As a friend recently pointed out to me, it was high time I reached out my arm and caught the next train that was passing by. Fortunately for me, it was the calculus train and it was just a few stops ahead of the station at which I disembarked last fall. Allllll aboard for Objective Functions, Antiderivatives, and Integration!
Last week I was able to make a short visit to campus, and I happened to check the office hours of my calculus professor from last semester. I was pleased to find that she was once again teaching Calculus I, but in the mornings this time, and holding a review session on Friday mornings. I showed up last Friday and surprised myself with some of the things I was able to remember how to do. Monday, with her permission, I started sitting in on the class itself, and she used my work on an objective function problem as the example she put under the opaque projector! (I am told by educational personnel more in touch with audio-visual equipment that this is called something else. I am of the age to call it an opaque projector because the device is projecting an image, and the original does not need to be on a transparency.) She just took my whole notebook and stuck it there under the camera. Gosh, I’m glad I wrote neatly. (The radius was 3.04 cm and the height was 12.2 cm. So there.)
All she wants me to do is take the tests with the rest of the class. They just had a test handed back, so it looks as if my ticket has been punched for the rest of the trip. One more regular test and the final exam, and I will be finished with the course. With the opportunity to go to campus every morning and study, go to class, and study some more, I can do my best and have no excuses. And frankly, the material is a bit easier for me now that I’m hearing everything a second time, with some space in between. I will have my afternoons for errands and editing work.
When I’m not editing, I’m reorganizing the house. My middle son turns 9 this weekend, and he wants to have his birthday party at our house. I’m never thrilled about cleaning for cleaning’s sake anyway, but the house is much more disorganized than what cleaning will fix. A huge social deadline may be just what I need to make me finally get our stuff in the right places, and get rid of the stuff we don’t need. Several rooms are already done and they give off a happy vibe now. But there are many more left to go… plus a party to plan, and probably at least one thing to bake. I really should make a list or something.
And starting this weekend, or maybe not, I am a soccer mom. My youngest child is signed up for city rec sports outdoor soccer (yes, indoor soccer is a thing) and they cancelled the first game because the fields still had snow and/or mud on them. The second game is supposed to be this Saturday morning. At 9am. With no coach. It’s been raining all week and the field is underwater, so I’m praying hoping that this one is cancelled too. In the meantime we have already bought him soccer shorts, soccer shoes, soccer socks, soccer shin guards, and a portable soccer goal. UPDATE: Yes, this weekend’s game has also been cancelled. So now it starts the following Saturday morning, with make-up games on a couple of Wednesday nights. Oh, how interesting this will be.
Just to carry along the train theme, here is the video for “Driver 8″ by R.E.M.
Did you miss me yesterday? Sorry, I’m transitioning (temporarily) to Friday posts so that I won’t miss a week when I’m on Spring Break in a couple of weeks with the kidlets.
Someone asked me this week, “So, where are you going for Spring Break?” Of course I answered “OHIO!” with a big fistpump. Even when I was in college in Ohio I took my Spring Breaks in Ohio. And it was usually in the middle of March, so even if you felt springlike, there was no getting around the fact that it was NOT a good time to start your own personal cycling season; the temperatures were usually in the range of 40 to 50°F. If I got any riding done when I was home on break, I usually had a sore throat and a cold by the next week. It… wasn’t exactly a vacation at the beach.
Okay, time for progress reports!
Last Sunday I was enjoying the lack of need to go anywhere since the weather was crappy. I sat on the couch and knitted on my Wingspan shawl until I ran out of yarn near the end of the 8th triangle. Lo and behold, the second skein of yarn for it arrived on Monday afternoon. YESSSSS. It is a different dye lot and looks a bit darker to me, but I really don’t mind or care. I get to keep knitting.
In the meantime I have pulled out a pair of socks I started knitting last October or so, on yarn that has been languishing in my stash for years. (How many years? Well, I stopped in at Ruhama’s in Milwaukee [all right, really Whitefish Bay] before I saw “Mean Girls” in the theater. Which came out in 2004. That’s a pretty long time for a skein of fine-looking German sock yarn to make up its mind about what it wants to be. And who would have guessed it would actually want to be socks?) They’re intended for someone whose feet I don’t have immediate access to, so I really hope they’re going to fit. Knitting fitted items to spec is not one of my natural gifts, so while I can knit socks, they usually go to someone whose feet happen to be the right size. Locating people whose feet fit my socks is also a gift.
And…. drum roll…. tomorrow I shall knit the Very Last Piece for the project-which-will-soon-be-unveiled. I cannot tell you how hard it has been this week to only knit one piece per day for this project, with the end so near in sight. There was such a temptation to hole up and crank out the knitting and finish early. I decided to join the resistance and maintain the pace, despite how eager I was to get the whole thing “done.”
In non-knitting news, the kidlets really did a lot of stuff since my last post. Middle Son won a trophy in a spelling bee, Youngest Son earned a ribbon in the same bee and then proceeded to lose his two front teeth over the weekend. Eldest Son went and turned 14, putting a real cramp in my tendency to still think of my inner self as 22. He’s almost taller than I am, and his feet are already bigger than mine (though we can still trade shoes in an emergency). And I went ahead with my valiant weight-loss plan, did two Jillian Michaels workouts in two consecutive days, and completely wrecked myself. I took Thursday off from programmed exercise, and by the end of the day I was able to go both up and down the stairs without screaming involuntarily. I’m calling that a victory and will strive to make progress from there.
Back to knitting news! Due to an unexpectedly favorable alignment of circumstances, I will be able to attend Late Night Knitting tonight for the first time in more than a year. It takes me an hour to drive there (and there might be freezing rain in the early evening), but I can stay until they kick me out at 11pm. Then (sigh) I have to drive homeward for another hour (and there might be snow in the late evening). On Saturday there is a rummage sale/bake sale at my kids’ school (for which I will be baking) from 8 until noon, so I’ll need to be there at least at the beginning of that. Then I think there’s a Pokémon tournament somewhere that needs to be Hung Out At with Eldest Son. Then there will be a Batman movie to watch, Doctor Who to view, and some test knitting for Phase Two of the Ginormous Secret Project. Then…. ah, how I like being busy.
As of today I’ve hit an important milestone on a knitting project I’ve been working on for a few years now. For various reasons I am not ready to reveal its nature in this space (but those of you who know me from “another space” will be able to figure it out pretty quickly), but I can say that I now have just 15 units left to knit before I assemble the whole thing. That puts the project at 93 percent complete, though in truth after I have those other 15 parts knitted I will call it no more than 99 percent until every last end is woven in. And because even the pre-assembly work is going to take some time, I can’t even give you an estimate as to when this project will be completed, photographed, and fully shared. Just know that I am very happy that my daily work, which I’ve been referring to as “quota knitting,” is getting me steadily closer to a huge creative goal.
But trust me. When I do the reveal, you won’t miss it! (You may question my sanity, but you won’t miss it.)
Most of you, when you see it, will want to ask me one question. The answer to that question will be “yes.”
I’ve also been chugging away on the Wingspan shawl and really should take another picture now that I’ve finished 5 of the 8 wedges that make it up. I don’t know if it’s the merino sock yarn, or the Addi Turbo needles, or a combination of factors, but I find it delightful to knit on it and shall be sad when I’ve finished it. But finishing it will allow me to take care of some other projects that also need my attention. Such as socks made from sock yarn. (What a concept!)
This week has been busy with healing myself body and soul, shoveling show out of the way, and driving kids to, fro, and back again as they all took turns being under the weather in various ways (dental work, low-grade fevers, sniffles & sneezes, and good old-fashioned hooky-playing). One of the best things I did was go back to campus Thursday morning and reapply myself to my calculus book. I’m having to start almost from scratch with the math, but today I got to a place where I am doing well and seem to have a deeper understanding of the type of problems I’m solving. We’ll see. Between the weather and everyone’s health it’s been tough to get down there. Now that we’re healthier I am renewing my commitment to finishing the course. My math-related plans after that point are still nebulous, but slowly forming.
My progress on my other resolutions has been somewhat hampered by the knitting done on these two garter-stitch projects, but there is a small project I had intended to cast on for on Valentine’s Day that calls for a new type of cast-on. So as soon as one of these projects is complete (most likely Wingspan), I will try it out and perhaps be able to check off one more completed resolution.
And finally… it’s finally MARCH! My already-teenage son will turn 14, my sister will be performing at SXSW in Austin (on his birthday!), we will have Spring Break, and DOCTOR WHO will be back on television!
After much agonizing, I have decided to renew a library book which I detest. Two weeks ago, there I was at the library, minding my own business, having dropped by to pick up a series of graphic novel-style mathematics books for my 6-year-old son. On my way to check out the books, I happened to notice a new arrival — a book on Euclid and his amazing book, Elements. I thought it would make a good introduction to book and author before I sat down and tackled Elements for myself.
Wrong, wrong, couldn’t have been more wrong. I started hating this book on Page Three.
Don’t even point.
Wait — now that I look back at it, I realize that I started hating this book waaaaaay before Page Three. Because I hate that the quote from Blaise Pascal that appears before the preface is in untranslated French.
I also hate the preface, which gave me my first sense of the author’s writing style.
It got worse from there.
I soon decided that the only proper course of action for me was to write a scathing review of this book so that I could warn off any of its potential readers. Time is precious these days. If I could establish that this book is a waste of both time and space, we could all move happily on to the next item in the queue. However, I didn’t think it would be fair to be nasty about a freshly published book that I didn’t actually finish reading. (Think back to high school. Can you imagine your Literature teacher’s reaction if you had attempted to turn in a book report on a novel you didn’t finish?) So, I struggled forward, trying to keep my temper. It wasn’t my book, so I couldn’t throw it with great force. I did toss it aside often, though. Then I would think, “It’s not that long. I can really get through this” and pick it up again. Then I would yell “I HATE THIS BOOK!” and put it down again. So my progress in the reading of it was not that swift or consistent over the last two weeks.
Yesterday I got an e-mail from the library… the book is due this Friday. I had 48 hours left to read the book, and 96 hours’ worth of more pleasant and useful things to do within that 48 hours.
So I’m going to try to renew it tomorrow. Between chapters, or segments, or paragraphs perhaps, I shall be sharpening my pen and charging up my electrons. I have two more weeks…. unless someone else, perhaps the author’s mother, is on a waiting list for it.
Slop season. Not spring.
One might also look out one’s window here in Wisconsin and imagine that spring is coming and this is a time of renewal. Think again, bucko, it’s only mid-February. Just because you can see patches of grass amongst the snow, slush, and mud doesn’t mean the crocuses are coming any time soon, nor should they dare. And you should probably stay inside yourself if you know what’s good for you. Flu, whooping cough, and black ice are laying for you.
So. Until Spring is really here and there are better things to read that don’t have such a tight deadline and bizarre moral imperative, there is knitting to do. The dropped-stitch lace scarf is complete and has been entered on the Finished Projects page. I have cast on for a Wingspan scarf/shawl and gotten a couple of sections done. It has kind of an unusual construction, but the knitting itself is quite easy. So far, there are three of us in my local knitting group who are making them.
(I don’t know why I can’t get the photo to show up. Sorry, just click the link.)
During the past week I have also gotten my oldest child signed up for his freshman year of high school. He is almost 14. He is almost as tall as I am (he checks this every morning). However, he is nowhere close to understanding just how ambitious his desired schedule actually is: Honors English, Eastern Cultures, Science 9, Geometry, P.E., German 1, and Intro to Engineering. I can’t wait until we get started on this in the fall and pour hormones into the mixture, add heat, and see what happens! He is a bright boy — he will just have to work harder at this than he realizes.
And now, a special announcement:
UNWIND 2013
I’m happy to announce that we are in the planning stages for the 6th “Unwind” social event, to be held Saturday, September 7, in conjunction with the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival in Jefferson, Wisconsin.
This event is NOT an official Sheep & Wool event, nor is it an official Ravelry event. It is a private party that you are invited to! The price of admission (which is cheaper, the earlier you register) covers dinner, a goody bag, a chance at a door prize, and the chance to hang out with some seriously fun knitters, crocheters, spinners, and others! And yes, you can and totally should bring your needles, hooks, wheel, spindle, and what-have-you. All the cool people are doing it.
On your registration form you can also choose to purchase a T-shirt. When you arrive at the Festival on Friday or Saturday and check in at our table in the main building, which should be just in front of the fence around the Silent Auction items, you will pick up your goody bag and T-shirt.
We have a cap of 150 attendees, so if you want to come, please sign up early. We can take walk-ins at check-in time at the Festival grounds, but NOT at the event itself.
Updates, discussions, and Q&A should take place in the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival group on Ravelry.
If you would like to help sponsor the event or donate a door prize, please email me or PM me on Ravelry.
I hope to see you there — I’ll be the one wearing the Doctor Who Scarf!
I’m enjoying a more contemplative day today as the snow gently falls on the pines and the pastures. Having ignored the urgings of the weather service to heed instructions for French Toast Alert Level Orange, I’ve done my driving for the day without adding to my stores of milk, bread, or eggs. Quiet music plays from the TV’s music channel. Knitting is being accomplished; reading, contemplated.
Not taken from my house, but it might as well be.
As I was driving back from “town” this morning I was thinking about how people keep saying that the internet has allowed people to opt out of personal interactions, that we are not learning how to effectively interact with people face to face. I wonder about that. If you know me, you probably know I spend a lot of time on Facebook. I check in several times a day, sometimes for hours at a time. I post, comment, share, like, friend, and play a popular game using letter tiles.
Through Facebook I have been able to connect with interesting people, stay in touch with relatives, and reconnect with more distant souls. My Facebook friends range from my first friend (born two days before me to the family two houses down the street) to people on the other side of the planet, sometimes cyberfriends of cyberfriends. I can peek over the shoulders of my twin third-cousins as they work their way through medical school. I can look at the first photos of the first grandchild born to someone in my high school graduating class. I can witness the silly exchanges between two best friends, or between partners. I can see a list of the songs my sister-in-law is listening to on Internet radio, and with a click of the mouse I can hear them, too. These are the kinds of events I wouldn’t ordinarily witness. They are a view into ordinary life that a class reunion, a family reunion, or even a phone call or a letter doesn’t have a way to truly include.
Through Facebook I’ve been allowed to participate in more joy, anxiety, humor, pain, happiness, and sorrow than I thought my heart would have room for. Babies are born and celebrated, and babies die and are grieved. Kids say the darnedest things. Students study, party, win, lose, and goof around. Pets get sick. Friends make plans, issue invitations, meet up, and share the photos afterwards. Grandparents fall down. People have surgery. Prayers, positive thoughts, and (((hugs))) fly back and forth like electromagnetic waves. Funny jokes and silly pictures are circulated. People are poked. A classmate waits in vigil for her comatose sister to open her eyes and rejoin the world, and her classmates wait invisibly with her.
This is more connection, not less. These are the kinds of shared events that used to only happen within a family. Because of Facebook, our families have grown if we have allowed them to. And not only have I discovered things about my friends and my family — I’ve discovered more about myself. I could compare my accomplishments with those of others and be depressed, yes; I can also encounter unsolicited viewpoints that make me stop, think, reconsider, reaffirm, adapt, change, and grow.
I’m not indulging in these musings just to distract you from the paucity of my knitterly and academic accomplishments in the last week. While the variable weather and the resultant slick (and sometimes invisible) roadways have kept me from getting to campus to work on my math, I am 29 rows (1,218 stitches) away from finishing the dropped-stitch scarf. I have a shawl project all set to go that a real-life, in-person kind of friend is making at the same time. I’ve also initiated a Valentine’s Day cyberspace knit-along event involving a whole batch of friends I’ve never met in person. And I’m making bits of progress on my longer-term knitting projects as well.
This was not a stated goal, but I’ve gotten all caught up with both “Downton Abbey” and “Castle,” and I’m starting on “Top Chef.” Ten more episodes to go on that one. If I have a marathon I might be able to finish in time for the live finale, but I’m not sure. I also have a stack of interesting books I’m trying to make time for. I miss reading.
What a long week! I got slammed with a sinus infection on my first day of school, then the meds slammed me again. There were also snowstorms on Tuesday (to and from school) and Friday (after school) that kept me as alert as possible. I worked 15 hours in the Languages & Literatures Department, mostly photocopying syllabi on Tuesday and posting “class cancelled” notices on Friday. It turns out that I probably won’t be able to count on getting that many hours in a regular week once the schedule is set, so I’ll probably be looking for an additional campus job to help pay for classes. I have a couple of leads.
Unfortunately, there was almost no knitting this week. The roads were terrible on Tuesday night, so I wouldn’t have gone into town for knit night anyway, but it was a Scout night, so I didn’t go to Scouts instead. I missed both morning knitting times, as I will for this whole semester, and I was so busy on Friday afternoon that I didn’t get home until about 5:30 anyway. There was no way in the snowfall that I was even thinking of driving to Verona anyway, which takes an hour in each direction on a clear day.
Friday brought something new… a first step in an assessment for Jack. I wanted him to be checked with Asperger’s Syndrome in mind, but after half an hour of watching him scoot across the exam room on the doctor’s “spinny chair” on his stomach, touch everything in the room, open all the drawers, and interrupt a million times, the doc wisely remarked, “I don’t really see Asperger’s here, but have you thought about ADHD?”
Well…. duh. I’d said years ago that I didn’t want him to go off to public school because he would have come home with a Ritalin prescription in hand on the first day, but I hadn’t taken my own words seriously. Viewing him through this filter, it makes a lot of sense. He doesn’t have a formal diagnosis yet, but we got a referral to someone who can make one, we set another eval appointment for two weeks out, and I have a pile of questionnaires to fill out myself and to distribute to other relevant parties. So, if you know a kid with ADHD or are an ADDult yourself, feel free to chime in with positive suggestions. The kid definitely needs some coping tools and some impulse control. He’ll be super scary when he gets focused!
Resolution Update
I am publishing this post on Saturday as I promised. Check.
No progress on the DNA Scarf, and none to speak of on the blanket squares either.
I must have thrown something out….
I’m current with my homework for Precalculus (and still looking for how to access the homework file for Astronomy).
I did a quick weigh-in this morning on the Wii after not working out all week (except for burning 450 calories a minute by gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white and my fingers locked up). I’m down a bit but didn’t make my incremental goal. Time to set a new goal and keep drinking the green tea.
Alcatraz update: I DVRed the show and watched it closely for two hours, but didn’t pick up on where Lydia’s song was. Ben says it’s in the gun-shop sequence, so I’ll have to watch it again and crank up the sound. I do kind of like the show. Thanks to everyone who watched the show, mentioned it to other people, or shared the video of Lydia performing “How Many Women.” Every little bit helps, and sometimes they turn into big bits.
Last night I utterly dedicated myself to finishing 198 Yards of Heaven. To translate, that means I really wanted to finish my toque, but Dale-Harriet was held up doing “other” fun things besides knitting and wouldn’t be to Knit Night until, well, later.
I told myself I’d just do a few rows until she showed up with the toque yarn.
I pulled the lace project out of its bag, looked at it carefully, and realized the removable purple tape I’d used to mark the pattern row had fallen off.
I asked the Sow’s Ear staff to pull up my Ravelry project listing on their computer so I could see what row I was on, and realized I hadn’t been very specific about that lately.
However, I had been kind enough to leave a cyber-note to myself that the stitch count was now accurate, and that was enough for me to be able to resume work.
Then I knit and knit and knit. Six long rows of pattern. Six more rows to the ending. Four rows that made an eyelet row and a row of 1×1 ribbing.
And then it was eleven o’clock at night. Time for the store to close, and not enough time to work a lace bind-off with what I was beginning to believe was not enough yarn.
“Just buy some more,” someone suggested. Well… that wasn’t possible, since the yarn I used for this project were the only two remaining skeins of it, purchased from this very store at least two years ago. 200 yards of it, for a pattern titled “198 Yards of Heaven.”
So I packed everything up, and turned a 60 minute drive home into a hair-raising, no-caffeine-needed 90 minute drive home in the first snow of the season. The roads weren’t slippery, really, it was just that I couldn’t see them, or very much of them, most of the time. That’s all.
This morning I ordered the children to watch television (it’s a rough life, but they woke me after four full hours of sleep and I wanted to reward them somehow) while I took the project into another room to bind it off.
I carefully measured my remaining yarn before starting the bind-off row, and I had 7 yards. Surely, seven yards would be plenty for working a four-foot edge.
(You already know the answer, don’t you?)
But you don’t know the solution — I used the yarn leftover from the first skein of yarn, which I had made into a little bobbin with a twist-tie.
Ha ha ha, one more project finished, and I have three whole yards left over from the 200! 198 Yards of Heaven, my ass! More like 197! Bwahahahahaaaaaaa!
And after I bribe the digital camera with some new lithium batteries, it will release my photographs and I will insert them in the appropriate positions in this post.
P.S. Dale-Harriet DID bring the matching yarn. You’re next, toque!
I’m still on track with Mitten Madness…. just need to finish a thumb at some point (later), and cast on for a mate (sooner).
What do you think, add the pawprints with duplicate stitch (which I’ve never done before) or a fabric marker?
The red yarn is Bernat Sox yarn, an acrylic/nylon blend with no wool at all. I got two balls of it for 99 cents each a couple of years ago and have been waiting to figure out what they wanted to be. I’m a little disappointed that it’s not wool, but it is machine washable and dryable.
In other news, it’s been terribly hot and humid lately. Only today has there been the arrival of some random thunderstorms that break things up a little bit. The main thing the rain is accomplishing is not allowing anybody to mow their lawns with any frequency. By the time the grass is dry again, we might be able to cut it for some very nice hay bales.
I’ve been working out again — found a new exercise plan which seems eminently sensible. I’m on the third week of the first six weeks and so far I’m losing weight, fitting into my clothes better, and feeling stronger and with more stamina. I’m trying to take walks for part of the cardio I need to do, and recently lengthened my standard walk from 2.8 miles to 3.6 miles. (I use www.mapmyride.com for this; check it out.) If I finish the six weeks well, I might feel brave enough to share the name of it. It’s nothing kooky like an all-cotton-candy diet; I just don’t want to jinx myself.
I’m also enrolled in an online course on Records Management, as a precursor to doing a Master’s degree in Library and Information Sciences. Not only is it a confusing course, I’ve been offline for part of it, and unable to access some of the reading materials for a larger part of it. Catching up is going to be tricky. I did acquire a brand new PC laptop to help out with this overall process, but right now that’s like trying to learn French on top of everything else. (Can I just say that Windows SUCKS and Steve Jobs was right? Ah, I feel better now.) I’m trying to do a reboot to my inner geek so all this can smooth itself out.
Whew! Time to make dinner for the two little boys (the other kids are out of state at the moment; long story) and cast on for Jack Mitten Two so I don’t lose my knitting mojo. I can do both thumbs in the same session.
You may have heard this already, but my region is expecting extremely cold temperatures over the next couple of days. I know, I was trying not to start each new post with a weather report, but this is kind of special weather.
Pretend you’re on Match Game ’77 for a minute. (Those of you born after 1977 may skip to the end.)
Gene Rayburn: “It was so cold in Wisconsin the other day—”
Richard Dawson, Brett Somers, Charles Nelson Reilly, et al.: “How cold was it?”
Gene Rayburn: “It was so cold in Wisconsin the other day, that they cancelled Thursday classes by 5:30 on Wednesday afternoon.”
I know, it doesn’t have the same ring to it as “It was so cold that Beth froze her BLANK off,” but this is a pretty big deal for us. Tomorrow morning it’s supposed to be -20°F. Wind chills tonight and especially Thursday night may be in the -40° to -45°F range. So finding out the day before was amazing. Our school district was even listed individually, which probably only happened because not everything in Milwaukee County was closed on Thursday yet.
So. The kids are all home tomorrow, and we’re not planning to open the door except to let Daddy leave for a brief business trip to sunnier, warmer Texas. Personally, I plan to knit. A lot. I don’t know what they have in mind.
Knitwise, on Tuesday I finished a little baby blanket for one of Big Tom’s therapists. The poor woman was on bedrest awaiting induction tonight, only to be told she’s not ready and has to stay on bedrest until 39 weeks are done. Ugh ugh ugh, I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. But let the record show I finished the knitting, washed and dried it, and wrapped it up and wrote a card. (Don’t tell her I can’t even find the cute baby-gift wrapping paper and adorable card I bought for her last Saturday.)
Me: “I’m sure I put it in a Secret Special place.”
James: “Why don’t you make a map of your Secret Special places?”
Now there’s a good idea. For now, I’m just glad I had almost-appropriate wrapping paper that could substitute.
Other than that, I’m working on the first of a pair of Retro Rib socks — but very, very slowly. I got in one repeat at the Webelos meeting last night, and one repeat this afternoon. I’m also working on another Doctor Who Scarf, but I think I’ve managed two rows on that all week. It’s so far under the radar there’s dirt on the plane’s undercarriage. I haven’t done anything on the Secret Project except buy more yarn for it.
In other news, I just finished sending in all my edits to the new issue of Knitcircus, so that will be able to go to the printer very soon. I like helping out on the ‘zine and I am just so impressed with the designs of Elizabeth Morrison. You should see her finished items in person. They all have such personality to them, and some of the yarns just glow. My own stuff just looks like stuff.
Top Chef Bulletin: Ariane got sent home tonight. Hosea pretty much threw her under the bus by allowing her to butcher her butchering of a lamb without telling her he had much more experience or offering to help. She didn’t even know how to tie up a roast properly. For goodness’ sake, I could have done a better job at it by remembering stuff I’ve seen Jacques Pepin do on television. So it’s sort of fair, and sort of not. She wasn’t going to make it to the finals anyway. Next week: Restaurant Wars. Bwahahaha!
Firstly and most importantly, the Connor Caps project was a huge success. In three weeks, knitters and crocheters from around the world contributed 145 hats to help support Connor in his fight with brain cancer.
December 5 was Hat Day at the school, and I had to leave early to get all the hats there. Unfortunately, I was just inside the city limits when I realized I had left one box of fleece hats at home. They had been sent from Hawaii, and represented the largest number of hats sent in by a single person, so I couldn’t leave them out. After a few moments’ panicked thinking, I realized that what I had to do was keep going, let the helpers start stringing up the rest of the hats, hope someone would take care of my two younger boys, and dash back home (ten miles away) for the fleece hats.
It worked out perfectly — the preschool teacher took Big Tom as well as Jack, and by the time I got back to school, all the rest of the hats were clipped to a clothesline that ran the length of the school gym.
The hats weren’t the only thing going on. The school principal kept everything moving through an intensely emotional ceremony. She explained about the Connor Caps project and how it had come together, then let Connor go up and pick out his own hat. Then each class from kindergarten to the eighth grade came up for hats. I made a little movie of part of the “hat sorting” and I’ll try to post it here. The quality is not great, since I made it with my little digital camera, but the emotions are what really show.
After all that was done, it was only 9am, and Jack still had school. It took me a full thirty minutes to convince Big Tom that he needed to come with me, and to convince Jack that he needed to stay at school until I came back for him at the regular time. To help me recover from the emotions of the morning, I went to the nearest quilt-shop-with-a-yarn-room and bought the prettiest and softest yarn I could find. I could only afford three balls, so I hid the rest of the dyelot and told the clerk not to sell the rest to anyone else.
Soft and pretty "reward yarn"
When I got home, there were more hats waiting for me. Even though they didn’t get here in time for the ceremony, they’re still part of the program, and if anyone wants to contribute hats they are still welcome. We came just ten hats short of making one for each kid at school, and I think the staff members would like to have hats too. If you’re interested and able, please contact me for the mailing address.
We have other projects planned for helping and comforting Connor and his family. The details are up at the Connor Caps group on Ravelry, but I can post them here, too.
Next there was a pilgrimage to Sinsinawa Mound. For some reason I had thought this was in the Eau Claire area, since it was described as being 2-3 hours away from Jefferson. Boy was I wrong. We went through some new Wisconsin territory for me, and I took a picture of the Verona exit from 151, just to prove there is something past it (that’s how I get to The Sow’s Ear). At one point our charter bus was stuck behind two Amish men driving their buggy home from Sunday Meeting. When we were at the spiritual center, I read on a flyer that it’s “just a ten minute drive from Dubuque!”
The day at the center was amazing, and there’s no way to adequately describe it all. I could refer you to read what Connor’s mom wrote in his CaringBridge journal — but she says the same thing.
It started snowing and squalling on the way home, and since James and I were in the first seat of the bus, we had an excellent view of how dicey the whole drive was. We were able to watch DVDs on the way out and back, and after the second movie ended, the kids decided to sing Christmas songs the rest of the way home. I can think of much worse road trips with schoolkids!
I found out later that when Connor’s family got home that night, other friends had put up their Christmas decorations for them, and they came home to a beautiful display of sparkling lights. They really are getting support from all quarters.
What comes next? Oh yes, Christmas knitting. I took a couple of projects with me (what? It was going to be as much as six hours on a bus!) but the only one I worked on was the Christmas stocking for my brother. I got a ton of it done, including almost finishing the colorwork section. After that it really picked up speed. It arrived at my parents’ house yesterday, and he doesn’t have it yet, but I can show you a picture. Even with the cuff folded, it came out to 27 inches long.
Ben's stocking
There really wasn’t any other requested knitwear to make for presents, but I did send out an Everlasting Bagstopper (i.e. cotton market bag) and make some dishcloths. In the meantime, I started working on a Season 16 Doctor Who Scarf as part of a mini knitalong. On Ravelry I became acquainted with a woman who finished her Season 12 Scarf as she sat with her dying mother. She was using the same yarn I had used and we both had lots of leftovers, so when she decided to make a Season 16, I started one too. I believe it’s the longest scarf, and I know I’ll run out of yarn at some point, but there’s no deadline. It’s all about community and support.
I also had a meetup at Thanksgiving time, with Christine (“akasha”) from one of my Ravelry groups. We met at a yarn shop (go figure) and I found the perfect tweedy yarn to start collecting for another variant on a Doctor Who Scarf. Talk about no deadline. And then, on Thanksgiving Day, I wore my Scarf all day long. My brother was impressed and eventually asked about it, and the upshot is that I’ll be making a machine washable version for him. Just yesterday I bought the bulk of the yarn I’ll need for it. I want to buy a special circular needle for the project, and I’ll get started after I find it.
I made another pair of the cotton footies in shades of blue, and gave them to James in his stocking. They’re a little big yet — I made the adult size — but at the rate he’s growing they will soon fit.
And after getting heavy snows and bitter cold and brisk wind, I decided to make everyone in the family a new pair of mittens, in wool this time. I started with Big Tom, and made a pair of baby blue mittens in Dalegarn Falk, using the Fittin’ Mittens pattern and adding a green Norwegian snowflake to each mitten. Jack’s are next. He wants an Autobot logo one one side and a Decepticon logo on the other, and on the other mitten he wants….
So, what’s on the needles now?
A Season 16 Doctor Who Scarf. The bamboo socks, newly restarted — transitioning to the toe color on one sock, with the other one watching curiously. Not Jack’s mittens yet, but soon. There are also seven (I think) other WIPs. One is a Secret Holiday Project that didn’t come close to getting done, but the others are familiar (cough Tyrone cough) if you’ve been reading this blog for a while.
Ugh, it’s driving rain right now and it’s melting our snowbanks down so everything will be ice when the temperature dips again. And the sky is thick with fog. Yuck yuck yuck! I’d rather it were cold straight through winter than to have this freeze/thaw/sleet junk, especially when we have most of the day booked for a huge Round Robin family eatfest today. With four little people to get in and out of the cars from house to house, it’s not easy, but we’ll do as much as we can.
We all had a blessed Christmas and I hope you did too! Stay warm and dry…. I’ll be back in a few days to make insanely optimistic New Year’s resolutions. We’ve all got to have a tradition, and that one’s mine.
