Panicking, I mean packing

Doctor’s appointment? Check. Tommy’s OK and gaining weight again.

Kennel? Check.

Last-minute grocery shopping? Check, plus the fall issue of Interweave Knits. Though, the 8 year old called me on it — “What knitting project did you finish?” I told him I didn’t have time to look at it today anyway.

Now: pack the bags, wash the dishes, bake the cookies, put away the extra clothes, clean the house for the showing, and I think that’s it. Oh yeah, put the kids in the van.

Last night: rewound a skein of BSJ wool, but didn’t cast on. Realized this morning I should have cast on. Worked on a wee tiny giftknit. Knitted on Tyrone. Watched the last Doctor Who with Christopher Eccleston. Maybe it was because Tom was awake and crying then and I couldn’t hear every word, but I was left disappointed and sort of forlorn. So I popped in the next Remington Steele episode, which turned out to have curious and strong parallels to a time in my life I don’t really want to rehash. (Lots of good eye candy, though. I even rewatched a scene. Whew!)

I had to sit quietly and finish the wee giftknit to get myself to where I could sleep. Life is curious.

Back to our regularly scheduled panic. Where is a HHGTTG when you need one?

Irish Fest free promo: Get in free on Sunday by going to the Mass and bringing a canned good donation. After Mass (including singing by the Irish Fest Mass Choir [name may be mangled, sorry], of which my MIL is a member) you are free to go to the rest of Irish Fest. Have a Harp. Buy a harp. Dance to harp music.

Have a good ol’ Irish time and I’ll see you by the curraghs. Bring your knitting. (I was going to write “represent!” in Irish Gaelic but upon a cursory inspection of the Gaelic tongue, I will leave that to the scholars.)

How to write the sorry letter for not paying

Yes, we have spam. And until I ran across the link I copied for my title (thanks, Mister  Shakespeare!), this was going to be my best-of (links removed):

Hello
I wish to suggest to visit to you [link]. Subjects of the given [link] search of a casino. Here you can find for yourselves the best and fair casinos. Free-of-charge bonuses and many other things. And simply to look that to a soul it is necessary. Very much I recommend search on pharmaceutics. Solid firms, quality of production.

Okay. Now that we have that out of the way…. there is knitting to discuss. Not a lot, but you know.

I started on the BSJ, I really did. The first thing I discovered was that I didn’t like the yarn I bought. It is fine New Zealand/Aussie yarn imported through a place in New Hampshire I’ve never heard of, but nevertheless, I don’t enjoy knitting with it. It’s stiff and almost crusty, like it’s been on the shelf for ten years waiting for a home. I can’t get gauge with it either. I knitted a swatch on size US 4 needles and only managed 5.5 st/in, shooting for six, but knitted myself some chain mail in the process. No way am I knitting this on 3’s. But I think it will soften up in the wool wash, and it’s a lovely variegated magenta, so I decided to press on.

Then I started knitting, and I know EZ said it would be strange, but it’s already so odd I might rip back and try again. I didn’t mark the stitches she said to mark because I didn’t know if I should mark The Stitch or The Space Before The Stitch, and now I have no idea where those markers would be. I’m not completely sure which row I’m on, either. That’s not a good sign.

To add to that, it was my first time doing a PSSO, and I didn’t know if I was doing that part right, either. Finally I searched YouTube for “knit PSSO” and found a demo that confirmed I was doing it just fine, but still. It looked like I was making bobbles on one end of the thing, and I know that ain’t right.

So there it sits until my head is clear. There my self-designed Dianne hat sits until I can figure out more crown decreases. There my socks sit until the kids are asleep and not distracting me. There sits a lot of yarn.

Today I hauled out my gauge swatch for Tyrone and got about three rows done (two knit, one purl) before I had to put it away again and Watch The Children.

Now, Mr. Beth and his buddies are off to the pub. 75 percent of the kids are asleep. And what am I going to pull out and work on again?

The Irish Hiking Scarf, what else???

Tonight’s shameless plug for the Milwaukee Irish Fest features the Canine exhibit. Within barking distance from the Cultural Village is an exhibit of Irish dog breeds: you know, Irish Wolfhounds, Kerry Blue Terriers,  Irish Terriers, Irish Setters, that sort of thing. They have demos and shows and the dogs are there all weekend, on display, with the owners answering questions. Check the link again later this week: looks like the full schedule isn’t posted yet.

And… what the heck are you people searching for? And how on God’s green earth are you finding this blog when you type in these things?

Search Terms Used To Find This Blog, Part II 

chocolate sheep poo
Oh please. This is not Dirty Jobs, where every other adventure is about poo. Yes, I have mentioned chocolate. I sometimes mention sheep. And yes, I have mentioned poo. But not in a row, people.

Tom Baker
I’m not worthy.

pictures of fly bites on sheep
??? Eww!

deathly things to do
At least I knew there this one came from. But as I haven’t done anything “deathly” in a while, I can’t help you there. [Reminds me of an operating system, lo these many moons ago, in which I was within a help module and typed "help." The system responded, "Can't help with that."] [I may have told this story before. Sorry. I am a geek and I used to be a bigger one.]

things not to do at Hogwarts
Let’s see…. irk Professor Snape? How about asking Hermione, she seems to know all then rules you’re not supposed to break. And when and how you actually should break them.

I hope you both get flies
Again, eww!

sully cake
Okay, two people used this search on the same day. What’s up with that? I actually had to look up Sully because I was thinking it was an X Files reference and I know I’ve never written about that. Then I saw a picture of a grown man in a Sully costume from Monsters, Inc. and thought, oh, right, the fun fur hat. What are the odds of two people having read this blog months ago, and all they remember is a fun fur hat and my son’s birthday cake from March?

Oh, for goodness’ sake.

P.S. to Mr. Beth: I’m very sorry I didn’t tell you I was buying a spinning wheel. I couldn’t remember if I had told you or not, and I thank you for your patience, love, and understanding when you found out about it by reading my blog.

Top Ten Things to do after Deathly Hallows

WARNING: slight spoilers inside. But they are very slight. And if you haven’t finished the book yet, what are you doing on the Internet? Log off and finish!

1. Cry enough to buy another box of tissues.

2. Marvel at how small details in each book remained important in the final volume, years later.

3. Go see Order of the Phoenix.

4. Knit something for the Charmed Knits KAL charity.

5. Anticipate that Minerva McGonigal’s participation in the Battle of Hogwarts will rival Yoda’s first fight scene in the Star Wars prequels (once it hits the screen).

6. Go to YouTube and plug in character-name combinations and watch mash-up music videos for an hour.

7. Give up writing fiction entirely, or hopes of it.

8. Send J. K. Rowling a thank-you note for all her excellent work.

9. Re-read The Half-Blood Prince to figure out that Horcrux thing again.

10. Steal it from your teenager and read it again!

She’s not doing it.

After lots of thought I have decided not to progress to Second Year in the Hogwarts Sock Swap. Not the least of the things on my mind was the combination of slow-knitterness and other events that led to someone else finishing my socks for me. But the new year of swap, with its full-on Harry Potter identity to maintain, coinciding with a vacation, a move, and goodness knows what else…. I didn’t think I could keep up, and what an odd thing to be doing to finally be the thing that took me down. So yes, I did delete the last post that gave my answers to the questionnaire…. no need for that information to be out there, under the circumstances.

So.

• I will try to finish what I’m working on,
• Start Tyrone so I can be doing something in my own knitalong,
• And start working on new things for family and friends.

Oh yeah — and pack and move and make new friends and all that crap.

AND finish Deathly Hallows, I’m on Chapter Eleven. Sssshhhhhhh!!! I am trying to finish before I meetup with Jules.

UPDATE: I finished the book and can discuss by e-mail. If you leave a comment here, take care not to be a Spoiler!!

Got the book, now leave me alone

Last night at 11:30 I headed out for the bookstore where I had reserved my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I found myself part of the world’s ruliest mob. More than 300 copies had been reserved, yet everyone stood calmly in line and chatted.

There weren’t people dressed like wizards, or end-of-book spoilers, or line jumpers. A few people had on HP related T-shirts. (Nothing as cool as my Hufflepuff socks, though, thank you Jules!) I knitted on a baby blanket while I stood in line and listened to college students and high school students chatting around me. There were a few parents who had been pressed into service to drive their carless children to the line, but on the whole many fewer grownup fans.

At one point in the line it struck me that this was one of the few times (I can’t think of another, right now) that I was doing the popular thing at the same time as everyone else. I usually read the book in paperback, watch the movie in the cheap theater (these days, get it on DVD), or buy the third fifth iteration after all the bugs have been worked out (right, SG?). Whoopee for me, I was finally doing the “in” thing.

Then I looked around and realized I was hanging out with 16-to-21-year-olds to pay almost $30 for a discounted first edition hardcover. Took a little bloom off the rose, but it was kind of chilly there, at midnight in mid-July in Wisconsin. (Who knew?) That bloom was going to fade anyway.

So I got the book, took it home to Mr. Beth and handed it over. Then proceeded to botch up the baby blanket on the last row I had decided to knit before turning in (at 2am!). I think all I did was drop a stitch on the World’s Most Mindless Knitting, but it was hard to tell for a while because everything I did to try to fix it was screwing something up. I had my eyes closed at the time I made the error (falling asleep, don’t you know) so it was hard to know how to undo it.

So. Today, I’m learning a New and Valuable Skill with my crochet hook. !@@#$!!!! Then I have two massive and probably confusing tomes to read. All Mr. Beth would say about the new book (no spoilers here) is, “She sure isn’t wasting time with this one.” There was another muttered comment of his that I laughed at: “Well, if that’s true, then how did she make the rest of the book so long?” I enhanced his reading pleasure by tossing out gems like “After Lily rose from the dead” and “Lily and James really were killed in a car crash and this is all a madman’s dream.”

My apologies if any of this nonsense turns out to have any bearing at all on this marvelous series. Now, I need to pick up a stitch, add the next skein, and start reading Half-Blood Prince again. Judging from Mr. Beth’s I-don’t-need-to-do-no-stinkin-rereading experience, I will be glad I did.

See you all in a couple of days!

Treasure hunt!

With apologies to Ferris Bueller, blogging goes by pretty fast. If you blink, you might miss it. So here is some cool stuff I found over the last few days, while trying to catch up on my own sector of the knitblogosphere.

Did you wonder where the Harlot’s candy-colored handspun would up after she donated it to Claudia for a prize as she collected pledges for her MS ride? (breath) I found it here. It’s still beautiful and it’s great to know it’s in a happy home.

Do you like toe-up socks but hate short-row toes? Here is the amazing solution to the problem — bottom-up socks with top-down toes. As the Harlot might say, this is dead clever.

Still don’t know what you want to be when you grow up? And your kids laugh and say, Mom, you’re already grown up? Go here. Mother Chaos has expressed this so well I will never have to write about it again, I’ll just hand people a card with the hotlink written on it. (Or maybe have T-shirts made. That would be good for Harlot Tour meetups…)

Did you ever want a Personal Yarn Shopper? I just stumbled across this blog and feel like sending this chick $10 and saying, do your best for me at the next auction. Un. Be. Freakin. Lievable.

(edit) I just found this and there was no way I was not going to include it. Someone knit up an iPhone — Awesome!

If you have found some other cool stuff that I missed, let me know! One link only, though, so you won’t end up in the spam bucket with the guy from Amsterdam with all the drugs.

And here’s a quick note to all those jerks obsessed with ruining all the suspense that J. K. Rowling has spent that past ten years building up? Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. I don’t want you to shove the ending in my face, I want to READ MY BOOK. A note to others who feel as I do: don’t look for any news related to Harry Potter at all. I hear that people are typing in comments to news stories, with spoilers (real or fake) in all caps just to get their jollies. If in doubt, log off and knit until your book comes in. Then give us all time to read the book. I am re-reading the series and will be on Half-Blood Prince this weekend until Mr. Beth, who isn’t re-reading, finishes Deathly Hallows. We’ll all meet on the other side and have a good cry. Then, judging from reports from the Order of the Phoenix movie, there will be plenty of new things to knit.

Including House socks. For swaps.

Fly away home

And we’re BACK! Tommy was discharged at 3pm today so I could simply stuff him with food at home. We won’t have the results of the stool sample for a few days, I guess, so in the meantime I will just keep the food log and note the bowel movements and help him start to develop arm and leg strength so he can catch up developmentally.

Thanks so much for your comments and e-mails. By the time I got home I had just enough energy to read them and not always enough to reply, but I did read them all and I am thankful & grateful that so many people were thinking of Tom. Believe me, all the nurses were lost in his blue eyes and long lashes too!

Does he look bigger to you?

I did absolutely no knitting today, since I didn’t feel up to tinking all those rounds of the hat. Instead, I re-read more of Order of the Phoenix so I could finish it before the movie comes out, not that I’ll be able to see it anytime soon. But tomorrow I have to start tinking. Maybe all the kids will take a nap at the same time so I can do that (sure).

I’m just so glad we’re home. I can’t think of anything else to say right now. What in blazes is going on in the knitblogosphere? It’s all I can do to keep up with For Better or For Worse.

Oh yeah… considering I will be spending all day just feeding and picking up after the kids, and keeping the house clean enough for a showing in an hour’s notice, my knitting and blogging will have to be done after bedtimes. So if you’ve been dropping by for my typical 10am Central post, it will probably be 12 hours later now. Just so you know.

Any Doctor Who fans out there? I have been watching some episodes with the ninth Doctor, Christopher Eccleston, and I just love this series of it. I’m really going to miss him when he’s replaced by David Tennant. I know I’m a couple of years behind the curve but I don’t care, the one shown on PBS on Saturday night where Rose traveled back to the day her father died was great.

Baby waking, gotta go to bed!

Monday’s Mail

Time to do some show and tell. Here are pictures of the goodies I got in Monday’s mail. I would have shown you sooner, seriously, but I like to drag things out over time. Haven’t you noticed?

First open was a box from Arizona from Lauren. It contains a knitting-pattern-a-day calendar. We agreed, some of the patterns are cute, some are outstanding, and some are dogs. But it contains an entry form for knitters who think they can improve next year’s product. Do you think I should write up the Emergency Necktie? I wouldn’t get paid or anything, it’s just for the good of the cause. (Their cause to sell calendars.)

Then was an envelope from Wiley Publishing, containing the book I won in their drawing. Go and knit up some Charmed Knits beanies and send them in to the publisher. Go quickly! Each hat is an entry in a weekly drawing before it is donated to Warm Woolies.

And then there was the first donation of leftover yarn to the “organization” I am tentatively calling St. Helen of the Blessed Skein. No disrespect intended, just a reference to the only movie I know about a Catholic school fund-raiser. (At least that’s what I told the kids. They like to point out all the safety violations.) Thank you Beth M.! I am not sure if I will create a new blog for St. Helen’s or what.

Knitwise, I am rocking on the salt and pepper socks now that I am past the cuff and on larger needles (I went from size 1 to size 3). I think I will cast on for the second one now that the needles are free, to combat SSS before it has a chance to start. Pictures tomorrow. It is actually looking like a Sock, and a handsome one at that.

I need to show some progress on my Hogwarts Sock Swap socks on my blog on Friday. The trouble is, I don’t have the yarn yet. Wait, I’m thinking….

Familywise, Tommy weighed in today at 15 pounds 2 ounces. So we need to have another weight check next week and hope he has gained much more by then.

Someone else is being shown the rectory! Oh no! I hope they see a ghost! We have to get this house on the market and sold so we can get it for ourselves.

Baby steps

I am creeping along with my baby sock, but I have turned the heel and completed the gusset. I would just like to bask in the glow of this marvelous accomplishment for a few minutes before I get back to the manual and see what I need to do to head down towards the toe. I feel like First Knitter, who Steph writes about in Casts Off. This accomplishment is radically tempered by the fact that I’m reading explicit step by step instructions and am making up absolutely nothing as I go along. But still. I’m really knitting a freaking sock! (Perhaps I should have learned how to do this before I signed up for a sock swap?)

The kids have sort of been cooperating — they left the room when Knitty Gritty was on, so I worked on the sock then.

All this was only able to take place after I finished reading Circle of Quilters by Jennifer Chiaverini, which I started last night. The usual Chiaverini spell overcame me again. I can’t explain it. She’s not a florid writer, and the people she writes about aren’t sensational. Yet I turn the pages as fast as I can because I so want to see what happens to these quilters. This time, kind of like in The Cross-Country Quilters, I just wanted to shake them all by the shoulders for not seeing what terrible relationships they were in. I shut out the rest of the world and blow through each book in 24 hours. So I’m caught up with her, and with Earlene Fowler’s Benni Harper series (until next month, anyway), and with Michele Scott’s Wine Lover’s Mystery series.

Back to knitting and life. Tomorrow is Jack’s third birthday. [He seems to have been three years old for a long time, but I guess that's normal.] He wants “blue cupcakes with blue icing.” Maybe I will surprise him and put little Blue’s Clues sugar pawprints on them. Mr. Beth is taking him for a drive tomorrow so the rest of us can decorate the living room and give him a surprise party — surprise parties seem to be the theme this year.

I picked up some much-needed chocolate this morning. At the gas station store I got the largest possible cup of Hershey’s Double Dark Cocoa cappuccino, and was drawn to a Hershey’s Special Dark display. Here’s the text: “First red wine, and now this. Yes, life is good.” In the display were two limited edition Special Dark bars: raspberry with macadamia nut, and almond. Yes, I got one of each.

Oh yes — I snuck out of the scout meeting last night to raid the bead store for the stitch markers for the swap. Here’s a benefit of having taken a class at a local store: the store was closed, but since they were having a class right then, the owner waved me in to look at what everyone was making. She also asked to see my completed wirework project (from two years ago) and sold me beads. And gave me tips on making my own jump rings. Do you think she’d like to see my Camp Fire beads? I am thinking about turning them into stitch markers.

Welcome to Knitsville, population us

Yes, I just blasted through the Harlot’s new book last night. (Thanks, kids, for being happy to have cold leftover pizza for dinner.) I’m starting again today so I can etch it deeper in my brain.

It’s not a book for Muggles, and maybe not for new knitters. But it’s a wonderful book for Knitters, those of us who are already entrenched, addicted, and loving it all. It’s funny and clever and makes you laugh out loud for a variety of reasons. The illustrations are inspired, and the travel quotes are so apt. The whole package is so well put together it makes me think, Gee, maybe I should just send my ideas to these people instead of being a small publisher myself.

The only thing I miss is an index so I can look up all my favorite parts again and again. But I’m always missing an index when I read knitting or craft books. So it’s quite possible that it could just be me. And maybe the Tsarina, too. And Ruth. But other than that.

With that and the new Vogue Knitting in my wooly hands, I feel all wrapped up in the knitting world. Mr. Beth has volunteered to do all the driving this weekend so that I can knit in the van. I got some supplies this morning to start putting together the working copy of my craft store directory. I’m within sight of the fourth skein for the Moebius. I’m full of ideas for experimenting with my own designs. I’m reading the second Maggie Sefton knitting murder mystery. And I’m hoping to visit a new yarn store this weekend.

And, I made cherry chocolate chip cookies yesterday. Give me a Coke in a glass bottle and all’s right with the world. Wait a minute….

Ahh.

(Oh yeah, props to the first person who gets the reference in the title.)