Great Joy in Mudville and Simple Pleasures on the Flatlands

I knew the World Series had gone to game 7 tied 3 and 3, and that they played Wednesday night.  Because a Texas team is involved (the Houston Astros), and because my cousins are big sports fans, I confess to feeling some curiosity as to who won, so I googled.  The Astros won 4 games to 3, so great joy indeed.  There’s a good little bit of irony in my allusion to Mudville.  Between all the rain and flooding from Hurricane Harvey, that’s pretty much what Houston ended up being.  I’m glad the Astros were able to pull it out of the hat for them. This has been quite a roller coaster year for the town of my birth.

In the knitting news, I finished a hat last night, a kind of kicked cancer’s *ss, celebratory, happy hat, or a raspberry, giving cancer the finger hat, depending on how you want to look at it — since it will be donated to the cancer center.    I’m calling it the Pink Power hat.  It’s all over multicolored stars.  In the uphill slog that is chemotherapy, sometimes you need some over the top, goofy silliness.

I added a variation without the beads.  I also have some faceted clear beads and I might do one in some dark blue or burgundy metallic yarn I have.  It takes 81 beads, but the pattern is fairly straightforward.  It has a “k1, yo” bit where you drop the yo on the next row to provide enough length for the knit stitch to be pulled through the bead with a crochet hook and then slipped onto the right needle and knitted on the next row.

I took about 25 hats to the cancer center last week.  That ought to hold them for a while.  I’ve got some other hats on the needles, but I think I’ll change the pace and do some other projects for a while, my reader’s shrugs, for one.   My Malguri Morning shawl, for another. (The two that went to Washington state were warmly (!) received, and were just in the nick of time.  Winter is setting in up in the Pacific NW. )

I’ve been drinking Stash Tea’s Spiced Chai hot with a liberal blop of Caramel Macchiato Coffemate in it (Walmart did me dirty and was out of Crème Brulée flavor). Their spiced chai is also good cold with a splash of fruit juice in it.  I usually use either apple juice or Welch’s White Peach (which is a combo of white grape juice and peach juice), but “fruit juice of choice” is always a winner.

I’m also in the process of polishing off some sliced ham, bacon, and Havarti cheese slices on crackers (Walmart did me dirty again and was out of Muenster cheese, but they did have Havarti cheese.  It’s not Muenster, but it’s not bad. . .).

Because I rent, and because I feel sure the landlady would object to my putting a cat flap in my bedroom door, I’ve rigged a heavy velvet drape over the door to block out the light, yet allow the fat(cat)boy to come and go as he pleases.  I have a chock of wood that holds the door open just enough, and a door stop on the other side to keep him from pushing the door way open.  I had been holding the drape out of the way when not needed by using a long wire twist tie which, as you can see, has finally succumbed to metal fatigue.  But then I remembered I still had some of those coconut shell buttons I was using for neck warmers and I-cord is not that hard to knit. . .  I knitted a 5-stitch I-cord that was a bit more substantial to match my button, which is gigunga.  I attached one end to the button, made a loop on the other end — not the most elegant bit of work I’ve ever done, but close enough for government work.  I had screwed a cup-hook into the wall to attach my twist tie to, and it worked equally well for my I-cord tie.  Since the bedroom door is in a fairly narrow hallway, I have the curtain hung on one of those spring-loaded curtain rods.

This would also be a good solution for a drafty door in wintertime.  The velvet curtain is fairly heavy, and the spring-loaded curtain rod doesn’t mar the wall.  Weatherstripping being as cheap as it is, though, if you were the house owner (versus a renter), I could see putting foam weatherstripping around inside doors as well as outside doors to stop air leaks and cold drafts.  I might also point out, weatherstripping, if done right, also blocks light if you, like me, need your bedroom pitch dark to get good sleep, or work shift work and have to sleep during the day.