JenLa

…blame Jen. (Ha! You were expecting me to say, “tough shit” weren’t you?) When I asked, “What should I blog about today?” She replied “knitting…” and then proceeded to laugh her ass off at me. So, I don’t need to beg forgiveness because all I’ve blogged about all week long is knitting. It’s all Jen’s fault…

…oh, and Dana’s too, because she’s the one who, in Monday’s comments said:

…I’m making the peacock shawl too, I’d love to see pics of your progress.

Never being one who likes to disappoint (it just comes naturally):

This is Chart Seven of Nine of the Peacock Feathers Shawl

…NINE!…there are nine EFFING charts in this pattern! NINE!!! 7 in the body, and 2 for the edging. I swear, this is the most complicated knitting I have done to date. It has frustrated me to the point where I gave it several well-deserved time-outs. Ok, I guess it probably doesn’t help that I knit this at my desk…at work…during work hours…shhhhh, but that just makes it more challenging.

“Ok, that’s an awfully large chart, La, where are you at?” (Don’t you just love it when people talk to themselves?)

Now just put a 1 in front of that “84″. That means that I have a total of 366 stitches on the needles right now.

Sorry I didn’t stretch it out but…hello! That’s 366 stitches…like any of YOU would take it off the needles at this point. Besides, I’m kind of scared to. I mean, what if it’s all fucked up? I don’t know if my OCD would let me deal, and I’d have to rip the entire friggin thing out. Whereas, if I waited until it was done and discovered it was all fukacta’d (thanks Jen…LOVE that word) my laziness would take over and there would be no rippage…just the application of feline logic: if I don’t see it, it doesn’t exist.

In other news, because it can’t ALWAYS be about me. You all should go see the newest arrivals over at Stacey’s. Yup, she’s peddling pussy. What do you mean, “Bad La!”? Aw, c’mon, you all know you were thinking it! But seriously, how cute are those newborns? WAAAY…

Mim has revised charts for Seraphim, which she obligingly sent my way, so this weekend will find me bossing around my knitting. It’ll probably entail some rippage (and much cussage), but if that’s the sacrifice I have to pay to have that shawl done and a done right and perfect and beautiful, then bring it on!

Yeah, so who will be checking in with me on Monday just to see how much well that goes, huh? And who of you will be checking in to watch my head explode as I recount whole “bossing Seraphim” went?

These kinds of posts are hard for me to write. I’m much more comfortable with the ranty bitter side of myself than the softer one. I always think it’s because I feel weird about showing off gifts, I don’t like to be all “looky what I got!” But it also has to do with the ever-present feeling of being unworthy of such generosity. I guess if everything happens for a reason, some of the crap that’s been hitting my fan is because I needed an exercise in gratitude. And this post is only one of several on the theme that I will be writing.

We have to back up to before my FIL died and my mom had been in the hospital. You remember that she had been so dehydrated she was hallucinating among other things. Well on that following weekend they kicked her out of the hospital because her insurance didn’t want to pay to keep her there just to be on fluids. Because being so dehydrated you hallucinate isn’t a good enough excuse for medical care? So. Angry. And then add to that more family drama. I’m trying to be careful what I write here because a lot more people are aware of this blog than I’m comfortable with thanks to my husband linking here. (Just kidding, Lemon, thanks for the links!) Suffice it to say that very very very VERY ugly things keep happening with a couple of people in my family, things I find not only abhorrent but dangerous as well. So I went to the hospital to see mom safely home that Saturday morning after a late night learning of some drama that had been stirred up and I was very angry about that, too. And I wanted to confront somebody about their part in it but I decided it would be better when I was less angry so I held it in. Then I called Mom’s best friend (I refer to her as Mom’s La.) to let her know Mom was discharged and to get moral support on the issue, because it’s something we have both talked about before and she’s as mad about it as I am. Talking to her made me angrier, so angry I decided to try and do something about the situation. So I called some agencies who all basically told me there wasn’t a damn thing I could do and nobody would help me. So I was so pissed by then that I was seeing white. Even though I was about a mile and a half from SnB at the time, I considered not going because I was dreadful company. But I had told Pixie that I was coming and she was bringing me some Calmer from her stash for a chemo cap for my mom so I thought well I’ll go, but maybe I won’t stay long. And I got to vent it to a couple of the girls and it calmed me down some. I was still feeling kind of sorry for myself on the whole “WHY WON’T ANYBODY HELP ME?” front, but I think my blood pressure and heart rate dropped dramatically just by being there.

And then the next thing I know Pixie is standing there holding a bag and saying that everyone had gotten together and had been working on something for my mother for several weeks. She handed me a bag and it contained this:

(photo ganked from Pixie)Click to see pics of Pixie and Claudia modeling.

And hell yes, I bawled. So much anger and sorrow counteracted immediately but an overwhelming act of kindness. And even though the blanket is for my mother, it was such a gift to me I don’t have the right words to describe the thanks I feel in my heart.

So I want to say a deep and heartfelt thank you to:
Amanda
Ann
Pixie
Claudia
Jacquie
Jane
Jenny
Jodi
Mouse
Olga
Sally
Sandy
Tammy
Whitney

And wait, this post isn’t over yet. Because just after that Claudia gave me this: for Mom as well, which is Odessa and she made it the night before at her Friday SnB out of Manos!

So even though life can get very bad and terribly overwhelming at times, here’s proof that there are good people who spread happiness and love, too. And for those of you who worry about my state of mind, you can see I am so lucky to have good friends supporting me.

No, that’s not the name of the next Incredibles movie (though the idea of an Incredibles sequel is highly appealing), it’s what I’m suffering from…yes, you guessed it! Say it with me, now…Second Sock Syndrome, or ESS-cubed for short.

You know, before I started knitting socks, I would hear [read] someone throwing around the ESS-cubed phrase I was like “Pssssht! What’s so hard about knitting a second sock? It’s just like the first…pussies!” Little did I know how those words would come back to haunt me (and kick me in the ass…). Oh, the stupidity of naivete! Yes, I was a dumbass, and yes, I’m sorry for calling you all pussies.

For me, is it the boredom of knitting the same exact pattern in the same exact yarn another fucking time that gets me? No. Is it yet another manifestation of knitters ADD? Could be, but…No. Is it the dread of knitting that same exact sock only to find out it’s a whole different size than the first one, even though you knitted it exactly the same; same needles, same number of rows that you paid particular attention to and took meticulous notes on, etc.? (See the picture of the socks in my last post? What a great example of forced perspective huh? One sock is definitely much larger than the other one, even though it’s not very easy to tell.) Where was I? Oh, yeah…the dread of fucking it up yet again? No. You know what the one thing that will send me to scrubbing toilets or reorganizing the his garage quicker than anything just to put off casting on that second sock as long as possible?

Uh…the casting on of the second sock…and the joining…and the knitting of that first, most-difficult-row-of-all-to-knit row. After that? It’s smooth sailing.

Last night I finished the first of the Roman Tootsies socks, but instead of casting on, I glared at Seraphim for a while [through her basket, of course] and then settled in with a margarita in my right hand, and Sassy on the armrest needing pats to occupy my left and watched Underworld Evolution. And today at work I opted to clean my entire office in lieu of casting on, but that lasted only so long. I even did a look-up of what others have posted about it.

Teresa C. posted a really good explanation of S-cubed.
Chelsea advocates the knittus interruptus method.
Sheron shared her experiences with ESS-cubed and highly advocates 2 Socks on 2 Circs

And now I’m working up this blog post, all the while I’ve got 61 German Twisted casted-on (my new word) stitches over a pair of #2 DPNs just taunting me to sack up and just join and knit already!

I wonder how long it would take me if I were to disassemble and then reassemble the copier. I betcha if I’m lucky, it could occupy me at least until the end of the day.

Man, how do all of YOU cope with the SS Syndrome?

Every so often a bandwagon comes along and you like the look of it. Some of us more than others, but I digress. Here’s the one I like right now:
You put in your website address and it takes a few minutes and whips out this neat little graph of it. The different colors represent various links, tables, blockquotes, etc. I got the link from Rise. I want to embroider this on a pillowcase or something. Once you make yours you’ll get a link to all the others tagged on flickr, there are some neat looking graphs there. This reminds me a little bit of the word cloud. Does my affection for this and word cloud make me self-absorbed? Or is it the very act of having a blog in the first place?

In way of an explanation for my absence the past week, I’d like to advise you to NEVER say “Well, it can only get better from here.” On Father’s Day my father-in-law left his house to see a client but never turned up. As it turns out his car was struck by two trucks while trying to cross a highway and he was medivacced to the hospital where six pints of blood and three hours of effort were unable to save his life. So I went to the Berkshires for a few days to be with the family and for the funeral and then returned with Jared to his Boston apartment for a couple more days. You might be tempted to point out that when it rains it pours, but wait, there’s more. Jared’s uncle died the previous weekend, as I had written about but his was the second death in a series. A couple months ago Jared’s parents’ best friends and their lifelong neighbors and pseudo-aunt/uncle were struck with tradgedy. She was diagnosed with lung cancer and he became nearly suicidal with grief. He had finally sought help with his depression and was doing much better when he struck a tree while driving home and was paralyzed as a result. He was not going to be able to breathe without a ventilator so he had them pull the plug; he died about three weeks or so ago. So first this pseudo-uncle, then his uncle that died of parkinson’s, then his father and the day after the funeral the pseudo-aunt died of her lung cancer. On the day of the funeral, Jared lost his job due to actor injury. He’s coming home next week and frankly, I’m glad. The job will resume in September so we just have to make do until then. And I had the most miserable experience with the airline both directions, which will be a post unto itself (probably entitled something like ‘lets all band together to bankrupt united’). So yes, when it rains it pours but I’m starting to feel like my umbrella has blown inside out and has holes in it and the metal bits are kind of poking out everywhere.

Now then. We’re jobless and have illness and death clinging to us-we are wondering at this point if we are pariahs. So you know what we did when we got back to Jared’s Boston apartment? We rode the subway and walked all over the city and drank beers and sangria and ate lobster and went to the Aquarium and Fenway Park and Boston Commons and Fanhueil Hall (sp?) and Tremont Pizza and Paul Revere’s house, all in the rain. I LOVE Boston. I don’t know, maybe it could be the rosy glow cast on the city by having three days of not thinking about our problems or maybe it’s the great public transportation that allows you to go off drinking and never have to worry about getting home or maybe it really is just a great city, but if I ever consider moving to a city again? Boston, for sure. I say this now because it wasn’t forty below and miserable, of course. And no, I didn’t visit a single yarn shop, meet up with any bloggers*, take any pictures or even turn on a computer or check my messages the entire trip. Disconnection turned out to be far less painful than I’d imagined. But once you get used to the quiet, plugging back into your world is absolutely deafening. At least I have lots and lots to talk about on the blog for the next week or two.

*Jessalu, I was actually going to try and meet up with you since I was literally only a few miles away, but I had no internet connection and no information with which to contact you. Next time I’m in the Berkshires, for sure.

Hell, we’re bleeding subs like a wounded jackass. Not liking the ration of bullshit posts I’ve been dishing lately, huh? Heh, what can I say? I could have bored you all with in-progress pictures of the most boring sock in the fucking world; or yet another picture of either a still unfinished Peacock Feathers Shawl or a Seraphim Shawl. Instead I waxed silly and light and fluffy in a cutesie attempt to hold down the fort until Jen returned. You live and learn…Oh! Another thing I learned was a different way to host my pictures so that everyone can see them (I hope…let me know if you’re not) I totally heart Flickr!

So, instead of more of the same, today I offer up the blessed little knitting I’ve been doing. Yeah, yeah, I know…all that bullshit I posted last week, and all I have to show for it is a measily pair of plain, boring-assed socks? Yup! ‘fraid so. If it’s any consolation, I wrote the boring assed pattern myself, and if anyone is interested, I’ll eventually put it on our free pattern page…just as soon as I can either 1) Beg Jen to do if for me (not like she’s got enough shit on her plate as it is), or 2) pull my head out of my ass long enough to figure it out for myself…but THAT, my friends, could take years.

So, for all of you who get turned off because of knitting content, now is the time to click away. For the rest of you…

You may want to be sitting for this…

A FINISHED OBJECT!

Yarn: Knitpicks Palette in “Fawn”
e2a: Ok, I just looked, the color isn’t FAWN, it’s NUTMEG. What can I say? Uh….moron? comes to mind…
Needles: US Sizes 2 and 1
Pattern: My own that I’ve called “Sockinette”. (Hey, it was the best I could do! Got something better? Bring it on, I’m game!)
Notes: Basically this is a cuff-down, plain stockinette sock. Cuff is done in 2 X 2 ribbing, plain heel flap with a French Toe. Eventually the pattern will be available here, and that will be cool because then I’ll have more than just one pattern on that page.

I made these socks for a friend of mine to go with his Roman Legionaire reenactment *impression. Now, Jen did some research a little while back and found that knitting isn’t exactly historically accurate for 2nd Century AD. What they had was Nalbinding, which I don’t know how to do. So, until I learn how to Nalbind (hey Beth, thanks for the link), knitted will have to do for now. Eventually, when I have the patience and the surplus (HA!) yarn to do so, I’ll try felted-rolled socks.

In the meantime, I’ve casted on this fun pair for another Roman reenactor friend.

Because this pair in intended for a chick, they can be fancier. I’m using the fancy rib pattern that Deb wrote for me a while back, which I dubbed as Tootsies. The recipient of these socks saw my Koigu pair, and just HAD to have her socks done similarly.

Otherwise, I’m still slowly plugging away on Peacock Feathers, but Seraphim is in time-out. There’s something seriously wonky with it, but until I have the patience (and the free time uninterrupted by the dumb question of the day or some other [male] bullshit) to figure out what I’ve fucked up on her, I’m afraid that she’ll just sit there languishing in her basket…

*For those untarded people, meaning, for those of you who don’t do historical reenactment, “impression” means “the person you’re portraying, and everthing that entails”…so in other words, the justification for a grown person to run around playing dress-up and pretending to be someone they’re not. (as Jen sits there snickering)