Wall Street Ought to Take Up Knitting

Knitting is a calming, productive way to manage stress. Personally, I'm tired of hearing about the hysteria on Wall Street and Main Street over the financial crisis. I work with people who check the market several (that's putting it mildly) times a day and worry about every few points it drops and bewail the losses. I, however, take much pleasure in imagining all those suits in NYC calming themselves down by picking up their pointy sticks and some yarn. Don't you think that could improve things? I've lived through these down cycles before and my meager financial investments always have rebounded. There isn't anything I can do about the situation, so I think I'll just knit. Luckily, my stash is deep enough that I can keep busy until the market recovers. And, if necessary, I can wait a long time because I also have a deep stash of quilting fabric. I'm golden.

The empty nest is beginning to feel more comfortable. I still have a regular crying jag on Saturday mornings, usually after Don has left to do his Saturday things. Silly things set it off, but it doesn't last long. I think it may have as much to do with how tired I am by the end of the work week as it has to do with anything else. Maybe this will be the first weekend it won't happen.

Instead of knitting, however, I'm finding myself to be on a cleaning out binge. First, I cleaned Zeben's room over the summer, with another cleaning needed after he was home for a week before going to college. Then, I cleaned Nate's room. Dust was thick on the bookshelves and books and junk on the shelves. Trash was in the closet and on the floor. I opened a big trunk he keeps in his room and it had a full load of dirty socks in it -- pee-uuw! The floors in both room have been washed, the beds made, and I can get to the windows for the first time in a long time. The linen closet in Nate's room is now organized so I can find things (now that I can actually get to the closet). Now, though, I need to get busy and, finally, paint the woodwork and wallpaper or paint the walls. That should keep me busy this winter.

This past weekend, I cleaned out a cupboard and the pantry shelves on our cellar stairwell wall. The impetus was an infestation of flour moths but the result was a lot of old stuff thrown out and a much-easier-to-find-things-in cupboard and pantry. One more cupboard to go, this weekend.

Now to organize and clean out the basement, garage, sewing room, porch, files & records, photos, recipe files, and..... yarn!

ON MY NEEDLES
Norwegian Woods Shawl #2 in Classic Elite Silky Alpaca Lace in off-white. This one I'll make in the bigger version.

Lace shrug for my mother -- Knit Picks lace weight in blue & gray variegated. This is my second shrug from the Gathering of Lace pattern by Meg Swanson. No errata for this pattern!

A friend gave me two cones of purple pearl cotton and I found a lace bag in Gathering of Lace that called for pearl cotton. It has a series of hearts down the center of each side. I'm hoping to have two done by Christmas to give the daughters of our friends who are also twins and also freshmen in college. So far I'm about half way through the first one.

The pink socks turned out to have problems. To begin with, I forgot to make the second size instead of the smallest size. Also, somehow I lost some stitches and wanted to do a different heel than the one in the pattern. I ended up pulling them both out and starting again. I'll be happier with them in the end.

WHAT I'M READING
I just started The Mezzo Wore Mink by Mark Schweizer. This is the 6th in a series of hilarious novels in which the main character is both the Chief of Police for a small North Carolina town and the Episcopal Church organist. He's also a fan of Raymond Chandler and attempts to write his own mystery stories. Each one of these books has at least one belly laugh out loud episode (involving pirates, clowns, helium filled naked women balloons, competing "living creche" scenes with collapsing sets, a massage parlor called the "Upper Womb," an escaped gorilla, and really loony Episcopal priests and religious education directors), which makes them very therapeutic to read. Our church choir has invested in the full set and has happily shared them. A new member of our choir, a retired priest, is currently working her way through the first couple of books -- she decided she'd better read them after we regaled her with our desire to put on a Pirate Eucharist based on one of the books.