Life's a Stitch

Words of wisdom

I found this lovely quote from the Talmud today. Believe it or not I had never heard it before. Must have spent too much time in Catholic School. But its simple message quieted my distraught knitting soul:

Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, "Grow, grow."

I'm off with for a girl's weekend to see Judy Collins, so I leave you with another moment of peace. He may not have bought her a doggie bed, but they've worked it out:

Enough, enough, enough!

I'm one of those people who can live a long time just putting up with things, get to the end of my rope and reach the point of ENOUGH, goodbye, I don't need this. Examples in my past include a place of employment and a major relationship. Not a bad thing, it's how every attempt at weight loss has been approached in my life. I remember once, in my thankfully distant past, being told by the receptionist at the clinic where I worked "Girl, you are bustin' out of those jeans."  That's all I needed and 26 pounds later I felt liberated.

Don't worry, I'm not quite at the end of my knitting rope with Print O the Wave. It's brought me awfully close. Close, but not there. Yet. I'm leaving my options open.

I am an experienced lace knitter, having taught a Charlotte's Web class, and completed a long list of brain twisting lace patterns  including Kiri, Rippling Waters, C'est La Vie, amongst others, and the one that illustrates my gluttony for punishment - Charlotte's Web the second. 

The first disaster was self inflicted, having put it away without those rubber thingies (AKA in our house as mommy's little pink/yellow nipples) at the end of the needles, and dropping the whole darn shootin' match when attempting to knit at an airport between flights. We've all been there in one way or another. The second phase included picking up 600+ stitches around the edge, only made worse by my tendency to enlargen patterns. Remember my behemoth Lady Eleanor?

Ok, I'm now onto phase three - the edging. And then there's the blocking. I'm flirting with ENOUGH. How do you think seasilk will smell in a fireplace? It's only a sick fantasy, our fireplaces having been filled in with the fake gas variety. Want to take bets? Will Life's a Stitch endure or will she get to ENOUGH?

Relentless creepiness - Rated I for Icky

Here are some updates:

Six feet later: Erika suggested I give a rating for recent gross posts. This update is rated I for icky. Is that how you spell it? Icky? Ikky? No matter how you spell it it's pretty gross. An update to recent news that four running shoe clad feet have washed up on our British Columbian shores in 11 months. This week there have been two more - six feet in under a year, five of them from the right side of its human body. Actually one was a hoax - an animal paw stuffed into a sock held in place with seaweed. I'm willing to bet there was some teenage brain power behind that one. Still, come on you guys from the random incident camp. It does not seem possible that these are random events. Five real feet and counting...let's talk relentless creepiness.

Displaced Grace: The new love seats have arrived in all their cherry red splendor, only problem is that Gracee has been displaced. She desperately wants to attempt a leap onto the seat, but I have not been encouraging. She looks at me and talks Scottie.

Grace never knew Scottie language until she heard this video and it opened up for her a whole new world of communication. When she wants something she speaks in her best MacKenzian accent rapidly shifting her weight from right paw to left and back again. I suggested to Chuck that we buy her a doggy bed and in his best practical Minnesota farm boy voice, he said "Why? She has carpet to lie on." Can't you hear it? Mind you, this is the same husband, who replied when I suggested our 40 year old bath tub might need replacing, "It still holds water, doesn't it?"

Knitting: How about that? It's a knitting blog lest I forget. Ucckhhh. You know what I mean by that sound?  That's the sound of having picked up 672 stitches from around the edge of Print O the Wave and having a different stitch count with the completion of each round.

Tried and true aka dating myself

This is my electric can opener. I bought it in about 1975 for $3 at the Richman Gordman Half Price Store when I lived in Omaha. I's been on one counter or another for over 30 years. Recently, one of my kid's friends commented "Oh, it's a can opener. All these years I thought you really liked pork and beans and the cans were too big for the cupboard."

Tried and true - my electric orange/lemon squeezer. I used to get made fun of for having so many things that plug into the wall. I bought this one at Walgreens in the late 70's for nine bucks, Still works just fine. I sound like my parents used to. Just wait, if you don't already,you will, too.

 

They don't make them like they used to. My sewing machine weighs a ton due to its metal parts. There is no way I'm parting with this baby. A sewing machine was the first thing I bought when I finished my master's degree and got my first real job.

 

Here is something that hasn't lasted, although 17 years in an active household is pretty good for furniture. On Tuesday, it's out the door for these guys as two new red love seats are joining our family.

 It's disintegrating! What do you have that's lasted forever?

It's a graduation badge!

File this one in you can teach an old dog new tricks. This is a Flickr badge of our past week, which included both high school and undergrad commencements, although one was conspicuously sans graduate. Click on one of the wee tiny pictures and get an enlargement. Some of what you'll find:

1. Close but no cigar - see the blue gown on the hanger? That's as close as it got to crossing the stage. Yes, the high schooler did graduate, but was stuck on set, acting in a commercial, and didn't make it back on time to formally receive the diploma. The parents were present and crushed, the graduate seems unscathed.
2. Promming bloggers or would that be blogging prommers? Here in North Vancouver, parents attend the prom with their students, then the kids go off for aftergrad parties. That's 5 and a Beagle with me.
3. The head bonk, formally known as the ceremonial tap. This was new to me:
"A hold-over from the knighting ceremony where the monarch taps the prospective knight on the shoulder and dubs him "Sir," tapping is a convocation tradition started in Oxford and Cambridge. It is a symbolic act--a recognition by the learned gentry that the student has passed certain hurdles and can now be considered a scholar. Only undergraduates get tapped by the Chancellor. Master's and PhDs were already admitted to the society of scholars when they received their undergraduate degrees, so they do not kneel.
4. What a graduate's mom carries in her purse: a camera; an umbrella, it's BC after all; forms and passes - regalia, parking, admission; nine Kleenex.

Enough of the chatter, here are the pictures:

www.flickr.com

What is this?

This is a Flickr badge showing public items from lifesastitch tagged with grad. Make your own badge here.

How do pills know where to go?

More everyday questions. How does the pain medication know what part of the body to go to? I know the science behind it, but the manufacturers assume people don't or else they wouldn't spend so much developing different boxes for the same item.

Read the labels on certain brands of over the counter pain tablets, and although the ingredients are the same, the labels indicate different formulations, one for arthritis or one for headache, for example. It looks to me that Tylenol 8 hour and Tylenol Arthritis formula are identical products. Marketing is a fascinating thing. Tylenol Ultra advertises its traditional formula along with "an added pain relief enhancer." You know what that magical ingredient is? Caffeine. Wash down you regular Tylenol with coffee, and the cure is the same.

On the topic of headaches, Ive resurrected a knitting headache. Remember Print O the Wave? While in the Toronto airport last summer, waiting for the three hour propeller plane flight to New Hampshire, I pulled out my knitting while the needle decided to stay in the bag. Nice slippery, silky yarn plus a lace pattern - disaster. I worked on a Print O the Wave recovery operation only to discover the stitches hadn't all been picked properly.

A year later, Im back at it and all looks good. I was hesitant to take a picture. Here comes another everyday question:  Why don't knitting mistakes become apparent until they are photographed? Looks fine in person, but snap a photo and cables appear reversed, stitches dropped and lace zigs rather than zags. If you see any knitting anomalies, please be gentle in informing me.

Thanks to you for all your congratulatory messages. The celebration continues here. Photos next post.

How does toothpaste know it's night time? Another question from everyday life...

How does toothpaste know it's night time? I recently bought a pack of toothpaste and found one tube was labeled for daytime use and the other for nighttime. I read the ingredient list and they were identical. Being the rebel I am I reversed the recommended regimen and my teeth don't seem confused.

Questions from everyday life - someone's got to think about these things.

Everyday life for us this coming weekend includes graduations, Mari with her degree in Astronomy and Physics from the University of Victoria, and Bryant from high school. The former, although demanding, requiring hard work and extreme effort, is a definite. The latter looks as though it will happen after all.

Mr. Bry has not had it easy going through the traditional curriculum; his creativity challenging even his art teacher. A thank you to those teachers who believed in him, particularly the one who sent home a special message today, leaving these parents dewy eyed. Seriously. There have been some others who understand him and have appreciated his talents, but this was a message directed to the mom and dad, knowing that life has not always been a stitch with this student. This teacher looked back and acknowledged in writing, our boy as a wonderful student, polite, talented, respectful and very helpful. He expressed pride in having him as a member of the graduating class. Thanks to you, and to the principal who reinforced his words.

SIL Grethe, in MN has established a family tradition of crocheting afghans for the high school grads. Here is Bryant receiving his:

How do fruit flies know to stop at the border?

Living on the border of two countries comes with interesting regulations. God forbid you cross into the US with a mango or fruit of the hawthorne. I once had a "lemon offense," reamed out by the FDA inspector for surreptitiously carrying a forgotten wee slice of lemon in my picnic cooler. The reasons for transportation of forbidden fruit are tied to control of insects that might affect future crop production. Get this, though, my lemon was American by origin. It was a returning resident. There are no lemon groves that I know of in Canada. It makes me wonder, though, how fruit flies know to stop at the border? Not the larval variety that might hitch a ride on a slice of fruit, but the mature ones hoping for a vacation. That seems like the more likely scenario for potential crop infestation.

During the mad cow scare, there was a rule preventing the transport of pet food containing beef products. Ms. Grace is on prescription dry dog food made of duck, potato and herring. Stinky stuff with gourmet ingredients, not cheap, believe me. We got an in-the-box, by-the-rules inspector who confiscated the bag at the border. No arguing with him, that duck isn't beef. As far as he was concerned pet food was pet food and this was the dreaded Canadian variety. That was an expensive trip requiring a stop at an American vet for a replacement. Maybe he was right, I've been on the lookout for quacking cows since, but haven't found one yet.

Here's our current cross border visitor.This is my mother, who taught me to knit in Brownies. She looks content enough, but she has been suffering with ten out of ten pain from post herpertic neuralgia resulting from the worst case of singles her local hospital had ever seen. None of the traditional treatments seems to work for her. Believe it or not - knitting seems to help. For the first time in two and a half months she is rating her pain at an eight. That's a charity knitting project she's working  on - a child's blanket in a basketweave pattern with Paton's Canadiana in Crazy colours.