Clarification and a Sock Update

Mr. Pug pointed out (while I was sitting in the office until 1 am this morning untangling yarn) that Noro was technically not to blame for the three-yarn debacle pictured yesterday. He reminds me that the mess was actually caused by Buddy and that Noro was an innocent victim. That makes me feel only slightly less guilty that I untangled that atrocity by attacking Noro with a machete like a South American native fighting his way through the rainforest. Sorry, Noro.





But, I ask you: is this the face of a killer? I think not. He's the very picture of innocence.





In other sock news, two pairs were completed last week:



First, the Dream in Color (Pansy GoLightly) toe-up version of Spring Forward. My only quibble with the cuff-down version was that I could only get 2.5 repeats of the pattern on the cuff and still get it over my heel. I thought that knitting them toe up would give me more leeway but this turned out to be wrong--new toe-up version has the same 60 rows and the cuff is short, just like the other one, but I like the short-row heel a lot better so it's all good.






And the Opal happy socks (I have no idea what the real name of this yarn is) are done too. These I'm in love with! No quibbles at all.




Finally, just to let you know that I'm not completely anti-Noro:

This multidirectional took two skeins of Silk Garden Lite and, again, I love it! Great colors, not even one knot, very little veg matter. The perfect yarn, if you didn't have a history with it.

Two of the three socks involved in the tangle have been rehabilitated. The J Knits North Carolina is in three small balls and I've already knit about 2 inches onto the cuff since last night. The black/red/chocolate mystery yarn, which I don't know the name of*, has been cast on and torn out already. I started a toe-up sock using a short-row toe and decided it's just a very fiddly way to cast on. I'm not sure it's worth it, but I'm going to try it again because I'd like to try to make La Digitessa and that calls for this cast on. If it doesn't work the second time, the sock will be made with my standard toe-up cast on.

The Noro is, unfortunately, in the trash can, but not before it left Noro fuzz on all the other victims. RIP, little Noro.

*This yarn came from the Celtic Knot and I bought it when we went to Maryland Sheep & Wool this past May. It had some very clever name but I've lost the band and can't identify it. It's a little odd because it's quite heavy fingering weight, almost sport weight. Unfortunately the Celtic Knot is gone now (I assume) and I can't ask about it. It seems to me that some of our group bought some of this yarn (Whit maybe) and maybe one of them will be able to identify it.

Putting the Blame Where It Belongs

In the way the liberal media are so often given the blame for the Iraq War (meaning that they reported it), my friend Jane is really to blame for this posting.


It's all her fault, or at least it seems that way to me. Well, she's responsible for the posting, not the subject, below:





One day I was feeling oh-so-proud of my prowess with socks and Jane, in a rather wet-blanket sort of a way, posed the question "do you ever have a problem with Single Sock Syndrome?"



Well, I wasn't about to answer that question because, well, because I sort of do. I am, in fact, a great starter and a lousy finisher. But I've had a sort of a banner week of finishing socks and I got a little cocky. I started looking around for socks that could use a little completion in the second sock sort of a way and I found some easy candidates:

But it turned out that each of them had a good reason for their early abandonment. The Opal on the top left is some that I got in a raffle at the guild and had been knitted and unknitted and reknitted and so forth several times. I have cast it on and unknit it myself three times and now I find that, having reached the new yarn portion, I can't get gauge to save my life. Hmmmm....not an easy fix.

The Opal on the top right is what I'm calling my blue cheese sock and it's done on size 0 needles. I think it needs to be a 1 or a 1.5. I just don't think I'm going to like it--it needs to come out and be restarted.

The sock on the bottom--well, it's sock #1 and it just needs to be kitchenered and sock #2 started. But I haven't touched it in over two years and ... did I say kitchenered? Yuk! And I haven't knit on DPNs for awhile either. Well, of the three this is the easiest but ....


But wait ... upstairs in the Maryland Sheep & Wool 2007 knitting bag ... what about that tangled mess of yarn? Isn't there an almost complete pair of socks in there? Well, yes, but ....

An hour later I'm very little closer to solving the problem. I did manage to recover a ball of really beautiful sock yarn that I thought was going to be a multidirectional scarf (until I realized I already have one that's almost identical in color). And I did manage to cut loose the partial sock from the mess. But, of course, I can't finish the sock until I untangle some of the yarn that goes with it. It's lovely yarn, J Knits North Carolina, but it's hopelessly tangled in ...

Yes, it's hopelessly tangled in NORO, the dreaded Noro Kureyon.

So, students ... what have we learned from this debacle:

(a) Never toss three different projects into your knitting bag without putting them into individual project bags?

(b) If you'd just finish one project at a time, you wouldn't be in this mess.

(c) You idiot--haven't you learned yet that Noro can't be trusted?

And, of course, the answer is (d) All of the above.

Resolution, Schmesolution

There are very few unbridled successes in my life but I think I can say without contradiction that I have one achievement in my life that cannot be taken away from me.

I have NEVER ONCE accomplished any of my New Year's Resolutions. Now I'm not so egotistical as to think I'm alone in this--I'm sure many of you are thinking right now "What's she talking about? I'm just as much of a loser as she is. Maybe even more so." But you're not my problem, I'm my problem.

In 2006, for instance, I resolved to lose weight, finish some UFO's, be a better parent and semi-spouse, blah blah blah. In 2007, I resolved to lose weight, finish some UFO's (most of which were left over from 2006 and some from the 1960's), etc, etc. In 2008, I just planned to be more mindful of what the heck I was doing which would result in losing weight, finishing UFO's, being a better parent. I don't think I nailed even one of those resolutions. I'm clearly the World Champion of Non-Accomplishment, whatever you think.

So this year I have a plan that is diabolically clever. So clever it makes Tom Cruise's plan to assassinate Hitler look shaky--not to mention his plan to convert us all to Scientology. Nope--got him beat! No more resolutions of things that I can do to make my life (or yours, for that matter) better. Nope! This year, it's the year of the Anti-Resolution.

In 2009:

• I will NOT join the Ravelry group that plans to knit a full-size sweater every single month during 2009. Hell, I'm such a slow knitter, and have so little time to knit, I'm lucky to have enough time to make a pair of socks a month, not to mention a sweater.

• Nope, I won't be committing to knit a pair of socks a month either.

• I will NOT be letting my hair go gray this year. Yes, Sandy showed up at Whit's the other day with her hair grown out and it looked fabulous. Yup, both Nancy W and Nancy B, not to mention Ellen, have gorgeous gray hair. You will not see mine go gray this year, even if money gets so tight that I'm coloring it each month with Just For Men and a toothbrush.

• I will NOT be appearing on either Atlanta's Desperate Housewives or The Biggest Loser this year. Don't call, don't write. It's not happening.

• I WON'T be promising to blog every day, or even every week. As often as possible--that's all I'll commit to.

• I will NOT be running in the Peachtree Road Race this year, or the Marine Corps Marathon. This represents the latest in a long series of years I have NOT run a marathon, something I'm quite proud of.

• I will probably NOT finish most of the knitalongs I sign up for, even the ones I pay a fee to participate in. Actually, I may fail to even download most of the clues and I think I can say without any fear of being embarrassed later that I will almost surely end up deleting most of the postings due to frustration. I can totally promise that I will delete all postings written in German, French, Urdu, or those postings that appear within four hours of the clue's publication showing off a photo of the completed clue with the words "I finished."

• I WILL continue to sign up for them because, you just never know! This one might be THE ONE!

• I will NOT be trying Ina Garten's recipe for cheesecake again. Love the Barefoot Contessa but that cheesecake was the biggest disappointment of the Christmas season. Bummer!

• I will NOT go to Maryland Sheep & Wool this year. Yeah, I know -- that's not such a positive accomplishment, merely an economic decision. We've gone two years in a row and it already feels like a tradition I don't want to give up. But maybe next year.

My theme for 2009 will be SEIZE THE DAY. That comes from one of those ubiquitous email spam letters that slipped through the spam filter the other day because Joyce sent it. I always think I won't read those things and I always do. But this one had a gem buried in it: SEIZE THE DAY.

I'm taking that to mean Be Open to Opportunities. Don't put off new experiences or the chance to knit with a friend or see a grandchild participate in a sport or event. Take a trip--see someone important or visit some place new. Listen to an author talk about a new book. Sign up to take a class to learn something new. Take pleasure in wearing a handknit sock or finishing that viral knit, even a year later than everyone else. That's my plan for 2009.

See you there?

It's Magic, One Way or Another

Yes, Virginia, there is a Dumbledore ... er, Santa Claus. One or the other, I'm not sure which.

A lovely friend ... and I can't name her to thank her because I don't know her name ... has sent me a skein of --Drum Roll, please--Opal yarn, Dumbledore color. There's only one clue, well, aside from knowing that I would LOVE Dumbledore and don't already have it.

That clue is that the package came from Kay Mather who is a member of the Wednesday night Noble Knitters group and has recently opened a fiber business. That means that it's likely that my generous benefactor is one of the Nobles.

Thank you very much to whichever of you lovelies was so generous with me. I LOVE Dumbledore, and can't wait to cast on with it.

(I guess the fact that it came by US mail and not by owl suggests that it's Christmas magic, not the Harry Potter kind. Another clue.)

Again, thank you. I love all of you and am very grateful to know you.

The Knee--Progress to Date

Several kind friends continue to ask about Mr. Pug and how he's faring with his new, improved, highly technological knee. Well, it varies from day to day and sometimes from minute to minute. I've seen every variation--some of them I wouldn't mind seeing again, and others I hope will vanish forever.

Some days he's a happy camper:

On these days, he's full of hope and expectation and promise. On a day like that, life in the Hundred Acre Forest is good--all Disneyish songs and dancing among the tiny forest animals.

Then there are the blue days:

On these days, Mr. Pug sees only the cloud--no silver lining at all.

Yesterday, he felt wonderful, like a young man who could tackle the world:

But today -- today is one of the black days when I would cheerfully leave home:

Yes, we're in full Grizzly mode today. Grrrrrr!

I Do ... I Don't

Okay, this whole togetherness thing is waaayyyy overrated. It appears that one of the major precepts of marriage, critical to the Judeo-Christian way of life, is a lie.

You know that whole "till death do you part" thing? That whole walking into the sunset, holding hands, with maybe a Viagra moment or two to break it up thing? It's a lie, a damned lie.

That stuff works fine if you have a job and go to work, oh, say, 40 hours a week. With commute that brings it up about 50 or 60. Throw in sleep, knitting groups, book groups, a trip to the grocery or two, and maybe an hour or two in the pedicure chair every so often, and that brings time with your spouse (or in this case, semi-spouse) down to about 49 hours a week, or really the time spent on another job. Hell, you can blow most of that playing solitaire on the computer or blogging or some other useless task.

Do-able, right? Well, yes, in some parallel universe, I guess.

In the olden days, when men had prey to hunt, crops to plant, animals to feed and milk, trees to chop, they were off doing things most of the day. The wife could go about her business of keeping the house and children without too much interference. In our own time, men can go out into the woods with other men to kill defenseless animals or hit balls around a golf course or ride motorcycles or attend sporting events with other men.

This is the glue that holds relationships together. Apart time.

I really do understand why the gays and lesbian groups are fighting for the right to marriage--civil marriage or religious marriage, who cares? I get that you need legal connections and some of us need spiritual connectivity to another person. But we still need apart time. We may need our spouses attached on paper, but the bottom line is, we need space, room to breathe, quiet time, whatever you want to call it. Or I do.

No, I'm serious--I do! I have had a man--Mr. Pug--joined to me at the hip for over a week now. It feels like he's joined to my jugular vein, and he's bleeding me dry.

Where I go, he goes.

What I do, he does ... or at least he comments on.

If I eat it, he wants some too. Or wants to tell me why it's not worth eating. Or how he could have made it better on the grill.

If the phone rings, he assumes it's for him. On the rare occasion it's for me, he wants to know who I'm talking to, what's going on in that person's life, who they voted for, and what their view on the auto bailout is.

If I take the trash out, he reminds me to keep the lid closed and that it really shouldn't go to the street until Thursday morning and that it needs to be brought back to the house promptly on Thursday afternoon. It wouldn't hurt to wipe it off with a damp cloth.

If the dogs seem fussy, he advises me on how to properly feed them (open can, dump, add dry food, put food bowls down and get hands out of the way).

If, God help me, I read a book, he asks questions about what I'm reading. If it's the newspaper, he has already read it and left it crinkled and crumpled.

If the mail has come, he wants his right away. If it hasn't, he's fussing about why the mail lady is 17.3 minutes later than she was yesterday.

If I'm knitting, he wants to discuss the intricacies of the pattern (what is that curved implement and why are you pushing it into the yarn--it's a cable holder, for God's sake! Shut up!) or the dying process that causes the yarn to be different colors--it's a miracle, I say, a miracle!

I have received helpful critiques on my driving (wow, you really hug the right side of the road, don't you? watch out for that red light! there's a cop up ahead--you might want to slow down), laundry techniques (if you fold the towels in thirds, you can get more onto the shelf), cooking (that last bunch of cookies was a little crunchy, hon--maybe if you took them out earlier?)

The one place he's uninterested in is the computer. That's why you'll find me here--blogging and knitting and pretending I'm single and live alone. I'm not hiding. I'm in here breathing all by myself in blissful silence. Ahhhhhhhh ....

Is this what retirement is like? If so, I'll be working until I'm 90 (or in woman's years, 75).

My House's Secrets

Have you gleaned from my postings yet that I am incredibly spoiled? That I am accustomed (rightfully so) to being the queen in my house, with a small but active cadre of servants to do my every bidding? Okay, there's only one--Mr. Pug.

And he's sort of out of the picture, service-wise, these days. He's very much in the picture annoyance-wise, but that's another story.

But I am nothing if not resilient. I've lived alone several times in my life and have really enjoyed it--I think I'm really well-suited to be a hermit, emerging from my hovel only on rare occasions to forage for food and yarn. My point is that I am fully capable of caring for myself, handling my own affairs, and taking care of my own hovel--er, abode.

So I'm puttering around my house and realizing I really don't know much about where I live. For instance:

• Flashlight. Where does the darned thing live? Why can't I find it? Where are the batteries for it, because when you DO find it, it's dead?
• Buddy's hiding places. The other morning, while Mr. Pug was still in the hospital hooked up to God only knows how many good (legal) drugs, Buddy disappeared. Completely disappeared. At 5 in the freaking morning. And I couldn't find him--this isn't a big yard--it's the back yard of a half-acre lot--where the heck could he be? I walked the whole damned yard, in the dark, without a flashlight (see bullet above), checked all the gates--three if it matters--called his name with increasing shrillness, offered treats and kisses and every other desirable doggy option I could think of. Did I find him? No. Did I call Mr. Pug and ask him to come home--right now, dragging an IV pole if necessary--and find the darned dog? No, but it was very close.
• What does he do when he's hiding? Fifteen minutes later, he strolled through the doggy door. I swear his breath smelled like squirrel poo but I could be wrong.
• Bird Feeder. What idiot put it on top of a pole that is 3 feet taller than any of our ladders? Where IS the ladder? Okay, we seem to have six ladders. Which one is the appropriate one for the job? Are ladders like knitting needles--do you somehow have to get gauge? How are you supposed to carry a tub of seed and two suet cakes to the top of a ladder, assuming you're not scared to death of heights, which I am, and somehow pull open a rusted suet holder to slip in the suet cake while simultaneously grabbing the suet, clutching the large tub of seed, trying not to lose your hold on the ladder which is shaking and quivering? Then do it again, because there are two suet holders, each one more rusted than the other. That is definitely a four-hand task and I somehow have only been issued two.
• Gutters. Who is shaking these trees and filling up those stupid gutters? And who knew that when they fill up, water oozes in through the fake stones in the fireplace? Is it going to require finding the 12 foot ladder to fix this problem? If so, we're all going to be wearing raincoats and carrying umbrellas.
• Christmas wrapping paper. Yes, I know I said this was the year of Grinchification, but I still needed to send off presents to the grands in NC. I know we HAVE wrapping paper, because every year I buy 10 or 12 rolls and use small scraps from 6 or 8 of them. That should leave a lifetime supply of partial rolls of wrapping paper, SOMEWHERE in that garage. (Not in the red-topped Christmas Wrapping Paper tub because somehow we always forget to buy one before the Home Depot runs out of them.) So, yesterday I went to the store and bought 5 more rolls (because it's such a lean Christmas), the remains of which will disappear into the vast Black Hole of the garage by next year.
• Once-a-year-kitchen equipment. What do I mean? You know--the roasting pan you only use for a Thanksgiving turkey or to make Chex Mix, the KitchenAid stand mixer you only use for Christmas cookies, the over-the-burner griddle you use for Christmas breakfast, that big white oval platter, the extra ...that stuff. Where is it? Where could it be? It's big, for God's sake. Do you have any idea how big a KitchenAid stand mixer is? It's like having the Tower of London on your counter without the Crown Jewels--which is why it's stored SOMEWHERE.
• The pantry. Actually we have two pantries, which is good because both of them are approximately the size of a smallish diaper bag. I suppose if we'd bought a full-size house instead of the midget variety, but we didn't.... One holds canned goods, some of which have been there since the Jurassic age and have the expiration dates to prove it. The other holds (a) whatever won't fit onto the kitchen counters, which were built for the Oompa Loompa family, (b) anything Mr. Pug thinks we won't need any time soon (see bullet above), and (c) his wallet, his keys, his extra shoes, coins from his pockets, old receipts from Publix, recipes that aren't good enough to save and we don't even like the ingredients but are too good to throw away, etc. It's like a giant junk drawer which we would have one of if we hadn't bought the dollhouse-size house.

Finally, there's the yarn problem. Yeah, yeah, I know that's sort of a me-problem that can't be blamed on him. Well, the fact is ... there's rather a lot of it. But I'm one of those people who are frightfully disorganized but still know where everything is. You know--the person who can look at a 3 foot tall quivering stack of papers on a desk and pull out the 1996 state tax return because she knows at which geological level it resides? That's me.

And that's the way my yarn is ... organized. Yes, let's call it an organization system. That's so much better than the reality, which is that it comes home in bags or mailing pouches, sometimes after months of ripening in the car trunk. Said bags/pouches get stuffed into various crevices where they can remain in relative hiding. Sometimes the yarn gets placed into one of the dozens of decorative baskets I've bought to hide ... er, store ... it. These baskets, bags, etc. supplement the nice storage shelves that Mr. Pug built to hold the wall-o-yarn in the office which were filled up within a week of their erection.

So anyway, when my kids were coming for Thanksgiving, I had to shovel out the bedroom. I probably should have done it over a period of time, keeping good records on where various things went. But I didn't. I got to the day before the arrival and started shoving, pushing, hiding yarn and projects everywhere. In closets in the office. In closets in Jake's old room. In my own two closets, under things. (The one place I didn't use was the garage--I knew I'd never see any of it ever again if it went in there. Abandon all hope, and all that.)

You know what's happened, don't you? I can't find any of my projects--those UFOs that I'm really going to finish someday. Or that yarn that I brought home and am really, really going to make something out of any day now. Well, the day is here--I'm home and ready to knit. Where the heck is the yarn?

In the distance I hear a grinding noise. I'm terribly afraid it's the sound of a KitchenAid stand mixer filled with Socks That Rock yarn and with the dough hook going. Oh, no!