Moral Imperatives

Last weekend I was talking with a friend about the progress of some of my current knitting projects.

“How’s that February Lady Sweater coming?” she asked.

“Well,” I said, “I had to finish up Logan’s Blanket, then I had to set aside everything else so I could work on this prayer shawl.”

“Ah,” she said sagely. “Sidelined by moral imperatives.”

I think that for the last six months that kind of sums it up. Every January I sit down and sketch out the projects I want to knit in the upcoming year. I love lists and plans, and it would be great to just be able to sit down and work the plan. But that’s never the way it goes.

Last fall I had started soliciting knitting patterns for a booklet I wanted to do. No sooner had I done that, than the whole Connor Caps project sprang up as something that had to be done. In the middle of it, of course, was Christmas knitting. (Not that anyone actually asked for me to knit them something for Christmas, mind you. We can only speculate how much more knitting I would have been doing had anyone actually requested a knitted item.)

This year was going to be different, yadda yadda yadda. I took up the mantle of a Christmas present that didn’t get done in time for last Christmas, and finished it (and a fraternal twin) for this Christmas. But then I started Logan’s Blanket and was still helping coordinate the other projects for Connor’s family.

Whew! I cast on a cool project for myself and finished it in time to wear it while the weather was still cold. But by then I was organizing a local knit/crochet group, which will have its first meeting tomorrow night. (You are coming to Yarn-a-Latte, aren’t you?)

The most recent moral imperative has been to knit a prayer shawl. My husband’s grandfather passed away at the age of 92 at the end of March, and his grandmother came into possession of a prayer shawl made by someone she didn’t even know. While she is very crafty indeed, knitting is not her “thing,” so she was extra impressed by the thought of someone creating such a comforting item for a stranger. Technically it’s a very simple project, but it meant so much to her that I decided to pay it forward by making a prayer shawl in her favorite colors, blue and white.

Then, last week, my former father-in-law had two heart attacks and died suddenly. And then I knew who I was making the prayer shawl for. I went stash diving, cast on, frogged what I had, re-thought the project, wrote out a pattern, cast on again, harvested the top-down sweater for the rest of the yarn, and have neglected the rest of my projects since last Tuesday. It’s a simple project, true, but the simplicity allows for a lot of meditation as the hands make the stitches. This shawl is full of prayers and happy memories and good thoughts. And though the rest of life does go on and need its own kind of attention, the other projects can wait a bit until the prayer shawl is done.

Then it’s time for starting another Doctor Who Scarf, and knitting a Christmas stocking in summer so I can publish a pattern in the fall. So it doesn’t get any more sane.

Un-knitwise, the kids all took turns getting sick over the course of a week and a half, but they’re mostly better. It doesn’t look like swine flu — cross your fingers. Tom turns out to be farsighted and will need glasses, which explains a lot. I’ve been getting some physical therapy for my hip, which has been locking up. I’m also waiting to hear about TV show renewals for Castle and Chuck. Usually I just watch the show and get mad when they cancel it, so my degree of involvement with “save my show” campaigns this time is a surprise to me. They’re both a lot of fun to watch, and I’ll miss them when they’re gone, whenever that may be.

And, of course, Yarn-a-Latte kicks off tomorrow night at Tan-a-Latte in Jefferson at 6pm tomorrow night. There will be a drawing! name tags! and coffee! (It has already been suggested that maybe I should not be having so much of the coffee.) Knitters I haven’t even met in person yet have been helping me distribute flyers across the county and a little bit beyond. All are welcome, even if you just like to sit and watch other people crochet. Nothing wrong with that!

I might even take my camera and remember to take pictures. And blog about it.

Everything

Here it is, Post 300. Long in the making because, well, these benchmark numbers put one under such pressure to perform! Until, finally, it occurs to me it hasn’t been three days since the last post, it’s closer to three weeks and by the time I write the next post there won’t be anyone there to read it anyway.

Emergencies

I have had my share of little panics over the past three days three weeks. Remember that extra little Christmas we had when I found the presents I’d hidden? One of them was a Scout knife, fresh from the factory and twice as sharp. The very next day, said Scout forgetting that putting it on top of his dresser wasn’t exactly removing temptation from his four-year-old brother, we had ourselves a small crisis. I’d tell you all the details, really I would — they were hilarious! — but until some sort of statute of limitations runs out, I’m afraid I’ll have to plead the Fifth lest someone from Children’s Services is reading this and decides I need some time in solitary to reconsider my parenting skills. (Short version: I did not know the knife was on the dresser until we were on our way to the doctor’s office for some skin glue. The reasonable explanations I heard for there being blood everywhere were all lies.) But we did meet a lovely new pediatrician.

That was a Wednesday. The following Monday I went upstairs to wake the same four-year-old boy for school, and was met with a zombie. I carried his limp body down to the couch, where he lay all day, eyes glazed, fever burning, unslaked by orange juice. The doctor’s office had no open time slots, so he didn’t get there until Wednesday, when it was discovered he had an ear infection and a teensy bit of, well, pneumonia.

It’s interesting to tell people that your child has a touch of, well, pneumonia. They look at you as if you’re about to breathe some pneumonia on them as well, while the thought bubble above their head wonders do people still get pneumonia any more?

Some of them do, and I hope they’re almost done with it. Because for a whole week, TV sucked, medicine tasted nasty, I was the most horrible mommy on the earth and deserved to DIE, and school became the Emerald City. But we did meet another nice pediatrician.

Meanwhile, I was adding “I am SO going to Knit Night” to the end of every e-mail I was writing last week. The events of the night were undiminished by the fact that one of my brake lines blew out as I was leaving the Beltline on the way to Verona, and were of course completely out on the hourlong drive back. I could tell they were handling differently — I just didn’t know why. But I brought me home safe. We dropped off the van on Monday, and maybe it will be fixed tomorrow morning. And we did get to reacquaint ourselves with the guys who fix my car.

So.

I finished a Secret Knitting Project I can now call the Old School/New School Scarf. Check it out in 2009 Finished Projects. It’s a tube scarf, with colored stripes transitioning from Marquette Warrior to Marquette Golden Eagles. It’s hideously warm and was completed two days before it absolutely had to be.

I finished my January sock for the Personal Sock Club — check it out in Finished Projects as well. I finished this sock yesterday, so technically it’s a January/February sock, and I don’t care to speculate as to when the second one will be finished. I might cast on for it tonight, just so that doesn’t get delayed any further.

Who’s left? The only other active project I have is a Season 16 Doctor Who Scarf. I’m coming to terms with my other projects not really being Works In Progress, but Hibernating Items I’d Rather Not Think About For A Few More Months. But I really would like to get them all wiped out by the end of 2009.

Thanks for reading my 300th post!

P.S. I did some spinning the other night — yes, Wookie roving. I have a spinning retreat coming up in less than a month and thought I’d blow through the open bag of Wookie wool, have fun plying it, and have all the bobbins free for the retreat.

Disorderly conduct

“One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.” — A. A. Milne, the January 18 quote on the Never Not Knitting daily calendar by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

I finally have to admit that I am a disorderly person. (Any husbands present and past who may be reading my blog can skip this post. You already know this about me.)

In the last two days I made a couple of exciting discoveries. The first was that I found the baby-gift wrapping paper and extremely cute baby card I bought for Tommy’s teacher. This was five days after I had to wrap her baby present with other paper and make a different card. The important thing to remember is that in this instance I got the knitting done and the gift delivered on time. (In fact, the baby came this past Sunday.) It was on Tuesday that I discovered that my Special Secret place for the paper and card was, in fact, my Lantern Moon knitting bag.

In retrospect, this made sense. On the day I bought the paper and card, I also made a couple of stops for yarn. I must have tucked them in the bag to keep them from getting folded or crushed (they remain in excellent condition). Short Term Memory forgot to say a word about it to Long Term Memory, possibly distracted by the “all Seventies weekend” format of the radio station we were listening to in the car that day, and there you go. And now, if anyone has a baby anytime soon, I’m all set. Except for the knitting, of course. And that baby would have to be Soon, before I forget again where I put the paper and the card.

Still with me?

Tuesday was also when I discovered that my family was not yet done with Christmas. I was looking for my daughter’s hand-painted red, white, and blue T-shirt from summer school, since the kindergarteners were directed to wear red, white, and blue clothes to school on Tuesday, in honor of some Presidential Inauguration or something. (For more on the significance of this event, see here — I admired the pageantry of the occasion but don’t want to talk politics here.) So anyway, I was in an upstairs back closet where I keep things like Christmas decorations, hand-me-down kid clothes, quilt frames, extra bedding, sleeping bags, and the like. I opened a big blue plastic bin and saw….

Christmas presents. Nine unopened Christmas presents.

Uh-oh.

And now I remembered moving some of the early presents from in from of the master-bedroom closet to this upstairs closet so we could do things like open our closet. Not the we still can, but that’s beside the point. The point is that whoever wrote “out of sight, out of mind” knew exactly what he (she?) was talking about, and probably enjoyed as many exciting discoveries in their lifetime as I enjoy in mine.

Through a tremendous stroke of luck, there were two presents for each child, and one present for Mr. Chocolatesheep and myself (the very present I specifically asked for, and was feeling a bit irked about not having received).

So this evening, just after an early dinner of Spiderman macaroni and cheese (one word: avoid), the kids opened a new round of Christmas presents and were thrilled with everything.

I’m not sure why I can’t go through the plastic bins that hold my yarn stash and find a collection of mysteriously completed projects, but I’m working on building up my karma to increase the chances of this.

Whoever’s in charge of karma? Could you just do those raglan decreases on Tyrone? I swear I’ll do an excellent job on the crew neck band and even look up the Lily Chin invisible bind-off thingy from Knitty Gritty.

le sigh

Knitwise, after wasting three hours last night untangling a skein of yarn from the utterly botched frogging of a scarf that used the only skein of the Secret Project yarn available within forty miles….. I’m just happy to have gotten anything done today.

Personal Sock Club: I need to do about 5 more repeats on the leg of the first sock. I’m doing Retro Rib and it calls for 17 4-round repeats, but I’m worried my big feet will make me run out of yarn, so I’m going to do 15 repeats. Or maybe 14. We’ll see. Right now, at about 10, it would just look stupid. I hope it picks up speed when I get to the heel. I know I don’t have a snowball’s chance of getting the pair done by the end of the month, but it would be nice to have half the pair done.

Secret Project: I’m almost through the second third. Now that I have the yarn infusion I can (hopefully) steamroll to the end before the deadline of January 30. This is one of those “absolutely, positively must be done” kind of dates. It’s looking possible.

Doctor Who Scarf: This is the Season 16 Scarf I’m doing in yet more Brown Sheep Nature Spun Sport. I’m almost done with the first column of Chris Brimelow’s pattern, which is something like 330 rows. That’s doable tonight.

Honestly? I know I have a lot of UFO/WIP projects in the bins, but I’m not working on them. And I don’t plan to. There’s quite enough on my plate right now. (Mr. Chocolatesheep? Wave to me from San Diego if you’re reading this.)

Tonight is for Scarf knitting and sock knitting and Blackpool.

A first post for 2009

Well, I survived a New Year’s Eve date with my husband. If we had those more than once a year I don’t know how I’d prepare. We had a fun sorta healthy dinner (Mongolian BBQ) and a Cake concert at the Riverside in Milwaukee, and an overnight in a luxurious hotel. He saved up all his points and miles from his business travel last year to get it. I should have done a photo shoot of the room, but I forgot.

And yesterday I produced the first FO of 2009 — the bamboo socks. Okay, so the vast majority of the work was done in 2008, but still. Weaving in is what makes them done. The aforementioned socks will be appearing at The Sow’s Ear in Verona, Wisc., tonight as part of their Victory Tour. Please stop by and pet them!

Today I picked the first yarn I’ll be using in my Personal Sock Club project. This is a Ravelry thing, part of the Stash Knit Down 2009 group. Lots of people have come up with cool ideas for using up their stash, and this is the one that connected with me. To join our super special sock club, you just pick out the sock yarns you already have and the patterns you want to make, put them in plain or fancy bags, and draw one out every month. A $250 value, for free! I will be making the Retro Rib Socks from Interweave’s Favorite Socks book, using Wildfoote Luxury Sock Yarn from Brown Sheep, in the “Forget Me Not” colorway.

I’ve also got Late Night Knitting tonight — and it’s a must-go because DH is poised to start his big business travel season and will be gone on some of the nights. I must strike while the needles are hot, as it were.

A big HELLO to those of you who have discovered my blog and been gracious enough to tell me you like it! I will try to have more posts and more pictures this year, though I need to upgrade my photo storage subscription to make that possible. I hate working with PayPal because I do it so infrequently that I always forget what to do. But for you, I’ll do it.

I think I have a big round number of posts coming up very soon (this is #296). How shall we celebrate Number Three Hundred?

Knit, knit like the wind!

I’m not sure how this happened. I was perfectly happy with working on (or not working on) my few Christmas knitting projects, then everything just exploded.

I cast on for a Marquette-colored huge lap blanket for my husband. This is supposed to be finished in time for the tip-off of the first game, November 8. So far, this looks doable.

I pulled out project yarn for two three additional Christmas projects. One of which “needs” an orphan ball of white mohair, how does my mind come up with this stuff? Oh yeah, they might need to be done by Thanksgiving.

I swatched for (and thus internally committed to) the NaKniSweMo project for November. (Upside Downers from Patons! In Plymouth Encore!)

I decided to finish two lap quilts for Christmas presents. One is in the quilting stage, and the other has a half-pieced top. They’ve been dormant for a year and a half.

I have two freelance clients hoping I will get work done before Thanksgiving.

Did I mention we’re going to Ohio at Thanksgiving? One knitting meetup, one possible child handoff to the ex and his family, a huge family meal (not at Mom’s house!). But, at least eight hours of driving each way, so prime knitting time.

Le sigh. But I’ve been sneaking various podcasts into my brain, so even though I’m not caught up from when I loaded up the iPod about two months ago, at least there’s progress. I’m scared to sync the thing up with the computer. You have 32 new podcasts. Would you like to download them now?

On the plus side, I’ve been taking a lot more photographs of my current and past projects for my Ravelry records. If you’re Rav-enabled (now there’s a Freudian slip!), there’s a lot more to see there now. Please come and visit! I even rescued a picture of the Packer Hat from the blog and reclaimed it on my hard drive. Flickr is helping me save it now. (Is there a way I can post my WordPress media library contents to my free Flickr account and thus save all my previously blogged photos? Hmmmm?)

Over and out, it’s time to cast on.

Name This Post

I have already written posts titled “sorry” and “hiatus” and “mea maxima culpa,” so if nothing else you should have a clear picture of me so far. Sometimes, I don’t post. Even when stuff is happening.

I’m sorry I haven’t written. Between the flooding and Ravelry and, oh, Ravelry…. Ah, crap, I’m just a bad girl, not keeping up the blog. You know how you get so overwhelmed you can’t find the energy to try to get un-overwhelmed? That’s me!! **(waves to Radar)**

Floods. The waters are starting to subside, the Jefferson County Fair is this week, summer school did start a week late after all but will end on time. The post-flood mosquitoes are nasty but small.

Family. I think everyone’s been injured at least once. All have recovered. Except for our poor dog Chili, who was diagnosed with a spleen condition that was most likely cancerous. He had other issues ahead of him, and a happy life behind him, so we made the hard decision and said goodbye.

Travel. My husband and my brother circumnavigated Lake Michigan by motorcycle in mid-June and not only lived to tell about it, but got back on time. Some of the small parts of their bikes didn’t quite make it, but it was a Learning Experience — their first tour of any length, solo or team. Unfortunately they learned the wrong lesson and want to circle Lake Superior next year. Anyone want to send their husband along with them next June?

Knitting. Did I mention knitting? I finished a testknit scarf, and am doing some Doctor Who knitting now for a project that will go to cast & crew. SQUEE! (Had to get that out of the way, sorry to hurt your ears.) I tried to do some finishing off of stuff before the Who project started, but it didn’t work out that way. Now I have a second mitten I have to half-dismantle due to screwing up the amount of plain knitting between the increase rounds. Lucky me.

Otherwise I’m actively working on an alpaca triangle shawl for myself (deadline: Wisconsin Sheep & Wool Festival), a pair of socks for DH (I’m next), and … apparently a bunch of other stuff. My WIPs literally fill a laundry basket right now and the exposure is rather embarrassing.

Spinning. No more spinning for a while now, but I do have another wheel, an antique with some missing parts. We acquired it on Saturday. SQUEE! (oops)

Computer. Got my Mac back. Unfortunately the data were gone. I’ll still be working on the statewide craft store guide since I have all the info in hard copy form, but at a more leisurely and thoughtful pace. And I’ll be making backups. I swear to God I will. Losing all my digital pictures of the yarn and the kids has taught me that, the hard way. I hope I can get back the ones I uploaded to WordPress.

I’ve also fallen terribly behind on my blog reading, so if you’re on my blogroll and feel neglected, I’m sorry about that too. (I apologize a lot, don’t I? Sorry!) This summer vacation thing is kicking my butt big time.

One more thing: Happy Birthday (today! oops, now it’s yesterday) to my dear Mr. Beth. He’s happily rowing curragh with the club, then going out for a beer (or more) with his brothers. Permission for that was the least I could do for someone who likes to bring back nicer yarn from his business trips than I’m willing to buy for myself at my favorite LYS.

Which I should be able to visit on the 18th for Late Night Knitting. It’s been about three months and I really miss everyone!

Where’s that box?

Eek, it’s March already, and the Harlot will be here in late April. If you are the one with the HOT box, please e-mail me! I’d like that hat to get done in time to present it to her in Madison. I have moved since I started that project, and haven’t heard from anyone on the list in a while…. so I hope it hasn’t made its rounds and been delivered to the Dead Letter Office of Stevens Point, Wisconsin.

Another quickie…I started another blog. I know, having this and Backyardiknits and a Ravelry account just wasn’t enough, I just had to go and start Steele Knitting. I’ve updated my blogroll slightly so you can go check it out. (Or, since I went to all the trouble to make a link, you could just click on the link. Your choice.)

Knitting? Oh….nothing to report, and we’ll leave it at that.

Three sides live

Yesterday we had a snow day. It was the kind of day that (apparently) makes kids think that whenever there is snow on the ground, there won’t be school. It didn’t look bad at all in the morning, but when the Eldest came running back to the house, we began to think something was up.

“Mom! Dad! This guy in a purple car said there’s no school today!”

After telling him not to trust everything told to him by guys in purple cars, we turned on the TV and the radio and eventually heard that school would indeed be closed. This isn’t as simple as you think. The school told us that cancellation news would be on the Madison radio and TV stations (no call letters given), and if we lived in Jefferson “proper,” I’m sure that’s how we would have found out. But our phone exchange and cable package are actually tied to the Milwaukee area, so it did take a while for the news to come across.

We’ll become better parents eventually. I swear, someday we will.

Meanwhile, with everyone at home (except for Dad, who hoped in vain that he would get a snow day) we watched as the snow started to fall, then changed to freezing rain, then switched back to snow and piled on. At about 3pm it all stopped, and I got out the snowthrower to help our landlords with our driveway. They even rescued our mail from the mailbox, which had been knocked from its perch earlier by the snowplow.

Knitwise it wasn’t a good day for catching up. I’m chugging away on a Secret Project of a new type to me, the kind where the stitches increase and increase and increase until, whammo!, you’re done. I’m not up to Whammo yet. And since I have several more skeins to add before I get to Whammo, I’m pretty sure it won’t be a Secret Christmas Project.

Something happened on Ravelry a couple of days ago that I thought was pretty funny. Some knitters were kicking around the idea of an Elizabeth Zimmermann KAL with her Knitter’s Almanac, and I mentioned that I was going to be pretty busy in January (writing a book and all), but if someone gave me a copy of the Almanac for Christmas, I’d jump in when I could. A knitter replied that she had two copies and would gladly swap one for something.

She lives in Devon. England. I live a few hours from Pittsville (WI), home of Schoolhouse Press. I wonder how many miles this book will have on it before it comes “home”?

I also checked out her blog. Note that we have the same spinning wheel except for the finish (mine is more like honey). Ain’t Ravelry fun?

But here’s the Really Big News: Last night I finished the third side of the T-shirt quilt. In order to make it easier on my back, I kept the quilt folded up except for the part of the binding I was sewing down. It brought the work closer to me and, apparently most importantly, I couldn’t see how much further I had to go until I was almost done. At that point, I had five inches to go, and couldn’t not finish.

One side left, vacuum gently, press the binding edges down, pack and mail.

Piece of cake.

And did anyone catch the Anthony Bourdain Holiday Special the other night? It was a riot, especially if you’re the kind of person who thinks The Ref is a good Christmas movie. If you can’t catch this On Demand, or in a rerun, I’m so sorry. It was extremely snarky and rude, and very very funny.

Spam Post of the Day

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Un poco de mojo

I got a little bit of my knitting mojo back last night. I took Friday night off, and only wound a couple of skeins for future projects. On Saturday I carried the Red Scarf project around with me but didn’t get to knit more than a couple of rows.

But last night while we were waiting for Tom to start getting sleepy, I laid the Irish Hiking Scarf out and looked at it carefully. Finally I could see that I had in fact done my cable crosses too soon. All I had to do was tink back one right-side row and re-knit it without the crosses. Another wrong-side row, then it was time for the right-side crosses. Done.

Did I got on to do a full repeat? Hell no. I rolled that sucker up and went directly to the Red Scarf, do not pass go.

Today I get some car knitting time. Just to be safe I think I will only take Red Scarf with me. Don’t want to bruise the mojo.

Thanks for all your good wishes! The situation is already improving.

Thursdays are for trips to the hardware store

So when Colleen turned to me last night, said, “Mama, what does this do?” and showed me the stretched-out spring that controls the bobbin tension on Maggie, my spinning plans for last night went out the window.

Instead, I watched a video on spinning (insomniacs take note), watched Top Chef, and wound up the alpaca yarn. Which took a lot less time than the two days it took to tangle and untangle it. It made an extremely tiny but soft ball. I want to make a hat out of it but don’t know the exact design I want to use yet. And I got to see my replacement Lantern Moon needles, sent out because the tips of the first set became discolored. Thank you Iris!

Today I need to get some Maggie supplies from the local hardware store: 30-weight oil, replacement tension springs (hey, maybe I should get more than one), that kind of stuff. Do any more experienced spinners have any suggestions for what I should keep on hand? Because Maggie was (ahem) pre-owned, I don’t have the Ashford maintenance kit. Perhaps I should try to score one of those… but my thrifty cheap side says, the hardware store will have everything you need. They just don’t know it.

I worked on Tyrone last night too. Got those sleeves sorted out. One had 39 stitches and the other had 43. It didn’t end up being as hard to even out as I had imagined. It was one of those things that was a little easier to see once it was all laid out on the [child-free] floor. And it sort of made sense, how to knit the sleeves on, but it was really difficult to do, in a way that makes me wonder if I have horribly fouled things up. It’s nearly impossible to get the needle tips in the right position for knitting. I think I will need to slip a second circ in there to do the raglan decreases. At this point I’m actually looking forward to backing it off onto dpn’s. Really lonnnnnng dpn’s.

Oh yeah, my stitch count doesn’t match up with Ann Budd’s, either. I wonder who’s right?