Well, at lunch today, I got a rolling start on the pumpkin pie I got at the grocery store Tuesday. Dear friends S & JH have invited us over for dinner tomorrow, so Friday, I’ll be having store-bought “leftovers” courtesy of Prater’s and Market Street with some of Prater’s good ol’ cornbread dressing, sliced chicken breast (no Carving Board turkey to be had, alas) and jellied cranberry sauce, with punkin’ pie for afters.
I’m back making Julekuler again, The little booklet of 24 patterns is a free download from the Schachenmayr website. The pattern is from Arne & Carlos, and they have a tutorial. I’m doing 9 of them for the scholarship auction that Sekret Klub my mom belongs to has every year. The members are supposed to use their talents to come up with crafts or auctionable items with the proceeds going to their scholarship fund. My mom’s talent is getting me to do stuff for her. One year I made snowflakes, one year washcloths, one year neck warmers.
As I have said before, there’s nothing a knitter likes better than a worthy excuse to knit something. Like the wife of the assistant pastor of her church is 
expecting a baby in December . . . . There’s a hat that goes with the ensemble, but the photograph is on my phone and not on my ‘puter and I’m not in the mood to hassle with transferring it over. I’ve got one bootie to finish, the sweater to block and sew buttons on, and it’s done.
The stockings in the picture of the Julekuler I’m in the process of are hostess gifts for the friends who are having us to dinner tomorrow. I always like to do a little something for them. They have been such good friends to my mom, lo, these many years. She sings in the choir with my mom. (I have this homonym thing where I know the one I want, but I invariably type the wrong one. Like just now, I typed “quire” instead of “choir.” The worst one is typing “meat” when I mean “meet.” I try to tell myself it just seems to be happening more frequently because I’m so aware of it, but I dunno. . .)
This time around on the Julekuler, I’m finally internalizing a technique for catching my floats. For those nonknitters in the crowd to whom that last sentence made no sense, when you are working with two or more colors, you carry the color(s) you’re not using at the moment behind the work, which leaves a little loop of thread called a “float.” If you have to carry one color for more than three or four stitches, you need to secure – catch – the float by securing it to the back of your work to prevent having a big long loop of thread you could catch a finger in (mittens or sweater) and so it will look neat. There are several techniques for this.
Now that I’ve got the float thing down, I want to try again to make me a “death flake” hat. My first attempt ended up being too small partly because I didn’t catch my floats. 
The pattern is a “gothicized” version of the eight-petal rose pattern so popular in Norway and Sweden. I’ve already made me a hat with the traditional eight-petal rose pattern on, but I have a black cowl that is just begging to have a matching black hat. I have the yarn. After Xmas, I’ll have the time. The hats as well as the stockings and Julekuler are all made with Caron Simply Soft yarn, which I love (except that it splits badly). It’s an acrylic yarn, but it’s very soft and snuggly, perfect for hats and scarves and cowls.
Last month we had a medication crisis when the stupid VA website wouldn’t let me refill my clopidogrel prescription and I was fixing to go out of town. I spent about an hour on the phone and finally got them to refill it locally and I went and picked it up. This month when I went to the VA website and tried to refill the prescription, it wasn’t even on the list! I called and left a message, which apparently fell down a well, or something. Tuesday, I went down there in person to see what the heck was going on.
Turns out I’d used up all my refills and had to get a new prescription from my cardiologist. I found this out two days before a major holiday (with only enough doses to get me through Tuesday of next week) only because I went down in person and rattled some cages. They had a whole month to warn me my prescription was expiring so I could go to my cardiologist in a timely manner and get a new one, but did they? Nope.
S
o, I have to call the cardiologist and get them to fax over a new Rx, which they promptly did, because they are not a government agency. Then the VA calls me this morning to tell me they tried to call me Tuesday (while I was out doing the things I actually needed to do like renew my car tags and shop groceries) and that I can go pick up my December supply at the pharmacy. So I had to make a special trip today to get the stupid medication I could have picked up while I was at the VA yesterday, only nobody bothered to tell me it was there. And not to put too fine a point on the whole debacle, all my other prescriptions come in 90-day quantities except this one. I have to go through the refill rigamarole on the website every 30 days! I’ve asked and asked that it be changed to a 90-day supply just like all the rest of them, but to no avail.
Oh, and I did get the little sweater finished for the ball-jointed doll, plus a hat. I need to send it but I want to do another sweater before I do.
The Owl Underground 
I hope your Thanksgiving Day was a good one. I can’t think of a single reason it wouldn’t have been. I loved that turkey illustration at the top. The first thing I did when I saw it was try out my own fingers. Yes, I can still divide them that way: two on one side and two on the other. Those finger turkeys were a staple of our art classes, c. third grade or so.
Every time you’ve mentioned your Mom’s special talent — getting you to do stuff for her — I laugh, and then I miss my mom, and then I laugh again.
Since I don’t have a television any more, I miss a lot of things, including the commercials, but yesterday I thought of you when I saw a commercial on a friend’s tv. It was a family gathered to exchange gifts, and grandma, who was knitting throughout, had knitted things for everyone. They were rolling their eyes, especially when she pulled out the knitted bikini she’d made for herself. Watch for it.
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