Well, kind of.

I’m blogging again (at least, I hope it’s not just a one time performance), but I’ve moved.

Come see!

• I am a bad blogger. I understand this. I am trying to be better. I am also trying to come to grips with it — I don’t have to be fabulous at everything I do! If I can only manage one post a month, then that is okay. Disappointing . . . but okay.
• I am, as of Saturday, the mother of a four-year-old. This is astonishing to me. It does not seem truly possible that it has been four years since my boy came to join me. I am very, very hopeful that the four-year-old year will be easier for all of us than the three-year-old year was.
• I am once again struggling with depression and on antidepressants. Prozac and I made very good friends about eight years ago, and I thought I had truly beaten a lifelong battle with depression. As it turns out, I wasn’t completely done with that battle. It has been a very bad year, and with my inborn tendency toward a chemical imbalance in my brain, I was pulled under and now I’m just struggling to keep my head above water. I have been very, very withdrawn for months now, but with the help of this medication and I am working very hard to climb out of this hole. I’m not looking for sympathy, but offering an explanation for why I have been (and may continue to be) less than pleasant on this blog. Bear with me, and it should (should) get better.
• I am the proud owner of a completed pair of Hederas! I am so so proud of them, and so utterly thrilled to finally have a pair of handknit socks for myself. I finished them ages ago (during Socktober, yay for me!) but did not manage to blog about them until now.
  
  
  
  
  • Pattern: Hedera from Knitty
  • Yarn: Fortissima Socka, 75% superwash wool/25% Polyamide
  • Needles: US size 2
  • Notes: I did not knit the heel as written in the pattern; I tried it twice and could not get it to look decent. It was much longer on one side than the other, and just not working out for me. I substituted a plain knit heel and am very happy with that modificaiton. I love, love, love the fit of these. They’re perfect. I did make an error in the lace pattern, but I repeated it in the second sock so that it looks more like a “feature.” It is a small error and it does not bother me at all. I am very, very, very happy with these socks. Yay for me!
• I am not sure I like the way my very first ever toe-up sock fits me. I finished it a little late for Socktoberfest, but I did accomplish my Socktoberfest goal — to experiment with a new way of making socks. Toe ups, short row toes and heels, picot bind off — definitely all new stuff! But — I just don’t know that I like it. They are simple, plain stockinette socks in a very pretty comfortable yarn — but the fit is just . . . . off. I’m just not sure that the short row heel works for me. It’s a cute sock (though there’s terrible laddering — what is that all about??) and I love the colors — but the truth is I’m not sure I’m going to make the second sock. I may rip this one out and try something different. For right now, I am reserving judgement. Toe up was fun, but I think from here on out I’ll probably be sticking with the top down, heel flap construction. (My apologies for the following photos. Yucky weather leads to indoor crappy flash photos, but I didn’t want to wait any longer to blog about these!)


Click here to see how my four-year-old wanted to help with the photo shoot!



I’m proud of the fact that I’m ghostly white; I’m trying hard to avoid skin cancer!

• I am working on Mother’s bag again! Still achingly slow progress, but I am feeling less like a terrible daughter. When she was here for Nate’s birthday party, she noticed her purse in my knitting bag and got very excited. “Am I go to have my candy cane bag for Christmas?” Well, Mama, I’m going to try! If I can just buckle down and do this, it shouldn’t take THAT much longer to finish. I have about 4 inches of length left to go. That doesn’t sound like much, but WOW this is going so slowly, and so boringly. I’ll have more photos when there’s progress worth showing!
• I am playing single mother this week. My husband is traveling for work, to North Dakota. I’m such a horrible wife that I am getting a great deal of amusement out of this fact — and I’m SO very glad that I’m not him. He’s experiencing real winter, and our high today will be in the 70s. Much better him than me. My son is now paging me to come watch a movie with him, so I’m going to go work on that Mom thing. I hope I’m back with more to say before long. Y’all have a good week.

and a little of that…

I finished my ugly dishcloth:

It’s so awful it’s funny. It makes me grin every time I see it, and I have been using it mercilessly ever since I completed it. I love it, even though it’s hideously ugly and even though I fucked up completely on the last pattern repeat (don’t know exactly what I did, don’t really care — it’s just a dishcloth! How — freeing!). What makes it even better is that I showed a photo of it to my best friend (who tolerates my knitting babble, much like my husband, with patient affection) and he said “It looks like the American flag dipped in hydrofluoric acid.” I cracked up. (I love that I know people who even know what hydrofluoric acid is.) It gives me even more reason to smile every time I see the thing.

In other news (unfortunately with no photos), I have finished the gusset decreases on my second Hedera and will shortly be racing along the rest of the foot — it moves so fast after this point! So my Socktoberfest “celebration” is well underway. I have loved knitting these socks. I think I’ll have two new pair on the needles very quickly — Embossed Leaves, for my friend Lily, and I may try my first pair of toe-ups (most likely for another friend). I already have the yarn for the toe-ups (I’m going to use some stash Elann Sock It to Me in lovely shades of brown), but I don’t know what I’m going to do for the yarn for Lily’s. I may try some of the KnitPicks sock yarn.

A little progress has been made on Icarus — I’ve made it halfway through the fourth repeat of chart one. It’s looking delightful. It’s so easy and brainless right now — but still fun because I just flat-out love knitting with lace-weight yarn. Still, I’m looking forward to getting on to the “real” lace charts. It’s going to be a while, though, particularly given that for a little extra size I’m going to be doing an extra repeat of chart one.

No progress on Mother’s bag (picture red-faced embarrassed daughter here). But I am going to leave this afternoon to visit my family (including Mother) in Orange, and I plan to take only my Hedera (I just can’t abandon it so close to the finish) and the bag. I should have a lot of time to knit, because there will be plenty of folks ready and willing to entertain the boy-child, so maybe I will make some real progress. Maybe even get finished with the body of the thing — what an appealing thought!

I think that’s all the babble I have for today. I’m on my way to pack and I hope I’ll be back with some pictures of finished socks on Tuesday!

My addition to eye candy friday:

Tequila. This is a pure “indulgence” photo - and one I’d really like to partake of more times than is probably wise.

As far as not eye candy — I am working on the worlds ugliest dischcloth. I had some Peaches & Creme stashed from waaaaaaay back, in color “pink lilacs” — a combination of pinks, purples, and white. Everything I’m really working on is on little needles with little yarn, so I wanted something mindless and quick to work on when my brain wants to disengage. So I decided to try out a dischcloth — worsted weight yarn on US size 7 needles — just what the doctor ordered. I’m working it in a feather and fan pattern (which I’ve never done before, and yes, I realize is not going to give me an actual SQUARE dischcloth). It’s fun, and I’m enjoying it.

But my gods what an UGLY creation. The colors, alone, are hideous — enought to make me thing “what in the FUCK were you thnking, Carrie?” — and then there’s the pooling on top of that. Hideous personified. But. But. It makes me grin every time I pick it up to work on it. And it’s going so FAST! So I’m pretty happy with it. And, after all, it’s going to be used for menial labor — how pretty does it have to be? It’s more than enough that I’ll get a kick out of it every time I see it.

Progress so far:

Icarus is growing, slowly. Mother’s bag is . . . .well, thinking about growing. Even more slowly. Hedera is pretty much being saved for “out” knitting — which means not getting much time.

In other news, I joined Lolly’s Socktoberfest.

I just really like the idea, and I’m pretty sure I’m never again going to be without a pair of socks on the needles, so it seemed like a good fit for me. I’m hoping to have the second Hedera done within the first couple of days of October, and at least one other pair (for Lily) compeleted by the end of the month.

We’ll see how that works out!

back again . . .

It seems this blog is often more about absence than presence. I’m working on accepting that, as it seems to be the best I can do.

As usual, the good news is that even though I’m not blogging, I am still knitting. I’ve got a couple of new projects, in addition to the old ones, and even one finished object!

Boring update first — Mother’s bag. This is such slow progress. It feels like I can knit forever on it and it just doesn’t grow. At all. That makes me want to tear my hair out. So this seems to be, again and again, shoved to the bottom of the WIP basket. However, I have finally reached the end of the first balls of yarn — and it all had to go somewhere, right? So that must mean that, despite what it feels like, progress is being made.

I doubt that this looks any different at all than the last progress photo of this candy-cane bag, but for the record here it is:

I’m thinking of making this my “at computer” knitting project rather than my socks. It is pretty mindless knitting, and maybe if I’m otherwise engaged while knitting it I won’t get so frustrated at its lack of apparent progress. I WILL have this finished by Christmas. Sigh.

I am also still working on the second Hedera sock. Progress so far looks like this:

That’s nine repeats of the lace pattern done on the leg. This one is not moving nearly as quickly as the first did, but I am still having great fun knitting it. Nate has begun Spanish classes, and I took Hedera with me to the second class (I thought I’d be having to participate, which is why I didn’t take it to the first class). The other mothers in the class were a little taken aback by my knitting at first, but once they realized that I would still be participating in the conversation, it didn’t seem to bother them, which is good. That will give me a 45-minute solid block to work on these at least once a week, so hopefully I will be done with the second sock soon. I find myself surprisingly tickled with the fact that these are for me, that soon I will be wearing my own handknit socks. I can not wait!

I think my next-up socks (for Lily, for real this time!) will be the Embossed Leaves pattern from one of the relatively recent issues of Interweave Knits (I don’t remember precisely which issue).

Okay, next in line — a finished object! These are for another friend of mine — Fetching handwarmers from Knitty, knit in leftover Kathmandu Aran yarn from Rogue.

I like these so much that I started another pair, out of a yummy soft green yarn that I had one skein of in my stash. It’s a DK weight, so they have a completely different feel than these do. I’ve finished one, and will be starting the second very soon. Pictures when they’re done.

Finally, my big new project:

Even the little details look just yummy, as far as I’m concerned. This is the Icarus pattern, by Miriam Felton, from the Summer 2006 Interweave Knits. I fell in love with it as soon as I saw the pattern and the name (in fact, I’m not sure that the name isn’t the majority of my attraction to it, but I’m weird like that). When I started seeing finished shawls pop up in blogs, and saw how lovely they were, I knew I neeeeeeeeeeeded to knit this. I was craving serious lace anyway, but I think I may have been soured forever on Kiri. So I cast on for Icarus about a week ago, using Misti Alpaca Lace yarn in color 7120, a lovely subdued blue-green color, and US size 4 needle. (Much as I love my Denise’s, when I was swatching for this I was desperately craving some of these!)

I have, so far, completed 3 repeats of Chart 1.

This part of the shawl is pretty much brainless knitting — I’m finding the pattern so easy to read it’s almost impossible to screw up. I did have one error which I *gasp* didn’t go back to fix — I would have had to tink two long rows, and I was able to fudge a fix that I think is almost completely unnoticeable (hubby couldn’t pick it out, either). Other than that, the only issue I’ve had is forgetting to put in a yo, and that’s easy to fix on the next row — no ripping or tinking required. So I’m very much enjoying this knitting.

I think that’s all I’ve got on the needles right now. I just ordered the yarn to make my shrug for my little sister’s wedding in February. I decided on the Knitpicks Andean Silk in Pitch. I’ll have a look at it when it gets here and decide if I like it enough to use it for that purpose. This is the first purchase I’ve made from KP, so I’m anxious to see how I like the experience.

I bought Knitting Vintage Socks by Nancy Bush earlier in the month and thoroughly enjoyed reading it. I haven’t decided which pattern I want to make first, but there are a few I plan on making. When I purchased it, I had a nice chat with the lady in line behind me at Border’s. She told me she had made several of the patterns from it, and really enjoyed them, so we talked a bit about knitting. She was somewhat surprised at how recently I started knitting, and gave me a card — apparently she does private lessons, and will also meet with you to help you “fix” your knitting. It was pleasant, and for some reason, surprising. I just don’t know many knitters in real life, so running into one in such a random manner was quite unexpected.

I hope to be back with finished socks soon!

My Gramps, my last remaining grandparent, died exactly a week ago.

I have been traveling (to Mississippi) and dealing. There has been some knitting done, but I’m not up to sharing it right now — I’m still pretty emotionally wiped out.

Just wanted to update on where I’ve been.

So Daddy had open heart surgery last Monday, the 10th. He went home from the hospital Monday (the 17th), which was very exciting, but Tuesday night he ended up in the ER because he had a fever and couldn’t catch his breath. He was readmitted to the hospital with pneumonia, and I have no idea when he’s going to be able to go home again. In the meantime, it must suck to be him. I went to the doctor this morning, and was also diagnosed with pneumonia. I have tried hard to imagine what it must be like, to have this kind of cough when your sternum has been split in half and you have a nasty incision all the way down the center of your chest, but the truth is my imagination is just NOT that good. I only know that it must, in fact, really really really suck.

I spent a lot of time up at the hospital last week, including being there from 6:00 am to 8:30 pm on Monday, the day of the surgery. I can not even begin to describe how tortuous that was. Daddy was told to be there at 6:00 am, so we all arrived at that time. My original understanding was that he would be going into surgery shortly after arrival. I was wrong — he didn’t actually go into surgery until close to 11:00 am. Then the surgery itself took approximately three hours. After that, he was taken to the cardiac recovery ICU — and we were allowed to visit him immediately after he got there, at 5:00 pm, and at 8:15 pm.

What this added up to was a LOT of waiting — very stressful, agonizing, terrifying waiting. Both my sisters, my mother, Daddy’s brother and his wife, two of my parents’ closest family friends, and a coworker turned friend of Daddy’s were all there in the waiting room — in a show of support. One would imagine that somehow, that would make the waiting easier — having loved ones to share it with — but it did not.

The only measure of peace that I found all day, and on through the week through hours of sitting in Daddy’s hospital room, or sitting in the waiting room between ICU visiting times, was when I pulled out my knitting. I wish I could say that it made everything better, but of course it didn’t. It did, however, provide me with some measure of peace. Just the repetitive motions, the feel of the yarn moving through my hands, the vision of the fabric growing tiny bit by tiny bit, was soothing. It allowed me to disengage from my mind a little, to gain a little space. I hesitate to say it was like meditation, but . . . it allowed me to focus the energy that I had, both on the creation of the fabric, and — with each stitch made — on will for Daddy to be okay.

I’m glad I had it. I’d've gone crazy without it.

Mother told me I looked like a little old lady. I nearly threw the knitting at her, given that what I was working on so hard was a bag for HER, but I restrained myself. It made everyone laugh, and we all probably needed a laugh.

This is how far I’ve gotten:

For whatever reason, it seems to be slow going. It’s about seven inches long so far. The pattern (Via Diagonale from Knitty) calls for 9.5 inches; I’m thinking I’d like to go a couple of inches longer than that if I don’t run out of yarn. But it is going sooooo slowly I’m not sure my patience is going to hold out, even if the yarn does.

In spite of its looking like a candy cane, I do really love the way the bag is looking so far. I’m thrilled that I’m confident in my ability to line it well, too (if I can get my sewing machine set up in the new house ever) — such little things bring me joy. The bag feels great to touch and the texture is just yummy.

Sometimes I’m just really happy I found knitting and can call myself a knitter.

Even if it does make me look like a little old lady.

So I’ve been gone. What the hell was I doing?

First, scrambling like a madwoman to keep my house spotlessly clean all. the. damn. time.

So that, eventually, I could do this:

To get here:

Click here to see a full gallery of house photos

And then get from here:

to here:

Click here to see a full gallery of improvements so far

And then while still working on all that, I had to spend a LOT of time here. My Daddy had a valve replaced in his heart, and a bypass, and a procedure to correct a problem with his heart rhythm. (He is only a few days out of surgery, but so far recovering well.)

So it’s been a busy couple of months.

There has been a little knitting. Not much, but a little.

I finished hubby’s socks.

I keep meaning to get a modeled shot — they fit! hooray! — but in the insanity that has been my life, it has not happened yet. Soon, I hope.

I finished Rogue — got her sewn up, and have for the moment decided not to put in a zipper.

And again with the modeled shots — soon, I hope.

I have been wearing the hell out of this cardigan. (Which should be making you go “WTF?!?!?!” given that it is the middle of July, I live in Houston, and the sweater is made from a wool/cashmere/silk blend yarn.) Maybe it’s just me, but I find hospitals to be very, very cold places. So I’ve been wearing it up at the hospital this week. It is DIVINELY comfortable and sooooo warm. I love it. I am just in love with this sweater. And I’ve gotten lots of compliments on it, too! It’s the first time I’ve really worn a piece of my knitting enough that I get comments on it, and that makes me feel all warm and gooey inside. I’m sure the people who say “I like your sweater!” don’t understand the bigass grin they get in return, but that’s okay.

And Kiri. I have progress shots of Kiri, too.

Yeah.

I picked it up one day in the middle of packing, and I screwed it up but good. Shifted the whole fucking pattern over by a few stitches. I still don’t know what I did. But of course, I didn’t notice it until AFTER (and I mean, literally about 2 minutes after) I moved my lifeline at the end of the repeat. I tried my damnedest to get it back on the needles after I pulled out the offending repeat, but there was nothing doing. I was tearing my hair out with the frustration and figured it would be better for my sanity just to rip the whole thing and start over.

I haven’t started over yet, though. Right now I’m contemplating a different pattern, and I knew I needed some mindless knitting to work on, not lace.

So I’ve been working on Mother’s bag, and on a pair of socks for Nate from the leftover hubby sock yarn. (He wants a pair of socks that match Daddy’s. Isn’t that cute?) I have no progress photos of either, though, yet. I’ll get there eventually. (This has become a mantra for me in the last couple of months.) The new house has significantly less natural light (more shade, fewer windows) for photo taking, and it’s kind of a pain in the ass.

But really, I will get there eventually.

It’s good to be back.

Blink. Blink. Oh look, there’s a whole world out here. How pleasant. Maybe I should try taking part in it again. What an idea.

I just need to get some things out there, and then I can talk about knitting. First of all, migraines that last more than three weeks suck ass. I am so tired of fighting with my body. Secondly, keeping a house in condition to show to buyers on a moment’s notice is miserable. It is, I think, more miserable if you have a three year old and a dog who sheds tremedously than if you didn’t. I’m about to drive myself crazy over here, and I’m getting nothing productive done. (I don’t consider keeping my home pristine productive. I do just fine with clean enough.) And finally, trying to find a new home when you absolutely love the home you have is just miserably exhausting and depressing. I would give anything to be able to just pick up our house and move it closer to my husband’s job and into a decent school district. Instead, I’m stuck trying to find a house that I’ll love anywhere close to as much as I love mine, and that’s not an easy task. Ugh. I so very much want this all to be done and over with.

Okay. Now that I’m done whining, let’s see what kind of knitting (and other crafting; don’t want to forget about my delightful sewing experiences!) there is to write about.

Rogue? Umm . . . still sitting in pieces, just like she was last time I wrote. I feel so bad about this. It’s not like it would take long for me to do the seaming — the zipper, on the other hand, I’m still terrified of.

My bag for sew? i knit! is still at the exact same point in construction as the last time I posted. I do have a plan for how to finish it that will not (I hope) require me to throw the sewing machine into a wall, but I’m still a little gunshy. Not to mention, I’m afraid of getting into a groove (ha!) working on and then having the realtor call to tell me someone’s going to be here to look at the house in five minutes. My sewing has so far been a very messy endeavor, and there’s that whole “pristine house” business. I’m just going to have to bite the bullet one evening and finish it.

Mother’s bag? My Kiri shawl? They call to me. I want to work on Kiri so badly it makes my finger tingle. But I must. finish. hubby’s. socks.

Which brings me to absolutely the only knitting progress I’ve made at all in weeks. I finished the first of those socks:

The color is not spot on here; in real life, the colors are much richer, but my head was not cooperating with taking photos enough to work hard at it.

A closeup of the toe, because it’s the only closeup I took that came out. You can see I’m having some trouble with laddering, which I haven’t had in a while — don’t know where that came from.

The best news of all? Hubby tried it on and he LOVES it, and it FITS. It fits beautifully. Like it was (forgive me, I have to say it) made for him.

The second sock is coming along nicely. I hope to have it finished soon, and then I want to start a pair for my friend in Canada — if she’ll ever send me the measurements I asked her for!

Hopefully I will have more progress — on something, anything! — to share soon.

Okay, I’ve now edited this post four times, I think, to fix stupid stuff. I hope I’m done now. I’m starting to feel like an idiot.

Quick boring update. I don’t talk too much about my medical issues here, but I’ve got a boatload of them, and they’ve got me down for the count. Good (? well, better anyway) blogging will resume before too long. For now, a few completely random notes on the state of things:

1. I finished and blocked the body of Rogue. I’m a wee bit disappointed — it’s a little shorter than I’d like. I was worried this was going to happen, and debated with myself over and over and over again about adding an extra cable repeat to the side cable, and decided against it. I’m kicking the hell out of myself now and very upset. Hubby says it still looks great, but I dunno. Will be seaming and sewing in sleeves very soon, maybe today. Pics to come.
2. Hubby’s first sock has turned the heel and is coming down the home stretch. Ugly (and I mean ASS-ugly) pooling on the gusset, but nice striping has resumed now that I’m on the body of the foot (does a foot have a body?). I’m afraid the foot is too big. I’m going to finish this one, let him try it on, and then go from there — adapting and reknitting sock #1 if necessary.
3. My bag for sew? I knit! is (ha!) coming along. You can read about my adventures with my sewing machine here. I do not have the fortitiude to post about it again. So far I have not heaved the sewing machine into the wall. My nearest and dearest have a pool going on when it will happen.
4. My cousin is going to have a baby! First grandchild for her parents. New little person for me to knit for. I’m excited.

And in non-knitting news:

5. We had a realtor come look at our house today. Getting ready to put it on the market. Looking at getting a better price than imagined. Very scary.
6. The boy was in a wedding this past weekend. He did what he was supposed to do for all of about 32 seconds, did NOT go headfirst into nearby water despite my greatest fears, provided great entertainment for everyone there, and most importanly, was so cute I almost died.

Be back soon with more interesting and relevant stuff.