My Sweet Escape

Gwenny Gwen Gwen’s new album
(cover image from amazon.com)

“The Sweet Escape” has been one of my favorite songs since I bought Gwen Stefani’s new album in December. Of course, it’s on the radio constantly right now and she performed it last week on American Idol, but I like to think I “discovered” it before it was cool. I’m pretty sure I get what the song is supposed to be about, but when I listen to it, the sound, the words, they speak to me in a totally different way. Listen to these lines:

….if I could escape and recreate a place that’s my own world
and I could be your favorite girl (forever) perfectly together
tell me boy now wouldn’t that be sweet?……

When I listen to “The Sweet Escape”, what I hear isn’t about how someone else is treating me or how I’m treating them, but how I’m treating me. I’ve come to realize in the past few months, that I don’t take very good care of myself. I’m always too worried about everyone else; making sure they’re happy, doing what I think they expect of me. Somewhere along the way I lost myself. I lost that girl who cared about painting her nails, who bought herself pretty undergarments, that saucy girl who wasn’t afraid to show off a few of her assets, and laughed a lot. And in her place appeared someone older, someone frumpy, a girl who worries too much. I don’t like this new girl. She looks old in the mirror and feels out of place wherever she goes. She frets too much over silly things and forgets that she’s still pretty young and someday when she’s a lot older, she’ll wish she’d enjoyed this time in her life. And if she could recreate that place within her heart where she used to live, bring back the girl she used to be, then she’d be R. Darling’s favorite girl forever, perfectly together, and wouldn’t that be so sweet?

I think this calls for a visit to the spa….

Photo Friday – March 30, 2007

August 26, 2005 – Lk. Moraine – Banff, Alberta (Canada)

Feeding the chipmunks here was one of the most fun things I’ve ever done. I’m sure we weren’t supposed to be feeding them, but how could we resist such adorable beggars? We had a couple smooshed granola bars in our pockets and if you look closely at this fat little guy’s cheeks, you can see he’s got enough stored in there for at least a couple weeks. We’ve also got a photo of one of them stealing a practically whole granola bar right out of R. Darling’s hands. Oh the power of cuteness…..

The Longest Month

Why is it that March always seems like the longest month of the year? December and August both have 31 days, but they don’t seem to drag on nearly as long as March. Maybe it’s the whole “In like a lion, out like a lamb” thing. If you think about it, a good two thirds of March is still winter. Maybe this month seems at least twice as long as the average month because right about now I’m so freaking tired of winter that I can’t seem to wait one more second for spring to arrive. And now that spring is “officially” here, good old March is up to its same old tricks. Here, have a little taste of sunshine, nope that five minutes was enough, now I’m taking it back. The only good thing about March is the fact that Daylight Savings Time started early this year. Yep, we got an extra hour of daylight to see the pouring rain by. Nice. I guess if you’re Irish and/or a beer drinker there’s always St. Patrick’s Day to break up this never-ending bore of a month. But since I’m neither, well, March sucks for me.

And this month it doubly sucked because this March I was going to make do without buying any yarn. But somehow March got its stranglehold on me and I just.couldn’t.make.it. to the end of the month. My feeble will was crushed by its evil longevity. I’m pathetically addicted! So, this is what I got:

10 skeins of Noro Lily in color #36 (which is a pretty pale lavender). I bought it on eBay and got an amazing deal – probably close to 50%-60% off! I have since read that it’s been discontinued – maybe that’s why the deal was so good. Yay for me! It was meant for Sahara, but after swatching it I decided that it isn’t really drapey enough. Luckily though, I think it will work as a substitute for Muench’s String of Pearls for the Kate Gilbert Keyhole top that I want to make out of the latest Interweave. Bad girl that I am, I also purchased some yarn this morning for Sahara from WEBS that I will post about later when I receive it. R. Darling reads my blog so I’m sure I’ll have to divulge this little secret sooner or later….

Not much knitting going on around here. Gwenny Gwen Gwen has been on American Idol so I have been glued to the TV instead of working on the mini-sweater or the warm woolies cardigan coat. Three more days and this ceaseless month will be over! Can’t wait….

The Ripping Block

Welcome ladies and gents! What we have here is a new addition to the ripping block! Here you’ll find Exhibit A: a sweater pattern called Rusted Root, designed by the ladies over at Zephyr Style and knit in Candy Apple Cotton Fleece by Brown Sheep Yarn Co. This sweater was knit almost completely during one snowed in week after Thanksgiving, and has not been touched since. Note the voluminous sleeves and ill-fitting torso, true signs of the knitter’s unfortunate lack of foresight (she didn’t even bother to try it on until it was almost finished!). And upon closer inspection, you will notice the botched lace pattern where she slipped the stitches incorrectly! Such a knitting travesty! This sweater is as prime a candidate for the ripping block as has ever been witnessed before! Don’t miss the opportunity to see this one frogged!

Is it me or do you hear the Devo too?

Rip it good

[sing to the tune of Devo’s Whip it…]

When a problem comes along
You must rip it…..
When something’s going wrong
You must rip it……..

Now rip it
Into shape
Shape it up
Get straight
Go forward
Move ahead
Try to detect it
Its not too late
To rip it
rip it good….

That’s been the soundtrack for this whole weekend so far. R. Darling’s working so I figured I’d have tons of lovely knitting time. Little did I know I’d be singing the rip it song all weekend long. I knit swatches, I blocked swatches, I took the gauge. I ripped out the swatches, I re-knit the swatches, I tore out some hair, I said a few expletives, and finally…… I gave up. I felt trapped in some kind of knitter’s underworld, a knitterly Sisyphean hell, doomed to knit and re-knit the same length of yarn over and over, only to have to unravel it and begin again. To console myself I watched Elf. It’s kind of hard to be grumpy with Will Ferrell cavorting around on-screen in his green and yellow elf outfit. I know, it’s a bit off season for that kind of thing, but it makes me smile any time of the year.

And to make me feel as if all was not wasted this morning, I started Glampyre’s Mini-sweater (Boob Holder) using Patons SWS in Natural Geranium. It’s going pretty well even though my gauge is off (ha ha – big surprise!). I figure it will warm me up for the Fitted Knits Along that starts April 1 (yay!).

Oh and sometime later today when you find yourself humming Devo, I hope you think of me and smile…..

Wild Wild West – Photo Friday – March 23, 2007

September 26, 2006
Our second wedding anniversary, taken in Victoria, B.C., at Grandpa’s Antique Photo Studio

I know it’s corny, but I have always wanted to have old west photos taken. We saw an ad for this place on the boat ride over to Victoria and I knew we had to go! Of course, R. Darling was a good sport (probably since it was our anniversary and all), so we went in and got a few photos taken. I liked this one the best, where we are looking very serious as they would have done in the old days. You could almost believe he was a tough lawman and I was a dance hall girl with a heart of gold….. (And money! Get a load of the bills in my garter).

I Had No Idea…..

…..that it was going to be such a big deal about knitting Sahara over at the SKC.  Apparently there’s some kind of big fuss about Tilli Thomas yarns and I feel very guilty about the whole thing because I nominated Sahara.  But if it was going to be such a big deal, then why did 76 other people vote for it too? 

Clearly you can substitute yarns.  I mean, isn’t that what knitters do?  They customize things, make them original, break some rules, shake things up.  All we voted on was the design.  That doesn’t mean we’re endorsing the yarn.  In fact, I think of it more as endorsing Wendy.  She’s a cool chick that designs beautiful, fresh, flattering patterns.  And if you’ve ever read her blog you can tell that she changes things up herself all the time.  Stitchdiva asked her to design something for them.  That means, to some extent, that they probably made the rules.  How do we know that they didn’t ask her to use Tilli Thomas?  Come on people.  Live and let live!  Fine, you don’t like Tilli Thomas, well there are a thousand other yarns out there to choose from.

Maybe I should have known better.  Maybe I should have kept to myself until I was a really good knitter and knew my way around a knitalong.  But I thought I’d get involved.  I thought I’d be outgoing for once.  And I just really loved this pattern and thought it would be fun to knit it along with some other gals since I have no one around here to knit with.  If I’d realized everyone was going to get so bent out of shape I wouldn’t have nominated it in the first place.   

Spring!

I usually post photos on Friday, but today was the first day of spring and I had to celebrate by posting a springy picture! Since today’s actually cold, grey & icky and my flowers are still all sleeping soundly, I thought I’d share this picture from a few springs ago. One of the counties south of ours is famous for their beautiful tulips. People come from all over when they’re blooming just to wander around the fields and take photos. R. Darling and I have both lived here most of our lives and suddenly realized a while back that we’d never bothered to see them for ourselves. So we took the Harley out on a beautiful clear day and filled our memory card with photos. There really is nothing that compares to acres of flowers reaching towards the sunshine, in bold brilliant colors, as far as the eye can see. Here’s a few more from that day……

 

Hope the first day of spring was beautiful in your corner of the world!

 

Typical Tuesday

It’s just your average Tuesday around here. Not much going on. Work, dinner, dishes, a little TV. I know – I’m crazy like that. Anyway, I mentioned the Warm Woolies Cardigan Coat in a previous post and I thought I’d share an in-progress photo of what it looks like so far. I’ve just got to add the other sleeve and knit a couple button bands and then voila! Kiddie coat! It’s a simple pattern, though I didn’t enjoy seaming the sleeve very much. Most of their patterns are knit in the round so I don’t have a lot of practice with that. Still looks decent though, considering.

This is the other thing that’s been keeping me busy. The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards. I mooched it recently on Bookmooch which was a totally amazing snag since everyone and their cousin has it on their wishlist. Some of the previous moochers left some terrible comments about it. I disagree, though I do find it less engaging than I’d expected considering its popularity. I’m still enjoying it – just a bit slowly.

Now off to read or finish that last 1% of Fetching. I am so dying for the next SKC KAL (So far my nomination is in the lead! Yay!) as well as the Fitted Knits Along to start! Oh the knitty torture!

A Rainy Day Reserve

Today was a good day for a rainy day project. You know, one of those projects that you’ve had in the back of your mind, tickling your brain when you try to sleep at night, appearing in your thoughts while you’re at work or cooking dinner. A reserve project, one you design in your head, maybe even buy supplies for, knowing one day all that preparation will coalesce into a glorious manifestation of your imagination. Or in my case, a sometimes disastrous or lopsided manifestation that usually ends up in the trash……

Today was a good day for one of those. I pulled one out and dusted it off and look what I got! I’ve been wanting to try making stitch markers for a while now. Such a fun and easy way to personalize your knitting, plus keep track of your rounds and increases/decreases! What gal couldn’t use a little bit of style on their needles? With not much going on today I figured, why not? R. Darling’s working a different shift, I got time. I picked up these supercute beads at Joann’s the other day and I’ve got loads of other seed beeds floating around the house so I thought I’d put them to good use. In all of about 10 minutes (most of that time was spent deciding on where to place the big bead vs. the small beads – I analyze too much!) I had 2 stitch markers! Cool. Practically instant gratification! It became pretty obvious though, that while these are definitely workable and cute, I’ve got some work to do making my wraps and top loops a lot more presentable. You can kind of see that the top loop on the left marker looks kind of like a virus head instead of a pretty round loop. Oh well, chalk that up to the scientific tendencies in me I guess! These will fit up to a size 9 needle and I’m looking forward to trying them out very soon!

He’s a Sweet One

 

R. Darling went out for coffee and a paper this morning and came back with these for me as a surprise! Man I love my hubby! No new knitting news so far today….

You Can Cross That One Off The List

Just about to go under the needle, Summer 2002

Well, it wasn’t exactly on the list of top 100 things I want to do before I die, but I guess I can say that I’ve now experienced an MRI. My knees have sucked pretty much my whole life, but have never really hurt or stopped me from doing much until the last couple months. When I started getting really sharp pains and a popping sensation in my right knee I figured it was time to suck it up and go to the doctor. So, I was scheduled for an MRI and today was the big day. I’ve never really considered myself a big jewelry wearer, but this morning I had to think about and remove all the metal before going in. No watch, no earrings, no wedding ring, no righthand ring, and…..I almost forgot about it…..this one, the oh-my-god-I’m-28-must-do-something-young-quick navel ring I got a few years back. When you accentuate and accessorize something for going on 5 years, it looks pretty funny when you let it revert back to its natural state. My bellybutton looks tiny and I can’t stop gazing at that little naked dot in the middle of my tummy. Oddly, it wasn’t until I was filling out the extensive questionnaire about whether I had a pacemaker or bits of metal in my eye (who has metal in their eye and lives to get an MRI, anyway?) that I remembered my gold crown. The one that I cried and moped about over several days during December and January. I was sure the fact that I was getting a gold crown was going to be immediately obvious to anyone I smiled at and ruin my smile forever. And what do you know, I forgot all about that sucker.

Luckily I was able to leave all my clothes on (no jiggly bits were aired during this exam thank god!) and the nurse was really nice. They told me I’d be able to have music on during the scan, and did I want Soft Rock or Jazz? Yeah, sure, whatever…. I was starting to get a little nervous by then. The soft rock then, the technician says to the other gal in the booth, and then she pushes open what looks like a bombshelter door and I hear a big whoooshh like it’s been hermetically sealed inside there. Great, they’re putting me in this big round cylinder, completely unprotected, and they’re sealing me in here like the air’s not safe for normal people! What’s going on here? So they get me all situated and she tells me through the headphones that I’m going to hear some knocking for about 30 seconds and that will be the first scan. Be sure to lie still she says. O.k. No big deal. What do they do if you’re really fat and don’t fit in the tube? The Beach Boys are singing about the Sloop John B. and I’m staring at the ceiling. The nurse talks into the headphones again and tells me the next one will be 3 minutes or so. This time it’s Juice Newton…..Just call me Angel, of the mo-rning, Angel….. It’s funny what you think about when you have nothing else to do. I think to myself that Juice has to be the crappiest name on the planet. And two seconds later I think, well, at least her parents didn’t name her Fig. Meanwhile, my butt is being shot with magnetic pulses and radio frequencies and I wonder if this was what those belt-o-matic weight loss machines were like in the 50’s. You know, those ones that show smiling ladies with motorized belts slung around their butts just jiggling away the flab? After the belt-o-matic segment, there’s one that sounds like a skipping CD, a loud skipping CD. Through this one I hear Total Eclipse of the Heart. By the end of the scan I hear: Once upon a time I was falling in love, now I’m only falling apart…. Ah. So true.

I’ve got half of the Warm Woolies Cardigan Coat done. Finished a lot of it yesterday after seeing the doctor and finding out that I’ll most likely need knee surgery. Knitting all day was good therapy. Doing something for someone else helped keep the tears at bay. I’ll try to post some photos tomorrow.

Oh, and if I develop any cool super powers after all that bombardment with radio and magnetic frequencies, I’ll let you know. I felt a little woozy afterwards so perhaps the cells are mutating already. Personally I’m hoping for some Spidey Senses…..