I like her socks better than mine!

Knit Night, as ever, was terrific. What a great bunch of ladies! It’s like being at church, without the singing. I think that if everyone had Knit Night, or something like unto it, there would be a whole lot less contention in this world. [Unless your neighbor had bought up all the Koigu; isn’t that how wars get started?] But think about it: if we sat all the leaders of the free and unfree world down in a room with the Harlot and Wendy and Cookie A and Cat and Annie, and we gave them sticks and string and got them hooked on cables and bobbles and lace, and they made leper bandages and prayer shawls, and the only assassinating allowed was in Sock Wars? As Louis Armstrong sang, what a wonderful world.

Speaking of wonderful things, what a nice picture of Tola and Mike on the Harlot’s blog yesterday. I did a shout-out in the comments. Tola answered back [IM via blogpost, LOL] and waved to Tan. And I was “inspired” to write the following. It’s funnier if you know the tune for “Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree”.

I looked on The Harlot’s blog, and what did I see?
Mike and Tola in Annapolis – squee!!!
Book tour brought me such a nice surprise:
Mike and Tola, right before my eyes.

Harlot took a picture, and they’re so sweet.
He’s real tall, and she’s petite.
I didn’t get to go, but I was glad to see
E-friends grinning, close to WashDC.

(And it was fun to read through the comments and see SuburbanCorrespondent's name. [P.S., Secondborn loves your blog.])

OK, so if life is wonderful, why the title for today’s post? Because Micki is working on her second Anastasia, and I definitely like her sock better than mine. [All of her recent pictures are spinning, not knitting; it was her Lendrum that I played with two weeks ago.] She did an Eye of the Partridge heel flap, and that sock is pure poetry. So I will be trying the same for my second sock, and I think I will be much happier with it.

I am not happy with this.



I wore my Monkeys yesterday. When I took them off at the end of the day, there was a big old hole in one of them. I thought I’d inspected them pretty thoroughly for bite marks [moth damage; I do not have a new weird habit that you need to worry about], but apparently I missed something. So they will be washed very carefully and then frogged and the yarn recycled into footies or mitts or a scarf or something. I am way too frugal to throw out a pair of $20+ socks, and Jitterbug is too skimpy in terms of yardage to just frog and re-knit, and I just love the yarn. So it will join my green and plum Lola in the frogpond.

Insert expletive of choice, here.

For those of you who have been worrying about my mental health [you know who you are], this week has gotten progressively better. It helps that I like my job and love my co-workers. Having face time with the Bitties and their parents on Sunday also helped, as did going to LittleBit’s concert on Monday night and hearing all that glorious music. And Knit Night. And getting an email from an old friend who is unhappily married and just taking it one day at a time; that really put my singleness back into perspective.

I also learned long ago that service prevents depression. [I don’t mind being sad occasionally; I refuse to be depressed, ever again.] So I wrote a congratulatory email to someone I don’t like, whose hard work bore fruit. And I did LittleBit’s taxes. Twice. Once with TurboTax, where we discovered that I hadn’t paid attention to which program I was using, and it would cost $49.95 to get her $11.05 refund! And again using paper forms. I also used the interactive voice response program at work to allocate my upcoming raise into four buckets: my 401K, my Christmas Club account, paying down my line of credit, and the rest of it to improve what I laughingly call my standard of living.

[Almost] Cozy is perking along nicely. I added a third ball of yarn at Knit Night last night. A knitting project that doesn’t argue with me, is great cause for rejoicing! I need to go update my progress report on Ravelry.

I paid $3.23 a gallon for gas last night. I am considering getting that train pass a month earlier than planned.

Tonight I’m going visiting teaching, and then I just want to curl up on the couch and knit. I think I will check out that furniture shop again on the drive home tomorrow. Or maybe during lunch on Friday, since my best-friend-at-work will be off.

Actual Knitting Progress

See?



Here’s a closeup. A little blurry, rather like me this morning.



And this. I couldn’t resist. Just a few rounds before leaving for work yesterday. I couldn’t stay mad at Anastasia very long.



After work, I drove like a bat out of Houston to get to the high school in time for LittleBit’s concert. The junior varsity choirs have improved a lot since last fall. The varsity choirs? Goodness, gracious, great balls of high notes! They sang a couple of Russian songs and a Spanish love song, and a song about Mary holding the infant Christ and then holding her Son’s lifeless body one last time. It was was lovely and reverent and remarkably non-depressing. LittleBit had a solo consisting of eight widely-spaced, staccato accent notes in one of the Russian pieces. And they kept the house lights up during the entire concert, so I got plenty of knitting done on my whisper-quiet bamboo needles.

You know how some people go all berserkoid if there is any reverent mention of God in the schools? The choir directors, at least in Texas, seem to have done an end-run around that, with loads of songs in Latin that praise God quite boldly and melodically, and ask for His blessings.

[Abrupt change of topic; didn’t want you to get dizzy.]

One of my dinner group friends told me that President Monson wiggled his ears in the priesthood session of Conference last Saturday night. I told him, “You guys get to have all the fun! I wonder if there will be a little parenthetical comment when the talks are printed in The Ensign? [prophet wiggles ears; much startled laughter]”

I read excerpts from some of the Saturday talks in yesterday’s Meridian Magazine [click on link at left], and I applaud Elder Wirthlin’s gentle teaching that God loves variety in His people and created us to be individuals. I’m glad that our prophet is lively and warm and tenderhearted. And also, apparently, capable of wiggling his ears, though I am not.

When I joined the church in 1975, the girls who could afford it wore Jessica McClintock’s “Gunne Sax” dresses. I had a couple, myself, because I had to completely redo my wardrobe after joining the church. [Necklines came up an average of four inches; hemlines came down about a foot and a half; 1975 was the last gasp of the micro-mini, except for music videos and street corners.]

In the 80’s, the uniform-of-choice for good LDS sisters was the omnipresent floral dress with white lace collar. [I managed to avoid that look, chiefly because I spent most of the 80’s in maternity clothes.]

And now I wear what I want, consistent with comfort and modesty, which drives one of my daughters absolutely nuts. She worked as an assistant manager at Casual Corner a little *too* long, in my never-to-be-humble opinion.

I just smile when she asks why I am wearing top A with skirt B and remind her that there is fashion, and then there is personal style. And that fashion is pretty much the “foolish traditions of the mothers”, designed to create artificial distinctions and insecurities, to which I respectfully say THBPPPP!

I’m off to channel my inner Stevie Nicks. Happy Tuesday! Knit Night tonight, woohoo!

The Banging Wall

Suburban Correspondent had some good things to say recently about the joys and pitfalls of parenting.

And shortly after reading her post, I found this post waiting in my Bloglines. And I mostly agree, though her statement that “Children are natural teachers too, their gentle ways instilling respect and affection for siblings, a calmer pace for the household.” does not reflect my experience of motherhood. Maybe Charlotte got mellower kids than I did?

Speaking of my kids [you knew I would, sooner or later], the quietest of them recently posted something that helped me to understand her a bit better. She is also the most private of my girls, so I won’t be linking to her post. But it sounds as if she and I both have tickets on the Where Do I Go From Here Express. She has always been my Noticer and my Finder, even as a toddler, and I have no doubt that she will synthesize all of her thinking and feeling into an amazing and fulfilling adventure. But it will be on her schedule, and not on anyone else’s.

OK, my first Anastasia sock is done, as of about 8:00 last night. The afterthought heel is not for these feet of mine. So I’m going to try the pattern as written for sock number two, with the abominable short-row heel, and see if I like knitting it any better than I did last time. But I suspect that I will be making a third attempt, this time with Wendy’s toe-up-heel-flap heel, which fits me impeccably. And I may knit the leg of the second sock on a size 0 [2.0mm] needle instead of the 00 [1.75mm] that I am using for the foot. And I will probably be frogging the first sock back to the heel and reknitting from there, but I don’t even want to think about that at the moment. I’ve cast on the second sock, and it’s going into timeout for a day or two while I play with [Almost] Cozy, and give my severely-poked finger time to heal.

I had a really good day yesterday at Secondborn’s. And BittyBit made the funniest comment at lunch. She looked over at LittleBit and asked in a puzzled tone, “Who drew on your eyebrows?” [LittleBit has lovely, strong, neatly-tended eyebrows. There is absolutely nothing wrong with her eyebrows. Sophia Loren in the 1960’s would have coveted LittleBit’s eyebrows.] LittleBit told her a bit sheepishly, “Nobody ... I guess I should get my tweezers.” We all cracked up.

BittyBubba is an Olympic-class cuddler. [Even the old East German judges would have liked him.] So LittleBit and I each got our fill of holding somebody cute and male. It helped. A lot.

LittleBit has a pre-UIL [University Interscholastic League competition] concert at 6:00 tonight. I will be hard-pressed to make it on time from work. She has been rehearsing like crazy for this for the past two weeks. And we still have her spring concert to go, and her voice recital, and then graduation to get through.

I think I’m going to curl up on the couch with my knitting and the soothing voice of David Reidy before I have to think about something for breakfast and what to take for lunch. I don’t think that I’ve been to see Captain Kolache since LittleBit started driving herself to seminary. [I’ll take my G-rated testosterone fixes any way that I can find them.] Might be a good day for a field trip.

Way More Random Stuff than Usual

Obviously, my math skills were off considerably in yesterday’s post. Just as they were decades ago when I made 2/3 the rice but put in 3/2 the curry powder, thus putting myself off curry for the rest of my natural life. 1/4lb of lovely turquoise yarn roughly equals 1/8kg, so 112g would be about right.

I got notification of a possible match on the Churchboy Dating Service. Clicked the link and read his profile. He sounded plausible, so I logged in, and there was no profile on the actual website that matched his name. Just as I feared: Brother Right is a Fig Newton of my imagination! [Yes, I know, I know; if he were truly Brother Right, and this were the right time, he would have been there when I clicked. So he is obviously Brother Wrong, and I have been spared another disaster.]

KnitPicks has new wallpaper for your computer. Guess which one I chose? I may not keep it long; it reminds me a little too forcefully of what I don’t have, rather than all that I do. Can’t wait to hear what LittleBit has to say; she thinks so much like me that it’s scary, and she is in the same leaky boat!

OK, this is just weird. I think the sample is skewed. It reminds me of what my statistics teacher taught us, umpteen years ago: there are lies, d@mn lies, and statistics.

Yes, I am feeling seriously OLS [Oh Look! Shiny!]. Or just susceptible. I hadn’t cooked, really cooked, in two weeks or more. And yesterday I marched myself into the kitchen and started throwing away battered disposable plastic containers and emptying out the fridge.

Made a small pot of lentil soup with the usable portion of those geriatric leeks. Yes, the two that were left from the last time that Cooking Madness overtook me. Sautéed them in a bit of butter and olive oil, chopped up half of my sad-looking but not irredeemable carrots, dumped in the last of the red lentils [three years old but hurrah! for dried legumes] and a quart of beef broth. Decided it needed a little something and rooted around for a cinnamon stick that had seen better days, and a small handful of fennel seeds.

[Ate the last of the boxed cereal throughout the day and pitched the box. Ran the dishwasher *again*, as things hadn’t gotten entirely clean the first time around.]

Went back and stirred the soup, which smelled heavenly and was too thin for my taste. Fished out the cinnamon stick. Ripped open an envelope of Parmesan pasta, stirred it in, and reset the timer for a few extra minutes.

The end result? Rather bland in color, but nicely complex in flavor, and filling. Which is good, because I feel unaccountably empty. Jo’s post with the birds building nests made me smile; it also made me face the fact that I want to have somebody to cook for. LittleBit is gearing up for the UIL competition and working as many hours as she can. [We were both happily surprised to spend an hour or two in the living room together, late yesterday morning. She added charms to a bracelet, and I played on the computer, and we talked!] We have not eaten a meal at home together in weeks.

I am spending more and more time with the dinner group, which ensures that while she is otherwise occupied, I am not sitting in a corner, chewing off a paw. I do not want to turn into one of those women who natter on endlessly about imaginary ailments, or who accumulate a small country’s worth of cats. You know: the character that Ruth Buzzi played on Laugh-In, with her stockings rolled down and her hair in a net, sitting on the park bench and whaling Arte Johnson with her purse. Or turn into a “cougar” like some women I know, prowling restlessly for ridiculously younger men. [What would I do with one? It’s not like I could have a physical relationship with him, and what on earth would we talk about?]

Speaking of more statistics, this led me to this, which led me to this, and then this. What can I say? I was nearly done binding off the stitch marker bag that will be going out in the mail to my friend Tola. And just a wee bit twitchy. [Pictures of the bag, and her stitch markers, to be posted after she receives them.]

To make the bag, I used the tiny ball of yarn that was leftover from my Monkey socks. [Even better, I also found the socks!] It’s fatter than the purple yarn that I used for Tinks’ bag, so I cast on 13 stitches for a 12-stitch-wide bag and knitted fewer rows. I also doubled the number of stitches on my needle, the row after I formed the eyelets, so that I could work K1P1 ribbing for three rows and have a more ruffly finish to the bag. [And also because Tinks’ bag was a little fiddly to bind off since I had forgotten to grab the next needle size up for that purpose, and the opening was just *that* much smaller than I would have liked. But her hands are daintier than mine, so no harm done.]

This yarn is Jitterbug, very smooth and springy, so I had no difficulties anywhere in the process. And I have almost exactly two yards left, perfect for marking afterthought heels on the next pair of socks that I have in mind for myself. Can’t wait to see if what I see when I close my eyes, looks as good when on the needles. And can’t wait to show you!

I ended up not leaving the house at all yesterday. [Didn’t even turn my phone on.] Although at one point I would have just about killed for some French fries or hash browns. Because nothing says love like greasy, salty potatoes. I contemplated dashing out for a $5 pizza and to rent a movie, but fixed myself a small salad and hard-boiled some eggs, instead. Don’t cry for me, Argentina; I also ate a serving of the Dove 71% cacao bar that one of the Good Brothers gave me at the dance on Friday to reward me for my first official act as a moderator on our board. And about 9pm I whipped up a pot of risotto, to use up the last of the chicken stock.

I am pondering a couple of chairs that I saw on our walkabout on Thursday night. I think I will run by there on my lunch hour one day next week and take another look. There were insets in the chair backs that looked like thin slices of polished pink granite, and I think the seats were burgundy velvet. The chairs were carefully stacked atop a table or sideboard, so I couldn’t touch the chair backs to satisfy my curiosity. Very late-Victorian-Chinoiserie. Seriously quirky.

I think they would look great with my gate-leg table, tucked into a corner of the new kitchen. I remember that that particular shop has layaway, and they also have a small cupboard that was very inexpensive and only needed a little work [and a pane of glass on the door] to make it perfect for displaying my good china. I think the chairs would fit easily into my car for the trip home, but I think I would need help getting the cupboard out here. Happily, I know someone with a truck.

I got really bored last night, so I hauled out the Murphy’s Oil Soap and cleaned this up. Tilt your head sideways; Blogger issues. It’s 42” [about 107cm] high, 24” [about 61cm] wide, and the shelves are 4” [10cm] deep.



[Yes, that is a blue towel you see in the picture. It was a hand-me-down. I use it for grubby tasks, because I am trying to wear it out as soon as decently possible.] I don’t remember if I bought this cupboard from Brother Stilts when he moved, or if he gave it to me in exchange for my nearly-defunct washer and dryer. But it leaned facing against the wall in the previous apartment, and I would like to use it somewhere in the duplex. [It might be an excellent repository for my sheep collection.] Here is a shot of the four shelves; I need to put new screws into the sides of the cupboard, for them to rest on. Again, tilt your head.



I can envision this cupboard with bits of filet crochet lace tacked to each shelf. There’s a nice squished crownish molding at the top of the cupboard that disappeared when I snapped the first picture. Crocheting four strips of lace for these shelves ought to keep me out of the pool halls for awhile longer.

I was weary and full of good simple food when I went to bed last night. And I think I productively used up the excess energy that I’d been feeling throughout the day. I didn’t overeat, and I didn’t go out for retail therapy. Though it’s obvious from this post that I was doing a lot of virtual retail therapy! Instead, I puttered about and made my little corner of the world a more pleasant place to be.

Except for the nice chat with LittleBit, I wasn’t really in the mood to talk to anybody. I just wanted time and space to think. And I connected a few dots about my life and my purpose and had a bit of creative inspiration. All of which is way better than sitting around and feeling sorry for myself, which I mostly avoided.

We were not meant to dwell alone, we humans. We were meant to be devoted to one another. Sometimes the ten years that I have been officially single, seems like a very long time. And then I remember how I am thankful not to be unhappily and unequally yoked; that was far worse.

I got over seven hours of sleep last night. Can’t wait to see how this day unfolds...

The Social Whirl is Winding Down

At least a little. I caught a bit of traffic after work last night, and by the time I’d finished up at the grocery store, it was about an hour before I needed to be at dinner with my friends, with the finished brownies. So I called one of them and told her I would meet them at the dance.

I listened to an archived podcast of Sticks and String while the brownies baked, and I knitted. As of this morning, roughly an inch and a half [4 cm or less] remains before I bind off Anastasia and start picking up stitches for the afterthought heel. Between now and then, I want to make a trip over to Harbor Freight to pick up a digital pocket scale. There were somewhere between 1000 and 1200 yards on this 4-oz [112g? can that be right? wouldn’t a quarter of a pound equal just less than 500g?] skein, and I think I’ve used maybe a third of that, and I’d like to confirm that before making the fatal snip.

Back to the subject of Harbor Freight for a minute. Brother Sushi buys a lot of tools there, because they carry everything you can imagine, and at a discount. I had never heard of it until he told me.

When I needed the blue painter’s masking tape to line up the Wall Words on the dining room wall in the old apartment, that’s where I went [chiefly because my neighborhood grocer didn’t carry any, and there’s a Harbor Freight not too far from Secondborn and her tribe. Two birds, one stone, and all that.

Middlest had left McAllen and her Awful MIL and was waiting to join her hubby at Great Lakes after he completed his basic training for the Navy [the place where he apparently got the idea for a girl in every port. Bozo.] She was staying with her father and Fourthborn at the time. And we got to hang out a lot, which was very nice. But I digress on my digression.

There is a joke on one of the singles sites that I used to frequent, that the best way for a girl to get a date for Saturday night is to walk into a hardware store and peel a banana. I’m not sure that I want to understand all the logic or symbolism behind that.

At any rate, Middlest and I walked into this enormous hardware store that was teeming with menfolk of all ages and a handful of intrepid females, none of whom apparently brought their fruit salad with them, and most of whom looked as if they could tear down a Jeep in 23 seconds flat. As we were standing in line to pay, I had a thought. Middlest read my face and said, “What? ... What?” I murmured that I would tell her in the car.

Which I did, after we were buckled in and the windows were up and the doors were locked. “I think we just discovered the Testosterone Kingdom”. [That will only be funny to someone who is or used to be LDS, and is otherwise explainable only at Macaulayesque length. I’m not even going to try. But you could ask the missionaries about the three degrees of glory, the next time that they knock on your door.]

I think if I were the type to go hunting for a man, Harbor Freight would not be a bad place to start. You’re almost guaranteed that the guys who go in there are good at fixing things, or at least willing to learn. And “competence” is definitely one of the legs on what Tinks and I call my Three Legged Character Stool, the shortlist of what defines a “keeper” for me.

Unfortunately, most of the fellows I saw in there on my last trip, could either afford tools or dentists, but not both. And the ability or inability to go see the dentist is something that conjures up ghosts from my past. At the first apartment complex we lived in when we moved back up here from the Texas Hill Country, the maid/make-ready supervisor was a woman with a good heart and a lot of common sense. I really liked talking to her. We will call her Fannie Mae [just to irritate any government spooks who may be reading this blog].

And Fannie Mae was a smoker and one step up from destitute and missing maybe a third of her teeth. She was my age, and looked 20 years older. When one of my wisdom teeth cracked and fell apart as I was sitting and reading and eating bonbons, I probed that jagged remnant and wondered how we were going to fix it. And I thought to myself “I am not going to be [another] Fannie Mae.” Because I could look into my future and see myself losing one tooth after another; at that point I had not seen a dentist in over ten years and had not had medical insurance in thirteen. I think that is when I realized that in a material sense, my life was not ever going to get any better unless I made some drastic changes.

Thankfully, the fast offerings that our friends had paid into our church, covered the extraction. [Once a month, those of us who are able to fast, fast for two meals and give the value of that food, or more if we can afford it, as a fast offering to bless the poor. I have been the poor. And I have been blessed.] When it was time for the other three wisdom teeth to come out, the children’s father was working and had dental coverage. We were separating at that point, but he took care of me after the extractions, and I took care of him after his cataract surgery.

I am thankful to have a good job and benefits that include dental insurance.

So, I’m headed over to Fort Worth to watch one or more sessions of General Conference today, and I’m making a side trip to Harbor Freight. And I am leaving my bananas at home.

A Brilliant Solution

Need a swift to corral your yarn while winding it up? Middlest sent me this link. Clever! I still have my 20+ year old umbrella swift that has served me so well, and I can tell that it is getting a wee bit creaky. Not unlike its owner.

Great fun with the dinner bunch last night. Major storms were forecast for the evening into overnight, and I can hear stuff splashing down outside. One of my paralegals warned me that tornadoes were a possibility. I got a few drops on the trunk while we were at dinner, and we had a perfect evening for strolling. There were handfuls of musicians on the sidewalks and in some of the shops.

LittleBit got all the graduation paraphernalia that she ordered. I have a wee calling card on my desk that I would love to show you, but then the Bad Yarn Pirates would know who we are and come steal my Alice Starmore books while we were sleeping. Or possibly LittleBit herself, which would be even sadder. So, no.

But two months from Monday, my last child will be graduating from high school and beginning Real Life in Earnest. I loved the Harlot’s post last year and echo many of her sentiments.

And now, if you will all excuse me, I need to go out in the rain and pick up the brownie mix to make the brownies that I will be taking to the dance tonight.

A Veritable Knitting Spree

AKA “Stealth Project #1”

I woke up yesterday morning in the mood to play with pliers and silver and stones, oh my! And before breakfast, I had whipped up the stitch markers for my friend Tinks. You know, the stitch markers that she won weeks and weeks ago. Those stitch markers.

And then I got to thinking. How to present them? I didn’t have any fabric that I thought would do, and I really wasn’t in the mood to sew, anyway. So into the stash I went and came up with the leftovers from LittleBit’s first socks. KnitPicks Essential Tweed in the purple. Out came my Addi 1’s, and this was born.



This yarn is pure pleasure to knit. Nice and smooth, round and round, 15 stitches on each side, utterly seamless. All these toe-up socks have taught me a thing or two. I even knitted in the cast-on end when I did the first row, so the only weaving-in was at the top when I was done. The bag is about 1.75” [4.5cm] wide and a little over 3” [7.75cm] long. The eyelets are a simple K2tog, YO, with a knit stitch at the end of each row. If I had been thinking more clearly when I cast on at 5:30 yesterday morning, I would have cast on either 14 or 16 stitches per side.

What was inside, you ask? These.



The big one is amethyst. I don't remember, but I think the small ones are flat glass beads; they have a different sort of translucence than the Mama Bead, and they are crackly on the inside.

The ribbon which closes the bag ~ I didn't want to use the yarn, because it is slubby ~ is that skinny satin stuff you can buy by the roll at any craft store or fabric shop. If this hadn’t been a last-minute inspiration, I would have stopped at the fabric store and picked up a roll of matching purple, or one of the colors in the tweed flecks.

Sorry for the glare; I photographed this on the table in the cafe at the bookstore where we met last night before dinner. [At least you know that they keep a clean table in that cafe!]

Tola, honey, I haven’t forgotten you. I have the beads and the silver, but no idea what to do for something to keep your stitch markers in. I wonder if I have enough of that Jitterbug left that I used for my Monkeys?

Dinner with Tinks last night was wonderful as usual. There is nothing like spending a couple of hours in the company of a longtime friend, particularly when there is food involved. Tonight is dinner with a girlfriend from the dinner group, then a meet-up with the rest of that tribe for more walking-about. I am taking my “dontcha” shirt to throw on over my jeans when I shut down the popsicle stand for the day. It’s a little too casual to wear at my desk, not when my desk is the front desk.

Thursday already. Wow!

[Root] Beers, on the House!

I got the numbers yesterday for my merit raise and cash bonus. Can’t post them here because some of my coworkers read my blog occasionally. [Besides which, Miss Manners and the ghost of Emily Post would beat me about the head and shoulders with a pair of white kid gloves.] But I am pleased, and most grateful. And it’s safe to assume that there is a spinning wheel in my future. I asked my friend Jeri how long it had taken between her order and its arrival; she said about a week.

If I could turn cartwheels, I would.

I have finally finished one stealth project and have begun another that is somewhat related. Pictures to be revealed later.

Knit Night was fun, as usual. I was the first to arrive and got us some good seats. And then only lasted about an hour and a half before turning into a pumpkin. This is the third morning in a row that I have wakened an hour or more ahead of my alarm. Is it Christmas Eve and nobody told me?

Did everybody else catch the pranks on Ravelry yesterday? I was trying to come up with a clever post on the forum so that my Sheepie icon would get a hat. And I was mildly amused to find a Fabio book on my virtual bookshelf, less so to have a craft book with a crass title alongside it. I thought also that a “friend” link request was a spoof and declined it. But this morning I realized who she is and have posted an apologetic response.

They say that you lose brain cells with every pregnancy. I would appear to be living proof.

Much progress on both non-stealth projects yesterday. Maybe an inch added to Anastasia, and three or four to [Almost] Cozy. Not enough to justify dragging out the camera; you’ll have to use your individual and collective imagination(s).

Tonight’s the meet-up with my friend Tinks. It’s been way too long.

“Getting raked at the gas pump”

A new phrase in my vocabulary. I found it in an article on the company website and googled it. I think the verb is off by one letter. Gas is $3.15 a gallon here. Milk is $3.50 a gallon. I’m slightly more concerned about the latter. Yes, I consume way more of the former, but the latter is more crucial to quality of life, chez nous.

I had read that a large part of this is due to our dependence upon corn. [Confirmed by the cover of the newest issue of Time, which arrived in yesterday’s mail at the office.] It’s everywhere. In our food, in our gas tanks, in our animal feed. Which is why eggs are now worth their weight in gold. I almost wish that I had my old house back, with the chickens and the rabbits and the goats. At least now I have a real job, and I would be able to afford good hay for the goats, and I’d have fresh milk twice a day.

Although I sure don’t miss having to go out in the rain to milk. Nope, don’t miss that at all. Or having to drag Tuffy from the pen to the milking stand. [She was just smart enough to remember how surprised the neighbor's cat was at being shooed out of the feeding tray one morning. One angry cat, levitating eighteen inches into the air and coming down into Tuffy’s face with claws extended. One terrified goat, breaking free from my grasp, executing a triple axel on the milking stand, and pronking like an antelope back to the pen then leaping over the four-foot fence. The 125 yard goat drag: a twice-daily Olympic event until we traded Tuffy for breeding fees for three more docile does.]

I am so jazzed! My “dontcha” [Knitty] shirt that I wore to the dance on Friday night of the singles conference, washed well. I plan on wearing it to Thursday night’s walkabout.

One of the legal secretaries at work was teasing me gently. She asked what was going on in the big conference room, who was in there, what they were talking about. She told me that my days of being Miss Independent Receptionist are coming to an end; that from now on I need to be alert for little tidbits that would benefit my [future] attorney. I know that she was mostly kidding, but there’s a germ of truth in there. A good receptionist is well-nigh invisible and absolutely impartial. A good legal secretary is above gossip, but savvy about politics. We are talking a whole new set of paradigms here. I have to grow Great Big Ears. And keep them close to the ground. And try not to step on them. Or anyone else’s.

I think that I’m done swatching and on to the knitting. I present for your knitting pleasure [Almost] Cozy, an adaptation of Danielle Schoonover’s design in the Fall 2004 Knitty.



I have modified the K2tbl [knit two together, through back loop] to a simple SSK [slip as if to knit, slip as if to knit, then knit them together]. It’s a subtle difference that would be obvious in an untextured yarn and is less fiddly in my much-frogged Denim Silk.

And some verifiable progress on Anastasia.



This grey dangling end is hanging from the row that will become the afterthought heel.



The actual color is about midway between these two photos.

Mostly-Good Changes, More Classical Parodies, and a Full Schedule, with Breaks for Knitting

Mostly-Good Changes
1. We remain in our current ward and are keeping our bishop.
2. He has two new counselors, because his others have gone to two new wards.
3. Unfortunately, we lost our Relief Society president.
4. My near-date experience of three years ago is now in the ward that I was hoping we wouldn’t get moved into.
5. Our beloved seminary teacher is now in our ward.
6. Brother Sushi did not get moved back into his pre-divorce ward [the same one that we were hoping not to get moved into]; he is now in Firstborn’s ward, which will now meet in our building.
7. And the new ward is south and west of us and meets in Fort Worth, while our ward now extends farther into Cowtown as well. [But I will not remain in this ward when I move; I’ll be too far west for that.]
8. I get to keep my good home teacher until I move.
9. Most of the burrs under my saddle have now been neatly disposed of.
10. Only a few of my close friends got moved into new wards.

More Classical Parodies
This. Or this.

Knitting Progress
I put in a bit over one row on the stealth project [still swatching, no pictures] before the meeting, until I reached Row 7 of the chart and realized that that was precisely where my printer decided to wander off for a chat at the water cooler. So I picked up Anastasia and got several rounds knitted on her.

Laundry
Officially caught up. I hung out at Firstborn’s yesterday after church, wrote a quick note to Lark’s mom, who is still a guest of the state of Texas, put more rounds on the sock, and ate too much good home cooking.

Dinner Group Stuff
I put together my first poll for our dinner group [they made me a moderator about a week ago] and got it successfully posted to the board.

This is going to be a busy week; I think tonight will be the only night that I’m home after work, though I might take a swing by Central Market first.
Monday - Family Home Evening, even if it’s just me
Tuesday - Knit Night
Wednesday - meeting up with my friend Tinks
Thursday - dinner and another walkabout with the dinner group
Friday - the first-Friday dance and dinner beforehand
Saturday - General Conference
Sunday - General Conference

Good times.

No Pips

What was I up to last night? Well, some of you may know that several years ago, Gladys Knight joined the LDS church. She assembled a 100-voice choir, Saints Unified Voices, and taught white boys [and others] to sing gospel and to *move* while they sing. I have their first CD. It is magnificent.

This weekend she and the SUV are here for four missionary concerts. The premise was that if you have friends who are curious about the church, you could buy tickets quite inexpensively and bring your friends, and if they wanted to know more they could later arrange to speak with the missionaries, and if they did not, they would have had a nice evening out with their friend [you] and Ms. Gladys and heard some lovely, inspiring music.

My friend P had invited two of her friends, and they bailed on her. She put up a post on the dinner group’s board asking if anybody wanted to go [the tickets were all sold, weeks ago]. I posted “Me, me, me, pick me!”, so my friend L and I met P over at her home in BigD [this is beginning to sound a lot like alphabet soup, no?], and we carpooled to the Dallas East stake center. Where we stood in line to enter the meeting house for 45 minutes and were not the only knitters in line.

The capacity of that stake center is 1300, so that’s how many tickets were printed for each performance. I saw no empty seats, but someone on the dinner group board said there were a few at the performance we attended. I did see a lot of discreet eye-wiping among my neighbors.

The choir sang several of my favorites from their first CD. It was the sort of evening that you don’t want to end. Her husband bore witness and gave his conversion story. And then she did the same. You cannot fake that kind of warmth, generosity of spirit, or conviction.

Today we are having the big stake sacrament meeting. The only ward boundaries unaffected by this are my best friend’s ward, the singles ward, and the Spanish ward. All sorts of rumors have been flying. Brother Sushi said at dinner on Friday night that 40% of the active priesthood brethren in our stake are in two wards: his and the one next to mine. And two of the wards barely have enough active brethren to fill the necessary callings [which is why Second Ward was dissolved five years ago]; one of those wards is Firstborn’s.

I don’t expect to leave the meeting feeling as devastated as I did, five years ago, when they dissolved my old ward and threw the children’s father into my new one, just as I was getting settled in. I do expect to see a lot of new faces at church next week. And I am feeling pre-comforted, if you will, by the knowledge that no matter how many faces from the ward before this one are in my new ward, I will only be there a few more weeks before moving out of the stake.

There are a handful people from the old ward who are in the next ward over and knew me when I was Poor Sister Ravelled and still treat me with the faint condescension they accord to women who divorce and/or who have had rebellious children. [Because obviously, their own children are angels.] It gives me opportunities to remember that the church is not a shrine for the perfect but a hospital for the sick or afflicted, even if there is some private disagreement on which of us fits into those categories. If I end up in *that* ward, I will chalk it up to Heaven thinking that it’s time for me to finish forgiving that handful of twits my brothers and sisters.

In the comic-relief department, there are new matches on the Churchboy Dating Service. One turned out to be a guy that I was bold enough to ask out during Leap Year eight years ago, who has politely kept a roomful of people between us ever since. So, no, I don’t think it’s going to be a match.

Maybe another half-inch on Anastasia yesterday; not enough to merit hauling out the camera. And not quite a full pattern repeat on what I think is going to be a happy confluence of yarn, pattern and tweediness with my much-frogged Denim Silk, so no picture there either until I know for sure.

Did everybody else get the email from KnitPicks about their new Gloss laceweight? Cue the Pointer Sisters, because I’m so excited!

The Average Courting Frog

Read this. Really made me smile. I told her that I’d dated [and kissed] a few of those myself.

Conversations like the one she described between the two guys on the ferry, are what sustains the friendship between Brother Sushi and me. We talk about his mission to Japan, the people we’ve met who have changed us, what we’ve cooked lately, the sock du jour.

Everything, and nothing. Which was what we talked about last night. And I came home feeling not only fed, but nourished. We ate at a new-to-us chain restaurant. His daughter likes the burgers. We thought the burgers were average, but I notice that we both fell just this short of inhaling our fries. [Yeah, my ankles are a little puffy this morning, but it’s not like anybody looks at them, anyway.]

I had pretty much decided against getting the stackable washer/dryer combo for the duplex, considering that new they run between $800-1200 on average. That’s a lot of sock yarn. But he knows a couple of people who have scratch-and-dent salvage businesses, and he’ll keep an ear to the ground for me. So, that’s promising.

We talked about the feng shui aspects of the new place. When you walk in the front door, you can see straight down the hall into one of the bedrooms. I originally thought that I wanted to have that one for my room; it's on the east side of the house and would get morning light. But I think I want to set it up as my studio, with my spinning wheel framed by the doorway. I think that would be a lovely welcome when I get off the train each night, and when friends come to dinner. My bedroom would be visible only from the hall that connects the kitchen and bathroom. And I think that would give me greater privacy.

I just got off the couch after listening to this week’s KnitPicks podcast. And I have about an inch and a half of knitting above my afterthought heel marking row. Not a lot of knitting got done yesterday.

I took the advice of my Sisters of the Wool and checked on the Robin wheel on Ravelry. Two year wait, and half the cost of my first car, but the deposit to mark my place in line is eminently reasonable. I’ll send him a check in a couple of weeks, and I think I’ll be ordering my Lendrum two weeks later, depending upon the size of my bonus.

A bit of serendipity fell into my lap for this evening’s adventures. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow. It’s time that I found something sensible to eat, to chase the double handful of gingersnaps that I’ve noshed on while reading and posting this morning.

Anastasia Meets the Afterthought Heel

I meticulously reloaded half my stitches back onto the needle and tried Anastasia on for size after inhaling my lunch yesterday. [Chipotle cheddar cheese sliced wafer-thin, atop whole-grain saltine crackers. And a bag of Wildly Cherry M&M’s for dessert. Doesn’t get any better than that!] About 2” shy of my heel, and a perfect fit. I started to use the same toe-up heel flap that I used for the Stripedy Stockings, and after two rounds I decided that I wanted to try an afterthought heel instead.

Happily, there was a bit of the yarn from the Stripedy Stockings in my toolbag, so I tinked back those two rounds and used the brown-grey-black-and-cream as a barely-discernible row, to be picked out in a few days, after I’ve bound off the cuff.

I went to bed at 10:00 last night and slept like a rock. Six and a quarter hours of presumably quiet breathing [except for the Luke-I-am-your-mother whooshing of my CPAP], and no lights on when I awoke an hour ahead of my alarm this morning.

When I went to bed last night ~ reluctantly; I was having so much fun with Anastasia ~ there were four or five rows above my afterthought marker row. Now it’s more like 5/8”. This design is so simple to knit, and so easy to modify, and the pattern it produces just makes me grin. Now that I’ve been knitting socks for a year and a half, and lace for about a year, I wonder why I didn’t try both, sooner.

Knitting is one of the simplest things there is. Two stitches really: knitting [the top of the loop faces away from you in the finished fabric] and purling [the top of the loop faces you]. You get lace by pairing strategically-placed increases and decreases. You get cables by crossing one or more stitches over or under others. You get ribbing by alternating knit stitches and purl stitches. And when you are done muttering *[K7, K2tog, YO, K2tog] repeat from *, you have something that fits your own particular assortment of curves and straightaways, in a color that pleases you, and the pleasure of having learned one or more new techniques in the process, and the knowledge that you will never, ever see the same item coming toward you on the sidewalk on somebody three sizes smaller.

What’s not to love?

I am feeling somewhat less needy this morning. Still looking forward to dining with my favorite samurai tonight, but not feeling quite so testosterone-deprived. It helps to listen to David Reidy. Maybe it’s the accent. Maybe it’s just nice to hear an intelligent man natter on about Things Knitterly. I tried to listen to Cast On last night, but she lost me when the music came on, and the F-word jumped out of the chorus and slapped me in the face. This is my home, and these are my ears. And I am voting with them; I won’t be going back to her podcast. Though I will be knitting Mrs. Beeton in the foreseeable future.

I have to laugh at myself, at least a little. Ten years ago, when I was freshly-divorced and generally cranky, I read women writers and listened to female singers. I had had it up to here with male voices for the time being, whether written or audible. I think it was probably part of the healing process, not to mention that when I divorced the children’s father I no longer had to endure Rush and G. Gordon and a host of other blatherskytes whose political leanings I tend to share, but whose method of delivery is so off-putting [to me, at least] that almost it persuadeth me to become a Democrat.

Gradually, I discovered men who didn’t set my teeth on edge. Men of sound mind and resolute character. Men who respect women and enjoy their company. Men whose counsel I can trust. Now, the CD in my car is as likely to be Ray Charles as Emmylou Harris. It’s a good place to be.

Happy Friday, everybody! It’s payday, chez nous, and my turn to buy dinner, and Anastasia is looking rather pleased with herself.

Les Chaussettes, Elles Sont Fini!

It seemed only appropriate to make the announcement en français, as these are Child’s French Sock from Knitting Vintage Socks by Nancy Bush.



I like the pattern very much and will almost certainly make a pair for myself, sometime down the road. Mine will be 100% wool. This is a nice yarn, and I think/hope that Middlest will like how these feel, and I prefer 100% natural fibers on my own feet.

[Middlest, honey, do you want me to mail these to you c/o your friend C, or keep them here for your arrival?]



The flowers, alas, are not my own. A friend and colleague received them yesterday at work. I told her that I couldn’t think of anyone who deserved them more. [Well, other than me, of course!] They smell as good as they look, and I learned something. My friend meticulously de-pollinated the star lilies, because their pollen stains everything it touches, and you can’t get it out. Who knew that flowers had a scarlet-letter thing going? [“Stay away from that lily, dear. She’s pretty, but she’s been pollinated. And more than once. And we don’t know by whom.”]

Anastasia is next, and I want to figure out a big-needle project for the knitting equivalent of a weekend tryst. Something that won't get me in trouble financially, morally, or calorically. [Speaking of which, have you tried the Wild Cherry M&M’s?]

Thank you for your kind words yesterday. I went to bed last night around 11:00, again sans LittleBit, and woke up this morning to a glow of light out in the living room, and my first thought was, “The hall light is still on? She didn’t come home last night? I’m going to embroider her a new one.” But there she was at the computer, with freshly-shampooed hair and a lovely smile for her cranky mother. No UIL rehearsal last night; she worked a shift at the restaurant for a friend who has the flu, and stayed to help close for the night.

I think I am going to have to ask Brother Sushi to step way outside his comfort zone and pat my shoulder and say “there, there” while I snivel, tomorrow night. I have two songs alternating in my head: a parody of Tevye’s words, “Would it spoil some vast, eternal plan, if I [had a decent] man?” and “I'm much too young to feel this d@mn old.” What I really, truly want is a good guy of my own, one that I don’t have to send home at the end of dinner. One whose job description includes “there, there” and other forms of comfort.

It’s spring. We just had a full moon. And I suspect that one of my ovaries is still yodeling.

Aughhhhh! I’m going to talk it over with the Man Upstairs while I figure out what to wear to work. And probably for the entire 25 miles there. And possibly on the trip home. I just have to figure out how to word it differently, to get a different outcome than last time. I remember coming home from an attempt to get to the young singles' dance, with a driver who could barely see to drive and nearly got us killed, and falling to my knees in my room and praying, “I want some righteous male attention.” The next day, I was introduced to the children’s father.

I will laugh about this in a week or two, and definitely in a year or two, even if I’m still single. I just don’t feel like laughing now.

Whence this weepiness?

My friend brought her Lendrum spinning wheel to Knit Night, last night, and generously shared it and a nice chunk of BFL roving with me. [Another friend brought hers as well, and we now have two less “spinning virgins” in our group.]

My hands have not forgotten, notwithstanding a hiatus of seventeen years. It was precisely the restorative needed after a busy day at work and entirely too much time spent rambling around inside my head, trying to out-think my feelings.

In many ways, my life is less busy and complicated now that LittleBit is driving. I let myself sleep in until 5:00am on workdays, and she sets her alarm and gets herself up now. We have prayers together, and she heads off to seminary and school and work and UIL rehearsals. I am less tired physically and at something of a loss, emotionally. I miss my kid. On good days, we have maybe 15 minutes of face time. Sometimes we are able to grab half an hour and play catch-up. I have no idea what is going on inside her head, or her heart.

She got home late last night, after UIL rehearsals that ended at 9:00 and time with friends after that. Way later than I think is reasonable for a school night. And I snapped at her, “Just what is so bad about our home that you don’t want to be here?” Which I realize after a reasonably good night’s sleep was really, “I miss you. Don’t you love me anymore?”

I think it’s safe to say that I am smack in the middle of Empty Nest Syndrome, and it feels a lot like the Weaning Blues, and I’m not sure which of us is the one being weaned.

I also realized, as I was turning off lights and semi-tidying the couch after working on Middlest’s sock while listening to “Finding Neverland” [which is not a listening-to movie; much too visual, and I really should watch it again before turning it in tomorrow night], that what all this feels like, is what I felt like days before I met the children’s father. The same restlessness, the same longing for connection, the same skin-hunger that for me is far more devastating than mere unavailable [trying to find a word that will not draw spammers and perverts; we will settle for “partnership”]. My hands are crepey, my neck and shoulders are breaking out, and I am uncharacteristically not-at-home-in-my-skin.

Not only do I miss my kid, but I also miss my water aerobics class. My membership at the Natatorium expired while I was in the middle of the last bout of croupiness, and it made no sense to renew for a year when I will only be here [and driving my car to and from work] for another three months.

I also miss Brother Sushi, but that will be remedied on Friday night when we finally get our monthly dinner. I will get to hear about his family reunion and his new grandchild. He will get to hear about the new friendships I’m building in the dinner group. For which I am now one of the moderators in our Yahoo! group, as of yesterday.

I think maybe the scariest thing about feeling the way that I did, thirty-three years ago, is that I don’t know what it means. Is this just loneliness compounded by spring fever, or is it a portent of another relationship that begins well and ends badly? Do I go out and mingle with people and try new activities and seek a fresh balance between activity and repose, sociability and contemplation? Or should I just stretch out on the couch with my knitting until these waves of emotionality and neediness have stopped rocking my boat?

Yes, I could ask the Man Upstairs, but I’m not all that sure that I’d like the answer. Braack, bock bock bock bock!

“Sock Madness”, Redefined

You will recall my crowing, yesterday morning, that I was nearly ready to start working on the toes. And I really, truly thought that I was. Until I got to the part where I am supposed to knit even for a few rows before starting the toe increases, and I realized that I really shouldn’t start until I’d read my notes on Ravelry, and then uh-oh, squared, cubed, and blazing on into the fourth dimension, realized that I hadn’t decreased quite enough at the heel gussets and needed to rip back a “hunka hunka burning rows”.

Sigh.

On the other hand, this means more time with a rather nice yarn that I’m not yet sick of. So it’s not all bad.

Have asked one of my Sisters of the Wool to please bring her spinning wheel to Knit Night. I think I need a little break...

Is the Peep Catholic?

[With my apologies to any of you who are devout Catholics. I have great respect for that Church, for the way that it kept the cultural and spiritual lights on during the Dark Ages, and for the goodness of many of its members.] I found this link on Mason-Dixon Knitting. This was my favorite, before I gave up and went to bed way too early this morning. Hence the ditziness of my title today. [It’s #25 in the series; I hoped that the link would take you directly to it, but no such luck.]

Thoughts on “The Jane Austen Book Club”: I mostly liked it. The movie is definitely better without the deleted scenes, some of which were just squick.

There is knitting in this movie. There is teaching-of-knitting in this movie. Without giving away plot points, there are lunacy, temptations, marvelous visual cues as to how women communicate with one another [useful for any male reader who wants to understand us as a species], great costumes, and an opening montage that is only rivaled by my memory of the opening sequence of “Local Hero” [another lyrical and wonderfully subversive movie; one of you told me a few months ago that Mark Knopfler did the soundtrack].

That being said, there are a number of “oh please, please do not go there” moments. This is not a movie for children, although I think the love scenes are discreetly handled. This is not a movie I would be comfortable watching with a date, or with my friends from the dinner group. I don’t know if this is a movie that my daughters would enjoy; I know that at least one of them has no patience for the leisurely, meticulously-crafted plots so characteristic of Jane Austen. But I would not be embarrassed to watch this with any of them, or with my best friend, who like me is an Austinophile [is there such a word?]

I was delighted to learn from a quick glance at the screen while listening to the bonus material, that there is a “Jane Austen for Dummies”. Appearing soon on my wishlist for Amazon. And it’s obvious [to me, at least] that one of the things I will be doing when the dust settles after the move, is joyfully re-reading every blessed one of Jane Austin’s books.

When I finished the movie, I had two pattern repeats to go on Middlest’s sock, before the toe decreases. Which means that I should have a picture of the finished pair before bedtime tonight!

And which also means that I will be down to one project on the needles. I will want to do something on larger needles, which might mean Fetching in the red Cashmerino Aran I have been hoarding for over a year since knitting four pairs in green or tweed in late 2006. Or maybe I will unvent something to use up the last of the Smooshy leftover from Mal’s Mitts last December.

I still have no idea what I want to make from the charcoal grey Denim Silk. Happy Monday, everybody!

In the Economy of Heaven

A happy and blessed Easter to all y’all.

I read this article during a sanity break at work on Friday. She captures beautifully what I think and feel about Easter, 32 years post-baptism.

Speaking of church, Middlest asked when we have our block of meetings. I’ll email you that information, just in case there are any irreligious burglars reading my blog. Plus, after next week that might change, but I’ll go into that later. Suffice it to say that our schedule and Secondborn’s ward schedule are sufficiently offset that I was able to dash over for sacrament meeting in her ward, which they have first in their block of meetings, and then back home for our meetings, where sacrament comes last. [There are two options for how the three meetings in a three-hour block are arranged; it’s my understanding that the stake president decides which arrangement would be best for the wards in his stake.]

Thus killing several birds with one stone: a smidgen of quiet time with my Bitties, a blip on the radar screen of a certain brother, and a mutual-non-acknowledgment-of-existence with the minor politician I dated briefly. Enabling me to be back in our ward for my duet with LittleBit in sacrament meeting, where we reprised the hymn we sang/signed last week in Relief Society.

We were supposed to reprise it last week in sacrament meeting, but one of the speakers ran long. There was much murmuring among the “sistren”, but today I understood why that one brother went over his allotted time last week. The mother of one of our ward members is deaf; she and her husband were visiting from out of state this weekend. Her husband sat in front and interpreted most of the meeting. When LittleBit and I got up to sing/sign “How Great Thou Art”, he got to sit in the front row and relax for a moment. And I had a real, live deaf person to sign for. In the economy of Heaven, there is an elegance and wisdom that surpasses mortal understanding.

The reason that I’ll have to wait until next week to let Middlest know what time we meet for church, is that next Sunday we are having a stake sacrament meeting [something like unto stake conference, with the exception that we will all take the sacrament together, which doesn’t happen at stake conferences]. Why, you ask? Because they are reconstituting Second Ward, which was dissolved five years ago, shortly after LittleBit and I moved into our current ward. The last change threw Fourthborn and her father into our new ward; while I was happy to have her in our ward, as for him, well, I just sat there and sobbed. Audibly. He and I have lived within three miles of each other for the past ten years since the divorce. It has made visitation easy for him; it has not always made church easy for me. Particularly when he was the Gospel Doctrine [adult Sunday School] teacher in the old ward.

So, we know that they will be pulling talent and leadership out of several wards, in order to staff the resurrected Second Ward. And we know that our ward will be affected, because only those wards that will be affected, have been invited to the stake sacrament meeting. And we are invited. And we don't know where the new ward boundaries will be, and we know that two weeks from now, some of us will be attending church in my old building. So it made for a poignant Relief Society birthday party yesterday, as they presented a slide show of all the active sisters in the ward as it now exists. And it made for a tender Sunday School class today, as we don’t know who will be gone next time we meet [including, possibly, our Gospel Doctrine teacher]. And after our duet and the choir Easter program, our dear bishop stood and gave us some heartfelt, encouraging words, at which point I was a soggy mess, particularly when the organist played “God Be With You Till We Meet Again” as postlude music.

So in a bit of comic relief that I hope does not detract too much from the Easter spirit, I offer what my long-ago roommate, Shellz, sent me. I thoroughly enjoyed this. [The background looks like my house did when I had hordes of short people.]

I picked up a couple of movies on my way to the party last night. [Had a blast; flirted not at all; brownies were a real hit.] And I’ve had a short but hopefully not sleep-wrecking nap. So I’ll be off to help Johnny Depp find Neverland, or maybe I'll just hang out with The Jane Austen Book Club. I’ll let you know what I think of both movies, later.

The heel is turned and the gussets complete on Middlest’s second sock. I imagine that more progress will occur during the movie(s).

A Most Instructive Evening

I was obviously supposed to be there, judging by the number of obstacles between my desk and the museum. We did get early dismissal from work, but I think I already mentioned that. I had a wonderfully productive day and was nevertheless delighted to shut down the popsicle stand and head out.

Obstacle the First: Card Keys. I have two of them. One for the parking garage, and one for the office suite. I have them clipped together and wear them on the hem of my shirt. Got out to the car, stowed my bags in the trunk, grabbed my knitting in case traffic screeched to a halt, buckled up, and heard a click/clunk as my tags slipped off into The Chaos Beneath The Seats. Drove the car up onto the first parking level, got out my flashlight, put on my emergency flashers and started spelunking. Two of my girlfriends stopped to ask if I was OK. It took me ten full minutes and much reinvestigation to finally locate my cards. Definitely a case of “none so blind as those who cannot see”.

Got back in, buckled up, turned off the flashers, and headed out. Eastbound traffic was at a standstill, but I had clear sailing westbound until out of nowhere there was half of a something [easy chair? box spring?] squarely in front of me, and thankfully nobody in the next lane. I went one way, the car behind me went another, and we both missed it. And almost immediately had to swerve around half of a pallet that was waiting in ambush. Thankfully, it was a bright clear afternoon with good visibility, so no harm done except to my pulse rate.

Pulled off at the credit union and grabbed some cash from the ATM, and got back onto the freeway. Found a parking spot right across the street from the museum, near a crosswalk, and my new friend P waiting for me. We then played “Marco!” with the main body of our friends, who had been stuck in traffic and were still about five miles out. Just before they arrived, a pair of the younger single sisters showed up, so all in all there were seven of us.

The artwork was nothing short of amazing. Reliquaries, old coins, sarcophagi, fragments of old illuminated manuscripts. Those early believers and artisans had an appreciation for how the Old Testament and New Testament connect, that is lost on many modern Christians. We took a guided tour [included in the price of admission] led by a lovely woman who graciously admitted that she was out of her element. She knew a lot about the pieces, but she did not appear to be a student of the Scriptures. I would have loved for some of my friends at church to have led that tour, particularly the one who was the keynote speaker at our conference last weekend.

I bit my tongue a lot last night, and when the tour was over, I went back and read the plaques on the wall and looked at the items at my own pace. I don’t like crowds, and I don’t like canned versions of “what we think happened”. I like facts and artifacts, and I like to think for myself, even if sometimes frequently I draw the wrong conclusions.

So this morning, the day before we celebrate the one of the two most important events in human history, I am glad to be alive, glad to be something of a scriptorian, glad that I don’t have to walk around on marble floors today, glad that I know the Good Brothers and some of the sisters a bit better than I did, glad for the Chinese food that we ate last night, even if my fortune was more generic than most and the cookie was stale.

Our ward is having its annual Relief Society birthday celebration this morning. I’m looking forward to that. And then I will have some puttering time before heading over to Parts East for a game night, where I will probably not play games but just sit and knit and visit.

I am not far from the heel on Middlest’s sock, and I would like to turn that heel and my own before the sun goes down. We shall see. I have some other projects that I want to work on. I did pick up some ribbon for the Stripedy Stockings, and I realized while at the fabric store that one stocking is about an inch shorter than the other. Should not matter once they’re on my legs, as one of my calves is about an inch bigger around than the other. So as long as I match the longer stocking with the larger leg, there should be no Mutt and Jeff effect.

And there is another small project that needs to be checked off the list, plus the laundry to catch up. [Like the poor, always to be with us.]

I’m off to listen to yesterday's KnitPicks podcast and one or two from the Sticks & Strings archive. Happy knitting, everybody, and have lots of fun with your kids and grandkids, if egg-dyeing is on your agenda. Iwas tempted but managed to resist.

[Resist. It's a dyeing joke. Tee hee!]

Oh, and for the record: no flirting whatsoever last night, just lots of good conversation.

Les mots du jour [words of the day]

Pleonasm. Not to be confused with neoplasm. Although both are related to having too much of something. I got a call right about lunchtime from one of my co-workers, who was at a Toastmasters meeting and needed a quick chat with the walking thesaurus [that would be me]. I had never heard of a pleonasm, although it seems that I’ve committed beaucoups of them in my long and wordy life. Dictionary.com came to my rescue, and hers.

I forgot to ask her if she had to use the word in her talk.

And now for something that might seem to be a change of topic, but isn’t. Entirely.

One of Brother Sushi’s sterling qualities is his ability to tell me that I might be wrong without making me livid. An excellent quality in any friend, and all the more delightful when that friend is male. We were meandering from one parking lot to the next, on the night of our monthly dinner some months ago, in search of a restaurant without a 45-minute wait.

I’d been delayed in picking him up after I left the office because LittleBit was having a first date with a guy she’d liked for quite awhile, and I remembered what the kitchen sink had looked like when I’d left in the morning. So instead of driving straight to Brother Sushi’s house as I normally would, I came home and we speed-cleaned the kitchen and tidied the living room.

My mom had done a similar thing for me shortly after I joined the church, when the guy *I* liked called for an impromptu picnic and I had no food in the house and no car and no way to get to the store before he got there. Mom threw some sandwiches together and a couple of apples while I whipped up a batch of brownies. So in helping LittleBit, I rolled that good-karma wheel a notch or two forward.

Where was I?

Driving between one restaurant and another, I used the word “perambulate”, which I felt was a pretty good description of what we were doing: ambling about, except for the fact that we were not on foot. He said, “I don’t think that word means what you think it does.” And instead of getting my seat belt in a twist, I said something like, “OK, tell me more.” And he told me that it meant to patrol the perimeter of an area, in the sense of securing it.

I had a little time at my desk a few days later [translation: I needed to look busy for a few minutes], so I did some sleuthing at dictionary.com. Turns out that we were both right. I was not crazy for having the mental image of strolling around, with or without a perambulator [same root], and he was not wrong about the patrolling aspect.

I love being right. There are things that I love even more, such as chocolate and naps and knitting on the couch listening to a good clean podcast, but being right is pretty far up on the list. And I need to work on that. I remember something one of our church leaders said, several years ago: “Do you want to be right, or do you want to be loved?”

In all honesty, I want both. And over the long haul, I think the Savior is the only one who’s managed that, and certainly not during His earthly life. So why should I expect it in mine?

I am more than halfway down the leg of Middlest’s second sock, and I have just about used up the last of the first ball of yarn. I will probably polish that off today. Possibly before work. The sock will be getting some culture tonight. We are meeting up at the Kimbell Museum for their exhibition of early Christian art, at half price, and then I am most devoutly hoping for food afterward, or at least dessert. Both of the Good Brothers will be there, so there will be excellent conversation and possibly some flirting, and I was delighted to see while reading the posts for our dinner group that another brother who interests me, has joined the group if not tonight’s excursion.

Can you hear me grinning, from where you sit? I have one minute to throw on my clothes, grab my bags, and head out the door. And leftover chicken fried steak waiting for my lunch. This is shaping up to be a very Good Friday, indeed!