Kiss My Knits!

Illnesses and exploding bags.

So I was at the weekly stitch night last night when Turtlegirl pointed out that I had just told a story that was primo blogging material. And she’s right. I neglected to write about the capper to our crappy morning!
Click for a tale of post office pugilism.

We can be Heroes Meme

Well, Boo’s back in school (although she had a shaky start to the day) but now I’m under the weather.

This, combined with another event this morning, have conspired to make this a Really Crappy Day. And it’s only 9:45 in the morning.

I got the breakfast bar from Harris Teeter and am about to settle in to eat, watch TV, and knit. Hopefully the day will turn around.

Well, Emily was too sick to go to school today. Actually, she was sniffling and coughing all weekend long, didn’t want to eat (a dead giveaway that she feels bad) and mainly laid on the couch watching Disney. She definitely was not up to par. This makes me feel better about missing school yesterday, since she would have missed it anyway.

Today she’s running a low-grade fever, which I’ll bet she has been all along. She’s still not hungry, still sniffling and coughing, and is playing on the computer. She’s still small and boneless enough that she can curl up sideways in the computer chair. For the most part, I’m just letting her do whatever she wants, since it’s keeping her resting. Later we’ll take a bath and maybe do a little math, but for now, it’s computer games and rest.

Had a good time at the Carolina Alpaca Celebration in Concord on Sunday. I went with turtlegirl76 and illiane. The animals were so cute I considered smuggling one out, but decided it probably wouldn’t fit comfortably in illiane’s SUV. Curses, foiled again! The event was geared more towards breeders, but was still fun.

However, we did have a good time at the free spinning seminar, which turned out to be more of a talk about shearing, picking, carding, and very little spinning. We got to see a bit done, though, and I learned that I like a double treadle, more modern machine than the single-treadle antique that I briefly experimented with in the seminar. No, that is not me in the picture, it is Donna Blackmon of Flint Ridge Alpacas.

There were, of course, vendors there, with all manner of alpaca and craft-related stuff. I wound up spending every single cent of the “mad money” my husband left me. (I had paid bills the day before and mentioned that we were officially broke, but oh well, I’d still have a good time. He left a wad o’ cash on the bedside table for me before he and my daughter took off for Laurinburg. Sweet!)



What’d I buy? Well, Creatively Dyed Yarn had a booth, so I had to get that pretty skein of sock yarn to the left, of course. Also, the one to the right, which is a little more tan and less pink than the picture shows. There was also some worsted, and from other vendors, a bar of really minty eucalyptus-y soap, a pair of incredibly soft baby alpaca gloves, some finger puppets for my daughter, and a little treat for my husband which I can’t show yet because apparently he does occasionally read my blog. Who knew?

Then it was back to Charlotte, where I helped turtlegirl rearrange her furniture. I swear, it was more fun than it sounds. Our cat mercifully let me sleep until 7:30 this morning, so I awakened full of pep! I’ve spent the day cleaning the house. It still looks like a sty, but it looks like a sty which could actually someday be clean. At least the piles of crap are smaller. Just gotta keep that momentum going.


Major down side? Today was Presidents’ Day and there was no school. Or so I thought. We had a snow day two weeks ago, and apparently the school system decided that today was a makeup day. I didn’t know this until my mother called at noon and mentioned it. Meanwhile, my daughter’s out of town. I seem to remember that when I was a kid, they just tacked all those days on the end of the year. I figured that’s what they’d do this time. Apparently not.

My daughter’s school has an automated system which they use to call us all the time, once in English and once in Spanish. If there’s a school play, or a “donuts for dads” type thing, we get calls. They couldn’t call and say “hey, there’s school today!”? Gr. So we missed a day, which is frustrating.

Well, it’s back on the alpaca horse tomorrow, but hopefully we’ll all be in high spirits. I know I feel better having a cleaner house and new yarn to play with.

Now when’s my next vacation?

Hats up for: OR, OR, and NY.

Super easy, super quick. Afterthought heels are officially my new favorite thing for self-striping yarn. I could actually knock the second one out this weekend. Yay!

I’ll post details after I have an actual finished pair. 🙂

Jayne hats up for: PA, OR, NY

I decided to go ahead and go with socks. I’m doing the ribbing pattern from Knitty’s Thuja, but on fewer stitches since this is sized for a woman’s foot instead of a man’s. Also, instead of that heel I’m doing an afterthought heel. This is also sometimes called a grandmother’s heel or peasant heel. The idea is that you knit some, then you put in a row of waste yarn (that’s the red row on my wrist), then you knit all the way down to the toe. Later, you come back and unravel the waste yarn and put in your heel. Supposedly it makes it very easy to replace just the heel when it gets worn out. I haven’t done one before, so I wouldn’t know.

This particular heel appealed to me for this yarn since it means I wouldn’t have to interrupt the striping along the top of the sock, and because it should create a nice pattern of its own. There’s a pair of striped socks with an afterthought heel in Weekend Knitting and it looks really nice.

I think I’m going to rip back to the heel, though. Now that I’ve had a chance to look at it, I think the heel will work better if it’s in the middle of a color change rather than up on one end. More symmetrical. I said it before, but if the vendor has more of this at the alpaca festival, I’ll get a skein (thanks for the birthday money, Dad!). I might write and ask her to bring one if she’s got it.

These are going to be very thick and warm. I can already see that they’re not pilling like the Koigu, which makes me feel better that it was the yarn at fault and not so much me. If I knew then what I know now, I’d have made my mom’s out of something sturdier.

Didn’t get enough sleep last night, but I’m about to make myself some buckwheat pancakes and plop down in front of the TV to do a little Jayne knitting, so that’ll be cozy and nice.

The meeting was less than a stellar success. My co-leader for tonight was also the cookie mom, so she had to load cookies into peoples cars, which meant I had to run it alone. The girls blew through the conversational lesson very quickly and with little attention. In fairness, I had very little for them to do besides talk and make a few faces, and I didn’t factor our three chatterbugs into this. They’re charming girls, but if there’s one thing those spirited little pixies don’t need, it’s tips on how to strike up a conversation.

The best part was coming out afterwards. The girls helped clean up some, in the scattershot way that seven-year-olds do, and I didn’t press it as much as I should have. I wound up cleaning up heaps of glitter, so we got out about 7:15. It was dark.
Emily looked up and said, “What are those dots?”
“Those are stars!” I said, “Look, there’s the constellation Orion!”
“What does it look like?”
“You see those four stars, with the line of three stars in the middle? The three stars are Orion’s belt, and the constellation is Orion, Orion the hunter. People think he looks like a hunter, hunting other constellations across the sky.”

“…Orion…”

She kept looking, to the point that she tripped a little as we were walking because she couldn’t take her eyes off the sky. So we stopped and watched for a while. We looked again at home. She was really interested. It was very nice.

I’m really wiped, and may not go to knitting tonight. We’ll see after she goes to bed.