WTF?

So, there have been a lot of very strange and unpleasant things happening to me lately. Tonight, to cap off a crappy week, my ex-husband called me. WTF?!?! Why? Why did he call? Am I just being immature? Am I supposed to be friends with him? I've long since let go of the anger towards him, and I have forgiven him for a good many of the bad things that he did, but I don't want to be friends with him. I don't want us call each other and compare notes on how life has gone since we split. Why? Why would either of us want that? I don't want to know about him, and I don't want to share my current life with him either. Is this weird or am I just over-reacting?

I might be back

Hey, it's nice to see you again... I'm feeling much more relaxed and I'm not feeling the need to take copious amounts of my anti-anxiety medication. For those of you who emailed and asked, it wasn't anything to do with family, or illness, or accidents. Because of what I do for a living, I really can't say exactly what happened to send me close to a nervous breakdown, but I think we are now in a place where we can start behaving normally. If nothing else, the most obvious thing learned from this is that I have got to get out of banking.

The main reason to break the blog silence is that after complaining for at least a year about my lack of a laptop computer, I now have a laptop computer! There's nothing like an anxiety attack to send a girl right out to spend too much money, is there? I'm completely and totally in love with this thing. I got a Toshiba Satellite on sale last weekend and so far, I'm really very impressed. Now I can sit on the couch and blog and surf aimlessly while watching Alton Brown on the Food Network. It doesn't get much better than that, now does it? I'm also pleased that I'm not hating Windows Vista as much as I had been warned. I am afraid that I will end up bankrupting myself buying new games to play on it, since it seems that many things I already have are not willing to play nicely with Vista.

Another reason to blog is that we had a little bit of a scare the other night. Right around 8:45 Monday night, I heard some strange sounds and went out on the deck. It was dark and quiet and at first nothing seemed wrong. Then I heard and saw what looked like fireworks, which might be unusual this time of year, but there are quite a few college age people around here who like fireworks, so I didn't think much of it. Then I heard someone yelling and suddenly there were sparks in the air, and smoke billowing from a building about five houses away from us. I ran back inside and went to the front window for a better view, and there were flames shooting up the entire front of the building. I don't think I realized just how fast fire moves. I ran upstairs to get Mark, and by the time I got back downstairs, it was really bad. Bad enough that the sparks (Who am I kidding? These were big flaming chucks of wood flying through the air) drifting over our roof made me start looking for the cat carrier, and deciding what to do and if we should be getting ready to leave. I like to be prepared, you know. We were also a little concerned because from what we could tell at the time, the building on fire was right next to the building that Mark's cousin lives in. It was a while before anyone felt like relaxing and going to bed. Fortunately no one was hurt, mostly because no one was home, and a neighbor even got the dog and two cats from the house out. It certainly made me think about our own fire safety plan. You never think it will happen to you, but it can. Sometimes being overly anxious and extra prepared can pay off.

explanation

I guess I can't keep kidding myself that I'm blogging on a regular basis anymore. Most of our readers are close friends and family, but there are a few other readers who stop by occasionally. I feel that I owe you some sort of explanation so at least I don't have to have this nagging sense of guilt about not writing.


I've been taking a bit of a break from blogging because of certain things that are slightly out of my control right now. Pretty much the only thing occupying my mind these days is the one thing I can't blog about. I haven't been knitting so I have no pretty things to show anyone. One of the things I need to have in order to write here is a sense of humor, and I've sort of lost that right now. I do know that this is temporary, and I'll be back at some point, really.


I hope that in the meantime Kate will have some stories about her recent trip to the UK to keep us all entertained!

Greetings from the Land of Pie!

A quick post, since my friend Alex has just removed pork and sausage pasties from the oven. Which means dinner is imminent. The grocery here is packed with a variety of pie beyond my wildest imaginings. Bite size, hand sized, full sized with anything from fruit or custard to meats. You name it, the Brits have put it in a pie. They're best with hot mashed (potatoes) and a interestingly named beer... like Bishop's Finger, Fursty Ferret, Bishop's Tipple (bishops here, so straight laced and of fine reputations), Old Peculiar, Spitfire and Snecklifter. We're not drinking them all at once, of course, but it's fun to pull one out of the fridge and ask a pal if they'd like a bit of Spitfire. Bishop's Finger has been the best for crude jokes, besides being a good beer.

Time for supper, and a chance to watch our slideshow of photos for the day, so I'll sign off. Cheers!

Lame Christmas Post

This month has completely gotten away from me. I have abandoned all further Christmas knitting, as every spare moment from now until the day after Christmas has been accounted for in working, wrapping, visiting and maybe a little sleeping.

The scarf for my MIL is done. Mitts and neck warmer for my mom are done and already gifted (she's flying to Indiana to see my grandmother this afternoon) and the mitts for Mark are done and being worn. I always think I'll have time for it all, which I probably would if it weren't for the above listed things like working and sleeping. Anything else is simply not going to get done. Apologies all around.

I also have not mailed any Christmas cards. Please don't feel singled out if you sent me one and didn't get one in return. No one did. I can't quite bring myself to send out e-cards either. Seems even more shameful than not sending anything.

I have no happy or touching stories to share this year. I've really got a lot of nothing. I explained to Kate earlier that I have pretty much given in to my inner Grinch, and I am only barely preventing myself from freaking out at everything and everyone remotely Christmas associated by stuffing my face with sugar cookies.

In the absence of anything else, I have sunk to a point I promised myself I would never reach on this blog. I was sent an email by a friend with some Christmas questions, and I'm supposed to send it to five friends. So, here you go five friends!

1. What was the best Christmas present you got as a kid? That's really hard to answer, since I got so many nice presents as a kid. I remember being thrilled that my grandmother bought me the entire set of Laura Ingalls books when I was nine or ten.
2. What was the best Christmas present you got as an adult? My engagement printer. My husband proposed to me on Christmas night but didn't have a ring, so we call the photo printer he gave me my "engagement printer."
3. What's your favorite Christmas Carol? Oh Holy Night or What Child Is This. Both make me think of my grandmother and they never fail to make me cry a little bit.**
4. How long can you stand to listen to Christmas music before you crack? Pretty long, as long as it hasn't started before Thanksgiving.
5. How many Christmas albums do you own? Probably close to twenty-five. Possibly thirty. Is that too many? Is that weird?
6. Did you ever go caroling as a kid? Yes. It was a Grace Brigham/Shrewsbury thing.
7. Would you willingly eat fruitcake? I've never had fruitcake.
8. Do you own any Christmas Sweaters? No.
9. Do you own any Christmas jewelry? What? Yes. Four pins. A snowman pin and a Christmas tree pin, both in simple silver.The other two belonged to my grandmother. One is a wreath shaped pin with green and red enamel and faux gemstones as ornaments. Yes, it's as bad as it sounds. The other is a silver filigree snowflake with pale blue stones through out.
10. Do you wear them? Yes, with the exception of the wreath. I'm wearing the snowflake right now.
11. Did your family have any Christmas traditions? Like what? Oh boy. Yes. Many traditions, far too many to list. For years as a kid I would buy my mom an ornament with the year on it. I still don't know if she even like it, but it went on for years. As a grown-up, I try to see Holiday Inn with Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby sometime before the end of the holiday season.
12. Do you buy Christmas presents for your pets? Yes.
13. What's your favorite Christmas cookie? Snickerdoodles.
14. What's your favorite Christmas candy? This year I discovered that Cabury's makes a Christmas version of their candy-coated eggs. That's the favorite this year.
15. What's your stocking look like. Blue velvet with silver stitching.
16. What's the oldest ornament on your tree? My mother has all my childhood ornaments and everything else was trashed when I got divorced. Everything now is new from 2001 on.
17. Real or artificial? Real.
18. Do you have Christmas decorations or lights outside? No.
19. How far would you drive to see Christmas lights? I don't understand the question. Do people do that? It's nice to see some as I'm driving home, but go look for them? No.
20. Are you a fan of tasteful or tacky? Oh, please. Tacky all the way!

Merry Christmas, Happy Holiday, Peace on Earth, safe travels, and much love to all!

**Christmas Eve update: Yep, Oh Holy Night made me cry like a baby in church again tonight, right on cue. The fact that it was followed up by Silent Night with all the lights out except our candles didn't help. If they had thrown in What Child Is This, I would probably still be there.

Who Are You and How Did You Get Here?

I promised another update on some of the random blog hits we get, so here they are. Being able to see what strangers have been looking for offers me much amusement every week.

People who found us by searching for things with "disaster" in their search included classic disaster, disaster wedding, ugly knitting disasters, and many simple knitting disasters.

Searches including knitting but not disasters had (and I have not corrected anything for grammar or spelling) knit drinking glasses sleeves, knitted coffee sleeves, knitting gourmet, hug me knitting, and my favorite in this category: knitting head won't fit.

In random hits that could possibly stretch to cover something we talked about, we have hits for chocolate maramge pie as well as cholate marange pie. At first I thought this must be from the same person, misspelling their search twice, but no. These came from separate people in Idaho and Kentucky. Apparently the pressure of having to make a cholate maramge pie the night before Thanksgiving sent their ability to spell right out the window. There are also searches for electromagnetic street lights, life aquatic costumes, franken chickens, my neighbors make me crazy (I feel your pain, really I do), and my personal favorite this time around: stop dog from sh*tting on lawn. Man, I really wish I could help you there. Kate, I think we need to explore this franken chicken thing a little more. This time the search tracked back to someone with an IP address at Disney World. I'm thinking movie rights...

Christmas, Part II

I called this post Christmas Part II, because I got over here to find out that Kate had beat me to the gift update post. I do have some pictures of my progress for you.

This is the first of what will hopefully end up as a pair of fingerless mitts for my mom. She's like me (or technically, I'm like her) in that her hands are always cold. The yarn is a superwash merino from Art Yarns that I used for my own mitts. The colors in the photo are pretty true to how the really look. When choosing colors for Mom, she's very flexible, as long as they fall in to the category she refers to as "Hello Kitty Colors." The pattern is my own design, cobbled together from about three written patterns and my unfailing stubbornness to follow a written pattern.

Next up, a scarf for my mother-in-law. This is a fairly simple and (in my opinion) a slightly boring scarf. I do like the flippy little ruffle on the ends. My MIL is a very sweet woman, who I am very lucky to have drawn in the In-Law lottery. She is always very put together. She doesn't wear clothes so much as she wears outfits. I'm hoping that this will fit in to her outdoor repetoire somewhere. I really hope so, since there are about eleventy-billion stitches in this scarf.

These are the socks least likely to be finished for Christmas. I'm not saying who they are for, since I think she reads this blog and I don't want to disappoint her if they don't get done. I adore these socks, done in a variegated Koigu (the blue/green yarn) and Cherry Tree Hill solid purple. They are knit in a two-color stranded pattern from Charlene Schurch, and I'm so proud of this sock! It's the first time I've been able to get the color work on a stranded sock to properly make it's way around the heel. I even managed to get the heel gusset to stripe like it was supposed to. Love, love, love them. On second thought, maybe they will have to be my Christmas socks and I'll make something else for her. Don't tell her I said that.

Okay, so that sweater for my honey. He and I talked about it yesterday and after a long list of excuses, he said to me "Even if you started that sleeve right this second, it wouldn't be done by Christmas, would it?" No, no it wouldn't. "Why don't you see how much you can get done on your other things before doing mine?" I do so love that man. I'm still feeling guilty about it, though. I've done about four embroidered pieces that will eventually be a quilt/throw for him. These are the two I have photos of today. I can imagine how I want this to look, I just hope I can make my vision a reality. Don't feel too bad for him - he will be getting many fine Christmas presents. They will most likely come from amazon or somewhere else on line. No malls for me. They give me hives.

In other news, I won a trivia contest online, and I won yarn! Yay for free yarn! The online shop is www.sonnyandshear.com and they have a great store. I've gotten a few skeins from them in the past and I found them to have a wonderful selection. I may wait until after the Christmas knitting is done before I go shopping though. I certainly don't need any pretty distractions. Kris from sonny & shear also has a really interesting and well written blog at http://knittingwannabe.typepad.com/. If you need yarn, give them a look!

Next up... another installment of "Who are you and how did you get here?" You won't believe some of them!

Finding time

Every knitting article I see this time of year assumes we have all the time we need to make handmade gifts for friends and family. I believe them every time... forgetting to factor in things like, oh... shovelling, making dinner, eating dinner, paying bills, grocery shopping, and sitting around wondering how people with kids get it all done.

I have three, no, four projects on needles right now. That beats out the number of books I'm reading at the same time. I try to keep my projects simple, since I do walk away and can forget what the stitch pattern was, which row of the pattern I was on, etc. I also forget where I wrote down those details. The Better Half got me a small notebook that I could hang from my neck like a pair of librarian glasses. You know, on a silver chain so I wouldn't lose it. Of course I misplaced it, with my project progress notes inside. So I am forced to scatter them across various notebooks at my desk. Not in the front, oh no... but on whatever page I quickly flipped open to because I was in a hurry to put the knitting down due to some highly distracting factor like burning soup or a knock at the door, sometimes both.

Of my four projects, I must finish the Christmas present. I had myself convinced that it would take no time at all, and sat down to start with scads of holiday cheer. I've now started it four times, and I'm mad at having lied to myself about the easy factor. Some yarns get so cranky after you pull them out a third time. Mauch Chunky wool begins to pull apart when you cast on repeatedly. I hate knots in my cast on, I truly do. Ultimately, it will be felted so I suppose it doesn't matter, but it's terribly annoying. I'm sure it will get done, in that last minute panic that punctuates much of my holiday preparation.

With any luck, we'll get some more snow, the temperatures will be inhospitable, I'll be trapped inside with my needles and the yarn, and we'll work out some kind of truce.