What a Revolting Development This Is

Way back in the late Ordovician, before TV was even in color (!) there was a show on TV called “The Life of Riley” that starred William Bendix. It was a situation comedy, and just after they’d gotten into the situation, Bendix would break the fourth wall, look straight into the camera and say his catch phrase, “What a revolting development this is.”

Well, in this situation comedy that is my life at the moment, the situation is this: That slight numbness I’d gotten in the tips of a couple of fingers which I thought was from chemotherapy has continued to get worse. Now instead of just being on the tip of my middle fingers and along the left index finger, its on the tips of index, middle and ring fingers of both hands, and the pads of both thumbs. It’s not exactly numbness. It’s a little like pins and needles, and it amplifies sharp sensations way out of proportion. Stuff that should just register as slightly pointed is painfully sharp.

Here’s the deal: Mom has restless leg syndrome/peripheral neuropathy in her feet. Some of the causes of it are heritable. If I’ve inherited what she’s got, I’d rather have it in my feet than my hands (touch typing, knitting, and the zillion other things I do dexterously manually). But — oh, that “but” — there are other possible causes: Chemotherapy, carpal tunnel syndrome, and C2 radiculopathy. My second cervical vertebra (C1 has your head on top of it, C2 has C1 on top of it) is slightly cattywompus due to an old shoulder/neck injury from trying to lift a 40 lb bottle of water and upend it onto the water dispenser. I’m hoping that it’s mostly C2 radiculopathy and the chiropractor can improve it. I’m a side sleeper, too, which doesn’t help. Stay tuned.

When I went to my appointment at the VA, I did get three or four x-ray views of my tootsies. But then after I talked to my PCP, she sent me back for four or five views of my neck, including one with my mouth open, aimed straight into my mouth. (Yeah.) So bright and early this AM, the lady at the chiropractor calls me to schedule a chiropractic appointment for my neck. (My mom’s mom, a second generation Texan who spoke German better than she spoke English, called them “punch doctors”) I’ve never been to one, so I have that (and a passel of paperwork. Sigh!) to look forward to this Friday.

Today was my day for running errands hither and yon all over town. I yonned way the heck out to 122nd street and discovered I could have done what I needed to do there on line. (Well, zut, alors.) Then I hithered my way back by the bank to deposit a check, by Market Street on 50th and Indiana Avenue to make a donation to the Goodwill truck that they let park in their parking lot, by Red Lobster to treat myself to lunch and kill time until the framing studio opened at 1 pm, by the framers to get some pictures framed, and then made a Wal-Mart run.

The way out of Wal-Mart that puts this little piggy in the best field position to go north on Quaker Avenue and wee-wee-wee all the way home goes right by the Whataburger, so naturally I drove through the drive through and got a large Dr. Pepper, which I have been sucking down in large gulps ever since. Hithering and yonning is thirsty work, especially since somebody left the heat on outside today . . . .

In the parking lot at Wal-Mart, I got a shower scattered on me as I was loading up the trunk, and when I got back home and was unloading, I got another, longer shower scattered on me to the point that I waited it out under the carport where I park. (Is it technically still a CARport if it’s long enough to park eight cars under it?)

It’s sprinkling, flashing and grumbling as I type. The current humidity is 46%, so unless some serious rain happens, it’s pretty much evaporating as soon as it hits pavement.

But we had a nice little thunderstorm at about 4 o’clock this morning and got a good little rain out of it. This is how I like my thunderstorms, them outside and me inside. We’re having a jolly one now. Serious rain is happening. We’ll take the rain, but pass on the hail, please.

Yesterday was my birthday. (Let’s just say I’m old enough to know better but still young enough to seriously consider doing it again.) So today I took myself out to eat at Red Lobster and had crab legs and fried shrimp. I love me some crab legs. I brought home half my shrimp for later, and three of their rolls. I had a sneeze’s worth of French Fries. (I’m allergic to potatoes, but I eat them anyway because I love them. They’re worth a sneeze or two.)

This is what I took to the framer today. She’s “Spider Grandmother” revered by the Hopi as Kokyangwuti and by the Navajo as Na’ashjé’íí Asdzáá. The painting is by Susan Seddon Boulet. I used to get calendars featuring her work (this is one I kept for this picture). She was famous for her “Goddess” paintings, drawing from myths and legends of cultures all over the world to celebrate the feminine.

The spider is associated with weaving/fiber arts in many cultures. (See: Arachne, the Greek version, a weaver who was turned into a spider as a punishment for hubris. The Greek gods were always coming down hard on people who got too uppity, especially women.) Native Americans see Spider Grandmother as a wise and benign leader who helps and protects the people. She taught the people how to spin wool and weave blankets to help them get through the cold winters. Of course, the role of women in a society differs from culture to culture. The Greeks were a heavily patriarchal society and there’s a good deal of misogyny inherent in their mythos. The Navajo, on the other hand, are inherently matriarchal and matrilineal, but with strong respect for the elders of both sexes.

This pair of beautiful unicorns are two others of Boulet’s works that I had framed year before last by the same framer I’m having frame this one. This new picture will be my birthday gift from my mom.

I got a DVD of “Gate of Hell” which is the first Japanese film made in color (Technicolor). It’s a tale of unignited love and obsession set in 12th century Japan. The costumes are GORGEOUS. I think I’ll watch it tonight. Either that one or “3000 Years of Longing” with Tilda Swinton. Maybe both.

I Felt The Earth Move Under My Bed

I’ve been in three earthquakes, two here and one in Monterey, CA. Interestingly, I happened to be in bed at the time in all three instances. Not surprising, though since the first one (in CA) happened in the middle of the night. The second one (here) was at 6 o’clock in the morning. This last one hit at 3:32 p.m. yesterday, 16 November while I just happened to be lying in the bed reading*. My bed is oriented almost due SW/NE, and it was like something big and heavy had silently given the side of the building a solid thump that jiggled my bed from side to side. I’m on the third floor of a 4-storey, steel and concrete building, which probably amplified the effect slightly. It was a Richter 5.2 with the epicenter located about 27 miles/45km west of Pecos (which is about 3 hours/214 miles/344 km to the southwest of us) at a depth of 3.1 miles/5km underground, according to Earthquaketrack.com. Durn frackers.

Monday was a blustery day, and on the chilly side. The poor mourning doves toughed it out for about an hour before they sought a more sheltered roost.

We have an activities director here at Carillon who organizes “expotitions” to things like restaurants, concerts, museum exhibits, theater events, sports games, etc. They have this big bus with the nice seats like you go on organized bus tours in. They herd us up and load us onto the bus and off we go. Tuesday, they had an expotition to the Plaza Restaurant and now that I’m street-legal again, I signed up to go eat what my dad called “Meskin food” (TexMex). Naturally, they had bowls of salsa and baskets of chips out on the table for appetizers. (They had various sopapilla dishes on the menu, both sweet and savory — my dad always called them “sofa pillows.”) I had a soft beef taco, a beef tamale and a heaping scoop of refried beans. I had it twice, in fact. The food was so good and the portions were so generous that I got a “doggie bag” and had the rest of my lunch for supper. The prices were very reasonable. All that and two glasses of sweet tea came to $13 and change. The Plaza is located out on Milwaukee Avenue just south of 50th street, out in the part of town I refer to as “Southwest Yuppyville.”

It was a bittersweet outing. After I got back from the restaurant, I went out to Market Street to get a flower arrangement of some roses for mom because Wednesday the 16 (the day of the earthquake) would have been my parent’s 76th wedding anniversary (except my dad passed away in September of 2015). I also got a grocery or two and a birthday card for my BFF (23 November).

I decided to get gussied up to go out to the restaurant, so I wore the above necklace, which I got on Portobello Road in London in 1974. I also wore these new earrings I had just gotten off Etsy from a vendor in Poland. As I was carrying the groceries into the apartment, I happened to notice I had lost one of the earrings. I wear a pair of small gold hoops which I only take out for CT scans and x-rays (to keep my holes open), but the holes are big enough that I can slip a second ear wire through them. I try to get lever-back ear wires or studs whenever I can, but if it’s a “fish hook” ear wire, I usually put those little rubber “stoppers” over the wires, only I didn’t think I would need them. I did back track as far as I could, but didn’t find it. They were such pretty earrings and I’m just heart-broken that I lost one — the first time I wore them! That’ll teach me.

My BFF finally got her Halloween card. I mailed it on 21 October. She got it on 11 November, after the midterm election, oddly enough. (Can you say “voter suppression,” boys and girls?) She also got her car back (we’ve finished rebuilding your transmission, ma’m. That’ll be $4.5K, thank you very much), after having been without it for over a month. The great ladies from her church really went to bat for her, organizing car pools to get her to and from work, else she’d have lost her job and been out on the street. I was frustrated that I couldn’t do more to help her besides send her a Halloween card with five cute little pictures of Andrew Jackson tucked inside it. Which apparently took the scenic route to get from hither to yon. Musta had to change planes in Dallas . . . (Texas is such a large state, it’s hard to get a direct flight from one end of the state to the other, e.g., from Lubbock to Houston. They’re usually routed through one or the other of the two Dallas airports — DFW or Love Field.) (In Texas, you can’t even go to Hell without going through Dallas.) (Then again, the argument can be made that DFW is Hell.)

The other day, I ran across a teaser/trailer for the 2011 version of “Jane Eyre” with Michael Fassbender as Rochester, which I haven’t seen but will order the DVD for because Michael Fassbender(!). That next morning, I woke up from a dream about this young woman who was hired to keep house for this man who lived in a big stone house out in the Yorkshire Dales. He had a secret, too. His was that he was a time traveler who had escaped from BREXIT England to live in 1840’s England. (Feel free to steal the premise, you writers out there . . .) They had these two 8-week old kittens , a black one and a white one, who got tangled up with half a dozen of these pale green beetles that were bigger than they were and had to be rescued for their own good. I woke up wishing that the kittens were real and mine.

*BTW, in my defense, I walked all over the world Tuesday, walking all the way to and from the front desk to get the bus to the restaurant, then going out to shop groceries, taking them up to the apt, then taking the flowers over to mom at Carillon House and getting mail on my way back. The weather was cold, my motile appendages were unhappy with me, I still haven’t gotten my stamina back, so Wednesday, I took it easy. What’s the point of having an adjustable bed if you can’t adjust it until it’s comfortable and snuggly warm on a chilly day and then having a good read in it? (And ride out the occasional earthquake . . . ) I gulped down a good three-fourths of Cuckoo’s Egg by C. J. Cherryh and quaffed hot tea for most of the afternoon. The only thing that would have made it better was curb service. Oh, and BTW again, did you know they make almond milk eggnog? I gotta get me a bottle of Harvey’s Bristol Cream. T’is the season.

Oct-over and Hallo-went

One more day left in October. I’ve got running around to do tomorrow. Gotta do a Walmart run (TP, paper towels) and vote early.

My poor old Logitech M600 Touch Mouse has become decidedly arthritic and unwilling to scroll. I’ve had it for like six years and the poor thing’s just plain wore out. I love it because it doesn’t have a scroll wheel (that’s the part that invariably wears out first on my mice). You just stroked with your finger in whichever direction you wanted to scroll and I really liked it. But I can’t get them any more (because I love them, naturally they quit making them. . . are you listening, Logitech!). So I decided to live dangerously and get a vertical mouse. I’ve only had it a day and I’m still getting the hang of it, but I think I like it.

The typical mouse has the hand lie flat on it, which twists the bones in the forearm, with the added potential of resting the flat of the wrist on the edge of a desk — not good!. The vertical orientation of the hand with this mouse is kinder on the carpal tunnel by having the hand in a vertical orientation, with the weight of the hand on the outside edge.

The one thing I don’t like about it is that you can’t pick the mouse up easily. I’ve got this huge monitor (22-inch diagonal) and if I have to get the mouse pointer from one portion of the screen way over to another, I can’t hop the mouse as easily — move it over a couple of inches, pick it up, move it back, put it down and keep moving it in the same direction. This “hopping” maneuver minimizes how much you have to move your whole arm to get the mouse pointer from hither to yon, especially useful if your mouse pad isn’t very big. With the vertical mouse, I have to take my fingers off the control surfaces to pick up the mouse. Oh, well. I’ll cope.

I follow this YouTube channel called “The Last Homely House” run by a lady named Kate who lives in the north of England. She got the name of her channel from J. R. R. Tolkien’s books. She’s an older woman whose parents are both gone, her children are grown and married, and she has a grandchild. She likes quilting (English paper piecing in particular), sewing, knitting, cooking, gardening, and cats. She promotes local crafts, and craftspeople in what she offers on her channel and in her shop. Watching her videos is like visiting a friend for a cuppa and a natter — over 78 thousand other people feel the same way I do and have subscribed to her channel. Quite a long lime green sofa.

She has roped her daughter-in-law Anna into helping her with the photography, and with her shop and the various activities. (Anna’s husband John is a woodworker who has made several items for her shop.)

It’s getting to be “need a new calendar time,” and she put one together (Anna’s photos) so I ordered one. She’s also into jigsaws and had put out a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle. They sold out before I could get one but I caught it on the second go-round. They came Saturday. There are a lot of jigsaw enthusiasts here, and I thought I’d contribute this one to the cause (after I worked it myself!).

This is a good place to plug the website “Jigsaw Planet” which is a free website that allows you to set up a free account, upload whatever photographs or graphics (.pdf, .jpg) you want and make them into jigsaw puzzles. You can also work other people’s puzzles. I’ve made a ton of puzzles — I like artwork (Anne Bachelier‘s paintings, for example) and photographs. I make 200 piece puzzles because I have a nice big monitor to work them on. I love working jigsaws, especially while listening to some nice music. The nice thing about working puzzles on Jigsaw Planet is you get puzzles for free and you can’t lose any of the pieces!

In the knitting news, I’m going to try knitting something that has to be felted — a Scots Bonnet! (or tam or beret, or whatever . . . ) I’ve already got the yarn — 100% wool. Enough for two bonnets.

I’ll have to swatch so I’ll know how much this yarn shrinks and take that into account. (Ah, yes. Adventures in math . . .) You knit the thing too big, “felt” it by washing it in hot soapy water, and it shrinks down until it fits. Or that’s the plan at any rate. You’re supposed to block it by putting a plate in it. Stay tuned.

Here is the natural habitat of the indigenous knitter. I got that little hexagonal table when they had the estate sale of the lady up the hall who I regret not being able to have gotten to know better. Notice the bowls. I have one of those LED pole lamps that remind me of the saucer ray guns from the 1953 version of the film “War of the Worlds” with Gene Barry, but it puts out great adjustable-level light for knitting. Out of frame at left is a reader’s table with a bowl of knitting notions and a Kindle Fire with internet radio apps for music purposes.

Venice Classical Radio is a big favorite, as is Soma FM.

Here’s a little trick. When you’re knitting a scarf or some other long flat piece that’s getting long enough to be a pain, roll it up and “pin” it with a large stitch holder. Makes it much easier to turn your work without that great flapping length hanging off your needle getting all twisted up in your lap.

It’s gotten cold enough in my bedroom that the heater has come on. (Thermostat is set at low of 68 F/20 C) Hot tea drinking weather has returned. I’m having a “two-bagger” in my stainless steel commute mug — a bag of Twining’s Irish Breakfast and a bag of Stash Tea’s Moroccan Mint. Scrummie.

Life Among the Bells

Well, life is about to change again. Mom comes to live in the apartment Monday and my time to myself is going to become very infrequent and very precious. I’ll cope. It’ll be like going back to work. I’ll adjust. But the great expanses of time I’ve been enjoying to stretch my mind out and let it wander into knitting or reading or writing will come to an end — for now. What usually happens is I’ll have a burst of inspiration and want to write on this story I’ve had going on for over a year, or I’ll have a burst of inspiration and go off into a whole ‘nother story, or I’ll retreat into books, and the time I’ll be allowed to do that will be greatly and frustratingly reduced.

I went to the oncologist Wednesday to discuss the results of my CT scans, which are not what we want to see. He wants to do a PET scan in January to see which of the lymphomas are actively growing, how fast they’re growing, and what’s around them that they could jeopardize if they don’t stop growing. We also sat down and had a serious talk about my treatment options.

Pardon me while I vent: These entitled, selfish, thoughtless people who believe that living in this great country means they are free not to get vaccinated against COVID , a potentially fatal disease, if they don’t feel like it and are free to ignore any of the CDC’s other recommendations like wearing masks and, therefore, are free to spread that potentially fatal disease to other people’s families (particularly their children) are, as far as I’m concerned, guilty of criminal negligence. I got the vaccine as soon as I could, not just for my own protection but for the protection of my friends and family, and the fellow citizens whom I interact with on a daily basis. In my book, it’s called being a good Christian and a good citizen. So you can imagine what I felt when my oncologist explains to me that the best drug to treat lymphoma and keep it from turning into leukemia will strip me of my COVID immunity in the process, and that if I were to then get COVID because of these irresponsible idiots, it would almost certainly be fatal. So, instead of being able to take this treatment when I’m still relatively healthy and could get the best potential outcome, because of these antivaxer idiots, I have to wait until it’s a case of damned if I do and damned if I don’t. OK. Venting over.

My apologies. I try very hard to keep politics out of this blog, but this situation hits so very close to home and has such far-reaching consequences to my life and my family’s, I felt I had to stand up and be counted among the sane, responsible, adult members of the community and tell it like it is.

OK. Time for the knitting news — and there is news. I mentioned starting a hat. I’m well into the second ball of yarn and have just started the decreases.

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The elevator on my floor comes out here on first floor to this lovely fish tank which is all full of greeny-blue colors and fish. It’s Halloween, and there are “discrete” Halloween decorations scattered about in keeping with the season.

I got into the spirit with a couple of decorations of my own courtesy of Wal-Mart but I’m not as liturgical as mom, and storage space in the apartment is limited. In view of the conversation I had with the rehab lady about mom and how I should actively discourage the use of her wheelchair in favor of her front-wheel walker, the sign might be just the teeniest bit ironic . . . . .

Oh, I almost forgot. I finally got the TV to speak to the internet. It was something stupid. Some TV setting that should have been off was on. Changed it to off, and the TV embraced the internet like a long lost friend. I celebrated by watching the old “The Three Musketeers” movie that was done in 1973 directed by Richard Lester, with Michael York as D’Argagnan, and Charlton Heston as Cardinal Richelieu, Richard Chamberlain as Aramis, Oliver Reed as Athos, and Christopher Lee, Raquel Welch, Geraldine Chapman, Faye Dunaway, and Roy Kinnear. It was free on Amazon Prime. Thoroughly enjoyed it. They don’t make them like that any more, alas. . .

Within Feet of a FO

I’m within about two feet of being finished FINISHED! with the Sweet Irene Shawl. It’s on a 40-inch circular needle, which is just fine when you’re working on the humpty gazillion stitches you end up with in the body but now that I’m working on the knitted-on edging, which only has seven stitches, it’s a bit much. I stoppered the aft end of the circular needle and got one of my US6 (4.0) 6-inch DPNs so I can just use one end of the circular needle and the DPN, and I don’t have to wrestle the whole body of the shawl just to work back and forth over those seven stitches of edging. You’ll notice I’m also playing yarn chicken. Thrilling times! I started this project in June of last year. Slowly, slowly up Mount Fuji . .

I have managed to get the yard raked. It took me three separate sessions with days in between to finally pull it off, but I got it done. It only took about 8 trash bags this time instead of the 14 it took the first time I did it the year after I moved in. The first time, I managed to do it all in one day. (This was before I had two stents, chemo, four hospitalizations, pneumonia and a knee replacement all within two years’ time.)

I have also gotten my new sewing table, which is currently leaning up against the wall in my kitchen doorway, so there’s that. I am now in the process of washing all the blankets I intend to make lap robes out of (some of which I’ve been intending to make lap robes out of for literally years and still haven’t yet). I need to get up and put the last load into the dryer now. Then, I get to decide where I want the sewing to take place and see if I have appropriate sewing notions. I have made no progress on my yarn stash sorting out or major house cleaning. Let’s not get carried away, shall we?

Some people (my mother) seem to have gotten the idea from jocular comments made herein (usually involving trained chimpanzees) that I’m intimating that my mom’s intelligence is less than stellar. This is not the case. Let me set the record straight. My mom was a legal secretary for half a million years to one of the partners of a very prestigious local law firm. She’s been retired for a number of years now, but she was, and still is, legendary at that firm for her organizational skills, her clerical competence, her people skills, her meticulous attention to detail, and her elephantine memory of cases.

Considering that she came from a time when cultural norms and societal constraints made career opportunities for women problematic, to say the least, and considering where she started and what few opportunities were available to her, she came a long way, baby. I’ve often wondered if she had been born in this century instead of last, and got a halfway decent shot at a college education, where she would end up. Board room? Cabinet post? Who knows? I do know, though, that whatever she ended up doing, she’d be really good at it.

That said, when it comes to contraptions of any kind, she’s a visual learner. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just the type of learner she is. Give her the thing and the instructions, and no matter how simple or self-evident the device, she will be thoroughly frustrated within a very short time, throw up her hands and give up. Show her how the thing works, and she gets it right off.

A YouTube Channel to Check out.

I love this guy’s channel. The videos are short, usually about knitting, always about life, light and chatty. His work room is next door to a brontosaurus hangout, and just around the corner from Mr. Rogers. He reminds me so much of a dear friend, JT, who has moved to another state, and who I miss being able to visit with.

The other day I received the DVDs (to replace my VHS version) of the 1995 Colin Firth/Jennifer Ehle version of Pride and Prejudice, which is a miniseries, and I got to thinking about how many dramatizations of this novel there had been over the years. (I prefer my P&P in accurate period costume, reasonably faithful to the novel, and without the zombies, thank you very much.) It’s kind of like Doctor Who. Immediately two Doctor Who fans discover their mutual Whovianity, the next question inevitably is, “Who is your Doctor?” (David Tennant) Your answer helps plot you along the time and relative dimension in series. When two fans of Pride and Prejudice meet, the corresponding inevitable question is, of course, “Who is your Darcy? Need you ask? Firth forever!

Sanity in the Time of COVID-19

I have a feeling the hygge-ers, the binge-watchers, and the cocooners (speaking) are going to make it through the pandemic with a lot more sanity than the social butterflies,  the “people” people, the oxytocin junkies, the herdies (who can’t go anywhere or do anything unless accompanied by one or more friends), those who have been helicoptered to the point that they don’t know how to occupy themselves, and those poor folks who have a deep-seated need to have their  existence independently verified by somebody else to the point of panic at the thought of being alone.

We have lost the art of solitude, and it is an art.  We don’t know how to be still anymore.  Some of us have forgotten how to take the mind out of gear and just let it coast; some of us either don’t know how or, worse, are  totally unaware that it can be done.   Apparently, there is a widespread myth that there is a lot of thinking involved in it.  To understand solitude is to understand the difference between fishing and catching fish.  Sometimes you sits and thinks, and sometimes you just sits.

There is a certain zen state that happens when the hands are busy with a repetitive task, the sort of task where your body is doing something and your eyes are keeping an eye on it, but  the part of your brain that balances checkbooks and reads recipes, and decides you’d better take an umbrella is not needed for the task at hand.  It’s been called “being in the moment.”   It’s a neat trick if you can do it.

So now that you’ve got more “me-time” than you know what to do with it, here are a few suggestions:

Project Gutenburg offers free downloads of books no longer under copyright.  The downloads are available in several different formats for the various e-reader platforms.  The Kindle app (which uses .mobi  format) is free.

Seat 14C and Avatars, Inc.  are two websites that offer free bespoke SciFi anthologies.

Go to Amazon Kindle and type in “free Kindle books.”  There are more than you might think.  Be adventurous.  Try this one with this fantasy cast.

Learn how to do something by hand.  That’s why God gave us YouTube.

For that matter, there’s a lot of goodies from  British TV on YouTube– twenty seasons’ worth of “Time Team,” or David Suchet playing the title role in several Agatha Christie “Hercule Poirot“dramatizations,  or the above mentioned Jeeves and Wooster with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry,  or a bunch of David Starkey historical documentaries, Michael Wood documentaries and Lucy Worsley documentaries.   There’s all kinds of amazing stuff down the YouTube rabbit hole.

Jigsaw Planet is a free-to-join free-to-use website that allows you to upload pictures (.jpeg, .png  formats) and turn them into jigsaw puzzles. You can customize the number and shape of the pieces.  You have the option of letting others work your puzzles, just as others can opt to let you work theirs.  This website works best on a laptop or PC with a decent sized monitor screen, or, ideally, a smart TV that lets you bluetooth a keyboard and mouse, and can access a web browser.

If you are a knitter or crocheter and have never been on Ravelry, it’s free to join and use, and boy, are you in for a treat!  Lots of free patterns for everything.

If you’re desperate for something to read, try this.

 

Oh, It’s Knitting Time Again, The Weather’s Cooler*

Our weather has been consistently cooler (finally!) and rainy of late, with crashy-bangy T-storms rumbling in out of the southwest, heading for Oklahoma and points SE. I stepped outside this afternoon wearing a short sleeved tee shirt and the thought actually crossed my mind that I might want a light jacket.  (Must have gotten down into the low 80’s F/26-27 C.)  If it cools down any more, I’m going to have to start wearing clothes in the house again. . . That’s ok, though because I have long-sleeved, ankle length sleep shirts, too. (Cotton is my friend. . . ). . . . And would you believe, only two finished, wearable shawls?

Mom and I have a flying visit to Pearland scheduled toward the end of October, and after that, the top priority item on the knitting agenda will be making the “talents” for this year’s scholarship auction at that Sekrit Klub my mom belongs to.  (The members are suppose to utilize their talents to make items for the auction.  My mom’s talent is getting me to make stuff for her. . . )  It’s going to be knitted Xmas balls this year.  Three sets of three.   I think I’ll make a red and green set, a red and white set, and a blue and white set.  I’ve got the red and white yarn, and I think I have the green, but I’m pretty sure I don’t have the right blue in the right yarn.  I’ll have to go stash diving to make sure, though, before I hit up Michael’s.

So now that the weather is getting cooler, I’m feeling more knitty (and less gritty!).  I got this little mini-hank of fingering weight yarn at the knitting group Xmas party year before last.  A lady who was not part of the group, but known to several of its members (she is both a drop-spindle and wheel spinner, had chickens, dogs, goats and alpaca, and would have had a long drive into and out of town at night, and anyway, with all that livestock, who has time??) dropped by the party on her way back out to her place.  She evidently had a RACSB moment and, without preamble, handed me this mini skein of hand-spun yarn in a plastic sandwich bag.  I don’t remember the exact fiber content, but there may be some alpaca involved.  It’s this not-quite-teal shade of blue/green.

It’s a neat trick for one person to wind a traditional skein without a swift, but I improvised.  Most of the yarn I buy is cheap and (hypoallergenic) acrylic and comes in pull skeins (pull skeins are tools of the Devil**, y’all.  Just sayin’. . .) and have no pressing need for a swift.  It’s when you start getting into the pricy, big name and/or “artisanal” woolen yarns — i.e., yarn from a big name European company, or yarn exclusively from only one breed of sheep, or artisan hand-spun/hand dyed yarns,  or yarns blended with fiber from truly exotic species (yak, musk ox, saluki. . . ) — what I refer to as “snob yarn” — that you start needing a swift.  ( Compare Caron Simply Soft acrylic yarn at around $5 per 315 yd/170 g skein –depending on where you buy it, and Malbrigo yarn (from Peru) at $18 per 440 yd/100g skein.  A sweater’s quantity — depending on your size — of the Malbrigo can run you more than $100!)

About six months ago, I sprang for some skeins of Malbrigo sock yarn (Peruvian) in a luscious dark teal (are you beginning to detect a color palette here?) and  some donuts of Knitting Fever (Australian) yarn in a really zippy two-tone combination of strands of light purple and medium Prussian blue twisted together.  I got both of them (on separate occasions!) from the Must Love Yarn Shop in Shelburne, VT.  Two of the owners of MLY put out a podcast every Friday (I follow their YouTube channel) during the course of which they will feature a particular brand of yarn as “the pick of the week” and give a discount code for 10% off that’s good for two weeks if you buy that particular yarn (in any color they have in stock) either in person from their store, or from their website.

Anyway, to crawl out of that rabbit hole and get back to that little hank of yarn (remember it?), I have been threatening for (literally) years to knit a sweater for the little 25-cm ball jointed doll belonging to the wife of my favorite author (C. J. Cherryh) and I had earmarked the aforementioned hank of yarn for that project. We’re talking fingering weight yarn on size US1/2.25 mm double pointed needles at a gauge of 6 stitches per 2 cm.  I’m having to use a tapestry needle to work the cable because none of my cable needles are small enough in diameter.  (The smallest cable needle I have is US6/4.0 mm).  I have the doll’s measurements, and I’m writing the pattern as I go.  (If God had wanted me to do math in my head, She wouldn’t have given us calculator apps!)  I’m also playing a little knitter’s game called “yarn chicken.” (I do love a challenge!) Thankfully, I have a “Plan B” — some compatible colors in this weight yarn — that I can “design in” to the pattern if I need to.  The US1’s I’m using are from my ChiaoGoo sock set.  Believe me, this sock set is a real bargain.  You get a  really nice, sturdy cloth, zippered carrying case and SIX 5-needle sets of 6-inch double pointed needles:  sizes US0/2mm, 1/2.25mm, 1.5/2.5mm, 2/2.75mm, 2.5/3mm and 3/3.25mm.  These are high-quality stainless steel needles.  (They also have sock sets in bamboo)  I absolutely adore them.

 

There’s a thing knitters refer to as UFO’s, UnFinished Objects — Works In Progress (WIPs) that have run out of gas. I’m telling you.  I have enough UFOs to re-enact  (H.G. or Orson, take your pick) Wells’ “War of the Worlds.”   Most of them are currently in a parking orbit in two of the drawers of my stash bins.  I’ve got four sets of bins crammed full of yarn and another two large plastic bins of yarn on the floor beside them.   I think after the first of the year, I need to go on a serious WIP whup.  A finish or frog-athon. (When I’m not in free-fall down the “Outlander” rabbit hole, that is. . .)(So many books, so little time!)  Sigh.

Today’s earworm is brought to you by the woman who would become Princess Leia‘s mom the year after this film was released, and two of the all-time great song-and-dance men  (Donald O’Connor and the incomparable Gene Kelly).  The unsinkable Ms. Reynolds is  having no trouble at all keeping up in this rarified company, singing or dancing.  The film this scene is from is a classic.

* With apologies to Ray Charles.
**They were ostensibly designed so you could use the yarn straight from the skein, without having to roll it up into a ball or cake first.  However, if you pull from the outside, you always have to be stopping and unrolling more yarn (or else you give it a good yank and it hops off the couch and rolls halfway across the room and you have to get up and go get it).  If you pull from the inside, locating the yarn end in the center of the skein is like Finding Nemo and once you're down to about 20% of the skein, they have a marked tendency to suddenly implode into a big wad of yarn barf.   Either way, they'll have you losing your religion in a New York minute.
***What the little ball chart calls "hankenskein" by any other name is still yarn barf.

Plus Ça Change, Plus C’est La Même Vieille Chose

My mom turned 94 this year.  She not only still has all her marbles,she has more of them than I do!  She’s active and alert, is in remarkably good health (touch wood!) and is in better shape than a lot of people 30 years younger than she. (For that, we are all extremely thankful!)  She was born in 1924 and the mind boggles at the changes that have happened in the world during her lifetime.  However, and not surprisingly, technology has gone off and left her in the dust, and there are times when trying to help her remain connected to the modern world is like being in the movie “Back to the Future.”  Case in point:

We have finally converted my dyed-in-the-wool, write-checks-for-everything Mom to the ease and convenience of credit cards with bonus points (she got one through her bank after my dad died, because their only credit card was in his name, and that was the only way she could get one in her name).  Now she charges practically everything on it, writes one check to pay the credit card bill in full every month (she could pay it on line, but we won’t go there!), redeems her bonus points for gift cards to local restaurants and she is a happy camper.  So, this afternoon, she calls me and says that “since Charles changed her email program to Windows 7” (momspeak to English translation:  Windows Live Mail decided to stop playing nice with everything else and Charles, her computer guy, took it off and loaded Mozilla Thunderbird in its place),  when she tries to check her credit card bonus points on her bank’s website, she can’t because it wants her to upgrade her browser before it will let her.  So I went over to get to the bottom of it and see if I could get things sorted out.

Upgrading the browser had no effect and I ended up having to call her bank’s help desk.  Turned out the program her bank uses to track bonus points doesn’t like Firefox and insists you use either Google Chrome or Internet Explorer to access it.  She uses Firefox for everything else and it works just fine.  Now she has to load a separate browser to look at this one website so she can check her credit card points, which is stupid, but that’s the internet for you. (The poor schlimazel at the help desk had no clue why this was even a big deal.)  Naturally, I had to walk her through how you do that so she could write down all the steps (What Internet Explorer calls a “favorite” is really a bookmark, mom.  No, I don’t know why they have to call it something different.)

When I used the phone on her computer desk to call about the credit card website, the sound quality (the phone is 15 years old, if it’s a day) was so horrible I could barely understand the guy I talked to (and I have normal hearing). (You want surreal? I was trying to interpret between a millennial who I could barely understand on the phone and my mom, who is literally 4 years older than sliced bread.)  When she gets a phone call when she’s sitting at her computer desk, sitting right next to this phone, she gets up and goes into another room to another phone to answer it because the sound quality on this phone is so horrible (and she’s so hearing impaired), she can’t understand what people are saying.  Why doesn’t she get a new phone?  Because this phone is hooked up to a caller ID box from the 1980’s that she knows how to operate (so she can see who called her and didn’t leave a message!), and she’s afraid that the new phone won’t work with this caller ID box. Never mind that her cordless phone handsets have a caller ID function which she (a) didn’t know they had, and when I showed it to her, (b) she thinks is too complicated and/or too much trouble to use.

I don’t know why this surprises me.  There are only two modern phone jacks in the whole house.  The rest of them are all still the original phone jacks from when her house was built in 1962, the kind that require a phone cord with prongs.   I’m assuming the “new” one in the computer room had to have been put in by the AT&T guy so he could install their DSL when they first got a computer in the 1990’s, and the one in the kitchen was probably put in by another AT&T guy when prongs became obsolete and that phone quit working. If it wasn’t for the cordless phone system I got her (the base unit is plugged into the kitchen jack, with handsets by her chair in the den and in her bedroom) (which don’t have to be plugged into a phone jack that is too expensive/too much trouble to update), she would only have one usable phone in the whole house.

Anyway, I found her a corded phone on Amazon with a caller ID function with a large display that only requires one button press to access, and has a volume control on the handset, so hopefully now she won’t have to get up to go into another room to answer the phone instead of using the one sitting right next to her.  (I bet I can get it to work with her old caller ID box, too.)

While I was sorting all this out, she started complaining about not being able to hear her doorbell. It’s one of those wireless gizmos that some friend from church installed for her when her other one quit working.  It only has one wall unit, and she has it plugged in a plug/point in the den.  When she’s in the den, she can barely hear it.  When she’s anywhere else in the house, she can’t hear it at all.   To make her case, while I was working on her computer, she went out and plonged it, and even I could barely hear it.  The plug-in unit doesn’t seem to have a volume control on it.  So I went on Amazon and found her one with three wall units so she can plug one in the den, one in the computer room and one in her bedroom.  It also has four volume settings and, hopefully, one of them is “dull roar”  so we can set it where she can hear it.  All this tech is due to arrive next Friday, at which point I get to go install it all and show her how to use it.  Stay tuned.

Her broker, who she has probably had longer than she’s had that phone,  gave her a 10-pound ham for Xmas.  She lives alone, so most of it went into the freezer.  Guess what happened to another big slab of it.  (My cardiologist says I’m not supposed to eat ham.  Too much salt and nitrates.  Let’s don’t tell him. )

 

We Were Thankful Clear On The Other Side of Town

My mom and I had resigned ourselves to Thanksgiving dinner at a local restaurant (we’re both so over cooking holiday dinners), but a lady she sings in the choir with asked us over to eat with them.  JH and her husband S moved last year from my mom’s side of town, clear across to the other side of town.  My mom had been there once, but not the way we went.  Still, she had it plotted out and she came by to pick me up.  I took the first batch of snowflakes with me as a hostess gift, and they were a hit.

It was a bit tricky to find their house.  Our town is laid out quite logically and typically, on north-south streets, odd house numbers are on the east side of the street, and even house numbers are on the west side of the street.  Their street runs north-south and their house number is an even number, so one would expect it to be on the west side of the street.  No soap.  The houses on the east side predictably had odd house numbers, but there were no houses on the west side of the street.  Typically numbered streets have the lowest numbers in the north, and get higher the further south you go.  What we didn’t realize was that the crossing street at the end of that block was 1st Street, which is where the system changes.  The next cross street going north was 1st Place, followed by 2nd Place, etc., and the numbering system from that point is exactly reversed.  When we got into the next block, the houses were still all on the east side of the street, but they had even house numbers in reverse numerical order to the usual “lowest number to the south, highest number to the north” sequence.  Fortunately, the house we were looking for was right at that corner, and we’d found it.

It’s a lovely house, somewhat smaller than their previous house, but with nice high ceilings, shutter blinds on the windows, a gorgeous, fully appointed kitchen,  and each of the three bedrooms has its own en suite.  They’ve accessorized the decor with SH’s antique electronic devices including an old 1920’s pole microphone.  (SH is an electrical engineer and has collected all sorts of vintage electronics).

JH is not real into cooking either and has little interest in doing it, especially since her husband S loves to cook and is very good at it.  It was he who cooked the luscious spread.  He even made the pumpkin pie.

While he cooked, we girls watched “Gone With The Wind” on TV, which was already in progress when we tuned in.  My mom saw it on its first run in a theater when she was 12 (it made a huge and lasting impression on her), and she has seen it a gazillion times since.  (I’m sorry to say, my mom has completely bought into that whole Cult of the Lost Cause thing which both the book and the film reflect, and can’t understand why they want to take down monuments to Confederate generals, etc.  She is scandalized and personally affronted that the name of the high school my dad graduated from was changed because it was named for a member of Jefferson Davis’ cabinet.)(She’s 93.  There’s no hope of my enlightening her.  I’ve learned to just let sleeping dogmas lie.)

We had a traditional meal — turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, creamed corn , cranberry relish, — except biscuits for bread instead of white rolls.  My mom was supposed to bring rolls, but realized at the last minute the frozen rolls she was planning to bring had been in the freezer quite a while and she was no longer confident of their freshness.  The frozen biscuits, on the other hand, were recently bought, so that’s what she took.  No matter.  Bread is bread.  It was a very delicious feast.

We had a delightful time with dear friends, and many things to be thankful for.

A Change of Pace

That loud grinding noise you heard a while ago was me changing gears from knitting to crochet. (Yes, I am ambicraftous.)  My mom belongs to this Sekret Klub, and every year in early December they have a fund-raising auction.  The members bring things to auction off, pay inflated prices for each other’s stuff, and the money goes into a college scholarship fund of some sort.  Last year, I made her four buttoned cowls.  This year, I’m making her three sets of five crocheted snowflakes. I’m also making several sets of three for hostess gifts.

Tuesday after knitting group, I need to dash over to Michael’s and get some stiff stuff, some opalescent embossing powder, a container of sewing pins, and a paint brush.   I’m pretty sure I already have enough crochet thread in my thread stash.  In order to turn the snowflakes into tree ornaments, which is the goal of the exercise, they have to be blocked (stretched and pinned into shape), then soaked in the stiff stuff and sprinkled with opalescent embossing powder to give them just the right amount of sparkle. When that side is dry, you flip them over and repeat the process.  Once they’re thoroughly dry, you hot glue a little loop of the narrowest white satin ribbon they make to one “point” so an ornament hook can be attached for hanging it on the tree.

One down, many to go.

I googled crocheted snowflakes and found this website that has a whole slew of free patterns for them.  More than enough for the 15 I’m making for my mom.  I’ll choose the 15 I like best, and do them.

I was searching for “Russian waltzes” on YouTube yesterday (because I couldn’t remember whether this one waltz was written by Prokofiev or Khachaturian)(It was Khachaturian.) and found this serendooglously*.

And yes! It’s from a Russian film.  And yes! An English language version is available on Amazon, . . . And yes! It’s been shipped!  (It’s dubbed in English.  I wish it had been in Russian with English subtitles, but I may just turn the sound off and gorge on the video.)

Here’s the Russian language trailer.

Matvey Lykov, who plays the guy she really loves (spoiler alert:  Not the blond guy.), is yummy.  And that wedding ensemble she’s wearing in the boat is just fabulous.

 

*serendoogle — something you find serendipitously while googling for something else.  I made this word up by mashing “serendipity” and “google” together.