Stop Her She's Knitting!

If Only It Was Colder

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 20 Jun 2018 18:50:00 +0000

I have retreated to my basement to avoid the noise of the roofing crew. Oh my goodness the noise.

Let's talk knitting shall we. I really do knit so I don't kill people and so that I don't inadvertently kill myself with my blood pressure. Of course, sometimes it doesn't work quite so well as we will see below. But it all turned out in the end.

I love a knitting challenge. I am assuming that is why I like what is called "colorwork" knitting. For the non-knitters who hang around here that means you are knitting with more than one color of yarn at a time. In the case of the sweater that I just finished it meant that for most of the sweater I was knitting with two colors as one time and in a couple of spots with three colors of yarn. It makes me look a lot more talented, knittingly speaking, than I really am.

I had wanted to do a Damejakka Loppa sweater for a long time. I love knitting sweaters. Love, love, love. I was also determined to knit this sweater from stash. How hard could that be? I mean I have, in some senses, reached SABLE as far as my yarn stash in concerned. SABLE being: Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy. I knew that I was going to use Knit Pick's Palette because I seem to have a lot of that. So I dug it all out and started to arrange colors and I realized several things.

I didn't have enough skeins of yarn for the main color so I would have to order that.
I didn't like any of the other color combinations that I was finding so I might have to order a skein or two.
I didn't have the right color for the contrast cuffs and button band so I would have to order that.

So much for only using stash yarn. But I placed my order and then I realized that:

I hadn't read the pattern correctly and I was short on how much I needed for the main contrast color
I still didn't like my color choices.

Back to more ordering. Finally I was ready. I faithfully did my swatch, grumbling all the way because....I hate to swatch. I knit a bit looser than some, it's a Continental knitting thing, so I went down a needle size. And that is when I realized that:

I didn't have the right length of cable for the needle size so I would have to order that.
I didn't have the right needle size with the right cable size.

Once THAT order arrived then I was all set. I cast on and away I went.

Whoooosh! Before I knew it I was through the colorwork yoke and on to the miles of body. I was flying. But there was this little thing tapping at my brain saying something wasn't right. Something was off. I knew it and I didn't want to admit that my gauge was off. For the unknitterly of you, gauge is how many stitches you are getting to the inch. For some things, like socks and lace, I don't think that gauge matters all that much. But for sweaters, GAUGE MATTERS. It matters a whole heck of a lot. It makes the difference between whether a sweater is the size you expect or some other alien size. If knitters have any question about our gauge we like lie to ourselves and say things like...

"This will be fine."

"I got gauge with my swatch so it has to be right."

"I am sure that I can block this sweater to be bigger after I give it a good soak."

I was a half way through the body of the sweater when I finally sat myself down and had a good talking to myself. My gauge was wrong, even though my swatch was right. The sweater would be too small and no amount of soaking and stretching and blocking would make any difference. And so.....

I pulled the whole thing out. Oh the pain. Oh the tiny balls of yarn. But I knew it was the right thing to do. Sometimes gauge swatches lie to us. It was discouraging but what would have been even worse is to spend all the hours knitting this thing and then finding that it was too small. That would definitely raise the old BP.

I cast back on and got to knitting. Almost immediately I could tell that my gauge was right. The fabric just felt better. I made it through the yoke, I got through the miles of body, the sleeves when on without difficulty. And Monday......

My Damejakka Loppa was finished, blocked and ready to be worn. Of course on Monday it was also 93F so I quick put the sweater on, ran outside, had HHBL take some pictures, ran back inside and took the sweater off.

But Winter is coming and this is the first thing that I am going to wear when the weather is more cooperative. Now I am off to think about the next sweater to cast on. I have to use up the yarn from Maryland Sheep and Wool before I go again next year.

Do As the Doctor Says, Not As I Do

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 10 Jun 2018 19:32:00 +0000

Thought we were done talking about Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy? Nah, I am milking this baby. Well really not because I am tired of the whole thing but I still talking about it. The temporary heart condition that just keeps on and on.

OK, I have to be honest on this and say that I am actually feeling much better, almost my normal self. HHBL mentioned this morning that I am never actually “normal”. I resisted the urge to stab him with a sharp instrument because, well, he has a point. I am feeling almost myself because, for the most part, I have done what the doctor’s suggested I do. Go home and rest, take your medications etc. And I have been resting. Yowza I have been getting 9+ hours of sleep a night. And I have been placing my ever growing bahookie on the couch a lot, watching endless episodes of “Survivorman” and cringing when he eats bugs. Sorry but you just cannot convince me that a Bark Scorpion is tasty. I have been trying to eat healthy and I have been drinking an ocean’s worth of water. My taste for coffee has been a bit on the shakey side for some weird reason so I have been drinking a lot of tea.

Did you catch the part about the fact that I have been doing MOST of what the doctors said to do? Because there is one thing that I am no longer doing, even though my primary doc, the ever sweet and totally intimidating Dr. M-G tut tutted at me when I said I was not going to do this thing any longer. And I am also going to be honest and say that I called the cardiologist’s office to tell them that I was not going to do this any longer, just so they knew, even though I haven’t actually seen the cardiologist yet.

After 6 days I took myself off the beta blocker that they had put me on when I left the hospital. Listen to me well people, I will NEVER take another beta blocker. I know why they prescribed it and what it was supposed to be doing and I don’t give a rat’s hairy ass (sorry). The side effects made the actually taking of the medication something that decreased the quality of my life. I had the first dose of that tiny pill of horribleness the morning that I left the hospital so I really didn’t notice anything because I just felt generally terrible. But by last Tuesday it was clear that our relationship wasn’t going to last long. The first thing that I noticed but didn’t attribute to the beta blocker (until I did a bit of research) was the swings in my body temperature. This was not a hot flash, this was that my body temperature would shoot up to 100.4 or 100.5F. I could feel it rising. Then I would feel terrible. Then the fever would break, usually in the middle of the night and I would be drenched in sweat. Sorry to gross you out but drenched is the best way to describe it. Even after I had my murderous female organs removed in 2009 I didn’t have hot flashes like that. Mother of all that is holy I don’t have enough sleep wear to go through this. It was when the hives showed up that I began to worry a bit and I started to do some deep dive research into more obscure side effects. I had a whole hive of hives under my right upper arm that merged into one massive mound of itch the size of a 3x5 card. And then there were the hives all along my belly extending onto my back. Fun and itchy times. Add to that the intestinal issues and the general feeling all day of dizziness and disorientation plus general lethargy and I was done.

The last dose of that pill of ill will was taken on Thursday morning, after which I said, “ENOUGH!!” By Friday morning the hives were entirely gone, the dizziness and disorientation were gone and by yesterday my temperature seemed content to stay within it’s normal range. I still get tired by early evening but that is also resolving itself.

I want to be clear about this. Beta blockers are not an evil class of drugs. They help many people and many people take them with little to no side effects. Doctor’s prescribe them for many reasons that are different from my Takotsubo diagnosis and if you are on one you should do what your doc tells you. I am just a contrarian and my body is intolerant of some medications (sulfa drugs, ACE inhibitors and now, apparently beta blockers). But I also am a firm believer in listening to what your body is telling you. My body was telling me that carvedilol was not a good thing for me and so we have broken up.

Carvedilol it wasn’t you, it was me.

Oh who am I kidding, of course it was you. Thank goodness you didn’t cost all that much.

Heart, Who Needs A Heart

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 03 Jun 2018 17:35:00 +0000

Right now I am supposed to be filling my little Nonni heart with Sidney snuggles.....but that is not what I am doing....darn it.

This is so that everyone knows exactly what happened and so that I am not explaining it over and over. I am a lazy person like that. And if I have told you the whole gory story before, just skip this one.

For a long time it had been on the calendar that I would go out to DC to watch the grand baby for two weeks when TMO went back to work after her maternity leave. SQUEE!! Two weeks of rocking and snuggling and general baby overload. I anticipated. I cleared my calendar. I packed my bag. I planned the knitting to take. Just as an aside, I had more trouble planning what knitting I should take than actually packing my suitcase. I can always do laundry but the thought of not having enough knitting gave me heart palpitations.

HHBL and I packed up the Prius of Death and headed out on May 27th for relaxing Washington, DC. There might have been a bit of sarcasm there because DC is anything but relaxing if you are driving. I didn't need a car so HHBL was just going to stay an extra day and then go back to the Frozen NE Ohio before making the return trek in two weeks to pick me up. On the drive we came as close as I ever remember coming to hitting a deer head on at 75 miles an hour. That will make your heart go pitter patter (ominously as we shall see). We arrived safe and sound despite the suicidal quadruped and settled in to snuggle...and here comes her blog name.....Sweet Short Stack.

I mean, how could you NOT want to just kiss those cheeks!!

We spent part of Memorial Day at Mount Vernon getting our history lesson along with all the other people who thought it would be a good idea to go to a National Historical Monument on a national holiday. Between us we have many higher education degrees but sometimes we don't think smart. Thank goodness we got there early. Tuesday was uneventful. HHBL went home, TMO went back to work, TSiL was still home but I fed and snuggled and rocked Short Stack for most of the day. All was well.

And then came Wednesday. Cue ominous music. This next part is going to be long and I am sorry for it but we all know that I like to excessively use my words.

I woke up with a start around midnight on Wednesday with intense shoulder pain. I couldn't find a comfortable position. Finally I got up and took a Tylenol and went back to bed. I was able to doze off for a bit but at 3:45a I woke with intense chest pain. Oh for the love of Pete!! I needed my rest as this was the first day that SSS and I would be snuggling alone and I wanted to be wide awake for that. I lay there for a while and tried to just ignore it. It would not be ignored. So, I did what any self-respecting nurse would do, I got up and took another Tylenol and said it must just be because I was caring around a 13 pound baby for most of the day before. Surely that is it.

By now you must have guessed that was not it.

Finally I just got up at 5:30a, crept into the bathroom and took a shower, hoping that the warm water would soothe whatever this was. I was also ignoring the shortness of breath that I was having but if I was trying to ignore the very intense chest pain I might as well ignore this too. Things seemed to get a bit better (I can certainly lie to myself!!) and the day started for everyone. TMO went off to work, TSiL was getting ready to go, I was rocking Short Stack to sleep for the first of her naps........

And I just could not ignore the fact that my chest pain and shortness of breath was back with a vengeance. So, in the most apologetic tone I could muster I had to ask my son-in-law to take me to the emergency room. The last thing that I wanted to happen was to be home alone with Short Stack and have to call an ambulance. And that is what I would have had to do. TSiL is the most amazing and calm person in a burgeoning crisis. He stood there for just a second and then stepped into the breach, packed up the baby bag and the ergonomic baby carrier that has a name that I cannot remember and ushered all of us down stairs where Short Stack and I waited while he went and got the car and plugged in the directions for the large medical center 1.5 miles away. It was a long drive. TSiL dropped me at the ER door and went to park. I made my way in and explained to the nice person that I had chest pains and could they please do something about it? She told me to take a seat. When you are in pain time seems to move at a glacial pace. I am sure that it wasn't any longer than 5 minutes before I was called back to see the nurse but it seemed longer.

Emergency Departments all pretty much work the same. You tell them you are here. They invite you into the first part of the inner sanctum where they determine if you have earned the right to be admitted to the good place. If they determine that you have not earned the right they tell you so and send you home. The nurse did an initial history and I had the first of two ECG's (electro cardiograms for those who do not know or care). Then they sent me to wait in the "we aren't quite sure that you are that special yet" place for my test results. Again, I am sure it wasn't that long that I was waiting there but is seemed that way for sure. I was in a fair amount of distress. I was treated to watching someone being revived with Narcan and to someone else being told by the social worker that, yes they were in fact well enough to continue working and no the social work department was not going to give them a "note" saying that they could stay away from work and still get their welfare benefits. The little every day dramas.

Finally another nurse appeared in front of me, verified I was who I was and walked me into the inner and VERY busy part of the ED. And when I say very busy I mean that every cubicle was filled and the hallways and every available space was filled with people in beds and on gurneys. Oh man. The only reason I was put in an actual cubicle and not on a gurney in the hallway was because I needed to be on a heart monitor. As I entered took off the clothes requested and settled myself on the more than uncomfortable gurney I was treated to my cubiclemate ripping the ER resident a new one because no one was listening to her and she was in pain and it was just like the last time and no one was doing anything about it. Yikes. She did the same thing a couple of hours later and then checked herself out of the ED.

And then for the next 10 hours I was in the ED. I am not going to give you a blow by blow but here are some hightlights

medical history by a very earnest resident (we all have to start somewhere)
they wouldn't let me walk to the bathroom the first time so I had to use the bedside commode. Now THAT is a humbling experience.
chest pains that would not subside despite 3 nitroglycerin tablets and a nitro paste patch (I did refuse the morphine as that seemed a bit excessive)
feeling so shitty that I didn't even want to read or knit. THAT tells you how bad I felt.
being alone for 10 hours in the ED. I sent TMO, TSiL and Short Stack home. No need for the little one to be there and she is sort of tied to TMO.
finally talking to the cardiac resident, Dr. Khan, about what was going on. He told me that they were admitting me to the cardiac observation unit but they didn't have a bed for me yet (this was a hour marker 8 in the ED saga)
finally FINALLY talking to the cardiologist, Dr. Ertel, who said, "Well, I think we are going to escalate your case a bit and get you into the cardiac step down. You may get a bed faster that way."
Just at ED hour 10 they wheel me up to 4NE room 4

The rest of Wednesday was sort of like the first part of Wednesday except with a MUCH more comfortable bed and some food. They did put me on a nitro drip for a number of hours but that dropped my blood pressure so low that they stopped it in the middle of the night. By morning my chest pain was a 2-3 on that subjective "tell me how your pain is" scale so it seemed like that was some progress but there were still no answers. I did not sleep well but I slept a bit. Oh the noise!!!! And the damn phlebotomist who shows up at 4:30a, knocks once and flips on all the lights. Really!!

Thursday, or as I would also call it The Day of All the Tests and Blood Draws. I couldn't have anything to eat after midnight because I was scheduled for a heart catheterization but because I was an "add on" they couldn't tell me when they would actually do it (4pm it turns out). We started the day with an echo cardiogram, otherwise known as "let me smear all this gel all over your chest and try not to get it on the clean sheets". Fun times. BUT, the echo was the first test that gave the doc an indication that this might not be a heart attack.

Dr. Ertel and team (Senior resident Dr. Khan, residents, hangers on) arrived on rounds to tell me that the echo indicated that what I was dealing with wasn't a heart attack but something called Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy. It wasn't a heart attack (which was good), it was treatable and reversible, but it had to diagnosed through the process of elimination so I had to have the heart cath. Say WHAT! Follow the linky thing for a very good article on what Takotsubo is. We would be here for another week if I had to explain it. The thing that is interesting is that the onset of my Takotsubo might be tied to the very short and very stressful incident of not actually hitting the deer on the highway. Dr. Ertel also said that I could have small sips of water (praise the LORD!) and my nurse, Jill, brought me an orange Popsicle.

Ambrosia on a stick. I ate it with undo haste.

We don't need to discuss the heart cath other than to say good drugs make for good procedures. The only problem I had was with the 4 strict hours of complete bed rest afterwards. I mean, what if I have to go to the bathroom before 9pm I asked. Bedpan was the answer. I can hold it was my reply. Dr. Ertel appeared again (is he ALWAYS at the hospital?) to tell me that my arteries were lovely (well thank you!) so this wasn't coronary artery disease but they wanted to do one more test, a cardiac MRI. Have I ever mentioned to you that I get claustrophobic? Hmmmmmmm. Have you ever had a closed MRI? It is a claustrophobic's worst nightmare. 45 minutes in a magnetic tunnel of death where the noise is horrendous and the panic is always just below the surface. I had the tech put on MercyMe, I kept my eyes closed and I imagined Jesus right beside me. If you think I am saying that flippantly I am most assuredly not. That was how I got through it. And also not thinking about the fact that I really had to PEE!! Finally I was back in my room just about 10p and I elected to go to sleep (after peeing) rather than watch the second half of the Cavs-Warriors game. Oh JR!!!

By the way, I should mention that HHBL had arrived back at my side on Wednesday evening and stayed with me all day Thursday til he went home to bed and then back on Friday for doc talk and discharge. The man is the BESTEST of husbands and the rock that I couldn't do without.

Friday dawned. I actually got a bit of sleep but again Oh the noise! Oh the damn 4:30a phlebotomist with the touch of a gorilla! Finally Dr. Ertel and entourage arrived with the good news that it was Takotsubo and that I could go home with a lovely array of new drugs that I needed to take carefully albeit temporarily (bloodthinner, baby asprin and a Beta blocker). I was to see my primary physician and a cardiologist in the next couple of weeks and I was to REST and do nothing for the next week. We were out of the hospital by 1p and on the road home by 2:30p. I was amazed, and not in a good way, how little energy I had on Friday. Just taking a shower and packing up my stuff totally did me in. But each day is getting a bit better. One of the medications makes me a bit dizzy at times and the cost of the other medication about gave me a heart attack for real, but other than that I am on the road to recover.

I do want to take a minute at the end of this to say a big and heartfelt thank you to everyone at Medstar Washington Hospital Center. I know that you will never see this but your care of my poor little overly fat padded self was wonderful. To my nurses, Sheenali, Jill, Jennifer, and George, you were all kind and compassionate and knowledgeable, just as a nurse should be. To Dr. Khan and Dr. Ertel, thank you for answering questions and really for having the knowledge to know, right off the bat almost, that this wasn't a run of the mill heart attack but was Taketsubo which is something that isn't seen all that often (trust me to have something obscure). Washington Hospital Center is known for their cardiology care. The Lord put me in just the right place for this latest little adventure. Thank you again to all who were a part of my treatment, I cannot say enough good things about you!

Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy you are not the boss of me! (for long that is).

Maryland My Maryland

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 22 May 2018 22:06:00 +0000

Oh life, you are so crazy. Right now, at this very moment in time, I am in New Orleans. Guys, I have never been to NOLA! I am still surprised by that. I have been as far away as Ghana, Uganda, Rwanda, India, Peru, Australia. But I have never been to New Orleans. Heck, I spent 5 years in Texas going to school, and somehow I never got to New Orleans. I am taking pictures and banking memories for blogging.

But I have already digressed and we are only one paragraph in. What I WANTED to tell you about is Maryland Sheep and Wool. If you are a knitter or fiberist you may have heard of MDSW. If you haven't....

I am so sorry but we are going to talk fiber. And not the kind that is good for your diet and overall intestinal health. It isn't even fiber that is good for your budget. It is so NOT good for your budget. So, so, so not good.

So, almost a year ago, my friend Michelle for Crafty Flutterby Creations, who is also a KnitSib of long standing, asked if I wanted to help in her booth at Maryland Sheep and Wool. I thought about it for all of 5 seconds and said YES! I put that date right on the old calendar and periodically looked at it and contemplated fiber. I started saving a bit here and there so that I actually had a "fiber budget" to spend when I got a break. More on the fiber budget later. The first weekend in May found me in the car and on the way to the Howard Co. Fairgrounds in West Friendship, MD. Set up was Friday afternoon and it was hot, and windy and, well, it is on a fairgrounds where there is a lot of dust and straw and more dust and my allergies were all like, "Oh we are SO going to make you pay for this." They did make me pay for about a week after MDSW but I don't really care. All was set up and we had a fun time on Friday night with other knitters and then it was Saturday and back to the dusty, but thankfully cooler fairgrounds were I vended the heck out of myself. Sunday was pretty much the same thing with some rain thrown in. Lets just go to the pictures shall we.

There are two sorts of things that you are going to see at MDSW, other than the food, and that is yarn/fiber/crafting accoutrements....and sheep. Lots and lots of sheep. Barns and pens full of sheep of every description and color.

This is Easter, so named because....she was born on Easter. Clever that. She is a Valais Blacknose sheep and I swear she knew how to pose for pictures. She was working the barn like Kim Kardashian. And her fleece! So soft and cuddly. If I thought it possible I might have tried to sneak her into my suitcase.

And I also got to meet several women who I have known for a very long time but only on the Internetz. Cuz that is where ALL of the deep friendships reside right? But in reality Lola and Tina have been friends for a long time and I cannot tell you how excited I was to meet them in person. Please excuse my over abundant chinage. My wattle is genetic and must be born with grace and dignity. Who am I kidding, there are times when I look like a turkey right before Thanksgiving.

Also, I might have found my ornament for the annual Ornament Exchange. I was helping to set up the booth and looked down the row a bit to a booth that was two stalls down. And there it was. It is the only one that the woman made so it is one of a kind, because that is what "the only one the woman made" means. I am not showing it here but guys it is so stinkin' cute I just can't stand it. And now that I have actually put this up here I cannot then keep the ornament for myself. Sigh.

How did they know?? I needed another mug at Chez Knit like I needed a hole in my cranium. And yet, this came home with me because.....it called to me with it's siren song of pottery and I could not resist.

This is evidently a baby coffee plant. Someone walked by with it and said that she had bought it over in the plant area. She also told me that in about 5 years, if the plant lives, it should give her enough beans......for a cup of coffee. Somehow, the ROI on that doesn't seem all that appealing to me. I think I will stick with ordering my coffee from here.

Best. Yarn. Colorway. Ever. Dawn from Fairy Tale Knits is a genius. And she gifted me the skein so that is extra special. Now to think about what it wants to be. It has gone to live with the stash for a bit. Sometimes yarn needs to age, like a fine wine or Limburger cheese, in order to be all that it can be.

But let's be honest. Have you ever smelled, let alone tasted, Limburger cheese. There are not enough centuries left on this earth that will ever make that cheese palatable.

And do you remember, way up at the top of this long and rambling post, that I talked about my yarn budget that I had carefully planned for MDSW?

I blew that budget wide open in the first hour that I shopped. Yes, those bags of yarn represent ONE hour of shopping. One. Hour. And I went back the next day for a bit more shopping. Oh my stars and garters. Oh my aching pocketbook. Oh my smoking credit card.

I am not telling you how much I spent on this wool haul but just know that I brought back TWO sweater quantities of yarn plus various other skeins. When I started back to knitting almost 12 years ago I would have scoffed at the thought that I would pay $45 for ONE skein of yarn. I am not saying which of these skeins was $45 dollars but one of them might have had that price tag. My lips are sealed.

What is spent at Maryland Sheep and Wool STAYS at Maryland Sheep and Wool. It is just like Vegas, only it smells like a sheep.

Sorry. Not Sorry

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 31 Mar 2018 16:18:00 +0000

Gather up the heart medications folks because I am blogging.

So, it would seem that I took 6 months off from blogging. It wasn't really a conscious decision on my part. It was just that life. Oh life you crazy person. Is anyone even here anymore? Perhaps we will just take this as a reboot. StopHerKnitting 2.0 as it were. Yes, I think that is what we will do. That way I can tell you what has been going on around Chez Knit and it will be like we are old friends who haven't seen each other for an age. And I will attempt not to drop off the face of the earth.....again.

Really, I have thought about all of you (all 10 of you I would now guess) ALL the time in the past 6 months. I have thought, "Oh! I have to tell them about that." and then it never happened. Bad Deb. BadBadBad. The excuse that I am going with is that the fact that I currently have 4 jobs, three of which I can tell you about at the moment and one that I will tell you about later on, keep me pretty busy. That is my excuse and I am sticking to it. I continue to work part time for HHBL. Good thing that we like each other because we spend 5 out of 7 days in each other's company. There is a blog post in there somewhere about the work/life balance when you work for your husband.

Then there might still be the whole wedding coordinator thing going on.

Currently there are 6 weddings on the books for 2018 so the next few months will be busy. I always end up adding more as the time goes on. I do love weddings.

And now.........

We have added.........

A.........

GRANDBABY!!!

I will tell you all about that in just a hot second. OK, I will tell you now. Really, we knew about her "existence" when last I was here but there has been a total and complete media blackout on the whole thing. And I will not be sharing a boat load of pictures here because, well TMO and TSiL have asked me not to and I can completely respect that. But......

I am sharing just ONE picture because, oh guys, she is the cutest thing in the world. Cuter than bugs ears as Grandpa Pringle would say if he were here. It also begs the question as to whether bugs actually have ears. I will be off to the Googles later to check that out. Is there ANYTHING better than new baby smell.

Of course, within 12 hours of meeting her Pops she loaded the old diaper while sitting in his lap. Get a load (HAHAHAHAHA!) of that look of holy concentration on her face. She is DEFINITELY going to fit right in with the family.

That was two pictures. Sorry.....not sorry.

The other big news is that we have added another Son-in-law. Yes, Cartoon Girl and That New York Guy (TNYG) tied the knot last weekend in NYC. A good time was had by all, or at least by me. The setting was fabulous, The Museum of the Moving Image, which TOTALLY suits CG and TNYG.

Doesn't everyone Facetime the baby when getting ready? Does that count as another baby picture? Sorry....not sorry.

The DRESS!!! Oh the dress. CG has a very vintage style and that meant a vintage dress. I would give a good skein of Pagewood Farms yarn (ask a knitter, they will understand) to know the story of this dress. It was made, we believe, in the 1930's and originally had a train, which was removed to make the dress more her style. The turban was made from the train fabric. The owner of the vintage shop that she loves pulled the dress, all wrinkled and unloved, out of a plastic bin in the back. There was no going back after that.

Sorry....not sorry. It isn't a Quigg wedding without a Star Wars reference.

"Her mother....and I"

HHBL has his line down pat after this. But now we don't have any more daughters to marry off. Oh well.

TNYG started to cry when doing his vows. And then CG was crying. And the Elisha (the fabulously marvelous friend/officiant) was crying. And then we all were crying.

Weddings are for crying right?

And then it was all done and we went on to party the night away.

This is Elisha, the friend/officiant. She is mine now. I love her and I am keeping her. Please excuse my overly generous armage. I am a grandma now and that is a required thing. Also, wearing pearls is a grandma thing too. Perhaps I should also start smelling like talcum powder. Or am I taking this too far?

OK, this has gone on longer than I expected. It is Saturday and I have things to do, like finish another baby blanket, but not for The First Grand baby. We seem to have a bunch of family babies making an appearance in the next few months. SO fecund we are. Look it up. I also have a bit of lace knitting to finish because, guys........

I am going to MARYLAND SHEEP AND WOOL FESTIVAL in May (ask a knitter, they will explain it to you). I used all caps there so you can hear me shouting my excitement. It helps to have friends who are knit designers because Michelle of Crafty Flutterby Creations has asked me to go and help in her booth. This has been on the calendar for almost a year. I am so excited. I promise there will be pictures after the fact.

This blog post has taken me FOREVER. But there are just a lot of words that want to come out. I will be back.....I promise.

Analog is Me

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 22 Sep 2017 21:51:00 +0000

We live in a digital age. I know this, believe me. I shoot with not one but two big digital cameras. I edit all photos on a big computer with powerful software. I work for a software company that deals every day and all day with public data.

We all know that I love Instagram and Facebook and Twitter.

Don't try to take my iPhone away from me because I might have to cut you.

And my iPad. Oh my iPad. Bringer of documentaries on Netflix and "Grantchester" on Amazon Prime.

Dropbox, Evernote, Pepperplate, Ravelry. Digital, my life is digital.

But not completely. Not totally. There are still a few wild and woolly analog outposts in my life. There is the whole reading physical books. Don't get me wrong, I read a lot of digital books. I read a lot of books period. But I also read a lot of analog (for lack of a better term) books as well. I walked past a woman in CostCo yesterday and she was telling her teenager, who was holding up a book for her to see and possibly buy, "You can just put that book down. It is like, I don't know, 700 pages and you know that is about 659 pages more than I am ever going to read."

It broke my little bookworm's heart to hear that. I can't imagine reading anything and everything that I can get my hands on. I have been known to read the ingredients on the can of bathroom spray if I can't find anything better to read while having my...golden moment.

TMI? You can't be surprise. Surely you can't.

I know that when the grandchildren arrive and are old enough....they get books. Of course, they also get candy for breakfast, but that is another story.

So, there is a place I am going with this whole analog thing. I swear there is. There is a corner of my life that I have deliberately switched back to analog from digital and I couldn't be happier.

Crazy as it sounds (and my brother, who is all things digital would say it is crazy), I have never been happier with my choice to go analog with my Bullet Journal and research information.

I have always been a person who enjoys writing things down in a physical way. I have loved lists all my life. I was that odd person in college who took notes in class and then re-wrote the notes as a way of studying and retaining things. Those notes were a thing of beauty and allowed me to achieve an "A" in my Med-Surg nursing course.

Of course the fact that I allowed the Neurosurgeon I was shadowing to convince me, a nursing student although admittedly an overly competitive nursing student, to scrub in and assist in surgery (and by assist I mean that he handed the little instrument to me and allowed me to remove brain tissue) might also have helped in achieving an outstanding grade. I wasn't sure how things would turn out when I realized the instructor was looking in and seeing what I was doing. But that is another story for another time.

I can say with some certainty that at this point I don't see myself going back to keeping lists and to do things and planning pages and all the minutiae of my day to day existence in any digital form.

ANALOG FOREVER! is my rallying cry.

At least until I want to check my Instagram feed....of which I have two by the way.

The Mystery Box

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 29 Aug 2017 18:23:00 +0000

We all know that I knit socks.

This year I am participating in something called the "Box O Sox 2017 KAL"

What is a KAL you might ask yourself. Don't you hate it when someone smugly uses an acronym that you don't understand? If you are like me, you sit there and try to work it out in your head cuz you just don't want to ask.

Knit
A
Long

There, that wasn't so bad. Now if we were talking about a SPAKAL then all bets are off right? (Spin A Long, Knit A Long). Oh we knitters and our incomprehensible speech. Thank goodness you don't sit in on knit night with the KnitSibs. You might need a knitting dictionary as we throw around terms and phrases like:

"I am loving this brioche knitting!"

"Is that an SSK or a K2Tog?"

"The charted pattern took me a bit to figure out but once I got the color dominance down I was on my way."

Where was I?

Socks. Yes, thank you. The Box O Sox 2017 KAL I think.

What IS the Box O Sox 2017 KAL you ask yourself. Well, it means that as I go along in the year 2017 and I knit socks, after those socks are finished, washed, blocked, photographed and put up on Ravelry I put them away in a box and I don't wear them.

I know. It is hard to believe. Let me say that again.

I do not wear them. I do not put them into podiatric rotation.

There is a specific reason for this. It is sort of like a gift to myself. I knit 12 pair of socks, one for each month, put them in the box and then on New Years day 2018 I open the box up and there are 12 pair of socks that have never been worn. Welcome to 2018!

Since I think I am going to do this every year I actually went to Hobby Lobby and got a special box and decorated it. Who doesn't want a box that has Sock Monkey paper and Llama/Alpaca washi tape.

And we won't even talk about my current obsession with washi tape. We won't talk about it at all. Not a bit. Not even about the 3mm washi tape that I buy. Nope.

I see the box every day when I go into my closet. And I think about the socks. And I can hardly wait for New Years Day. Of course, it has been a really warm summer so I haven't worn any wool socks for 3 months. But I still dream about them.

New Years Day is going to be so good.

It had better be because NYD 2017 saw me laid out on the couch trying to cough up a lung with the pneumonia.

2018 you had better be nicer.

It's ALIIIIIIIIVE!!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 25 Aug 2017 20:31:00 +0000

Yes, folks.

The sourdough starter is alive. Let's talk about it shall we.

When last we spoke, I had finally been "starter shamed" into getting my carefully prepared, and at one time tenderly nurtured, home developed sourdough starter out of the basement refrigerator where it had been languishing, unloved and starving for............18 months. I had only a glimmer of hope that it might be resurrected. Yes, after I had done "starter surgery" and fed it, there were bubbles and hope raised it's feeble head. But, bubbles do not a sourdough loaf make.

And can I just say that basement refrigerators, while extremely useful in so many ways, are the place where things go to die. Just saying. I finally cleaned out several jars of pickling experiment that I had carted over from OCK, 4 years ago, and hadn't eaten (I am the only one here at Chez Knit who eats pickles). They had languished in the basement frig as sort of a pickling science experiment and they weren't getting any better. So I tossed them.

Where was I? Oh yes, the starter.

Well, last Saturday, after several days of feeding, I thought I might give the starter a try. I had found a recipe that seemed easy (my first mistake with sourdough!) and so I embarked. What better thing to do on a Saturday.

It was not a success. And when I say it was not a success I mean you could use it as some sort of weapon to bash someone's head in OR perhaps as a hockey puck, even perhaps a weight during your workout. Whatever your choice I would not have suggested that you eat it. HHBL was like, "NO, don't throw that away!!" But I love him too much to do that to him.

And I am a perfectionist. We were not going to eat that. But, I was also not going to be defeated by a jar full of little living organisms swimming in water and flour. I have opposable thumbs thankyouverymuch. So, I fed them several more days and looked at more videos on YouTube and looked at Pinterest (I have a love/hate relationship with Pinterest that I will explore some other time) and waited. And I realized something. The thing that I really didn't take into account when making that first ~~boulder~~ loaf is that sourdough takes a LOOOOOONG time. Not long in the making of the dough, that I can now accomplish in about an hour. Nope, the proofing takes 12+ hours and THAT my friends is where I had totally screwed up on the first loaf. I am a long standing baker of bread with packaged yeast. I fear it not. But, yeast bread made with those little packages, or in my case measured out from a jar, rises fast and sure. With sourdough you just have to make the dough, trust that it "feels" right and then let all those organisms get busy in the frig overnight, at least 12 hours or more.

So Wednesday evening, after dinner and before the Indians game, I got to work making my next batch. I did my measuring (measure with a scale people!!) and mixing, and autolyse phase, and adding salt, and slap and knead, and stretch and fold. Then I floured a surgical towel (another story for another time but just let it me known that I have enough of these to outfit an entire surgical suite) and put it and the loaf in a colander and stuck it in the basement frig for 14 hours. I pulled it out on Thursday, followed the baking instructions and hoped for the best......

Folks, I have made sourdough bread. And can I just say that it is amazing. I was so excited about it that I made another batch yesterday afternoon and put it in the frig and then really quickly got it baked before leaving to drop Coco off at the dealership (Takata airbag recall) and then scooting to the office.......

The sky is the limit from here my friends.

And we are SO having BLTs this week.

I May Have Killed It...Or Not

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 18 Aug 2017 19:28:00 +0000

I go through these phases. I think, "Oh I need to learn to do that!" Then I do it. Then I move on. Sometimes things "stick" and sometimes they don't. Knitting seems to have stuck. Scrap booking did not. Does anyone need any scrap booking materials. I have them.

A while ago I decided that I needed a home developed sourdough starter. I KNOW that I told you about it but for the life of me I cannot find the blog post that covered that. If I could just get my bahookie in gear and finish my spread sheet with all of my blogs over the past nine years I might have had better success than the whole floundering around and looking at years and trying to figure out which catchy title actually had the sourdough blogpost in it.

Where was I?

OH yes, sourdough.

I went to all the trouble of growing my own sourdough starter (it isn't that hard) and using it for a while but then....then.... I have no idea why I decided that it would be a good idea to store the starter down in the basement refrigerator. I know for sure that I would never have thought to throw it out. It had use and as we ALL know I suffer occasionally from a severe case of BIMNISD (again, there is a blog post on this. There perhaps might be more than one. I cannot find them. Moving on.)

For whatever reason, at some point I stored my starter in the basement frig. My upstairs frig is very small and space is at a premium so that is most likely the reason why the starter ended up downstairs. But the result of the reason is that the starter went down into the basement and then just sort of stayed down there like a college student who has come home without a job, languishing in the basement. You know it is down there. You know you should do something about it but you figure, "I will take care of that tomorrow." And tomorrow never comes.

Every time I had to put something into the basement frig or get something out of the basement frig, I would see that container. It would sigh and suggest I use it. It would squeal with delight when I opened the door and then groan with depression when I passed over it.

Do I anthropomorphize things too much? Maybe.

This is probably the time to give you just a bit of sourdough starter knowledge. As the starter sits for any period of time and isn't regularly used a black looking liquid will form on the top. That is called "hooch" and it is exactly what you think. It is alcohol which is really the waste product of the yeast in the starter. It is also telling you that the starter is hungry and hasn't been fed. You can just pour the liquid off and then feed the starter.

Yeah, my starter had a black liquid on it for at least a year. So very appealing and, lets be honest, just a bit scary. After a certain point in time I just preferred to act like that container wasn't even there. I see nothing and move on. We all have that lingering science experiment somewhere in the depths of our refrigerators. Don't tell me that you don't! OK, maybe Heather K doesn't. I have seen her refrigerator and it is spotless and organized. But don't the rest of you tell me that there isn't something lurking. I will KNOW that you are lying.

What happened next is really all the fault of YouTube. I started watching videos produced by Simple Life Homestead (blog). Here is their YouTube channel. Why do I care? Well because Michelle of SLH was Cartoon Girl's BFF all through school. Two more different people there cannot be on the planet and yet. Bonded for life. I have been obsessively watching their videos and got to the series on Sourdough starter and I remembered.....

Yesterday was not a day at the office and I was in the midst of one of my "make all the things" jags so I gingerly brought the container upstairs to the light of day. And I opened the container. And it was so disgusting that....I didn't even take a picture of it. That is how funky it was in there.

But I would not be deterred. Who cared if there was actually some fuzzy mold growing on the sides of the container? Not me. Mold is good for you. Just think Penicillin! Who cared if there was a whole boatload of hooch just floating sullenly on the top of the starter. That hooch is not the boss of me! I laugh in the face of unknown mold.

First thing to do was to drain off the hooch. That was just a pleasant job. Not quite Sam Tarly serving soup and cleaning poop gross (sorry all you non-Game of Thrones people) but it was still yuck! Then it was a matter of what to do with the sort of funchy growth on the sides of the container and the top of the starter. The starter itself was fairly solid, which I expected since it had been sitting for a long time. It wasn't dried out but was sort of the consistency of whipped cream cheese. It was also giving off a very "alcoholy" smell, also to be expected. I decided that the better part of valor was to just scrape off the top of the starter and then extract from the middle, avoiding the sides.

This is what it looked like once I had removed all that I thought was viable. Take a look at all the yummy stuff on the sides. All the rest of this was scraped out and discarded. Thank goodness!!

Then, because I am a nerd, I measured out what I had been able to safely extract and it came to about 1 cup worth of starter. I didn't want to use all of that in one jar so I actually then split it into two separate starters. Then, because I am REALLY nerdy sometimes, I weighed out each of the starters to see what was what. I came up with about 66 grams per starter. Then, because it is always better to weigh out your ingredients rather than just using a measuring cup (nerd alert again), I actually weighed out 66 grams of flour and 66 grams of warm water (times 2) and add it to each of the starters, stirred it around and covered them up. They did not smell all that promising.

The initial process was completed around 11a. I kept an eye on them all through the day but not much happened. I fed them each again at 8p, covered them with a towel and went to bed. And this morning........

It's ALIIIIIIIIIIIVE!!!

Bubbles, it has nice bubbles. That is good. And it smelled less alcoholic and a bit more sourdough startery. We might have lift off people. I discarded half of each of the starters, fed each of them with another 66g of flour and 66g of warm water before I left for work and I put them in a place that is warm and draft free. If they are in the least happy I may, just may, try and bake with one of them tomorrow. If not tomorrow then it will more likely be on Tuesday.

This must be how Dr. Frankenstein felt........ before the monster tried to kill him that is.

I will keep you posted on the progress but I am optimistically excited about this.

But now I have two starters and I really only need one.

Why Couldn't They Just Update It?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 24 Jun 2017 16:29:00 +0000

We all know that I love my technology. Well, all except for my actual to do list, where I have gone back to being an analog loving Luddite. And very happy I am with my modified Bullet Journal. But the rest of my apps that live on my phone and my iPad are part of my daily life. They all have a purpose. I don't like apps that I use once every three months or longer. That just means that the rest of the time they are sucking up space on my phone and I already have problems with using up the space on my phone.

But there is a problem with technology. It isn't static. It gets updated. They can't just leave things alone! Rude! The worst thing is.....when a developer stops updating an app that you DEPEND on and then Apple starts sending you little urgent messages saying things like,

"This app hasn't been updated in awhile and might slow down your iPhone!"

Yup, got it. I don't care if it slows the phone down just so long as it is doing what I want it to. But then comes this message. And then all bets are off.

"Contact the developer because this thing isn't going to work after the next iOS update!"

NOOOOOOO! Dang it times 20. Now, I am going to let you into a little something about me. Try not to be too surprised by this.

I like my world to be neat and orderly. I KNOW! Quel suprise! HHBL looked at me the other day and said, "You really just need to clean something out every day don't you."

Ummm, YES! I like order. I like organization. When I am stressed I organize something. It makes me feel all warm and comfy and like I have control over my life. Heck, I was stressed a bit last week and organized and cleaned out my already well curated closet and then put a rug on the floor in there. Then all I wanted to do for the rest of the week was sit in the closet and be happy. Everybody does this right?

One of my favorite apps is the one that I use for my grocery shopping list. I have this thing, you see, about wanting to know EXACTLY how much I am going to spend at the store. My resources are finite in this regard and I need to have some control. So for the last 4 years or so I have been using an app that I actually PAID FOR and that I love. My list is very detailed, depending on store (Giant Eagle, CostCo, Heinens), it is well curated and it has taken a long time to get where it is. And this morning........

I got the dreaded "Call the developer and make him update your app because it is soon to be toast" message. Huh, WHAT? It hasn't been updated in a while? Like how long? Well, it turns out it hasn't been updated for three years. That is like I am driving the Edsel of grocery apps in the age of Tesla cars. Crap. Just what I want to do on a Saturday morning is try to find another grocery app that suits me. My brain just about exploded when I pulled up all of the possibilities.

But I have found something I think will work. It gets great reviews. And currently it seems like it is updated with regularity. I actually PAID for the upgraded app. I hate to pay for apps but it seemed like it was going to be necessary. But now, now I have to actually redo my ENTIRE list. Oh the pain and agony of this. Before I even started on that little monumental project I had to weed through all of the items that they "conveniently" had already input into the app because SURELY I would need to buy Utskho Suneli (what the heck IS that?) or perhaps some Belgian Pralines (don't think so). Or perhaps I wanted to choose between Tampons and Internal Tampons. Hmmmmm, definitely a list that was made by a man. Tampons, by their very nature, are internal. I have never seen a tampon worth a damn that was "external. An external tampon just means that you sneezed really hard. Nor was I ever going to chose the option of "Beef liver" of "Calf liver". Not even if I was starving.

So what am I doing on this lovely Saturday morning in between hanging out loads of laundry on the line? I am getting my new grocery/shopping list up to snuff.

The struggle is real. And this is stressful enough that I am looking for something to clean out this afternoon. Anyone have a closet handy because all of mine are neat as a pin.

A Cautionary Tale

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 10 Jun 2017 03:31:00 +0000

Yeah, yeah. I know. Who am I. Moving on.

I am attempting to type this blog post on my ipad without using my right thumb. Do you know how difficult that is. It is even more frustrating because the reason that I have that lovely brace on is because I have been stupid. Too much computer work and too much concentrated knitting will get you.....

De Quervain's tendonitis.

Otherwise known by the lovely name of "Mommy thumb." Look it up. You will probably be able to type it out faster than I can at the moment. I am a very fast and efficient typist, when I have the use of all of my fingers that is. You don't realize how much you use your right (or left) thumb until you don't have it.

The worst part of this, other than the fact that without the brace on, when I move my thumb in a certain way it feels like someone is simultaneously trying to rip my thumb off and stabbing my wrist with a red hot poker....

I am unable to knit. Just saying that makes me jittery. I knit when I watch TV. I knit when I read. I knit to calm myself down. That means that I knit every day for some portion of time. That has never been a problem before, but then HHBL and I drove to DC for a conference, and I knit almost all the way there and all the way back. Plus I have been doing a lot of repetitive motions on the computer. All was fine it seemed. There were slight "twinges" here and there but I ignored them, idiot that I am.

Tuesday morning I woke up and oh Mother Mary and all the saints did my wrist, right at the base of my thumb hurt and moving my thumb in certain ways made me wince for sure. Same on Wednesday and then last night the pain was so bad that it woke me up several times.

So here I am, with a "thumb stabilizer" that I will be wearing at all times unless showering and washing dishes. No heavy gardening, no knitting.

What makes this so very frustrating for me is that I KNOW the rules of knitting self care. You knit for no more than 20 minutes before you take a break, put the pointy sticks down a d do something else for a bit. You do not knit in 2 hour blocks. Idiot.

Also, I cannot take any NSAIDs like Ibuprophen. I can take Tylenol but it doesn't have the anti-inflammatory effects. I am a whiney, knitter unable to knit.

Fear me.

What Does That Switch Do?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 17 Feb 2017 18:55:00 +0000

A post also known as, "I guess our whirlpool tub does work."

I know, you have been missing my little "this could only happen to me" posts. I haven't done one in a long time. Things happen, I just haven't written about them. But this one is a classic, although it doesn't involve rivers of water or clogged toilets. It involves our whirlpool tub.

I have a love hate relationship with whirlpool tubs. I am not, but nature, a bath person. I am a shower person. I am a short and efficient shower person. You can thank my dad for that as I wasn't always such. I was a typical teenager who took her water resistant transistor radio (if you don't know what that is look it up) into the shower so that I could sing along on the AM station with the top hits of 1975. That is I WAS that typical teenager until I routinely would use all the hot water in the tank. Then I was no longer that typical teenager because my dad said, "You can take as many showers as you want...but they can be no more than 5 minutes long. We all need hot water in the morning."

OK then, short showers it was.

We had a whirlpool tub at OCK, it came as a part of the custom house package. It was one of the few things that I didn't really make a decision on. It was there in the plans. It got put it. And in the 13 years that we lived there I used it less than 10 times. We had a well. Wells are tricky things. That tub used as much water as it would take to solve the California drought. Every time I filled up that tub I could hear my well gasping with distress. I will say that it is nice to get into a whirlpool tub after a long day of yard work...but still....the well guilt was strong.

And then we moved to Chez Knit. And there was another whirlpool tub. When we had Chez Knit inspected before the purchase, the inspector could not get the buttons on the tub to work. We just added it to the list of things that we would eventually fix. It wasn't a priority because there was also a shower (and remember, I am a shower girl.) In the mean time the tub was just the place that we draped wet towels and wet tee-shirts and a ledge to put things on and.....

You get the picture.

I occasionally used it just to soak in the tub with some epsom salts. I will admit that it is a good way to relieve some stress. And add a glass of wine and a good book. I am OK with this.

And then on Wednesday that all changed with one little question. HHBL walked into the bathroom, looked at this innocuous little timer switch on the wall by my sink area and asked, "Hey, what does this switch do?"

I am going to admit that I had never really investigated the switch. It looks just like one of those timer switches that you see in hotel bathrooms that turn on the "heater lamp" so you can be all toasty warm and live out your fantasies about being a rotisserie chicken.

What? No one else has that fantasy? Moving on.

I told him that I wasn't really sure, that I hadn't seen any kind of warming light in the ceiling and had dismissed the switch and moved on. So he turned the dial.

And the tub made a gosh awful noise.

Wait a minute! The timer switch is at the opposite end of the bathroom from the tub. They can't be connected!

Oh yes......they can.

We quickly surmised that if you turned the dial on the wall that the jets in the tub turned on, or at least we thought that was what was happening. There was no water in the tub to verify our tentative findings. But I knew the way to find out. It was too late to run a tub full of water on a Wednesday night so I had to wait until Thursday to put the tub jets to the test.

I filled the tub with deliciously hot water (a watched tub spout fills very slowly). I added my lilac scented epsom salts. I walked over and turned the dial for the tub jets....

Eureka! The jets bubbled the water with the same force that Old Faithful does.......I was all ready to get into the tub.....and then I realized that the jets hadn't been used in a LONG time and when they had been turned on they had spewed into my lovely bath water all the gunk that had built up in the them for however many years.

I was not going to get into the water that had black particles floating throughout it.

Crap.

So, I emptied the tub of my lovely hot water. I scrubbed the tub. Started the water again to refill and went off to do something else so that I wasn't standing there watching the tub fill. All filled finally.....and it wasn't all that hot water....because if you fill up the whirlpool tub twice in the space of an hour you will drain the water heater just a bit. But the water was warm enough. I was not going to be denied. I turned on the timer.

Whirlpool!!!! I didn't care if the water was lukewarm. I got in there and enjoyed the heck out of this gift that we didn't even know we had.

I am ridiculously excited about this folks. But I don't think our water bill (or the water heater) can stand nightly filling of the Bubbling Behemoth. But once a week seems feasible.

Oh yes. Once a week seems very feasible.

Bitty Bits of Blather (Volume 17)

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 21:28:00 +0000

In case you are wondering, I decided to number these little strolls through my mind. That way I know how many of them there actually are.

1.
Thank goodness, the Christmas decorations are all put away. Actually they were all put away a week ago. We had company for dinner on Sunday and I didn't want them coming in and seeing that we were still Ho Ho Hoeing at our house. Doesn't it always seem like it takes twice as long to take those things down as it does to put up? And ALWAYS, after you have put everything away and the boxes are all stashed back on their shelves in the basement, you look up and see something that you missed. Last year that was the string of "peppermint candy" lights that I had over the sliding door in the back. It wasn't so much that I missed them when taking everything down (they are hard to miss as they go across the whole top of the door), it was just that I left them there...for 12 months. Sort of my ode to West Virginia. And you want to know something.......

Not a single person who came into the house for that entire 12 months said a thing about the fact that we had greenery and Christmas peppermint candy lights still up in the kitchen.

This year it is a nativity scene that I put up on top of a piece of furniture and missed when taking everything down. I may just leave it. We will see.

2.
Oh my gosh the RAIN! It rained for two days this week and I had to drive through standing water in places where I have never seen standing water before.

But I am not going to actually complain about the rain because it could have been snow. And that would have been A LOT of snow. I will take the rain any day.

3.
Saturday is the first wedding on 2017. It is January and I already have 6 weddings to coordinate between now and August. This one is good sized, if you count 8 bridesmaids, a maid of honor and two flower girls. Yowza. AND the groom will be in uniform. They are the cutest thing. But of course I actually say that about all of my couples, even the ones who don't speak English and wear a sparkly pink dress. I say it because it is true. I don't think I have ever seen a less than radiant bride, even the one that got stung by the bee 30 minutes before the ceremony.

Always make sure that if the bride is allergic to bees that the photographer doesn't take her out into the field on a warm August afternoon. And if they do, just make sure that you have Benadryl handy.

I'm just sayin'

It is all in a days work.

4.
I am cleaning out my iTunes library. There is music in there that I have never listened to and frankly have no idea where it came from.

Has someone been downloading random songs into my iTunes library whilst I have been asleep.

I just wanted to use the word whilst.

I mean, there are random songs from artists that I have never heard of and after listening to the songs....I am not going to listen to them again. If I didn't buy the music, and believe me I am sure that I didn't, then I don't feel any obligation to keep it in iTunes, clogging up my very carefully archived music. And I do mean carefully. HHBL just shakes his head. He is evidently not as ~~anal~~ ~~obsessive~~ careful with how his library is organized. I mean, doesn't everyone make sure that artists are correctly reflected - Last Name, First Name.

Unless of course it is a band. I mean you wouldn't list ELP as Palmer, Emerson Lake would you?

5.
My cousin sent me the best thing (well really her mom, Carol, sent it to me.) Linnea and I had lunch a while back and she mentioned that she had been listening to oral histories recorded by her grandparents. Her grandmother and grandfather, my Aunt Margaret and Uncle Kenneth, many years ago sat down in front of a tape recorder and recorded 94 "episodes" of their life. That is a bit over 94 HOURS of history. Margaret and Kenneth were as cool as cool could be. Margaret was my Grandmother Amsler's oldest sister. They graduated from Wheaton College. They were missionaries for 10 years in Siam (before it was Thailand), she was an author, he was at one time the US State department's go to man on Thailand (he had traveled the length and breadth of the country). The stories that they would tell. And their house in DC. Oh, it had the one thing that I have never had in any house that I have lived in and something that I have always wanted.

A second back staircase.

But I digress. Linnea mentioned to her mom Carol that I was interested in the recordings. Carol graciously sent me a jump drive with 12g of recordings on it. I have the "Landon Chronicles" all loaded into iTunes. Now to find 94 hours to listen to all of them.

6.
So, I am experimenting with Bullet Journaling. Don't know what that is? I have been intrigued for quite some time with this and it actually fits well with how I like to do things as far as lists are concerned.

If you go onto YouTube or Pinterest you will be overwhelmed with all the artistic and fancy bullet journals. I have looked at just about all of those YouTube videos, believe me. I sat down and spent an entire day just immersing my self in the world of the bullet journal before I made the decision.

So far.....I am completely obsessed. I have given myself a year with this, it fits perfectly with my swing back to "analog" on my to do lists. A bullet journal really is just one giant to do list and brain dump all rolled into one.

I will give you a run down at the end of the year to let you know if I am going to be continuing with it.

7.
I can tell you that my Bullet Journal is in no way an artistic thing of beauty. That is the thing that would be very discouraging about watching those YouTube videos and looking at all the different, and frankly outrageously gorgeous "spreads" that you will find on Pinterest.

I am not that person and I had to tell myself, when I embarked on this journey, that it was OK not to have stylized hand writing and all the "stuff" and there is a lot of it.

Mine is simple and functional and I like it that way.

It Wasn't Just The River That Was Flowing

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 11 Jan 2017 19:37:00 +0000

Before I actually get into what I wanted to tell you let me say that the pneumonia has been conquered for the most part. The cough is still there but not nearly as often. The energy level is about 80% and my appetite is back, more's the pity.

Now on to the memories.

One of my big goals for 2017 is to get all of the things scanned. I may not make it as there are a lot of things. But I am making a dent and today I scanned some letters. I like to read the letters before I scan them and it was when I was reading this particular letter that I was flooded (pun intended as you will see) with memories.

I want you to take a look at the picture below. It is two snippets from a letter that Mimi wrote to her parents, Grandma and Grandpa Pringle, in May of 1974. I had to do some date figuring because the letter didn't have a year on it but since I know it was written in May of my 8th grade year, 1974 is what I came up with.

Take a good look at the picture and read the second part of the letter closely.

She wrote that there was "much woe" from having to come back three days early from our week long "outdoor education" 8th grade trip. Ummmmmmm, I am not sure who she talked to that she got the impression of woe at being back......

But it wasn't me.

I still VIVIDLY remember that trip. Every single aspect of that horrible, horrible trip.

Did I tell you that the 1.5 days that we were at that awful camp were horrible beyond measure? I wanted to make sure that you knew that because.....it was horrible.

And I am going to tell you why it was horrible in all it's horrible detail. But just to warn you, I will be talking about like teenage girly angsty things....and periods.

Yes, I said PERIODS. Aunt Flo. Mother Nature's revenge.

THE RED TIDE.

I was not what you would call an adventurous teenager. I didn't like things out of my comfort zone, and my comfort zone consisted of a book, a comfy chair and headphones on my head so no one bothered me. If you threw is a big bowl of black olives you might not even see me for days. I was shy. I was so very, very insecure. I had body issues out the wazoo. I was a mess. My best friend was sunny and vivacious and had straight blonde hair. She could TALK TO BOYS without stuttering. Oh I wanted to be Nancy in the worst possible way. But I was not. The thought of going on a week long trip with the rest of my 8th grade class, most of whom I would be too shy to talk to, was agony. But there was no way to get out of it. We all had to go. So we went.

I remember arriving at the camp...and it was raining. The anticipation of outdoor activities in monsoon like weather does not a happy teenage girl make. The boys went to their side of the camp, which was over the bridge that spanned the gently flowing stream (more on that later.) We girls went to our cabins, which happened to be on the same side of the camp as the dining hall, which I remember thinking was at least one good thing. I did like my food. I don't remember who I was "rooming" with but I don't think it was Nancy or Julie or Jodi. Any of those girls would have calmed my anxiety a bit as they were my "peeps" before the word meant anything other that the noise that a chick makes. I just remember sitting on my bunk, all squishy from having to run through the rain and wishing to be home. But I pushed on cuz I don't think they would have let me drive the bus home on my own, even if I had known how to get home.

Tuesday morning dawned...and it was raining, and I don't mean just a gentle sprinkle. I mean rain like you should see Noah going by any second. Torrential rain. Which we had to run through to do things like, go to the bathroom and take a shower. Not that ANY of us were going to take a shower with any of our 8th grade friends. Are you NUTS! That would mean that we would actually have to disrobe. Not happening. I didn't even bring any soap. Hygiene is overrated.

And it was about the time right after breakfast, when we were all soaked and squishy and muddy and wondering what the heck we were going to do, that I realized......

Other parts of me were squishy that should have been squishy. I had started my period. And I hadn't brought any "supplies" with me.

You might be asking yourself why I hadn't prepared for this thing that happens with great regularity. If you are asking this then you have never been a teenage girl. I had a hard time remembering to take a shower on a daily basis let alone count out my cycle, mark it on a calendar and then make a notation as to when it was likely to come around again and assault me. You might also be saying to yourself, "Well, you could have just asked your friends or the teachers if they had any supplies." And again I say that you have never been a teenage girl, especially a shy one. I wouldn't have been able to even get the word "tampon" or "pad" out of my mouth when standing in front of someone in authority. Gads!

But, the one thing I could do was improvise.

1. I would change my underwear.

2. A fairly decent "pad" can be made from toilet paper. The only problem with that is that it doesn't want to stay in place as you walk. You have to walk with little mincey steps and grip that sucker with your lady parts or it slides out of place. Also, you have to change it fairly frequently.

3. I would wear my very dark blue overalls for the entire 5 days. "Accidents" would be less noticeable I was hoping.

4. I would feign death before getting up on a horse. Enough said.

And the rains continued to fall. And fall. And fall. And as the rains continued to fall, that gentle little creek between our side of the camp and the boys side of the camp was not so little any longer.

Tuesday night came and went, damp in many places, and Wednesday morning arrived....and it was still raining. Can I say that the one good thing about all of the torrential rain is that we had to do inside things. No horseback riding ensued. No hiking in the woods. A small glimmer of goodness.

But it soon became apparent that things were not going to be even moderately good for long. Aunt Flo was in high gear. And the river kept rising. I remember standing on the girls side of the camp along with all the others of the female persuasion, gripping my improvised pad with my lady parts, and watching as the now raging river slowly demolished the bridge between the two sides of the camp. Hmmmm, that isn't good.

And that put paid to the "Outdoor Education" week. If I remember correctly, the boys had to actually pack up their stuff and hike out of the woods to a road where they were picked up.

I packed up my stuff, made a new lady pad to celebrate going home early, and got on the bus. If it wouldn't have caused too much talk, I would have kissed the ground in the Edison Jr. High School parking lot when we got back.

And you can bet that after that little fun time I ALWAYS had supplies with me.

ALWAYS.

Pneumonia Diaries: Day Three

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 04 Jan 2017 21:07:00 +0000

Otherwise known as: Maybe I shouldn't have gone to the office today.

Really, there wasn't much of a choice on that one. I can work from home a great deal of the time. Have computer, will work. But there are some duties that can only be done while in the office. Bills like to get paid. Checks cannot be cut at home is all that I am saying. So, HHBL and I went to the office this morning.

And now I am home and back on the couch. Baby steps to health Deb, baby steps.

Pneumonia, you are a beeyotch! And Sir Super Wicked Cough, I hate you.

I did have a bit better night's sleep last night. And by that I mean that I didn't have to get up and sleep in the chair, although I thought about it a time or two. Sustained slumber was not achieved. I was propped up on pillows like a Victorian heroine just to see if that would help a bit. I did not like it. I am very particular about how my pillows are positioned and fluffed when I am sleeping. Ask HHBL and he will tell you. This sleeping on multiple pillows is not great for optimal sleep for me, and I am not entirely sure that it helped the cough all that much.

Am I whining? I don't care.

So I will most likely spend most of the day tomorrow on the couch as all of the Christmas decorations laugh at me. I wonder if I just covered everything with sheets and left them til next year would anyone notice?

So, in the immortal words of Bob Wiley from What About Bob?, perhaps one of the funniest movies that I have ever seen, "I'm baby stepping! I'm doing the work!"

Pneumonia Diaries: Day Two

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 03 Jan 2017 21:13:00 +0000

Otherwise known as the night I slept in the recliner.

First off, I have to say that I think that I am making progress on the getting better front. Thank goodness for good drugs. But I can only say that in the last couple of hours. I am still running a low grade fever, day 7 in the feverliciousness of my life, but it is in the low 99's so there is some progress.

The cough may actually be a bit better. Or it may just be that I am not trying to sleep. Who knows. I choose to think that it is getting better thankyouverymuch. And right after I wrote those fateful words I got up and moved around a bit, slowly walking down to get the mail, and that triggered a monumental coughing fit where I ignominiously peed my pants a bit.

Just keeping it real.

Now if I could just get a good night's sleep then we might actually see some good progress. I haven't had a solid night's sleep in 7 days, cooresponding exactly to the arrival of Mr. High Fever and his cousin Sir Super Wicked Cough. Somehow coughing during the day is an inconvenience but not life altering. But when you have a coughing jag at night it takes on an entirely different meaning in life. Supine is not the best bodily position for the coughing up of a lung. And my brain is so tired at the moment that I actually had to look up the word "supine" just to make sure that I had used it correctly.

Last night was a very bad night. I will start off by saying that I slept as one who is dead from 9p-12a. Don't remember a thing. Don't remember HHBL coming to bed. Nada. But sometime after midnight I got up to answer nature's call and all heck broke lose.

I got back into bed and hacked a bit and then hacked a bit more and about that time it occurred to me that maybe I should just get up and try to sleep in one of the recliners, upright rather than thrashing around in bed trying not to wake HHBL.

And then the mother of all coughing fits came to visit. Holy mother and all the saints in heaven! I actually got a bit scared because after it was all done and I couldn't catch my breath. Fun times. So I ended up in the recliner, covered by various blankets that could be removed or added as my temperature went up and down, trying to sleep. It was not a pleasant night.

So I am hoping that the antibiotics have kicked in enough today that I don't have to ~~sleep~~ doze in the recliner tonight.

But I am not holding my breath.

Literally, I am not holding my breath. I am short of breath already and need all of it that I can keep.

And the Diagnosis Is.....

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 02 Jan 2017 15:57:00 +0000

So, do you remember me telling you that I hadn't been feeling all that well. And that I had run a temperature on Wednesday of 103F, which for an adult is more than a bit high.

Well, High Fever didn't go away. He didn't go away and actually he asked his brother, Super Wicked Cough, to come and hang out along with their cousins, No Energy and No Appetite. It has been a fun few days. I went to bed on New Year's Eve at....9:30p, that is how bad I felt and how badly Ohio State was losing. HHBL watched the rest of the game, a movie and the ball drop all by himself.

The cough has really been the worst part. It is relentless, especially at night after I get up to use the bathroom. I am 56 after all and it is a rare occurrence to sleep through the night. But 30 minutes of coughing after getting up does not a good night's sleep make.

And then there is High Fever's sister, Miss Shortness of Breath--or as I like to call her, the SOB--that showed up yesterday. Fun times. I took a 1/2 mile walk in the afternoon and thought I might have actually killed myself in the process. So finally I knew it was time to see someone. Which meant that rather than bother my doctor, I went to the CVS Minute Clinic this morning to see the nurse practitioner. She took my history, listened to my lungs, took my temperature, looked me in the eye and said......

Pneumonia. Upper lobe, right lung.

Oh goody goody gumdrops.

Actually, it wasn't as much of a surprise as you might think. I suspected as much so it was sort of comforting to know that I was right, even as I was trying to cough up a lung and had to put my head down because I was dizzy.

So, two prescriptions and several over the counter medications later I am home, putting my feet up and still trying not to cough up a lung.

2017 this is NOT the way to start out our relationship.

Bitty Bits of Blather - The 2016 in Review Edition

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 31 Dec 2016 15:34:00 +0000

I felt this overwhelming urge to do some bitty bits of blather. I have missed our time together going over the minutiae of my life in tiny bite sized pieces.

Let's do this more often shall we?

1.
I think I posted around 500+ times on Instagram this year. Not bad.

Or really bad depending on how you look at it. Unlike the Kardashians, none of my photos came with pouty trout mouth and I was fully clothed the entire time. You can thank me later.

Here are some of my favorites

2.
I watched approximately 125+ movies/documentaries. It is an approximate number because, even though I am ~~anally retentively obsessed~~ fairly careful about keeping a list of the movies I have watched, I do occasionally forget. That list also includes several TV shows that I might have binge watched, including The Great British Baking show.

Can I just digress for a minute to say that without Mary Berry, Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins, the show is now dead to me. I will just have to live on re-watching the first 7 seasons.

3.
I managed to read 71 books this year. That is a grand total of 22,635 pages. And I can tell you that because of the fabulous "AutoSum" feature in Excel.

Thank you Microsoft.

My favorite books of the year were:
On Living by Kerry Egan
Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus by Nabeel Qureshi
The Crime of the Century by Dennis Breo
Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny
Junk by Alison Stewart
The City of Mirrors by Justin Cronin
Girls & Sex by Peggy Orenstein
Valiant Ambition by Nathaniel Philbrick

4.
2016 was again The Year of the Wedding. I coordinated/attended/attended & coordinated 11 weddings. There was everything from the bride who wore a sparkly pink dress, had no attendants and could not speak English to the wedding with 10 bridesmaids. Yowza. Here are my favorite pictures from those days.

5.
There was some knitting that happened. That cannot be a surprise to you. I knit a total of 15 pairs of socks. The evidence is below, although this is not all 15 pairs.

This picture is short at least two pair of socks because those went to Mimi. She always appreciates them and knows how to take care of them.

As in years past I have already taken out 12 skeins of yarn from THE STASH, put them through the ball winder, put them in brown paper lunch bags, stapled the tops shut and labeled them with the months of the year. The January 2017 Mystery sock is sitting with my sock knitting bag just waiting to be cast on tomorrow! Below are the yarns that will become socks in 2017. That is not to say that these are the ONLY skeins that will become socks. It is just that these are the planned skeins.

There was other knitting going on as well. Three baby blankets, several cowls, a number of hats, at least one lace project as well as ongoing work on the Never Ending Sock Yarn Blanket and a couple of other things.

Speaking of knitting, as we are, today I will also evaluate the current "WIPS" (works in progress for the non-knitters) sitting in my UFO (unfinished objects) pile and make the decision as to what projects will actually continue into the new year. I always swore that I would be a momonogamous knitter, only working on one project at a time.

I am obviously a big fat liar.

There are projects that you start with great intentions and enthusiasm and then you just lose interest. It is better to just frog and put the yarn back in the stash for another day. I know that there is at least one knitted vest in there that is half finished and will never be finished because I don't like the yarn with the project.

Life is too short to knit something that doesn't bring you joy.

6.
The rest of today will be used with cleaning out and cleaning up in preparation for 2017. I am cleaning out all of the articles I had stashed in Pocket because I don't use that any longer and I am trying very hard to just delete things that I don't use on a regular basis. I have found that the digital age just makes it easier for some of us with hoarding tendencies to hoard but not take up any space that anyone else can see.

Yarn stash is never to be counted as a hoard. No need to look over there.

I will be looking through ALL of the iPhone photos that I have taken over the course of 2016 an eliminating all that don't really need to be kept. That would currently be 1149 photos that I have to go through.

There is a bunch of stuff to scan. There is planning to be done.

So many things to do before the Ohio State - Clemson game comes on tonight and I start stuffing my face with shrimp and beer.

7.
OK all, lets go out there and have a happy and safe New Years Eve.

Personally, I will be sitting around, sans bra (but with pants on) watching football and eating junk food cuz, you know, I was SO smart to schedule my annual physical for a week after the new year.

See you in 2017.

Gauge Lies

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 30 Dec 2016 20:37:00 +0000

I have been knitting for a while now. I am no stranger to the ways of the knitting Force. It is strong in me. Therefore you would think that I would know better than to cast on a sweater on a day when I was under the weather.

Did I tell you that I have been under the weather for the past few days? And by under the weather I mean that I produced a 103F temperature on Wednesday with a resulting cough that makes Chez Knit sound like a TB ward (HHBL is coughing too.) We went out to dinner with LaurenLeep and The Tech Guy on Wednesday and I remarked to myself as we were getting out of the car that I wasn't feeling quite "the thing" at that moment. You know those vague feelings of something not being quite right with your world but not sure what is wrong. Sort of like the lookouts on the Titanic right before the iceberg emerged.

Or not.

At any rate, dinner was fun as it always is. There was Italian food. There was wine. We laughed a lot. But every time that I got up to go to the bathroom, which was located in a rather chilly hallway, I was suddenly shivery. I sucked it up and persevered but the minute that we stepped out into the chilly night....I knew something was definitely wrong. Go home, dig out the digital ear thermometer, stick it in my ear and wait. You know you aren't going to like what it says when it takes an age to beep. 103F. How nice.

So yesterday I wasn't feeling so up with things. In fact I spent the day in flannel pajama pants, a thing which I NEVER do. No really, I always get dressed in the morning. But yesterday I put on my flannel pj pants and my big old Star Wars sweatshirt and I spent the day on the couch, reading and watching the TV and knitting. You know you are really feeling bad when the thought of going to the basement to measure the swatch for the sweater you want to cast on is just too much effort.

But late in the afternoon I oozed my way down to the KnitCave and measured the swatch and Bang! spot on gauge. If the term "swatch" and "gauge" mean nothing to you, just know that a gauge swatch is a small or big (depending on how much patience you have) piece of knitted fabric using the needles and the yarn for your particular project. If the gauge is "off" that will mean that your knitted garment will not turn out to be the size that you were expecting. Think of all of the hilarious pictures you have seen of "boyfriend" sweaters that some hapless knitter produced without checking her gauge.

When knitting a sweater "gauge" is the mantra that we live by. It is the word that can mean smiles or tears depending on if you did your swatch and if you actually listened to what it was telling you. I did two swatches. The first one said to me in big bold letters, "YOU NEED TO GO UP A NEEDLE SIZE!" I listened intently, went up a needle size and the angels sang. So, in the midst of my fuzzy fever ridden day I decided that it was a good idea to cast on the sweater, which is using yarn that my MiL purchased for me in Lima. I can't get any more of this stuff and so I need to be sure that the sweater fits me, especially considering the fact that I am going to steek it.

What is steeking you are asking yourself if you are not a knitter. Steeking means that I am going to DELIBERATELY cut my knitting right up the center. So counter intuitive to everything that we teach ourselves as knitters. But that is what the pattern calls for so I had better make sure that the size is spot on. Once the scissors do their job there will be no going back to reknit.

This is how far I got by the end of the evening. Oh how I love stranded colorwork. Knitting with two hands at the same time makes me feel like I can take on the entire world's issues and still have time for coffee and knitting.

I am a knitter. Hear me roar!

The knitting was perfect. I felt like I had adulted a bit in an otherwise lying on the couch kind of day. But, there was that nagging, maybe there is a iceberg dead ahead feeling in the back of my brain. Looking at those perfectly done colorwork stitches, I just knew that the gauge was off.

But gauge swatches never lie, you are saying to yourself.

Oh yes, they do.

I know what some of you are thinking. You are thinking, "I bet she knit that gauge swatch flat, not in the round. That will mess with the gauge." You would be wrong. I did swatch in the round (an entirely fiddly process that makes my brain crazy.) The only thing that I can conclude is that perhaps the gauge was a bit off because I am knitting with both my left hand (my dominant knitting hand because I knit Continental) and my right hand (which always knits a bit tighter.) That is my story and I am sticking to it.

I woke up this morning and knew that I had to check the gauge on that sweater and sure enough, it was off. And then I had to make the painful decision to.......frog it. To be fair, I did not frog it completely because that would mean having to re-knit that blasted K1P1 ribbing at the bottom. I despise K1P1 ribbing and I wasn't going to knit that again. But I did pull out everything up to the first round of colorwork, a lesson in carefuly measured movements so that you don't pull out stitches that you didn't mean to pull out, which I did despite being careful. I put larger needles on the cables and then had to go through the tedious task of getting all of the stitches back on the needles and fixing any mistakes I made when picking up stitches. I am not going to explain that last statement to those who are not knitters because I can already see your eyes glazing over. It was tedious and there might have been some language involved that I am not going to share with you.

Just know that in about an hour I am going to back to where I was when I so happily went to bed last night.

Just remember boys and girls.

Gauge lies.

Merry Christmas (One Day Late)

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 26 Dec 2016 13:14:00 +0000

Yes, I know, I am a day late. I have a reason. The house is full of progeny, that is my reason. We have lived in the current Chez Knit for 3.5 years now but this is the first Christmas that all of the progeny have been here at the same time. Thank goodness for 4 bathrooms! And a finished basement! And enough beds! It has been a busy few days.

I might have spent time baking bread (6 loaves) before everyone got here. Well, actually I baked three loaves thinking that would certainly be enough. But then we went through 1.5 loaves in the first 24 hours and only Cartoon Girl and That NYC Guy were here with us at that point so I began to be concerned about the bread usage, knowing that the other progeny love bread as well. So I baked 3 more loaves the day that TMO, TSiL, Shoe Queen and SlimJim arrived. Since Thursday we have gone through 6 loaves of bread. That is four loaves that I baked and two stellar whole wheat loaves that TMO baked. Yowza.

There were numerous games of Mah Jong. I managed to win one game, which is one more than I usually win. I seem to always pick the combo that means there are only pairs in the Mah Jong that I am building and pairs are a difficulty because you can't put them up on your wall using a Joker. At least this year I remembered that I cannot do that move. But it didn't help me win any more games. Did I just lose all of you? Hello?

Our Granddog Darcy is here to visit as well. She is the perfect dog. She rarely has to go out. Her shedding is no where near as momentous as Max the Magnificent's was. She doesn't bark and she rarely licks the floor. She did, however, figure out that if I am cooking in the kitchen and I then walk by her, she tries to quickly sneak a lick of my fingers just in case there is anything good there. Maybe I shouldn't have let her lick my fingers that had Tahini all over them. Just a thought.

There was a great deal of after dinner talk and laughter. NO POLITICS. Lots of wine. We went through the equivalent of a small winery's worth of vino. But really, what is good food without good wine. And we ate well. Shoe Queen and Slim Jim cooked a vegan taco meal one night. I am very intrigued with tempe. Then TMO and TSiL cooked an Indian feast one night. Oh the curry! Then we all participated in the meal yesterday. Oh the food! We have several food traditions for Christmas, one of which is that we have Nutmeg Coffeecake for breakfast. But, we also have vegans in the house and Nutmeg Coffeecake is not vegan. I am going to tell you that I am so proud of myself that I managed to make it vegan. There were just two ingredients, an egg and milk, that I had to substitute. Guys, 1 tablespoon of ground flax seed soaked in 3 tablespoons of water substitutes for an egg! It is magic. And I just swapped unsweetened almond milk for the regular milk. I was so pleased when it came out of the oven. And it tasted fantastic.

We managed to make Cartoon Girl snort on various occasions so life was in balance.

The perfect Christmas gifts arrived. I can see a marathon in my future. #itwasneverpersonal And last but not least. We managed to take a fairly good family picture. I felt like I was channeling my father as I would push the button on the camera and then have 10 seconds to run into the picture and get myself situated so that I didn't look like I had run into the picture.

Merry Christmas from the Quigg/Cudney/Cutherell/Barwegen clan. We hope it was a great day for you. Now I am off to clean out my refrigerator.

Forceable Blog Rearrangement

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 19 Dec 2016 20:30:00 +0000

Stupid work laptop.

Stupid Feedly.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

There, now I feel better....well not that much but I am getting there.

Monday, why do these things always happen on a Monday. Monday's are hard enough with all of the "well I guess I actually have to get up and put on pants today" and "yes, I guess I really should go to the office and be productive" stuff that you have to deal with after two days of not going to the office. I still put pants on mind you because, it is WINTER here, or almost. It was 15F when I got up this morning.

I put on pants indeed and a wool sweater and wool socks and a wool cowl. Of course I will take most of those off at some point during the day because I will inevitably have my own personal summer at some point. Never let anyone tell you that if you have the internal lady parts removed you won't have hot flashes. They will be lying to you. I don't know how the body figures out how to do this without all of the little female bits, but it has done so.

What was I talking about? Oh, Monday.

Monday is always one of my busiest days. There is always tons of things that have to be done and last Monday was no exception....so it should have been expected that on this particular day my laptop would say, "No. Sorry. Not feeling it today." It was slower than the line at the DMV. Outlook didn't want to open and when it did open it didn't want to stay open. Nothing wanted to work. So, the decision was made to jettison the old behemoth for another lap top. I work at a software company, believe me when I say that there were other laptops that were just crying out for a job. I grabbed the first one that I could find, which happened to be laying in plane view and said, "Let's use this one. That should be easy."

Famous. Last. Words.

It took HHBL two hours of his precious time just to get Outlook and Office up and running. If you think that I am busy that is nothing compared to his schedule, which currently runs about 70 hours a week worth of work. I spent most of the afternoon getting all of the things moved over to the new computer and downloaded and set up and thought everything was fine.....until I tried to use Feedly, which is where all of the blogs that I read for all of the works reside.

Feedly kept telling me that it didn't know me. I tried every which way to tell it that we were old friends but it was as if Feedly had suddenly unfriended me.

Me: But I am logged in on the old computer AND the iPad!!!

Feedly: That is not my problem. I don't know you. Login with Google and start all over.

Me: But, but, that isn't workable. All the blogs! All the stuff!

Feedly: Not listening. Here look, I logged you in with Google. You can thank me later because I know better than you.

Me: But none of the blogs are there! That isn't the way I login to get the blogs!

Feedly: LALALALALALA. Not listening

Me: Fuck (sorry but that is what I said)

I tried again on Thursday morning but nada. Feedly is telling me that I am dead to it, at least the email login that I have used forever is. Guys, I am religious about putting all of my logins for ALL OF THE THINGS into my Datavault manager, and yet, I have no login info for Feedly.

So, I finally decided just to reconstruct the blogs, painstakingly, slowly, into Feedly on the "new" laptop. And I decided that maybe it was time to just weed out all of the blogs that aren't really updating any longer. If the last time that you put up a blog post was more than 12 months ago......goodbye (says the person who went three months without blogging a thing.)

Have you noticed that less people are actually blogging these days?

I can tell you this because I eliminated half of blogs that I have been following. I felt bad about it, really I did, but if it has been 42 months since your last blog post then I think I can safely say that you are most likely done.

And, if I would routinely pass by your blog and say to myself, "Well, I will get to THAT one later." And you had 10+ blog posts that I just hadn't bothered to read......I said goodbye to you too.

My, my feedly feels so clean and streamlined. And I DARE Feedly to lock me out again.

Says I with fear and trepidation.

Ramblings

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 14 Dec 2016 21:56:00 +0000

OH my gosh guys, I really do miss you. I miss our little talks, one sided though they may be. I miss thought vomiting all the minutiae of my day onto your computer screens. All the stupid things that I do.

This whole having three jobs and still finding time to blog thing is not treating me well. I think, "Hey I should tell the few people that still follow me about that!" and then life walks up with it's steel toed boots and just gives me a swift kick and it never happens. Life you are a mean bully with yellow teeth and bad breath.

Whine, whine, whine.

Where was I.

Oh yeah, life. Do you know that at one time I actually thought that once the progeny went out of the house for good and onto their lives that I would have all of this time on my hands to be creative and do things and...

The cosmos (and probably you as well) is laughing at me. Big belly laughs of incredulity that I would ever think such a stupid thing. Life is just kicking my big fat bahookie and I am just saying, "Please sir, may I have some more." Maybe 2017 will be better.

I am thinking that I am going to rely less on pictures and more on words as we go along here together. So, if you are all, "but where are all of the pretty pictures," you might be disappointed. There are still pictures, have no fear, and I MIGHT have a new camera body that, if I wasn't married to HHBL I might marry it. Oh my word and all the stars in heaven it is beautiful and heavy and doesn't play well with half of my lenses so I might have to purchase a new lens next year.

Maybe I will stick with iPhone pictures, of which I take a vast amount. That cannot be a surprise to you. If it is you haven't been here for very long.

Here, this is me riding an indoor carosel with a bunch of other adults, all with drinks in our hands. I lead a wild and crazy life during the holidays. Actually, this was at a holiday party that HHBL is invited to that I also go to as they are a client of mine. The intersections of life.

I also just need an outlet for all of the words and feels and you get to be it. Well, you and my journal which gets ALL OF THE FEELS. Don't you feel privileged! The one thing I won't talk about is politics.

Can I tell you something......

I didn't tell ANYONE who I voted for (except HHBL who I tell everything to except for how much I spend on yarn). And I am not going to tell anyone who I voted for. And I am thinking that this will be my rule from now until the day that the Lord calls me home. Politics = a toxic pool of swamp water that someone is going to get their panties in a wad about. So not worth it.

So, all the words to say that I am still here. I will try to do better. I just don't think that it is time for me to pack it all up and go home.

Unless you tell me I should.

Please Tell Me the Summer is Over

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 08 Sep 2016 21:41:00 +0000

It is the 6th 7th 8th 9th of September and obviously I started writing this blog post several days ago. I am also hoping against hope that Summer is sort of officially over. Yes, I know that is just a nutty thing to say, considering that I live in the Frozen Northeast Ohio where the winter is long. We only have 66 totally sunny days A YEAR around here. The total number of days when we see the sun of any kind is only around 167. Clouds like us here.

But I am just about done with summer. I know this because I look at all of my flowers and think, "It isn't THAT hot out (94F yesterday). I will water them tomorrow." They shrivel and dry out and all I can think about is putting in some Fall flowers....or not. Flowers, whether Spring, Summer or Fall, have to be watered and my watering mojo has gone with the summer.

Maybe it is just that HHBL and I tried to pack an entire Summer's worth of stuff into 48 hours over the Labor Day weekend. Believe me, it isn't like we haven't done anything this summer because we have. But we just had a busy weekend. Saturday I coordinated my last wedding of the year. I should say that my compatriot Marj and I coordinated the wedding because we really need two coordinators to cover all the ground. 7 bridesmaids. 2 flower girls. 5 separate sets of grandparents. 4 sets of parents. A cast of thousands. And a last minute scratching of the third flower girl from the program for misbehavior. She was only 14 months after all and there was no way that she was going to actually walk down the aisle. It might have been the whole manic running and screaming that sealed the deal. Or am I just being picky?

Because it was Labor Day weekend there were boat loads of things to do. HHBL and I elected to go to Cleveland Oktoberfest on Saturday evening, a mere hour after I arrived home from the wedding. My legs were not pleased with me. Just enough time to change, down some Tylenol and grab some $ for beer because, you know, OKTOBERFEST. Actually, we have found that the best deal for us is to buy 12 $1 drink tickets that gets us each 6, 3oz "samples" of the craft beers that are on tap in the afternoon and evening. We elect NOT to drink copious steins of beer from the large national brewery that sponsors the event because....we are beer snobs. I shall not apologize for my beer snobbishness. If I am going to consume calories in the form of beer I want it to be something that is worth my drinking time. Also, I will admit that I keep a list of the "Big Three" breweries and any smaller breweries that they have consumed and we avoid those.

I digressed. No surprise there.

6 of those little samples equals 18oz of beers with at least 7.8% ABV equals a happy evening.

And I might have eaten all of this. Schnitzel and sauerkraut and potato pancake. OH MY! I have a rather large love of sauerkraut so this sandwich was pretty much deep fried salty nirvana for me. It certainly stayed with me long after consuming.

I will spare you the videos of the bagpipe band which I made HHBL sit through. Bagpipes, my happy place. I can't explain it but the sound of wailing bagpipes just makes me happy. Just add it to the list of my oddities.

We were home in time to watch a movie (Fathers and Daughters, Russell Crowe, pretty good) and then collapse into bed.

Sunday. Church. Then......The Great Geauga County Fair, which will be a post all it's own because.....lots of pictures. Just know that I consumed large quantities of lemonade (a new thing for me this year), onion rings and 4H milkshakes. In all the years that we have been going to the fair we haven't gone on a Sunday. Definitely a popular day for a lot of people.

Home from the fair in time to spend a couple of hours on the couch trying to digest my consumption of total crap food and then back out the door to go to our last Blossom concert of the year. It was "Raiders of the Lost Ark" with the orchestra playing the actual score. We looked at each other and thought, "we might want to get there a bit early, just in case it is crowded."

Crowded! We were packed into the lawn like chickens in one of those trucks that you see on the highway. You know the ones with chickens stacked up a mile high, heads and butts akimbo. We did get there early, 2.5 HOURS early, had a small altercation with a rude parking attendant who said we couldn't park where we wanted and to "get the heck back in line." I won't repeat what I said. We were not the first, or second person to put up their chairs on the lawn. Our favorite place is at the top of the hill, right in the middle. Easy access to the bathroom and easy getting out before the crowds. By the time the concert started there wasn't a 3x3 foot square of land that was open. I have never seen so many people there. And now I will make a confession. HHBL and I have seen "Raiders of the Lost Ark" perhaps a hundred times. We can quote all of the dialogue. We looked at each other, looked at the crowd and left right about the time that the bad guys wee going to take the ark to open it up. We can watch that at home and we would rather get out of the parking lot in a reasonable time. We are evidently actually 90 year old cranky people.

But we were still home at a reasonable time.

Labor Day we.....labored at all of the things that we hadn't done over the weekend because we were doing othe things. That is what Labor Day is for right?

Is it Fall yet? What does it matter. If you could see my calendar for the next few months you would know.....

Fall is going to kill me too.

Yeah, Yeah, I Know

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 09 Aug 2016 02:42:00 +0000

Do you still remember me? I am not sure that I even remember me after the month that we had. July, it is a blur for so many reasons. It is already going on the second week in August, I am well into my Olympic watching obsession and I am still dwelling on July because....

She just about beat us to death.

We started out the month with a boat load of fun....

Another of these children that I have known since they were knee high getting married. They need to stop it right now because I am beginning to feel my age. They cannot be old enough to get married.

Stop it, just stop it.

The excellent part about the whole thing was getting to spend time with these people,

Even though some of them forced me to play Corn Hole. Do you know how much I suck at Corn Hole? Oh yes, there was much laughter going on and it wasn't because I was doing a stand up comedy routine. It was because I kept throwing that stupid little bag, not forward and towards the hole, but up and out into space.

I am still scarred by the experience.

Then there was another wedding of these children that I have known since they were knew high to a grasshopper.

Heidi married Daniel. It was such a happy day and Heidi was such a beautiful bride and Daniel, who was a classmate of Shoe Queen, was smiling from ear to ear and I did 14K steps in 4 hours.

And then I went home and died.

Plus, in the month of July HHBL and I went to Blossom Music Center three times. THREE.

There was the concert on July 3rd with 14,000 of our closest friends. And I do mean close. There was literally no place to walk and every square inch of lawn space was covered with someone. If it looked green and grasslike someone came and put a blanket or a lawn chair or just a butt on it. The number of people who got up to go to the bathroom and then couldn't find their way back to their spot, wandering aimlessly and looking for some landmark to lead them to the promised land, was significant. HHBL and I like to get there early and leave a little early. That means we get a good spot on the lawn and we miss the hordes on the leaving end.

You don't need to see other pictures of the other times at Blossom. Such as, couple that set up their air mattress and proceeded to lay down for the whole concert. We hoped they would keep it "family friendly" when the sun went down. Plus there was the concert where the heavens opened up before the concert started and HHBL and I decided that it might not be a really good idea to be under the really big tree with our umbrellas open while there was a lightening warning. We try not to be stupid if we can help it. Just know that we went three weekends in a row.

Then there was all of the baseball that happened in July.

HHBL and I might have gone to an Indians game with one of my KnitSibs and her hubby. The tickets were primo even though the Indians were not. And against the hated Yankees too. Sigh.

It was a very hot evening as evidenced by the preponderance of dome sweat exhibited by the guy sitting in front of me. Someone get that man a towel! And it was too good of a picture NOT to put on Instagram.

And then there is this, HHBL's baseball pants after every game. Being the catcher means never having clean pants at the end of the game. Can you say, "Take these out and hit them with the jet nozzle on the hose before soaking them for a good long time." By the way, HHBL plays in two different leagues which means that I get to wash these pants twice a week. But, he hit a Grand Slam home run on Saturday so I will gladly wash these pants as often as needed. Boom.

And as if all of this hasn't been enough then there might have been some photography going on. I had fun photographing at one of the local Cleveland Habitat sites and at Cleveland Industrial Training Center.

And then there is also the REAL job, where I have been asked to pick up some new skills. Photoshop! InDesign!

And just to get the month of July off to a rip roaring start, massive fraud was discovered at a company where HHBL sits on the Board. How the CEO managed to keep anyone from finding out is unbelievable. That news, which arrived in HHBL's ear on July 3rd, necessitated many hours on the phone and in the car driving down to Columbus and dealing with things and helping that company to stay afloat and find an new CEO (the old one having been the perpetrator of the fraud, think Bernie Madoff kind of stuff). We still look at each other daily and think, "How the heck did he keep it a secret for so long?!?"

All in all, I would say that July just about beat us senseless and we were very glad to see the back of her. Besides the fact that it was just damn hot all month.

Have I told you how much I hate hot weather?

That Is a Bad Sound

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 01 Jul 2016 00:48:00 +0000

Do you know what this is? Take a good look at it.

It is at the base of the tree outside of our bedroom windows, nestled right in my Impatiens. By the way, this picture was taken a week ago.

It is a bunny nest. Dang it. I will say that this was Mommy Bunny's second choice as a place to whelp the litter. Is whelp the correct term for this? Oh my gosh, I just Googled this and you can call them a litter or a Kindle. Does Amazon know that? There may actually be crosswalks here because I can tell you that my Kindle books do seem to breed like rabbits.

Now that was an interesting digression. Back to the bunnies. Second choice to give birth. Right.

I looked out one day and realized that there was a rabbit sitting in the middle of one of my planter boxes. That made me very unhappy. But I was confused (not an unknown occurrence with me) because she was just sort of sitting in the box. She wasn't eating anything just sitting contemplating her kingdom, which wasn't really surprising because she had parked her furry bunny bahookie right in amongst the jalapeño plants. As we have seen, even the deer don't like those. I did tell you about that didn't I? How the deer tried to eat my newly planted jalapeño plants but succeeded in just pulling them up and then spitting them out on the ground. Well if I didn't tell you then that is what happened. I slammed open the sliding glass door and chased the bunny away and took a look at the damage. She hadn't eaten anything but she had begun to excavate in the box.

Oh now that CAN'T be good.

But she was gone, leaving in her wake one uprooted pepper plant that had already been damaged in the Great Jalapeño Deer Debacle of 2016 so it wasn't a huge loss. I moved the dirt back where it was supposed to be and went on with my day.... And she was back by evening, sitting amongst my pepper plants, contemplating her universe. We had words and I said she couldn't stay and she left in a flurry of bunny huff and I put a big old pot in the middle of her excavations so she couldn't come back. That seemed to fix the issue....or so I thought...until a day or so later when I walked out to the front of Chez Knit to water my impatiens around the tree and found that she had excavated a hole, right at the base of the tree, deep enough to see China. Crap. I did think about just filling the hole in but we had guests coming to visit and it just slid to the back of my mind as slick and quiet as the 10th plague of Egypt from The Ten Commandments. The next time that I checked that hole, it had been carefully covered with grass until you wouldn't even know it was there.

My bunny wrangling window of opportunity had closed and I had missed the round up. Sorry, we watched Open Range recently and I am still in cowboy mode.

I wasn't completely sure that there were babies in there until June 21 when, as I was watering the plants around the supposed bunny obstetrical unit, I mistakenly poured some water over the dried grass and disturbed whatever was in there. I had just finished reading Justin Cronin's third book in his Passage Trilogy, The City of Mirrors, and I had a fleeting thought that when the ground started to move there would be virals pouring out any minute. Did I tell you that I have a vivid imagination.

So, the bunnies are there, although we haven't seen them. I wasn't happy about this blessed bunny event but even I am not heartless enough to invade the nest and get rid of the bunnies. I thought about it for a nano second and realized that I just couldn't do it.

But the raccoon had no such sentiments.

Last night HHBL and I were just settling down to our too short night's sleep after an abortive attempt to see a concert at Blossom Music Center (I will tell you about that fun time another day, after I am less angry). I was just sliding into slumber when:

HHBL: What was that?

Me: Whaaaaa. Ididnhearanythingiwassleeping. Zzzzzzzzzzzz

A bit of time passes and then the bed shakes violently and

HHBL: What was that? Did you hear that? It sounded like something is outside. (Gets up and looks out window). There is something out there. I think it might be the bunnies. There is something on the front step. I think it IS the bunnies.

Me: Oh for the LOVE! So, we both get out of bed, go to the front door, open said door and go out onto the front step. Even with the light thrown out by the million candle watt street light I can't see what is going on under the tree but it looks like there might have been a change in aspect ratio. I go back to get one of my bazillion flashlights (I am my father's daughter after all) and tramp back out to the front step...in my jammies....with my sleeping mask up on my forehead.

This is the sleep mask, and me doing my pouty Kim Kardashian thing. I look more like a bug but whatever. See how well YOU take a selfie when you can't see what you are doing. I have that thing shoved up on my forehead, my hair in a messy bun on top of my head and I am out on the porch shining a flashlight at the bunnies nest when.......

SHITBALLS! (oops, sorry but that is what I said) Something runs out from beside the porch and I think briefly about changing my undies when I get back inside. I had time to register that it was a raccoon and it had something in it's mouth before it was across the street and into the woods.

Oh dear.

But, after checking and moving some of the bunny camouflage around we determined that there was still life in the bunny abode. I covered everything back up and went back inside, climbed into bed, settled the eye mask back in place and started to slide into dreamland when....

I heard the bunnies screaming.

That is really the only way I can describe the sound, bunnies screaming. We leaped from our place of not very resting and rushed back outside, eye mask on forehead, to see the raccoon dashing back across the street and into the woods. I couldn't see if he had anything in his mouth, I didn't really want to know, but it didn't look like the nest had been disturbed too much. My guess is that he stuck his little raccoony hands down in there and went fishing for bunnies. But the problem was, we were not inclined to continue with the whole Jack in the box, up and out the door thing for the whole night every time Mr. Raccoon came back to the bunny fishing hole. And I was willing to "let nature take it's course", so to speak. I am not going to kill a nest of bunnies but nor am I going to prevent Mr. Raccoon from bunny fishing. If that upsets you, well, you can come and fill in the gigantic hole that she dug and then hope that she didn't damage the tree and that Ma Bunny and the Bunnalettes don't eat any of my flowers.

We went back inside and I closed the window. I just didn't want to hear what went on. In the morning the nest was still there although it looked a bit on the disturbed side but I could tell that she was still in there. But this afternoon, when I got back from work...... No bunnies. Elvbunny and the Bunnalettes have left the building. Or at least I hope that is what happened. I am hoping that she moved her kindle of bunnies down the road a bit, or at least into the neighbors undergrowth. And she had better stay out of my flowers. I may not want to kill a nest of baby bunnies

But I have always wanted to try rabbit.