Life's a Stitch

At my watercolour class the teacher told a story about his Dad, who asked him "If you had two wishes what would they be?" My instructor remembered his Dad’s wishes, " to always have a $20 bill in my pocket (it was probably the 1960’s) and to remember everything I’ve learned." How well off we would be if we could remember everything we learned.

Although Gracee isn’t the most intelligent dog, she does remember everything she’s learned. Each evening, in anticipation, she parks herself at the top of the steps about the time Chuck is due home from work. I’m not sure this is about memory or that a dog can smell her master from a great distance.

I’ve been on a roll recently teaching myself new things. I’ve been wanting to knit an Indian cross stitch scarf with Koigu. I saw a picture if it on the Keyboard Biologist’s blog. She has a link to a site for purchasing the pattern, but the link was a dead end. The designer had retired. I e-mailed the K.B. and she told me the pattern was free with the purchase of two balls of Koigu at another site. You can’t order online through this site, you have to e-mail and wait for a return call. It’s been a couple of months with no response so I got to work figuring it out myself. I found two versions of the Indian Cross Stitch pattern in materials I already own, one an encyclopedia of stitchwork that I’ve had since college days, the other is the current Vogue Knitting, where there is a scarf using the same stitch, but it appears to be knit widthwise instead of lengthwise.

I heard a discussion happening behind me at a knitting group. I felt like I was in fifth grade.They were referring, in just loud enough voices, to my prolific knitting and that I mustn’t have a life. What I don’t have is TV. I knit for 15 minutes at breakfast, 15 at lunch and I average an hour to an hour and fifteen each night. Some days I don’t knit at all and sometime I put in three hours. I’m sure this would be way less if we had TV. We have TV’s, just no cable and living way up the mountain as we do, we got nothing without cable. I made the decision not to hook up the cable when we moved into this house. At the time Bryant was pretty young and once argued with me quoting Bart Simpson as if he were a real person. That pretty much sealed my decision. It’s been most difficult for Chuck who used the TV as video valium. It has the opposite effect on me as I am a news junkie. We’ve recently discussed under what circumstances I’d consider having TV again. My stipulation would be that there be no cable in the bedroom. The conversation didn’t go very far after that so maybe I’m safe for awhile.

Knitting the flower basket bag has also taken me back to school years. Ninth grade math to be exact. Math didn’t click for me until college years and then I loved it. This Vogue knitting pattern, however, at times makes as much sense to me as algebra did in high school. It’s a series of failures and slow successes. Maybe if I put it away for a few years it will click. I’m not giving up, but I am accepting that this is a fine example of a process knit. I am glad for on-line knitalongs. They give me encouragement to persevere; I couldn’t possibly be the only one who doesn’t get it. I remember that feeling from school as well.

If you’re a blogger, don’t you wish sometimes that you could contact some of those people who arrived at your site through strange Google searches? Like the person tonight who googled from Japan "solution to dining philoshoper problem."  The internet has loads of info, but Life’s a Stitch is the only site that came up when someone wanted to solve the issue of a philosophizing dinner guest.

It’s not too difficult to guess what the people behind these searches were thinking: "dirty blog photo albums," " girl with puffy nipples," and "cute young things." But what made them click on a knitting blog? There is usually enough of a description to indicate what they’re in for.

Two recent searches left me chuckling, however, for their randomness. How about "roast bear cook time oven" or "Hong Kong tushy?"

It just occurred to me that some of you regulars may have come to me through one of these searches. No problem, you obviously like some aspect of knitting and you are totally welcome to continue reading, I’m just concerned about the prospect of you "inhaling mouse turds" and I hope you figure out "where to pee on a train."

Went to the mail this morning and I’ve been happily RAOK’ed! Inside a package from Knitter’s Review was a simply stated gift card: "Happy RAOK," a box of knitterly note cards and the piece de resistance:

Thank you! It’s amazing how things like this happen at a good time; recently life has presented us with some dropped stitches and this was a happy way to mark the fact that they’ve been picked up and things are clicking along in their not so usual way. Much appreciated!

Something smelled pretty rotten in our van the other day. First is started out smelling reminiscently of nail polish remover. Then it was a nose stinging tang and I knew I had to figure it out. Ah ha! A runaway can (I use the term loosely since they are now made of cardboard, no longer the metal ones I used as hair rollers in high school) of orange juice concentrate. It fermented to the point of bursting, seeping into every possible crevice of that vehicle’s floor. After a thorough cleaning we’re into smell control. We are a house of extremely allergic people, especially when it comes to artificial scents. Luckily we have discovered some baking soda pucks, the name of which escapes me. When we bought our used Jetta they were miraculous in eliminating the watermelon scented pine tree air "freshener" the previous owner had hanging from the mirror.

On the subject of scents, why would anyone use a food scent to mask an unappealing odor? I was in Wal-Mart and noticed toilet paper holders with an apple cinnamon scent. I’m sorry, I don’t want to mingle bathroom smells with something I like to eat. How about you? They also had vanilla ones recently. Excuse me while I puke into my lemon scented toilet.

On the knitting front these are various bits of my flower basket bag. Notice, however, that there are no photos of the bag itself; having been frogged yet again. I decided to edit the pattern to make the bag slightly larger, to do the handles with a corking tool, and to save myself time by knitting in the round. There’s probably a reason it’s not written to be knit in the round. It is a very confusing pattern by itself, much more so with knitter inflicted amendments.

Chuck update: Good news – the IV bag comes off today, and will be substituted with oral antibiotics, but the PICC line stays in until he is infection free for a while. And it’s back to work on Friday. He expressed pleasure in anticipation of losing the pump he has been carrying around. It was like a large, heavy Tamagotchi strapped to him, beeping insistently when it needed care or refilling. Some of us women can relate to this concept after suddenly being delivered of a weight of the nine month variety.

Raise your hands, how many of you like to go shopping for bras? I bet you that number decreases with age. I read that the average bra size is 36C and that this is increasing. Ten years ago it was 36B. What’s going on? Is it because of the aging population? Too many kids on hormones? Too much McDonald’s? I ended up buying a Wonderbra. Who names these things? It’s not the push up kind of Wonderbra, but very sturdy looking pale green thing with a rhinestone right smack in the middle. I think it was the rhinestone that hooked me, so to speak. As I get older my foundations are getting more practical. Right, practical – a rhinestone bra. Moving right along into the too much information department, I used to buy bras for what they looked like, now I buy them for what they do. In other words, do they do their job of holding things up properly? This wasn’t an issue for me ten years ago. Must be all those McDonald’s breakfasts.

I’ve finished Jeannie’s shawl. It was a quick satisfying knit, the perfect gift project. It’s a garter stitch triangle, starting with two stitches and doing a yarn over after the first stitch of each row. It took way less yarn than the bias shawl, making it a bit more economical with two fewer skeins of yarn.

Thanks to Emma, who sent me her list of yarn substitutes for the Alice Starmore Marina sweater. I used her list to do yet another conversion while consulting with a Jamieson and Smith colour card. After three translations I was able to adjust the colours to more closely match the ones in the photo in Woolcraft. I am gracious to all those who helped try to find the yarn in the old "put up" and was finally able to place an order right here in Canada. The shipping cost to order from Scotland was going to be thirty British pounds! So, in the interest of economy, I lucked out. I’m sure the amount of time spent in deciphering colours will be directly proportional to the amount of time it takes to knit this project. OK, I’m a knitting masochist.

A new milestone has been reached in our house. Daughter #1 has bought her first car. What a feeling of freedom that must be for her. She was going to name it Clifford the Big Red Car, but after seeing the colour, "Harold’s Purple Crayon" might be more suitable. Her pride and joy is a ’99 Chrysler Cirrus, previously driven by a sweet older Jehovah’s witness lady from Jamaica.

I was at Chicks With Sticks the other week showing off my Charlotte’s Web shawl and someone asked where I bought the pattern. I realized that I’ve never blogged about that strange event. I had made up my mind to knit the shawl and stopped by five yarn shops in Washington looking for the pattern. A the last shop, in Anacortes, I was told that they didn’t carry the pattern or Koigu yarn, but was directed to yarn of a similar weight. I reached up above my head to pull a skein from its cubby when a leaflet fell out of the same cubby and hit me on the head. I have witnesses. I looked at the paper and it was a Charlotte’s Web pattern. I was destined to knit that shawl. The woman who worked at the store didn’t have a clue how that pattern got there, but she gladly sold it to me.

Just about finished with the triangular shawl and I’ve started on the flower basket bag, having knit two of the roses and two of the leaves. I love Lamb’s Pride’s stitch definition.  Decided to knit the body of the bag in the round, adding 16 extra stitches. The gauge on the Lambs Pride bulky is 3.5 stitches per inch on size 10.5 US needles, however, I was getting four on size 13’s! Ripped it back and will restart on size 15’s! And I thought I had become a loose woman.

Bryant’s birthday was on Earth Day. Prior to his birth, erroneously predicted for May, I had the name Forrest on my list of possibilities. When the blessed event happened on April 22nd I changed my mind thinking he’d be teased unmercifully for the coincidence or people would assume his parents were hippies, thirty years late, who name their kids of the earth. I know parents who have named babies Jade, Stormy, and Winter. So here’s my baby, who at fifteen, elected to postpone his celebration since dad was in the hospital. 

After a meeting of the minds (the pharmacist, the IV nurse and the discharge nurse) at his bedside, Chuck was discharged from the hospital into the care of a once a day visiting nurse. Each afternoon of his hospitalization Chuck called me with a list of items for me to bring on my next visit. On the last day he requested Miss Vicky’s potato chips, fresh fruit, cans of Coke, the laptop and DVD’s and then he cracked up. "You know I’m suffering from extreme boredom when I request a toenail clipper!" It was good to hear him laugh as his sense of humour dropped significantly after Ron, his roommate with the knee replacement, was discharged from the hospital first. We’ll have the nurse for ten more days and then hopefully we can put this behind us.

I stopped knitting Jeannie’s triangular shawl until I can dig up a tape measure. It’s looking fairly large and she is a petite person:

Update: We’re waiting for another set of tests before they can release Chuck from the hospital. So far, no bacteria has been identified. Last night, however, he looked like his old self again after they unhooked him from all tubes and drains except the PICC line for antibiotics and allowed him to put some weight on his leg. Sue, his roommate’s wife and I struck a good deal – she hates to stay by herself in a motel and I like to eat out. So she stayed here and took me out to breakfast and dinner! Really, it would have been miserable going through this alone. She and her husband had us laughing all the time.   

I took a day off last week to get my last year’s taxes done. Not 2004, but the 2003 ones. Revenue Canada has been sending me nasty letters to remind me to file. It’s not like I owe them anything, but I guess they only want to know how much of my money they get to keep. So, off I went to dig up the tax stuff. Oh look, the plants need watering. They will certainly die if I don’t water them right this minute. Back to the taxes, sitting in front of the computer. Oh look, an e-mail from Uli. The taxes can wait another couple of minutes. OK now, maybe if I figure out something to reward myself with when I get my return I’ll be more motivated. What was that website with the great deals on Noro? Half hour later. It must be time for lunch. Quick bathroom stop. Oh look, all those Clinique samples are cluttering up the vanity. I’ll take a few minutes to organize them. Four mascaras, two dramatically different moisturizers, one seven day scrub and five cosmetic bags later I make it out of the bathroom. Oh look, there’s my triangular shawl project calling out to me. "Knit me, purl me, come on, how long can a row or two take?" Five rows later, back to the taxes. Taking bets whether I got them done or not? Wait, I have to upload some photos for this post:

Is it my imagination or are the carpet, shawl and Gracee all the same colour? I’m in a wheaty-beige phase. In fact I’ve been in that phase for awhile. My past three houses have all had the same colour carpet. Oh yeah, the taxes. Yes, I completed the 2003 ones, still have the 2004 ones to go. But I have a good excuse this week.

Thanks everybody for your concern during this crisis. Chuck will stay in the hospital until they can identify what bacteria is causing the problem, then will send him home for IV antibiotics through a PICC line (a catheter to a major vein just above the heart) for at least two weeks. I have to get that bedroom clean and organized lest the home care nurse think that the room was the cause of his contamination!