kmkat and her kneedles

The story of my life. In 100 lines.

Stolen from Helen.

Things I've Done (In Bold)

1. Started my own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band but only if high school band counts.
4. Visited Hawaii twice. Got pregnant the first time, brought the baby the second time :-)
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than I can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland/world
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sung a solo
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched lightning at sea No, but I have watched it from an airplane and was in that airplane when it was struck by lightning. Scary, that.
14. Taught myself an art from scratch Knitting and crochet
15. Adopted a child (I was adopted, but that probably doesn't count.)
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown my own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train (No, but I have slept on an overnight ferry.)
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitchhiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise (unless you count the two hour dinner cruise kind)
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of my ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught myself a new language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David (Never been to Italy, but in one of my art history classes we saw a photo of David's backside. He has a really nice butt.)
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight Remember the Hawaii trip?
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had my portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason Smokey gets me flowers for no reason all the time. What a guy.
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check I was fiscally irresponsible in my younger years.
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten Caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades We took a guided hike in the Everglades; it was the dry season.
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone Recently, as you all know, since I insist on telling you all the gory details.
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had my picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating (Not I, but my parents used to kill and prep the occasional domestic chicken for dinner, not to mention wild duck and pheasant.)
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous (Does doing a tax return for a locally well-known person count?)
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee (Yellowjacket, yes; bee, no.)
100. Rode an elephant

The pix go marching six by six.

Vicki Knitorious tagged me for this meme. It sounds like fun!

--Go to your sixth picture folder and pick the sixth picture
--Pray you remember the details

Now, I am gonna have to bend the rules a little (actually, a LOT). My photos are all in one folder, so instead of posting the sixth picture in the sixth folder, I am going to post all the photos whose identifying numbers, as assigned by the camera, are all sixes. Here goes!

IMG0666.jpg, August 28, 2008; seed pods of something (Queen Anne's lace?), taken at our campsite on Lake Superior:

DSCF0666.jpg, May 16, 2008; my iPod, playing Duma Key (unabridged) by Stephen King and plugged into my ($25!) iPod dock; the reason I took a picture of this is lost in the mists of memory:

DSCF0666.jpg, March 20, 2008; taken one evening at work and showing the betting pot; staff and managers are flipping quarters for something or other:

DSCF0006, March 15, 2008; Franklin taking photos for the 1,000 Knitters Project at Yellow Dog Knits in Eau Claire, WI:

DSCF6667.jpg and DSCF6665.jpg, August 31, 2007 because apparently I deleted DSCF6666.jpg; I was taking stash photos for Ravelry:

 

IMG0006.jpg, taken by a friend of Matthew's sometime during his senior year in high school; they went to Minneapolis one Saturday and she took lots of photos of him; he was hoping to use one as his senior photo; this was NOT the best of the bunch:

6.jpg, April 30, 2006; Matthew was fooling around with my scanner one day when I wasn't home:

And there you have it, a tour through my iPhoto folder by the sixes!

Passing this on, I tag:

Deb, who has some of the best pet photos around, rivaled only by...

Chris, whose feline models come up with some very funny captions.

Cathy-Cate, who takes gorgeous photos of flowers, among other things.

Stacey, who has gone all squishy on us.*

Cookie, because she doesn't post a lot of photos so I am gonna give her a hard time ;-)

Joan, who knits faster than the wind.

* I just discovered that Stacey had already done this meme. Instead, I tag...

Suzanne, who always looks better than anybody in the world in her handknits.

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ETA: Another excellent reason NOT to venture into any retail establishment on Black Friday: Wal-Mart worker dies after shoppers knock him down.

Happy Friday. More junk.

1. Sleepy :: time tea
2. Thanksgiving :: Day
3. Fifteen :: years old
4. Authority :: sucks
5. Bangs :: guns
6. Curled :: bangs
7. Young man :: old man
8. Surprised :: delighted
9. Mistake :: oops
10. Handle it :: please

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The new improved Typepad now makes it more difficult for me to respond to my commenters. If you have a TypePad blog, please click on the "signout" option above the comment box when you comment.* Otherwise, your comment lands in my email with a sender of "[email protected]." And I cannot reply.

Sux.

And now I find that I cannot change the font or font size of this post by using the handy font and font size buttons. It is too piddly to do it with html so you will get this post in this teeny size.

Sux x2.

* This was Cookie's solution. However, her TypePad blog is a step above mine, which is the $4.95/month El Cheapo version. I don't see the signout option on my blog. Arghhhh.

Why I do not shop on Black Friday.

Boise Town Square, Boise ID, 1 am

In my many decades on this planet I have only shopped on Black Friday twice, both times in Chicago. We were visiting my husband's family for Thanksgiving one year, and certain others in the family wanted to go downtown to Water Tower Place on the day after Thanksgiving. It was sheer unadulterated hell, and to this day I still cannot figure out why I agreed to go along. Overdose of turkey, probably.

The other time we were in Oakbrook for another relative's wedding and decided to take advantage of Best Buy's sale. We studied the ad, decided what we wanted, marched in, bought a TV and a Palm, and marched out. We most certainly did NOT attempt to be there at 5am or whenever BB opened, and we did not browse around the store. It was not nearly as crazy as the Water Tower Place disaster nor the scene in the video.

If I never shop on Black Friday again it will be too soon.

* * * * *

This guy articulates -- in a hilarious way -- some things my husband has often said.

Thanks for the link, soxanne!

Thanks, Cookie!

My most grateful gratitude to Cookie, who pointed out what was killing my blog layout. Thanks, Cookie, you absolutely rock!

The food meme.

It is Thanksgiving, that American traditional holiday of gratitude and gluttony. What better time for a food meme?

This is the Omnivore's hundred list of foods the gastronome Andrew Wheeler thinks everyone should try at least once in their lives.

The rules of the meme: bold those you have tried, strike through those you wouldn't eat on a bet.

1. Venison My dad was a hunter. We ate venison steak most nights when I was growing up. The roasts were icky, the steaks and chops were good, the hamburger and sausage were excellent. In addition to venison, i.e., deer, I have eaten antelope, moose, and bear. And squirrel and rabbit.
   

2. Nettle tea

3. Huevos rancheros

4. Steak tartare I sneak bits of raw hamburger and raw steak every time I prepare them. But I have had the real thing -- once.

5. Crocodile

6. Black pudding

7. Cheese fondue I lived through the 70s and have the fondue pot to prove it.

8. Carp

9. Borscht

10. Baba ghanoush

11. Calamari The calamari we ate at various places in South Africa was excellent. #1 son and I both decided we liked calamari.

12. Pho Huh?

13. PB&J sandwich Duh. I am an American of the 20th century. I especially like to eat pb&j on tortilla, rolled up.

14. Aloo gobi

15. Hot dog from a street cart Can you say "state fair"?

16. Epoisses Huh?

17. Black truffle

18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes Does dandelion count? Oh, wait, I think I have had elderberry. And Annie Green Springs.

19. Steamed pork buns Maybe. Don't remember. We go to a lot of Chinese buffets.

20. Pistachio ice cream Just last week, in fact.

21. Heirloom tomatoes The upper Midwest is largely devoid of heirloom tomatoes -- growing season too short. Damn.

22. Fresh wild berries Many times -- strawberries, red raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, usually eaten within seconds of picking.

23. Foie gras Yuk, liver.

24. Rice and beans Yellow rice and black beans, a Key West favorite we brought home to the Great Frozen Tundra.

25. Brawn, or head cheese

26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper

27. Dulce de leche

28. Oysters Smoked in a can only, never raw or in oyster stew.

29. Baklava Too sweet. I'm not a big fan of honey.

30. Bagna cauda Huh?

31. Wasabi peas Yum. I just discovered them a couple months ago. Too bad I have to drive 50 miles to buy them.

32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl Probably. This is not something so distinctive I would necessarily remember it.

33. Salted lassi

34. Sauerkraut Sauerkraut and ribs, mmm. Although I could do without the sauerkraut.

35. Root beer float

36. Cognac with a fat cigar I had cognac once. It gave me a migraine. Skip the cigar... forever.

37. Clotted cream tea Sound disgusting but is actually delicious.

38. Vodka jelly

39. Gumbo Only if Campbell's Chicken Gumbo counts.

40. Oxtail

41. Curried goat There was goat in the dish, don't remember if it was curried or not. It very well might have been; it was a Chinese restaurant.

42. Whole insects Never on purpose. Once I grabbed a can of Coke that had been sitting on the floor. Where the ants found it. Ants taste sour.

43. Phaal

44. Goat’s milk

45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more

46. Fugu

47. Chicken tikka masala

48. Eel

49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut

50. Sea urchin We kept one in a pail of sea water once while camping in the Keys. You can eat them?

51. Prickly pear

52. Umeboshi

53. Abalone

54. Paneer

55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal See #13, above, re: American, 20th century.

56. Spaetzle

57. Dirty gin martini

58. Beer above 8%

59. Poutine

60. Carob chips

61. S’mores See #13, above, re: American, 20th century.

62. Sweetbreads

63. Kaolin I thought kaolin was the kind of clay used to make porcelein. Apparently not.

64. Currywurst

65. Durian No, but I do know what it is.

66. Frogs’ legs Tasted really, really fishy.

67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake State fair, hello?

68. Haggis

69. Fried plantain In the Keys, I think.

70. Chitterlings, or andouillette

71. Gazpacho

72. Caviar and blini

73. Louche absinthe

74. Gjetost, or brunost We used to have a house mate who relished her Norwegian heritage; she often had gjetost in the fridge. It wasn't bad, as I recall.

75. Road kill

76. Baijiu

77. Hostess Fruit Pie College vending machines.

78. Snail Eww, have you ever stepped on a snail and smelled the resulting stench?

79. Lapsang souchong

80. Bellini

81. Tom yum WTF is that?

82. Eggs Benedict

83. Pocky (or something similar).

84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant I have never been IN a three-Michelin-star restaurant.

85. Kobe beef Not only have I eaten it, I ate it in a teppanyaki steak house in Japan.

86. Hare

87. Goulash In rural southern Minnesota where I grew up, every hotdish (that's what we call casseroles in the Midwest) made with macaroni, tomato sauce, and hamburger was called goulash. I'm guessing that is NOT what this item is referring to.

88. Flowers Violets, nasturtium, nasturtium pods.

89. Horse

90. Criollo chocolate

91. Spam In our family, pancakes and fried Spam is considered the ultimate camping breakfast.

92. Soft shell crab

93. Rose harissa

94. Catfish Blackened. Yum.

95. Mole poblano I have a dandy WW recipe for chicken mole poblano; I have eaten authentic mole, too.

96. Bagel and lox Yum!

97. Lobster Thermidor

98. Polenta

99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee

100. Snake

Have a great Thanksgiving!

Caps, community, and cats.

The second hat for Connor's Caps is done.

Three pairs of mittens for The Yarnery's mitten drive.

Onward to finish the [not] Red Scarf!

* * * * *

And now, for your viewing pleasure... the incredible Slinky Cat!

I look at The Sartorialist every day, don't ask me why, my version of high fashion is Target instead of FleetFarm, mostly I despise fashion, but anyway. This was in his blog today, and I had to share it with you.

The rest of his readers may marvel at that garment -- the warmth! the individuality! the chic-ness! -- but you and I are scrutinizing it carefully trying to figure out exactly how those sleeve cuff cables were made and is that bulky alpaca and where did the knitter find those buttons?

I fully expect to see a version of this on Ravelry within the week ;-)

I finished the first hat for Connor's Caps.

Pattern: House Hat beanie  from Charmed Knits by Alison Hensel; I made the smallest size, 18-1/2" circumference.
Yarn: Knit Picks Swish (superwash merino) in Ocean, Coast Gray, and Gold.
Needles: Knit Picks Options US#6 (ribbing) and US#7 (rest of hat).
Mods: none.

You may recall that the requirements were that the hat use Connor's school colors of cobalt and gray with a little touch of gold. After I finished the first hat I weighed it and compared that weight to the remaining balls of blue and gray yarn. (Scale was $20 plus shipping on eBay. A useful investment.)

 

Yes! Definitely enough to make a second hat in a larger size; exactly as I planned. Hell, yes, I'll take credit for luck.

As I cast on for the second hat, a daring thought crept into my mind. Perhaps I could use this as a teaching opportunity! Never mind that I am a perfectly ordinary knitter who seldom ventures beyond her comfort zone of stockinette, garter, ribbing, and cables and hence has little to teach in the way of techique. Never mind that some really good knitters (you know who you are)  occasionally read my blog. Never mind the hubris inherent in the whole effort. I seem to have established a track record of giving a knitting tip or lesson about once a year. It's time. Here goes.

I always cast on over two needles -- actually, over both ends of the circ held together, since I always knit on circs -- to ensure that my cast-on is not too tight. Instructions often say to cast on over a needle a size or two larger than the one you intend to use, but that means I have to go hunt up another needle. My way is easier, i.e., better for the lazy knitter. Me = lazy knitter.

Although stitch markers have become an accepted art form, perhaps even attaining the status of knitting bling, I have resisted the temptation to buy any cute ones because I lose stitch markers like kids lose mittens. Here one second, gone the next. For a long time I have instead used scraps of yarn looped around the needles. They tend not to slide off the needle when I am not paying attention. If I do drop one it doesn't bounce once and disappear from the face of the earth. And they are free.

Long hard experience has taught me that I am incapable of consistently and accurately counting to any number larger than twenty. So I use my [free!] stitch markers to delimit groups of twenty stitches each. This hat requires a cast-on of 96 stitches, hence, the group of 16 at the end.

Okay, this one is my favorite. I can estimate how much yarn I need for a long tail cast-on when the number of stitches is less than 40 or so (about a yard). But that estimation gets harder when the cast-on is for 72 or 96 or 168 stitches. It is intensely annoying to run out of yarn before reaching the number of stitches needed, and I hate to waste the long tail of yarn if I overestimate. So I tie the two ends from my ball of yarn together loosely and cast on with those two strands. When the cast-on is done, I cut the strand that comes from the outside of the ball and continue merrily along with the center-pull strand. A couple things to remember: the initial *stitch* is not a permanent stitch, but will disappear when you untie the knot, and remember to leave all the ends long enough (6" or so) that you can easily weave them in.

Wait. I just remembered another thing that an accomplished knitter from the fiber guild taught me last spring. When you are going to knit something in the round, don't bother to join immediately after the cast-on. Knit a couple rows back and forth, then join. It is a lot easier to avoid twisting the work, and you can use the tail of yarn to sew up the little seam where you were knitting flat. It doesn't show. I have done this on the last five pairs of socks I knit and on the first hat, above. Trust me. It.Doesn't.Show. (But be warned that I adhere to the trotting horse theory of error correction; if you can't see it from a trotting horse, it doesn't need to be fixed.)

There you have it. Your knitting lesson for the year. Don't spend it all in one place.

If you are a CPA in Minnesota there is a good chance you spent Thursday and Friday at the Minneapolis Convention Center at the annual tax conference. And if you saw a woman in a wheelchair there who was knitting in Every Single Session, you saw me.

It is winter here in the north, although without significant snow on the ground.

I got a dandy *free* tote bag and lapel button...

to commemorate the occasion. This tote bag is a big improvement over the ones from past tax conferences. Those all attempted to look like attache or laptop cases, but failed miserably in the attempt because the budget didn't allow for the requisite quality. This one attempts to look like a reusable shopping bag -- or knitting bag! -- and succeeds admirably. I foresee it getting a good bit of use, as opposed to the previous ones that sat in a corner and eventually made their way to Goodwill without ever having left the house during their sojourn in my life.

The second best thing about the conference is that you get one of these with your lunch each day:

  

Mmmmmm, chocolate...

I learned a few tax and tech things, but by far the best part of the conference was the 8+ hours of knitting time each day. The Palindrome scarf looked like this on Thursday morning:

and by Friday evening it looked like this (color is accurate above; the stitch holder below is marking the side on which I cable):

As if all that luxe knitting time weren't enough, I got to go to Knit Night at the Yarnery on Friday night thanks to an invite from soxanne. If I were a better blogger I would have a photo. But I am not and I don't. You will just have to imagine a dozen or so smart women, each one knitting something better than the next, talking and knitting and laughing around a table. It was a delightful time. Thanks, soxanne!

Got nuthin; must do meme.

Ten Random Things (stolen from Knitiot Savant)

1. Magazines subscribed to:  Um. U.S. News & World Report. I have subscribed to lots of magazines -- New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Bazaar, Time, PC World, Fortune, Herb Companion, Fine Gardening, Green Thumb, Green Prints (The Weeder's Digest), Nation (not all at the same time) -- but I found that it had become a burden to read them. So I let them lapse.

2.  Aside from knitting, my favorite pastimes are - Reading, preferably with a cat on my lap/chest, playing around on the internet, hanging out with my family.

3.  If I were not an accountant (insert your own profession) I would be: Once upon a time my choice would have been dancer. Now, it would be forensic something-or-other or computer guru.

4.  I am irrationally worried about - I don't worry much. My only irrational fear is that the semi in front of me on the freeway won't quite fit under the underpass coming up, and its load will end up on top of my car. This seems especially likely to happen when the semi is a flatbed with a great whack of stuff strapped to it, like Christmas trees or huge bales of hay. How do I know the guy that loaded it actually measured to be sure it would fit under that bridge up ahead?

5.  If I were the opposite sex - I would make a terrible man. Too cowardly. Although I suppose if I were a man the testosterone would take care of that.

6.  The thing I miss most about childhood is - always being The Special One.

7.  I like to collect - I don't like to collect things, although I do seem to have acquired a collection of coffee mugs from places I have visited.

8.  Though I've never been there, I feel inexplicably homesick for - Tahiti.

9.  I've never really liked to eat - peas or beans. Especially lima beans. Or baked beans.

10.  When I have nightmares, they're usually about - being in some public situation and not knowing what to do.

* * * * *

Here's a random photo, taken at the hotel at Wisconsin Dells. I must have at least one picture in every post.



* * * * *

More nuthin'; random mutterings.

1. Spit it out :: I don't have all day.
2. Shadow :: dancer
3. Database :: computer
4. Expression :: of distaste
5. Boss :: jerk
6. Baby :: kangaroo
7. Mystic :: River
8. Kate :: McGrew*
9. Boobies :: birds
10. Raid :: bugs

* After a little IMDb research I discovered that I was really thinking of Kate Mulgrew, the actress that played the captain on Star Trek: Voyager. These random muttering things are challenging.

One of the disadvantages of a walker or crutches or a wheelchair is that it is difficult to carry anything along -- a book, an iPod, my pain meds, a bottle of water, my knitting, all of the above. Mostly I relied on a large tote bag that contained everything and which I kept by my side constantly. The single thing that was the most difficult, though, was how to carry a beverage without spilling it. The morning coffee, which I always drink while checking my email and reading blogs, went into a travel tumbler, no problem.

But what about a glass of wine? Tippy cup to the rescue.

I am hanging out in Minneapolis for a couple days at the annual MN tax conference, aka 2-day knitting retreat with speakers and CPE credit. Day 1, I knit about 15" on a Palindrome scarf for the Red Scarf Project. It would have been closer to 24", but a brain fart midday required a couple frogging sessions. More tomorrow (knitting, not frogging, I hope). Assuming I don't finish the scarf during the conference I plan to drop in at Knit Night at The Yarnery in St. Paul on Friday everning. Wheeee!

* * * * *

Typepad looks way different tonight, lots of more editing and formatting icons and stuff. And the Preview screen is different (it sucks). Don't know if Typepad is different or if it is just because I am on a Windows computer. I guess I will find out when I get home.

I have been saving this post just in case there were more *highlights* that needed to be included. Nah, I think this is enough.

* * * * *

My beloved morphine pump in the hospital.

(I know I took a photo of it, but apparently at some point I deleted it. Dang.)

After the surgery, I had to give myself an injection of blood thinner to prevent deep vein thrombosis. Daily. For ten days.

Luckily, I have never been prone to needle phobia, so this was not particularly traumatic. The needle was so very thin I almost couldn't feel it going in, although injecting the blood thinner burned a little. But every injection site -- they were all across my midriff -- developed a sweet little bruise. I shall spare you to that view.

OTOH, I got my very own sharps disposal container.

Are you jealous yet?

#2 son got rid of something I had wanted to eliminate for a long time.

That's the passage from the original house (behind him) into the addition (the plywood floor). The opening was a large window in the original house; during construction we cut out a piece of the wall below where the window had been so we could easily walk back and forth. But that opening was not wide enough for the wheel chair ::grumble::

Now it is ::happy face::

Next, he removed a barrier that was never a problem before but which now kept the wheelchair out of my office.

After that 2x4 was gone I could roll right in there, eliminating the problematic transfer through the door from wheel chair (which has brakes to keep it immobile) to office chair (which doesn't) ::more grin::

Once he was done, I could roll over almost all of the second floor, which is the main floor of the house. Yippee!

A few days later I discovered that if I go backwards in the wheelchair by pushing with my foot and cast, I can zip around the house really fast.The next day I discovered that if I do that, I get a stiff neck from watching where I am going. :-( So I zip around but don't bother to look behind myself much. Watch out, dogs! Wheelchair, coming through!

I can do laundry and even move the basket of clean laundry back to the bedroom. Here is my foot, aka trailer hitch, towing the basket.

Most of the doors that I wheel through are wide enough for the wheel chair, but sometimes it is a tight fit. The victim(s) in this case are my knuckles, which I have mashed into door frames -- hard! -- on both the right and left sides.

The purplish area around the second knuckle from the bottom is the residual bruising from my latest mashing. Both times I have done this -- right and left -- I broke a blood vessel in the affected hand like I did last year. But that experience had taught me to be alert to such things, so both recent times I quickly put pressure on the affected area to keep down the internal blood leakage. I may be slow, but I am teachable.

Although I attempted to telecommute after the ankle break, it was just too difficult. So I went back on leave of absence until February. But my buds at the office didn't forget me.

Someone else didn't forget me, damn...

That's just for the operating room and the overnight hospital stay. It does not include the surgeon's bill, the several many outpatient visits, nor the physical therapy yet to come. Right now our medical insurance is duking it out with our auto coverage, saying that since the accident happened as I was exiting the car, the auto insurance should cover some or all of it. From what I have learned so far, State Farm (auto) will cover a smallish piece of the total; the rest (fingers and toes crossed) should be 100% covered by our medical insurance.

On the rare occasions when I have had to venture out into the world on my own, without Smokey to wrestle the wheelchair and to chauffeur me around, I have had to use the walker. The main floor of our house is the second floor, and I get down the stairs to the first floor and back up the graceful way -- on my butt. Taking the walker down was not too difficult, but bringing it back up was. Here was my solution:

Two dog leashes, one attached to each side of the walker, and the two clipped together behind my neck. I dragged it up the stairs behind myself and still had both hands free to hoist myself up a step at a time. Sometimes I amaze myself.

* * * * *

Today was my first physical therapy session. The PT was impressed with the range of motion I had already regained, but warned me about *cheating* on the weight-bearing. Maybe it was just the power of suggestion, but my ankle hurt for the rest of the day after I started to worry that I might be doing harm to it by putting a bit a weight on it. That would really suck. So I am being careful again, no weight, just hop along on one foot behind the walker. My goal is to be walking unaided by mid-December, and I don't want to jeopardize that.

You Are 50% Boyish and 50% Girlish

You are pretty evenly split down the middle - a total eunuch. Okay, kidding about the eunuch part. But you do get along with both sexes. You reject traditional gender roles. However, you don't actively fight them. You're just you. You don't try to be what people expect you to be.

How Boyish or Girlish Are You?

Well, yeah. I am in what has traditionally been a male-dominated profession (accounting). I began to appreciate what female friendship has to offer only in the past ten years or so.  I am stubborn and independent. But I still consider it dangerous to shoot a gun despite having passed rifle training at age 11. As an adult I have walked out of the room when a handgun was brought out for inspection.

Thanks to Nora and Angie for this.

* * * * *

 

you are lightcyan #E0FFFF

Your dominant hues are green and blue. You're smart and you know it, and want to use your power to help people and relate to others. Even though you tend to battle with yourself, you solve other people's conflicts well. Your saturation level is very low - you have better things to do than jump headfirst into every little project. You make sure your actions are going to really accomplish something before you start because you hate wasting energy making everyone else think you're working. Your outlook on life is very bright. You are sunny and optimistic about life and others find it very encouraging, but remember to tone it down if you sense irritation.

the spacefem.com html color quiz

Sorry. I don't think so.

I am more like this. Or this. Or this.

How about you?

The following is excerpted from Passage des perles: Style over fifty. Delights, (a)musements and resources for the Elegant Age, a non-knitting blog I read. The author is often the voice of common sense in a fashion world gone nutso, although her price range, which she considers modest, is far above mine. She lives in Toronto and is in this post writing about items she purchased on a recent trip to Paris.

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2. Shawl
A fine wool from Wolff & Descourtis, supple enough for indoor wear. Their silk  and velvet pieces are divine (Nicole Kidman collects them) but too dressy for my current life. Victoria Wolff, designer and granddaughter of the founder, lectured me, "Never the point at the back." Superb quality and design from a small historic house.
Wolff & Descourtis, 18, Galerie Vivienne (2nd arr.); this passage is a treasure.

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Comments:

kmkat said...

As a knitter who intends to make some shawls, I have to know: why no point in the back, and what shape did she recommend?

Duchesse said...

kmcat: The shawl is square, and the classic fold is to bring both points together in a large triangle. But you don't WEAR the triangle so the point falls across the middle of your back. Why not? This is unspeakably dowdy, "no one wears them this way." You toss the point on one shoulder, so the whole deal is skewed. Or you fold the square into a long rectangle and wear in various ties and twists. Ooohh, a hand knit shawl sounds fabulous.

materfamilias said...

I'm a knitter who has made shawls, kmkat, and if I don't wear the point at the front (with sides flung 'round back to come over the opposite shoulder and meet in the front), I will obscure it by folding it to the long edge, then folding again for a scarf shape. I just find the point in the back too suggestive of the rocking chair. No thanks. Curious to hear the Parisienne's reasons, Duchesse.

Duchesse said...

ma: Victoria too wore a shawl with the point at the front, ends wrapped around to tie under the chin- I do this a lot in frigid Toronto as well. But in a heavier shawl it is a lot of fabric under the chin.

As for reason for no point at back: dowdy, not chic. When I tried on one melting chiffon paisley (that I still pine for) she remarked that "English ladies buy it" and that was not a compliment. Ah, the French!

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That's the word from Paris. Discuss amongst yourselves.

Early in January of this year I decided that 2008 would be a year of Not Buying Yarn. My stash had achieved a magnitude that was troubling to me. Although I cannot say that I have purchased zero yarn since January, I have bought very little, and everything I have purchased has been project-specific, like the superwash merino for the Red Scarf Project scarf and for Connor Caps. None of the "Oh, this is pretty/on sale/! I want some!" kind of buying.

But I know that confession is good for the soul. So here it is.

On Friday morning I had to go to an appeals hearing for which one of the committees on which I sit will be the jury. This was Smokey's weekend to work so I was on my own for transportation. In the absence of a beam-me-up-Scotty machine, I am sadly confined to an automobile and walker with which to venture into the world. The ankle is still supposed to be non-weight-bearing, but I figured out last week that I can cheat a little when I use the walker. This has emboldened me tremendously.

After the hearing I set out on my adventures. First to the supermarket. Oooo, how exciting! The supermarket!

My excuse was that I was out of coffee, never mind that small bag of beans in the freezer and the canister of decaf. First, I drove past the front of the market, peering through the glass doors to see whether they had an electric cart. Check!

Fifty bucks later -- yeah, I bought a few other things, too -- I was on my way again. Across the river into Minnesota, then I tried a back road I had never followed for more than a mile. Ended up in Center City.

Hmmm, thinks I, might as well keep going to Chisago City and see exactly where my physical therapy appointment will be on Tuesday. That appointment is at 8:30 am, at which time I am usually still asleep. If I find the exact place I need to be, I can sleep an extra three minutes on Tuesday! Check!

Then I turned homeward, and as I drove through Lindstrom -- remember Lindstrom? -- I recalled this place.

(I thought I had a photo of the front of the store somewhere on my hard drive, but I couldn't find it. Use your imagination. Thank you.)

It's a cute yarn and craft shop with a big table in the center of the yarn section. There have been knitters, crocheters, and/or rug hookers around it every time I go in.

Weird thing, though, apparently their sock yarn is capable of jumping right off the shelf and onto my credit card.

This is 4 oz/450 yards of Chugiak superwash merino from Pagewood Farms. Mmmmm. It seems to be a bit overspun...

...but I don't care. It is soft and yummy and has gorgeous colors and will go splendidly with that green sweater I am going to knit for myself someday.

* * * * *

The Yarn Harlot linked to me on Wednesday! I just checked my stats, and my blog had a total of over a thousand page views Wednesday and Thursday! That is about 800 more than a more normal two-day period. w00t!

This seems like an appropriate time to see how much the blog is worth ;-)

My blog is worth $9,597.18.
How much is your blog worth?

Heh. The last time I did that it was worth about $3.97. It's all about timing.

* * * * *

Time for unconscious mutterings.

1. Please stop :: that.
2. Move over :: and share the covers.
3. Sweet as :: honey.
4. Bet :: your ass.
5. Mad about :: Helen.
6. It’s over :: the mountain.
7. Intend to :: do well.
8. Blame :: myself.
9. Jefferson :: nickel
10. Heartless :: bitch

You may now resume your normal Sunday doings. Have a great rest of the weekend!

I set aside the kimono sweater a couple weeks ago to devote myself to some community knitting. Here's what's goin' down.

The Yarnery does a mitten drive every November. At the end of the month they donate the mittens they have collected to the St. Paul public schools. I had started a pair of mittens last year that never quite made it to the finish line, i.e., they remain thumbless. Hey, a head start!

Although the picture of last year's mittens seemed to indicate that many were 100% wool, and I certainly am in favor of wool for warmth, I also thought it important that the mittens be machine washable. No sturdy superwash wool either in my stash or easily obtainable, but I did have some Plymouth Encore and Lion Brand Wool-Ease.

These will probably fit a kindergartner. The twined knitting makes them a bit warmer than they would be otherwise. Yes, the thumbs are as wonky as they look in the photo.

Although the mitten drive runs through the end of November, the only time I will be able to deliver my mittens to the Yarnery is Friday, November 21. Yes, that is next Friday. Perhaps I'll be able to squeeze out another pair of mittens, perhaps not. I'll try.

ETA: After I finished this post on Friday night and saved it to post on Saturday, I settled myself in my recliner with my knitting and a Nelson DeMille audiobook thriller (The Lion's Game, for those of you keeping score.) Almost before I knew what had happened, I had finished the pink and white mittens and knit the first mitten of a pink pair that will be almost large enough for me. When finished, that pair will fit a 10-12-yo girl. Yay for audiobooks!

Once the mittens are done and delivered, the next item on the roster is a couple of hats for Connor Caps, an effort organized by Chocolate Sheep. A boy in her son's fourth grade class was recently diagnosed with a rare brain cancer and has started chemo. A couple boys in his class volunteered to shave their heads in support of Connor. The idea evolved and expanded and now Beth wants 200 hats in their school colors so that everyone can wear a chemo hat in support of Connor. My yarn arrived today, and I picked up the pattern book I had requested from the library.

If anyone else wants to jump in and knit or crochet a hat for this project, I know Beth would appreciate it. You can get all the details at the Connor Cap group at the Ravelry group, linked above. She wants the hats by December 1.

The last thing is scarf for the Red Scarf Project, which deadline has been extended to December 15. Perfect timing!

This is the Palindrome scarf (Ravelry link) done in [unisex] camel-colored Knit Picks Swish worsted (superwash, 100% merino)

I had been wanting to knit this scarf ever since I read that it was reversible, because I wanted to know exactly how that was accomplished. My brain could not figure it out. After knitting six inches of scarf I still do not completely understand it; three-dimensional things are difficult for me to manipulate mentally. However, the pattern is a very pleasant knit, easy to memorize, and I love the feel of the Swish worsted, so I am looking forward to picking this up again. No, I have not yet mastered cabling without a needle; this yarn may be a bit too slippery to do so.

And there you have it, the knitting report. Over to you, Chet.

Found at the Iceland Weather Report. Thankfully, I no longer need to think about this alternative.

* * * * *

As long as I am sort-of ranting, I might as well throw this in from yesterday's Wall Street Journal:

One other worry some observers have about the [bailout of the banks and other financial institutions]: In the six weeks since lawmakers approved Treasury's plans and set in train the massive spending and financial reorganizing it entails, "no formal action has been taken to fill the independent oversight posts established by Congress when it approved the bailout to prevent corruption and government waste," the Washington Post reports. "It's a mess," Eric M. Thorson, the Treasury Department's inspector general, tells the paper. "I don't think anyone understands right now how we're going to do proper oversight of this thing."

Remember the first days and weeks after the US invaded Iraq, and how millions (or was it billions?) of dollars of cash -- often in the form of pallets of bundled $100 bills -- were *distributed* with no oversight? Sheesh. For being from a party that traditionally stands for fiscal conservatism, this administration sure doesn't get it.

* * * * *

Thank you for all your kind words yesterday about our Tabby. Gone but not forgotten, she now joins Junior and Zoot and Sheba and Daisy Bumble and Pius and Argyle, other cats we have loved, in that Great Litter Box in the Sky.

Get your puppy cuteness fix on demand here.

Live streaming video by Ustream

Okay, now I have made up for no post yesterday.

Knitting in the big time.

I look at The Sartorialist every day, don't ask me why, my version of high fashion is Target instead of FleetFarm, mostly I despise fashion, but anyway. This was in his blog today, and I had to share it with you.

The rest of his readers may marvel at that garment -- the warmth! the individuality! the chic-ness! -- but you and I are scrutinizing it carefully trying to figure out exactly how those sleeve cuff cables were made and is that bulky alpaca and where did the knitter find those buttons?

I fully expect to see a version of this on Ravelry within the week ;-)

A cap and a lesson.

I finished the first hat for Connor's Caps.

Pattern: House Hat beanie  from Charmed Knits by Alison Hensel; I made the smallest size, 18-1/2" circumference.
Yarn: Knit Picks Swish (superwash merino) in Ocean, Coast Gray, and Gold.
Needles: Knit Picks Options US#6 (ribbing) and US#7 (rest of hat).
Mods: none.

You may recall that the requirements were that the hat use Connor's school colors of cobalt and gray with a little touch of gold. After I finished the first hat I weighed it and compared that weight to the remaining balls of blue and gray yarn. (Scale was $20 plus shipping on eBay. A useful investment.)

 

Yes! Definitely enough to make a second hat in a larger size; exactly as I planned. Hell, yes, I'll take credit for luck.

As I cast on for the second hat, a daring thought crept into my mind. Perhaps I could use this as a teaching opportunity! Never mind that I am a perfectly ordinary knitter who seldom ventures beyond her comfort zone of stockinette, garter, ribbing, and cables and hence has little to teach in the way of techique. Never mind that some really good knitters (you know who you are)  occasionally read my blog. Never mind the hubris inherent in the whole effort. I seem to have established a track record of giving a knitting tip or lesson about once a year. It's time. Here goes.

I always cast on over two needles -- actually, over both ends of the circ held together, since I always knit on circs -- to ensure that my cast-on is not too tight. Instructions often say to cast on over a needle a size or two larger than the one you intend to use, but that means I have to go hunt up another needle. My way is easier, i.e., better for the lazy knitter. Me = lazy knitter.

Although stitch markers have become an accepted art form, perhaps even attaining the status of knitting bling, I have resisted the temptation to buy any cute ones because I lose stitch markers like kids lose mittens. Here one second, gone the next. For a long time I have instead used scraps of yarn looped around the needles. They tend not to slide off the needle when I am not paying attention. If I do drop one it doesn't bounce once and disappear from the face of the earth. And they are free.

Long hard experience has taught me that I am incapable of consistently and accurately counting to any number larger than twenty. So I use my [free!] stitch markers to delimit groups of twenty stitches each. This hat requires a cast-on of 96 stitches, hence, the group of 16 at the end.

Okay, this one is my favorite. I can estimate how much yarn I need for a long tail cast-on when the number of stitches is less than 40 or so (about a yard). But that estimation gets harder when the cast-on is for 72 or 96 or 168 stitches. It is intensely annoying to run out of yarn before reaching the number of stitches needed, and I hate to waste the long tail of yarn if I overestimate. So I tie the two ends from my ball of yarn together loosely and cast on with those two strands. When the cast-on is done, I cut the strand that comes from the outside of the ball and continue merrily along with the center-pull strand. A couple things to remember: the initial *stitch* is not a permanent stitch, but will disappear when you untie the knot, and remember to leave all the ends long enough (6" or so) that you can easily weave them in.

Wait. I just remembered another thing that an accomplished knitter from the fiber guild taught me last spring. When you are going to knit something in the round, don't bother to join immediately after the cast-on. Knit a couple rows back and forth, then join. It is a lot easier to avoid twisting the work, and you can use the tail of yarn to sew up the little seam where you were knitting flat. It doesn't show. I have done this on the last five pairs of socks I knit and on the first hat, above. Trust me. It.Doesn't.Show. (But be warned that I adhere to the trotting horse theory of error correction; if you can't see it from a trotting horse, it doesn't need to be fixed.)

There you have it. Your knitting lesson for the year. Don't spend it all in one place.

Knitting and knumbers.

If you are a CPA in Minnesota there is a good chance you spent Thursday and Friday at the Minneapolis Convention Center at the annual tax conference. And if you saw a woman in a wheelchair there who was knitting in Every Single Session, you saw me.

It is winter here in the north, although without significant snow on the ground.

I got a dandy *free* tote bag and lapel button...

to commemorate the occasion. This tote bag is a big improvement over the ones from past tax conferences. Those all attempted to look like attache or laptop cases, but failed miserably in the attempt because the budget didn't allow for the requisite quality. This one attempts to look like a reusable shopping bag -- or knitting bag! -- and succeeds admirably. I foresee it getting a good bit of use, as opposed to the previous ones that sat in a corner and eventually made their way to Goodwill without ever having left the house during their sojourn in my life.

The second best thing about the conference is that you get one of these with your lunch each day:

  

Mmmmmm, chocolate...

I learned a few tax and tech things, but by far the best part of the conference was the 8+ hours of knitting time each day. The Palindrome scarf looked like this on Thursday morning:

and by Friday evening it looked like this (color is accurate above; the stitch holder below is marking the side on which I cable):

As if all that luxe knitting time weren't enough, I got to go to Knit Night at the Yarnery on Friday night thanks to an invite from soxanne. If I were a better blogger I would have a photo. But I am not and I don't. You will just have to imagine a dozen or so smart women, each one knitting something better than the next, talking and knitting and laughing around a table. It was a delightful time. Thanks, soxanne!

Ten random things.

Got nuthin; must do meme.

Ten Random Things (stolen from Knitiot Savant)

1. Magazines subscribed to:  Um. U.S. News & World Report. I have subscribed to lots of magazines -- New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Bazaar, Time, PC World, Fortune, Herb Companion, Fine Gardening, Green Thumb, Green Prints (The Weeder's Digest), Nation (not all at the same time) -- but I found that it had become a burden to read them. So I let them lapse.

2.  Aside from knitting, my favorite pastimes are - Reading, preferably with a cat on my lap/chest, playing around on the internet, hanging out with my family.

3.  If I were not an accountant (insert your own profession) I would be: Once upon a time my choice would have been dancer. Now, it would be forensic something-or-other or computer guru.

4.  I am irrationally worried about - I don't worry much. My only irrational fear is that the semi in front of me on the freeway won't quite fit under the underpass coming up, and its load will end up on top of my car. This seems especially likely to happen when the semi is a flatbed with a great whack of stuff strapped to it, like Christmas trees or huge bales of hay. How do I know the guy that loaded it actually measured to be sure it would fit under that bridge up ahead?

5.  If I were the opposite sex - I would make a terrible man. Too cowardly. Although I suppose if I were a man the testosterone would take care of that.

6.  The thing I miss most about childhood is - always being The Special One.

7.  I like to collect - I don't like to collect things, although I do seem to have acquired a collection of coffee mugs from places I have visited.

8.  Though I've never been there, I feel inexplicably homesick for - Tahiti.

9.  I've never really liked to eat - peas or beans. Especially lima beans. Or baked beans.

10.  When I have nightmares, they're usually about - being in some public situation and not knowing what to do.

* * * * *

Here's a random photo, taken at the hotel at Wisconsin Dells. I must have at least one picture in every post.



* * * * *

More nuthin'; random mutterings.

1. Spit it out :: I don't have all day.
2. Shadow :: dancer
3. Database :: computer
4. Expression :: of distaste
5. Boss :: jerk
6. Baby :: kangaroo
7. Mystic :: River
8. Kate :: McGrew*
9. Boobies :: birds
10. Raid :: bugs

* After a little IMDb research I discovered that I was really thinking of Kate Mulgrew, the actress that played the captain on Star Trek: Voyager. These random muttering things are challenging.

One more highlight.

One of the disadvantages of a walker or crutches or a wheelchair is that it is difficult to carry anything along -- a book, an iPod, my pain meds, a bottle of water, my knitting, all of the above. Mostly I relied on a large tote bag that contained everything and which I kept by my side constantly. The single thing that was the most difficult, though, was how to carry a beverage without spilling it. The morning coffee, which I always drink while checking my email and reading blogs, went into a travel tumbler, no problem.

But what about a glass of wine? Tippy cup to the rescue.

Maintain radio silence.

I am hanging out in Minneapolis for a couple days at the annual MN tax conference, aka 2-day knitting retreat with speakers and CPE credit. Day 1, I knit about 15" on a Palindrome scarf for the Red Scarf Project. It would have been closer to 24", but a brain fart midday required a couple frogging sessions. More tomorrow (knitting, not frogging, I hope). Assuming I don't finish the scarf during the conference I plan to drop in at Knit Night at The Yarnery in St. Paul on Friday everning. Wheeee!

* * * * *

Typepad looks way different tonight, lots of more editing and formatting icons and stuff. And the Preview screen is different (it sucks). Don't know if Typepad is different or if it is just because I am on a Windows computer. I guess I will find out when I get home.

Highlights of my convalescence.

I have been saving this post just in case there were more *highlights* that needed to be included. Nah, I think this is enough.

* * * * *

My beloved morphine pump in the hospital.

(I know I took a photo of it, but apparently at some point I deleted it. Dang.)

After the surgery, I had to give myself an injection of blood thinner to prevent deep vein thrombosis. Daily. For ten days.

Luckily, I have never been prone to needle phobia, so this was not particularly traumatic. The needle was so very thin I almost couldn't feel it going in, although injecting the blood thinner burned a little. But every injection site -- they were all across my midriff -- developed a sweet little bruise. I shall spare you to that view.

OTOH, I got my very own sharps disposal container.

Are you jealous yet?

#2 son got rid of something I had wanted to eliminate for a long time.

That's the passage from the original house (behind him) into the addition (the plywood floor). The opening was a large window in the original house; during construction we cut out a piece of the wall below where the window had been so we could easily walk back and forth. But that opening was not wide enough for the wheel chair ::grumble::

Now it is ::happy face::

Next, he removed a barrier that was never a problem before but which now kept the wheelchair out of my office.

After that 2x4 was gone I could roll right in there, eliminating the problematic transfer through the door from wheel chair (which has brakes to keep it immobile) to office chair (which doesn't) ::more grin::

Once he was done, I could roll over almost all of the second floor, which is the main floor of the house. Yippee!

A few days later I discovered that if I go backwards in the wheelchair by pushing with my foot and cast, I can zip around the house really fast.The next day I discovered that if I do that, I get a stiff neck from watching where I am going. :-( So I zip around but don't bother to look behind myself much. Watch out, dogs! Wheelchair, coming through!

I can do laundry and even move the basket of clean laundry back to the bedroom. Here is my foot, aka trailer hitch, towing the basket.

Most of the doors that I wheel through are wide enough for the wheel chair, but sometimes it is a tight fit. The victim(s) in this case are my knuckles, which I have mashed into door frames -- hard! -- on both the right and left sides.

The purplish area around the second knuckle from the bottom is the residual bruising from my latest mashing. Both times I have done this -- right and left -- I broke a blood vessel in the affected hand like I did last year. But that experience had taught me to be alert to such things, so both recent times I quickly put pressure on the affected area to keep down the internal blood leakage. I may be slow, but I am teachable.

Although I attempted to telecommute after the ankle break, it was just too difficult. So I went back on leave of absence until February. But my buds at the office didn't forget me.

Someone else didn't forget me, damn...

That's just for the operating room and the overnight hospital stay. It does not include the surgeon's bill, the several many outpatient visits, nor the physical therapy yet to come. Right now our medical insurance is duking it out with our auto coverage, saying that since the accident happened as I was exiting the car, the auto insurance should cover some or all of it. From what I have learned so far, State Farm (auto) will cover a smallish piece of the total; the rest (fingers and toes crossed) should be 100% covered by our medical insurance.

On the rare occasions when I have had to venture out into the world on my own, without Smokey to wrestle the wheelchair and to chauffeur me around, I have had to use the walker. The main floor of our house is the second floor, and I get down the stairs to the first floor and back up the graceful way -- on my butt. Taking the walker down was not too difficult, but bringing it back up was. Here was my solution:

Two dog leashes, one attached to each side of the walker, and the two clipped together behind my neck. I dragged it up the stairs behind myself and still had both hands free to hoist myself up a step at a time. Sometimes I amaze myself.

* * * * *

Today was my first physical therapy session. The PT was impressed with the range of motion I had already regained, but warned me about *cheating* on the weight-bearing. Maybe it was just the power of suggestion, but my ankle hurt for the rest of the day after I started to worry that I might be doing harm to it by putting a bit a weight on it. That would really suck. So I am being careful again, no weight, just hop along on one foot behind the walker. My goal is to be walking unaided by mid-December, and I don't want to jeopardize that.

Dumb stuff about me.

You Are 50% Boyish and 50% Girlish

You are pretty evenly split down the middle - a total eunuch. Okay, kidding about the eunuch part. But you do get along with both sexes. You reject traditional gender roles. However, you don't actively fight them. You're just you. You don't try to be what people expect you to be.

How Boyish or Girlish Are You?

Well, yeah. I am in what has traditionally been a male-dominated profession (accounting). I began to appreciate what female friendship has to offer only in the past ten years or so.  I am stubborn and independent. But I still consider it dangerous to shoot a gun despite having passed rifle training at age 11. As an adult I have walked out of the room when a handgun was brought out for inspection.

Thanks to Nora and Angie for this.

* * * * *

 

you are lightcyan #E0FFFF

Your dominant hues are green and blue. You're smart and you know it, and want to use your power to help people and relate to others. Even though you tend to battle with yourself, you solve other people's conflicts well. Your saturation level is very low - you have better things to do than jump headfirst into every little project. You make sure your actions are going to really accomplish something before you start because you hate wasting energy making everyone else think you're working. Your outlook on life is very bright. You are sunny and optimistic about life and others find it very encouraging, but remember to tone it down if you sense irritation.

the spacefem.com html color quiz

Sorry. I don't think so.

I am more like this. Or this. Or this.

How about you?

The word from Paris re: shawls and how to wear them.

The following is excerpted from Passage des perles: Style over fifty. Delights, (a)musements and resources for the Elegant Age, a non-knitting blog I read. The author is often the voice of common sense in a fashion world gone nutso, although her price range, which she considers modest, is far above mine. She lives in Toronto and is in this post writing about items she purchased on a recent trip to Paris.

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2. Shawl
A fine wool from Wolff & Descourtis, supple enough for indoor wear. Their silk  and velvet pieces are divine (Nicole Kidman collects them) but too dressy for my current life. Victoria Wolff, designer and granddaughter of the founder, lectured me, "Never the point at the back." Superb quality and design from a small historic house.
Wolff & Descourtis, 18, Galerie Vivienne (2nd arr.); this passage is a treasure.

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Comments:

kmkat said...

As a knitter who intends to make some shawls, I have to know: why no point in the back, and what shape did she recommend?

Duchesse said...

kmcat: The shawl is square, and the classic fold is to bring both points together in a large triangle. But you don't WEAR the triangle so the point falls across the middle of your back. Why not? This is unspeakably dowdy, "no one wears them this way." You toss the point on one shoulder, so the whole deal is skewed. Or you fold the square into a long rectangle and wear in various ties and twists. Ooohh, a hand knit shawl sounds fabulous.

materfamilias said...

I'm a knitter who has made shawls, kmkat, and if I don't wear the point at the front (with sides flung 'round back to come over the opposite shoulder and meet in the front), I will obscure it by folding it to the long edge, then folding again for a scarf shape. I just find the point in the back too suggestive of the rocking chair. No thanks. Curious to hear the Parisienne's reasons, Duchesse.

Duchesse said...

ma: Victoria too wore a shawl with the point at the front, ends wrapped around to tie under the chin- I do this a lot in frigid Toronto as well. But in a heavier shawl it is a lot of fabric under the chin.

As for reason for no point at back: dowdy, not chic. When I tried on one melting chiffon paisley (that I still pine for) she remarked that "English ladies buy it" and that was not a compliment. Ah, the French!

.

That's the word from Paris. Discuss amongst yourselves.

Yarn fast? What yarn fast?

Early in January of this year I decided that 2008 would be a year of Not Buying Yarn. My stash had achieved a magnitude that was troubling to me. Although I cannot say that I have purchased zero yarn since January, I have bought very little, and everything I have purchased has been project-specific, like the superwash merino for the Red Scarf Project scarf and for Connor Caps. None of the "Oh, this is pretty/on sale/! I want some!" kind of buying.

But I know that confession is good for the soul. So here it is.

On Friday morning I had to go to an appeals hearing for which one of the committees on which I sit will be the jury. This was Smokey's weekend to work so I was on my own for transportation. In the absence of a beam-me-up-Scotty machine, I am sadly confined to an automobile and walker with which to venture into the world. The ankle is still supposed to be non-weight-bearing, but I figured out last week that I can cheat a little when I use the walker. This has emboldened me tremendously.

After the hearing I set out on my adventures. First to the supermarket. Oooo, how exciting! The supermarket!

My excuse was that I was out of coffee, never mind that small bag of beans in the freezer and the canister of decaf. First, I drove past the front of the market, peering through the glass doors to see whether they had an electric cart. Check!

Fifty bucks later -- yeah, I bought a few other things, too -- I was on my way again. Across the river into Minnesota, then I tried a back road I had never followed for more than a mile. Ended up in Center City.

Hmmm, thinks I, might as well keep going to Chisago City and see exactly where my physical therapy appointment will be on Tuesday. That appointment is at 8:30 am, at which time I am usually still asleep. If I find the exact place I need to be, I can sleep an extra three minutes on Tuesday! Check!

Then I turned homeward, and as I drove through Lindstrom -- remember Lindstrom? -- I recalled this place.

(I thought I had a photo of the front of the store somewhere on my hard drive, but I couldn't find it. Use your imagination. Thank you.)

It's a cute yarn and craft shop with a big table in the center of the yarn section. There have been knitters, crocheters, and/or rug hookers around it every time I go in.

Weird thing, though, apparently their sock yarn is capable of jumping right off the shelf and onto my credit card.

This is 4 oz/450 yards of Chugiak superwash merino from Pagewood Farms. Mmmmm. It seems to be a bit overspun...

...but I don't care. It is soft and yummy and has gorgeous colors and will go splendidly with that green sweater I am going to knit for myself someday.

* * * * *

The Yarn Harlot linked to me on Wednesday! I just checked my stats, and my blog had a total of over a thousand page views Wednesday and Thursday! That is about 800 more than a more normal two-day period. w00t!

This seems like an appropriate time to see how much the blog is worth ;-)

My blog is worth $9,597.18.
How much is your blog worth?

Heh. The last time I did that it was worth about $3.97. It's all about timing.

* * * * *

Time for unconscious mutterings.

1. Please stop :: that.
2. Move over :: and share the covers.
3. Sweet as :: honey.
4. Bet :: your ass.
5. Mad about :: Helen.
6. It’s over :: the mountain.
7. Intend to :: do well.
8. Blame :: myself.
9. Jefferson :: nickel
10. Heartless :: bitch

You may now resume your normal Sunday doings. Have a great rest of the weekend!

Knit, knit like the wind.

I set aside the kimono sweater a couple weeks ago to devote myself to some community knitting. Here's what's goin' down.

The Yarnery does a mitten drive every November. At the end of the month they donate the mittens they have collected to the St. Paul public schools. I had started a pair of mittens last year that never quite made it to the finish line, i.e., they remain thumbless. Hey, a head start!

Although the picture of last year's mittens seemed to indicate that many were 100% wool, and I certainly am in favor of wool for warmth, I also thought it important that the mittens be machine washable. No sturdy superwash wool either in my stash or easily obtainable, but I did have some Plymouth Encore and Lion Brand Wool-Ease.

These will probably fit a kindergartner. The twined knitting makes them a bit warmer than they would be otherwise. Yes, the thumbs are as wonky as they look in the photo.

Although the mitten drive runs through the end of November, the only time I will be able to deliver my mittens to the Yarnery is Friday, November 21. Yes, that is next Friday. Perhaps I'll be able to squeeze out another pair of mittens, perhaps not. I'll try.

ETA: After I finished this post on Friday night and saved it to post on Saturday, I settled myself in my recliner with my knitting and a Nelson DeMille audiobook thriller (The Lion's Game, for those of you keeping score.) Almost before I knew what had happened, I had finished the pink and white mittens and knit the first mitten of a pink pair that will be almost large enough for me. When finished, that pair will fit a 10-12-yo girl. Yay for audiobooks!

Once the mittens are done and delivered, the next item on the roster is a couple of hats for Connor Caps, an effort organized by Chocolate Sheep. A boy in her son's fourth grade class was recently diagnosed with a rare brain cancer and has started chemo. A couple boys in his class volunteered to shave their heads in support of Connor. The idea evolved and expanded and now Beth wants 200 hats in their school colors so that everyone can wear a chemo hat in support of Connor. My yarn arrived today, and I picked up the pattern book I had requested from the library.

If anyone else wants to jump in and knit or crochet a hat for this project, I know Beth would appreciate it. You can get all the details at the Connor Cap group at the Ravelry group, linked above. She wants the hats by December 1.

The last thing is scarf for the Red Scarf Project, which deadline has been extended to December 15. Perfect timing!

This is the Palindrome scarf (Ravelry link) done in [unisex] camel-colored Knit Picks Swish worsted (superwash, 100% merino)

I had been wanting to knit this scarf ever since I read that it was reversible, because I wanted to know exactly how that was accomplished. My brain could not figure it out. After knitting six inches of scarf I still do not completely understand it; three-dimensional things are difficult for me to manipulate mentally. However, the pattern is a very pleasant knit, easy to memorize, and I love the feel of the Swish worsted, so I am looking forward to picking this up again. No, I have not yet mastered cabling without a needle; this yarn may be a bit too slippery to do so.

And there you have it, the knitting report. Over to you, Chet.

Evacuation plan no longer necessary.

Found at the Iceland Weather Report. Thankfully, I no longer need to think about this alternative.

* * * * *

As long as I am sort-of ranting, I might as well throw this in from yesterday's Wall Street Journal:

One other worry some observers have about the [bailout of the banks and other financial institutions]: In the six weeks since lawmakers approved Treasury's plans and set in train the massive spending and financial reorganizing it entails, "no formal action has been taken to fill the independent oversight posts established by Congress when it approved the bailout to prevent corruption and government waste," the Washington Post reports. "It's a mess," Eric M. Thorson, the Treasury Department's inspector general, tells the paper. "I don't think anyone understands right now how we're going to do proper oversight of this thing."

Remember the first days and weeks after the US invaded Iraq, and how millions (or was it billions?) of dollars of cash -- often in the form of pallets of bundled $100 bills -- were *distributed* with no oversight? Sheesh. For being from a party that traditionally stands for fiscal conservatism, this administration sure doesn't get it.

* * * * *

Thank you for all your kind words yesterday about our Tabby. Gone but not forgotten, she now joins Junior and Zoot and Sheba and Daisy Bumble and Pius and Argyle, other cats we have loved, in that Great Litter Box in the Sky.

Live puppy cam.

Get your puppy cuteness fix on demand here.

Live streaming video by Ustream

Okay, now I have made up for no post yesterday.