ECF and What Comes After the Storm

I took this picture last night as I walked to the Metro. The weather was quite bad here yesterday and the calm after the storm yielded a gorgeous pink sky. Very appropriate to this post.

Nearly 3 months ago, my father returned home from a weekend away to find that his house had been flooded to a degree that required most of it to be gutted. We were happy to be able to offer him a place to live so he moved into the rec room of our small house.

The time since then has been interesting and I think that we have all learned a lot. My girls can now detect the opening of a tube of Ben Gay from across the house. We also know that sending my dad to the Costco can yield interesting results such as a refrigerator packed with 6 half gallon containers of orange juice. (He thought it might be too much but bought it anyway.) We learned that my dad’s taste buds may be a little out of wack. How else can you explain the fact that he didn’t notice that he was using GINGER rather than GARLIC on his pizza until midway through the second slice? Hmmm…

I listened in amusement as my dad matched wits and wills with Stinkerbelle on a regular basis. Let’s call that one a draw.

I never expected deep conversation but my very conservative dad and I had a lot of very interesting conversations about the direction of the country and other, equally controversial issues. There was no yelling or bloodshed.

The biggest surprises were the conversations that my dad and I had about my knitting. The Shirley of the title was my dad’s mother. It is from her that I inherited my knitting needles and I taught myself to knit as a tribute to her. I never knew if any of this meant anything to him. It does. My unsentimental dad told me that he likes the name of the blog (so it will stay) and commented on the differences between my reasons for knitting and those of my grandmother and great-grandmother. It pleases him that I knit. It pleases me that it matters to him.

I mention this now because my dad moved out yesterday. I’m happy to have the house back to normal but I’m also pleased that we were able to spend some quality time together. Of course normal is a relative term and here it means that the chaos is diminished just a little – not completely eradicated. My brother and his wife will arrive on Tuesday for a Thanksgiving visit and, shortly after they leave, we’ll host a bunch of giggling tweens overnight in celebration of the Drama Queen’s birthday. See – the fun never ends!

Knit, Knit, Knit

Why oh why do people insist on crowding around the doors of the Metro trains? Lately I have been taking the train to work (instead of my car) in an effort to maximize my holiday knitting time. I’m lucky and get on at the end of the line so I usually get a seat. The part hat sucks is that every day I have to fight to get off the train because people crowd around the doors, and some really discourteous folks pile into the train before others get off. As hubbo reminded me last night – there is nothing common about common sense. I unfortunately see proof of this every day.

Thanks for all of your, ahem, support of my holiday knitting plans. I am well aware that I’ve got a touch of insanity. My list of holiday knitting is best described as ambitious and may will be revised in the near future but, for now, I continue to give it my best shot. As proof I offer this sock which I finished last night. It’s just a generic toe-up sock in Elann Esprit. 1 down – 8 to go!

I can’t afford to have naked needles so I started another sock this morning but unfortunately it’s not the mate for this blue one. Why? I lost the other ball of blue yarn. Ugh! I think that my holiday knitting plans may be jinxed.

I also started something else last night – another votive sleeve. I’ve been very busy collecting beads lately and I’m pretty sure that I have enough to complete a pair of sleeves this time. Actually, I bought so many beads (a little overkill maybe) that I’m absolutely certain that I have enough. I also got something else that made threading the beads on the wire last night easy peasy. It’s this silly little bead tray thingy. It’s blue and it has 2 holes of different sizes with caps on them in 2 corners so that you can easily pour the extra beads back in the containers. I dumped a bunch of beads into it as I sat on the couch last night and went to town. So much easier! You really don’t want to know how I was doing it before.

As I write it all down I realize that my recent knitting efforts sound like those of a slacker. Not so! See this! It’s a bag that I started last weekend. I probably shouldn’t admit to any of this because it makes me sound more crazy rather than less. I started this last Saturday because it’s for a crafter who I hope to see at a craft show this weekend. I’m starting to realize that it probably won’t be ready in time because, as you see it in these pictures, it’s about 8 inches tall and I hope that it will be 18 before felting. Yep, I still have to knit 10 more inches... and the strap... and felt it. Also, I’m doing intarsia and I HATE intarsia. It slows me down. Don’t look inside the bag either. Ewww … nasty ends everywhere. I plan to felt it as is and clip the ends afterward. Thank goodness for the forgiving nature of felting - it hides a multitude of sins.

The thing that makes this really nuts is that I promised this bag to one of my favorite crafters back in February. Ack! February! I bought the yarn (her color choices) in March and it sat since then. Procrastination will get you every time! She is planning to embellish it with the cool glass beads that she makes. That’s why I went with the circle motif. Perhaps, if I pull and all nighter Friday and work on it all day Saturday, I’ll get it done in time. Did I mention that she’s gonna be in town this weekend?

Ruffles and Reality

When I wrote about my purchases at Stitches last week, I mentioned that two things I bought found their way onto my needles immediately. One was the pair of Fetching that I made from the Brooks farm yarn. The other was this cool ruffled scarf. Walking through the hall, Felicia and I stopped at a booth where someone was knitting this up and we had to have it.

The yarn is Linie 194 Solo and 2 balls of it made up a 4 foot scarf. It's a nifty 2 color woven band that get's "knit" by poking the needle through it rather than wrapping the yarn around the needle. It was really good for TV and Merto knitting. I think this will be a perfect holiday gift for a certain green-loving 8 year old I know. I think I detect a hint of jealousy around my house. As I finished this last night my girls wanted to know why I’ve made 3 things for their cousin in the past month or so. I dunno. Just lucky I guess.

I was feeling good as I finished this scarf yesterday because it’s one more gift that I can consider done. I felt so good that I went back and reviewed my list of holiday knitting and created a nifty little chart for it in my sidebar. I thought that having it there would make me feel accomplished and successful. Um – not so much! Here’s what my holiday knitting chart looks like now.

	Planned	Completed
Scarves	3	2
Socks	4 pairs	0
Votive Holders	2 pairs	1 single
Fingerless Gloves	1 pair	2 pairs

Do you see the problem? It’s kind of glaring. Of the 4 pairs of planned socks, I’ve completed none. The horror! I’ve got to get to work fast.