Life Among the Bells – The Owl Underground

Well, Zut Alors

Those who follow this blog for the knitting content will be happy to know there is knitting content for the first time in a while. I’ve had four hats which were already in progress on the little rolly table I use for the keyboard of the new computer. They’ve been just sitting there mocking me for the better part of two months. Two of them were ready to start the crown decreases.

I grabbed this one, did the crown decreases and finished it. It’s got twisted cables, right twists alternating with left twists, and instead of finishing the others, of course, I started a new hat. 90 stitches on a US9 (5.5 mm). I use the trick of casting on 20 stitches, counting them to make sure there are 20, putting a stitch marker and casting on 20 more stitches, rinse and repeat. That way, I don’t ever have to count higher than 20. 90 stitches is 4 x 20 + 10. Since I’m doing a hat, though, I cast on 4 x 20 + 11. Then you straighten out all your stitches on the needle, slip the first stitch you cast on over to the left needle, place a marker, and knit it together with the last stitch you cast on to join for knitting in the round.

I ended the very first row row with k, k instead of k, p, and knew I messed up somewhere. I back tracked and discovered I had nodded off at the wheel and k, p, k, k, p, k, p, and of course I did it right near the beginning of the row. Zut, alors. I could rip it all out and redo the cast on, or I could fix the previous row — one stitch at a time — as I knit the second row, which is the tedious option I chose.

I am a firm believer in FWF — fixing without frogging. It’s important that a knitter learn how to fix mistakes without throwing up their hands in defeat and frogging the whole shebang back to before the mistake. Learning to fix the mistake you made rows ago will teach you more about the construction of fabric itself, how it goes together — the nuts and bolts, if you will — than you can learn any other way. You haven’t really mastered the “doing” until you’ve mastered the “undoing” and “redoing.” So, I fix the row 1 stitch — change the purl to a knit or the knit to a purl — and then I work it appropriately for row 2, one cotton-picking stitch at a time. . . but I’m back in the saddle again.

Our quote for the day: “Live your life in such a way that if it was a book, Florida would ban it.” That’s as political as I’m going to get in a G-rated blog.

I’m still dealing with the issue of the altered sensation in my finger tips, particularly the middle fingers — things like touch screens, and knitting are problematic. When I knit, I use that middle finger of my left hand as a kind of “gatekeeper.” I bunch the stitches on the left needle up against it so I don’t have to stop so often to move stitches around toward the tip where the knitting happens. I pinch the top of the stitch I’m working against the needle while I’m working it, which makes it easier to work, and letting it go pulls the next stitch forward. It’s a habit pattern — emphasis on the pattern — and if the pattern changes, it takes time and repetitions for that change to be made into muscle memory.

I’ve got something going on every day of the week this week except today. Chiropractic appointments on Tuesday and Thursday. I see my orthopedist on Wednesday, and Friday, the water guy is coming to change the filters on the undersink reverse osmosis unit.

Mom decided she wanted some new clothes, and there’s a catalog she likes to shop from. Like many businesses, they’ve stopped sending out gratuitous catalogs as a way to reduce overhead. They don’t even send one when you buy stuff from them. I bought her some stuff hoping to get a catalog with it, but no soap. I’ve asked them to send me a catalog, but I haven’t gotten it yet. Unfortunately, Mom doesn’t have a way to shop on line.

Now that she’s been able to go to the beauty saloon ever week and get her hair done, she doesn’t like to put tops on over her head because it messes up her hair. She wants blouses that button up. Unfortunately, most of the tops she has are pull on because at the time I got most of them for her, ease of putting them on and taking them off was the main criteria. I’ve bought her three blouses and a couple pair of pants, they came yesterday, and I need to take them over to her to see if they pass muster before I sew clothing labels on them.

The blooms on the orchid really last a long time. They’re still going strong.

Dos Lebn Iz a Shpas

Taking a leaf from my earworm du jour:

Dos lebn iz a lidl, to vozhe zayn in kas.
Hey, Yidl, fidl, shmidl, hey, dos lebn iz a shpas.*

That’s been in heavy earworm rotation with this and this all week.

Been a tricky week. Had my first visit to the punch doctor (chiropractor) Friday. Got a look at a head-on x-ray of my C-spine. Yep. C2 is slightly cattywompus. They don’t actually punch you anymore. They have machines for that. Yes, I did have tightness in my neck and shoulders. Felt good. I have one session next week because of the holiday, then it’s Tuesdays and Thurdays for the next five weeks. The peripheral neuropathy in my fingers is down to the first knuckle now. My little fingers are the only ones not affected.

It’s three and a half in the morning and I have a load of clothes in the dryer. I prefer to do my laundry in the middle of the night. That way, I can use both washers and dryers if I need to and get it all done at once without being a machine hog. It’s a little scary how easily I can slip back into nights. I like the peace, quiet and solitude. One of the things people never seem to “get” about me is how self contained I am. There’s one of the Just So stories by Rudyard Kipling called “The Cat Who Walks By Himself.” Yep. (If you have not read Kipling’s Just So Stories, I highly recommend them. Written to be read aloud. The language is positively luscious.)(There seems to be this idiotic notion that stories for children should be written in simple language. Balderdash. Do them a favor. Give them stories written at the adult level using rich language that has cadence and flow, and let them grow into them.)

I have this little fold out clothes bar mounted to the wall of my closet right above my laundry basket. The hanger goes on the bar, the dirty clothes go in the laundry basket. When I go to wash clothes, there are all the hangers I need to hang them up. (I will not buy clothes hangers unless I break one. I have a net zero closet: If I get a new garment, I have to get rid of some other garment to get a hanger for it. ) When I go to take the clothes out of the dryer, I’ll just grab the hangers on my little bar and put the clean clothes back on them.

Was saddened to hear of the passing of Tina Turner. Unfortunately, a lot of women are going to need the role model she provided for overcoming adversity. A certain small segment of the population seems bound and determined to take away our hard-won rights and force their minority views on everybody.

The orchid I’ve taken into foster care seems to have turned the corner. It’s leaning into the sun now and generally looking perky. It has its little glass and at least one good root slurping up the sky juice. I don’t know what color it blooms. Maybe I’ll find out. That’d be cool.

Me and Google Translate are going to read Yaxin el Fauno de Gabriel by Man Arenas in Spanish. I love his art. I can’t find an English translation, only the original Spanish and the French translation. I had 2 years of French and 3 years of Spanish in high school and a year in college.

At one time I was fluent enough to get around Barcelona by myself, but I’ve slept a few times since then. I’ll pull Google Translate up on my Kindle Fire and settle in for a good read.

*This existence is a song. Why should I be upset?
Yidl, fidl, shmidl – Hey -This life is pure fun.

All Done

All eight blooms are open now. Ridiculous how chuffed I am about a plant blooming.

I am cautiously hopeful about the beauty saloon operator’s orchid. When I got groceries today, I got a pretty little blooming plant (kalanchoe?) in a teapot and took it over to her today because I have taken her orchid “into protective custody.”

I have repotted it properly (she thought all the roots had to be covered up!) and have gotten an orchid fertilizer spike on board. It now has a means to get all the water it wants and has a viable root (possibly three) which appears to be taking on water. It’s leaves have firmed up, which is a good indication that it is now better “hydrated” than it was.

I have recently learned about a birdsong app for smart phones. If you hear birdsong, you can start the app, which listens to the birdsong through the phone mike and identifies the specie(s) of bird(s) doing the singing. (It uses GPS to plot where you are and determine what birds might be found based on your location.) Back in the old days, you’d join a group of birders to go out bird watching together and a more experienced birder would take you under their wing, and it would be, “Hear that? That’s a Yellow-headed Whatchamacallit.” Then you’d scan the tree canopy with your binoculars to see if you could spot one. You’d finally spot a bird and there would be breathlessly whispered consultations over the bird book (Roger Tory Peterson, of course) and identification by consensus. It was all about being out in nature, the camaraderie of being with people who enjoyed the same activity you did, the challenge of the hunt, the thrill of the chase, the joy of success. Now they have an app for that. Sigh.

We had a violent crashy bangy T-storm just now, and it rained hard in big splatty drops against the window for about 10 minutes. (And this POS stupid internet that we have here is down. Rebooted the modem to no avail.) I like it when it rains at night. Gives it a chance to soak in and do some good. It evaporates too quickly when it rains in the daytime.

I had to be up at oh, God thirty this morning to make an 8 o’clock lab appointment at the VA and walked all over the world to get there. Then I went to the grocery store and walked all over the world. On my way back, I drove up under the portico and stopped by the lobby to pick up some stuff I ordered from Amazon from the receptionist before I went to my appointed parking space. I remembered to put my fold-up cart into the trunk, so I unloaded the car into it and schlepped the groceries upstairs (via the freight elevator). Then I carried a vase of roses and a teapot full of blooming plant down the elevator to first floor, up one hallway and down the other, up the elevator to third floor and gave the roses to mom for Mother’s day, and the (tea)potted plant to the beauty operator, hiked back and got the mail, (and took the package notification things for the packages I’d already gotten all the way up the hall to the lobby and back) and took my lunch back up to the apartment. By then I was exhausted and my knee was very unhappy with me. I put lunch in the fridge and crashed til 7 o’clock and had my lunch for supper.

Edit: The above was written on Wednesday evening. The internet went down Wednesday night and stayed down. I had to copy the blog post to a Word document and save it because not all of it autosaved before the internet went down. It’s still down. I languished all day Thursday, unable to finish my blog post, unable to listen to music on internet radio, unable to watch YouTube, unable to play games on my Kindle Fire, unable to read the next book in the series I’m reading because I hadn’t download it to my Kindle before the internet cratered. Then, early this morning, I had a huge forehead-smacker of a DUH! moment. Darling, your phone is hotspot enabled. (Yes, I call myself ‘darling’ when I’m taking myself to task. Bite me. )

I had purchased that option on my cell phone plan for when I travel, to be able to get Google maps, and internet radio access whenever and wherever I want it, as well as being able to use my Kindle in places where I don’t trust the WiFi, or where there isn’t any. My Kindle was already set up to connect to the internet through my phone’s hotspot. In a matter of minutes, I had the next book and the rest of the books in the series (Diana Gabaldon’s Lord John Grey books) downloaded to my Kindle because the internet for all three buildings is still down.

So, this morning, I fixed myself breakfast, got my phone, and proceeded to sign onto the internet on both computers via my phone’s hot spot. I’ve been eating my curds and whey (AKA cottage cheese) (with mandarin oranges) and my brioche toast and finishing this blog post. Here directly, I’ll have my shower and wash my hair and get suited up for my appointment with my PCP at the VA at 1330 hrs. I may go early to see if I can get my foot x-rayed so I can get a podiatry consult for orthotics which may help my knee by more properly aligning my foot. Or that’s the thinking anyway. Onward and upward.

Seven!

Seven down and one to go. I know y’all are sick of hearing about the dern orchid. Still, it looms large in my legend, so to speak. The beauty saloon on site has hired a manicurist, which is not as much of a non sequitur as it seems. I called the beautician who does mom’s hair and got her, made an appointment to get a pedicure and manicure (minus polish). (I don’t do nail polish.) The beauty saloon on site has a separate room for the hair dryers.

That led to me spending time getting a pedicure and a manicure in the dryer room and noticing a very woebegone orchid over in the corner. It just seemed to be gasping for water. Long story short, I ended up with it. I don’t know if I can save it, but I’m going to try. It’s still more or less green, but very limp.

It belongs to the beauty operator that does my mom’s hair. First thing I did was get it out of the bark she’d put it in, snip off the obviously dead roots and stems, and plop it in a bowl about half full of water. This was Thursday. I can tell some of the roots have plumped up, but the leaves are still really flaccid. I need to scrape a tiny amount of crumbs off a fertilizer spike down into the water.

She had it in just a regular ceramic pot with all that bark, which was bone dry, and there was no way it was getting enough water or any air on its roots. I had some plastic orchid repotting pots and I ordered a ceramic pot for orchids. I also ordered some lava rocks. If it does make it, I’ll repot it in the proper pot with the lava rocks and some of the bark she had it in. The story was that it was in a room with no heat during a cold snap, which wouldn’t have done it any good at all, but I know it also wasn’t getting anywhere near enough water for the kind of humidity we have here.

I just looked and our current humidity is 12%. Not anywhere near tropical. We’ve got a front blowing through with a 60% chance of rain (don’t hold your breath) in the middle of next week, with sun and 90+ degree (32+ C) weather going into the weekend.

I’ve got a peace lily (Spathiphyllum cochlearispathum), and saw these. These are Anthuriums of unknown parentage adopted from my local Market Street. They’re colorful, to say the least. Anyway a nice little potful has joined the lineup on the window sill. It’s taken up a spot next to the Christmas cactus, which also blooms, only not just now.

I think I have a home for the Stone Pine. I’ve gotten in cahoots with my upstairs neighbor and have identified a spot for it outside on the grounds. There’s supposed to be a cache of garden trowels and such somewhere. Poor thing is just not getting enough light in my window, especially now that the tree outside has leafed out.

I ordered the complete DVD collection of the BBC’s production of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple stories staring Joan Hickson in the title role. These productions were purported to stick as closely as possible to the stories and their locales. Supposedly, Agatha Christie saw Hickson in a play and wrote her a letter to the effect that she would make the perfect Miss Marple once she was older. I quite agree. I knitted on the brass band shawl while I watched the first DVD in the set. Miss Marple was a knitter. So was Ms. Hickson. A lever knitter, as many Brits are.

The Brass Band Shawl — the yarn version of a brass band playing “Stars and Stripes Forever”

Last week, my cousin and his wife, who live in Capitan, NM, drove over. We went out to lunch at Applebee’s and they had a nice visit with mom, and then they drove back. It’s only a 5 hour drive. They don’t stay over as they have three horses, but are down to just one dog and one kitty cat now. He’s 86. This is the first time she’s been able to come with. It was nice to see them again. He is the son of my mom’s oldest sister (14 years her senior).

And The Blooms Just Keep On Coming

Four blooms now, fully open and gorgeous, and five, six and seven proceeding as planned. It’s ridiculous how chuffed I am about it. The peace lily is still going nuts, blooming front, back and center. Not as major a chuff as the orchid, though. I need to repot the Christmas cactus and I already have the pot.

Spring is well and truly sprung. The tree outside my window is greening up hand over fist. The wisteria growing over the pergola at the outdoor seating area on the other side of my wing has burst into leaf. One hopes that flowers will be forthcoming soon. You’ll note the picture on the left is of a plant (Syngonium phodophyllum) I’ve been wanting to have for ages.

I’m trying to confine the plants to one pair of windows because the other pair in the room is adjacent to the TV and I’d always be having to raise and lower the blinds in order to watch something on TV (most of which is streaming and DVDs. Cable services are crap anymore.). I’m going to have to rehome the “elephant ear” plant because it’s taking over the world. Mom has no room for it. She already has a poinsettia left over from Christmas, another orchid, a kalanchoe, an Easter lily, and a plant of unknown identity I gave her to make room for the elephant ear.

You see the problem. There’s two more plants tucked behind the others, the arrowhead plant, which is behind the orchid, and the Christmas cactus (which needs to be repotted) behind the big elephant ear which is hogging the middle. I may inherit (or buy) another orchid, and there’s simply no more room. I may see about talking to the grounds keepers about the Stone Pine. It can be planted outside if a protected place can be found for a tree that small. First world problem, though.

I had quite an exciting Friday. I had an appointment for a bone scan (with isotopes!) at the Covenant Hospital radiology department at 12:30, and I went down plenty early to leave me time to park in the parking building and hike the skybridge to where I needed to be. Got in the car. Turned the key. Nothing happened.

Fortunately, our security people have one of those little hand-carry booster battery things and got me going. I got to my appointment, got’er done, went back to my car in the parking garage, turned the car key, and nothing. There’s a Battery Joe’s right nearby so I called them, and this very nice young man came with his very nice little hand-carry booster thing and got the car started. Again. Of course, the problem was that I hadn’t driven far enough to recharge the battery after the first boost, so I took the scenic route home — a half orbit of the Loop to the other side of town, back up Indiana Avenue, and eventually to my friendly, neighborhood Market Street grocery store. Where I found the arrowhead plant. Among four bags of other things. And they had rosemary and olive oil specialty bread again! So, a happy ending to a rather fraught day. I gotta get me one of those little hand-carry battery booster dohickies. (You plug them into a wall outlet to charge them.)

I had the bone scan to see if osteoporosis is the problem with my left knee (my body’s current problem child). I’m in the (long, drawn-out) process (dealing with the VA) of setting up rehab through services here at Carillon so mom and I will both be in rehab. Again. (At left is a new part of Covenant Hospital (Hope Tower) being build in place of the old part they knocked down. )

I’m going to try to weasel in some exercises for my upper back and shoulders to head off my inherited tendency to age-related kyphoscoliosis.

I’m trying to get rehab for mom as often as Medicare will allow because she gets upper as well as lower body exercise in a safe and controlled setting, gets to interact one on one with the therapists (mom is a people person), and the trained rehab people can keep an eye on her various back issues (kyphoscoliosis, sciatica). She also gets cognitive therapy mostly for the sake of having one more person to interact with on a regular basis. A fair percentage of the people on her floor are “gaga” as she puts it (#4), and it’s hard to have meaningful interpersonal interactions with people who have misplaced a significant number of their marbles.

While I was out gazooting about Friday, I got stopped at the stoplight that enabled me to snap a quick picture of the smiley-face bush, whom I haven’t seen in quite a while, and its latest costume. Not sure what it’s supposed to represent, though. Perhaps a Frenchman for Valentine’s day? Je ne sais quoi.

Alas, there is no knitting news because I’ve mostly had my nose in a book. I’m on book #17 of the Foreigner series with four books left on the shelf and another one coming in September. There has to be another one after this, because the new one will be the 22nd book in the series and 22 is a very infelicitous number. Just saying. I probably will then embark on a reread of the 17 books in the Sebastian St. Cyr series (Regency murder mysteries!) because book #18 drops this month. (Spoiler Warning: Hero is pregnant again!)

Houston, We Have Bloomage!

Why, Yes, I Am a Toolbelt Diva

When I moved, I sold my reciprocating saw, and the drill I had since the early 2000’s (and, like a dummy, all the bits and sockets to it), as well as everything else except a “basic” tool kit: a hammer, a pair each of regular and needle nose pliers, a Phillips and a regular screwdriver, a large adjustable

wrench and a pair of channel locks. Which pair of channel locks came in handy this afternoon, when I couldn’t get the cap off my Peach Mango sports drink.

When I moved in here, I installed my own “handheld” shower head, hung all my pictures except the one. The maintenance guy did install my curtain rods and curtains (even though they’re not supposed to –I pulled the sensory overload card on them) because I just flat couldn’t reach them on the step stool, and did hang that one picture that needed a heavy anchor (which I didn’t have) that was on the wall above my bed. But other than that, I assemble furniture (I have quite the collection of assorted Allen wrenches) and am otherwise quite handy.

I took a break from reading yesterday evening and watched a French production of Mozart’s opera “Don Giovanni”. It was a rouser. There were several attempted rapes; the bass (Il Commendatore) got knifed in the first act (which is always fatal), and in the second act, one of the sopranos floozed about on state in her underwear and the tenor’s shirt, and the baritone (Don Giovanni) (who was a fox, BTW) stripped down to his tighty whities (it was, after all, a French production) and instead of getting dragged off to hell (spoilers!), Don Giovanni remained on stage in his skivvies for the remainder of the final scene. The minimal scenery that they had was well chewed, and a good time was had by the audience (including yrs trly). The only problem I had with it was that the libretto is in Italian and the closed captioning for this production was in French. This opera is notable for, among other things, a statue that comes to life and for Wolfie’s version of “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.”

Right after lunch today, I set off into deepest darkest Yuppieville to go get mom’s taxes ready to be filed electronically, and on my way back I stopped off at Wal-Mart to get “a few things” (read: six bags’ worth). Mom was running low on tissues and they have the Haribo Peaches candy I can’t seem to find anywhere else. They also had the small size of the almond milk creamer which I don’t use fast enough to get the big size of, which is all Market Street had. They also carry the brand of vitamin D3 tablets and calcium chewies that I prefer to the brands Market Street has. And of course, Whataburger is right next door (chicken fingers, FF’s and gravy!).

So I walked all over Wal-Mart, drove through Whataburger, went in to the package store (Harvey’s Bristol Cream!), walked all the way back up from the parking lot to the apartment to get the cart I should have brought down and put in my trunk when I left the apartment to go run errands, unloaded the groceries into the cart, schlepped them back to the apartment, put them all up, then hiked over to mom’s to give her the tissues and back. Then I had my chicken fingers, etc. When I got up just now to go refill my water bottle, my hips and knees were so stiff I could hardly move for a minute or two and my heel hurt so bad I could hardly bear weight on it. The earliest appointment I could get with my orthopod was with his PA and is on the 30th. If I wanted to see him, the earliest appointment was 10 April. (I’ve still got to go to the VA and get a copy of the plain films and the CT the VA did to take over to him.) I ain’t going anywhere tomorrow but to the refrigerator and back. I’m going to lie in the bed with my feet up and probably finish the remaining half of the book I’m currently reading and head into the next one in the series.

Oh, If I Just Had A Chainsaw and a Good Lawyer . . .

I’d be chopping down those stupid Bradford pear trees all over town that just burst into bloom last week. Their pollen just rips my poor sinuses a new one, to coin a phrase. I am ambushed by sneezes like jump scares in a teen horror flick. I have what are called occular migraines — I get the flashy lights (scintillating scotomata) in both eyes, but no actual headache. They go away after about a half hour to three quarters of an hour, but in the meantime, I just have to either sit down or lie down until they’re over because it’s difficult to see. I may not have any all year, but I’ve already had three in as many weeks. Stupid Bradford pears. Pseudoephedrine + guaifenesin tablets are my friend.

And not to put too fine a point on the weather, Friday, the humidity was 10%. (!!!) It’s gone up to 29% now. At least the dirt’s not blowing today. That loud slurping noise you heard just now was me putting lotion on my poor hands. Again.

The other day it was gusty and blustery, and when I came in from running errands, my hair looked like Doc’s in Back To The Future. My hair’s about five inches long all over now and invariably I’ll get out of the car, and a gust of wind will whoosh me from behind. Like being shot in the back of the head with a leaf blower. All I can say is, “It was combed when I left the house.”

The Bradford pears are leafing as well as blooming, but nothing else is yet. That’s a wisteria vine on the pergola. Not a leaf in sight. Nor any hint of green on the locust tree outside my window. The squirrels are getting frisky, though.

Mom and I used to live in the 2BR apartment that goes with the 3 third floor windows behind the tree on the left, but when she went to the skilled nursing facility, I moved to a 1BR apartment on the same floor but in a different wing and no longer overlook the pergola. My apartment now is on the other side of the wing on the right side of the picture.

Mom’s orchid is ramping up to bloom. I’m almost ridiculously delighted about that. And my peace lily is going nuts. It has 7 blooms on it at the moment. I’ve been watering my little jungle with reverse osmosis water to avoid scale buildup in their soil. We have such hard water here.

I went to my oncologist yesterday afternoon and had lab work done. He said, “Your lab results are good, I’ll see you in August.” So, yay. Not so good is my left knee, the one I had replaced. That knee has been hurting when I walk and it pops in certain situations. I had a CT and plain x-rays of the knee done Friday at the VA in preparation for wrestling the red tape octopus to get a consult to go see the (non VA) doc who did the surgery. I swear, dealing with the VA is like pushing a rope.

There’s the old Cousin Minnie Pearl joke about going down to Grinder’s Switch to mail a letter at the post office, and when she came out, she said, “I looked up the road and here come Brother a’walkin’ down the road pulling this great big old logging chain behind him. And I said, ‘Brother, what are you doing walking around pulling that old logging chain?’ And Brother said, ‘D’yer ever try pushing one?'” Logging chains don’t push any better than ropes . . .

In the knitting news, I’ve got two more hats on the go. Another, larger, kitten hat on the left, and a kind of cloche affair on the right done in moss stitch. Moss stitch (which alternates knits and purls both horizontally and vertically) will separate the continental knitters from the throwers real fast. In order to purl, you have to bring the yarn to the front of the work first, then purl the stitch. Then you’ve got to bring your yarn to the back of the work to knit the next stitch. That’s two “throws” for every stitch. If you’re a thrower, moss stitch will wear you out.

Haven’t done much knitting lately, though. I haven’t mastered knitting and reading at the same time, yet. I finished the last book in the Familiar Spirits series by R. Cooper and the last book in Eliot Grayson’s Mismatched Mates series. And I reread one of the books in Megan Whalen Turner’s Thief series (6 books).

There’s a new C. S. Harris Sebastian St. Cyr book coming out in April and a new Foreigner book by C. J. Cherryh coming out in October. Oh, joy!

In The Old Days

We have some moving scenery out here in the flatlands. Monday week ago, it was moving about 35 mph and was Oklahoma-bound. We had a real howler. The trees outside my window couldn’t make up their minds between Martha Graham and Twyla Tharp. How brown was my sky? Medium tan on the horizon fading upward through pale beige to ecru/eggshell up top from the sun glare. It blew again yesterday and today, but only about 22 mph. We usually get these blustery days in March, but we’re getting them early this year, apparently .

Days like these take me back to walking home from elementary school. That was back in the 1950’s, before the farmers learned “sand fighting” techniques. Walking home through a sand storm, when the wind gusts were strong enough to knock you off balance if they hit you broadside. The air would be gritty and smell like dusty ozone. There was a park about halfway between the school and home that was bounded on the west by Orlando Avenue and on the east by Nashville Avenue, on the north by 40th street and on the south by 42nd street, which I crossed at a long diagonal, corner to corner. (In my town, north/south streets are alphabetical from east to west and east/west streets are numerical from north to south.) That was the challenging bit, crossing the park. There were no houses or fences to break the wind. It would slap me around and lull me into leaning into it, then fake me out by dropping abruptly to catch me off guard and make me stagger. We stayed with the neighbor lady after school til mom came home from work. Although she had three girls and I had a younger brother, our ages were staggered such that I never got out of school at the same time as anybody else. I always walked home by myself. There was a playground in the park, but I never stopped to play on it, not in all of the 6 years I went to that school. I always walked straight home. After we had a blow, there would be a rime of powder-fine dust along all the window sills and top sashes, the sugar would be slightly dingy. The air would have that dry, dusty smell for days as the fine dust settled out of the air.

This choice quote from one of the “homesteading” YouTube channels I follow: “I’m going to stick stuff everywhere until I run out of places to stick stuff.” Story of my life! LOL.

Mom seems to hear pretty well on her new phone, which is a relief. It has a better speaker and more volume. I’ve got some mail I need to take over as well as a couple of tubes of toothpaste as she’s about to be out of toothpaste again. Tomorrow.

Finished another hat. The turquoise one is made from the same pattern as the green one, only instead of using yo (yarn over) to do the increase, I used kfb (knit front and back). The yo produces an eyelet and gives a lacier effect. The kfb makes a tighter fabric without the eyelets.

There’s a lady in the knitting group that wanted to learn cables. I did the second hat to show the difference between twisted cables (blue) which have two strands, and braided cables (pink) which have three. When you work cables, you are literally changing the order of the stitches on the needle. You pull some off the left needle onto a cable needle, work the stitches behind them, then put the stitches on the cable needle back on the left needle and work them. Whether you held those cable stitches behind the work or in front of the work (cross in front, or cross behind) when you worked the stitches behind them determines what the fabric looks like. The instruction for a cable cross is “C(number)” followed by “F” or “B” (Front or Behind).

On the blue hat, I worked the cables over six stitches against a 4-stitch reverse stockinette “ground” (which makes the cables stand out). Since a twisted cable has two “strands,” each strand is 3 stitches. The (number) in the instruction is the number of stitches in a strand. That last letter (F or B) tells how the strand crosses — in front or behind. On the blue hat, the cables that twist to the left only use C3F crosses. The cables that twist to the right only use C3B crosses.

The difference between the twisted cable and the braided cable is the number of strands. On the pink hat, the braided cable is worked over 9 stitches, which gives three strands of 3 stitches each. Think how you braid hair. The right strand crosses over the middle one, then the left strand crosses over the middle one. To accomplish this in knitting, you alternate a front cross with a back cross, but because you’ve got three strands in play, you’ve got to offset the back cross because you’re not only alternating crosses, you’re alternating the strands that cross. So across a braided cable of 9 stitches, your first cross would be C3F, k3, — you’re crossing the first (right side) strand over the middle strand, with that “k3” being the left strand. The second cross is the cross of the left strand over the middle strand but because knitting, in order to do that, you have to cross the middle strand behind the left strand (C3B), and you’ve got to get past the first strand to do that, so the second cross is k3, C3B. You don’t need to see a picture of the finished article to know what kind of cable you’re doing. All you have to do is look at how the crosses are written in the pattern.

When you knit something where the bind-off is on the knitting — like the sleeves in a top-down sweater, or the ribbing on a top down hat like the kitten hat, I like to use a variant of that bind off where you knit two stitches together, put the resultant stitch back on the needle and knit it together with the next stitch.

This works fine on stockinette but on ribbing, it doesn’t look right. What I like to do is after I’ve knit the two together, I look at what the next stitch is. If it’s a purl, I bring the yarn forward before I put that stitch I just worked back on the left needle. Then I purl the two together. Here’s the finished kitten hat for a baby.

Periodically, I like to mortgage my mythical firstborn son so I can pick up half a pound of brisket at the deli in Market Street. This works out to four or five sandwiches’ worth. Now and again I can come across the tanduri naan made in a “sandwich round” form which, oddly enough, makes an excellent sandwich. Chop up some brisket and give it a 35-second zot in the microwave. Get one of those “beefsteak” tomatoes that one slice will cover the bun, and put mayo on one piece of bread followed by a slice of tomato. I put tartar sauce on the other slice of bread because I like the pickles+beef taste combination, and then put the chopped meat on and amalgamate the sides. Serious nums! Of course, the portions of the meals Carillon provides are quite generous and it’s not unusual that if they’re serving ham or roast beef, I’ll have meat left over that’s suitable for sandwiches. That was the case today. I had two sandwiches for my meal, one of brisket and one of leftover roast beef from a meal earlier in the week.

The Slightly Miffed Hatter

Not mad, just mildly disgruntled. Coming home from visiting mom, inserted my key card to open my front door and . . . . zip. Fortunately, I’ve gotten in the habit of never leaving the apartment without my phone and my keys in my pocket. Called security. His key worked just as fine as frog hairs. Mine (neither of mine!) got a brief flick of red light and accomplished nothing. Zilch. Zipola. By then it was 4:30 in the p.m. Called down to the front desk, got them to make a new set of keys. Fortunately, I know my neighbors, so when I went out Tuesday (trolley in tow) to knitting group, Michaels (guess what I bought there!) and then Market Street, I could leave my door nearly closed but not latched, so I wouldn’t have to wait out in the hall with a trolley full of groceries, etc., for security to come open my door for me. I was in Market Street when the Front Desk called to let me know my new key cards were ready.

We ordered mom a new phone, not exactly smart, but of average intelligence. It’s a little Nokia. She can text on it. (she could text on the other one, but not as easily.) She says she’s not going to be texting anybody. I’m taking bets on how long she’ll hold out. Once she sees how easy it is to do, she’ll be texting. She’ll finally be able to text Jim S. during the Cowboy games. Joy will no doubt be unconfined. Three to five business days. Not here yet. Expecting it probably Monday. Considering how much snow places have gotten this year, if it gets here by Monday, I’ll be delighted.

The next hurdle will be getting mom to use the hearing aids with Bluetooth I got her. “Oh, but an audiologist . . .!” No, mom. At this stage of the game her hearing loss is past the point of “fine tuning by an audiologist.” Well into the brute force range. The new hearing aides can connect to her phone via Bluetooth, and hopefully she’ll be able to hear on her phone again. It’ll be an interim solution at best. Unfortunately, her hearing loss is getting to the point where nothing short of hooking the phone up to a bullhorn will help her hear a phone conversation, which is sad. She’s isolated enough already. Anyway, I’ll set it up for her with the numbers I have that I know she’ll want, and program the rest in when I take it to her.

How to tell you’ve “I’ll just do one more row and then I’ll go to bed” one time too many.

Working on David’s Hat. Need to do cable crosses and go looking for my cable needle. Not in the bowl. Not on my desk. Not under my keyboard. Not on the floor. Tore the world up looking for the durn thing for ten minutes. Then I realized where it was. (Exhibit A). I’d knitted off and left it. Time to go to bed. So, the next morning I go to pick up my knitting and realized there was something wonky about the cable I was about to knit. (Exhibit B) Realized I’d done a C3F when I should have done a C3B (crossed over right when I should have crossed over left). So I had to frog that cable back past the cross and re-do it. Sigh.

This is what I got at Michael’s after I’d run them through the ball winder. Intended to get just a few skeins, but when I got there, they were having a 50% off sale on all their yarn, so I was able to get twice as much yarn for the same budgeted amount of $$. Yes, Ma’m! Not shown is a take-no-prisoners turquoise colored skein of Caron Simply Soft yarn, which is already in progress. I’ll hat this yarn up and then start in on the bulky yarn I have in stash for guy’s hats. Guys do chemo, too, but ladies first.

I finished “David’s Hat” (what I’m calling that pattern in memory of David Crosby) but was not happy with that row of purl right before the crown decreases. Next one won’t have it and neither will the pattern.

I’ve started hat bags: I’ve put a 16-inch circular, a 24-inch circular and a set of double pointed needles all in the same size in a bag. I have a US 6 (4.0 mm) bag, a US 7 (4.5 mm) bag, and a US 8 (5.0 mm) bag.

Finished a swirly hat using yarn overs to make the stitch. Now I’m working on one that uses kfb (knit front and back) to make the stitch. (I’m using that rampant turquoise yarn.) These are such simple hats you really don’t need a pattern. Just figure your gauge, work out the number to cast on from your circumference measurement making sure it is a number that is evenly divisible by a number larger than 5, and decide how you want to make the stitches. If you want it to swirl to the right, you make the stitch at the beginning of the section, and k2tog (knit two together) at the end of the section. If you want it to swirl to the left, you k2tog at the beginning of the section and add the stitch at the end of the section. When you’re ready to do your crown decreases, you replace k2tog with k3tog. They’re sweet little hats, but they’d work for guys as well as girls.

I’ve been using that little bed table I got for mom that she doesn’t need anymore as a desk extension. I discovered the other day that my ball winder will clamp onto it. The table will become a permanent fixture, I suspect.

I am inching closer and closer to getting rid of the Windows 7 machine. Last night it wouldn’t power off and I had to “help” it by holding down the power button. Today, when I booted it up, it told me that I had an unauthorized version of Windows, which I most certainly do not. Dragged kicking and screaming to Windows 11. Yep. Any day now.