Mother's Day Scarf

Ooookay. Well, kids, it's been a while but I am back now and better than I've been in a long ass time. Not sure I'll be posting frequently, but I am finally beginning to take some charge of my life and it feels great!

Now for some knitting.
Ooh, and a couple free and easy patterns, too!

First is the mother's day 2008 scarf. I had improvised a lacy hat that I wore at Christmas and my mom fell in love with it. Here's a picture, although it doesn't show the lace pattern (and I use the word loosely) very well if at all:


So she loved it and I gave it to her. It is very soft and the yarn is yummy feeling. I had 2 skeins left of it so I decided she needed a matching scarf. This, unlike the hat, I had a pattern for. Or at least a lace stitch from some book.

Mother's Day Scarf 2008:

download PDF here

The pictures just don’t capture the real beauty of this piece. Sometimes the yarn and stitch just
go together so perfectly that the result is stunning.
I think this scarf is a good example of that. It’s
lacy, but still has substance and a bit of sparkle.
I honestly think it’s one of the loveliest things I’ve made. I hope my mom agrees when I am able to give it to her. I got the stitch from one of my stitch dictionaries, but I can’t recall which one. It’s shockingly easy, only a 4 row repeat and
nothing trickier than k4 tog tbl. I used 2 skeins,
starting a 2nd piece with the 2nd skein and
joining them in the middle so that the lace wouldn’t be reversed on one side and the gracefully arced ends would be symmetrical.

CO 17
row 1: sl1 purlwise, k1tbl, k13, k1tbl, p1
row 2: sl1 knitwise, p1tbl, p13, p1tbl, k1
row 3: sl1 purlwise, k1tbl, k4tog (yo, k1) X5, yo,
k4tog tbl, k1tbl, p1
row 4: same as row 2

repeat these 4 rows until piece is half of desired length (or as I did, until you run out of yarn in one skein), put stitches on holder, make another one and join them in the middle. I have no advice on how best to join them since I am atrocious at that sort of thing, but obviously the less noticeable the join, the better.

I used Caron Glimmer yarn in Biscuit and US11 needles. I used circs , but that is just personal preference. And here are the pics:

Next Post: a mitered corner baby blanket made with Lion Brand Homespun.

ETA: Yes, I painted the styrofoam head. Acrylic paints. And it now has a blonde Halloween wig, too (I found it while organizing my craft closet. Pictures of that project will be posted as soon as it's finished. A hint: hanging organizer shelves!)

Good groceries

I'm not normally one to wax rhapsodic about something as prosaic as a grocery store, but after my last little jaunt to my local Market Street, I just have to say how impressed I am. Everyone working there is friendly, which is a nice change from the surly service received elsewhere (I'm looking at you, Kroger...). When we first moved here I tried out all the local grocery stores and decided that Market Street was my favorite, but for the last few months I've been trying to conserve gas and to cut down on my errands meant going to that awful big box retailer of evil. Today I only needed groceries, so no WalMart. I had forgotten how nice Market Street is. All sorts of gourmet and specialty and organic stuff and prices that are, in many cases, even better than WalMart's. Organic milk, for example, is a dollar (or maybe dollar and a half) cheaper... 2 liter Diet Coke is 13 cents less... And not only do they not seem to believe in the current trend of making the customers do most of the work themselves, they do everything at checkout for you, from unloading your basket (does anyone else still do this?) to bagging and placing the bags in the cart to loading your stuff into your car. And I have never had anyone be unpleasant to me there. I could actually not hate grocery shopping in an environment lie that. Oh, and there are always plenty of cashiers... who will come and get you if they are free and they see you waiting. Really, I love the place. Who knew a grocery store could put me in such a good mood? I just hope that their corporate masters aren't evil or I will be very disappointed. All the people I've talked to who work there say it's a great place to work, so maybe it really is a rare example of business being done centered on the customer instead of the bottom line.

Open letter to my big brother

It's my brother's 40th birthday today. He and I haven't been close in a very long time and there are a number of things I'd like to say to him, but, to be honest, I've never had the nerve. I seriously doubt he would ever read this, so I'll write those things here:

Dear B,

Happy birthday, big bro. I know things in the family have been tense and strained and that you feel that you have been unfairly targeted, but that is simply untrue. You haven't been behaving well. It has little direct impact on me, but your actions affect people I love in negative ways and that both hurts and angers me.
You are abusive to your kids. That has to stop or CPS will eventually be called. I understand that you have trouble controlling your temper, but those are your kids. They need you to be the adult and to have some fucking control. I had hoped that you limited your abusive behavior to verbal assaults on the little ones, but I have heard tales of you pushing one of them while telling him that he was the biggest disappointment of your life. Wow. And this is the boy who was molested by a neighbor. Did you not think he had enough issues to deal with? Seriously, how could you treat a child that way and think it was acceptable?
I heard that you threw a fit on Christmas Day because you weren't treated with the deference you felt you deserved. You are so incredibly full of your own sense of self-importance and entitlement that it drives me crazy. Why would you expect everyone to wait to eat until you finally deigned to show up? You know full well that Christmas dinner has never waited on me or on Roger or on anybody else. Do you really think that you are so much more important than everyone else?
(Oh, speaking of Christmases past, what about the year you brought your girlfriend's little daughter to our Christmas Eve family celebration which also included your wife and your own kids? Did you, even for a moment, consider the feelings of anyone other than yourself? You may be the most selfish person I've ever known.)
After the fit you threw because people were hungry, you had heated words with our mother. I have no idea what your problem is with her, but you need to get over it. I love her, but I know she's no saint. You aren't either, though. You told her you didn't know how to be a dad since she split with our own father when we were small. Do you actually believe that we would have been better off if he had been around when we were kids? Every parent must figure out his or her own path; you might want to look at the way you're raising your own children and learn to make them the priorities in your life. It can't be easy, but you made the choice to have kids, so you need to be there for them. Do you want them to hate you when they are your age with as much vitriol as you apparently have toward our mother? And even if she did somehow wrong you, you are a grown man. You are middle fucking aged. Get over it!
You have taken advantage of our grandparents and our mom for so long now that you probably don't even see that you're doing so. It infuriates me to see them constantly kowtowing to you. You do know that at least a portion of that is done out of fear and dread, not out of love, don't you? You act like a child and throw temper tantrums if you don't get your way. You expect our grandfather to take care of you and your kids while giving nothing in return.

A break from the knitting

I'm taking a bit of a break from my knitting, not so much by choice as by necessity. My dear, sweet M. is concerned that I should be able to support myself if he has to go to prison. I am concerned for the same thing. So I am teaching myself (with his assistance) how to program in Java. Within a couple of months I hope to be able to take the J2EE certification exam and get a job.
It's not coming very easy to me, honestly. I am unaccustomed to having problems learning things, so it is very frustrating for me. But I intend to stick with it. I know I am an intelligent woman, so if other people can learn this, so can I.

Here are some more pictures I took of the snow yesterday...

This is crazy. I shot this outside my apartment this afternoon. I love it, don't get me wrong, but I don't recall ever having snow so late in the season, or ever seeing snowflakes this large.

growing despair

We got a letter yesterday from the public defender's office. We had been hoping to hear from them and that the news would be good; the judge in October granted a new trial because, amongst many other instances of prosecutorial misconduct in the case, one of the government's key witnesses perjured himself and they knew or should have known about it.
Unfortunately, the prosecution refuted this claim and now the judge has agreed and denied the motion for a new case. The next step for M is sentencing. No date has been set yet and I hope it is as far off as humanly possible. It has taken me so long to let myself fully be with him, to completely let go of the thought that my destiny might be with someone else, and now they want to take him away from me. Not only will I lose my boyfriend, but there's no way I'll be able to afford this apartment so I'll also be homeless. And jobless. Can I manage the waiting for him if he does go to prison? I've never been very good at being alone, so we'll have to wait and see. He seems much calmer about all of this than I am, but that's not saying much.
Hopefully the judge will allow him to remain free until his appeal. It's not like he's really "free" anyway, what with the ankle monitor and the curfew. I also think that the year and some months with that thing on should count as some fraction of his time served since he can't really be said to have been at liberty with that thing on him. I hate this so much. I am so scared and he just won't talk about it unless I push it. And this is the kind of thing we really need to talk about to sort out what we're going to do about finances and his stuff and the apartment... It's all such a mess.
I just don't want to lose him now that I've finally figured out that this is where I want to be.

In the other parts of my life, I have become somewhat addicted to the most boring game ever. It's called Fish Tycoon and in it you have a couple of aquariums (aquaria?) and some fish. You breed and sell these fish in order to find the seven magical fish. It is not a fast paced game, nor one that is exciting in any way, but for some reason I find it oddly compelling. I've found 3 of the 7 magical fish and just over 60 of the more than 400 species of fish. It takes some note taking skills to keep track of which fish you've bred and the results and it takes literally hours to make any progress whatsoever even running in the 2X speed. But that leaves me time to knit while I'm playing, so that's exactly what I've been doing. Over the past few days I've made 4 or 5 headbands. My roots are growing in and I haven't been able to find the exact color of dye I used last time and want to use again, so headbands it is. I'll take pictures soon and post them, but just haven't been in the mood lately. I've not even been on Ravelry in a couple of weeks... I may need to wean myself from all of this anyway since if M goes to prison I will most likely be without internet while living with my grandfather. That thought terrifies me. I don't know what I will do with myself if I am cut off from the world in that way.

Plans, kids, and ex-wives

I made plans. Anyone who knows me knows that this is not something I do very often, at least not plans of any elaborateness because they invariably get fucked up. But I made plans for Valentine's Day, secret somewhat elaborate, romantic plans for M and myself. I was rather proud of myself for this and was looking forward to having some special time for the two of us next weekend. It seems like so far this year we've either had his boys on the weekends or he's had to work or we've been sick. We're both finally recovered from the nasty colds we had and we have his boys this weekend, so I thought everything was set. I was even going to arrange it so that he could stay out past 8:00 (it's a long story... he has to wear an electronic monitoring thingie on his ankle because he's been accused of something he didn't do. Even though the guilty verdict was thrown out he is still wearing the thing. basically it's house arrest from 8 pm to 7 am. Very irritating to both of us.)
I was busy today running errands. I got the yarn I am swapping with Pat mailed off after making the international shipping (it's just to Canada for chrissake, what's the big deal? Whatever happened to free trade?) far more complicated than it actually is. I also had to get some stuff notarized and faxed for another contest I won. You guys aren't going to believe I won this when you find out. I think I'm probably not supposed to say anything about it until it's officially announced, but it was a bit of a hassle with all the paperwork. Still, I got it done. That was before the post office.
In my defense, I have only actually been to the post office here one time. I have, however, driven past it on numerous occasions. It's right off the main highway through town, not far really from where I live. And yet, today I could not find it. I drove past it no fewer than FOUR TIMES before finally seeing it and getting Pat's parcel safely off to her.
So by the time I got home I was stressed and hot (over 70 freaking degrees in February! I hate this weather) and still needed to do the grocery shopping. But first I needed to relax and eat something. So I did. I had plenty of time since EB (elder boy) had a boy scout meeting tonight and M wouldn't be home with them until almost 9:00. Around 4:00 the phone rang.
I hadn't been home very long and still was on edge from all the driving and having to deal with people and the unknown and such. It was M. I rarely hear from him in the middle of the day, so I was immediately concerned. Turns out EB and, to a lesser degree, YB (younger boy) was sick. Feverish. There would be no boy scout meeting tonight and they would be home in about 3 hours.
I went off... why, if a child is sick, do you send him to someone else's house? That was unheard of in my family when I was a kid. If my brother or I got sick then all activities were cancelled and we had to stay in bed. Apparently their mom, who otherwise coddles them so much I fear they will shatter upon impact with the real world in a few years, thinks that sending a feverish 9 yr old out to infect his father and the father's girlfriend with whatever nastiness has been bred in him is more than acceptable. To me, that is bad parenting. The child would feel better at home, in his own bed. He didn't go to school, but he's fine to visit daddy and Eve. Lovely.
I was angry and I am less effective when I am angry. I didn't get the usual cleaning done nor did I get the grocery shopping done. I got the boys' room tidied up (it is my craft room when they aren't here and all my yarn lives in the closet in there, so it gets kinda messy) and the table cleaned off so that they could eat their fast food. Then they were here. And EB, all sick and obviously miserable, begins throwing a fit that there's no room for his food on the table. All he had to do was move his chair to where he usually sits or move the postal scale (it weighs less than a pound, don't grief me about it) or the small vase of flowers. But no. Instead daddy had to come fix it for him. He's sick, I know, and I should cut him some slack, but dayum, does he have to be even more helpless than his mommy has already made him?
It's after the boys have had dinner, and all is quiet. EB is laying down in their room and YB is on one of the computers in there. I had made plans for all of us to go to the nature museum on Sunday for the animatronic dinosaurs, but that clearly isn't in the cards for this weekend. I tell M that that's fine, we can take the boys in 2 weeks when we have them again. It will be the last weekend of the exhibit, so it's all good. Then he drops the bombshell.
"Or we can take them next weekend," he says, ever so nonchalantly. I look at him, puzzled. "No, we can wait. It's open until the 24th."
"No," he replies, "we have them next weekend."
...
...
... the tears weren't immediate and I think they were quiet enough that he never noticed I was crying. I did let him know that I had made plans for us for next weekend for Valentine's Day. He tried the old "does it really matter which day it is" spiel. Well, yeah, it kinda does sometimes. For example, unless their mother changes weekends again before then (which she doesn't do often unless she knows it's inconvenient for us) we have the brats on my birthday. Most days I am okay with having to play second fiddle to the spoiled and helpless fruit of M's loins, but on my birthday (which is also just 3 days before our anniversary) I'd like to be first in his affection. I know that if I don't mention it to him he will never realize it, and even if I do mention it he might not mention it to his ex-wife.
If for some reason things don't work out with M in the long run, I think any man with children, at least minor children, is off my list.

Just for fun, since this has been so bitchy and serious, let's try to figure out what I would look for in a mate. I have no intention of things with M ending, but life is unpredictable.

• No minor children. Period.
• Not a musician
  
• smart
• funny
• computer literate
• not a raging alcoholic nor a complete abstainer from spirits
• non-smoker (funny how just a few years ago this would have said "smoker)
• no more than 5 years younger or 10 years older than me
  
• not too tan, too buff, too 'metrosexual'
• has a job that allows a decent standard of living
• has at least one hobby that he takes as seriously as I take my knitting
  
• isn't squeamish when I want to discuss my girly bits
• likes cats

Those are absolutes. Then there are those qualities and characteristics that would make him my dream man. They go something like this:

• tall.
  
• fair skin, dark hair, dark eyes.
• long hair, worn in a ponytail while he is in a suit
• sense of style
• previously married, but only once and divorced for at least a decade
• enjoys the theater
• has similar taste in music to my own
• enjoys the same kinds of movies I like
• Understands my neuroses
  
• has had a vasectomy
• is from Massachusetts or Oregon and still has family there
• can teach me things
• listens
• allows me to fawn over him... and sometimes does so over me
• is a bit overweight
• has big, attractive hands

Okay, I guess that is enough for now. I may come back to this list as I think of more things. For now, though, I have M. And his brats. And a kitchen to clean before they can whine about not liking what they are having for breakfast. Grrr. I'm feeling a trifle under appreciated and maybe even somewhat taken advantage of. Some of it is PMDD. And some is anger and frustration. But I need to get all of it under control before I have to deal with M and the boys.