Progress, of a Sort, and a Pair of FO's

I wrote yesterday about the new Brad Paisley song and how his voice makes me feel foodish. [Somewhat better than feeling foolish.] Is it un peu triste that when I think of love or romance, my brain automatically substitutes “food”? Because food sure is easier to find in my world. And it’s one of the few sensual or perhaps more accurately stated, sensory pleasures that I get to enjoy as a single, active Latter-Day Saint woman.

And I talked about curling up on the couch with a good book; it’s a definite possibility, as my second November Mystery Sock is nearly done. Three more rounds [as I draft this post] and then I start decreasing for the toes!

Only a knitter would think of pairing toe increases and an exclamation point.

Maybe that book I should curl up with is Geneen Roth’s “When Food is Love”. It’s on my bookshelf somewhere, in my self-help section. [Does anybody besides me remember when Barnes and Noble had science fiction on one side of the shelves and self-help on the reverse? Maybe yours didn’t, but one of mine did. Am I the only one who thinks that’s funny? Or who bought books on both sides of the shelves, sometimes on the same shopping trip?]

Maybe this song about the “letter to my younger self” gets to me because I have a seventeen-year-old daughter [but only for another three weeks]. And I know that a lot of the things we are doing, we may be doing together for the last time. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that *I* am doing them for the last time, and she is or will be doing them for the first time on her own.

I’m sure it’s crazy-making for her when I keep thinking of things I need to tell her or teach her before she grows up and moves out. Like it all has to be done by the day after tomorrow. She’s a good kid, and we generally communicate well, so it’s not like we’ll never talk again once she’s in a home of her own.

On the drive home from the tattoo parlor yesterday morning, she and I discussed appropriate consequences. And she came up with a good one, which leaves Lorelai’s [my car] and Phineas’ [my other car that she will drive, and has christened] fenders intact, as well as her dignity and mine as humans, and doesn’t grieve the Spirit. Forgive me for not sharing it here; some of the girls who lived through my fender-ripping, over-reacting years might think that she’s getting off easy. And while they might be right, my perspective is that she’s a different kid than they were, and I’m a different and hopefully better mom than they had.

Speaking of better, I had a better night’s sleep, last night, than the one before. I woke up later than my weekday 4:00am but about when I wake naturally on a Saturday morning. Which would be crazy-early for most of you but is deliciously late for me. And I have just enjoyed a mug of generic vegetable juice, and all the mitochondria are singing like Sweet Adelines. Are you surprised that I still remember what mitochondria are, so many decades after high school biology class? Me, too, a little. Or that my mitochondria can sing? Hey, if your mitochondria want to go plant flowers or iron the sheets, fine by me, but *mine* like to sing.

Here is a link to an article on taking better photographs. Well, at least I have the habit of getting up early, down cold. Now I just need to start thinking like a photographer.

Here are the finished Barcelona a/k/a November Mystery Socks. I kinneared them:



LittleBit is still at rehearsal for tonight’s Madrigal Dinner, so I’ll have to get her to do the honors some other time. But for now:



A clearer shot of the leg:



And one of the heel:



Lovely socks, decadently soft on my feet, such joy to knit.

What’s up next? Firestarter Socks in the turquoise and yellow yarn that Micki gave me, which I thought I was going to use for my Comet Socks. Turns out that they wanted to be LittleBit’s birthday socks, and she likes that reverse stockinette gusset on Firestarter as much as I do.