Life's a Stitch

I consider my family life as generally one of joy, but hard work. After this year, however, I realize how much weirdness there is especially with health flukes. Yesterday Chuck woke up with a sore knee. By the end of the workday he was in excruciating pain. I took one look at this huge purple knee, thinking flesh eating disease, and told him emphatically that he needed to see a doctor. Amazingly he agreed and visited a local clinic. The dr there advised him to get to the hospital immediately. On the way to the ER he developed a very high fever and uncontrollable shakes. After a four hour socialized mediciney wait he saw another dr who put him on IV antibiotics and enough morphine to keep him happy, sort of. Today he had arthroscopic surgery to clean out the infection and was told it was a good thing he sought timely treatment as there could have been more significant bone damage had he waited. It’s something called septic arthritis. OY! I did get significant knitting done; there’s a positive aspect to everything. The other positive thing is that his hospital roommate, a nice older gentleman having his second knee replacement, was over from a small community a ferry ride away and we arranged for his wife to stay at our house rather than commute while he is in the hospital. She and I shared a bottle of wine tonight and were amazed at how much we had in common; other than husbands hospitalized for their respective knees.

My new project is the shawl for a wonderful woman who was Elina’s substitute mom while away at college. This woman was Elina’s former boyfriend’s aunt, who employed her throughout her college years, had her over on holidays and provided a motherly shoulder to cry on when needed. I’m knitting thoughts of thanks into this project, a triangular garter stitch shawl made from Lang Tonga held together with a solid colour Estelle Watercolour, both in champagne tones.

It’s complete – Elina’s bias shawl made from Midas – but that’s Mari modelling it. Due to its stretchy, drapey nature I crab stitched around the outside edge. I thought this yarn was difficult to knit with, but crocheting was nearly impossible. It took a long time but I’m happier with the product. Someone commented that this shawl was pretty enough to be considered jewelry. It was expensive enough to be considered jewelry! I hope she’ll wear it more than once. Oh thank goodness this project is finished. 

At Chicks With Sticks, one of the women had bought extravagant bamboo yarn and continued the splurge by buying ebony knitting needles. "Why," my husband asked, "is knitting bamboo yarn on bamboo needles not Kosher (like mixing dairy with meat)?" Clever, I thought, but good he recognizes that there are different kinds of knitting needles.

And if you haven’t seen this, it’s worth a laugh – Gangsta Knitters.

You always hear the question "If you had one last opportunity to travel where would you like to go?" My version, "If you had one last project to knit what would it be?" Let’s qualify that – there would be no budgetary limitations. My knitting dream is an Alice Starmore sweater, but realistically there is no way I can spend almost $300Cdn on a kit from Virtual Yarns.  However, I am a good shopper and found the pattern for A.S.’s Marina in a discontinued book called Woolcraft. Flora would have been my first choice, but Marina is good. Currently most A.S. patterns are only sold en kit directly from A.S. herself. Her books are available on e-Bay at over $100 US! So $13.95 for Woolcraft was a bargain.

Obstacle #2, purchasing yarn for Marina. There is a brouhaha in the knitting world about A.S. and her yarn, which used to be produced by Jamieson in Scotland. To make a very long story short, if you can find one of her patterns it can be knit with her yarn or Jamieson’s. The yarn alone is pricey either way.

Obstacle #3. Export rules have changed and the yarn format from Europe has recently changed. A.S. patterns were designed with the old "put-up" in mind which had more yardage than the new version. The price is the same for both, but you need more skeins of the new put-up than the old.

Obstacle #4. The photo in Woolcraft (as above) appears to be in a different colourway than the pattern calls for. I have found several suppliers that have the yarn, mostly in the old put-up, for the colours as specified in the pattern, not the colours in the photo.

Dilemma – Do I go for the original colourway that is brighter, a little more bluey greeny than I would like, or do I take the time to order a colour card to select my own colours and risk availability only in the new, more expensive format? Or does anyone know of a reasonable alternative yarn to Jamieson, Jamieson and Smith or Virtual Yarns? I need something that comes in many colours as this pattern calls for 24 colours.

Don’t you hate these little complications? Maybe I should buy a lottery ticket and if I win I could buy the original kit. I hear the pattern is autographed by A.S. herself.

Keep dreaming and have a good weekend.

I’m cheating today, this is a copy of a post I added to the Flower Basket Knitalong:

I’m in, like I need another project to work on. But I’m so close to finishing my current shawl that I can rationalize it. I bought the yarn the last time I was over the border and the sneaky stuff jumped onto my needles so I could see what a rose might look like. I’ve adapted the pattern slightly:

1. Else inspired me to use Lamb’s Pride bulky at a much lower cost than the Burleyspun or the yarn the pattern called for. She knit hers on size 13 needles so it’s slightly under gauge. I plan on adding 16 extra stitches (2 extra repeats of the trellis) and adapting the bottom to fit. Has anyone else (no pun intended) done this?
2. I’ll do the top rim in black instead of the green so that I’m not in for another skein of yarn. I already bought an extra black so my handles can be longer; more like shoulder straps.
3. I’ll do the handles on a corking tool as they look very nice and even when felted.
4. My roses will be pink and red.

Wish me luck, and remember, “Life’s a Stitch.”

An update on my current project, Elina’s shawl is 75% complete.

This is a sequel to my February 7th post where, years later, I was told of events in my children’s lives that occurred right under my nose. After a friend sent me a link to a Shar Pei dog undergoing an extreme makeover, Bryant told me how he and a friend (who will remain anonymous lest his mother read my blog and not allow him over again) would challenge each other to how many clothes pins they could pin on their arm. It was a contest of endurance since clothespins on arms aren’t entirely painless. Now that they are teens I should be grateful they aren’t competing for the number of piercings. Did you know the plural of piercing is not in the spell check? That proves their unacceptability to mothers. I remember reading a book as a child, was it Little Women or the Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, where one of the girls would keep a clothespin on her nose to assure it remained in its upturned state. What price glory? Here is Bryant re-enacting the clothespin trick. Good thing he already has an upturned nose.

     I start my watercolour class tonight, so for a while I’ll be posting three times per week as time will be a bit more limited.

     This is Elina’s shawl 50% complete:

     I was recently called cute by one of my employees. Cute, in the way that people think of senior citizens. I’m cute because my son text messaged me and I didn’t know how to reply so I went to the youngest employee in our organization and asked for her expertise. She said “You’re so cute!” I don’t do cute very well. I am a capable woman. Years ago my daughter and I used to have capable woman days to prove our prowess. She is proving her capability by studying astrophysics. She loves knowing stuff others don’t know, particularly her level of math. I suppose I’m really really cute because I’ve figured out how to blog.

     I am taking a day off. The past few days were spent wrapping up a big grant application; many hours of intense work. It took $5000 of staff time to produce an application that weighed seven pounds and ultimately killed the photocopier. As we said in Catholic high school, I’m keeping my fingers crossed and saying three Hail Mary’s that it’s a successful one.

    Charlotte is done and she’s darn cute even if I do say so myself. I was going to ask Sandy if I get two stars by my name on the knitalong list, but then I discovered someone else had actually knit six Charlottes! The ruffle took six hours! Emma pointed out, that although I thought that Charlotte didn’t measure up even after 32 extra rows, the pattern measurements included the fringe. I feel better.

Thanks to all for your mouse solutions and sympathy. Believe me, I will try every one of your suggestions.

Warning: Rated R for grossness.

Hickory dickory dock, a mouse really ran up our clock. We have a serious mouse problem and I need…

I stopped in mid sentence because, really and truly, at that moment a mouse ran right over my foot as I was posting. It was 3:00 a.m., dark, and it freaked me out a bit. Chuck was surprised he didn’t hear me scream. I reserve the scream for dead mice. Like the other night when I went into the garage to refill Gracee’s dog food container from the huge sack. I saw a stick poking up out of the container and pulled it out. No stick there, it was the stiff tail of a dead mouse still attached to its mummified in dog food preservative body. I simultaneously screamed and threw the containerful of dog food across the garage floor.

Here’s another vermin story worthy of a scream. Years back we lived on a remote island during the summers while Chuck was employed as an executive director of a church camp. While the babies were napping I was in lying in the sun, half asleep. Feeling a tickle in the hollow underneath my knees, I very quickly came to when I realized the tickle was a good sized garter snake slithering under my knees.

OK, enough of that. What can I do for the mouse problem? I don’t want to use poison because of the dog. We have those ultrasonic plug in devices that supposed to give the mice mini migraines and keep them away. Right. I’m sorry to say that live traps don’t do anything to solve the problem; it’s just a vicious cycle of catch and release. We have the equivalent of a cat in Gracee, the great white hunter, who killed two this week so far. I thought the mice would stay away when they whiffed a predator in their midst. I was wrong. Once again, I appreciate the advice of my fellow bloggers, bloggerless readers and lurkers.

I know you’re reading this for knitting content, so here is the progress on Elina’s shawl:

Just a quick one – my ultrasound came out fine – two teensy cysts (about the width of a US size 2 knitting needle) were what was originally picked up by the mammogram. It’s amazing what they can see. I can relate anything to knitting! And I’m awaiting knee surgery. More knitting tomorrow.

We’ve all had those moments at work when we say something that we wish we hadn’t. For me it’s when that quote will be distributed far and wide, much to my embarrassment. When the Pope died, a reporter was trying to convey His intellectual brilliance by saying "He consumed books like other people consume Twinkies." I bet he wishes he hadn’t said that. I’m not a good Catholic, but it feels strange without a CEO. Sort of like the Catholic concept of limbo, neither here nor there. It especially feels weird knowing the world’s most influential advocate for peace is no longer of this world.

A little break from finishing Charlotte, here is my new project for Elina, who considers this future shawl as one of her best outcomes of mommy harassment. "Oh  please, please, please make me a shawl out of that stuff I know you hate to knit with. How often do you graduate from college? Pleeeaaassse"

Introducing the hand painted turkey truss. Yup, in the absence of dental floss, Koigu was used to truss our Easter turkey. This is no April Fool’s joke, here’s the photo to prove it.

On to the more traditional use of Koigu, a blocking Charlotte. I had to call it quits after the additional 32 rows. I was running out of yarn. The disappointing aspect is that I didn’t bother measuring my gauge since it was a shawl afterall. So, after all the extra work it still measured out to traditional Charlotte size according to the pattern. I really wanted it larger, but I wasn’t prepared to knit one more row. I still love the outcome. I am planning on adding the ruffle after blocking so that will add another almost inch to the length: