But Are You Knitting?

I could answer with some quippy cliche' about the Pope or bears in the woods, but the short answer is yes. At any given time, there are about a half a dozen projects 'on the needles' in and around my house. Most of them, right now, are in a box somewhere. That being the case, I'm a little low on gratuitous fiber shots, but I am getting a lot done on the projects I am working on.

Project 1 is a lace stole for DT, a teacher friend who is tutoring MUC in reading over the summer. This stole isn't anything fancy in the way of technique or design. I chose the pattern out of Treasury of Knitting Patterns, VL. 1 because it was mind-numbingly easy, making this a great travel project. The yarn is Knit Picks Bare, and I dyed it with some not-quite exhausted blue, but I did this sort of paint on thing. The yarn came out with this distressed denim type effect, which actually works, since the yarn is already starting to get a bit fuzzy from the stitch work. By the time I get this thing all sized and pinned out, it should be a really relazed, but comfy casual stole, which fits DT perfectly. The big news from this project is the Addi Turbo Lace circulars. Boy do they make all the difference in the world. I really recommend these needles if you're working with laceweight yarns or complicated stitchwork. The sharper points work so much easily than traditional Addis.

Project 2 is a rescue of some Alpaca Sox yarn sock I started some time ago and forgot. I ran across them in The Great Unpacking and decided to frog some unsightly patterning that just wasn't working and go for plain 'ol socks. They're not the fanciest in the world, but they are some kind of warm and fuzzy. They're going to make great Birk socks.

And, there's no picture, but I always have some kind of cotton project going, like market bags or dishcloths, which I generally work while at the pool with the kids. Yes, I even knit at the pool. And the movies. And while waiting for the doctor in the exam room. What can I say?

Small Post Script: Spoke to Dr. Lucy at length today. She is doing well, other than the 2 shots she must give herself each day. Fortunately, those end soon. Thank you for your kind thoughts for my friend.

Eat, Pray, Love - This Is the Meaning of Life?

First, let me say I consider myself a fairly intelligent individual. It's not that I'm arrogant or superior about my acumen. I don't claim to have any ability equivalent to Stephen Hawking or Einstein. I'm no dummy either.

Secondly, I'm a voracious reader. There are always a few books I'm in the process of reading at any given time. Currently, I'm in the middle of one of the Florence King essay compilations, a biography of Abigail Adams, the letters of Abigail Adams and John Adams (I'm working on those concurrently), as well as a couple of pulp novels that have no particular literary value at all. I just use them as void fillers. In the past two and a half months, I've also read Jane Austen's Emma, three other Florence King books, both The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns (by the same author and I recommed them highly), The Red Tent, a Christopher Moore book (whose title escapes me at the moment), The Count of Monte Christo ( for the innumerable time), Friday Night Knitting Club, a collection of O Henry stories (again), and several others, including the latest Laurell K Hamilton.

I recently read Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love, which is unusual for me for a couple of reasons. I don't really care what everyone else is reading, and I don't follow the best sellers as a matter of course. Also, I'm not into the whole self-help, 'here's the way to find yourself' thing. Why I actually picked this book up is a mystery. Maybe it has something to do with WHERE she went as opposed to WHY. Her travels took her to Italy, India and Bali, places I happen to find fascinating, and perhaps that is what lead to my interest. At any rate, I picked it up, plunked down my money and bought it. Once purchased, I slogged my way through it, regardless of whether I liked it or not. Rare is it for me to put a book down in total disgust before reading it through. I gave this book the same courtesy. I read it, and I did enjoy reading it, although it did get a bit tedious at times. It was a nice little book about one woman's personal journey to self-discovery.

Do I find it revolutionary and groundbreaking?

No.

This is where I'm having such difficulty. This book has becoming some sort of textbook on how to discover yourself. The author has been on Oprah where much to-do was made, there are reading group guides, the reviews tend to be over the top and I just don't get it. There's just not that much there. It's not an instruction manual. It's not even really a "how-to". It's more of a "year in the life".

Let me back-track a bit here and say, I do understand, fully, a person's need to search for personal or higher awareness. I totally 'get' what Gilbert was about and what she was doing. I don't necessarily agree with her methodology, but I understand the exercise. But, I (and from what I understand, she, too) feel that the journey for this self discovery, or discovery of a higher power, is so totally personal, there's no way to to emulate her journey. Every journey is unique and must follow a unique path.

Besides, we know the answer is 42. However, if you have any ideas that may enlighten me, feel free to post them.

One more small, totally unrelated note. I received word that two people important to me and mine are very sick. Dr. Lucy, whom I've referred to in this blog before has some bizarre, weird thing that I don't understand at the moment, since I haven't talked to her directly as of yet. All I know is she went to the hospital, where it was discovered there were blood clots in her lungs. She's now at home on bed rest. Secondly, The Things' Assistant Principal gave birth to a baby boy earlier in the week. The baby is healthy and fine. After delivery, something happened, and Parks had a heart attack, necessitating open heart surgery and a triple-bypass. For a while, she was being kept in a drug-induced coma, but the latest I heard just this afternoon was she is to be moved to a private room next week. This is really good news for both of my friends, but they are not out of the woods yet, so to speak. So, if you could keep these people in your thoughts and prayers, it would be much appreciated.

These butterflies are the Gulf Fritillary and the Black Swallowtail, both in my yard over the past week.

The Parental HALO Is Slipping

It appears Necropolis and I aren't going to be in line for any parental awards anytime soon.

Over the past weekend, Nec rediscovered an interest in his Playstation 2 and has the machine set up on the TV. I don't usually bother with the thing and have little or no interest in what happens. The Things have a couple of games for it, but have seemed to prefer the computer. Until now.

This weekend, the boys, the grown one and Things, have been playing HALO 2. In short, it's a sci-fi, shoot-em-up type game. It has a multitude of player options, but generally the boys have been either playing against each other (find your opponent and shoot them) or as a team against the game.

Yes, I know there are a lot of people who would take exception to letting a 7- and 9-year-old play a game of this nature. It may really seem as if we're not being very discriminating parents here. And, I might agree with you, except there's a method to our madness. We never just 'let' The Things win.

Somewhere along the line, we decided that good sportsmanship and developing real creative thinking skills were more important than the current pervasive parenting idea of letting kids win to improve their self-esteem. And, we don't play Candyland or Operation around here. The Thing's first 'real' game was Perfection. It was quickly followed by Trouble and Sorry, both of which were quickly grasped. We still play these as a family, but more advanced games became required. We brought out Chess and Pente. So, MUC has never won a chess match, poor kid. Pente is usually a best of 5 tournament, as that's all either kid can take before they blow. I'm eagerly awaiting for them to grow up a bit, so I can drag out my very old and very well used Scrabble. It'll be a while.

When The Things got decks of UNO cards for their last birthday, I showed them how to play with one hand, and after that, it was all or nothing. I was willing to bow out and 'assist' each boy, but MUC insisted on continuing play until he finally beat me. It took 7 times (and about a hour and a half of continuous play), but he finally did it on his own. That one win was more important to him than any of the previous 6 losses. Now, I'm as likely to lose as to win to either Thing. The Things are well on their way to becoming sharp, critical, analytical thinkers. And, there's ain't nothing wrong with their self-esteem either.

As to HALO, as they navigate the worlds, they have to remember where they are, where they've been and where they're going. They have to complete missions, make decisions and think critically. Then, they get to shoot and blow things up.

I can live with that. If that makes my parenting dubious, I can live with that too.

Support Your Local Lepidopterist

Our new home has something I consider to be of an added benefit: an established Southern yard. This was, to me, one of the selling points. The yards came complete with huge, old azaleas, a gardenia shrub, large trees and shrubs of various varieties and, in the front yard, two planned flower/shrub beds. While this is a good start, there is work to be done. Little or nothing has been done to the yard in any real fashion for the past couple of years. And, to quote one of my colleagues, the yard's a hot mess.

I'm one of those obsessive types that can't stand the idea of the yard looking so unkept. It's more than just the grass being mowed (which I've also done several times), but also the beds and shrubs just look pitiful. Even though we are essentially still walking around and amongst boxes in the house, every few days I feel the compulsion to do some landscaping.

The first major project was a bed of lantana. "My" lantana is the ornamental, hybrid type with the yellow flower clusters that can (thankfully) have the wood cut back when the foliage dies away in the fall. Of course, in late May when the flowers should have started their leafing, they looked scraggly and awful. Frankly, the whole bed was one long and tiresome exploration in Southern gardening gone wrong. The end of the bed closest to the street is anchored by a Sago palm (apparently expensive, definitely unsightly), the end farthest by a pine tree and some odd crepe myrtle trees I've never encountered before (and that's saying something). Around the bed are about a dozen lantana plants. None of this had been cared for. All needed pruning, shaping, fertilizing, mulching and whatever else I could think to throw at it. That would be after I raked out all of the pine straw and cones, not to mention the old pine bark used as mulch and bedding in a former life. So, I got to work. Raking was my first task.

After raking out the mounds and pounds of straw, cones and bark (not to mention screaming like a girly girl on more than one occasion when accosted by gargantuan palmetto bugs - this is why everyone should use cedar mulch), I had what resembled a clean bed. This is also when I discovered that my lantana bed was so much more. It was also an Iris bed (at least, that was my thought at the time). And, too, it was a daylily bed. And, it was where someone decided that a few clumps of random liriope should go. I'm still not sure what the thought process was here. These others are INSIDE the bed, and when the lantana is at full-steam-ahead strength, you wouldn't really be able to see them. But, before I just started randomly pulling out plants, I decided to let sleeping dogs, and all that. I'll give everything a season to change my mind, and then I'll do the random ripping (with the exception of the Asiatic lillies by the mailbox, but that another story).

At any rate, I trimmed up the myrtles, cut away as much of the deadwood on the lantanas as possible and, resisting my inner 5-year-old, left the Irises and liriope alone (even though the Irises have YET to show bloom stalks!). As for the daylillies, I decided to make that one work for me. I went and purchased another 6 or 8 more, and created a decided daylily area. I gave everything a good dose of mushroom compost, laid the cedar mulch, and left well enough alone. Okay, I do water a couple of times a week with the soaker hose. But other than deadheading the daylillies, I don't do anything.

The lantana have freakin' exploded all over the bed.

Now I have some guests of the pleasant variety. Butterflies. It's actually rather cool. It all began with a Tiger Swallowtail. I didn't get a picture, as I wasn't expecting to notice anything like that, but after it dive bombed me as I was walking past the bed, I ran inside for the camera. By the time I got back, the Swallowtail was gone, but it started my slow decline into Lepidoptery obsession. I spend several times a day circling the bed taking shots of the various butterflies that hit the lantana for their daily nectar fix. I'm sure I'm creating a lot of gossip for the neighbors. "There she is again, Ed. Out there with that camera, shooting pictures of that lantana bed, or at least, I think it's a lantana bed, since I can't see around that Sago palm. What can one woman want with so many pictures of lantana anyway?"

While on my search to identify my first true, recordable sighting, I discovered that not only are there butterflies, but also skippers and moth-butterflies (not to be confused with moths). This led to another round of shutter snapper about the bed.

Identifying these critters is an Herculean task. I've got a website or two that I'm using at the moment, and I've ordered a couple of field guides to help, but goodness, it's a complicated process. Sometimes, it's not what you see on the 'color' (or dorsal) side, but what's on the 'under' (or ventral) side. Which means, I'm trying to time two different shots: one with the wings open, and one with the wings closed. These are also usually two different angles that I'm trying to get before the thing decides to take off and land again. I'm definitely learning patience, perseverance and frustration management.

Part of the this is illustrated by my new least favorite game, a rather weird nature version of hide and seek. The butterfly flies away from the lantana, I do my best to visually follow it and watch it land whereby I try (usually in vain) to get my camera to figure out what it is, exactly, I want the thing to focus on. Yes, I know I could use manual focus, but by that time, the thing wouldn be not just gone, but dead. Frankly, that's just beyond the ability of my skills at the moment. Not only that, but for every one decent photo I get, there are the 10 I delete as total ca-ca. It's a good thing I have a digital camera. Film would be totally cost prohibitive at the rate I take crappy photos.

And, in the vein of frustration management, here's a photo of a longtailed skipper that I ALMOST got in frame in flight. Almost.

Other than the unidentified insect at the top and the bumblebee, the critters are, from top to bottom, the Common Buckeye, the Pearl Crescent, and the American Lady (dorsal and ventral). The bottom photo is of a Longtailed Skipper, which I did get while feeding. It has a really cool blue body. You can check it out on my Flickr photostream along with some of the other skippers I photographed.

It's June in Georgia - A Great Time to Think Sweaters!

Now that the move is settling out a little, I have some time to actually look at some of my in progress projects. One of the major ones is the sweater for Necropolis I agreed to make after his post Christmas pronouncement of "You never knit anything for me."

Well, this is true. I never really considered it as 1) Nec's tastes in clothing are almost as particular as mine and B) I figured it was a waste of good yarn to make the effort. However, with his whiny-butt statement, I set off on the unenviable task of trying to find something I thought I would find remotely interesting to knit, and he would agree to wear. Eventually, I stumbled on one of Brooklyn Tweed's submissions to Interweave Knits in the Fall '07 issue. It's called Cobblestone, and it just a basic sweater. Now, Nec's not generally a sweater type of guy. And, I was very upfront with him (ad nauseum) that if I took the time to do this, I would be expecting more than the occasional wear. He agreed, and I set off to find the right yarn.

This proved to be a challenge of epic proportions.

We live, basically, on the line that equatorially bisects the state, affectionately referred to by all Georgia History students as "The Fall Line". Last winter, I wore my wool coat a grand total of twice, and only because I wore a lighter weight dress than the temperature required. We haven't had anything resembling real snow or ice since MUC was an infant (he's now 7). And, even I don't wear pullover style sweaters unless it is COLD (re: not in a very long time). So, if I expect the sweater to see some wear time, the yarn would have to be a special blend. I was thinking something like a lighter weight wool, but with some of the same warm/cool properties of a silk blend as well. Try finding that in a commercial yarn. It was either near impossible or prohibitively expensive.

Which lead to my chatting it up on Ravelry on one of the boards. I ran across someone who actually does the washing/dying/carding/combing/blending, and better yet, she was a dream to work with. I gave her my less than specific, obtusely general ideas, and she turned it into a roving that was just wonderful. I spun it into a yarn, and checked to see if the gauge was at least in the ballpark, and we were cooking with gas! (By the way, I really can't say enough wonderful things about Julie and her fiber, so if you're looking for something of that nature, I really suggest you check out her Etsy Store ).

I've spun a specific amount of the fiber, to check my yards/oz, and then we'll determine the exact amount I'll need for the entire project. This is something I'm really looking forward to seeing to the end result.

Been a Long Time Since I Rock-n-Rolled

I knew it had been a while since I had posted anything on the blog, but I really hadn't realized quite how long until I finally got around to putting up a new post tonight. I can blame some of it on the move (we moved into a new house...have I mentioned that?), as we went for quite a spell without TV, cable, internet or house phone service. We still had our cell phones, but as for the house number, it hadn't transferred. The whole house transaction happened from start - Nec and I decided we would look for a house to purchase - to finish - signing the contracts, mortgage papers, papers that say we are who we say we are and all possible aliases we might potentially use - within 3 weeks. Therefore, by the time we knew where we were going, it took a while to contact the utilities. And, they were in NO hurry to switch services.

Now, services are up and running, and the household, while not unpacked, is at least moderately functioning. With school now out, I spend a large portion of my day entertaining The Things while pretending I'm unpacking. When we all get cabin fever, we go outside (in the extreme heat) and work in the yard. Frankly, we have more fun there. Unfortunately, it's just too hot to do too much. Like most kids, MUC can create fun. Here's a shot of Sprinkler Kung Fu.

I also caught a pair of cardinals bathing themselves on the soaker hose in one of the flower beds. These pictures aren't the best, as it was late in the day, but the birds were really fun to watch.



It's been mentioned to me that pictures of MUC tend to feature more prominently in this blog than those of GLB. It's not an intentional thing. It's rather more a difference of personality and age. I can get decent photos with The Things, as you can see.

However, photos of GLB on his own tend to go something like this.

If you hit the link, you see what I mean.