Stupid - I know this is stupid.

There’s an ad running on TV, I’ve seen it a couple of times now.  It’s set in a school lunchroom where three little girls are opening up their lunches and getting ready to eat.  It also happens to be Valentine’s Day, and each lunch has been “enhanced” by mom in honor of the occasion.

The chubby little blond girl pulls out a piece of fruit that her mom has decorated with stickers.  The second girl pulls out a sandwich which her mother has trimmed into the shape of a heart. 

The third girl pulls out an envelope.  In side is a Hannah Montana card with a pre-recorded message from mom to her little “rock-star”.

The ad closes with a shot back on the little blonde who looks, not just wryly disappointed, but absolutely shattered.

It makes me really uncomfortable.  I would under no circumstances purchase this card or anything like it - and I can’t help but feel that this isn’t quite what the marketing department had in mind with this commercial :)

I’m getting stuck with my knitting, which is a little depressing, but was predictable for the time of year.  I’ve got several projects under way but don’t want to work on any of them.  It always seems to happen around now - the beginning of the new year.  I have also acquired some beads that I want to incorporate into some lace knitting but can’t decide on what I want to do with that and have the sneaking suspicion that if I start something new, I’ll get bored with it as well.

Ack - I suppose it will pass…

Chatters is on for this evening.  Bring your knitting (or whatever you’re working on) and join the conversation!

I had chemotherapy yesterday and am feeling kinda crummy today.  Eh, it’ll pass - which is what I keep telling Myria as she hovers concernedly :)  But I am using it as an excuse to indulge in what is probably one of my least healthful and therefore most enjoyed food choices…

There’s always a can on the shelves for emergencies and I can’t remember a time when I didn’t absolutely love the stuff.  I love lots of things - salads, fresh fruit, flaky croissants, soups (stews, chowders - that whole class of food served in liquid of some kind - can’t get enough of them!) - but when I’m feeling punk…

...only the Chef will do.  For one thing, he requires no preparation except for opening the can and heating :)  On a day like this, that’s a serious advantage - and I still needed help to open the damned can!  This was mostly because our can opener has been futzy for quite a while now and needs to be replaced.  Since we don’t have the shelf space for an electric model (I told you our kitchen was tiny!) - are there any recommendations for a good, sturdy hand-operated item?

I got the notion (Charlotte - this is your fault, I think!) to make cards for the friends I will be seeing on Friday.  I haven’t done this in many years and didn’t even know if I could hold the pencil (or the paintbrush) steadily enough to do the job…

Well, it’s not Hallmark, but it’s better than I’d hoped :)  This one, as you can probably guess, is for a knitter/cat person.  I have the concepts for the other two, but haven’t drawn them yet.  It’s been that kind of day.  It’s now (EST) 4:52 PM and I’ve been working on this post, incrementally, since about 8:30 this morning.  Some days are just like that :)

These (plus a third item that I have yet to make) will go into the cards.  I didn’t do the knitting actually on the toothpicks - they’re just too short to manipulate.  I knit the swatch and then transferred the stitches.  You may be interested to know that the toothpicks are the equivalent of size 0 US (2 mm) needles - in diameter, if not in length.  I hadn’t knit on size 0s before but it wasn’t too bad.

The cotton for the snowflake (Susan’s lovely Southern Snowflake) is Lily Sky-tone which I stumbled across in a thrift shop a couple of years ago.  I know it is old, possibly as old as I am - but oh, it was lovely stuff to work with, soft and not at all difficult on the fingers with a lovely sheen to it.  I’m going to be sad when it’s all gone because Lily hasn’t made this for a long time now.  On the bright side, there’s most of a ball of white (slightly age-tinged) left and a partial ball of the most lovely, soft shaded pinks.  I tend to use them sparingly :)

Jade has been loaded for bear all day.  I have no idea what’s gotten into her but she’s been prowling and meowing (and meowing and meowing…) since early this morning.  The pose in the above photo is her “Come play with me” invitation - but you have to careful.  Jade has no governors of any kind and while I don’t believe she means any real harm, she sometimes removes quite a bit of skin just from not knowing better.  Better to wait until she’s calmed down a little :)

The weather here is dismal; it has snowed all day (again!) and is currently dropping ice on top of everything, just to add insult to injury.  Tomorrow, whenever we can get out, we have to head over to dad’s and get him dug out too.

Just as well to get out I suppose.  I read a recipe this morning for savory oatmeal!  This was made with soy sauce and scallions and though it sounded truly odd at first (Myria made quite the face when I told her about it), I find I can’t quite put it out of my mind.

So I need to pick up scallions :)

Okay, let’s see if we can get back to something like normalcy around here :)  I’ve been running around, getting dad to his doctor’s appointments in Boston this week so what free time I have had has been spent mostly vegetating.  However, there has been some knitting going on!

I have finished the first mitt…

This pattern is one of my very favorites but let me tell you, it’s slow going - at least for me.  I knit at a reasonable pace but there’s so much going on here (and at such a small scale) that I have to slow way down to make sure I get things right.  However, slow though it may be, it is also incredibly gratifying to see the admittedly rococo pattern emerge.  I am truly enjoying this :)

Because I eliminated two stitches from the purl ditches, the leaf/vine motif enclosed therein does something interesting.  It hides when the mitt isn’t being worn.  When the mitt is donned, suddenly…

...there they are!  This was unanticipated, but I think it’s very cool :)

Featured in the same sale from which I acquired the sock yarn for the mitts was Lionbrand wool.  I hadn’t tried it before but since it was an excellent price, decided that now was the time.

I know, I’m supposed to be branching out from pinks and purples.  Eh, I do still like purple and because of the sale, only a limited selection of colors remained on the shelves.  I only got two balls of the stuff because, really this is a let’s-see-what-this-is-like exercise.  On the good side, it’s a larger than average helping of yarn since the ball is 85 grams (rather than the usual 50 grams) and 158 yds.  The yarn feels very rough to me though.  I will have to work up a swatch or a hat or something and see how it feels after it has been knitted and washed.  If it still feels too scratchy to wear, I’ll toss it into the blanket stash for future use :)

I started another cowl last night - hopefully a gift for a friend.

This a Paton’s Classic Merino of which I am growing more and more fond.  It works up nicely (for both knitting and dyeing purposes), has a decent hand, is easy to find and isn’t terribly expensive.  What more could you ask of a yarn?

Clearly my brain has been fried by doing the little teeny bobbles on the mitts.  What can I say?  I like bobbles :)  I must say, they’re a lot easier (and faster) at standard worsted gauge than at fingering weight and I envision bobble sections set off by seed stitch bars.  This is being worked end to end rather than in the round and will probably get buttons or clasps when its finished.

I saw the inaugural proceedings Tuesday, waiting with my father at the VA hospital.  The room was jammed with people - not only patients, but receptionists, nurses and orderlies - anyone who had a few minutes to spare.  I watched an elderly woman who was moved to tears and a young man who removed his hat for the opening prayer and recited the Lord’s Prayer (sub vocally) with the reverend.  I also saw several expressions of doubt and skepticism amongst the group.  But none of these reactions were specific to an age or a race.

It also occurred to me that if we, the people of the United States) can elect an African American to the highest office in the land, perhaps we aren’t as bigoted as I had feared.  While I am not in any way a political person and have no opinion on what kind of leader President Obama may turn out to be, I am heartened never the less.

Onwards!

Chatters is on for tomorrow evening.  I have missed our little sessions and am looking forward to hearing about everybody’s projects for the new year.

Hope to see you then!

Well, we’re finally home - and not a moment too soon either.  The cats were beginning to feel like they’d been abandoned, except for the hour or so we visited every day to feed them and tidy the litter box.  The degus and the gerbil didn’t miss us so long as they were fed.  To rodents, personal attention isn’t nearly as important as toys and treats :)

Dad is doing better - much better.  He can navigate around the house reasonably well now (even into places he shouldn’t be attempting - like down the cellar stairs) and can manage to look after himself again.  In true dad fashion, the better he felt, the more disagreeable he became.  I do understand that facing the fact that the extent of your freedom may be limited to the energy you can supply to the effort may be very daunting - especially when you have managed 85 years without any real problems.  And I know it’s hard to have things done (like washing dishes, cleaning clothes, general upkeep and so forth) in ways other than you’re used to.  Still, we were there three weeks and I’m pretty sure all parties involved were breathing relieved sighs at the end.

I did do some knitting, but nothing was finished - I was just too tired and stressed to be able to focus enough.  I did do a dyeing experiment though and it came out just fine.

After Christmas, Michael’s had a sale on (among other things) Patons sock yarn.  When I checked it out, the only solid color they had was a natural cream.  I had been hoping for something a little more interesting as I wanted to make something for my aunt, dad’s younger sister.  She had been calling every other day just to see how dad was doing and had been over to visit several times always bringing something delicious and homemade with her - apple pie, peach cobbler, blueberry pie, etc. I wanted to do something nice for her so on her last visit, when she admired Myria’s Dana Victoria mitts (she said, jokingly “Did you make these for me?”), I knew what to do!

Now dad doesn’t have a crock pot - at least that’s what he said when I asked him.  I did discover one lurking in the basement later on but…  So, as this was washable wool/nylon, I decided to hazard doing the dyeing in a pasta pot on the stove top.  Okay, I had the pot and the yarn - all I needed was some Kool-aid for the dye and some sort of acid to make it stick to the yarn :) 

My next trip to the store provided me with 4 packets of Kool-aid - 2 Black Cherry, 1 Strawberry and 1 Orange.  Now all I needed was acid.  Dad did say there was white vinegar in the cupboard which is what I normally use.  But I know my father well enough to know he would never have stopped complaining about the smell if I actually did use it.  So I read the Kool-aid packages carefully and discovered that all of them contained both citric acid and ascorbic acid.  Hmmm…would that be enough to enable the yarn to take up the dye?  I decided to maximize my chances by brewing some strong tea - 6 teabags worth in about a quart of water - to add some tannic acid to the party.

I wound and tied the two balls of sock yarn into a big hank…

I could have done this at dad’s, but I brought it back to our apartment on one of our cat-feeding visits.  Being able to use the swift made this job a lot faster and easier and I just tucked the finished skein into my purse for the return trip :)

Then for the soaking…

I would ordinarily soak wool for 30 minutes to an hour.  Because this stuff is machine washable, however, I felt free to squeeze it in the water and jostle it around because there was no danger of it shrinking.  It was completely saturated in just a few minutes.

Then I combined the tea with the Kool-aid and dumped that into the pasta pot, adding water (and stirring to make sure everything was well combined) until the pot was about 3/4 full.  And then I added the yarn.

I turned the heat on and let the liquid come to a boil, then lowered the flame so the pot was just simmering along.  It only took about an hour for the dye to exhaust and this was what I had at that point - ‘scuse the steam :)

You can see pretty well that all the color has moved from the liquid into the yarn and that the liquid is pretty much clear.  Yippee!!  The combination of citric, ascorbic and tannic acids worked beautifully in enabling the yarn to take up all the color.  I’m going to have to remember this when dyeing with Kool-Aid in the future - I probably don’t need to worry about adding vinegar.

Next step was washing, the mandatory roll in the towel (the yarn you saucy girls, not me!) and hanging it up to dry.

Side note:  Does anyone know what the ideal humidity for a home should be?  Is there even an ideal humidity?  Dad’s house is so dry that Myria and I both had sinus problems all the time we were there - not to mention we had to practically bathe in lotion to keep our hides hydrated :)  It was good for the yarn though - it pretty much dried overnight :)

This is what I wound up with - and while the picture’s a little fuzzy, the color is accurate and I’m calling it Rusty Venture.

And this is what I’m doing with it…

I had to modify the pattern somewhat because my dear aunt has little tiny hands - as opposed to the hooves that both Myria and I sport.  So I cut back the repeats of the pattern, going from 6 down to five.  That changed the stitch count from 72 to 60.  I actually cast on at that point and began the first mitt, but the more I looked at it, the less I felt it was right.  So when my aunt visited the next time, I measured the circumference of her hand (ruining any chance of making this a surprise gift) - just over 7”.  My hand measures 9”.  So I checked my gauge and decided that the purl troughs didn’t need to start with a width of 5 stitches and subtracted 2 stitches from each one.  Then I frogged the first attempt and cast on again with 50 stitches this time.

This is going to work very nicely :)

Thank you all for your kind thoughts for Myria and my dad - we appreciate them very much.  For myself, thanks for your patience - I’m back and, hopefully, will stay back for a while.

Oh, and if you’re interested, Chatters will be open again on Saturday night!