Life's a Stitch

Yup, that’s Gracee’s name. She came to us at six months old, a piece of returned merchandise, a used dog. The breeder told me that her owners couldn’t house train her and she was vicious when tucked into bed. If you know Scotties, you know a bed tucking would be most embarrassing for such a distinguished creature.

I’m always up for a challenge when it comes to vulnerable creatures. Indeed, Ms. Grace couldn’t be house trained because she has inflammatory bowel disease. No gross details, but there are plenty. At the worst, she was down to 15lbs instead of her healthy 22 and was ready to be dealt with in the most humane way possible, if you know what I mean. The vet said, “let’s try one last thing” and put her on prednisone. In 48 hours she had an amazing turnaround. For all you purists who believe in the BARF doggy diet and no meds, this was the best thing for her. She is still on a minimal dose, but after two years is a typical dog. Typical for a Scottie means a dog who knows she’s better than you and reminds you of that every day. OK, Gracee’s is typical except for one thing. She has OCD, which my husband thinks is a side effect of the prednisone. She constantly licks carpet and sucks her leash. WARNING – this is gross: poor puppy throws up a carpet fibre sausage about twice a month. I warned you. That is a small price to pay for life with Gracee May, we love her just the same.

Her official adoption picture:

As for knitting I finally picked up where I left off on my Rippling Waters scarf. I started the end bit three times and kept ending up with a mistake in the same spot. After a break I took a deep breath and patiently worked through the numbers. Guess what? I had made a note on the chart resulting in being one stitch off. I figured that puppy out, I did it! I have a whole new outlook. This is progress:

Are these the cutest things you ever did see:

Last year the pres of my board of directors and I started knitting these. I did a total of three; she did at least three dozen. She sold them at a craft fair for $12 Cdn, a totally too reasonable price. I wanted to buy a pair of hers to use as a gift, but she insisted on giving them to me. She is a very nice person and I love working with her. Her colours are the cutest. Mine were pastels. I do have a pair of white ones on the needles for a Baptism gift.

Speaking of babies, I bought mine his first official piece of men’s clothing. It’s a corduroy jacket from Old Navy, which just opened near us. There are times in a child’s life where costs rise significantly. When they turn two and can no longer fly for free, when they advance from the children’s menu to the adult one, when they move into adult clothes, and of course, when they enter college. I have two there right now, complete with room and board.
A friend of mine told me of family friends who have four kids in college. Whew!

I was determined to finish this project, as I have several others being ignored and it feels so-o-o good to finish something. It was really fun to knit – fun colours, fun stripes, and the ruffle was fun, too. I get bored knitting solid colours or plain patterns. Toward the bottom I decided to knit from two balls of silk garden to thicken the stripes, otherwise the top would have been striped and the bottom just single row of colour. Knitting note: I used a US size 11 needle and exactly five balls of yarn. Love this Noro, have to get more, need a sale!

I need projects like this – quick, fun and complete, in between the ones that are very difficult or tedious. But I also have to be careful not to ignore those UFO’s completely. I do have a few of those – slippers 75% done, baby hat 90% done… I sometimes have to take the time to consider what’s holding me up and either re-commit myself or frog the darn thing. Uh-oh, I hear the sound of “ribit” calling me from my knitting closet.

I grew up just outside of New York City. We saw wild animals from time to time – squirrels, chipmunks, bunnies and the occasional raccoon. Stories of people getting eaten up by wild things were reserved for fairy tales. You heard stories of alligators coming up through the toilet, but did that really happen? Now I live just outside of Vancouver, BC, about the same distance from downtown as I lived in New York. I generally hate stereotypes (all Americans own guns and Canada is a vast, cold wilderness far from civilization), but I feel like I’m living in one. Over the past two months, in our driveway, we’ve had a cougar, a skunk, a fox, a coyote and a bear.

On to knitting: Noro Silk Garden – wonderful to knit with despite the gigundous slubs and a knot in each skein. There definitely is more Noro in my future.

My in-house wild animals: Gracee and Mari

$1000 worth of damage on my car, after being kicked in by a teenage boy with a problem. My son was laughing with a friend at MacDonald’s because his friend had ice cream all over his face. A swarm of kids outside of MacD’s saw them through the window and thought they were the target of the laughter. My guys leave MacD’s and were swarmed by the outside guys. Luckily DH drove up and the boys bolted for the car. The swarm followed and kicked in the rear quarter panel. DH chased them all the way home! Of course nobody would answer the door, so DH called the police. Nobody would answer the door for the police. Go figure. DH was mad the police didn’t shout “POLICE!” like on TV. Cop ended up leaving saying that he’s going on days off but maybe he’d pursue it when he got back as he recollects the police have been to that house repeatedly. IN BC you don’t have the option of pressing charges. It all goes to Crown for a decision. Plus young offenders have a multitude of rights that victims don’t. This is a minor infraction compared to what they can get away with. I will leave you with this abbreviated rant.

This is when I need a variation From Nemo:
You know what you gotta do when life gets you down?
Just keep knitting, just keep knitting,
Just keep knitting, knitting, knitting
What do we do we knit, knit, knit
OH HO HO How I love to knit…

The colours are a bit brighter than they really are, but here is my poncho in progress.

I learned how to crochet ruffles at knit night and will ruffle the bottom instead of fringe. Stay tuned.

What does Noro Silk Garden have to do with our house’s foundation? Here is a glimpse of how I think. Or rationalize spending money. When we bought our house it was considered a teardown. It is expensive to demolish a house and start over. Being from a career that involves a bit of a rescuer mentality (we’ve also have had a rescue dog and bird in our lives), I knew I was meant for that house. I would save it from demolition and live in it. An inspector, who was undoubtedly influenced by my sheer desire for that house, declared it structurally sound. A few years later, after more than budgeted renovations, we were clearing the brush from around the house and discovered a significant gap between the foundation and the ground. Making a long story short, it requires a significant repair. I know after that after the repair things will be tight so there’s an excuse to buy some Noro Silk Garden now. Besides it feels so good to buy something when I’m feeling down about something. It’s destined to be a “Very Harlot Poncho.”

I fear I am turning into a frog queen. How do you make the decision to fix or frog? If you are making a shawl that has 20,000 stitches do you go back and fix one stitch ten rows back? I’m not talking about the dropped stitch that ladders all the way to the bottom, but something like an accidental knit two together that doesn’t really have an impact on the design. Or a dropped stitch on a finished pair of socks that could be reincorporated by cheating with a needle and some well-matched sewing thread? I try to tell myself that nobody will notice, but then think about running into an expert like Wendy, and being sure she’ll notice that stitch underneath my sleeve.

Knitting is supposed to be relaxing and I’m trying to convince myself that I need to let some of this stuff go or I’ll drive myself round the bend. My husband used to own three stained glass studios where he taught classes. I took the class and married the teacher. His conflicting messages to students were: “accuracy is the single most important aspect in glass work” and “the artist is his own worst critic.” Balance, it’s all about balance. I have found a little mistake in a current project and I am going to leave it there and not let it bother me. It will not bother me. I think it will not bother me. I hope it …..

Thanks to Stephanie for ROAKing me with a sheet of labels printed with my blog address! I’m always writing it down on little corners of scrap paper.

No pictures of a blocking rippling waters scarf. I had to put it down for a while. So, here’s Gracee, bothered by nothing:

The close up:

“I am an acne pimple, lonely as can be.”
“Don’t cry pimple, I’ll bring you company”
“Hey fellow pimples, would three be a crowd?”
“All together pimples, sing real loud…
Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah…”

That was a Clearasil commercial from my teens. I have worse acne now than I ever had at 13. My 14 year old son and I are keeping Clearasil in business. When is this stuff going to stop?

Speaking of things that are obvious and at times, annoying. What do you do about self-striping wool? If you knit some sweater patterns, the stripes on the arms are much wider than the stripes on the body. If you knit a triangular piece, the stripes at the bottom aren’t stripes any longer – they are rows of colour. I am planning a shawl of self striping yarn and have decided to use several balls at once as it gets obvious, matching the colours to form thicker stripes. This is different from the pooling you can get with hand painted yarn because you have to match the colours to get the striped effect. I don’t think it would bother me in sleeves, but it does on the main body. Someone’s got to think about these things.

I had to think about these things when knitting my first fair isle sweater. I had two teachers for that course, one who likes things to match perfectly, and one who was an anything goes person. That was an interesting combination. I found after awhile I would think through my questions and go to the one whose answer I wanted to hear.
Here is the finished product. Notice, I went with the anything goes teacher for colour questions; the sleeves are not mirror images and I decided my colours as I knitted. I went to the other one for technique advice. The best of both worlds.

True for knitting as anything else. I love the tools of knitting. Among my favourites re my digital scale (so I never have to guess about how much yarn I have left) and my newly acquired yarn winder.

My daughter’s boyfriend gave me a generous gift certificate for Joann for a recent special big birthday. Timed with 40% off coupons or free shipping I turned it into a magazine, the Knit Stitch book, the Purl Stitch book, Chibi bent darning needles, a shadow box frame and the above mentioned yarn winder. Thank you, Mitch! Recently I sprang for the swift and am anxiously awaiting its delivery.

A most important tool for blogging is the digital camera. Mine is a Sony from way-back-when when digitals didn’t come with a viewfinder, just the screen that is difficult to see in bright settings. Went to an electronics store yesterday that had an updated Sony (optical zoom) with a reasonable sale price. It bugged me that you couldn’t look through the viewfinder without leaving nose prints on the screen. I’m still contemplating the purchase. You’ll know it happened when the quality of my pictures takes a leap forward.

Occasionally I buy some mortgage the house yarn – the kind that is above the regular budget, but irresistible. The kind you buy with birthday money. I consider La Boheme or Touch Me in that category. I know there’s worse but I don’t dare buy them. What’s one step worse than knitting with m-t-h yarn? Frogging a completed object made with it. I did just that today:

I had bought some LaBoheme to make a shawl. A quarter way through I decided it was looking like a baby blanket and turned the shawl into a scarf. It was knit lengthwise on large needles and had lots of give. I wore it for the first time today and it drove me crazy. So-o-o long, I couldn’t sit on the toilet without holding it up for fear of sending the fringe on an unsanitary swim. Without thinking twice it’s back into three fuzzy balls waiting for a re-work; something wider and shorter. I just couldn’t stand spending that much on something I wouldn’t wear.

I rec’d a comment from Dani that she wants to ROAK me. I hadn’t signed up properly on the ROAK database and she needed further info. Just getting the message was a ROAK. Thanks, Dani.

Gracee’s been groomed: