Woofgang Pug Knits

KnittingBall

2011-09-25T10:57:00.000-04:00

Great day yesterday--spent the first part of the day with friends, ShopHopping, eating and schmoozing, and then saw a great movie with Mr. Pug. A movie I would never have chosen but I really enjoyed.

A baseball movie, for a couple that never, never--well, hardly ever--goes to a baseball game. What's the deal? And what does it have to do with a knitting blog? Well, it does.

First off, it was a well-acted movie. I'm not a huge Brad Pitt fan because I've always viewed him as a pretty guy without much substance but, well into his forties, he's growing into his looks much the same way Harrison Ford has. He could, in my opinion, become a Clooney--Beautiful at a Certain Age. There are some other well-respected character actors in the movie like Philip Seymour Hoffman, but also some new faces (at least to me) like Jonah Hill. So, not a Beautiful People movie, just good acting and a good story.

Moneyball is based on the real story of an Oakland Athletics general manager faced with competing against larger-market, bigger-budget teams like the New York Yankees, who bought and stole talent from smaller, less well-funded teams. In a year when he lost three of his superstars to such teams, he had the challenge of rebuilding from the ground up on a beer budget. He became convinced that the answer could be found in statistics--that if he could find the players who could (statistically, at least) get on base more often, he could win ballgames. He was battled every step of the way by his scouts, the team's manager, and a skeptical press, yet that team ended up winning an unprecedented 20 games in a row that year (although not the Big Win they were looking for).

And how does this relate to knitting? Hold on, hold on ... I'm getting there.

Now, I'm really not a student of baseball but the characterizations of the old-time scouts in Moneyball rang true to me. They sounded an awful lot like my father did when he talked about baseball, which he loved way more than anything else in his life, including us. He talked about baseball players the way old racetrack touts talk about horses--about stride and form and athletic build and how they "look" at their particular chosen "spot" on the field. Intuition and past experience play heavily in choosing potential winners. This one's a mudder, that one's good for the sprint but can't go the long haul. Always bet on a red horse, or one with a star on his forehead. (I had a BFF long ago who always bet on a horse with the name "Steve" or one with the title "Doctor." A horse named Dr. Steve would have sent her into ecstasy. She won as often as anyone else, as far as I could see.)

One player in Moneyball was even criticized for having an ugly girlfriend which supposedly spoke to his self-confidence--how could he be a good player if he didn't have the confidence to have a pretty girlfriend?

So, first and foremost, Moneyball reminded me of my father and of another longtime friend, Larry. I've lost touch with Larry over the years I've been here in Atlanta, but being with him always made me think of my father because of his love of baseball. Larry was the first person who ever explained to me why baseball was more of an intellectual exercise than a game like football or basketball, which were (in his opinion) purely athletic pursuits.

My father died in 1979 and never knew the 2002 team that Moneyball is about but he'd have LOVED this movie. It combined his love of All Things Mathematical with his favorite sport.

But here's how it relates to knitting--you knew I'd get there eventually, didn't you?

I picked up some yarn at Only Ewe and Cotton Too yesterday (hi, Elyse and Bill!) because it was flat-out beautiful. Oh, and it felt good, too. Zara Chine, a gorgeous DK weight, heathered bright red with a hint of black. Great twist, fabulous color and perfect for a vest pattern I have in mind.

Perfect? Well, not exactly because the vest (the Portland Zippered Vest if it matters)--heavily cabled and intricately patterned, calls for worsted weight. If I'm going to use the Zara, it's going to require some heavy rethinking of the pattern to make up for the difference in gauge and weight. Thankfully, Susan D volunteered to help me and it MIGHT work but that's really not my inclination. My inclination, like the old baseball scouts, is to use my intuition and say, "oh, what the heck! I'm sure it'll all work out" because I desperately WANT it to work out.

But that's really not my experience--I have a pile of failed projects that didn't "work out" because I skimped on the planning (and plodding) process.

The way it's going to work out is with a heavy application of math and statistics, not with a hopeful spirit and a generous dash of wishes. I'm going to have to add spreadsheet and calculator to my knitting bag. I'm going to work with Susan to rehash the pattern--add a repeat here, go up or down a needle size, actually fit it to my tension and my body size, and there's a good chance it might actually fit when I'm through.

But like the critics and the old scouts, I think it'll take some of the magic out of the old game.

Peg Aloi and Tough Women

2011-08-22T10:57:00.001-04:00

So, somewhere in cyberspace, a freelance writer named Peg Aloi thinks women aren't tough anymore.

She seems to think that we (the stereotypical women who probably only exist in her mind) are soft and girly because some of us blog about canning vegetables and sewing clothes and even knitting. Somehow that makes us less worthy of respect, that we show that we're multidimensional people, not paper dolls. She seems to think it's anti-feminist to show what she thinks of as our feminine sides.

Ya gotta love it. If Gordon Ramsey writes about cooking, he's a real man. If I do, I'm a lightweight, ruffled, girly-girl who's there to make fun of?

Here's the comment I left on the page:

Yup! I burned my bra (figuratively if not literally) so my daughters would have the respect of their peers, be welcomed into J-School and law school and med school as equals, and be employed to write pithy columns that would get people talking, even if the columns were crap. You're welcome.

I really thought by now we'd be past laughing at stereotypical portraits of the sort of woman who knits or cans tomatoes or hunts or fishes or plays soccer. I thought we'd be talking about REALLY tough women--the ones that are serving in the armed forces, sitting on the Supreme Court, caring for sick relatives, and sending their kids to school well-nourished and clothed on a recession income, among other things. That was what my generation of bra-burners was trying to do. Apparently in some quarters, we're still back in the '60s.

Oh, well. Maybe your daughters will be more enlightened.

'ey Mate! That's My Tooth!

2011-05-05T17:12:00.000-04:00

So, I was lying in the dentist's office today -- literally lying upside down almost -- while a probably otherwise nice enough woman dug and scraped and wrenched and grappled with my teeth. Seriously, a root canal is nothing to be trifled with, and I'm not the greatest patient in the first place. I was not a happy bear.

But nowadays dentists have all sorts of tools at their disposal to keep you from being distracted by the tools they're using -- IPODs and TVs and Sirius Radio and audiobooks and, for all I know, Chippendale men pole dancing on toothbrushes. As for me, I was watching Regis and Kelly, whom I only get to see when I'm in the dentist's office. (And, frankly, I don't miss them at other times.)

Today Kelly was talking about weird syndromes and she mentioned a Croatian woman who awoke from some type of surgery speaking German, never having spoken it before. And another woman (why is it always women? Are men too embarrassed to report this type of insanity?) who awoke from oral surgery (hello!) speaking with a British accent.

The syndrome was called ... get this ... Foreign Language Syndrome and it seems it's a real complaint, if not a medically recognized syndrome. (Obviously whoever named the darned thing has a bad case of Overly Obvious Syndrome.)

Well, so there I am, with a mirror and a rack full of nasty-tasting purple gunk and a drill and someone's entire hand in my mouth and I'm wondering ... what language will I be speaking when I finish with this procedure? With my luck, I'll end up talking like Tony Soprano or one of those fakey British-accent guys who sell kitchen gadgets on early morning cable.

Crikey!

And then I got to thinking, maybe I'll have some new syndrome, and it will change my life. I'll have a really fabulous talent, like opera singing or dress designing or I'll look like Sofia Vergara. What the hell! I'd settle for looking like Kate Middleton!

Maybe Sofia Vergara with a fabulous talent?

Never mind. Once all those implements were gone from my mouth, it was just me in there. No accent, no new body, and definitely no talent. Maybe a little slur until the anesthetic wore off completely.

Rats! Why is it always me?

Happy Springtime Holiday!

2011-04-24T14:22:00.000-04:00

Today's a Pajama Day and I'm very much enjoying spending [Insert Generic Springtime Holiday here] at home.

Just me and the pugs... Mr. Pug had to work today if you can call frying multiple turkeys for the other Home Depot folks work. To me, it would sound like fun if I didn't know he was up most of the night (after getting off work at midnight) injecting and brining and whatever else it takes to make a fried turkey taste ... not so fried.

Seriously, I told him this morning, "they take advantage of your good nature," and he just looked at me. Then I remembered, and said, "well, yeah, I take advantage of your good nature too, but I'm entitled!" Much eye rolling ensued.

Anyway, much celebration of the beautiful weather around here. For Lucy, a sunbath in the backyard. For me, a big pot of vegetable soup. (Oh, and the great pedicure I got yesterday--see toes at bottom left--OPI Roller Girl, if it matters.)

My entire accomplishment for the entire day thus far is that I'm within 4 rows of binding off the Lakedale shawl, no mean accomplishment since the last few rows are long, long, long. I'll withhold photos until it's complete, just so you know I don't show ALL my cards.

Finally, in an Attitude of Gratitude, I'll share this from Older Daughter: she and I were talking as she drove home from a beach weekend. She was fussing that I was alone.

(Question: why do people think that an arbitrary date on the calendar is somehow a day that One Cannot Be Alone For? Just because we always had a big Easter dinner with all the family around the table, searching for eggs and eating chocolate bunnies? And now we don't? Never mind, I think I just answered my own question.)

Anyway, I was sitting on the screened porch with the phone, talking about what a nice day it is--pugs in the garden, irises and azaleas and snapdragons and roses blooming, butterfly bush almost in bloom, bird feeder doing a land office business, hummingbird at the feeder, etc.--and she reminded me that it was really all thanks to Mr. Pug, whom she somewhat irreverently called "the Man Slave." She said that without him, I'd be living in a hovel and I should be grateful.

I reminded her that without the Man Slave, I'd be living in a hovel in her back yard, and we were both grateful!

Still Blocking

2011-04-12T20:42:00.000-04:00

And here's Ishbel! Ishn't she ... I mean, Isn't she ... beautiful?

MadelineTosh Merino Light from Eat.Sleep.Knit. The color is Cherry. Isn't she ... oh, never mind, I already said that!

Ode to the Glove

2011-04-12T07:00:00.000-04:00

Knitting as we know it today is a trendy thing. A trip through what researchers would call “the literature” – Ravelry or the blogs of young and (dare I say it?) hip designers. or the knitting magazines and especially the online magazines such as Knitty and Twist Collective—show that today we’re knitting as much to express our personalities as we are for utility.

Kicky ruffled skirts, ChaCha scarves, embellished swing jackets travel alongside intricately cabled sweaters and socks of twisted stitches that make your head hurt when you try to follow them. Shawls--once the domain of sturdy housewives and women selling vegetables at the local farmers market or even (and I know I’m going to get bitten for this one) your grandma—are now exotic, bright, beautifully, intriguingly complex, garments.

But few items of clothing are more homely and comforting than the knitted glove. Early examples of knitted gloves have been dated to about 1000 AD in Latvia, so they’ve been around for awhile. And most of us wear them at one time or another. Even for those of us who live in the South where winter is mercifully short—even we wear gloves. Growing up farther north, my daughters wore those great fluffy mittens I knit out of Lopi; today they wear delicate mitts, with or without fingers, designed to keep their hands warm on the steering wheel while still showing off their jewelry.

Be it ever so humble, you can depend on a glove to keep you warm, to protect your manicure while gardening, or, for knitters, to provide a quick venue to practice a new cable or a fair isle technique. And, of course, gloves have had protective uses for years and years, from the ubiquitous rubber glove to wash dishes to the leather boxing gloves that protect a fighter's hands and the ones that baseballers use to catch a potential home run.

But now, according to a piece I heard last night on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” gloves have taken on a new life. The Aglove keeps your hands especially warm on the ski slopes, due to silver threads (no, real silver!) that conduct heat better so you can operate your IPad while you schuss down a slope. The SensoGlove has a computer chip in it with a screen. It analyzes your golf swing to identify weaknesses in your grip. Use the Power Glove to control your computerized gaming system. (The Power Glove was invented after an earlier prototype for Nintendo, the Data Glove, failed.) The Bionic Tennis Glove is supposed to improve your swing and control of your racquet.

What’s next? Socks that diagnose pronation or an incipient bunion? A shawl with underwires to keep the girls in place after age and/or childbirth drag everything south? Knitted knickers that dispense a steady dose of contraceptive?

No! I say, no! It’s time to stop this nonsense. Sometimes a glove is only a glove. Keep knitting, and don't even think about how to knit in those computer chips.

Okay, the Day Could Have Started Better

2011-04-09T09:54:00.000-04:00

Doesn't that just say it all?

On a more positive note, here's what I'm doing while the Oh, So Wonderful Mr. Pug labors with Tire Stuff.

Blocking Multnomah, and it's about time! Multnomah has been finished for months and months but this is the part I hate the most. Soon she'll be beautiful. She's made of Dream in Color Knitosophy (Discover is the colorway).

OMG! I just checked--I finished Multnomah in February 2010--she's been sitting for over a year waiting for blocking. I'm sorry, Multi! I'm a bad, bad crafter.

(Please don't let me look to see how long Saroyan's been waiting--hope it's not the same length of time but I bet it is. Definitely a question for another day!)

In my defense, it's really not my fault. It's the Atlanta Spring's fault. I make the item, of wool no less, and just when I'm thinking it's time to block and wear it, the weather changes (around early March) and I switch out to open-toed shoes and that's the end of the wool garment. After that first official crocus springs forth, it's all sandals and light clothing, and no waiting for Memorial Day. I mean, really, once I have that ceremonial First Real Pedicure of the Spring, I never, ever look back!

(I have no excuse about why I didn't block it in time for the cold Atlanta winter, which starts in late December and ends in February. Just a bad crafter and a sad, sad case of poor memory.)

I Can't Compete!

2011-04-05T07:00:00.002-04:00

Snapped at a traffic light on the way back from a training session this morning in downtown Atlanta (somewhere on Memorial Drive):

Sadly, the resolution isn't good enough for you to be able to read the writing on the passenger door. It says:

Wholesale prices

Socks
T-shirts
Boxers
Wife Beaters

Okay, let's do the math.

The Sock Man: 60 socks (30 pairs, as the clarifying print on the side of the truck notes) for $12. That's about 20 cents per sock or 40 cents a pair. And, just for giggles and grins, let's assume the guys in the SockMan truck aren't charging tax. Even if they are, it's still a helluva deal.

Me: 1 pair of socks, approximately 100 grams of wool (maybe superwash, maybe not). At rock bottom, you could go to Michaels and get a skein of acrylic for about $3.99, but let's be realistic. Most of my socks come in at about $18 to $28, depending on who dyed it and where I bought it. (Let's call it a non-weighted average of $23/pair. We won't even talk about the ridiculously low cost of my labor!)

$0.40 vs. $23.00.

Hmmmmm ....

There's really no point in trying to figure out how much it would cost me to knit a wife beater, now is there?

Knitting and Crochet Blog Week - Day Seven 2KCBWDAY7

2011-04-03T21:30:00.001-04:00

Last day of KCB Week--will it be my last post? Hmmmm ....

Today's assignment:

Write about your typical crafting time. When it is that you are likely to craft – alone or in more social environments, when watching TV or whilst taking bus journeys. What items do you like to surround yourself with whilst you twirl your hook like a majorette’s baton or work those needles like a skilled set of samurai swords. Do you always have snacks to hand, or are you a strictly ‘no crumbs near my yarn!’ kind of knitter.

First of all, "crafting time"? In what alternate universe does the Knitting and Crochet Blog Arch Fiend live?

For me, there is little or no "crafting time." What there is, is 10 minutes between getting home and feeding the dogs, another 6 while I'm waiting for the potato to microwave, a hour between laundry loads--no, I used 30 of those last 60 folding the last load, hanging up drip-dry stuff, putting it all away.

There's an additional 30 minutes most mornings if I remember to set my alarm for 5 instead of 5:30. There might be a pitiful few more while I wait in various lines--at the bank, at the grocery, at the drive-thru, at the pharmacy -- 15 minutes to fill a prescription, my Aunt Sally's fanny! Then there are the few minutes spent at traffic lights on my hour-and-a-half commute each way. [This in no way constitutes an admission of guilt in any charge of "failure to pay full time and attention" that might be levied by some over-zealous state trooper trying to supplement Georgia's pitiful tax coffers.]

I always think I have "crafting time" at night in bed. The reality is that more mornings than not, I wake, still wearing my glasses and holding my knitting in my hands. If I die peacefully in bed, it'll take the CSI investigators a few hours to figure out that I'm not a murder victim. ("She was holding a sharp weapon, but never even lifted it--she must have known her attacker!")

So, all this has shaped my knitting. Let's review the facts:

I have almost no time to do anything.
If I have any time, Mr. Pug is talking to me.
If he's not home, there are always between one and three dogs on my lap.
My powers of concentration are about shot by this advanced age. This means that I have the attention span of a flea smoking crack.
I have lots of yarn and no time to knit.
But I want to knit it all so I keep casting on new projects.

This unhappy combination of factors has resulted in a very confused knitting life. It results in multiple projects requiring differing levels of concentration, each project relegated to a specific minute portion of my life.

First, major projects. In recent years, these have been few and far between. Last year there was the modular patchwork jacket, a project you may see one day only if I am crippled in an accident resulting in several weeks in a wheelchair or a hospital bed. Those are the only circumstances that I can imagine would force me to actually seam together all the pieces. (Note to self: you don't like to finish!) More recently, the Jane Slicer-Smith jacket which was begun last May, put away in June, and picked up again this January. Somehow, in the interim, it has assumed the proportions of a tent that could house several Bedouin sheepherders AND their sheep, and has been put down again.

Now, Waltham, which may one day look like this:

but today looks like this:

Long way to go, huh? And by the way, for the moment, please don't remind me that there will be seams aplenty in this project!

Second, minor projects requiring some level of concentration. Okay, there's some concentration (or a lot!) involved in a major project. (Did you see those cables in Waltham? Yikes!) But into this category fall things like lace. This cannot be accomplished with a spouse talking to the knitter about really important, critical, crucial things like "do we have any more dried mango?" and "how do you think the lawn looks now that I switched to that new fertilizer" and "let me tell you about the customer-from-hell I had today." Nope, this requires absolute silence, and this means I can't even have the ubiquitous NCIS rerun going. Also, these projects cannot be carried away from the piece of paper known as the "chart." Losing the "chart" means abandoning the project. These projects either go well

like Ishbel here (which needs blocking, I know, I know--I'll do that tomorrow, Scarlett) or they go hopelessly wrong like

this. What's the problem, you may ask? Well, the answer is that I have no idea what it is. Not the yarn, not the lace pattern. The only things identifiable here are the needle, the row counter, and the provisional cast-on. Otherwise, no clue. Classic case of chart separated from knitting. Hopeless case.

Finally, there are the carry-along projects, usually a sock but less frequently a multidirectional scarf and most recently

these little mitts or fingerless gloves or whatever the current word for them is. They're made of Zauberball and are warm and cozy--which might mean something next winter but here in Atlanta, where we've had our pedicures and have been wearing open toed shoes for weeks, means they might as well be T-bone steaks at a vegan convention. No use at all.

The ultimate carry-along project, of course, is socks and I always have several pairs on the needles (or, needle, since I almost exclusively use one long needle for Magic Loop). This type of project can, if properly chosen, be completed in the dark by a blind person simply by touch. [In no way is this an admission that I have EVER knit on a sock on I-75S on the way to work.]

Since I just indulged in a major frenzy of finishing completed socks (weaving in the ends, etc.), I'm down to about two pairs and this is one of them. Plymouth Fino, a fuzzy unplied sock yarn that I hope will wear better than it knits. But it's pretty and someday I might even finish this one and get the next one started. This is the pair that's traveling with me in the car now that I've finished up the Blue Ridge Footprints socks.

There's another pair on the needles somewhere. (Well, let's be honest, there are probably several pairs on the needles somewhere in this house if I could find them--see the post on organization, Day 3, I think--I think they're somewhere in the Rockies, but .... oh, who cares? They're lost forever.)

But, seriously, there is another pair somewhere (in the car? trunk maybe? in a knitting bag? somewhere in the garage, in which case they are well and truly lost) that I've been puttering away on. They're beautiful autumnal colors (which I'm calling Autumn in Orwell, for those of you up on your Vermont geography). And I'm sure they would be really nice ... if I ever see them again.

"Crafting time"? Are you crazy? I barely have thinking time!

Truer Words Were Never Spoken!

2011-04-02T21:01:00.000-04:00

Quote from Ducky on a rerun episode of NCIS, in which a passenger on an airplane is killed with a knitting needle:

"A crude but highly effective technique."

Now that's what I aspire to ... that my crude technique is effective.

Knitting and Crochet Blog Week - Day Six 2KCBWDAY6

2011-04-02T20:54:00.000-04:00

Today's assignment:

Is there a pattern or skill that you don’t yet feel ready to tackle but which you hope to (or think you can only dream of) tackling in the future, near or distant? Is there a skill or project that makes your mind boggle at the sheer time, dedication and mastery of the craft? Maybe the skill or pattern is one that you don’t even personally want to make but can stand back and admire those that do. Maybe it is something you think you will never be bothered to actually make bu can admire the result of those that have.

This may sound like a change of subject, but it really isn't.

I went yarn hopping (hi, EatSleepKnit!) with four friends today. Three I know really well, one is a newer friend. So I may be somewhat off in my calculations but I think our little group represented about 200 years of combined knitting experience.

And, although I think most of us have certain areas that we would consider our personal areas of expertise, most of us have at least tried most types of knitting. This doesn't mean we're all experts--far from it. One of my goals for this year is to learn fair isle knitting and I'm definitely not the best at doing intarsia--each of us probably also has an area or two that we'd agree aren't our best skills.

What we all have in common is that we're all still learning. We take classes from knitting designers who come to our Guild or to Stitches events or to SAFF or Maryland Sheep and Wool. We buy books and magazines that feature new techniques and we try them--sometimes successfully, sometimes not so much. But we're all still learning.

So, my aspiration for this year, and for future years, is that I never stop learning.

I'm going to keep taking classes and trying new things. Entrelac this year, definitely. Fair isle, if I run out of excuses for not doing it. Knitting one of Cookie A's most complex socks--from her pattern, not copping out with my toe-up prejudice. Improving my finishing techniques.

And, occasionally, trying old things, again, hoping to hone my skills. Here's the first inch from my new project, two sleeves on one needle. It's Waltham, by the way, by Kathy Zimmerman. I haven't knit an Aran sweater since approximately 1979, but here we go again. That one went pretty well--let's hope this one shows the effects of the 25+ intervening years of knitting.

Oh, by the way, remember that thing I made you read yesterday? The description with no photo?

Does it look anything like what you thought it would?

Knitting and Crochet Blog Week - Day Five 2KCBWDAY5

2011-04-01T22:04:00.000-04:00

Well, today we're going totally off the tracks. The instructions for today are not do-able, at least not by me, at least not today.

Today's the day the Crazed and Possibly Insane Knitting and Crochet Blog Week Fiend wants us to experiment with using lots of fun media--videos, schematics, original cartoons, blah, blah, blah. Not only can I not do any of those things on a good day (and today wasn't actually all that great!), but ... wait for it ... today's the day my camera died, like a duck shot from the sky.

Dead.

So today we're going to have to dig deep and use a technology most of us haven't even considered in many years. Nope, it's not 3-D. It's even older and weirder than 3-D.

So, let's get started. Now sit quietly and close your eyes. Sitting quietly? Eyes closed?

What? I can't hear you.

Oh, I get it. You can't read the blog with your eyes closed, can you? Okay, this is going to be a little more difficult than I thought.

So, pretend your eyes are closed. It's really black, isn't it? Now pretend you're wearing a collar of knitted tubes. There are seven tubes, all different but similar sizes. The tubes are joined at the beck of your neck by a vertical band of stockinette stitch. In these days of precious metal prices heading for the roof and fashion jewelry enjoying a resurgence of interest, you're wearing a multi-dimensional necklace of yarn--turquoise and brown with little flecks of green and white. You are wearing a necklace of knitted turquoise-colored rings. Claudia's Handpainted Fingering Yarn, to be exact, color Teal Party, bought at EatSleepKnit.

If none of that makes sense, and you want to cheat, or if your imagination still isn't working, or if my description sucks, go to Ravelry and check out "Sev[en]" by Kristen Johnstone. Or you can wait until I get a new camera if you want to see the one I finished earlier this week.

How's that technology working for you?

For those of you still here, you've just been transported back to the late 20th century, 20 or 25 years ago, and you've experienced a little-known technique that historians used to call "reading." If it felt a little familiar, I guess you can thank your first grade teacher.

Knitting and Crochet Blog Week - Day Four 2KCBWDAY4

2011-03-31T23:05:00.000-04:00

Today's assigned topic is:

Whatever happened to your __________?

Write about the fate of a past knitting project. Whether it be something that you crocheted or knitted for yourself or to give to another person. An item that lives with you or something which you sent off to charity.

Over the course of my knitting years I've given away countless knitted items and very few stick in my mind.

In my 20s, when I and everyone else I knew were having babies, I knitted baby sweater after baby sweater for all the little babes that were (seemingly) so important in my life at the time. At the time, I had a favorite pattern, a top-down little raglan from a Bernat book and I probably made 15 or 20 of them. I have no idea where any of those babies or the sweaters are today--I guess they weren't that important at the time after all. But the thought was nice.

And for many years--10 or 12--I knit socks for Russian orphans. Adoptive parents would gather up those little socks and stuff suitcases full of them and carry them with love when they made their pre-adoption visits to visit orphans in far-flung places in Russia--back when Russia was the USSR. Why Russian orphans? Why not?

The idea was that the parents would travel to Russia to meet a child they might or might not end up bringing home and would be appalled by the living conditions the children were in. One of the things that has stuck in my mind is the fact that we were encouraged to make the socks (or sweaters or hats or whatever the item of the month's challenge was) out of pure wool. Yes, our own babies wore acrylic to avoid shrinkage, but it was unthinkable for hot water to be wasted washing an orphan's socks, so they would remain pristinely unfelted for all time. And if some hideous circumstance resulted in a sock being shrunk, there was always another orphan that would fit it, no matter the size. I have no idea how many socks went to Russia, or whether any of them ever got there, or whether any child ever wore one of my sock pairs. But it felt good to send them off, like releasing butterflies into the wind.

Eventually, things being what they are, the cost of taking those hugely stuffed suitcases on an airplane became so outrageous that parents stopped carrying them. I'm assuming that socks are still mailed off but I don't really know. For some reason, I stopped knitting them when the push went from knitting garments to finding the money to ship them.

There are so many amazing knitting-related charities--Afghans for Afghanistan, knitted hats for preemies, Caps for the Capital, squares for Warm-Up America. It's amazing to me that there are so many people in this world who are so selfless. The anonymity of the whole thing is the most amazing part--no one wants or needs credit. They just want to help.

Then there are the things I've made for swaps, mostly on Ravelry--little knitted bags and socks and once an IPOD case. I sort of know where they went but ... not really.

But the garments that I always wonder about are the helmet liners. Our guild has made over 650 knitted helmet liners for soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Frankly, there's something wonderful and awful at the same time about knowing your knitted helmet liner might be keeping a soldier warm in a cold war zone. The people who collect them say that they're needed because the government supplies acrylic or polyester liners that don't keep the head warm--I'm sure there's some fiscally responsible reason for this, or that they wash better, or some other esoteric reason to send something that doesn't work to someone who's defending your company, but I don't understand any of them. I've heard that sometimes medics use them to keep a wounded soldier warm as he or she is Medevaced to a clinic--that may be an urban legend but I'm clinging to it. I hope that our liners have done some good to the people who make sure we can live free.

Well, this was a way too serious trip down memory lane. I guess I should have stuck with the sweater my ex got in the divorce settlement!

Knitting and Crocheting Blog Week - Day Three 2KCBWDAY3

2011-03-30T07:00:00.001-04:00

So, today's assigned topic:

How do you keep your yarn wrangling organised? It seems like an easy to answer question at first, but in fact organisation exists on many levels. Maybe you are truly not organised at all, in which case I am personally daring you to try and photograph your stash in whatever locations you can find the individual skeins. However, if you are organised, blog about an aspect of that organisation process, whether that be a particularly neat and tidy knitting bag, a decorative display of your crochet hooks, your organised stash or your project and stash pages on Ravelry.

And the answer is, in my case there's no good answer. Or, put another way, we can do this the hard way or the easy way. Let's start with the easy way.

My yarn stash is arranged decoratively in crisp white cubes, sorted by weight, then by color. Individual planned projects are arranged in clear ziploc bags, each one labeled with a copy of the pattern (in its own acrylic protector, of course) inside the bag, but visible to aid in immediate identification.

(Are you buying this?)

Each yarn is assigned a personalized identification number (a PIN for short, if you're still believing this crap) that matches an entry in the Ravelry database where, if you're still believing any of this utter fabrication, a clear photo and description of yardage and colorway and dye lot are also contained.

(Okay, this isn't working, even for me. I know that friends lie to friends all the time but this one is really pushing the envelope. We're going to have to do this the hard way.)

First of all, what do you know about tectonic plates? All you really need to know is that, as portions of the earth expand and contract, bodies of land are shifted and moved onto each other, creating crevices and mountains. Every so often a really bad movement might result in things like dinosaurs being purged from the earth, but that's really a seldom thing. Here's something that may help you understand what all this means in terms of stash management.

Okay, are we clear? No? Okay, perhaps I need to explain further.

In the master bedroom, there's an area that we'll call "The Appalachians." This mountain range consists of bags (some project bags, some shop bags) each with yarn in them. Here, for instance, is the cobalt blue Miss Babs yarn I bought at Stitches last year to make a shawl. And the (almost the same color blue) Malabrigo worsted, also from Stitches, that was going to be a Cheryl Oberle shawl. And there are some miscellaneous skeins of sock yarn. Come to think of it, probably everything in this range came from Stitches last year. This range could be considered the "OMG! I just bought this at Stitches and I'm going to work on it right away so I need it near to me!" pile. And, yes, I know Stitches was almost a year ago. Your point?

Upstairs, "The Rockies" used to be in the extra bedroom. but got moved to "The Shenandoahs" next door when grandson Cole was there. The Rockies mostly consisted of yarn bought in the 2004-2010 era (hereinafter called The Spenderiferous Era). Lots of impulse purchases that have never come to fruition. Storage in this area consisted of lots and lots of large straw beach bags with no organization whatsoever.

Earlier this year, The Rockies got combined with The Shenandoahs. The Rockies materials date from pre-history through our move to Atlanta. Meaning there's yarn in here older than my daughters. Now "The Rockendoahs" have experienced a number of landslides and even a few volcanic eruptions. When we first bought the house, The Rockies were beautifully organized in bins on shelving (Mr. Pug took care of that!). Now just walking around in The Rockendoah area is treacherous, and requires pinions and ropes.

Okay, see why there are no photos? I thought you'd see it my way.

Knitting and Crocheting Blog Week - Day Two 2KCBWDAY2

2011-03-29T07:00:00.006-04:00

Day two, and I'm still blogging. Amazing!

Today's challenge:

Look back over your last year of projects and compare where you are in terms of skill and knowledge of your craft to this time last year. Have you learned any new skills or forms of knitting/crochet (can you crochet cable stitches now where you didn’t even know such things existed last year? Have you recently put a foot in the tiled world of entrelac? Had you even picked up a pair of needles or crochet hook this time last year?

That's an interesting one, now that I'm officially a Knitting Crone.

I was taught to knit at about 9 or 10 by my grandmother who was in her late 70's by that time and Older Than God in my eyes. So I wanted to knit like her but certainly not to BE like her. At that time I didn't know anyone else who knit, except for my mother who was a dabbler. (And I certainly didn't want to be her either!)

But now I'm an older knitter in a world seemingly dominated by young, fearless knitters. It's an amazing world to be a part of, surrounded by people young enough to be my grandchildren who are leading the way with incredible designs and patterns. Sometimes I see a fabulous, innovative new pattern on Ravelry or Knitty and read all the way to the bottom and read "so-and-so has been knitting for seven months now and her first book will be published next year."

Thank God for Maggie Righetti and Elizabeth Zimmerman who went before them and paved the way. They taught me the skills that have kept me knitting so I can jump fearlessly into the pool with these newer knitters.

Over the years I think I've dipped a toe into most aspects of knitting and I've had some amazing successes and some devastating failures. And 50 years after learning how to knit, I still think of myself as an intermediate knitter. There are some areas I've only recently entered (with lots of trepidation) like lace. Until about four years ago, I'd never knit lace--my excuse was that I'm really not a lacy, girly-girl, person but the reality was that I was ... SCARED of lace. Now lace is an area to be respected but not feared. I'm still not a shawl wearer, per se, but I've knit a few and I'm sure there are a few more in my future.

And for many years I knit socks. You really can't fail with socks--they always fit someone, you can never have too many, once you get the basic shape down they're all do-able. About three years ago I read an article by Ann Budd in Interweave Knits and became obsessed with toe-up socks. Since then I've made them a passion. I can cast on (Turkish or Judy's Magic Cast On) in my sleep, have perfected my short row heel, and finally have a loose bind off that I like. In short, socks have come to be my "go to" project--I keep finding them in various stages of completion all over the house and car and occasionally even finish some.

But what have I done over the past year? Well, let's see ... there's my ongoing fling with modular knitting. One sweater complete (if by complete you mean in pieces waiting for seaming together), one vest in progress (and will I ever finish it? I think not but I remain hopeful), and the infamous Jane Slicer-Smith jacket that's about halfway done and, by some horrible circumstance, is now approximately the size of a Cirque de Soleil tent. (The elephant called--she wants her cape back!)

And, of course, I dabbled with beading last year, even before Sivia Harding came to teach at our guild. She got me started playing with beads and beaded jewelry (although I guess my first beaded jewelry muse was really Betsy Hershberg).

But what will this year bring? Well, I already know I'll be doing entrelac because we're having a very well-known entrelac designer come to the guild in the fall (sorry--can't say the name until we have the contract in hand). But I'm very excited--I've done entrelac but I'm not ready to say I'm good at it yet.

I did promise myself that this would be the year to learn Fair Isle. I want to, no, really, I do. And I truly do mean to learn it, some day. But ... do I really have to?

And then there's Waltham:

I can already hear the naysayers telling me, if you can't put together one sweater, what makes you think you'll put this one together? And I don't have an answer for you. I just know I'm going back to my roots and trying cables again. (The last cabled sweater I knit was for my ex-husband and he got custody in the divorce.)

The good news: Mr. Pug won't get this one!

Knitting and Crocheting Blog Week : 2KCBWDAY1

2011-03-28T17:24:00.000-04:00

Okay, I've seriously neglected the old blog in recent months. Yes, I know ... I hear from the six people who actually read it that they miss it, but still ... it's like going back to your ex-husband. It's a little embarrassing and one of those things you may not want to shout about from the rooftops until you know it's going to last longer than a hot, sweaty afternoon. (Don't ask how I know this one.)

Anyway, along comes Knitting and Crochet Blog Week 2011. What better excuse to unearth and revive the blog than that? And it even comes with suggested topics. So, here we go, first day:

So, today's topic is "A Tale of Two Yarns." And, just so you'll get the idea, here's the explanation:

Part of any fibre enthusiast's hobby is an appreciation of yarn. Choose two yarns that you have either used, are in your stash, or which you yearn after and capture what it is you love or loathe about them.

The timing for this question couldn't be better, because I started a project this past weekend in a yarn that I'd heard about but had never used, Madelinetosh Tosh Merino Light. When Debra and I went (separately but serendipitously) to the Claudia's Handpainted Yarns Trunk Show at EatSleepKnit a couple of weeks ago, Debra took me to the Madelinetosh room and wouldn't let me leave until I'd picked out a skein (Cherry, if it matters).

Now I love a cult yarn as much as the next person, and I have to admit the color grabbed me by the short hairs right away. Do you see all those shadings? Frankly, the day of the trunk show was rainy and the light in the room was adequate but not great, and I thought it was red yarn. It wasn't until I looked at it outside that I saw all those colors. And it's a single ply, which meant I likely wouldn't be making socks from it.

In fact, I had no idea what I would make from it--probably, with my track record, nothing. I figured it would join the other approximately 493 skeins of sock yarn waiting for me to be inspired. (Okay, that may be an exaggeration but not by much!) This weekend, the yarn told me--it had to be the Ishbel shawlette.

I wasn't prepared for finding that using it would be nothing short of a Harry Met Sally moment. This yarn is smoothly twisted, not plied, with a little bit of attitude. (Why do I think I should be saying, "Tosh ... Madelinetosh" like "Bond ... James Bond"?) Ishbel is a delicate balance of stockinette with a very simple lace edge. In the Tosh Merino Light, the stockinette portion is beautiful and soft. The lace portion is sharply defined--every PSSO stands out like a beacon.

Now, moving from ecstasy to irritation, my unfavorite yarn of all time: Noro Kureyon.

Oh, I love the colors! Noro yarns have some of the most wonderful colors available to a knitter. They change and swirl and move through a knitted piece with a life of their own. No argument with the colors at all.

But the texture? The rough, almost scratchy fibers, longing to make you itch? The thick-and-thin nature of the yarns that take you from a lumpy blob of yarn down to a hair-like thread that suddenly breaks off in your hand, just as you're pulling a stitch taut? And the woodiness--and by this I mean the actual splinters of straw and wood that appear in every skein? The multiple knots, never in the same color, mind you, so that you're knitting along with deep purple and suddenly the yarn ends in a knot ... and now you're knitting in turquoise blue... both pretty colors but ... they couldn't match the broken strands?

And what I hate the most about Noro Kureyon? The fact that I'm continuously seduced by it. I see it, stacked beautifully in a cubby in a yarn store, and I think, "maybe this time it'll be different."

Come to think of it, that IS a ltitle like going back to your ex-husband. It just makes you remember why you left him in the first place. (And don't ask how I know.)

No, really. Don't ask.

Farewell to the Boss

2011-01-20T17:33:00.000-05:00

When I was 17, I graduated from high school and began a job as a GS-4 Clerk-Typist-Stenographer at the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO). I had been recruited by my high school shorthand teacher's husband who worked there also, and I was pretty excited. It meant taking two buses into downtown Washington, DC from our house in the Maryland suburbs and I thought I was pretty hot stuff with my four-figure salary! (Yes, that would be one digit, then a comma, then three zeros, per year!)

I, of course, had no real idea where I was going or what I would be doing.

Turned out that OEO was the poverty program, a brainchild of Sargent Shriver who had also founded the Peace Corps, and was launched as part of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. The idea was to attack poverty in our own country, by helping states and counties and towns to help themselves. I was assigned to the community action group that worked with North Carolina, and later to the West Virginia/Kentucky group. In the meantime, I was handed over to the Regional Director of the whole shooting match, to churn out typed grant letters.

That's another story in itself, involving inch-high stacks of two-piece carbon paper in various rainbow colors (all of which had to be PERFECTLY typed) and my first encounter with an electric typewriter. Suffice it to say that I'm terribly grateful for the incredible patience shown to me by everyone involved.

But this is about Sargent Shriver, who passed away this week. He died at 95 but the picture above is pretty close to what he looked like in those days. I have to admit to a little shiver even today when I think of how he looked in those expensively tailored suits he wore. I think I was imprinted right at that point toward a man in a nice suit.

Of course, we all knew he was a Kennedy brother-in-law, which was a big deal even to a city used to seeing political celebrities around town. As a child, I remember being in the Senate Office Building and looking down on the Senate from the balcony. One of my friends' fathers was an aide to a senator from Michigan (after whom an office building would be named later!) and I had stared down onto a wrinkly, baggy-suited Lyndon Johnson and a chunky bald Sam Rayburn. Neither of them impressed me in the least, but Sargent Shriver did.

I have to say that Shriver was my first "CEO" and the one who set the standard for all the CEOs I'd work for over the years. He was unfailingly courteous, and knew each staffer's name and a little about them. I'd pass him in the hall and get a "Hello, Diana, how are you liking your job these days?" or "Boy, did you get caught in that big traffic jam at Friendship Heights this morning?" He knew the mentally challenged Xerox operator and was always willing to listen patiently to a long explanation of what might have caused a paper jam yesterday. Each one of us was a person to him and he made us all happy to be at work. I've heard that he could be a taskmaster but I'm willing to bet that most of the people who worked with him, either closely or peripherally the way I did, will remember him as a fair, kind individual--the kind they'd like to work for again.

So, using the whole Kevin Bacon Seven Degrees of Separation, really that puts me pretty close to Jackie Kennedy, doesn't it? And Maria, and the GuberNator. And let's not talk about Teddy. But I bet none of them were as nice as Sarge. He was definitely a man who motivated us all to do good things.

Goodbye, Boss!

Getting It Together

2011-01-02T14:32:00.000-05:00

Once a year or so, usually toward the end of a year or right at the beginning of a new year, I have a fleeting sense of being organized. That's the day I go to Office Depot or Staples and buy new innards for my planner and start trying to get a sense of having it together for the coming year.

Yes, Jake, I know that a paper planner is "old school." Did you think I needed you to mention that to make me feel old? But I guess I AM old school. I have numerous electronic organizers including my IPOD, my Blackberry, my Outlook calendar, my computer at work and the one at home, but there's something about writing the coming year's birthdays and circling paydays on the little boxes on that paper calendar that gives me a sense of old-fashioned "readiness" and my place in the world.

Somehow when you're looking at the week's tasks on your Outlook you don't get that "big picture" understanding of what we're all a part of. This year January brings my sister Debbie's and my friend Cathy's and my friend David's birthdays. I see my other sister's upcoming surgery and my hair appointment and the guild meeting and dinners with friends. I see planning meetings and business commitments and the day the mortgage payment is due. There are notes about sad events, too, dates that I move from one year's calendar to another as if there's any danger I'll ever forget them. There are dates that mean something important to me and to no one else.

I still make lists on paper in the section I've named, with a great creative spirit, "Lists." Lists of groceries to be bought, projects to be knit, books to be read, gift ideas for birthdays and anniversaries and holidays in the future. Couldn't they be on my Blackberry? Sure. But there's something about being able to run my fingers down the paper and check them off as they're completed or as a decision is made to abandon one.

There's a section called "Writing." Here's the place that I jot down a plot idea or a character description or an idea for a blog post. These are the thoughts that flit through my mind as I drive the long route to work in the morning. Most of these notes never ever result in anything but they're there if I need them.

I have moved along in a few ways. I've stopped using the address directory pages that the planner folks keep giving us. All the important numbers are in one of the two cell phones I schlep around with me 24/7 (or "31" as the kid on Two and a Half Men says). If I want a snail mail address for some inconceivable reason, it's in one of the computers or on a memory stick somewhere.(There are even two or three stamps tucked into one of the pockets of the planner should I want to mail something--I think they've been there for several years and I only use them for the occasional birthday or sympathy card.) And my planner can't hold the audiobooks I listen to on the IPOD or the books I read on the Kindle.

Anyway, that day of feeling in control of my life isn't today. This year I think it was December 14. Now I'm still carrying around that big red leather binder with all those calendars and lists but I've already lost control of the year. It's only the 2nd and I already feel lost. Oh, well. Maybe next year.

What Keeps a Kindle Warm at Night?

2010-12-15T14:21:00.000-05:00

First Christmas gift of the year given--a Kindle sweater--and, I think the only knitted gift I'll give this year. Combination of Grinchiness and arthritis that's causing some arm issues.

The pattern is adapted from one on Ravelry and is knit from purple baby llama yarn. Soft, soft, soft! Yarn and button (and suggestion for the pattern) all from Cast On Cottage, Roswell, GA. (The pattern's designer, Karen, is also a Cast On customer.)

It's too short to fit my Kindle, which is the original. I knit it a little too long for the newer version because I wanted to include the button at the top--important if you're going to keep it in your purse because it'll just slide right out otherwise.

(I was gifted with a really beautiful Kindle cover in a Ravelry swap and I love it but I'm thinking of adding a closure of some kind to avoid the whole sliding thing. Wouldn't be a problem if I'd just leave it at home, I suppose.)

Anyway, cast on 52 stitches total with Judy's Magic Caston, size 7 magic loop (26 stitches on each needle). Knit in stockinette for 7.5 inches, then switch to size 5 needles and do 3 or 4 rows of 1X1 rib, add a buttonhole in the middle of whichever side you've decided is the front, then another 3 or 4 rows. Bind off with Jeny's Surprisingly Stretchy Bindoff (which IS surprisingly stretchy!).

Sign Language

2010-10-18T06:48:00.001-04:00

Have you noticed how parenting has changed since you had your children? This isn’t a trick question—it doesn’t matter WHEN you had them, it’s changed. That’s because each generation wants to do it better than their parents did.

When I was an infant and young child, my mother was a devotee of Dr. Spock and his reliance on sane and sensible parenting. I still used his book as a bible when my daughters were born. For instance, after generations of babies being bundled into heavy blankets and sweaters no matter what the temperature, Dr. Spock said you should dress your child the same way you would dress yourself—more layers in cold weather, fewer in warm weather. Amazing! (Apparently Dr. Spock didn’t have any advice on any of the other myriad ways in which my mother managed to screw me up. Oh, well ....)

So it never surprises me to hear about a discovery that the current generation has made about how to undo the parenting my generation did—after all, I did the same thing. Just to keep you in the loop too, here’s my research on latest parenting techniques based on a weekend spent with my nieces Caitlin and Sarah, and two great-nieces, the Amazing Ruby and the Incredible Emily. And here’s what I learned.

Sign Language. Yep, that’s what I said. We’re using the same techniques that scientists are using with lower primates to help them communicate. Because they too lack the ability to vocalize their needs.

But here’s what had me laughing:

Emily (10 months) can use sign language to signal that she wants ”milk, please, “and even “more milk, please.” She does this with a hand sign that simulates a hand pulling an udder, which would make a lot of sense if (a) she knew what an udder was, (b) she knew what would occur if you happened to pull an udder, or (c) she was even drinking milk.

Fact is, she’s lactose intolerant so she really needs a sign for “Non Soy Non Dairy Alimentation Product, please.” So we’re teaching a child to use a symbol she cannot possibly comprehend. But we're the icon generation, and we communicate with pictures. Let’s just hope that somewhere in the education process there’s a lesson on “and don’t try that on the cat!”

So, I’m feeling like Andy Rooney railing about things that make no sense to me. But that doesn’t mean I can’t see the positives:

• For instance, a whole generation of mostly silent infants just holding up their hands to signal what they want. That could do away with the whole WalMart rage-at-noisy-children syndrome. How angry can you get at a child silently pulling an udder repeatedly? It could make flying commercial bearable again, or vastly improve the whole eating-in-a-restaurant thing. And they can go directly into silent texting.

• I’m pretty sure that even PETA won’t be able to claim that pulling a virtual udder injures the bovine population in any way. It might embarrass Elsie, but it won’t harm her. If it turns out that it does somehow take advantage of cows, maybe Chik Fila could change their billboards to say "Eat Mor Children."

• In fact, I’m seeing whole new possibilities for the Happy California Cow commercials. Maybe the happy cows could do their whole sales job silently, using hoof signals. That would make me happy.

• If our cave dweller forebears had had better signals, they wouldn’t have had to wonder whether Little Oog was crying because he was hungry or because his tiger skin was damp, again. There’s nothing worse than having your cave baby screaming about being hungry when you’re trying to catch the next meal.

And let’s face it. We all use signals of one kind or another to get the job done, even those of us who are accustomed to communicating with words rather than icons. My ex-husband was fond of the “hand writing in the air” signal for the waiter—I suppose that in those pre-electronic days, he assumed that the waiter would hand write the bill so he could pay it. Today’s waiter would be wondering what he was doing. (Is there a sign that uses a hand pushing keys on a computer?)

And who isn’t familiar with the twirling index finger next to the head that signals that someone is a little cuckoo? That one might be accompanied by heavy eye rolling, too. How about the one with the invisible beer being taken to the lips that says, "drinking problem"? The infamous "flying fickle finger of fate" that tells the other driver what you think of his driving?

Finally, we’re all familiar with those signals between spouses, the ones that say “I’m ready to leave now.” I even remember when that signal meant, “can we go home right now and do something more fun?” rather than “I can’t stand being here with your friends one more minute.”

What does this have to do with knitting? Well, I think we need some Knitting Sign Language. (Not to be confused with the symbols used in knitting charts. Although trying to come up with a hand signal for SSK or Cable 2 Right would be an interesting challenge.)

How about two hands facing each other as if they are holding needles? With a raised, inquisitive brow, it could mean “is it okay to knit here?” or "did you bring your knitting?" With an angry glare, it could mean “HELLO! I’m knitting here—can you go away please?)

And then there’s the raised index finger that says, “I’m counting! Wait til I'm done, please.”

I think there are definitely some possibilities here. In the meantime, I'm looking for a sign that says "I dropped my bead on the floor and can't find it."

Visible Signs of Aging

2010-09-27T11:24:00.000-04:00

Age used to be so simple—for years, I was always the youngest of any group of people I was with and that made me … YOUNG. Which, for a long time wasn’t what I wanted to be.

I couldn’t wait to graduate from high school, to take my first (legal) drink, to drive a car. I DIDN’T wait to get a fake ID (but I swear, pinky swear, that I never used it to break any laws—you do believe me, don’t you?).

Some in my generation were mistrustful of those over 30—I just thought the over-30s were completely irrelevant at that point, so who cared? When I passed that milestone, I was so mired in working two jobs to support two kids that I hardly even noticed. Thirty, shmirty, I only got two hours of sleep last night and I’ve got to make lunches before the school bus comes!

And the reality is that after 30, the years blur by. One day you’re 30, the next day you’ve got almost two hands worth of grandchildren, and they’re doing all the things you thought were so ambitious and edgy. (And given the number of mistakes I made, let’s hope they do it better than I did!)

I’ve come to terms with my age. After all, 50 is the new 30 and 80 is the new 60 and as long as I’m somewhere in between, it really doesn’t seem to matter at a certain point. I can still cut up my own food and I forget my own cell phone number relatively infrequently. I’ve adapted to cutting edge technology pretty well and am almost ready to buy an IPhone. I actually tweeted one day!

But let’s face it, I’ve got wrinkles in places where I didn’t even know I had places. I’ve accustomed myself to finding gray hairs in surprising places. Don’t look at me that way—I meant my eyebrows and my chin! And I have noticed that all the beautiful people in People magazine are … well, I don’t know who or what they are. I’ve never heard of any of them! But they sure are pretty for the most part, especially that Gaga person.

On most days I feel pretty young, about 40 or so. Looking good, feeling good. (OMG! I just said 40 is young! OMG!)

Until I go to the grocery store.

You know you’re REALLY old when the child who’s bagging your groceries puts it all into separate, small bags that an old fart like yourself can carry to the car. I went through the 10 items or fewer line the other day and had 8 bags to carry out. The eggs in one bag, the rotisserie chicken in one, the package of Prilosec (which probably weighs less than a gram of cocaine, not that I’d know) in one. Thank God I didn’t buy anything in a can or a jar or they definitely would have had to have their own bags.

Now at my advanced age I don’t want to make two trips from the car into the house. Too hard on the knees, you know. So I had to grasp my 8 separate little baggies, along with my purse, my knitting, my half-consumed Diet Pepsi, and the bag of yarn that I needed to sneak into the house because Mr. Pug will have a conniption if one more skein of yarn comes in the door.

Got the picture? Me, struggling to carry all that crap? Not a pretty picture. I swear I heard my neighbor mutter “what’s that crazy old woman doing NOW?”

So I guess the verdict is in. I’m old. Oh, well, at least it isn't a condition that lasts four hours or more and requires a trip to the ER.

Pins Envy

2010-07-20T10:59:00.002-04:00

Nancy kindly let me read her copy of Madeleine Albright's book Read My Pins. Albright was Secretary of State during the Clinton years and is now a professor at Georgetown University, and for much of her career she has adorned her business clothing with pins. Me, too, Madeleine! Me, too!

Albright used her pins to send a message to those she was interacting with, usually positive but sometimes with a twist. For instance, Saddam Hussein called her a serpent and so when she went to Iraq to deal with him she wore a snake pin, although she abhors snakes. (Me, too, Madeline!) She also has a huge collection of patriotic pins (flags and such) as well as flowers, animals, buildings, and anything else you can think of. Me, too!

I've collected and worn pins for many years, during many years when they were popular and fashionable and many when they weren't. (More of those latter, probably.) I have, I think, around 140-150 pins, most of which live in two over-the-door cases. Others hang out elsewhere. Each case has 40 pockets on each side, so there are a total of 160 pockets. Some of those pockets hold earrings, but most have a pin and sometimes two.

Many of these pins have a story behind them. Many were bought with my friend Nydia. We started buying them at craft shows and continued buying them together and separately for years. I'll have to ask her whether she's still got hers--mine are mostly all still here. Others were gifts--my sister Deirdre has given me some really interesting pins. One's an old native American turquoise pin that's as big as a dinner plate.

Then there are the ones I can't find--like the ceramic fish I bought in Massachusetts when Mr. Pug and I went there with his daughters. And there are the ones that got broken somewhere along the way--I have a Robert Shields wooden fish with one of the feet broken off. Yes, I said "feet." Shields put feet on his fish. But I did find the replacement fish I bought when he still had a storefront in Sedona. Alas, he's gone from there now but I still have the fish (with and without feet).

I did find an old blazer in the closet the other day with a pin still attached to the lapel. That makes me think there are probably a few more that didn't get detached before the jacket went to the Women's Shelter or Goodwill or Dress for Success. Rats!

Anyway, what got me started thinking about all this is that one of Albright's pins also lives in my collection--the gold and marcasite Ginko flower on page 7. Mine is lying to the left on the book.

I was really excited about telling Nancy that until she told me she has two of the pins in the book. (Her, too, Madeline!) Then I saw another pin farther back in the book that looked familliar--surely I have that one too! It's the one with the line of attached stars--don't I have that? Nope--mine is similar but it's hearts, diminishing in size and falling away down my shoulder. See the star pin in the top center? That's my heart pin superimposed to its right. Similar but ... NOT!

All this has inspired me to start wearing my pins again, and documenting that. I'm going to blog my pins at a new blog site http://www.pinsenvy.blogspot.com/. Come see what the Pin of the Day is today!

Cat Whisperer Update

2010-06-28T11:56:00.000-04:00

It's been awhile since there was an update. Not for lack of interest, just lack of ... well, I don't even know what. I have no excuses. So here's a minor update at least.

There are so many things of importance that I could write about today, including the surprising depth of my emotional response to USA's elimination from the World Cup (who knew a professional soccer game could feel so personal?), the fact that Mr. Pug and I have finally formalized our 24+ year history, the fact that my first granddaughter Haley has graduated from high school and is on her way to the next stage of her young life .... you get the message. There's a lot to talk about.

But what do people really want to know? What's the burning question that my friends ask me? It's "well, Woofgang, you really left us hanging. What's up with the kittens?"

And the answer is, they're all fine. The three tiny ones that I honestly wasn't sure would live through the night? One of our employees took them home with a kitten baby bottle and formula, and she and her parents have been having a wonderful time fostering them until they're old enough to go to permanent homes.

And Monroe? The little dark gray/blackish guy that we took over from the two teenagers? Well, he's as happy as can be. He's the newest addition to my boss's two-black-cat household and, while he hasn't won over the two original homesteaders Noir and Lucy, he's got the boss and her husband firmly in his pocket, metaphorically speaking.

Let's put it this way--he just returned from a lovely weeklong vacation in the western North Carolina mountains AND he's got a hat to play with. Right now, I'd like to have his life.

The Cat Whispers

2010-06-07T20:22:00.000-04:00

Uh, do I look like the Cat Whisperer to you?

Right. I didn’t think so.

So how did I end up rescuing three … no, wait, make that four … kittens today?

When I am not, and let me re-emphasize this, NOT a cat person?

I was wandering around the campus at work today, minding what passes for my own business, enjoying the lovely weather and the nice flowers and the beautiful green lawns being manicured by the landscaping company when one of the aforesaid landscapers approached me.

Cute Hispanic Guy: “Meees! Hey, Meees!”

Me: “Uh, me?”

CHG: (Doffing hat in a respectful way—God, I really have to get some better wrinkle cream! I must look ancient!) “Jes, Mees. Can you come?

(Hmmmm…maybe the wrinkle cream IS working. Maybe I’ve set this handsome young Latino man wild with desire.)

CHG: “Cuts, Meees.” (pointing)

Me: “Cut? Someone’s cut? Who’s cut?”

GHG: (Holding up three fingers) “Cuts, Meees.” (More pointing, toward one of our cottages.)

Me: “Uh, okay. Cut? How badly?”

CHG (as if speaking to the village idiot, and not the young pretty one, the old crone one): “Cuts, Meees. Three cuts.”

Me: “Oh, hell. Cats? Damn! Morte?”

CHG: “Morte? What?” (Apparently my Spanish is no better than his English.)

We reach the bushes outside one of the cottages and he’s digging in among the foliage, finally pointing out three tiny, bedraggled, scraggly kittens, wedged in under some roots. Oh, crap.

This is a cottage peopled by adolescent boys who tend, on a good day, to jump around playing with make-believe swords slaying each other and make-believe dragons. On a bad day, all bets are off. Not a good place for three itty-bitty starving kittens.

But, in fact, what is the right place for three itty-bitty etc., etc ., etc.? I remember from a series of emails that there were originally five kittens and that at least one small kitten body has already been found on the grounds. No mama anywhere to be found.

Now there are three. And they’re not looking that good. And I am SO not a cat person.

Luckily at that point one of the staff joined me and began to coo and giggle and talk baby talk … or kitten talk. I went to fetch a box and she yanked out a root that had one of the kittens effectively stapled into the ground by the neck.

The next thing I knew, I was back in my office with a box of cats. Tiny, mewling, weak little cats. Three of them. Luckily the staff member agreed that she’d take them home with her some ten hours later, and to a vet in the morning. If any could be saved, she’d adopt at least one and maybe two of them.

Could I let it go there? No. I’d already tried giving them milk off my fingers but they couldn’t figure out the whole “lick the finger” thing. Two of my coworkers and I went to a nearby vet to ask for help.

We stood there with our pitiful cardboard box and were told “take them to the pound; that’s the right thing to do.”

We finally prevailed and purchased a tiny nursing bottle and a can of formula.

I felt a tug on my sleeve. I saw two young teenage boys, skateboard in one hand and a kitten in the other. Another kitten. Oh, crap!

They’d been sent by their mother to drop off the kitten which they’d found a day earlier. He was dressed in a tiny sweater and nestled in a woolen cap. Oh, crap.

The vet’s staff sent them away. They don’t take kittens. They told them to take them to the pound. The boys left.

Then they returned. With the kitten. What were they supposed to do with the kitten?

Oh, crap. They were trying to do the right thing, and no one would help them do it. And I have a thing for kids who really want to do the right thing. They’re not all that common.

So that’s how I ended back at work with four kittens, not the three I left with.

I have no idea where Monroe, as we named the older black kitten, will end up. Maybe with my boss but maybe not because she has two older cats who will not take kindly to an interloper. But probably someone here at work will take them. They have to, now that he has a name. (Yes the spots of our volunteer's dress are milk from feeding Monroe with a baby bottle!)

Oh, crap. I AM not the Cat Whisperer.

An Old Friend and a New One

2010-06-01T16:10:00.000-04:00

I'll be the first to admit it--I'm not right when it comes to dogs. So, when I heard someone calling my name from the hallway outside my office today to come see a dog, I ran ... er, walked sedately ... to see what was going on.

Standing in the hall was an old friend, a woman I'd worked with at The Big Corporation. She and I had served for several years developing and managing the company's disaster recovery/business continuity plan*. The person who had called me had no idea Melissa and I knew each other--she was amazed when we broke into a big hug. That was worth the price of admission right there.

*Yes, that's the plan that was ditched as soon as the new Powers-That-Be realized they really didn't give a rat's patootie if the company recovered or continued or anything else. So they let my friend go and, shortly thereafter, me too.

Anyway, it's always nice to see an old friend, especially in a context you weren't expecting. Those are her feet at the top of the picture (the ones in the sandals). But look who she's holding on to. Could Gina be any more beautiful? (I deliberately took a picture that wouldn't flash in her face or you'd really get a faceful of beauty to look at.)

Gina is a 7-year-old rescue black lab who works as a Reading Education Assistance Dog. Turns out Melissa is the president of the Georgia chapter of READingPaws. READingPaws brings assistance animals into therapeutic situations to help kids with their reading skills. The Reading Assistance volunteer and the animal are matched with a child and come on a regular basis to work with that specific kid. The kids form a bond with the dogs (and there's even a Reading Assistance parrot!) and their reading skills improve in the process.

It won't be Gina who will come to my workplace but I was thrilled to meet her anyway. Who wouldn't want to learn to read if you could have a friend like Gina to help you out?

Pistol-Packin' Mama

2010-05-26T10:31:00.000-04:00

So on Sunday, Mr. Pug and I went to the local Koi emporium.

For the uninformed in the Fish World, Koi are not the type of fish that supply those much-needed Omega-3s. Nope, they’re more like “black gold, Texas Tea.” Some of these bad boys and girls are as big as a cat and cost a car payment. At a certain point, they’re more valuable than your grandmother’s silver tea service.

Here in the Pug household, our requirements are more modest. We have a pond the size of a sink on steroids and three smallish fish who are the survivors of our three seasons of fish-perimentation. That’s not a problem. And, at this point, we can’t afford any more actual fish because all of our money goes to upgrading their environment.

We’ve put more money into this pond than BP’s put into the Louisiana wetlands—with about the same results.

Anyway, we went to the fish store, where I wandered among tanks of huge, hungry fish who bobbed to the surface whenever a humanoid figure approached, apparently thinking we would all carry Koi pellets with us. Each time I’d return to the “show room,” which apparently had been the tiny living room of a 50’s brick ranch-style house before it became Koi Central, Mr. Pug and the owner would be deep in conversation about pumps and money and power sources and money and filters and money. I would roll my eyes and inquire about some vital facet of fish-raising (“ooooh, look honey, they have puppies here in the back room!”) and the owner would drag the conversation back to money.

Finally, on my third pass through the Money Pit, I interrupted a deep discussion about valves and hoses and clamps and input and output (Mr. Pug: "so if I want to backwash the filter, I just turn this knob?” Owner: “He-ah-al no, man! That’s the input, not the output! Do you want to spray fish excrement all over yourself?”).

Okay, let’s interrupt here. Why would a 50-year-old man think the best way to advertise his no-doubt considerable experience and expertise in fish-raising and money-taking is to wear his old college sweatshirt? To me, a college sweatshirt on a middle-aged man just says “Hey, look at me! My best years are 30 years behind me!”

And don’t get me started on the guys with GED in their resume wearing the local college mascot. That’s just false advertising in my opinion.

Okay, back to fish guy. At this point I said, “so, cutting to the chase, how much is this new system going to cost?”

You would have thought I’d spit in his scuppernong wine. Both of them, for that matter: Mr. Pug wasn’t any happier with my question than Mr. Bulldawg. They exchanged “The Look,” and I saw where this was going.

“I’ll be in the car,” I said. And left to my knitting (Ulmus, in Malabrigo SockYarn, Indecita and Abril, if it matters, ).

When Mr. Pug returned to the driver’s seat, after filling the back of the car with 20+ feet of hose and several large boxes, and after spending approximately the equivalent of two months utility costs (think height of the summer with the AC going full blast 24/7), he was proud. He had acquired Tools. He was a Happy Camper.

I’d already decided I wouldn’t mention the cost—after all, it’s no worse than a smallish bag of yarn would cost.

“You know what he said about you?” Mr. Pug grinned.

“Nope.”

“He asked how long we’d been married.”

“What’d you tell him?”

Now, mind you, if I’d had to answer that question, I’d have pulled out my pocket calendar and calculated “uh, about negative three weeks,” but he took the Guy Way Out.

“I told him we’d been together more than 24 years. Then he said you were 'some kinda pistol, ain't she?.' What a hoot!"

“Uh huh.”

Now you and I know that’s code for “can’t you control your woman?” A woman might have said, here in the South, “bless her heart,” and it would have meant the same thing. Basically, “sorry, man, that you have to deal with that.”

Not, Mr. Pug. He thought it was a compliment.

Bless his heart.

Technology Musings

2010-05-19T16:09:00.001-04:00

On the way to work this morning I listened to the new John Sandford novel on CD. Last week it was Pat Conroy's South of Broad (highly recommended!!!!). So, for 43 miles and an hour and a half, my car tells me a story. Then at night, I repeat the process.

Last night I woke in the middle of the night and did some reading on yet a different novel, this time the new Jonathan Kellerman/Alex Delaware. This time I read on my Kindle. When I fell asleep, the Kindle turned itself off.

Frankly, it's been forever since I read a novel ... printed on paper. If I have time to read, which I mostly don't, I don't want to schlep around a big ole hardcover and even the paperbacks today weigh a pound or more. And if I'm awake, I'm probably knitting, so I need my hands free.

So the Kindle. (Thanks, Jake!) Anyway, the Kindle is about the size of a paperback book but half the weight. Amazing, amazing! But it's a different life and requires some life-skills adjustment.

For one thing, your library exists in the ether. In this case, all my New Yorkers (or at least the ones I haven't read yet) are stacked up on my menu instead of next to the bed. So are the next four novels I'm determined to read. (Whoops! I just bought the new Karin Slaughter, so make that five!)

To get a new one, I go to the Kindle store (on the Kindle main menu) and hit the "buy" button. Then, once it's in the menu, a matter of seconds, I can move between all my reading material with the movement of one finger. And the darned thing even "dog-ears" my place in each book -- it knows what I've already read and haven't. Like I wish my IPOD worked but it usually doesn't.

And now when I want to turn a page -- and by the way, the "print" on the page can be adjusted by size depending on how my eyes feel on a given day -- I hit "next page" or "back."
So, will future generations only get their reading done electronically? Who knows? Will they miss the smell of a new book?

And those same generations -- will they know what the words "hang up" mean? After all, we don't hang up the phone any more -- many of us haven't had a telephone for years-- we end the call.

Now that vehicle ignitions are push-button, will our kids ever know the pleasure of putting their brand-new ignition key into their first new car and turning it -- the power of feeling that engine turn over under the power of your fingers? Or will turning that key become the equivalent of turning the crank on your Model A?

And what about phone exchanges? Do you remember when you could look at the first three numbers of a phone number -- no, not the area code, that's New School -- the three numbers after the parentheses and before the hyphen. Remember when those numbers told you something, like what part of town the caller lived in? No more.

So, here we are -- the whole world is technological. Except for my knitting.

I just continue to wind yarn around my two sticks. Over and over, knit and purl. Around and around. Occasionally I knit two together, or slip a stitch. The most high-tech thing I do is use one long needle to Magic Loop.

If my grandmother could come back for a day she'd have no idea where to find a book or how to start a car, but darn it all, she could pick up my knitting and go to town. Knitting is one thing that's changing every day and at the same time hasn't changed at all since my grandmother learned to knit 100+ years ago or since men and women learned to knit fabric for warmth 2,000 years ago.

And as long as I can keep knitting, I don't really care how to turn on my car. It can just stay in the driveway.

Oh, the picture? That's Kerrigan and Emma, hanging out at the lake last week. Do you think they care about technology? Not hardly.

How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways!

2010-05-11T13:56:00.000-04:00

There's a reason I'm the Poster Child For Failed Relationships. Well, two reasons.

First, I'm crappy at relationships. Love relationships, that is. The other kind (friends, children, siblings, business), I'm pretty okay at.

But love? Nah! I'm prone to the "got along without you before I met you, gonna get along without you now" school of relating. My philosophy of marriage was probably formed by the favorite cartoon characters of my childhood (ca. 1958). About that time Albert the Alligator (in Pogo) quoted Rudyard Kipling : "a woman is only a woman but a good cigar is a smoke."

(Years later I translated this for my friend Ruth and me into "husbands come and husbands go but you can never have too many dogs." It fit both of us way too well.)

Anyway, the second reason relationships never work is that I always choose the wrong man. Wait, that would be The Wrong Man. Capitalized, bolded, italicized, underlined and in a large font.

The Wrong Man

So, what does this have to do with 2010 and Mr. Pug? Glad you asked.

On Mother's Day, Mr. Pug gave me a really lovely card, the kind that's kind of soupy and soapy, covered with little violets and other delicate and beautiful flowers, and all the words in script. You know, the kind that you scan, skim, and put aside. Nice thoughts, kindly usually, but frankly, Come On, Big Boy, Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.

(Yes, there was a really nice place where he actually wrote some flowery and personal thoughts about having been together for a quarter of a century --- a quarter of a century? Is he kidding? No, really it's .... okay, 25 years together. I'll give him that one.)

But how do you know Your Man is really The Right Man?

Because he gets your septic tank pumped, without even being asked. Just because he thinks it will make you happy.

Okay! I'm convinced. He's the guy.

Putting My Dog Where My Mouth Is

2010-05-06T10:58:00.000-04:00

Janice and Marguerite have commented about what types of clothing a dog could wear. Here's a photograph taken in 2007 of Lightning, wearing her Cat Bordhi moebius.

Sadly, Lightning is no longer with us but the moebius lives on!

She has the quizzical look of someone who's tried to understand the construction of one of Cat's socks, doesn't she?

Ravelry: 10 Shawls in 2010 Group

2010-05-05T07:00:00.001-04:00

I’m always highly suspicious when I see a “shawl” photographed on a 6-year-old child. It’s the equivalent of me photographing something around a pug’s neck. Highly annoying to the pug and not exactly the same as photographing a penny next to a clue at a crime scene for size relevance.

Yes, a pug’s neck is wrinkly and so is mine, but there the resemblance stops. And I don’t know what it’s supposed to tell me when you picture your shawl on someone 3 and a half feet tall and weighing 65 pounds.

Just a quibble, I suppose, but please refrain from using your cat or your infant grandson to model your knitted garments.

Lessons Learned at Stitches South

2010-05-02T19:39:00.001-04:00

It's hard for me to believe that, one week ago today, we were watching the Knitter's folks close Stitches South up around us. Booths were being packed, security guards were ushering last-minute shoppers out the door, and knitters from around the country were stuffing their cars and suitcases full of yarn they didn't arrive with.

An event like Stitches or SAFF or Maryland Sheep and Wool (missing you guys today!) is something to be looked toward to all year, like a long fibery gestation period, where the final result is bags of yarn, not a squawling infant. (Some of the yarn in my stash is older than my grown children, but I digress.) We wait and wait, checking off the months and days until the big event and then .... push, pant, push again and ... It's Wool! It's Needles! (Now when is someone going to invent the foldup stroller for fiber, the one you pull out of your tote bag like a tiny umbrella, so we can push our skeins and balls around in front of us, proudly showing off the new purchases to all who pass by and reach down to pat our little yarnbabies?)

And, contrary to Mr. Pug's secret worries, Stitches South isn't simply an excuse to buy yarn. It's a Learning Experience, a Foray into the Knitting Community, an opportunity to Explore Trends in Fiber. The shopping is simply a side effect like ... well, like that condition that lasts more than four hours if you take a little blue pill. A side effect with benefits. (That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.)

As for the Learning Experience, I took three classes and, yes, I learned from the teachers but there's more to it than that. First, Stitches was an opportunity for me to assist at the registration desk and welcome participants to Atlanta. Plus, it's always a temptation to sign up for many more hours than you can actually hope to survive but, as an experienced knitting event-goer, I've learned that ugly lesson the hard way. At a certain point, major blood vessels in your brain start to explode like Dollar Store fireworks and the next thing you know, you can't remember your dog's name, much less that amazing technique to make knitted jewelry out of Chinese takeout boxes.

(As for that technique, first remove the little wire handle thingies, run the boxes through a cross-cut shredder, mix all the pieces together in a giant vat of llama saliva and spit splice the whole thing, then .... oh, never mind. This is probably why the Knitter's folks keep rejecting my emails!)

First I took a great class on entrelac from Gwen Bortner. I've taken entrelac classes before -- in fact, when I moved to Atlanta in 2001 I took a class at Cast On Cottage and actually made a lovely Noro vest that never, ever, even for one minute, fit me and now makes a fabulous wall hanging. But over the years, I haven't used the technique much and I wanted to take a class with Gwen and, there you have it! Anyway, very enjoyable class, a very skilled teacher, and a great, truly fabulous, handout. There's a slim chance that I might actually remember how to do it again, she was that good.

Then ... OMG! Jewelry with Betsy Hershberg. Let me say it again ... OMG! We made little knitted and beaded beads--that's not a typo--they were beads wrapped in beads and used as beads. I don't know what could be more fun than that! Now it also turns out that they're somewhat fiddly to make ... okay, they're a lot fiddly ... and I'm not so much a fiddly person. But you only need 9 for a necklace and I've already got 2, so ... it's SO do-able, if, say, I break my leg in three places tomorrow and have to sit in one place for weeks at a time surrounded by ribbon yarn, beads and DPNs. But completely do-able. But not if the docs give me good drugs. Then all bets are off.

But Betsy is wonderful--she's the person I want to be, sort of Hot Grandma with spiky hair and big funky jewelry and psychedelic readers. Definitely got a little of that '60s thing going! And I also learned that when you forget your DPNs, the person from Tennessee sitting next to you who loans you a set might be really fun and a friend for life. (Third eye, Lindy719!) We also learned that there's always one loud person in the group who thinks they should be teaching the class. Oh, well.

Finally, Jane Slicer-Smith. Okay, this was what I was there for. Yes, yarn, yes, camaraderie, but Knitting on the Barbie? Yeah, baby!

I missed the opening day ceremonies which everyone said were wonderful, but my class on Sunday morning was terrific. Not so much technique, but more like inspirational and design-oriented. We learned which designs will look really fabulous on you if you're 6' tall and thin as a rail and which ones will flatter you ... or me, for that matter, if you're tall and a little lumpy. Or a lot lumpy. Turns out her swing coats are designed for women like myself for whom the term "60s Hippie" doesn't just refer to our time in a VW bus spray-painted with peace signs. The swing style distracts from the "hippie" aspect and swirls around them.

But she also talked about changing needle sizes to create the swing look (or to widen or narrow a more traditional cabled area or such) and to create more strength at the top of the garment where it hangs from your shoulders. Who knew?

And I don't want to say I was inspired by Jane but check out the picture on the right--the first five squares of a Swagger vest from her book Swing, Swagger, Drape.

And just to keep you wondering, I'll tell you that once I finish this tier (28 squares), the whole thing gets turned upside down and then the next tier (the bodice) gets picked up from that bottom edge. Didn't I say she was amazing?

In Which I Attempt to Buy Yarn

2010-04-30T14:06:00.001-04:00

So my “core” group at work went out today for lunch, a burger shop across the street from A Store Which Will Not Be Named. I was salivating just looking at it and it wasn't all about the burgers. After lunch, the rest of them went to one of the other little shops on the block so I went to ASWWNBN.

Front table: tiny cotton sweater in gorgeous summer colors (1 or 2 skeins required, depending on size) with the pattern beside it. That’s all that was on the table—one pattern--the display pattern--and several piles of the yarn in different colors. Very feng shui, if you ask me.

Perfect little shrug for Ruby. Cool. What the heck? Make one for Isabelle and Emily too, while I’m at it. (Did I mention I just bought yarn at Stitches South and don't really need any more but .... it IS yarn we're talking about and I'm relatively helpless in its presence.)

I pick up two skeins (coral if it matters, which would be beautiful with Ruby's blue eyes) and ask one of the two people behind the counter (no one in the store but them and me): “Where will I find this pattern? Or is this your last one?”

“Don’t know – you need to look in the patterns.”

“Okay—where are they?”

(Pointing) “Over there, in those binders.”

(Rifling through binders) “Okay—hmmmmm, there aren’t any of these patterns with the other children’s patterns. Do you have more?”

“Nope.”

“Okay—so you don’t have any copies of the pattern on display with all that yarn?”

“Guess not”

“Okay—thank you for your help. Good bye.”

Did I mention there were NO other customers in the shop?

Well, poot! I tried.

Irreconcilable Differences

2010-04-29T17:18:00.000-04:00

First, for the record, I am in love with ... nay, impassioned by ... Malabrigo sock yarn. All Malabrigo sock yarn. I don't think I've found the color yet that doesn't make my throwing finger itch to cast on a sock. Any sock. All socks.

My most favorite used to be Archangel. Archangel has a mixture of all those reds that call my name with little hints, glints even, of gold. Fabulous. Truly like an archangel at sunset.

After that, Tiziano. Deep, vibrant, screaming blood red.

Finally [drum roll, please] Botticelli. Botticelli Red, to be exact, but, to be exact, it's not exactly red. More like red wine with a little soda. So, like a Renaissance wine spritzer.

Or the color of the pinky-red in the painting above. (And by the way, yes, that DOES look a little like the Stitches South slumber party in the lobby of the Waverly Hotel last week, but without the bunny slippers.)

In fact, Botticelli-color. A color that should be in a stained glass window of the Virgin Mary in a magnificent Italian cathedral.

Okay, I'm done. You get it. I love this yarn. (Are you seeing a trend? Why do I keep buying red sock yarn? Why did I buy Sedona by Lisa Souza for a pair of socks and Blackberries, the color of a squished blackberry on your hand on a a hot summer day, also by Lisa Souza, for a shawl? Could it by any chance relate to my mother's admonition that "nice girls don't wear red"? Nah, surely not.)

So, why, why, why, doesn't Botticelli want to be a sock?

First, I tried a lacy toe-up sock from Wendy Johnson's first book. No go. Frog.

Next, Nutkin, toe-up. Whoops, heel's too tight. Frog, reknit with more stitches on the instep.

Nutkin, more stitches. Whoops, cuff's too tight. Frog, reknit with more stitches on the cuff.

Nope, not working.

Botticelli's showing its age by this point. The yarn, like the knitter, is showing a little fraying around the edges.

Last night, cast on a pattern from Wendy's new book. (Rosebud, if it matters.) No, no, no.

Sivia's Cherry Blossom pattern. No, nein, nyet.

I don't think Botticelli wants to be worn on the feet. Maybe it wants to be a shawlette. Hmmmm. We'll see.

In the meantime, I'll just hold it close to my face and purr.

Goodbye to a New Friend, Hello Again to an Old One

2010-03-23T11:45:00.000-04:00

Reading a book is a little like knitting a project ... sometimes the anticipation is even more pleasaurable than the actual event.

You know ... you see a project somewhere ... a sweater or a scarf or a shawl ... and you can't rest until you've bought the pattern, read it 'til it's ragged, bought the yarn, wound it into balls, found the needles or ripped them out of another project, and cast on. Then you knit 'til your hands bleed and then ... it's done. Now what?

I've been waiting and waiting to get my hands on the audiobook version of An Echo in the Bone, #7 in the Outlander series. My library ... no, forget it, I can't even call what my county has a library ... the library to which I have a paid membership doesn't have it. It's not on Audible. Yes, I have the book but it weighs a ton and no, I don't have it for the Kindle. (And I understand the Georgia state troopers frown on finding drivers hurtling down I-75 with a hardcover book open on the steering wheel.)

So when my wonderful friend Debra offered to let me listen to her library's copy, all 40 discs of it, I jumped at the chance.

For the past two weeks, I've been hanging out in my car, hanging on every Scottish burred word. These books make me remember I'm part Scot and when I listen to Davinia Porter read them I'm all, 100%, Scot. Nothing else. My blood runs plaid for the time the book is playing. And this last one ... no, not the last one, the latest one ... well, most of it takes place during the Revolutionary War in the area where my own ancestors were fighting it (on both sides!)--Ticonderoga, Saratoga, Long Island. For the past two weeks, I've felt like I was truly home, and surrounded by family.

And now I'm done. It's finished. Kaput!

Luckily, Jamie and Claire are apparently NOT done. There will be another book ... there has to be.

What will I do 'til then? Well, this morning I put Outlander in the CD player. It's the only one that I own except in MP3 form, and I guess I'll start over.

But ... sigh.

I Am Alive!

2010-03-14T12:09:00.001-04:00

That probably sounds a little dramatic to you. Well, not if you're a Diana Gabaldon Outlander fan, of course. Then you know it qualifies as a literary reference, if somewhat paraphrased.

But darn it, it feels like I'm barely alive, but slowly coming back from the dead. So bear with me.

It's been an ... unusual ... couple of months. Actually the whole year, all 2.5 months of it so far. And I'm trying not to obsess on the fact that the Ides of March is tomorrow ... just have to live through the Ides, man! (And try not to think I've made a hideous grammatical error ... Ides is singular in this case.)

So, first there was the whole Mr. Pug health thing, which I think is an ugly blot on our memory at this point, but otherwise no prob for the moment. Well, except for the fact that he's become more focused on his health, to the point that we actually drank decaf coffee for a couple of weeks before we both agreed we'd rather be dead than drink that stuff on a regular basis. In reality, we each drink only one cup of coffee in the morning, maybe two on a lazy weekend, but not enough to make ourselves totally miserable over. He's still drinking no-caf Diet Coke and more power to him but I'm not traveling that route with him. It's Full Power Diet Pepsi for me.

Then there's work. I wear four or five hats at work and one of them is Information Manager, so there's always a lot of work at the beginning of the new year to pull together all the EOY reports. And March marks the first month in which our licensing authority (Georgia Department of Human Resources) may show up on any Monday to do an unannounced weeklong inspection of the whole facility, including buildings, records, kids, etc. Just in case we needed some more stress, this March was the date set for our every-three-year survey visit from our accrediting organization, CARF. And we're a pretty well run organization but it's an opportunity to show everyone that we're really special. So you can imagine that we've all been running around like chickens with our heads off putting together documentation binders, dotting i's and crossing t's, and spit polishing the units. It was my first CARF inspection so I put in several 7-day workweeks making sure my area sparkled since at least 60% of the standards relate to my areas of responsibility (safety, consumer advocate, corporate compliance, data management, data from persons served, etc.).

Whew! CARF has come and gone. We're still waiting for DHR but that already seems modest in comparison.

But, a lot of work. Then there's family. Grandson Cole turned 17 in February and next grandson Brandon turned 15 a week later. That meant a road trip to Virginia, with a car full of people who couldn't wait to see Cole. (Well, I wanted to get my hands on him because it's been awhile, but since he's so grown up I tried to be a little restrained ... probably not as restrained as a 17 year old would like but I did my best.)

That's Cole in the middle with grandson Brandon to the left and grandson KC to the right. (youngest grandson Cooper stayed home ... not quite old enough for me to do 12-hour trips in the car with yet ... I do have some limits.)

While we were there, we went into DC for a day which was a very nostalgic trip for me. After all, I spent the first half century of my life there and it was fun and a little weepy to see all the old sights. One thing I DO NOT MISS is the traffic. Hellacious, and definitely a good competitor for Atlanta's traffic.) That's the White House in the background though it's not too visible. Granddaughter Kerrigan is peeking around Daughter Jen. Anyway, after walking around the monuments and eating one of those fabulous vendor hot dogs that's been boiled in God-Only-Knows-What but is not to be missed, we felt our day had been well spent.

But my final souvenir from that trip? KC's cold. Thanks, big guy! I guess that's what you get when you have a 10-year-old who still wants to snuggle.

But I've been sick all week. And, going back to the fact that we now know that Mr. Pug dodged a bullet and a bypass, it feels a bit whiny to complain about anything so prosaic as The Common Cold. So, I've been going to work, holding my hand over my face, not shaking anyone's hand, eschewing my knitting groups, and not complaining.Much. But I suspect that all my whoofing and hacking and groaning have given away my secret ... I've been Totally Miserable. In fact, yesterday I slept all day. Yes, about 22 hours off and on.

And today, still whoofling a little but basically, I Am Alive!

Now to get back to knitting. It's about time!

Avatar Schmatavar

2010-02-22T16:38:00.000-05:00

Okay, I guess I'm officially old. No, make that Old, with a capital O.

I didn't love Avatar.

I didn't hate it ... I just didn't ... love it.

First off, those dumb plastic 3D glasses hurt my eyes and I had a massive headache when I left the movie theater. They're obviously not meant for those of us with less than 20-20 vision. In my case, they had to fit over my regular glasses and that just didn't work--it left little areas on the periphery that weren't 3D and were uncomfortable and distracting.

And this must be the coming thing because fully half of the previews of upcoming movies were in 3D--Alice in Wonderland is the only one I remember. I mean, Johnny Depp is HOT but definitely weird and he's no less weird when he's standing in the foreground of an animated background with hair flying in all directions.

And it freaked me out a little that, although the movie theater had signs posted everywhere that said they 'sterilize' their 3D glasses before they reuse them, I watched the teenage 3D dispenser guy handing out glasses from the same bucket he was putting the used ones into. Kind of like drinking out of a stranger's coffee cup. Frankly, I want dinner and a few drinks before I share that much with someone I don't know again.

But back to the movie. Here's the plot: It's 2154, and a young disabled Marine is going to the planet Pandora to participate in a scientific experiment, one in which he'll be the mindforce behind an avatar that will move among the native Pandorians (?) without being noticed. Yes, he's going to transform through sleep from a paraplegic humanoid into a 10 foot tall blue guy with a tail. But the important part is: he'll have working legs and he'll be able to run and jump and stand up to brush his teeth. Maybe that's worth being blue for.

And, of course, there's an evil military security type and a corporate goon who just wants to rape and pillage the environment to get control of a rare element hidden deep in the ground. To get this element he's going to have to bulldoze the civilization of Pandora, which is based on respect for the environment. The center of power is inside a huge tree. And, also of course, there's a girl--she's 10 feet tall and blue too but when his tail and hers meld, virtual fireworks explode.

Anyway, you know where it's going to end, right? With a huge computer-animated battle with the Pandora people and various amazing other creatures vs the military types. And really, once you've seen one or a dozen of those movie scenes, whether the battle's led by Mel Gibson in a kilt or Bruce Willis on a motorcycle or Brad Pitt in a toga, you know how it's going to end.

Trouble is, it was Fern Gully all over again. Don't remember Fern Gully? Well, you probably didn't have a toddler grandchild in the mid-90s. I watched videos with those kids until I thought my brain would fall out of my head and FG was one of the all-time favorites. We probably watched it literally hundreds of times.

It's the story of a human who falls in love with a fairy who lives in a magical tree of fairies. The whole fairy life is all about love for the environment and respect for Mother Nature and all that. And there's a bunch of evil humans who want to bulldoze the tree to get control of the land. Of course, there's a big battle between the fairies and the magical creatures and the corporate yahoos who want to bulldoze their tree. Sound familiar? Yeah, I thought so.

Finally, this movie is L-O-O-O-N-N-G-G. I thought it might never end. I thought I'd be tall and blue by the time I left.

Sad to say, for the last hour of the movie I just kept thinking "now wouldn't that blue make a great sweater? Or socks? Or a shawl? Where can I get that color?"

Okay, I'm Old. I admit it.

Valentines Day Update

2010-02-14T09:44:00.001-05:00

Mr. Pug came home from the hospital yesterday after getting his third stent, this one all the way in the back. It was a day of delays as the procedure was postponed for emergencies. In the end, all went very well and he's home today, surrounded by happy pugs. (Lulu refuses to sleep when he's gone for the night, meaning that she took one look at him, gave him a big kiss, and went to sleep.)

So, since there's no drama, I thought I'd comment on The Day:

How You Know You've Been Together A LO-O-O-O-O-NG Time:

You pick up your Valentines flowers together at Sam's (where you went to buy chicken for the dogs). (Him: Oh, honey, what color do you want for your flowers? )
You forgot it was Valentines Day because you're supposed to be at The Mountain knitting with friends and because you've been hanging out at the hospital for days. Whoops!
You pick up your Valentines card on the run at Kroger. (Me: Oh, honey, while you're shopping I'll run to the card rack.)
The card you pick doesn't have anything at all to do with him but it does have a great picture on the front of PUGS.)
But it's the Perfect Card and you can't wait for him to see it because he'll think so too.
You spend Valentines Day doing the taxes.
You can't print out the tax return because he's put the power cord for the printer somewhere REALLY safe.
But it's all okay because you're doing it together.

Happy Valentines Day, Mr. P.

I'm a Contented Knitter

2010-02-05T15:51:00.000-05:00

So, have you taken the Knitting Personality Test yet?

It's very short and I found the possible answers in the drop-down menus surprisingly unsatisfying--like Goldilocks, I found it hard to find the one that was "just right."

But, here I am, The Contented Knitter:

You are to be envied as the happiest of knitters. You knit for the enjoyment of it. Whether it's the satisfaction of making a jumper for yourself or the pleasure of making a gift for a friend. Knitting is a relaxation. You don't get overly worried about learning new techniques. (Yup! Still can't do Fair Isle or Intarsia--and I don't care!)

You tend to lack confidence in your abilities and will often stick to a tried and tested pattern rather than try something new. (Oh, like that's the reason I knit the same sock over and over and am afraid to try an actual garment? Oh!) Remember that your favourite patterns were new once. Beware of getting stuck in a rut, especially when you knit for other people. (No problem here--I never knit for others--remember that "lack of confidence" thing?) A good knitting primer would be ideal for boosting your confidence, especially something which combined the theory with suitable projects. (Which could explain why my favorite books are still the Maggie Righetti's.) Something like Sally Melville's Knitting Experience series would be idea. (Well, except for that Einstein Coat!)

If you want to branch out a little why not try felted knits? This will add a new dimension to your knitting. There are many felted knits that require nothing more than basic knitting skills and a washing machine. (Actually, I'm always attracted to felting but am basically too insecure to do much with them--I prefer things that are more exact and predictable. I really don't want to knit a bag the size of a two-bedroom apartment and then not know what size it will end up.)

So, bottom line: it's pretty Spot On. I have been knitting for 40+ years but stick to projects that are easy for me to understand and don't require too much stress and strain on the old brain. When my friends dive into new techniques, I find myself on the sidelines knitting that same old toe-up sock.

But let's face it: You just can't beat being "envied as the happiest of all knitters."

So, who are you?

Ten Comments on Ten Shawls in 2010

2010-02-01T09:45:00.000-05:00

So, how many of you are participating in the Ravelry group knitalong called "Ten Shawls in 2010"? The idea, which is remarkably obvious if you read the title, is to knit ten shawls this year, and to document your progress as you go. Of the ten, eight must use 250 meters of yarn and two must use 500 meters of yarn.

And here's where I am with the whole concept:

Flickr is not your friend, or at least not mine. Every posted completed object must have a photo, the photo must come from Flickr, and though I've used Flickr many times in the past to post photos into forums, this time it took me days and days to get Flickr and Ravelry to communicate.
When they say “shawls,” what they very often mean is “tiny, lacy scarves” or "things that sit around your neck and make you sweat." Many of them are "shoulderettes." Maybe these women’s shoulders are just substantially smaller than mine.
Many are made from fingering or worsted weight yarn. A worsted shawl just sounds hot and heavy and my experience with Saroyan, which is lovely but hot and heavy, proves this. My problem with this is that I typically buy worsted in amounts for a garment (i.e., 10+ skeins) and sock/fingering in amounts for a pair of socks (i.e., 1 or 2 skeins). The amounts do not compute for a shawl. This means the yarns in my stash that might be suitable don't have enough yardage or (in the case of the worsted) too much yardage.
HOT and HEAVY used to be a good thing, and something to strive for, not to mention something that has resulted in a very spotty marriage history, but not so much these days.
These folks have nothing else in their lives, obviously. Some of them have already posted three or four January shawls, and not only the little bitty scarfy things--some are actual shawls.
Some of them are really beautiful--Haruni, Aeolian, Bitterroot come to mind.
Some are so ugly you have to wonder why, why, why.
I have enough yarn in my stash to knit at least a dozen shawls this year without ever buying another yard of yarn.
Odds are, I'll still buy more yarn to knit lace. Laceweight and fingering weight.
The odds on me finishing even one more shawl/scarf/stole in 2010 are minuscule.

So, which one are we starting next? I'm thinking Haruni.

There's a Group For That

2010-01-30T17:41:00.001-05:00

Is it my imagination or is it silly that the new iPad has 140,000 applications (or "apps" as we technorati call them)? And by the way, it doesn't make phone calls or take pictures.

Can you say overload?

Or maybe I'm just jealous because I don't have an iPhone or an iPad or anything at all i, except my iPod which half the time doesn't work for me. (And, as my grandchildren continue to remind me, it's second or third generation ... Not The Latest Kind, So Why Bother Anyway?)

Yes, I know that three year old children can operate an iPod, but I can't.

I guess that means I'm NOT a technoratous. Oh well.

But speaking of apps and such, Ravelry now has some 600,000+ members and there is a group for almost anything you can think of.

There are groups for knitting groups in towns you've never heard of in states you're proud to have avoided for your entire life. And groups for shops in those towns, each one proudly waving their six members. (That sounds sort of obscene--waving members, ewwww!-- but it wasn't meant that way.)

Of course, there are groups for people knitting a specific pattern or knitting everything by a certain designer or using a yarn that is Better Than Any Other, I Promise You!

And there are groups for virtually any TV show you might follow, or actor, or vampire wannabe, or anything else that interests you.

But today I stumbled across a group for knitters who support finding a woman who, it is widely assumed, has been killed by her husband in Utah.

Now, I support finding this woman as much as anyone else. In fact, I'd be royally ticked off if there was a group of people anywhere that DIDN'T support finding her.

And, I would probably join a group supporting torturing her husband until he told where the body was if it was available. But having a knitting group for a dead woman (or a Presumed Dead Woman) smacks of the "in memoriam" things that bereaved people pay to put in the newspaper on the anniversary of their loved one's death. Like, "it's been a year since you left, Danny, and we miss you every day...."

And this all takes a little willing suspension of disbelief. First, are there newspapers in the Great Beyond and does Danny subscribe? Because here in Atlanta, our newspaper is definitely going to hell in a handbasket and I hope no one expects Danny to get it throughout eternity. I'm pleased when it shows up in my driveway for one more day, all six pages of it.

Does he read the paper every day, or only on the anniversary of his Big Day? Does he subscribe to the newspaper on his Kindle? For god's sake, doesn't he have anything better to do for all of eternity than hang out reading the obituaries section of the newspaper?

Which brings me back to the woman in Utah. Does this imply that (a) one of us killed her or knows where her body is or (b) we know the husband and maybe we can persuade him to tell all by knitting him a sock or a nice cabled sweater?

What does any of that have to do with knitting?

Never mind--it's the power of the Social Networking Site. Maybe if enough Ravelers post enough about this woman something good will happen.

Or maybe we just need to go find the husband, like 600,000+ villagers using knitting needles as pitchforks. Now there's a group I could join!

Yes, I'm Still Knitting ... What About You?

2010-01-24T15:48:00.000-05:00

Saroyan is finished. It feels wonderful--how could it not, being made of Malabrigo Worsted? But what was I thinking?

This is a smallish shawl--a scarf really. It's narrow, about 12 or 14 inches at the widest part, and about 66 inches long. So, on someone, a shoulderette or I guess "shawlette" is the new word. On me, definitely a scarf.

Okay, so it feels wonderful, and looks good and was highly satisfactory to knit--the lace edge was fun and easy to memorize.

But ... I hate having anything around my neck.

Let's be honest. If someone wanted to give me an exquisite gold necklace from Italy that weighed what this piggy weighs, I'd find a way to wear it, and be highly grateful. But yarn ... and Malabrigo worsted at that ... it's hot. Not itchy, just hot.

So, once I get it blocked, it will go into the box to be set aside for this year's Christmas gifts. Or pulled out if I go to Utah during snow season.

Any way you look at it, it's a Finished Object and that's never a bad thing.

Also OTN:

The ever-present sock, this one from Opal yarn from the stash. And, by the way, I'm pretty used to my wild socks, and you probably are too. But I knit with a new (to me) group of knitters out here in Pug Country (which some of my friends call, not too affectionately, East Alabama), and two of them visibly flinched when I pulled out the sock.

"Oh, my!" one said, shielding her eyes. "That's really ... bright ... isn't it?"

"Whew!" said the other. "What are those colors anyway?"

Answer: fuschia, orange, and purple, of course. Thanks Opal Neon!

And, finally, the ubiquitous multidirectional scarf:

I bought two skeins of Koigu and thought it would be long enough but I had to break down and buy one more skein the other day to make it a wearable length. Thanks to Cast On Cottage for putting it aside for me.

So the socks and the scarf are my car knitting ... the stuff I do when I wait in the ATM line at the bank or in Atlanta's lovely traffic. But I guess this means I need to pull myself together and get back to the sleeves on my patchwork jacket if I think I'm going to wear it to The Mountain in three weeks.

Ain't We All Amazing?

2010-01-22T15:37:00.000-05:00

I got the nicest comment on one of my posts calling me "an amazing woman."

And, while I was ever so pitifully grateful that SOMEONE, somewhere, thinks I'm amazing, I know in my heart of hearts that I'm not.

Or, more to the point, that we all are.

When I look around at the women I know, we're all pretty darned amazing. We manage jobs, and houses, and spouses, and children, and grandchildren, and even our own parents, and somehow we manage to fit knitting and friends in too.

Now, mind you, the women of previous generations managed most of those things, too, but I don't think they had nearly as much fun doing it as we do. Most of the women in my family were proud in a dour, Scottish/New England pilgrim kind of a way of the fact that they ... survived. They struggled through, with complaints never voiced but with an attitude that screamed that they were eking out a barren existence for themselves and their families against all odds. The sense of pride of accomplishment was often accompanied by a grim mouth and frown lines across the forehead.

And, by the way, we Never Air Our Dirty Linen in Public, so those women probably couldn't sit down at the local coffee shop and complain about what ungrateful rats their husbands and kids were, or that the bank was coming to foreclose on the South Forty.

That Massachusetts blood still runs through my veins and every so often I can get that cranky feeling that I'm holding the entire world on my shoulders and damn it, you better appreciate the sacrifices I've made for you!

But not too often.

Most of the time, I have a pretty good time.

Of the women I know well, most have gone through something crappy in the last year or two--a husband with a health problem, or a kid with a divorce or a drug problem, or even the death of a parent or a spouse or a sibling or their own health issues.

And, amazingly, we're all still laughing and buying yarn and knitting wild and crazy knitted objects and taking and teaching classes and reading books and playing games and, basically, just enjoying Life on Life's Terms. We sit around tables and knit together and share our successes and occasionally our failures and we don't worry too much about our frown lines.

Amazing, isn't it?

EZ was right: Knit on, with confidence and hope, through all crises.

The Lure of the Sock

2010-01-20T13:58:00.000-05:00

There’s a man on the Sockknitters List who washes his handknit socks annually. No, that doesn’t mean he wears dirty socks—it means that he has a pair for every single day of the year, never repeating. Once a year, in a sort of Mythical Ceremony of the Soap, he washes 365 pairs of socks and hangs them up to dry. Then he meticulously matches them, folds them, and puts them away for the year to come. Some time last year he posted a photo of this on his blog (the 365 pairs hanging up, side by side, dripping contentedly in unison).

I do not have 365 pairs of handknit socks.

I have, maybe, a dozen pairs in constant rotation, not counting the ones that are strictly to keep my feet warm in bed. During the colder months of the year, which here in Atlanta consist of December, January, and occasionally part of February, I wear socks most days, with an exception every so often for those days when I want to pretend to a level of professionalism at work.

I’ve never had a job before where I could wear corduroys or wool slacks with socks most days. Before I came to Atlanta, I had a suited kind of professional life, and, of course, I was considerably … shall we say, younger. I wore panty hose and heels at least five days a week. (I don't think anyone wears panty hose any more--they've gone the way of the Playtex rubber girdle, thank god! It's Spanx or nothing, these days.)

Even when I worked as a real estate appraiser, I worked much of my career for a man who wanted a certain level of professionalism. He used to insist that his female appraisers (well, I was the only one at the time) wear a dress or skirt, sort of like the good old days when girls all wore skirts to school. (I tell this to my granddaughters every so often, just to frighten them with the horrors of the good old days, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and we had to run to escape from them wearing skirts, stockings with a garter belt, and stiletto heels.)

And, in those heady days of real estate appraisal, I climbed fences, jumped creeks, and crawled up muddy hills as I pursued lot lines. I even climbed down from the second floor deck of a townhouse once--the door to the inside had slammed behind me and locked me out there.

And weather was not a consideration—a lady wore a dress. My final day under those rigorous rules came the day I inspected an older house in Vienna, Virginia. As I wandered through the house, which I already knew would not meet any of the rather lax (in those days) Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac standards for a mortgage, I felt a tingling sort of a sensation on my legs. I ignored it but had one of those nagging suspicions that Something Was Not Right.

When I finally looked down, my legs were covered with teeming fleas. They had crossed the knees and were sprinting for ... well, never mind. Let's just say it looked like I was wearing black tights. I ran outside, grabbed my state-of-the-art 12 pound car phone attached to the dash, and called my boss with two messages: (1) if he wanted that house appraised, he better get his butt over there himself and (2) I’d be wearing slacks from that day forward. He arrived shortly thereafter, finding me standing in the street still shooing vermin off my legs, and acquiesced immediately to the new rules.

Anyway, back to the socks. I love my socks for many reasons: warmth and coziness, of course, but also the pleasure of looking down at my clogged foot and seeing what the fashionistas call “a pop of color” or maybe an intricate lacy pattern. But I could buy socks that gave me those things.

No, I knit socks not for warmth or beauty but for the pleasure of the process. The process of knitting itself, of course, which challenges the mind and stills it at the same time, and the process of seeing those stitches turn into a garment in a surprisingly short period of time. But the whole thing is hard for people who don’t knit, or who don’t knit socks, to understand.

So here’s the conversation I had on Monday, sitting in the cardiac surgery waiting room:

Me: (knitting along on a toe up sock, Opal yarn if it matters, magic loop)

Other Man: Wow! This surgery thing is taking a long time.

Me: Yup.

OM: There’s nothing to read here.

Me: Nope.

OM: I can’t stand this TV show and I can’t change the channel.

Me: Nope.

OM: What do they expect you to do here anyway?

Me: I couldn’t say.

OM: I can’t stand much more of this.

Me: Mmmmm …

OM: I mean I’m losing my mind.

Me: I can see that.

OM: What are you doing?

Me: Knitting.

OM: Yeah, my mother crocheted too.

Me: Uh, huh. This is knitting.

OM: Oh. What are you making?

Me: It’s a sock (holding it up).

OM: Oh. Can’t you buy those?

Me: Yes, but …

OM: I mean, they’re, what? About half a dozen pairs for five dollars?

Me: Probably, but …

OM: I bet your husband thinks you're crazy, right? You could buy socks at WalMart. Or won't he let you buy them?

Me: Well, no, actually he …

OM: I’d let my wife buy them. Actually, she could buy them with her own Social Security check. Isn't that amazing? She never worked a day in her life after we got married, just stayed home with the kids, and she gets a check. Damned socialist country!

Me: Yes, well, I …

OM: These people must be crazy! There’s NOTHING to do here while you wait. What are we supposed to do while we wait, huh?

Me: Uh, huh.

So, I ask you … who’s the crazy one?

Two Down, One To Go

2010-01-19T05:10:00.000-05:00

Thank you to each of you who have asked about Mr. P and his status. He's fine and we appreciate your concern.

The heart cath revealed three blockages (and one "iffy" one) in his heart. Two stents were inserted in two of the blockages and he'll have to go back and have one more done in about 3 or 4 weeks. It was a relatively simple procedure, as such things go, and went well.

I won't say he was a happy bear all day because it's hard to be happy when you have to lie completely flat for four hours in the ICU while your TV is stuck on CNN coverage of the Haiti situation. He was a tad ... er ... grumpy, to tell the truth.

I just kept knitting, on the ubiquitous multidirectional scarf (all the in the right direction, thank you) and on an Opal toe-up sock. An annoying monitor beeped loudly every 7 seconds, relentlessly. He complained. I knit.

By the time grandson Jake showed up in the evening, he was sitting up, fed, combed, color back, and in almost every other way, Mr. Pug As Usual. I went home. My work was done.

Altogether, a good day.

Thank you again for caring.

Mr Pug Update

2010-01-16T23:40:00.001-05:00

Mr. Pug continues to languish in the hospital, surrounded by books and magazines and with the TV going full-blast-all-the-time. I suppose that's every man's dream, to have full control of the remote and no one to tell him to change the channel or lower the volume. His roomie went home on Friday night as did, apparently, 95% of the other patients in the hospital, and so he's, temporarily at least, The King Of The Remote. (I can't remember--is that what Wendy Johnson calls her SO? If so, I apologize, Wendy. Go knit a sock and let it go--it's only temporary. Once he gets home, I take over!)

Question: So, if they're all gone, why isn't there a visitor chair to be found ... anywhere on the second floor? Did the departing patients all take them with them? Are visitors chairs like every other commodity in the hospital, personalized and disposable? Is there a locked bin somewhere in the alley, chock full of visitor chairs that were contaminated by previous visitors?

Anyway, to update, he's stuck there waiting for a procedure on Monday (a heart catheterization, to be exact).

In fact, we got to watch a video about this procedure yesterday because apparently that's how medical education works in hospitals these days. I asked for more information about the procedure (because Mr. Pug had told me they were doing "a heart thing") and here's what happened:

Nurse's aide -- "oh, no, I don't know nuthin about that ... I'll get the nurse" (Okay, I'm fine with this--she's not paid to dispense medical information.)
Nurse -- "I've got this video right here. Oh, and this brightly colored, double-sided handout with a colorful drawing of your loved one's innermost organs."
Doctor X -- "I'm Doctor [fill in the incomprehensible foreign name] and I understand you have a question. I can't tell you anything because I'm the hospital doctor, not the cardiologist. Nice to meet you." (And ... you do ... what?)
Nurse -- "I'll just turn on this video and let you watch it."
[Cue to 5 minute video seemingly designed to explain a relatively complex medical procedure in which your heart could spontaneously combust to a five-year-old who's accustomed to getting her information from The Wiggles. Apparently, the loved one's innermost parts DO resemble a cartoon and are, in fact, animated.]
Nurse -- "They use this wonderful local anesthesia that keeps you awake and participating and it's really wonderful and I don't know if I can stress how wonderful it is."
Me -- "Oh, yeah, Pug, we've had that before. That's the same one you had when you had the endoscopy and the one that killed Michael Jackson."
Nurse -- [leaves room]
Doctor Y -- I'm Doctor Young-and-Charming and I work with the cardio group. Everything okay? [Not waiting for an answer...] Hey, not to worry -- it'll be fine except if it isn't and then we'll tell you on Monday. Okay? Cool! See you later. Oh, and by the way, we're doing this really cool study with Johns Hopkins but we're not actually cleared to do ... uh ... bypasses ... so we usually don't. Unless we do. But not to worry. We'll send you somewhere good [within our corporate infrastructure of mega-hospitals] if we need to. But we probably won't. But if we do ... well, we'll see on Monday.

Thank God for Google!

What Would We Do Without Our Knitting?

2010-01-15T07:59:00.001-05:00

It's been a stressful week. Mr. Pug is temporarily in the hospital while his intrepid team of physicians figures out what's making his heart slow down to the pace of a lemon. So far we've heard multiple theories, each with a different solution, but no consensus. Sounds like I'll be picking him up today and then we'll wait for someone to bring us into the loop, with some future action to be identified later.

In case I sound like I'm complaining, I'm not. I'm grateful that (a) we have access to all these specialists and tests and (b) he has insurance to pay for it. We're among the very lucky ones these days.

But it's a lot of Hurry Up and Wait. And thank goodness I have my ubiquitous knitting, which is great for passing the time and starting conversations with strangers.

On Wednesday, we sped to the emergency room, at the primary care physician's directions. Sped there so we could ... wait. And wait. The triage process at this particular hospital works very well--I was really impressed--and we were obviously among the less urgent among the broken limbs and the acute head injuries and the who-knows-what that resulted in a young mother dying while we were there.

I, of course, was the only person among the 75 or so people in the room who had brought my knitting. (Well, I had a book, too, but never had to break it out.)

I was carrying the ever-present mindless knitting, in this case a Koigu multidirectional scarf. I knit, and I knit, mostly only peripherally aware of the drama going on around me.

(Sample: A young man who was probably challenged in some way since the EMTs kept talking about his "caregiver," was talking on the phone to someone in a very loud voice explaining that he had been beaten up by his roommate. "I'm unconscious and dizzy," he repeated over and over. Well, not exactly.)

At midnight we were told that Mr. Pug would be admitted and I went home. I still had to take care of the dogs and get enough sleep to get to work the following day.

But about 11 pm, I looked at my scarf for the first time since we'd gotten there.

Now talk about mindless knitting. The multidirectional scarf is one of the simplest patterns known to man (at least once someone fixed Iris Schreier's original pattern and made it knittable) and I've made several of them--less than 20 but more than 10. You simply cannot make a mistake with this puppy and it ends up looking like you did something magical because of the short rowing.

So, imagine my surprise when one of the hospital personnel, who said he was a crocheter, asked to look at the scarf and I proudly held it up and ... it looked like the letter "V" instead of the letter "I."

Somewhere between 4 pm and 11 pm, I'd just kept short rowing off the wrong side of the damned thing and now I had rather odd looking jabot or cravat.

But you know me. I wasn't about to admit that the fricking thing was a total disaster! And this kid didn't know any better--after he's a crocheter, not a knitter!

"Beautiful," said he. "I wish I could do that. It looks amazing."

"Oh, thanks," said I, thinking that "amazing" wasn't exactly the word I would have used--"spec-crapular" was more what I had in mind. "It's easy--you could learn to do this in a heartbeat!"

The minute he left the room I frogged down about 12 inches. Now it looks like a scarf again.

Thank goodness I had my knitting so I had something to do--INCORRECTLY, but I did it.

First FO of the Year

2010-01-11T20:57:00.001-05:00

Okay, now the new year is officially off to a good start. The first pair of socks of the year is finished! Mini Mochi, we love you!

Now, on to Saroyan and Patchwork Jacket.

Oh, wait, you want to know about Saroyan? And what in the world it has to do with "Bones"?

First off, "Bones." I love, love, love Kathy Reichs' books about Temperance Brennan. They are wonderful mysteries about the anthropologist known as Tempe, who splits her time between Montreal and Charlotte. (This fits into my love for regional mysteries--the kind that make you feel like you're really in the city where the story is set.)

Anyway, the "Bones" TV show doesn't have a whole lot in common with the mysteries except the name of the main character and the fact that Reichs does some of the writing and presumably makes a pile of money from it. But it's an intelligent show and one that stands on its own. It's also full of really strong women and you just can't beat that. It's the perfect show to TIVO and then knit to, preferably with a pug on your lap, if there's no football to watch. (OMG! How about those Arizona Cardinals! Woot!)

But I digress. On Ravelry (how much do we love Ravelry!) I found three wonderful (free!) patterns designed by Liz Abinante for three of the female characters. So, there's a shawl called "Travelling Woman" designed in homage to Angela Montenegro, the artist who works with Tempe. Then there are the "Temperance" socks. Finally, there's "Saroyan," a scarf inspired by Camille Saroyan, a forensic pathologist.

Make sense now? I knew it would.

The Best of Intentions

2010-01-10T16:57:00.000-05:00

I was determined that I was going to finish the Mini Mochi socks before I cast on anything new. And I swear, my intentions were pure. It wasn't my fault.

I was working on my list of things that I would really like to make this year ... yes, I know I never make anything but socks, but this year is my Garment Year. I'm determined to wear the Patchwork Jacket to The Mountain in February and I really only have sleeves to go. So, it's looking as if I might actually complete A Garment in 2010.

And that, of course, got my confidence level to the unreasonable point and I started thinking about Cheryl Oberle's Three Sisters Jacket and what would be the perfect yarn and that made me think Malabrigo. At the same time, I was watching some old Tivo'd episodes of "Bones" while I waited for football to start. Anyway, I got online to see who has Malabrigo worsted at what kind of price and the next thing you know ... I pulled out some Malabrigo from the stash and well, it had to be Saroyan.

I've completed four repeats (above is one leaf motif repeat) and it feels so good ... well, I just have to find some Malabrigo for that jacket.

Could This Explain My Lack of Productivity?

2010-01-09T10:16:00.000-05:00

Have you ever taken one of those surveys, the ones with a few demographic questions at the beginning to establish who you are and what products someone might be able to sell you in the future?

There's always a question about your level of physical activity. And the responses are always things like "walk twice a week," "run every day," "just completed a marathon."

Uh, yeah ... I always lie. Don't tell me you don't ... I won't believe you. It's like those questions about family income ... who's going to admit that they really earn somewhat less than the national poverty level? And with that level of education? What does that say about our success level as individuals? Basically, the surveyors have to be really dumb if they think we're telling the truth about those things. But I digress.

Have you ever noticed that no one ever queries the fitness benefits of knitting? After all, my hips may be ... er, overlarge ... but darn it, my wrists are incredibly flexible and my fingers are limber as all get out. Well, that might be explained by the outrageous number of hours they spend hanging out on keyboards, but you get the point.

But actual exercise? Not so much.

Now it turns out it's not my fault, and I can prove it.

That big furry thing on the left is a pugbutt. A 20 pound pugbutt. The rest should be self-explanatory: handknitted socks on feet, blue corduroy leg, rounded turquoise colored belly ... yep, that's definitely me. With a giant furry pugputt on my lap. The computer is to the left of the pugbutt, on the arm of the chair.

Oh, yeah, that other stuff? Yeah, that's yarn, part of the inventory process if it matters. My big opportunity for Task Accomplishment for the day.

I thought yesterday would be a great day to sort through yarns and get them entered into Ravelry. (I continue to delude myself by thinking that if I have it identified and labeled and entered in the Ravelry database, maybe I'll be (a) inspired to actually use it, or (b) give some of it away to a charity specializing in the yarn-challenged, or (c) be too embarrassed to buy more. So far, this methodology has proven to be flawed, but you never know when a yarn miracle could occur.)

And it's a physical job. Get up, find yarn, photograph it, sit down in chair with laptop and dive into Ravelry..

But the bottom line is that once I got settled in the chair with my laptop and the yarn that needed to be added to the list, Lucy settled onto my lap. I shifted the laptop around her, on top of her, behind her ... nope, she wasn't going to move. And I wasn't going to get anything productive done.

I had no choice ... I just relaxed into my enforced Snow Day With Pug and knit. Well, I might have played in Ravelry a little.

Not that bad a day, when you think about it. Just don't go to my Ravelry page to see my progress. You'll be sorry.

Awww ... It Looks So Pretty!

2010-01-08T11:09:00.001-05:00

Once a year, usually sometime in January, the entire city of Atlanta stops because of precipitation. Not snow--we all agree that snow is pretty and we're glad we don't get too much of it. Nope -- it's ice that stops Atlanta.

My friends and family in Virginia and Maryland have been talking to me recently about the snow they've had, and it brings back some good memories and some bad. Let's see: Snowmen (good); Broken Wrist (not so good). White Christmas (good); White Christmas if you haven't finished your shopping yet (just plain ugly).

The mid-Atlantic region just had 18-24" of snow a couple of weeks ago, depending on which area you're talking about. That amount of snow definitely has an impact on the whole area, because it generally takes a day or two to get the roads clean enough to get into work. And there's that day of cleaning the driveway, only to have the street cleaners block you back in. But basically, the street folks have been out most of the night before salting and sanding, and the snowplows are on the road immediately, and most of us are out doing errands the same day and our bosses expect us back at work the next day.

Here in Georgia we just don't get that kind of accumulation but the sight of a flake sends us all into Red Alert. Take yesterday, for instance.

Last night was our guild meeting, always held the first Thursday evening of the month. But flakes were coming. Several of us spent what seemed like hours on email debating whether to cancel the meeting. Finally, with the gravitas usually reserved for declaring a raising of the Homeland Security alert level or deciding who should play in the BCS championship game, we cancelled. Turned out to be the right decision, but it could just as easily have gone the other way -- all of us sitting at home while the first flake turned out to be the last. Definitely a crapshoot, no matter what The Weather Channel says.

And, by the way, in the South, The Weather Channel is GOD. Well, next to high school football. I know people who won't walk to the end of the driveway to pick up their newspaper without checking with TWC. I will admit to a more cynical viewpoint--I see meteorologists as closer to crystal ball gazers and less as all-knowing beings. Because I've spent too many evenings sitting home while the first flake turns out to be the last, surrounded by my stockpiled milk, bread and spare batteries.

Anyway, when I first came to the South, I scoffed at the way we run around like well-bred chickens with our heads cut off when we spot that first flake. I harkened back to Life in The North where Men Are Men and We Know How to Deal With Snow.

But the first year I was here, I almost got run off the road by a guy in a black pickup truck who slammed on his brakes in front of me, traveling on black ice. He hit another car, I steered into the skid and only hit the curb. Whoopsie!

So, a few truths:

1. We're really NOT prepared here for snow or ice. My little rural county apparently cannot afford a bag of sand. I know this because the streets outside my subdivision are a solid sheet of ice and there's not a sandtruck or even a probationer with a shovel anywhere to be seen.

2. One of the things that makes driving in snow easier is that you're driving on packed snow which gives traction. Here we don't have that luxury--it's just a thin layer of ice that freezes and thaws and freezes and thaws and becomes the Dreaded Black Ice. Not a Good Thing.

3. And, no, we really don't know how to drive in this stuff. It's hard to become an expert when you only get one day a year to practice. And that whole "drive into the skid" seems so counterintuitive. Much easier to slam on the old brakes and see how that works out for you.

Bottom line: I'm hunkered down in the house, surrounded by dogs and yarn. I've given up on going to work and I'm going to spend the day doing something really important, like Knitting. Or inventorying yarn and planning to knit. What's your excuse?

Tensile Strength ... Check!

2010-01-07T16:24:00.000-05:00

Remember when we were talking about whether Mini Mochi can hold up to wear? The second sock OTN got its first test yesterday ...

About 4 pm I was running late (to get my hair cut, if you must know) and raced out of my office to my car. As I neared the car, I saw something on the ground behind the driver's side and said to myself, "wow, that's really a pretty blue ... it's almost the same color as my Mini ... OMG! That's my Mini Mochi sock!"

There it was on the asphalt parking lot, its faithful HiyaHiya circular still in its magic loopy place. And there was the yarn stretching, stretching, stretching from the ground into the driver's side door, across the driver's side seat, and into its little project bag on the passenger side.

Not a crimp, not a tangle, not a knot. Not a dropped stitch. Not even a snag. Perfect.

It had been there since 7:30 in the morning. I guess everyone who walked past it just thought, "well, there's a half-completed sock lying on the asphalt" and none of them thought to ask whose it was. Well, they should have known whose it was ... it was still connected to the car by that unplied yarn that everyone says is so weak.

Mini Mochi, I love you!

Oh, You Wanted Details?

2010-01-02T07:35:00.000-05:00

Why didn't you say so?

Here are the Zauberball Crazy socks #1 -- see the tubular cast-off on the left? Perfect, if I do say so! Just not wearable.

But perfect! Here's the completed pair--both wearable on my more ... full-figured ... legs.

And here's Zauberball #2 -- check out the completely different hues of similar Zauberball yarns:

By the way, loving my new camera--a Nikon Coolpix 12 megapixel variety. Two of my grandchildren plus Mr Pug all got cameras, and my own little Kodak 8 megapixel had gone mysteriously missing. Okay, clearly a message from a Higher Power (that would be the Higher Megapixel Power).

Somehow the whole camera/Christmas thing got out of hand. Let's just say that, in my zeal to provide The Perfect Christmas, I bought and returned and bought and returned and bought ... and ended up with an extra camera that either needed to go back to the store or be retained by a person who had lost her Kodak. I caved ... the Nikon would be mine!

Needless to say, the minute I got the Nikon out of the box, read enough of the instructions to be able to take the first picture, and saw the stitch definition I could get with 12 little megas, Kodak reappeared from its hiding place in the middle of a pile of placemats on the kitchen table.

That, of course, was Jake's fault. If he hadn't been coming for dinner, I wouldn't have checked out that mysterious lump in the placemats until, say, March, and then I wouldn't be feeling guilty right now. Oh, well ... never hurts to have a backup.

On a slightly different subject, I'm meeting Joyce later so we can pick out buttons for a project you haven't seen ... an actual garment. More details later.

Good Start to a New Year

2010-01-01T22:26:00.000-05:00

This will be posted later tonight because it seems that using my new internet solution (T-Mobile wireless) on a big national holiday is sort of like revisiting the old dial-up days. I can't seem to upload photos to Blogger or to Flickr. (Makes me wonder why my former employer, The Big Corporation, still thinks dial-up is a viable option ... might explain the stock price!) It still beats the crappy service I was getting from Bellsouth so I'll hush my crankiness now.

Anyway, there's an old wives tale that the way you spend the change of years will determine how you spend the coming year. There was a time in my life when that would have boded for some very exciting times in the next 12 months. Nowadays, it's a little different.

At midnight I was casting on a new sock--not a new pair of socks, but the second sock in a pair started October-ish of last year. Debra gave me two lovely skeins of Mini Mochi and I knit the first sock up quickly and then ... er ... misplaced it. I unearthed it yesterday in a fit of organizational frenzy and the new sock is on the needles.

I've read several critical reviews of this unplied yarn but I have to say I really love it. It's VERY soft and I don't know what that will mean for long-term wear but I'm willing to take the risk. Beautiful!

Since last night was also the first Blue Moon since 1990 and the last one expected until 2028, the color is completely appropriate, don't you think?

And this morning I finished off two more pairs of socks--one just needed the ends woven in. That's the newest Zauberball Crazy socks, which were originally intended as a Christmas gift but which have reverted to their most deserving owner, Me, or maybe they'll go into the gift box.

And the pair completed just before those were also Zauberball Crazy, but totally different. This pair needed a little more surgery to finish them. Here's the story:

In October when Candace Eisner Strick was here she taught us several new bind-offs, including the tubular cast-off. I couldn't wait to try it on the Zauberballs on the needles and the result was absolutely gorgeous--elegant, even. I think it's the nicest looking sock top I've ever made. Unfortunately, as elegant as they were, the top would barely stretch over my heifer-like ankles. Yet, it was too beautiful to frog. A problem, no? The second sock was made with my traditional stretchy top and fit like a champ. But still I couldn't bring myself to fix the first sock.

This morning, I frogged. And let me say, not only is the tubular cast-off the most elegant of all the bind-offs, it's also the most structurally sound I've ever seen. It took the precision and patience of a CSI investigator to get it out. Anthropologists in the next century will be trying to deconstruct socks with tubular cast-offs without success. The equivalent of the knitting cockroach--can't be killed! But now it's gone, and replaced with Old Faithful (which is knit first stitch, knit second stitch, then place both back on the lefthand needle and knit together through the back loop, then repeat, using that stitch as the first stitch.)

By the way, both of my sisters are probably thinking I've lost my mind right now. I can tell this is so because of the stunned silence emanating from Arizona and Virginia, where they've both opened their Christmas packages and found ... Zauberball.

It's not exaggerating to say that I have fallen deeply in love with Zauberball, in a way heretofore reserved for Opal and Malabrigo. Neither of my sisters reads this blog, so they'll just have to wait until their curiosity gets the better of them and they ask why, why, why I sent that weird yarn to them.

Debbie has two new granddaughters so I'm sure she's not even contemplating knitting socks for grownups at this point, but eventually she has to come out of that mode and remember that she and her sons and even Caitlin need socks. And Deirdre has only recently begun to knit socks and I'm sure she's more conservative than I am.

But one day they will know The Truth and they'll be ready for Zauberball. And then they'll realize the sacrifice I made in sending Zauberball to them that I could have kept for myself.

(There's a rumor in the lace world that Zauberball now comes in laceweight. Elyse from Only Ewe and Cotton Too has ordered it but I haven't heard from her so I'm assuming it's not in yet. When it is ... oh, my!)
`

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year ...

2009-12-30T11:48:00.001-05:00

No, not Christmas! Haven't you been listening? Christmas pretty much sucks. No, it's the beginning of the new year, which is one of two chances a year to Change Your Life.

Seriously, there's the beginning of the school year, typically Labor Day. That's the time your mom takes you shopping and you get new clothes that will make you suddenly cooler and prettier and less likely to be left eating your lunch alone at that table in the corner of the lunchroom (maybe it would help if your lunch was cooler ... hmmmm), and new notebooks and writing implements that will make your grades better. I'm guessing now it also involves a new cover for your I-Phone and maybe an indigo-blue streak in your hair, but other than that I'll bet not too much has changed.

And then there's New Year's, when we all make resolutions that we don't keep.... at least I don't. I read in yesterday's paper that some insanely low percentage of people actually keep their resolutions, something like 5 percent for men and 4 for women measured over a six-month period, so at least I don't feel quite so guilty. Let's face it ... I don't feel guilty at all. Because I'm a process person, not a product person ... it's all about the resolution-making process!

But to get ready for it ... there are supplies. And those have changed over the years.

A new calendar definitely, and not those free ones that come from the charities you made the mistake of supporting last year. Let's face it, there are only so many pictures of endangered snow leopards that you can look at before you just lose all hope for humanity.

Every year I get some form of new calendar and the format has changed over the years ... first, there was the planner (preferably one of those leather-bound things with lots of indexed sections to catalog all the change areas), then a PDA (I still have two or three old dead Palm Pilots hanging out in my home office waiting for the technology to return), plus, of course, MS Outlook (on the home computer) and its printouts, and most recently, my Blackberry (which ties my personal and my work lives).

I really want ... no, NEED ... a netbook. That way I could carry every thing in my purse. And, while we're at it, I need a bigger purse.

Back in the day, my mother carried around a little spiral-bound notebook with a page for each day labeled in her meticulous handwriting. She was fond of Peacock Blue ink and the completed items were lined through with perfect control--no wavy lines for her. Her internal mental wiring might have been sparking like an electrical storm in Arkansas, but those perfect lists in Palmer script attested to a desire to keep life's tasks under control. My older daughter has inherited the list-making gene, and takes it to newer, higher levels. Over the years, her lists have been a great source of family humor:

Wake up
Brush teeth
Exercise
Shower
Comb hair
Get dressed
Make breakfast
Get kids to school
.... well, you get the idea.

And I understand it, I really do. Some days it's nice to be able to check off "wake up," because that might be your only accomplishment of note. If you can check off the first 7 or 8, maybe no one will notice that you didn't make those six dozen professionally decorated cookies for the Girl Scout troop or pick up your husband's cleaning for the fourth day in a row.

And, if you're a knitter ... and let's face it, most of us are ... or should be ... there's knitting to keep track of. Because along with those resolutions to save money and lose weight and exercise and get a new job and maybe a new husband, there are important knitting resolutions.

Like, finish all those projects that are hanging out all over your house in various stages of incompletion.

That lace shawl that you can't find the instructions for and anyway, you probably should have put in a lifeline for exactly this point, but you didn't. And do you even still like it?
The other six that you started that you really thought you might finish but ... well, you didn't.
And all those single socks that need a mate. (Why? Just wear shoes and long pants--no one will ever know! Hey, it works for Lucy Neatby ... why not you?)
And those holiday gifts that you really wanted to make but didn't.
And the baby gifts for the kids who are even now entering "to do" items in their own Leapfrog computers ("apply for college--get someone to help with the essay") and probably won't ever fit into that darling Baby Surprise Jacket you thought you were going to make for them. And let's face it, their mother would have machine-washed it anyway and it wouldn't even fit the American Girl doll now.

And, of course, there's the organizational aspect of knitting. This involves, in my case, at least, starting by finding all the fiber I've stashed around the house over the past year.

What? You don't have bags hidden everywhere with skeins of yarn that you're really, really, no, really, going to make into something ... very soon?

Liar! I know you do ... but if it makes you feel better to deny, okay.

And how about all those needles? If a knitting anthropologist came into my house in its current state, I'm pretty sure there would be some very direct questions about my mental state. Such as, why did she buy all those needles? How many needles does any one person need? Why are there 4", 5", 7", and 9" DPNs, all in the same sizes (0000, 000, 00, 0, 1, 2)? Did she really need bamboo, rosewood, square needles? Why would anyone keep buying long, long circular needles (mostly in the same sizes just mentioned)? Why are they still in the original packaging?

Books? Beads? Roving? Spindles?

Okay, once you've found them ... now you need to put them somewhere where you can find them. More supplies needed--plastic tubs, no, wooden shelving, no, how about those big bags that your new comforter came in? No new comforter? Buy one to get the bag!

And now to inventory all that stuff. Spreadsheets, Access databases, lists on yellow legal pads ... if you don't make lists you'll never know what you had and you certainly won't be able to find it ever again.

Oh, wait! That's why we have Ravelry, right? Okay, take the photo of the yarn, enter the information from the ballband into the database ... whoops! the ballband is lost ... is that what the dog was eating a minute ago? Oh, well ... use a guesstimate. Then try to remember what it was intended for ... hmmm, does it really matter? Surely you'll be able to find a use for 2600 yards of Cherry Tree Hill lace yarn. And does it matter anyway, since somehow it's tangled into a rat's nest? Is that what the dog was doing when he took the ballband? Why do his whiskers look like Tequila Sunrise laceweight?

Now ... see why we don't keep our resolutions? It's just way too complicated.

Quick ... It's Not New Year's Yet!

2009-12-28T08:00:00.001-05:00

Your New Year's Resolutions don't kick in until later this week. There's still time to try The Best Shortbread Cookies EVER-- my big find from the just-finished Dreaded Christmas Season. (They're so good they almost made living through Christmas worthwhile ... almost.)

Try the basic cookies--they're so rich they're like eating a stick of butter--then try the variations.

BASIC SHORTBREAD COOKIE

2 sticks unsalted butter (softened to room temperature)
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup confectioners sugar
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt

Beat the softened butter and the two sugars together until fluffy. Add the flour and salt. Press into an 8" square pan. Score into wedges, strips, or whatever shape you prefer, then chill 30 minutes. Bake 1 hour at 300 degrees. Cool, then cut along the score lines.

Variation #1:

Dip the cooled shortbread strips into melted bittersweet chocolate and then sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

Variation #2:

Make it white chocolate instead.

Variation #3:

Add 3/4 cup ground pecans into the batter. Roll into two 1" thick logs and chill 30 minutes. Slice into 1/2" rounds (or ovals) and bake 12 to 15 minutes at 375 degrees. (Watch these carefully--they spread and brown around the edges FAST.)

Share with friends or not, as your conscience dictates.

You Know Christmas Is Over When ....

2009-12-27T13:06:00.000-05:00

Woo hoo! December 27 -- we survived the dreaded Christmas. Not without scars, but we survived.

In the Pug household, you know Christmas is over when ...

The Grinch is gone and ... Snoopy's in the house!

The top tier of lights on the Christmas tree went out this morning.
Buddy and Lulu have already destroyed one of their new puggy toys that Santa brought.
Lucy is too cool to play with toys (but this isn't because it's Christmas--she's always too cool for toys).
Mr. Pug has lost the gift card he got in Charlotte.
We can't take pictures of any of the turmoil because, though we both got new cameras for Christmas, neither of us has figured out how to use them yet.
Daughter #1 has already called to say that Target won't take back the duplicate gift she got from me (a Foodsaver, if it matters) because I can't find the receipt.
Not even for store credit.
I've still got things to ship because we didn't get to Virginia ... pooh!
I don't even care because I'm so darned glad this flippin' holiday is OVER!

Whew!

2009-12-08T10:03:00.000-05:00

Have you bought a car lately? A house, perhaps? Nah, neither have I.

In fact, I don't buy cars--if we get a new car, Mr. Pug handles it because I have ~~almost~~ no patience for all the $&*# that goes on--the negotiations, the bargaining, the pleading, the getting up to walk out and leave, the begging, the re-figuring of the price, the dragging the manager out with all that faked drama, the loan process. Nope, I'll drive my cars right into the ground to avoid the whole thing.

Back in the Dark Ages, I was a realtor, and I while I loved helping folks find their dream house, I hated, hated, hated the bargaining part.

I'm one of those people my daughters would call "old school," who just want to see the sticker and make a decision: Yes, I can afford it, or No, not right now. Simple as that.

So I've been dreading the day when my cellphone contract would expire because ... I knew I would have to swim into the shark-infested waters of Telecom.

That Day Has Come.

I still thought I could escape the whole thing. I sent Mr. Pug to his carrier to have him add my cellphone to his contract and to find a solution to our internet-at-home issue. (Our internet has been down since we kicked our Bellsouth landline to the curb, and I can live with using the computer at work. Mr. P. cannot, apparently, live without internet service, although to my knowledge, he hasn't touched a keyboard at home since 1982.)

I told him what I wanted.

add my cellphone to your coverage
get a mobile broadband card and contract so we can have internet on the laptop
get a plan that saves us money over our current plan.

He called to say, "it's totally settled--I've solved the problem--in fact, I'm your Knight in Shining Armor." "Meet me at T-Mobile," he said, "so we can pick out your new phone."

Could I trust him? I did.

Two-and-a-half hours later, we left, frazzled and disheveled, beaten up by the Telecom Gods.

Do we have internet at home? Yes, we do have a mobile broadband card. I installed it last night and it works, although I have to give up my Bellsouth account.

Do I have a new cellphone? No.

Do we have a new cellphone contract, family plan, etc.? No.

And here's why:

The Promise:

We here at T-Mobile want to make your life better. No more contracts.
No ugly commitments.
Menu-driven plan that will save you hundreds of dollars a month.
You get a really cool phone that will make you feel like you're 20 years younger.
Great plans for $50 a month
Love you, man!

The Reality:

Yeah, we have a $50 plan
Well, it's really $59.99
Oh, wait that's for talk only. Oh, you want to text too?
That's $99
Oh, wait that doesn't include internet
That's $139
Plus $50 for the mobile broadband card
Plus $200 for the phone
Oh, you want a phone for free?
That requires a contract
Then your plan is $169
But your cool phone is free
Oh, $30 more a month isn't free?
Oh, and the free phone really isn't the cool one--is that okay?
That one--the Super Phone-- does cost a little extra
And, of course, there's an extra charge for using the super-cool phone--yes, an extra charge every month
And, wait did we mention the $10 a month charge if you drive a Chrysler?
And the $5 a month if your hair is gray?
And the $6.50 a month if you want to call anyone outside Georgia?
And the fact that it takes up to a week to port your old number?
And the fact that Mr. Pug apparently can't be bothered to add all the numbers up? Maybe he needs a new cellphone with a calculator.

I could get a health insurance plan through the Senate before I could get a new cellphone plan.

Oh, crap. I'll just keep my old phone, I guess, until I have the patience to go in there--without Mr. Pug--and work it out for myself.

Knittin' with the Girls

2009-11-30T12:26:00.001-05:00

Well, except for Bill, of course.

Thanksgiving with the kids was ... the usual wonderful torture. And when I say torture, I mean, of course, fingernails on chalkboard torture, Chinese water torture, toenails being pulled out at the roots torture, wearing your new heels to work torture, being held down and tickled by your big brother torture.

Needless to say, I wouldn't have missed a moment.

And of course, it wasn't really torture. It was just three days of extreme stress, and not because of the kids. It was highly stressful because I took three flipping dogs to Charlotte to celebrate Thanksgiving. (Mr. Pug was in Utah, blissfully enjoying being pugfree, although he did have to put up with his brothers.) By the time I left, I was just thankful that there were no deaths and no one went to jail.

First, the dogs usually love going in the car ... until they figure out that the car will move and then they won't be home. Usually this takes about to the end of the driveway. Then they start pacing and nosing the windows and whining softly and barking at passing cars and people and trying to nudge open the big Tupperware container of their food and barking at passing cars and looking for their water bowls.

We're not even out of the subdivision and I want to go home myself!

Anyway, by the time we got to my younger daughter's home on Wednesday, I was at my wit's end and ready to put them up for adoption. But the kids were thrilled to be with them and they were ... well, Buddy was just as thrilled. He's really a people dog and just wants to be with lots of people who will pet him and fuss over him and if they scratch his belly, well, that's just a bonus. But the girls ... let's just say they have my personality and they would have been quite happy to be able to go to their corners to read a book or knit a sock.

The good news is this: Lulu only bit one person and that was just a nip, and it wouldn't have been too serious anyway because she lost her two bottom incisors playing tug-of-war with Buddy. And I forgave her because the child in question was holding her by the ears and pushing her face into Lulu's face and, I ask you, wouldn't you have bitten her too? And Lucy nipped me, but only because Lulu jumped at her because she apparently was protecting her from the same child and Lucy got scared. And Buddy only took off running once, across several lawns, to see some people up the street who looked like they might pet him.

Can you say S-T-R-E-S-S-F-U-L?

No blood, folks! You can move along now. Nothing to see!

Oh, and did I mention noisy? OMG! These people talk all the time. I mean all the time. Yes, one of them is four and this is characteristic of four-year-olds. But what about the grownups and the over-fours? And none of them ever speak in a normal tone. Nope! They yell.

DO YOU WANT MORE TURKEY? they say.

IT'S TIME FOR BED! they say.

PICTUREKA! they say.

Shhhhhh ... my hearing was blown out by the British Invasion of the 60's and still these people are reverberating like a mudslide coming down a mountain.

By the time we left on Saturday morning, younger daughter was growling herself--apparently dogs shed. Who knew? She was muttering about the state of her baseboards and I knew it was time to go. Older daughter was out of town so she is probably just checking her baseboards out right about now, and wondering how we could have scratched her new hardwoods in the 12 hours we were at her house.

Fact is, they're not dog people. Or cat people. Or hamster, fish, or bird people. Neither of them really likes anything that sheds or poops or pees or asks to go outside to do any of those things.

So, as much as I loved being with daughters and grands, I couldn't wait to get back on the road, to spend seven (yes, I said seven--traffic on I-85 was insane) hours with three dogs doing a repeat performance of their previous pet tricks. And I was so happy to be home, in my own space, that I swore I wouldn't leave it until forced out on Monday morning to go to work. And it was so ... quiet. Blissful!

Instead, Sunday found me at Only Ewe, knitting with the girls and, of course, with Bill. Somehow the house felt really, really quiet and the car knew the way and ... there I was.

And I remembered where home is. Home is where they let you knit without asking whether you're going to make something for me, me, me, and when it's going to to be finished, and whether I could make another one, just like it, but in black and smaller and out of different yarn, and where no one wants the water bowl refilled and where no one's worrying about the state of the baseboards.

Nanowrimo-no-no

2009-11-21T13:43:00.005-05:00

What is it about me and pressure? Deadlines? Requirements? Commitments?

Yeah, I know. I suck at all of them. It's embarrassing to say, but it's true.

For instance, it's wonderful to have a blog. Absolutely freeing to know I have an open place to lay it all out, write about whatever's on my mind, without any pressure to write. Just write when I feel like it, don't when I don't.

Believe me, if someone said, Woof, You Must Write 500 Words Every Thursday, I'd be running in the other direction. Because, I guess I'm commitment-phobic.

(I'm pretty sure that Mr. Pug would agree with this. And, okay, anyone who's viewed all my projects-in-progress could have told you this as well--it's not exactly a secret after all!)

So, why, why, why did I think that this year, unlike 2007 and 2008, I would be able to handle Nanowrimo? What? You haven't heard of Nanowrimo?

Simple enough. All over the world, professional and pre-published writers (I hate the word "amateur" in this context--it makes me think of being the last child called for the team in school) commit to try to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November.

Thought I'd do it in 2007--failed. Thought I'd do it in 2008--failed. As for 2009--no chance at this point.

Let's do the math. 50,000 words divided by 30 days (remember 30 days hath September, April, June and November?) is 1,667 words a day. How difficult could that be?

And they don't even have to be the right words--the idea is to produce a first draft that you'll finalize later. The idea here is to get your novel down on paper in some form or another, or at least 50,000 words of it.

So, following the math example above, my word count for 11/20 should be about 66.67% complete, or 33,333 words. Reality: 3,088, 5.52%. Not even 10% of the partial goal. (Can you tell that I'm a data cruncher in my other life? Would you like to see the Excel graphs demonstrating my failure? Nah, I didn't think so.)

Want to hear my excuses? Again, I didn't think so.

I think I'm going to declare a new individual, personal challenge, to try to get something in written form by the spring. Then I'm going to try to get to Malice Domestic the last week of April. (This could be a stretch given that Stitches South will be here the week before--I'm going to have to save some serious moolah but at least I have a place to stay at MD--someone in my old neighborhood would put me up, I'm sure.)

But it would be put me in the DC area at Maryland Sheep and Wool time. Hmmmmm.

Okay, so work, family, holidays--those damned holidays!--pugs, work, knitting, work -- no problem!

Notice how I'm already making excuses for why I can't make the new challenge?

OMG ... Did They Say "Nether Regions"?

2009-11-20T11:49:00.001-05:00

From Eat This, Not That, under "8 Foods You Should Eat Every Day":

Spinach

It may be green and leafy, but spinach is no nutritional wallflower. This noted muscle builder is a rich source of plant-based omega-3s and folate, which help reduce the risk of heart disease, stroke, and osteoporosis. Bonus: Folate also increases blood flow to the nether regions, helping to protect you against age-related sexual issues. And spinach is packed with lutein, a compound that fights macular degeneration. Aim for 1 cup fresh spinach or 1/2 cup cooked per day.

Okay, what are the odds on finding this term in my email a day after I use it in a blog? Incalculable.

Darn you, Debra.

Reader, Writer, and Knitter, of course

2009-11-19T11:35:00.001-05:00

If I had to describe myself in a few words--not so easy for someone as wordy as me, as you know!--three of those words would be reader, writer, knitter. And, of course, parent, grandmother, dog lover, semi-spouse. Yadda, yadda. The list goes on and on.

We're all complex creatures, of course, and that's what has always fascinated me about people. When I was appraising real estate, I loved to go into someone's house and try to identify what the owner was passionate about. Most of us are passionate about something, whether it's a craft, reading, or collecting some arcane object.

(Frankly, if you're not passionate about something ... well, shame on you.)

Anyway, I'd wander through someone's personal space, all in the name of business, of course, and while I was taking notes on square footage and condition of the appliances and carpeting, I'd be checking out the shelf space. I would see the most amazing things--at least they amazed me.

Sometimes the things people collected were pretty run-of-the-mill. Pottery or a particular kind of glassware or cow creamers--yes, I do remember someone who had hundreds of cow creamers. Very Bertie Wooster, that. I saw more doll collections than you can imagine, which only tells me that someone's spending way too much time with the shopping channels. It's only my opinion, but there's something just a little creepy about all those Marie Osmond dolls staring blankly out from behind the glass cabinetry.

One time I went into a very ordinary house in the F... M ... subdivision of Herndon. House was ordinary, owner was ordinary, nothing special one way or another. Then I got to the master bedroom. Over the bed was a huge, and I mean VERY LARGE, oil painting of Fabio on horseback riding through the woods, that long shiny hair flying in the wind, teeth glistening, and a sensuous look on his face. He looked like he was coming right toward me so he could ... well, let's just say that I got a twitch in a few unbusinesslike parts. What I once heard a romance writer call "the nether regions," although I'd have to look up "nether" to see if that's an accurate use of the word.*

Once I recovered my equilibrium, I asked the owner, "uh, not to be too personal, but ... uh ... what's the deal with Fabio?" Because let's face it. I'd seen a bunch of stuff, but Fabio hanging over the bed? I don't know what I thought the explanation would be (it was before the days when we were used to hearing about erections that last more than four hours and personal lubricants), but I was unprepared for it.

Turned out, she was a romance writer. She showed me a bookcase of her books published by Harlequin Books and the oil painting was the original art for one of her book covers. She said she wasn't sure which was the greater thrill--knowing her books were being read by thousands of horny women throughout the world, or knowing that Fabio was on the cover. Well, that was in Fabio's heyday--I'm assuming that by now he's just another long-haired wrinkly old dude, but I got her meaning.

I'm digressing again, aren't I? Well, not surprising. That's what I do.

Anyway, I've been a reader since I was very young. I was an only child until I was nine, and life in those days was ... let's just say, I spent an awful lot of time alone, and I read, all the time. And reading is still a huge part of my life ... everything from the daily paper to The New Yorker to knitting magazines to novels to histories to ... well, you get the idea. I'm one of those people who reads billboards and cereal boxes and yarn ballbands and other people's blogs.

And I also write, mostly for myself, but that's okay. I'm my own best fan, so why not? And of course, I knit. Well, we knew that, didn't we?

So, who cares? What's this all about? Glad you asked!

First of all, you all know that Wednesday is Noble Knitters night, right? Yup. That's the once-a-week knitalong that makes Hump Day bearable for me. Our group has been meeting at the Barnes & Noble at the Avenue in Norcross for a couple of years now and has grown from a few people to a pretty steady 10-20 folks. It's become an oasis of knitting camaraderie in what is often a fairly stressful workweek for me, and it's pretty much what held me together when I was ... between jobs. (And, believe me, there's NOTHING more stressful than that!)

So I wasn't all that excited about having it disrupted by a book signing, even if the book was knitting-related. Because here's the ugly truth: I'm not all that crazy about knit lit. I've enjoyed the Monica Ferris stories but have been pretty disappointed by some of the others, especially that one lady who keeps claiming that, soon, very soon, any minute now, just wait, Julia Roberts is going to star in her new movie and the one who keeps telling me to find Jesus in the stitches. Frankly, I'd rather see a vampire movie.

But, it should be interesting to meet someone who's probably not too unlike the rest of us around the table, except that she's found a way to make a living doing what we do for free. (Free? Who am I kidding? We're paying for this stuff!)

And Bill and Elyse from Only Ewe and Cotton Too were doing door prizes! You just can't improve on that!

Terri Dulong was so delightful! Turns out she's a transplant from the blustery northeast to Florida, which, even if it really isn't The South in the way that Gawga is, is still southernish. She's a former RN who's written several books that most of us haven't heard of, but hit the big time with her novel about Cedar Key, FL and a series of knitting heroines.

And, needless to say, she's a Reader, a Writer, a Knitter. Yeah, yeah ... I know her book has "spinning" in the title, which is why I walked past it when I saw it on the table at B&N the other day. I mean, I'm as much of a fiberista as the next person, and I do have several spindles hanging out at home in a mug waiting to spin up something wonderful, but, nah, I'll wait for it to turn into yarn, thank you very much.

But she did show us her knitting, and unless she picked it up in a dark alley from a half-completed-knitting dealer, I assume she actually knit it. Actually, I sort of like that concept--the darkly beautiful knitter of a certain age--a redhead, of course, because they're ALL redheads--who hangs out at Michaels to get knitting wannabes hooked on that famous gateway drug, merino wool. She sells them a partially complete sock on double points so they can flash it when they go into a real yarn store and gain acceptance. Now there's a character you could build a novel around! Can she gain redemption taking acrylic to the homeless?

Back to Terri. She had some great stories, both about her life and her writing. (It was worth the price of admission just to see our own Scarlett O'Haras giggle over the way Terri said "scawf." Wow! Don't you just think it's hysterically funny when people have regional accents? Amazing!)

So, hang on to your hats for a review, coming soon, of Spinning Forward. My hopes are high--I enjoyed the parts she read to us and hearing about the book and the ones to come. And she inspired me--I swear, next year I'm going back to Malice Domestic with a manuscript to show around.

And, did I say? I met another reader, writer, knitter who's got a writing group! Woo hoo! (Hi, Cheryl!) I was floating, all the way home.

_____________________
*neth⋅er /ˈnɛðər/
–adjective
1. lying or believed to lie beneath the earth's surface; infernal: the nether regions.

2. lower or under: his nether lip.

Origin:

bef. 900; ME nethere, OE neothera, nithera, deriv. of nither down (c. G nieder), lit., further down, equiv. to ni- down + -ther comp. suffix

And I was just going to dress up like a witch ...

2009-10-14T10:56:00.000-04:00

I love Halloween. I always wear my pumpkin sweater on Halloween, unless I wear the one with the witch hitting the wall on her broom -- depends on how formal the occasion is, ya know?

But I usually confine my celebration to putting a pumpkin on the porch and buying a big bowl of candy, preferably candy that I won't want to eat. Kit Kats are good for that ... NO CANDY CORN!

But here's a church in North Carolina that really knows how to throw a Halloween party!

You've just got to love a religious body that thinks that burning the works of Mother Theresa will improve the world, don't you? Even Oral Roberts and Billy Graham are too wicked for these folks!

In case you're looking for something a little less ... frickin' weird ... you can knit your cat a witch hat. (I can tell you right now: No self-respecting pug would wear this hat, and most cats have too much dignity, but maybe ... I dunno ... an American Girl doll?)

Stamp of the Chump

2009-10-13T09:43:00.000-04:00

There's no secret to it--where men are concerned, I'm not a good judge of character. At least when it comes to spouses. My past track record speaks to this and needs no embellishment. If my heart and ... er, other parts of my body ... are involved, I can't pick 'em.

But that's only men who appeal to the ... love ... part of life.

I'm actually usually pretty good when it comes to men who don't spark any feelings of lust or love. In matters of hiring and firing and just plain sizing men up ... I'm a champ. I can spot a con man a mile away.

Even Mr. Pug agrees, although he might take issue with my statement about men and love. (Maybe I'm getting better? After all, we're still together after all these years ....)

Anyway, when he and I were in business together, we frequently disagreed about men we'd meet during the course of business. He'd introduce me to someone he wanted to hire, or someone who wanted to sell us something, and sometimes all the hairs on my body would stand up and I'd know ... he's a louse. "Get rid of him!" I'd shout. "Show him the door."

Usually Mr. P would tell me I was crazy ... until a later date when he'd admit, "whoops, hon, you were right ... I should have listened to you."

I'm also a champ when it comes to looking over my friends' and relations' spouses. When their ... love radar, let's call it ... would get in the way, I could check out the guy and know right away that the guy was a jerk. Not that anyone ever listened to me, because I'm known for my own crappy love radar when it comes to my own life. Poor judgement all the way ....

But this week, I've come to realize that my doctor radar is fatally flawed, too. At least, my Ob/Gyn Radar. Who knew? For awhile, I thought maybe it was just coincidence that there had been some ... er, failures of choice ... in my medical background. This week, all the evidence is in, and I'm Officially Unable to Select a Medical Professional.

Let's examine the evidence:

1971 - The wonderful Ob/Gyn who delivered oldest daughter is dying of heart disease, can't see me through pregnancy #2. He refers me to Bad Doctor #1. BD #1 comes with great references, is reputed to be Ethel Kennedy's doctor, has delivered some of her many children. I meet him, he has the personality of a speculum but not as warm, but seems competent. No sense of humor, but maybe that's not absolutely necessary. Then he shows up for Jennifer's delivery about an hour late, and drunk as a lord. Let's just say that no one that drunk should be trusted with a needle and thread. And less than a year later, he drives his Mercedes to Key Bridge, the connector between Arlington, VA and DC. Somewhere in the middle, he gets out and dives off the bridge, a suicide. Maybe he finally realized he was missing a personality!

1983 - Okay, I've recovered from the fact that I picked a really crappy Ob/Gyn. But now, I have a guy that I pretty much like. BD #2 is Iranian, and darkly handsome -- sort of like the hot Persian guys I used to meet at Dupont Circle in my wild youth or like the Shah before we knew he was torturing people -- and has a better personality than BD #1. In fact, he's actually kinda cute, which is probably a major warning sign in a doctor that you only see when you're wearing stirrups. Sometime that year he murders his wife, wraps her body in a quilt from their bed, and puts her body into the trunk of their Mercedes, and parks her and the car at Dulles Airport. Okay, another warning sign.

2001 - I move to Atlanta. After a few years of HMO doctors, I'm on my own again. Someone from the office recommends a doctor in Marietta and I start going to him. Again, no spark, but by now I've figured out -- I just want a doctor who can do a Pap Test, not a friend. But I'm vaguely uncomfortable with BD #3's office -- what's the deal with all the weepy women? Why do they all come with someone to drive them home? Whoops! I seem to have stumbled into someplace I don't want to be. Drop him ... and wonder if I might have misjudged him. Maybe he was really okay ... maybe ..... Until this week, when I learn that he's the jerk who got out of his Mercedes on I-285 and punched a female motorist in the face in a burst of gynecological road rage.

So, here's the point. This really points to a serious failure in my ability to find a good doctor. Why do I keep picking jerks? Or is the Mercedes the common factor?

From now on, I'm checking out the parking lot. If the doc drives a German car, and it's not a Beetle, he's off the list.

Weekend with Candace

2009-10-07T13:10:00.000-04:00

Every year the knitting guild brings in at least one "superstar" teacher for a weekend of classes and hopefully some fun. We've had some incredible people and some who were ... let us say, less than incredible ones. It's not an easy task to find someone who will challenge our most experienced knitters and not intimidate our less experienced ones.

It's also not easy to find a teacher with a variety of skills and techniques to teach. For instance, I'm a Sockie. I love socks ... every variety. But a weekend of just socks would only appeal to a very few of our members. Likewise, a weekend of all-lace. I'd be happy, but others, not so much. So, a teacher who's a "one-trick wonder" won't do.

Let's see. What else? Well, it helps if s/he has a book or two under her belt, or designs that folks are familiar with. But not everybody who can write a book or design a pattern can teach.

Which brings me to: Candace Eisner Strick. We had the MOST fun with her this weekend. She's an author, teacher, designer, yarn dyer, fiberista all tied up in one package. With a sense of humor. Here she is demonstrating a rather unique technique she called the "crotch cast-on."

Well, don't hold that against her! We didn't. We laughed and hooted and hollered and generally had a great time, while learning Austrian Twisted Stitches and the other eight of her favorite cast-ons and cast-offs. And she brought her fabulous yarns and patterns (check out her website for the incredible yarns she calls Merging Colors).

And I guess that's the essence of a perfect knitting weekend--knit with friends, laugh a little, learn a lot. And, now that we've met her, Candace is a good friend!

New Sock OTN

2009-10-01T07:00:00.001-04:00

No, I haven't finished the other socks I'm knitting, the Zauberball ones -- why would you ask? And no, none of the others either.

Stop criticizing my ability to complete a project--now you're just being ugly, as we say here in the South.*

Anyway, here are Early Spring Socks, a Crystal Palace pattern by Janice Kang. The lacy pattern is easy to memorize and to read your knitting and that's a good thing.

You can get the pattern free on Ravelry and you'll see a much better picture of the lacy pattern.

But these socks are ... drumroll, please! ... Malabrigo Sock in the Botticelli colorway. Soft merino with wonderful stitch definition.

I defy any of you to turn down a chance to knit with Malabrigo. And, besides, they're my "home in the bed" socks to knit rather than my "take them anywhere in my purse" socks. And anyone who doesn't know the difference just isn't a sock knitter.

* I love it when I can adopt a Southern expression and pretend I'm a Southerner. Like when you tell a friend about how another friend wore a dress that was just plumb fugly--like Scarlett O'Hara on crack-- and you end the description with, "bless her heart." And I have learned over my eight years here in Gawga that you don't press down on the accelerator, you "mash" it, just like you do with the elevator button.

Praise ... and a Quibble

2009-09-30T07:00:00.003-04:00

When's the last time someone trusted someone else in the retail world? Never, you say? Well, almost.

The current economic climate (Cloudy days ahead, chance of continuing flooding, run for your life!) has made all of us a little cynical about each other, I suppose. And, let's face it--it's not that easy to make a living. We have to take every opportunity.

So I'm always happy when I can support a designer or a supplier in the yarn business. No, really--it's not that I need or want more yarn or patterns, I'm just trying to do my part to keep the economy going. (Hush, now! Don't be cynical! It's not becoming!)

Anyway, last week I saw that one designer for whom I have the utmost respect is giving up publishing her quarterly newsletter. Part of the explanation seems to be that digital downloads--and particularly Ravelry downloads--are costing her money because of copyright infringement. Sad, but definitely part of the digital publishing world these days. It's affecting every single medium from newspapers to hard-cover books.

On the same day, I saw a pattern on Ravelry from another designer that piqued my interest. Went to the website and found Janet Scanlon. Yes, Janet who designed the My Constant Companion felted bag we all made ten years or so ago.

I saw two felted bags that got my attention--quick there's a new one there now! Why didn't I see it before?-and clicked order. I got a message that told me to email her and she'd send it. And bill me later. What? Is she crazy?

I emailed her and ordered. She responded immediately, apologizing that she'd have to charge me postage. Uh, yeah ... of course. Again, crazy?

Two days later the patterns arrived. With an invoice. Shipping was ... uh, exact postage. Crazy? Each page of the pattern comes in its own vinyl protector, with the pages stapled, so you can knit from the pattern without taking it out of its protector to turn the pages. Amazing!

So--praise. Janet is a woman who still believes in people. (And, yes, I put the check in the mail already! Did you have to ask?) She advertises a product, sends it on trust, and it's just what she promised and you wanted. Amazing in this world of mistrust and thievery.

But, and here comes the quibble, she prints her patterns on that same blue paper that Fiber Trends used to use. Do they still? I don't think so. People stopped buying them because they were too hard to read and I think FT has now gone to a different color.

Why the blue, somewhere between turquoise and cobalt? I've always heard it's to keep people from making copies or scanning the patterns into their computers. BUT for me, it's a problem. My eyesight has always been sort of dicey and these days it seems to be worsening every day. I am struggling to read these patterns. I can read them but I have to be in a very bright room--definitely not my bedroom where I usually knit. Not enough contrast for these eyes.

Bottom line: Go to the website and buy her patterns. (Check out Mercury, the messenger bag! Oh, my!) Knit one of them. But just among ourselves, Janet, I'd rather have paid you upfront and gotten the pattern on a lighter piece of paper that I could read.

They're Even Mean to Crazy Aunt Purl!

2009-09-28T08:00:00.001-04:00

Do you read "Crazy Aunt Purl"? Well, why not? She's certifiably nuts in a good way. Oops! Shouldn't have said "nuts." It could get someone angry.

Anyway, I was going to write something here about what other bloggers and op-ed writers are calling "the decline of civility" or "why can't we just all get along? or "is everyone here crazy?" You know what I mean--people screaming at the president in public and cursing each other out in the parking lot over a space near the mall entrance, or ... well, you get the idea.

Now, I'll admit I was one of the first to criticize our former president, The Shrub. But I did it quietly and in private and if I'd been introduced to him in person I'd have shaken his hand firmly and politely and said "nice to meet you, Mr. President," and I wouldn't even have muttered under my breath until he was out of earshot.

Because that's how we were raised. Let's face it--we all want to say things sometimes that we DO NOT SAY because that's not the way we roll. We were raised better than that. (Thanks, Mom!) We might say "that poor fellow is one toenail short of a pedicure" behind our boss's back, but, in front of the guy, we pull up our big girl panties and do what he says. Then we report him to Human Resources if appropriate. (That was a heck of a mixed metaphor but you get the message.)

I guess it's a combination of the immediacy and the anonymity of the internet that have made us all think we can say absolutely anything to anyone and it'll be okay. (And people--when you're not on the internet, you really don't have an excuse!) People who would never say something mean to someone's face think nothing of saying it on a blog. Is it because we know the person we're insulting is probably too far away to hit us? Maybe.

Back to Crazy Aunt Purl. Check out her September 24 post. The offending comments have been removed but I think we can all guess what they contained. She wrote a pretty innocuous but interesting posting about pot roast and added a comment about a potluck the next day and needing a peanut recipe. And bam, bam, shazaam, she's suddenly the Anti-Christ, trying to kill off all the peanut-allergic folks in the audience.

This whole peanut thing is odd anyway. One day peanuts are mild, inoffensive little critters growing in the Deep South, best known for Jimmy Carter raising them. Now they're in the same category as Ebola and Angry Aliens From Space, just out there trying to kill people.

Okay, I get it. Some people are allergic to peanuts. Children in kindergarten should not be fed peanuts because they're too little to protect themselves. Grownups should make sure they read labels and ask about potluck recipes if it's possible a peanut was involved. I'm not downplaying the danger.

But ... and this is important ... we all have stuff we shouldn't be eating for one reason or another. You can't eat a peanut because your throat might close up. Coconut makes me gag and I shouldn't eat ice cream because lactose at night gives me acid reflux, not to mention bigger hips. But at the end of day ... it's my problem, and yours. I'm definitely not going to blame Crazy Aunt Purl if someone brings ice cream to the party.

And I am going to try her pot roast recipe.

No Excitement Here Folks!

2009-09-27T11:43:00.002-04:00

No excitement here. The flood waters have receded, things are high and dry at Casa Pug, and we can move on.

Not that there weren't a few exciting days, in a relative sort of a way. I mean, I was a little concerned when I saw the pugs lining up two by two to go out the door in the mornings. And it's never a good thing to see Mr. Pug hanging from the rooftop in a monsoon, trying to find out what's causing water to pour out of the fireplace. But aside from some minor inconveniences, we were among the very lucky folks of my particular part of Sunny Georgia who got through the floods relatively unscathed.

Last weekend was rather ... er ... damp. Mr. Pug and I went to Tucker, GA to see a koi show. Now, for those of you who may be map-challenged, Tucker is approximately on the other side of the galaxy from Casa Pug, but the koi show is a once-a-year sort of a thing, we wanted to check out what's new in the koi world (not much as it turns out), and who knew we'd be traveling through water up to our eyebrows?

By the way, two things: First, to clarify, Tucker is on the other side of Anything, not just CP. It's one of those places that you don't know is there if you don't need to go there. And second, we didn't even buy a new koi. It turns out that a 500-year flood is not the ideal time to introduce a new, rather pricey, fish to your pond, especially if you're the sort of fish-owners who have lost most of their fish in the last year to inexperience and algae bloom, whatever that might be.

Anyway, rain on Saturday. Rain on Sunday. On Monday when I left for work, Mr. Pug was hanging off the aforementioned gutter checking out the aforementioned leak. The ride to work that day took approximately, oh, about six hours because Atlanta drivers still think they can drive 75 MPH through standing water. That afternoon when I left the office (or tried to, anyway), the little creek on the south side of the property was flooded to the top of the banks. Gazebo halfway under water. Water up to the little bridge. Roiling water. Uh, oh.

Turns out that someone had broken into my car while it was parked in the office parking lot. (Well, actually, it was Mr. Pug's car -- yikes! Now he REALLY thinks I'm bad luck when I drive his car!)

Now, mind you, it had been monsooning all day--who goes out to commit a crime in a monsoon? Apparently it's not unknown. When we looked at the video of the parking lot the next day, I could see a blurry image of a black car backing in next to my car, staying there for about two and a half minutes, and then driving out, apparently with my GPS system, Little Nuvi.

(Little Nuvi has become a part of our family in the two years we've had her. In fact, she's the least dysfunctional member of the family. She takes us everywhere and apparently has made us very lazy mapreaders while she was at it. She's the only thing that GOT us to Tucker in the first place, for instance--without her, we're never finding our way back. Also, when the police start closing ALL of the streets in your county, and the surrounding counties, it's almost impossible to find your way home without Little Nuvi. Nuvi -- I miss you!)

By the way, from Mr. Pug's point of view, the biggest deal is that they broke the driver side lock. I thought he was overreacting until I learned that I would be paying the deductible to fix the dratted thing.

Anyway, the scariest thing for me, once I'd called the cops and been told to wait--this might take a while, we're kinda busy right now, and no, we can't do this by phone, and no, tomorrow won't do--was that I couldn't find The Sock. Wait! The jerks took my knitting? Put up the umbrella, get out into the pouring rain, rump hanging out under the umbrella, and find that sock!

Whew! It turned out that they'd emptied three knitting bags onto the floor apparently looking for cocaine or oxycontin or hundred dollar bills or cool CDs, but hadn't taken anything except Little Nuvi.

What? You don't have three knitting bags in your car? Each full of uncompleted projects? Whatever!

Good news: I had knitting to work on while I waited ... and waited ... and waited ... for the cops. (They never did come; at the two-hour point I went home, figuring the sirens and flashing lights up on the main drag meant there were some bigger issues to deal with.)

Bad news: Apparently my knitting isn't good enough for Atlanta crooks. That's kind of insulting. On the other hand, maybe a partially knit sock isn't that appealing and they'll come back when both socks are finished.

It's something to look forward to. In the mean, here's The Sock--Zauberball from Only Ewe and Cotton Too. Have I mentioned that I'm crazy in love with the way the colors change? If only the sock could help me find my way back to Tucker, I'd be fine.