The Gang of Three

I may have already mentioned that I live in a testosterone-rich household. Three male humans, three male dogs, myself, and one daughter (who is seldom at home except to sleep, shower, and change clothes).

The male humans are not much of a problem. However, the dogs are really a handful. We refer to them as "The Boys". Here they are in one of their quieter poses.






Their names are Micky (the big boy), Franklin (in the foreground), and Brando (little guy in the back). Micky is a big (very big, like over 90 lbs) bundle of family-only love (you do not, however, want to get him pissed off at you). Franklin is has the sweetest temper of the three, always happy, always wagging his tail, loves a good cuddle, a weird-looking little guy of such uncertain parentage that we sometimes refer to him as Franken-Dog. He and Micky are best friends, and love to play together.

Brando, in contrast, is apart and aloof, more than a bit snotty, and very self-assured that he is the best looking dog of the three (which he is). He is a bossy, snarly, snappy little SOB. He can be unexpectedly endearing, like this morning when I found him asleep in a basket of laundry.





Back on the knitting front, in the never-ending quest to use up stash, I finished the Oregon Vest from Oat Couture (in Wendy Aran, which I bought years and years ago). I admit to being gauge-impaired, but, really, I did measure and measure and swatched and swatched, and the damn thing is too big. I WILL NOT RIP IT OUT. I plan to experiment with a swatch or two to see if I can felt it down slightly (it is a blend and might not felt at all). If not, I will find someone who fits it.






A pleasure to report is the hat from the Fall Knitters. It came out lovely, very comfortable, very flattering. I used Red Heart Soft, which I got on sale at Michaels.

Next up on the needles is the Pacific Northwest Shawl in Jaeger Zephyr, in a lovely soft medium grey shade. I made this once before and gave it away as a gift. Beautiful pattern (with no errors!), great fun to make, spectacular garment.

Political Leaning

Thanks to Chocolate and Raspberries, I linked on over and took the short political quiz.

I was rated as Libertarian:

LIBERTARIANS support maximum liberty in both personal and
economic matters. They advocate a much smaller government; one
that is limited to protecting individuals from coercion and violence.
Libertarians tend to embrace individual responsibility, oppose
government bureaucracy and taxes, promote private charity, tolerate
diverse lifestyles, support the free market, and defend civil liberties.

Yeah, I guess that's pretty close. Not quite left enough, actually, and, at times, not quite right enough.

Most of the time -- especially during election campaigning, which drives me totally mad, I prefer to think of myself as an anarchist: there's no government like no government.

I used to really enjoy politics, discussion, give-and-take.

Not any more. Any time discussion gets interesting, someone throws out the Patriot Card, and discussion dies a sad and pathetic death.

Seasonality and Tagged

Birthday Season starts in July at my house. I really get slammed with birthday season, and it stretches on FOR MONTHS and months.

July brings 4 birthdays: nephew, brother, sister-in-law, youngest son
August has 3: grandchild, daughter-in-law, and husband (same date)
September has 2: both of my daughters (2 days apart)
October has 1: oldest son
November has 1: father

That makes 11 major events in the space of 5 months, and these are only within the immediate living family. There used to be a lot more on this list, but they have already passed. Yesterday was my oldest son's birthday, so I have only one more to go before the Christmas season starts. The Exchequer really takes a beating this time of year.

I got tagged (for the first time), so here are my Famous Four Lists. Don't expect me to tag back, I am not that sophisticated.

4 Jobs I have had:
1. Car hop at an A&W in the ghetto (and oh, what really interesting clients we got at night!)
2. Semi-official researcher and proof-reader for a theology professor
3. Cook in a cafe
4. Manager of an adventure travel company

4 movies I can watch over and over
1. Some Like It Hot
2. The Best Years of Our Lives
3. Casablanca
4. Lord of the Rings

4 places I have lived (I have only lived in California)
1. Richmond
2. Los Gatos (before it became chi-chi, it was a nice little working-class town)
3. Berkeley
4. Pleasant Hill

4 TV shows I like to watch
1. Dancing with the Stars (I love watching ballroom dancing)
2. TV5 Le Journal (in French)
3. What Not to Wear
4. Food Network cooking challenges

4 places I have vacationed
1. Fort Bragg, CA
2. Bisbee, Arizona
3. Germany
4. Central America

4 things I love to eat
1. Pasta with white clam sauce
2. Fried Okra
3. Middle Eastern anything
4. Cornbread

4 websites I visit every day
1. Yarn Harlot
2. London Times
3. CNN
4. Time Magazine

4 places I'd rather be than here
1. Germany
2. South of France
3. Ireland
4. The Deep South

A Knitting Break

I am (sort of) roaring along with projects.

Here is the finished and blocked Highland Shawl from Cheryl Oberle's Folk Shawls. Lovely pattern, but when it came to the edging, I wimped out before finishing all of the repeats. It is a good thing that I did, or I would have run out of yarn before starting the final edging pattern. Still it is a lovely lacy pattern and quite roomy as is. I used Black Water Abbey yarn from my stash.

Anoth favorite quicky project is the dishcloth. I made the "Worshcloth" using the pattern from Mason Dixon Knitting but edged it in attached i-cord.

I am currently using up stash on the Oregon Vest, as I was crazy enough to buy some Wendy Aran when I was in Ireland a few years ago (it was on super mark-down in Galway) which has been sitting patiently in a bag at the the back of the closet since then.

Also in the works is the Tweedy Topper from the latest Knitters, which finally hit the local bookstore this week. Clever pattern, lots of fun. I love to wear hats, but not that many hat styles look good on me (gumdrop head, round face). I am making it in acrylic camouflage (Red Heart) first to see how it will look. Good for rainy days around here, since I do not own an umbrella. If it flies, then I will do something a little more sophisticated.

The Last Okra of Summer

Not too long ago, DH and I went to the farmers market in the next town. There was a booth there selling the most beautiful okra I have seen in a long, long time. DH made gagging noises. I bought 2 pounds.

Okra is a wonderful food and a direct link to my childhood. My mother cooked it all the time -- boiled, in soups, in salads. But the very best was sliced, mixed with egg. corn meal, chopped onion, black pepper, and fried to a lovely golden brown.

It was just wonderful! I ate the whole thing myself, which was a good thing because I could not get anyone else at the table to try it. It brought back summer vacation in Texas, where all the adults sat on the porches drinking whatever they were drinking (and it wasn't iced tea) while we kids played in the streets until midnight. Dinner was some meat or BBQ and at least a thousand sides. For some strange reason, what sticks in my memories are not the june bugs and chiggers, not the humidity and the incredible heat, not the tornados. What I call to mind are the food and the music.

This digression was prompted by Chocolate and Raspberries latest post. It is sad and maddening that we live in this incredible, cosmopolitan area, with people and languages, and accents from all over the world. BUT if you have a Southern accent, you are automatically classed as a mentally incompetent redneck from the lowest slime layer in the pond.

Makes me so mad I want to mount a gun rack on the back my truck.

Comfort Zones

There are certain parts of my house that I retreat to for comfort. The most frequently occupied area is my workspace. In this tiny corner I have my beloved desk (inherited from a great uncle with whom I shared a birthday), laptop, knitting baskets, and crates and baskets for files, books, DVDs and other stuff. It is in a corner of the dining room, right next to the fireplace. I sit here in the wee hours of the morning, when I cannot sleep, watch old movies, and knit or work on my computer.

My other comfort zone is the bookcase that has my knitting and other books. Note the strategically-placed chair and lamp. I do not knit here, I only read.

Here are the knitting shelves. Knitting books are not confined to this space, they can be found scattered all over the house'

This is only one of at least 10 book cases areas in our house. In my humble opinion, you cannot have too many books.

The Gift That Keeps On Giving

Guilt.

DD1 showed up this weekend. Don't get me wrong, I adore all five of my children. I carried each one of them tenderly under my heart for nine freaking months, gave birth without benefit of any pain management (if I had it all to do over again...), loved them, cuddled them, clothed them, educated them, put up with them and their weird growing-up pains.

Nowadays, I find myself paddling in the deep end of the testosterone pool. I live with three male humans, three male dogs, and the one daughter still at home is either at work or out with her friends.

Boys are much less complicated than girls.

Admittedly, DD1 has had a lot of problems in her 24 years of life. She was so difficult that she was asked to leave the home when she was 17. She is beautiful and brilliant. Musically gifted, intelligent, charming (well, sometimes). Suffers from clinical depression, anxiety attacks (as does DD2), and who knows what else. Carries an almost complete pharmacy in her purse. She also carries an enormous chip on her shoulder, never happy, never satisfied. Most of her conversation centers around her martial arts dojo, her shrink, her classical guitar-playing business, her emotional pain, her money problems, and how her parents have let her down (with a corresponding dissertation on how much her friends and their parents show their love for her).

DD2 has remained in the home, sort-of gets along with her parents and remaining siblings, works full time, has a totally different personality from her sister. Also beautiful and gifted, also mercurial, also charming, also chemically dependent (necessarily so, trust me), loves clothes and make-up, but more independent and, in a lot of ways, more mature than DD1. Responds to her older sister's list of woes with the curled lip of scorn and a few choice words of the kind that I would never have said in front of my parents when I was growning up.

This having been said, I really cringe when I have BOTH of my daughters under my roof at the same time. Like this weekend.

Oh, the tension. And oh, the guilt.

Any more wine in that bottle?

Has it been almost a month???

Jeez, time really flies, even if you are NOT having fun. Has it really been almost a month since I last had something to say?

I have got to GET A LIFE!

Dialysis takes up most of my energy. Even though we are now down to 2X/week, kidney, heart, and surgery follow-ups swallow up most of my time, attention, and everything else.

In addition, we are now involved in two great searches -- a home water distiller and a motorhome.

We drink a lot of water, and a home water distiller has been on the back burner for years and occasionally sneaks forward to perch on the middle burner. A kind acquaintance recently mentioned that he was doing much better, health-wise, since he stopped drinking tap water and stopped buying bottled water. His secret is distilling water at home BUT he insists that the best results have been obtained since he gave up anything in a plastic bottle. Glass or stainless steel, that's the ticket.

Makes sense, don't ya think? Water in our area is highly chlorinated and probably has all kinds of jolly metals and other things that really don't belong in our bodies. It has gotten to the point that drinking water is dangerous to everyone's health, and, really, you can only consume so much beer before the weight gain becomes a problem. Also the not-so-kind members of the Highway Patrol. Since plastic tends to crack, scratch, and otherwise deteriorate (except in landfills), the possitility of chemical leeching is also a big concern.

After a very exhaustive seach we have found that there are only two products that we could use. One comes with a glass container (almost everything else uses plastic) and is run by electricity. The other is even more basic and can be used with any heat source (including a campfire) and is entirely made of stainless steel. I will let DH decided which of these marvels to purchase, as I have done my part.

And the motorhome.

We are great campers (never mind that the first time I went camping I was 23 years old and there was a gale that night that left us literally floating in several inches of water, but that's another story). For many, many years and many, many children, we tented. When I was in my 40's I told DH that I could no longer sleep on the groud, it was far too much work.... anyway, I was pregnant with #5. So we bought a trailer.

Absolutely loved it! Room for 7 to sleep, nothing to set up, awning to sit under, really wonderful people to meet.

Fast forward to mid-50's. Preparing and hooking up a trailer is A LOT OF WORK. And now we are 4, not seven.

If you had asked me a few years ago, did I see us in a motorhome, I would have laughed you off the planet! Famous last words....

I, for one, do not like hotels or resorts, I prefer to eat my own cooking, and I like my own things around me. Not to mentio the dialysis wrinkle (sometimes he feels fine, sometimes not, no way to predict). I also like to make last-minute plans. HEY -- it's Thursday afternoon, how about a long weekend at the beach?

What we really want to be able to do is shove some food into the refrigerator, sit down, turn the ignition key, and take off.

So we are in the market for a motorhome, one with a bed above the cab (for the 13-year-old) and a queen bed in the back for those of us who insist on a good night's sleep.

More in the next installment!

Papa Time

You might also call this Grandpa Time, but DH made it abundantly clear that there is only one Grandpa in our family, and that is my dad (who is pushing 95 but suffers from dementia, poor sweet man, doesn't recognize anyone any more). So what do you call a male grandparent who does not want to be grandpa? Well, in my southern family you call him Papa. In this case, Papa Nick (so as not to be confused with Papa Paul, the other grandparent). Papa Nick likes this. I guess it has a kind of pater familias ring to it, which appeals to his German control-freak nature. And I also guess that he feels younger than he would if he were called GRANDPA NICK. We all have strict orders not to use this in his hearing ( HAH!! -- GRANDPA NICK, GRANDPA NICK, GRANDPA NICK -- that was fun, if a little childish).

Now, I myself have no objection to being called Granny. There has always been a Granny in my family. My mother was Grandma to my kids, but my dad's mother was Granny. She passed almost 25 years ago, and after that there were no grannys in the family until it was my turn to step up to the grandparent plate. I voluntarily -- no, proudly -- took up the Granny mantle and title.

Should I change my blog name? Perhaps call it Deep South Granny? Knitter Granny? Granny's Two Sticks Hell-on-Wheels? Are we getting a little silly here?

Speaking of Knitting...I finally wove in the ends and blocked my Clapotis. Even in lace weight yarn and size 2 needles, it is wonderfully long:


Detail of the stitch pattern (sorry about the blur):

In the immortal words of my late DMIL -- Sehr elegant.

Granny Time

So much to do, so little time. It has been almost a month since the last posting. Life is busy, life is full of stuff.

A great treat today -- my daughter-in-law and granddaughter showed up at our door at 10AM. It has been more than 2 years since I last saw them. At that time they lived in Hawaii, and they came for a visit (with my son). Now they live in Mississippi, but son had to stay home at his job, so we had the great pleasure of a full day with the two of them. The whole family went to the park (not terribly exciting just to say, but a perfect piece of Americana, and just wonderful for taking pictures and talking, talking, catching up, and talking). One daughter had to leave for work, so there is a gap in the family portrait.

The past month has been the usual round of dialysis, doctors appointments, more dialysis, and more doctors appointments. On the up side, I have been spending countless hours knitting in waiting rooms and have finished DH's Fair Isle Vest.

Here it is being blocked:

Here is a detail shot of the pattern itself:

If it looks really intricate, rest assured that it is. Judicious enlargement of the teeny tiny detail chart, lots of stitch markers, and religious use of a row counter are mandatory! The big sweater chart (row-by-row) was less than useless. Enlarging it to full size made the details too blurry to see, and there were some serious mistakes in the written pattern. Its only use was for the starting row, which was row 4 of the pattern detail. I am totally clueless as to the reasoning behind this, it makes no sense at all.

If you are going to go to this much work, I think it pays to make the inside as nice as the outside and enclose the edges of the steeks. There is an excellent explanation of this at www.kidsknits.com. Not difficult to do at all, and you end up with the insides looking like this:

Voila, one work of art.

I used to love summer days and nights

The hotter and longer, the better.

Crazy Aunt Purl's post about fried okra reminded me of this.

I spent 16 years living in the fog belt where a sweater was common wear almost every day. 22 years ago we bought a house 15 miles inland where spring and fall are warm and clear, fog is seen on winter mornings, and summers are long and hot. Evenings spent outside on the lawn chair, sipping iced tea or beer, planning a BBQ for dinner with locally-grown corn on the cob all by itself as the first course, tomato salad to die for, potato salad, watermelon for dessert.

Fried okra as a special treat.

A special treat for ME ONLY. Husband and kids think okra is just too, too gross for words. Fine with me, I'll eat it any way I can get it. Fried is best. With chopped onions and lots of black pepper.

This is how life is supposed to be.

That was before menopause, which changed EVERYTHING.

Now it's indoors with the air conditioning running, outside only with mosquito repellent, sunscreen, and hat. Corn on the cob still appears, but tomato and potato salads are verboten because of DH's renal and cardiac diet and these delights have far too much potassium. Watermelon has to be measured... hell, everything has to be measured!

But my love for fried okra is eternal, deathless, unchanged.

The miseries of menopause and turning 50 are, IMHO, vastly overrated. Maybe I was just lucky, but I was really happy to leave the 40's behind. Hot flashes became a convenient way to cut the winter heating bill. Don't like my greying hair -- tough! I earned every single strand (and I hold YOU responsible). Mood swings? I DON'T HAVE NO STINKIN' MOOD SWINGS!!!!

Some thoughts on air conditioning. This has to be the greatest gift God has given to modern man. AC makes life possible (especially during the heat wave of the past week). AC makes sure I can sleep at night. AC lets me cook real meals. AND MOST IMPORTANT -- AC lets me knit any time I want!

More Knitting

Just a gallery of what I have finished in the past year.

1. Done really a long, long time ago -- like around 30 years -- but my DH still loves and wears it. My first fair isle. Complete with DD2 and Brando.
2. A more recent fair isle for DH, from Philosophers Wool. Really a fabulous design. Great pattern. Gets really tedious about half-way through. Does it get worn? Get real -- we live in California. But it make a great cushion for the back of the rocking chair.

3. Alpaca Beret4. Alpaca Scarf5. More Scarves in various novelty yarns (fun, fun, mindlessness)
6. The every-present sock. I can knit these in my sleep. I always do socks top down. I tried the toe up method but could never get the foot the right length or the heel in the right place, so I stick to old tried-and-true. I even still use the size one aluminum needles I bought to make my first ever pair of socks, still use the original pattern that I learned on.

Meanwhile, back at actual knitting

For some reason known only to the server, the pictures of my scarves never appeared on yesterday's post.

Here is the Woolease clapoti:

Big enough to be used as a comfy shawl and, really, too cool for words. This pattern is really, really fantastic, easy to memorize

I liked doing it so much that I pulled some lace-weight merino out of my stash, got a size 2 circular needle, and started another one:

Finished this one in the hospital, and it is an actual scarf size! Lovely, lovely, lovely. However I doubt I will make this again. The center (i.e. straight) section is a real drag the second time around.

Current project is a fair isle vest for my DH. The pattern and yarn come from Knitpicks, an excellent value, BUT be warned that there are a couple of really significant mistakes in the published pattern, so a trip to the website errata is really important. Naturally it takes me 2 rip-out sessions to make this discovery, but things are now on track and progressing nicely.

Actual Knitting content

Leaving behind the exciting soap-opera of my current so-called life, I hereby present you with real, live, actual, honest-to-God knitting. Like most of my needle-oriented friends, without knitting my fashion statement would probably consist of a complete set of lovely which jackets -- you know the ones with the extra-long sleeves. And, since I have spent uncounted hours sitting in hospital ICUs, ERs, surgery- and cardiac-recovery rooms, not to mention 3 afternoons per week in the dialysis clinic, there has been a whole lot of kntting going on.

My inaugural first post mentioned three projects, socks (there are always socks on the needles), a ponchette, and scarf (always have a scarf, too).

Here is the ponchette. It looks wierd stretched out on the blanket, but when I out it on, it is really cool. Pattern came from the Berocco website (where it is called the Asar Ponchette). In a lot of ways it was boooring -- garter stitch throughout. And the pattern was not user-friendly, so I had to re-write it to make any sense of it. In addition, the pattern has no schematic, so it was really easy to miss a mistake in the original, and I had to rip out most of the finished garment and start again. Those who have known me for a long time will be surprised at my fortitude -- in the past I have tossed things into the trash rather than repeat the tedium of ripping and reknitting, especially garter stitch, which is definitely not my favorite type of knitting.

Scarf project: I really tried to avoid the clapotis. I did not like to look of it at knitty.com, the drop-stitch thing totally did not imprint on my imagination, I refused to even consider it.

However, I read the post about it (and saw the pictures) by Left Coast Knitter, checked my stash, and thought, Weeeeellll, maybe I have a use for all that Woolease I bought years ago. Let's give it a try.

Three Eventful Months

Hmmm. When I published the latest message, I made changes to reflect today's date. However, I noticed, after it was published, that it still was dated June 18, which might cause some confusion since I also wanted to strike the month of July from the calendar.

Here is the short version of what has happened in the past 3 months:

May 01: Death of MIL
May 09: Flight to Hamburg for funeral.
May 17: Return to California
May 22: Death of very close friend from cancer
June 03: Dear husband has a heart attack.
June 08: Death of young man who is close friend of oldest daughter -- he was right down the hall from my husband, so we were rushing back and forth for several days
June 09: Dear husband has triple bypass surgery
June 15: Dear husband comes home from the hospital
June 18: Dear husband returns to hospital with congestive heart failure, pneumonia, and diarrhea.
June 21: We are informed that he has been definitively diagnosed (we had already had a partial diagnosis of this) with polycystic kidney disease and renal failure. Dialysis is the only treatment until he qualifies for transplant.
June 22: DH has surgery to install a fistula in his right arm and catheter in his chest
June 23: First dialysis performed in hospital and then discharged to come home again. Dialysis to be done 3 times/week.
July 10: Re-admitted to hospital after falling and banging head on cement outside of dialysis center. There is a problem with the blood pressure, which falls into his shoes whenever he stands up.
July 11: Back home again to continue recuperation and dealing with the depression, meds issues, weight-loss (i.e. he has lost 30 pounds in less than 1 month, so extremely weak), and to start the process of looking for a kidney to transplant.

It has NOT been fun, dear friends, not fun at all.

Throughout all this, ther HAS been some knitting going on, which will be described in future posts.

The Best Laid Plans ...

I really CANNOT BELIEVE that it is now July 14. This is absolutely impossible.

Actually, it cannot be July at all, since I decided that the months of May, June, and July for the year 2006 had to be stricken from the calendar and replaced with Ozzie (the month formerly known as May), Harriet (the month formerly known as June), and Little Ricky (the month formerly known as July. The former months of May, June, and July of 2006 have been quite possibly the worst of my life.

Since I firmly believe that bring things into the light can be very healing, I will tell you why, and I will begin way, way back on May 1, 2006.

On that day DH and I received a telephone call telling us that his very dear mother had just died. She was just 2 months shy of 101, so she had had a good, long, and very eventful life. Since DH has severe gout and arthritis problems and his mother lived in a thiird-floor walk-up apartment and, anyway, he does not DO funerals, and since I loved her like my own mother, and since I had already promised that I would do this, I left everyone behind and flew to Hamburg, Germany, on May 9.

The funeral was really lovely and touching (and very different from those I have attended here), and she is finally resting beside her beloved husband who passed more than 60 years before.

Rest in peace, Herta Klara Wilhelmina Hetzer, nee Koppers.

After the funeral, I tried to assist my sister-in-law with the final details of cleaning out the apartment where MIL had lived since 1952. This process took the entire week of my stay. Here is a picture of her building; her flat is the entire top floor. I think that the saddest part was driving away in the taxi at 5 AM, looking up, and realizing that I would never see the apartment again.

Pictures? We don't need no stinkin' pictures

After a really great start (OK, so it wasn't great, just tentatively enthusiastic), it occured to me that I do not have a digital camera. My husband has a camera. My friends have cameras. My cell phone has a camera! I, alas, do not. I am continually charmed by the lovely, lovely photos of everyone else's work, to the point of becoming inhibited about posting desriptions of my own. This, however, is about to change!

On May 9 I flew to Hamburg, Germany, for a funeral (more about that in a different posting). And my sweety lent/gave me his old camera, charger, and software for the trip. WELL, possession being 9/10th of the law, I assume that this baby is now mine to use until he remembers, which will probaby never happen.

Plans. Oh, baby do I have plans!

The first post is always the most difficult

Lame blog title, I know, but this is my first foray into writing in years (except for the technical stuff I do for business). "Deep South Knitter" was chosen in a moment of sheer panic (Omygod, they want a title for the page!). In all fairness, it is also a tribute (sort of) to all the generations of southern women I descend from who had to knit, weave, spin, sew, cook, can, and otherwise provide everything their families ate, wore, walked on, and slept under. I do not have these ambitions. I just like to knit, occasionally crochet, and sew (a rare event these days).

My current goal is to make a serious inroad into the stash that I did not realize had become so incredibly overwhelming. I used to keep everything nicely stored in our trailer -- out of sight, out of mind, and very easy to add things to. This was also my sewing and ironing room. However, we sold it, and I had to clear everything out. I was rudely confronted by the enormity of my fiber-greed, a most sobering experience, and not a little embarrassing given the snide comments from my son and daughter who had to carry everything into the garage. I had to publicly promise that there would be NO TRIPS TO STITCHES WEST or any other yarn source until it is whittled down to a handful of unfinished projects.

So, currently on the needles:

• A pair of socks in Regia in dark blue with thin stripes in 4 colors (purchased in Hamburg 2 years ago)
• A "ponchette" in Gedifra Flamme Couture in a lovely chocolate brown (also purchased in Hamburg -- a real score at 1 Euro per ball, hope I have enough because I will probably never find any more)
• The ever-present novelty-yarn scarf