Buttons and camels

The boys ran in with arms full of mail, dumping a shower of catalogs and letters onto me. Among them was a brown envelope from Canada. Sarah sent a little hand-knit vest for the impending baby, who has been contentedly stretching small feet into my ribs and making no signs of exit.

I love the little garment so much. The boys laid it on my belly and made d'awwwws over the little buttons.

I'm a bad snail-mail friend, having temporarily relinquished my income and being unable to reciprocate. But in this past hard year the packages and letters have come, flying in from Ontario and Santa Cruz and Bakersfield, and I feel so loved and ineptly grateful. I'm gathering myself, everything is falling into place in increments, and I'll be back up and sending good things back out into the world soon.

Robotaday recently sent a box of lung-friendly fiber, with a spindle and alpaca fleece so exciting that I haven't dared try them yet. I read articles about spinning and look at them greedily, waiting for the day I can sit outside with a tall cold beer and uninterrupted hours to make a studious attempt. Kids play. Babies sleep. It will happen. In the meantime, I wound the skein of camel and silk she had tucked into the box, and freestyled a small Lothlorien pullover. The baby stretched and still refused to come out.

I am feeling slow and quiet and anxious in these long last days, but I'm here.

Tender moments

We sprawled on the couch as a family, watching a movie. The boys were all young shoulders and curls. "Look at my handsome boys, mom," I said. "They're pretty nice," she agreed. Then Gavin reached over, poked his brother, and Leif whipped around, grabbed Gavin's hand, tried to hit him with it, and punched dad in the balls.

Warms the heart, it does.

kilt hose for the small-legged

When you can buy a good pair socks for $3, it doesn't make economical sense to knit your own at $8-20 a skein. Kilt hose, however, can run you $40-80 on the market, and suddenly it makes a whole hell of a lot more sense to just make your own. And while it can take me the better part of a year to make a damn pair of socks, I will inexplicably turn out hose inside of two weeks. A niche! I have found mine!

There are not a lot of patterns for kilt hose. I bought an old book about knitting kilt hose, and it was full of vague guidelines and uncharted, picture-less directions written in terms nobody uses anymore. I read it anyway, and thinking about making my own collection of kilt hose patterns. Traditional hose! Modern hose! Military hose! Flat knit and fancy and utilitarian hose!

 Hose hose hose hose

So I have written the first pattern and made up a pair of simple children's hose.

Children's hose need to be simple, quick enough to knock out before their limbs grow out of them, and durable. The trick is to use slightly thicker yarn on slightly smaller needles, to make a fabric that will hold up a bit and not puddle around the ankles. Here I used a dk weight yarn, worked out a simple cuff that looks fancier than it is, and used single instead of paired decreases to accommodate small sausagey legs.

Around here, the Highland Games come on the heels of Burns' Night, so there is the better part of a year to knit up some nice hose for the kilt season.

And I already need to get cracking on the next pair, because some aspiring RSCDS dance instructor already wore a hole in the ones I made him last year. Since he's bottling a batch of home-brewed hard cider for me this weekend, though, it's a fair trade.

moody

I used to worry a lot about the drive to kaaawa, which hosts the occasional smooshed jogger because of a bend in the road. Then I spent four years driving the long winding cliffs of Maui, and it put the 15 minute stretch of beachside highway in perspective a bit. I drove up to the beach, listening to music and feeling stupid about fussing all those years ago. There is a lot I would change, if I could go back and pry my hands loose before I strangled the things I was so scared to lose.

I discovered years ago that little soothes like sitting on a beach in the middle of the week in the longest part of winter. The same song has played on the radio during these drives for the past 6 years. A few weeks ago, we traded in the Chevy for a smaller car - a car so plain and functional as to be invisible to all speed traps - and its radio is just as possessed as the last one.

Near the infamous bend in the road, traffic halted, and I rubbernecked dutifully as we inched past three cop cars and a truckload of surfers. A too-young teen was slumped on the ground against the fence with plastic cuffs and a "well, shit" expression as he watched traffic go by. The cops were in jeans and body armor, clustered in the shade over paperwork on the hoods of their Chargers. Glimpses of lives I don't intersect.

I sat on the beach and read while Leif drew swirls in the beach with sticks. Tourists stood in the surf and jumped and flexed for cameras. I feel like a time traveler, watching happy moments become old vacation memories.

We ate an orange and I sunned my ham hocks.

Everything happens the only way it can, I tell myself. I don't believe myself, but it's a nice thought.

Busywork

I'm mad at my knitting, but it's doing ok despite me.

This productivity while I defer to a more patient math tutor than myself. Howling "rawr just do it!" and throwing star stickers in the air doesn't appear to have any educational benefits. Its gotten the floor pretty clean with all the sweeping time-outs I've given myself, though.

Still no crimes to solve, except for Who's Been Peeing on the Scale. It's down to one of the cats.

Death Match - MAMMOTH

Prehysteria. Mammothry... Werewolves.

Prehistoric weremammoth has a sad.

All her friends are extinct. The books she's been reading are ancient, and she hasn't had anyone to sharpen her claws wit  on for ages.

Now she just watches youtube videos and gets into arguments with paleo-dieters on the Internet.

Weremammoth contemplates next evolutionary step.

Robotaday and Yermits have more mammoths. sarahapple has been acting out various plagues throughout history, and will be joining us later is back among the living.

Week 34

Maura sleeps by my legs all night, and has decided that my feet are her enemy, savaging my toes any time I move in my sleep. Because I am nice and understanding, I slowly inch them closer and closer to her throughout the night, until they are tucked under her tummy, then dig my toes in and tickle her violently. All her extremities - including her tail - sprout sharp teeth at this point, but ha, that is why feet are thick skinned.

My mother has started pining for Indiana, daydreaming about apple trees and wood cabins and 5 acres to build an aviary without neighbors. I remind her about wet wool, and icy roads, and children with chapped faces, because I am helpful like that, but I knit her a pair of socks to make her feel cozy. And I knit them in three days; my new speed knitting powers owing to a mishap with lactic acid a few nights ago, not unlike the origin story of a very sedentary superhero. Drowsing out of a deep and delicious dream, I curled my toes down before I could wake enough to remember NO NEVER POINT THE TOES and triggered a massive leg cramp that tore my muscles all to hell and inflated my leg like a zeppelin. Where was the foot-eating alarm-cat when this happened, I would like to know? An ounce of prevention is worth a pint of blood, as the saying goes.

And here is an unrelated picture of Astrid as couch throw.

Notable: I managed to get the child up to the topside playground, winning a battle against gravity. There I drew a tree while throwing a stick for him to fetch. Parenting is easy.

turtles and bread

My mom's procedure went without incident, apart from my appalling city driving.

So things are back to the usual slow roll. 

This is still happening. And I am down to one pair of pants that fit. Will be improvising some sheeting for the final weeks.

I baked bread that looked like a turkey.

Ran out of yarn on the second kilt hose. Ordered more, in scant quantity. While waiting, started a new project, which I will also run out of yarn for.

(Improvised toddler verson of the Intertwined Cables Pullover)

The kid has just this week made a brain connection between letter sounds and the words he wants to write. I attempt to help pad this vital thread of brain fat with repetition and piles of buttered bread.

I like the slow pace of things, but have started thinking about being one of those knitters who solves crime while drinking tea and cutting witty remarks. So far, have been spying on the neighbor kid, who appears to be dealing drugs at the dialysis center, using a basketball as his secret signal. Haven't figured out exactly how to go about sleuthing, being as a) nobody has died conveniently on my lawn and b) the neighbor kid has known me for 10 years and will probably recognize me. Crime solving is hard. Just need the right shoes, probably.

Slowing down

Heavy. Tired. We have momentum in the mornings that ends in fat feet and a spine that wants to stay adhered to the couch. We hurry to sweep, load dishes, change laundry, paint, do worksheets, and make dinner before everyone gets home, sucking every molecule of vertical stamina from my iron supplements.

I have been having moments of comfort and happiness, of excitement at the end of a new milk frother and assortment of k-cups. The old dark thoughts have gone walking again at night when my guard goes down, and they catch me while driving sometimes.

We went to a Royal Scottish Country Dance party and the highland instructor blocked the door after seeing the length of the boy-child's legs. I sat knitting kilt hose for those stick-insect limbs while the old ladies nodded and winked at each other.

Feet like a draft horse.

Pattern to come as I write it down. And OF COURSE I ran out of yarn 3 inches from the toe and needed to order another ball, which of course is back-ordered until February. Became overcome by visions of rampant hose knitting and bought a book of old kilt hose patterns. Who am I?

The cats and my mother have stolen the ugly striped blanket I made, and huddle under it all together against the freezing evening rain, so I have started a new baby blanket.

Umaro, by Jared Flood (Brooklyn Tweed)

Editing illustrations, which I am always certain ruins them completely.

Things are slowly moving along.

The quilt is DONE

ITISDONEITISDONE

Now Leif just needs a bed. This being temporarily disassembled and shoved under the big bed until we work out the furniture arrangement in the bedroom. Which we have... Oh, 8 weeks or so to do.