I'll think about that while I do some crunches.

Last week at knit night I rode over to Kate's, as usual, but misjudged the amount of daylight left and ended up having to leave the bike there and get a ride home. It took me five days to get around to it, but today I ran over to her place, got the bike, and rode home. (In case you feel like patting me on my sweaty back, the walk warm-up was 10 minutes, the run was about 20 minutes AND NO I DID NOT STOP, and the ride was 10 or 15.) *

I've been doing this a lot lately (riding, running, whatever). I realized with a vague kind of jolt, a few months ago, that I'm not getting any younger. This shocking revelation prompted a long hard look at my fitness level and led to an uncomfortable truth: "later" doesn't ever get here...the only choice I have is Now, or Not.

After two years of belly dancing I can confidently say my fitness level has improved, but at the age of 33 I really should be doing more and harder exercise. The belly dance is great for internal fitness, a bit of sculpting, and skeletal muscle health, but it falls down in some areas...especially bone density.

Blah blah blah weight loss, blah blah blah heart disease, blah blah blah diabetes, blah blah blah osteoporosis, blah.

On the other hand: logically, my heart only has so many beats in it, right? And should I really be using up my allotted beats this quickly, or should I conserve them for my old age?


* Edit: Mapquest tells me it was 2.2 miles. TWO POINT TWO MILES PEOPLE. How embarrassed am I that it took me that long to run 2.2 miles? However, how proud am I that I ran 2.2 miles without stopping?

This One's FO You, Gwen

Serenade Angel
Designed By: Rebecca Waldrop for MarBek Designs
Begun: in the time before time, when the earth was young and the butts of Scotsmen were still faintly blue.
Finished: thirty minutes ago (August 19, 2007)
Stitch count: approximately 175 by 300
18-count aida fabric, in "Victorian Christmas Red"
Mods: none, you Philistines. Modifications are for the free and carefree life of knitters. I slavishly followed every subtle nuance and infinitessimal colour change in this chart.

I should tell you that it's very hard to photograph cross-stitch. None of these pictures remotely do this piece justice, nor even accurately depict the colours.

The approach of Christmas (and the "brr" months, as my brother calls the four months leading up to Yule) always spurs me to a renewed interest in cross-stitching. In my circles lately there has been a fair bit of excited chat about cross-stitch: it seems a lot of those who knit were at one time stitchers too. All this talk of charts, DMC, Balger, hoops and tapestry needles induced me to dig around in the stash and pull out some albatrosses that have haunted my sleepless nights for years.

This is the first of three angel patterns I bought in the early 1990's. The other two, "Herald Angel" and "Canticle Angel" (by the same designer and similar in style) haven't been started yet but will, in time, complete the series.

So this is an enormous relief - a rather weighty WIP (work in progress) that has been waiting for at least three years for 12 background crosses and a bit of gold ribbon around the edge of the halo. It's difficult to explain why it took me so long to finish - it's a complicated and boring story about my inability to use a hoop because of fear of crushing the multitude of fussy metallic threads, and the size and weight of the frame on which it was therefore mounted. (See? even the précis is complicated and boring.)

I can't tell you how glad I am to have this sucker finished. Cross-stitch is a wonderful and absorbing hobby, but you can't really take a piece of this size with you on your travels. As a result, you are limited to the amount of time you can find to sit absolutely still with a strong light over your left shoulder, chart clearly visible and very close by. It's extremely time-consuming.

A bit of a closeup for your delectation.

This is the first of four large and outstanding works-in-progress which I pledge to have finished by the end of this next year. At the earliest. The other three are, in order of importance:
1- Charlotte's Christmas stocking. Ideally I would like this one to be done by this Christmas. The chart is still lost and I have ordered another one. When it arrives, I will be stitching before you can say "Yes, Virginia".
2- The Beatrix Potter Storybook Sampler that I started while pregnant with my first child, serenely expecting many days ahead when I could sit in a rocking chair with a cherubic infant sleeping in a cot beside me, stitching fondly on a beautiful addition to her lovely nursery. (Go ahead: amuse yourself by playing "spot the fallacies" on that last sentence.) I have finished 5 of 8 motifs on this. There are 75 different symbols in this chart (so around 65 different colours). It is on 18-stitches-per-inch fabric.
3- The "Enchanted Alphabet", started circa 1994, a lovely little nursery-themed thing which I am 60% done. (It was midway through this piece that I started the ill-fated "Serenade Angel".)

It feels good to be doing this again, but I admit I have gotten a bit older and it seems I need a stronger light now. I think I may be forced to invest in an Ott-Lite if I plan to finish these projects with my eyesight still intact.

Spiral Scarves...And The Countdown Begins.

Attention Sandra: do not read this post.

This year we're doing something different for Christmas presents. With the kids in the family getting a little older and more aware of Who Got What and She Got To Unwrap More Than I Did, it's becoming more and more important to rein them in. To be fair to them, it's not only the children that need reining in...come 10.30 AM on Christmas Day I am always looking hopefully under the tree to see if there's anything I've missed.

My sister-in-law and I decided to do it this year: "handmade" gifts. This doesn't necessarily mean "knitted", although, realistically, knitting will figure prominently.

I had bought some bouclé yarn last year, with vague thoughts of knitting ponchos for all my nieces...after half of one poncho, when I was crying bitter tears of boredom, I abandoned the project. The yarn will now become spiral scarves for the girls, with matching wristers.

This one is in camo (hard to see in the picture), for a very non-girly 8-year-old.

The thing with knitting for children is, there's always the very real possibility that they'll despise what you have made for them, send a faint sneer your way on Christmas morning, and promptly consign it to the Goodwill bag. Good news is, with acrylic bouclé yarn that I got on a BOGO sale and spent one day knitting, it won't break my heart. And, with the perversity common in non-knitters in general, and children in particular, they are more likely to be enthusiastic about acrylic bouclé than about, say, cashmere laceweight.

The pale blue. For a slightly girlier niece....haven't decided which, yet.

Speaking of laceweight, here is the first work-in-progress picture of my mother-in-law's gift: Eunny's Print o' The Wave Stole. I'm knitting it in Sweatermaker's Island Hues (no website but you can find out more about it at Fun Knits), on bamboo needles which I have sharpened almost to the danger point with an emery board. It's the first time I've knitted proper, laceweight lace, though the patterning, chart reading, and so on is no different to, say, the Pomatomus socks, or any of the other lace socks I've made. This means I've avoided the much-mythologised beginning-lace-knitter learning curve.

This shows the patterning well, though the colour is truer in the second picture.

I started the gift knitting in January - a pair of Anemoi Mittens for my sister, who had recently assured me that she loves wearing mittens and has quite a few pair of them. A few days ago, she spotted the Anemoi Mittens on Eunny's sidebar, and commented "Boy I'd like those...that is, IF I wore mittens."

I said cautiously, "But...last year you told me you wear mittens all the time."

She breezily said, "Oh, no: I meant gloves, not mittens."

There was a silence.

Then she said, "Oh, no."

So I suppose the lovely blue and white Anemoi Mittens are destined for someone else. Sadly, Gwen has the smallest hands of anyone I know, so unless they go to a niece, they will have to be ripped right back and reknit with a size larger needle. I'd send them to a niece, but....well, the rest of them are getting acrylic bouclé spiral scarves. It hardly seems fair.

My Just Reward.

Look what arrived yesterday!

My Sockpal came through big time with these waving lace socks (I think from Interweave?) in Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock, colourway "Cedar". They are gorgeous, and a great fit.

Thank you Vicky (not a blogger) for your hard work on these socks. And thank you for all the treats - I'm glad you work for Cadbury!

XOXO
Shannon

A show of hands, please.

Do all mothers have desertion fantasies, or is it just me?

"I have learned my lesson and I swear, Lord, if you just take them back I'll never have sex again. I'm SORRY, okay?"

A Lot of a Little

Today is a day for massive amounts of housecleaning and laundry. I've been working on some knitting but can't talk about any of it, and in the meantime the house has degenerated somewhat. I picked up my pyjama pants the other day (yes, from the floor), put them on, and a bit later felt a creepy crawley on my leg. Pantsed myself to find an earwig hanging out on my thigh so I had to have a little girly freakout. Mr HSBoots did the same with a pair of jeans the other day (but without the girly freakout -- I think)... ew, ew, ew. Time to deal with the discarded clothing piles everywhere.

It's not that I'm a slob or anything, but I definitely feel that cleaning is not the best use of my available time.

This morning a friend called me to chat about how great she feels on her new diet, with some crazy shake thing she drinks every day, and that no evil carbohydrates have crossed her lips in around three weeks. I tried to congratulate her but couldn't talk because my mouth was too full.

Banana-Apple-Blueberry Pancakes with Strawberry Sauce
1 1/3 C flour (I use 1 C white, 1/3 C wheat)
1 T baking powder
Scant 2 T sugar
1 banana, mashed with a fork
1 egg
1 1/4 C milk
3 T melted butter or oil
1/4 tsp vanilla
1 medium sour apple, peeled, cored, sliced 1/4" thick
Handful of blueberries

Mix dry ingredients, beat wet ingredients in a separate bowl, then mix together gently, leaving lumps. Cook on griddle or frying pan 1/3 cup at a time, pressing apple slices or blueberries into the top of each pancake after they spread out but before they are dry on top.

Cook about 1-2 cups whole frozen strawberries with 1 tsp to 1 tbsp sugar in a small pot over high heat until berries give off some liquid and start to cook down. Mix juice of 1/2 - 1 lemon with 1 tsp of corn starch until smooth, then stir into bubbling berries. Turn heat down, cook for a few minutes until thickened. You can use any frozen berries for this. Adjust amount of cornstarch and sugar to your taste. Very yummy on ice cream, waffles, french toast, what-have-you.

The garden is doing great this month. This is the window box on my shed. ("Shed" is an awful word.)


One of my many clumps of irish moss, which I hope will one day carpet a whole section of my garden path. The black grass I bought this spring has grown very well out in the island bed: you can see one of its purple plumes in this picture.

One of the other occupants of the island bed - the pink hardy geranium I got from Kate last year. It didn't flower at all last year, so I was so happy to see these pretty things last month:


Later this week I will post a couple of Christmas-present FOs, trusting that the recipients, being Mere Children, will not be reading this blog.

A Watery Grave

Marina Piccola Socks

Pattern: Kate Gilbert's
Yarn: 100g Sweet Georgia Superwash Sock in "Life Aquatic"
Yarn Source: Pick Up Sticks
Needles: 2, 2.25mm Aero aluminum circulars
Tension: 9.5 sts/inch
Cast On: July 14, 2007
Bound Off: July 28, 2007
Mods: Used a slip-stitch heel instead of the eye of partridge specified, by accident. Designer recommends 3 repeats of the pattern on the cuff and I only had enough yarn for 2.
Notes: I liked this pattern. It was pleasantly addictive, and easy to memorize. I like how it looks and I'll certainly make it again.

And now let's review, shall we?

Shan's Sockapalooza 4 Timeline

1. Bought two skeins of Regia 4fadig and Cookie A's Gothic Spire pattern, knitting the first sock and 3/4 of the second sock before I realized I wasn't going to have enough yarn. Scoured the island for another ball, to no avail.


2. Bought the Marina Piccola pattern and cast on with stash yarn (2, 50g skeins). Knitted one sock to within 1" of the toe, ran out of yarn.


3. Began aggressive internet surfing to find another skein of the yarn. Meanwhile, cast on the second sock to start the cuff.


4. Midway through the ribbing, took the sock to the library with the kids. Shut the point of one of the circular needles in the car door. Didn't notice until I took the sock out of my pocket to knit it, and saw the 90 degree bend one inch from the tip of one needle. Recklessly grabbed hold of the thing and bent it back as best I could, calling on the heavens to strike me with lightning if I ever volunteer to do Sockapalooza again.


5. Knitted the rest of the sock with a bent needle.


6. While comparing foot length with the second sock, knocked over my chai tea onto the first sock. Rushed it to the bathroom sink where, thank God, I was able to quite easily rinse out all traces.


7. Felt a distinct sense of foreboding.


8. Realized there was no more "Life Aquatic" sock yarn on the continent and there was no choice but to rip the first sock back to the ankle and take out half a repeat.


9. Ripped the first sock back to the ankle and took out half a repeat.


10. Reknit the first sock.


11. Carefully....carefully....put them on, overtop of a thin pair of running socks, to take a couple of pictures.


12. Tomorrow, will gingerly tuck them into a padded envelope with a packet of tea, a maple leaf-shaped cookie cutter and some chocolate, and mail them off to Denmark.


13. The day after tomorrow, the plane they are on will probably crash into the Atlantic and go down with all hands.