Sitting, Knitting

Another school year is almost over, and with it will end the Wednesday Wait -- that 20-minute limbo between dropping one daughter off at work and picking the other up after her once-weekly Library Club duties.  It seems silly to go home, shut off the car, unlock the house, kill a few minutes, lock the house back up and head back over to the school, so I steal the time to sit in the car and knit (or crochet).  June would normally see temperatures too hot for car-crafting, but yesterday was cool and dry again -- conducive to working on a slip-stitch heel flap.

Might I Recommend...

...remembering that resolution to only work on one project at a time?  Or maybe one knitting and one crochet project at a time?  Or maybe one crochet and two knitting if the needle sizes are different?  Can you see how this unfinished project quagmire gets started?

Overexposure compliments of an impossibly sunny, chilly, June Wednesday morning!

Really, though, I just want to remember for future reference (and recommend at the same time) a few sock-knitting resources that have been very helpful:

1.  Cuff-down sock "recipe" (and other great tips such as how to prevent ladders) from Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's Knitting Rules!: The Yarn Harlot's Bag of Knitting Tricks.

2.  Digging a little bit here and here produced several "A-HA!" moments as I struggled with some key concepts in combination knitting.

3.  And a super-duper video that teaches the kitchener stitch:



All I need now is a little bit of willpower to finish all these projects before I start something new!

Crocheted Hands-Free Purse

I amateurishly sewed up this bag before a wintertime trip to Atlantic City.  The idea was that it would be just big enough for necessities (such as my camera and all the money I would win), and could be worn  under a jacket, over the shoulder and around the neck, leaving my hands free to beat the odds at all the slot machines in every casino on the Boardwalk.

The trip was a bust (I think it was the one where my husband ended up in the AtlantiCare emergency room with a kidney stone), but the purse idea worked pretty well.  I considered translating it to crochet but couldn't decide what stitch to use, and the idea worked its way to the back of my mental queue...until I saw this at Tangled Happy.  Basketweave.  Perfect.

Too impatient (as usual) to actually follow a pattern, I did a 2 x 2 basketweave stitch over 28 stitches (the first and last stitch in each row are not part of the pattern; they'll probably be used for sewing the purse together).  Worsted-weight yarn and a size 8 (or H) hook make for a good sturdy fabric.  And the plan was for a messenger-style bag, closing up with a flap.

But once the bag was just flap-length shy of being done, I got distracted (as is so often the case) and it's been sitting unfinished since the most recent spate of obsessive sock knitting began.  I'd really like to get it done, though, and crocheting with heavier yarn doesn't seem like such a bad idea on days like today when it's a cool, humidity-free 71 degrees.

A Favorite Thing: Cicadas (of which there are none at my house)

Return of the Cicadas from motionkicker on Vimeo.

Nothing says summer to me like the sound of cicadas.  And in top-form, ultra-nerd fashion, I've been waiting for the 17-year cicadas since early May -- following the online cicada tracker, reading all the news items about the Brood II "invasion", watching videos about their life cycle.  I recorded the recent Science Channel show about them.

And every day I listen for them.  Cicadas?  No, just birds.  Cicadas?  No, just a car idling somewhere.

Sure it's been unseasonably cold here.  In fact, one would not have been uncomfortable wearing a winter coat last Saturday.  But the rest of Memorial Day weekend had ushered in a warming trend.  Surely my town had reached the 65-degree soil temperature that magically inspires the cicadas to emerge from the ground.  After all,  Claudia had cicadas four days ago and yesterday morning, and she lives north of me where logic (flawed, I guess) would dictate a later arrival of appropriate soil temperature.

Wednesday got off to a chilly start, but by late afternoon temperatures had topped out in the 80s.  Something about the breeze and the angle of the sun reminded me of being at the shore, as I sat on the porch listening intently for the cicadas which have inexplicably not yet arrived.

On Thursday, karma broke my pinky toe.  That morning I had taken one daughter to the oral surgeon to have a tooth pulled.  I was (and remain) concerned about my husband's bronchitis,  and was hoping another daughter had found relief from what appeared to be a migraine.  It crossed my mind that I was the only one in the house without a "medical issue" that day.  And then I smashed my bare foot on the leg of a chair.

But broken pinky toes have become almost routine for me, and at least it isn't the foot I drive with or operate the foot-pedal I use to do my transcription job.  Actually, the need to elevate it occasionally has become a good excuse to spend some extra time outside -- listening for cicadas in the now 90-plus degree, cicada-friendly heat.

Cicadas?  No, just a breeze rustling the leaves high up in the trees.  Cicadas?  No, just a train approaching on the very nearby tracks.

So now as I write this, it's Friday evening and my neighborhood remains a cicada-free zone.  What gives?  I guess I'll give them another day and go check out some of the Favorite Things at Mockingbird Hill Cottage.

Obsessed

So Mother's Day was lovely.

At brunch time, the girls set the table for Dad's famous potato omelet.  He also made stuffed artichokes and barbecued chuck steaks for dinner and the grown-up kids came over.  I got impossibly thoughtful gifts from everybody and didn't have to lift a finger all day.  So I knitted socks.

It's been wonderful to have a true springtime this year.  There's the odd 85-degree day (usually following an unexpectedly cold day), but most days have been sunny and breezy with just enough rainy days to keep the flowers and vegetables watered.

Early May above...Late May below

And since it's mostly been not-too-hot and not-too-cold, it's been great for spending time on the porch.

Knitting socks.

My husband is battling a particularly nasty case of asthmatic bronchitis which saw him needing an emergency breathing treatment on Saturday.  But by Memorial Day, he was cooking again -- barbecued ribs this time.

There's potato salad in that bowl there.  I used to be afraid to make potato salad.  My mother's recipe is delicious, but it called for cooking the potatoes whole, and mine always came out either over- or undercooked, until I found a tip online last summer that said to peel and dice the potatoes into 3/4" chunks, cover with water, heat to boiling, and cook for 10 minutes (if that's not enough, keep cooking and checking every two minutes).  The relatively uniform size of the potato chunks ensures that they cook evenly.

Nemesis defeated.

The girls made some fantastic peach cobbler together.  Without arguing!  It was like a miracle!

And with all that cooking help, I had more time to...knit socks.

(I might have a problem.)

Knitting, Fasting and Falling

Judging by my family's reaction ("Oh, a sock.  That's nice."), this accomplishment will probably not be as exciting to ANYONE as it is to me, but I just finished knitting my first cuff-down sock:

Don't look too closely!  I knit combination-style, where the stitches sit "funny" on the needles.  It's great for speed and makes purling a breeze, but I have not yet mastered a nice-looking, right-slanting  k2tog.

And this week may not have been the best time to delve into the mechanics of knitting, because I'm on Day 3 of a three-day juice fast and feeling a little light-headed:

It's not as bad as the screaming woman on the glass (from a mystery dinner theater) would have you believe.

One week after Easter (inspired by my sister's attempt at the same regimen), I started a "no white food" diet and it's been very effective, both for weight loss and increasing my energy level.

Then I came across the idea of a juice fast, and thought dropping a quick couple of pounds would be good motivation to help me continue to stick to the reduced-carb diet.  At the very least, I'm going to be so appreciative of any solid food by tomorrow morning that even lettuce will seem like Filet Mignon!.

Want to try it?  Here's what I did.

In each of three large bowls, I put:

3 oz spinach
1/3 bunch of kale (chopped and stems removed)
1 apple (cored and chunked, but not peeled)
1 pear (also cored and chunked, but not peeled)
2 stalks of celery (chopped)
1/8 of a cantaloupe (peeled, of course)
1 Tbsp honey
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp cinnamon (I used a whole teaspoon and it was too much)

Each bowl of stuff fits in a blender container (add enough water to make it blend properly).  Liquify it and put it in a pitcher, adding enough water to each batch to make 96 ounces.

Instead of eating, I drank six 16-oz cups of this stuff for two days (and I'm about halfway through the third day right now).  I'm not hungry, and even though my family had pizza one night and I made pulled pork sandwiches for them the next, I sat at the table during dinner -- truly not feeling at all deprived -- and wasn't tempted in the least.

Oddly enough, what looked most appealing to me was the salad they were eating -- chopped tomatoes and cucumbers, sliced black olives, chick peas and chunks of mozzarella cheese in Italian dressing.  Does one's appetite begin to favor fruits and vegetables when bread and pasta have been virtually eliminated for a couple of weeks?  Hmmm....

And while I didn't fall off my juice fast, Caesar did fall into a hole:

My husband was digging for the footings that will support the little deck that's going behind our new dining room addition.  Caesar meanwhile was playing his familiar crazy version of solo soccer when his disgusting, muddy tennis ball rolled across the patio and into one of the footing holes.

This dog would probably jump off the roof of a skyscraper to chase a ball, so naturally he dove headfirst into the hole.  In the time it took my husband to grab his phone in order to snap a picture of Caesar's hind legs scrambling in the air, he had somehow righted himself -- still in possession of the errant ball -- but nonetheless stuck!

Iron Man 3 this weekend?

A Favorite Thing: Annuals

Perhaps it was because winter seemed to be hanging on especially long.  Or perhaps it was because last spring and summer, we didn't plant flowers around the giant tree in the backyard or in our ubiquitous stone flowerpots.

 Whatever the reason, I could not wait for the annuals to come out this year.  And when I went grocery shopping on Wednesday morning, Shop-Rite (of all places) had some of the most healthy-looking plants I had ever seen!

Marigolds are not usually one of my favorites, but these were irresistible!  I added purple petunias to the cart, and what I thought were white impatiens (they turned out to be begonias, but that's just fine, too).

Most of the plants went into the brick planter around our ancient fruitless mulberry tree, after my husband was kind enough to turn over the soil.

The rest went into the stone flowerpots that my husband made in the tradition of his grandfather.  In fact, one or two of them actually were made by his grandfather, probably over 60 years ago.

Some oregano was bravely sprouting in along the side of one pot, and now it's being guarded by a couple of marigolds.

There's some knitting going on, too.  I had two skeins of sock yarn (can't remember exactly, but it might have been Loops & Threads Luxury Sock) crocheted into a triangular thing that was too small to be a shawl and too big to be a scarf.  It's turning into these socks now (thanks for the inspiration, Vera!).  This will be the first time I've knitted a cuff-down pair of socks, so we'll see how it goes.

We have a houseguest this weekend, too.  It's Sadie, our...granddog (cringe), who I believe is the most photographed dog in all of the known universe (judging by my daughter's Facebook page).  And yes, she is wearing a tutu.  In fact, she arrived on Thursday with more luggage than the average human would need for a weekend, including several outfits and a raincoat.

And for any of you who follow my other daughter's Legends of Aeternus blog and noticed that there were no posts this week, it's because she is battling a particularly nasty case of bronchitis that has really knocked her for a loop.

Linking up with Claudia at Mockingbird Hill Cottage for A Favorite Thing -- check it out!