Still Knitting

I've neglected blogging for a couple of weeks now -- but haven't stopped knitting. We're still in the midst of a "crisis" in both of my parents' health, though the crisis isn't as pressing at this particular moment. Each parent spent a night in the hospital last week -- different nights, different reasons, and extremely stressful for everyone. Mom seems to be on the mend, though she has some significant ongoing health issues. Dad's in the midst of tests and procedures to determine whether there is something that should be done -- it is taking longer than expected to figure things out and what has been found along the way is... frightening. The big lesson for me has been that I need to take proactive steps to protect my health, namely exercise. With help from Weight Watchers, I've got my eating under control in a way I can (with work) sustain and have lost over 10 lbs. The next 10 will come off with exercise added in. The cardiologist told my father (I was there) that his quitting smoking 30 years ago and continuing to stay physically active were the two things that have made his pulmonary problems much less dire than they might be. OK. I hear it. Now I have to do something about it.

Now, I have been noticing that my arms have stayed in pretty good shape, despite my not lifting weights or anything, and my theory is that knitting is good for the arms. My arms are actively engaged in knitting at some point every day! So, I declare myself off to a good start :)

I've made very good progress on the wedding stole. The way this is made, you knit the center square and then knit each of the two ends off of that. I've got almost one whole end done -- just the last chart and a total of 17 rows left to do.

The Debbie Bliss sweater sleeves are up to the point where the top shaping begins. Those won't take long once I get a chance to work on them. I'm knitting the sleeves at the same time -- a trick I LOVE, since sleeves are the last parts you usually knit and it is so nice to have them done at the same time. Plus, it assures that the shaping is the same for both.

I started the Latvian Mitts (on the cover of Knitting Traditions recently). They are a good mental challenge, and a wonderful color fix. But they are definitely at-home knitting.

So, I keep knitting despite the challenges, and look forward to some serious knitting time over the next week -- maybe I'll even get some blogging time to tell you about it!

Knitting Therapy

I think one of the reasons I love knitting so much at this point in my life is that it is something I can control, to a large degree. I can:
* work on it when I feel like it and ignore it for years if I want to (thinking of one lace shawl in time out for the past 2 1/2 years).
* rip it out if I don't like it and move on.
* fix mistakes.
* have something to show for my time and efforts.
* put my thoughts and prayers into items to give to family and friends.
* listen and/or think while accomplishing something.
* choose appropriate challenge for myself.
* and keep myself busy when I need something to do.

The rest of my life doesn't afford me these luxuries.

Catch as Catch Can

A number of activities have prevented me from blogging this week, but I've been knitting whenever I've gotten a chance. I've gotten through 5 of the 8 1/2 repeats of the main pattern on one end of the wedding shawl. I actually had a couple of evenings when I was able to get through a whole 20-row repeat. On Sunday, during movie time, I finished and bound off the back of Sprössling and started the left front. And, I got a couple of inches done on the Debbie Bliss sweater sleeves.

I also picked up the latest Debbie Bliss magazine and have fallen in love with another sweater, but can't find a photo on line at this moment -- it is a short, fitted cardigan with little inverted vents at the bottom. The pattern also calls for knitting little roses to go over the snaps that go down the front.

My distractions this week have come from both work and family. I spent yesterday with my parents after my mother spent a night in the hospital. She had a 3-day bout of diarrhea and was severely dehydrated by Monday when my dad took her to the doctor, who sent her to the ER. She's much better now and hopefully will be rested and strong enough to get through the next few days when my dad is having a catheter put into his heart to look for blockage points -- a little scary, but not (yet) too big a deal. Siblings are lined up to be with them into next week - I can't imagine being an only child! At work, we have a week when three candidates are on campus to be interviewed for an opening in our office. At a college, you don't just come have an hour interview -- you come for a whole day. It begins with dinner with a couple of members of our staff, and then I start them out on a full day of meetings with students/staff/faculty/staff from other departments by taking them to breakfast in one of the dining halls. That makes for 3 extra early mornings for me. I usually blog over breakfast, hence my neglect this week!

This week's highlight has been our Parlor Maple. Here is what we saw the other day when there were 5 blooms:
And this morning, I came down to see more than a dozen blooms or almost blooms, with more to come! What a lovely taste of spring!

Bogged Down

I got a bit off track this week, I'm afraid. Besides the flooded basement (still damp, but no lasting damage), we've had a cat who turns out to have a UTI (she's been peeing in "inappropriate places," as the vet assistant put it), my father has to have a "procedure" to check for blockage in his heart, a sensor-gone-nuts on one of the doors of our VW that buzzed constantly, even when the doors were fully closed ($323), and I've just been tired and out of sorts. Work has been crazy -- I had three students crying in my office over two days (not anything I did to them -- they were having bad days for various reasons -- it is mid-terms, what can I say?) this week and there just doesn't seem to be enough time to do anything. So, what do I do on Friday afternoon when I had no appointments? I cleaned out a drawer of my file cabinet. Not really something that should have been at the top of my "to-do" list, but it made me feel just a bit more in control of my life.

I managed to do two things for myself, though. I went to yoga on Thursday evening (and the class was all about balance - how appropriate). I managed to knit at least a couple of rows of something almost every day (except Wednesday when I didn't get home until after 9 pm). I don't have much to show for it, but I did it. Today I spent 2 hours in the car, going back and forth to visit my parents, fixing mistakes on a pair of socks I've been working on for a couple of years (lace knee socks on needles that I've decided I really don't like using). I'm doing them two-at-a-time on one needle and had a rough time getting them back on the needles after ripping out a few rows, but the car ride gave me the opportunity to get it straightened out. And we've now got medicine for Pandora (can't wait to try to give it to her -- that is going to be interesting -- twice daily for 7 days). And I found a great deal on Reynolds Cricket yarn at Marden's ($2.49/ball). And the sun just broke through the clouds for a few minutes. I guess things will be OK. I think I'll go knit for a while.

Gadget Gene

My father enjoys asking me about some of my knitting tools and tricks. He was curious about the lifeline I still had in the center panel of the wedding stole when I showed it to him and my mother the other day. In some ways, I think some of my knitting/sewing gadgets are similar to his woodworking tools and gadgets -- we both like to have the right tool for the job, whatever the job may be. I have a cousin who once had a story done about her in her local paper, talking about the many specialty cooking tools and pans she had. I've seen this propensity in many members of my family -- there must be a gadget gene that we all have.

I'm right in there with the Yarn Harlot when it comes to collecting knitting needles. Though my collection doesn't come close to the size of hers, I'm working on it steadily. I'd love to be organized enough to make a note of where certain size needles go when they leave my storage sites -- where the heck are those size 5 Knit Picks Harmony points? If I can find the project they are in, I could cap off the cord and use the tips on the new project I want to start NOW. I'm afraid I'm not as good as my father at taking the time to build the organization system that will work for me -- but I continue to dream I can!

Speaking of the wedding stole:
Without blocking, it is hard to see just how beautiful this is going to be but I think you can see a bit of the sparkle of the beads. You can just barely see that the orange life line my Dad was intrigued by is still there. I realized yesterday that both of the main projects I'm working on are close to the same color -- navy blue and a dark blue/purple. Not great for evening knitting, but somehow I'm coping :)

Water, Water Everywhere

Yesterday's weather was wet, wet, wet. Not only was it raining all of Sunday afternoon, but it poured during the night, and there was more rain yesterday. The result was a diminishing of the snow pack - directly into our basement. We often have a little water in the basement, though we can go several years without any and then we have a morning like yesterday. We do have a floor drain, but after having an incident when a rat got into the house via that pipe, we've had our plumber fix the plug and ... it works! Using a wrench and a hammer, I finally loosened it around lunch time, and there was a big sucking sound as the water disappeared down the drain.

Along with opening the drain, I spent some time moving slush around in the driveway to redirect the water streaming out of the backyard away from the foundation near the back door and down the driveway to the street. Although it was raining while I was doing it and I got rather wet, I have to say that this activity brought me back to my childhood. We had a dirt driveway in the house where I grew up and my father and us kids spent lots of time in the spring digging trenches to drain the puddles and dry out the driveway. I loved finding ways to make the water move in the direction I wanted. I'm sure the muddy driveway was a yearly headache for my parents -- not only for driving in and out but also for 5 kids who loved to play in it -- but for us it was fun.

The student event I was planning to attend last night was moved to next week, so I got to come home for the evening. I was particularly happy about that because the temperature dropped around 4:00 yesterday, freezing all of that rain, and I wasn't looking forward to driving back to campus in the evening (my slush dams were ice piles by the time I got home at 5:30!). It also gave me some good knitting time as DH had a school board meeting to attend. Changes to the social studies curriculum were on the table and he wanted to be there to support the proposals. I am above the shaping for the armholes on Sprössling back and got a few rows done on that, but spent more time getting going on one of the sides of the Tibetan Clouds Stole (aka wedding stole). Now that I'm not working all the way around the big center square (almost 400 stitches in a row), it moves pretty quickly (100 stitches a row).

I Listened!

Friday evening and Saturday provided lots of quality knitting time. I listened to myself and finished the center square on the wedding stole - photos tomorrow, hopefully. THEN, I cast on for Sprössling! Ann Hanson's version looks like this:

Mine is looking (unblocked) like this:
A friend has also started on hers, but is using a different yarn that feels a bit more substantial than my BFL -- this is going to be a light, airy sweater. Right now it mostly appears to be pleated fabric and I can't wait to see it blocked. I've made just a couple of modifications -- first, making it about an inch shorter to fit my short waist better. Second, when I got to the part of the increase where I would have a little block of stockinette stitch (like the one I got in the decrease area), I simply switched the stitch on each side of the marker to a purl stitch and that broke up the block nicely. I'm not going back to change the decrease areas, but will use this strategy on the front in both the increases and decreases.

One weekend highlight was the blooming of our Parlor Maple. This plant was outside most of the summer, and when we brought it in it was covered with aphids. Luckily we have no other inside plants that attract the critters, but this plant was certainly suffering. I convinced my DH to carefully wash off the leaves and stems and we used a product called, I think, Merit, which doesn't kill aphids, but does make it impossible for them to reproduce (you dilute it and put it into the soil -- we spent $29 for the bottle, of which we needed to use a tablespoon -- but it worked!). We've been rewarded by a steadily recovering leaf production (beautiful speckled leaves) and this:
And this:
Within another week, we could have a dozen lovely blooms!

Row by Row

After work and yoga and dinner last night there wasn't much knitting time (though I made some by staying up later than usual). I completed Chart B on the wedding stole, though! 12 more rows on the center square and then on to one of the ends. I WILL complete the center square before I inevitably give in to the temptation of Sprössling (Cate - are you paying attention? Center square BEFORE anything else!). I think we'll have a bit of a Sprössling Knit-Along, though, as two friends are making it too -- one is already half-way up the back and the other had swatched by Wednesday night in choir. I'm sure she will have started by Sunday, too.

Cold, cold, cold weather! -2 this morning, but should rise about 40 degrees today. Definitely a layer day -- hopefully I can take off my long underwear by lunchtime when I have to be presentable at a lunch meeting with prospective students' parents :)

Self-discipline or Wild Abandon?

Today I'm wearing a handmade sweater that definitely is not the most flattering to my figure, but I always get compliments on the sweater itself, and it is one of my warmest sweaters, so on a day when the temp is in single digits, I'll settle for a sweater that is more attractive than I am :)

Although I didn't work late last night, I did return to choir after taking the month of February off and got home around 9 pm. I did, however, get a few rows of the wedding shawl done before going to bed. I also compared notes on my BFL swatch with my friend who also bought some of the same yarn (hers was navy blue) and we both got gauge for Sprössling on the first try! I often do not get the knitting in my swatch to match what a pattern calls for at first. I usually can get stitch gauge with little problem (that would be the number of stitches over a measurement such as 4" -- think of it as the horizontal gauge) but more often than not do not get row gauge (number of rows over a measurement -- vertical gauge). Row/vertical gauge is fairly easy to adapt on most patterns, but stitch gauge has a everything to do with how big around a sweater ends up being and needs to be accounted for before knitting the sweater.

So, I think I'm going to go ahead and knit Sprössling! Now, should I cast on this weekend or make myself concentrate on the wedding shawl and finishing the sleeves of the Debbie Bliss sweater first? Self-discipline or wild abandon?

Maybe I CAN Fit to Flatter!

I find myself still thinking about what was presented in the Fit to Flatter class I attended over the weekend. Combining that with a comment I made to my DH about my never having felt comfortable with my own body and a daily yoga article on resistance, I'm realizing that having myself photographed in tight-fitting clothing was the least difficult part of the whole thing and that my own resistance to seeing myself as shapely in a pleasant way is likely the hardest thing for me to overcome. Who would have thought it would take me into my 50's to start to deal with that?! As usual, my epiphanies are slow to piph.

On the very positive side, losing just 10 pounds has made a great difference in my self-concept. And Amy's class does have me looking more closely at patterns with an interest and confidence in knitting sweaters again -- hopefully without having to chant, "I hope it fits, I hope it fits" as I come to the point of sewing it together the way I have in the past :)

Yesterday was my long day at work with two evening workshops -- I'd rather stay and do two in one evening than have to go back to campus two evenings a week -- so there was no knitting accomplished. Our neighbor is still very sick. DH seems to be coming down with a cold, so I'm now on the watch for flu at our house. Wash your hands, everyone!

Ooh, Lovely!

I was feeling a bit like I overspent on that BFL, but when I started knitting a swatch yesterday on my lunch hour I fell in love. It is going to make a gorgeous sweater! I'm not sure I can really describe it, but it just feels lovely in my hands and going onto the needles. The swatch isn't really big enough to measure yet, but I tried anyway and it looks like I'm going to be right on gauge for Sprössling, so I think I'll probably use it for that sweater. I'm dying for an Ann Hanson sweater -- I love the shawls, neckwarmers, and wristwarmers that I've made from her patterns and have been thinking about this sweater for some time, so I'm going to go for it.

When I spend a little more than I'm comfortable with (trust me, I spent less than I had budgeted to spend at the vendor area), I always remember when I spent every cent I had (at the time it was probably about $15) on Barbie outfits and my mother chided me (putting it nicely). Do we ever get over some of those experiences? Now it is my mother who acts like a child and me who tries hard not to chide.

In addition to swatching the BFL, I got a few more rows of the wedding shawl knit last night. I don't have far to go before I'll finish the center square and be able to show what it is looking like. The yarn I'm using, Webs' Colrain Lace, has a lovely sheen to it.

Please pray for my next-door neighbor, John, who was hospitalized with flu yesterday. He's 89 and fragile. My aunt has also been hospitalized with flu this past week, but is much better. John is a fighter -- he had a kidney transplant in his 70's, a heart attack two years ago, and fell down a staircase two years ago. He always fights back. We've been close neighbors for 21 years, sharing a driveway, and he and his wife are like family for us.
And these are my lovely ladies. Pandora, the grey and white, older cat, loves to nuzzle my hair whenever she gets a chance -- isn't that strange? Her best opportunity comes when we watch television and she can sit on the back of the couch where I sit.