Dashing Through the Snow

Your intrepid hospice nurse pulled another double shift last night. I think it's the pleading tones of the supervisor that get to me. She sounds so reasonable and needy that I find I can't say no. To add to that, she prefaced by saying, "I know you're having a quiet night," at which point, I should have screamed the word NO! NO! NO! She had invoked the curse of nurses everywhere by saying the word, quiet.

Bye-bye Japanese car (I'm going to miss you). Hello made in Kansas Ford Escape.

The weather was, in a word, wretched, with already 2 inches of heavy wet snow and more mixed precipitation expected. Emboldened by my new sleigh, I accepted the mission of working 16 hours. Fool. Big dummy head. That's me. Weak, weak, weak.

The phone didn't ring again until just shy of midnight and I had to drive 25 miles to see a patient. Even with four wheel drive and my snappy V6 engine, it still took close to an hour to get there because the slush was so deep on the freeway. I got home at 3 AM and fell asleep. Deep in slumber, and probably paralyzed during REM sleep, I didn't hear my beeper go off at 6:45 and missed calling a family back promptly to answer a question. I felt awful, when I finally awoke at 8 AM to see the page.

That's it. No more doubles. I don't care how sweet she sounds or how nicely she begs, the next time the supervisor calls me, I'm going to let her go to voicemail so I have time to practice saying no.

In an attempt to find humor today, I came upon this holiday video. That Ozzy is a naughty boy:

Sleight of Hand

A few weeks ago, I paid $40 to take my first knitting class--the Fair Isle Hat Class. I attended only one of the two days because by the time I'd finished the first class, I had grasped the concept of Fair Isle knitting and finished the project that same night. By the time the second class came around, I had finished my second hat. Instead of taking the second half of the class, I stayed home and napped that day. I vowed that unless it was something I felt the internet couldn't teach me, I was not going to take another class. $40 buys a lot of yarn.

Can you find my mistake? I may let it stand...

When I saw the Michigan double knit hat at the yarn store, I wanted the pattern, but didn't want to take the class to get the pattern. I talked the young lady, Ann Marie, who created the pattern, into selling it to me without taking the class. Of course, I had no clue how to do double knitting, but I wasn't going to let that stop me. After paying for the pattern, I went home and googled, double knitting. I found a video on KnittingHelp.com (I love that site and owe all of my initial skill to their videos), and a great article on Knitty.com, another fabulous site for skill building, not to mention free patterns. Following Ann Marie's pattern, I cast on for the 2 colored hat and I haven't looked back.

Double knitting is nothing short of magical. Magical. Essentially, I'm knitting two hats at once--a tube within a tube-- that are connected only at the cast on edge, and again at the M. The connection occurs when the knitter swaps the position of the two yarns. In this case, I knit the M in blue on the yellow side and in yellow on the blue side. Ingenious! I will say, this is not a technique you'll embrace if you hate to purl. Though it's clear that this is a stockinette pattern, and knit in the round, and we know that every stitch is knit to get that effect, to create a mirror image, one color is knit and the second color is purled. Fixing mistakes? Oy. Now that's a challenge. I have 2 errors that I missed, but I'll fix those in the end by embroidering over them with yarn (gotta love duplicate stitching!). Then again, I may let the mistakes stand.

Mirror image made by alternating colors and the knit/purl stitch. The yellow stitches are knit and the blue purled. To make the M, I knit the blue and purled the yellow.

There are several applications for this technique, one of which I'll try after the first of the year: two socks at a time knit one inside the other.

Be still my little knitter's heart.

Do As I Say

I am fully aware that I said I wouldn't do any Christmas knitting. It appears I'm a liar. I've been knitting up a storm. I can't show it all to you, but my buddy here has seen it.

This was Mr. Mocha Latte looking all non-chalant, just prior to him pouncing on my yarn, biting it and simultaneously digging his claws into my pajama clad legs. Yeouch. As cozy as he was, he was asked to leave after he started mixing it up with my yarn.

Here we have some not so stealthy winter knitting. Somebody is going to receive an awesome Michigan hat--double knit in the round--that is reversible.

This should give solace to the recipient who won't be watching Michigan play in a bowl game this year. Or not.

There's still time to knit a Spartan hat...

Raise Your Cup

This evening, the sale at Cups of Kindness begins. I've gone over to take a look-see at what various artists have made and donated. I've got my eye on a few things and I'm itching for the virtual doors to open.

All money raised benefits the Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank and every dollar donated provides 7 meals for those who would otherwise go hungry. Now that's what I think they mean by stretching a dollar. I wish I could do that!

This year, I donated a knitted item in a round about way. I raffled off my too-large hat to one very generous reader, Laurie, from Three Dog Blog in return for her donation to Cups of Kindness. Together, we kicked off the start of the Cups of Kindness selling season. Maybe you can help keep this going by doing a bit of your holiday shopping at this very special, one of a kind store.

Tis the season to raise your own cup and help eliminate hunger.

Happy Shopping!

Photo by Jorge Barrios on Wiki Commons

Time Out

When I was just a young thing, locking me in my room because I'd been naughty was like a death sentence; being sequestered was just about the worst thing on earth. I recall the desire to be in the thick of things at all times. Oh! How I long for those time outs now. I'd pay somebody good money to send me to my room for an hour. Even 10 minutes would be good. Over the years, I've come to appreciate solitude and an empty calendar.

With the holidays coming up fast, and me with nothing done, my work schedule has conspired with my to-do list to make me feel like I'm already behind this month--even though December just got here. Nobody at work was willing to pick up a day here and there for me so I can get some things done. People just weren't answering the phone. Until today.

Woot! I scored 4 days off this month that wrap a weekend. If you're mathematically challenged this morning, that's 6 days off in a row. The woman picking up my days needs the money and I need a break. That's what I call a win-win situation.

My goal is to have most of what I need to get done completed before next Thursday so I can sit around the house eating bon-bons, spinning yarns and knitting for 6 days in a row. I know that won't happen, but a girl can dream, can't she?

Photo: Wikicommons

A Cautionary Tale

"That's SO Last Year's Coach."

I have a relative through marriage who actually makes statements like that. And means it. I may or may not have a Coach bag from several years ago, but I will tell you, I didn't buy it. It was a gift. It's now a gift I pretty much never use. It may or may not be in my closet since my daughter likes to swap bags now and then. It's probably there because it's small and we all know it wouldn't be the right bag for a girl with a fractured sacrum to carry. She should carry the biggest bag she can find and load it up with the heaviest stuff she owns. That's the way you cure a broken back. One of these days, I'm going to go through her bag to see just what's so important that she can't leave behind--even for a few hours.

But, as usual, I digress.

So this relative, several times removed, the one who likes to rag on women for carrying counterfeit, or last year's Coach, is beginning to learn that financial woes can ruin your wardrobe faster than a girl can make snobby statements. She's the same one who told me she didn't deserve breast cancer because she was better at taking care of her body than most. She truly believed that cancer should only happen to people who asked for it, not for those who stayed uber-skinny, worked out every single day and took their overpriced designer multivitamins religiously. I've never had a conversation with this woman when she didn't find a way to make someone feel bad about themselves while elevating herself on a pedestal.

About two years ago, she got a bug to buy a new home. Not just any new home, either, it was a million dollar home in the zip code she desired. She went and looked at it, and being the wise financial genius that she likes to think she is, she waited. She heard through the grapevine that the owners had lost their high paying jobs and were desperate. When she'd first begun her search, the home was listed for 1.2 million dollars. Each month she waited, the asking price dropped 10 percent. When it became clear that the owners were in utter dire straits, she offered $600,000 and proceeded to gloat. Her patience had paid off and she had her chi-chi home, clearly at the expense of someone's misfortune. Interestingly, when she had to sell her first home, she wouldn't do it because she couldn't get a good enough price for it. She was offered what she'd paid for it, but there was no way it was worth only that in her mind, otherwise, why would she have lived in it for so long. She hung onto it and used it to house her less than fortunate relatives. A very magnanimous woman, wouldn't you say?

Failing to learn from the cancer episode, she clung to her misguided belief that bad things could never happen to her because she does everything perfectly. She considered herself above the financial devastation that had struck metropolitan Detroit and continued to spend like a drunken sailor who only hits port once in a blue moon. Although her new digs were perfect, she hired a decorator and dropped another $150,000 into remodeling a perfectly good mansion. Then tragedy struck. Her husband's business started to fail. Their savings, all in the stock market, disappeared overnight. Despite how wonderful she is, her husband found another woman to give him comfort and has moved in with her.

Just desserts? Probably so. I don't ordinarily find humor in the misfortune of others, but in her's, I admit I do. Hey! I'm not perfect and never said I was. If I were Catholic, I'd have to go to confession every single day just to admit how much I've enjoyed her karmic comeuppance. Over the past year, this woman has said and done the most hurtful things to my daughter. I've wanted to call her so many times to let her know how I really feel, but my best friend and my daughter have vetoed this idea. To still my fingers from dialing, I decided to put her business out there for the rest of the world to see.

I can't wait to bump into her and see her wearing last year's Coach.

So sue me.

Profound

Not me. At least I'm not feeling that way today. I'm all snuggled up, knitting and periodically spinning. I'm striving to make the yarn to knit the Deep in the Forest Mittens. On the wheel right now, I have a beautiful charcoal colored alpaca I purchased at the fiber festival that's spinning up beautifully. In a bag next to the wheel is a cream colored alpaca I bought last week. Obviously, these won't get cast on until the yarn is ready. That may take awhile.

It's pouring rain and incredibly damp and cold tonight. It's supposed to turn to snow later, but hopefully, we won't get much. Since it's raining cats and dogs, I can only say I'm glad I don't have to shovel this stuff. Lucky for me, I'm having one of those hospice nights we don't talk about. I don't want to break my streak. Suffice it to say, Silent Night is a wonderful way to describe a night, no matter the season.

Whatever you're up to, I hope you're cozy, warm and doing something that you love.

Have you heard these guys? If it weren't raining, I'd be walking up to Barnes and Noble to buy their new CD: