More Than Many Sparrows

I had a terrible weekend of exhaustion and nausea, which finally culminated in the worst headache ever last night that actually woke me from sleep at 4 a.m. By 4:30, I had decided I was going to get out of bed and go to the corner store to buy a Diet Coke and some Tylenol, because I hadn't had any caffeine that day and knew my body was withdrawing, and all the Tylenol we had in the house was expired and hadn't done anything to the headache. When Lee rolled over and mumbled something, I told him my plan, and he immediately said he would go. And he did and was back in 10 minutes. I took two pills, gulped some soda, and managed to get another hour and a half of halfway decent sleep.

I had a doctor's appointment today at 3:45, and I didn't realize I was nervous about it until after lunch when I had to begin watching the clock to make sure I left on time. After last week's scare and some continued anxiety, I was just plain nervous about how the exam would go, even though I've been trying very hard to be sensible, rational, and calm.

The appointment again revealed an active Inside Baby with a strong heartbeat, and I left the office feeling great. Then I went to Target to pick up some items, and I browsed the Christmas section and felt filled with a general sense of well-being. Then I came home and continued to feel fantastic and ate supper without a hint of nausea, and I'm up now at 10:33, writing this entry with vigor and zest.

So, last weekend: psychosomatic symptoms, or normal pregnancy crap? We'll never know.

Blair will say I'm schmoopy for saying so, but Lee has been amazing during this pregnancy. He's always amazing, of course! But, seriously, he has stepped up to the plate in a major way, particularly these last few weeks where I've felt especially anxious, nauseated, and tired. He has kept up our house and cooked and waited on me and just told me to chill out and gestate. Which is really what I have needed; it has helped tremendously to do very little but that.

I did manage to accomplish some crafting over the weekend, for which I am very proud of myself. First things first: I did repairs on three pairs of pants. The first was my brother Jake's. It had a split crotch seam that I easily sewed up, and then I found a burn hole and patched it up by stitching over a small piece of coordinating felt on the back side, and you can barely tell anything is different. The second pair of pants was mine, and it also had a split crotch seam, an unraveled leg hem, and an undone hook and eye. The third pair had another unraveled leg hem and a broken fly. Those last two I wore for months without repairing them, and now that I finally have fixed them... they don't fit anymore. See you on the flip side, pre-preggo pants! At least when I can fit you again, you'll be all ready to go.

Then, I sewed the last two rows onto this baby:


This is a rag quilt made from Penelope's receiving blankets from when she was a baby. I started this thing over a year ago in Waterbury, and it shouldn't have taken that long, but I craft in fits and starts in recent years. Plus, it sat in a box while we prepared to move, then it sat in a box in storage for six months, then it sat in a box while we moved into our house here.



I ragged-up the edges, the threw it in the washer for some more raggy-fying. Then tonight, after I took these pictures, I also trimmed off the hanging strings.



Penelope was pleased, and in fact she is sleeping right now all wrapped up in her "beenkit."



There, she's wearing a skirt I attempted to make back in, oh, 2006. I screwed it all up, and it never fit right (who but me could screw up a simple wrap skirt so terribly?). But my new desire is to make cloth napkins. I wanted to cut the skirt up and make it into several of these, but Penelope preferred to wear it instead. So I indulged her and instead made some very basic napkins out of some fabric I acquired at the Hat City Scissor Squad craft swap last year.



There's not much of the fabric, and some of it is faded, so I just used to parts where the print was strong, and that was enough for three cute napkins! I made napkins in 2005 with my friend Jennifer in New Orleans, and I used them for a long time but have gotten out of the habit, and many of the napkins I made then are worn out or stained or discolored from being washed with the wrong loads, or whatever. So I want to replenish my supply and begin anew at using cloth napkins, because they are so fun and so cool and oh-so-very green. La dee dah.

And now it's time to say goodbye to all our company. Or at least, it's time to go to bed. Maybe I will dream up some fun (but simple and quick!) project to work on for Inside Baby.

I finally finished a crochet project I've been working on for months. It's a bolero from Stitch 'n Bitch Crochet. I started it while I was still working for the magazines. I remember because I bought the yarn at the very lame Joann's in Danbury one Tuesday before my knitting group. I don't know why it took me so long; it's short and crocheted. Easy! Fast! Not for me.

One reason it took me so long is that I was finished weeks ago and didn't realize it. I finished all but the right sleeve, and I convinced myself that the right sleeve needed four pattern repeats. So I finished those repeats and realized--doh!--it needed only two repeats.



I brought it to Tampa with me and only worked on it on one flight, and I think that's when I confused myself. I wish I had figured it out, because I could have worn it down there. Now I can't wear it until it gets warm again because it's definitely warm-weather attire.

So I pulled out the two unnecessary repeats. ( Click here to see the real finished result. )

I made some more projects from Tease.

Here's a purse made from T-shirts. One side:


A T-shirt from UWF.

( Click to see the other side and more projects. )

Gotta love T-shirt surgery, yo.

Last night, I made my second project from Tease: a halter top made from my high school photography club T-shirt. I always liked the image on that tee, but the shirt was long-sleeved, and after high school, it was consigned to the pajama drawer and only rarely saw light.



( Click to see detail of the back and an alteration of a skirt. )

This is not the type of outfit I normally wear, so it may never make it out of the house all together, but there you go.

I made my first project from Tease. It was one of the easiest projects in there, and I tackled it because after working and shopping for work pants and going to dinner and ironing Lee's shirt for his interview and feeling crappy all evening, I couldn't begin on a complicated project, but I reeeeally wanted to make something. This book has been burning a hole in my knitting bag since Monday night.



It's a tote bag. I made it using the "Restoration Full Gospel Baptist Church" T-shirt I bought and altered a couple of summers ago, but I feel self-conscious wearing it here (will people think I'm a Baptist? will they understand why I'm wearing it? hey--why am I wearing it?). I adorned the handles with beads I might have had since 5th grade when another T-shirt project called for beads to adorn fringe (shudder).



I love that book!

For a tote made out of a T-shirt, it's surprisingly strong, and I will probably use it for groceries. I hope to begin bringing bags to the store instead of bringing home gobs of plastic bags. I try to reuse the plastic, but invariably we end up with more than we can use.

After I made my last post, I hung around the mall until I pretty much had to leave. Then I found out that Blair's flight was delayed again, but only by half an hour or so. So I got in the car and drove to the airport, which is in the opposite direction of my house from the mall a far enough distance that it didn't make sense to go all the way home. Then her flight was further delayed... so I found the airport and decided to drive around a little. Then I got lost. I considered making a voice post and pleading for someone to call me and give me a little MapQuest aid (I called Lee, but he was asleep and didn't answer), but then I had a totally revolutionary idea. I went to a gas station and bought a map. My sexy map-reading skills got me back to where I needed to go.

I had quite a bit of time, so I took a random exit off the highway and drove and drove--and I found myself in Chappaqua, New York, the home town of Dar Williams! I was so excited. "This is where it all happened," I thought dreamily, driving through the vacant commercial district. "This is where all the ideas began. 'Are you out there, Jimmy Olsen? Johnny Memphis?'" I looked around to see if I could spot the local theater where the babysitter might have leapt up with a sparkling horn coming out of her head in the prestigious Chappaqua production of the Unicorn, but I didn't see it. I was getting a little loopy by then.

I also drove by the Reader's Digest Global Headquarters, an unassuming-looking gated compound. Oooh! Aaah!

Eventually, I gave up and went to the airport to wait, and her plane landed at 2 a.m. We stopped at a 24-hour diner in Danbury on our way home.

The next day, I gave Blair a gift I had crocheted for her. Well, I crocheted it for her baby; she's expecting her first child in August.
( Click to see the blanket and hat. )

I had a short list of things I thought we could do while Blair visited: I wanted to go to duck pin bowling at the St. Joseph's bowling alley. It's a bowling alley at a church. I've been eyeing that thing since I moved here, and I finally called to find out what the deal was, but I was disappointed to learn that it's not open to the public. They use it for some kind of league. I have only a tenuous grasp on what duck pin bowling even IS, let alone what a league might be like. Will I ever get to try?

We also said we wanted to go to the Melting Pot for fondue, so Friday night, after getting up really late (hey, we went to bed really late), we gussied ourselves up and drove to the nearest location, a few dozen miles away. It was raining like the dickens, and that delayed us considerably as we tried to get out of town over flooded roads, but we made it, only to have to wait 45 minutes for a table.

Here's Blair across from me in the bar area, enjoying a cup of coffee while we waited.

( Click to see! )

When we got home, we watched Sarah Jessica Parker's little-known 1983 flick, Somewhere, Tomorrow. This movie is awesomely bad, and I recommend it heartily. I found my copy at the dollar store, and the racks continue to overflow with it.

Saturday was still rainy as all get-out, and our sleeping patterns didn't improve. We went out shopping for the materials for the next project we wanted to do: prepare and devour some crab legs. Finding the crab legs proved to be more difficult than I anticipated; we wanted to try some kind of fish market or farmers' market instead of the grocery store, but I'm not familiar enough with my area to know what kind of place like that is available, if any. We ended up buying them at the grocery store, and man oh man, they were good! I was so pleased at how easy they were to make. I will definitely be doing that again. Thanks to Gabi for the simple, yet effective advice on steaming crab legs.

After crab legs, we continued our Sarah Jessica Parker theme and watched Girls Just Want to Have Fun.

Sunday, we got up a little earlier than the previous two days, and we went to lunch with Lee at Maggie McFly's. Then we went to the mall so Lee could buy some pants and shoes for an upcoming business trip, and Blair and I browsed baby stuff at Burlington Coat Factory. Oy, there are so many different contraptions and tools for mothers to use--and lots of adorable stuff that I know I'll love picking out when I'm getting ready to have a baby. I do love to collect accessories.

After the mall, Blair and Lee took naps while I went to Mass. Then Blair and I watched a documentary called Always a Bridesmaid; it was pretty good. Blair had Netflix and cool taste in movies, so she brought that one. If I had Netflix, I'd still probably end up wasting my monthly fee by renting, like, First Daughter and then not watching it because it doesn't actually look good, and wondering why I rented it but not wanting to waste the rental but then forgetting I have it...

Finally, today we got up early enough to get Blair packed and ready to go with enough time for us to visit Holy Land USA, the Waterbury landmark I've been dying the most to see.

( Don't miss these pics. )

It was an exciting, fulfilling trip to the Holy Land, and while we saw the main attractions, I know there's more to see. I hope to go back there and do more exploring.

We saw a potentially scary dog hanging out around the car as we approached it on our way out, but he ran off, and we drove to Danbury for lunch at the Sesame Seed. Then it was off to the airport. Here's hoping Blair's flight home was faster than her trip out here.


ETA: The pictures are still sizing themselves, I see. This annoys me greatly.

Thanks for the responses. I've kept a close watch on the crock pot. ( Click to see the worst of it. )

Anybody have a favored red beans and rice recipe they'd like to share?

I made this for Meagan from a pattern I found on craftster.org.



That's the picture she sent to me from her kitchen.

Saturday, the Hat City Scissor Squad had its annual Craft Swaptacular at Christine's badass abode. We all brought crafting items to offer to the group, and we came home with more than we got there with. That's how I felt, anyway! I managed to unload some bias tape, some crochet patterns for those gigantic Barbie dresses that you drape over half-spheres of Styrofoam or rolls of toilet paper, an old henna body art kit whose henna had all dried up, and some vintage dress patterns I bought on ebay when I was shopping for my wedding dress pattern. But I walked away with most of the remainder of the patterns that nobody wanted, a semi-defunct sewing machine I couldn't unload--and a haul of other people's stuff including some fabric, stencils, Mod Podge, buttons, cross stitch, towels, and fray-away solution.

And I walked out with a full belly; we also brought items to munch on. I made a layered hummus dip--or tried to; I used to have this kickass recipe, and I kept promising Gabi I'd make her a copy, and then I managed to lose the recipe altogether, so I don't think Saturday's version was true to the dip I've made in the past. It's missing at least one layer; a yogurty one. I don't remember what goes on that layer.

But! It didn't matter, because I replaced that layer with a cucumber shark garnish. The Ronco knives my dad bought me for my birthday came with a booklet about how to make fun garnishes, and Mr. Shark was my first attempt.






Sunday was, of course, Mother's Day. I tried to ignore its approach as much as possible, but I found that it's unavoidable the closer it gets. I didn't think it really bothered me all that much, no more than any other reminders of my mother bother me. But then I found myself getting choked up when I tried to explain to Lee that I wanted to go to the 4:15 Mass instead of one of the earlier Sunday Masses because I wanted to avoid all the moms and all the Mother's Day homilizing. He suggested I write a card for my mother. A nice idea, but I didn't do it. I feel like I write a card to her every day.

I didn't really want to go to Mass at all, because I knew that even the 4:15, the shortest Mass of the day, couldn't avoid its Hallmark moniker. I was right, but it wasn't that bad. Officiating was the priest whose first homily, which I heard on the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, completely turned me off but whose demeanor and counsel in the confessional warmed me back up to him. I feel as though I have an understanding of him, though if I were called to describe it, I don't think I could. He said the Mass was offered for our mothers, living and deceased. I ought to have known it would be; we Catholics always remember our deceased loved ones. I just never really wanted us to this badly.

I've been thinking about the Virgin Mary and whether I ought to regard her differently now. Don't orphans, especially the really holy ones who end up saints, consider Mary their mother, a real replacement for their missing ones, even more so than those who call her their heavenly mother while their earthly mothers still live and breathe?

Mary does not seem an appropriate replacement. In some ways, she already replaced my mother in areas in which the real thing was inadequate; I've sent more prayers for spiritual guidance to the Blessed Mother than I ever posed questions to my earthly one. But Mary can't possibly be a fill-in for a flesh-and-bones mother who calls and sends emails and wears perfume and has an address where you send holiday cards.

My mother is still real, though; as real as Mary. If I can pray to Mary, can't I also pray to my mother? I try not to bother her, for I imagine she is probably busy right now. Still, I send up a little thought now and then. They are as confused and broken and stilted as my prayers to Mary; unsure and short. "I miss you."

I did ask Mary to be a mother to my mother and my Mammaw, if they need that. I really have no guesses about what sort of afterlife they might be negotiating right now. I just reread The Great Divorce by CS Lewis, and if things pan out in the way he surmises, I hope they are both learning how to be solid now and have no wish to get back on the bus.

Entries like this one become confused and broken and stilted after a time. The life I am negotiating right now is like that, especially interiorly.

I made a new iPod cozy last night and today. I modified the pattern for the cozy I made last time, and I used the monkey pattern instead of the bear. Except I couldn't get the ears right, so he's... some kind of large-lipped, earless creature. This monkey will always hear no evil. Besides, in this relationship--between me, Little Big Brain, and this cozy--I'm the only one who should be listening to anything.





Who's liking the new Springsteen? Pretend I'm raising my hand.

I have a case of crafter's back right now, that stitch you get in your back from hunching over the glue gun and/or the crochet for an extended period of time.

I've made some cozies for my new best friend, Little Big Brain, my iPod.

( You want to behold these. )

Time to set the clocks forward.

Lee and I both had the day off today, so we ran around town doing fun, exciting, mundane things. I woke up on the sofa this morning; after dinner last night, I stretched out to rest and maybe nap on the couch, and I didn't wake up for twelve hours. So even though I got up early, I got up very rested, and all day, I thought it was Saturday. It helped that the weather was perfect. Perfect! Good job, Connecticut. I knew you had it in you.

We started out at Chase Park, which is near my house, looking for the Grizzly Bear letterbox. We didn't find the box; the directions were a little vague (sometimes they're intentionally vague so as to be challenging), but the box may just be missing.

While we were there, we took some pictures.

( Cut for your viewing pleasure. )

Then we went to the Sew & Vac where I'd dropped off the free sewing machine I scored last week. The repairman called me last Sunday to say it really wouldn't be worth fixing the machine because it's got some stuff wrong with it. I could tell that when I tried it out at home, and it definitely needed cleaning anyway. So. While we were at the Sew & Vac, we decided to buy a new sewing machine. I was going to buy one of the overhauled ones the guy had for sale, because he promised a 3-year parts and labor warranty, but the thing is, I already have a sewing machine that's dysfunctional that I got with the idea that I'd need to buy a new, nice one later. My mother-in-law gave it to me for my birthday two years ago, and I really appreciated her gift, and I have used the machine. I don't sew that often, but it's been poopy from the get-go, and I always feel like I'd sew more if I didn't have to pull out my hair every time I wanted to try it. My new machine is excellent. It has all the fancy stitches I want, plus it's hardcore; it can sew through denim and upholstery. We've never finished our dining chair reupholstering project, and the dude at the Sew & Vac said the machine would certainly sew through four layers of vinyl "like butter." We'll see. He promises a five-year parts-and-labor warranty, and the machine comes with a ten-year warranty. So rock on.

After that, we went to the Waterbury police station to pick up some Munters equipment that had been stolen from a job (at the police station) and found in a pawn shop.

Then we went to the Timex Museum in Waterbury. Timex is directly descended from the Waterbury Clock company, which began in the late 1800s. Who knew? The main clock room, filled with clocks all set to approximately the same time, had a really neat sound. Clocks upon clocks ticking softly all around. For several minutes around three p.m., they sounded the hour one at a time. The woman who winds them came up to do her job while we were there and told us she'd be setting them all for Daylight Savings next week. Other than her, Lee and I were the only souls there.

After the museum, we went to the grocery store and then home for frozen dinners and some fun on my new sewing machine. I made part of my MFA prom getup. You can preview it, but not in its intended form. That's a surprise for the prom-goers.

( Prom Preview )

And though this time I was not sewing through four layers of vinyl, the machine did go right on through the material "like butter."

Today after work, I went to this nail salon that's right by my office, and I got my eyebrows and nails did. And let me tell you, it was niiiice! It's just a typical nail salon with a $10 manicure, but while one lady does your nails, another comes over and gives you a sweet back massage. Then while your nails are drying, she comes back and gives you another one, this time with a hot towel. Yikes!

It was pretty much awesome, but I have a lot of anxiety about tipping. I'm very worried about whether or not I'm a good tipper. Sometimes getting manicures and pedicures makes me feel guilty, as though I'm treating these people as if they're somehow below me. So I try to tip well to somehow make up for that. I wasn't sure how to tip the nail lady AND the massage lady, and I tried to ask the nail lady, but there was a language barrier. I'm sure it all worked out, but I'd love some input from anyone that might be able to offer it for next time.

Saturday, I went to a day retreat at the Holy Family Passionist Retreat Center. The retreat was about meditative knitting, and it was led by Susan Jorgensen, one of the authors of a book called Knitting into the Mystery. It was a little different than I expected. I was anticipating some discussion about the prayerful possibilities in the repetitive nature of knitting, and there was some of that, but mostly she told us about the shawl knitting ministry (which she says she had a part in starting). Lots of parishes all over the place are doing this now. Groups of people get together and knit "prayer shawls" for people. In the past, I had this idea that a prayer shawl was something you wore when you prayed, but now I know that while you may use it that way, what makes a prayer shawl is the way it was made. And it's made by people who pray for the recipient, known or unknown, while they knit. The knitter might belong to a group, and the group members might all pray over or bless the finished shawl. Then they give the shawls to people in crisis or in any kind of need for something like a prayer shawl. They might also give it to someone expecting a baby or getting married or graduating.

I think a shawl knitting ministry is a fine idea, but I don't think it's for me. I've never knit anything the size of a shawl. If I did, it would take forever, and I wouldn't want to give it away. Never mind devote all of my knitting time to making huge blocks of material that I'm going to send flying out of my hands. I'd never knit anything of my own! We began shawls at the retreat--that's the other thing; I thought I'd be working from an exciting, new pattern, but the shawl Susan uses is rather standard, and because I brought the recommended Homespun yarn, I ended up just starting a garter stitch shawl since you can't really see the stitch pattern, anyway.

I did like the bits focused on meditation, but they got a little New Agey. At the end, Susan played a track that was a guy reading a poem/prayer over a back layer of... like, lute music or something. I have a love/hate relationship with that stuff. I can appreciate some of the ideas in, say, these poem/prayers, but the presentation (lute music) really leaves me wanting to snicker. It just doesn't do anything for me.

In any event, I met some really nice old ladies in the group. They said I was the first New Orleans person they'd met since the hurricane, and they asked me a lot of questions. Sometimes I like talking about that stuff, because it's a release, but I think I'll be glad when I can run out of occasions to announce, "Oh, I just moved here," because then I won't have to answer the follow-up question, "Oh! Where did you move from?" and have to explain that, yes, I was "in all that," and no, I didn't lose my home, so yes, I'm very lucky, but yes, my husband and I decided to move anyway. I didn't mind telling these ladies, though.

One of the ladies asked if I'd come to the retreat on my own, and when I told her I had, she said I was very brave. I said, "I have to be! I don't have any friends!" But that's not really true anymore. I'm feeling very comfortable friendship-wise with my gals of the Hat City Scissor Squad (the SNB I attend). Besides, I always go to religious things (when I go) on my own. That's not brave; it's usual. In some ways, I like going by myself. It makes retreats into retreats. This is not to say I wouldn't want to go do religious things with my friends; I would. But there's a place for solitude, too.

Susan summed up her whole philosophy of spirituality with one word: connection. She said that in graduate school (she earned a degree in pastoral counseling, I think) she wrote pages and pages about what spirituality is, and since then, she's whittled her philosophy down to just that one word. Connection, she says, is how we achieve spiritual experiences in relationships, nature, creativity, everything.

In that way, our knitting can be a spiritual experience, because it connects us with the person we knit for, the person who taught us to knit, other knitters, and in fact, the whole knitting world, past and present, because knitting is an ancient art that has had practical, creative, and artistic purposes for generations.

During that part of the talk, I thought about my mom. She never quite had the patience to truly teach me any kind of craft in depth. I wanted to learn to sew; she told me point blank that she didn't have time to teach me. I knew she crocheted before I was born and when I was very young, but I never knew she knitted until I was learning to knit (from a book). She told me that she never had much patience with knitting on her own, that it took too long. I have some of her crocheted blankets now (one or two of them). There was a crocheted blanket in her closet, and I think she made it, and I don't know if someone took it. I didn't. I sort of regret not taking it. I don't think it was in the throw-away pile, anyway, so that's good.

Anyway, I thought of her because when I was staying with her after the hurricane but before she learned about her brain tumors, she let me go through this box of yarn she'd kept for years and years and never used. I found an unfinished project of hers, still on its circular needles.



It's a baby garment with a hood; maybe a capey kind of thing. She told me that she started it when she and my dad and I stayed in Tucson one summer while my dad was on sabbatical. She was making it for Nick; I guess she was pregnant with him at the time. I was, I think, around one year old.

She never finished the project. If I had to guess, I'd say she got bored with it or distracted and put it down, and then he was born, and maybe the weather didn't call for a woolen baby cape, and then he got too big. And then he died.

Now she's gone, too.

When I found it, I asked if I could have it and finish it, and she said sure. Now more than ever I feel committed to finishing it. I've thought about it a lot since she gave it to me. I want to finish it and use it with my babies when I have them. I don't think I like the idea of making it for a specific baby I might be expecting one day, because if anything happened to the baby, I might get all funny and feel like the project was cursed or something.

But if we want to talk about connections, this project is already connected with my mom. Her fingers touched every centimeter of the yarn as she wove it around her needles and into the work. It's connected to my brother, who was growing in her belly; certainly she thought of him as she knit. When I finish the project, my fingers will run along the soft wool, and I'll join the web. I won't be able to help thinking about the recipients, however theoretical; they'll be connected, too.

I'm not working on that project now, though, because I'm working on other projects. But pulling it out to photograph it, I realized how far along my mom got in making it. I'd say it's at least half finished. The pattern (still in an envelope addressed to her in Tucson) looks fairly simple, and I think I can figure out where she left off.

So that's the knitting news.

Over a year ago, I began this ill-fated project. The summary: my mother-in-law gave me a king-sized blanket for Christmas, but my bed was a double, and I thought the blanket would be too big. I thought it was a cool blanket, though, and I wanted to use it, so I decided to rip out the anchoring stitches, remove the batting, and turn the thing into a duvet cover.

Well. The blanket would have been fine as a blanket on my bed, and the anchoring stitches proved to be so numerous that ripping them out was entirely too cumbersome a task to keep my attention. And the blanket itself wasn't cool enough to bring me back, either. After I posted that photo essay, I never touched the thing again. All I was left with was a ruined blanket, half the batting pouring out of one side and the rest stuck firm.

We used it as a drape for some stuff we brought from New Orleans, and I came up with a new plan for the blanket. I decided to cut it up and make a cover for my sewing machine, which I'd been keeping in its original box with its Styrofoam cutouts. That's a pain in the ass to have to deal with every time I want to use the machine, and it's rather unsightly.



There's the finished sewing machine cover in the middle of what's left of the blanket (a lot!).

Keeping my machine nice and warm and dust-free:


This was not a serious job; I just took some measurements and cut some pieces and sewed them together. Then I cut a slit across the top for the handle, made a rudimentary attempt at a seam to keep the edges of the split clean, and glued some ribbon in place around it. I made some bows to glue down on the ends.


I mismeasured the split but didn't realize it until I had already glued everything down, so I just cut through the bows to make it fit. I told you; I was going for function over beauty.

Ah, crafting. Crafting always makes me feel good. My emotions have been really exhausting lately; every day I have pretty deep lows and at least moderate highs, and sometimes I go back and forth a few times. Some days the highs are really high, and the lows aren't always horribly low, but I'm getting both every day.

Today was pretty blah. Lee is out of town today, so my apartment is empty and lonely. But when he called tonight, we had a really nice conversation. Sometimes the person you're with the most calls and you don't have much to say except "Hello," "I love you," and "Goodbye," but this wasn't one of those conversations, and it picked me up a lot. So before I could let myself sink into the Internet again, I fired up the glue gun and began brandishing my scissors.

I confessed to him how horribly I've been lately with my commitment to stop smoking. I'm trying to do so much right now, not the least of which is keeping myself from disintegrating, and apparently, stopping smoking is not something my self can handle on top of everything else. He didn't seem to mind, and I was glad, because I thought he'd be disappointed.

One day at a time, yo, just like they say. One cigarette, one 33-mile drive to Danbury, one craft project, one song on the karaoke mic at a time.

I always wanted to have a perm when I was a kid. When I finally got one, it was done at home by my mom's friend Tammy who "used to" "work at" a beauty salon. It was a disaster: pencil-tight curls clinging to my head except when I mishandled it with a brush and it became a frizzy cloud. I was in 6th grade, and it didn't occur to me to question Tammy on what size curlers she was using.

These are the kinds of curls I'd still love to have:



Those were achieved, however, by wearing one of those magic-bun things in my hair all day long. Can I bring that thing in and have them set it in my hair with that eggy-smelling stuff?

Oh, yeah. The purpose of that picture is to show off my new kittee hat. I started it at SNB last night and came within a few simple steps of finishing it (and I would have finished if I hadn't stopped to eat--stupid hunger!). I finished it tonight.



This one's in just two colors. I crocheted the flaps in the yellow but switched back to the green for the edging. I like how it came out. I don't have any buttons yet, though, but I love wearing the flaps down so much that they aren't really going to be "necessary." So I can wait until I find the perfect buttons.

Kittee, this pattern is so great. I told Lee the other day while I was wearing my first version, "It's freezing out--but my ears are so warm!"

He said, "It's because of that smartly designed, expertly made hat." He said you and I were a good team.

This week, I purchased the long-awaited crochet manual by Bust editor and so-called "knitting superstar" Debbie Stoller, Stitch 'n Bitch Crochet: the Happy Hooker. I have Stoller's two knitting books, Stitch 'n Bitch (a Christmas gift from folkgirltwo or three holidays ago; I learned to knit from it) and Stitch 'n Bitch Nation. I knew I wanted to add the crochet book to my collection as soon as I knew it was forthcoming, and even more so when I found out that kittee and cyntergomes would have patterns published in it.

I think the book was originally slated to "drop" (as Marcus says the kids say) last November, but it didn't actually make it to my local Barnes and Noble until last Wednesday. In fact, I preordered it on amazon.com, which still says it isn't due to be released until March 15, and I canceled my order after the stitch 'n bitch I went to on Tuesday when one of the ladies showed up with a copy. I showed off Kittee's and Cynthia's patterns to everyone; they all oohed and aahed.

Before it was finally released, I wondered if the delay had to do with the trademark controversy over the term "stitch 'n bitch." For the uninitiated, here's a summary from overlawyered.com:

Stitch & Bitch, trademarked

The phrase "stitch and bitch" has been in use for many years as a popular nickname for social circles that meet for knitting and conversation. Circa 1997 a company called Sew Fast, Sew Easy trademarked what it called its Stitch 'n' Bitch Cafe and since then has deployed lawyers to shut down use of the phrase by many local and online hobbyists' clubs. A protest site, "Free To Stitch/Free To Bitch", has traced earlier mentions of the phrase including by Anne Macdonald in her 1988 book No Idle Hands: The Social History of American Knitting, who describes it as having been used for such a club during World War II. (Catherine Elsworth, "It's getting bitchy in knitting circles", Daily Telegraph (U.K.), Feb. 11)

According to various blogs and message boards and podcasts, Sew Fast, Sew Easy is taking on Debbie Stoller for the rights, but it looks like all they'll succeed in doing is alienating every Internet-savvy crafter in America. A Google search for "stitch bitch sew fast" shows pages and pages of pissed-off knitters ranting about the idiocy of this whole thing, and I've yet to see a single person defend Sew Fast, Sew Easy.

But! The book is out, so there must not be THAT much trouble.

I knitted Kittee's hat from the book. I used the same yarn I used to make a scarf for my mom last year. I still have a lot of this yarn, and now I have the scarf again, so they'll match. Plus, I have ANOTHER scarf--really, a scarflet--that I crocheted when I was first learning, and it's made of the same yarn, too, so I have all these interchangeable pieces.

Here I am in the hat and scarflet:



The hat has earflaps that you can fold up and button. I used some buttons from an old button-up hippie shirt that I wore a few times in middle school or maybe high school (it had been my mom's from her gypsy days) that eventually I got rid of, but I saved the buttons.



I think I'll be wearing it flaps-down this weekend. It's supposed to be really cold.



So! My job. I didn't make it clear yesterday (especially for non-voice-post-listening readers) that the job I got is the copy editing job, not the bank job. I failed the personality test for the bank job; apparently, my personality is not suited to like being a bank teller, and I would never have lasted long, so they sent me on my way. Isn't that nice? They determined this by asking me true or false questions such as, "I want to learn to scuba dive" and "As a child, I felt comfortable talking to my parents" and "I often get indigestion."

After I was turned away from the bank, I went to New South Bury Haven Townington (my new name for all cities in Connecticut) to interview for the copy editing position. The interview went very well; the editor-in-chief felt very positive about me based on my resume, and he asked me aboard. I worked my first hour and a half right then! Today, I copy edited one of the three magazines they publish.

I'm excited. The one uncool thing is the money, though. Per hour, it pays less than my UNO job (a substantial but not gross amount less), and it's only part-time, so 29 hours per week at the most. But it sounds like the company is growing (it's only four years old), and the position could very likely become full-time at some point in the future. It's not as free-lancey as I originally thought; some work can be done at home, but much will be in the office. I'll have to experience a couple of publication cycles, maybe four or six weeks, to get an idea of the patterns in the work week. Then, if the money is really killing me, I can look for a second part-time job. Maybe.

That's the fruit of an evening's labor on the knitting machine. The fair isle took me a little time because I had to make the chart and then follow it. I've never done fair isle before! Some of it is a little messed up, because I managed to step on it as I was binding off. Siiiigh. The bottoms of the u, t, and e want to vanish into the background, but I'm sure I can pick at it and make it work. It's supposed to say "Munters," which is the company Lee works for; it's going to be a scarf for him, eventually. It's going to be much longer; I just had to get it off the machine because it was getting too long. It's got about 3/4 of a skein of Caron's Simply Soft in it. I'm pretty impressed with Caron's Simply Soft. It really is soft. We'll see how it holds up after being worn.

I'm getting more and more used to the machine. It still makes some puzzling mistakes that I can't figure out, but it still beats the hell out of trying to do all that stockinette by hand!

I went for the chicken fingers. At the time I left, that's what the majority had picked, and it's what I wanted anyway. But guess what? I got to the restaurant, and they were OUT of chicken fingers. So I had fish and chips. Good--but not as good as the fingers. Mmmm... chicken fingers.

That night, I decided to cook something decent for myself. Lee was out of town--on Valentine's Day, no less (which didn't really bother me any more than it does when he's out of town on any other day, which is to say I missed him, sure, but I enjoy the perks of having the place to myself sometimes, too)--so I didn't need to worry about him. I decided to prepare some Goya red beans and rice from a box, but to use the fancy directions!

This involved sautéing some sausage with onion. I didn't have any peppers, so I made up for it by using extra onion. After the sautéing, I was to add Cajun seasoning, which I also didn't have, so I substituted some selected seasonings I had on hand.

And that's when I had a Horrible Surprise.

( These pictures might make you vomit, so click only if you're strong of stomach. )

I had spaghetti for dinner instead.

Today was a pretty day. The temperatures got into the fifties, and with all the windows in my apartment, the thermostat read almost 80. The snow is melting.

It's hard to believe this was just three days ago:

( More snowy pictures. )

On the snow day, I made use of being cooped up inside (not that I spend much time outside anyway) by busting out my Christmas present from Lee.

( These pictures will be of special interest to Dawn. )

Tonight, I went out. I had to pick between two events that interested me that were both scheduled for tonight. There was to be a stitch 'n bitch in Meriden and a Theology on Tap in New Haven. I ended up picking the ToT because it meets only once a month where the SNB meets every week, plus I was just in the mood for some theology.

It ended up not really being a social event for me, though. It was at this neat place called the Playwright, and I got there just before it started. One of the organizers, Katie, greeted me at the door, and I chatted with her for just a minute, but then it was time for the talk. A priest talked about the liturgy and why and how we can try not to make going to Mass routine.

I was looking forward to this topic, because Mass has become a little routine for me, but actually? He was kind of boring, just like so many homilies are, and I kept inadvertently tuning him out.

When it was over, I went to the bar, had a drink, and read a free copy of the National Catholic Register (and grimaced at some of the things my fellow Catholics are doing and saying these days). I didn't feel like socializing, I realized, so I told myself not to feel bad about not approaching someone and striking up a conversation. There were a lot of people. I missed tatelover and wished she could have been there to discuss the whole thing with.

On my way back to my car, I passed a club that was having swing night! It looked like only a couple pairs of dancers, though, and they appeared to be dancing all sexy, so I just kept walking.

Next week, I'll go to stitch 'n bitch. That will really be much more conducive to socializing, so I look forward to it.

I know you all are probably sick of my "Oh my gosh, it's sooooooo cooooooold here" posts, especially you northern folk. But I haven't yet exhausted my amazement at it, nor has the novelty worn off.

I think I tricked myself into believing for a little while that it probably wouldn't snow again this year. Everyone keeps saying what a "warm," "mild" winter this has been--like that's supposed to make me feel better. I confess to someone (the bank teller, the oil company guy, whoever) that I've just moved here. From where? From Louisiana, that's where! And, yes, as you've guessed, it's very different here for me, and yes, it's very far away. And I'm cold; it's cold out!

"But this is actually really mild!" they all say. As if to say, "Just wait until next year. Next year will have your lily Southern self in three jackets every day."

So there's that. Plus, it's already almost halfway through February, and they all say that after February, the worst is over. So I figured, hey, mild winter, almost through February--I bet we don't get snow again.

Then this weekend came. According to Netscape weather, tomorrow we're having "Snow. Blowing snow." Eight to twelve inches of snow! Yikes.

Will it be bad if I miss Mass tomorrow? I'm scared to drive, and even more scared to walk, even though it's only, like, half a mile. One mile tops.

We've been sitting tight inside since this afternoon, waiting for the blizzard to begin, and it finally started just before Ferris Bueller's Day Off ended. It's no eight to twelve inches, yet. It doesn't even seem like "blowing snow." It just seems a little amped up from "flurry."

I've discovered my new favorite hobby. Indoor photography. I wanted to take pictures of the snow, but dang, I'm not going out in that mess! Forget it.

Here's the view from my window. Thanks to Picasa for helping me tune this into visibility.



Lee finished the TV. Here, Dee Dee darts across the room in front of it.



I made the curtains you see in the background. I bought some fabric at JoAnn's--it's really perfect, I just love it--and some ribbon and bead trim at Wal-Mart.



On the first curtain, I folded down the top and sewed a length or purple ribbon along the top where the seam was (you can't see the top in these pics, I guess). Then I left the lower edge raw and sewed the beaded part to the back (the ribbon the beads hang from is brown) and then glued the purple ribbon across the front. Then I realized that with all the pinning and struggling with the beads in the sewing machine, I was doing way too much work. So for the rest of the curtains, I folded and ironed down the top edge, dispensed with the pinning, and went ahead and sewed the top down. I still left the lower edge raw, and I just used the hot glue gun to attach the ribbon along the top seam and along the bottom. That worked out even better, I think, because the excess glue created more weight to hold the lower edge down. They go perfectly with the newly jazzed up TV, the rug, and the couches.

More detailed pictures of the room will come later.

I imagine that being someone who knits is going to come in very handy in my cold Connecticut future.



That's from yesterday, when I found it necessary to bundle up inside my apartment because the heater was crapping out. It's done this nearly every single day we've been here: when the temperature goes up during the day and meets the point where we've set it, the heater shuts off, as it's supposed to, but then it won't come back on when the temperature begins to drop. We usually realize this once it's dropped several degrees inside and we begin to notice the chill. Then we have to go down to the basement where the furnace and oil tank are and hit the reset button. Usually, it comes right back on and stays on until the next day.

On two occasions, though, it took several tries to get the thing to come back on. Soon after we moved in and noticed this problem, we reported it to the landlord, who came by and said nothing was wrong. The problem persisted, and Monday was the second of the two occasions when we couldn't make the heat revive itself. On the phone, the landlord sounded puzzled and, perhaps, concerned for the ole pocketbook, but this time, I phrased my report so to make it clear that I was calling the heating company and I just wanted to know whether I needed to reference an account number.

The heating company sent someone out right away, and he went down there and claimed to fix something. Woo hoo; heat.

Well. Tuesday afternoon rolls around, and I'm feeling chilly. And what do you know; the heat is off again. I called the heating company again, and while I waited for the dude to come back, I donned my gloves and hand knit wrist warmers and hat, because I tell you, this is frickin' Connecticut, not the South, and it's cold.

He came over, "the transformer I put in yesterday was dead!" blah blah blah, now it seems to really be fixed. No problems today. Thank heaven.

The weather monitor on my browser says it's 25 degrees out with flurries. Brrr! Flurries are different than I imagined before I lived here. I knew the word "flurry" first as a metaphor: "She rushed through the office in a flurry of photocopies and stray packets of artificial sweetener." I imagined flurries as short but intense and mildly heavy bursts of snow, with swirling wind and, perhaps, a soundtrack of flute music. If what I saw today were really flurries, then flurries are actually just brief episodes in which a few flakes of snow fly about and don't stick to anything. Anyone care to confirm or clarify my observations?



Last Saturday, we went to a swing dance in Middletown, thanks to irisira03's suggestion (Thanks!). The dancers up here mostly Lindy, it appears, which is intimidating to me because I'm much more experienced with East Coast (and come on, this IS the East Coast, so why can't we dance that way?). East Coast's basic is six counts and really easy for beginners. Lindy is eight counts. The basic itself is more difficult, and as it involves more spinning, it's very dizzying. The lesson we attended at the beginning of the dance taught something of a beginners' Lindy, a six-count job that mimicked Lindy with its triple-triple steps instead of single steps. The ultimate goal of beginning with something like that, though, is to get to eight count Lindy.

In Pensacola, the beginning norm is the six-count East Coast, and in my experience, people come to the dance anew and learn that, and if they stick around, they see that the more advanced dancers can Lindy. The more advanced dancers who learn Lindy eventually seem to prefer it, in fact, so Lindy kind of becomes The Dance That The Good Dancers Do. It isn't as though East Coast is for lame-o beginners; it isn't as though there's not a lot of practice and work required to execute a polished lead and follow for East Coast. I'm not sure why people who learn to Lindy seem to graduate out of East Coast, but then again, I prefer my Super Nintendo over Nintendo 64 and Game Cube and whatever the hell else has come after, so what do I know.

(An aside: Some dancers say that the term Lindy is an all-encompassing word to mean every kind of swing dance, both six- and eight-count and whatever else there is. For my purposes, however, six-count single-step is East Coast, and eight-count is Lindy. This is the terminology with which I was introduced to this whole business, so it's what I use.)

I like the way the Lindy looks, and I like the challenge of learning something new and more difficult. I like that in trying to learn the Lindy, I've learned a lot about frame and form and all of that. It's been useful to me in that way.

However, to be unashamedly honest, if I felt that I could hone my East Coast skills and still be asked to dance by Good Dancers, I'd be happy. I've just never had any luck with Lindy. I don't know what the trouble is with me, but any instruction I've received just never seems to stick. I'll take classes and lessons and workshops, and I'll do okay within those and feel as if I'm really getting somewhere, but at the next dance and with a partner who wasn't in the class, my body forgets everything it learned.

This is terribly frustrating. I can feel myself making mistakes that I can identify, but I can't make myself correct them. I know that a lot of this is lack of practice, but if I get frustrated with Lindy, Lee is frustrated ten times over. He hasn't been to as many classes as I have, and we both have enough trouble with just the basic; forget adding in any different moves. And you kind of can't just practice the basic Lindy again and again because it's so dizzyingly spinny.

Anyway. So in Pensacola, I could pretty well hold my own because enough people dance East Coast that I have enough people to dance with (though so many people there now Lindy, too, and Lindy almost exclusively that I feel intimidated there at times, too). In New Orleans, there was a whole lot of Lindy going on, but their dances were at terribly inconvenient times, so we never went and it didn't matter.

Here, it looks like it's all Lindy. Yikes!

One other thing that's intimidating about Lindy: it's difficult, and so when people get good at it, they feel good about themselves. That's great. If I ever get good at it, I'll feel good about myself, too. Sometimes, however, people get cocky about it. Some of the highest upturned noses are on the faces of accomplished Lindy-Hoppers (and, worse, self-imagined accomplished Lindy-Hoppers). It's certainly not the case that all Lindy-Hoppers are dance snobs; some of the best and nicest Lindy-Hoppers I know read this journal, for instance (hi, Ashley!). But there's nothing worse than working up the nerve to ask someone to dance and then seeing behind their downcast eyes after a couple of passes that they hope you'll kick them in the shins hard enough to incapacitate them out of finishing the number. Being inadequate at the Lindy Hop, coupled with feeling paranoid about Lindy dance snobs--it makes for a gut-twisting time at the dance.

We went to the class, and I felt okay, but Lee was frustrated by his lack of practice and inability to catch on right away. I feel his pain. We felt our best when we danced some faster numbers (better suited for East Coast). Then this guy Phil, who had to be at least 60 years old, asked me to dance, and I totally flubbed my Lindy follow. He reminded me to make a good, resisting contact with his arm. Right! I knew that; my body just forgot. At least Phil was very friendly and nice and not at all snobbish.

Phil was, however, the only person I danced with who wasn't Lee. I'm also really shy sometimes about asking guys to dance.

The swing circle was really interesting, though, and also not like what I'm used to in Pensacola. First of all, when one song came on, all the dancers knew it was the swing circle song, so they began clapping and formed a circle. They actually formed a small circle and blocked off half the crowd from seeing, which I thought was a little cliquey, but anyway. The song was very fast, and they clapped and stamped and hooted. The dancers ran out and did just one or two flashy moves, then ran back out, and they were all doing fast Lindy and Balboa. Sometimes, these people along the inside of the circle would kind of jump around on two bent legs and kind of focus on the couple in the circle. I'm not sure what that was about. The whole thing was not unlike the dance footage on www.dancestore.com.

When that was over, they did the Shim Sham. They didn't do it to "Tuxedo Junction" or one of the "Shim Sham Songs"; they did it to a song whose name escapes me. It's in A League of Their Own in the scene in the road house when Madonna is all dancing with a bunch of different guys. Not that version, though. And they didn't do the Shim Sham in a big crowd; they did it in a circle, which created this cool effect of the circle opening wider and then closing tighter. I recognized a lot of the Shim Sham, but some parts they did differently to accommodate and accentuate the circle formation. It was really neat. Then at the end, they all threw themselves on the ground.

It was, if nothing else, an interesting night, and I got a feel for the "scene" here. I do want to work on my Lindy. The fact that it's hard and intimidating doesn't mean I don't want to do it. I just have some barriers I need to figure out how to cross.

We might look into private lessons with some instructors. I know that can be really pricey, but we'll see how it goes. Classes and workshops just don't seem to give us what we need. We both learn better from private instruction, and I feel as though I've done the "Beginners' Lindy 101" thing too many times with too little results to make it worth doing again. I need someone to tell me what I have and what I don't have.

So that's the news from here. Now it's 21 degrees and, apparently, sunny...?

Time for bed.