Oh No, I Missed A Day!

I just had nothing to say yesterday and was in a cranky mood, to boot. So no post. On the other hand, it's the 18th of November and I've posted something like 23 times this month. I felt a little odd not posting yesterday since I think November is the "post something every day" month, but you know what? Screw it. I'm not going to post with nothing to say.

I had the real do-nothings yesterday. I did manage to make a trip to Target and got some exciting stuff like underwear and a Christmas gift for a cousin. I was not in the best of mood going in but man, I was really in a bad mood by the time I came out. It was semi-crowded...not really the full swing of holiday shopping but getting there. But all the people that were there were idiots. (Well, except for a friend of Rachel's and her Dad who were there...they aren't idiots.) People who park their carts in the middle of the aisle. People who stop their carts in the middle of a busy spot to talk on their frigging cell phones. People who have their sixteen children strung out in a line blocking the widest aisles. (Okay, there weren't sixteen children, only three. But the effect was the same.) People who leave their cart blocking the conveyor belt at the check-out so that you can't start unloading your own cart...and then try a couple different credit cards before deciding to write a check. Argh.

Today is better. Mr. Pointy Sticks and I did the grocery shopping and I've thrown together a pot roast. It sure smells good. I just had a yen for a pot roast lately. No carrots in this one but still...yum. Though the recipe called for a 28 oz. can of tomatoes which you then "squeeze into chunks in your hands." Well, let me just say that we may be finding splashes of tomato juice for years to come. And I'm washing my sweatshirt even as I type. Sort of a mess.

Last night Rachel decided to play some Playstation so I sat with my log cabin blankie over my lap and wove in some ends. Didn't get them all done by any means, but I made a start. And then I decided to start the Chevron scarf. This is from Joelle Hoverson's Last Minute Knitted Gifts and is a pattern that's all over the Web. I bought some Mirasol Hacho in two colors for it and last night I cast on and did a couple of rows. I'm not sure that there is enough difference in the two colorways, though they look pretty different in the skein.


I'm not sure how stripey it's really going to look. Which is okay...I'll just have to do another one in more distinctive colors. It's a fun knit and looks pretty. What more do you need? A fun knit and the aroma of pot roast. Yum.

Later -

The pot roast was yummy. That's a recipe I'll be using again.

At Least It's Friday

So here’s a quandary…

I had this friend. She’s someone I met at work almost 30 years ago. About 4 years ago she…hmmmm…I want to say “went off the rails” but that sounds too judge-y. Let’s just say that she had a lot of changes in her life…which, for her privacy, I won’t go into. She also got very snappy. It felt to me as though during every conversation we had I was either boring her to tears or she was picking at everything I said. She would frequently walk right past me desk without acknowledging my presence. I kept cutting her slack until about 2 -2 1/2 years or so ago when we were having a conversation about vacations. She was planning a vacation with two friends from work. “I dunno,” I said, “there’s no one here I’d want to vacation with. I mean, I go on vacation to get away from work, not take it along with me.” And she snapped something along the lines of “Well, nobody cares about your opinion because you never travel anyway.” And marched off.

And for a few minutes I was angry. And hurt. And then I realized that I just didn’t care. That she had sort of eroded our friendship down to this little nub and this last comment just snapped the nub right off.

Now she acts as though everything is normal. She just gave me a birthday present, which now means that, unless I can think of a tactful, non-confrontational way to give it back to her, I’ll be exchanging Christmas and birthday presents. But I sort of don’t want to. I know I should feel all warm and fuzzy about our past friendship…but I really don’t. I recognize that she is trying…hell, she drove down from Baltimore to be at my mom’s memorial service last year…but I just don’t care. We don’t have anything much in common. Other than work. (I mean, I could probably count on two hands the number of times we've ever gotten together outside of work.) And, unfortunately, she’s sort of tarred with the “oh-my-god-I-hate-work-when-am-I-
going-to-be-able-to-retire-I-am-so-damned-tired-of-everyone-I-
work-with” brush.

So…any tactful ways to return a present or do I suck it up and pretend everything’s fine and hope that eventually I feel friendly towards her again? And what is wrong with me that I can look back at 30 years of friendship and just say, “eh”?

It's Only Thursday!?

Like the Mystery Stole, I am ready for this week to be over. No moves yet at work but surely it can’t be much longer…please, God.

My dad and step-mom are off tomorrow on their annual Thanksgiving trek to Florida. Driving the whole way. Which makes me a little nervous, though they’ve never had a problem. But that’s a lot of miles. And then they’ll do it again in January or February for their annual stay on Sanibel. (Must be nice. I’ve been there twice. I would love to go back again someday. I should work on that.) My dad is (unbelievably to me and probably to him too) 86. I hope I am as active and sharp and look as good when I’m that age. He’s a pretty incredible guy and a great dad. (Hi, Lolly! It’s the truth!) Actually, I don’t know that he checks in here at all…he knows about the blog but has the impression it’s all about the knitting.

And speaking of knitting, I got an email from Webs today. (I’m on their mailing list so this isn’t unusual.) But for some reason I am more tempted than usual to throw in a big close-outs order. I think it may happen this evening, after I go home and check and see what sort of desires Readerville people have for scarves. I haven’t knit any Readerville scarves for a while now. And I got those cool scarf books. And my aunt wants me to knit her a warm muffler. And there is always next year’s Synergy fundraiser. La la. I think that, yes, an order can be justified. Pay no attention to that stash in the corner.

The Not-So-Mysterious Stole

I am so ready for this to be done. I have about 20 rows left and I just want it to be over. And today I was plugging along and realized that I had some sort of error a couple of rows back. And I just fudged some sort of messy solution and went on. But now it's bugging me and I have this sick feeling that I am going to make myself rip back to the error and fix it right. And I just. want. to. be. done.

It may just be going to time-out for a while and I'll work on some other stuff. Except I really shouldn't put it away with a mistake or I'll never remember to go back and fix it. But do you know how hard it's going to be to rip back three or four rows of close to 200 stitches apiece with the slip-2-knit-1-psso's and the k2togethers and the lace weight.....???

Argh. And now I'm babbling.

Here's an idea. We all hate spam, right? We all hate telephone spam even more than email spam, right? We especially hate the phone spam that is just some computer-generated message. Am I still right? I propose a law that would say "Okay, you want to be a phone-spammer...we can't stop you. But you have to hire real people to make the calls...no computer calls allowed anymore." Of course, then I'd be hanging up on some poor real person who couldn't get any better job than bothering people over the phone and I'd probably feel worse about doing that than I would hanging up on HAL...

But not too much worse.

Currently Reading

I finished Dan Simmons' A Winter Haunting this morning. Pretty tasty little horror story - one where you don't know what's really happening and what's in the narrator's disintegrating little mind. I hadn't, until someone on Readerville mentioned it, connected this Dan Simmons to the author of The Terror, which is just a fantastically scary and cold book. But they are, of course, one and the same. I think I need to read more of him.

What's that? I hadn't mentioned reading this? What about The Stolen Child, you ask? What about When The Devil Holds The Candle?

Shut up.

Hat...Now With More Inches

We have about four inches of ribbing now. And I am worried that I don't have enough yarn. I'm wondering if I should start throwing in some grey stripes now rather then wait until the end and have to rip back. And how long should I make it from edge to decreases? I'm thinking about 6 inches from where the ribbing would fold up.

And I have to say....trust your instincts, trust your instincts, trust your instincts. I put the hat down for a bit, picked it up and thought "Huh. I didn't realize I was on the second needle of a round. Didn't I just finish a round?" Looked back at the previous needle...nope, it was the first needle and I was now on the second. Despite a niggling voice in the back of my mind saying, "Are you sure you're right?" I plowed on and finished the round.

Only to discover that I had carried the yarn from the beginning of the first needle to the beginning of the second needle without actually knitting anything. So three needles full of stitches ripped back. Sigh.

May I just say how much I hate these needles? The only size 8 double-points they had at The Black Sheep on Saturday were Bryspun. I'll take a picture of them when I get home but they have very pointy ends. And pointy ends are okay....in fact, they're great if you're doing lace. Sure, they poke my hands but all double points poke my hands...these are just a little more painful than most. The real problem? Where the oh, so pointy end joins the straight and narrow of the needle there is a little step...a jog...an angle. And the yarn *thunks* over that step with every stitch. I just realized what it's like...it's like driving on a concrete highway with the joints going thunk-thunk-thunk under your wheels. I hates them, my precious.