Equi-knocks

This afternoon just before suppertime will be an astronomical event that I dread every year....the Autumnal Equinox. Why, you ask? I will answer in just one word. Light. That's it -- Light. I crave light. Daylight, sunlight, bright light that is not fluorescent or otherwise artificial, REAL LIGHT. And starting today there will be less of it in a 24 hour period and more of darkness. Darkness is confining, depressing, discouraging, and just plain old not fun or exciting.

After having worked far too many 12-hour shifts in windowless NICUs where it was dark when I drove to work in the morning and dark when I left in the evening, never having seen the light of day all day, I have this pathological thing about light. I have to have a window seat at restaurants, I wear light and brightly colored clothes. I don't wear black. My bedroom walls are a cheery shade of pink. I have at least 7 lamps in my room, just so it is light enough where I need it (studio table, desk, by the bed, etc.). I'll do most anything reasonable to fight off seasonal depression triggered by insufficient light.

Fall is always difficult for me. My fibromyalgia flares fiercely every year in October. This year the flare came a month early and I have been completely miserable. Mind you, I have spent one afternoon per week with my wonderful dentist, "Dr. Michael". I think I have paid for the private school tuition for one of his sons this fall with all the work I have had done. But I am now officially worthy of being called a QUEEN....and I have the gold crown to prove it. Ouch! I have coped as best I can by doing what usually helps the most...meds and knitting. But somehow my right shoulder got hurt last week...it may have been the serious cleaning and dejunking I was doing. Whatever, the pain has been so bad that I haven't been able to do much of anything, most notably knitting. ARRRRGH! This has made me one grumpy gal...my poor family is still putting up with me though.

In my restricted state I found I could not knit on my complicated, twisting, CookieA Clandestine socks, but I could knit "plain vanilla" socks. And so this morning I finished another pair of socks for Daddy. I dubbed this pair "Ugly Man Socks" because that's what I call all of his socks. After all, I use pretty, colorful yarns and interesting lace patterns for my socks; for his I use plain stitches and dark, rather boring colors. The irony in all this is that this pair of socks is really quite attractive. I love the yarn. If I hadn't knit daddy's socks from it I would knit socks for myself from it. Awesome yarn. Sigh. I never was any good at cynicism, sarcasm, or any other of those acerbic things. I should know better than to label something "ugly" before seeing the end result. Double sigh.

Better luck next time...with the next pair...or two...of socks. Knitting on!

Merry Christmas!

Another Christmas Day is coming to a close and I can't help but reflect back on what's happened. The long-awaited socks for Daddy were unwrapped, not with surprise, but with a great deal of joy. Daddy put them on immediately last night and declared them perfect. Ever the critical eye, I thought they looked just a smidge on the snug side. Next time I'll try either a slightly fatter yarn or a few more stitches for some extra give. They also looked a little snug across the toes. They didn't feel too tight and Daddy said they weren't, but once again, I'll add maybe 1/2" on the next pair. He wore the socks with his dress loafers when we went out today and he showed them off to everyone. For as much as I did not enjoy knitting those socks I know I have to knit another pair for him very soon. It's the very least I can do to help his poor aching and sensitive feet find a little comfort.

I showed mother what I had knit on her lace stole thus far. I have dubbed my adaptation of the HeartStrings Scotch Thistle Lace Stole pattern Thistle's Epistle. I kind of like the ring to it, and I got into knitting an adaptation because I didn't go back and read the pattern instructions (the "epistle"). Her response was favorable, although she was so tired and grouchy that any hint of a positive response was a miracle. But, since the stole wasn't going to be under the tree, I gave her a new set of Wolfgang Puck knives--ones that are sharp and safe, unlike the scary things she's using now. I refuse to touch those knives--scary!

A few days ago I was feeling the need to knit a little something simple, yet lacy as a perk me up alternative to the big shawls and stoles I have OTN. I was surfing the FOs at Ravelry and someone posted a scarf by a popular lace designer, Sivia Harding. Off to Sivia's website I went in a flash, threw open the lace files and coughed up some cash! (My apologies to Mr. Clemens, ahem) There are 3 Harding designs I'm eager to knit, 2 of which are med-lg shawls. The other is this sweet beaded scarf called Angel Pearls, knit from a single skein of Kid Silk Haze. After a little math and some scary yarn manipulations I turned a cone of cobweb wt. baby alpaca singles into a triple-stranded center-pull ball. The yarn is a rich golden yellow so I chose silver-lined gold beads to go with it and I cast on. Failure to concentrate did necessitate tinking a row here and there, but I have 1.5 repeats of the center chart completed and things look good. The yarn is a bit tricky to work with as it's very slippery and easy to split the strands, but the fabric it produces is lusciously soft and enhances the lace. The best part of this scarf design--it's knit in one piece from start to finish with no grafting or provisional cast-ons or anything complicated. I'm finding such designs in lace to be hard to come by, so this is a big deal.

My Christmas was everything I had hoped for. I knew what most of my presents were beforehand, but Mom did surprise me with a few things from Coldwater Creek. I love everything I received, but I'm especially liking the new pajamas. A nice, heavy cotton jersey, the red pants are covered in preppy plaid and green triangle "trees" with a white top emblazoned with the word Celebrate right across the "girls". My "big" present was a red suede jacket, which I adore, but I Bet I wear the PJs more ;-D

Ho Ho Ho, it was a very Merry Christmas after all!

Narcissistic Yarn, Acts of Desperation, and Other Random Thoughts

Today I added a few photos to go with the ramblings on of a distracted mind. Here's my completed "Smooshy Socks" aka Socks for Veronik. The yarn lives up to it's name. soft and smooshy! I wore them yesterday and got gushing raves everywhere I went. That's pretty impressive for socks. With each pair of socks I knit, I learn something new. From the smooshy socks I learned how to knit socks that would fit around my curvy calves and still fit at the ankle. At last I can knit a sock with a longer leg, right? Not so fast.... They fit just great, they just don't want to stay there. Chalk another one up for gravity as the socks retract comfortably to just above where all my other socks sit. Some battles just weren't meant to be won. Back to knitting 4-5" cuffs.

I knew I had to go to the doctor's office yesterday and with no "current" socks OTN I needed a project to take with me. So I resumed work on Daddy's Christmas socks. I knit the heel flap over the weekend and got all the stitches picked up for the gusset. Lots of stitches since these are big socks for big feet. I was testing the limits of my favorite KnitPicks needles with all those stitches. Desperate times call for desperate acts. I knew I couldn't just pitch these socks into my purse and go without losing stitches everywhere, so I grabbed my 32" KP circular and started knitting a la Magic Loop style. My stitches are saved from drop-offs! It's pretty awkward in that you have to fight the natural curvature of the cable, even if it's a super flexible cable. Messing with the loop is fiddly and I'm not yet convinced this is superior to dpns. I am knitting in all stockinette at this point, so that's pretty simple, but working in pattern may be more tricky. Magic Looping does demand the use of stitch markers, things I never used on dpns as the spacing of stitches across the needles served to mark where you are at in the pattern. I may switch back to dpns once the gusset decreases are done, but for now it's magic loop time I guess.


My last photo is symbolic of how my day has gone today. We had terrible wind storms last night, I didn't take my usual sleep med (forgot to get it refilled) hence I didn't sleep too well. So I'm not in my best form when my four-legged friend came to see me this morning. Miss Emme, aka Her Royal Majesty of Supreme Rottenness, decided it was time to be picked up and put into my bed. Dachsies are short, my bed is tall--enough said. Emme has her favorite way of occupying my bed, and this morning's offering was not up to her expectations. It was a rough night, after all, so there weren't many blankets left on the bed. I was trying to knit on THE SOCKS (they will be done this year, Daddy, I promise!) but NO! I must move. I must fix the blankets. I get up and start to make the bed, but before I can crawl back in She took over. Rotten I tell you, rotten. Parked right on top of my heating pad. I know when I have lost. I relocated to the recliner with my knitting, sans the heating pad.

This should have been a sign portending things to come. I picked up a new shawl pattern while I was at the Yarn Haven yesterday. Oh yeah, I hit the LYS! I bought another skein of Araucania Ranco to knit socks for my sister for Christmas (or her B-day if I don't get done in time). While I was there I thumbed through Sandy's pattern collection. She's been expanding these things and I was happy to learn she is carrying FiberTrends and HeartStrings patterns. I've been looking at HeartStrings patterns for awhile, but didn't have a convenient source--until now. I loved Jackie's Scotch Thistle Stole design when she released it last summer. Others liked it too, as there was quite a rush on the pattern and dyed-to-match Schaefer yarn that was meant to go with the pattern. When I saw it at TYH, I knew it was my answer to what to knit for Mother for Christmas.

After careful deliberation and review of finances, I opted to forgo buying new yarn and use some cashmere from the stash. This is the pretty brick red yarn that I ordered hoping for a ruby red. Sweet Richard at ColourMart found some ruby red and sent me both cones. The Brick is perfect for Mom, and if used double stranded, is perfect for the Thistle Stole. No problem, right? I'll just wind off half the cone with my trusty ball winder, then knit from both for the stole. I've done this many times without a hitch, but not so today. They say yarn has personality. Different yarns say different things, like "Hey. look at me! I'm bright and sassy" or "I'm soooo soft and sweet, don't you want to pet me?" The brick cashmere has a personality all right, a narcissistic personality. It's very fond of itself. It's also quite flighty, as in flying off the spindle when I had about 40g wound off. That means the ball gets to sit on the floor next to the partially unwound cone to go through the winding process all over again. Bothersome, but not problematic, right? Wrong! I've heard folks whine about yarn barf before, you know, the big globs of yarn that spew forth from center-pull balls to crate havoc and knots while you work. Yarn Barf! I'd never had any bad barf before, but this self-absorbed stuff puked constantly and didn't want to be separated into one long line. Bad yarn! I hissed my way through rewinding and now I have yarn ready to knit. I hope it behaves better while knitting. I put some nice hand cream on while rewinding the yarn in the hopes of discouraging it's stuck-on-self ways in the future. And here I thought narcissistic people were difficult to deal with. Who knew yarn could be too!