Socks in the dead of summer

 (Bear with me here.  I'm not quite sure why this is sideways but I don't feel like spending the time to try and fix it so just work with me.  :)  )

My lovely m-i-l's socks that I, somehow, finished in a whirlwind of joy at midnight last night.  I was certain I was still going to be knitting on them today, finish and rush home to wash and get after them with a hairdryer (wait, we don't even own one!) to get them ready but no.  I actually finished on my set deadline, washed them last night and they were drying on the dryer damp this morning.  They are a little crinkly (the yarn) but they turned out cute and so totally my m-i-l.  I can't wait to gift them tonight.

I hope she doesn't read this blog.  Does she?

Black cabled wrap

The pics as promised.  It's knitted in Debbie Bliss' Rialta which is merino superwash wool in whatever color number black is.  It held the cable shape superbly, making the wrap have more body than drape which is what the pattern calls for out of linen.  The wrap I own in this pattern that Mom did is out of bamboo.  I love all the varieties and this one totally fit my sis-in-law.

Sha-la-la-la, shame on you

I'm brewing a cup of tea, musing over a few people I know, thinking of things I would like to do to let them know how I feel about them and their life decisions.  The "what to do" has reached the level of me visualizing tearing pictures of them into little tiny pieces.  This is totally not mature, totally not rational, the idea that their life is their life and it's none of my responsibility/business is totally irrelevant, and the rational/mature side of me is shaking it's head, saying "tut, tut, shame on you."  But I'm finding strange pleasure in thinking this and I'm not sure I like that.  See, over the past few months I have been trying to "rise above" and mind my own business, love people but keep my head about it, and make firm, calm, fair decisions about the emotional state I'm in and the emotions I choose to show.  Do you know how hard that is once you start trying to do it consistently?  It's so hard I feel like I'm going backwards instead of forwards with it.  Maybe I only feel that way because I'm now paying attention to things.  Maybe I'm being thrown a curve ball to see how much I truly want this.  (The latter I doubt; I try hard not to think of life this way, but still.)  But whatever the reason, I know I'm better than this so why do certain insignificant things get to me like this?

Some light got shed on this, or at least a new way of thinking, at the conference I was at last weekend.  It was a wonderful trip with the fabulous co-workers I'll soon be around lots and lots to the neighboring state's preschool teacher convention.  (Those ladies can sing, I'll tell you, but I guess that could go without saying.  They are all pre-school teachers and everyone knows we sing all the time.  But I digress...)  Several of the sessions I chose to go to were about the emotional states and what teachers/parents could do about them and one quote struck me.  It didn't talk to me totally as a pre-school teacher but did more as an adult.  It's as follows:

"Our emotions will manifest, or communicate, our character, our value system, the lies, or the truth, that we've based our life on."           Dr. Robert Roberts, Spiritual Emotions

So what to think?  Am I feeling this way because I'm a closet control freak or is it because I can't stand making mistakes (ah, the perfectionist in me, eh?) thus when I see other people doing things that are 85% of the time considered by the experts to be "mistakes" I have a reaction?  On the other hand, should I stop being so self-centered about all this and turn the quote on these people that aggravate me and think "Hmm, they are feeling guilty and trying to hide their actions, thus the behavior and subsequent actions" ?  Either way, it's something to think about.  Am I really getting the quote at all?  Either way, this quote has me thinking and trying to listen to what emotional trigger I have going off so I can see what part of my mind is trying to talk to me instead of trying to change my emotional reaction to something more p.c.

So no conclusions yet but hopefully I keep truly moving forward instead of back in this endeavor.  Just wanted to share the quote and story.  My tea is ready and I'm looking forward to it.

The Life Pursuit

I have a new happy in my life.  It's a little red cd/radio that fits nicely on my kitchen counter.  It was a freebie of Mom's from some book order.  I can now listen to whatever I want while cooking without blasting everyone out of the house!  The only cd player was in the front room and I can't hear it over the vent or dryer in the kitchen; ask me about the time I was listening to White Stripes while no one else was home.  A friend biked by, on the street mind you, and said it sounded like a frat party.  I was flattered.  I don't think I ever did that 14 years ago.  But, the even better thing is I CAN PICK UP KSCL (Centenary College radio station).  I was cooking breakfast one morning, enjoying myself, radio on, and Hubby came in grinning, saying "I feel like I'm back in college."

Wrap is finished.  Pics soon.  It'll be gifted tonight.

...and a Monday holiday is for cleaning???

Today has been great so far and I'm not being sarcastic, either.  We, all four of us, have been cleaning.  Nothing was safe: under beds, floors, base boards, bins, behind curtains, blinds, everything got a once over and was cleaned out, donation considered, and appropriate action insued.  And it was totally not my idea.  Yesterday Hubby had been on a mission to find all the marbles from a birthday present given to Little Guy and got up close and personal with the condition of our front room.  "It's DIRTY!" was the comment.  All he got was a stare from me while I thought of what to say.  (In the past, every time I was fretting about needing to clean the house and life not letting me he would say "You just cleaned it.  It's fine.  Relax."  Advice that made me grit my teeth and resist screaming "You don't understand me!!!!"  I'm fully aware that our house at it's dirtiest is cleaner than 50% of all the houses we visit in a year but we have a small house with no carpet so any little thing tracked in makes lovely dirt bunnies that congregate in various spots and hold conventions.  Those are what I find when I'm opening and closing doors, trying to walk out of the house to run errands, so I am constantly reminded that while I'm cleaning other peoples houses, mine is laying to waste.  Well, maybe not that extreme, but it's sure not being cleaned.)  So I simply smiled and said that the vacuum cleaner was in a closet and he is more than welcome to clean the house.  That led to discussions which led to more discussions which led to the conclusion that everyone would help and we would take one room at a time and get everything in ship-shape order, then Daddy would come in with the vacuum and get all the icky dust up while the other 3 of us cleaned up the next room on the list.  It's worked like a charm and the kids are old enough to really get down and help so they really enjoyed it because we all were doing it together.  I'm really glad they helped because that freed me to do some extra cleaning and I found that we were having an interesting unintentional science fair experiment using our bathroom floor on what bacteria can grow underneath a potty training chair and the different smells they can emit.  I'll use Little Guy's word:  YUCK.  But it is now cleaned and washed and conclusions noted.  Who cares that we didn't have a hypothesis in the first place, all in good fun.  It was Albert Enstein who said "If we knew what we were doing it wouldn't be called research."

Eventually I'll get to my knitting today.  I've got 6 days to my deadline on the cabled wrap and it's coming along ok.  Almost halfway.  The Bee has put in her vote to watch "Bye, Bye Birdie" this afternoon as my knitting movie and I think I'm all for that.  Little Guy said Thomas the Tank Engine and I think we can swing both.

Another funny story related to the cleaning up/out.  I was going through all the kitchen toys given to us that we decided needed to go into storage when Little Guy came swaggering through with his birthday light saber.

"When Darth Vader comes I'm going to fight him," he said.

"Sure, but we have to vacuum your room first," I answered.

"Ok."

Just to let you know, Hubby was Han Solo but since the gifting of the light saber has been deemed Darth Vader.  He had run across the street to his parents to return something.

Limerick

There was a big fuzzball of stress

With an insane wicked grin, none-the-less.

I asked it to tea,

Kicked it hard in the knee,

And immensely enjoyed it, I confess.

[to my fellow stress addicts, continue to kick it's a$$.  It's an amazing mental image and helps melt the tenseness away.]

Something old, something new

Life has settled into a high paced, but at least consistent, schedule.  I am at Mom's helping her rehab her knee, cook for the FabFam, and clean house while potty-training Little Guy.  (That's going great by the way; only a few minor accidents when he gets tired in the evening or too busy playing to go.  No sweat because I had kids that still did that in Kindergarten and 1st grade.  I totally got this!)  We are borrowing Mom's car to keep it active;  she can't drive anyway so I'm her chauffeur.  HaHa! City @ the Port, look out!  Hubby has our car and we aren't having to dash about getting everyone everywhere so that has been a nice change.  The Bee (who is also SuperGirl, that name just fits her better now) is almost finished with school so that's one less errand to do.  Also having her around more to play will be a nice change for both Little Guy and me.  We've missed her during the day.

While cleaning and passing the time at Mom's I have been knitting away at a s-i-l's birthday present.  It's a wrap and a lovely one at that.  I don't care to knit wraps (or scarves for that matter) because they are hideously boring to me so this has been a special labor of love, especially since she wanted black.  Why, do you ask?  Um, you can't see it.  At all.  Like the yarn totally disappears except under bright lights.  And this is a wrap with cables which kinda ups the excitement factor a bit when there is a mistake, which I tend to do because I'm usually knitting this while watching some movie or show ("Fantastic Mr. Fox" was truly fantastic but I had to rip half a row out because I forgot to cable) that I find more exciting.  At the moment it's Sgt. Cribb and I've managed to avoid disaster so far (knock on wood).  

I'm nearly halfway through it and I highly recommend the pattern if you like, or don't like!, knitting wraps/scarves.  The gauge is large enough you can see a quick growth but not so big it's a bulky piece.  The cable row is easy and happens every fifth row so just when you get stuck establishing a k-p switch pattern there's the cable to make it pretty and change it up.  Pics and a link (if I can find it) to the pattern/pattern name will be posted once it's gifted.

While making myself knit on this I've been cleaning out things at Mom's like closets and drawers.  I'm boxing up things for Snakeman (congrats on your latest addition!) and trying to work through all that's still here that's accumulated through the last 30+ years.  How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time.   This has earned me weekly trips to Goodwill and a local used book store and some rare gems of finds, some I get excited about, some not so excited.  I won't go into details on the latter.  :)  In the fabric boxes I found some pajamas that I had cut out to sew back in '99 and a little doll dress that I wasn't sure who made it but all it needed was a hem and snaps to finish.  I took them home and am proud to say they are finished.  I wore the pajamas last night and the Bee now has another not-naked doll (4 down, too many to go).  I couldn't imagine why I never sewed up those pajamas and had wondered where the fabric pieces had gone for years.  While sewing it up and trying to figure out what needed to go where (the pattern itself I'm sure was donated years ago) I realized why I had discarded it.  I had gotten too industrious on sewing shirttail hems and had hemmed the sleeves too soon which meant they would take some extra figuring to fit them on the shirt.  I apparently didn't feel like doing the figuring or ripping the hems out (knitting I don't mind so much but sewing I HATE ripping) so I dropped it like it was hot and went on my merry way.  11 years later it took me maybe 3 minutes to figure out the difference, make it look right, and sew that puppy up in under an hour.  I make myself laugh.