Minor Adjustments

You get something new and you have to skoojle it and zhuzh it a little sometimes until it’s right like you want it. So when mom got the back of her new lift chair reclined to the comfortable angle, she couldn’t see the TV. A small throw pillow was required to bring her head up to the optimal TV-viewing angle. Only when she got up from the chair, the pillow fell down, and she had to pick it up before she could sit back down again. So in my midnight musings, I had a thought, and this afternoon I hit up Walmart for a couple 3 hand towels (they had some chocolate brown ones that matched the chair), and a little box of safety pins. Two of the towels were “S” folded and enclosed in the third one, which was pinned together around them with safety pins. Then that third towel was pinned to the top of the chair so that it would flop down over the edge right where her head went. Eight layers of towel was just thick enough. Now the “pillow” stays put. Since it’s only safety pinned, it can be removed, unpinned, and washed if necessary.

The lift chair has a battery back up for the electric motor. Really. If the power goes out, the battery provides enough oomph to lift you out of the chair. I’ve got to remember to get some 9v batteries next time I go for groceries as the La-Z-Boy guys that brought the chair didn’t have any. I need some anyway, because that’s what my smoke/CO2 alarms use.

My mom wears knee-high hose every day. (She is of the generation that never wears shoes on bare feet, and wore cotton “footlets” with high heels when they couldn’t get hose during WWII.) She had mentioned that she needed to get some new ones, and during my midnight musings it also occurred to me that I might have some stashed in my drawer. I rummaged and found a box of 8 pairs that still had 7 pairs in it. I never wear hose anymore, panty or otherwise. I gave up wrestling octopuses years ago, and that box of knee-highs has moved house with me at least once, if not twice. I was happy to split it with her. They were even her color.

I’ve gotten her groceries a couple of times now (while I was at Wal-Mart, I got the soup I forgot to get at Market Street Friday) and have started doing little tasks for her like emptying the dishwasher. It’s been so long since I’ve lived there (don’t ask!) that I don’t know where things go anymore. I’m having to relearn the house.

In the knitting news, I’m moving right along on the Latticia shawl.

The center lattice lace panel has a garter stitch panel on each side of it, followed by the ladder lace edging. The increases are worked on the wrong side rows as a kfb (knit front and back) in the last garter stitch before the ladder lace edging on each side.The number of stitches in each garter stitch panel should increase by 1 every other row and there should always be the same number of stitches in each garter panel. As of the current row I’m on, there are supposed to be 75 stitches in each garter panel, and it’s just now occurred to me that I can count 70 stitches out from the center on each side and put a yellow marker at that point, so I don’t have to count every durned stitch in each panel every couple of rows to make sure they’ve still got the same number of stitches . . . and keep moving that marker over 10 stitches when appropriate. Pardon me while I have a DUH! moment . . .

I’ve got 24 more rows to go on the Latticia Venezia shawl before I begin the second “stripe” of alternating ribbons of stockinette and lattice lace panels.