Weekend with the 'rents

I think I mentioned that it's cold and feels like it's raining all the time and we'll never get any summer wah wah boohoo?
But it does make for some very nice pictures of rainy plants all out of focus and artsy.


We had a lovely weekend, despite the weather. I really should qualify that, because Sunday *was* a nice day and it didn't rain until evening.

On Saturday visited the Pittock Mansion, which I'd never been too. It's quite the pile--all the marble and sandstone was gorgeous. It was built 1909-1914, just late enough to get electric lights and a central radiator heating system, as well as phone service. Pittock emigrated to Oregon mid-19th century and was the first owner of the big local daily paper.

This is the outside. It's built up on the top of the hills west of Portland.

The grand stairway. There's 4 floors. It felt like being inside of a Clue game (study, music room, dining room, kitchen...)

They're not kidding about it having the best views in the city. This is the view out the bathroom window.


The kitchen tiles were nifty: when they first dug up the floor, they found that the tiles were interlocking pieces of rubber, and they recreated them and the pattern when they restored the room:


Sunday we went to the Japanese Garden, which was stunningly beautiful, as always. Everything was green and lush with all the rain.


One thing I really like about the garden? They just embrace the moss.
Unfortunately the effect doesn't look quite so good on our ratty front lawn.

One more azalea picture for the road, OK?

I is for Iceburg Lettuce

Because I hate it. I don't like iceburg lettuce at all, and for 18 years of my life, that's what I believed salads consisted of. To be fair, it's not like it tastes all that bad, it just doesn't really taste. The crunchiness: OK, but so are carrots (and heck, romaine) and they taste good. A salad: bunch of crunchy cardboard drowned in dressing to make it taste good.

Fortunately I finally discovered the rest of the World of Lettuce and since then I've even been known to like salads and even eat them by choice (gasp!) I'll eat baby mache straight, no dressing adulteration required.

I'm flippant today because I'm feeling a weird mix of anti-social, diverted, elated, sad, and lonely. The 'rents return home this afternoon. I think I will have dinner with my love monkey and then knit alone for a couple hours and not talk to anyone. I suppose this means I'm an introvert on the whole Meyers-Briggs scale, but then comes the times I crave company and camaraderie. It's just exhausting.

Bah. Enough navel inspection.

Winner!

Thing #2 winner is Nicole, who guessed the closest:

I know that people have already guessed that you're getting a pattern published, so I'm going to guess an article instead (either by you or about you).

But I *wish* I were having a book published. Thank you all for entering my contest. Just a little article, not even a pattern. It should be coming out sometime soon. I don't know how much I can say so I'm going to keep mum for the moment. I'll just say that all that t-shirt tie-dyeing came in handy, at long last.

ETA:Woo! My article was posted this morning in the Summer edition of Knitty!

The 'rents have landed

First off - for the Thing #2 contest, I should have clarified: if more than one person guesses correctly, I'll pick a winner randomly from among the correct guessers. If you want to change your guess because of this, that's fine. Sorry for the confusion.

K's parents arrived late Wednesday night. I feel bad that the weather is so crappy; it is definitely not 'summer' unless you define summer as 55 degrees F, overcast and rainy. Ah well. This is what I need to remember when it is 102 and humid. CANNOT PLEASE ME.

Sorry, I'm a little spastic because Thing #1 was confirmed this morning and is a go! WOOHOO! I'll talk about it soon.

One of my current sock projects. I never got the self-patterning thing, it never seemed all that interesting to me. I picked up some Lang Jacquard for socks for my Dad just on a whim, and I Get It Now. It's so much fun to see the new colors come up. But you know what's crazy-making? Attempting to knit 10 spi by using 1.5mm needles because I am so loosey-goosey. On the other hand, the fabric is nice. On the other hand, smaller than toothpicks. Bleh.

These last two are from walking around downtown.
I found this lamp to be just a little creepy. It was in a window advertising a high-end frufru steak house.

Hmm, speaking of steak houses, we need to find a good, not-totally-insane seafood place and fast. The 'rents hail from the midwest and so a good salmon dinner is high on their list during visits. Unfortunately all the seafood places I know of are from Ye Olde Schoole of dark wood paneling and stuffiness. Or fish 'n' chips. There seems to be no middle ground. I think we may have to grill our own.

New condo building strut/decoration. I just really liked the orange color, especially with the green against it. So happy! So not grey like the sky! I know this probably makes me a freak. Do I care? No.

Thing #2

Contest! My good fortune is your good fortune! Drop me an email at bigalice at ye olde gmail.com and guess what Thing #2 is to enter. Contest will go until Friday midnight PST or until someone else publicly spills the beans about Thing #2, whichever comes first.

Edited to Add: if more than one person guesses right, I'll pick one of the correct guessers via random number generator.

Information:

1. I'm not pregnant

2. Thing #2 is tangentially related to knitting but is itself not knitting.

I'll send a hand-dyed skein of fingering-weight yarn in the color of your choice to whomever guesses first (or closest). Here's an example in greens:


And, 3. No, I'm not opening my own hand-dyed yarn store. This isn't meant to compete in any way with La over at Fibercrack’d, so go over there and join her contest and ogle her beautiful yarn!

Now I'm going to go hide under my desk. In-laws on the horizon at T-36 hours and counting. Send reinforcements and cleaning supplies.

Where did June come from?

I really intended to post last week but there is so much going on. I'm having a hard time keeping it all in a row. There is thing #1 that I can't talk about, and thing #2 that I also can't talk about; thing #1 is causing me much stress (not bad stress, but definitely stress). And then my in-laws are coming to visit this week so the whole weekend was spent cleaning and not doing much in the way of FUN. Well, I did squeeze in a little fun, because my time is precious and valuable and I refuse to spend all of it in scrubbing out the refrigerator. (The fridge, she is inherited and old and probably uses too much electricity. I clean up the sticky bits, the mold, and the crumbs, but I leave it at that. I guess that makes me a lax housekeeper. Bite me.)

Dad & I visited the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden when he was here, at the peak of rhodie bloom season.

Also, I like flowers and plants 'n' stuff but I get really tired spending all day planting them. I really should just suck it up and buy hanging baskets that are already pre-pretty from the nursery, but I have this ongoing delusion that I am a Master Gardener so I amble through the "trailing annuals" aisles at the local plant nursery looking for exactly the color combination to make The Perfect Hanging baskets. (See also: I am cheap).

The birds own that park. A canada goose looks at me laconically.

I tried to embroider the whites of the eyes on El Bunnie but it just looks weird so I think I will go with buttons only. They are very well secured; I even used cotton-covered poly thread, which is a pain in the rear to break. I am already late for her birthday. Gotta get this out the door.

I picked up the lace stole again because I felt guilty. Michelle showed me a shawl that she started and finished and blocked in less than a two weeks. My poor stole has been out of the loop for months and months. I have to finish this, if only to reclaim my needles. It's just so repetitive.

But the goslings are pretty dang cute

The weather has been craptastic lately (as usual for Mayish), with the occasional evil tease of a nice day to keep us hoping. K's aunt's name for this month is Junuary.

The bad weather is entirely explained by the fact that it's the currently Rose Festival time in Portland. It's the biggest civic event of the year - parades, carnival rides, fireworks, etc. Overcast skies and rain is traditional. You think I'm joking, but Every. Single. Year. we have lived here it has POURED rain on the Saturday of the big parade. I kid you not. So if you live in the NW, I apologize -- next Saturday morning will be a downpour. On the plus side, the sunny weather should arrive in force as soon as next weekend is over. Except you, Seattle, you know you always get rained on for the 4th of July. That's traditional, too.

Another common view of the geese.

The other big change (for me) is that I've started riding my bike to work most of the time. K & I scouted out a route that is mostly residential streets (lucky K gets a bike trail for a good chunk of his route). It's about 5 miles each way, and only a little bit of downtown streets. So not too bad, only I've learned to despise drivers on cell phones even more. It's sure a whole lot more fun than taking public transit, although it's cut out my train knitting time.

Sorry, this post is like a poker hand with a something of everything and nothing useful. Good wishes to all of you.

Just to put things in context

This is about how long it is now. It's not naturally curly, those are fake curls. It's long and mostly straight. I wasn't kidding about the back fat (sigh)

I am awful at embroidery, drunken or sober. Good thing I could take up knitting. Chain stitch is my new best friend, after back stitch and I don't get along too well. The bunny is done, except for a bodice ribbon and the whites of its (hers? his?) eyes. After all this, I have to agree that the orange looks a little weird. Oh well. It's probably the purple dress, brings out the orangeyness even more.

And what is this?
That would be my first attempt at stranded knitting. Doesn't look like much, does it. Fortunately the rabbit does not care. Surprisingly enough, I've got tension issues (hahahahaha, me who has to go down 2+ needle sizes for every project. You don't want to know what that translates to for thinnish sock yarn.)

Too late at night after a weekend of bad weather

I'm thinking of cutting my hair. It's waist length, and I've never cut it, ever (trims don't count). I've had long hair for so long it's almost part of my identity now. People might not remember me, but they'll remember that chick with the really long hair.

Am I insane?

I'm thinking I'm tired of looking like Cousin It from the backside. Then again, big hair hides back fat.

Proof that New Mexico isn't a monochromatic wasteland

When I was visiting, I spent an hour or so walking up in the foothills of the mountains. I found this little cactus hidden among some rocks at the mouth of an arroyo (a dry wash/drainage path).

Aka 'Spike.' One way that Nature says: DO NOT EAT ME.

H is for Hiding

Erm, it's been 3 weeks, hasn't it? I'm sorry to just drop off the face of the earth like that. I haven't been reading blogs much either. Sometimes I get all weird like this and I don't want to cope with reality any more. At the same time, I usually crave attention and interaction, so it's really not all that fun. Hiding under the covers usually wins out. I'm trying to be better.

Thank you all for your good wishes. Mom's doing well and walking around again, after a week of forced sitting-around and crutches. She has exactly the same knee problems I have, in the same knee even, but I got the luck of the draw and my ripped up meniscus doesn't cause me any pain, so I could bypass the surgery.

Dad visited and I survived. I think he had a good time. I enabled him into buying a new camera, heh heh. Anyone coming to visit, take note: we are mostly boring people who like to do boringish things like go for bike rides, visit gardens, eat good food, knit, and read. Although I know of this really cool old 80s arcade in town if you need your Galaga fix.

There's been lots of knitting lately, mostly all boring comfort knitting; although I do have an update on the toy rabbit, which K tells me now resembles the groundog from Caddyshack. I've been working on its dress (why sure, rabbits have dresses!) which is purple and stranded and kicking my derrière.

New Mexico isn't quite so green as Oregon.

Well, different shades of green. Check out all those cholla cacti. My parent's front yard has a couple of them out front, one with a dove's nest built inside all the spiny arms.

Hi Mom! She looks pretty good for 3 days out of surgery, I think (even if it was arthroscopic. They still had to give her a general anaesthetic.)

P.S. Hose and heels are tools of the debil, I do believe. My thoroughly broken-in shoes gave me 2 blisters within a half mile of walking. Fortunately I don't get much practice wearing them.

Please leave a message at the tone

Hi.
I'm sorry I have not been answering any email. My mother had knee surgery on Wednesday so I'm currently in New Mexico, helping her out for a few days. Everything's fine and she's healing quickly and hobbling around.

Back on Saturday night to clean up the house for my Dad's visit to Portland next week. It wasn't all of it planned that way, but that's the way the events have fallen out.

Hope you are well and happy. <insert clever, humorous, insightful comment here>

Gorgeous

Today is a blustery day. I like that word; blustery.

I seem to be full of some kind of vague Spring angst. I'm irritable and frustrated at stupid things. I can't seem to form coherent sentences.

Lately it feels like my Get Up And Go has gotten up and gone. There's a growing pile of MUST-BE-DONE-SOON things that doesn't ever seem to diminish. I know I'm going to regret this soon and I already regret the regret.

It's about as much fun writing all whiny like that as it is reading it. And everything else ends up sounding sickenly earnest or twee. So, I stick my tongue out at you. BLEH!

-----

I like the letter G, we have a kind of sympatico. G is a little hard around the edges, a little teutonic. Gigantic, gargantuan, gorilla, gibbous, gestalt. Gesticulate! Ha, I guffaw at you! ha ha!

Spring and I, we really don't get along. Too much transitional, too many cute 'n' fuzzy bunnies? I don't know, but I am always impatient with Spring. However, I sure do enjoy all the little sprouting things. So my chosen G word? GREEN.








P.S. Booties are done. Pictures coming soon.

F is for Fabric Depot

I'm a little sad (and envious) tonight, because earlier I took the Love Monkey to the airport to leave for a week-long business trip to London. Yes, that London. It's his first time, and unfortunately he'll be mostly tied up in meetings. I don't care if it's silly or clingy, I miss him when he's gone, even just for a few days.

I thought about F for Fat or Food or some other loaded topic, but frankly I'm tired of obsessing about those particularl things. Instead:

F is for Fabric Depot!


Fabric Depot is ENORMOUS fabric and craft store here in Portland. Behind that unassuming brown facade lies a wonderland of quilting cotton and sewing fabric. (the pictures are surreptitious so not all that great, sorry.)

I can't quite describe how marvelous this store is to non-quilters; but to give you knitters some analogy, Fabric Depot is like the sewer's version of WEBS. This picture is looking toward the several rows of batiked and hand-dyed cottons. What you can't see are the the aisles and aisles and aisles of printed cottons, and this is just looking to the left half of the store.


I have a serious addiction to the remnants section (60% original price) and I admit to getting repeatedly sucked into the bi-monthly 40%-off-all-fabric sales. Michelle and I hit "The Depot" this weekend; me in search of baby bootie buttons. I had mighty self control but still came home with about 8 packs of buttons.

What? I'll use them, I'm sure. 4 of them are already sewed onto baby booties.

Rabbit

Recently I got the uncontrollable urge to knit a toy; in particular, a toy rabbit


That looks like a rabbit, doesn't it? DOESN'T IT???

New Niece!

Thanks for all the comments about exercise. I should emphasize that I would NEVER, EVER have thought that I'd get to a point where I would like running for FUN. Not ever. A tiny corner of Hell must've frozen over.

I'm still catching up on answering you all, but I wanted to post this now: I'm an aunt again!


I like this aunt thing: all of the cute and none of the pain.


This makes us a triple-niece household. Here's baby girl and her sister (a few months shy of 2 years old)

E is for Exercise

This is an unusual E, especially for me. This post in honor of my being able to go to the gym this weekend for the first time in a month. I have trouble expressing how wonderful it was to be able to move again. My back is healing, but I'm being very cautious. I never thought I would actually *miss* exercise, but there you go.

This is my exercise story.

I was your usual active little kid. I played soccer, basketball, softball; I swam during the summers at the neighborhood pool and biked around. I was even on the track team in Jr. High, and swam with a swim team.

But, I wasn't ever any good at it. I'm not all that coordinated and I don't have a lot of natural upper body strength. I wasn't able to do a pullup or a handstand or climb the rope in P.E. Having mostly typical physical education teachers, I pretty much learned:
a) the rudiments of American popular sports, and
b) to despise my body for being slow and weak.

I wasn't ever a pudgy kid, but I've never been skinny. When puberty arrived, the hormones hit my metabolism hard, and I've been overweight to obese ever since then. This made me even less likely to want to get into gym shorts and t-shirt. By high school I had pretty much stopped exercising altogether.

It was all just a huge source of embarrassment -- I was big, I was bad at sports, and I couldn't even run all the way around the stupid track. I associated physical activity with shame, and wished I could just make my body go away. I had to take PE classes in college, so I took badminton. At one point near the end of college I tried out the exercise thing again by taking an aerobics class. I couldn't do as much as the other people but I did lose a bunch of weight in that 2 months. I still got a C in the class, since they graded on attendance (A+!) plus how many pushups and situps you could do (F) (never mind that the aerobics class didn't actually DO any pushups, situps, or weight exercises at all. Still grumpy about that).

About 8 years ago, in my twenties, I saw a picture of myself and something inside snapped. I put myself on a diet: low fat, low sugar, low calories. I don't eat excessively, but I do have a sweet tooth. I dieted all the way through Fall, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and beyond. Yeah, no Christmas cookies, rolls, gravy, or candy canes that year. I dropped some weight, but then I hit a plateau. For months.

After weeks and weeks of no change, I finally sucked it up and walked into a gym.

I don't really know how to describe how much of a leap that was for me. I DESPISED exercise.
I specifically chose a gym that was immediately across the street from where I worked, so that I would have no excuses about it being too far away.

I had NO IDEA what I was doing. The nice man who was quite happy to sell me the gym membership recommended I work with a trainer. It was really the best thing I could have done. Maybe I just got lucky. She was great, fantastic; helpful without being accusatory. I told her I wanted to be healthy and weigh less, and I'd do whatever she instructed to get that way.

She showed me how to exercise. It sounds absurd but I just didn't know how to use my body. Instead of getting on a treadmill and running hard until I fell over (in about 2 minutes), she showed me how to start out jogging slowly, then walking after that got to be to much, then jogging again, all the time working to increase the running times. She showed me how to use the weight equipment and pay attention to what my muscles were doing. She designed all different kinds of exercise programs for me so I wouldn't get bored (well, too much. I have a short attention span).

And over the next 6 months, I actually got fit. I had muscles. The little flabby bits under my upper arms went away. I got so I could actually jog for 40 minutes WITHOUT STOPPING. I felt great. I was exercising 50 minutes a day, 6-7 times a week, and lifting weights 2-3 times a week. Oh my, was it a timesuck. I got down a size 12, the smallest I've been since before puberty. I learned how to enjoy my body and using it effectively.

Then the whole knee thing happened and physical therapy and blah blah blah. It involved some ripped up cartilage and some unfortunate genetic revelations. Since then I haven't been able to do all that I used to do. The weight has slowly crept back up again, since I've slacked off the weights. I sure do miss the running (although biking is almost as fun).

But the exercise, it is a good thing, truly. I really do feel better when I'm doing it regularly, as much as it often bores me. I never, ever, thought I would actually enjoy exercise. But now, it really just feels good to move. Just to walk the mile to work without pain is little miracle. Even during my careful, reduced-impact gym sessions, it felt like all my muscles were singing. It's wonderful to feel so much more at home in my own body. Not that we don't have our little differences, but we're kind of stuck with each other.

I never get anything done

I like to read blogs and all, but honestly? Not so much lately for people I don't know, because everyone seems to Get Stuff Done except for me. I just looked this one blog and she's got a pile of stuff in her "Finished for 2008!" list. I've got a pile of half, mostly, and nowhere-near finished stuff and I only seem to keep adding to it. It's not as if I am having a mad cast-on Spring fling, it just feels I unknit more than I knit these days. It's true I am often distracted by the Shiny and New, and also I have to have an easy travel knit ready at all times or I might die of boredom on the train, but that doesn't explain the enormity of this pile.

I can't get it together in other bits of my life either: do I have pictures to show you of all these supposed knitted things? No, I do not.

Darth Socks: reworking the toe for the 3rd time now.

Obsession Socks: ran out of yarn halfway through the second foot. Nowhere near the toe, so I can't just fake my way with some different-colored toes. Not enough yarn even if I pulled out the first sock's toe.

Clown Socks: waiting for measurements. Mostly done with first foot.

Lace stole: on hold since forever. Newer shinier things appeared.

Cardigan o' pinkness: got bored. Fearing it is too fugly.

Knittin' for the new niece: I did design and finish a hat. I have no idea whether it will fit a real baby. I can't find a grapefruit of the appropriate trial size. But the accompanying baby booties are stalled out at the straps because I can't figure out how to do them so they look the same. grrrr. About 4th or 5th reknit on these.

2 ideas for niece baby sweaters floating around my head that I want to cast on for RIGHT NOW: on hold 'til I get some measurements, since niece #1 was MONSTER BABY and fitting into size 1 clothes when she was 6 months.

Cassidy's handspun beanie: needs ripping out AGAIN because it's just a smidge too short. And it's got an unfortunate nipple top.

In the midst of all this, I think I want to make a toy rabbit, one that has a stranded colourwork dress. I have never worked stranded colourwork. I'll let you know how it goes.

First though, I've got to figure out something on those booties and get them out the door. SIL's due in a couple weeks so she could pop at any time.

Snow: It's Not Just for the Midwest Anymore

Well, I hope you're happy. Poor frigid oregano.

And just when the irises started popping up, too.

Sheep-Transmitted Disease

Last night I was talking to K the Love Monkey, telling him I felt all glum and somewhat embarrassed that I had to tell everyone to whom I'd lately sent yarn that it might be contaminated with carpet beetle eggs. He said, "It sounds like yarn-eating insects is the knitter's equivalent of an STD."

And then he popped out with the phrase, "sheep-transmitted disease."

He doesn't knit yet but I'm working on him.

D is also for Discouragement, Disillusionment, and Destruction

I thought of multiple titles for this post, including

Another reason why I don't like wall-to-wall carpets
I am not so good at the non-violence when it comes to protein-fiber-consuming insects

I spent part of the weekend cleaning up an infestation of carpet beetles. These little bastards have been appearing around the house for months now, but never in large concentrations until just recently (Friday). I found ground zero on Saturday - the upstairs linen closet/cat litter box location.

The first time I saw one of them, maybe a year ago?, it prompted me to bag up almost all of my yarn in plastic ziploc bags. Unfortunately I got a little lax.

Possibly infected yarn is now going through a freezer regimen.

Fortunately they don't seem to care for cotton (which I have a lot of and isn't bagged) unless it's soiled. Instead they've got caviar tastes: it's wool and silk and feathers all the way.

There are 2 casualties so far:
1) some holes in a length of woven silk, and
2) a well-eaten Pomatomous sock, not even worn once. I discovered this just as I finished sock #2 and took them outside to take pictures. So I'm back to 50% on that project.

So I was a vacuuming fiend this weekend, albeit one that didn't bend over much and had a temperature and a dripping nose. I feel better today, much better than Saturday (slept 11 hours). But I know they are back there, breeding. Grrrrr.

To anyone I've sent yarn to recently: I don't think you need to worry, as I have found no beetles, larvae, or sign of infestation anywhere near where that yarn was kept. However, if you want to be absolutely safe, stick it in a ziploc bag in a freezer for 2 weeks, or throw it in a pan and heat it a 150 F oven for 30 minutes. That should kill all stages of the insects. I'm sorry about the runaround on this.

D is for DYEING

I've been doing a lot of dyeing lately. I don't really know why as I've got a bazillion other things lined up to do, but it's more dyeing for dyeing's sake, not really to produce anything. I use the excuse that I'm trying out different sock yarn blanks.

RED RED RED
I do kettle dyeing. I could handpaint instead, but I'm just having fun messing around with this. Since the yarn is completely submerged, there's much more color blending. I've been kind of on a shaded solids kick.

I dream of Greenie
I, um, have a little problem with saturation. As in, I have too much of it. Give me a jar of dye and I go buck wild, I guess. I finally managed a little restraint last time and got something with pale to medium greens, which I like very much and seems to be impossible to photograph well (even with image enhancement, it looks like poo).

As usual, my little obsession with red. I can't get a good pic of this either; it's dark reds shading to browns and I like it very much.
I just enjoy color. All kinds and flavors. I like admiring all the other hand-dyed sock yarns out there and how beautiful they are. I like the almost-always pleasant surprise of the skein's final coloration once it's out of the dye pot and dried. With some of these dark ones, I think, oh no, I've dyed a mass of solid black, but it's surprising the subtle range in colors I get at the end.

At the bottom of the deep blue sea
However, I need to deal with this growing pile of sock yarn. Cannot. Knit. Fast. Enough.

Enough with the flowers already

This is a public service announcement for those of you in the in the North/North-Eastish bits of the North American continent:

SPRING IS ON ITS WAY. REPEAT, SPRING IS COMING.




I waffled between putting these up or not--whether it'd be nasty and mean or offer hope. I fell on the side of 'but they're just so pretty'. If it makes you feel better, last weekend there was brief but intense hail storm which stripped those blossoms right off the trees.

I hope you all have a fantastic weekend. My brain is dissolving out my nose, but hey, it is FRIDAY.

Another Big Fluffy cameo, on his grand tour of our backyard:
He looks mean in that picture but really he's just a big softy (Ha, Wren'll get that reference I think.) You can see from the pick just how thick his winter coat is--that iron pillar attaches to the fence. A few weeks ago he decided to sneak inside and hide in our basement for at least several hours. We were alerted to his presence during a movie when a loud yowling came from the direction of the (now closed) back door (our cat Frances was sitting on my lap at the time).

Either Frances is getting mellower or she's just scared of him so she doesn't go on territorial defense DEFCON 1 unless we're also around to back her up.

Did I mention that C is also for Clumsy?

And completely idiotic?

Latest in the line of just-how-can-I-annoyingly-(not seriously, thank goodness)- injure-myself events for this month, I managed to slice 2 of my fingers while cutting onions tonight. Onions that were to go into the chicken soup I was making because I think I'm coming down with a cold.

My typing accuracy goes way down when I'm only on 8 fingers. It took 3x times as long as normal to write this. Also numbers are hard (and not in the Barbie sense).

I'm fine; one finger's not bad, the other is deeper and of course right on the top joint so I'll self-splint the damn thing so that it heals faster. And at least it's my non-dominant hand. I think that's the first time I've ever been in (slight) shock before and I didn't enjoy it. I just got dizzy and a little nauseated for a little while.

I think knitting is out for the moment, though, unless I can figure out some way of holding things with a half-splinted left middle finger. Time to get friendly with crochet again!

---------

Happier C's:

Croissant (this one's almond. And eaten)


Crocus


Chrysanthemum


and of course,
CHOCOLATE

This is the chocolate cake I made for K's birthday (extremely belated). Bakerina's blog has been inspiring me to new heights of baking lately, and so voilà: my first successful cake completely from scratch. I used these eency 5" diameter pans because a 9" wide cake would be way, way overkill.

It's yellow layer cake with milk chocolate buttercream icing. And it is DEADLY, let me tell you.
Deadly but delicious. (Is that an awful enough segue to D?)

The Anti-Back

K the love monkey got free tickets to Cirque du Soleil, which I have never seen, so we went last night. The show was beautiful, very impressive. It's probably best I never saw this when I was a kid because I'd probably have tried to devote my life to getting into it (I was kind of an attention hog kid. What'd I want to be when I grew up? A movie star.) That would've been disappointing because I'm extremely uncoordinated and not exactly the tumbling body type (I sucked SO MUCH at ballet. And I was only 6).

Anyway, I was enormously impressed and entertained, and I admit to complete and utter envy that people could contort and move in such ways, especially as I was sitting there hoping my back would last out sitting for 2.5 hours. Really, still pictures don't do the show justice--a huge part of the show was the lighting, ambience, and sound, as well as the costumes and props and movement. If you ever liked watching the gymnastics at the summer Olympic and wished, oh, that there were better costumes and it was more like Ice Dancing, you'll love this. Except the dude hanging from the girl's hair. OW.

My spine & I

Thanks all so much for the sympathy and suggestions. I wish I could say I'm feeling better, and I was feeling better and optimistic at the end of last week. My lower back and I had a temporary detente and plans for possible mutual disarmament, but something changed (? who knows what) Sunday and we're back to open warfare. My ice pack (bag of frozen corn. Don't mock, it works) and I are on very close terms lately.

I think I'm going to have to break out the big drugs as every day this week has been progressively worse. Today I'm walking around with a noticeable list to the left and no position stays pain-free for more than 10 minutes. I refuse to let this stop me from doing things though. I'll hobble around and sit uncomfortably and do everything glacially slow but I will NOT stop.

Sigh, this has happened before, it's like the Wheel o' Back Pain 'round here, every few months->years I spin the unlucky number and lurch around like Quasimodo and bitch and whine and mope about and generally feel miserable. It takes about 6 weeks to heal to "normal" levels, so I just have to trust that it'll heal again this time. This fact that it's getting worse worries me though. The absolute worst thing is the worry, especially the worry that this time I'm screwed and it'll never get better and I'm going to have to live restricted and in pain for forever.

The timeline of back suckage started 8 years ago while doing squats in a kickboxing class. I figure I probably partially herniated a disk then, and occasionally I'll sleep on it wrong or overtax the muscles, which makes it flare up, leak a bunch of fluid which then presses on the spine which presses on the nerves. My Highly Unscientific Conjecture is based on the fact that warmth==very bad more pain but ice is my friend, which makes me think inflammation. I Am Not A Doctor, but then again all the doctors have ever done is throw pills at me and say "try to move around, don't just lay in bed; it'll get better eventually" (yo, there was the time I could hardly make it to the bathroom without falling on the floor. I'll stay in bed and not be in pain, thanks all the same).

Nah, I've never seen a specialist. I should probably hunt down a good chiropractor but I never get around to it until I really need one, and then I don't have the energy. Massage seems to make it worse, but I only tried it once. I should probably try again, I know that sometimes things have to shift around a bit and feel worse before they feel better.

I REALLY ought to be doing yoga; I saw at least one study that shows that it was more effective than traditional muscle strengthening/conditioning at reducing the incidence of chronic lower back pain (and the strengthening in turn was more effective than doing nothing). But I have to do it at least a couple times a week for it to be effective and I don't know how to fit that in yet. I barely make it to the gym (ha, not for the last couple weeks) for an hour in the morning. Sometime in the evenings? Hmm. I need to shop around for good class.

And finally there is the plain and obvious, "lose some weight, stupid." I'm trying, I really am. It's just hard to move around when I want to curl up in a fetal position. I've been very good about food intake lately, lots of veggies and grains, low sugar & fat. I just can't help but envy the pizza & a coke crowd. The ones who are eating all those Friday donuts. Do you KNOW how long it has been since I've had a carbonated beverage? Or a hamburger?

Anyway, enough on the self-pity. I need to figure out how to hobble out for food. I've got an apple in the fridge but I forgot to bring anything more substantial. bleh. Hope you all have a happy, motile, pain-free day.

Signs of Spring

Daffodils

Hydrangea shoots

Ornamental plum blossoms

Cursing

Big Enormous Thank You

I am something like 3 weeks late in posting this (ha, what else is new?), but I'd still like to do so.

A bit ago Zoe sent me a fantastic wonderful package full of knitting goodies. It was such a fabulous surprise to come home to, and I want to publicly thank her for doing such a lovely thoughtful thing for me. I opened it up and thought Damn, I've died and gone to Heaven and it's a yarn store after all.

Some Regia silk sock yarn, so soft and a gorgeous slate blue; variegated Wool In the Woods (more socks! woop!) in toasty browns and greys. There is a skein of lovely soft brilliantly colored Sophie's Toes that I can't wait to try, and a skein of Sundara silk lace yarn in a beautiful silvery slate grey. I can't stop touching it, I'm such a silk addict. A skein of Skylark yarns in alpaca and bamboo that is so amazingly soft, and an awesome sock yarn bag and the Mindful Knitting book by Tara Jon Manning.

Thank you so much, Zoe, you made my day (& week & month).

grrrrrr

I'm breaking my own rules by posting without having replied to all your great comments, but I'm feeling annoyed and I have no one to bitch to except the ether.

Stupid back, stop hurting. Can't concentrate, can't sit down for long, can't even walk normal speed. I walk like I've got something stuck up my rear end. OTC painkillers don't help, prescription painkillers make me fall asleep. I don't know how people live with chronic pain. Don't even know what I did to make it like this, or I'd stop doing it. DAMMIT STUPID BACK