Yarnausea

It's been forever since I knitted like it was my hobby instead of yarn collecting (which, I think, is my actual hobby). I have amassed quite the collection of yarns and tools and toys to pursue this 'hobby' that I don't do. 

Oh, that was ugly.

The Super Bowl. Yeesh. I enjoy a good football game, but I don't think that bloodbath qualifies.

Anyway, I'm prepping my Ravellenics Games projects. I don't usually participate (deadlines on my hobbies and life's little joys sort of give me hives), but this year I found the only two teams that give me the latitude to work hard or not at all.

So I finally got my yarn out for the third and most interesting of my Ravellenics projects -- a pair of armwarmers I've been designing for ages. Here's the yarn:

To give you a hint of how old this project is, that yarn is discontinued. Not that it takes much, because yarn lines and colors go out of fashion all the time, but it's fairly standard sock yarn in kettle-dyed, mildly variegated colors.

Weep with me.

It's a stranded color work project, too. So what I needed to start this project up is a multi-strand yarn organizer. My local Big Box was remarkably short on that item, so I'm improvising my own in a fairly clever way, if I do say so myself. Wanna se?

First, you take two plastic shopping bags -- I went with fairly small ones for this project. 

Then you wedge your yarn in there and pull the center strand out of each of the skeins (making them all center pull skeins):

Then you thread one strand of each through each of the handle holes:

Hey, presto! Each yarn has its own little handle hole, and all tangling will occur outside the yarn bags.

Yes, it's a bit ghetto, but it'll work. You'll see. Eventually. When I get around to, you know, actually knitting on this thing.

My love/hate relationship with clearance endcaps.

I seriously love clearance endcaps. You know what endcaps are, don't you? They're the short shelves at the ends of longer shelving systems at grocery stores and shops? They face the main aisles instead of looking inward?

Anyway. I was at the grocery store today getting some necessaries (make up and graham crackers) and passed this beauty on an endcap, discounted 30%:

A pudding basin! Well, being as this is America, it was labeled "Mixing Bowl", but it's actually a stoneware pudding basin/mixing bowl.I can now steam my own puddings at home! Hurrah!It is always a good day when you can add a little more sugar and fat to your life, isn't it?

Of course, I needed this basin like I need another hole in my head, so I sort of hate clearance endcaps. They prod me into buying stuff that I want a lot, but don't really need, and only because it's 30% off.

Love/hate. All the time, people, all the time I get in trouble with these things!


Next weekend is my half-birthday. As I turn 39 and 1/2, which you must admit everyone only does once, I thought I would celebrate the event by starting a new project for myself, with my luxury yarns.

I'm thinking of making a Pebbly Mesh Shawl out of this yarn:

And a Rose Window Shawl out of this yarn:

I'm not sure which one to do first, although I'm thinking of using the silk thread first. It's a simple design (if you can't access the Ravelry page for it, I'm surely sorry for you) so the colors of the yarn will be front and center. The Rose Window Shawl has a far more complicated pattern, and the mild variegations of the reds in my Touch will work well with it.

I'm just trying to remember if I already started a project with that red yarn. I can't recall -- and I think it was my Kaalund yarn, instead. Maybe.

I might just maybe have too much red laceweight in my stash.

Ooops.

Where's Surly Knitter?

A cemetery! How cheerful.

Actually, I went for a reason -- I wanted to find my great-grandfather's grave. I knew his name and where they lived in 1900 (thank you, census forms) but nothing else. I figured if I found his grave, at least I'd have the years he lived -- maybe not the dates, but it would give me a starting point.

We have very few Catholic cemeteries on this side of town and, thankfully, they all keep one office. I called and found out he died two years before my mother was born. I had thought he'd died years before, since none of the family photos I've seen have him in them. There's great-grandmother, all 13 kids and eventually their spouses, but no great-grandfather. Either he was taking the pictures, or no one wanted him in them. Which is possible, as my mother says he was a wretched drunk.

Eh, the Irish. Whatcha gonna do wit us?

So I decided to drive down to get a map to his grave and my mother asks me to get a map to my older sister's grave (she was stillborn, five years before I was born.) Okey dokey. When I get there, I ask for both great-grandpa and deceased sister, who my mother tells me should be listed as 'Infant M---'. The nice lady in the office goes away for a while, then comes around the corner and says, "K----?", i.e., my name. I look at her blankly, wondering when I gave her my name, until she says again, "K---- M----, 1969?"

Meep. I knew they'd intended to give the name I ended up with to her, but mother always told me they'd changed it to Mary after she died. Of course, mother hadn't attended the brief funeral; my father handled it all while she was still in the hospital, recovering, and there wasn't a headstone when she finally got to visit the site.

I smile, say yes, that was the name, and she goes off again to photocopy the plot purchase cards and get me the map. She comes back, gives me the papers, offers some directions to help me with the map directions, I thank her and go. In the car, I read the papers and on the plot card for my sister, they list my father as Edwin. Ummm, not his name. Right last name, close on the first one, but not his name. It sounds similar, so I know they've got it right.

When I told my mother, she asked my father and he said he'd changed my sister's name to a related name. Mom says, no, the form says K---. It also says your name is Edwin. Well, my father says, that's what you get when you deal with [name of funeral home].

After the shock of finding out someone with my same first name is buried near my great grandfather (they're plot neighbors, almost) I took some photos, and hied me home to make dinner. Between the nasty cold that's now descending into my chest (which is ok, actually, that means it's almost run its course) and the constant rain over the past week, I needed something hearty. Something warm and heavy and that calls to mind the royal wedding in two days which I fully intend to watch:

 Ham and chicken pie. The pie crusts I used were a bit elderly (not off or rancid, just old), but the filling is fabulous. It's a recipe from the National Trust Complete Traditional Recipe Cookbook, for which I cannot find a link. This one is an updated version of mine, and I hope they worked on the instructions for the new edition. For this recipe, she had a paragraph that literally said, "Make a white sauce with the butter, flour, stock and milk, throw in the parsley and then pour it over the filling." Now, I can translate this because I know how to cook, I know how to make a white sauce and I'm pretty confident in the kitchen. If I'd been a new cook, I'd have been hosed. This is not a cookbook for beginners.

Still and all, the recipe turned out excellent. To whit:

My first piece. Yes, I said first. It's a lovely pie, the weather is making like a Dyson and I found out I've got a truly recycled name. It's been a rough day.

You can tell what season it is, can't you?

Look at this photograph:

 Allergy meds, check. Saline nasal spray, check. Tissues, check.

Mold season is upon us, people! 'Ware the black mold!

Actually, I think I have a cold -- my allergies are rarely so nasally-oriented, and my mold allergy is asthmatic in nature. Still and all, it's pretty miserable. I did an allergy pill and took two hits off my decongestant nasal spray and I'm draining, yes, but I don't feel much better. If it were allergies, the pill would have made me feel much better than this.

Sigh. There's nothing to do but wait, then. In the meantime:

This pile of paper is the bits of my family's history my mother gave me. I may have mentioned I'm going to hunt them down like the criminals they probably were and, if they were anything like as strange as I suspect, I'm going to write an apologist book for my siblings entitled: This Is Where I Come From: See, It *Really* Isn't My Fault I'm Like This. I think it would go over well with the sibs in terms of reading matter (although they may not accept the possibility of genetic eccentricity), but I'm thinking no one would believe it was non-fiction.

I hope the eccentricity is genetic, I'd hate to think this much crazy came out of standard child-rearing. If nothing else, I'd feel better about how I turned out if I could blame part of it on the genes. Think what it says about my parental committee's abilities in that direction, otherwise. Bless.

I haven't knit in a while (not since my sinuses filled up like lead balloons; God I love living in a terrarium-like environment!), so no knitting pictures for you today. I will be working on something this week, if only my mother's shawl (she's starting to get stroppy about it and nag), although I'm not sure I've got the wattage going for anything more creative than endless garter stitch (blech.) What is it about full sinuses that makes you feel mentally sluggish?

And my music selection just came to the end of the album. Today's music is Time 4 Three's 3 Fervent Travelers. Excellent music, and I love the word "fervent". I don't think it gets used often enough, and to see it in an album title cheers me no end.