It Was the Socks' Fault, Not Mine

My blog seem to have vanished from the face of the earth. I blame it on two things: facebook and sock knitting. The thrill of the first has worn off a bit, although I used its messaging to arrange a huge surprise for my husband's birthday. I got his brother, sister-in-law, and niece to fly out from Iowa for his 70th birthday (26 December) and our 40th anniversary (31 December).

The thrill of sock knitting lives on. I finally tried it, years after it became so popular. I got Melissa Morgan-Oakes's two books on knitting socks two at a time, cuff down and toe up, using Magic Loop. Then I sent off to KnitPicks for worsted weight yarn in approximately the colors she used for her sample socks. Carefully following each well-illustrated and well-described step, I discovered that sock knitting is easy. Then I did a little shopping and discovered that it's fun and pretty, too. I've just finished turning the heels on my twelfth pair of socks.

I can't recommend these two books enough. I've collected a bunch of other sock patterns and it's very easy to adapt any of them to her techniques.

The bitter irony of this new-found passion for knitting socks is that I don't wear hand-knitted socks. Mostly I wear thongs because I live in fairly warm places and sandals work just fine. On the rare occasions when I do wear socks, I wear Katie Bell socklets that I buy from Costco in bundles of ten pair. Or I wear a pair of cotton socks from my vast collection from Lands End, as these socks, bought before I retired in 2002, show no signs of ever wearing out.

So what do I do with all these socks I knit? I give them away, of course. I have friends and family in cold climates who love my socks. The first pair I knit, a lovely pair in purple, went to my beloved sister-in-law. My niece, my cousin's wife, my goddaughter, my cleaning lady, my friend Pat, e-friends on Usenet (alt.fan.cecil-adams, to be precise)--all of them get my hand-knitted socks. I buy colors of yarn with each of them in mind. When my sister-in-law and niece were here we went through my four bins of sock yarn and pulled out an entire bin for the two of them (plus four balls for my brother-in-law). Every one they liked was one I'd bought with them in mind, which made me happy that I'd picked so well. My dear goddaughter finds wool too itchy to wear, so I buy non-wool yarn, like bamboo, for her.

I was going to post a photo of some early pairs of socks, but it's not working from flickr and I can't figure out where I put the original. I'll dig out the memory stick, which is probably in the camera, which I think is in a knitting bag somewhere here, and get photos posted. I should probably photograph some of my yarn, too. I discovered Trekking XXL and Zauberballs, to add to the KnitPicks and Elann sock yarn. I have stopped going to my favorite sellers on eBay and Etsy because I absolutely cannot buy more sock yarn until I've knitted up at least a bin's worth.

Oh, No, Not Another Kindle

OK, I admit it. I bought the latest version of the Kindle, the higher-contrast graphite DX. My excuse is that I dropped my original DX and now it hangs up and has to be restarted every few days. Some of the real reasons are that the dark gray version is very attractive and that I like the higher contrast of the new display. That this version will work internationally isn't really a reason because I don't plan to travel outside the US.

I managed to drop my Kindle 2 and kill the display screen while it was still under warranty. I bought a two-year extended warranty when I made the leap into e-bookery. By the time I bought the DX I was familiar enough with the Kindle to think that I didn't need to buy another warranty. Of course, I waited to drop the DX until about two weeks after the one-year standard warranty expired. Oh, well.

I finished my first pair of real socks a few days ago and I'm going to send them to my sister-in-law early next week. Photos will appear here once she's received them. I'm going to ask her to be relentlessly critical of them, particularly of how they fit. I'll be asking her to go against her nature but it's really for her own good. If she doesn't give me feedback she may be in for a lifetime of badly fitting socks. It seems to take me about a week to turn out a pair of socks, knitting them two at a time, so this isn't an idle threat.

My husband claims I've bought every sock pattern book that Amazon sells, but I really haven't. I don't particularly care for either intarsia or Fair Isle color work, so I haven't bought any sock pattern books that only have such socks. I have bought a bunch of sock yarn from Knit Picks. They reliably sell good yarn, often with luxury fibers like alpaca, at very reasonable prices. I also picked up some cotton and wool Regia sock yarn from Elann.com. I have resolved to buy no more yarn, not even an inch, until I've knitted up all the sock yarn I've got right now.

Back in the Low Desert

We came back down to Palm Desert on the 9th of December. It had really started getting cold in Lancaster, so I was definitely ready to bail out of there. It's mostly been in the mid- to high-70s here and I even wear shorts on the sunny days.

We skipped last winter, so it had been about fifteen months since we'd been here. The house stayed cleaner than I expected, except for the bug bodies in the bathrooms (I don't know how they get into the house and the casita, maybe from the attic through light fixtures or something). I got Merry Maids in on a panic basis on the fourteenth and they went through the whole house. My cousin came in on the sixteenth and her family came in on the weekend and the general tidiness of the house fell apart, with gifts to be wrapped and pieces of crystal and candles and holiday food and gift wrap and ribbon and stuff everywhere.

There were some problems, though. I had a gallon bottle of bleach sitting on the counter in the laundry room spring a leak and trickle out into rather pretty bleach stalactites on the counter and the wooden cabinets, with corresponding stalagmites on the tile floor. The counter is that synthetic marble stuff and the bleach etched a set of concentric rings into it, matching the bottom of the plastic bottle. The bleach also penetrated the finish on the cabinets in a couple of places, damaging the wood. It's been cleaned up and I'm ignoring the damage right now. I think I'll have to replace the entire counter, which is about six feet long, with a sink cutout, as well as one cabinet panel.

The other thing that happened because we were gone for so long was that the pump in the washing machine dried out. As a result, when I washed the first load in it, the plastic pump overheated and I melted itself into junk. This happened the evening of the third day we were back, a Friday, and I was able to schedule a repairman for Tuesday. He took one look at the puddle, centered at the front of the washer, and diagnosed the problem. Apparently, this is a fairly common problem for snowbirds.

I had had to have my Lancaster washer repaired this summer and I took the opportunity both times to ask the repairmen about front-loading washers. They both told me that front-loaders had a very high repair rate and that the repairs were very expensive. This confirms some of the stories I've heard from friends and neighbors with front-loaders. I think I'll stick with top-loaders. I know they use more water, but I have the ultra-large size and, as a result, don't wash that many loads, so I don't really feel that I'm putting the entire balance of nature into decline.

Our family visit was wonderful and the Christmas Eve dinner was absolutely perfect. Well, we forgot to make and serve the green salad, but we had enough food on the table that we didn't notice this until we were cleaning up the kitchen. It was wonderful to see my uncle and his daughter and her husband (their son and his wife, who live in Seattle, couldn't join us because they were insanely busy closing escrow on their first house and scrambling to get out of their apartment; plus, they're expecting a baby this spring).

Our visitors left the day after Christmas, much to Gordo's dismay. He had really enjoyed having six people in the house, particularly the two kids who made over him constantly. His sojourn at this house had started badly when he fell into the waterfall and strained his shoulder. He was put on crate rest for about a week, getting out just as the kids arrived. He really misses them.

I think this is enough of a data dump for now. I'll be back fairly soon to tell the tale of my reading Cryptonomicon, a book by Neal Stephenson, and to show off my latest shawl, a knit-along (KAL) project.

Oops, Sorry About That

My last posting here was in early August and then, as far as anyone could tell, I just dropped off the face of the earth. I didn't, really. Instead, I discovered facebook and started posting all my news there, as well as in alt.fans.cecil-adams, leaving myself with nothing new to say here.

So, let's see. I knitted a baby blanket and an afghan, for my favorite baby and his grandmother, respectively. I've gotten pretty good at making navy bean soup in my pressure cooker. I've done a lot of reading on the Kindle DX. I discovered Woot.com and Wine.Woot.com and have spent too much money on gifts and bottles. We're down in Palm Desert (we got here a week ago) and Gordo the Wonder Collie is settling in, although he did fall into the waterfall pond on his first day here.

My beloved cousin (well, she's actually my cousin's wife, but I love her as if she were a sister, so there's no single word to describe the relationship) will be here in a couple of hours, to stay until the day after Christmas. The rest of the family will show up a little later. Her husband (the actual cousin) and their daughter get here on Sunday and their son shows up three days later. The kids' arrival dates are functions of their college and high school schedules. Her sister lives just north of us, as do his father and his sister and her husband.

I spent two hours at the supermarket earlier today, trying to fill in my pantry and have some nice fresh produce for her. I went to Stater Bros. (for the first time ever) and discovered that they have a very extensive La Brea Bakery product line. I went a little overboard and will have to do a little freezing before bedtime. Nice produce and a nice service butcher, too. There was a customer at the butcher counter looking at beef roasts and he asked to look at the other side of every roast there. I know why he was doing that, but it's excessive when it's a rib roast from the middle of the piece. Sort of like looking at both sides of a center-cut pork chop.

I'm having Christmas dinner this year for all the California members of my mother's family. That's not very many people, though. There's us, my uncle, and his two kids and their families. As I wrote above, my uncle's son has two kids. His daughter has one son, who lives in the Pacific Northwest. He and his wife won't be here because they bought a house and the escrow is closing on the 23rd or 24th, so they had to stay there. They're going to have a baby in the spring (I already bought a present on kids.woot.com). So this year there will be nine of us for dinner on Christmas Eve. I'm hoping that this becomes a family tradition, now that three households are so conveniently close.

I'm sure there's more to tell, but I've got to go put the rest of the groceries away. I'm going to light some candles to greet my cousin, too. Festive is my watchword this year.

Good News and Bad (But Improving) News

First the good news. I made another batch of bean and bacon soup (recipe posted here previously), only this time I spread it out over several days. It's been so hot here that I really didn't want to make it in one session. Well, actually, it started after I soaked the beans and then didn't feel like making soup after all. Still, I was glad to find out that I could spread the process over a few days.

I picked over and soaked the beans about five days ago, freezing them after I rinsed them. Then on Saturday I sliced and fried the bacon and drained it, then put it in the fridge. This afternoon I took care of the onion and garlic, then put the peppercorns, bay leaves, onion and garlic, bacon, and beans (nuked briefly so they wouldn't be a great big bean lump) into the pressure cooker, set it, and sat down to see what was new on Facebook I'm Mary Shafer there, if you want to friend me.

It's finished cooking now and I've tasted it. It tastes pretty good, but it needs salt, of course. It's too hot to whiz with the stick blender; I don't like the idea of flinging really hot soup all over me and the kitchen. I'll add salt while I'm doing that, to be sure to get it evenly mixed. I didn't put enough in the first batch, partly because my cousin was coming and I wasn't sure how much salt she'd like.

Speaking of my cousin, we had a wonderful visit. We were so sad to see her leave. Even Gordo missed her and kept going to the guest room to look for her. He'd give me this pitiful look like "How could you let her go away?" and, of course, there was no explaining it to him. She's the one who introduced me to Starbuck's iced chai latte last year. I'm now a regular customer and it's all her fault. I don't drink coffee, so I hadn't known they sold tea. I got her back, though. I introduced her to the Kindle and loaned my Kindle 2 to her. Both she and her husband have been reading with it and they really like it. I suspect they're going to end up buying one (or, maybe, two). We're a reading family, even the people who marry in, and it passes on to the kids, too.

Now for the bad news. Gordo the Wonder Collie had to have extensive exploratory surgery on Friday. He'd managed to swallow a 3" by 3" piece of rigid plastic, as well as a bunch of smaller pieces of the same plastic and some other stuff, and this was really messing up his digestive system. We took him over to the vet after he vomited five times in the night. Collies have deep chests, which made the surgery more difficult. They cut open his stomach and pulled all the junk out of it, which took both hands, and then examined his intestines carefully for smaller pieces.

He had a small fever over the weekend, but that's gone (this is written on Monday). He's still not eating much, but he's always been a picky eater. We now have great hopes that he'll come home tomorrow, since he actually ate a little kibble today. I think he has to demonstrate that his digestive system works from end to end, as it were, the same way that people who have had surgery on their digestive tracts do.

Birthday Cards

I got a birthday card and note from my favorite niece in the whole world (she's actually my only niece, but I still recognize her superiority at being a niece). She told me that she bought herself a Kindle 2 after reading my posting on mine. She has always been a great reader, like me, which I think has made us closer over the years. I have to admit to having aided and abetted her reading habit; I would buy her books when we visited Iowa and even now we give her Amazon gift certificates.

Still, to convince her, with just a few words, to buy a Kindle 2.... Fortunately for my auntly reputation, she loves it with a passion. I am so pleased to hear that from her, since I love mine, and her, so very much.

She is a wonderful person. She's really good at dealing with people, which is a large part of her job (she's a fairly high-level manager at the hospital system of a big Midwestern university), and she's very intelligent. She got her MBA at that same university while working full time, with excellent grades. We are so proud of her and her success. She's also a wonderful aunt to her four nieces and one nephew. She graciously gives me a much-needed outlet for knitted goods, by accepting and wearing warm woolly scarves.

Maybe she'll start leaving the occasional comment here. I didn't even know she was reading.

Sad Anniversaries

It will be my mother's birthday on the 24th, the second since she died. Somehow this anniversary makes me sadder than the anniversary of her death. In reaction to this, I find myself swamped in creativity or, maybe, in shopping to support creativity. I've been buying lace weight yarn like crazy. I bought three partial cones of Jaggerspun Zephyr and another three colors of cashmere-silk blend on eBay, four different colorways from Black Bunny Yarn, and two colorways of kettle-dyed yarn from Knit Picks. Then today I got a skein of Lorna's Laces Helen's Lace for the 2009 Year of Lace Spring offering.

The funny thing is, I don't know why I'm suddenly accumulating lace weight yarn. It's not in honor of my mother. I never knit a lace shawl for my mother and she wouldn't have worn it if I had. She rarely wore sweaters or jackets or coats and a lace shawl just wasn't her style at all. An afghan would have suited her, but I'm just now starting to think about knitting afghans, mostly for the new house.

There's some miscellaneous news. We're having a heat wave here. It's been in the '90s, which is unusual in April. Today we're having a lot of convective activity and there's an actual thunderstorm just north of us that has really dropped the temperature. I doubt if we'll see any precipitation, though.

Gordo went to the vet last week and he weighs 75 lbs now. He'll be one year old on May Day. He's doing very well, although he has trouble sleeping in the warm evenings. We've started leaving the slider in the bedroom open and he's doing better. His crate is right by the door and the cool air washes over him, making him more comfortable. He also seems to be eating a little better. I think he's not wild about the lamb and rice kibble, so I'm going to look for a different brand next time. Maybe I'll pick up a small bag of Canidae. My previous pair of collies liked it very much, so I can hope Gordo will, too, and that it won't make him itch.

Some time ago I got a new vacuum cleaner, a Eureka, that claims to pick up dog hair. It does and I'm really pleased. I hadn't realized how much hair Gordo had shed in the bedroom (or how much we'd tracked in) until I saw it whirling around in the vacuum cup. His hair is pretty much invisible on the silver plush, which helped conceal the quantity. The vacuum can also be used on hard floors, having a switch to turn the beater brushes off, which is really nice. My halls and bathrooms are tiled and regular vacuums just spread stuff around on them, rather than sucking it up. This vacuum came from Overstock.com and was quite reasonably priced. I looked at Dysans but couldn't find one with the hard-floor option and thought they were kind of expensive. I've had Eurekas before and liked them, so that's what I got.

At the same time I also picked up a Bissell carpet cleaner from Overstock.com. It's refurbished and has a minimal complement of accessories, but I'ver never found that I use the accessories. I probably should, now that I actually think about it, since the chair I regularly sit in is a bit grubby and could stand to have the arms cleaned, at the very least. We have the carpet cleaners come in about once a year and do everything, but with a dog it's nice to be able to tackle spots when they appear, without doing the entire house. All of my dogs have been very good about not making organic messes, being well-trained, but I swear that they would sometimes clench an entire pawful of mud to track onto the carpet on rainy days. Add in my propensity to spill Caffeine-Free Diet Coke and spot-cleaning gets important.

The third thing in my order was a pressure cooker. I've never had one, but my mom loved hers. She was a working woman for as long as I can remember and the pressure cooker let her put dinner on the table in no time. I'm more interested in keeping the kitchen cool during the summer. I'm trying to add some balance and variety to my diet and I know I'm more likely to eat food I've prepared. For example, I despise cooked bell peppers, yet a lot of companies sneak them into frozen meals, where they taint the entire dish. This is particularly true of baked pasta dishes and Mexican foods, like enchiladas. I also think the pressure cooker will let me cook smaller quantities. There's really no reason to make two big pans of cheese enchiladas or lasagna just because you're going to all that work anyway. The cooker is also touted as making excellent rice and, with special pans, steamed desserts. I'll let you know how this works out.

I Haven't Dropped Off The Surface Of The Earth

It's been more than two months since I last posted something here, although I've been updating afca regularly. There's isn't a lot of news, except about Gordo the Collie Puppy and his epilepsy. I did a little knitting and will update that soon, with photos.

Meanwhile, about the Wonder Puppy....

We've been titrating his dosages of Phenobarbital and potassium bromide and seem to be getting satisfactory blood levels. The number of seizures has dropped significantly. Last week we bit the bullet and sent him down to West Los Angeles to have an MRI and a spinal tap, just to be absolutely certain that there was nothing obvious causing the problem. Apparently, onset of epilepsy in a puppy is uncommon, particularly when there's so much trouble controlling it. They didn't find anything, but we did get a nifty DVD and I can assure you that, despite how he sometimes acts, Gordo does indeed have a brain.

Our vet has been consulting with a neurologist (vets specialize these days, just as do MDs). The neurologist suggested a new drug to add to the other two, so our vet called in a prescription to my pharmacy. This is human medication, too, and is very expensive for the uninsured, like Gordo. My pharmacy called me three times, just to make sure I knew how much it cost. We haven't started him on this, yet, because he seems to be doing better without it right now. We'll see.

On the Internet, Nobody Knows You're a Dog

Last night Gordo was sitting on my lap and he discovered the keyboard of my laptop. The flash washed out the monitor or you'd be able to see that he was reading alt.fans.cecil-adams on Usenet.

I can tell that Gordo's days as a lap dog are numbered. We went to the vet this morning, to have the blood drawn for his pre-surgery lab work, and he weighs 32 lb. He's 19.5 in. tall at the shoulder (adult male collies are 24-26 in. at the shoulder). Most of his height is in his legs. It's going to be a close race to see whether he gets too heavy for me to lift or he gets too leggy to fit on my lap.




Here's another photo. Doesn't he look older in this one? Usually he looks very puppy-like in photos, but there are a few angles at which he looks older. He's only four months and one week old, so he is still a puppy and usually looks it.


Here's one of his four-month birthday presents. It's a magenta tiger, with squeaker, and he's very attached to it. It started with a round ball, about an inch in diameter, on a cloth tape for a tail. It took Gordo about ten minutes to remove the ball. He has subsequently removed most of the cloth tape. It's just visible here; it's the light spot in the center of the back, toward the bottom.

Gordo got an extremely charming sea turtle from his cat cousins in Iowa last week and fell in love with it. He carries it around everywhere and sometimes naps using it as a pillow. The next time he does so and I can reach the camera I'll take a photo. It's really cute.

The cat cousins also gave him a stump with three squeaky squirrels in it that we haven't let him have yet. We're waiting until he gets bored with the current plushy toys (or until he wears them out completely) to give him the stump, which is really great. Too many toys can be confusing to a puppy. Plus, the family room floor is already pretty much paved with dog plushies, rawhide chewies, pig skin rolls, and squeaky latex hippos and frogs. Not that we spoil our dogs or anything, of course.

Gordo Grows

Look at those long legs and big feet. Gordo had a growth spurt on Sunday and Monday and added an inch of height, I think, all in the legs. He was kind of inert on Monday, except for twice polishing his dish so clean that it was a good mirror. I gave him a little extra for dinner and he didn't even pause, but just ate it down.


Another view of the legs. His muzzle is more readily visible here and its increased length is easy to see. He has to grow muzzle because he's got to fit about twice as many adult teeth into it as he had baby teeth in his little puppy muzzle. He's teething right now and there's just not enough in the world to chew on. The family room floor is an obstacle course of rawhide and pigskin and nylon chewies. He also has a couple of freezable canvas chew bones that seem to give him some relief.



There's the muzzle and nose close up. You can just see the pale spot on his black nose, on the left just above the nostril. I think that's related to his being a merle.

We went to the vet yesterday (Tuesday) to get his last puppy booster shot. He has graduated from the little tabletop scale to the big floor scale, as he now weighs 30.5 lb. That's twice what he weighed when we got him. We also made appointments for his pre-anesthesia blood workup and for the surgery, which will combine neutering and repairing his umbilical hernia. He's almost four months old, meaning that Los Angeles County wants him licensed soon. He'll need his rabies vaccination certificate and his neutering certificate to get his license.

The trip to the vet and the vaccination really wore Gordo out, coming as they did on the heels of the growth spurt. He spent most of the day sleeping, only reviving after dinner. By bedtime he was his usual perky self, racing around the back yard and harassing his beach ball.

Gordo and the Purple Hippo Squeakie

Gordo
Originally uploaded by Mary The Digital Knitter

Here's Gordo, three months and four days old. He weighs 22 lb and is a lot taller. Notice that the tail, legs, and nose have grown quite a bit. He won't fit through a couple of his favorite shortcuts any more, which surprises him.

He's got a lovely nature, very amiable, and is a joy to have around. He's figured out the house-training business completely. He's an intelligent little fellow and has picked up several commands. He has a burning passion for shoelaces but no longer unties my husband's laces, after a few admonitions. However, my friend Pat's laces are fair game.

We took him over for his next-to-last puppy shot today. It doesn't seem to have slowed him down a bit. He's been bouncing around all afternoon, except for an hour or so. I went out to run a few errands and he went into his crate for a nap. Amazing how a short nap will re-energize a puppy. When I got home, he was ready to go for another four or five hours.

The sun has set now and so has the puppy. He's definitely diurnal. Perhaps puppies run on sunlight and puppy kibble....

A Little Explanation About Collies

This whole collie story is kind of complicated and now that we finally have our collie, I can set the story down in an orderly way. There are five collies involved, all sable and white or sable merle and white, and all male.

The first collie was the rough-coated collie puppy who died shortly after he was born, about two months ago. I mentioned him here before.

The second collie was Dakota, the three-year-old rough male who had decided he didn't like going to dog shows. His breeder decided to try one more show season to finish his championship in the conformation ring (he was halfway there already). However, it took her almost a month to decide this, while we waited in Palm Desert in a very hot June. On the other hand, we were there to have company from New Jersey that we wouldn't have had in Lancaster.

The third collie, from the second breeder, in Simi Valley, was another rough puppy, but the breeder's daughter decided she wanted him if he was of good enough quality. She's married to another collie breeder in the Midwest. He was, so off he went.

The fourth collie was a two-year-old rough male with an overbite and a bit of a history. He, however, developed collie nose and the breeder decided to give him to a friend who had known him for some time. She didn't feel comfortable about him coming to me in the desert, as she couldn't give her usual guarantees of good health.

So, after deciding that I didn't really want a puppy, even though they're precious and adorable, and even after preferring rough-coated collies (like Lassie), I changed my mind yet again and ended up with the fifth collie, a smooth-coated puppy. We've had him for nine days. He's grown so much you can see the difference from day to day. He's very smart and is figuring out the house-training business very well. We just love him.

Hot Puppy Love

Have I got news! I talked to the Collie Club of America representative in Hesperia (less than an hour east of Lancaster) and one of her dams is going to have five puppies on Cinco de Mayo. As soon as she knows what they are she'll give me a call. If there's a sable and white male, he's mine, all mine! OK, ours, all ours!

His name will be Gordo, named after Charles Gordon "Gordo" Fullerton, NASA astronaut and now a Dryden research test pilot. He and his wife live two streets over from us and they have also had collies. The previous two collies were named after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. Before that, I was using names from "Macbeth".

If we don't get a sable and white male from that litter, her friend has a sable dam about to have puppies, so there's a second chance. And the third chance is the representative's second dam.

I talked to her for about half an hour and gave her several references. One of them, Sheri Moss, is the top gun in working collies. Another, the breeder I got Donal and Malcolm from, is a good friend of the representative. That was a real relief to both of us. Good, careful breeders don't like to send their babies home with just anyone, you know. I was all prepared with even more references, like vets, but it's OK.

I'm so excited. I can hardly wait.

A Death In Our Family

My much beloved father-in-law passed away, peacefully and painlessly, at about 5:00 am today. He was the last of our four parents and his death brings back all the pain of the other deaths, as well as its own pain.

He was a wonderful, kind, loving, intelligent man and he'll be sorely missed by his family.

One Fewer of the Greatest Generation Soon, Apparently

We got a call from my husband's sister-in-law in Iowa. His father, at 96, is doing very poorly and may not last through the night. This will be the last of our parents to die.

I've been struggling with the first anniversary of my mother's death, too. I may not be here much for a while.

Library Dedication

On 2 February the Friends of the Lancaster Library dedicated their bookstore within the library to my mother's memory. Here's the photo of her, a small plaque explaining why, and the official Los Angeles County Library System sign.


This was at the annual meeting and they also installed their officers and had a great speaker, a local author who has sold one of his books to be a movie. A lot of my mom's friends and fellow volunteers were there and everyone said wonderful things about my mom, even the speaker who had only met her once, some years ago, and had remembered her very well for her efficiency and her kindness. He writes a column in the local newspaper and, it turns out, mentioned my mom in his column after the dedication. I haven't seen it yet, but one of the volunteers saved it for me and is going to drop it by later today.

I said a few words about her love of reading and of books and how important the volunteers and the library were to her. Everyone seemed to like what I said and they laughed at my little jokes and nodded in agreement with what I said.

Here's a close-up of the official sign, made to match all the other official signs throughout the entire county system:


And here's the photo of my mom, taken at an angle so that the flash wouldn't reflect off the glass and ruin the picture:
Isn't that a pretty frame that they picked out? I'm very impressed with it.

Sorting Needles

I've been tidying up my rolling bin full of knitting needles and other accessories. I got pretty much everything but the needles done and finally gave in to the inevitable. I have too many needles. I had too many before my mom died and I inherited hers. I'll probably still buy more needles for specific projects.

Among the circular needles my mom had were two with metal cables. Fans of Elizabeth Zimmerman may recall her writing about the first time she saw and, briefly, used a circular needle. That needle had a braided metal cable, as I recall, and one strand of the braid had broken and would snag the yarn, but still the needle was regarded as a wonderful tool that EZ wanted. My mom's two needles are in extremely good condition, a beautiful bit of knitting history.

She also had some 14" plastic single-point needles in US 2 or 3, which probably date from the '40s. A lot of knitting back then used much lighter yarns and much higher stitch counts than we do now. I think of worsted weight as being pretty standard for sweaters, but then it was sport or fingering weight.

She kept up with the times, though. There are a lot of larger needles, including circulars. I remember using a one-piece nylon circular in about a US 13 to knit a top-down raglan sweater in coral Spinnerin Frostlon. It had a vee neck and was a perfect color match to a straight skirt I had. That was when I was in high school. I also remember knitting a lace shell in avocado at about the same time.

My mom knitted a lot of slippers from a pattern popular in the '50s. They used a US10½ needle and two strands of worsted weight yarn in the adult size. Smaller sizes used lighter yarn and smaller needles. They were really simple and I, too, knitted a fair number of them. I could probably reconstruct the pattern without much effort. Anyway, she still had three or four pairs of 10-inch US 10½ needles, the ones we used for these.

Obviously there's been a lot of nostalgia involved in this needle sorting. It's been thirteen months since she died and I still miss her acutely. The probate closed last week, incidentally. It had been complicated by one particular asset that we had a little trouble getting transferred or it would have been done last year.

Another reason I have too many needles is that I have a personal quirk that I like to have complete sets of things that come in sets. I bought the larger tips and longer cables that weren't included in the KnitPicks Options and Harmony sets, for example, and I'll probably finish out the 16" circular needle set one of these days (I'm missing US 6, 7, and 9, which were out of stock earlier). I also really like sets that come with nifty storage systems for all the components, like the Options interchangeable circular needles. Fortunately my quirk is controllable and I can limit it to inexpensive sets. About the most expensive knitting set I have is the Weldon's Magazine facsimile set, all twelve volumes of it, and I bought at least half of those as Interweave Press brought them out.

Progress

Here's the latest picture of my Angel Lace Shawl. I've added one more pattern motif repeat (ten rows) since I snapped this. Just for orientation, the center top of the shawl is at the center top of the photo. In this photo I had about a quarter of the first ball of yarn left, meaning I was about 3/8ths done.


Another photo of the shawl, from slightly further back. In this photo the center of the top of the shawl is slightly left of the bottom of the photo. The tip of the triangle is at the upper right of the photo. I need a longer cable on my circular needle to lay the shawl out in its proper shape.


Now it may seem that I haven't made much progress on my shawl since I last reported and I really haven't. I had something else to do. My dear niece, The Best Niece In The World or TBNITW (not that I'm biased or anything), sent me some beautiful hand-painted rayon chenille yarn. This part of it hadn't traveled well and I hadn't treated it carefully enough when I took it out of the box and looked at it. Chenille has so much twist in it that this yarn had really snarled itself up, with only a little help. So I found an end and untangled. And untangled. And untangled.

Isn't this beautiful hand-painted yarn? The colors remind me very much of turquoise and amethyst. I have no idea what I'm going to knit from it, except that it needs to be knit fairly firmly in a pattern stitch to prevent worming. Here's a closer look.

And here it is, untangled and wound into a nice firm ball slightly bigger than a baseball.

TBNITW sent more than just one kind of hand-painted chenille, so I'll share more photos as soon as I take them. She has wonderful taste, but what else would you expect from TBNITW?

An FO At Last

I have finally finished my pretty Bigfoot Shawl from Wrapped In Comfort by Alison Jeppson Hyde. It's knitted in Knit Picks Gloss, which is a fingering-weight blend of 70% merino wool and 30% silk. This is a very robust yarn; I ended up re-knitting about three inches of this shawl about four times and the yarn stood up to it very well, looking just as good the last time I knitted it as it did the first.


The pattern called for three balls of Gloss but I used an extra three-quarters of a ball. This was the result of my decision to knit until the shawl was 16" long unstretched. At the end of the third ball the shawl was 16" long somewhat stretched, but that seemed just a little skosh to me, so I knitted on. The pattern calls for 16" in length, no other description, which is why I had two options. Of course, it was easy to decide to press on after three balls because I had, with my usual caution, bought an extra ball. This leaves me with more orphan balls that I probably need, but it avoids that nasty sinking feeling you get when you're out of yarn but not out of pattern.


Here's a not very good photo of the pattern, a variant of Fan and Feather. This is some of the part that got knitted four times. The yarn looks pretty good, with good stitch definition and shine, even after all that abuse. Knitting with black yarn can be a challenge, particularly for older eyes. I used the screen on my laptop to check my knitting.

So now I've got to block this circular shawl. That's going to be a first for me. I've looked around a little on the Web, as well as checking some books, for tips and hints. I have those rubber floor tiles I use for blocking, plus a zillion T pins and several tape measures. I'm not exactly sure how I should pin out the neckline. I mean, I know it's round, but what's the right diameter? I'm pretty sure this will become easy to see when I get right down to it.

So now all I've got left for my imperative Christmas knitting is a scarf made from Knit Picks Panache for my brother in law. This is such luscious yarn, 40% superfine alpaca, 20% cashmere, 20% silk, and 20% superfine merino. I just love knitting scarves from such luxurious fibers for my brother- and sister-in-law, both of whom I love dearly.

Here's a photo, one I've posted before, just to save readers the effort of paging back through previous posts to find it.

It's a little darker blue than this, not quite navy blue, though. The color is named Dusk.

And the last photo, just because I like the colors so much, is of the triangular shawl I'm knitting for myself. I won't be doing much with it until the blue scarf is done and the BIL and SIL scarves are on their way to Iowa.

This is very relaxing to knit. That may be because the pattern is quite straightforward and the colors are sort of unpredictable. I'd never dream of giving this shawl to anyone else because the colors are so vivid, even gaudy. And, of course, I have the option of frogging the whole thing back and knitting wristlets from it, more in accordance with the plan of the yarn's creator. It's sock yarn, but I don't knit socks.

One last item--I'm beginning to suspect that I may get a washer and dryer for Christmas. The washer doesn't always spin the clothes dry and the dryer seems to be stuck on really hot. We're going to go over to Lowe's and look at the Whirlpool front-loading washers and matching dryers. This isn't exactly what I was hoping Santa would bring me, but at least it's not coal.

What A Week It's Been

I went over Friday and signed all the paperwork to list my mom's house. The only thing we didn't do is set the date we'd begin. My realtor, Jane, who used to be my neighbor, came by the house on Saturday and agreed with me that it wasn't ready yet.

On Monday we cleared out the master bedroom and both bathrooms completely. The bedroom set (queen bed, dresser, nightstands) is still in there, which Jane says is OK because it'll show people how big the bedroom is. Apparently, people have trouble estimating the size of empty rooms. I think this set is going to go to one of the sisters who clean my house in Palm Desert.

We got kind of a late start because we had to go by the bank and get my signature medallion certified so I could cash in one of my mom's IRAs, since I was the beneficiary. The medallion certification guarantees that I'm really who I say I am and promises that the bank will cover any losses if it turns out I'm not, so they don't just hand these out at random. We'd had a raging hassle over this Friday, but I figured out what the bank really wanted and it just sailed through.

Then Tuesday my friend and I finished clearing out the guest room. It's still got a daybed, a dresser, and my mom's cedar chest in it, but the dresser and chest are empty. We also packed up the last of the kitchen stuff and made a run to the thrift store. We had about ten boxes of stuff for them. They were getting ready for their fall sale the next day, so we just put everything in the conex out back. My friend and I both noticed that some of the stuff they were taking into the shop for the sale was stuff we'd brought over earlier.

Wednesday my husband and I went over to the dentist. We both had crowns to have cemented and I had two fillings. It wasn't particularly painful for either of us, but we were there for almost three hours. It might have gone faster if my crown hadn't been such a perfect fit. The cementing process starts with a trial fitting and bite checking. Well, my crown wouldn't come off. It was made to fit my tooth and fit it did. My dentist ended up doing the adjustments in place and then tried for at least five minutes, maybe more, to get it out. When it did finally pop off, it bounced off the tip of my tongue toward the back of my mouth. I wasn't in any real danger of swallowing it, fortunately. Needless to say, we didn't do any more trial fittings; the next time it was in my mouth it had cement on it. It's perfect.

Thursday our new van was supposed to be delivered, but there was a problem with getting the running boards. They were damaged in shipping, with a deep scratch through the gel coat, and there was no way they could be used. So they've been re-ordered and we're just waiting on them arriving and getting painted. My friend went over to the house and moved all the cartons of books for the Friends of the Library out to the garage. She also moved about three-fourths of the cartons of stuff we're taking to our Palm Desert house (mostly kitchen stuff and books) out there too. Meanwhile, I started organizing stuff here to go to Palm Desert, mostly books. I'm ignoring the yarn for now.

She got a call from her husband, at about 1730, that his car wouldn't start and would she please come down and get him. He works near Burbank Airport. She put their dinner into the fridge and went down and got him. He went down with a co-worker this morning and figured out what the problem is. Tomorrow they're going to get a hitch for her pickup and go down and get the car. Not that she needed any more excitement in her life, because she's on the board for the public parks in the unincorporated area west of town and they're having a book sale tomorrow. Apparently the county employees can't actually sell the books and take the money, so the board members have to do that, something it would have been helpful to know before Thursday.

Today, Friday, was a very successful day. We started by loading the books for the Friends into my van. Then two guys from the thrift store showed up and took away the two filing cabinets, microwave oven, microwave stand, and two vacuum cleaners. To save them making a second trip and, more importantly, to save them from having to lift the heavy console TV into a Suburban-type van, we ended up moving all the boxes of books into my friend's pick-up and putting the TV in my van. The ramp really helped with that. I followed them over to the shop and they unloaded the TV and I visited with the workers for a bit and then went home. I was so pleased to get these big things out of the house and garage and over to the shop. My friend and I would have really struggled with them.

Next one of the afternoon volunteer workers, who had been a very good friend of my mom's, came by on her way to the shop and picked up the five boxes of things for the homeless shelter (my mom had been collecting this, like towels too worn to sell but still good enough to use, from the donations to the thrift shop). We also had a big black garbage bag full of large RubberMaid, Tupperware, and other storage containers for her daughter-in-law, who is a serious baker and can use these large containers for flour, etc. I also had a few little things for her, mementos of my mother. Between all these visitors we managed to finish clearing up the office. There's a few pieces of furniture in there, which we'll move on Monday.

My friend has graciously agreed to take the daybed, the drop-leaf table, the end table, two living-room lamps, the rock-maple hutch, and two paintings by my father's youngest sister. She has also taken a number of other things. She knew and liked my parents and will remember them both when she uses these things. Her daughter, her only child, also knew my parents and also will remember them fondly. I just can't say how much it means to me that she's taking these things.

Anyway, we finished up the day by taking fourteen cartons of books over to the library, where we were met by the president of the Friends. He and one of the library guards unloaded the cartons onto carts and whisked them away. The librarians will go through the boxes and take any books they want for the collection and then the Friends will take the rest to sell, either in the bookshop they've named after my mom or at their semi-annual sales. My husband and I buy books on science and other non-fictional topics that we don't always keep. We pack these books, frequently the newest books on the subject, in a marked box and they, I'm told, always get added to the collection. I think this says something rather sad about the funding for our county library system, that they have to rely on donated books in such important areas.

It is just amazing how much progress we've made. For so long it seemed as if we weren't making any progress at all, no matter how hard we worked and how much we took away or packed up. Now all at once it's almost empty. We have another day, at the most, and then I'll get the cleaners in. Following that, the entire interior has to be painted, except (maybe) the kitchen. Then it goes on the market, probably in about a week. And there it will probably sit for ages, until some investor buys it and turns it into 8A housing, like what happened after the last real estate bust we had in the Antelope Valley.

I decided to send some people, mostly family, photos of my parents. They had a great portrait done by a very talented local photographer about ten years ago and I was able to get her to make prints for me. I kind of underestimated my list and had to call her this afternoon and order a few more prints. They'll be ready in about two weeks. I bought a box of those stiff photo mailers and I've been tracking down mailing addresses. I'll start mailing them once I get them all.

I'm still knitting away on my Bigfoot Shawl. I'll get a photo over the weekend.