I am so tired of the verbing of America. SO weary of words being used in the wrong way. Seriously...if I hear or read the word 'gifted' one more time I will scream like a crazy woman and then run down the street cursing. Gifted, sourced, impacted, referenced, officed......really, how hard is it to verbalized your statement in the correct manner? If this is driving me nuts I can only imagine what it's doing to all the poor people who took English as a major in college.

Is it me or what? How is saying 'I gifted her with some yarn' easier to say than 'I gave her some yarn'? Or, weirder yet, ' I was gifted this yarn'? Oh, it sets my teeth on edge. And, I might add, Ravelry is not helping one bit with their gifted/traded section. They are gifting yarn all over the place. When I heard someone say recently that 'they officed at home' I had to bite my tongue, hard, to keep from saying what I really wanted to say which was, 'You sound like an idiot'.

How have we come to this? Is it a cool pretense that I don't get? Is is really so much cooler and hipper to say gifted instead of I got or I gave? Am I not in the cool group anymore? Is it texting? Is it TV? IPod? IPad? What?!

What I would really like to say to all the gifters and sourcers is that I will remain in my home office looking up reference materials that will make an impact. I will receive gifts and I will give gifts. I will not source anything and I will do this until my last breath. I may even start correcting you all so watch yourselves.

Well, hell. I have been knitting on these pooling socks for awhile now and I had decided a couple of days ago to get going and get the darn things done. I have other stuff to knit...other stuff to do. There are Hallowe'en costumes to make, trips to pack for, and chiffon dresses to sew at work. And let's not speak of the state of my house. I finished the first one and cast on the other one right away like a good little knitter. The second sock did not stripe either. Still pools of gray amid a sea of blue. Sigh. I press on. I knit. I listen to a book on my MP3 player. I watch horrible TV. I do a little laundry. And then I read the Yarn Harlot's blog.

She's on a book tour now and she always has such great posts on the people who come to see her. They bring her good knitting and bad knitting, funny knitting and sweet knitting. They also bring beautiful babies but that's not the point. The point is that someone brought something to show and it was a baby hat with the child's name knit into the front of the hat. I howled with laughter when I saw that the name had been knit in backwards. Oh, I made such fun of the poor woman. Of course, it was in the privacy of my own home and mostly in my head that I poked fun at the backwards name and I would never have said anything mean to her in person but really...who would do such a bonehead thing? I laughed and knit on.

Fast forward to this evening. I sat down to knit and was kind of thrilled to be able to turn the heel because I really have a fondness for that so I did. Pleased as punch with myself, I putzed around getting ready to pick up the stitches along the gusset edges and..... what? What?! Why did it all look so weird? Why was the front of the sock looking this way instead of that way? Well, hell. I had knit the whole heel backwards. Yes. Yes, I did. I knit the whole heel without even looking at it. Bonehead? You be the judge.

No, I didn't go to Rhinebeck but I am sitting here wishing I had. Whenever I see pictures of it...usually via Anne Hanson....I ache with longing. There are so many people with all the same purpose while wearing lovely knitted things that it makes me weak in the knees. There are all manner of women who I would love to meet or even just bump into. There is just so much YARN! And sheep. And ...and...everything! It's like DisneyWorld for adults. Oh, I can barely stand it.

We have a little sheep and wool festival here called Sheperd's Harves but it is nowhere near the same scale as Rhinebeck. It has sheep and shearing and border collie trials and lots of vendors but it is not the same. I can usually snag some Briar Rose yarn there but it is not New York. Nowhere near. I am a sad little jealous creature.

One of these years I am going to make it to Rhinebeck. I swear on my yarn stash. I just hope I'm not in a wheelchair when I get the chance.

Horray! I am done with the godforsaken oak leaf sweater AND all the beeping and road scraping has stopped! I knew it had something to do with the knitting of the everlasting sweater. My house is quiet except for that thing that flew or fell down into my stove exhaust fan and scratches all night. In my life there is something new every day. Whether I like it or not.

Technically the sweater really isn't finished. I have to sew up the side seams and then pick up stitches to knit cuffs but it is done in my book. The 'just one more 36 row chart' deal is over. Thank god. I haven't blocked it yet either yet I consider it done. It is so done that I went on to knit socks for Xmas and already have one of those done and off the needles. That is what is nice about socks. Where you're done...they're done.

I ran into a knitting group when I stopped in at my favorite coffee shop yesterday. Luckily, I was wearing a shawl I had knit so I had something for show and tell. The women were all happily knitting and talking and we had a nice little chat before I had to run back to work. One of the gals was knitting a sweater out of...get this...fingering weight yarn! I didn't have the heart to tell her that she probably wouln't ever finish it. Who am I to be a killjoy? All I know is that if that sweater was being knit in my house it would never be considered done.

Well, hell. I have a new obsession and in the 11 days since I heard about this thing I have purchased items and gone on car trips. Insane! I now geocache and I can't stop. There. I said it. I seriously can't stop. Even finding myself outside in the dark of night walking down the street barefoot in my pj's whilst staring at a GPS device and having my neighbor ask me if I was out for a walk didn't stop me. The odd look he was giving me didn't stop me either. I just explained geocaching to him way longer than was necessary.

Here's the deal: I love a good scavenger hunt. I love being outdoors. I love trying to figure out clues. I love a nice gadget. A hand-held GPS device is a wonderful gadget. A person can have fun all day with it. A person can even forget about laundry and dinner and birthday parties while out geocaching but that's another story. It's the best fun ever for two old farts and their grandkids.

I was shopping at REI just 11 days ago when something interesting caught my eye. Things like that happen to me. I found myself looking at a shelf of GPS devices. I found myself touching them and wondering what in the world this was all about. In the next second a couple of people who geocache started talking to me and 'bang' I was hooked. It just sounded like so much fun to stomp around in a forest looking for something tiny and swearing to myself. I went home and told my hubby about it, we looked it up in the internet, http://www.geocaching.com, and before I  knew it I was out buying a Garmin. We discovered that, in a five mile radius of our house there are more than 300 geocaches hidden. Are you kidding me? We were on it like stink on a monkey!

We didn't buy groceries over the weekend. We geocached. I didn't do laundry. We took the grandkids geocaching and we had the best time ever even though we came home covered with burrs and scratches. I think maybe after I get dressed today...because even walking around in the daytime with my jammies on is a no-no for me.....I will stop for a little caching on the way to run my errands. How long can it take?

As I revealed in a previous post, the Master's Knitting program is calling out to me and I am going to give it a go. After the holidays. That was my plan. To work on it and blog about it no matter how boring and mundane. Well...I have been reading the posts in the Master's group on Ravelry lately and I have to say that almost everyone is fired up to a fever pitch over the thing. I'm getting scared. The number of posts about what kind of yarn to use is almost endless. There are things that have to be researched and then written about. There are numerous books to either purchase or try to get from the library. There is a friggin' bibleography to write! A giant 3 ring binder is involved. There are so many posts to wade through that I am getting exhausted just reading them all. I think this Master's program will be a short trip to Crazyville for me.

I have a little..ahem...problem being organized. Not just with knitting and yarn balls but in all things. I tend to leave things laying around until I can't find them anymore. No matter how many knitting bags I have, everything I need to work on in the bag is never all there. A pattern here, a yarn ball there, and don't get me started on the needles. I just can't be good and I am too old to learn how now. How am I ever going to finish this Master's program with everything that is involved?

And don't tell me to get a big bin and keep everything in there. Believe me...after a few weeks it will not only hold some of the program but also a spatula, a couple of Legos, a book I have been looking for, and one shoe. The yarn will probably be somewhere else. This is my cross in life to bear. I have no idea how to fix the inability to have things all nice and tidy and in the correct place. It's going to take me years to finish the Master's because I will spend the larger part of the time looking for things.

My grandma used to say, 'pins go where pins go, bobby pins go where bobby pins go'. She would be in Crazyville if she could see that I have bobby pins and a doll shoe in my box of pins. My grandma knew where everything of hers was and could lay her hands on whatever she needed in a second. The gene did not make it to me. I don't know how it happened but there is a jar of markers, 3 coffee cups and a watermelon in my car. This is how it is in Crazytown.

Seriously....the Creature Comforts Cardi is still being worked on. I am knitting and knitting an unending sweater. This must be what hell is like. It never gets to the correct length. I have measured and re measured and knit and knit and the damn thing is still not long enough. I am getting sick of the darling oak leaves. I don't much care for the color of the thing anymore either. I have a bad feeling about this now. I see myself giving it a dip when it's done in order to block it and it will grow and grow until it's the size of my couch. Sigh. I would like to start in on something else or finish my Christmas socks but I don't dare. If I don't keep at the sweater it will shrink and I will have to knit even more. I believe it is cursed.

I have 2 more hats to knit for Hats for the Homeless and I would also like to get those done but I can't leave the sweater alone for a minute. I have a nice pile of 8 hats and I would like it to be 10 that I drop off. They are fun to knit and don't take much time unlike the damn sweater. I used up a lot of stash yarn for the hats and only bought one more skein. I had no idea that I had so much washable wool hid away but there you have it. A person thinks they don't have enough yarn and buys more but then...whoa....there ends up to be a lot of yarn behind the closet door.

In other news the beeping still beeps. The grinding and scraping still goes on. I'm beginning to think that I am personally responsible for keeping the road crew around because I don't have the damn sweater done and when I do....they will be done and gone.

Oh man....I am old. My three lovely daughters helped me celebrate a milestone birthday yesterday complete with blindfold and surprise cake. There was also a ride in a fire truck and a nice lunch and a wonderful gift of tickets to see Tonic Solfa at Orchestra Hall in December. It was an amazing day. The thought my girls put into the whole thing almost made me cry. They are the best kids in the world. Nonetheless...I am still older than dirt.

I have been looking at my old face in the mirror this past week leading up to my birthday and I can't exactly believe what I see. What happened to my face? Some days it's a real shock to me to see this face looking back at me. Where did the face go that I used to see? I feel like I looked the same for such a long time that this old age crap has done a real number on me. Makeup isn't helping anymore. It just makes it worse. I usually feel about 48 years old for most of the time. A 48 year old who would rather put on jammies and knit at the end of the day instead of going out but still...48. Now when I am asked my age the answer will be a shock to me to have to give.

I going to try to think of this age as using the time to raise my lovely daughters and to see what they have become. Also, to have used the time to get to know and love 5 fabulous grandchildren. I am trying not to be depressed by my old face and my old number.