Homecoming

Phillip is sick.  And by that I mean that he has saved up about five winters' worth of head colds and minor irritations in order to experience them more fully, all at once.  Dude can be very efficient.  This would be the classic, wretched, late-winter flu and he has been on his face with it for no less than five days.  Which means that I am effectively a working single parent this week, with the added bonus of nursing duties.  In Sickness and in Health.  Whatever: This Blows.  Oh, and I really need to review and return about 100 pages of tech edits to my publisher.  Yesterday.  And the hacking cough of Certain People who are in the same room with me has kept me awake all night for about a week, so you can sprinkle sleep deprivation into the Gloom Stew we're cooking at our house, as well.

So I arrived home last night after an exceptionally long day at work,  struggled to divest myself of coat, purse, laptop, and keys.  An unusually loud racket coming from the living room should have motivated me to turn right around and leave again.  Instead I followed the din and surveyed the wreckage:

1.  Five children, only some of whom belonged to me, feasting on Cub Scout fund-raiser chocolate bars and pepperoni sticks in my living room.  The Universe has again spoken on my choice of white slipcovers.  Nice work, that.

2.  A sheepish-looking Scottish Terrier lurking near a suspicious puddle under my desk.  Evidently neither the Bed-Ridden nor the Chocolate-Besotted are functional dog walkers.  Brilliant.

3.  The 413th pile of tangled yarn this week: Unsupervised Kittens + Yarn = Carnage.

My instincts kicked in and I fled.  By which I mean that I sighed heavily and went to check the mail.

Then everything turned on a dime, because waiting for me at the mailbox was this:

And if that weren't enough, this:

Apparently, the Universe has not completely given up on me...

Flying Saucer

That's what Phillip called it when he saw the Noro beret drying on a dinner plate.  He's not wrong:

It borders on unnatural, how much time I spend looking for weird household items for blocking.  I am the self-proclaimed Crown Princess of Making Weird Towel Shapes to Block Stuff With.  As a late-stage convert (I only began to understand the importance of blocking a couple of years ago), I have become a Blocking Zealot.  It's lame how long it took me to get a clue about blocking, having trained as a tailor.  Tailoring requires more than just a little steaming, thwacking, molding and otherwise sculpting of fabric, so you would think that knowledge would be more easily transferable to knitting.  But it wasn't until I had to study and write about it for the Master Knitter program that I really gathered brains.  Now I love to do it so much that no knitted item is safe, and no household implement, non-porus surface, or passing pet is sacred.  I'll block anything on anything.  My personal best was a combination of 6 washcloths and 2 balloons for a lace shrug with puffy sleeves.  Wish I'd had the presence to take a picture that time.

But back to the hat:  My kids are fighting over who gets it, which I take as a good sign.  I think it's okay as a first attempt, and I learned a lot about self-striping Noro.  There are things I will do differently next time, like chart a bigger, clearer motif.  I also would engineer a more interesting pattern for the crown.  I think I will also choose 2 really different colorways when I do this again, rather than two ends of the same skein.  I did myself no favors by going cheap on that one.  (Note To Self:  Since when are you scared to spend Money on Yarn?)  What I really enjoyed about this project was not having any idea what to expect as the colors changed on me.  I did not know what a control freak I am with regard to color.  I kept having to tell myself not to break the yarn and felt in a new color - MADE myself trust the progression of what was on the skein, just to see if I could stand it.  And I did!  I even was surprised by how much I liked some of the combinations that happened, notably yellow and burgundy.  These are two shades I almost never work with, and certainly not together.  But in context of the small space of a hat, I really liked the area where it happened.

Tomorrow I head for the garden spot that is Tacoma, Washington, for the Madrona Retreat therein.  I am so amped I can hardly keep it together.  My goal is to post on all four days, so stay tuned for reports on my adventures.  Reminders not to paint "Madrona Or Bust" on my car are probably needed.

In unrelated news, one of the projects has been cut from my book, and I am completely devastated.  I thought my skin was much thicker than that, but apparently not.  It's like loosing a toe.  I will live, but I think I will always miss it.  The good news is that the outcast project is going to be featured on my episode of Knitting Daily TV, whose theme, I'm told, will be "Fun With Color".  I think it will also be offered as a free pattern via the Knitting Daily Pattern Store, so it's future is by no means doomed.  Watch for it next November.  In the meantime I plan to Get Over It.  Knitting, after all, is not for weenies.  And wallowing in despair messes up your hair.
 

Just Plain Snotty

A big thank you to those who advised me on my next project.  I went with the cozy cables, thinking that if Murphy's Law prevails, then the sun will come out, which would be nice, and if it doesn't, then I will still have cozy cables to enjoy.  Then I got sick.  A raspy stinkin' chest cold, with loss of voice and the whole maryanne.  And my rewrites, which I naively thought were done, all came back to be re-re-written.  Again.  And our house, along with Phillip's car were vandalized.  Don't know why us -  just one of those things, I guess.  The car is not drivable, which means that Phillip is riding my motorcycle to work, so let's hope my the cozy cable choice does cause the sun to come out: nothing yuckier than riding a motorcycle in the cold cold rain.  I promise to post with a better vibe next time, but I didn't want my devoted following to think I vanished.  Thanks for checking in!