Deck the Halls with Yarns of Folly

Last night in a fatigue and Christmas-fueled haze, I came across these patterns. "What a great idea!" I thought. "I can make play food for M.M. rather than spending all that money buying it." Then I thought, "Hey, I should also make a couple of little stuffed animals for my nephew!"

"I'm almost done with the second sock, so I'll have plenty of time," I thought. "And they're little, so I'll get them done really fast!" So I ordered yarn. In five colors.

This morning I woke up and remembered a few things. To wit:

• I also promised to make my nephew a Christmas stocking, as called for by family tradition.
• I actually didn't finish M.M.'s stocking last year, and I'd like to do a little more decorative work on it.
• These are Christmas presents. Meaning, I can't knit them in front of M.M., who is now old enough to be surprised Christmas morning – and to demand to play with toys before Christmas if she knows about them.
• I'm a slow knitter.
• There are only 2 weeks left before Christmas.
• I can't feel smug about other people's Christmas panic knitting plans if I'm in the same state of mind.

I've been knitting madly on the still-to-be-finished sock this morning, so that when the yarn comes I'll be ready to jump right in.

Knitting Survey – with Prizes!

I don't know why I'm publicizing this - it reduces my chances of winning anything. Oh, I forgot… no one reads this anyway. My chances are safe!

Useless Information

Stolen from Margene

10 Random Things about Me…

• I love a woodstove
• I make a mean spinach lasagne, thanks to my mother
• I think I'd qualify for some sort of advanced degree in American folk music, should such a thing exist
• I know a song lyric for every conceivable situation
• I really like listening to the radio, and don't really like watching tv
• I was a New Year's baby
• I was in an incubator for the first 24 hours of my life
• I recently started wanting an iPod
• I'm sometimes embarrassed by my taste in books, movies and tv
• I'd like to get over that

9 Places I’ve Been….

• The Meteor Crator near Winslow, AZ ("I was standing on a corner in Winslow Arizona, such a fine sight to see/It's a girl my Lord in a flat bed Ford, slowing down to take a look at me")
• Carhenge, Alliance, Nebraska
• The Crazy Horse Memorial in Custer, SD (can you imagine a more ironic town name for this monument?)
• Interlaken, Switzerland
• Amsterdam
• Apalachicola, Florida
• Grass Valley, California
• Amarillo
• Key Largo

8 Ways to Win My Heart….

• Think I'm smart
• Be good at real things
• Take care of me
• Don't want me to be different than I am
• Tell me the truth
• Take me new places
• Help me fall asleep
• Love me

7 Things To Do Before I Die….

• Visit the 8 remaining states I haven't yet been to
• Fall in love
• Graduate college
• Write a book
• Raise sheep
• Lose the pregnancy weight
• Accept myself the way I am

6 Things I’m Afraid of….

• Frogs
• Big cities
• Liars
• Running out of money
• Environmental degradation
• Death

5 Things I don’t like….

• Bananas
• Commercialism
• Being cold
• Arguments
• Traffic

4 Ways to Turn Me Off….

• Be a know-it-all
• Wear cologne
• Be mean
• Drive aggressively

3 Things I Do Everyday….

• Laundry
• Drink tea
• Floss

2 Things That Make Me Happy….

• Woodfires
• My daughter

1 Thing On My Mind, RIGHT NOW….

• College application is still not done!

The Good and the Bad

The good news: Someone is finally very interested in the house, and Jan (realtor) thinks they're definitely going to make an offer!

The bad news: M.M. has come down with pneumonia

The good news: It's a mild case, she seems to feel fine, just has a bad cough and antibiotics will likely clear it right up.

Bad news: I feel a suspicious heaviness in my chest and I've started developing a cough too.

Good news: I got some free firewood and using the woodstove has made me very, very happy for the past few days.

Bad news: I didn't get very much.

What Will They Think Of Next?

BrightFeet Light Up Slippers : slipper with headlight

One Sock Down

I'm late with my blogging. I actually finished the first sock last Monday, which was one day longer than my two week goal. Pretty good. The second sock is well along now, I've gotten about half the leg done, and I'm on track to complete it much more quickly than the first. For one thing, I didn't have to knit the first three inches half a dozen times, so I'm way ahead of the game.

In other news, M.M. graduated out of her high chair today. It was a poignant moment for me, but she took the whole thing in stride. Since she was able to climb in and out of it at will, and she was getting tall enough to make it increasingly difficult to stuff her legs in there under the tray, I decided it was time. We took the tray off and now she can sit at the table like a regular (tall) chair. It's kind of nice to have her there at the table with me, I admit.

Thanksgiving went as well as I could have expected, and I am thankful for many things, including:

• M.M., the beautiful, joyful, healthy, smart, wonderful child of my heart
• A good place to live. Even though I am desperate to get this house sold and get out of here, if you have to live in limbo, this is a very nice place to do it.
• Friends and family, of course. The good ones are very, very good.
• A measure of financial security... I'm more or less constantly scared these days about how long I'll be able to make ends meet, but so far so good, with the help of an incredibly flexible job that allows me not to have to buy child care, some child support, minimal though it may be, and a little bit of rent income from an impoverished tenant. I don't know how long I'll be able to swing it if the house continues to not sell, but so far we're still here.
• Books
• Music
• Living in a time and place where I can enjoy Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms: Freedom of Speech, Freedom from Want, Freedom from Fear, and Freedom of Worship

Happy Thanksgiving!

Pie Guy

We made apple pie today. I haven't made one in years, so I was pretty nervous about it. The dough, which I was most worried about, turned out very nicely – I was paranoid about overhandling it, but it turned out flaky and nice. I did forget to brush the top crust with anything, so it didn't brown much, but no big deal. The filling basically turned to mush because I cut the apples up too small. It's more like applesauce pie, really. Still tasty though. Check out the creative vent holes in the top, huh?

I've thrown caution to the winds and started the toe decreases on the sock. I'm so determined to finish it tomorrow and not go over the 2 week mark that I don't care if it fits, dammit! I think it'll be ok. It's going to be bigger than my socks, so how wrong could it go? [foreboding music cue here].

I'm going to bed now, at 10:30, to make up for a short night last night and a no-nap day for M.M. today. I'm really tired and I was very cranky today, so I need to get some sleep. I hope the early bedtime doesn't backfire on me. I often seem to stay up later when I go to bed early, because of some freaky circadian rhythm thing, I guess, or some screwy psychological mid game I play with myself, or maybe because I'm just so darn stubborn.

G'night.

Aquaria

I learned about this from Scrivener : Opening Wednesday, it's the largest aquarium in the world . I'm a big aquarium fan. I think it started with the tv ads for the National Aquarium in Baltimore when I was a kid. They showed these giant column filled with water and bubbles rising to the top, and they just looked so magical to me, I was hooked. The Boston Aquarium is pretty good too, but I found it a bit limited. Good penguin exhibit though.

Knitting-wise, I'm very happy that the missing sock of the pair I recently finished for M.M. mysteriously showed back up today. I had looked lots of places for it, but apparently not in the middle of the bedroom floor, because that's where it was this morning. I'm getting close to finishing the first of the socks I'm working on for my brother. I was hoping to do the whole pair in three weeks, but it looks like this one is going to take at least two. This means that my cousins will not be recieving hand-knit socks for Christmas this year. Not from me, anyway. However, this will not stop me from ordering Socks that Rock. I've already got the pattern picked for that, as well as for the Koigu that I got last month (was it only last month?).

M.M. has laryngitis of some sort. The poor thing can barely speak, and when she does, she sounds like a hard-livin' 17 year old. Her voice is low and hoarse and alternately crackly and squeaky. It sounds like she spends all her nights smoking and drinking whiskey, which is a little disturbing to this over-protective Mama. Luckily, other than being a little less energetic – or perhaps I should say more quickly tired-out – she doesn't seem to feel unwell. And she gets to take medicine, which is her all-time favorite thing to do (I'm so worried she's going to turn into a drug addict!). I've only been giving her homeopathic remedies, which don't really do anything, but they taste good.

She's really really excited about going on the train to Boston next week. The tickets arrived by FedEx today. By the way, don't even get me started on the fact that Amtrak forced me to pay an extra $12 for FedEx delivery of my tickets. In an age when they make machines that sell subway tickets and airlines don't even have actual tickets anymore, you can't tell me that they can't come up with some other way to work train tickets than delivering them by FedEx. Not only that but I had to actually call their 800 number rather than just order them online, because that was the only way to waive the signature requirement - which would have meant that I had to be home Monday through Friday, 9 to 5 because they couldn't tell me when they'd actually get here. Is this real? Do they actually think this is 1954 and people are home all day?

Anyway, what was I saying? M.M. is really excited about the trip. About half and hour after the tickets came, she said "Mama can I go on the Amtrak train now?" When I said no, it's in 5 days, she got out her Weebles and played train with them. This meant that she sat in her chair and set them up in rows in front of her, I gather as though they were all riding on a train together.

Progress!

Progress has been made. The leg of the sock is over 6" long, and the heel flap is done. I do have some confusion about the heel flap, however. The pattern calls for 24 rows, after which the flap is supposed to be 2 1/2" long. Mine is only 2" after 24 rows. At first I thought I'd just keep going until it was the desired length, but then I started thinking about picking up the stitches for the gusset and worried that everything would be askew if I had the wrong number of rows from which to pick stitches up. So I think I'm going to charge ahead and hope that the shorter heel flap is not a fatal flaw. The color in this photo is not at all true. It's really a much richer, darker, heathery-er red.

In other news, we got rolling suitcases yesterday, in anticipation of our upcoming holiday travels: a train to Boston for Thanksgiving (highly inefficient, but the whole reason for the trip is for M.M. to be able to go on a train, so there we are) and flying to North Carolina for Christmas. M.M. had a great time pulling her suitcase through the throngs at the Holyoke Mall yesterday. I hadn't been there before, and I truly regretted going, particularly on a Saturday during the expanded holiday season. It was way too crowded, overstimulating, and crazy for me. M.M. did ok except for getting low blood sugar in Old Navy. She was better after an apple. We won't make the mistake of going there on a day like that again.

We had a last-minute house showing yesterday, so the morning was a frenzy of cleaning and tidying. I'm crossing my fingers, because according to the realtor, the people liked the house and are interested, though they haven't made an offer yet. We'll see what happens. I had a good feeling before the showing, but I'm trying to keep expectations and hopes low to avoid disappointment.

Here is some gratuitous cuteness. M.M. was eating like a lumberjack tonight, including grapes, caught here for digital posterity. Her sweater is wet because she had been washing dishes for a half hour before the grape-eating.

Rose-Kim has these beautiful socks to show us, and over in Moth Heaven, we get to look at these lovely striped socks. Cassie at Too Much Wool has finished not one but two pairs of socks in the past two days.

And after knitting with every spare moment for two days, here's what I've got. I have lost count of the number of times I've ripped back the first two inches of this %)(@& sock in the last couple of days. I can't imagine why I can't handle the concept of knit 2 purl 2 repeat ad infinitum. It's really not that complicated. I was loving knitting with this yarn, on the #3 needles, which seem humongous after using nothing but 1s and 2s for the past 3 projects (which translates, embarrassingly, into about 6 months). I thought I was going to be making such fast progress with the bulkier wool and the bigger needles. Instead, I'm caught in some strange Dantéesque hell of knitting the same 5 rounds endlessly.

It's A Toddling Town

Yesterday M.M. got a nursing Mama and baby doll . She was exploring them, testing out the baby's sling, etc. and I asked her what the baby's name was. After very little hesitation, she said Chicago.

I have no idea where it came from, but she is committed to it. She didn't seem to have any ideas for naming the mama doll, but we eventually settled on Rebecca.

Ta-Da!

They're finished! After much ripping out of the ribbing because I kept forgetting which round I was on, I finally got the second toe done last night, and M.M. is wearing them as we speak. The photos I took didn't come out very crisp, so you can't see the detail too well, but trust me, I'm quite pleased with myself.

I've already cast on for yet another pair of socks, for my brother's Christmas present. These are in worsted weight yarn (Cascade 220, a heathered blue color) on size 3 needles, and it all feels huge compared with the teeny tiny gauges I've been working with for the past 3 projects.

Things I've Learned

Some things I've learned about parenting a 2 year old. It's all a cliché, but there's no such thing as a cliché when it's happening to me:

1. Don't worry, it will all change before I finish typing this.

2. Changing sleep patterns takes a looooong time, but it can be done (my apologies to Elizabeth Pantley, who I doubted here).

3. It takes consistency, nay, rigidity, in sticking to nap and bedtimes. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

4. If the child is so tired she's already falling asleep before you finish the whole bedtime routine, so you decide to skip part of it, the disruption will wake her right up, and she'll be awake far longer (and it will be far less pleasant) than just doing the whole damn thing in the first place.

5. Power struggles are not worth it. And unwinnable anyway.

6. Cut food up into smaller pieces that you think you need to.

7. Smaller portions ironically result in more food intake.

8. There is no end to the guilt and worry.

9. Crying will always happen at the exact moment that the NPR commentator is finally saying the one thing you want to hear.

10. New human beings learn an amazing amount every day.

11. There's still a lot they don't understand.

12. The first unsolicited "I love you Mama" is better than sex, chocolate, drugs, and an hourlong swedish massage all put together.

Toddler Sock Progress

The colors are not true, but here is the sock-and-a-half. My sister sort of bummed me out this weekend by telling me the colors reminded her of camouflage, but I'm trying to put that out of my mind. I love these socks, because they look fancy to me, even though the pattern is an easy one. I'm very proud. And hoping against hope to finish them in the next day or two.

I wish I'd made less cuff and more leg. The pattern (from Knit Socks! ) calls for fuzzy novelty yarn on the cuff, from which I've politely abstained, but using the main color yarn makes the cuff too long and plain. Next time I'll know better.

�The AntiCraft!

"Where are the sweaters to enshroud our dark hearts? Where are the afghans to blanket our angst? Where is the macabre? The dark sensuality? We've brandished our needles in defiance. "

This is a seriously funny little magazine. But don't tell them, because I think they want to be taken very, very seriously.

Quick 'n' Clean

A quick update so I don't feel like such a blogging loser, even though I'm sure no one's reading it anyway. The house is being shown tomorrow, so I'm cleaning, straightening, hiding tchochkes, and 'staging' like a madwoman at midnight. Pleasepleaseplease God let these people want the house, pleasepleaseplease.

I'm happy to report that one toddler sock is finished, and I'm quite pleased with it. No photo as yet because of the cleaning frenzy, but I will document and share it soon. I've cast on for sock #2 and had knit several inches but had to rip it back substantially because I had gotten my purls and knits backwards on part of the ribbing. Oh well. There may be some knitting opportunities tomorrow, with my sister here to divert M.M.'s attention.

And, another gratuitous cutiepie photo:

Not Very Much

Via Rose-Kim.

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Stop me now!

I'm in serious danger of tackling more than one project at a time! Quick, do something! I'm working on the toddler socks, which are proving maddeningly slow and prone to mistakes (because they're so small? I don't know!), and am itching to get going on further sockage. I keep thinking about the size 3 needles in my collection that are not in use on the toddler socks. It's a hazardous situation. I didn't even see the Yarn Harlot in Rhinebeck, so I can't blame it on some sort of contagious multiple-project virus.

Socky Socks

They're not flawless. One is a bit too short, and the other is a bit twisted. But I wore them all day yesterday, and they were quite comfortable, and no one pointed and laughed at my feet. So I'm satisfied with my first pair of socks. I've cast on for a quickie pair of toddler socks out of the leftover yarn before I start my next real project, which is to be another grownup pair.

I've been fantasizing about some yarn that I saw in Rhinebeck. Sadly, I don't remember the name of the vendor, and I wasn't smart enough to take a card. I remember the booth number (or at least the building number) and I've idly thought of trying to figure it out from there. But I need to work on my college application first. I can't help cracking up every time I think about having to work on a college app.

Rhinebeck

We went. We saw a lot of yarn. We also saw sheep and llamas and some ringtailed lemurs. Bought slippers, no yarn …– I was a bit overwhelmed, and I couldn't concentrate on yarn and corralling a two year old at the same time. It was fun though.

Not so fun, I think I have to rip back the last several inches of the second sock. The toe decreases are on a collision course with each other and I think it's because I'm doing them in the wrong place. I'll try again.