Things I don't have the energy to expound upon

A blog post of mine from last November currently has the highest page views because of a footnote where I mention a halloween costume as seen on The Big Bang Theory that's adorable and, based on googling, doesn't exist. It seems lots of other people are googling for this costume as well and get my lament instead. Oops.

~ * ~

My father is in hospital. There's a whole thing but I'm exhausted from my first day back at work after our honeymoon (4hrs and I'm dead on my feet - how did I used to do this 40hrs/week?) and I can't be arsed to rehash it all again. His condition is currently stable and the prognosis is optimistic. I'm soliciting well-wishes for him and especially for my mother but request that they not be wasted on me.

~ * ~

My FiL's 88th birthday was Friday (my husband's birthday was Thursday) so we had him over for Sunday dinner. I made a beef mince shepherd's pie served with mashed carrots, and a treacle tart with ice cream for pudding. It was my first treacle tart, both making and eating and while it's not something I would go out of my way to eat, I can't seem to stop nibbling at it. Odd.

~ * ~

My friend and I finally exchanged Christmas presents on Friday - I made a pair of mitts for her, acrylic as she's allergic to wool, and I hope to actually write up the pattern at some point. She gave me a 1930's-esk, peacock feather-esk locket in silver and emerald. It's not something I ever would have bought for myself, but it's lovely and I've worn it every day since. I am really picky about jewellery and tend to wear the same couple of pieces and hate everything else (or think it's "nice but not for me") and this makes two things she's given me that have gone into heavy rotation.

~ * ~

I bought a pair of jeans and a cardigan, both on sale, with my own money. This whole having-a-job-and-being-able-to-buy-things thing is nice. Not that my husband begrudges me his money, but it's not the same. The cardigan is a short-sleeve, hooded, knit one with one tog at the neck and open the rest of the way. It's cute and a nice colour, but not, I think, something I'm likely to wear out of the house. It's acrylic so not overly warm (hence, cheap) and I really don't get the button just at the top and hanging open the rest of the way thing. I'm sure it's flattering for some people but I'm not them and it feels like it's the only style sweater currently being made - both store-bought and patterns. This is right up there with "skinny jeans".

Burns Night

Yesterday was the anniversary of Robert Burns' birth, which is a bit of an unofficial holiday in Scotland, celebrated with the "traditional" dinner of haggis, neeps (turnips), and tatties (potatoes), and of course the reading of such poems as the Address to a Haggis, Auld Lang Syne, and the Selkirk Grace:

Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it,
But we hae meat and we can eat,
Sae let the Lord be thankit.

Some friends of ours tweeted that they were hosting a Burns night with regular and veggie haggises and extra seats around the table (though these turned out to be on the sofa) and would anyone care to join them. My response was somewhat more enthusiastic than Chris' as I think he more accurately judged how tired we'd be our first full day home, but I fluttered my lashes and he replied that we'd be attending.

The food was wonderful - I had the veggie haggis as I think sheep are for wool, not eating, and Chris got the regular stuff which he continues to claim to enjoy - and the company moreso. The 13-year-old twin daughters of the house led a protracted game of "I Spy" that got squirrelier and squirrelier as the night progressed. My objects included "slacks", "mortar", "plinth", "lintel", and "soda" occasionally counting on my American words to confound the Brits. The curtain ties were the object in question twice, first as "tie backs" and later as "sashes" and at various times we debated whether you could see things such as photosynthesis or light (I reckon yes and no, respectively). It also brought us a variety of philosophical conversations:
"What would you call those?"
"Daisies."
"They're not daisies!"
"You didn't ask what they are, you asked what I would call them."

Poor Chris spent most of the evening dozing on the sofa or quietly playing with his phone, as is his wont around crowds. I was asked to declaim a poem, specifically "Lines on the Fall of Fyers Near Loch-Ness" which was a bit of a gimmie, being mostly in "English" and not Scots:

Among the heathy hills and ragged woods
The roaring Fyers pours his mossy floods;
Till full he dashes on the rocky mounds,
Where, thro' a shapeless breach, his stream resounds.
As high in air the bursting torrents flow,
As deep recoiling surges foam below,
Prone down the rock the whitening sheet descends,
And viewles Echo's ear, astonished, rends.
Dim-seen, through rising mists and ceaseless show'rs,
The hoary cavern, wide surrounding lours:
Still thro' the gap the struggling river toils,
And still, below, the horrid cauldron boils

Lots of Yarn

My husband and I returned last night from our lovely Madeiran honeymoon* and I have lots of yarn related things to catch up on, though very little knitting to show for my time.

First off, my Jameison & Smith sweater yarn arrived. I spent the first week of the New Year glaring at everyone who rang the doorbell who wasn't delivering my sweater yarn which, surprisingly, was a lot of people. (My husband orders a lot of things, especially business supplies, online - Inverness may be the hub of the Highlands but it's not exactly a booming metropolis. Also, living without a car, it's a lot easier to have things come to us.) It didn't show up until Saturday, while I was running around trying to get everything ready to have downstairs painted whilst we were gone. So, Yay! it arrived and I no longer needed to worry about it and Boo, by the time it arrived I didn't have time to do more than smoosh the package and pet the wool once or twice and I will continue to be too busy for a while yet.

One of the frowned-at deliveries was yarn (which really was a Yay! except it wasn't the built-up-in-my-mind yarn), from The Sock Yarn Shop, owned by the lovely Pip (and she's currently doing a yarn give-away on her blog). This really wasn't frowned at at all, not even a little bit. How can you frown at sock yarn? I bought four skeins of yarn: 100g of Schoppel Wolle Admiral in black, for work socks; two 50g skeins of Reggia Extra-Twist Merino in "Petrol" which is a teal for me; and a 100g skein of Opal's new Vincent van Gogh in Red Vineyard for my husband. I've used Opal before for my Monkey socks and mitts but the other yarns are all new to me. Pip also threw in a wee little tote. These were all purchased with my money, earned at my job, which made both me and my husband very happy.

That was before I left. We didn't find yarn in Madeira (though I kept seeing twisted up cotton scarfs in shop windows and thinking they were hanks of yarn and getting excited), though people were selling hand-knit things such as hats and ponchos. None of the people I saw knitting spoke English and I don't speak Portuguese so I wasn't able to ask them where they purchased their yarn. Sadness. Embroidery is really big in Madeira, but I didn't see anywhere to buy thread or even little "embroider your own hanky" kits. I would've liked to buy a kit, too**.

We flew in and out of Glasgow and I was delighted, on the way back, to stop in The Yarn Cake which handly is both a very nice yarn shop and a lovely wee café. My first order of business was to exchange my KnitPro 3.25mm interchangeable needles that snapped. She let me exchange them for metal ones as I'm now leery of the colourful birch needles, at least on the smaller sizes. I also got metal tips in 3.75mm, and the rosewood "square" needles in 6.5mm to fill in the empty spaces in the DellaQ interchangeable needle organizer that my wonderful husband gave me for Christmas. I was hoping to pick up some 1.75mm circs for sock knitting but she doesn't carry anything bellow 2.00mm, obviously not suffering from my large-gauge-despite-feeling-like-I-have-a-death-grip-on-the-needles problem.

For Christmas I knit an aran hat for Aged Parent (my FiL) out of Shilasdair's Baby Camel yarn (modelled bellow by my husband). He had a store-bought aran cap in a natural cream but he'd at various times complained that it was itchy and not his colour, but that he needed a thick, warm, doubled over at the brim hat to keep his ears warm (he'd almost lost them to frost bite, in Canada, during WWII). This (outrageously expensive) sea-coloured baby camel yarn seemed just the thing with which to replace it. He cried when he unwrapped it (the men in my husband's family are emotional) and has since told everyone, every single person he's met that I knit his hat and isn't it amazing. This man deserves more hand knit gifts, starting with a pair of mitts in a similar colour-way of Shilasdair Aran lambswool for his birthday. Which is Friday (today's Wednesday) though I won't see him till Sunday.

I also finally, four years after first seeing the pattern and thinking Want!, I finally bought yarn to knit the Pfeiffer Falls hooded scarf: seven skeins of New Lanark Mills Aran in Tartan Green.

~ * ~

* more on that later

** I did buy two hankies, but that's for the honeymoon post.

Samuel Pepys

I've been following Samuel Pepys' twitter account (currently tweeting 1669 though the description still says 1668), taken from Pepys' Diary, and occasionally reading the more salacious tweets to my husband so that we may together boggle over his womanising ways. Remembering the scandal resulting from Elizabeth catching her husband in a compromising position with her companion, Deborah Willet - and the dizzying back and forth of would he give her up or wouldn't he - my husband purchased an annotated copy of the journal* for me for Christmas**.

I am most of the way through the 150-odd pages of introductions and commentaries and today read the first entries*** and have already been chastised for reading them privately in the bath (I like to start the year in the manner I intend to continue) rather than reading aloud of it at bedtime. I cautioned my husband that it wouldn't all be scandalous affairs and household strife to which he replied that he expects it will be a lot of "'tonight we had mutton. I did not care for it.'"**** "Actually tonight they're having turkey."

A spoiler, I know, but I kept both the fact that it's leftover turkey and that Elizabeth burnt her hand in its fixing a surprise for later.*****

~ * ~

* as Pepys himself most often referred to his diary

** or rather Volume 1, being the year of the lord 1660.

*** being the editors' one-page summary of the political situation (Cromwell's government has crumbled but the monarchy has not yet been restored), Pepys' proto-entry summarizing his health (physical and financial) and that of the country, and the entry for 1 January, 1660.

**** I'm an American. I may pick up British vocabulary but I will never abandon my American punctuation and nested quotes.

***** Until he reads this. Honey, don't read this.

Sweaters Intimidate Me

My miss-givings about knitting a sweater are less about the technical construction (though the idea of having to do the maths and worry about fit do intimidate me) than the fear that after all that time and effort* it won't fit or, whether it fits or not, it won't be flattering. Add to that a lifetime's desire to be thinner and fear of getting rotund-er and knitting a sweater seems destine to be a source of regret.

One of my goals in life, not a New Year's Resolution, is to love myself for who I am rather than holding out for a better version of me, one more worthy of love. Assuming there is a static goal-line one can cross and believe that now, finally, now one is worthy of love and happiness and acceptance (both observational and personal experience inclines me to think there is not), even if such a prize were achievable, I personally respond very badly to such negative incentives. I get very stubborn when told I can't or shouldn't do things. I'm sure you're all shocked to hear I can be so contrary, but I really dig my heels in and become "[as biddable] as any mule in Christian-dome".

My weight has, without particular effort on my part, been stable these past six weeks. That's not a considerable length of time, but it does seem to indicate that this is a weight my body is comfortable with and thus a shape I'm willing to throw time and effort at. I always prefer to wear quality clothing and shapes that flatter, but it's hard to justify investing in a wardrobe rather when one doesn't know if one will continue to lose or start to regain**.

But even if my shape changes, I can't keep waiting for tomorrow. This is the year I start knitting sweaters and if they don't fit in a year or five years, well I'll knit more sweaters. And I'll be a better sweater knitter in a year and I'll keep this sweater for when I pass through this weight again***.

~ * ~

* the cost of the yarn, aside from the initial investment, doesn't bother me as a bad sweater could always be frogged and the yarn repurposed.

** for the curious I am neither at my lowest nor my heaviest, but after gaining 2lbs/1kilo for the last five months this six week platform seems significant.

*** I tend not to follow trends, preferring a 1940s aesthetic, so I'm not worried about styles becoming unfashionable.

NYR: Pattern Selection

Having resolved to knit two sweaters (one for me, one for DH) and add to my sock repertoire, I have spent a fair amount of time reading my sock and sweater books, flipping through magazines, and, most of all, creating filter after filter in Ravelry. Patterns were matched to yarns, measurements and meterages were determined, yarns were selected and discarded based on price, reviews, colours and finally availability. This brings me to a tangent:

On the whole, having an online store reject attempts to add quantities of yarn not actually in possession of the shop is a good thing. It would, however, be better if stock quantities could be determined prior to trying to add them to my "basket". As opposed to manually adding each colour I like only to determine, time and again, they don't have the requisite quantities. In half a dozen colours, plus a few I didn't really like that much anyway. Had that effort resulted in purchasing yarn my irritation would have been tempered by the joyful anticipation of nice, affordable yarn. As it is, I'm just irritated.

But I have selected my patterns and my yarns: for my sweater I'm trying February Fitted Pullover by Amy Herzog. Even as a non-knitter of sweaters, her name had been increasingly familiar with very positive associations. She has a few designs that don't interest me, but when I read the descriptions I found they weren't knit with me in mind (sweaters for the bottom-heavy, rather than my very full hour-glass). It's a nice that she and I agree on styles both for and not for my figure. I ultimately decided against a sweater from Little Red in the City as they are none of them quite what I want for my first sweater. Ysolda's day will come.

For my DH I picked Terry's Pullover by Carol Fuller from Interweave Knit's Holiday Gifts 2009. I found it in my Ravelry filtering, recognized it as the one Socktopus just knit for her husband, and it was already high in my Ravelry queue - despite going through yesterday and significantly reducing the number of items in said queue. My husband has a generously sized nose and the shawl collar should allow easy clearance for pulling it on and off.

For both sweaters I ordered Jamieson & Smith's Shetland Aran, in a tealy-blue for me and a dark sage green for DH. I used their Shetland Supreme for my Sheep Heid Tam so it's a brand with which I am familiar and I like the idea of knitting with affordable wool from local(ish) sheep (given that my efforts for even more affordably priced Knit Picks yarn from the mothership were for naught). Now it's just the joyous anticipation of wool and the finishing the projects in progress so I can start my sweaters.

Except it's the Thursday night between Christmas and the New Year so there's a very real chance that J&S are closed for the holidays. Even if they are open, I don't think they can get my order put together, packed up, and ready to go out in time for Friday's last collection given that the Shetland Islands aren't exactly a renowned transportation hub. Saturday is Hogmanay, New Year's Eve, traditionally a bigger deal than Christmas*, and New Year's day falls on a Sunday which means the British bank holiday is observed on Tuesday - 2 January, Monday, is a Scottish bank holiday. So, assuming J&S is open tomorrow and they can process my order before final collection, the absolute earliest I can expect my happy parcel is Thursday the 5th. Did I mention we're leaving for our honeymoon on the 8th?

Fortunately, I have the yarn for my next sock project: Knot Socks by Nancy Bush from Sock Knitting Master Class (see, a pattern from one of my new books!) using some purple Araucania Ranco that I purchased for myself when getting the replacement yarn for to knit replacement Brainless socks for my DH who accidentally felted the first pair. The pattern is cuff-down with a cast-on (double start), heel turn (square), and toe (star) I've not tried before.

~ * ~

* Christmas was actually banned in Scotland for almost 400 years, until the 1950s, because it was considered a "papist" holiday. Presbyterians really don't like papists.

New Year's Resolutions?

Tis the season for knitters to plan their yearly knitting and make resolutions such as "Knit things with yarn I already own and no buying new yarn" or "knit at least one thing each month" often selecting the patterns and yarn in advance. I neither have a significant stash, nor a problem with not feeling like I've knit enough, but I do have some specific skills I would like to acquire, namely sock techniques and (gulp!) sweater knitting.

Both socks and sweaters span a range of skill levels from "suitable for a competent beginner" to "seriously mad skills, yo!" and while I while I have some skills my repertoire of sock construction techniques is somewhat limited* and I have zero** sweater experience.

For Christmas, my DH gave me Ysolda Teague's Little Red in the City, a book about sweater modification (with seven patterns) and just today I picked up the digital copy of Ann Budd's Sock Knitting Master Class which covers a variety of sock construction techniques, both cuff-down and toe-up and a variety of cast-on, bind-off, heel, and toe methods. Add to this my Best of Knitter's Magazine's Guy Knits, and the form of my resolution becomes clear: Knit a sweater each for myself and my husband, and work my way through Sock Knitting Master Class.

My current method of knitting is to alternate between knitting for myself and my husband, so my master class goal is not so much to knit all 18 socks as, 365 days from now, being able to say "look at the new techniques I have tried". And two finished sweaters.

~ * ~

* one pair cuff-down socks, rounded heel, wedge toe, kitchener BO; several pairs toe-up, short row and Turkish CO, rounded heel, Judy's Surprisingly Stretchy BO

** I have knit three baby sweaters using different techniques but they're on a completely different scale and "shaping" isn't particularly important.