Life's a Stitch

Man Oh Manos

Finally, a finished Manos del Uruguay scarf with my own made up pattern; a variation of a Herringbone Rib stitch. My thoughts:

1. Manos is generally a pleasure to work with although this skein had a fair amount of thin bits compared to its usual thick and thin style.

2. There are huge variations within the same colourway, making it difficult to order online. I ordered colourway #113 - wild flowers - and it was markedly darker than the #113 I've seen in others' projects.

3. Manos can be a dirty yarn that benefits from a soak before blocking.

4. It grows and softens during blocking.

5. The Herringbone Rib stitch shows off the variegation nicely, and although different on each side, each side is nice looking. I would call it an acceptable reversible scarf stitch. I've had many requests for the pattern, so I'll try and write it up in the New Year.

6. I found it an easier, faster knit than the Herringbone stitch of "My So-Called Scarf," often seen online (link on my sidebar).

Oh no, my stash is now Manos-less! Have to work on that one.

Some of us are going to attempt a New Year's trip to B'Ham, our family tradition. As the kids have gotten older not everyone comes along, but I'm not ready to give it up as it's usually a wonderful time celebrating with Seattle friends and fellow knitters. It does seem a bit overwhelming given my becrutched state. My motivation is a visit to Bellingham's newest yarn shop, Marilyn's. Too bad they don't carry Manos.

Happy New Year!

Drop everything and give yourself a gift

The party's over, at least until New Year's and it's back to reality time. Knitting-wise, blocking is my dreaded reality, but I've found a solution. Drop everything and head to your local welding supply to buy 1/16 inch stainless steel welding rods. If you are blocking lace, do it yesterday! What a gift these babies are; inexpensive bits of heaven. Cut your blocking wires into a variety of lengths, weave them in and out along the outside edge of your knitting, put in a few pins and voila - beautiful blocking technique with no annoying pin points. Just make sure they are the "unfluxed" variety or give them a good scrub with SOS pads ahead of time. It's a little easier, but not necessary, if you file the ends to a sharp point.

The old way vs the new way:

Christmas update: Our low key holiday was a success. Look what we substituted for a tree; these lawn decorations made an acceptable substitute:

Christmas day started with 8:00 a.m. church. It was nothing short of a miracle to get everyone to agree to get up at that hour. Our simplified gift giving worked like a charm: I let the kids know in advance how much I can spend at Christmas, then it's up to them. They can choose any combination of gifts or cash up to my limit. I liked Bryant's choice: one gift for himself, no money and a gift for a family in need. We had our traditional duck dinner, cooking two extras for the Boxing Day Danish cold meal.

Boxing Day was a success with 19 for dinner, including Anne, a friend at the start of a similar knee journey to mine. Her son noticed how I was asking my daughter to take on a number of extra tasks since I'm still on crutches. Matt said "You sound just like my mom, who's been asking me to do everything, only I drew the line at licking her envelopes!" You probably had to be there, but having been tempted to exercise parental license during this time of recovery, it cracked me up. And the winner of this year's Akvavit induced behaviour award goes to daughter #1's bf for playing catch the panting dog's tongue with Gracee.

Hope you had a good one.

Merry Christmas

The gift knitting is done, Chuck has bought the food for our Boxing Day Danish frokust for 20, and given the circumstances, no one is giving me a hard time for not decorating, baking or shopping. It's all very much under control. Here are some of the finished products:

May your nights have stars of wonder,

and your days be merry and bright,

may the real reason for Christmas

fill your life with joy and light.

Li

The Christmas that almost isn't

I've always threatened to do the Christmas hype biannually. Do shopping, lights, tree thing every other year and celebrate what Christmas really is in between. That's happening this year, albeit not exactly intentionally. With further complications related to my knee reconstruction resulting in hopefully temporary, crummy chronic mostly night time pain (read little to no sleep), things are being scaled down considerably this year. Although it's what I always wanted to do, I feel a twinge of sadness now and then. Right now it's nice, though. Chuck is doing his Christmas baking listening to mellow, jazzy Christmas music and I'm blogging in bed.

This knee surgery recovery period has allowed me a lot of time vegging in front of the TV. We don’t have cable, don’t get any reception without cable, so I resorted to movie rentals. Here is my list in order of how I liked them:

#11 Respiro – a depressing Italian movie

#10 40 Year Old Virgin – stupid and stupider

# 9 I Heart Huckabees – maybe I was on too many pain pills at the time – really hard to follow

#8 Napoleon Dynamite – too slow, but the lack of filthy language, drugs and lewd activity were much appreciated. You don’t need that stuff to make a good story

#7 Rushmore – I could take it or leave it

#6 Meet the Fockers – a barrel of laughs when I needed it

#5 Rare Birds -  low budget Canadian film, starring William Hurt, slow moving at first, but an engaging story. Critics compared the style to waking Ned Devine.

#4 Snow Walker – a touching Farley Mowatt story, starring a gifted 19 yr old Inuit actress

#3 Six Feet Under, Second Season – after watching 11 of the episodes I was dreaming that the characters were part of my life

#2 Finding Neverland – a deluge of tears when I needed them

#1 Room to Rent – light hearted British film with a good story

On the knitting front here is a last minute gift for someone who may be reading my blog. It's made from Granbia, a soft self striping Japanese yarn, nearly impossible to find in North America. It's an adaptation of the child's Rainbow Scarf from Last Minute gifts (how appropriate). Link to the patten is on my sidebar.

My knitting spot

Oh my, I just realized how my scotties might appear to be, ahem, otherwise engaged. I assure you it was purely a photographic accident. There are seven other scotties hiding behind the chair and they were all crowded together and over lapping, hence the strange picture. Now if they only could have cast iron scottie puppies, that would be a different story.

Tagged by Chris, I'm passing this on to Maureen, Caro and Karen, only if you want to.

Pieces of string

Unable to drive for six weeks, I had to find an alternate method of satisfying my yarn urges. I'm a modern woman, it's OK to do this in the privacy of my bedroom, right? I've spent hours today at E-Bay shopping on my wireless laptop. Arriving home from school, Mr. 15 yr old with attitude says, "What a waste of time, do you realize you've spent hours shopping for pieces of string?"

As a matter of fact, yes, I do realize it. Always the queen of rationalization and a bargain hunter, the combination of e-bay, online yarn shops and not spending my $4.58 per day on McDonald's brekkies for my month recovering at home, have added up to some major yarn purchases. String at a discount, that's my goal these days. I'll post photos as they arrive, but the spree includes:

1. Classic Elite Miracle - my favourite, most soft yarn I've ever felt made from alpaca and tencel for a Fiddlesticks wrap called C'est LaVie

2. Classic Elite Premier - tencel and cotton, for Ruffles from Scarfstyle

3. Marks and Kattens Iceand, AKA Online Iceland - that yarn I've used for a scarf, the one with the tiny little snowballs scattered on top. I paid $8.50 a skein for this once in a scarf splurge. Found it on e-bay for $2.99! Enough for a sweater.

4. A replacement for my Gingher craft scissors, which are hiding from me, somewhere in my house, probably suffering from exhaustion due to overuse.

5. Two skeins of Bouton D'Or Opale and another three skeins of Classic Elite Miracle to add to my existing stash so I can make a decent sized shawl and not worry about running out of yarn.

And you thought this was turning into a knee reconstruction blog.

Ms. Major Meltdown Mess

Yup, that was me yeaterday. Went to my first physical therapy appointment, took one look at Michelle, my trusted talented physical therapist (she's a knitter), and burst into tears. I think the sleep deprivation hit. And the fact that I don't control pain very well, grinning and bearing it, until I hit the wall. I haven't had more than two stints of two hours of sleep at night since the surgery. I usually wake up with the feeling of extreme painful pressure behind my knee cap and my quads in tight spasm. I've had very little pain during the day, but nights have been torturous. I've birthed three babies, two without any drugs, how come this feels so horrible? Thank goodness daytime is good. It's time for a dose of major pain killers.

I'm feeling much better today, especially after a massage, and now, getting in some blogging time. I followed a link to find out my name as a Christmas Elf and it came out appropriately:

Christmas Elf Name My Christmas Elf Name is Get your Christmas Elf Name at JokesUnlimited.com

And Bryant is Goofy Bed-Head.

Haven't been able to photograph my knitting spot yet, but here is some knitting, a second, more narrow feather and fan in black angora, oh so-o-o soft:

Up with the good one, down with the bad one

That's the rule for using crutches on steps - up with the good leg, down with the bad leg. Consulting other knee reconstruction blogs I realize my recovery is typical. Sort of like getting comfort when frogging, from other knit bloggers. The main obstacle today was not being able to remove the garbage bag from my leg after a shower; it was tied a bit too tightly. Luckily I found a pair of scissors within hobbling reach.

This is certainly a challenge for me as I don't do life in slow motion very well. When my body is running down the stairs to my office, my head is already at my desk. It's no wonder I've had so many knee accidents and all my little kid pictures show me with bruised legs. I've never taken the time to concentrate on where my feet should be in relation to the rest of my body. It's never too late, I guess.

More knitting (feather and fan scarf, I'm having difficulty photographing the colour accurately) and flowers (aren't they beautiful, from my Board of Directors):

If I had known how much fun a feather and fan scarf was to knit, I would have a stash of them by now. Why I love feather and fan:

1. It knits to a nice rhythm.

2. With three easy rows and one pattern row, it works as no-mind, movie watching knitting.

3. It requires less yarn than other patterns - its laciness blocks up in size - wonderful for exotic yarns when you don't want to spend too much.

4. It drapes nicely.

5. Perfect for solid or variegated yarns.

Later this week - I'll show you where I knit as I've been tagged by Chris.

How about some dessert in bed?

Not what you might think. It was our anniversary the other night and we celebrated with dessert in bed, all five of us. In my quest for comfort food I made a batch of Rote Grutze, a German recipe that's a fruit flavoured pudding with berries, topped with a layer of vanilla custard like my grandmother used to make. It takes about an hour of stirring which was about all my knee and harvested hamstring could take. Unable to sit for long either, we retreated to the bedroom so I could have dessert painfree. I wish I had a photo.

I have to tell you what a comforting bunch you are:

1. Chris ate roast beef sandwiches during her pregnancy nausea. I had the privilege of 24 hour pregnancy nausea for a total of more than a year of my life. Nope, no morning sickness for me, I had to do the all day variety.

2. Rebecca recommended cherry lime soda - yumm, sounds like a fizzy stomach settling dream to me.

3. I don't know, La, I'd be worried what tomato soup would look like in the toilet.

4.  My sister, Jane, is right on about Grammy's creme.

5. Beth craves potatoes and cheese baked together. She would love Canadian Poutine - fries, covered in curds of mozzarella-like farmer cheese, smothered in enough gravy to melt the cheese. Yummeee.

6. Poor Dorothy can't think of anything foodlike that's comforting. That's why she's in such good shape.

7. Judith had a list that included cut up apples. During my version of morning sickness with baby #1, I ate a pound and a half of apples per day to settle my stomach. With #2 it was McDonald's Chicken McNuggets - probably heavy enough to stay down no matter what and with  #3 it was plain A&W burgers on a plain bun.

8. Heather appreciates comfort food and has some delicious looking foody photos on her blog of her recent b-day celebrations.

9. Alison is from the Lipton chickie noodle camp. You're either a Campbell's or a Lipton's person.

10. Jenny is making me hungry with the idea of cinnamon toast, definitely right up there in the comfort food department.

Sniff, sniff, it's bad enough dealing with all this sick feeling stuff, and then the SIL had to leave. Due to her stash enhancement, pictured below, she barely had room in her luggage for the family's Christmas gifts I sent home with her:

I didn't have the chance to get too sad as Maureen stopped by with some Christmas baking. Nothing like a visit from a fellow blogger with goodies to help ease the pain:

Comfort: food, yarn and company

Nothing like a little nausea and pain to bring out the craving for comfort. I know I'm sick when I crave Campbells's chicken noodle soup, pudding and bananas, apple muffins and tapioca. I worked on the entire list last week. And I know it's really bad when I can't stand the thought of Miss Vicky's potato chips or Purdy's cherry caramels. What sick foods appeal to you?

In my search for comfort, I was thinking about what yarn I should be knitting with and it's definitely alpaca. Grignasco Top Print fulfills my need for softness and colour (thankfully, not as garish as they appear in the photo). Comfort came today in the form of my SIL Ellen, one of my knit addicted victims, and I, bundled up in a bedful of down, both knitting Misty Garden from Scarf Style. Her's is in a mohair blend called Flamenco. This is her first venture into mohair and lace knitting - a double challenge project that was less than comforting for her: