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.

Holidays and Hurrying Around

The holidays are upon us and my life has gotten a bit odd. It's not exactly because of the holidays, though. My friend Pat's daughter, the mother-to-be for whom I've been knitting, is here for Christmas. What she doesn't know, but her mom and I know, is that there's a surprise baby shower for her on Saturday. Pat and I have been racing around town, shopping, running various errands, and trying to decide on our shower presents.

I had no problem picking out a gift, as a long discussion of the excellence of the baby swing convinced me immediately that nothing else would do. When I showed Pat the one I'd selected from Amazon, she decided to send another item in the collection, too. After intense discussion, we decided to send them to her daughter's home, denying ourselves the chance to see them in real life. However, we did have the diaper bags (a two-bag set) sent here. I'll tuck the sheets and descriptions from Amazon into the respective bags and she'll have something to unwrap and be surprised by. This whole thing has consumed more time than I thought it could, mostly on selecting the proper color and pattern.

We also spent a day getting our new toilets installed. This house was built in 1972 and I, in my youth and foolishness, put in two Harvest Gold bathrooms. When we bought the first house in Palm Desert we had Kohler Wellworth low-flow toilets. These were the first low-flow toilets we'd seen and liked. The second Palm Desert house had them, too, and now our Lancaster house has them. In white. Plain, glowing white. I'm a quick learner. Next I'm going to replace the Harvest Gold lavatory sinks, rendering one of my bathrooms into a white bathroom (except for the gold tile around the shower). I'll still have the Harvest Gold bathtub, though. I understand they can be painted or powdercoated or something, for a lot less than they can be replaced.

To add insult to injury, my dishwasher is making an odd noise and not getting the dishes as clean as I'd like. It's the second dishwasher we've had since '72, so it's not as if we didn't get our money's worth out of it. However, the expensive soundproofed dishwasher in the Palm Desert house has spoiled me. I'm going to try to hold out on this for a while though. Ditto on the washer (which doesn't always seem to spin well enough) and the dryer (which seems to have lost some of the intermediate heat settings). They're both quite aged and I knew this day would come. I'd just hoped it wouldn't come for every appliance in the house all at once.

I've been knitting like a fiend, between all these digressions. I finished my BIL's scarf last night and the what-not for what's-her-name is coming along nicely. As soon as I finish that, I can go back to my brightly colored shawl.

There's an excellent chance that the probate for my mom's estate will close this month. There hasn't been much action on the house, as my realtor expected, but we hope to see more action in February.

Great Progress In Probate

Well, it looks as if we're very near to closing probate. We're past the 60 days after notice to creditors, we've transferred everything that needs transferring, and we're going to wind it up now. Because we didn't get the house sold, it will just be put in my name until it gets sold. There'll only be one remaining thing, which is income tax returns. My mom died on 15 January, so we have to file a return for her in 2008. The lawyer has to file a return for her estate, from when she died to when probate ended. In both cases there will be a small refund or payment, but nothing much.

We've really made progress with the house. My friend and I got everything we could out of the house and into the garage on Wednesday. All that was left in the house was the bedroom set, a dresser, a cedar chest, a couch, a love seat, and a dinette table. Oh, and the solid maple hutch. On Thursday a team of cleaners came in and did a wonderful job cleaning it. I asked the cleaners if either of them would like the bedroom set and one accepted. Encouraged by that, I asked if either wanted a queen hide-a-bed and the other one did. That really makes my life easier and I'm glad to see the bedroom set go to a good home.

The guy with the stake-bed truck (with tailgate lift) and his helper will show up at my house Monday and load up the hide-a-bed. We'll take that over to my mom's house and unload it. Then we'll load up the couch and love seat and a bunch of boxes and take the boxes to the storage space and the furniture over here. Then back to my mom's house for all the rest of it, except the bedroom set and hide-a-bed, and over to the storage space to drop it off. Then we pick up the last furniture and take it to the cleaner's house at about noon. Then my friend and I go home and collapse. I don't know what the mover and his helper do.

I'm going to send my mom's cedar chest to my goddaughter in New Jersey, so I have to get a mover to handle that. I'm going to go through my cedar chest and dig out a bunch of crocheted doilies, etc, that my grandmother made and gave my mom and me. These go well with my cousin's decor (and don't go with mine at all). I'll pack all that into the cedar chest and ship it.

I'm finally going to take the paint chips over on Monday and pick the paint color. I've left a message for the painter. The current weather makes it likely that he'll want to paint it fairly soon. We've got a cut-off low with enough moisture in it to make painting exteriors a bit chancy, so a nice little one-day interior job should be convenient for him. As soon as the paint goes on the walls, the house goes on the market and I go to Palm Desert.

Well, we're not going quite as quickly as that implies. I've got to pack up some stuff here first, including yarn (the rest of my knitting stuff is always packed in a rolling crate), knitting books, and other books. I have to take a bunch of clothes down, too. My summer clothes here in Lancaster double as my winter clothes in Palm Desert. I remember commenting to a fellow shopper in Palm Desert on Christmas Eve 2005 that it was wonderful to live somewhere that wearing shorts and sandals that day was a good idea. I also have a limited number of dressy clothes, mostly that slinky rayon and Lycra fabric, and that has to go each way each time, too. And I have to pack my twelve pairs of sandals.

I'm almost back where I was when I ripped back the Bigfoot Shawl. I've got some new yarn to knit a stole for a friend and I've done a little swatching on that. I'll get some photos soon to show you what I'm thinking of. The yarns are Lion Brand Incredible bulky ribbon yarn, Yarnplace Vivace DK banana, and Blue Heron Rayon Loop heavy worsted. I think I'm going to do chunks of garter in the rayon loop, blocks of netting-like lace in the Vivace, and narrow garter stripes in the ribbon. I'll also use the ribbon for long heavy fringes. This friend needs a stole with drama.