mousme | Entries tagged with knitting

I burned the candle at too many ends, and I am paying for it today. I think this is the fallout from packing too many commitments into my evening shift week and into last week as well, especially a bunch of house visits.

I had lofty plans to do some cleaning today, but mostly all I've managed is a nap. I am trying to view today as a "radical rest" day, even though I feel very bad about not cleaning. I had a therapy appointment that ended a few minutes ago, and my therapist told me that when I make plans and have to cancel them, even for good reason, my brain registers that as a failure (apparently it's a biological phenomenon, I'll have to look it up later) and that's why I feel extra bad about it. We discussed different ways to make plans in such a way that if I do have to cancel or change them, it won't register as a "failure" in my brain.

Anyway, the plan now is to go get my latest book from the library, and do some reading. I put a handful of books on hold, since they all had fairly lengthy waiting lists, but somehow they've all become available at once. So now I have the unexpected task of trying to get them all read in three weeks. A few years ago this wouldn't have been an issue, but these days it can take me a month to read a single book. So we'll see if I can get this done in time. It does help that I have several days off in which to accomplish all this. I did manage to finish one book during my night shifts, and I'm partway through a second, and I'll be picking up the third today. The first two are non-fiction and are fairly dense: Practicing New Worlds: Abolition and Emergent Strategies by Andrea J. Ritchie and Struggle and Mutual Aid: the Age of Worker Solidarity by Nicolas Delalande. The first in particular was a very dense read, and I think would have been better if I'd been reading it as part of a discussion group rather than just on my own, but it still gave me lots to think about. The second one is not as complex but it's a lot drier, so I'm having a little more trouble getting through it. I was hoping to read it in the original French, but unfortunately it's not available at my local library.

The book that's waiting for me now is The September House by Carissa Orlando, which intrigued me after I heard a review of it on the Too Many Tabs podcast. The podcast thoroughly spoiled the book (which I expected), but it still sounds like it's going to be a really interesting and entertaining read. The premise is that an older couple buy their dream home and, when it turns out to be Extremely Haunted, the wife decides that a little haunting never really hurt anyone, especially considering how perfect the house is otherwise. So she just goes to extreme lengths to placate the ghosts, which get particularly rowdy in September (hence the title), scrubs off the blood that keeps oozing from the walls, and makes do, right up until her daughter comes to visit and threatens to upset the precarious balance she's struck.

I'd also like to work on a craft project this week, but I haven't decided if I should re-try the socks or try a new needlepoint project. I got myself a cute little kit that will let me embroider an owl, and I'm excited to try it, but I'm also working with my knitting coworker next week who's been teaching me to knit socks, so it would be nice to have a sock that's ready to at least have the heel turned by the time I get there. Decisions, decisions.

Okay. Time to get this show on the road. I still have a few things to get done today before I pass out in bed again.

Current Mood: lethargic

Weirdly, I forgot that DW existed when I promised myself I'd start my journaling again this year. To be fair, I spent most of my journaling time on LiveJournal over the years, and DW for the longest time was my "backup account." So I naturally gravitated back to LJ rather than DW, and was only reminded of it a couple of days ago.

So, now I shall resume my old habits of posting here and cross-posting to LJ. LJ has updated its UI, too, and I have cultivated a deep and intense hatred for it. ;) It's incredibly unintuitive and has lost a lot of the functionalities that the old UI had, including being able to just create entries either using rich text or my old friend html. God, I miss being able to use html on the internet on a whim.

I made a point of importing the entries I made on LJ since the beginning of the month, and that way I'll have them here in case anything happens to my LJ, not that I think it's in immediate danger of being deleted or anything.

Today's post is going to be short, because I've just finished a week of night shifts and had to stay for five extra hours today because two coworkers called in sick and they desperately needed someone to cover during that time. So needless to say, I am tired. I picked up groceries on the way home, then put them away, grabbed a quick snack of leftover tourtière, and then crashed for a three hour nap. Once I'm done updating here it'll be time to get the dogs sorted out before bed: I now have a routine of giving the Brittanies a quick brush/comb behind the ears so they don't develop mats, and then they get their teeth brushed. I wasn't good about it before, but we've been brushing their teeth pretty much every night for a year now, and I think it's doing everyone a world of good to have their oral hygiene better taken care of, especially Rika, as chihuahuas are prone to tooth decay. So, yes, soon it will be "time for ears and teefs!"

Then I will fervently hope that the enterprising rabbit pair who likely live in my neighbour's yard won't decide to go for a nightly stroll right past my back yard. The sight of them inevitably unleashes a torrent of excited Brittany screaming, and no one except the dogs enjoys that.

Tomorrow morning I have a woefully early start for Quaker Meeting, and in the afternoon I have the dual role of playing "tech support" (i.e. hosting the Zoom Meeting) and being a representative of Ministry & Counsel for a Claremont Dialogue we are having to get people's contributions for the State of Society Report. For those who are unfamiliar with Quakerism (which is most people), a Claremont Dialogue is a kind of worship sharing that takes the form of a circle process. We go around the circle and everyone gets a chance to speak what's on their mind, ideally letting themselves be guided by God/Spirit/the Light/etc., and a little silence is maintained after each sharing. There is no back-and-forth, and participants are encouraged to share their own leanings and not to "respond" to whatever others have shared, as the goal is not debate, but the pooling together of experience. I quite like the format, and it has led to some pretty transformative experiences for a lot of people over the years. Circle processes in general are pretty great for healing and processing and moving through difficult things.

So that's it for now. I've also been posting off and on on BlueSky, mostly progress pictures of my current knitting project, my first-ever sock! I posted a few preliminary pictures on my LJ too, but BlueSky is where I've been doing most of my wailing and gnashing of teeth, because turning a heel is an absolute bear. I am going to pick it up again when I'm less sleep deprived and have the time to devote to concentrate on it, maybe tomorrow afternoon after the Claremont Dialogue.

Catch you all later!

Current Mood: tired

My sock knitting lesson continues. I've finished the ribbing on my first sock and just started the first row of knitting, so I have a ways to go yet before I get to turn my first heel, but if I apply myself I might be able to get to it tomorrow night. My coworker and I have two more night shifts together after tonight, so I want to try to finish this sock by Saturday morning, so that I will have at least a sock to show for our efforts this week. Of course, if work gets very busy that may not happen, but you never know.

I should figure out if I can load photos from my phone to LJ somehow. It doesn't have an app that I know of, and that's how I've become accustomed to handling pictures these days. I think it's probably still easy enough to upload photos to my LJ albums, so I'll do that for now.

( Read more... )

Huh. I appear to be unable to resize the images the way I used to in the past. That's frustrating. Well, I have put the beginnings of the sock behind a cut so it doesn't overwhelm people's pages.

I am going to keep going in a minute once I've finished writing this post. I've been knitting while ploughing my way through the Wuthering Heights audiobook. The version I'm listening to is narrated by Jane Froggatt, best known (I think) for playing Anna Bates on Downton Abbey. I must confess now to never having watched Downton Abbey, although I suppose I will get around to it eventually. I thought for years that I had read Wuthering Heights as a teenager, but it turns out that I read the other Brontë sisters and never Emily. I was passingly familiar with the story just because people around me talked about it so much, and it also turns out that I had some pretty serious misconceptions about the plot. I somehow imagined that Heathcliff's love for Catherine was unrequited, and didn't know at all that half the story is actually about the generation of children that came after them. Oops?

Anyway, I am not really enjoying this book. Almost everyone is cruel, selfish, capricious, or some combination thereof. As my friend Autumn put it to me very aptly, it's a fascinating study about how cruel people treat each other, and about how they breed cruelty in their children. Inhumanity begets inhumanity, or as the modern saying goes: "Hurt people hurt people."

The reading by Jane Froggatt is going a long way to making the listen more enjoyable, in spite of my lack of sympathy for the characters (with the occasional exception of Nellie, although I find myself losing patience with her a lot of the time as well). I didn't know that the book was set in Yorkshire, and her voice acting has breathed life into the dialogue that I think I likely wouldn't have appreciated if I'd just read the text on the page. Her ability to switch fluidly from one accent to another is really impressive, too.

I'm looking forward to being done, and to move onto a hopefully more enjoyable book. I am also going to try to read/listen to more "classic" literature this year. I have some significant gaps in my classical education. I will also be on the lookout for great books from more diverse authors, and hopefully broaden my horizons. My friend Sarah, in the wake of the Neil Gaiman debacle, commented that she'd stopped reading books by white cishet male authors a long time ago for precisely that sort of reason (not that she had a crystal ball about Gaiman, it was just on general principle).

I think my next one will be a regular murder mystery type, hopefully a fun easy read with nothing too dark and horrible. The previous book I read wasn't super dark, but it dealt with a lot of rape/sexual assault, and I could do with some lighter fare as a palate cleanser. I have about 30 minutes left on Wuthering Heights, so I shall get back to it now and hopefully progress on my sock.

KK spent most of today industriously doing All of the Baking. She made biscotti (a personal favourite of mine among her creations), chocolate chip cookies, and brownies. I am going to be eating baked goods for the rest of my life at this rate! Not that I'm complaining too hard.

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I blinked and my day disappeared. It didn't help that I slept in today. I gave myself permission to sleep in last night, and only got up at about 10:30, but then it took another hour to get myself organized and ready to face the day.

I wasted time going to the pharmacy to pick up prescriptions for KK, because she'd misread her notification and there were no prescriptions to pick up. Honestly, the Shoppers' Drug Mart notification system is super annoying, because the notifications all look almost identical, whether they're saying a prescription is ready for pickup, or a prescription will be ready for pickup later, or that your prescription has run out of refills, so it's really easy to think that you should go to the pharmacy when there isn't anything there for you.

I also went to my friendly local yarn store to pick up another skein of yarn for the Hubris Shawl, and two skeins of sock yarn. I switched shifts with a coworker next week so she can attend a training, so I will be working nights from Monday to Friday. My shift partner for the week is an avid knitter and she has promised to teach me how to knit socks, and I am very excited at the prospect. If nothing else, I am hoping to do a lot more knitting this year, including a bunch of socks.

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I've been working on a shawl for my mother since the beginning of December that I have now dubbed The Hubris Shawl, because I seriously underestimated how long it would take me to finish. I was hoping to have it done by this weekend, but I have now run into a new snag, namely that I have run out of yarn. I went back to my FLYS (Friendly Local Yarn Store), but not only do they not have any of the right colour left, it's a specific brand imported from England where all the shops are closed until Monday and on top of that, the FLYS can't just order one skein from them because they have order minimums.

So right now I am stuck until I can find another skein of the yarn from the same dye lot (or at least a similar one). I can order one online, but the shipping is almost as much as the cost of the skein, and that is a lot more money than I was hoping to spend on this. It's already been a pretty expensive shawl (over $100 worth of yarn), but well worth it to spend on my mother. That last skein would cost nearly half as much again as the initial four skeins, and, yeah. My poor bank account is not in great shape these days.

I'm hoping another FLYS will have it in stock, but it will have to wait until I get back from Montreal this weekend in order to check for it. I'm lucky to have a few local options before I resort to ordering online, at least.

I've got a busy day ahead of me tomorrow, so I will leave all my other thoughts for a future post. Otherwise I will be here updating all night instead of sleeping.

Current Mood: frustrated

I'm sorry, you say I got that wrong? That it's Valentine's Day? *peers out the window* Snow Day seems like a perfectly apt name for it. :P

Happy Valentine's Day for those who celebrate it, whether you're single, dating, married, shacked up, in a polyamorous relationship, whatever permutation of humanity floats your boat. Love is for everyone, and doesn't come purely in the form of romantic love, no matter what the greeting cards would like to have you believe.

The proof is in the pudding, after all. Lots of friends get together on Valentine's Day to do something special. My father always made sure that both my mother and I got a symbolic present on the day, too. It wasn't about being a couple, it was about love, and he loves both of us.

It'll be the same tonight. If I can get through all this snow, I need to run some errands in order to make tonight special. I haven't figured out what I want to make for dinner. It has to be something Bean will eat (hah), but I'd also like it to be a little fancier than our usual fare. I also need to wrap the tiny presents I got. I was going to knit little Valentine's hearts for the two of them, but I think I won't have time. Maybe next time. :)

I keep meaning to get back into knitting, but I haven't yet found a pattern that I like and that will use only the yarn I have in my stash.

pdaughter seems to really like her Doctor Who scarf, so at least there's that. I should check my stash again, and see what I might be able to get away with.

Also, in my copious amount of spare time, I'm thinking of trying to learn to draw better than I do now. That's not hard, as I can't even manage basic drawing right now. If I ever manage to get myself out of the house today, I'm planning on a trip to Michael's for stitch holders and for a small drawing pad and pencils. I may borrow

pdaughter's copy of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain and do some of those exercises (I had my own copy, but a long time ago my cats peed all over it and ruined it. My cats are one of the numerous reasons I can't have nice things.). I wonder if

april_drawing is still taking place? I've been out of the loop.

I miss a lot of the things I used to do before work ate my life. I miss dancing and learning languages. Dancing isn't feasible these days, schedule-wise, but I may look for some language books and see if I can't immerse myself back in German or Italian, or maybe start a new language. Spanish seems a pretty likely candidate. The last time I tried Mandarin was an unmitigated disaster, so I think holding off on that is a better plan.

I have missed knitting, and it seems to be one of the things I can do during my night shifts that won't be too intrusive when it comes to actual work. Mostly my night shifts are tranquil things, but when they get busy they get extremely busy, so it has to be something I can put down quickly and not worry about getting interrupted.

I'm thinking of doing a project for myself, which is a rare thing. Usually I knit for other people. But I've been looking all over for some suitable sweater vests for work, and I'm coming up blank. They are few and far-between in my size, it seems. Apparently if you're a plus size, you don't get to wear sweater vests. They are only for thin people. :P

I've found a pattern I like on Ravelry, though I shall have to buy it for $2.00 or so off Knitpicks. I'm not complaining, though. It looks beautiful, and that's less than I've paid for some iPhone apps. I may also get the yarn off Knitpicks as well, since it's pretty specific, but after that, if I want to make more, I'll hunt around for less expensive yarn. Overall, it's an expensive project, even if I can get it with free shipping. The sizing on this pattern does seem to include my size, from what I can see, so that's good.

Other things that I can do on night shifts, when my concentration (and work itself!) allows for it, is to read. I haven't had the time, the energy, and most importantly the focus to truly read of late. I think I read a handful of books last year, and the years before that. Partially the internet served as a distraction, partially for a while I was writing every spare moment I got, which meant no reading, but in the last year it's been more of a no time/no focus problem rather than anything else.

So I've set myself a lowball goal of reading 25 books this year, and set it up on Goodreads. (My username there is ratherastory, if anyone is interested) I like the site, and I've found some interesting recommendations there as I've started using it more. I'm keeping track of my reading as best I can, and with any luck that, too, will improve this year.

And no, don't worry, I'm not going to read when I should be doing family stuff or running errands. I'm not going to use it to procrastinate. The reading will be scheduled into the "me" time of the unschedule, and/or squeezed in during my down time at work and on lunch breaks. I can also read when I'm waiting in line for things, or in waiting rooms before appointments. Same goes for knitting.

Speaking of time and saving time, I've been trying to perfect the art of the Navy shower. I've managed to get myself down to 4 minutes and 15 seconds, but my goal is to get it under 3 minutes. When that's done, I need to work out how to whittle my shower/dressed/made up routine to under 20 minutes. Right now I'm managing a little over 30, which is okay but not great, and doesn't include the times when I have to blow-dry my hair. My hair is very thick and takes forever to dry, even with a blow-dryer. So I've mostly been letting it air dry, but that's a bit of a problem on very cold days like the ones we've had.

I'm trying to motivate myself with the notion that, if I'm not by myself, or if it's right before I start my workday, then that time isn't mine. So in order not to waste other people's time, I need to be more efficient. The longer I spend in the bathroom/shower/whatever, the more of other people's time I'm wasting, which is a big no-no. The way I see it, my brain doesn't really care about me, but it does care about not letting others down. So if I frame it as being about other people instead of being about me, then my brain kicks into gear and makes me get down to business. It's the same for getting up on time, either when my alarm goes off (on workdays) or when the rest of the household gets up (on my days off). Sleeping in means I'm taking up time that doesn't belong to me. The time that is mine is already set in the "unschedule," so all other time that's not scheduled sleeping time doesn't count as mine.

IDK, this makes a lot more sense in my head.

Current Mood: contemplative

pdaughter spent most of the day in the basement renovating the giant Barbie house she has as a surprise Christmas present for Bean. It looks glorious, but she had to twist herself into pretzels for a lot of it, and I think she's paying for it now. When it's all done there will likely be pictures. Stay tuned!

I have been working away on the Soopar Seekrit Prodgikt.

pdaughter is being a fantastically understanding girlfriend and is making a point of not looking whenever I sneak off to work on it for a while.

I spent most of today with Bean. We wrapped presents. Mostly it involved him putting scotch tape on everything except the presents (himself, the floor, the sofa, the dog on one notable occasion), wandering off between every piece of tape we applied, unravelling three entire spools of ribbon, opening the fridge and pulling out a bunch of stuff before I could get there to stop him, crawling under the dining room table, and generally being very distracted/not focussed on the task at hand. Apparently he was much better when he and his mother wrapped presents together last week.

I did manage to get some knitting done. It went a lot like this: knit 1 row, chase after Bean; knit 1 row, put on a DVD for Bean; knit 1 row, chase after Bean; knit 1 row, put on a different DVD for Bean; knit 1 row, chase after Bean; knit 1 row, get Bean a snack; knit 1 row, rescue Bean's snack from the dog; etc. I'm kind of impressed at the progress I made in light of that. ;)

I didn't get any of the chores done today that I wanted, except for the dishes. I never got around to getting outside to shovel, so that will have to be done first thing tomorrow. I'm heading to Ottawa for two days, then driving back just so I can be here Christmas morning before returning to my job in the afternoon. It's going to be a long, tiring week.

At least I got a fair bit done while I was home. Not as much as I would have liked, but the bathroom and kitchen both got deep-cleaned (including behind the stove), all the presents are wrapped, and things are generally in order. Next week, when I'm back from work, I'm going to turn my attention to the bedroom and putting all my books in order. After that, in the New Year, I will make a point of organising all the disorganised crap I have in the basement.

Okay. Back to my knitting. Wish me luck!

I spent Valentine's Day at work. The Overtime Fairy is a bit of a misnomer, but I miss using that icon. I got my shifts messed with considerably because of the Olympics, so my weekends are basically toast until April, which makes me very, very sad. I have exactly two weekends off until then. Woe!

Ironically, I haven't been watching the Olympics. I think I might still be a bit bitter that they took away my post in Vancouver for the event.

Otherwise, though, life proceeds apace. I'm still puttering along, doing my thing, cuddling the cats, going to work and back, still chronically single, nothing to report, really.

The past couple of new episodes of Supernatural broke me. In a happy squeeing fangirl kind of way. SO freaking painful, but just gorgeous anyway. As a result, I have been humming "Hey Jude" for the past ten days.

I've managed to get some knitting done recently, too. I'm behind on all my baby stuff, but whatever. I figure if I'm at a stage when just the thought of picking up knitting needles fills me with loathing, then I'm doing it for all the wrong reasons. I think that after the next (and last!) baby blanket, I will turn to the knitting of socks, and see if I can get excited about that.

I've been listening to The Doors when I bother to have music on at all. It's been that sort of month.

Current Mood: chipper
Current Music: The Doors —Soul Kitchen

Been off the radar for a little while. Work, prepping for Capricornucopia, keeping my head above water.

I am SO far behind on my flist that I will never catch up. Has something momentous happened that I ought to know about? If so, let me know. :)

(Yes, I know about Haiti. I work for the RCMP, remember? We're in the thick of it. No, I can't really talk about what we're doing, other than what's already out there in official statements.)

Capricornucopia rocked. It was choose-your-own adventure this year, which got off to a rocky start, and then once we got ourselves sorted out it was smooth sailing. Then the audience revolted and shoved the organizers onto the stage, and we all pretty much killed ourselves laughing by the end.

We also SUCK, because people go accidentally left off the email invite list. This has never happened before, and I am willing to shoulder a hefty portion of the blame on this, because I didn't get my shit together this year until really late.

WE ARE REALLY SORRY!

*hangs head in shame*

Otherwise, life is quiet on my end. There has been a little bit of knitting, a fair amount of work, and a whole lot of fanfic writing. Yes, I have joined the Dark Side™. Uh, well... I was already there, but I guess I've been tapping into it more than before. :P

Current Mood: busy

Spent the morning with

karine,

owldaughter,

ai731 and

toughlovemuse doing the knitting thing, had a delicious lunch of soup, freshly-baked rolls, and schadenfreude pie.

Have been vegging at home, watching the new season of Heroes, getting some writing done, having quality time with the cats. Good times, overall.

The weather is kind of grey, which I suppose is normal for November. Sleeping cats, however, totally makes up for that.

Current Mood: okay

Night shift is performing its usual magic. This week I have done very little other than work and sleep.

I did post new installments up at Midnight Crossroads, and God help me, I actually wrote some fanfiction for the first time ever, because I was bored and my brain refused to produce anything else. Not that I think fanfiction isn't a valid form of expression, let me hasten to add. It's that my version of fanfiction is... unpublishable. It's not quite Mary-Sue levels of awful, but I suspect it's close. ¬_¬ Oh well. At least I'm writing, right?

I am watching the first X-Files movie. I seem to remember it being better than this.

In more random news, I have pulled something in my neck, which is making existence a wee bit more difficult than usual.

I'm going to order some needles from Knit Picks. With any luck, they'll be here by next week, so that I can get started on my Christmas shawl next weekend.

So, yeah. That's what I've been up to lately. As you can see, excitement abounds. :)

Current Mood: tired

After trying to start not one but two knitting projects on the heels of the last baby blanket, I have messed up both attempts because I can't read the patterns properly. It doesn't help that I'm not feeling one hundred percent, and apparently having blocked sinuses does nothing to help with concentration.

So I am declaring a one-week break from knitting. I am going to curl up in bed with a book and a cup of tea until it's time to go see my parents, and I am going to ignore my knitting until next Saturday. That's when I'll be going to Ottawa for training, and so I figure I can start up again then.

Bah.

Current Mood: sick

I have *two* sets of interchangeable circular needles. Two sets. Neither set has the size of needle I need to knit my Christmas shawl.

COME ON!

Current Mood: frustrated

Okay, my photography skills are crap, and thus the baby blanket looks like the ugliest thing ever since people started dyeing their poodles exotic colours. I promise it looks better than this in real life:

( Pictures behind the cut )

Current Mood: chipper

So the ick has turned into a fully-fledged summer cold. Bleargh. On the plus side, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of colds I've had in the past five years. The last time I had a cold was last October (according to LJ), and it was pretty minor. Overall, this one feels as though it's not going to be too bad either. I'm congested, but the chest thing seems to have improved. The bad part about not having been sick since last year is that I don't have a single decongestant in the house. Bah.

In non-ick-related news, I not altogether surprisingly didn't get everything done yesterday. I did, however, can all my rhubarb, which once it was cooked and organized turned into less rhubarb than I was afraid I had. I have a little over four litres of the stuff, which is all to the good. The canning appears to have gone off without a hitch, with all four jars going "POP!" when they were supposed to, which makes me very happy.

I also finished the god-blessed baby blanket. Looking at it now, I realize that I probably should have put in at least two more repeats, but I was really sick of it (no pun intended) and it looks fine. Pictures will be forthcoming, as I have once more located my camera cable. ;)

So today is a day for more domestic chores, and then in the evening I will be off to visit the Parental Units for dinner. They have been feeling neglected, and rightly so, since I haven't seen them since the end of July, what with work and WorldCon and the like.

Okay. Off to get coffee.

Current Mood: accomplished

The garden is booming. The tomatoes have made an appearance, and a few of them have ripened without my noticing. I have ninja tomatoes, apparently.

The peppers are sulking, but while they haven't grown, they have produced flowers, so I am cautiously optimistic.

I got one tiny cucumber off one plant, and the other plant has a cucumber on it too. I hope that next year the harvest will be better.

The herbs survived in spite of my not weeding the garden for about a month. The tarragon isn't very happy but it's hanging in there. The mint had a battle to the death with the bindweed, the clover, and the grass, and came out the victor once I cleared out the debris. I'm vaguely frightened. ;)

My garlic disappeared. I think something ate it. There is *one* bulb left.

The basil has gone nuts and is three feet tall. The carrots that

moonandtree planted are doing well, as are the beets.

moonandtree and I got a lot of weeding done today. I am taking a break right now because I'm hot, tired and thirsty, but depending on how the rest of the day goes I'm going to try to get out there again to spread some cedar mulch where we weeded, to discourage the weeds from coming back too strongly again.

I also harvested the rhubarb, which I think I left a little late. I lost some of the stalks to... well, rot, I'm guessing. Still, I have a TON of rhubarb. I see canning in my immediate future. Gotta pull out my canning recipe for rhubarb and make sure I have enough jars for it.

Today's to-do list includes dishes, laundry, gardening, finishing the baby blanket, and getting in some writing. If I have time I'll be canning the rhubarb. If not, that will happen tomorrow at the latest. Oh, and I have to call my mother before she convinces herself that I've decided never to speak to her again.

In non-domestic news, I appear to have some sort of weird summer cold. I had a horrific sore throat all day on Thursday and it got a bit better yesterday, but today I woke up slightly congested and with the feeling that someone had settled a wildebeest on my chest: not quite an elephant, but big and heavy and inconvenient nonetheless, and the occasional racking coughing fits aren't as fun as you'd think. I'm feeling better now —being outside in the warmth helped— but I can feel whatever it is lingering in the background.

Current Mood: chipper

In the meantime, I am struggling with this stupid baby blanket. Again. After getting through four repeats with no trouble, this fifth repeat is threatening to claim my sanity. I've had to rip back about six times this week, and I've just found yet another mistake. Gnarr.

*glares at knitting*

I suspect this will be ten times worse when I try to knit that shawl next.

Current Mood: frustrated

So Den!Mama, who is now a supervisor, has been watching me struggle with the knitting all week, finally broke down on Friday night, the day after she'd seen me frog what had taken the better part of four days of work.

Den!Mama: "I don't understand how you can do that."

Me: *considers a tongue-in-cheek BECAUSE IT RELAXES ME! reply* "What, knitting? Well, I enjoy it, when it's going well."

Den!Mama: "But you just had to start it all over."

Me: "Yes, but I learned from my mistakes, and now it's going much more smoothly, and it looks better."

Den!Mama: "If it were me, I wouldn't bother. The baby would be getting a nice store-bought blanket. You can get really pretty ones that aren't expensive."

Me: "True, but that defeats the purpose of a hand-made gift, for me."

Den!Mama: "Yes, but then you can spend time on things you actually enjoy!"

Me: "..."

I let it drop after that. With reason, she was convinced that I somehow hate knitting (although I promise you I was good and didn't swear or curse or even yell at the knitting even when I frogged it!), or that it was too frustrating a process to be worth it. There wasn't much to say, really.

Current Mood: perplexed

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Page generated Mar. 6th, 2026 08:40 am

Corner of Bourbon & Division

Her Words of Wisdom Scratched Into The Door

Entries tagged with knitting

Oh my God, I am so tired.

I forgot about Dreamwidth

There. Now you have a sock.

Knitting, reading, and cookies

Where did my day go?

Knit, Purl, Unravel...

Happy Snow Day!

Time to start knitting again, and other things

Long day was long

Where does the time go?

What'd I miss?

Overall, life is good

Nothing to report

Okay, I'm done.

ARGH! New knitting woes (that didn't take long)

Baby blanket!

Diseased.

Garden update, it's been a while

Eventually I'll get around to posting about WorldCon

In which She Doesn't Get It

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March 2026

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