quick peek

I have a new pattern coming out tomorrow via Knit Picks.

Can you guess what it is?

i'm crocheting!

Yes, that's right, I said crocheting!

I've caught the one-hook bug for sure. Over the winter I spent a lot of time hanging out with a couple of crochet evangelists, and they convinced me to try it. With some basic instructions from a friend, and an hour in front of my laptop with the Crochet Guru, here's what I made for my first project:

I didn't make all of these... just the wonky-looking beginner penguin on the left.

Even though I'm a complete novice and I only know three stitches, I find that crochet is approximately one million times faster than knitting. That's actually the reason I wanted to learn it in the first place... I decided to knit an afghan as a gift, and I just couldn't face thousands of yards of yarn at my snail-like knitting pace. Yay crochet!

Here's the afghan-in-process so far:

I'm making it with Cascade 220 Superwash, perhaps the most versatile wool yarn ever. Such a wonderful selection of colors. I chose 9 colors for this afghan, inspired by the colors of Fiesta Ware. The pattern is a simple Edie Eckman Granny Stripe pattern I got from the internets.

My next adventure in crochet may be with Edie Eckman too... I'm itching to take her Crochet Techniques class on Craftsy. Maybe that will be my reward to myself for finishing this afghan!

6 great last-minute gifts for knitters

Attention, spouses! You've got 5 days left til a major gift-giving holiday. Lucky for you, knitters and crocheters are easy to shop for. Here's my go-to list of last-minute gifts for the fiber lover in your life:

1. Keep their fingers flying all year with a subscription to a fiber arts magazine. Interweave Knits and Interweave Crochet are obvious choices. Is s/he a relative beginner? Try Knit Simple. Fashionistas love Vogue Knitting and KnitScene. Subscribe online, print out the gift coupon, and put it inside a lovely holiday card. Classy!

Ceramic yarn bowls from Kristina Chadwick

2. One of the knitting accessories I'd never ever buy for myself, but have always lusted after, is a yarn bowl. The yarn bowl functions both as tool and decor (it keeps the yarn ball from rolling away while you work with it), so pick a pretty one that matches her/his style. There are about a million of them on Etsy in every conceivable color and style, but shipping at this point is dicey. I guarantee you that your local yarn store has quite a few in stock right now too.

The Namaste Hermosa knitting bag... drool.

3. File this one also under Stuff I'd Probably Never Buy for Myself But Would Love to Have: A stylish knitting bag. Whether you want to spend $25 or $150, you can find a great bag online and choose express shipping, or pick one up at your LYS and have it under the tree by Thursday. 

DellaQ circular needle wallet

4. Have you ever seen your Beloved Knitter struggling to untangle a pile of tangled-up circular knitting needles? Does s/he curse loudly searching for the right sized needle while digging through a drawer full of bamboo and plastic cording? S/he just might love a needle organizer - they're often called needle wallets. My favorites are made by Lantern Moon and Della Q. 

5. Everybody who works with their hands needs a massage right about now. It's gift-making season, and those shoulders, arms and fingers are tired. Give her/him a gift certificate for a half-hour massage. In 30 minutes, s/he will walk away with mojo restored and a smile on her/his face. This is another easy one to buy online, stick the print out in a tiny gift bag and feel like a superhero.

6. Okay, maybe this is totally obvious, but you can't do better than a generous gift certificate to your local yarn store. Support a local business, make a knitter happy, and dress it up with a shiny bow. No local yarn store? I'm really, really sorry. But there are some great online retailers too... the Webs store, Jimmy Beans, KPixie and KnitPicks are full of yarn and tools that your crocheter or knitter will be delighted to browse through. 

I hope this helps! And I hope that you and your yarn lover have a very Merry Christmas!

the new girl

This weekend we added a new hen to our backyard flock.

Michelle and Dolley can't stop staring at the new girl

(Yes we have chickens. Have I never mentioned them before? They're lovely).

The new girl's name is Abigail, named for Abigail Adams, the second first lady of the US (except that I keep calling her Abigail Van Buren because I mix up advice columnists and first ladies, apparently). All our hens are named after first ladies, thanks to our 5 year-old's interest in them. Michelle Obama, Jackie Kennedy and Dolley Madison have been keenly interested in the new arrival, snooping around her little quarantine coop and generally being very nosy.

Poor Abigail is a sight. Before we got her, she was penned up with five roosters (FIVE! ROOSTERS!) and a gaggle of little bantam pullets. She's awfully bedraggled, missing some large clumps of feathers, and appears to have a broken toe, the poor thing. But she's still a pretty hen, a Plymouth Rock with lovely black & white feathers, young and a good layer according to her erstwhile owner.

I hope she settles into our flock happily. Three plump nosy hens have got to be better roommates than FIVE! ROOSTERS!, right? She's going to live like poultry royalty at our house: free run of a big bug-filled backyard, organic feed, lots of yummy lunchbox leftovers, all the mealworm treats she can eat, and herbal tinctures in her water jug. Basically chicken paradise. Except for being chased by an overly-affectionate toddler who really wants a hug, because that's the price a chicken has to pay at our house in exchange for all the organic grub. Toddler love, and giving up her delicious eggs. Yay, more eggs!

P.S. Writing this post led me to find that people on Ravelry are knitting chicken clothing. Of course they are. Penguins shouldn't hog all the sweaters for themselves.

what to read this weekend

Hi everybody! Happy Friday!

I'm looking forward to a beautiful sunny weekend and lots of time scampering through colorful leaves with the little ones. And finally, time to exhale and curl up in my nest with a good book.

What are you reading right now?

Every fall I recharge my reading list with the Man Booker Prize nominees. The 'short list' is usually revealed in early September, and I try to read as many of the books on it as I can before the prize is awarded a month later. Not an easy feat, since I have other things to do besides devour novels, but there are few things as satisfying as a great book, so I make a valiant effort. After the prize is awarded I usually keep on working my way through the list til it's done, which makes for a delicious fall.

Right now I'm about halfway through David Mitchell's new book (you know him. The Cloud Atlas. He wrote that incredible mind-bending novel). Anyway I'm reading his new novel The Bone Clocks, which was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize but didn't make the short list (a decision I've decided to agree with). It's a fun read, and as I've said I'm only about halfway through, but I don't find it nearly as uncanny or revolutionary as Cloud Atlas, or The Thousand Autumns of Jacob deZoet. But it's fun and wild, and I hate to leave a book unfinished, so I'll definitely spend some quality time snuggled up with it this weekend.

Next I'm hoping to read Joshua Ferris' To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, which I've been waiting patiently to receive from the library for quite some time now... I just know somebody has an overdue copy malingering under their couch. Wish I could go to their house and get it!

I really want to read How to Be Both by Ali Smith, but the darn book won't even be released in the US until early December. I think the publisher just likes to annoy American readers. Any rate, like David Mitchell - or maybe very unlike him? - Ali Smith messes with the conventions of novels, storytelling, chronology and grammar, and lately I've learned about myself that I really enjoy that.

My prediction for who will take the winner's podium on October 14: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, by Karen Joy Fowler (you already know her too. She wrote The Jane Austen Book Club). We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is a gem: Powerful, clear prose that anybody can read and enjoy, moving characters and a cracking good story. If the conceit of the book hasn't been spoiled for you yet on Goodreads, please please take my advice and don't read any spoilers. Just go ahead and read this fabulous, surprising novel that will have you questioning everything you thought you knew about what it means to be human.

I'm about to start the weekend off right by cleaning out the chicken coop. But I'll be puzzling over plot twists in The Bone Clocks while I do it. Hopefully the chickens don't mind.

what will I be?

Because I haven't wanted to admit it to myself, I haven't really said anything about this before: Arthritis is hurting my hands and I can't knit much anymore.

If you don't knit (or crochet, or carve wooden decoys, or hand-quilt or something), this probably doesn't sound like such earth-shattering news.

I'm 38 years old. I was diagnosed with arthritis around the time I turned 30, but I think I've had it since adolescence. It's in all my joints, but it seems to concentrate on certain joints at certain times.

Since having Baby #2 just about a year ago, the arthritis has been concentrating on my hands. Some days the finger joints ache terribly and keep me awake at night. Some days they just feel tired, like your legs will after a long day of walking.

There's lots of good and bad advice out there about arthritis remedies. I've lived with this for a while now, so I've tried lots of things (other than the prescription drugs, in which I have no interest). Some work. Fish oil helps me a lot. Eating less dairy and sugar help a lot. Other things haven't helped me much.

Last winter I made myself a beautiful Lopi sweater that felt very much like a swan song. I knit it from beautiful, undyed, handspun yarn that I'd brought home from Vermont years ago and saved for a very special project. Though my hands ached and I could only knit one row some nights, I kept pushing through it, because I hardly ever make anything for myself, because I really really wanted to make this sweater, and because in the back of my mind I suspected this might be my final knitting project.

Since then I haven't quit entirely. I've made a couple of little baby gifts. Small things that don't take too long, even when you can only knit one or two rows at a time.

I hope that this is temporary. I hope that this is a period of the arthritis focusing on my hands, and that with enough fish oil and diet modification and targeted yoga the pain will mostly disappear from my hands, perhaps go torment some other joints and humble me in some new way I had not imagined.

In the mean time, I read. I devour books. I inhabit other worlds, where my hands fall away along with all my other disappointments and I am only consciousness - perhaps someone else's - and new stories constantly unfold. Thank God for books.

My Great Aunt Ruth was a voracious reader. My mother told me that Ruth was also an accomplished seamstress, and that she had the most beautiful handwriting, but by the time I knew her, Ruth's hands were curled into tight claws and her poor finger joints were swollen knobs that gave her no peace. She always sent birthday cards, and you never had to read the signature to know who had written such gnarled-looking letters.

I don't remember ever hearing her complain about what she could not do, though clearly she had had to give up many of the things that had once made her who she believed herself to be. I knew her as kind, insightful, gentle, meticulous and always elegant. She always wore a stylish blouse and a jaunty scarf or necklace, even for the most mundane weekday cups of tea with my grandmother.

I think about Aunt Ruth's hands a lot and wonder whether mine will someday be like hers, whether I will have to give up knitting and sewing, writing, drawing and planting tiny lettuce seeds in perfect rows in my garden. Or will I just leave my hands behind, the way I do when I'm engrossed in a really good novel, leave my whole body behind and be first and foremost a consciousness, a sentient being whose physical shortcomings (and physical abilities, for that matter) are no more relevant than the whine of a mosquito in one's ear?

For a long time I didn't say anything about this out loud, or even to myself much, because it was just too sad. Who am I, without the being able to make things?

But you know, we go through many metamorphoses in our lives. I have gone from child to adult, from unattached to lawfully wed, and from individual to Mother, whose own heart walks around outside her body in the shape of two growing little girls. I have gone from daughter-who-takes-her-incredible-father-for-granted, to woman-without-a-father. One day all these will change again. Some of these future lives I am terrified to contemplate. Some will bring more joy than I can imagine now. I'd always thought knitting would be at hand throughout. Perhaps not.

I will be here, I myself. You too, will be yourself still. That's all I really know for sure.

unchristmasing

I'm not really up for Christmas this year.

This will be the first Christmas without my Dad. He was a big kid at heart, and he was the keeper of all our family holiday traditions, from the Chinese almond cookies to the Nat King Cole Christmas album. The thought of trying to celebrate this holiday without him makes me absolutely miserable.

My mom and sister are wisely just opting out. They're going to take a long weekend away, and then lay low on the holiday itself. We've decided on no gifts, except for the kiddos.

I wish I could do the same, but the other 3/4 of my household very much want to celebrate Christmas, and as one of them is 3-1/2 years old, it seems we don't have much choice in the matter.

So I have to grin and bear it, I guess. But with a newborn baby in the house, nobody seems to be expecting much of me, and so I think I will be able to live up to their expectations quite well.

My goal is: Spend no money. I can't go crazy on hand-made crafts without spending money. I can't put pressure on myself to decorate the house festively, or bake amazing things, without spending money. The truth is, I don't want to do these things. So for the folks I absolutely must exchange gifts with, they're getting something from the Use What You Have stash. The Ghost of Christmas Present predicts a lot of little felted items coming from me this year. And I'm halfway through a pair of EZ Mocassin Socks, so someone will get those. And I think that's going to be the extent of it. Thank goodness I still enjoy knitting, with or without a holiday attached to it.

late fall

We escaped the hurricane that brought such terrifying storms to our coast and mountains. All we got here in central North Carolina was some much-needed rain. I feel almost guilty enjoying some beautiful fall weather while my relatives on the Jersey Shore struggle though yet another storm knocking out their power and disrupting their lives.

But Nature is glorious around us right now, so I will take her on those terms and be grateful.

The other day HWWLLB cut down all the faded, raggedy-looking summer flowers from our front yard - mostly zinnias and gomphrena - and stuffed them into the yard waste bin. The Little Pea took the nicest of them to school for their flower-arranging activity. We've got several this-might-be-the-last-bouquet bouquets of salvia and asters all over the place. Every time I pick a green pepper or a stalk of basil, I say a little thank-you for the harvest, in the recognition that this might be the last of it.

At the same time, the greens and lettuce are sweetening with every cold night. Now that it's generally too cold for insects, I don't have to worry about the caterpillars munching on my baby broccoli and cauliflower plants. All I have to do is pull the occasional weed and fantasize about the delicious meals they will make soon. We have enough fresh salad greens for a much larger family, and a nice selection of dark leafy greens to round out any meal.

I'm awful at cleaning out the garden. I cling to the memory of the summer bounty, even if it is a hazy memory of what I wanted it to be, rather than a clear picture what it actually was. Once the stalks are spent and the disheveled vines are everywhere, you could forget that the cucumbers never produced or the squash were all mutilated by vine borers. It was a glorious summer garden. Now it's spent. I hate clearing away the debris afterwards, even though I know it would mean fewer disappointments next year from over-wintering marauders.

Right now my eye is on the leafy green things, wondering which of them will be sweet and tasty and abundant enough to grace our Thanksgiving table. There will be plenty of mustard greens, Chinese cabbage, Russian kale and red sails lettuce. The tatsoi will be my own little treasure that I keep just for myself (and the Little Pea), my very favorite green and one that I never seem to be able to grow very much of. In the freezer are two big tubs of roasted pumpkin, the surprise harvest from the volunteer pie pumpkin plant that came up in the middle of a vegetable bed and braved the vine borers to give us several adorable, perfectly round, bright orange pumpkins.

Surprises, disappointments, bitter and sweet. I'm giving thanks for a little garden that helps me ride out life's storms every season.

There is nothing good to say about cancer.

It's been tough times lately in the Pea household. I haven't had much to say about knitting or my garden, so I haven't been posting here.

But I do have a lot of other stuff on my mind, and probably none of it is foreign to any of you, so maybe I will say something about it.

This is my first up-close experience with cancer treatment. Going through this yourself, or with a loved one, is the last thing that anyone should ever have to do.

I hate that my Dad has to go through this. I hate what it does to my poor Mom. I hate cancer. I hate chemotherapy. I'm angry at the whole world. I'm especially angry at industries who pump cancer-causing pollutants into our air and water and say it's too expensive to do things differently. You know what's really too expensive? Cancer treatment. In every conceivable way. Too expensive.

So I am full of anger and frustration.

I'm also full of sadness, as you can imagine. I can't say more about that now, because I don't feel like crying in public and I'm writing this post on the train.

Here's something good that I have to say: If you have lived a good life and been kind and generous with others, it is amazing how kind and generous they will be with you when you need it.

My Dad is my hero. I have always admired and emulated him. He is one of the kindest, funniest, most generous people you could meet. And now that he's going through the trial of his life, I am just overwhelmed at the kindness and generosity of our family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, old acquaintances... frankly, of the whole world. Karma is an amazing thing.

In the darkest moments, at the worst times, I feel spiritually and almost physically lifted up and buoyed along by the love of everyone around us. I have never experienced anything like this before. It reminds me of stories of drowning people pushed up to the surface by dolphins and somehow carried safely to shore. It's so beautiful and sustaining. I can't imagine how we (or anyone) could make it through a time like this without the support of friends.

All the same, I would rather not be experiencing it. I would rather be enjoying this beautiful spring, which is somehow bursting with life and beauty even though it seems more like the world should be ending right now. I would rather be building new garden beds, working with my Dad on home fixer-up projects, or learning to use the spinning wheel that a dear friend lent me recently. I would rather be taking the Little Pea on visits to the playground, instead of the hospital.

When people write stuff about cancer, I think they usually are supposed to put a positive spin on the whole thing, like about the amazing life lessons that cancer taught them. Or what they learned about themselves while going through hell. I have learned a lot of stuff that on the whole, I think I'd be just as well off without knowing. I didn't want to know what I know now about chemo, and all its various complications. I don't have anything good to say about cancer. Not one good thing.

knit through it

an old picture of my home knitting nest, circa 2007. today's nest is sadly lacking in feline companionship.

I'm not sure what exactly I want to say about things right now.

I am blessed, that's for sure. I have a roof over my head, a loving companion and a sweet healthy child. We have enough food. We have jobs. We have friends and family. It's important to remind myself of these things, to keep everything in perspective.

As my sister said, it could be a lot worse. Some families have much worse to deal with. Abuse. Neglect. Nobody who loves them.

We have lots of love. We are lucky.

My dad is sick. My dad is 62. My dad was the picture of health until very recently. Now he is sick. Now we are spending too many long, boring days in the hospital waiting for the next test, the next update, the next procedure.

The knitting nest on my couch is frequently transformed into a bed for my mom, since our house is so much closer to the hospital. The Little Pea is so happy to see more of her grandmother, but bewildered by the absence of her buddy, my mom's other half, her grandfather.

He is at home right now. He is waiting... we're all waiting... waiting to find out what the course of treatment will be. Waiting to know what the prognosis is. Waiting to find out what to expect.

There is certainly lots of time for knitting. Miles and miles of stockinette stitch, acres of repeating patterns... I could be knitting afghans or men's sweaters, or many many pairs of warm socks. I am struggling a bit right now with what project to pick up and take for these long hours of waiting. As if something in the choice I make will tell us something about the future.

winter catch-up

January: finally there's time to stop and sit down and clear one's head.

It's a mad dash through December. I knitted like a madwoman from the middle of November until the week after Christmas when I was still furiously finishing gifts for visiting relatives (one right under the recipient's nose!). I knitted so much and so fast that I didn't manage to snap a picture of any of it, which is kind of pathetic for Ravelry addict like me.

Above are a pair of mittens I made for myself in November when I realized one day that my hands were cold, and I did in fact have the power to do something about it. I fished out some wonderful Noro Kureyon Sock that I'd bought specifically for mitten-making, from a clearance bin at a yarn store in Vermont during our summer vacation (I think this yarn has been discontinued). I rocked through them in a few days, picked up the needles again and started powering through holiday gifts.

Here's what I made in December: three pairs of mittens, a little birdie, a lovely hat, four twisty cuffs, and a Christmas stocking (which was actually mostly knitted in November). I can't believe I finished all that in a month. I am generally a slow, plodding knitter, but in December I was a machine.

But it has left me wanting to do more creative knitting this winter - having fun making things for me, or maybe not exactly for me, maybe for someone else to have in the end, but because it's a particular technique or color or something that I want to explore. Not just because I think that maybe someone else will like it.

So I'm working on a design for a little girl's jumper in Malabrigo Ríos (UK and Aussie readers, I mean a little dress thingy, not a pullover). And I'm getting ready to write up a fun post on some of my learnings about mitten knitting, since I've done rather a lot of it lately and feel like maybe I have a nugget or two to share about it.

But most of all, I'm dreaming of knitting myself a big, warm snuggly old-fashioned-looking sweater with the wonderful yarn I got in Vermont over the summer. And I'd like to have it ready rather soonish so that I can wear it in this winter weather... but I'm not exactly a speedy knitter. So maybe it will be for next winter. Maybe it will be one of the spectacular fishermen's sweaters from the book I got for Christmas: Patterns for Jerseys, Guernseys and Arans: Fishermen's Sweaters from the British Isles, by Gladys Thompson. What a wonderful book! I am snuggling up with it when I go to bed at night, leafing through wonderful historic photos and reading about the author's anthropological ramblings through the British Isles in the first half of the last century. It's as good as a Henry James novel for transporting you to another time and place.

greetings from the backyard

Hello from our backyard. This is where I've been spending most of my time these last few beautiful weeks. Now that it's getting quite hot, most of the time in the backyard involves a hose or wading pool.



I can't say that there's been much knitting going on. There's been small knitting. Lots of friends are having babies (including one you may know), and so I've been knitting away on bootees and caps and toys and such.

But I'm not feeling very inspired to design. I have lots of sketches piled up, but none of them are singing out to me at the moment, "knit me! knit me!" The squeaky knitting project gets the grease around here, to mix metaphors, so the sketchbook is going unnoticed right now.

The garden is going like gangbusters. We recently finished up a big spring harvest of peas and radishes and lettuce, and now the garden is in a little lull before the tomatoes and peppers and tomatillos and beets are ready. In the mean time, there is chard. Always chard. I love swiss chard, I love how reliable it is in all sorts of weather, and this year even the caterpillars seem to be leaving it alone, so we're enjoying quite a lot of it.



The chicks grew up quickly. In the foreground is Pepper, a refugee chicken that our neighbors passed along becuase she was being beaten up by her flock. She has risen to the top in our little flock, where she is the eldest and is teaching the others to scratch, peck and squawk effectively. She's a year old so already laying eggs and generally earning her keep (unlike some other freeloaders I could name).

The Little Pea is going to be 2 years old in less than two weeks. I can't believe it! Every moment passes at about three times the speed that moments used to, back in the halcyon days of my youth, before I knew all that I know now. But I do know some wonderful things now.

what i did on my winter vacation

Apparently I took a little blog vacation this winter. I think that perhaps the vacation is over and it's time to peek my nose out again.

Now that I'm emerging from my hibernation den, it seemed like I ought to report on what I've been doing since we last visited, when I was baking a large number of apple cakes. Here's the list:



Sprucing up the garden

I made these two lovely raised beds out of cedar. Aren't they nice? (Don't look too closely). I'm a horrible carpenter, and I don't have a saw, so I had to rely on the lumber place to cut the boards down for me, and then I did a rather amateur job of putting them together. The boards were all rather wildly off the 4-feet-zero-inches target, so the boxes are crooked and overlapping and look like they were built by second-graders in shop class. But hey, they're mine, they're full of dirt and now there are even little seedlings growing in them, so I'm satisfied. Perhaps we will finally be able to grow a carrot longer than 1.5 inches!



Knitting (a little bit)

I'm not sure how it's happening, but I seem to become a slower knitter by the day. I've always been on the slow side, but now I can't seem to find more than 15 minutes at a time to knit anything. Half a row is about all I can seem to generate in one sitting, which makes for a pretty pokey pace. I made the mittens above for my sister's birthday in January, and after that made the pretty sweater being modeled by the Little Pea at the start of this post. Now I'm working on a spring cardi for her, which has not progressed much despite an enthusiastic start. I have tons of design sketches just waiting for someone (me??) to put yarn and needles together and make them real. Did I really used to crank out a design every month or two? Who was that masked woman?



reading (a lot)

Since having a child, I seem to have become a super-reader. I can kill a 1,000-page novel in the time it takes most people to read the Sunday newspaper. I don't just read one book. If I like a book, I go out and get everything that writer has ever published and read them all, in chronological order. I'm currently working my way through A.S. Byatt's back catalog, to my great satisfaction. What a joy her prose is. And I am in love with all of her characters (except the ones I hate, but I really really hate them, in a deeply joyful way, like hating Duke's basketball team or Sarah Palin).



Chasing a rambunctious toddler.

I can't believe the Little Pea is going to be 2 in just a couple of months. She is a lot of fun, and a little bundle of energy.



There are chickens in my house.

This picture was taken about three weeks ago, when the chicks were sweet, cuddly, adorable little fluffballs who hardly knew how to scratch yet. Now they are ungainly adolescents who are overcrowding their dog crate, eating copious amounts of chicken chow and pooping nonstop. All this in my back room. The room where our kitchen table and my desk are. We have a small house. I'm not sure how much longer I can handle the indoor chicken arrangement. Soon they will have enough feathers, and it will be warm enough, for them to go live outside in the chicken coop. Will that happen before HWWLLB and I run out of patience and roast them for dinner? Only time will tell.

And finally... I made a Facebook page for f.pea. Please go Like it! I'm thinking that I might send the first 50 likers a nice surprise. But I have no idea what it is yet. Maybe it will be an adolescent chicken.

resolutions, warm fingers

It's January, it's biting cold, it's snowing all the time in North Carolina for heaven's sake. It's time to knit mittens.

I just completed (finally!) the Norwegian mittens, and they have been dutifully mailed off to HWWLLB's lovely mama, belated for Christmas but right on time for her January birthday. And I am hooked. As you can see, they are beautiful, but they're also warm, comfortable, practical, and a relatively quick knit.

I haven't knitted mittens in years, because in the past I knitted them with one yarn color and found that a single layer of knitted fabric just lets too much wind through to be warm enough for me. I've been wearing fleece gloves ever since. But stranded mittens! Of course! Those smart Scandinavians know all about how to stay warm, don't they? It took me a decade of knitting to wake up to the genius of Norwegian mittens, but here we are. I think there are more mittens in my near future.

So, I have been thinking and thinking about a New Year's resolution. I like making resolutions, and in the past I've gotten pretty ambitious with them, resolving to do things like giving up plastic and practicing yoga every single day. Needless to say, they don't always stick, but I think it's a worthwhile exercise.

But I've been having a hard time coming up with resolutions this year, perhaps because I don't feel very ambitious. One of the things I noticed about 2010 is that I worked much too hard. I put way too much pressure on myself to perform, and I think it's telling that I didn't take a single vacation day all year (until December 23rd, when I realized I had been insane). The only days I took off from work were for funerals. : (

So I think this is my resolution for 2011: Stop pushing myself so hard. Expect less from myself. Do less.

I'm not going to put any qualifiers on this one. I'm just going to try - less.

season's greetings

We're snowed in at HWWLLB's parents' house in the mountains. It's wonderful.

It was such a busy, hectic fall. Being snowed in over Christmas means that basically everything has stopped. We didn't travel to see more relatives, I'm not trying to cram in any work, we're not even making trips to the grocery store. We're here with yarn and books and toys, finding little ways to have fun, and taking lots of naps. I really needed this break. It took a foot of snow to get me to slow down and relax!

I have two knitting projects going here: one secret and one decoy. The secret project was supposed to be a Christmas gift, but it wasn't done in time, so it will be a birthday gift in January instead. It's Elizabeth Zimmerman's Norwegian mittens, and they are the most beautiful things I've ever knitted by far. I keep stroking and gazing at them (which may be why they weren't finished in time for Christmas!).

The decoy is because we're hanging out with the mitten recipient, so I can't very well gaze upon the mittens (or knit them) in front of her. So I'm working on a bulky jacket for the Pea with big fat giant colorful Lang Mille Colori Big yarn. It's beautiful and soft and quick and fun.

It's hard to fit all this knitting in between naps and baking, but somehow I'm managing. I hope you're having a wonderful holiday. This is just what I wanted for Christmas!

recently

I knitted a smooshee man as a gift for one of the Pea's friends. She enjoyed taking him for a test run in the backyard.



Instead of trick-or-treating, we spent Halloween playing at the state park just outside city limits.



If you guessed that all those pom-poms I made were for a broccoli costume, you were right (and also, you are amazingly psychic!). She liked the costume for about the first 15 minutes, but spent the rest of the afternoon pulling on the pom-poms saying "OFF! OFF!" The broccoli looks a bit steamed in all of the pictures. HA HA! Steamed! Broccoli! Ah, just made myself laugh. Whew.



I can't believe it's November already. November 7th, to be exact. Holy moly. I hope you're having a great fall.

october afternoons

We are playing outside quite a bit lately.

I'm so grateful that the heat of summer has finally dissipated, and we can go outdoors again and enjoy fresh air and sunshine. This summer really over-stayed its welcome. Don't get me wrong; I like summer, I do. But I don't like hot sticky temperatures, and by the end of September if I had to sit through another 90+ degree day, I was going to lose my mind. So October has been quite welcome.

On my days off, the Little Pea and I are enjoying long walks, romps on the playground, fooling around in our backyard, and hanging out with friends. Yesterday afternoon we walked around the corner to a friend's house and whiled away a couple of hours just playing and laughing with them in the yard. Bliss!

Courduroy, jeans, sweaters, blazers, warm socks, scarves, boots and closed shoes... I've missed them all so much. Welcome back, fresh air!

The crisp weather has also sent me back to the kitchen and the knitting bag, two places I've longed for all summer. Somehow I was only able to make cursory visits to both. Today I made pancakes for breakfast, grilled cheese for lunch, I'm simmering up a big pot of vegetable stock for soups, and I'm baking cookies.

I've also got a big list of knitting projects competing for my attention: a sweater for the Little Pea's new doll (seen above), a sweater for the Pea herself, mittens for the Pea before our family camping trip next weekend, because it's going to be chilly, Norwegian mittens for the Pea's grandma for Christmas, and an owlet for a friend who will be turning five soon.

Maybe I'll get some of them done on the car trip to the mountains. I can't wait to see the fall color in the Blue Ridge, and to sit by a campfire eating hot apple turnovers in the chilly air. Apple turnovers are one of the staples of the family camping trip. A group of us has to spend half an afternoon peeling apples at the campsite, but it's well worth it.

What are you savoring on these crisp fall days?

sick, sick, sick

Everyone is sick at my house. It is quite tiresome.

I'm knitting this scarf, slowly but surely, and the warm fall color and silky yarn are cheering me, a little. But it's a drag being sick, having a sick partner, and a sick baby is worst of all.

Ever since we started at a child care center at the beginning of August, it seems there is a new funk every week. First the little one gets it, then HWWLLB, then me. Repeat ad nauseum. Nobody feels like making dinner. Nobody feels like cleaning up the house. We are all very tired of it.

I hear that this is the standard for the first year of child care. And that if you don't use child care, it will be the first year of kindergarten. The family gets every little bug that's going around. After six weeks of it, I can't imagine making it through the rest of the year. Blegh.

Sniffle.

Whine.

Cough.

knitting through it

There's nothing in particular that I can pinpoint really, that has made the last month so stressful, but I'm glad that tomorrow starts a new month and perhaps a less hectic one. Lots of commitments to keep, lots of major deadlines at work and not enough time to get the work done, not enough down time to keep me from frazzling out around the edges. We've also been having a nasty heat wave, which has been wearing on everyone's nerves.

pphhbthlthhhhhhhhhhhh

(that was a big, big exhale...)

When I get very stressed, it tends to make me depressed. When I get depressed, it tends to make me hole up in a corner and not enjoy the world much. The more I do that, the more down I feel... I'm sure that many of you are familiar with this unhealthy inward and downward spiral.

If it weren't for knitting and weekly yoga classes, I think that things could get kind of serious. Fortunately, I just get sad and grumpy for a while, until I finally realize what's going on and slap myself upside the head a couple of times.

smack, smack!

I really needed that.

Today, a pair of old friends came over for lunch, and we spent a leisurely, blessedly-cool afternoon visiting with each other and the little one, taking a long walk, comparing garden notes and just enjoying good company. I also cooked some, blocked a sweater that really needed it, and tidied up the house a bit as well. All things that made me feel human and more connected to the rest of the world -- maybe even connected enough to write a tiny bit.

Hello. How are you today?

oh, hello

Yes, it's me. It's been kind of quiet around here.

I seem to have misplaced my camera, so no pretty pictures to liven up this apologetic post.

I like making lists, so here's a list of what I've been doing since the last time I wrote:

• Spent a fabulous weekend with Bugheart and Grub and took the Little Pea for her first swim at the city pool
• Started knitting a shrug (at Bugheart's urging) with some scrumptious Misti Alpaca sock yarn
• Was interviewed by the wonderful Shari for a tour of our garden on Cafe Mom
• Was interviewed by the teevee news at work (no link to that one!)
• Picked several zuchinnis the size of my arm
• Went to a fabulous 1950's-themed wedding and got to hang out with lots of old gradschool friends and meet their children.
• Started looking for a new child care situation for the Little Pea (*sigh*). Our wonderful, loving nanny is going back to school. We are so happy for her, and so sad for us.
• Was overwhelmed by the generosity of my friends while raising about $1,000 for Student Action with Farmworkers
• Danced my hiney off at the Bee Ball
• Hemmed a few pairs of pants (pants are all suddenly longer - I blame the high-heel craze)
• Work work work work work

I'm also reading Grendel by John Gardener, and making lists of unfinished projects that I swear I will finish this summer.

But not blogging, checking Ravelry, or otherwise spending much time on the internets. Hm. Well. What have you been up to?