knitabit

The Political Post

And now, the obligatory endorsements for this political season. Those not interested in politics in general, or in my politics in particular - feel free to stop reading now.

Welcome, political junkies. Here are my endorsements and supporting rationale for national, regional and local elections.

Comments have been disabled on this post. I don't care what you think about my politics. Go post your opinion on your own site. Thank-you.

National
President Kerry Because of Iraq. Because Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz are scary and need to be shown the door. Because Bush is too stupid to hold the job.

Senate Salazar A brilliant mind and a hard worker. A moderate. Coors isn't as bad a candidate as I thought he'd be at the outset. Still, being in the water business, I know that Salazar will be the finest ever sent to the Senate on western issues of land, water and personal property. Let's not let this opportunity pass us by.

Congress Matsunaka Anyone but Musgrave. She is mean and evil.

Regional
Amendment 34 - Construction Defects Yes This one will go down in flames but I'm voting for it anyway. Here's the way I remember it (some of my details might be fuzzy but I've got the gist of it.) This amendment results from a vicous and dirty campaign to pass a law during the 2003 legislative session. It passed by one vote after a lot of intimidation and dirty tricks by the prevailing side. Some lobbyists said they'd never seen anything like it. The losing side vowed to undo the legislation by bringing a citizen's petition. I have no idea whether what's on the ballot will simply undo what was done in 2003, or if it substitutes something else entirely.

Amendment 35 - Tobacco Tax Yes Might as well charge as much as the other states do. Though I hold no grudges against smokers and find our local smoking ordinances to be petty. (Why not smoke in a bar? Geesh.)

Amendment 36 - Electoral College Still waffling on this one The electoral college sucks. We should get rid of it. But what's the best way to do it? Not sure Colorado should be the guinea pig on this. On the other hand, our state has a history of doing something daring when it comes to electoral reform. Did you know that Colorado was the first state to give women the right to vote? How cool is that?

Amendment 37 - Alternative Energy Yes Because I feel like it.

Local
School District Mill Levy Override Yes Reluctantly, and with irritation.

All other races: straight Democratic ticket. In Weld County, it's the same as not voting.

Novice Knitter

My daughter wanted some knitting supplies for her eighth birthday, and I gladly obliged. Here's what she's completed after two evenings:

Isn't that just too cute? We're working through some tension problems (knitting too tight) but she's hanging in there without any frustrations so far. That's my punkinny!

Also for her birthday, I prepared what may be my last batch of Mini Happy Meals:

That's a juice box, some french fries (shoe string potatoes), and a couple of hamburgers (an oreo half in between two Nilla Wafers, with red and yellow frosting for ketchup and mustard and green-dyed coconut for lettuce.) I've been making these for class birthday treats for about a billion years now, and I'm ready to retire. They are awfully darn cute, aren't they?

My Surreal Life

No photo of Roscalie today - it is not appreciably different from the last dozen or so photos I've posted, except that it's grown by another inch or so. Good progress was made last night while we watched one of our favorite DVD's - "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World." You gotta love Ethel Merman as the outrageous mother-in-law.

Friday started out so wonderfully - morning tea with Mrs. OotFP (thanks, Patricia!) followed by baking a homemade cake to take to the tailgater party in Fort Collins. Later in the afternoon, I was sitting at my daughter's group violin class when the cell phone rang. It was my oldest son, calling to report that his younger brother "has a bad cut." But it wasn't bleeding "that bad." So I abandoned my daughter at her lesson and flew home to find that his assessment was pretty much spot on. The cut was about an inch long and not bleeding much, but being that it was on his elbow, it clearly needed stitches.

The explanation - that he tripped over the dog and fell on a broken glass jar in the back yard - is not entirely convincing. (Although it's true that the dogs do get in the trash can from time to time and drag stuff all over the place.) Still, this isn't the kid that's made a reputation for himself by rolicking with the dogs in the back yard. Oh well, further interrogations have not been fruitful. I suppose this one of those things we'll hear the truth about in oh, twenty years or so. I do recall regaling my parents with those "here's what REALLY happened" tales once I was grown up and out on my own.

The trip to urgent care and the subsequent stitching caused us to miss the tailgater entirely, and we arrived midway through the first quarter of the CSU vs. Wyoming game. We were further delayed by a traffic accident in Fort Collins. All of the game traffic was pinched down to one lane, and only about four or five cards could get through each change of the traffic light. As we passed the scene of the accident, it wasn't clear at all why the lane was closed, and the half dozen or so police officers on the scene were standing around comparing recipes or something rather than taking charge of traffic control for all of the out-of-town visitors struggling to get to the game. Fort Collins residents recently approved unionization of their police force in a close election that was supposedly rigged. Might be hints of things to come for another front range municipality (are you still reading, Patricia?)

Yesterday was much better. After my daughter's a soccer game, we spent the afternoon on the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder while she and other violin students performed. Her little ensemble had their very first public performance:

This was followed by a kid-friendly concert by the Cavani Quartet on the CU campus.

Surprise! (Two Kinds)

The first surprise is the good kind: the Baby Surprise Jacket. I'm done with the initial set of decreases, and am about to start on the increases.

I'm not happy with my choice of yarn. This sweater really calls for something stripey, and this yarn is variegated, not striped. Oh well, it's mostly an experiment anyway and it's awfully fun to knit. By the way, it's curly and crumpled because I'm carrying it around in my purse in case of an Unscheduled Knitting Opportunity.

Now the second kind of surprise. The bad kind. That would be going to the dentist for a simple filling and walking out two and a half hours later with the filling PLUS a temporary crown on the tooth next to it. Yee gads (oh, that was a Music Man thing that just slipped out!) Dentristy is an assault on all five senses, isn't it? Pain, bad tastes, the sound of the drilling, the smell of burnt tooth, looking at the ceiling for a couple of hours...

I went to the office and drooled while doing what simply HAD to be done, and then came home to drool in privacy.

To make matters worse, I am sensitive to the epinephrine ingredient in the novocaine (it makes my heart race) so they have to give me a different formulation that is fast-acting. What that means is that midway through the procedure the novocaine wears off, it starts hurting like hell and then they have to shoot you up again. It happened twice.

But let's change the topic. Lost last night was good but not great. My husband was finally able to watch an episode. Not as good as Twin Peaks, he claims. After it was over, our viewing preferences diverged and I opted for the Broadway special on PBS (fantastic!) with occasional peeks at the baseball game. In the bottom of the ninth, I returned to the family room to FORCE my husband to watch the historic win (he was watching Wife Swap, what a wienie.) It's an odd couple, that's for sure, when the wife has to explain the Curse of the Bambino to the husband.

Decreases, Tension Issues, and Miscellaneous Notes

Here's a close-up on the decreases for the v-neck portion of Roscalie.

See the stitch I circled? It's not aligned with the rest of the stitches in the row, and it's a problem on this pattern sequence throughout the sweater. Here's what the chart shows:

I'm knitting two-handed (i.e., one color in each hand), and it just occurred to me that maybe I need to switch hands on these rows. If anyone has any other insight into what appears to be some sort of tension problem, please leave a comment for me. Thanks!

And finally, a few miscellaneous notes:

• After messing around with the My Yahoo RSS feeds, I much prefer Bloglines. I love the little Bloglines notifier that tells me when there's something new on the blogs I frequent.
• I'm currently being inundated with comment spam, but thanks to this installation of Movable Type, I can delete them before they ever appear on my blog.
• Did you see the new Television Without Pity linked graphic in the column at right? I LOVE that site! Can't wait for the new "Lost" episode tonight...
  Posted by karen at 09:50 AM | Comments (1)

MOTS

(more of the same, for those not familiar with the abbreviation.)

I'm about midway up the sleeve steeks, I think. I was feeling kind of puny yesterday (intestinal upset - you'll forgive me for not providing details) which translated into lots of knitting time. By about 8:30 last night, I was actually sick of knitting. A temporary phenomenon, I assure you - when I posed Roscalie for her picture this morning, it was all I could do to not sit down and resume knitting. I'm getting anxious to cut that front steek!

I'm pretty sure I'm going to run out of yarn. Not only from making the body of the sweater longer, but it seems I've misplaced a ball of yarn as well. Now the only question is whether I will simply order more yarn from Virtual Yarns or a kit for another sweater as well!

I loaned my pregnant sister-in-law a book full of Dale baby patterns, hoping she would select a fair-isle pattern. Of course, she went with a solid-color textured cardigan.

I'm still messing around with the Baby Surprise Jacket (for the same sister-in-law) and it has temporarily replaced my sock as my travel/soccer knitting.

Back from Utah

*whew*

I keep telling myself it's good to make the husband and kids fend for themselves once in a while, but I think my worrying about their fending is more stressful than the actual fending.

The day before I left: my husband had to deal with the worst water line rupture they've had at the City since he started working there more than 20 years ago; my oldest son needed help on a take-home math test and when it was apparent he hadn't grasped the material I spent more than an hour reviewing the concepts before we got back to working on the test itself; the second oldest son had some piece of his orthodontics come apart and I told him he'd just have to live with it until next week; the third oldest son spent an hour in panic-mode looking for a school book that he claimed was lost somewhere in our house (it turns out it was in his desk at school all along); and my daughter had the typical "please don't leave us, mom" meltdown that accompanies my every departure from the normal routine. So I had all of this on my mind while driving to the aiport at 4:00 in the morning on Wednesday. And then the flight was canceled and although I got on the next flight out without any problem, it still meant that I lost a hell of a lot of sleep for no good reason.

I didn't bring along any knitting because I was fairly certain something would be confiscated at airport security. And I was right - they took me aside to get a pair of manicure scissors out of my carry-on suitcase. This is so stupid that I just won't bother to comment further.

I had lots of downtime so I bought two books at the airport - I finished one and I'm halfway through the other. I know I'm the last person to read it, but I thought "The Secret Life of Bees" was just the most wonderful thing and I'm going to re-read it again someday. It was so good, I read it too fast. I hate it when I do that.

Okay, this is scary: I went to amazon.com just now to retrieve the link and it says I ordered this book back in January. I did? Then why did I just buy another one? Why didn't I read it when I bought it the first time? I'm even more convinced that I have early-onset Alzheimer's.

The other book is "The Namesake" and it is also very good.

I need to read more.

More of the same

Here's a close-up of one of the armholes on Roscalie:

Knitting, schmitting...let's change the subject. I had to make a brief presentation at a town board meeting last night. A couple of the trustees were kind of scary. My husband also had an after-work meeting with some other elected officials. We removed the residual after-effects by pouring ourselves a rum and coke and settling in for an evening of TV.

I prevailed in the Battle of the Remote to watch the PBS show about the Transcontinental Railroad. Two of my great-grandfathers were in the employ of the Union Pacific Railroad, so it's a subject area of personal interest.

Going off on a total tangent, whenever I hear the phrase "Union Pacific Railroad" I immediately think of the Woodcock character in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid":

Butch, you know that if it were *my* money, there is nobody that I would rather have steal it than you. But, you see, I am still in the employment of Mr. E. H. Herriman, of the Union Pacific Railroad.

By the way, the antics of the Union Pacific Railroad in the 1860's make the Enron gang look downright law-abiding.

In other TV news, I am enjoying the Television Without Pity recaps of the "Lost" episodes. This last one was particularly funny.

I will be offline for a couple of days - I'm headed out to Salt Lake City tomorrow morning for a speaking engagement. I'm wondering which knitting to take with me...

Much Knitting News

I should have been outside yesterday enjoying the beautiful fall weather, but I opted to obsess on Roscalie instead. I started the armholes and the v-neck shaping so things are starting to get interesting.

On Friday I had a meeting just a mile or two away from a good knitting shop. I had only one thing on my list, but what's the point of going in a yarn shop unless you make some impulsive purchases?

Here's an adorable scarf kit for my daughter's birthday. I had intended to buy stuff separately but the packaging on this kit is so cute, and she gets really turned on by that kind of thing:

Then I spotted Elizabeth Zimmerman's "Knitting Workshop" book which contains the pattern for the Baby Surprise Jacket - something I've always wanted to try. And I found some cute baby-ish yarn of the right gauge. My sister-in-law is expecting a baby girl in January. I don't know if this will be to her taste (man, is she particular!) but it will be a fun knit nevertheless. If I decide it's not a good match for her, I have no problem with setting it aside for a last-minute gift for someone else.

I also wanted to get some Koigu for the sock pattern I found. So here's the yarn I picked out - I wanted something a bit more subtle than the Koigu I've used in the past:

Guilt.

My youngest son caught me in a quiet moment this evening and said, "Mom, my soccer game is at 9:00 Saturday morning and I need to be there at 8:30." I guess he internalized the rant last week. Bless his little heart.

This Shot Was Not Staged

This is what I found on my couch this morning:

The knitting and the TV remote - yep, that about sums it up.

Roscalie has been idle for a couple of weeks - mainly because I've been too busy. But also because of the modifications I'm making. I'm a little nervous about whether I've truly thought through the consequences of my changes. I checked my math yet once more last night and decided, to heck with it, full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes!

Are we loving "Lost" or what? OMG, I can't believe how much fun this show is!! My favorite scene last night was when, during a flashback sequence, Kate was struggling to drag Ray away from the wrecked car and it was all the more difficult because his prosthetic arm came off. And then the whole sequence about putting the Federal Marshal out of his misery...eeeewwwww. And then at the end - the chipper, upbeat "we're all pulling together to survive" musical backdrop...followed by the ominous close-up on that weird Locke dude - is he a good guy (he found the dog, after all), or (as the music suggests) a bad guy? You can tell the writers are having all kinds of fun with this show.

I'm re-programming my automated email reminders for "Mythbusters" to alert me to the weekend showings.

Endorsements

From time to time I find things I really really like out there in consumerland, so today's supplementary post gives honor to some recent finds:

I'm the "team manager" for middle son's soccer team, and it's a piece of cake since discovering My Team One Call. It's a web-based service where you set up a phone roster, and then when you need to call everyone on the team ("today's game has been cancelled!"), you simply call a toll-free number, record your message, and press the # key, and voila, everyone's instantly notified. Previous team managers attempted to set up phone trees (they never worked) or would take it upon themselves to call everyone (I refuse to do that!) This service is $39 for a six-month sports team roster; you can make an unlimited number of 30-second calls. Everyone on the team loves it. The system is smart enough to leave messages on machines or voice mail.

For some reason, yogurt is a food that I absolutely love, and it seems to calm down my digestive track whenever I eat it. I bought a yogurt maker from amazon.com and I am now making my own yogurt that is far tastier and more nutritious than anything you can buy at the store. The ingredients? Whole milk, a bit of gelatin, and some powdered milk. I use the store-bought plain yogurt as "starter." Though some may consider whole milk to be too fattening, I find that it makes the yogurt much more substantial and satisfying and fills you up instead of leaving you hungry for more. Add some fruit and some Splenda sweetener and it's better than dessert.

My oldest son and I have cell phones on a Verizon family calling plan. We just figured out last week how I can send text messages to him, allowing me to communicate small bits of information ("Aunt Sue will pick you up after practice today") without spending too much in the way of "minutes" and without interrupting his class work. He figured out how to text back from his handset and can send it to either my phone or to my email. I inadvertently selected cell phone numbers that are in a different calling area from my husband's office, meaning that he has to place a long distance call to reach me on my cell phone. Well, now he can send a text message instead! Usually the calls from his office to my cell are pretty brief ("do I need to get anything at the grocery store" or "yes I can pick him up at practice today") and it's so much safer to read a text message at a convenient moment than to flail around trying to answer the cell phone while driving in traffic.

I love technology.

Other Diversions

Like most of the other knitting bloggers I caught up with this morning, I didn't spend much time at all knitting on Sunday. I was too lazy, too glued to the tube.

Too bad there was nothing worth watching! *snort*

In the morning, I surfed around the political talking heads before we went to church. On the local Fox news station (we don't get the real Fox news on our dish subscription) (thankfully) I happened to see our beloved Governor, "Woody", being interviewed. THE MAN CANNOT PRONOUNCE THE NAME OF OUR STATE. For those of you who may have been watching, it's NOT pronounced "Col-o-rah-do"; it's pronounced "Col-o-ra-do"* where the "ra" syllable rhymes with "bath." (I understand that folks in Nevada have the same problem.) I also thought his casual Sunday attire (a sweatshirt?) was a bit too casual for the Sunday morning show, especially when the Governor from Michigan, also being interviewed, was wearing business attire. But now I'm getting catty.

The afternoon was spent watching the Broncos hold on by their fingernails to pull out of Tampa with a win.

After dinner, I watched a bit of "Terminator 2" while waiting for "Desperate Housewives" to come on. It was disappointing; I would love nothing more than a cheesy soap opera to look forward to each week, but this one was over the top in terms of silliness. Oh well, we did manage to catch the re-run of the "Lost" pilot on Saturday night. Oh wow, maybe this is the show I'll look forward to each week. And wouldn't you know, it's on at the same time as Mythbusters? We'll have to catch Mythbusters on the weekend re-runs, I guess.

So now you know; I'm somewhat of a couch potato.

*On the dictionary link, you can click on a little sound file icon to hear the correct pronunciation. That's the way we really say it.

"What a Maroon"

That's one of my all-time favorite Bugs Bunny lines. And particularly relevant since I've realized that of course the booties don't turn out right...WHEN YOU DON'T FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS!!

The soles were too narrow because I didn't see the part of the instructions about knitting 4 more rows before you start up the sides of the bootie. Duh!

And then I realized that since this baby is only one month old today and since December is only two months away, maybe I should knit up the three-month-old size.

So I started completely all over again and got them both finished this afternoon while watching the last half of "Star Trek V" followed by the last half of "Jurassic Park."

These are pretty darn cute. I'm going for the 'gasp of amazement' factor when the gift is opened. I don't care what happens after that (except, as I mentioned before, I don't want the little parts to end up in the baby's mouth.)

In other news, I ranted at my family this morning and it felt really good. We were half an hour late for a soccer game because I had the wrong time stored in my brain. Can anyone else in this family look at a calendar? Can these children - who the teachers tell me are quite literate - take even a morsel of responsibility for their sporting events? Can they maybe look around the night before the game for their missing uniform parts? I resigned from the job of being solely responsible for the sports calendar. And, as I said, it felt really good.

Rudolph-1 completed

Well, here's the first reindeer bootie:

It was a quick project - I started after dinner and had it done by 9:00 or so. I'll whip up the other one tonight.

I made the bootie pretty much as instructed, except with these changes:

• I used a cheapie Red Heart acrylic sport weight yarn in a tan sort of color
• I changed the nose from two embroidered nostrils to a red pom-pom
• On the nose decreases, I used the proper purl decreases to get symmetry (the pattern calls for p2tog on both sides of the nose; I changed it to p2tog on the first decrease, and then slip-slip-p2togtbl on the second decrease)
• For the antlers, I used a double thickness of felt and blanket-stitched them together
• I used a tubular cast-off to make a smooth top edge

I do not like the shape of the bootie. The sole is too narrow and the cuff is too small in proportion to the foot. (And what is with that pointy stitch on the sole underneath his nose? It's a m1 increase gone bad, I think. And there's a tension problem on the left side of the nose - it looks sort of gap-y.) But I expect that these booties are so impractical (the baby's going to be reaching for the antlers and the nose and possibly destroying them or worse yet, getting them worked loose and into his mouth) that they'll only be worn maybe once or twice. I've just convinced myself to enclose a little note about safety when I wrap these up for mailing.

I think this is one of those "it's the thought that counts" kind of gifts.