busy thursday

Erasmus is still chewing me to bits. I understand what he is saying, yet get bogged down by the length. The answer is simple: put it down and let it rest. If I do, will I ever pick it back up? I will have to eventually. For now, lets move on to Swift. I like Swift, for the most part.

What I love is the knowledge that Kristin Britain’s third installment of the Green Riders book is due out sometime this fall. I already have it pre-ordered and the cover image is fantastic.

The body of the Cable-Down Raglan is finally done. The Elder Twin was nice enough to model it, as there are no full length mirror in our house that is not covered with stickers.

I am off to the post-office to see if any books have come in. The whole book and yarn diet thing just did not pan out; we are back to building a nice library of vintage publication and yarn.

The real question on my mind, other than why I am forcing myself to read Erasmus, is wither or not I should buy another set of circular needles before tonight’s SnB. My new knitting buddy has offered to show me how to work a pair of socks at the same time using 2 circular needles. Hmmm…

New Garden Feature

Lookie! A bridge. It has been in our garden now for about 5 days.

What can I say? The Maternal Grandfather does good work and I take lousy pictures.

The family animals have yet to walk across it. Puppy still runs all the way around the pond. Though she is starting to warm up to it somewhat.

My Knitting Play Date

We started knitting around 5:30 and left the library around 8:30. Three hours of guilt-free knitting. And I now know when and where the local SnB meets. This Thursday at a bookstore. My goal is to not only be there, but to have the body of the Cable-Down Ragland finished.

Speaking of which, I am back to where I was; only now it looks great. The cable actually looks like a cable. See, this is what the cable looks like (when I auto-level the picture):

Thus it now looks like this (in real life):

The knitting aspect of my life is looking up. Erasmus has not progressed any. Though I am not the least surprised. I shall try to read fifteen pages tomorrow.

Puppy is pouting because we only went on one walk today. We’ll go somewhere special in the morning. I am really glad I went tonight. I needed it more than I knew.

I bought a copy of Elizabeth B. Browning this weekend; it should come in this week. That will be nice. Better than that (as if there is anything), the Maternal Grandparents went shopping earlier. They found a place where I can complete my Yale Shakespeare collection. Though it is an eighth reprinting and the ones on my shelf are of an earlier publication. Who cares? They will look lovely together.

sunday afternoon

Ah! I need a break—at least from reading another page of Erasmus. That’s right; I finished The Poetic Edda yesterday and have moved on to In Praise of Folly. Thin little volumes of texts my Profs assign me to read now seriously scare me. More material appears to be stuffed into each and every page long paragraph; and Profs have more time to cover said paragraphs (getting through 70 pages instead of 500). I am so glad I decided to read these things early.

Thanks to some friendly knitters at the Knitty Coffeeshop, I am going ahead with the frogging back to the middle of the first waist cable on the Cable-Down Raglan. This has been a hard choice to make, but they are right: it would bother me and I want it to look nice. With any luck at all, this will happen before my knitting date tomorrow. It’s kinda like a play date, but for knitters. Whenever I am finally finished with this pullover, I need to get started on another big project; like a dress for a five year old. I have already finished one shawl for the Twins and I need to cast on the other one sometime this week.

Today is Mom’s birthday. We went shopping yesterday and bought enough hand soap and lotion to last a year. Seriously, now I have no idea where to take the Twins shopping other than Bath & Body Works. My Sister sent Mom a new video recorder. I was playing/testing it out and now have footage of the girls cutting Mom’s birthday cake to send Sister. As soon as I install the program on the computer.

Puppy did not want to come inside the house when we left for Church this morning and was caught outside in the rain. Therefore, all afternoon I have been reading beside a wet dog. It has not been one of our most cherished memories of Puppy. But she is still my favorite Puppy, even if she did just eat the last two bits of the birthday cake I had on my plate.

So, two weeks ago I had the urge to hear a harpsichord. A Bach harpsichord, to be exact. Last week, I wanted to hear a cello in something Italian. Now, both Bach and Vivaldi take up most of my iShuffle. Helmut, Hayley Westenra, and a few selections from Beethoven and Mozart fill the count up nicely.

The Preacher’s last sermon was nice…I hope he likes his new congregation.

A Very Good Day

Yea! My very 1^st first edition came in the mail today. Ok, so it is only a U.S. first edition. Still, a first edition is a first edition. Virginia Woolf’s Flush: A Biography of Elizabeth Barret Browning’s Cocker Spinal. How cool is that? The Maternal Grandmother purchased Ms. Woolf’s sophomore novel Night and Day (a 1971 library edition) for me as well. With any luck, I shall be able to start collecting 1920’s and 30’s printings of novels. I like those copies better than new printings. They smell better and look cooler in class/parks/bookshelves. (It's a book lover's thing.)

I love Virginia Woolf. And now I own six of her books.

Anyways, I catered today for the StepPaternal Grandmother at a party for eight. Not much going on, but it was still a make-up worthy occasion.

The Maternal Grandmother and I are taking the Twins to Phonics School in the morning. Afterwards, we are going shopping for Mom a birthday present.

But the best news about today—I have a knitting date on Monday. Naturally, by then I should have ripped the Cable-Down Ragland back to where it needs to be fixed.

CDR Problems and Swimming

First the knitting—

I have made what might be called unforgivable adjustments to the Cable-Down Raglan pattern. Should I rip it back and if so, how far? Is there enough ripping to count as frogging?

This is what it looks like in a bad picture.

And this is what the offending section looks like with the 'auto fix' button on my picture program. I really do need to fix it.

Now for family updates—

The Twins’ last day of zoo camp is tomorrow. They seem really tired, and since they have three more weeks scattered throughout the summer, I am hoping that this tired is coming from the tee-ball and swimming. The Elder Twin can swim underwater for short distances. The Younger Twin is defiantly being the younger twin, and enjoying every minute she can being dependant. However, she let me teach her out to push off from the edge. That was a cool big sister moment. Another of those moment happened when the Elder Twin trusted me to go under the water with her in a part of the pool she where could not touch bottom. Granted, we will probably have to go over the whole trust thing again next time, but it was still cool.

Mom let them jump off the big diving board. They had been asking nearly the entire time we were there, it was only when we were four of the seven people there that they were able to. They loved it. Too bad all the pictures I took are of a splash and bright green lifesaver ring. See? This is the best of them.

june 20

Nothing of real importance to post.

I made a deal with the Younger Twin that if she cut back on her pouting then I would find the first Barbie fairy movie (don’t ask me to spell it). Yes, I am bribing a sister to keep her pouting to a minimum. I ordered the blasted thing this morning, at nearly thrice the price I would have paid four (?) months ago when I purchased the Barbie fairy rainbow movie. Honestly, I did not think she liked the first one.

Tee-Ball Season is Finally Over

We lost game 2 of the tournament big time. The other team was way better, when they hit the ball, it would go up in an arch rather than bouncing and rolling on the ground. It was cool. The Grasshoppers played well; the other team was simply better.

In other news, the sweater for Mom’s dog is coming along very quickly. Earlier, I had to rip five rows for length. He really is going to be confused about his gender as the Elder Twin picked out the colors from my stash and she heavily favored the pinks. Maybe I should hunt down a cat button for the thing, just to really confuse the poor thing.

A Very Good Monday

God, thy name is Loki. Why? Because this week is tee-ball tournaments with a single elimination rule and how did the Grasshoppers do? We won our first game. Go figure, we finally break our losing streak. Hey, if one is going to be horrible, at least be consistent in being so. Now we play tomorrow night. All joking aside, we made some really good plays tonight. I mean really good plays. What should have been our last game, we completely rocked. It was like everything finally clicked for us. Go Grasshoppers!

While we are on the subject of a good Monday, the neurologist put me on some antidepressants. First dose is in the morning.

Mom’s little Pomeranian got a hair cut last week. I think it looks adorable; in fact, I might actually think it is cute and start liking it. Wait, the stupid dog chewed my 16” circular needles, size 4. I think we’ll work some more on our relationship. Although the thing looks much better now that it no longer resembles a pom-pom with legs, the dog gets cold in Mom’s house. Hence the reason I am making it a sweater for Mom’s birthday next week.

and the day ends...finally

Yea! I am half way through the Poetic Edda. Talk about wonderful. I will not bore anyone with the details, save to say it is well worth the read.

The Local Family went out to eat as an early Father’s Day dinner. And somehow the Maternal Grandparents and I have the Twins for a second night in a row. They (and myself) are extremely tired. Why? Because we had a dirt party this afternoon. Two loads of dirt, a sprinkler, and a mock swimming pool. There were fifteen very happy kids. All the moms at church who do not let their children play anything where they might get dirty actually allowed their poor, deprived children to play. Three boys in particular (each whom, at various points has wanted to marry the Elder Twin, the current boy plans to live with her in Noah’s Ark) wanted to stay forever; they were even building a tunnel in one of the dirt piles to hide. I did not have the heart to point out the obvious flaws of their plan…their mothers could do that later.

A friend from my Undergraduate University came to town for the occasion. She has since left. Besides getting lost and locking her keys in her car, the two of us went to The Yarn Studio early in the day. I have no problem buying yarn with no usage in mind. When it wants to be something, it will let me know. Until then it stays rent-free in the stash. My friend, on the other hand, does not have this issue. Everything has to have a project. Obviously, some of her stash yarn is behind in its rent.

interesting

The LPN told me to come back today if my throat was not better. And I actually went, quite a new concept for me I must say. Turns out, I have a stone in my spit gland. I nearly laughed. Another round of medicine. How do I pick up these things? Migraines with a sinus infection are bad enough but a stone in my spit glands?

Every WIP’s I have is officially on hold. Some Emergency Knitting Projects have come up and they are much more important.

I started the Poetic Edda today. Wow. Forget taking notes on it right now, I just want some light non-school related reading.

Finally!

I finished Lock today. And somehow I’ve purchased two “CDs” of Bach from iTunes (I really wanted to hear a good harpsichord being played. I like the harpsichord and Bach rocks them.

The Elder Twin’s mock-shawl is coming along nicely.

Wow, this is long

Is it Friday yet?

Well, there were only 5 players at last night’s game. All the same, we made 2, count them, 2 outs in 1 inning. And everyone got to bat as soon as they made a run, making all but one of the players very happy. Of course, we lost that game (by 3 points) and tonight’s game (don’t ask). Younger Twin was catcher on both occasions and was beside herself with delight. She was going to miss tonight on account of fatigued, then decided there was a chance she could be catcher again and miraculously refreshed.

Mom is much better after yesterday’s string of tests. They think she has a compacted sinus infection. The doctor said she can return to half-days next week.

The rest of this post is about knitting, feel free to move on if it bores you.

I made a new friend today. She knits. Her sister was having an event at The Cedars, a place I assist when needed, and it came up (no, I did not initiate the conversation). We were talking about places in Italy we would like to see, as the sisters are going there in November. As a history buff, we were able to talk about the museums and such stuff. I threw in, “If I could ever go abroad again, I would do what I could to get into the academic rooms of museums and collections. Of course, I would also be in every knitting store I could come across;” just as a last comment. Next thing I know, my new friend, Ms. A, and I are chatting away about our favorite types of projects. Naturally, she lives an hour away. We can spilt the difference and meet at a park, but she and I had a wonderful conversation. They were surprised to learn I am a Literature person since we were knee deep in the topic of history.

I had a happy moment, a rare thing these days.

Though the local family does not mind me knitting around them and are fairly use to me doing so; there is just something special about knitting with someone who is also knitting. Or even just talking about it. We knitters (as a generality, there are always exceptions) are social by craft and it is refreshing to be in a knitting circle.

And it has finally happened; I may have found a stitch and needle size for the Elder Twin’s mock shawl. To think, it only took seven attempts to find it. It is overly simple, but it is working up well and that is what truly matters. Perhaps it was merely me trying to force it into a complicated garment that was the problem. Lately, nearly all of my projects have been a step or two higher than what I could easily do. This is a return to basics. 120 stitches in Irish Moss (also called Double Moss and Double Seed) on size 11 needles. This is going to be huge, as I have purchased 880 yards of yarn.

Despite my best intentions, I bought yarn. KnitPicks.com is having a one week sale on yarn and I had to buy some. Originally, I was up to $50 but I was able to cut it in half. After all, I do need to be able to close the trunk. Fingers get ready, we have to knit.

what a very Sunday day

Well, the day is almost over.

Like most Sundays, this one was packed full of Church-related events. There was the service itself (which we cut out early). What can I say? A group of people (from Church) were coming over for lunch and we had to get ready.

The Maternal Grandmother left before we had finished cleaning up. She went to a big teacher thing at the capital. The Maternal Grandfather and I have a three day break from her honey-do list. Not to worry, she’ll add to it when she gets back.

Then there was a wedding shower for a girl I grew up with in the Church. Not much in common with her these days, but she’s nice and I wanted to see a picture of the groom.

Now at last, I can relax a little. Puppy liked having lunch company, although she was not overly fond of being kept on a plastic chain. Some of the guests were paranoid that she bits. Despite her wonderful reputation, they still were concerned. Not to worry, I had her in a location that was very shady and she had access to the pond to drink. Like many animals in this family, she could have a choice between bottled water and a rain puddle and would always go for the rain puddle.

The Cable-Down Raglan is coming along very well. There would be pictures but they have yet to come out right.

It finally rained today. Thank God for that.

In other news...

If I hear one more thing about so-and-so’s baby bird or the bunny across the street; I will be forced to take drastic measures. The Twins refuse to talk about anything else, correction: they also talk about wanting a bird or bunny for their own. Please no. I swear to be as good as I possibly can be for the next century. Just please do not give us a bird (of any age) or rabbit (again, of any age). Nothing else will exist for them for about a month and then they will have moved on.

Mom has been ordered to bed rest by the doctors—again. Therefore, I will be taking the Twins to a birthday party for one of their church friends tomorrow afternoon. I was all set to plant flowers this morning when my throat got bad enough for me to send myself to the doctor. They took my blood, the starving leeches, though the results will not be in until Monday. “Drink plenty of fluids and take it easy,” they said. At least I will not have to go in for blood work for the Neurologist (I got the doctor to fax the results to my Neuro to spare everyone the pain). Two nurses came in to take enough for a CBC, one to use the needle and the other to hold my hand. I am getting better about this whole needle thing.

And now for some pictures!

See, I have been knitting something. Just not the C-D Raglan.

Proof that there is some artistic genes floating about the family. The Younger Twin drew this picture of a horse. He is looking at you (the bottom blue dot is it's nose.) When I was downloading this picture, I found some I had forgotten about from two weeks ago. The Elder Twin posed just for this one on the right. On the left, they were telling me all about the frog they put into their bug box.

Yet another fine day as a Grasshopper

What have I been doing? I don’t remember. And I am not sure I really care. The past few days are one giant blur.

The Grasshoppers lost Tuesday night’s game. We are getting better at bat, however, the entire team still runs out to the outfield every time the ball gets past second base. No surprise that we lost tonight as well. Although, the Elder Twin caught the ball four times in one inning. The Younger stopped the ball once and remembered to run…most of the time. She had to turn around on her way to second base in the first inning, after all making sure one’s accessories (in this case her hat) are on one’s person is very important.

Mom has discovered eBay. She has already found several sellers of children’s clothing that she likes. What can I say? Just that the Twins love the outfits.

The Cat has quit demanding food at the top of his lungs. He now merely waits on top of the dryer where everyone will see him (and his empty food bowl) as they come into the house. Brilliant, is he not?

I am less than fifteen pages away from finishing Locke. Sadly, not much progress has been made towards my Cable-Down Raglan. Still, hope remains.

More Grasshoppers and Knitting

Guess what? The Grasshoppers lost again. However, we did tag members of the other team. Though most of the time the other girl had already touched the base. One little Grasshopper fell on her knee, thankfully she does not have bad knees and she should be back on her feet soon. We play a regular game tomorrow night, no more make-up games.

Yesterday I forgot to talk about the Twins’ Saturday School. Fifteen kids (with a parent-figure apiece) were in a class for phonetics. Apparently the lady in charge was wonderful and kept everyone’s attention for the full ninety minutes. Impressive.

Well, I finally became brave enough to try on the Cable-Down Raglan…and it fits! I am making the 38” though I am a 36” so it is a little loose but that is quite alright. Especially given that the one in Interweave Knits looks a bit big on the model.

I’ve thrown a shawl for the Elder Twin on the needles, since it will not require much concentration. The Younger Twin will have one as well (she also wants a dress but we’ll see). Maybe this will keep them from wearing my shawl, I can only hope.

Another project I have put-off and finally (almost) completed was gluing all the Table of Contents from my knitting magazines on a piece of cardstock. I now have a list of all my patterns on approximately twenty pages, front and back. Now to get them laminated and put in a folder. Making a picture chart for the girls really spurred this one on.

Summer Reading is at a standstill, as Locke has proven a denser read than I first thought it would. The only thing keeping me from the temptation to skim the blasted thing is knowing I will only have to reread it in the Fall. Better now than then. Now if only I could slowly back away from those little collection of knitting essays. That would force me to finish Locke a might sooner. Yet not even I have that much will power. A self bribe might be in order, though that would mean a break from my resolve not to buy any new books or yarn until July.

Ooooh! Helmut Lotti’s ‘Greensleeves’ just came up on my iTunes. Life is good.

back to my life

Well, that was the best one day vacation I have ever had. Lunched in one of my favorite places. Saw a friend I haven’t seen in two years. Had tea with another I haven’t seen in a year.

I had every intention of staying at church this morning, but Mom started coughing so I took her home. Then I went and took a nap.

and we have our fourth loss

Well, we started the game 2 players short and the other team usually has an extra player or two. However, the Elder Twin fell on her bad knee as she went for a ball at the bottom of the first inning. Mom spent the rest of the game holding Elder Twin. The other coach had to explain five or six times why Elder was not batting or playing. She even has a skinned patch on the juncture of her hip and stomach from where she fell. We are talking about major devastation in the eyes of a five year old girl.

I start my only vacation tomorrow. Sadly, it also ends tomorrow. I am driving an extended sibling to a meeting at my Undergraduate University. Since this is a one day event, I will go all out for lunch at my favorite place to eat. Yep. Tomorrow’s lunch will be featured at an Italian restaurant run by people from Mexico. Trust me, it is the best meat sauce anywhere.