Domestic Bliss
It's like you're unraveling a big cable-knit sweater that someone keeps knitting and knitting and knitting and knitting...
Solace.
"Properly practiced, knitting soothes the troubled spirit, and it doesn't hurt the untroubled spirit, either." -- Elizabeth Zimmerman
God knows my troubled spirit needed soothing today.
Today I am so grateful for my knitting, which provided me a respite from thinking too much, at least for a few minutes at a time. I found myself working stitch after stitch, focusing on the colors in the socks, trying to imagine the child who will wear them, occasionally stopping just long enough to wipe away the tears rolling down my face -- something I must now do again as I type this.
This morning I got a phone call telling me that a dear friend was killed Friday in a car accident on his way home from work. My coworker who called didn't want me to learn of his death the way she did: she saw the memorial wreath when she went in to work today.
I had just started a pair of socks for Children in Common, and I picked them up and knit most of the day until they were finished. A few times I had to put the socks down and cry for real; my husband, bless him, stayed by my side all day today and let me sob into his shoulder when I needed to. But mostly, I knit and knit and tried not to let the sadness drown me.
At times like this, I see how much knitting for others benefits me.
(Miss you, T.)
A rat with a cuter outfit.
The other day, Syntax heard a scuffling noise on the front porch. We had several cardboard boxes out there waiting to be recycled; someone took an interest in them.
It ran away, but came back as soon as he shut the door, so he was able to get the picture. Apparently, the little guy wasn't getting enough fiber in his diet:
Mmmmmmmm, cardboard!
2 Eggs Any Style: $19.75
We got home from our trip around 9:00 last night, thoroughly exhausted. We had a great time!
We started out Thursday afternoon, and after driving up I-81 for about 4 hours we decided it was time to get some dinner. Unfortunately, we couldn't find anywhere to stop! Most of I-81 is nothing but cows and campgrounds. Now, I'm all for stretches of unspoiled scenic land, but I-81 desperately needs more restaurants and motels. Seriously, I think a developer could make a fortune building around this highway - it was a pretty busy road. I spent a good part of the drive knitting. (So nice to travel with a husband who likes to drive!)
Anyway, we eventually hit Lexington, Virginia, which had a truck stop containing a restaurant called Berky's. We were very pleasantly surprised - the food was excellent. It was probably the best pot roast I'd ever had in a restaurant. After dinner we pressed on to Harrisonburg, where we stayed the night in an awful little motel. It didn't look that bad - at least it had interior corridors - but the beds had rubber sheets and crappy mattresses. (Does the annual bedwetters' convention meet in Harrisonburg? We had to wonder.)
In the morning we decided to skip the motel's "continental breakfast" (coffee and stale mini-muffins) and head to the truck stop across the street; unfortunately the food wasn't very good and we probably would have been better off with the stale pastry.
We hit the road again and ended up in College Park, Maryland to do some shopping at Ikea. Since the closest one to home is in Atlanta, we thought we'd better take advantage of being near one while we were here. I recently cleaned out our bedroom and separated out all of my long-sleeved shirts and other fall/winter clothes, and right now they are in banker's boxes, which aren't the most attractive storage option. I bought a bunch of cool boxes and several tubes of our favorite Swedish cookies. Of course, we had to eat lunch in the Ikea cafeteria; Syntax got the signature Swedish meatballs but I opted for a turkey sandwich instead.
After shopping, Syntax drove me around DC and showed me the apartment buildings where he used to live and some of his old haunts. One of the neighborhoods has been really gentrified since he left, but apparently the other hadn't changed that much. We ran into a woman from the tailor shop below his apartment who had hemmed his pants 8 years ago.
By then it was after 3:00, so we drove down to Arlington and checked into the Westin. Normally we don't stay in places this nice, but we had scored an internet deal. Egad! They have something called "The Heavenly Bed" that absolutely lives up to its name. (And you can order one for your home for just $3100.00!) After a bit of a rest, we walked down the street to investigate the area and found a great little Thai restaurant with excellent food and reasonable prices for dinner.
Saturday morning we took the Metro into DC and spent most of the day walking.
We visited the International Spy Museum, which I really enjoyed. (I've always wanted to see an Enigma machine.) We got a bite to eat, then went to the National Portrait Gallery where apparently you are allowed to take pictures of the art, as long as you don't use a flash.
Elvis sighting! (That's a ceramic jug.)
We hopped back on the subway and ended up at the Library of Congress, which has a stunning ceiling.
We went back to the hotel for a shower and a rest before heading out to Kalamity's house for the 3WA party. It was a lot of fun and she was a great hostess. I wish I could have stayed until the end, but I started to turn into a pumpkin around 9:30 and we had to leave.
We took it easy on Sunday morning until we had to check out of the hotel. Normally we would have treated ourselves to a breakfast from room service, but we really didn't want to pay $19.75 for "2 eggs any style," so we skipped breakfast and had an early lunch.
After we checked out, Syntax very kindly indulged me in finding a yarn store. We ended up at Stitch DC on Connecticut Avenue, which was having a sale on everything! I got a few skeins of Artyarns Supermerino and one skein of Suss Fishnet, which resembles mohair but it's a blend of acrylic, nylon, and alpaca. Soooooo soft! I'll probaby use it for a simple lace.
I finished my tomato hat:
Looking at that hat makes me so happy!
I also finished my earflap hat:
And I knocked out another plain hat:
I'm going to send those last two to afghans for Afghans for their July 24th deadline.
I'll close this entry with one more tomato hat photo. It makes me HAPPY!
Teeth, hats, and road trips.
Yesterday was the Day of Errands. I managed to get most of them done before my dentist's appointment (just a cleaning, thank goodness). The good news is that they didn't find any cavities. The bad news is that I'm going to have to have the bonding on my front teeth redone. But I really can't complain too much about that, considering that I had the bonding done 24 years ago (at the time they said I could expect it to last 5 to 10 years). Until I was 13, I had a David Letterman-style gap between my top front teeth; dental bonding was a brand-new procedure back then, and that was my birthday present from my parents. I remember that it cost $60. Now it costs about 10 times that. The hygenist assured me that since this is repair work, my dental insurance should pay for part of it. Boy, I hope she's right.
We had a great Stitch & Bitch last night at the pub - only three of us were there, but that's about the best we can hope for these days. It's kind of nice, though; when we had a huge group, it was kind of hard to actually have a conversation, and you couldn't talk to anyone you weren't sitting next to.
The Yarn Harlot mentioned that two of her friends are asking for baby hats that look like fruits and vegetables for their WIC Breastfeeding Week celebrations. I thought making a tomato hat would be fun. There are several free patterns out there, but I decided to make up my own, with a different construction. I started from the top, and I'm doing the red part first, then I'm going to do the green part separately and sew it on. I'm just about done with the red part.
I'm using Debbie Bliss Merino DK, which is very nice to knit with. How did I go this long without realizing that Debbie Bliss yarns are machine washable? It makes sense, considering how many baby patterns she's published. I would never make anything for a baby that was not machine washable - that would be cruel to the new mother!
I'd better run - I still have to pack a bag. Syntax and I are going to DC for the weekend to do a little shopping, do a little sightseeing, and attend a party at the home of the lovely Kalamity. It's a get-together for some of the east coast 3WA people. Should be a lot of fun.
37?!
Let us celebrate the occasion with wine and sweet words. -- Plautus
Or in my case, a sour apple martini and some creme brulee.
Yesterday was my birthday. I met a couple of old friends for lunch, then treated myself to a trip to the yarn store (where I was surprisingly restrained); later, Syntax took me to Bonefish Grill, where no waiters sang to me. (Hooray!)
My very sweet friend MissCourtness sent me this:
Isn't that pretty? It's a big ball of hand-dyed cotton. I'll have to think of something special to make with it. I love the handmade card too.
My darling husband really surprised me by giving me this:
That is an autoharp, which I decided I wanted to learn to play after seeing A Mighty Wind. It's an older one in surprisingly good condition (he assures me it's worth at least three times what he paid for it); two strings are broken, so I'll need to replace those before I can start playing.
I also received a little gift from the county.
Yeah. Happy birthday to me.
I need a Bathroom Monkey.
Because the holiday fell on the right day this year, I am off for a week. (Hooray!)
Alas, because my mother is pestering me about wanting to come over, I will not be spending my week off knitting up this lovely blue yarn.
Eeesh. That's not a terribly accurate representation of the color. It's not nearly that green; it's more of a nice shade of cerulean blue mixed with turquoise. (I have discovered the secret to Kool-Aid dyeing: use a whole lot more Kool-Aid than you think you're going to need. Like three or four times as much. Fortunately, it was on sale last week at 8 for $1.)
Okay... the photo on the right is a little closer to the actual color, although I don't know why the pictures insist on looking green. The yarn is not green.
Anyway, rather than getting to knit up my pretty not green yarn, I am stuck cleaning my house. My feelings on that subject were summed up nicely by my husband here.
Ultimately I hope to have everything in the house as organized as those cubicles over there on the right. I also hope to win the lottery, cure cancer, and write the great American novel. (A lottery win is probably the most realistic of these ambitions.)
I find the darndest things when I clean. So far I've recovered some artwork from college, my high school transcript, a ring I thought I had lost, and this book:
I can't figure out why I own this. Did I wake up one morning and suddenly feel the need to purchase jazz-age nekkid lady clip art? Did I just go overboard with the Dover catalog one day? What the hell was I thinking?
