Fido Knits

Sasha!

2009-04-23T06:56:00.001-04:00

Her arrival in our family and in our life is close enough now that I can count it in hours -- and I have been. I'm incredibly excited, but also a little trepidatious. What if all the things I used to know without thinking, I now have to think about? Could I possibly have enough room in my brain for yet another thing?

In other news, life here is good. I feel very much as though I am just in a 'waiting' phase -- waiting for Sasha, waiting for news of G's transplant, waiting to figure out when/whether I'm going back to Tae Kwon Do, waiting while I figure out how committed I am to continuing the flute, waiting for summer, waiting for the next school year. It's not that I'm anxious about any of these things, or waiting for them impatiently (OK, I'm impatiently waiting for Sasha). It's more that this feels like an in-between time.

And maybe that's the crux of the little bit of dissatisfaction I seem to be feeling recently -- if all time is in-between time, then when do we get to the "being" time? The "living" time? Maybe I need to stop thinking of this as a waiting time, and instead milk it for all it's worth.

I'll let you know how that goes.

Dog, Part IV

2009-04-15T06:57:00.000-04:00

Sasha.

She arrives Saturday, April 25th. We could not be more thrilled.

Dog, Part III

2009-04-14T07:11:00.000-04:00

A few months after we returned Niko to his breeder, we thought we might be ready for another dog. A closer examination of our life, and of the things that had changed in the interim, convinced us otherwise -- new jobs, new house, and other major life changes had placed us in a situation that wouldn't really be fair to a puppy, and we weren't particularly interested in a grown dog at that point.

So, instead, we fostered a dog. She was named Meggie when she came to us, but we changed it to Maggie (largely because the way in which her previous owner family said the word 'meggie' struck us as affected, and if there's one thing a nine-month-old Wheaten should not be, it is stuck-up and affected). When we got her, she was horribly matted because apparently she didn't like to be brushed so her humans stopped brushing her. She also didn't like to have her collar touched, so they attached a leash and left it on. She had a favorite seat in their house, so they made sure not to sit there so that she'd always have access to it. And then they were surprised when their kids would be playing football inside the house (loud and rambunctious) and she would nip at their heels (Wheatens are the only non-herding breed allowed to participate in herding trials -- they are all-around farm dogs).

Poor pup. She was nine months old, and under the impression that she had to be in charge of everything. After three weeks with us, she loved being brushed, was happy to go into her crate at night and during the day, and was excited to have a leash put on or taken off because it meant it was time for a walk/romp or for a treat. Ultimately, because she had a "history of biting" (really, she was trying to herd the kids . . .), she could not go to a family again and instead was placed with an older woman who had a Kerry Blue Terrier and understood the importance, with the terrier temperament, of being an authoritative (not authoritarian) leader.

Maggie was just the right thing at the right time for me. She reminded me that I do know how to deal with a dog and that Niko's behavior was probably not my fault. But her departure left us "between dogs" (the way so many are now "between jobs"), and there we have stayed since 1998.

Dog, Part II

2009-04-10T06:36:00.001-04:00

Where was I? Oh yes, my parents and siblings got a dog, and I didn't stop speaking to them. Unfortunately for me, though, it wasn't until about seven years later that I finally got my own dog, Niko.

He was a Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier pup, and was the sweetest, cuddliest, most wonderful dog ever. Except when he wasn't. See . . . he was food and object possessive, starting at about three months old. I worked with him on it -- spoke with experts on the breed, spoke with his breeder, his vet, worked with a behaviorist, took him to all sorts of obedience classes and agility classes and appropriately established myself as alpha. He had a command vocabulary of about 40 words (starting with 'sit' and 'down,' and going all the way to 'left,' 'right,' 'walk,' 'run,' and a slew of others). Even though he was a terrier - bred to "go to ground" after vermin (a/k/a rodents), he dropped a live chipmunk on my say-so.

But he never reached a point where he wouldn't growl as I walked by him while he was eating, wouldn't snap if I put my hand in his bowl (to add food), or would keep eating calmly as I petted him. Finally, one day, he was on his back on the floor near to where his food bowl usually resided (it was in the dishwasher) and I was rubbing his belly with my foot (I was sitting on a nearby chair). He rolled over, and I absentmindedly rolled him back onto his back to keep petting. He jumped up and bit me. I needed four stitches.

We returned him to his breeder, after many long conversations with trainers -- one of whom said "this is going to be a life-long issue until he is old and his teeth fall out." We intended to have kids someday, and I just couldn't take the chance that Niko would decide that the a child's food should be his -- the bite that gave me four stitches on my leg would have done a lot more harm to a toddler's arm.

It broke my heart to return him. He was happy and peppy and sassy; he was well trained and well behaved. He was loving and calm and mellow. He was a wonderful hiking companion. He showed me how beautiful the world around us is - in all kinds of weather. He gave us countless laughs and cuddles. He would sit and gently lick my tears as I cried when I was sad. He was a companion and confidante. He was a training buddy. To this day, twelve years later, I still miss him.

Dog, Part I

2009-04-07T06:56:00.000-04:00

Remember the Simpsons episode where Bart and Lisa sit in the back seat and ask a question while Homer answers it, over and over again?
"Are we there yet?"
"No."
"Are we there yet?"
"No."
"Are we there yet?"
"No."
"Are we there yet?"
"No."
"Are we there yet?"
"No."
(you get the idea).

Growing up, my relationship with dogs felt very similar:
"Can we get a dog?"
"No."
"Can we get a dog?"
"No."

There may have been months, or even years, between the times that I asked the question, and I might have followed it up with "why not" (I'm sure I whined that one), or something similar. I always wanted a dog. Apparently, when I left for college I told my parents that if they THEN got a dog, I would never speak to them again.

Fast forward one and a half years -- midway through my sophomore year of college. In the midst of a family vacation, my dad asks if I really meant that threat. (Can you see where this is going?) They got a dog. My sister was just starting high school, and my brother was two years behind her. They got the dog. And no, I didn't stop speaking to any of them.

But mommy, where do they get the organs for G's tranplant?

2009-04-06T06:54:00.001-04:00

It's official. Our seven-year-old friend, G, is now listed for a multi-organ transplant. Doctors will remove her stomach, duodenum, small intestine, liver, pancreas and spleen, and replace five out of the six (all except the spleen) with donor organs.

Scary stuff.

If the operation does not happen, G is looking at a lifetime (however long that is) of repeated life-threatening sepsis events, of which her doctors do not believe she will survive another one. And if the operation does happen, then there are all the stresses and difficulties associated with this magnitude of surgery and the recovery, plus the issue of lifelong immunosuppression. But there's also the possibility that she will no longer need a central line, a g-tube and a j-tube, and that she'll be able to eat. That she'll live to go to high school. That she'll be able to travel more than an hour away from her "home hospital." That's she'll be able to attend school.

What lovely, wonderful things to hope for.

As the day has approached for G to be listed, I have been speaking with Kiddo the Elder (KtE) and Kiddo the Younger (KtY) about the prospect. They're both a bit grossed out by the concept, but slowly coming around to the realization that actually, this is a pretty cool thing that modern medicine can accomplish.

And then, a few days ago, in the middle of one of these conversations, KtY looked up at me and said "but mommy, where do they get the organs for G's transplant."

"From the organ fairy, dear." "From the stork." "At Costco."

Don't worry. I didn't actually choose any of these answers. Instead, I led her to it gently. Where do organs exist, out in the world? And could you live without your liver? Ultimately, we agreed that the organs would have to come from someone who had been relatively healthy but had died, who lived in our area of the country, and who was about the same size as G. Then we discussed that the fact that we are hoping for organs for G does not mean that we are hoping for a child to die. Rather, we are hoping that when a child dies -- as, unfortunately, some do -- the people who make decisions about what to do with the child's body decide to donate the organs so that another child can have a chance at a longer and better life.

You know what? Parenting is not for wimps. I've given great thought to how to talk to my kids about all sorts of things, but I never imagined I'd be speaking to them about the ethics of hoping one of their closest friends doesn't die.

My totally awesome new toy

2009-04-02T21:55:00.002-04:00

I recently got a t-mobile G1 phone/music player/movie player/camera/calculator/bubble level/compass/picture viewer/browser/email client/dog walker (OK, I'm only joking about the dog walker -- we don't have a dog, what would be the point?). One of the free pieces of software I downloaded onto it is a barcode scanner. It's marketed as an application that allows you to comparison shop -- you go to the store, scan something, and then the browser opens up and you can look online or at other nearby stores (did I mention the GPS capabilities of this thing yet?) and see if they have it for a better price.

But what the hell? Am I really going to go to a store, only to get back in my car and drive to another store, perhaps to find that the thing I want is out of stock and now I've wasted time and gas? Or, better yet, since I do most of my shopping online anyway, if I'm in a store it's because I need the thing pronto ThankYouVeryMuch, and not two or three days from now.

But I downloaded the software anyway, mostly because I'm a geek like that and I like the idea of having a barcode scanner.

Fast forward to this evening. I had promised someone I would send them information about two hard-to-find books that I have. Problem is, I was having trouble hunting down the information online. So, I took out my trusty new toy and scanned the bar codes. Once the bar code was recognized, I clicked to go to the google book page corresponding to the book, and from there to one of the "buy this book" links.

Cool, no? But wait! There's more . . .

Bringing up the options menu for the page I found to buy the book, I clicked "send page," and my teensy tiny little machine pasted the url into an email, which it then correctly addressed based on the first two letters of the recipient's name (did I mention this is a google device which syncs automatically with my google contacts?). And then I sent the links. Brilliant!

How cool is this? (how geeky am I? Wait. Don't answer that -- I think I already know).

Life, at a moment's notice

2009-04-01T07:09:00.002-04:00

I am by nature a planner. I like to know what's coming. Even if the plan is just to hang out and do not much of anything, I like to know that there's a plan. At work, I plan my work and work my plan. I am a list-maker. Every aspect of my life is visible on a list somewhere (OK, maybe not EVERY aspect, but most of the ones that would be fit for discussion with anyone other than a therapist or spouse).

Over the past eight years, and recently increasingly, I have had to learn flexibility. That life doesn't always go as planned. You thought you had a meeting this afternoon? Sorry, the kids' school just called and one of them is sick and needs to go home. You thought you were driving to NYC after work on a Friday to get on a plane the next morning at ungodly o'clock to leave on vacation? Sorry, one of the kids threw up right before you got to the after school program to pick them up.

I can remember, during both of my pregnancies, reaching the point where (if I had not been planning a home birth) I would have been told to pack a bag because I could have to leave for the hospital. I remember stories of wives calling husbands home from work to drive them.

In my life, I think I needed to learn that I should have a plan, but I should be able to react quickly and well to changing circumstances. My best friends' daughter is very sick, and frequently winds up hospitalized. Our phone rings in the middle of the night, or first thing in the morning, and I head to their house to be with their older daughter so they can go with their younger one to the hospital. Their elder daughter wakes up to learn that her moms are gone, her sister is at the hospital, and her day will be a crap shoot - will this be the time she gets called out of school to say 'goodbye' to her sister? My kids wake up to learn that their mom isn't home for the morning routine, and their friend is in the emergency room again.

Slowly but surely, we are all learning flexibility, how to roll with it when the universe dishes you something other than what you were expecting. And how deeply wonderful it is when things proceed as planned. I am learning that I am in charge of only a small portion of my life, and that while I cannot fully control all that happens in my life, I can choose my reaction to it.

Well, here goes nothing . . .

2009-03-31T07:13:00.000-04:00

In January of this year, I started a post:

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I don't know whether this will be the start of blogging again for me, or not, but I've been tagged in a "six things that make me happy" meme, by my good friend Eva, and I figured I ought to answer/participate.

A lot has changed since I started this blog. For one, knitting is back to being more of a pastime/hobby rather than an obsession or way of life. For another, we have good friends with a very sick child, and have become something of a backup support for them and their older child when their lives get crazy. I'm taking Tae Kwon Do, and playing the flute -- all of which leaves less time for things like living my life and sleep. As a result, the time available to blog has decreased markedly, in parallel with a decrease in my interest in or obsession with the former topic of this blog - knitting.

But I still have things I think about, things I want to say. I just don't know that I'm going to wind up using this venue to do it.
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And that was as far as I got. But recently I've had a few thoughts kicking around inside my head, and started thinking again about this blog. Maybe this WILL become the place where I say what I have to say.

But first, another update: I quit Tae Kwon Do. Leaving work midday to go work out was getting to be difficult because I am getting busier at work (a good thing in this economy). Otherwise, not much has changed in my life.

Anyway, before I start putting down those few thoughts, I should finally respond to the meme for which I was tagged.

Six Things That Make Me Happy
(1) Sunshine
(2) A hug from a child
(3) The love of my spouse
(4) Good coffee upon waking
(5) The health of family and friends
(6) My new toy/phone (T-Mobile G1)

Friends

2008-10-01T06:14:00.001-04:00

I've been thinking a bit recently about the idea of community and the importance of friendship and connection. It seems that events in my life have come together to emphasize for me just how important connected-ness is to me.

On Friday of last week, thirteen of my friends arrived from all over the country for a weekend in Boston. We ate, drank, talked, cried, laughed, shopped, ate, drank, swam, slept, shopped, talked, laughed, argued, and celebrated our way through the weekend together. Parts of it were sublime -- a deep and abiding sense that I was among 'my people,' that I might not agree on everything with all of them all the time, but that no matter what, these women have my back. They are the ones I can rely on to slap me upside the head when I'm being completely unreasonable, but also to acknowledge (while slapping me) that they've been-there-done-that, too, and that their response is from personal knowledge. They are the ones who provide the pep talk at three in the morning when I cannot sleep because I'm worried about something or other, the ones who assure me that the insane behavior of my kids is actually pretty normal (and that their kids, too, have been-there-done-that). Other parts of it were really difficult. I do well with groups, but always come away feeling totally drained and worn down, no matter how much fun I had. Spending 48 hours straight with people I see only once a year, with no down time in which to recharge, was tiring. Tiring, but completely worth it. These are my people.

Then on Tuesday of this week, I drove with a good friend to upstate New York to visit her mother, who is not doing so well. I was there as moral support and company -- to make a long story short, the best explanation is that 'we all have family, and even when they're easy, it's not easy.' And her family is far from easy. So I spent the day driving about nine hours round-trip, to have lunch and to be sure to say things like "you can do this," and to marvel at the foliage, to joke about the price of gas, to talk about the current economic situation, to laugh and talk and to sit in companionable silence with a good friend who needed a little bit of support.

I am so glad I did both of these things. Yes, they took me away from my family and from what I consider to be "my life," but really, they brought me out into my life. They forced me to participate more in who I am and in what is important to me. More than my work, more than my knitting, or the TV shows I watch or the books I read, my friends and family -- my connections -- define who I am and allow me to be fully myself. And if how we spend our days is how we spend our lives, then I feel like I'm spending my life just the way I should: growing and maintaining relationships that have meaning and provide sustenance to me and to others. My only regret from the past few days is how little time I have had with E and the kids.

Incentives

2008-09-18T02:26:00.000-04:00

So, I was talking with Kiddo the Elder the other day about the fact that her friend, G, is going to choose a "Make a Wish" trip soon, and we were discussing what we thought G might choose. (turns out, it's Hollywood all the way, bay-bee). And then, as these things are wont to do, the topic turned to the question of what Kiddo the Elder would choose.

KtE: I don't think I'd go to Hollywood, mom, I think I'd just choose to stay home and watch TV.

Me: ???!!!?? Wha? Huh?

KtE: Really, I don't think I'd ask for anything like that, I'd just ask them to make you and Daddy let me watch TV as much as I wanted for a few days.

Me: What about a ski trip?

KtE: Nope, I'd rather stay home and watch TV.

Me: What about going sailing for a week? You love to sail.

KtE: Yeah, I do love to sail. [pause] But I'd still rather watch TV.

Me: Hey, what about meeting Miley Cyrus or something like that?

KtE: That'd be cool. But I'd rather watch TV.

On the one hand, there's a part of me that wants just to turn the TV on and leave it on until my kids get so sick of it that it no longer holds this amazing sway over their lives. On the other hand, how completely lucky am I? I can promise TV-time as a reward for good behavior or specific above-and-beyond-the-call-of-duty tasks, and know that it is an incredibly valuable and effective reinforcement of good behavior.

I am torn between feeling like I'm a bad parent for having built TV up into this amazing thing, and feeling like I must have done something really right for it to be so rare in our house that it is considered a delectable treat.

Wordle

2008-09-05T07:42:00.000-04:00

How cool is this? It's a word cloud of the words on the first page of this blog.

Yes, I have been gone for far too long. And no, I haven't really been knitting. I've actually fallen off the face of the earth. Between various trips all over the place this summer (San Francisco for business, Vermont for fun, western Massachusetts for flute camp for the kiddos, and a beach vacation for fun), and kid illnesses that bedeviled our family for ten days straight somewhere in there, it's been about all I could do to keep my head above water. Don't get me wrong; this was an AWESOME summer. I participated a bit at flute camp; I took up Tae Kwon Do. I stayed on top of my work. I met new people, and just generally had a great time. But there was very little time for knitting in all of that, and even less time for blogging.

But now September is here. A time of new beginnings (also a time of New Beginning's evil twin sister, Transitions), and I'm feeling the urge to pick up the needles again. I have a Something Red that needs finishing, and then there's Samus. And the socks that I started while at the conference in San Francisco. All sorts of stuff.

Anyway. I'm back.

At least, I think I am.

I'm awful

2008-07-23T22:56:00.003-04:00

I'm awful. Haven't updated in the longest time. Honestly, I'm not even knitting all that much anymore. And I'd be surprised if there were even three or four people who still had me in their bloglines or other aggregator.

Nevertheless, I have an important request to make, and plan to use any and all reasonable methods at my disposal to make it. So here goes:

Some time over the past two years, you may have heard me mention my friend G. G is a six-year-old child who is catastrophically ill. She has a central venous catheter (also known as a 'central line') inserted into a vein just a few millimeters away from her heart. For 22 hours out of 24, a liquid nutritional blend (TPN, “total parenteral nutrition”) is pumped into her bloodstream, so that she can keep going.

Although the theories are varied as to why and in what way, G's gut doesn't work. She has a g-tube (basically a grommet into her stomach) through which she used to receive a small amount of diluted infant formula. And she has a j-tube (a grommet attached to a tube that runs 45 cm into her intestine) so that some of her medications can be absorbed by her intestine. She is on laxatives that would send most of us running for the nearest toilet, but which just barely keep her gut moving. She is on anti-emetics, and anti-fungals, and the occasional antibiotic. She has, at various times in her life, been transfusion dependent. And she was recently hospitalized for about three months, three weeks of which was spent in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU), on pain medication and a ventilator to deal with the septic shock associated with a fungal infection she acquired because her non-working gut had translocated yeast (yes, as in the fungus that gives any number of women yeast infections) into her blood stream.

But when I think about G, this is not the child who comes to mind. This is not the picture I see. When I think of G, I think of the friend to my children who loves to dance. She will put on a CD of Hannah Montana and hold a dance party. She wakes up singing, and sings to herself throughout most of the day. She bounces from place to place. She runs more often than she walks. She changes outfits four or five times a day. Her favorite color is pink, and the more sparkly a thing is, the better. She is kind, and stubborn, and sweet, and outgoing, and accustomed to being at the center of her life, but also more than willing to sit quietly playing on Webkinz for hours on end. She is amenable to the periodic interruptions to her day that are required by her med schedule, but able to pick back up whatever activity was interrupted as if she hadn't had to stop it. She gives the sweetest kisses, but can pout and whine almost as well as my own kids.

She is a completely ordinary child, who is – like all children – entirely extraordinary in every way. But she has one additional way in which is she is extra-ordinary – the medical support she needs just to make it through a day, to say nothing of the six years she has already survived.

She has mitochondrial disease.

Every cell in your body has a mitochondrion. The mitochondria are the energy source for the cells, providing the resources for each cell to do what it is supposed to do. Grow, replicate, process, move, spark, absorb, metabolize, modify, synthesize, age, die. All of these functions – and any others in which cells engage – are fueled by processes that occur in the mitochondria. The way in which the mitochondria function is, itself, genetically determined. A genetic mutation on the mitochondrial DNA translates, then, to an energy deficit for some or all cells of the body. This deficit may manifest itself in any organ system, at any time in a person's life. For G, it manifested early on, in her digestive system. Her brain, heart, and lungs are not involved, but she has hypotonia (her muscles are weak), her gut does not function (and, in fact, has a life-threatening habit of translocating bacteria and yeast into her blood stream rather than passing nutrients into her blood stream as it should), her pancreas, liver, kidneys, adrenyl glands, immune system, bone marrow, central nervous system (temperature and blood pressure regulation), and others are all affected.

But yet Kiddo the Elder once said, shortly after we got to know G and her family, “but G didn't have mitochondrial disease today; she was chasing me around the room!” If you saw G on an ordinary day, you wouldn't know how sick she is, if you didn't already know how sick she is. She carries her TPN, meds, and pumps in a back pack and runs around, dances, and plays like any other six-year-old.

It is a minor miracle that she leads such an ordinary life. Her parents could long ago have said that G must remain at home under 24/7 nursing care because the world is a dangerous, scary place, and it is too much trouble to bring medications and emergency medical supplies wherever they go. Had she been born ten years earlier, G would have lived her entire life in a hospital because TPN pumps and med pumps were not small and portable or even available for home use. Instead, her parents have chosen to treat G as an ordinary child who has medical issues, rather than as a set of medical issues housed in an ordinary child.

Much of the reason they can do this is the support they receive from their doctors and their infusion company, but a crucial component is the set of resources – from peer support to information and encouragement – provided by a small nonprofit organization that was founded here in Massachusetts: MitoAction (f/k/a “Mitochondrial Disease Action Committee”). MitoAction was founded 3 years ago as a collaboration between doctors and patient families from three of the major hopitals in Boston- New England Medical Center, Mass General, and Boston Children's. It grew quickly to have about 100 members, and has since grown to have 1,500 members and a budget of $100,000. Rather than follow the model of the American Cancer Society and others, of having local chapters reaching out to a geographically diverse membership, MitoAction has chosen to leverage electronic and telephonic connectivity to allow people nationwide to access its resources. This has allowed it to have a very low overhead, and to put the vast majority of its funds into providing information and other resources that directly serve people with mitochondrial disease and their families and caregivers.

Once a year, MitoAction puts on a Family Fun Day and Walk for Mito Awareness. The walk is nowhere near so rigorous as, for example, the Avon Walk. But the need, and the urgency, is as great. Conservative estimates hold that one in four thousand people have some form of mitochondrial disease (perhaps as many as one in one thousand). Research is revealing mitochondrial involvement in many metabolic disorders, and in diseases like diabetes, Parkinson's, Huntington's, Alzheimer's and autism. The range of people who can – and will – benefit from the efforts of MitoAction, is huge.

This year, on Sunday, September 21st, I will be walking along the Charles River in Cambridge, MA in the Walk for Mito Awareness. Please join me. Come play at the family fun day. Come walk with me. Join me in spirit, or in body. Join me by sharing your support – send an email, post a message for me to share with G and her family. And, of course, I ask for your financial support so that MitoAction can continue to do the good work that it does, providing resources, information and support to G's family, so that she can continue to play happily with me and my children.

Thank you in advance for any support you can provide. I deeply appreciate it. You can donate here .

Random Thoughts

2008-04-18T06:26:00.000-04:00

I've been knitting a lot recently. I'm almost done with the body of Something Red made out of Dream in Color's worsted weight yarn. And I'm just about ready to turn the heel on a toe-up plain stockinette sock I'm making.

And there are a zillion stories behind both of those statements. I'm making the "Something Red" because, as it turns out, I am a total joiner who cannot resist the snowballing power of a knit along in the The Loopy Ewe group over on Ravelry. And I'm making it because it'll look good, but also because it's called "something red," and the designer alludes to things like Cabernet and Sangiovese in her description of it -- and I'm knitting it in a colorway called "in vino veritas." And that all just amuses me no end.

And I'm making socks (yes, me, I am making socks -- go figure) because a friend whose daughter is in the hospital wanted to learn how, and I found some yarn for her and couldn't resist getting some for myself. And then she wanted help casting on and starting the toe-up sock, and it was easier to describe it to her over the phone if I did it myself at the same time, and then once I was started, why stop? The yarn is Crystal Palace Panda Cotton, and although it is incredibly splitty, I find I'm really loving it.

And I've dropped off the face of the earth here because a six-year-old friend of our family (same child as I mentioned in the last paragraph) has been in the hospital since February 23, except for two weeks at home around Eastertime. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the experience has been a crisis of faith for me. And as I have grappled with it, I have knit. And I have thought about knitting, and about its role in my life.

But I haven't taken any progress pictures, nor taken the time to write down my thoughts.

I have every intention of posting here more often; these drive-by posts wind up being so lifeless. And my life has been full to overflowing these days. There's no excuse for anything I do being lifeless.

The Importance of Knitting

2008-03-10T10:31:00.005-04:00

Recently, I called a friend's cell phone, knowing that she was at the emergency room of a local hospital, where her daughter was about to be admitted for a yet-to-be-determined length of time. We spoke about her daughter, the logistics of leaving life behind and entering hospital-world, the hassle of hanging out in the ER, and then I asked the obvious question: "What can I do? How can I help?"

Not missing a beat, the answer came back: "Well, first, I need some knitting."

I understand. Knitting is necessary. Knitting is essential. It can soothe, distract, entertain, allow time to pass. It can engross us, while simultaneously being put-down-able. For me, at least, it allows me to retreat a little when my surroundings get to be too much -- or to be more present than I otherwise would be, when what is going on elsewhere in my life has gotten to be too much.

Every so often, I get enthusiastic about a new hobby, pursuit, interest, whatever. I buy a GPS and sign up for online geocaching sites. I buy a spinning wheel and start acquiring roving. I take up golf. Or tennis. Or scuba diving. I take Spanish lessons. I go on Amazon.com and buy books on music theory. I get involved in teaching a full-impact self-defense course for women. Something strikes my fancy, and off I go. ~~Some~~ Very few of these things become life-long interests. But knitting remains constant.

It is no surprise to me whatsoever that the first and most helpful thing I could do for my friend was to get her some yarn for her next project. I would probably ask for the same thing. Wouldn't you?

========

And in my knitting news: I am almost done with my single-color Ribby Cardi. You may recall that I knit one of these about two years ago, only to find out that it was too small -- so I gave it to my sister, who is more than a smidge smaller than I. And I ordered yarn to make another one. The yarn had been ~~fermenting~~ ~~marinating~~ aging beautifully in my stash, for nearly two years when I decided, at the start of 2008, to shop my stash first. Which is how it came to be that I finally got around to my second Ribby Cardi. I had planned to make it in two colors, but decided I did not like how the two I had ordered looked together, and so have made it all in the main color. I am very fortunate (and thankful) that I tend to over-estimate the amount of yarn I'll need, and then I round up, and then I buy a bit of 'yarn insurance,' just in case overestimating and rounding up don't accomplish their intended goal. I was worried there for a while that I wouldn't make it, but I've successfully seamed the sides and sleeves of the sweater, and have attached one sleeve. All that's left to do is to attach the second sleeve and add a collar. I have about two-thirds of a skein left. I think I'll make it with plenty to spare (famous last words, huh?).

The next project will not be a shop-the-stash project, as I have been completely swept away by the Ravelry group "Loopy Groupies" plan to knit a sweater with Dream in Color Classy yarn. I'll be doing Wendy Bernard's "Something Red" in the "In Vino Veritas" colorway, and I am itching to get started. The yarn is such an amazing color -- it really does look like a Merlot or Burgandy, or even a Zinfandel or Sangiovese. And it smells delectable. I even made KTE and KTY smell it. I'm not sure they share my enthusiasm, but they did at least smile and nod politely. And kept their "back away from the crazy woman" thoughts to themselves (yes, they know what's good for them).

I promise pictures at some point. Really.

Sick

2008-02-13T05:59:00.001-05:00

I'm going to try to keep this post from getting too long.

Assume for a moment that you have a child. A child who is sick. A child whose digestive track doesn't work particularly well. A child who goes in and out of medical crisis, and in and out of the Emergency Room and the hospital, with alarming frequency.

And assume for a moment that, in an effort to get nutrition into your child -- you know, the stuff that keeps a person alive -- you agree with one of your child's many specialists to allow a central line to be placed. And assume that placing the central line allows you to get some nutrition to your child, but that your child also has other, unidentified medical issues and that nutrition is necessary but not sufficient to keep your child alive and well and healthy.

And assume that your child does OK for a bit with the IV nutrition, but spikes a high fever one night for no apparent reason -- although there has been a cold going around your child's class at school -- and that you and your child head to the Emergency Room and are admitted to the hospital.

And then assume that the attending physician does not know your child's gastroenterologist other than by reputation, and does not consult with your child's gastroenterologist, but decides that the hospital ought to try to feed your child, and starts giving this child all of its nutrition by mouth.

And assume further that on day 1, your child does OK. And on day 2, your child feels crappy. And at the end of day 2, your child throws up massive amounts of formula and other foods, and feels better again. Day 3 repeats day 1. Day 4 repeats day 2. But your child still has an unexplained fever and is losing strength and weight daily.

Day 5 repeats day 1. And on Day 5, a nurse who has been working on that floor at the hospital, but has not been involved with your child's care over the two years it took to get to this point, is assigned to care for your child.

And you're starting to go out of your mind with worry and concern -- they are starving your child, for chrissakes! And at the end of day 5, while your child is still doing decently well eating by mouth, two nurses show up with an armed guard and escort you out of your child's room.

Someone has reported you to the state agency charged with protecting children. You are told that you will not be allowed to see or speak to your child, let alone be in the same room with that child, because the state believes it is better to be safe than sorry, and the one way to find out whether you are harming your child is to remove the child from your care, take the child off all medical support for six weeks, and see what happens.

Now what do you do?

This is not my life, but it has been the life of dozens of families, some of whose children have then gone on to die in foster care. It's sick, really.

What resources would you want? How would you know they exist? What should have been done differently from the get-go to prevent this?

Eye Candy Friday

2008-02-08T06:54:00.000-05:00

Snow and ice clinging to a tree branch, one night after KTE and KTY finished at gymnastics.

Prayer Shawls

2008-02-04T06:11:00.001-05:00

Click of needles.
Rhythm of hands.
Quiet contemplation.
Knit within the stitches:
Thoughts for well-being;
Thoughts for healing and health;
Thoughts of comfort and thoughts of love.
-adapted from Nancy J. Spiegel Rossman

Over the last year, I have knit four variations on a 'comfort shawl' or 'prayer shawl.' We have friends who are going through a lot these days I knit a feather-and-fan shawl for KL,

a Retro Throw for GL (the five year old),

another Retro Throw for AL (GL's nine-year-old sister),

and finally a Follow the Leader shawl for SL.

I started these projects somewhere around March of 2007, and finished in December, 2007. During that time, I knit nothing else, except the hat and mittens I had promised to a friend from church. It was totally worth it. I greatly enjoyed the knitting of every one of these (and, in fact, have purchased the yarn to make myself a Follow the Leader shawl because I had so much fun with it).

For now, though, I have taken on a shorter-term project: the Ribby Cardi, of which I have completed the back and one of the fronts. Pictures to follow once I get them uploaded.

A (silent) poetry reading

2008-02-02T23:37:00.000-05:00

In honor of the Feast of St. Birgid, and because it's what all the cool kids are doing.

"My Daughter at 14: Christmas Dance"
by Maria Mazziotti Gillan, from Winter Light. © Chantry Press, 1985.

My Daughter at 14: Christmas Dance

Panic in your face, you write questions
to ask him. When he arrives,
you are serene, your fear
unbetrayed. How unlike me you are.

After the dance,
I see your happiness; he holds
your hand. Though you barely speak,
your body pulses messages I can read

all too well. He kisses you goodnight,
his body moving toward yours, and yours
responding. I am frightened, guard my
tongue for fear my mother will pop out

of my mouth. "He is not shy." You giggle,
a little girl again, but you tell me he
kissed you on the dance floor. "Once?"
I ask. "No, a lot."

We ride through the rain-shining 1 A.M.
streets. I bite back words which long
to be said, knowing I must not shatter your
moment, fragile as a spun-glass bird,

you, the moment, poised on the edge of
flight, and I, on the ground, afraid.

Eye Candy Friday

2008-02-01T06:43:00.000-05:00

I know I've been gone a while. I'll be back. Just not quite yet.

The view, at sunrise, out my window at work.

Crazy and good

2007-12-18T07:22:00.000-05:00

Life is crazy these days. Crazy and good. The to-do list stretches on and on. But somehow this year, it is reminding me of all that we have, of how very full and blessed our lives are. All the people for whom to buy gifts -- those are people who we love and who love us. All the people to whom we send cards? Those are people whose lives we follow (even if only from a distance) who continue to have a place in our hearts even if they are not a huge part of our lives. All the grocery shopping and cleaning house to get ready to host Christmas dinner? That's because family and friends wish to share the special day with us, to break bread together. All the planning for this Sunday's service at Church? That's because we have a cohesive church community in which we are actively involved.

Somehow, some way, a long to-do list has turned into a reflection on how very lucky I am to lead the life I lead. I'm not usually this chipper and optimistic during this dark, cold, dreary, dead time of year. But I'll take it -- I'm not complaining. Perplexed, yes. Complaining, no.

A Christmas Questionnaire

2007-11-29T23:31:00.000-05:00

Saw this at the blog of one of my Pay It Forward recipients, and thought it was interesting. Many apologies for the Christmas-centric nature of it; if you've been reading along for a while, you know that I am UU (Unitarian Universalist), and as such, celebrate just about everything there is to celebrate around this time of year -- an equal-opportunity celebrant, if you will.

Actually, I just like lighting candles. And most religious celebrations in the dark of winter involve lighting candles, right? Honestly, anything that brings light into darkness is all good, in my book.

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? Wrapping paper.

2. Real tree or artificial? Real, but we're thinking about getting a high-quality artificial tree for conservation reasons (and because our real ones keep dying before it's time to get rid of them)

3. When do you put up the tree? Sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas -- usually early December, but not always.

4. When do you take the tree down? Usually around New Year’s Day.

5. Do you like eggnog? Yech. I don't like eggs, and I don't like creamy things. Eggnog sounds like my own private definition of gross.

6. Favorite gift received as a child? A key to my parents' car. My very own key. My very own freedom.

7. Do you have a nativity scene? Yes, and I think it's an important part of what we celebrate this time of year.

8. Hardest person to buy for? My father-in-law.

9. Easiest person to buy for? It varies from year to year -- I don't buy stuff just for the sake of buying stuff. But if I see something that makes me think of the person, I make a mental note of it and then look back at it toward the end of the year to see if I still think it makes sense. There are some that are slam-dunks, and some where I wonder 'what was I thinking?!?' It's the slam-dunks that are the easiest.

10. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? A DVD the giver wanted, in which I had little or no interest.

11. Mail or email Christmas cards? Mail.

12. Favorite Christmas Movie? Hmm. I'm not so much into Christmas movies

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas? All year -- the buying part, though, happens toward the end of the year.

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? No.

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Cookies.

16. Clear lights or colored on the tree? White lights recently, colored lights growing up, and up until two years ago

17. Favorite Christmas song? Bruce Springsteen's "Santa Claus is coming to town"

18. Travel at Christmas or stay home? Home sweet home.

19. Can you name all of Santa’s reindeers? Nope.

20. Angel on the tree top or a star? Star.

21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning? One gift the eve before, the rest the morning of.

22. Most annoying thing about this time of year? Rampant consumerism. Gimme, gimme, gimme. I want, I want, I want.

23. What do you love most about Christmas? Building and honoring relationships. The opportunity to give gifts with meaning, without anyone asking "why'd you do that?"

24. How many people do you buy gifts for? 15-ish, plus daycare providers, coworkers, teachers, mail carrier, newspaper delivery guy, etc.

25. Do you put out cookies and milk for Santa? Yes, and carrots for the reindeer.

I give up

2007-11-29T19:25:00.000-05:00

There's no way I'm going to manage, realistically, to post every day this month -- even if I back-fill some of the empty days with random ramblings, knitting updates, and other miscellanea.

It has been an interesting experience, though. I have found myself thinking, far more often than I used to, "I should blog about that." So maybe this habit (or attempt to build a habit) of blogging more often will pay off in more interesting posts -- I am noticing interesting things in my life and intending to post them, rather than opening up blogger and wondering what the hell I should talk about now.

First up, I just signed up for "Pay it Forward" over at ZinLizzie's blog. If you haven't heard of it, here are the rules to participate:

I will send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment on this blog post requesting to join this PIF exchange. I don’t know what that gift will be yet, and you may not receive it tomorrow or next week, but you will receive it within 365 days, that is my promise! The only thing you have to do in return is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog.

So, that's my promise. Any takers? If not, I pledge to find three random people -- people I know, but for whom I would not normally make something (and who would not be completely freaked out if I DID make something for them) -- and make something for them.

Next, two cute-kid stories (because my life is just full of 'em):
(1) An exchange between KTY and her Nana (my mom). As background, Nana had asked KTY twice what she wanted for Christmas. The first time, KTY had looked at Nana (who was wearing a bathrobe), and had said "a bathrobe." The second time, KTY had glanced around the room, noticed the mini-binoculars that had been used to watch The Nutcracker the previous day, and said "binoculars."
Nana: KTY, I know you said you wanted a bathrobe and binoculars for Christmas, but was that because you really wanted them, or just because they were what you happened to see?
KTY: I don't really want them.
Nana: Well, then, what would you like?
KTY: Nana, anything I would ask you for, I can just get from Santa. And he just brings it. If you get it, you have to go shopping and spend money. So I'll just ask Santa.

(2) An exchange between me and KTE. Background: KTE gets Reader's Digest "Weekly Reader" for Third Grade. The most recent edition is about the presidential race. She was reading it and declared "I could be president someday! I was born in the U.S., I will have lived here for that many years, and I'll be at least 35! Hey, Daddy! You could be president! You're 37!" I walked over, stood in front of her, and cleared my throat. "Mommy!" she said, "Daddy could be president!" I cleared my throat again and stood up a little taller. "Ohhh. . . " she said, as the light slowly dawned, "YOU could be president, too, Mommy!" And then, without missing a beat "Be president! I want to see what Washington, D.C. looks like!"

Third, and finally, I spent 20 hours in an alternate universe overnight last night, and it has completely changed me.

I left work midday yesterday, and drove back to the city in which I grew up (New York City), to participate as part of a panel on leaving and re-entering the workforce at my ~~high~~ school -- which I attended from kindergarten through 12th grade. In other words, I went back to high school -- with all of the intimidation and fear that that implies. Before the program started, I, who usually have almost no problem speaking in public, was shaking.

And I had a BLAST.

It was great to go an talk about a topic about which I actually know something, and to talk with others who have done or are thinking about doing similar things. And to see old teachers, and the past headmistress of the school (who is nowhere near so intimidating as she was when I was 10 years old!). But really, I stepped into the world in which I would be living if I had accepted a position at a firm in NYC after law school graduation, and had stayed there throughout my career, rather than living in the Boston suburbs, taking a position at a large Boston firm, and then leaving to stay home full-time for a while.

I would not trade this life for that one if you paid me, but it was fun and thought-provoking to go be around people who have continued along the path that I believed had been laid out for me; to go out to dinner at the sort of place I used to go regularly, to leave the restaurant at 10 pm and be NOWHERE NEAR the last people in the place; to walk out my parents' front door at 7:30 this morning and be smack-dab in the middle of hustle and bustle; to spend the evening with people who work more hours in three days than I work in a week (even though, yes, I work full-time); to talk with women who are sending their daughters to the same school we attended twenty-some-odd years ago.

The life I am living is NOT the one I envisioned for myself as I was growing up. The lives my children are living are NOT the life I lived as I was growing up. Their lives closely match that of E as he was growing up. I would like to find a way to interject more of my growing-up into their lives, as it has equipped me well for what has come since then. But I have no regrets about the decisions I have made, the decisions that took me off the path that I saw laid out for me, and put me on a completely different path to the same destination.

The same destination? You must be wondering. How could it possibly be the same destination? "Partner at a large law firm in NYC, living in NYC, kids in private school," all of that -- is NOWHERE near to the same destination as Associate Counsel in-house at a membership organization, living in the Boston suburbs, kids in public school," and all of that. But when I was a freshman in college, my brother (eight years younger than I) called because he was conducting a survey for one of his classes. The questionnaire included the question "what do you want to be when you grow up?"

I have wanted to be an attorney since I was about 10 years old. My reasons for wanting it have changed as I have grown up, but the desire has remained the same (approximately).

Four years later, as I was moving out of my parents' apartment, I found the papers on which my brother had recorded the answers he received to his survey; one page of paper per survey participant. And I looked through, especially at the "what do you want to be" question -- after all, I had just graduated college and was moving out on my own; it seemed an issue of great import at the time. I read the answers. Doctor, architect, baker, candlestick-maker, firefighter. And then my answer: Happy.

No, this may not be the path that I saw laid out before me those many years ago. But it has led to the place I was seeking. No doubt there will be many more twists and turns before the journey is done.

Finished!

2007-11-25T16:14:00.000-05:00

A stealth project -- mittens and a hat from Ann Budd's "Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns." I donated custom, hand-knit mittens and a hat to our church's auction in March, and have finally (finally!) finished them.

Holiday knitting

2007-11-24T13:45:00.000-05:00

Well, this is the time of year when blogs all over blogland start a frightening countdown and count-up. We count down the number of days until the holiday of our choice (31 until Christmas, for me and mine), and we count up the number of objects we have knit to give on (or around) that date (0 for me, thus far).

Interestingly, though, most of my Christmas gifting is already arranged. I will not be knitting anything for anyone. My to-do queue of gifts for others and myself is already long enough. Adding to it and imposing a deadline on the things I add is just asking for trouble. I enjoy giving gifts; I do it year-round. Christmas is a convenient excuse to give people the things I see or think of that make me think of them. I've recently begun thinking of Christmas gifts as a timing issue. I am endeavoring not to give people things just for the sake of giving them things -- instead, I am giving them at Christmas the things that I have seen throughout the year and thought of giving to them.

Similarly, there are a few indulgences we have been considering for ourselves. If we get them and put them under the tree, we satisfy my desire to give and to get gifts at Christmas, while also taking care of our concerns about needlessly spending money just to clutter up our house (or others' houses) with more stuff/junk we/they don't need.

It's a new approach, and one that has made Christmas shopping particularly easy this year.

Now if only my holiday cards would write themselves and the house would clean itself.

How is your holiday prep going?

Giving Thanks

2007-11-23T20:34:00.000-05:00

For the first time in a long time, we spent Thanksgiving with my family in New York City. You could have knocked me over with a feather when we arrived in Manhattan just four hours after we left the Boston area (with two stops due to KTY's nausea and KTE's need to pee). It's usually a three-and-a-half hour drive, and I was absolutely sure that there was no way it'd be anything less than five hours on the Wednesday evening before Thanksgiving. But it was. One more thing for which to give thanks.

We arrived, and the house was festooned with flowers. Apparently, my aunt has a new flower-arranging business, and had asked what she could do to decorate for the holiday. Mom (her sister) said "two small ceterpieces would be great, thanks." In usual family fashion, "two small centerpieces" had the words "and then some" appended in my aunt's mind, and we had displays like this gorgeous one all over the house:

photo courtesy of KTE, who is developing quite an eye. She also took this one of the sunrise out the window of my parents' TV room:

Yesterday morning, my sister took the kids to see the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and E and I got a chance to go for a walk in Central Park and sit and watch the world go by for a bit -- it was at least sixty degrees out. One last hurrah of summer (or early fall). It was beautiful.

Progress on the second Retro Throw has been fabulous. Weaving in ends is a lot less onerous when sitting around chatting with various and sundry family members, snacking on apple pie and ice cream, and listening to my kids put on an impromptu flute concert for their great-aunt (my aunt), their grandparents, their aunts, their uncle, and various and sundry friends of the family. The ends are now all woven in -- with the "extra-ness" trimmed and piled in the middle of the dining room table:

I would have washed and blocked the throw, too, except that I remembered the last Retro Throw I knit. When I gave it to the recipient, G, she ended up in the hospital that evening (she is a medically fragile child for whom hospitalizations are, sadly, not infrequent). This one is for her older sister, A. They are away from home for the holiday, and the last I had heard, G was running a fever.

I do not think of myself as particularly superstitious, yet I found myself deciding that it made sense not to finish the Throw until the whole family was safe and sound within half an hour of their "home hospital" (for lack of a better term). I know that my knitting does not affect her health like that, but all the same . . .

And that's all I've got for today.

Thanksgiving

2007-11-22T10:42:00.000-05:00

a poem by Elizabeth, Countess of Craven:

I thank you, God, that I have lived
In this great world and known its many joys:
The song of birds, the strong, sweet scent of hay
And cooling breezes breezes in the secret dusk.
The flaming sunsets at the close of day,
Hills and the lonely heather-covered moors.
Music at night and moonlight on the sea,
The beat of waves upon the rocky shore,
And wild, white spray flung high in ecstasy.
The faithful eyes of dogs and treasured books,
The love of kin, fellowship of friends,
And all that makes life dear and beautiful.

I thank you, too, that there has come to me
A little sorrow and sometimes defeat.
A little heartache and the loneliness
That comes with parting and the word “goodbye.”
Dawn breaking after dreary hours of pain
When I discovered that night's gloom must yield
And morning light break through to me again.
Because of these and other blessings poured
Unmasked upon my wondering head,
Because I know that there is yet to come
An even richer and more glorious life,
I thank you God that I have lived.

The Anti-Martha

2007-11-21T15:42:00.000-05:00

As I get ready to load up the minivan and join the rest of the eastern seaboard in heading to Manhattan (yes, we are insane -- do you have to ask?), I leave you with an email I received about 10 years ago. It still makes me laugh out loud. I am posting it here without permission -- if you are, or know who is, the author, please contact me so I can clear my use with you or take it down from this blog. Thanks.

For everyone else: enjoy!

Subject: Happy Thanksgiving

My Dear Guests;
Martha Stewart will not be dining with us this Thanksgiving. I'm
telling you in advance, so don't act surprised. Since Ms. Stewart
won't be coming, I've made a few small changes:

Our sidewalk will not be lined with homemade, paper bag luminaries.
After a trial run, it was decided that no matter how cleverly done,
rows of flaming lunch sacks do not have the desired welcoming effect.

Once inside, our guests will note that the entry hall is not decorated
with the swags of Indian corn and fall foliage I had planned to make.
Instead, I've gotten the kids involved in the decorating by having them
track in colorful autumn leaves from the front yard. The mud was their
idea.

The dining table will not be covered with expensive linens, fancy
china, or crystal goblets. If possible, we will use dishes that match
and everyone will get a fork. Since this IS thanksgiving, we will refrain
from using the plastic Peter Rabbit plate and the Santa napkins from
last Christmas.

Our centerpiece will not be the tower of fresh fruit and flowers that
I promised. Instead we will be displaying a hedgehog-like decoration
hand-crafted from the finest construction paper. The artist assures me
it is a turkey.

We will be dining fashionably late. The children will entertain you
while you wait. I'm sure they will be happy to share every choice
comment I have made regarding Thanksgiving, pilgrims, and the turkey hotline.
Please remember that most of these comments were made at 5:00 a.m. upon
discovering that the turkey was still hard enough to cut diamonds.

As accompaniment to the children's recital, I will play a recording of
tribal drumming. If the children should mention that I don't own a
recording of tribal drumming, or that tribal drumming sounds
suspiciously like a frozen turkey in a clothes dryer, ignore them. They
are lying.

We toyed with the idea of ringing a dainty silver bell to announce the
start of our feast. In the end, we chose to keep our traditional
method. We've also decided against a formal seating arrangement. When the smoke
alarm sounds, please gather around the table and sit where you like.

In the spirit of harmony, we will ask the children to sit at a
separate table. In a separate room. Next door.

Now, I know you have all seen pictures of one person carving a turkey
in front of a crowd of appreciative onlookers. This will not be
happening at our dinner. For safety reasons, the turkey will be carved in a
private ceremony. I stress "private" meaning: Do not, under any circumstances,
enter the kitchen to laugh at me. Do not send small, unsuspecting
children to check on my progress. I have an electric knife. The turkey is
unarmed. It stands to reason that I will eventually win. When I do, we
will eat.

I would like to take this opportunity to remind my young diners that
"passing the rolls" is not a football play. Nor is it a request to
bean your brother in the head with warm tasty bread. Oh, and one
reminder for the adults: For the duration of the meal, and especially while
in the presence of young diners, we will refer to the giblet gravy by its
lesser-known name: Cheese Sauce. If a young diner questions you
regarding the origins or type of Cheese Sauce, plead ignorance.

Before I forget, there is one last change. Instead of offering a
choice between 12 different scrumptious desserts, we will be serving
the traditional pumpkin pie, garnished with whipped cream and small
fingerprints. You will still have a choice; take it or leave it.

Martha Stewart will not be dining with us this Thanksgiving. She
probably won't come next year either. I am thankful.

Ninety-nine . . .

2007-11-20T23:43:00.000-05:00

Ninety-nine ends to weave in, ninety-nine ends to weave. Weave one in, sew it on through;
Ninety-eight ends to weave in, ninety-eight ends to weave. Weave one in, sew it on through;
Ninety-seven ends to weave in, ninety-seven ends to weave. Weave one in, sew it on through;
Ninety-six ends to weave in, ninety-six ends to weave. Weave one in, sew it on through;
Ninety-five ends to weave in, ninety-five ends to weave. Weave one in, sew it on through;
Ninety-four ends to weave in, ninety-four ends to weave. Weave one in, sew it on through;
Ninety-three ends to weave in, ninety-three ends to weave. Weave one in, sew it on through;
Ninety-two ends to weave in, ninety-two ends to weave. Weave one in, sew it on through;
Ninety-one ends to weave in, ninety-one ends to weave. Weave one in, sew it on through;
Ninety ends to weave in, ninety ends to weave. Weave one in, sew it on through;
Eighty-nine ends to weave in, eighty-nine ends to weave. Weave one in, sew it on through;
Eighty-eight ends to weave in, eighty-eight ends to weave. Weave one in, sew it on through;
. . .

Are you bored yet? Me too. Motivating to finish this blanket is getting harder and harder, despite the fact that I am getting closer and closer to the finish line. Maybe a bottle of beer (or ninety-nine) would help? Nah, probably not.

Pictures to come. But later. I only just got the pictures from our August vacation off my camera and onto the computer -- and that's solely because I needed the "after" pictures of the basement construction so I could file the application for a variance from the state building code.

Yes, I know, I am seriously behind the times on this. This blog has become dull and picture-less. Oh well. I'll get to it when I get to it. In the meantime, I continue to stay busy with a whole slew of other things (including the highly important watching-TV-with-E portion of my evenings).

Daily

2007-11-19T22:47:00.000-05:00

There are things we do daily because we are in the habit of doing them (and perhaps because they are good things for us to do). Pedestrian things like brushing teeth and hair, showering, eating, talking, and so on. And then there are things that we strive to do daily, that we know are good things for us to do. Things like (for me) practicing the flute, reading the news in some form or another, staying in touch with friends, (and, this month, blogging). And then there are things that I strive to do on a regular -- if not daily -- basis. Things like exercise, keeping track of what I've eaten, going to bed at a decent hour, reading, knitting, and so on.

But as we approach Thanksgiving, it occurs to me more and more that what I really need to do on a daily, if not hourly, basis is to spend some time being thankful. When I start to count the things for which I am grateful, it is truly overwhelming. At some point, my mind shuts down and tacks on a proverbial "etcetera, etcetera, etcetera" (ten points if you know the allusion, even with my horrible spelling). But that "and so on" amounts to a spiritual laziness, doesn't it? An unwillingness really to face how very blessed I am.

I have a family I love and who loves me. I have a husband who is so fabulous in so many ways that to list them all here would sound like I was bragging. I have kids who are similarly so great --so kind, thoughtful, intelligent, inquisitive, funny, enjoyable, independent, tightly bonded, "and so on"-- that I have to restrain myself from shouting my love for them to the whole world. They challenge me to be the very best *me* I can be, and I feel truly gifted to have them in my life.

And then there's my family (my mom, dad, sister & brother), and my in-laws, and my extended family, and E's extended family, and our friends. Our close family friends who have become like family to us; whose kids are like sisters to my kids and who treat us like parents-- and vice-versa. Our slightly-less-close but still incredibly close group of friends from church. Our church. My good fortune in getting to participate in the spiritual growth and development of the eighth grade class at church.

And I haven't even begun to list things like having a job, running water, toilets that flush, coworkers who I enjoy, a roof over my head, electricity, heat, a warm bed at night, a good work-life balance, an internet connection, adequate (more than adequate) food to eat, modern pharmeceuticals that keep me sane (or at least more sane than I would be without them), cars that run, and so on.

See? There I go doing it again. Honestly, I think that I fear that if I looked my gifts directly in the face and had the courage to count them all, I'd never again go to sleep. But I know I need to spend more time focusing on all that I have and how very thankful I am for all of it. It can be so easy to focus on the things we do not have (a Roomba would make it easier to clean the basement; a new computer would allow our A/V system to access our music, video, and MP3 files; new cups for the kids would allow us to have a set that isn't mis-matched from various restaurants) and so easy to lose sight of all we do have.

So, as we enter this season of Thanksgiving, I resolve to give thanks. As I think about how to answer the "what do you want for Christmas" question, I resolve also to make a list that counts all the things I already have.

And maybe, just maybe, I will suggest to my kids that for each thing they put in their letter to Santa, they must also list one (or maybe even two) things for which they are thankful. We get so bombarded with "I want," "I need," "It'd be cool to have" at this time of year -- catalogs, advertisements, friends and family all encourage us to think along those lines. I think it's time to turn that around and count what we've got already. We are deeply blessed.

I am thankful.

Meaningful Thanks

2007-11-15T22:15:00.000-05:00

So, as some of you know, I am teaching my church's eighth grade sexuality education curriculum, Our Whole Lives. This past Sunday, I led a class that combined some of the session on STI (that's Sexually Transmitted Infections -- they're no longer called "diseases," as they were when I was being edumacated about this stuff) prevention with some of the session on Unplanned Pregnancy Options. To put it more bluntly: condoms and abortion. Talk about controversial!

But it was fun. Watching these kids grapple with questions that have vexed ethicists, scientists, doctors, lawyers, and others since time immemorial -- when does life begin? When should it be OK to terminate a pregnancy? What say should the father have over the decision to terminate? What about a teen's parents?

But, frankly, the most fun was the portion of the class I now think of as "fun with condoms." We put them on our hands, closed our eyes, and tried to feel the brush of a feather through them. We inflated them and measured circumference and length. We put them on bananas. We filled them with water to see how much they held. In with all of it, I and my co-facilitator conveyed important information: condoms still allow the user(s) to experience sensation. Condoms are rarely "too small." There are four things you look for before you open a condom (expiration date, lubrication (spermicidal or non-), rips or tears, and what the condom is made of (latex, sheep gut, or other)).

The class was fun. It was loud, a little irreverant, but also serious and focused. As I launched into my spiel about not using a condom if there's less than six months left before the expiration date -- "a condom costs about a dollar. That's way less than the co-pays for prenatal care, or the cost of treating an STI, or even buying an over-the-counter pregnancy test; don't risk it" -- the teens interrupted. "A Dollar?!" "I had no idea!" They were all speaking at once. "Wait a minute! There are like a zillion condoms here! They must have cost a fortune! Did you buy them? How much did they cost?"

"Yes, I bought them. It was about sixty dollars for the sixty condoms here."

"Woah." "Wait a minute. YOU bought these?" (this last comment from one of the louder, less focused kids).

"Yes."

The kid got really quiet. Then looked right at me, quietly said "thank you," and went back to being loud and boisterous for the rest of the class.

Honestly? That one moment makes all the time and effort I am putting in on this worth it. That one moment -- knowing that what I did and what I do has meaning to this child, and extrapolating that if it has meaning to this one, then is also has meaning to some (or maybe even all) of the others. Knowing that, even when the class is being a little rambunctious and seems to be preoccupied with the 'ick' factor (spermicidal lubricant on bananas, for example), I am still getting through to them. That makes it all worth it.

I am not sure that the words "thank you" have ever meant more to me.

I'm sure there's some elegant way to link this to the approach of Thanksgiving here in the U.S., but right now I'm just basking in the joy of that one "thank you."

An explanation

2007-11-14T16:50:00.000-05:00

Well, I know I've missed a couple days of blogging. But I'm going to call it an excused absence. You see, I've been sick. For about a month and a half, I've been fighting a stuffy nose and sinus pain. I managed to stay mostly ahead of it with Sudafed and hot drinks and plenty of water and eating well, and all the stuff they recommend you do. But a few days ago, I started to feel bone-tired. As if maybe the very structure of my self were made of rubber and liable to stop supporting me at any moment. So I started getting more sleep. As in two to four hours more per night than usual. And still I was tired.But did I go to the doctor? No, not then. I can beat this, I told myself, and I soldiered onward.

It reached a point where I would stop partway up the stairs to rest. But did I go to the doctor? No, not then.

I parked my car closer to my office building than usual, so I wouldn't have to walk as far. But did I go to the doctor? No, not then.

Last night, I realized that I was feeling too tired to knit anymore and all I wanted to do was to sit and stare at the wall.

I called the doctor. Too tired to climb stairs? Fine. Too tired to walk through the parking lot? Fine. Needing two to four extra hours of sleep a night? Fine. But unable to knit? Something must be SERIOUSLY wrong; we have to take care of that!

I'm now on antibiotics, and just an hour after my first dose, am feeling much MUCH better. I generally resist medications, but when they're necessary, boy-oh-boy are they necessary! So . . . you can expect to be seeing/hearing/reading more of me in the days to come.

In knitting news, I'm working on the edging for the Retro Throw for A.L., which I should finish tonight, and then I have only a mere kajillion ends to weave in (I started counting but got completely demoralized when I wasn't even through half the squares and the number was well above 30).

Knitting update

2007-11-10T21:29:00.000-05:00

So . . . the Retro Throw for A.L. is proceeding apace. I have created four rows of three blocks each by seaming together, well, rows of three blocks. And I have seamed two of those rows together. I have only to do two more seams (to attach row 3 to rows 1 & 2, and then to attach row 4 to rows 1, 2 & 3), and then the real ~~boring stuff~~ fun begins -- either I ~~have to~~ get to weave in well over 100 ends, or I knit the I-cord edging.

Don't get me wrong; I think I-cord is one of the coolest things going -- just the idea that you can knit a tube on ~~ONE~~ two needles (technically). That's pretty amazing. But despite the fact that I am obviously easily entertained -- as evidenced by my continuing ooohs and aaahs at all the pretty colors in a self-striping or handpainted yarn -- after about 10 inches, I find I-cord to be duller than dull. Lucky for me, one side of each of these blocks is slightly over a foot long. So this is going to work out to well over 14 feet of I-cord.

Funny, it doesn't sound all that bad, does it?

Anyway. As I get ready to wrap up the Retro Throw for A.L. my thoughts turn to my next project. I should really just finish up the mittens and hat for the friend from church and get them off my plate before the holidays. But then what? I'm getting antsy, wanting to start the entrelac stole for S.L., but I also know that the further away I get from the time when I was knitting Samus on a regular basis, the less likely I am to return to her. Maybe this isn't all that big a deal, as I'm not sure the design appeals to me as much as it once did. And then, I want to make a shawl for each of KTE and KTY, and I want to knit myself another Ribby Cardi, and, and, and.

So I'm faced with the question: do I cast on for a whole bunch of stuff and just knit whatever grabs me at a given moment? I have found that I generally do better when I have just one project active at any given moment. But I've also learned recently (with all these dang retro-throw squares) that when I get bored of a project, progess slows considerably.

I think maybe I'll go finish seaming this final Retro Throw while I try to decide "what next."

[and here's the necessary disclaimer/reminder: I announced on November 1 that you were about to be deluged with drivel.]

Whoops!

2007-11-09T20:59:00.000-05:00

It turns out that the United States Postal Service no longer will deliver to "any soldier." The letter or package or whatever must be addressed to a specific person. The Walter Reed Medical Center has suggestions for other ways to support our troops here. In addition to those options, I've come up with another one. We all know someone who knows someone who is enlisted. Get that person's address. Send them a card-- one card, ten cards, whatever. Throw in some candy, some books of puzzles, whatever. And, if you put in stuff for more than one person, ask the recipient to put the remaining items up for grabs by their unit, colleagues, friends, whatever. It's a little more work than "any soldier," but it is also a little more personal.

I missed yesterday

2007-11-08T18:19:00.000-05:00

Well, we're just barely one week into NaBloWriMo (National Blog Writing Month) and already I missed a day. Oh well. Maybe I'll go back later and back-fill it. But for now, I'm going to pick myself up, dust myself off, and move on.

I saw this on a blog today:

Please consider the following when sending out your Christmas cards this year.
When you make out your Christmas card list this year, please include the following:
A Recovering American Soldier
c/o Walter Reed Army Medical Center
6900 Georgia Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20307-5001
Pass on only if you feel compelled to do so

And thought it sounded like a good idea. I love the thought that someone I don't even know is holding me in their heart and wishing me well, and I imagine our servicemen and -women would, too. On the other hand, I put pictures of my kids on my holiday cards. And I put my return address on the envelope. It seems the height of irresponsibility just to put that in the post and mail it off to any ol' person with the hopes that they are not one of the very, very few people in this world I should worry about. I know that the odds are very much in my favor here. And I know that I could probably just skip putting a return address on the envelope. But still, it got me thinking.

Maybe I'll just send a neutral holiday card -- no photos. Or perhaps, rather than waiting for the holidays to roll around, I'll send a get-well card today or tomorrow.

Growing up, I spend a lot of Christmases traveling with a friend and her family; I was therefore away from home on Christmas. My father passed on to me an ethic that I have internalized since then: we don't just love you on the holidays, he said, we love you every day of the year; we don't love you MORE on the holidays, we love you that much every day; every day together is special.

Perhaps, then, the way to let a member of our armed forces know that he or she is in our thoughts is to send a card on a normal, ordinary day. I think I'll be stopping at CVS on my way home to buy a get-well card or two.

Random Tuesday

2007-11-06T20:38:00.000-05:00

Random Tuesday today, because, well, why not?

(1) Over the past week, I have lived through (and eaten my way through) Hallowe'en, my birthday (celebrated twice -- once at home, once at work), a three-day hotel-based work meeting, and a church potluck. I stepped on the scale this morning, as I do every Tuesday morning, but with great trepidation. As it turns out, I need not have been nearly so worried -- despite my tremendous gustatory transgressions, I still lost half a pound.

(2) The Retro Throw for A.L. is fully laid out on my living room floor (I'll post pictures when I get a chance). All that remains is to weave in the kazillion ends, sew the twelve squares together, add an I-cord border, and wash and block it. With any luck, that'll all be done within the next week or so. Or maybe I'm just a pie-eyed optimist.

(3) Our basement renovation is complete, except for a relatively short and straightforward punch list. It's been eight months in the making, but the space is truly fabulous and exactly what we needed to be able to live well in our house (previously 1,400 square feet of living space, 2 bedrooms, 2 baths; now 1,800 square feet of living space, 2 bedrooms, 2.5 baths). It's a beautiful thing. I've even taken pictures to prove it (and, as with the pictures of the WIP status of the Retro Throw for A.L., will post them when I get a chance).

There's just one hitch, though: we're going to have to apply for a variance from the building code, as there is no way to build the basement stairs to code without applying for a zoning variance to put a dormer in our roof. (the basement stairs are below the first-floor stairs, which would need to be modified, but they're below the attic stairs, which would need to be modified -- including dormering out over the roof, which is already higher than the town's zoning bylaws allow). On the bright side, I am an attorney and therefore know where to find the necessary forms and how to cite chapter and verse (or, in this case, chapter and section) to support my argument. On the down-side, an attorney who represents herself has a fool for a client. On the up-side, it's better to have a fool for a client than for an attorney (and I've dealt with plenty of client-fools in the past).

(4) There is no (4). Three is all I've got. And it's only November 6th. Either I am about to get very creative with my posts, or I am going to fall far short of my NaNoWhateverMo goal of blogging every day this month.

A romantic relationship

2007-11-05T10:39:00.000-05:00

About eight years ago, we got our first car--the first car E and I bought together. We could think of almost nothing else from the day we ordered it (in early August), to the day we took delivery of it after it was custom-made for us on an assembly line in Germany (in early November). We went for long drives in it. We took it to an autocross-type event. We doted on it. We couldn't get enough of it.

A week ago, we sold it. I was so very glad to see it go. Like many a romantic relationship, that initial infatuation had waned. It no longer filled our needs as well as it once had. It required extensive--and expensive--repairs. It handled beautifully, but did not accelerate very well. It had 'quirks' that required a certain amount of patience on the part of the driver and passengers. For example, sometimes the inside driver's-side door handle didn't work, so you'd have to roll down the window to open the door from the outside. The front doors didn't swing very well, so they would have to be pushed (or pulled) shut with great force. Sometimes, it was finicky about starting. We didn't have to jump start it, but we did have to sit with the key turned in the ignition quite a while before the engine finally turned over.

By the end of the relationship, I could not WAIT to be rid of it. Too many repairs. Too much time in the shop. Too many repair bills. And not enough return on investment for the car to remain enjoyable to drive. I began to wonder what I had ever seen in it.

By the way, remember this? That's the car I'm talking about. We sold it for $100 less than the insurance adjuster initially estimated the repair would cost. Needless to say, the repair wound up costing a lot more than that -- three weeks worth of work at a NYC body shop does not come cheap. And when we got it back, there was a new and concerning noise coming from one of the wheels. It turned out, the bearings had worn out -- unrelated to the accident, and yet another cost to cover before selling the car.

So we sold the car. But because nothing was ever easy with this car by the end, first we had to get through the evening of the test drive. It went like this:

I tried to start the car when I got home with the kids that evening, and it wouldn't start -- too long sitting unused. Pulled the minivan up alongside it to jump-start it, and found the batteries were too far apart. Backed the minivan in, with the plan of pushing the car to be sold back along the driveway (in neutral, brake off), and found that the all-wheel-drive is not amenable to being pushed by hand. Then E got home. He pulled the car he had been driving up alongside, and found that the batteries were too far apart. Pulled the car he had been driving up onto our neighbor's yard, hooked up the jumper cables, started the car that worked, and turned the key in the ignition of the car to be sold.

Nothing.

So I got in the car that worked, gunned the engine, and E tried the car to be sold again.

Still nothing.

So he attached the cable that was acting as the Ground directly to the battery of the car to be sold, to create a complete loop from one battery to the other, I gunned the engine of the car that worked, and E tried the car to be sold again.

It started. And all's well that ends well. Well, at least for now. We still have to turn in the plates and let the insurer and our town clerk know that we no longer own the car. Care to bet whether that'll go smoothly?

November Resolutions

2007-11-04T13:47:00.000-05:00

Blog every day (although I nearly forgot to do so today!)
Finish the Retro Throw for A.L.
Finish the hat and mittens for church friend
Start Lady Eleanor for S.L.
Stay on Weight Watchers Core plan
Start Christmas shopping

At some point, I swear, I'm going to go back to doing some knitting for ME. I still have Samus to finish (again -- remember? I made the sleeves a size larger than the body; they didn't fit together too well . . .). I want to knit the Ribby Cardi again (remember? it came out too small for me; I gave it to my sister). And then there are the Northern Lights mittens from Knitpicks with which I am absolutely infatuated. And I just got the new Interweave Knits. And my kids would like shawls, please. And there was that shawl I for which I developed a concept in my head that has yet to make it into knitted form. And I'm thinking I should have another go at knitting a pair of socks -- maybe just simple stockinette is the way to go, since my size-ten feet generally require that I knit toe-up in order to guarantee that I will not run out of yarn part way down the foot.

Have a happy Sunday!

Perspective

2007-11-03T09:17:00.000-04:00

I am posting from the midst of a three-day meeting of my company -- twelve- to sixteen-hour days, including overnights at a local hotel. From time to time I break free from my role in some of these meetings to check email. Yesterday, at the end of the work day, I read an email from my mother-in-law, saying "I heard about the murder in your town, and the lock-down of the schools. Are you all OK?"

Suddenly the work I was doing for my employer seemed a lot less important.

The bottom line is that, yes, my kids, my husband and I are all just fine. By the time I learned of what had happened, it was over. I look forward to getting home and hugging my kids at the end of the day today.

NaNoBloPoMo

2007-11-02T08:40:00.000-04:00

You may have noticed this trend in the blogosphere -- to accomplish something in November. To do a little something every day in November.

Never one to miss out on a trend (even though I'm usually the one catching the very tail end of the thing as everyone who was on the leading edge is jumping ship), I figured I'd join in -- and, as a bonus, see if I cannot break out of this non-blogging rut into which I seem to have fallen of late.

I intend to blog every day this month.

Consider yourselves warned. I apologize in advance for the potential drivel you are about to experience.

Hallowe'en

2007-11-01T06:30:00.000-04:00

Last night was an incredible learning experience for me.

(1) Candy does not taste as good as I think it does;
(2) Eating more of it does not make it taste better;
(3) Eating more of it can actually make me feel worse;
(4) Eating more at that point does not make me feel better.

And yet. Yet I love candy. Always have, probably always will. My birthday is around this time of year, so it and Halloween are closely tied in my mind.

I realized last night that I need a plan. I need to identify, ahead of time, specific days and events on which I will simply allow myself to eat, without later beating myself up over it. I don't want the list of events to be too long or insane, or the list of things I choose to allow myself to eat on those days to be limitless. But I need to have a plan.

I will eat candy on Halloween and Easter. I will have a cupcake or slice of cake on my birthday, and that of each of my immediate family members.

For now, that's it. I haven't yet figured out vacations and fancy dinners and other holidays. Maybe the answer there is to allow a little indulgence, but be very careful on the days around the indulgent day, so as to blunt the impact of the indulgence just a bit.

I definitely learned last night that "just don't have any" is really viable for me on a day-to-day basis as I walk by one candy bowl after another around my office, but that it completely falls apart for special events. Now I need something new and different for special events. I'm hoping this is it.

Rules of Being a Sox Fan

2007-10-19T02:24:00.000-04:00

First, a confession: I was born and bred in New York City, and it remains true to this day (more than 13 years after I first moved to the Boston area) that you can take the girl out of the City, but you cannot take the City out of the girl. It's in my blood; it always will be.

But.

I was never a baseball fan. Sure, I went to games. If asked "Mets or Yankees," my answer was Yankees. After all, Reggie Jackson was a Yankee and he had a candy bar named after him. My third-grade science teacher pointed out that the Reggie Bar wasn't the only candy named after a baseball player. Instead of knowing that he was referring to Babe Ruth, we all looked at him blankly. Even when he explained.

But I digress.

I wasn't a baseball fan. Then I moved to the Boston area. Then, slowly but surely, over my first year of law school, I became a Patriots fan. And I think once you're a fan of a Boston team, it makes you more susceptible to the virus of fandom of other Boston teams. Because I find myself on the verge of becoming a fan of the Red Sox. It's not that they're a winning team. Or that, frankly, there's anything particularly magical about them. I think it's just that I've been exposed to so long to the pathogen that I am now infected.

But I'm still a bit of an outsider looking in. And, in looking in, I have identified a few cardinal rules of being a Sox Fan. Over the course of the series against the Cleveland Indians, I have watched tried-and-true Sox Fans break them all:

(1) Thou shalt not give up until thy team hast been eliminated;
(2) Thou mayest be disappointed by thy team, but thou shall never raise thy voice in anger against thy team;
(3) Thou shalt not speak ill of the deity we call "Big Papi," even if it shall pass that the deity perambulates at high speed into a ball, such that the deity may no longer perambulate the bases but must return to the dugout.
(4) Thou shalt not take to thy inner chamber for sleep until the final moments of the final inning of the game are over;
(5) Thou shalt not shrug and say "eh" if thy team is not in the lead; and
(6) Thou shalt remain ever-vigilent and cognizant of the fact that the moment at which thou takest a thing for granted, the SportsGods shall remove that thing from thy grasp.
(7) Thou shalt rejoice heartily and loudly whenever it shall pass that thy team hast endured longer than the athletes who wear the pinstripes.

I was baffled. Having thought that I had deciphered the soul of a Red Sox fan, I was flummoxed. What? There's no solace in outlasting the Yankees? What? You do not believe we will win the series, and that's OK with you? And so on.

Then we won game five, and the world has righted itself again. The earth is no longer in danger of spinning off its axis. As of today, those rules are back in force. The Sox are still in it, and they're in it to win it.

Evil

2007-10-16T19:39:00.000-04:00

I'm working on losing weight and maintaining a healthy weight. Recently, I've been more successful than in the slightly-less-recent past. One major thing I've done is implemented a "just say no" approach to all the little goodies all over my office -- I swear, just about everyone has a candy bowl, there are brownies and cookies on tables in common areas, and then there's the vending machine downstairs. But it's been really amazing what has happened since I stopped eating crap.* I've lost the weight, and--more importantly--I feel better. It's even getting easier to resist the crap.

But just because it's getting easier doesn't mean it's anywhere near easy. The little she-devil on my shoulder keeps saying "just one won't hurt." The problem is, she's right. And then the next day, I hear "just one won't hurt," and at some point she ceases being right, but I've seen "just one" not hurt so many times that I continue to believe her.

I do better not to go down that road, and I know it. If I'm going to have "just one," it should be something I plan in advance, not something the she-devil whispers in my ear.

Thanks for listening.

*I will be the first to admit, however, that there may be some evolutionary advantages to eating crap.

October Resolutions

2007-10-13T09:33:00.001-04:00

Yes, I know I'm a little late on this. And I know I completely missed making September Resolutions. But, you can only do what you can do . . . and this is what I can do. So here goes:

(1) Not get sucked into any TV Series. (note: I did not say "any series on TV," as I have every intention of watching the Red Sox in the post-season).
(2) Stay on Weight Watchers Core plan. I've lost four pounds in the last week -- and I'm eating constantly. Good food, too. My sugar cravings are going way down, and I no longer particularly enjoy the mouth-feel of fatty foods. It's a good thing.
(3) Knit more. I need to finish the mittens and hat I'm making for a woman from church, and I need to make substantial progress on the Retro Throw for A.L. I have a whole queue of sweaters and other fun things I want to make for myself and others, and all that's standing in the way is my own self-imposed requirement that I finish these other things first.

Well, that's all. At least for now. With any luck, my November resolutions will be more prompt than these have been.

A day of (figurative) mourning

2007-10-11T18:11:00.001-04:00

Today I mourn the loss of the tooth fairy. KTE's teeth have been coming out, as teeth of seven-year-olds are wont to do. One of them came out this past Sunday. The next day, Columbus Day here in the U.S., I had a work holiday, and KTE and KTY had the day off from school/daycare, but E did not have a holiday. So, KTE, KTY, and I went over to the house of friends to hang out for the day. They live on a cul-de-sac off of a dead end. In the tiny little neighborhood, there is a whole posse of kids, ranging in age from about 5 up to 12. KTE, KTY, and our friends' children spent the day roaming the back yards of their neighbors and friends.

At the end of the day, on the way home, KTE says to me, "A, K, E, and N all say that you don't want me to know that the tooth fairy isn't real."

I answer that "I have no problem if you think the tooth fairy isn't real." (note the explicit lack of confirmation or denial of her implicit question), and go on to ask KTY (also in the car) what she thinks. Getting no answer, I suggest to KTE that we continue the conversation some other time.

Well, that other time was last night, Wednesday evening. I remained evasive, but eventually asked KTE what she believed, in her heart of hearts, to be the truth. Her answer was that "Santa might exist, but not the tooth fairy."

I told her she was right; that the tooth fairy is something we do in this culture to mark and honor an important event in the life of a child. I also told her that we didn't have to stop, and to please let KTY have some fun with it herself.

I find it highly amusing that the fact that the tooth fairy doesn't actually exist will not prevent her from visiting our house.

A Kajillion Different Things

2007-10-10T22:23:00.000-04:00

I have so much to talk about! And no time to do it! Never mind finding time to knit. Don't get me wrong; life these days is really, really, good. Just insane. Anyway, here's a sneak preview to whet your appetite for my next few posts (in no particular order):

(1) October resolutions
(2) I received my Football Along swap package (it was awesome!)
(3) Knitting progress
(4) Weight loss (amazing what happens when you stop eating crap)
(5) And I'm sure there are others; they're just not coming to mind right now.

Role Model, Enabler, Pusher

2007-10-01T07:53:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking recently about the very fine line of distinction between the meanings of certain words. For example, I am a role model if someone looks at me knitting, thinks "I'd love to do that," and then takes up the habit.

Um, I mean hobby.

I am an enabler if, upon hearing that someone saw me knitting and thought "I'd love to do that," I offer to teach them.

But am I necessarily a pusher if, after I offer to teach her, I then go buy a skein of yarn in what I know to be one of her favorite colors, and a pair of needles and keep them lying around, just in case? And does it really make me MORE of a pusher if I tell her I have these things, and offer to use them to teach her? And what if, after it turns out she is allergic to wool and cannot use the skein I bought, I dig into my stash and pull out a cashmere/silk blend (with a little acrylic) in what I know to be another of her favorite colors? Is that really so bad? I'm just doing what any good friend would do, right?

And is it really such a moral failure on my part if, the next day, I get a call from her in which she says "well, I've picked the needles back up again -- which one goes in which hand?" and my heart leaps a little with joy, because at least the previous evening's hand-cramping learning experience didn't totally repel her?

And what if I do a happy dance at my computer when I receive an email later that day saying she has knit for about three hours and fears I may have created a monster? That wouldn't be so bad, would it?

Would it?

And what if this weren't all completely hypothetical, but maybe just a little bit based in reality? Would it make a difference if I told you this is a friend with a chronically ill child and that knitting is going to be a useful way for her to pass the time at the hospital whenever the child is hospitalized, and that -- as we all know -- it might very well help to keep my friend sane during that time?

See? Not a pusher. Just a role model.

Right?

Eye Candy Friday

2007-09-28T08:38:00.000-04:00

One from the archives:

Robert's Grove, Placencia, Belize. February 2007.

Life here is good. Knitting is proceeding. I'm working on a pair of mittens and a hat for a woman who 'won' them at our church auction (actually, she bought them, but she was willing to pay more than anyone else, so maybe 'won' is the right word after all . . .). She used to be a prolific knitter, so I feel as though the bar is set a little high. On the up-side, though, she already had the yarn (thereby saving me some money). I'm using Green Mountain Spinnery stuff, and I absolutely love it.

At the same time, I am continuing to work on the Retro Throw for A.L. I am really enjoying it, but also looking forward to being finished. By the time I finish this one, I will have knit nine Retro Throw squares for G.L. and twelve Retro Throw squares for A.L. (she's bigger). Twenty-one Retro Throw squares is plenty, ThankYouVeryMuch.

The Kiddos are heading away for the weekend with the in-laws, and E and I have been discussing what we'll do. The basement is almost done, so it's time to start looking for furniture for it. Or we could clean out the computer room. Or all sorts of stuff. It took me all of about two minutes to go from "whatever will we do without them?" to "how will we have enough time to get this all done?" Funny how that happens.

Sex Ed

2007-09-24T21:26:00.000-04:00

I'm teaching my church's sexuality curriculum to the eighth grade sunday-school students these days. As part of the experience, I receive emails from others with links and articles of relevance and interest, and found this one particularly interesting. Fascinating, actually. I kept wanting to say "amen!" and to shout it from the highest rooftops. But I think the best I can do (at least for now) is to link to the article. It's about Senator Craig.

We interrupt this blog . . .

2007-09-23T09:09:00.001-04:00

Remember G, the daughter of friends, who I wrote about a few months ago? She was the recipient of the Retro Throw in pink.

I mentioned in that post that she is sick -- central line, G-tube, the works. What I didn't mention is the name of her disease. It's Mitochondrial Disease. It can manifest in any organ system (frequently more than one) at any time in a person's life. It is progressive and degenerative. There is no cure.

Awareness of Mito is now where awareness of Celiac disease was about twenty or thirty years ago. It gets diagnosed only in extreme cases. There are many, many people walking around with it who do not know they have it. As medical professionals learn more about it, they are learning that it appears to be a spectrum disease -- like Asperger's/Autism. Conservative (i.e., low) estimates are that one in four thousand people have it. A leading physician practicing with mito patients estimates that as many as one in one thousand people have it.

Yet most of us haven't heard of it.

This past week was Mitochondrial Disease awareness week. Today, my family is walking with G's family along the Charles River to raise funds to provide support for families living with Mito, and to raise awareness. Please take a moment to learn more about it by going to the site for MitoAction, and then tell someone what you learned. Post the link to your blog. Make a donation. Anything. Just do something. Please. It could make a world of difference.

Thank you.

Avast! Ye Scurvy Sea Dogs! Scoundrels, All o' Ye!

2007-09-19T13:20:00.000-04:00

Well, shiver me timbers and a yo! ho! ho! It's talk like a pirate day! ARrrrrRRrrr. What's a Pirate's favorite body part? Ayyyye! And 'is favorite letter? Arrrre.

OK. Enough of that.

I'm here to tell you about the red reset button.

Many years ago, shortly after E and I bought this house, the in-sink disposal died. We'd turn it on and hear . . . nothing. We tried letting it rest, thinking we had overheated the motor. We tried running water through it (that just made a messy backed-up sink), and finally we gave up. We called a repair company to send a guy. One of us stayed home from work that day. The guy came. Fifty dollars just to look at the thing. He said "did you press the red reset button?" We said "red reset button?" He said "Yeah, the red reset button." We said "what red reset button?" He said "this one," reached under the disposal, and pressed a red reset button in the center of its bottom. He flipped the switch, and . . . it worked.

Fast forward about three or four years, and we're having a deck built off the back of the house. The contractor is plugging power tools into an outdoor outlet to cut wood and power his nail gun, and so on. One evening, we notice the outlet isn't working any more. We go down to the basement and see if a circuit breaker tripped. Nope, that's not it. We check outside the house -- all the lines seem to be coming in OK. We mention it to the contractor and suggest that he might need to contact an electrician to fix what he broke. He asks if we have any other outdoor outlets. Yes . . . on the front porch, but please don't use it until you fix this one. He walks to the front porch, looks at the outlet, with its Ground Fault Current Interrupter (GFCI), presses the, um, red reset button, and the outlet works again.

Fast forward another three or four years, to today, and our cable goes out. No internet, no TV. The wireless router is working, the DVR (digital video recorder, like TiVo) is working. But nothing from outside the house can come in. I call our cable provider, who says they are not experiencing an outage in our area, but cannot 'ping' our modem or our TV. I double-check the connections in the basement, and then call back to set up a service call. We schedule a service call for the afternoon (fortunately, I am taking a personal day today to catch up on post-vacation pileup of life stuff). I call E at work to let him know that if he needs to reach me he should call -- email and IM are unreliable. He mentions that our cable goes through an electrically powered signal booster, and that the electricity in the basement closet where it is all located had gone out the night before. I go down to the basement, and start flipping switches on the breaker box. Ultimately, I flip and un-flip the master switch, cutting power to the entire house all at once. No go. Then I notice that there's an outlet in the closet. Yes, it's a GFCI outlet. I press the (notice a trend here?) red reset button, and all is well with the world.

The moral of the story? Sometimes life hits you over the head again and again with the same point. If you're lucky, you learn it before you sit at home for six hours waiting for someone else to fix the problem (I was lucky this time -- I called and canceled the service visit).

The other moral? When in doubt, look for a red reset button. I think I may have to get myself one of these.

Composing?

2007-09-18T13:33:00.000-04:00

For the first time ever, I had two flute lessons just one week apart. The second one was yesterday evening. As of end-of-day Sunday, I had practiced just once since the prior lesson. So I practiced a bit yesterday morning before I left for work. I also had my flute in the car while I was at work because I go directly from work to my lesson.

Yesterday was a gorgeous, gorgeous day. The kind of day that makes you realize why god invented New England. Sunshine, blue sky, light breeze, 70 degrees. Just gorgeous. After lunch, on a whim, I went out to my car and got my flute. I brought it over to the edge of the parking lot, far away from where I thought anyone could hear me, and practiced. I faced away from the building, toward a runoff pond on our property.

Partway through my practice, I realized there was someone walking nearby, and that he had stopped to watch (or listen). I stopped playing. He looked at me and asked "composing?"

It was all I could do not to laugh. The piece I was working on is a Minuet. The previous piece was Brahms' Lullabye. I still haven't figured out whether to be flattered (that he thought I could come up with such beautiful note and rhythm combinations) or mortified at how clear it was that I didn't really know what came next and was making it up as I went along.

A Safe, Beautiful Place

2007-09-17T06:16:00.000-04:00

Conversation with Kiddo the Younger (KTY) yesterday:

The scene: We were lying at the foot of my bed, cuddling, after a bit of a tantrum on her part. Dinner was impending, and it consisted of food she had refused to eat in the past.

Me: Do you want a hamburger or a cheeseburger?
KTY: I don't like either of those.
Me: Well, that's what daddy's making for dinner. I'd really appreciate it if you'd have a few bites, because when you don't eat dinner, you eat too much for breakfast and throw up. We don't want that to happen again.
KTY: It won't, because I'm going to have peanut butter and jelly for dinner
Me: Well, that's up to Daddy, because he's making dinner.
KTY: That's what HE thinks. [eyes narrowing] But he'll see.
Me: Even if daddy gives you PB&J, he's probably going to want you to have a few bites of the burger first.
KTY: If it's small like this [gestures about the size of her fist], then I'll eat the whole thing.
[I suggest that she ask that he make it small; she does; he agrees]
Me: I'm really, really proud of the effort you're making.
KTY: It's my heart. It's not me.
Me: You have a good heart.
KTY: My heart is making me do it. But not saying "KTY! Do this!" Just telling me nicely. But it's not the real me. It's my heart.
Me: So maybe the effort I'm proud of is that you're listening to your heart. Your heart is the very core of you, it IS the real you. Sometimes it can be hard to hear it though. I'm really proud of how you're listening to your heart.
KTY: But it's only during safe, beautiful times like this that I can hear it.

=========================================

Is it me, or is that an incredible level of self-awareness for someone who just turned five? I don't know all that many adults who would use the words "safe, beautiful times." I'm just floored. After the difficulties of the summer, to have arrived at a place where she and I can have that kind of a conversation leaves me simply amazed.

Thanks for listening to a mama-brag.

Wow, it's been a while, eh?

2007-09-14T22:04:00.000-04:00

I'm still here! Still alive and kicking. Sorry for the silence. It's been a crazy couple of weeks. I haven't really been home other than to sleep since last Tuesday (it's now 10 p.m. on Friday, so that's . . .what . . . ten days? and I wasn't even traveling; life has just been that crazy-insane). It's all been good. Nothing wrong. Just busy is all. I haven't even knit since we got back from vacation.

Vacation was wonderful. Very relaxing and re-invigorating. Lots of good family time. And of course re-entry is always hard. But things are reaching (have reached?)an even keel now. Kiddo the Younger is enrolled in kindergarten at her daycare, and is not attending public kindergarten -- at least not yet. That could change, but probably won't until next year. Kiddo the Elder has taken up soccer (at a VERY beginner level) and seems to have a real knack for it. Kiddo the Younger starts swimming lessons tomorrow. They both take gymnastics one afternoon a week, and have flute lessons one evening a week.

How did this happen? E and I both work full time. We don't have time for this. We've been adament all along that we weren't going to sign our kids up for a zillion different activities and sports and clubs and meetings. And yet, here we are. They each have three separate things. Never mind church school on Sundays and homework and whatever else is just part of our day-to-day lives.

Did I post finished pictures of the Retro Throw for GL? I think I did . . . Anyway. She loves it. Takes it everywhere with her. I could not be more pleased. I'm working on one for her older sister (less-girly colors, though), but have to put it on hold while I bang out a pair of mittens and a hat to make good on a donation that I made to our church auction in March.

So anyway. That's about it from chez fido. I promise I'll get back to posting more now that I've had a chance to catch my breath.

It's good to be back. Happy new year.

From vacation

2007-08-16T14:09:00.000-04:00

On vacation this week and next. I thought I'd have tons of time to post, and lots of stuff to post about. Vacation has been tons of fun, and if I had the time, I'm sure there's gobs of non-knitting blog fodder occuring. But mostly, I'm really enjoying just living it without recording it or thinking about how to translate it to a blog post.

So I give you the complete profile of me.

Oddly enough, on the MBTI, I usually come up INTJ -- maybe my vacation persona is a little different than my workaday self?

[editing to add: I re-took the "multiple intelligences" test this morning (Friday), and the site updated the 'badge' above. When I wrote what follows, the musical-aptitude measure had fallen off the bottom of the chart, at 50%, and "intrapersonal" (which has now fallen off the bottom) was second on the list.]

And for the first time ever I am offended by the implication that I lack musical talent. I have always said that I am tone deaf and cannot carry a tune. But now that I'm taking flute lessons, I'm developing those abilities, and find myself thinking that perhaps I'm better at music than I think I am.

Does perception create reality? Only time will tell.

Timing is everything

2007-08-10T08:40:00.000-04:00

The recipient of the pink Retro Throw blanket is the five-year-old daughter, G, of a family with whom we have become very good friends over the past year. They have become our extended-family family -- you know the type. The people you can call at 5 o'clock on a Saturday evening and say 'what are you doing for dinner?' and then wind up just hanging out and eating and talking until forever, while the kids eventually settle in for a sleepover.

They moved to our town from western Massachusetts last June so that they could be closer to the hospitals in Boston. You see, G is sick. She has a central line, through which she gets 22 hours a day of fluids, nutrition, and medicines. She also has a g-tube directly into her stomach, and eats very few things by mouth. Since January, she has been hospitalized five or six times-- once for ~~three~~ four weeks.

You would think, from that description, that she is a frail, tired, pale, listless waif of a thing. But she's not. She is probably the bounciest child I have ever met. She tires easily, but she has a lap-it-up attitude toward life that brings a smile to my face every time I see her. She is happy and sweet and bouncy and energetic and enthusiastic and self-confident and active and in love with all things princess-y, all things pink, all things purple. The more girly, the better.

I made the Retro Throw for her as a sort of prayer blanket. For good health. For longevity. For strength and endurance and good spirits. As I was knitting it, I kept hoping I would finish before her next hospitalization.

The blanket was to be a surprise, but I was working on a square of it in front of her, and she noticed. It is the first piece of my knitting she has ever seemed to notice (perhaps because it was pink and purple?). And then she asked who it was for, and I told her. The way her eyes lit up was just wonderful.

After that, every time we'd get together, she'd ask how the blanket was coming, and I'd tell her how many squares I had done, how many I had left to do, and how I was planning to seam it after that. On Sunday, she asked how it was coming, and I went upstairs to get it out of the dryer (it's cotton -- machine wash, dry low). When I gave it to her, she literally jumped with glee, and said "Oh Liz, it's just what I always wanted." She named the blanket ("fuzzy, and it's a girl!").

On Wednesday, I heard that she had gone back into the hospital Tuesday evening. We are supposed to leave on vacation with her whole family this (Friday) evening.

Timing is everything.

I did finish the blanket before the next hospitalization. And if we're lucky, she'll be discharged today and her family will still be able to join us for a long weekend.

Retro Throw #1

2007-08-06T22:55:00.000-04:00

Retro Throw number 1, for G.L. is complete! I had so much fun making it, and the giving of it didn't disappoint, either.

But before I get too far ahead of myself, how 'bout some pictures?

An early shot of the first two squares:

An almost-there shot of one potential layout-in-progress:

One potential layout:

Another potential layout:

And some final, finished-product, shots:

and

My next post will contain more reflections on just how much fun this thing was to give away (to a little five-and-a-half year-old girl whose favorite color is . . . can you guess? of course you can; it's pink!)

Knitting

2007-08-03T10:09:00.000-04:00

This is an actual knitting blog, right? Well, then, let's talk about knitting. I have completed all nine squares of the first of two Retro Throws (I'm making them three-by-three instead of three-by-four because their intended recipients are five years old and nine years old; there's no point in drowning the poor kids in knitting). I had a whole lot of fun knitting them, and can see how this project could quickly become very addicting. Each square by itself is easy to carry around, easy to knit, and yet still entertaining because of the ongoing color changes.

Is it wrong that I find the color changes entertaining? They are not pre-determined, but rather done according to my whim. Rather than taking away from the excitement, this adds to it for me. I spend a lot of time wondering when I'll decide to make the next change. Should it be this row, or the next one? Should I go to color A or color B? Once I do that, is the next stripe going to be wide or narrow?

Maybe I'm just easily entertained . . .

Anyway, I finished all nine squares, and then laid them out on the floor to figure out which one went where. It turns out that a bit of forethought might have been a good thing -- planning which squares had thin stripes, which had thicker stripes, and which were dominated by which colors, might have made the laying out a little more straightforward. As it was, though, I managed to come up with a layout that I think works quite well (I'll post pictures later).

The instructions next said to pick up and knit 42 stitches along the side of one of the squares, purl back, break yarn, and do the same with the side of the adjacent square, before doing a three-needle bind-off. My process went a little more like this:

Pick up and knit . . . 41, 42, 43, 44, 45 . . . F*ck! Start over. Pick up and knit . . . 36, 37, 38. Dammit! Start over. Pick up and knit . . . 40, 41, 42. Purl back. Break yarn. Repeat for other square. Three-needle bind-off. Lay the squares flat. Notice the ridge created by the binding. Decide I don't want no stinkin' ridge. Un-bind the binding. Frog the purling, frog the pick-up-and-knit. Repeat for other square. Thread tapestry needle and sew panels together. Lay flat. Note absence of ridge. Decide that sewing works, but I chose the wrong color yarn. Un-sew seam. Re-sew seam. Create three strips of three squares each. Go to bed. Attach the three strips to one another the next day, and start the I-cord edging.

And that's as far as I've gotten. I'm almost done with I-cord-ing (is that a verb? well, I guess it is now) one side of the blanket. I hope to finish it and the remaining three tonight. Then all I have to do is to weave in the ends of the yarn I used to sew the panels together, wash it, wrap it, and give it to its intended recipient. I started the blanket on July 4th, but the first panel was way, way WAY too large; the gauge was just plain old wrong for the effect I desired. I figure I have until Monday or Tuesday to finish and still be able to say that it took me a month.

This, of course, raises a whole 'nother question: how the hell am I going to make a dent in my queue if the projects to which I have allocated two weeks keep taking a month? But then again, why should my knitting be any different from the rest of my life? I seem to thrive by being over-committed. And I like it like that. So maybe it's just time to stop kvetching -- and, above all, time to stop being surprised by it. After all, I've been at this for nearly 37 years now. You'd think that those 37 years would have bought me some self-awareness, wouldn't you.

Anyway. Have a GREAT Friday!

Rewind

2007-08-01T08:38:00.000-04:00

For the past ten years or so I have said that I would only consider cosmetic surgery, such as a facelift, once I could point to the year/s of my life I wished to erase -- and that, thus far, I couldn't do so; that I had benefited from, learned from, or grown and improved from, each and every year of my life, whether I had enjoyed it at the time or not.

I think I found one. No, not one whole year. But one-twelth of a year. July, 2007. I'd like to take a mulligan on this whole month. For once, I am utterly and completely unable to say 'if I had it to do over, I'd do it the same way again.' If I were given the month of July to do over, I:

(1) wouldn't send Kiddo the Younger to camp. I believe that experience was what they refer to on scary serial-killer crime shows as a "precipitating event." She had a really, really, REALLY rough time with it, and taught herself some truly inappropriate and shockingly awful behaviors in her efforts to avoid going and participating. And now, even though she is no longer at camp, some of the behaviors linger and get trotted out over smaller difficulties. We're working with a child psychologist to address them, and maybe it's just as well that this cropped up in the context of camp rather than school -- but maybe, without the trauma of camp, she would have been able to handle school just fine.

(2) would take the money and run when the insurance company asked whether they shoudl authorize and pay for the repair or cut us a check. The car was supposed to be in the shop for a week and a half. That grew into three weeks. The shop charged the insurer for the total amount (the insurer waived the deductible and paid the shop for the whole thing), and then also charged my dad for the deductible when he went to pick it up. They have, supposedly, credited his credit card for the deductible--but only after I yelled at them three times, having ALREADY discussed the issue three or four times BEFORE my father went to get the car. We now have the car back (dad drove it from NYC, where he lives, to Boston, where he had an afternoon meeting). Two minutes after climbing into it to drive home last night, E called me. "Hear that?" he asked. The engine (or maybe a tire or wheel) was going rrRRRrrrRRRRrrrrRRRRrrrrrRRRrrrRRRRR. Dad, it turns out, had noticed the same thing. He just didn't know it was new. It is. That sound was not there before the accident and repair. So now we get to bring the car to yet another repair shop and have the work done. With any luck, MetLife will agree that it's related to the accident and will cover it. All in all, the insurance company will be out ~7K for a car we will likely sell for about $5K. We should have taken the money.

So, I've been thinking I want to rewind July, have a do-over, and try it again, a la Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. The I came across this quotation:

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” – Emerson

I think I'll just move on.

Happy August, everyone!

Decisions

2007-07-31T14:09:00.000-04:00

After a month (or more) of thinking long and hard about the situation, Kiddo the Younger is not going to start at the local public school next year. Instead, she will move into the private kindergarten at her daycare, and then we'll decide what happens next at some future time -- do we transition her to public kindergarten partway through the year? Do we move her into public kindergarten at the end of the year? Do we perhaps even move her into public first grade at the end of the year (she makes the age cut-off, just doesn't seem ready for big-girl school quite yet).

As for the Retro Throw, it is coming out BEAUTIFULLY. I learned something about myself, though: I do not have the patience to "pick up and knit 42 stitches, purl back; repeat on the other square; three-needle bind-off the two together" again and again and again. So I've just been sewing the squares together. Frankly, I think it's working better to do so. The three-needle bind-off created a wide bump between two squares of which I was not enamored. So far, I've made two strips of three squares each. Tonight's agenda includes making the third strip, and then sewing the three strips to each other. After that, I need to figure out what I'm doing for a border. I-cord is tempting, but dull and boring (and this blanket is 126 stitches on each side, for a total of 504 stitches. That's a lot of I-cord. Especially when you have to turn a corner with it). On the other hand, it may be the simplest and best border for this particular item.

It doesn't look like I'm going to come anywhere near to meeting my knitting goals for July, not unless I do a whole lot of casting on this evening. And with the way things are going at home, that's not highly likely.

Trepidation

2007-07-26T06:19:00.000-04:00

I just placed an order at Amazon.com. It consisted of:

Welcome to Kindergarten
The Kissing Hand
First Day Jitters
Kindergarten Rocks!
Will I Have a Friend?
The Night Before Kindergarten

Can you guess what's happening chez Fido in early September? Yep. Kiddo the Younger is heading off to Kindergarten.

She has already begun exhibiting some signs of apprehension. Unfortunately for us, she reacts to feeling scared and out of control by being controling, defiant, oppositional, and physical. We pulled her out of camp earlier this summer because, after two weeks of being there, she still hadn't eaten while she was there (from about 7:30 a.m. to about 5:30 p.m. every day), was still refusing to participate in most activities, cried (not quietly) for about two hours after we left her every morning, and often had to be carried screaming, kicking and flailing from one activity to another.

We will therefore be doing everything we can between now and September 6 to make Kindergarten non-threatening, and even someplace that she will be excited to be. The more she wants to do it, the less difficult it will be to have her do it. If, in fact, she makes up her mind that this is what she wants to do and nothing is going to stop her, then I firmly believe that nothing in the world could stop her. On the other hand, if she decides that kindergarten is big and new and scary and she doesn't want to do it, we will definitely be faced with more than a bit of a struggle--or some difficult choices.

We are meeting this afternoon with her future principal to discuss kindergarten readiness. Please keep your fingers crossed that we come out of the conversation with some clear path ahead of us.

============================
In other news, the banged-up car (at the body shop in NYC) will supposedly be ready tomorrow. The fact that I heard the same message about it being ready last Wednesday, then last Friday, then this Wednesday, and now this Friday makes me a little wary of placing much stock in the shop's time estimate. And our new car (the Odyssey) will be ready for pickup today or tomorrow. Then we start the joyous process of selling the old car.

Anybody want a 2000 Audi Avant (wagon) 1.8T Quattro (all wheel drive), standard transmission, sport package, heated front seats, leather-wrapped steering wheel, sunroof, dark blue? Only 96,000 miles on it, and we did the timing belt maintenance around 75,000 miles. It handles beautifully, and has been a great family car. It's in good-to-excellent condition, has had all the appropriate maintenance done. I'm willing to sell it for what Edmunds and Kelly's Blue Book tell me I would get as a trade-in value: about $6,500.

============================
And, finally, the knitting: I cast on last night for square number nine (out of nine) of the Retro Throw for G.L. It'll be interesting to see if this comes together well -- I've been totally random in how I stripe the various squares, with the exception of the following guidelines: (1) Three colors in use (pink, purple, light blue); (2) Three squares bordered with each color; (3) Use predominantly pink. After I'm done with this ninth square, I have to weave in all the ends, and then block the squares (to the extent that you can block cotton at all), then seam the squares together, then knit the outer border, then block the whole thing.

No chance I'll finish it before August, is there?

Negotiating

2007-07-23T05:55:00.000-04:00

I'm an attorney by training and by trade. I spend my days reading fine print and negotiating changes to agreements with some very inflexible vendors. I have on occasion advised my client/employer to walk away from a deal because there is too much risk associated with it. Why is this all relevant, you may ask?

We bought a car this weekend. A 2007 Honda Odyssey EX-L, with a tow package, fog lights, subwoofer, and splash guards. Having done my homework, we walked into the dealer, and I told them what I wanted -- and the price I was willing to pay. I had calcuated it as the base price the dealer pays the manufacturer for the car (no destination charge, no holdback, no markup), plus the lowest price I could find online for the accessories, and then added $200 for installation costs. Given what I had been seeing as prices others had gotten on these vehicles, I felt I had come up with a fair number.

The salesperson asked if there would be a trade-in. My answer was "no." I had heard that you should save discussion of a trade-in for the end of the conversation, after agreeing on a price for the vehicle. It was nice, however, to know that I would not later be saying "but what if there were a trade-in?" The car which we would be trading in remains at a body shop in New York City, so the honest answer here really was "no."

He then asked if we wanted to go for a test-drive (it increases the customer's emotional investment in closing the deal). We had already driven the car, so that one was a "no," also.

So he took our offer to his manager, and came back with a price $500 higher, based on the price they pay for the vehicle, plus the MSRP on the accessories, installed. We stood firm. He went to speak again to his manager, and came back asking if we would split the difference -- $250 above our offer. Again, we stood firm. So he again went to speak to his manager, and came back saying that they could meet our price, but only on a car they had on the lot, and they didn't have the color we wanted. We stood firm. They're going to get us the color we wanted, with the accessories we want, installed, all at the price we wanted.

All in all, I am very happy with the transaction. Now we just have to be aware of pitfalls and minefields in closing the loan and finalizing the purchase.

==============

In knitting news, I have completed seven out of nine squares of the current Retro Throw. After the next two, I get to start weaving in all the little ends and then choosing a layout for the blanket -- then piecing it all together. Wish me luck; I'm not usally a fan of finishing work.

Eye Candy Friday

2007-07-20T06:49:00.000-04:00

Yes, it has been a while since I've remembered Eye Candy Friday; I apologize for that. To make up for it, here's some Kauni yarn -- this is the stuff with which the Yarn Harlot is knitting (already knit?) her vest. I did not buy enough for a vest, but I did get enough for a shawl, which I think will look truly gorgeous in this rainbow of bright colors:

Enjoy! And happy Friday!

Reveling in Ravelry

2007-07-19T05:58:00.000-04:00

(I can't be the first to have used that as a post title, but I still feel pretty smug and self-congratulatory about it).

I'm in. Also as FidoKnits.

It amazes me how Ravelry has motivated me to organize my pictures and my yarn. I've been saying for months that I really ought to do that. I missed the April first Flash Your Stash, and have been intending to get on top of the stash situation "any day now" ever since then.

But now, the Ravelry membership, and suddenly I'm up in the attic cleaning out the closet-thing that holds the yarn, schlepping yarn down to the first floor to be photographed, setting aside time to take the pictures, sitting in front of the computer (instead of knitting) all evening.

Amazing what a little peer pressure can do. (and I mean that in a good way).

Now if I could only tear myself away from the new "groups" feature, and actually go get some knitting done, that'd be . . . well, that'd be a good thing.

In other news . . .

2007-07-18T14:34:00.001-04:00

Lots of non-knitting drama chez Fido recently. Between car trouble* and kid behavior issues, it's a small miracle I'm getting any knitting done at all. Not surprisingly, though, it feels a bit as though it's the knitting that is keeping me sane.

As for what knitting I'm actually doing? It's a darned good thing I'm working on something super-simple. I'm up to square number five of a nine-square Retro Throw. I didn't like the fabric that resulted when I chose a needle to get the right gauge to get a twenty-inch square, so I've gone down a few needles sizes and am knitting squares that are, to my eye, somewhere between sixteen and eighteen inches. Given that I started the throw two weeks ago, I'm pretty happy to be about half way through it. I'll post pictures sometime soon, I ~~hope~~ promise.

Now I just have to figure out how to knit a hat & mitten set, another Retro Throw (for the sister of the intended recipient of the current one), shawls for each of my girls, the rest of the laceweight sweater, and catch up on Mystery Stole 3 (which looks amazingly beautiful, by the way!) -- all by the beginning(ish) of September. Wish me luck!

*The car was not totalled, and is still in New York City being repaired, where it will remain until at least next Wednesday (two and a half weeks after the incident).

My SP 10 Rocks!

2007-07-12T09:27:00.000-04:00

(I, on the other hand, suck -- I should have posted this AGES ago).

About a week ago, a package arrived in the mail.

In it were all sorts of goodies:
Bracelets:

Stitch Markers:

A Louisa Harding pattern book:

which was signed by the woman herself:

And last, but certainly not least, some Colinette yarn:

I'm really looking forward to figuring out what the yarn wants to be; it is unlike anything I have, or have worked with in the past. I love the colors, I love the wild range of textures and how the two yarns look side by side. Now I just need to figure out what object, what stitch, what approach will best show it all off to good advantage.

So, many, many thanks to my SP, and also many apologies for how remiss I've been about posting. There's been a lot of non-bloggable stuff going on these days -- plus, to tell the truth, I'm actually trying to get some knitting done, too.

My Weekend, with visual aids

2007-07-10T21:41:00.000-04:00

It's funny how life happens. I had a whole long post working itself into shape in my head -- it was going to be about going to the Live Earth concert Saturday afternoon and evening at Giants Stadium. It was going to be about E stating that he needs to expand his musical horizons and that he enjoyed the more current music more than the older music (and about the little happy dance that statement made me do). It was going to be about the irony of driving well over 200 miles to go to a concert, the purpose of which is to raise awareness about global warming and carbon conservation. It was going to be about getting up and dancing to Ludacris and Akon and Fallout Boy, and then sitting down and knitting squares of the "Retro Throw" from Knitpicks. It was going to be about spending the weekend with my parents at their apartment in manhattan and about how much my kids love seeing their aunt and grandparents and how they didn't miss us at all, even though we hardly saw them all weekend.

And then I walked out to get bagels on Sunday morning, and saw this:

"huh?" I thought. "I know I was tired when we got home last night, but I really don't think I parked up on the curb." Very odd. Huh. What's going on here?

Then I saw this:

Yes, those ARE skidmarks coming across three lanes of traffic, landing right where my car *used* to be, and then swerving off again. Then I saw this:

And this:

Yep. That's the tire in the street, the wheel on the curb, and part of the rim of the wheel completely broken off.

As the body shop guy loaded the car onto his flatbed tow truck, he pointed this out:

The arm that holds the wheel to the axel (if I recall correctly) is completely pressed against the tire. The car is now at a body shop in NYC, awaiting the insurance adjuster's visit tomorrow. I am back up in Boston (we came home Sunday evening in a car we borrowed from my parents). I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but if you could keep your fingers crossed that the insurance adjuster decides to total it, I'd greatly appreciate it. The car is about eight years old, has nearly 100,000 miles on it, and is starting to have some idiosyncracies. Most importantly, though, we've been planning to buy a new car this summer anyway. Having it totalled would mean that we don't have to deal with getting back to NYC to pick it up, or with selling it or trying to get a fair trade-in value.

====================

But the concert was GREAT. John Mayer, Roger Waters, Kelly Clarkson, The Police, Ludacris, AFI, KT Tunstall, Kenna, Melissa Etheridge, and a whole slew of others, each performing their one or two greatest hits and one or two lesser known songs, and then stepping off the stage so the next artist could come on. And I got almost an entire square of the blanket done! (talk about KIP -- this was at Giants Stadium, with a full house for a rock concert).

The Power of Knitters

2007-07-06T06:50:00.000-04:00

Did we crash the internets?

Full text below:

BOSTON. How many knitters does it take? In a never-before-tried experiment, a whack of Knitters has determined that a measley 4,000 people (give or take) can crash the internet. This morning, at 6:15 a.m. Eastern time, an email went out to those who had registered to participate in this experiment. The email purported to be an announcement that the second clue of "Mystery Stole 3" was available at the Yahoo! Group, but our extensive behind-the-scenes investigation revealed the truth of the matter. The email was, in fact, the starting gun in the race to crash the internet.

Most, if not all, of the Knitters swarmed to the Group, thereby causing Yahoo!, Flickr, and a whole host of other -- excuse the pun -- hosts to come to a grinding halt. Word on the street is that Ravelry and other crucial Knitter services are also suffering the effect of this crash, thereby bringing poetic justice to those who caused it.

Further investigation has revealed that much of the credit -- um, we mean blame -- for the event can be placed at the feet of the Yarn Harolot, who, in her ongoing effort to convince Muggles of the power and numerosity of Knitters, urged the multitudes who read her blog to join the effort (cleverly disguised as a Mystery-Stole-Along Yahoo! group).

July Resolutions

2007-07-03T05:26:00.000-04:00

Forget the laundry thing. Ain't never gonna happen. I pretty much suck at putting stuff away, and that is doubly true when I am impeded by people sleeping in the room into which I need to put the stuff. Perhaps if we had a separate dressing room for the girls, I could do it. But at 1,400 square feet of living space, that's not bloody likely. Also, I was WAY over-confident in my speed knitting abilities. Or maybe I underestimated the amount of time that would be taken away from knitting by things like town meetings and book group and so on.

So, herewith, an ambitious, but perhaps slightly more realistic, list of resolutions for July.

Knitting
Finish laceweight sweater
Start shawl for KTY
Start shawl for KTE
Start retro throw for G.L.
Start retro throw for A.L.
Start hat & mittens from church auction
Don't forget Lizard Ridge or the Sleeves of Samus.

~~Real Life~~ Non-Knitting
Prepare the kids' lunches and snacks the night before
Out the door by 7:30 every morning
Keep my toenails looking nice(ish)
Put stuff away after using it.

I know the knitting resolutions look like a bad case of start-itis, but here's the thing: each of those objects has some sort of deadline, I just don't know what it is yet. Having them all proceed in parallel lets me prioritize one or the other on an as-needed basis. Really, ideally, I'd like to have them all done (and DONE) by the end of August, but that'll never happen. So then the question becomes which of them can wait until September or even October? I'm thinking my kids' shawls and the auction hat & mittens can wait. But maybe I ought to work on my kids' shawls first, because it has been a while since I've made them anything. Bottom line? I'll figure it out as I go along.

For those of you in the U.S. -- have a very happy Independence Day Celebration!

Surgery

2007-07-02T21:41:00.000-04:00

The discerning among you (actually, among those who read my blog other than through a news aggregator) will have noticed that the "Feather and Fan Scarf/Shawl" moved from the in-progress section of the sidebar to the completed section just a day or so ago. You would not be unjustified in wondering what the hell took so long.

Floor space.

The construction has greatly limited the amount of available floor space chez fido (well, that and our natural propensity to "play it where it lies," as they say in golf -- in other words, once a thing lands, that's where you leave it until you need it again). That limit has hindered my ability to block anything, let alone five or six feet of shawl. But then I remembered -- I had managed to block just half of it when I was about halfway done; why not block the other half?

So that's what I did. You may notice, however, that little bit of green lacy yarn in the lower left-ish corner. That's there because as I went to block it (having, I'll confess, already worn it once), I noticed this:

Recognize that? Let's try another angle:

Not one, but two -- count 'em, two -- dropped stitches. So I did this:

The needle is holding the stitch that I've worked back through and (almost) into place. The crochet hook is working on getting the other stitch back to where it (almost) belongs. Then I threaded through some laceweight yarn from the sweater on which I am currently working:

After blocking, I ran the laceweight the rest of the way through, and tied it off at both ends to make sure it doesn't come out. It's not a perfect solution (that would have entailed ripping and re-knitting about a quarter to a third of the whole thing), but it'll do in a pinch.

Speaking of the sweater on which I am currently working:

But it's now much further along than that. Both sleeves are on holder yarn, and the main body is just about to my waist (I know that doesn't actually tell you how long it is, and I apologize. I haven't measured). I'll probably go another three or four inches and then bind off. Then I'll have to bind off the ends of the sleeves, which I've decided to make three-quarter length so that they're not constantly falling into things like ketchup or a sink of dirty soapy water.

I'm completely smitten with this pattern/approach. It's the Deep Breath sweater (sorry, no online link) from Valley Yarns (the folks at WEBS). Most of the pattern is written for worsted weight yarn -- it's a simple top-down boatneck raglan -- but at the end, there is a suggestion that the knitter could make it with laceweight yarn; just get the same gauge as with the worsted weight, and voila! a laceweight sweater.

By the way? That orange yarn is the Cascade 200 that I am using for Samus. I have not fully abandoned her; I'm just involved with other ~~people~~ projects right now.

May's Bounty

2007-06-30T22:00:00.000-04:00

OK, Okay. So I know I'm more than a little behind the times here. My SP from SP 10 has been totally fabulous, and I've been completely negligent. I am perhaps a little over-committed in my life. I love it this way, and have started to learn how to pick up, with aplomb, a ball that I've been juggling and have dropped. But this is taking it to new ~~heights~~ lows.

This is my brag-about-my-pal-and-thank-my-pal post for the goodies sent (and received!) in May. If I could blush electronically, I would. But without any further ado:

Two skeins of some of the most fabulous yarn in the whole wide world: Malabrigo. (swoon). The color in this picture is pretty true (at least on my monitor) -- it's a great saturated, multi-hued blue. And I luuuurrrve it! but that's not all:

Seven really, really gorgeous stitch markers (by the way, I've dutifully noticed that I'll be completely screwed if I try to use these with the Malabrigo -- I'd simply lose them. If I were a better person, I'm sure it'd be easy to keep track of them, but I tend to lose things right under my nose, and the whole variegated blue and white markers with variegated blue and white yarn is just a recipe for disaster).

But that's not all:

Some really, really cute sheepy notecards.

So: Many, many thanks to my SP! S/he rocks!

Good News

2007-06-29T20:35:00.000-04:00

I was going to do a "good news/bad news" post, but I've decided to focus on the positive -- after all, it is a BEAUTIFUL Friday evening.

Good News 1: It looks more and more likely that we will be able to support the first-floor stairs adequately and still comply with the building code for the basement stairs.

Good News 2: Friends of ours, who have been married for 10 years, are going to get to go out for an anniversary dinner next week. This is a big deal because they have a child who is on a G-tube (into her stomach for food) and has a central line through which she gets medications and TPN (IV food) on an extremely precise schedule. Finding nursing care for her at the same time that they find babysitting for their elder child is well nigh impossible.

Good News 3: We are home this weekend. It's been a long time since I've had a relaxed day at home (and I'm not assuming this weekend will be relaxed, but it has a decent shot of not being insane).

Good News 4: The heat wave seems to have broken.

Good News 5: I had my review at work. It was a good review. I get to stay at least a while longer (not that I really doubted that, but you never know, do you?)

Good News 6: E is not leaving tomorrow for a two-week trip to London, England. That was the plan as of two weeks ago. It's been postponed and cut down to a one-week trip.

Good News 7: Our contractor removed the plastic bag wall between the back-hall construction zone and our kitchen, thereby giving us back the appropriate use of our kitchen -- and of our back door.

Good News 8: My lace-weight sweater is coming along really nicely. For some reason, the body (knit in the round) is going faster than either of the sleeves (also knit in the round). I think it has to do with the amount of time I spent sliding stitches along when I was knitting the sleeves, as compared to being able to use a relatively short(er) circular needle and bunch all the stitches toward the tip of the non-working needle so I can knit a whole bunch before having to stop and slide more stitches.

Good News 9: It's a beautiful Friday evening here in New England.

Good News 10: We're having Barbeque from my favorite 'que joint for dinner tonight. NOT grilled food, but food cooked low and slow -- pulled pork, ribs, and so on. Yum! (now maybe you begin to understand the slow progress of the progress bar on the front page of this blog! But yum. And I'm at my WW goal weight, so the remaining few pounds are a 'want to have,' not a 'have to have.' Right?)

Life is good.

Words you don't want to hear

2007-06-27T20:54:00.000-04:00

"Whoops," said by your hairdresser. [oh yes she did, but this was back in the early 90s, and ~~I've gotten over it~~ the mistake has grown out by now]

"Those shouldn't still be standing," said by your contractor about your stairs. He was conveying the opinion of the town building inspector, which makes the statement just that much more fun.

Have I told you we're having construction done? We are taking an unfinished basement and turning it into a finished space with a bathroom, a small tiled entryway (it's a walk-out basement), and a main space that will have kids' stuff as well as a couch and TV and such. The stairs that used to go from the first floor to the basement were so far from being up to code that it was laughable. Our contractor has managed to work miracles, though, and to put new stairs in the same physical space as the old ones while getting the new stairs to be pretty much up to code. If you could see the space, you would know that when I call this a miracle I'm not exaggerating.

The only problem is the headroom. The stairs from the first floor to the second floor hang too low above the basement stairs. We can change how the first floor stairs are supported, and get ourselves some more headroom. But there was some question as to whether we would be required to bring those stairs up to code the moment we made any changes to them. This is where the building inspector and our contractor come in.

They looked at the first-floor stairs and reached consensus that any changes we make would be improvements for safety (not reconstruction or alteration) and would therefore not require bringing the whole staircase up to code. That's the good news. The bad news (as you may have guessed) is that the rationale for this conclusion is that the supports for the stairs are so completely insufficient that they shouldn't still be standing; they should have collapsed on us long ago.

Sometimes I think I'm better off just not knowing.

And again with the randomness

2007-06-20T20:38:00.000-04:00

It looks like I'm actually getting my act together: here it is Wednesday, and I'm being random. But appearances can be deceiving. I've got nothin'.

I've been working some pretty long hours -- Monday until 9 p.m., Tuesday until 10. There's a part of me, though, that reads that sentence and laughs. I've had jobs where, when asked one morning whether I stayed late the night before, I have answered with a completely straight face: 'nah, I was out of here by eleven.' It's all a matter of perspective, isn't it?

I've been thinking a lot recently about the choices we've made, and continue to make. KTE is good enough at any number of things that, if we focused our energy and hers, she could be highly competitive. And yet we've made the conscious choice NOT to take the step from recreational mode to what might best be called training mode.

I sometimes wonder if we do KTE a disservice by not creating the environment in which she will truly shine at any one thing -- for example, she is a very good gymnast; she takes classes with nine- and ten-year-olds, and more than holds her own. She probably could be a GREAT gymnast. But that's not where our priorities are.

As I think about these decisions we've made for her, based not only on what is good for her but also based on what is good for our entire family, it occurs to me that I have made the same sorts of choices in my life. I used to have an incredibly challenging, exciting, engaging, intense, high-powered job. Now, I have a job I truly adore, but I'm not kidding myself -- from the outside, mine is not the most successful career in the world. But again, it's all a matter of perspective: right now, I feel like I have been incredibly successful at creating the life I want to have. It looks very little like the life I imagined I would have while I was growing up, but it is right for me, for now.

There's some chatter out in blogland about how these blogs are public and we ought all to behave ourselves. The Yarn Harlot, in particular, has drawn attention to the issue.

I feel a little like the character in a comedy who, after a huge hullabaloo has just happened, sits up, rubs her eyes, and asks "did I miss anything?" I have NO CLUE what this is all about. I will say, though, that I think she's completely right: yes, I have the right to write whatever the hell I want here (it is MY blog, after all). But this is a community, and there are certain norms of behavior. If I want to write something just for myself, I should open up a Microsoft Word document and put it there. Or, perhaps better yet, open a paper journal and write it there in ink. The whole point of blogging is to share one's thoughts and updates with others--even if the readers are wholly anonymous.

When I send email at work, I try to ask myself how I would feel if the email were printed out and posted above the photocopier. I take a similar approach in cyberspace: what is the worst thing that could happen because of this post? Thus far, I think it's limited to getting me on some sort of watch list for my anti-Bush, pro-gay-marriage postings. But one of the foundational principles of this country is the right to civil dissent.

As for the knitting? I'm still working on the lace weight sweater. I am incredibly excited to have this piece of clothing; it'll be unlike anything else I have, and it'll actually be genuinely useful (for those evenings when it's been warm/hot all day and then cools down just enough to make a tank top insufficient). But it doesn't make for interesting blogging. It's a top-down raglan. This means it's knit in the round, and then divided into three parts (one for each sleeve and one for the body), each of which is also knit in the round. I'm just going round and round and round and round and round with the knit stitch over and over and over and over again. (can you tell I'm getting a bit bored with it?) I somehow thought that because it's lace weight yarn on size 10 needles, it would go quickly. But it's the same gauge as a sweater would be if I used worsted weight yarn, which means it's exactly the same number of stitches as a worsted-weight sweater. Which means it's not going all that quickly. Oh well.

And, yes, I know I still need to post the lovely package from my SP. The items are all still sitting on my dining room table waiting to be photographed -- it WILL happen one of these ~~years~~ days. I promise.

Happy Birthday, KTE!

2007-06-18T22:56:00.000-04:00

A belated birthday wish to my first-born child. She turned seven (seven!) on Saturday, and I found myself marveling at the event all day long. How could this person be the same being as the one I first held in my arms in the early morning hours seven years ago?

She is so completely who she is, and yet 'who she is' is so completely variable. She is kind and sweet and smart (wicked smaht, as they say hereabouts), and fun-loving and impetuous, and athletic and down-to-earth.

She is competitive and over-achieving, and harder on herself than anyone else is on her. After falling and scraping her knee yesterday (we got her a scooter for her birthday), she was more upset with herself for forgetting her knee pads than she was upset by the scrape.

She HATES it when she has to struggle to learn something, but loves that she can learn it after the struggle. The things of which she is most proud are the things for which she has really WORKED, but at the same time she has a hard time getting past her belief that things should just come to her without effort (after all, they usually do).

She had her party on Saturday, and we got to sit back and watch how she interacts with her ten closest friends (in a first-ever event for our family, everyone responded to the invitation, and all the responses were affirmative). I am so completely blown away by the person she is becoming.

She remains, in so many ways, an enigma. She will get all caught up in a downward sprial of unhappiness at some little thing, but then something big that would make me just lose it doesn't faze her at all; she shrugs, says "that's life," and gets on with it.

She brings so much joy and sparkle and challenge and reward to my life; I feel so incredibly blessed to be her mom.

Random Thursday

2007-06-14T21:46:00.000-04:00

Yes, I know it's usually Random WEDNESDAY, but the fact that today is Thursday proves just how truly random this is.

First: Forty-five to One-fifty-one, BAYbee!

The Massachusetts Legislature voted today on whether an anti-marriage amendment to the constitution should be put to a popular vote. It needed fifty 'yes' votes, but got only forty-five. As of last night, no one was sure which way it would go, but it failed by a margin of ten percent. This makes me so freaking deleriously happy, I cannot begin to describe it.

Okay, now on to (somewhat) knitting-related content.

Item One:
The bad: I went to the dentist the morning.
The good: I got to knit while I waited.
The bad: The wait was only three minutes (WTF? Dentist waits are supposed to be interminable!)
=================

Item Two:
I went away last weekend, and brought my current knitting with me (the very lightweight sweater). It's a raglan sweater, knit seamlessly from the top down. The body and one sleeve is on a holder while I work on the other sleeve. And it turned out that the circular needles I brought were just too big for the sleeve. And too small for magic loop (which I find to be way too figety anyway). The good news is that my host took pity on me and brought me to her LYS, where I could buy some size ten DPNs. The bad news is that we inadvertently left the store with size nine DPNs. The exceedingly good news is that I happened to notice this before I even started using the needles. If you've been reading this blog for very long, you know that this is a highly unusual occurence for me. My usual M.O. would have been to knit the entire sleeve and then realize that something seemed to be a bit 'off.' The LYS very nicely let me exchange the needles for size 10s. Unfortunately, the size 10 DPNs don't do very well with lace-weight yarn. The marking of the brand and size on the side of the needle kept catching on the yarn. Plus, it seemed these size 10s were larger than the size 10s I had been using on the rest of the sweater. So I had to stop knitting.

I am never again traveling without my full set of Denise needles. Period, full stop, end of sentence.
================

Item Three:
I have grossly over-estimated my ability to finish projects. I have a Lizard Ridge square on the needles, along with this sweater. My plan -- as of a week or two ago -- was to be done with both of these by mid-June (I think I may have been counting on a lot of knitting time while I traveled). I'm about a fifth of the way through each of them, and that may be being optimistic.
================

Item Four:
Kiddo the Elder will turn seven this weekend. This just floors me. How'd we get here so quickly? How has it possibly taken this long? She's a really great kid, and it gives me so much joy to have her in my life and to watch as she grows wings and starts to become herself -- or at least the self she is going to be for a little while. She has a close-knit group of friends at school, is kind to everyone, is incredibly smart and athletic and capable and talented. Frankly, it just blows me away that she's related to me.
================

Item Five:
I know I still owe you all pictures of my SP gift. Believe me, it is at the top of my to-do list. The only problem is that I have next to no time to knock things off of that list. Between last Wednesday (June 6) and next Friday (June 22), I have exactly ONE evening during which I will be home for the night. Otherwise, I'm fully booked. I'm enjoying the heck out of life, but it does sometimes get in the way of the rest of my life. Of course, isn't that always the way? Choosing to do one thing (go to my book group) precludes doing another thing (posting my SP pictures)

=================

Item Six:
Ravelry. I'm incredibly torn about this: On the one hand, I'm all "why wasn't I invited to the party? When will I get mine? huh? huh? I want in! All the cool kids are there!" And on the other hand, I'm somewhat relieved. That site is the kind of thing that could eat my life. Like a miser who spends days counting and categorizing and re-counting and running his fingers through his money, I could spend eons of time organizing my stash, photographing it, organizing it again, photographing it again . . . and never get any knitting done, let along practice the flute or clean the house or cook the dinner, or whatever.

================

OK. I'm done now. I apologize for the long lag between my last post and this one; life has been -- in a word -- a whirlwind. But it always is, so that's really no excuse anymore.

Got 'em!

2007-06-06T23:53:00.000-04:00

I finally got around to getting the pictures off the camera. Here's what I've been up to the past few months:

A murder mystery evening-- the Four Deuces, a Chicago Speakeasy, was opening and there were questionable goings-on. I was "Carrie Crooner" (which is extremely ironic, if you've ever heard me sing).

Half-way through my Seacoast Yarn's Panda Sock Yarn feather and fan shawl (I blocked it because I was worried that two skeins would not make a long enough shawl/scarf, because I was knitting more repeats than I originally planned). Now that it's done, it still looks exactly like this, only longer -- and half of it is not yet blocked due to space constraints.

Walking out the Van Wickle Gates for only the third time in my life (once to graduate, twice at reunions when we've stayed for the last-day march through the gates)*:

Catching a glimpse of Theresa and her ~~beau~~ fiance as they walked with her fifth-year reunion class:

Taking a yarn safari to Northampton, to an event sponsored by WEBS, to sit in a theater with about 600 other groupies (let's call a spade a spade, shall we?)

and listen to the Yarn Harlot speak. She was witty and charming as usual.

And, in the midst of it all, we're still working on home renovation projects. Actually, let me correct that. We're still living through home renovation projects, while some very capable and competent people who we pay are taking care of actually "working on" the projects for us.

This is our kitchen these days:

No, we don't usually have a massively large garbage bag along one wall. Kiddo the Younger refuses to let me call it a plastic sheet -- she is convinced beyond all reason that it is a garbage bag. That seems about right to me, given the state of what is on the other side of that dust barrier:

and

And wouldn't you know it? Just as I get my act together to move and post pictures, I receive a package from my all-knowing Secret Pal. S/he must be all-knowing, because s/he managed to read my mind this time 'round. I am head over heels in love with everything I received, ~~all~~ most of which (the chocolate has already ~~been eaten~~ vaporized into thin air) I will photograph presently and post here as soon as I can.

*in addition to the bit of lore covered in the link, rumor always had it that if you accidentally walked through the gates during your time as a student, you would be fated not to graduate.

June Resolutions

2007-06-05T00:13:00.000-04:00

I think I like doing my resolutions this way. They don't always last the full month, but I get a new chance to start over every thirty days or so, rather than having to wait the customary three hundred and sixty-five days between fresh starts.

OK, I know I never need to wait. And I completely understand that the idea of new year's resolution is an artifice. I do try to engage in constant self-examination and ongoing improvement. But I sometimes forget that that's what I'm doing, and I grow complacent. I go back to just doing the same stuff day after day without stopping to determine whether it could all be just a little bit better if I changed something. These monthly resolutions are my attempt to remember to stop and think about that.

First, though, I should check in on my past resolutions and see which have led to long-term change, which I abandoned almost immediately, which I am still trying to accomplish, and which defy catagorization.

January
Be in bed by 11; spend 15 minutes per day engaged in self-reflection; stay in closer contact with my sister; eat mindfully; get the kids some down-time and spend it with them.
Knit something for myself; knit preferentially from my stash; Saturday and Sunday are for Spinning.

February
15 minutes per day in self-reflection; put away the kids' laundry; make a charitable donation.
Knit for myself; knit preferentially from my stash

March
Have more fun. Swim. Practice the flute.

April
Lose 8 lbs and keep them off. Read more.
Finish Samus. Finish Kiddo the Elder's Sweater

May
Finish Samus. Finish feather-and-fan shawl. Start mystery shawl.
Practice flute. Get outside more. Lose weight. Have fun. Avoid locking horns with Kiddo the Younger.
======================================
You may notice some common threads here: Have fun. Finish Samus. Knit from stash. Lose weight/exercise. Practice the flute.

It seems oxymoronic to work hard at having fun, but that effort actually seems to be working. More and more, I'll dive right in and join my kids at whatever they are doing; I'll say 'yes' to an invitation I might otherwise have rejected; I'll invite people over for dinner even though our house is a construction zone, just because I want to be with them. It's really about not being constrained by--if I'm being honest here--my vision of what it means to be a mom (cautious, worried, proper, prepared, and restrained), but rather starting to figure out how to remain who I am and have always been while still being a force for good in my kids' lives.

I finished Samus once. Now that I have to finish her again, it might take a while.

I've gotten much better about knitting from my stash. Of course, that's gotten easier as my stash has gotten larger. Plus, I now have a whole bunch of yarns that go with patterns, and patterns that go with yarns, so that I've created my own kits of sorts.

Lose weight/exercise. This one is interesting. Since April, when I put the ticker at the top of the page, I have at least stopped yo-yo-ing up to the mid 140s. I'm staying, instead, between 139 and 141. It'd be really, really nice to get down to 135 so that I can have a bit of leeway before my clothes stop fitting. But if I'm thinking of 135 as allowing 'leeway,' am I already setting myself up for just gaining back these last five pounds? Is yo-yo-ing between 135 and 140 really any better than going back and forth between 140 and 145? As for the exercise, I have no excuse. There's a gym here at work that I could use, a decent half-hour walk around the office park in which I work, and plenty of other opportunities for me to get at least some physical activity into my day. Just no motivation to get up off the couch and do it. Gotta work on that.

As for the other, not-so-common-themed resolutions? Read more? Check. Better communication with my sister? Check (kinda). Put away kids' laundry? Not check. Spinning? not check. Avoid locking horns with KTY? Check, but an ongoing effort.

======================================================
And now it's June. At the end of this month, we'll be half way through the year. For this month, I think I'm going to revive some oldie-but-goodies, and perhaps add some new:
Rest-of-life resolutions
(1) Figure out how to get the kids' laundry put away
(2) Increase physical activity, and keep it up
(3) Declutter
(4) Remember to have fun

Knitting
(1) Figure out what to knit next, and do it. No more maybe-this, maybe-that! Give extra weight to Kiddos' requests for shawls, and the fact that E still doesn't have his sweater (remember the Leo debacle? If not, I've tagged those posts "Leo," so you can find them).

Prelude to a Rip

2007-06-04T06:28:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned, I've started the laceweight version of a worsted-weight sweater. I know. It's a hard concept to wrap your mind around.* But it actually works. There will be pictures as I go; I promise.

However. (You knew there had to be a 'however,' didn't you?)

Because the sweater is a top-down raglan, I need to use stitch markers to show me where to place the increases to create the arm cap. I'm knitting this sweater on size 10 needles in order to get gauge (according to the various swatches I made, size 10 is the correct size; but as we know, swatches are filthy liars, so I'm not counting on this actually working). But I'm knitting it with laceweight yarn. My favorite stitch markers for lace do not fit on size 10 needles, so I'm using larger stitch markers; beautiful hand-made ones.

The problem, though, is that one of the rings that goes around the needle has a teensy, eeensy, tiny, itty-bitty space in it. And the laceweight yarn fits through it. So, not surprisingly, the marker traveled. I was oblivious to this, and kept increasing on either side of the marker. If I left the sweater as-is, that'd be one strange-looking arm cap. So it's time to rip.

If I'm going to rip this out and start over anyway, maybe I'll start on something else instead. Both Kiddos have asked me to make them a shawl, like the feather and fan shawl I just finished. Or maybe if the cold weather continues, I'll actually get moving on Samus. Or maybe something else entirely. The possibilities are legion.**

*A preposition is something you should never end a sentence with.

**Family lore has it that it was at the moment my father uttered this sentence that my mother fell in love with him. He proposed ten days after they met; they were married within the year, and have been happily together ever since. Not surprisingly, I'm a big believer in the power of words.

Weight

2007-06-03T22:50:00.000-04:00

You may have noticed a progress bar at the top of this page. You may also have noticed that the progress bar hasn't moved much. Actually, it's moved a lot -- but only a pound or two in either direction at a time, such that it basically stays where it was.

Historically, my weight yo-yos in the worst way. Up ten, down ten, up seven, down five, up ten, down nine.

As you read that sentence, you may have noticed -- the highs and the lows both keep getting higher. I struggle to figure out what attitude to have about that. There's a part of me that wants to hold my chin high and defiantly declare that I am a beautiful person no matter what I weigh. When I adopt that attitude, though, I find that I revert to eating the way I used to -- at a time in my life when I had a well-deserved reputation for being able to eat anything and not gain weight. That's not so healthy. Plus, it's hard on the wallet, as I keep needing to buy new clothes.

When I try to lose a lot of weight (which I consider anything over 10 pounds or so), I'm GREAT at it. I eat healthily, indulging as appropriate, and the pounds come off. When I try to lose a little weight (such as the five-to-seven pounds I am now trying to lose), I SUCK at it. I eat well and don't lose, then I eat poorly for a day and lose, so the take-home message is that I lose the weight when I eat junk.

I *know* that there's a time lag between my changed eating habits and my weight loss, but still I can't seem to internalize that. I'm working on listening to my stomach to tell me when I'm hungry and full, rather than my mouth. My mouth always wants more. Just a little something sweet; something to nosh on; a few more bites of this delicious, fabulously textured whatever. My stomach has a simpler approach: it gets hungry, and it gets full. I need to pay better attention to it.

I try to instill healthy food attitudes in Kiddo the Younger and Kiddo the Elder as well. I talk with them about my efforts to stay at a healthy weight. About the temptation of candy and sweets and fatty fried foods. I want them to know that yes, it is a struggle for me, but it's one worth doing because it keeps me healthy and able to run around with them and play with them and just generally 'be' with them. I don't want them assuming that, when I don't have dessert after dinner, it's because I don't want dessert; I want them to know that I consciously choose my long-term health over my immediate desires.

I know they will always be beautiful, lovable people, but I don't want them thinking that they're totally fine no matter how much they weigh. I will always love them-- all the time, no matter what. But I don't want them to be totally satisfied with every aspect of themselves if they have an unhealthy body mass index (low or high) -- I want them to know that there's something wrong with that and that they should change it so they can be healthy, and if they cannot change it on their own, they can ask for help. I know that the help will not always be effective, and that it is oh-so-easy to put the weight back on after losing it. Trust me, I know. I've done Weight Watchers five times now -- once in high school, once in law school, once after the birth of each of my kids, and once when I started my current job. I'm a lifetime member, ThankYouVeryMuch.

I sometimes ask myself, given that my BMI is well within the healthy range, why I want to lose this weight. It's not because I think I'll be a better person, or better liked, or more competant or capable. It is, at least in part, because I want to fit into smaller clothes; many of my nicer clothes are smaller. It's easier to look crisp and put together and professional in smaller, more tailored clothes (I don't wear make up or even blow-dry my hair; my 'look' depends entirely on my clothes). Plus, it's healthier. And that's the true bottom line for me -- I want to make sure I'm healthy.

Now if only I'd remember that when I walk by the bowl of jelly beans at work. Or when the Kiddos get ice cream. Or when we order out for pizza. Or . . . well, you get the idea.

In other news: if you're wondering whether I decided to knit Samus, the answer is no. Not that today wouldn't have been the perfect day for it -- 50s and 60s and rainy here in the Boston area. Nope. I decided instead to get started on the laceweight-yarn version of WEBS's "Deep Breath Sweater." I tried, but could not find a link for it. It's basically a very simple top-down raglan sweater knit with laceweight yarn at the same gauge as a worsted weight yarn (4 stitches and 6 rows per inch, in this case), which makes for a very lightweight sweater. I think it'll be perfect for those tank-top days that get a little cool at the end of the day.

Samus?

2007-06-02T22:42:00.000-04:00

I can't do it. I just can't do it. I cannot bring myself, in this heat and humidity, to knit the sleeves of a worsted-weight wool sweater. I wish I could. The Sleeves of Samus, Take Two, are next in my queue, and I really just want to get them done so I can stop thinking about them and feeling like I'm avoiding something. But I don't want to get them done enough to make it worth sitting and knitting with a wool sleeve in my lap. I finished the feather and fan scarf/shawl out of Seacoast Yarn, Panda Yarn. All that remains now is to block it.

Unfortunately, that is going to have to wait a while. We're having construction done on the house, and the way things have shuffled around means that the space where I usually block things is absolutely chock-a-block full with other stuff.

So the question then becomes: what do I make next. Do I move on to the next shawl? It might even be the one of my own design that I hinted at about a month ago. Or do I knit the laceweight sweater for which I picked up the yarn and pattern when I was at WEBS on Wednesday? Or do I continue with the just-barely-started feather and fan shawl in Socks That Rock Lemongrass?

Honestly, I don't know, which is probably why I'm blogging at nearly 11 p.m., rather than knitting. I think that means it's time for me to get going and make some decisions. Stay tuned.

Another fly-by post

2007-06-01T23:22:00.000-04:00

Apologies for these. Life is crazy. I've got tons to blog about, but no time to do it justice. So I'll leave you with a funny kid story, because . . . well, because I think it's cute and this is my blog, so you all just have to put up with it.

Setting the scene: this morning, in my bedroom, after my shower. Kiddo the Younger (KTE) is sitting on my bed as I get dressed.

KTE: Mommy, I can see your bum.
mommy wiggles her bum a bit
KTE: You're shaking your booty!
mommy laughs a little
KTE: I LIKE how you shake it!

Hello? Um. This is my four-year-old daughter, saying that she likes how I "shake it!" Go figure.

Been Around?

2007-05-29T23:15:00.000-04:00

I spent the weekend at my ~~15th~~ college reunion, and have pictures to share and stories to tell, but that will all take more time than I have available right now. As an added bonus for you all, by the time I get around to chronicling the weekend, I will also have pictures and stories to tell of my trip to hear the Yarn Harlot in Northampton tomorrow evening. And I've finished my Feather and Fan scarf out of Seacoast Yarn's Panda Yarn (which may just be my very most favorite yarn ever. Ever. Seriously). So there will be blog posts galore in the ~~weeks~~ days to come.

In the meantime, here is the Knitters' "Been Around" Meme (editorial comment/question: is this the rough equivalent of the 'purity test' we all took in high school and college? C'mon, don't tell me you don't know what I'm talking about; we all took one. Didn't we?).

Key: Bold=done, Italics=Will Do, Normal=No Desire

Afghan
I-cord
Garter stitch
Knitting with metal wire
Shawl
Stockinette stitch
Socks: top-down
Socks: toe-up
Knitting with camel yarn
Mittens: Cuff-up
Mittens: Tip-down
Hat
Knitting with silk
Moebius band knitting
Participating in a KAL
Sweater
Drop stitch patterns
Knitting with recycled/secondhand yarn
Slip stitch patterns
Knitting with bananafiber yarn
Domino knitting (=modular knitting)
Twisted stitch patterns
Knitting with bamboo yarn
Two end knitting
Charity knitting
Knitting with soy yarn
Cardigan
Toy/doll clothing
Knitting with circular needles
Baby items
Knitting with your own handspun yarn
Slippers
Continental knitting
Designing knitted garments
Cable stitch patterns (incl. Aran)
Lace patterns
Publishing a knitting book
Scarf
Teaching a child to knit
American/English knitting (as opposed to continental)
Knitting to make money
Button holes
Knitting with alpaca
Fair Isle knitting
Norwegian knitting
Dying with plant colours
Knitting items for a wedding
Household items (dishcloths, washcloths, tea cosies...)
Knitting socks (or other small tubular items)on two circulars
Olympic knitting
Knitting with someone else's handspun yarn
Knitting with dpns
Holiday related knitting
Teaching a male how to knit
Bobbles
Knitting for a living
Knitting with cotton
Knitting smocking
Dying yarn
Steeks
Knitting art
Knitting two socks (or other small tubular items) on two circulars simultaneously
Fulling/felting
Knitting with wool
Textured knitting
Kitchener BO
Purses/bags
Knitting with beads
Swatching
Long Tail CO
Entrelac Knitting and purling backwards
Machine knitting
Knitting with selfpatterning/selfstriping/variegating yarn
Stuffed toys
Baby items
Knitting with cashmere
Darning
Jewelry
Knitting with synthetic yarn
Writing a pattern
Gloves
Intarsia
Knitting with linen
Knitting for preemies
Tubular CO
Freeform knitting
Short rows
Cuffs/fingerless mits/armwarmers
Pillows
Knitting a pattern from an online knitting magazine
Rug
Knitting on a loom
Thrummed knitting
Knitting a gift
Knitting for pets
Shrug/bolero/poncho
Knitting with dog/cat hair
Hair accessories
Knitting in public

Tag!

2007-05-24T06:28:00.000-04:00

I've been tagged with the ubiquitous "seven little-known things about me" meme, and it has gotten me thinking. If you know me in real life, there's a set of things you probably don't know about me. But if you know me via my blog, you may know those things -- but there's a whole 'nother (lovely grammar, eh?) set of things you don't know about me. If you're reading this, you know me through my blog, and may also know me in real life. I plan, however, to focus on the set of things blog-people don't know about me. So I apologize in advance if you know me in real life, and find this list to be "seven widely-known things about me."

(1) I am a really picky adventurous eater. I love a huge range of cuisines, but have a strong aversion to certain textures. Creamy, squishy, slimy, smushy. Each of them makes me gag. As an example:

I used to get fevers north of 106 degrees fahrenheit. Eventually, the doctor diagnosed an "insufficient fever-control mechanism" (medical speak for 'I dunno'), and told my mother to give me asprin, feed me ice cream, and put me in a tepid tub to bring my fever down. Apparently, my mother had to convince me to eat the ice cream: "It's good for you," she said "it's like medicine." Fortunately, I've gotten over that aversion, although I still have trouble with yogurt, milk, some soft cheeses, jello, and a whole host of other stuff.

(2) I have a (little, dorm-sized) refrigerator in my office at work. I brought it in for a coworker to use while she was working and pumping. Then another coworker came back from maternity leave and used it. Then another was about to have a baby, then another. Neither of the last two used it, but I kept it around 'just in case.' Now I'm too lazy to bring it home -- plus, it's nice to be able to keep my food out of the communal refrigerator.

(3) My jaw is off-center (my lower jaw sits a little to the left of my upper jaw). I also grind my teeth at night. As a result, my jaw cracks every time I open it far. Someday this may all add up to be a problem, but for now I'm ignoring it. I've had many dozens of hours of work done on my teeth (perhaps even many hundreds), and I'm just fed up with it all.

(4) I'm taking flute lessons. This you probably already knew. But the new news is that ~~the kiddos'~~ my our teacher wants me to play with the group at the recital next Sunday. I'm very conflicted about this. On the one hand, I think it'd be a lot of fun to play with the group. On the other hand, they're all in second grade or below. Plus, I'm enjoying flying under the radar with this. But it might be nice to play with my kids. But I think I also want to sit and watch them play.

(5) I proposed to E. He accepted. Then we realized that we wouldn't be getting married until years later, and un-engaged. He then proposed a year ahead of 'schedule,' on a day when his behavior had convinced me that he had changed his mind entirely (he thought I had guessed his plan; I thought he had changed his mind). I was a child bride -- 24 years old. Looking back, I conclude that I was waaaaay to young to know what was good for me or how this would all work out. But I got it right, so maybe I did know what was good for me, or maybe I was just lucky. Either way, I'm incredibly happy.

(6) I've travelled to every continent except Antartica and Australia (as long as you allow me to count Japan, Hong Kong, and Indonesia as Asia). I plan someday to go to Australia or New Zealand, and daydream about Antartica but don't think it'll really happen. I also dream of someday going to Egypt. Travel was a lot easier and more frequent when I was the kid in a family and someone else arranged (and paid for) it. Now, the responsibility is (or would be) mine and the obstacles seem a lot higher. I used to think that I'd live in Paris when I grew up. I spent two summers living there in high school, and vacationed in France somewhat frequently otherwise. I fell in love over and over again with Paris. Life has a way, though, of taking unforeseen twists and turns. And now, here I am. I wouldn't trade it for the world.

(7) I am an extrovert, in that I love meeting new people and talking with them; I handle myself well in groups; I frequently am the organizer for large get-togethers of our friends; and I enjoy it all. On the other hand, I am an introvert, in that being in large groups overwhelms me and can sometimes cause me just to go into myself and shut down. In MBTI terms, I get my energy from alone time. The best example I can think of is that some people go to a rock concert and get all revved up, going a mile a minute, riding the wave of the energy of the crowd. Me? I'm the one who has to sit back down for a minute or two partway through the fourth song to recoup some of the energy I've spent. Don't get me wrong: I love it. I just sometimes need to stop and recharge.

As for tagging: consider yourself tagged if you want to be. And feel free to post a comment here that others can follow if they want to see your Seven Things.

Cognitive Disconnect

2007-05-21T06:50:00.000-04:00

As it turns out, I won't be going to the Massachusetts Sheep and Woolcraft Fair (a/k/a Cummington) this year. It's not because I've been away a lot recently, and it's not because the drive is too far, or the money too tight, or any of the things that I thought might prevent me from going.

It's because the weekend of the 26th and 27th is also Memorial Day weekend. And here's where the cognitive disconnect comes in. I've known for a while that Cummington was taking place on the 26th and 27th. I've also known for a while that my college reunion was taking place over Memorial Day weekend. Somehow, though, it was not until today that I put together that those are the same weekend.

By the way? Can I just say? Fifteen. It's my fifteeth reunion. I don't know whether to be amazed or underwhelmed. There's a part of me that simply cannot believe that the person I was when I graduated is now fifteen years in the past -- I still feel very much the same. On the other hand, there's a part of me that just wants to say "yeah, so?" I've changed. Of course I've changed. I have another degree, a career, a house, two kids, and I live in a different part of the country. It seems somehow appropriate that it's taken fifteen years for that all to play itself out.

Anyway. For those of you going to Cummington, I'm sorry I'll miss you (and the blegger afterwards. bummer.) but I'll try again next year when the stars are more likely to align.

Good News / Bad News

2007-05-16T06:31:00.000-04:00

Good News: I figured out what to do with all the sock yarn I keep buying. Shawls, shawls, more shawls, and maybe a miter blanket or log cabin blanket (these would be loooong-term projects).

Bad News: I'm still buying yarn faster than I can knit it.

Good News: I'm loving, loving, loving the Seacoast "Panda" yarn.

Bad News: I can't seem to find any more of it. (or maybe that's good news?)

Good News: Kiddo the Elder and Kiddo the Younger both want me to knit them shawls.

Bad News: [well, there's nothing bad about that, is there?]

Good News: I'm a little over half-way through my current feather and fan shawl, and I blocked it at the half-way point; it was about two feet, nine inches long. Multiply that by two, and it'll be the perfect length.

Bad News: It's taking a really long time to knit. There's no way I'm going to finish it, finish Samus, and start on the next shawl -- all before the end of May (my knitting resolutions for May were just a tad ambitious).

Good News: I've started tidying up the house in the evening after the kids go to bed. This makes weekends a lot more relaxing because there's a lot less housework to be done.

Bad News: This cuts into my knitting time mightily.

Good News: I've actually been practicing the flute, and really, really love it.

Bad News: This also cuts into my knitting time.

Good News: The basement renovation (from an unfinished basement to a finished basement with a full bath) is proceeding with surprising (dare I say alarming?) ease.

Bad News: We may be about to hit a snag. The clearance over one-third of one of the stairs to the basement is not to code. The remaining two-thirds of the stair has adequate clearance, all the other stairs have adequate clearance, and the stairs are all wide enough to conform to code. But this one-third of one stair may be our undoing.

Good News: I have a hotel room to myself tonight and tomorrow night.

Bad News: It's a business trip (15 miles from my home!) and I'll be working until about 2 a.m. and again at 8 a.m. There'll be no way to enjoy the room and get lots of knitting done.

Good News: We've pre-paid for the kids' camp sessions this summer, which means no childcare expense starting in early July.

Bad News: We need a new car.

Good News: We need a new car. I love looking at cars. We're thinking of either the Honda Odyssey or the Mazda CX-9 (warning: sound on that page).

Bad News: Neither of those comes as a hybrid.

Worse News: The Mazda gets crappy milage. And the Honda is . . . well, it's a minivan. I can't quite believe we're headed in that direction. But it has so much to recommend it. Storage, seating, handling, climate control, sliding doors, windows that actually open. Swoon.

Good News: I've been eyeing my wheel for a while, and think I may actually start spinning again. I bought a Lazy Kate and some more spindles, and might even go so far as to try to ply some yarn. But maybe that's crazy talk, and I'll just knit with my singles. I also got some small samples of different kinds of roving, and intend to try to find a favorite.

Bad News: Talk about cutting into my knitting time!

Good News: Cummington is coming up soon.

Bad News: I've been away a lot, and will be away a lot more, and therefore may not be able to go to Cummington without unduly burdening E.

Good News: Life is good.

Bad News: [none].

I COMPLETELY dropped the ball

2007-05-09T22:33:00.000-04:00

For a while, I was participating in a program at my church which involved, among other things, 15 minutes of quiet reflection each day. It was during one of those fifteen-minute spans of time that I realized that, for now, my life is not about finding a calm center amidst the craziness -- it is about riding the roller coaster, hanging on for dear life, and enjoying the thrill of the ride. Any time I finished up one major thing in my life, or one comittment came to an end (at least for me), I added something new. I keep planning to simplify, but apparently I just don't want to.

So I've decided to go with it.

I work full time. I have two kids. They take flute lessons, so I leave work early one day a week to give them dinner before the lessons. I (and E) also make sure that we run a practice with each of them every day (or almost every day). They also take gymnastics, but that's less of a time comittment overall. I knit, and get together with the Stitchers With Pitchers regularly (speaking of which -- if any of you are reading this, we have to pick a date for May!), and am involved in SP 10, and have done other swaps and pal-things. I am involved at church. We have a "Parents of Younger Children" group that gets together for a potluck dinner (with kids) and a discussion of spiritual parenting issues (without kids) once a month; I help to run that. And I'll be teaching the sexuality education curriculum to the 8th grade in the fall, so I'm starting to attend their classes now (7th grade). And I just joined the Religious Education Committee there. And, and, and.

And about a week ago (just after my last post), I received the most marvelous package from my SP10 pal. In it was a postcard (from Hawaii, no less!, even though the return address was North Carolina (if I recall correctly)), two skeins of KPPPM in a fabulous colorway -- really deep, bright, saturated reds and yellows and greens. I love it beyond words. It is absolutely perfect for me, and now I just have to figure out what to make with it. I want it to be something that does the yarn justice, and that's a tall order because this stuff is wonderful. There was also a makeup bag (well, it's a little bag, waterproof on the inside, with a zipper but no handle -- that makes it a makup bag, doesn't it? I don't know; I don't wear makeup, but this is going to be perfect for knitting notions, among other things). The bag is a bright pink with some flowers and a watering can painted on it, and the words "If you wait to be happy, you will wait forever. If you are happy now, you will be happy forever." I'm not sure I get what that means, but I think it's a variation on "it's not getting what you want, it's wanting what you've got," which is a sentiment with which I agree as long as it's about feeling good about the good in one's life, and not a sentiment about learning to settle for that which just isn't good. Anyway. It's a great bag. And then there was some chocolate (but not anymore -- that stuff disappeared quickly!).

And I haven't blogged about it. And the battery in my camera is dead, so there are no pictures to show.

My life is a juggling act right now, and sometimes I drop a ball (or two). My goal, generally, is to pick them up and keep on going. Somehow, though, I let this one languish on the ground for far too long, and I deeply apologize to my upstream SP. I really should have been more on the ball on this one (how's that for mixed metaphors?). I truly love all the stuff you sent, and am really, really looking forward to using it. Thank you!

In other news: the feather & fan shawl is approaching half done. I'm not sure it'll be long enough (I widened it beyond what the pattern called for, and may have sacrificed too much length in the process), so I plan to put in a lifeline and block the half of it that I have and then decide whether to rip back and start over with something narrower.

Since when did I become such a perfectionist?

May Resolutions

2007-05-02T20:16:00.000-04:00

Knitting:
(1) Finish Samus, no matter how difficult the thought of returning to her may be.
(2) Finish feather-and-fan scarf/stole/shawl thingy
(3) Start mystery shawl

Rest-of-Life:
(4) Practice flute (have I told you I'm taking lessons now, too?)
(5) Get outside more (gotta love spring!)
(6) Continue to lose weight
(7) Have fun
(8) Avoid locking horns with Kiddo the Younger

Notes on resolutions:
(1) I am finding Samus incredibly hard to get back to, given that I thought I had finished, and now I find I'm only about half-way through (still have to knit both sleeves). Maybe it would help if I thought of it as two-thirds of the way through, and included the knitting of the too-big sleeves as part of the total knitting time/effort. Either way, she's a wool sweater (Cascade 220), which I am attempting to knit as my heart yearns for spring and my mind has turned toward summer-weight lace.

(2) I started a feather-and-fan scarf/shawl in the colorway Calypso of this yarn, and am absolutely loving it. Merino, bamboo, nylon. You wouldn't think it, but that combination is magical. There is something so perfectly sensually right about how that yarn feels, about the colors (purples and greens and teals). Well, about just about everything about the yarn. I'm not sure how I managed to put it down and go to sleep last night.

(3) Mystery shawl. This is one that's going to occupy a lot of my time, but not provide much blog fodder (sorry!) I'm attempting to take a lace motif and turn it into a triangular shawl. It'll be done in variegated yarn, which makes it just a little trickier (have to make sure the motif still shows through), and I plan to add a border when the main body is done -- but it'll have to be the perfect border for that motif. And then. Well, then maybe I'll submit it for publication somewhere. Not that it'll be all that fabulous. But maybe someone will like it. Only time will tell. In the meantime, if I want to submit for publication, I cannot publish it here. Sorry.

(4) Yep. I started to get musical-proficiency envy of both my kids, so have decided to jump on the bandwagon and start taking lessons, too. Fortunately, I can use Kiddo the Elder's flute, so it's been pretty easy. Every so often, when time permits and when E can take the kids home after their lessons, I stay for a lesson myself. This stuff is fun! Maybe this is one of those instances where youth is wasted on the young? I never much liked the music lessons I took as a kid.

(8) [yes, I know I skipped a few]. Kiddo the Younger's behavior recently has been infuriating. She will defiantly look directly at one of us as she does the thing that (a) we have just asked her not to do, (b) we told her many times not to do, (c) will most delay the doing of the thing we want her to do, or (d) flat-out refuse to do anything (going so far as to kick and hit and bite if we try to thwart that plan). Thus far, the most effective response has been to say "I'm not going to argue with you," and walk away. We can do this in all but the most serious health-and-safety situations. So, with respect to getting her dressed in the morning? If she wants to go to daycare in her underwear, that's her choice. If she wants to wear only socks on the cold, wet ground, that's her choice. It is hard though, not to engage, not to feed the fury. The other piece of this, of course, is to give her the same level of undivided (but positive) attention when she is being good. And she can be oh so very good.

I will often say that she is Cindy Lou-hoo incarnate (remember the little girl in The Grinch Who Stole Christmas?), that she is cute and she knows it (and will work it to her advantage), but that sometimes she is impossible. Perhaps a little like that "little girl, who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead. And when she was good, she was very very good, but when she was bad, she was horrid." That could have been written about kiddo the younger. And it's high time I modified my behavior to deal with her better.

That's the thing about kids -- just when you think they're the ones doing the growing and changing, you realize that they are making you grow and change too. And I wouldn't change it for the world.

If my head weren't attached . . .

2007-04-26T15:43:00.001-04:00

The title of this post was going to be "Why I Take Out Yarn Insurance," and I was going to lead with a picture of the nearly finished second (note: SECOND) sleeve of Samus, with only six inches of yarn left, and about four more rows to go. I was going to extol the virtues of buying that one extra skein, just in case.

But then a little something happened, and suddenly my self-congratulations about the yarn insurance became a whole lot less enthusiastic.

Let me set the scene:
It was early in the evening when I finished knitting Samus. If I then blocked her, I would have had nothing to knit -- I don't want to start another project before the lace I've been obsessing about, and I have not yet received the yarn for that. So I decided to skip the blocking step and go right into seaming Samus together. This often leads to problems, especially when the pattern says to block and then seam, but I was willing to take that chance.

When seaming, I followed directions: I seamed the shoulders, I seamed the arms, and then I tried to sew the arms to the body. But they wouldn't go. The arm cap was much too large for the body. This must be one of the perils of neglecting to block, I thought to myself, maybe if I just squish it a bit, force it to line up, and sew it on, all will be well.

So that's what I did. Then I tried the sweater on. The body fit fine -- a little snug, but that's actually what I was aiming for. But the sleeve. Oh boy, the sleeve. WAY too big. My arm was swimming inside of it, and the point where the sleeve met the body of the sweater was laughably ugly. It actually looked like I was trying to make some sort of a pouf, like the world's worst bridesmaid's dress, out of a thick wool sweater.

I became convinced that my sweaters are cursed. I'm cursed. First the Ribby Cardi, which wound up fitting my sister (four inches shorter than me) perfectly. Then the Leo, which simply will not fit anyone anywhere, except maybe a giant with an eeensy, teensy, tiny head. And now Samus.

It crossed my mind that perhaps I had just knit the wrong size of sleeve, so I looked again at the first page of the pattern, where I had circled the number relating to the size I planned to make -- medium; the second size listed; the first one inside the parenthesis. I confirmed that I had made sleeves that size. And then I sat down to wallow in my misery at yet another failed sweater.

Then I glanced through the pattern. Despite circling "M" on the first page, I had apparently decided to knit the small size after all. Throughout the pattern, the FIRST number -- the one outside the parentheses -- was circled. Everything began to make a lot more sense. This explains why I needed the yarn insurance, why the arm felt so big and bulky, why the arm cap didn't line up with the arm hole on the body of the sweater.

Serves me right. I really should have looked through the entire pattern before starting in on the sleeves.

Good news: I have not yet suffered another failed sweater
Bad news: I need to rip and re-knit the sleeves. Is there a third-sleeve syndrome? What about a fourth-sleeve syndrome?

Lesson learned: When a project languishes on the needles for a while, I should spend some time becoming reacquainted with it and its pattern before picking the needles back up again.

The oddest thing, though, is that I am SO not this way in real life. My job is very detail-oriented, and I love it and am good at it. In the rest of my life, I read the instructions and then double-check them as I go. But somehow in my knitting I become the world's biggest ditz, about whom it is true that if my head weren't attached, I'd lose it.

Thoughts about knitting

2007-04-24T21:23:00.000-04:00

"Thoughts about knitting." What an inspiring blog post title! Just makes you want to curl up with a good cup of tea and dive right in, doesn't it? (yes, I am being facetious).

Anyway. I've finally done it. I've finally admitted to myself that although I love the idea of sock knitting, I don't love the doing of sock knitting. Although I love the sock yarn, I don't love the knitting of socks. Although I love the idea of wearing hand-knit socks, I don't love the actual wearing of hand-knit socks.

So now I have all this sock yarn, and no yearning for sock knitting. No hankering for a traveling (or sedentary, for that matter) sock.

But I will not be dissuaded from my love of the yarn! Instead, I have to come up with other things to do with it. And boy oh boy have I come up with some thoughts. There's the thought of a long-term project of a Log Cabin blanket in sock yarn, the possibility of doing some sort of an adaptation of Shelly's blanket, or perhaps even a tesselated fish blanket (it appears that the pattern is no longer available online, but has recently been republished in an XRX book of baby knits, the title of which I cannot now recall). But the thing that has most grabbed my imagination is the thought of making scarves and shawls in sock yarn. For whatever reason, my laceweight lace knitting comes out all wonky looking -- the yarn-overs look HUGE, while the other stitches look way too small -- so knitting with sock yarn seems the perfect solution. Particularly since it means the shawls will be more durable (less likely to snag and break, more likely to survive an accidental trip through the washing machine -- don't ask).

I even have a shawl in mind. I've spent literally hours trying to calculate how best to convert a particular motif into a shawl, how to get a rise and run of the diagonal that allows the multiplication of the motif at reasonable intervals, what sort of an edging to add, and so on. I've ordered yarn from Blue Moon Fiber Arts, and cannot wait to get started. I just hope that this isn't another instance where I love the idea but not the doing.

On another note, you will notice that the Jaywalker Socks have joined the list of unfinished, frogged, and otherwise abandoned projects. Not only do I not much enjoy sock knitting, but I also have a huge case of second sock syndrome, compounded by the fact that I altered them to knit them toe-up, and then threw in some increases and decreases to shape them appropriately for my foot, ankle, and calf -- and now I can't really decipher the notes I made telling me what I did when (after all, I started them back in early November; notations that made sense then have long since passed into the realm of the unintelligible).

Happy Earth Day

2007-04-23T06:54:00.000-04:00

I am inspired by Jenn over at Knit 'n Lit, who listed the things she and her family do to minimize their impact on the planet. At the risk of creating a meme (c'mon! join in! you can do it, too! let's all brainstorm together!), I thought I'd list the things we have done recently, and not-so-recently, to minimize our impact. Just for good measure, I'll include the things we keep meaning to do, but haven't yet (perhaps posting them here will help me to get motivated to make them happen).

Things we do
(1) We use cloth napkins. Two years ago for Christmas, I asked my mom for a bunch of dark cloth napkins, and she came though with flying colors. We now have 20-30 navy blue napkins that we use at the table in place of the paper towels we used to use. We've gone from using approximately a roll a week to using a roll every two months or so.

(2) We've replaced most of our light bulbs with compact florescent bulbs. The past month's electricity consumption was about 15% less than for the equivalent month a year ago.

(3) We now turn out the lights when we leave a room. This would seem to be obvious, but I've noticed that we used to leave the lights on downstairs when we went upstairs to put the kids to bed -- coming back downstairs to a dark house takes some getting used to, but it's worth it. The past month's electricity bill was about 20% lower than the previous month's. Some of that, of course, is due to longer days. But some of it is also due to changed habits.

(4) We've set our water heater to 120 degrees (fahrenheit). This is plenty hot to take a shower or bath, and not only decreases energy consumption but also prevents scalding of kids (and grown ups!)

(5) We have a programmable thermostat, which lowers the house temperature while we are away during the day, and at night while we sleep. We do not have central air, so the thermostat controls only the heat.

(6) We re-use plastic bags and containers as much as possible.

(7) We recycle paper and glass and cans and certain numbered plastics (according to what our town will allow)

(8) During the week, we use the gass-drinking car for the short trip to daycare and the train station (for E's commute), and the gass-sipping car for the longer commute to my office. E takes public transportation to and from work (and I would, if any existed).

(9) During the warm months, we frequent local farmer's markets and preferentially buy produce grown locally. It's good for the local economy, it tastes better (having ripened on the vine/tree/whatever rather than in transit), and it uses fewer natural resources to get from the farm to our plates.

(10) We use very few cleaning chemicals (this is as much from laziness as it is from being environmentally conscious, but the end result is the same). Similarly, we don't fertilize or water our lawn. It survives just fine (for the most part), and the weeds keep the rest of our yard looking green enough.

(11) We bought carbon offsets to cover the flights we've taken to go on vacation, the gas our cars use, and our home's overall consumption of energy. No, it's not the same as not using the energy in the first place, but it is nevertheless a good thing to do.

Things we ~~try to~~ will do
(1) We will install our through-the-window air conditioners, but not let them run unless we are in the room. We will run them just enough to keep us barely comfortable. We may even all sleep in the same room so as not to cool two rooms unnecessarily.

(2) We will start using environmentally friendly cleaning substances (vinegar, baking soda, etc) instead of the nasty chemicals.

(3) We will use canvas grocery bags instead of getting paper bags when we go shopping.

(4) We will use our bicycles to run local errands as much as possible.

(5) When we replace our gass-drinking vehicle this summer, we will include fuel efficiency as one of the necessary attributes of a new vehicle.

Well, that's it for now. But I'm sure there's a lot more we could be doing. I'd love it if you posted what you do to your blog (if you have one), and then put a link here in the comments -- the lists are likely to yield things we could implement chez Fido as well.

Thanks! And Happy (Belated) Earth Day!

Life chez Fido

2007-04-17T06:08:00.000-04:00

I was picking up Kiddo the Younger at daycare the other day, and she was in the midst of helping to clean up the "home living area" (dolls, play kitchen, dress-up clothes, little furniture, etc). She picked up a little blanket and started folding it. Seeing this, her teacher says "you are such a good folder! I bet you help mommy with the laundry, don't you?" Kiddo the younger just laughed: "Help MOMMY with the laundry?!? Mommy doesn't DO the laundry. DADDY does the laundry."

It's true, too.

Fido Family: Busting gender stereotypes, one teacher at a time.

In other news, Kiddo the Elder's sweater is done, and she LOVES it. It's, um, how shall we say? Um, a leeetle big on her. But she wears it anyway, and I am confident it will fit her for a good long while. Finishing it also meant that I could finally give Kiddo the Younger her companion sweater, which I finished last September* (luckily, it still fits). I'll try and get some pictures later.

*disclaimer/clarification: I finished knitting it, knitting the edging, seaming the sweater, sewing the edging on the body and on one sleeve last September. I added the second-sleeve edging in January. Talk about procrastination!

Long-awaited pictures

2007-04-13T08:22:00.000-04:00

Samus, body and one sleeve:

The stitch markers are marking stitches where I knit through the yarn, so that only a few strands are holding the sweater together at that point -- I need to go back and reinforce them by weaving in some more yarn.

Here's the cable, up-close and personal:

Finally, here's Kiddo the Elder's ballet wrap style sweater (the back, the two fronts, one sleeve, and the beginning of sleeve #2:

Given that I have cast on for sleeve number two of Kiddo the Elder's sweater, I think I my second sleeve syndrome may be going into remission. The true test will be whether I ever finish Samus.

Progress update

2007-04-12T06:32:00.000-04:00

Second-sleeve syndrome? I'm sure it exists, just like second-sock syndrome, and second-mitten syndrome. Part of my evidence for it is that I now have two -- count 'em, 2, t-w-o -- sweaters the finishing of which requires only that I knit the second sleeve. I've done one sleeve, the back, and both halves of the front of the sweater for Kiddo the Elder (a ballet-style wrap sweater, so the fronts were pretty substantial), and just have to knit the second sleeve, add the collar and ties, and then seam it all up.

As for Samus? She sits languishing, lacking only the second sleeve and a whole lotta I-cord (and then a zipper). The body is knit all in one piece, so I just have to sew the shoulder seams and attach the sleeves.

I really am going to finish the sweater for Kiddo the Elder before I do much of anything else -- I just ran out of knitting time last night (it was after midnight; I get up at 6 a.m. there are only so many nights in a row I can stay up that late). But as for Samus? Ugh. Just not motivated enough to get it done. It would be nice to be able to wear her, though. Plus, it would free my conscience to let me move on and knit other things (maybe even another sweater for myself).

I know it's been a long time since you've seen any pictures -- my goal is to get some up here on Monday. It's a Massachusetts holiday -- Can I just say how much I love living in a state that has an extra holiday? Most companies don't close, but mine does, and I intend to take full advantage of it by sending the kids to daycare anyway and taking the time to clean the house and work on this here blog, and get some knitting done, and maybe some grocery shopping, and perhaps . . .

Maybe this is why I never seem to make a dent in my to-do list -- I pile on too many things!

[and may I just rant about the weather for a moment? Someone has GOT to tell the weather gods that it is no longer winter. I know they were a little slow on the uptake in the fall, and that they may have fallen down on their job a bit through January and February, but that does not mean that they get to stick around all through April. It's supposed to be SPRING! And instead it's snowing. Yech.]

Four hours

2007-04-08T20:41:00.000-04:00

Let's start from the premise that I am a little insane. That will make it all much easier.

On May 30th (the Wednesday of Memorial Day week), the Yarn Harlot is going to be at WEBS. I'm sure she'll be closer to Boston at some point, too, but the desire to see her speak, combined with the siren call of WEBS is something this knitter cannot resist. It's not as though I need more yarn, but WEBS in-person (in-brick?) exerts a pull over me that I just cannot ignore. Must. Respond.

The talk is scheduled for 6 pm at a hotel in the Northampton area. I live about two hours from Northampton. Four hours of driving round-trip for the evening (it's a Wednesday, I work full-time). What am I, insane? (oh, right. I already answered that). So, I signed up for a seat at the talk and marked my calendar at work as "out of office" from noon onward on that day (figuring I'll deal with the issue of informing/asking my boss and coworkers later).

Then I set about trying to figure out how I was going to deal with driving home again at 9-ish (by the time the book signing and WEBS-shopping is all over and done with) after a truly full day. The only answer that came to mind is the obvious one: caffeine. Coffee, specifically. And lots of it. I'd be a mess the next day, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

And then I was reading the WEBS Blog. And they mentioned Yarn Safaris. And Yarn Safaris is having a Safari from the Boston area to the WEBS event -- leaving here around 3 p.m., returning around 11:30. And that's a no-brainer. One of their pickup places is about a ten-minute drive from my house. And now, instead of four hours of driving, I have four hours of knitting (although I admit that I may not knit on the drive back, what with the lack of light at that hour and all). Plus, I'll be surrounded by fellow knitters. It sounds like a dream.

Anyone want to come with me? How 'bout those of you who live closer -- are you planning to be there? Should we try to meet up?

Saturday Sky

2007-04-07T07:23:00.000-04:00

A most amazing thing happened one morning a few days ago. When I got to work, it was as though it was still dawn down at ground level, but late morning up in the sky. The trees were obscured by a little bit of fog, but higher up the sky was clear. I don't know if this picture comes even close to capturing it, but it's the best I could do:

April Resolutions

2007-04-06T20:17:00.000-04:00

(1) Lose this 8 pounds I keep gaining and losing, and then KEEP IT OFF! You may notice my blog now has a 'ticker' at the top tracking how much weight I've lost since, well, April 5th. Once I get down to my goal weight, that ticker will change to a time-count of how long I've remained within three pounds of that weight. That will be the challenging part for me. Historically, I've had the self-control to lose the weight, even when it takes months and months. I just tend to get to the finish line and give up (maybe the problem is that I see it as a 'finish line'?). Anyway.

(2) Read more.

(3) Finish Samus.

(4) Finish Kiddo the Elder's sweater.

Reading

2007-04-06T06:00:00.000-04:00

In honor of my new-found ability to read and knit (stockinette) at the same time, I provide you with a meme from my friend Eva.

Look at the list of books below: Bold the ones you’ve read* Italicize the ones you want to read* Leave blank the ones that you aren’t interested in. If you are reading this (and haven't participated yet), tag, you’re it!

1. The DaVinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18 The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom) (started it; couldn't finish)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (George Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb) (another one I started)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho) (started, may pick up again)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. The Bible (but not cover-to-cover)
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas) (in French)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery) (in English, later in French)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According to Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte's Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down(Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce) (I know . . . I can hardly believe it myself, either)

SP 10 Challenge

2007-04-05T15:50:00.000-04:00

Robyn, my SP 10 hostess, writes: "Post a picture to your blog before the 15th
showing me either your fave pattern ever knitted by you - or your most hated
project that once you finished it - you absolutely wondered "Why the heck
did I knit this". Want a challenge? Post both!"

If I do that, I get entered in a drawing to win a prize.

This is not an easy one for me. I think my favorite pattern is the one found here -- a top-down raglan for a baby. [edit to add: well, that just figures. I can no longer find where I found it online - sorry about that!] I've knit it three? four? times. Something like that. It goes quickly, and it comes out beautifully. All the parents have raved, and the kids have seemed at least moderately pleased.

As for the worst? Maybe Leo. Not because it was a bad pattern, but because it came out so poorly. Or maybe Wild Stripes -- because it was so insanely boring, and yet I stuck with it for literally weeks (although it felt like years) on end. And now my kids have it, but they don't treasure it the way they treasure the other stuff I've knit for them, and it rarely gets used, and . . . well, let's just say it wasn't a very rewarding knit.

Over a week?!?

2007-04-05T06:33:00.000-04:00

How'd that happen? How could it possibly have been over a week since my last post? I've taken some great (non-knitting) pictures that I keep meaning to post, and I've even gotten some knitting done. Plus, I've mastered the rough equivalent of walking and chewing gum -- I can now read while I knit stockinette, and so I've even gotten some reading done. And I've thought at length about how I'd describe each of these on my blog, but somehow I just haven't followed through. So here's the follow-through (sans pictures).

Samus is waiting in the sidelines. All I have to do is the final sleeve, then sew it together, and add the front zipper (although I will admit that I'm thinking some clasps might be nice for this. But I'm stuck because the final sleeve must start with two repeats of the cable, and I'm not really in the mood for cabling right now. I'm actually (and surprisingly) in the mood for some simple stockinette. Maybe it's the rebound reaction to the endpaper mitts. In any event, I'm loving me some stockinette and plan to keep on keeping on until inspiration strikes and gets me back into the Samus groove.

My toe-up Jaywalker socks? Well, I've completed one of them. And again, I'm not feeling the urge. It'll come back; I know it will. At least, I think it will. I will admit, though, that I'm having a bit of an identity crisis: am I a sock-knitter or not? I love sock yarn. I am entranced by all the socks I see online and by the enthusiasm with which people dive into knitting a sock. But [whisper] I'm not at all sure I enjoy knitting socks [/whisper]. I know that's heresy, and maybe I just haven't found the right socks, but there it is. But I love sock yarn, and what the heck else am I going to do with it, other than knit socks? Maybe I'll try a lifelong log cabin blanket ('lifelong' as in 'it'll take me a lifetime to finish it,' not as in 'it'll last me a lifetime'). Or maybe some scarves/shawls. Or maybe I'll catch the sock-knitting bug and not be able to stop.

Finally, the lightweight sweater for Kiddo the Elder. This is what I've been working on. I'm using a different yarn and different needle size than is called for in the pattern. As a result, my gauge is off (in the direction of making a too-large sweater). My seat-of-the-pants adjustment for this is that I am following the instructions for the 5-6 year old size (Kiddo the Elder is six, almost seven, and has a very long torso) exactly . . . except where a measurement is given in inches, in which case I am knitting to the length described for the 7-8 year old size. In theory, I should wind up with a sweater sized for a 7-8 year old. Alternately, I could wind up with a sweater that doesn't fit together because the sleeves and the arm holes are completely different shapes. Stay tuned for updates.

In the meantime, I'm back to reading again. It's the one thing I don't like about knitting -- it cuts into my reading time. I used to be a prolific reader who considered a two-book week to be a week without enough reading in it. And I haven't read much, or at all, since I started knitting. But it turns out that, thanks to a little gift from E, and the fact that this sweater for Kiddo the Elder is entirely stockinette (with a little garter stitch thrown in at the edges), I can read while I knit. I'm about three-quarters of the way through Pomegranite Soup, my book-club book. Waiting in the wings are (off the top of my head): Blind Side; Moneyball; The Audacity of Hope; The Tenth Circle; and a whole heap o' books sitting on the floor of the ~~room into which we throw the stuff we can't be bothered to put away~~ computer room.