 I have a little secret. Thanksgiving is not my favorite holiday. Sh-h-h-h-h. Nobody in my family knows that and I don't want it to get out. I want them all at my house entertaining me with their silly jokes, crazy laughter, and with all their hilarious and darling children in tow. That's all I want. I do not care if there is a turkey. I don't even like turkey and I especially do not like it on the day it was intended to be eaten. It gives me a stomach ache and I believe I am allergic to it.
A giant Thanksgiving meal is hard for me to make. It takes a lot of thought and planning and I don't like to think that much. I don't like to cook and if it wasn't for my family who I love to the moon and back I would be shoving TV dinners in the oven. I do it for them and try not to be crabby about it. To me it's like cooking fried eggs, bacon and toast. Will it all be done at the exact right time? Chances are...for me...no. I apparently have no sense of space or time because all of a sudden it seems the turkey is done. I have peeked at it in the oven all day and basted it within an inch of it's life and then...ding...it's done. I'm sick of smelling it and then Oh hell....I forgot to put the beans on the stove. The stuffing needs to be pulled out, the bird needs to be transferred to another surface to be carved and I'm still putting olives in little dishes and setting the table. There is always something I've left in the oven and the damn jellied cranberries won't come out of the damn can. And then...oh yea..the potatoes need to be mashed and the gravy needs to be made and it all needs to be hot when it gets to where it's supposed to be. It's a nightmare of epic proportions.
We don't have a dining room. I don't know why...we just don't. If it was a dining room the space between the living room and the kitchen would be too small to feed a mess of people anyway. There are bookcases and a piano so really there is no room for a table. We drag a giant table in the from the garage where it lives all year except for food holidays. It's not something I can start setting the day before and end up to have a lovely flower arrangement sitting in the middle of a snow white cloth. And matching napkins. I'm lucky if I remember to buy napkins. This year I didn't and we had summer napkins with pears dancing around on them at the plates. I also don't have much counter space in the kitchen. There isn't any room to keep steaming bowls of food warm. I ram things in a bowl, stick a spoon in it and give it to a grandkid to bring to the table. And really...by the time I get everything on the table I am so sick of looking at it that I can't eat. We say a hasty prayer and everyone digs in while I sit and wait for my stomach to unclench.
In spite of all this I am thankful but I don't need a day to be. I have a wonderful husband who kisses the back of my neck just at the time I want to beat him about the head for getting in my way by the sink. I have charming and funny daughters who know how to make gravy and will peel as many potatoes as need be without complaining. I would be complaining. I have daughters who laugh at me and my craziness with beautiful smiles on their faces. I have sons-in-law who are good dads and husbands and who are like the sons I never had. And then there are the grandbabies. Sigh. I love those darling kids with all my heart and even though one of them broke my glass garden gazing ball shooting nuts and mini marshmallows out the back door at the squirrels in my my yard with a slingshot I did not care. If I didn't have to make a that giant stinkin' meal the day would have been perfect.
I was listening to a podcast the other day when the two people involved started discussing the merits of knitting for others. There had been a long discourse about technical stuff and I had been thinking about pulling the ear buds out when I heard 'it may sound selfish but I only knit for myself'. Hm-m-m-m. It did sound selfish but I agreed with most of what followed because I now knit only for myself, my family, and Hats for the Homeless. I am only a giver when it comes to people who will appreciate what I have spent hours doing. And, as selfish as that sounds, that's what it is. I'm sorry.
I love knitting for the people in my life who beg for more wool socks. I love knitting little socks for grandkids who already appreciate the warmth of wool. I also love knitting doll clothes and hats and mittens as gifts because I know the intended will enjoy them and wear them. They live around me and know how much time it takes to knit that little sock. Or that big sock. They don't knit but they love that I do.
I couple of years ago I stopped knitting for people who were not wool-worthy.....which reminds me of one of my favorite TV shows and being 'sponge worthy' but that's another story altogether. I had started knitting socks for serious and people...non worthy people...began to ask me to knit some for them so I did. Because I am a sucker like that. If someone wanted to keep their feet warm with my wool socks who was I to turn them down? A hand knit sock is a gift of warmth from the heart. I knit like a fiend for people who I thought would appreciate the gift I was giving them, wrapped up the socks and gave them away. Little did I know that those socks were being thrown in the washing machine and having to go through various other traumas. It took awhile but I soon learned to be a selfish giver. My first glimmer of someone not being worthy was when I got a pair back that I had knit for my daughter's day care provider. She wanted me to mend the giant holes and seeing as though she had thrown them in the washer and -gasp-dryer so many times that they had felted I had a hard time finding any stitches I could connect with. She had so loved the little socks my granddaughter had worn to her house that she begged for a pair but alas....she is not worthy.
After a series of finding out what other mind bending things people had done to my wool socks I got the shock of my life and a bad stomach ache. I had knit a pair of beautiful cabled socks for my now ex-boss for Christmas one year thinking it was a lovely gift. A couple of months later, at work, we were having a discussion about knitting with a client and the boss yanked off her stinky boot to show that hand knit socks weren't all they were cracked up to be. I actually gasped aloud when I saw the condition of my socks. There were such huge holes in the heels that really...there was no heel left to even mend. And they were dirty and stunk to high heaven. I almost cried. I was speechless with sock grief. And a little embarrassed in front of the client. I wanted to sink into a big pile of yarn and have it close over me. I told her to take the other sock off and stuck both of the smelly things into my purse. I also told her that I was going to mend them but what I actually did was have a little funeral for them and bade them a sad good bye. We never spoke of the socks again but that day, as I stood weeping over the socks in my wastebasket, I took a vow to never, ever do it again. I vowed to make a list that only included sock worthy people and to have a strict policy....and never veer from said policy....about what a person has to be like before I will even have a glimmer of consideration about knitting for them. Selfish? You be the judge.
I guess there is another side to the coin. The one where if you give someone a gift it is theirs to do with what they will. The socks are not my socks anymore if I give them away and I should get over it. I bet that's what you are all thinking. I try to think like that but I'm selfish and I'm happier that way. And really...it's all about me.
 Please take time out of your busy day to cast your ballot. It's a freedom we are all entitled to. It's a freedom we all might not agree with but it's yours now. And please think about voting NO on both amendments. As a country we need to go forward not backward. We don't need to go back to an era where voting was restricted because of gender or race. We formed this country on basic freedoms and the ability to vote is the most important one. Wear your I Voted st
Bah! I have nothing for Master's Monday except a torturous headache and no progress on Level 2. I don't know what I was thinking deciding to start on this journey through knitting hell before Christmas. I have plenty, and I mean plenty, of knitting to get done before Christmas and it seems as though every day I add another thing to the list. It's so easy for my mouth to say that I will just add another pair of handknit socks to the pile of gifts while my actual brain tells me it's impossible to get all this accomplished. So, yeah, the Master's knitting has fallen by the wayside.
Level 2 is just a bugger. I knit up the first two swatches, then knit the first one again because it looked funny. I have to seam them both together to show that I get the idea of good seaming. I get it...I just don't have time to do it. I've been reading Arenda Holladay's blog and that thing is a gold mine of information. She has lovely little video clips showing practically everything a person has to know to knit something to perfection. Again....no time to put her videos into practice but she is saved in 'My Favorites' . Let's hope I remember that when the bitter cold and snow of January rolls around and I'm searching for some knitting to keep me warm. A lap full of wool swatches really raises the body temperature.
The thing that has bothered me the most about Level 2 so far was the friggin' mitten. I shouldn't have skipped ahead to the mitten but that's what happens when I am faced with a big binder full of instructions and a skein of wool. I need to do everything at once. I didn't have time to seam the swatches but surely I could crank out a mitten. Really? Some days someone should just have me go lay down, put a cold cloth on my head, and tell me to chill the hell out. I have recently knit 6 pairs of socks, a hat, and have patterns staring at me for American Girl doll clothes. I have another sock on the needles, 2 more balls of the same yarn for two more pairs of socks and then the darling 6 year old granddaughter socks to knit. What was I thinking starting in on a mitten that involved color work on 36 stitches with dpn's? And will be judged. Needless to say, the mitten did not go well. The M1's for the thumb gusset increases are something that I've never done before and I could not get them right in my frantic state of mind. Oh, I can do the M1's that require lifting the bar and knitting through the back look but these are different M1's and who has time to read the whole page of directions about that? Turns out these are Elizabeth Zimmerman M1's and all she did was twist loops this way and that for left and right leaning. Hell.
I've put the whole magilla that is Level 2 away now. I find I cannot be tortured by a mitten when there are so many other things to be tortured about. It will rear it's ugly head after Christmas and by then I will be ready for it. Right now I am tortured by sock knitting and the election.
Please vote. Vote NO on the amendments and vote for the party who will not mess with social security, medicare, financial aid and who will continue fund Big Bird. Please. It will give me one less thing to be to
My mother has Alzheimer's and it has finally been diagnosed as being in the middle stages. If these are the middle stages I can't begin to imagine what the end stages are like. It's been a hard road for all of us...my sister, myself and my mom because for a long time we had no idea what the hell was going on. Looking back we can see where it began and how it manifested itself into our everyday lives like a dark, shadowy person we also had to deal with. The disease is an entity unto itself. It takes away the person you knew and leaves you with two people you hardly know at all. Some days you are talking to your mom, taking some shit, and some days you are talking to the shadowy person who still thinks your father is alive after being dead for 16 years.
Mom had spent all the money she had by the time my sister and I realized that something was not quite right. She sent away for things that were just plain nonsense only because she wanted to see them in person. She gave thousands to charities and had so many magazine subscriptions that on the days I brought her mail in I would have to actually lug it. She took loans out against her house and spent the money is such a short amount of time that I was speechless when I discovered it. And speechless doesn't happen often for me. She gave such reasonable explanations for all this that it took some time before I brought the hammer down and took her checkbook away and also took over her bill paying. I had arguments with the bank and arguments with magazine companies. I was stonewalled by the VA when I explained that there was something wrong with mom and they blew me off. I feel as though I've spent the past almost three years arguing with someone about any number of things every damn day. Now mom has forgotten all about that. She thinks that my dead dad is there and that she can talk to her own mother who has been gone since 1963. In her Alzheimer's adjusted mind there are all kinds of people who come over and want her to cook them food and find them a place to sleep. And dad? Well, if dad isn't there then he is surly at the bar tossin' them back with his buddies or out with some 'hotsie-totsie'. She hides in her bedroom when the house is full of the people only she can see and even though she is alone she thinks she isn't. According to her it isn't even her house anymore and she is waiting to go live somewhere else. She's tired of taking care of everyone else and the dumpy old house she's been forced to live in. It's a sad state of affairs.
And now I'm going to admit that I do the things I do for my mom because I am her daughter and that is the way things are supposed to go. I don't feel much empathy because she was an ass-grinder of a mother who was always right and if things didn't go her way she just quit talking and gave everyone the silent treatment. She demanded certain behavior which was of the' children should be see and not heard' variety. She bullied, she publicly humiliated, and she never apologized. Ever. She groaned when asked to watch her grandchildren for any length of time and then told you all the bad things they had done while you were gone. When asked to send over empty food boxes so that the kids could play 'store' she brought over an armful of booze bottles and empty brandy boxes. There were no warm fuzzies and that was just how it was.
I am sad that a person's mind can get so muddled that they don't know they live in their own home anymore. I am also kind of sad to see the crazy force that was my mother dwindle down to a little confused person still trying to be right and blaming the phantom people she claims live in her home for all the things that go wrong or that go missing. My sister is the kinder, softer, warmer person my mom needs and is the best. She's the best at talking moms out of things and being nice. I'm only the best at getting things done and making phone calls. There is no hugging and no kisses on top of the aging head. We weren't brought up that way and I save all that for my own girls and darling grandbabies. I don't think my mom would like it anyway. She's a prickly old thing who is home alone in her house full of made up people and every day the phrase 'you reap what you sow' goes through my mind. I have a hard time giving to a person who didn't give of them self and, as sad as that is, I have to accept it and go on.
I've done it. I have ordered Level 2 of the TKGA Master Knitting Program. I believe I had said that I wasn't going to do it or that I was going to wait until the new year or some such nonsense. I lied. I have it all printed out and in a binder...not THAT binder....and it's ready and waiting. The problem is not the yarn...I have the yarn. The problem is that it's really, really hard. Really hard. There are way more swatches to knit and lots more research to do. There is fair isle knitting and argyle knitting and lace knitting. And pattern writing. And then, after that, there is the knitting of a vest that fits and has to be seamed up both sides. And a five page written report on the history of knitting. Gak. I think this is going to take me a whole lot longer to do than the what now seems to be easy-peasy Level 1.
I don't exactly know why I want to do this. I can't put my finger on it and I think I already wrote about why I didn't know before. I still don't. Maybe it makes me feel as if I am accomplishing something for myself other than laundry and dusting or going over to my mom's house to make sure she has taken her pills. It's just for me and I'm going to take a giant stab at this dastardly Level 2. We'll se
I am just going to come out and say it. I have too much sock yarn and I am in need of an intervention. After sitting waist deep in the stuff while trying to organize a yarn closet in the spare bedroom I came to the conclusion that I just can't help myself when I am around the lure of sock yarn. I need somebody to tell me no because I can't seem to say it to myself. There are too many pretty colors, too much cashmere and too many lovely hanks of squishy yarn begging to live in my lavender scented closet and I can't stop. I am a yarnaholic.
I used to trick myself into thinking that I didn't have a problem by hiding the yarn around the house in various types of storage containers. I was surprised one day when I moved a lidded basket I had sitting by the fireplace in order to clean the tiles and it seemed heavy. Oh! It was crammed full of sock yarn that I had forgotten all about. I had a basket by my knitting spot on the couch full of the stuff and that was sitting on top of a round basket also packed with sock yarn. There was a small bin in the coat closet and a small bin in the upstairs linen closet. Also, sad to say, there were two bins rammed into the spare bedroom closet. And a couple of hanks in a tote bag that was hanging by the front door. I found a couple more in a bookcase drawer that I never use. And in the corner china cupboard hidey hole. I had a problem.
I tried to fix the situation by first taking an oath to not buy anymore sock yarn and then taking every hank and cake I could find up to the spare bedroom and starting a little pile. I would organize that pile I said to myself and then I will have a handle on the sock yarn and I won't buy any more. That pile soon grew to epic proportions as I went up and down the stairs with more hanks of hidden yarn and before I knew it the bed was covered in wool and I forgot what the color of the carpet was. I needed more bins. I need several more bins I said to myself and closed the door.
Every once in awhile I would go into the room full of yarn and wade around thinking about how to actually start. I would set down a new bin or a new hank of yarn I had found and quietly leave the room. The cat enjoyed taking his daily nap on the bed covered in wool and I certainly didn't want to disturb him. I was never in the exact right mood to clean the old clothes out of the closet to make room for the new bins but the weight of all that sock yarn in piles began to hang heavy around my neck and pretty soon I was looking into the room every day and feeling bad. Then one day I had enough. I heard that my grandchildren planned to sleep over at my house on that very woolly bed in the room full of yarn and it snapped me into action. This could not happen. They couldn't see what a yarnaholic grandma was and they needed a safe place to sleep. I steeled myself and marched up the stairs with a cup of coffee and a sense of determination. Yarn was not going to get the best of me. I dove in and soon hanks and balls were flying every which way. The cat left in a panic as I emptied the closet of sad old clothes and pulled out the bins that had been stuffed in there willy nilly and emptied those as well. I set up new bins and labeled them with my extra fancy label maker. Pretty soon I could see the light and the carpet. I sorted, I tossed, mixed and matched bins and slid the ones that just weren't working out into the hall. An under-the-bed bin just does not belong on a closet shelf. Something will fall on your head every time you try to get it down.
Finally, by late afternoon, I had the wool under control. There were 4 bins of sock yarn and one for laceweight. There was a giant bin for worsted and a giant bin for 'everything else'. There was also a bin for leftover sock yarn because you just never know. One bin was for gifts and one for sock kits. A bin for needles that I hardly ever use and one for extra stuff. Like a junk drawer. A knitting junk drawer. A bin for my spinning spindle that I don't quite get the hang of and a bin full of unfinished projects that I might finish someday. I cornered the market on bins and they were all eventually in apple pie order in the spare bedroom closet.
I was so proud of myself. I had taken an oath witnessed by the cat and overcame my yarn obsession and even though I was sweaty and tired I went downstairs to get the camera so I could capture my shining moment on film. As I passed the open front door I saw a box sitting on the top of the steps outside. Oh.
 Hooray, hooray! I finally did it. I passed Level 1 of the Master's Knitting program. I got the re-done swatches I had sweat over and a letter in the mail saying that I had passed and could now go on to Level 2. I did a little happy dance and had myself a big sigh of relief. Passing that thing was a major accomplishment for me and I am happy as hell about it.
Except.... now I want to go on to Level 2. Argh! I am a woman possessed.
I had a birthday the other day filled with fun, family and grandchildren playing soccer. It was so much fun watching them and seeing how they've improved with every game. It brought me right back to the days when I was driving my own three girls hither and yon to games, practices and tournaments. For a few years there I felt as though I lived in the car and only ate meals out of a zip lock bag. Hubby was a soccer coach so it was up to me to get everyone every place on time and in the correct uniforms. Clean, of course. I wish I'd had the technology then to put some kind of device on my lawn chair just so I could see how many miles the poor beat up thing had traveled. I can't begin to guess how many games I watched and cheered at over the years what with rec soccer, school soccer, college soccer and summer traveling soccer. I also can't begin to guess how many times I ended up in the emergency room with a child who had sprained an ankle or torn some kind of ligament somewhere. There were also wrists that had been bent backwards way too far and one nasty concussion. We prefer not to dwell on that particular injury because it all turned out okay. And it's the hard part of the game.
Looking back, I think playing soccer taught my girls a lot about life. To listen to the coach, to play the game hard and to the best of your ability and when push come to shove...either solve the problem or talk and pass the ball. It's all about team work but occasionally it's about getting the ball out from someone else's feet and running with it. I hope my granddaughters learn the same lessons. And for parents of soccer players? Sometimes it's all about keeping your mouth shut and enjoying what's happening in front of you.
I loved reliving the old soccer days on my birthday. Watching my daughter's kids play and hearing them coach, give advice and cheer warmed my heart. I didn't mind one bit that my birthday cake was a Hostess Cupcake. I got to see the next generation of player step up and score.
 Here is my sock...the sock with the anticipated stripey goodness and a heel that looks like a toe. And nasty holes right where the purple heel meets green sock cuff. Man! I hate those holes. I don't much like the sock anymore either. After all the research and reknitting that I have done on these Afterthought Heel socks I have renamed them the Constant Thought Socks. I am obsessed with the damn heel and keep thinking about other ways there could have been to get the heel to look better than this.
There are people on Ravelry who write about the problem of fit if one has a high instep. Oh. I wish I would have seen some of that sooner. I have a high instep and I could have saved myself a lot of pain, anguish and torture by just knitting a different kind of sock heel. Perhaps the Sweet Tomato Heel or the wrap and turn heel. Or any damn heel other than one that would never fit me. I've read all about some kind of percentage system to alleviate the shallow heel that involves taking 60% of the stitches and using that amount to knit the heel instead of the usual 50%. I know I do not have a head for math but it seems to me that no matter how many stitches I use for the heel if I have cast on the same amount as I did for these socks the heel will just start farther up on the instep and still have holes and still look funny.
I might need hypnosis or a session of actupuncture to get the remaining thoughts of the Afterthought Heel out of the crevicses in my brain. It is kind of funny, I guess, that I can't let go of this thing. The funniest part about it is that every time I type 'heel' I have to go back and fix it because I find I've typed 'hell' instead. Afterthought Heels.....the third ring of hell.
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