave.

When did it get so hard to get up from the floor?  When did it get so hard to have a tickle fight with my kid?  When did I get so out of shape?  When did Orville Redenbacher move into my joints, making them pop pop pop popopopopopoPOPOPOPOPOPOPOPOP when I stretch or exert?  Nasty squatter. 

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“McDonald’s! I wanna go to McDonald’s for dinner!”  This from the backseat as we pass the Golden Arches while we’re out and about.  We look at the time.  We know that our errands will take us through the time we’d normally be cooking something, so a home prepared meal means not eating until after 8 pm.  We look at each other.  We don’t want McD’s again.  We’re sick of McD’s.  Daughter chimes in, “Frrrrriiiiiiiieeeeeessss.”

Great.  She has a total lexicon of about 10 words, and one of them is fries.  Might as well not worry about her saying ‘shit’ or ‘douche canoe’ too.  Perhaps we can get her a carton of cigarrettes for her birthday on Sunday and teach her how to flick a Bic while we’re at it.  After all, while fries aren’t necessarily carcinogenic, they are in no way a healthy thing to eat.  What are we teaching our kids?

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I sit at my desk, feet propped up on my CPU.  I stare blankly at the report I’m looking at.  The same report I’ve done every month for 8 years and three months.  That’s 12 times a year, 8 years, 96 times, plus 3 months, 99 times I’ve done the same report.  I’m the only one in my department who can do the report with any consistency.  It is the reason I have a job, and also the reason I was given a good raise a couple years ago, moreso than average anyway.  But god, if the procedure hasn’t become boring.  What’s so fulfilling about telling a man who inherited millions and a company and didn’t spend one hour in college how much richer he’s gotten that month when, after nearly 10 years, I’m still trying to pay college off?  I curse my mother for not marrying a wealthy business owner.  Then I think of my father, a lawyer and a good man, oxymoron like Captain Jack Sparrow .  He used to take all kinds of payments, knowing his clients couldn’t always afford cash money.  He’s received cookware, a boat, a car, stocks, and all manner of bartered items.  He’s gone to visit clients in the hospital because in their divorce, they’ve alienated everyone they know and he’s the only friendly face they have left.  He’s waived fees for those who truly can’t pay.  He loans his personal vehicles to clients who have no other means to travel when their only living relatives are out of state.  I don’t know that I would trade my dad for a bank account.  But I realize as I sit counting my beans/inventory/standards and variances that I am just a cog in a wealthy man’s grandfather clock, and not a very important one at that.  Except for this report, which honestly, doesn’t move me.  I open the file, save as a new month and begin the report again for the hundredth time.  And daydream of one day finding a purpose to my career beyond making the rich get richer.

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My alarm blares.  I groan and squint.  5:00 am.  I roll over and sleep for nine more minutes.  It blares again.  Snooze.  Snooze.  Snooze.  Finally, Mike nudges me about getting up since he doesn’t have to get up until 7, when I’m herding the kids out the door.  He used to snooze for an hour (using the same alarm I do, so I’d be the one hitting his snooze.  For years this went on.  I see nothing wrong with a little payback now that he gets to sleep a little later before anyone judges harshly.)  Finally, at 6 I drag my butt out of bed.  My limbs feel utterly incapable of propelling me through the next hour, let alone the day.  It’s only when the spray from the shower hits my face that I truly begin to wake.  Why am I so tired all the time?  I scrutinize myself cruelly in the mirror.  Never did lose that baby weight, but who’m I kidding?  I was this weight before I had my kids.

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I sit on the floor, my face puffy and swollen, my nose completely clogged.  I cannot talk without a nasally tone, making my words sound more pathetic to my ears.  Mike sits on the bed, his arms crossed, his body half turned away from me.  Look at him, I think.  He couldn’t be more obvious about not wanting to be near me now.  We’ve spat words at each other with such venom and anger that someting inside me broke, releasing a flood of tears.  This isn’t the life I thought I’d have.  This isn’t what I want for myself, and by extension, my family.  His words, “You’re mad all the time,” echo in my head.  I’m miserable.  I can barely drag myself out of bed in the mornings.  I hate my job.  I have a coworker that hates my guts and the feeling is mutual.  But The Crazy sits next to me and the tension wraps itself around me like a slanket/snuggie, making me grumble at the stupidity of the entire situation and I would like to stand up and shout that I’m not this person I’m accused of being.  But much like the stupidity of the slanket, it’s viral and spreading, and I can only ride it out and choose to ignore it while I continue on with my day.  By the time I get home, I’m such a miserable wreck that I snap at my kids.  I snap at my husband.  I make everyone feel as miserable as I am.  I am dragging everything down.  I can’t keep up with my kids when I do find the time/energy to play with them.  I sniffed at my clogged nose, pleaded with Mike not to pack a bag and leave for a few days to let things cool down.  I opened my chest, ripped out my heart, and handed it to him again.  I promised that with understanding of my emotions and what they were doing to me and those around me can come change.  I promised him I would not live a miserable life.  He stayed.

All of this began in October with a crashing realization that this horribleness was avoidable.  There were some financial implications for us that brought everything to a head, ripped the scabs we’d built up over and over off and forced us to take a true look at ourselves, our lives together, and our future.  Mine felt so bleak and awful that I well and truly, for the first time ever, felt hatred for myself and what I’ve let myself become.  They say everyone has a rock bottom.  I hit mine.

With this opening up of long mistreated wounds, I started takin a deeper look at things.  One of the biggest reasons I’m so off the charts miserable all the time is my job.  I looked into going back to school.  I looked at what the local area colleges have to offer and what I might be interested in pursuing.  As I realized that I’d be going back into serious debt and wouldn’t emerge with a new degree for many years, it occurred to me that at this point in our  financial lives, we cannot afford for me to return to school.  I know there are programs, grants, aid that we could get, but frankly, admitting I want to change careers is hard enough, and I don’t want to rush into a new career without truly wanting to study and love it.  I have more soul searching to do to find what I wanna be when I grow up.

The next big thing making me miserable is my health.  If I can improve my health, perhaps my job and career choice won’t seem like such a death sentence to me.  Perhaps if other aspects of my life are improved, I will be able to appreciate the stability of my job and not let the drudgery bog me down.  After all, I bet insurance agents, or house painters, or assembly line workers aren’t all passionate about what they do 100% of the time.  And yet there is pride to be had there too. 

So that’s what’s on my plate.  I’ve already written about eating in a more environmentally sustainable manner.  What I’ve only briefly touched on is that I’ve started running.  On a treadmill.  No one’s chasing me.  No one’s holding’ a gun to my head and saying if I don’t run this mile and a half they’ll filet my dog.  I’m voluntarily getting off my ass and getting some exercise.  It’s slow going.  I think I might have the start of shin splints.  Maybe I have the wrong shoes.  I’ve found some kickass running music (but hey, I’ll take any suggestions anyone might have)!  I’m learning.  I’m actually thinking of running a 5K.  I wanted to last year but slacked off after a couple weeks on the treadmill.  I don’t know if I’ve lost any weight.  In the past, I’ve become a slave to the scale and so this time, I’m not letting anythin deter me.  Weirdly, I’m liking running enough that the point of it (to lose weight) has changed some, so that I can get fit, and accomplish something.  Tell my brain to stfu when it scoffs and says I can’t run that much.  Well, 2010 is coming.  And instead of resolutions which I’ve failed at many many times, I’m just making choices.  What would I have done before?  Is that going to help me change my health?  Is that going to help me change my job?  Is that going to help me change my outlook?

This time, I’m choosing to be better.  Here’s to a new year.

Google Giggles

Just messing around yesterday, I typed some generic beginnings of questions into Google to see what the auto suggestions would be.  Here is my favorite one.

I’m pretty sure your eye is twitching because you’re dumb enough to Google symptoms, and you’ve read all the horrifc things that are possibly wrong with you.

Asparagus makes urine smell because there’s something funny going on in your digestive tract. It’s supposed to turn your urine greenish, not make it smell.  There’s something wrong with you.  I’m thinking brain tumor.  Sorry.  But don’t google that.  You’ll cry.

Love feels like a battlefield because you’re with the wrong guys.  The right one makes love feel like a warm house in the deep of winter, a fluffy puppy so happy to see you that he’s wagging hard enough to shake his entire body, a hot mess of eye poppingly good sex that could furrow even a botoxed brow, and the best book you’ve ever read, all rolled into one.  And it cures eye twitching.

What does your vag smell like?  If it’s pretty floral scents, I’m pretty sure it’s because you’ve gotten yourself some good soap.  However, I’m assuming you wouldn’t google that if it wasn’t a problem.  Perhaps you ate some asparagus and didn’t use enough toilet paper to clean up?  But I predict that’s the least of your problems.  Namely, I hope you find a vegetarian boyfriend who loves asparagus.  Good luck to you.

Dogs eat poop.  It’s a fact of life.  There is no why.

Not all poop floats.  But perhaps it’s fluffier than the stuff that sinks.  Just a guess.  Some things are better left un-googled.

If you can answer the question of hair turning gray and then can find a cure, I’d be your betch for life.  Seriously, I’ll handknit all your socks, draw your baths with floating rose petals on the the water and candles.  I’ll make you from-scratch dinners for life. 

I had to Google the zebra stripe thing myself, and found the answer duh worthy: for camouflage.  Google doesn’t know everything, apparently.

Ice floats so that the liquid passing through your lips has just left the ice and is cold.  It’s so cocktails are tastier.  Go have one.  It’ll help.

Snape kills Dumbledore?  Fuck you, Google, for spoiling that for me.  Asshole.

My New Daughter-In-Law & The Fork In the Road

So long time no posty.  Sorry about that.  Things are shakin’ at the ol’ Conniption Household.  Things I can’t talk about.  Oooh, I know.  I hate it when bloggers allude to things they ‘can’t’ talk about, but in this case, I simply can’t.  Not so publicly anyway.

We took a couple trips.  And then my computer decided that it wouldn’t recognize my camera as a device so the posts I had planned after those trips have been postponed.  I have some knitting to show off, but again, that takes camera talking to computer properly.  I’ll hopefully have that worked out shortly.  You’ll also have to forgive me because the Mucous Plague has visited its pestilence upon our house and Son is the only one apparently unscathed.  I’m hopped up on cold medicine.

A few weeks ago, we were sitting down to dinner and I asked Son how his day at Kindergarten had gone.  He said, “Fine. I’m going to marry Billie*.”  Billie is a little girl down the street who is in his class.  I gathered my wits before I brayed laughter in his face and doomed him to a lifetime of peering at girls from behind a locker door and being too afraid to talk to anyone about his crushes, resulting in unnatural tendencies that will result in restraining orders and possibly a spot in US Weekly as the stalker-of-the-month to some celebrity.

Ahem.

Trying to keep the mirth from my voice, I asked him, “Does Billie know this?  Have you discussed it with her to be sure she wants to marry you, too?”  He said, “I chase her every day at school, and she runs from me.  When I stop chasing her, she chases me back.”

Ah, true love.  So uncomplicated in the mind of a five year old.

I asked him last night what he would do if he ever caught her, or let her catch him.  His response was that he wouldn’t kiss her, that’s for sure.  If she wanted to kiss him on the cheek, well, then, he might let her, but he wasn’t doing the planting of the kiss.  I found myself torn because while I think it’s perfectly normal what he and Billie are doing, exploring social tendencies and how to handle their feelings, I also don’t want him to see the inside of the principal’s office, or worse, face suspension or expulsion over a kiss as the media has reported with the advent of Zero Tolerance at schools.  Common sense is not the order of the day, and while I think my kids’ school is more common sensical than some, I don’t want to take the chance. I told him to save the kissing for when he’s older, that he can hold her hand, or give her a quick hug (but not hang on her) but that kissing is for when he’s a teenager. 

Then, this morning, he asked me to fix his hair into ‘fun hair’ for school.  Next, he’ll be checking his labels and making sure none of his clothes come from Wal-Mart.  Does it really start this early?  Really?  I’m not equipped for this.  And relying on my husband to do the guidance bit for Son and his pre-pubescent angst seems like the answer since Mike is a good man, but I feel out of control here, like a delicate flower in a freezer full of sausage. 

Also, it seems like poor timing on my part since we’re embarking on the Candy/Holiday Food season but I’m tired.  Physically, emotionally, and in general my apathy is overwhelming.  All I feel like doing is eating, sleeping, and I’m doing the minimum required to get by.  This has been the norm for a long time, and it’s becoming a problem.  It’s weighing down my attitude, and I can’t remember the last time I smiled a genuine smile.  I am tired of being in a bad mood.  I’m tired of not feeling 100% capable of keeping up with life.  I’m sick of wishing for change instead of making the changes necessary. I am beginning to struggle with depression in a way that I haven’t in a long time, and at the time, I hoped I’d never face such a black abyss again.  I wanted to write about this in a more meaningful way, something with pretty words strung together in awesome ways but I’m not capable of that today what with the cold medicine coursing through my veins.  But I’m afraid if I don’t say it, it won’t be as real and the more tenuous it remains, the less I’ll feel confident in sticking to it.  So I’m saying it now.  There will be changes around here.  They’ve already begun.  My diet and exercise routine is being mapped out as we speak.  I’ve joined Spark People, though I’m a little leery of keeping a tool like that at my fingers because sometimes the actual changes required are lost in the use of tools.  All talk, no walk, if you know what I mean.  I’m also going to apply to be on Losing It with Jillian Michaels.  I don’t know if we’ll be picked to have a camera crew and Jillian descend on our house, and the odds aren’t in our favor, but to have a life coach come to us to analyze and help us reprioritize seems like, I don’t know, a step in the right direction, and we couldn’t afford one on our own.  And if Jillian were really going to visit, I’d have a hard time refraining from humping her leg.  I would at the very least, wish to give her a hug, if only to feel the solidity of her muscles.  Her awesomeness scares me and cowers me as well as inspires me.

So!  That’s what’s up with me.  There will hopefully be some changes coming up.  Unfortunately, I’m in the throes of one of those colds that saps your energy, and while I’m ready to get going on this fork in my life road now that I’ve chosen which fork to take, I know that any effort I expend on the exercise front will only prolong the weakness and sickness that I’ve been plagued with for the last few days.  It is one of those massive mucous parties in my chest that could easily become bronchitis.  However, in an effort to prove that I’m not just making excuses, I’m making small changes already.  I spent some time over the weekend cooking for the week ahead so that I can keep to a healthy diet and get into a new routine to jumpstart what I plan to be a whole turnaround.  I need this.  Or I’m staring into a life where I’ve alienated every person who has ever cared about me and I lose my family.  I’m not willing to go there.  I’ve got some work to do.  I need to get on it before I’m too far gone to care about losing it.  Something’s gotta give, and it’s not gonna be me.  Wish me luck.

*name changed for the sake of the children. Please, won’t you think of the children?

Packing the Knitting

We’ve been traveling here lately.  Last weekend we went to Indiana (Jones, as Son would say) for camping, Halloween themed stuff at the campground, and theme-park visiting at Holiday World in Santa Claus, Indiana.  I love this weekend, one we do every year, and while the mud made it a little harder than usual ~ can you say Baby + Mud Puddle = Instant Face Plant ~ it was still a blast and a half.  I do have pictures, but the camera died before I could get them uploaded. 

We’re also gallivanting off again this weekend for a trip we’ve had planned for coming on a year now.  We’re going to Galena, Illinois, an extremely senic and historic town rich in atmosphere and things to do.  Here are some pictures I took last year.

 

It’s like a Hollywood movie set.  In fact, I believe it was the downtown used in Field of Dreams when Kevin Costner’s character found James Earl Jones’ character. 

 

Even the streetlights are awesome.

 

Last year, we were only there for a day, the point of the trip not being Galena but a nearby town.  After seeing what a treasure it is there, we decided to visit again for longer.  So we found a house to rent that is cheaper than a hotel in the area, which will also save us money in that we can make our own food instead of relying on restaurants the entire weekend.  And off we’ll go.

I’m learning that the packing for these trips is challenging.  Preparation to bring a whole family, plus make sure the pets are covered in our absence, is like trying to build the world’s biggest Dominoes maze.  All the pieces have to be just so, done in the right order and executed carefully, or that first push off to make the whole thing fall into place will fail.  I don’t like starting trips off on the fail side of things.  Taints the whole weekend.

However, packing for the kids, while a pain, is doable.  What’s impossible is packing the knitting.  I need car projects because it’ll be 6+ hours in transit.  Socks or scarves are usually good for that, but I have one pair of socks on the needles right now, and while they do have a deadline, I have a greater deadline on 2 baby blankets.  One is nearly done, just needs the miles of i-cord border done.  I got about 1/3 of the way done on it driving home from Indiana yesterday before my brain quivered and threatened to leak out of my nose.  So I switched to the other blanket, the one I just started that I have to complete 36 squares by Thanksgiving.  Luckily it’s done in squares and so is also really portable, except that every row is different, and the pattern isn’t a repeating thing I could memorize.  Unless I memorize 50 different lines.  So that one is kind of a pain but it won’t knit itself.

The trouble is, I want to pack everything I’m working on.  I have a scarf for myself that’s been hibernating for half a year, a pair of socks I want to do for a friend down in the dumps, a pair of socks for my husband, one for each of my kids, and then a sweater I have had the yarn saved for going on a year now, plus the two baby blankets and endless possibilities for scarves and socks in my fairly small stash.  How in the hades does one choose which knitting to pack and which to leave at home?  Because I don’t want to be stuck with something I don’t feel like working on, nor do I want to run out.  But then, there’s a yarn shop on that gorgeous historic street, and I wasn’t a knitter last year when we were there.  But I plan to put a dent in my yarn budget while there this time.  So there are endless possibilities.  It boggles. 

Bag with both husband’s and my clothes: check
Bag for son: check
Bag for baby: check
Bag for baby stuff, i.e. diapers, wipes, sippy cups: check
Bag for knitting, needles, new projects, patterns, list of things to look for at yarn store, possible patterns  in the future, yarn for them, bigger bag, and maybe a 36 hour day: not so check. 

If you’re a knitter who takes things with you when you travel, how do you choose what to take?

Tears On His Face, On My Face

Two years ago, the tears were on his face, giant tears that were the product of being told he was lacking in some manner, while his cousin who is only six months older and one of his best friends, was not.  I held him on my hip, my heart saddened but understanding the circumstances in a way that he could not.  I tried to tell him it was for safety reasons, that the man who said he wasn’t tall enough to go on the swings ride at the carnival wasn’t trying to be mean, but that he had to be big enough for the safety strap to hold him, and as little as he was, he could slip right out of it.  He didn’t care.  He just rubbed his snot on my shoulder and glared at the man, and at the ride as the swings rose higher and higher and flung round and round, his cousin gleefully enjoying the flinging, oblivious to Son’s jealousy and left-behind status.  It was a bad night.

Still, I tried to turn the bad feelings we all felt over the situation into something positive.  “Eat your food and you’ll be big and strong enough for the swings at the picnic next year!”  It became a mantra.  It seemed at first to be the magic bullet to get him to eat.  Finally!  Forkfuls went into a mouth once closed in tight determination to remain food free.  Before, he wouldn’t try new things, sticking to mostly chicken nuggets and french fries, applesauce, carrots, and macaroni and cheese or spaghetti.  His diet was almost all carbs, and I wondered if he was balanced enough.  I fretted.  I worried.  He went from one season to the next without going up to the next size.  I put jeans away from spring to winter knowing that they’d likely fit in fall the next year.  Frowning, I carefully watched him, not caring as much if he had sugar or junk.  Given the choice between watching him eat crap or not eat at all, I’d reason calories are calories, and if we can get over this hump, then I can worry about realigning his nutrition intake.  If he asked for it, he pretty much got it, because it meant something was going in his belly.  He wasn’t so starved that the doctor was worried, but I obsessively gave him vitamins and found that I couldn’t look at him without gauging his size.  Proportionately, he was fine.  Lean legs and arms, little boy belly, skinny but not emaciated.  Still, I worried.  It’s what mothers do.  But the swings gave him a goal, and so he started to eat.  One bite at a time, he ate.

Time passed.  His palette has expanded.  Last night, he tried toasted ravioli and loved it.  He then tried a tortellini in sun dried tomato alfredo sauce and loved that too, except for the little bits of tomato in it.  But he ate.  He finished the bowl.  It’s become normal to me to see him eat now, so much that in fact somewhere in there, I realized I’d quit scrutinizing him.  I stopped hovering and obsessing about his eating habits.  He was growing by the charts at the doctor’s office, though he’s still in the lowest percentiles. 

That picnic returned over the weekend, and Friday night, he stood in line gleefully with his grandmother to buy his ride pass.  He held out his scrawny wrist for the wristband that would gain him access to unlimited rides until he was barely able to stand, and the first place he wanted to go was the swings.  Last year, he’d been denied access again, with just a half an inch in height to go.  He took it much better but it still hurt.  This year, there was hope in his face as he stood in line.  The kids in front of him rushed to find their seats and he came up to the man running the ride.  The gate swung close to his head.  If he was as tall as or taller than the gate, he was home free.  There were hairs that were thicker than the difference between him and the gate.  He was still too short, but this time, it was close enough for horseshoes and hand grenades… and carnival swings. 

“C’mon,” the Ride Man said gruffly, waving him in.  Son bounced inside the fence surrounding the swings, his cousin hot on his heels.  They were thrilled, him to have gained some form of acceptance he’d been missing for two years and get the chance to finally ride the swings, and his cousin to finally have a riding buddy, and not to feel guilty because he’s taller through no fault of his own.

They jumped up and strapped themselves in, and the Ride Man checked their safety belts, and then started up the ride.  The smile on Son’s face nearly split his whole head in half.  I’m sure he swallowed at least six bugs that first ride (and by the end of the night, he’d probably ingested enough protein in bug form to make up for having cotton candy for dinner – WIN!) and his smile was seriously so big that I wouldn’t be surprised if he had gotten a sparrow or three in there too. The moment was two years in the making, and I sat and watched with glee on my own face, tears standing in my eyes reflecting back the bright carnival lights.  Two years ago, the tears were on his face.  This time, they were on my face.

Crappy camera phone pictures

he’s too blurry to point out, but trust me, he was on there, lighting the world with his smile.  While I stood by and tried not to bawl like a baby over his success.  I can’t WAIT to see what kind of sap I’m going to be when he does more than manage to grow a couple inches.  They don’t tell you just how much you wear your heart on the outside of your body when you have kids. Oy.

Pinprick of Hope

          Writing about how much I loved the library as a kid got me thinking the other day.  It’s no secret that I’ve been unhappy with my professional life.  I have tiptoed around it because I don’t want to get into trouble for writing about my grievances so publicly, but I can’t really stand it anymore.  Between a bad relationship with a coworker, my beloved boss retiring last year and being replaced by someone else (I believe I called him ‘green’ in a previous post, and that about covers it, but there are so many other things I could say, but can’t here), a down economy and three promising job interviews that have culminated in a ‘thank you for your time,’ I feel hopeless, wilted, and just about out of ideas on how to improve the situation.  Let’s also say that talking about it with people who can help hasn’t resulted in the hoped for help, and again, that’s about all I can say about that. 

          So with advancement opportunities slim, outside opportunities slimmer, and stagnation and irritation growing, it’s no surprise that I’m feeling the flight part of the fight or flight instinct kick in for professional preservation.  I don’t want to use this space to do nothing but complain.  I really can be funny sometimes, and I am lighthearted most of the time.  I just feel so … stuck lately.  Well, not lately, but for the last 12 years.  For the new readers (if there are any), I changed my major in college from English to Accounting and it was the worst thing I’ve ever done.  Part of the reason was that I was afraid of the instability my dream of writing books could prove to be, and also I was afraid of the rejection factor.  I was changing schools to be closer to my boyfriend, who would become my husband and father of my kids, and that move prompted anger in my parents, so changing my major assuaged some fears my father had when I first declared English as my major of choice.  It was done a bit to appease him and grease the wheels for my transfer to a more exclusive, private school that wasn’t as well known as the state school I started at, but was highly regarded in the area to which I’d planned to move, which I’m also still paying off.  There were all kinds of reasons, most of which were the wrong ones. 

          So I finished school with a degree I was okay with but not something to love, and have since entered the professional world feeling like a worker bee funneled into a cubicle job because of the desire for a steady paycheck.  For a mother, this makes life better, not worrying where the next income is coming from so that I can provide for my kids.  But for me, just me, it’s stifling.  I hate it.  I have come to loathe getting out of bed in the morning and becoming one of the thousands clogging the roads to head to a job I only regularly go to out of need rather than a sense of purpose.  I am in the same boat as so many others, and I don’t feel a special entitlement to bitch.  My husband doesn’t like going to his job either.  Well, he likes the work, but not the people for whom he works.  And he endures.  He vents to me, but he moves on. I can’t seem to. 

          I don’t know why I had it in my head that stable = boring, and why I can’t find an alternative career that I can get behind full bore.  Writing that library post the other day was a light bulb.  Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Andrea!?  Why hadn’t you thought of this before!? 

          So for the last couple days, I’ve been kicking around the idea of going back to school for a Masters in some kind of Library Science.  The local American Library Association Accredited program isn’t too bad (though this Jayhawk threw up in her mouth a little bit at the prospect of attending a rival Mizzou affiliated school – a little collegiate allegiance reference for you if you didn’t already know) and the class schedule for the fall and spring semesters show quite a few online options. 

          There are obstacles, though.  I want to fully research the job market before committing to ANY continuing education.  I don’t want to be getting into something considered to be a sinking ship.  There’s that fear of instability again, but this time, I can be smarter about it.  The idea of a Library Sciences degree tickles my reading bone and nostalgia aside libraries are important public services that I can totally get behind.  Another obstacle is tuition.  There are quite a few programs out there for financial aid to mothers, to working professionals, and to people in general.  There’s a big push to get people into colleges around the country to try to help the job prospects a person has.  Another obstacle is time.  Many of the classes are offered online, so I could do my work on them after the kids are in bed or on weekends.  But the entire program isn’t online, so I would have to personally attend some classes.  I read somewhere in my research (very preliminary so far) that most people with Masters degrees in Library Science get them later in life as a career change, so perhaps the schedule would reflect that by having evening courses that I could take without interfering with my day job. 

          So much is up in the air, so much is speculation.  I was even afraid to mention it to Mike because I didn’t figure I’d have enough answers for him for the inevitable questions.  There’s so much that could doom the idea to a wistful plan to be tackled sometime in the future, easily brushed aside for the practicalities of a life lived in busy mode.

          But… I am looking.  It might be a plan.  I might mean the pinprick of light at the end of the tunnel for the chokehold my current situation has on me.  For the first time in a long time, I am hopeful again.

My Knitting Motto

Knit what’s fun.

This was what I told myself as I started project after project, and they were all fun, to start with.  But that wanes as the project slogs on, the blankets become never ending, the scarves knit in the round for double thickness are how long???  And the thought of trying my first sweater is both exciting, daunting, and, well… long.  The things I’ve set aside for projects that I’ve given myself with closer deadlines happen to be the long projects.  I have a scarf and two blankets in hibernation, and an irresistible urge to cast on sock after sock after sock.

What’s wrong with me?

Am I really that easily seduced by the quick finish?  Those ballband dishcloths look enticing to me, and we really could use some.  The cotton for them would be cheap.  I could use another couple of face cloths too, as Mike has used a few of them to clean the bathtub and I really don’t want Comet residue exfoliating my cheeks. 

So what did I do over the weekend?  I finished a pair of socks while watching my husband play mud volleyball and my son go nuts in the gloopy sloppy mud, and … you guessed it… cast on another pair of socks.  These would be the first ones for myself.  It all started last week, when I ordered a yarn I’ve heard good things about, Malabrigo.  I got the shipment in and it was such pretty yarn in such vibrant colors (the colorway is Caribeño) of purple, blue, and green that I spent a good amount of time on Saturday thinking about it as I finished a small pair of socks for Son.  Since I had empty needles, I though what the hell, and rolled up the Malabrigo on Sunday morning.

That’s where things started going south.  The skein was a bit tangled when I unwound it.  No problem, I’m a genius at untangling yarn.  I have more patience for that than I would ever have thought possible, but somehow, unknotting something is soothing to me.  But this skein was really whacked, and it took me a total of an hour and a half to roll it up in a ball.  Finally!  I was ready to start.  I read over the pattern I chose and saw that it fits a size 7.5 foot.  Oh.  Okay, this one means a little math.  I have fat feet that swell up on me.  I wear a size 9 shoe.  I had to modify the numbers if I ever had any hope of wearing these socks.  I’m getting more and more practice with this, and given that I’m an accountant, I can usually muddle through without much trouble, as long as I can figure out the pattern repeat just from reading.  I even swatched for this yarn to get my gauge on size 3 mm needles.  I was just about dead on the gauge recommended.  Only half a stitch more per inch. Should be fine, since I have bigger feet, right?

I used my cell phone calculator function, figured up some numbers, thought, that was easy, and cast on what I needed to cast on.  Short row toe, mm hmm, wrap and turn, okay, knit, purl, knit, going back through the wraps now, voila.  Toe done.  Wow.  This yarn is really pooling.  But the pattern should break that up.  That’s what all the people before me have said, so it’ll be fine.  I started the pattern instep and thought wow, this sock is big.  I tried it on, and if I kept going, then I likely could have gotten both feet in one sock, even my mammoth feet.  I realized that half a stitch bigger in the gauge was to blame.  For every inch, I was getting an extra stitch, which meant that the sock would actually be an inch bigger than I wanted when all was said and done.  No problem.  I frogged and switched to size 2.25 mm needles.  Tried again, but overcompensated for size and knit the exact number of stitches specified in the pattern.  I didn’t get too far before the insanity of that thought occurred to me.  What the hell, Andrea?  Your foot will never be 7.5 inches around and you’re using smaller needles than the pattern calls for, dumbass.  I frogged again.  This time, did the number of stitches I’d previously calculated on the smaller needles thinking that would work.  It was the equivalent of two extra pattern repeats per row.  Last night, after getting farther on the sock than I’d gotten before, I realized it was still huge but moving in the right direction.  With the give of the yarn, I would do well to cut back to only one extra pattern repeat and allow for the ease of the yarn. 

So I found myself frogging again last night, at about 10 pm and hoping I could get cast back on and going again this morning.  I was too tired to do more than rewind the ball and hope the next time would be the last time I cast on.  The yarn is showing signs of wear and I think if I have to frog again, I’ll be cutting off some length and trashing it.  That’s travesty in my book, and so, I double checked my math, cast on this morning, and am hopeful that this time will be the final time I do the beginning of this pair of socks.

 Tell me, are socks really this hard for everybody at the beginning of their knitting lives?  I haven’t even been knitting a year, so I’m wondering if this is simply a learning curve, if I’m destined to cast on five or more times for each pair of socks I start (remember the herringbone socks that took me eight tries before I finally got it?).  And really?  This is fun?

 This is fun.  This is fun.  This is fun.  Maybe I should go back to the boring garter stitch blanket, or the crocheted block blanket, or the ripple blanket that are all languishing in my drawers and shelves of my closet.  At least then I wouldn’t feel guilty for hibernating projects intended for other people.  But I’m realizing I hate crochet and two of those three are crochet.  They’ll take some enduring and a good pep talk before I can get  back to them.

 But my sock knitting clearly needs the practice.  Yeah.  That’s why I’ve cast on sock after sock after sock.  I’m not distracted by the shiny, pretty yarn I find on the web.  I’m bettering my sock knitting skillz.

 Ooh!  Pretty yarn!  I wonder what sock pattern I could do with that…

Rest Area Rampage

I’m posting an old post from an old blog that I found kind of funny.  Of course, not at the time, but after it happened.  I thought I’d share.  I may periodically post some of those for background or the ones I really liked at the time.  Just to keep things moving along.

To the people from Ohio who stopped at that rest stop on I-64 on Sunday in West Virginia:

I am a dog owner, so I understand that dogs can sometimes make a mad dash for unknown real estate, leash-free. I do understand this. So I didn’t get too pissed off when your 40 pound dog dashed into the back of our Suburban. I didn’t even mind so much that he was standing on the backs of my legs as I was kneeling over into the cargo area with my hand in the cooler getting another soda for my husband. I have a couple scratches, but hey, it happens.

What I did mind was that your Hell Hound pissed all over the inside of our vehicle. I minded that I got dog pee on my legs, and on my soda nestled snugly in its drink holder just under where your dog decided to relieve himself. I minded that some of your dog’s urine SPLASHED INTO MY PURSE, on my wallet and my cell phone. I will forever be thinking of my peed on cell phone as I hold it close to my face to use it. I minded that some of it soaked into our carpet and the remainder of our drive home from vacation, some 14 hours, was spent wondering if that smell I couldn’t get rid of was the smell of dog piss.

Okay, I will even go so far as to overlook all that, since your teenaged son was clearly embarrassed by the dog’s foray into our car, across my legs and leaving his bathroom trail over the console, into the passenger seat and out the front passenger door. It was an accident, and the dog being in foreign territory may have scared him a bit so he peed some. Okay. Sure. I’ll even go so far as to overlook that.

But what I will NOT overlook is the fact that you, the mother and father of the embarrassed son and owners of the dog, LAUGHED at our plight, and offered no apology or helping hand in the cleanup (thank GOD Mike’s aunt had Clorox Wipes with her, or I’d have just cried). YOUR DOG PISSED IN MY PURSE, YOU JACKASSES! I was too seething mad to think straight enough to march my pissed-on self up to you and demand an apology. I was too irate to think I should be asking you for $50 to replace my pissed on purse. Instead, I cleaned up your dog’s pee; I used the rest area bathroom to clean the pee off my legs and out of my flip flops; and I haughtily got back into my peed on seat and seethed for the rest of the day. If I were thinking, I would have shouted across the lawn for everyone to hear what happened, and WHY WERE YOU LAUGHING? I would have demanded an apology and money to replace my purse and for the shampooing we now have to do to get the smell out. If I were thinking, I would have taken a picture of you to post here along with the story. Instead, I will have to settle for merely complaining about you on my website and laughing now at YOUR expense. I hope you run across this someday.

Sock = 8, Me = Smackdown

So the socks I started eight times.  I finished them.  Booyah!  Take that, socks!

Proof that there are really two:

Specs:
Yarntini semi-solid sock yarn in the colorway Cabana Boy.  It’s 75% Merino, 25% Nylon in a light fingering weight 3 ply.
I love this yarn.  It’s soft, doesn’t split easily, and is vibrant and exciting to watch the subtle variations of color emerge, especially on this herringbone pattern.  The pattern is from the Winter 2008 Interweave Knits magazine and is available for free here but you have to sign up for the newsletter, which is also free.

I added an extra pattern repeat because both my mom (the recipient of these) and I have big feet, and if I couldn’t get them over my feet, there would be no way she’d get them over hers, since hers are a smidge bigger.  Adding the pattern repeat also meant changing the heel and toe a bit, and I’m not sure I got the toes quite right, but they look the same for both socks, so if they’re wrong, at least they match.

This pattern got to be fun after I got used to it, but it’s fiddly.  It’s great for car rides, but not so much for watching TV at the same time or anything that will break your attention to it.  A mere dropped YO can be disastrous, so I would suggest a lifeline on these, at least until the pattern becomes second nature.

I’m glad to have these off the needles, but after I bound off, I was feeling a little empty.  I have four blankets, two pair of socks, and a scarf going, but I still felt naked, like there wasn’t enough.  So I started Nancy Bush’s Whitby socks from Knitting on the Road and I’m using Dream in Color Smooshy in the colorway Pansy Golightly, a blend of light purples, blues, greens, and grays.  It’s lovely so far.  I really like this pattern, as it’s written in a very straightforward manner and is clear on the directions.  I have also finished one sock for Son and am halfway up the foot on the second one.  I am stalled on the Viper Pilots because I keep finding reasons to start over.  That one is up to three restarts, but now that I’m using sharper Addi Lace needles, I’m hoping there will be no more dropped stitches and I’ll be better able to do the cables with the sharper tips.   I’m no further than I was three weeks ago.  

The reason I have so much on the needles right now?  Startitis.  I am a process knitter as opposed to a progress knitter.  I enjoy the process more than the finished object, and while it’s gratifying to get something finished and off the needles, by the time I get to the end of one, I’m already daydreaming about what to cast on next.  I feel a bit neglectful of some of the items on the needles though, and I want to start a sweater this fall so I would like to get some of the other stuff completed before I tackle my first sweater. 

As for non-knitting content, please say a prayer for my friend Kari-Mel, who undergoes surgery tomorrow for lung cancer.  I would imagine such an undertaking would scare the bejesus out of any of us, and I can only imagine what she’s going through.  If I could be in her neck of the woods to sit and wait for news or hold her hand, I would.  She recently has had a bad run of luck, not only with her health but also with a break-in, so things need to turn around for her.  I really hope you can take a minute to send up a good thought or a prayer if you’re of the praying persuasion.  Things in life get shoved into perspective when you think of it in terms of life or death, which this most certainly is for her.  Kari-Mel, I hope those socks go with you to the hospital and keep your feet toasty warm!

Baggage

I’m not doing so well of late.  I put on a brave face for my kids and my husband, and I’m not a danger or anything, but I’m super stressed.  Mostly money woes, because while the cost of living has increased dramatically and the price of everything from our power bill to our daycare expenses has increased, my salary has been frozen due to the hard times and my husband’s sales salary is dependent upon, well… sales.  People are being frugal of late, and I can totally understand why because we’re doing it too, but it hurts the pay we bring home, and while I get it, I wish I could change it.  Unfortunately, I may have to make a phone call to my dad, who has always had my back whether I needed advice, a little stern direction, or money.  He lives too far away to get a hug over the phone but I try to anyway.  I hate the guilty feeling I have calling him for help, though.  Seems when it’s advice I have no problem asking, but if it’s money, I hesitate.  He is usually happy to help.  My mom isn’t always.  For her, money is a sink or swim issue, to a point.  I don’t want to give the impression she’s a greedy Scrooge, because she’s very generous.  She just gets more irritated over it more than my dad.

But there have been other things on my mind, too.  I accidentally backed my father-in-law’s minivan into a retaining wall, and while the bumper did that cool pop-back-out trick like it was supposed to, there are some nasty scratches in the paint and I’m very mad at myself that despite the extra care I was taking with another person’s vehicle, I still managed to fuck up.  If you knew my father-in-law, you’d also know that he’s the most picky, particular person on the planet about the care of his belongings.  He’s never got a hair out of place; he never wears a shirt that has a stain on it; he has a place for every single tool in his house and fie on you if you put it back somewhere he can’t find it; he’s a list keeper and crosses things off the list with regularity; he cuts his grass with a riding mower, then gets close to the trees with a push mower, then gets the edges with an edger, then whacks the tight corners with a weed whacker, and finally finishes up by blowing the grass bits off his driveway with a leaf blower – he owns a small fortune in lawn implements.  But you get the idea.  For a man who has a standing appointment for a hair cut once a month, pays hundreds of dollars a hear to have someone detail his vehicle and has been known to take it to a repair shop to have a loose screw in the dashboard tightened, it was hard to imagine him not blowing off the handle about the paint scratches. Not to mention that when I did it, he was out of town and I had to wait until he came back to tell him so as not to ruin his trip with him stewing about how bad it was. 

So from Sunday to yesterday evening, I couldn’t sleep well, and not just for the fact that my bed was missing my husband, who was traveling with my father-in-law.  I was honestly terrified he would scream at me about respecting other peoples’ property and that whatever the cost was I had to pay it (I would have anyway).  Turns out, though, he was totally cool with it.  He said as long as no one got hurt then there was no harm no foul.  He was even going to have another scratch that was already on it from the previous owner buffed out (see about the particularness of his stuff?) and he’d have that worked on, too.  He offered to have it traded for having Mike mow his lawn, and since Mike mows a steep hill for him every week anyway, it’s not much of a trade since there’s a high likelihood it would have happened that way anyway.  He gave me a hug, told me to forgive myself because he wasn’t even mad, and I shouldn’t be so upset because he wasn’t.

Cool or not as he was, I stressed hard over it.  I had bad dreams about it.  It haunted me.

Another thing on my mind is a potential work opportunity.  I can’t say much, but things at my current workplace are less than savory and it’s causing more stress.  I get up in the morning hating that I have to go to work when I used to love it and look forward to it.  But since my awesome boss retired last year and his replacement is… um… green (and that’s the most I’ll say about it) and then there’s The Crazy who is going to get her own voodoo doll knit for me to pummel when I need to, things have rapidly deteriorated.  I don’t want to go from one bad situation to another, so I’m trying to be very careful about the opportunities I’ll consider, but it’s hard to be choosy in this economy. 

I often wish for a fairy godmother to come and grant my wishes.  And as greedy as it sounds, it always comes back to money.  I just want to pay my bills and buy birthday gifts, and take trips to see family, maybe eat out occasionally and have no trouble with my conscience when I buy yarn without having to think too much about the balance in the accounts.  I don’t need a flashy car, big house, exclusive wardrobe or private school for the kids.  I would even like to have enough that one of us didn’t have to work.  Daycare for us now is nearly $1000 a month.  That hurts.  This month is particularly brutal because we have to pay the sales tax on the truck, and I just don’t know where it’s going to come from.  It’s enough to make me cry, stay up worrying at night, juggling bills and looking at the ever growing grocery list thinking how long do we have before I can’t put it off any longer?  I fucking hate this.  Couple that with my worries about work and the salary freeze and there’s no relief in sight.  And the thing is, I’m one of the better off ones in this economy, so I’m very grateful for what I’m able to do, but it still comes with so much baggage.  So much baggage.  And I’m barely coping.

Anyway, even knitting hasn’t kept me from over thinking things and fretting.  It just give me more time for my wheels to spin.  I did finish my mom’s herringbone socks (pictures to come) and I love them, now that I don’t have to fiddle with that pattern anymore.  I started a small pair for Son over the weekend and I’m already working up the leg on the first one.  But it’s still not enough to relax me.  It’s still not enough to keep the demons away.  Even my to do list of knitting is weighing me down, and it’s supposed to be fun.  It’s supposed to be an outlet, and I’m letting it feel like a chore. 

I don’t know what I need.  Besides a boost at the bank.  I just know I can’t sustain this.  So I’m really hoping this other opportunity works out and I can eliminate some of my woes.  Because carrying them around is really weighing me down.

Bumpasses!

Yesterday afternoon, I received a call from my husband that made me go limp and fearful to go home.  See, he hurt his ankle a few days ago and has been nursing it back to health over the last few days.  Our grass was getting out of hand, so I suggested his 9 year old nephew, who likes to cut grass, come over and cut ours for the week so that Mike doesn’t have to put the pressure on his ankle for as long as he’d need to be on his feet to cut our yard.  It’s not a huge yard, but it’s not tiny either.  So when my SIL and nephew came over to do the chore, they put our dog, Calypso, of whom I’ve promised an updated picture for the blog, in our bedroom.  This is often where we squirrel her away when we have people over.  She’s a big schweetie, but she’s also a big lug with a puppy’s enthusiasm and she’s a bit of a handful.  After yesterday, though, I may rename her Marley, after the worst dog ever.

So Mike is telling me over the phone that when he got home the grass was nearly done and things were fine until he went upstairs to free the Bumpass hound (a nickname from A Christmas Story that we often call her because of the chaos she leaves in her wake) when he saw it.

“Honey, don’t be too mad.”
“Uh oh.  What’d she do?  Pee on the bed?  Chew on a shoe?”
“She, um… well… she got into your yarn.”

My body went limp.  My yarn stash is virtually unprotected, a situation which will be remedied this weekend when I shuffle some clothes and free up a storage tub for it.  The yarn is in plastic bags under my bed, and in my closet on shelves of our closet organizer, sorted either by project or by color.  My most expensive yarns are in a shoebox on one of the higher shelves so I was confident they were okay, but I was worried first about a sweater’s worth of yarn I had stashed under the bed. 

“Who can we give her away to?” I asked Mike, only half joking.  I asked him to describe the yarns in the massive tangle, and he said it looked like three or four balls worth, and he told me the colors.  Okay, so it wasn’t the sweater yarn under the bed.  It came from a precariously perched, i.e. a big bag stuffed into a too small spot for it, bit of yarn for a baby blanket.  Mike said the yarn itself didn’t look damaged, but it was awfully tangled.  He’d put it on the bed and shut the door to keep the cat from going at it, too.

“I can deal with tangled.  I can get out most tangles.  I just want to know if the strands have come unplied.”  He said it didn’t appear so.  So at the end of the day, I was conflicted with a desire to get home as fast as the speed limit would allow and to prolong having to face the mess as long as possible.  Upon entering the room, I came upon this scene (and if you’re a knitter with an affinity for yarn, you might want to look away).

That’s three skeins of knitpicks palette yarn for a baby blanket and a skein of yarn that I can’t remember its origins for a blanket I’m making Son.  While the monetary value of the yarn isn’t all that much (probably about $12 worth of yarn there) it’s still yarn, and I can’t help but hurt.  All yarn is my friend.

The accused:

Don’t be bamboozled by her cute face and happy disposition.  She’s a destructive force with a long list of victims, including the frame of our bed, a pair of shoes or three, a grill cover, a hose attachment, an electrical cord, the corner of our couch, the insulation on piping to our air conditioner, books, two kids pools, two wiring harnesses on our old camper that plugged into the car for the running lights to work, and now my yarn.  We’re thinking of breeding her so that she can start to pay us back for some of the destruction she caused.  Don’t let her fool you.  Behind that innocent looking face and playfulness lurks a tornado, a Tazmanian Devil intent on making the most of time spent unsupervised. 

 
Watch your stuff.  Yarn carnage is the least of my talents.

It took me two hours to untangle the mess, and for those of you nearly crying over the state of the yarn, you can relax.  I saved all but maybe two yards of it.  Even the brown yarn, which had its guts spilled all over like some disemeboweled blanket.  It’s now resting comfortably in a ball after its procedure to untangle it,  and the attacker has been relegated to her place in the backyard at least until the end of the weekend, not coincidental at all in relation to my putting my yarn in tubs.

Happy Shoes (Or Splint, as the Case May Be)

A very smart woman once told me, “You get to wake up and put on your shoes and they have to wake up and put on their own shoes.” 

What does that mean?  That means that usually people who are messing with you, are being unreasonable, or are in general behaving like giant douchebags are usually miserable in their own right and have to walk in their own miserable shoes while I can choose to walk in my own shoes, and my shoes are what I make of them.  I can wallow, or I can breezily move along, move along, nothing to see here.  It doesn’t change the douchebaggery but it does affect how the douchebaggery makes me feel.  Friday I was getting down about it.  Today, fuck ‘em.  I’ve got my happy shoes on. 

That wise woman?  Also said in a moment of perturbed frustration, “I often ask myself why everyone else gets to be an asshole and I am not allowed to be.” 

Answer?  Because I’m not an asshole. 

That wise woman?  My sister. 

It’s been a tough few days at the Conniption Knit household.  Between a nasty coworker, of whom I have contemplated knitting an effigy and perhaps turning it into a voodoo doll or maybe just burning it (must use acrylic if burning, because wool doesn’t burn once the flame source is removed) and some nasty comments from aging family members, there’s been not a small amount of grumbling.  Add to that a Hallmark Holiday for which someone (not me) dropped the Hallmark ball and hurt someone’s feelings and a slip that resulted in a possibly sprained/broken foot/ankle (not me, but my husband), and mix in a little PMS (not my husband, definitely me) and you’ve got yourself a cauldron of blah that envelops a house and wraps it up in smothering arms, much like the Midwestern heat and humidity that’s gripping the area for the last week. 

The only thing going well?  The knitting.  I’m just about to the toe on the first sock of my Not Quite Mother’s Day Labor Day socks for my mom that she picked out when she was here the week after Mother’s Day.  I’m debating the pattern for my Not Quite Father’s Day Labor Day socks for my dad.  And I’m really enjoying the Viper Pilots I’m doing for my sister’s Not Quite Birthday Finish Them When I Can But Aim for Labor Day If She Can Visit Then birthday socks.  I’ve also cast on a baby blanket that’s thankfully due after Labor Day.  Labor Day is the new Christmas. 

There’s not a lot to take pictures of, however.  The Mother’s Day/Labor Day socks are the only things with remarkable progress on them.  The rest of it is no more than swatch size.  That’s the breaks when you have a full time job and a full time life.  Perhaps I should quit giving myself deadlines and simply finish projects when I can.  But I have six things on the needles.  Eight if you include hibernating items.  

Otherwise, it’s been a pretty low key habitat.  Father’s Day sorta sucked for Mike.  His mother missed giving him a card and his grandmother has reached Crotchety on the age scale and combined that with loose lips at Father’s Day Dinner.  He got irritated with me because he decided to clean a little bit and since I was on a different floor in our house, I didn’t know it and so didn’t pitch in.  Then, yesterday at work, he slipped and fell and possibly broke his foot/ankle or stretched tendons or something.  He needed help this morning getting his socks and shoes on.  Poor guy.  It’s work related, so he’s going to see the worker’s comp doctor (and I’m gearing myself up to start the insurance fight that’s inevitable when he has to deal with worker’s comp claims).  I’ve got plans to try to make it up to him, but those plans include an oven, which I discovered on Friday is out of commission.  Our heating element disintegrated, so the big meal I was going to make very likely won’t happen for a few more days while we wait for the parts to arrive in the mail.  Ah, the power of the internet.  What would have been a $150 service call is only a $50 repair and the heating element looks like it just plugs in.  It’s probably for the best since the dinners I made both Friday and last night resulted in flames. 

No, I didn’t burn the house down. 

I was making mashed potatoes (instant, since I’m not that interested in the real thing unless we have guests) and the milk and water always boils over on me.  Usually I catch it before it escapes the pot.  This time I didn’t and it pooled in the – what are those bowl things called under the burners? – the burner coaster and because the element was on hi to boil the milk/water for the potatoes, it caught fire.  Apparently I didn’t get it all cleaned out on Friday because last night when I used the same burner again, it caught fire again.  And I always get confused as to what I can throw on what kind of fire in the kitchen, so I just blew the flames out.  Luckily it was small enough that I could blow it out, but I believe I’m going to locate the fire extinguisher we have in the kitchen and prepare it for use.  I know flour puts out an oil fire, which I learned the hard way, but now I’m afraid to put water on any kind of fire.  

flour to put out an oil fire back in 2006.  Yes, I got a new stockpot after that.  And yes, I took pictures of it.  I had a blog back then too.

But the best part?  Neither dinner was ruined.  It makes me feel like Tom Hanks’ character in Cast Away when he gets a fire going the old fashioned way and dances around the beach dancing and shouting, “Look!  Look what I have created!  Fire!  I have created fire!” as if I can control the whims of the flame. 

However, it’s not an experiment I’m wishing to repeat.  I got lucky twice.  Perhaps a third time will bring the house down, literally, and what then?  There’ll be no more shoes to happily put on.  At least I know my yarn stash will be okay.  It’s all wool at this point.

Because Yarn Harlot Was Already Taken

I thought Knitting Harlot would be too close for copyright and besides, I like Stephanie and thought that maybe I should come up with something a little more original.  Remember I wrote about the socks that were winning?  I threw a couple of huge fits over having to rip those back so many times.  Conniption has always been one of my favorite words.  It’s fun to say, fun to type, and fit rhymes with knit so I could substitute.  

As for the socks that started it all on this blog, the Herringbone Socks, the score is now Socks = EIGHT and Andrea = 1.  That 1 was hard fought.  That 1 comes about as I’ve learned the value of having a knitting lifeline for finicky patterns.  Every few rows that I complete without making a mistake, I move the lifeline so that if a mistake occurs, I don’t have to totally rip out to the beginning since the pattern doesn’t make for very easily picked up stitches.  I’m making slow but steady progress.  Those socks will not best me. 

But I think every knitter has a little harlot in us.  We’re easily seduced by new yarns, new patterns, new techniques, and most of all, by inspiration.

This week has been a floozy week on the knitting front for me.  I swear, if someone on a street corner opened up a trench coat with pockets of yarn along the inner lining instead of the usual fake Rolexes, I would be helpless to keep from finding even the change in the bottom of my purse to fork over for the pretty, pretty yarn.  Surprisingly though, I have bought no yarn this week, though it is only Wednesday.

It started on Monday when I wrote about the siren song of the Viper Pilots sock pattern.  I was wanting to finish up my sister’s knee high stripy socks first before starting this pair and one was birthday, one for Christmas for my sister.  She was the one who turned me onto Battlestar Galactica, by which the pattern was inspired, and so I think she deserves a pair of Viper Pilots.  Then it occurred to me.  Switch which sock is given for which occasion! It was the only possible solution, because I was helpless in the face of the call of these new socks and so casting on for them was actually beyond my control.  I blame the pattern for being too damned irresistible.  So I hibernated the knee highs and cast on the Viper Pilots on Tuesday with much glee and only a sideways glance at the knee highs, hoping they grow unboring enough in the future for me to finish them (by Christmas).  Seems that if a pattern looks at me sideways with a come hither gaze and a wink, I can be seduced away from whatever I’m working on at the moment. 

Then yesterday, I was browsing along on my break, clicking links and following to my hearts content the knitting superhighway online.  I clicked a link and was cemented to my seat.  A beam of heavenly light in bright, sunshiny rays came through the ceiling and my irises went from orbs to hearts, for I instantly fell in knitty love.  Signature Needles.  Hand crafted, custom tips, weighted ends for perfectly balanced needles, much like a precision set of Henckel knives, where the tang is the same weight as the blade and can be balanced on one finger, giving control over the knife’s every movement.  (I’ve learned the art of a good knife from my husband Mike, who is a chef.)  Such were the claims of these needles, the brainchild of the president of a metal fabrication company who also knits and was displeased with her needles to the point of having some custom made for her at her company.  Oh my, but these needles are like art, just to look at the pictures!  To say nothing of the testimonials (I’m a sucker for testimonials) praising them.  These needles are definitely a luxury, a little spendy, but equated to other tools in other crafts that are engineered with quality in mind.  Michelangelo probably had some pretty good brushes in his paint kit; Bob Vila very likely has a top-of-the-line drill to complete his projects; and I’m fairly certain Eddie Van Halen doesn’t get his guitars from Guitar City – although he could make any mediocre instrument sing.  Granted, I’m no Michelangelo or Eddie Van Halen when it comes to knitting, but I could be.  Who’m I to let a little thing like a moderately expensive pair of needles (and in the scheme of expensive, $32 is totally doable.  $32 is a pair of shoes, a haircut, or a trip to the grocery store, not a BMW for crying out loud) keep me from being the next Kate Gilbert?  Who knows the knitting talent I may have latent within me?  And I don’t even need to look at the DPNs (even though I put them all on my wishlist anyway) since I can’t seem to use anything but circs on socks anyway because I’m clumsy with that many needles (and I’m talking to myself about being the next up and coming designer???  My delusions, they run deep). 

Are you talked into it as easily as I was yet?  See how I can get myself into trouble?  See how I can click that cart button and totally feel that I’m shortchanging myself if I don’t spend the money?  Yeah. 

My new needles will hopefully be here by the weekend.  I got some size US 6s (the most common needle size in the sweater patterns I want to tackle come fall, after I finish that wedding blanket that’s also on size 6 needles).  The rest will come as they can be afforded.  And they will come for Christmas, hopefully.  If I can get my family to understand just how much I like to knit and that knitting gifts for me are actually a good thing.  They scoffed at my knitting gift suggestions for my birthday last month.  Non-knitters don’t get it.  Which is why I’ve made it my goal to convert the world to knitters.  I started yesterday on my sister, who said she’d think about trying a scarf.  Which means I have to hurry up on the Viper Pilots.  I need to get a handknit into her hands pronto for the knitting hold to get its hooks further in.  Mwwaaaaahhhahahahahahah ha ha ha ha…  After all, I can’t be the only knitting floozy out there, now can I?

A Knitter’s Conundrum

We’re attempting to buy a new truck.  Back in December, our pop-up camper sustained damage in a windstorm that resulted in water damage to the interior and essentially rendered the camper totaled.  When the floor is one piece, even water damage in one corner is catastrophic in that everything has to be ripped out in order to replace the floor.  There’s not much patching possible in that case.  So February found us at our local RV show where we were very careful to select a new camper that would be within the towing guidelines of our Durango.  However, Mike was worried about the Durango’s towing capacity with the new camper, so we had some transmission maintenance done and had a new set of shocks put on to help with the bumpy ride.  Memorial Day weekend was the big test, when we drove to a campground we stay at every Memorial Day weekend that’s six hours away.  We did fine, for the most part, except through the Missouri Ozark vicinity of I-70.  The Durango was sluggish on the hills.  Capable, but the downshifting was significant and the RPMs would jump from 2500 to 5500 and cause my heart to flutter a bit.  It was nerve-wracking.  So after much teeth gnashing and eye rolling (all on my part since Mike loves to buy and trade cars around) I agreed that we’d end up ruining the Durango if we kept it going.  After asking around to his RV and camper owning friends Mike learned that diesel trucks go longer and tow better and it’s one of the reasons that most construction crews and essentially any type of work truck you see is diesel.  He convinced me and then he found what he wanted on the Kelley Blue Book website, listed by a small town dealer in southern Missouri.  

Long story short, we’ve made a couple trips to a small dealership about an hour south of St. Louis, and it’s been prime knitting time in the car.  Last week, I frogged my sister’s knee high socks because my short row heel had holes in it and there was another mistake up by the toe that I’d missed.  I started over last Wednesday and by Friday I was ready to tackle the short row heel again with a new technique.  A snafu with the dealership meant that we had to return on Saturday for a different truck to test drive, and that we’d likely get an even better deal with their mistake.  The original truck we were going to look at was sold out from under us and they were extremely apologetic, which could possibly translate to dollars on the deal for a new truck, which has fewer miles, is a year newer, and is also a heavier duty engine.  But it also meant another two hours in the car.  I turned the heel Friday night after we got home and worked my way up the ankle on Saturday on the ride down.  Pretty soon, I’ll be ready for the calf increases and will be able to cast off the first sock and cast on the second.  The pair will likely be late as my sister’s birthday is on Thursday this week, but this is okay with me. 

The problem is that I have a huge case of startitis, where I have three or four projects that I am chomping at the bit to get started.  I have a pair of booties for a baby expected by our HR lady that I want to do, and I have a couple baby blankets that need to be done, one by September and one by November.  But the thing I can’t get out of my head, the thing I’m fantasizing about casting on, the thing that is whispering its siren song of stitches to me is this pair of socks:

The picture is from the pattern Viper Pilots written by GlennaC, on Ravelry for the bargain price of $5.  I. am. salivating.  I have recently developed an obsession with the show Battlestar Galactica on my sister’s urging, and I have a deep love for the series that has given me words and phrases such as ‘frak’ for the eff-word and ‘so say we all’ for solemn announcements.  So to find a knitting pattern inspired by the show, with detail work to simulate the Vipers the pilots fly in the series as well as some details in the cabling attributed to the perils of space flight, well.  You can imagine the pitter patter of my heart as I clicked the PayPal button to fork over my eager monies and hold this pattern in my grubby hands.  Never mind that I’ve only successfully finished one pair of socks.  Never mind that I haven’t learned cables yet.  Never mind that I’ve got a full plate of things I want to finish and a husband that thinks when I’m knitting that I’m ignoring my family and my responsibilities, and so he rolls his eyes and makes disparaging comments when I pick up the needles (to which I complained that he does his hobbies whenever and wherever he chooses so I’m allowed to do mine at my discretion and he should shut his everloving pie hole, so say we all)!  Never mind all that.  I want these socks.  In the tone of Fat Bastard of Austin Powers fame, “Get on my feet, wee little socks.”  I supposed I could frog the knee highs again, or just hibernate them and cast on the Viper Pilots for my sister for her birthday since I’m a process knitter (enjoying the making of more so than the finishing of a project) and she’s the one who turned me on to the series so she deserves a pair herself, but man, a little restraint would probably do me some good.  Even if I do already have planned out what yarn to use, and have just made sure to procure the proper size needles, and even if I make it a point to go out to Ravelry and browse all the versions people have done and read their comments on the ease of the pattern.  Even though I have yet to make something for myself yet, and it’s high time I show my own feet some loving, or if I make them for her I can look forward to making this sock TWICE, oh the geek inside me did a little backflip at the thought!

There is one more trip down south in our future for the truck buying, assuming the cards all align in our favor with the financing.  It will be the trip down to make the trade and say goodbye to our beloved and reliable Durango, which I’m actually a little sad about.  But I’m telling you what, disparaging remarks from Mike or not, I’m knitting on those knee high stripy socks and I will finish them in record time.  SO SAY WE ALL!

On the Needles

I’ve had a bad week.  Between a snafu with a bill paying website and a utility company, I’m in a position that royally pisses me off.  The bill paying website has behaved in a manner that has resulted in me owing a lot of money to the utility company.  It’s a large portion of yarn money and it is only my fault in that I didn’t read the fine print thoroughly enough.  The worry abounds.  But I’ve learned something.  I should not consider starting over on projects when I’m that upset about something else.  It makes me want to start everything over.  Luckily, I listened to the cautious voice in my head instead of ripping back the pair of socks I’m making for my sister’s birthday to the heel because I don’t like the way it turned out and I think I’ve come up with a solution without having to undo hours and hours of work.  Here are the socks.

That heel is too pointy and the short-row construction has little holes where the decreases happen.  Those little holes are an assault on my knitter spirit, which is like The Force and is surprisingly strong in me for someone so new to knitting.  The solution?  After I finish the leg, I’m going to snip the yarn at the heel and rip out only the heel.  Then I’m going to redo the stitches in another short-row heel technique which professes to get rid of those abominable holes, and when I get to the end, I’ll rejoin the yarns and then weave the ends in the wrong side.  Voila.  Not sure how it’ll work, but there is nothing worth doing in knitting without doing it right.  Well, it’s a not technically a mistake, and there are some things I will live with, but apparently this isn’t one of them.  When I first started knitting, I was scared to try anything new that wasn’t in the pattern.  But really?  Scared of knitting?  What’s there to be scared of?  The worst that can happen is that I mess it up and have to rip it back and reknit.  Since I like to knit, while I might end up frustrated having to redo something, it’s still enjoyable to make the stitches.  Besides, what’s life without a little risk?  Problem with this particular pair of socks is that I have about two weeks to get them done and in the mail to my sister for her birthday so I don’t have a lot of time for risk.  I also don’t have enough time to rip them back and do the leg all over again.

As far as the rest of what’s on my needles, here’s the rundown.  This is the pair of socks that have been consuming my time mostly lately. They are Mother’s Day socks for my mother in a herringbone pattern that is not confusing as long as you know there’s a published errata, but is finicky, and while Mother’s Day has come and gone, I wanted her to pick out her own yarn, and she didn’t pick until two weeks after Mother’s Day anyway.  So when I get them done is when I get them done.  I’m shooting for having them done by the end of June.

You’ll notice I’m not very far.  I would be.  I’ve knit enough stitches on it to have a whole sock and part of the second.  But I’ve frogged this back a record SIX SEVEN times.  The first time, I made a mistake on the pattern after the ribbing.  The second time was another mistake.  The third time, I gave up on the pattern and was just going to knit a plain pair of stockinette stitch socks.  I decided that was boring and ripped it back a fourth time to restart the herringbone pattern ones.  The fifth time, my daughter ripped it back for me.  Ugh.  The sixth time, I got the farthest, nearly to the heel and discovered that the yarn I was using was the wrong gauge and that since I didn’t swatch for a measly sock (hubris of the new knitter) the sock was too small to get over my own foot, let alone my mother’s, which are a size bigger than mine.  It was then that I decided to switch yarn to this one.  It’s Cabana Boy from Yarntini’s Super Summer semi-solid Sock Club that I signed up for in April and goes through September.  It’s closer to the gauge and this time I swatched and while I didn’t exactly get gauge, it is close enough.  It’s a sock.  Then, I messed up the herringbone pattern again and ripped it back a SEVENTH time and if it doesn’t work this time, I’m finding another pattern.  First I thought it was a challenge.  Now, it’s a matter of pride.  But I’m not so prideful that I can’t see the reality that it may be a more difficult pattern than I originally thought.  I can do the stitches, but dude, it’s persnickety. Persnickety is hard with the little ones running around and ripping my knitting out for me.

Here are the rest.  A blanket for Son, my five year old.  He chose the blanket, and I’m obliging.  Technically it’s not knitting but crochet.  I went through a phase at the very beginning where I thought crochet might be fun to learn too.  I realized the error of my ways after starting this blanket.  It’s not that it’s not a good stitch pattern, it’s that I prefer two needles to one.  Somehow, I get more knots with crochet and only one needle.  I’m about a third of the way done.

Here’s another project, a blanket for Daughter.  It’s also crochet, but a little easier.  It’s several little blocks that will be sewn together to make the blanket.  I’m about half done.  I have a few more purple squares to make and then all of the green ones.  Then the blocking of the blocks, the sewing together, and the border. 

Here’s a better picture of the green.  It’s minty.

When I’m done with this blanket, I’m done with crochet except as an edging to my knitting.

Then there’s the Harry Potter Prisoner of Azkaban Ravenclaw scarf I’m doing for myself.  It’s too hot to knit on now though.

I picked Ravenclaw because I like the colors.  I knit a Slytherin one for my sister for Christmas (sadly didn’t get pictures) that started me on this whole knitting obsession anyway.  I’ll finish it by the time it’s cooling off in the fall.  It’s not exactly an exciting knit with its miles and miles of stockinette stitch.  It was perfect for me as a beginner, but now it’ll be good for when I’m watching TV and can look away from it and not have to stop.  It’s not persnickety at all.  Maybe it’s my antidote to the Herringbone Rib Socks.

Anyway, I’m off to knit on the herringbone socks.  Or the stripy socks.  I have a zen place I need to find so I quit thinking about the stupid power company.

Is This Thing On?

I am a new knitter.  Technically.  I learned how to knit half a washcloth when I was in 5^th grade from the mother of a neighborhood friend.  That was the increase side.  I never learned how to do the decrease side and then they moved and I let it go.  My excuse is that I was ten.  People do dumb things when they were ten.  I don’t have an excuse why it took me another 20 or so years to pick it back up.  Waiting for my intelligence to catch up with me.  Waiting for there to be fifty million things for me to do so that I look longingly at my knitting and wish that I could sit and cuddle with it, then I grudgingly turn back to cleaning the house or making dinner, running after my 5 year old or my 16 month old or bathing the dog.  I’m married, and he’s awesome.  No, you can’t have him.  I need him to survive.  He cooks and actually likes to clean.  No, I will not take bribes.  Unless you just want me to loan him to you for cleaning purposes.  Then we can negotiate.

So last November, I thought, “Why don’t I knit my sister a Harry Potter scarf for Christmas?”  And I learned the phenomenon that is the Christmas Knitting Deadline.  It makes a neat whistling noise, right as it sails past your ear.  I shipped her scarf in the second week of January.  Not horrible for someone who hadn’t knit a stitch for two plus decades.  I’ve basically learned what I know from www.knittinghelp.com and YouTube.  I already have an embarrassing amount of yarn stash.  Well, maybe not embarrassing to anyone else who knits, but certainly to non-knitters who are astonished that I have yarn and don’t yet know what I am going to do with it.  I buy what I like, and the only problem with this is that sometimes I decide to make something that requires more than I have bought.  It’s a problem.  That requires me to buy more yarn.  Well, I don’t think it’s a problem, but my husband does.  He’s of the mind that there is such a thing as ‘enough yarn.’  He gave me one little cubby in our closet organizer to keep my yarn, and naively when I first started, I thought that’d be enough.  I have since wizened up, and have also taken over the area under the bed with plans to move into totes to put in our basement.  I have four babies on the way to knit for, a wedding blanket on the needles and some birthdays and stuff coming up.  I have way too many things on the needles right now, more than I ever did when I cross stitched.  I almost can’t cope, and the scary thing is that I have so much more I want to cast on.  Hats, scarves, more socks, socks, socks.  

Here are some facts about me.

I prefer circular needles for socks.  I’ve tried dpns but I can’t seem to keep straight all the needles, and they’re pokey, and well, I injure myself less with circs.  My faves are Addi Turbos.   

I am not a new blogger.  I have written a blog for going on 5 years now.  Just not the same blog.  I was first pigeonholed into the parenting blog category.  My second attempt was miserable, a retaliatory blog aimed at taking my ball and going home.  I’d been outed to my family on my first blog (well, I stupidly outed myself when I first started) and the judgment over what I wrote got to be overwhelming.  So I took my ball and went anonymous.  I don’t write there anymore and I won’t tell you where those blogs are now.  It’s not worth looking at anyway.  I didn’t think my established readers gave a shit and a half about the knitting stuff anyway and it seems that is more and more of what I’m doing with my time so there was a disconnect.

I’ve always liked to write.  Once, I had aspirations of being a published writer.  I even majored in English in college for the first two years.  Then a transfer, a new city and school, and a new major, and I ended up a desk jockey surrounded by engineers and heavy equipment.  Not real fun, but steady and stable.  And soul sucking.  My cubicle is my own personal Hell.  I used to like my job, and I could even tolerate the 2 hr a day commute.  Until my department hired someone I don’t get along with.  She’s crazy.  And rude.  And paranoid.  That’s why I call her The Crazy.  I can’t talk about it here, though.  At least, I’ll try not to.  I’m not a mean person, but everyone has someone that makes them feel like ground up hamburger meat at the end of the day and she’s my meat grinder.  I haven’t seen her for going on a week and a half now, with coinciding vacation schedules.  It’s been nice.

I’m on Ravelry.  If you want to add me to your friends, email me at shutupnclickATgmailDOTcom.  Since my name there contains my surname, I don’t want to give it out over the net. 

I am a mother, butt-wiper, crust-cutter-offer, cartoon-finder, wagon-pusher, and goldfish-cracker-supplier.  You could call me a drug dealer, too, though I get the crap end of that deal since none of my clients can pay for my wares.  I’m also a reader, pianist, photographer, writer, and professional learner.  I am not happy unless I’m learning something.  The photography is really expensive with the equipment.  The knitting is what I picked up when I couldn’t afford the thousand dollar lens I wanted.

The name of this blog came from the fact that I’m a new knitter, getting used to learning patterns and reading the symbols and abbreviations.  I’m likely to throw conniptions.  I’m the queen of having a fit.  I have already thrown some legendary ones.  My current project, a pair of socks for my mother, has been winning.  It’s a pair of socks with this pattern and I have literally started it FIVE times.  Two separate yarns when the first one turned out to kind of suck, for this pattern anyway.  I am determined to win with this pattern.  It will not best me.  Right now, the score stands thus: Sock = 5, Me = 0.  I have always liked the underdog though, so watch out. 

I am new to the knitting web blogs, so if you happen to stumble on this post and know a thing or two about knitting blogs, send me a link to your favorites.  I’m always looking for new inspiration.

Oh, and I go by Andrea.