If Only It Was Colder

I have retreated to my basement to avoid the noise of the roofing crew. Oh my goodness the noise.

Let's talk knitting shall we. I really do knit so I don't kill people and so that I don't inadvertently kill myself with my blood pressure. Of course, sometimes it doesn't work quite so well as we will see below. But it all turned out in the end. 

I love a knitting challenge. I am assuming that is why I like what is called "colorwork" knitting. For the non-knitters who hang around here that means you are knitting with more than one color of yarn at a time. In the case of the sweater that I just finished it meant that for most of the sweater I was knitting with two colors as one time and in a couple of spots with three colors of yarn.  It makes me look a lot more talented, knittingly speaking, than I really am.

I had wanted to do a Damejakka Loppa sweater for a long time. I love knitting sweaters. Love, love, love. I was also determined to knit this sweater from stash. How hard could that be? I mean I have, in some senses, reached SABLE as far as my yarn stash in concerned. SABLE being: Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy. I knew that I was going to use Knit Pick's Palette because I seem to have a lot of that. So I dug it all out and started to arrange colors and I realized several things.

1.  I didn't have enough skeins of yarn for the main color so I would have to order that.
2. I didn't like any of the other color combinations that I was finding so I might have to order a skein or two.
3. I didn't have the right color for the contrast cuffs and button band so I would have to order that.

So much for only using stash yarn. But I placed my order and then I realized that:

1. I hadn't read the pattern correctly and I was short on how much I needed for the main contrast color
2. I still didn't like my color choices.

Back to more ordering. Finally I was ready. I faithfully did my swatch, grumbling all the way because....I hate to swatch. I knit a bit looser than some, it's a Continental knitting thing, so I went down a needle size. And that is when I realized that:

1. I didn't have the right length of cable for the needle size so I would have to order that.
2. I didn't have the right needle size with the right cable size.

Once THAT order arrived then I was all set. I cast on and away I went. 

Whoooosh! Before I knew it I was through the colorwork yoke and on to the miles of body. I was flying. But there was this little thing tapping at my brain saying something wasn't right. Something was off. I knew it and I didn't want to admit that my gauge was off. For the unknitterly of you, gauge is how many stitches you are getting to the inch. For some things, like socks and lace, I don't think that gauge matters all that much. But for sweaters, GAUGE MATTERS. It matters a whole heck of a lot. It makes the difference between whether a sweater is the size you expect or some other alien size. If knitters have any question about our gauge we like lie to ourselves and say things like...

"This will be fine."

"I got gauge with my swatch so it has to be right."

"I am sure that I can block this sweater to be bigger after I give it a good soak."

I was a half way through the body of the sweater when I finally sat myself down and had a good talking to myself. My gauge was wrong, even though my swatch was right. The sweater would be too small and no amount of soaking and stretching and blocking would make any difference. And so.....

I pulled the whole thing out. Oh the pain. Oh the tiny balls of yarn. But I knew it was the right thing to do. Sometimes gauge swatches lie to us. It was discouraging but what would have been even worse is to spend all the hours knitting this thing and then finding that it was too small. That would definitely raise the old BP.

I cast back on and got to knitting. Almost immediately I could tell that my gauge was right. The fabric just felt better. I made it through the yoke, I got through the miles of body, the sleeves when on without difficulty. And Monday......

My Damejakka Loppa was finished, blocked and ready to be worn. Of course on Monday it was also 93F so I quick put the sweater on, ran outside, had HHBL take some pictures, ran back inside and took the sweater off.

But Winter is coming and this is the first thing that I am going to wear when the weather is more cooperative. Now I am off to think about the next sweater to cast on. I have to use up the yarn from Maryland Sheep and Wool before I go again next year.

Do As the Doctor Says, Not As I Do

Thought we were done talking about Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy? Nah, I am milking this baby. Well really not because I am tired of the whole thing but I still talking about it. The temporary heart condition that just keeps on and on.

OK, I have to be honest on this and say that I am actually feeling much better, almost my normal self. HHBL mentioned this morning that I am never actually “normal”. I resisted the urge to stab him with a sharp instrument because, well, he has a point. I am feeling almost myself because, for the most part, I have done what the doctor’s suggested I do. Go home and rest, take your medications etc. And I have been resting. Yowza I have been getting 9+ hours of sleep a night. And I have been placing my ever growing bahookie on the couch a lot, watching endless episodes of “Survivorman” and cringing when he eats bugs. Sorry but you just cannot convince me that a Bark Scorpion is tasty. I have been trying to eat healthy and I have been drinking an ocean’s worth of water. My taste for coffee has been a bit on the shakey side for some weird reason so I have been drinking a lot of tea.

Did you catch the part about the fact that I have been doing MOST of what the doctors said to do? Because there is one thing that I am no longer doing, even though my primary doc, the ever sweet and totally intimidating Dr. M-G tut tutted at me when I said I was not going to do this thing any longer. And I am also going to be honest and say that I called the cardiologist’s office to tell them that I was not going to do this any longer, just so they knew, even though I haven’t actually seen the cardiologist yet.

After 6 days I took myself off the beta blocker that they had put me on when I left the hospital. Listen to me well people, I will NEVER take another beta blocker. I know why they prescribed it and what it was supposed to be doing and I don’t give a rat’s hairy ass (sorry). The side effects made the actually taking of the medication something that decreased the quality of my life. I had the first dose of that tiny pill of horribleness the morning that I left the hospital so I really didn’t notice anything because I just felt generally terrible. But by last Tuesday it was clear that our relationship wasn’t going to last long. The first thing that I noticed but didn’t attribute to the beta blocker (until I did a bit of research) was the swings in my body temperature. This was not a hot flash, this was that my body temperature would shoot up to 100.4 or 100.5F. I could feel it rising. Then I would feel terrible. Then the fever would break, usually in the middle of the night and I would be drenched in sweat. Sorry to gross you out but drenched is the best way to describe it. Even after I had my murderous female organs removed in 2009 I didn’t have hot flashes like that. Mother of all that is holy I don’t have enough sleep wear to go through this. It was when the hives showed up that I began to worry a bit and I started to do some deep dive research into more obscure side effects. I had a whole hive of hives under my right upper arm that merged into one massive mound of itch the size of a 3x5 card. And then there were the hives all along my belly extending onto my back. Fun and itchy times. Add to that the intestinal issues and the general feeling all day of dizziness and disorientation plus general lethargy and I was done.

The last dose of that pill of ill will was taken on Thursday morning, after which I said, “ENOUGH!!” By Friday morning the hives were entirely gone, the dizziness and disorientation were gone and by yesterday my temperature seemed content to stay within it’s normal range. I still get tired by early evening but that is also resolving itself.

I want to be clear about this. Beta blockers are not an evil class of drugs. They help many people and many people take them with little to no side effects. Doctor’s prescribe them for many reasons that are different from my Takotsubo diagnosis and if you are on one you should do what your doc tells you. I am just a contrarian and my body is intolerant of some medications (sulfa drugs, ACE inhibitors and now, apparently beta blockers). But I also am a firm believer in listening to what your body is telling you. My body was telling me that carvedilol was not a good thing for me and so we have broken up.

Carvedilol it wasn’t you, it was me.

Oh who am I kidding, of course it was you. Thank goodness you didn’t cost all that much.

Heart, Who Needs A Heart

Right now I am supposed to be filling my little Nonni heart with Sidney snuggles.....but that is not what I am doing....darn it.

This is so that everyone knows exactly what happened and so that I am not explaining it over and over. I am a lazy person like that. And if I have told you the whole gory story before, just skip this one.

For a long time it had been on the calendar that I would go out to DC to watch the grand baby for two weeks when TMO went back to work after her maternity leave. SQUEE!! Two weeks of rocking and snuggling and general baby overload. I anticipated. I cleared my calendar. I packed my bag. I planned the knitting to take. Just as an aside, I had more trouble planning what knitting I should take than actually packing my suitcase. I can always do laundry but the thought of not having enough knitting gave me heart palpitations.

HHBL and I packed up the Prius of Death and headed out on May 27th for relaxing Washington, DC. There might have been a bit of sarcasm there because DC is anything but relaxing if you are driving. I didn't need a car so HHBL was just going to stay an extra day and then go back to the Frozen NE Ohio before making the return trek in two weeks to pick me up. On the drive we came as close as I ever remember coming to hitting a deer head on at 75 miles an hour. That will make your heart go pitter patter (ominously as we shall see). We arrived safe and sound despite the suicidal quadruped and settled in to snuggle...and here comes her blog name.....Sweet Short Stack.

I mean, how could you NOT want to just kiss those cheeks!!

We spent part of Memorial Day at Mount Vernon getting our history lesson along with all the other people who thought it would be a good idea to go to a National Historical Monument on a national holiday. Between us we have many higher education degrees but sometimes we don't think smart. Thank goodness we got there early. Tuesday was uneventful. HHBL went home, TMO went back to work, TSiL was still home but I fed and snuggled and rocked Short Stack for most of the day. All was well.

And then came Wednesday. Cue ominous music. This next part is going to be long and I am sorry for it but we all know that I like to excessively use my words.

I woke up with a start around midnight on Wednesday with intense shoulder pain. I couldn't find a comfortable position. Finally I got up and took a Tylenol and went back to bed. I was able to doze off for a bit but at 3:45a I woke with intense chest pain. Oh for the love of Pete!! I needed my rest as this was the first day that SSS and I would be snuggling alone and I wanted to be wide awake for that. I lay there for a while and tried to just ignore it. It would not be ignored. So, I did what any self-respecting nurse would do, I got up and took another Tylenol and said it must just be because I was caring around a 13 pound baby for most of the day before. Surely that is it. 

By now you must have guessed that was not it.

Finally I just got up at 5:30a, crept into the bathroom and took a shower, hoping that the warm water would soothe whatever this was. I was also ignoring the shortness of breath that I was having but if I was trying to ignore the very intense chest pain I might as well ignore this too. Things seemed to get a bit better (I can certainly lie to myself!!) and the day started for everyone. TMO went off to work, TSiL was getting ready to go, I was rocking Short Stack to sleep for the first of her naps........

And I just could not ignore the fact that my chest pain and shortness of breath was back with a vengeance. So, in the most apologetic tone I could muster I had to ask my son-in-law to take me to the emergency room. The last thing that I wanted to happen was to be home alone with Short Stack and have to call an ambulance. And that is what I would have had to do. TSiL is the most amazing and calm person in a burgeoning crisis. He stood there for just a second and then stepped into the breach, packed up the baby bag and the ergonomic baby carrier that has a name that I cannot remember and ushered all of us down stairs where Short Stack and I waited while he went and got the car and plugged in the directions for the large medical center 1.5 miles away. It was a long drive. TSiL dropped me at the ER door and went to park. I made my way in and explained to the nice person that I had chest pains and could they please do something about it? She told me to take a seat. When you are in pain time seems to move at a glacial pace. I am sure that it wasn't any longer than 5 minutes before I was called back to see the nurse but it seemed longer. 

Emergency Departments all pretty much work the same. You tell them you are here. They invite you into the first part of the inner sanctum where they determine if you have earned the right to be admitted to the good place. If they determine that you have not earned the right they tell you so and send you home. The nurse did an initial history and I had the first of two ECG's (electro cardiograms for those who do not know or care). Then they sent me to wait in the "we aren't quite sure that you are that special yet" place for my test results. Again, I am sure it wasn't that long that I was waiting there but is seemed that way for sure. I was in a fair amount of distress. I was treated to watching someone being revived with Narcan and to someone else being told by the social worker that, yes they were in fact well enough to continue working and no the social work department was not going to give them a "note" saying that they could stay away from work and still get their welfare benefits. The little every day dramas.

Finally another nurse appeared in front of me, verified I was who I was and walked me into the inner and VERY busy part of the ED. And when I say very busy I mean that every cubicle was filled and the hallways and every available space was filled with people in beds and on gurneys. Oh man. The only reason I was put in an actual cubicle and not on a gurney in the hallway was because I needed to be on a heart monitor. As I entered took off the clothes requested and settled myself on the more than uncomfortable gurney I was treated to my cubiclemate ripping the ER resident a new one because no one was listening to her and she was in pain and it was just like the last time and no one was doing anything about it. Yikes. She did the same thing a couple of hours later and then checked herself out of the ED.

And then for the next 10 hours I was in the ED. I am not going to give you a blow by blow but here are some hightlights

• medical history by a very earnest resident (we all have to start somewhere)
• they wouldn't let me walk to the bathroom the first time so I had to use the bedside commode. Now THAT is a humbling experience.
• chest pains that would not subside despite 3 nitroglycerin tablets and a nitro paste patch (I did refuse the morphine as that seemed a bit excessive)
• feeling so shitty that I didn't even want to read or knit. THAT tells you how bad I felt.
• being alone for 10 hours in the ED. I sent TMO, TSiL and Short Stack home. No need for the little one to be there and she is sort of tied to TMO.
• finally talking to the cardiac resident, Dr. Khan, about what was going on. He told me that they were admitting me to the cardiac observation unit but they didn't have a bed for me yet (this was a hour marker 8 in the ED saga)
• finally FINALLY talking to the cardiologist, Dr. Ertel, who said, "Well, I think we are going to escalate your case a bit and get you into the cardiac step down. You may get a bed faster that way."
• Just at ED hour 10 they wheel me up to 4NE room 4

The rest of Wednesday was sort of like the first part of Wednesday except with a MUCH more comfortable bed and some food. They did put me on a nitro drip for a number of hours but that dropped my blood pressure so low that they stopped it in the middle of the night. By morning my chest pain was a 2-3 on that subjective "tell me how your pain is" scale so it seemed like that was some progress but there were still no answers. I did not sleep well but I slept a bit. Oh the noise!!!! And the damn phlebotomist who shows up at 4:30a, knocks once and flips on all the lights. Really!!

Thursday, or as I would also call it The Day of All the Tests and Blood Draws. I couldn't have anything to eat after midnight because I was scheduled for a heart catheterization but because I was an "add on" they couldn't tell me when they would actually do it (4pm it turns out). We started the day with an echo cardiogram, otherwise known as "let me smear all this gel all over your chest and try not to get it on the clean sheets". Fun times. BUT, the echo was the first test that gave the doc an indication that this might not be a heart attack.

Dr. Ertel and team (Senior resident Dr. Khan, residents, hangers on) arrived on rounds to tell me that the echo indicated that what I was dealing with wasn't a heart attack but something called Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy. It wasn't a heart attack (which was good), it was treatable and reversible, but it had to diagnosed through the process of elimination so I had to have the heart cath. Say WHAT! Follow the linky thing for a very good article on what Takotsubo is. We would be here for another week if I had to explain it. The thing that is interesting is that the onset of my Takotsubo might be tied to the very short and very stressful incident of not actually hitting the deer on the highway. Dr. Ertel also said that I could have small sips of water (praise the LORD!) and my nurse, Jill, brought me an orange Popsicle.

Ambrosia on a stick. I ate it with undo haste.

We don't need to discuss the heart cath other than to say good drugs make for good procedures. The only problem I had was with the 4 strict hours of complete bed rest afterwards. I mean, what if I have to go to the bathroom before 9pm I asked. Bedpan was the answer. I can hold it was my reply. Dr. Ertel appeared again (is he ALWAYS at the hospital?) to tell me that my arteries were lovely (well thank you!) so this wasn't coronary artery disease but they wanted to do one more test, a cardiac MRI. Have I ever mentioned to you that I get claustrophobic? Hmmmmmmm. Have you ever had a closed MRI? It is a claustrophobic's worst nightmare. 45 minutes in a magnetic tunnel of death where the noise is horrendous and the panic is always just below the surface. I had the tech put on MercyMe, I kept my eyes closed and I imagined Jesus right beside me. If you think I am saying that flippantly I am most assuredly not. That was how I got through it. And also not thinking about the fact that I really had to PEE!! Finally I was back in my room just about 10p and I elected to go to sleep (after peeing) rather than watch the second half of the Cavs-Warriors game. Oh JR!!!

By the way, I should mention that HHBL had arrived back at my side on Wednesday evening and stayed with me all day Thursday til he went home to bed and then back on Friday for doc talk and discharge. The man is the BESTEST of husbands and the rock that I couldn't do without.

Friday dawned. I actually got a bit of sleep but again Oh the noise! Oh the damn 4:30a phlebotomist with the touch of a gorilla! Finally Dr. Ertel and entourage arrived with the good news that it was Takotsubo and that I could go home with a lovely array of new drugs that I needed to take carefully albeit temporarily (bloodthinner, baby asprin and a Beta blocker). I was to see my primary physician and a cardiologist in the next couple of weeks and I was to REST and do nothing for the next week. We were out of the hospital by 1p and on the road home by 2:30p. I was amazed, and not in a good way, how little energy I had on Friday. Just taking a shower and packing up my stuff totally did me in. But each day is getting a bit better. One of the medications makes me a bit dizzy at times and the cost of the other medication about gave me a heart attack for real, but other than that I am on the road to recover.

I do want to take a minute at the end of this to say a big and heartfelt thank you to everyone at Medstar Washington Hospital Center. I know that you will never see this but your care of my poor little overly fat padded self was wonderful. To my nurses, Sheenali, Jill, Jennifer, and George, you were all kind and compassionate and knowledgeable, just as a nurse should be. To Dr. Khan and Dr. Ertel, thank you for answering questions and really for having the knowledge to know, right off the bat almost, that this wasn't a run of the mill heart attack but was Taketsubo which is something that isn't seen all that often (trust me to have something obscure). Washington Hospital Center is known for their cardiology care. The Lord put me in just the right place for this latest little adventure. Thank you again to all who were a part of my treatment, I cannot say enough good things about you!

Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy you are not the boss of me! (for long that is).

Maryland My Maryland

Oh life, you are so crazy. Right now, at this very moment in time, I am in New Orleans. Guys, I have never been to NOLA! I am still surprised by that. I have been as far away as Ghana, Uganda, Rwanda, India, Peru, Australia. But I have never been to New Orleans. Heck, I spent 5 years in Texas going to school, and somehow I never got to New Orleans. I am taking pictures and banking memories for blogging.

But I have already digressed and we are only one paragraph in. What I WANTED to tell you about is Maryland Sheep and Wool. If you are a knitter or fiberist you may have heard of MDSW. If you haven't....

I am so sorry but we are going to talk fiber. And not the kind that is good for your diet and overall intestinal health. It isn't even fiber that is good for your budget. It is so NOT good for your budget. So, so, so not good.

So, almost a year ago, my friend Michelle for Crafty Flutterby Creations, who is also a KnitSib of long standing, asked if I wanted to help in her booth at Maryland Sheep and Wool. I thought about it for all of 5 seconds and said YES! I put that date right on the old calendar and periodically looked at it and contemplated fiber. I started saving a bit here and there so that I actually had a "fiber budget" to spend when I got a break. More on the fiber budget later. The first weekend in May found me in the car and on the way to the Howard Co. Fairgrounds in West Friendship, MD. Set up was Friday afternoon and it was hot, and windy and, well, it is on a fairgrounds where there is a lot of dust and straw and more dust and my allergies were all like, "Oh we are SO going to make you pay for this." They did make me pay for about a week after MDSW but I don't really care. All was set up and we had a fun time on Friday night with other knitters and then it was Saturday and back to the dusty, but thankfully cooler fairgrounds were I vended the heck out of myself. Sunday was pretty much the same thing with some rain thrown in. Lets just go to the pictures shall we.

There are two sorts of things that you are going to see at MDSW, other than the food, and that is yarn/fiber/crafting accoutrements....and sheep. Lots and lots of sheep. Barns and pens full of sheep of every description and color. 

This is Easter, so named because....she was born on Easter. Clever that. She is a Valais Blacknose sheep and I swear she knew how to pose for pictures. She was working the barn like Kim Kardashian. And her fleece! So soft and cuddly. If I thought it possible I might have tried to sneak her into my suitcase. 

And I also got to meet several women who I have known for a very long time but only on the Internetz. Cuz that is where ALL of the deep friendships reside right? But in reality Lola and Tina have been friends for a long time and I cannot tell you how excited I was to meet them in person. Please excuse my over abundant chinage. My wattle is genetic and must be born with grace and dignity. Who am I kidding, there are times when I look like a turkey right before Thanksgiving.

Also, I might have found my ornament for the annual Ornament Exchange. I was helping to set up the booth and looked down the row a bit to a booth that was two stalls down. And there it was. It is the only one that the woman made so it is one of a kind, because that is what "the only one the woman made" means. I am not showing it here but guys it is so stinkin' cute I just can't stand it. And now that I have actually put this up here I cannot then keep the ornament for myself. Sigh.

How did they know?? I needed another mug at Chez Knit like I needed a hole in my cranium. And yet, this came home with me because.....it called to me with it's siren song of pottery and I could not resist.

This is evidently a baby coffee plant. Someone walked by with it and said that she had bought it over in the plant area. She also told me that in about 5 years, if the plant lives, it should give her enough beans......for a cup of coffee. Somehow, the ROI on that doesn't seem all that appealing to me. I think I will stick with ordering my coffee from here.

Best. Yarn. Colorway. Ever. Dawn from Fairy Tale Knits is a genius. And she gifted me the skein so that is extra special. Now to think about what it wants to be. It has gone to live with the stash for a bit. Sometimes yarn needs to age, like a fine wine or Limburger cheese, in order to be all that it can be.

But let's be honest. Have you ever smelled, let alone tasted, Limburger cheese. There are not enough centuries left on this earth that will ever make that cheese palatable.

And do you remember, way up at the top of this long and rambling post, that I talked about my yarn budget that I had carefully planned for MDSW?

I blew that budget wide open in the first hour that I shopped. Yes, those bags of yarn represent ONE hour of shopping. One. Hour. And I went back the next day for a bit more shopping. Oh my stars and garters. Oh my aching pocketbook. Oh my smoking credit card.

I am not telling you how much I spent on this wool haul but just know that I brought back TWO sweater quantities of yarn plus various other skeins. When I started back to knitting almost 12 years ago I would have scoffed at the thought that I would pay $45 for ONE skein of yarn. I am not saying which of these skeins was $45 dollars but one of them might have had that price tag. My lips are sealed.

What is spent at Maryland Sheep and Wool STAYS at Maryland Sheep and Wool. It is just like Vegas, only it smells like a sheep.

Sorry. Not Sorry

Gather up the heart medications folks because I am blogging.

So, it would seem that I took 6 months off from blogging. It wasn't really a conscious decision on my part. It was just that life. Oh life you crazy person. Is anyone even here anymore? Perhaps we will just take this as a reboot. StopHerKnitting 2.0 as it were. Yes, I think that is what we will do. That way I can tell you what has been going on around Chez Knit and it will be like we are old friends who haven't seen each other for an age. And I will attempt not to drop off the face of the earth.....again.

Really, I have thought about all of you (all 10 of you I would now guess) ALL the time in the past 6 months. I have thought, "Oh! I have to tell them about that." and then it never happened. Bad Deb. BadBadBad. The excuse that I am going with is that the fact that I currently have 4 jobs, three of which I can tell you about at the moment and one that I will tell you about later on, keep me pretty busy. That is my excuse and I am sticking to it. I continue to work part time for HHBL. Good thing that we like each other because we spend 5 out of 7 days in each other's company. There is a blog post in there somewhere about the work/life balance when you work for your husband. 

Then there might still be the whole wedding coordinator thing going on. 

Currently there are 6 weddings on the books for 2018 so the next few months will be busy. I always end up adding more as the time goes on. I do love weddings.

And now.........

We have added.........

A.........

GRANDBABY!!!

I will tell you all about that in just a hot second. OK, I will tell you now. Really, we knew about her "existence" when last I was here but there has been a total and complete media blackout on the whole thing. And I will not be sharing a boat load of pictures here because, well TMO and TSiL have asked me not to and I can completely respect that. But......

I am sharing just ONE picture because, oh guys, she is the cutest thing in the world. Cuter than bugs ears as Grandpa Pringle would say if he were here. It also begs the question as to whether bugs actually have ears. I will be off to the Googles later to check that out. Is there ANYTHING better than new baby smell.

Of course, within 12 hours of meeting her Pops she loaded the old diaper while sitting in his lap. Get a load (HAHAHAHAHA!) of that look of holy concentration on her face. She is DEFINITELY going to fit right in with the family.

That was two pictures. Sorry.....not sorry.

The other big news is that we have added another Son-in-law. Yes, Cartoon Girl and That New York Guy (TNYG) tied the knot last weekend in NYC. A good time was had by all, or at least by me. The setting was fabulous, The Museum of the Moving Image, which TOTALLY suits CG and TNYG. 

Doesn't everyone Facetime the baby when getting ready? Does that count as another baby picture? Sorry....not sorry.

The DRESS!!! Oh the dress. CG has a very vintage style and that meant a vintage dress. I would give a good skein of Pagewood Farms yarn (ask a knitter, they will understand) to know the story of this dress. It was made, we believe, in the 1930's and originally had a train, which was removed to make the dress more her style. The turban was made from the train fabric. The owner of the vintage shop that she loves pulled the dress, all wrinkled and unloved, out of a plastic bin in the back. There was no going back after that.

Sorry....not sorry. It isn't a Quigg wedding without a Star Wars reference.

"Her mother....and I"

HHBL has his line down pat after this. But now we don't have any more daughters to marry off. Oh well.

TNYG started to cry when doing his vows. And then CG was crying. And the Elisha (the fabulously marvelous friend/officiant) was crying. And then we all were crying.

Weddings are for crying right?

And then it was all done and we went on to party the night away.

This is Elisha, the friend/officiant. She is mine now. I love her and I am keeping her. Please excuse my overly generous armage. I am a grandma now and that is a required thing. Also, wearing pearls is a grandma thing too. Perhaps I should also start smelling like talcum powder. Or am I taking this too far?

OK, this has gone on longer than I expected. It is Saturday and I have things to do, like finish another baby blanket, but not for The First Grand baby. We seem to have a bunch of family babies making an appearance in the next few months. SO fecund we are. Look it up. I also have a bit of lace knitting to finish because, guys........

I am going to MARYLAND SHEEP AND WOOL FESTIVAL in May (ask a knitter, they will explain it to you). I used all caps there so you can hear me shouting my excitement. It helps to have friends who are knit designers because Michelle of Crafty Flutterby Creations has asked me to go and help in her booth. This has been on the calendar for almost a year. I am so excited. I promise there will be pictures after the fact.

This blog post has taken me FOREVER. But there are just a lot of words that want to come out. I will be back.....I promise.

Analog is Me

We live in a digital age. I know this, believe me. I shoot with not one but two big digital cameras. I edit all photos on a big computer with powerful software. I work for a software company that deals every day and all day with public data. 

We all know that I love Instagram and Facebook and Twitter.

Don't try to take my iPhone away from me because I might have to cut you. 

And my iPad. Oh my iPad. Bringer of documentaries on Netflix and "Grantchester" on Amazon Prime. 

Dropbox, Evernote, Pepperplate, Ravelry. Digital, my life is digital.

But not completely. Not totally. There are still a few wild and woolly analog outposts in my life. There is the whole reading physical books. Don't get me wrong, I read a lot of digital books. I read a lot of books period. But I also read a lot of analog (for lack of a better term) books as well. I walked past a woman in CostCo yesterday and she was telling her teenager, who was holding up a book for her to see and possibly buy, "You can just put that book down. It is like, I don't know, 700 pages and you know that is about 659 pages more than I am ever going to read." 

It broke my little bookworm's heart to hear that. I can't imagine reading anything and everything that I can get my hands on. I have been known to read the ingredients on the can of bathroom spray if I can't find anything better to read while having my...golden moment.

TMI? You can't be surprise. Surely you can't.

I know that when the grandchildren arrive and are old enough....they get books. Of course, they also get candy for breakfast, but that is another story.

So, there is a place I am going with this whole analog thing. I swear there is. There is a corner of my life that I have deliberately switched back to analog from digital and I couldn't be happier.

Crazy as it sounds (and my brother, who is all things digital would say it is crazy), I have never been happier with my choice to go analog with my Bullet Journal and research information.

I have always been a person who enjoys writing things down in a physical way. I have loved lists all my life. I was that odd person in college who took notes in class and then re-wrote the notes as a way of studying and retaining things. Those notes were a thing of beauty and allowed me to achieve an "A" in my Med-Surg nursing course.

Of course the fact that I allowed the Neurosurgeon I was shadowing to convince me, a nursing student although admittedly an overly competitive nursing student, to scrub in and assist in surgery (and by assist I mean that he handed the little instrument to me and allowed me to remove brain tissue) might also have helped in achieving an outstanding grade. I wasn't sure how things would turn out when I realized the instructor was looking in and seeing what I was doing. But that is another story for another time.

I can say with some certainty that at this point I don't see myself going back to keeping lists and to do things and planning pages and all the minutiae of my day to day existence in any digital form.

ANALOG FOREVER! is my rallying cry.

At least until I want to check my Instagram feed....of which I have two by the way.

The Mystery Box

We all know that I knit socks.

This year I am participating in something called the "Box O Sox 2017 KAL"

What is a KAL you might ask yourself. Don't you hate it when someone smugly uses an acronym that you don't understand? If you are like me, you sit there and try to work it out in your head cuz you just don't want to ask.

Knit
A
Long

There, that wasn't so bad. Now if we were talking about a SPAKAL then all bets are off right? (Spin A Long, Knit A Long). Oh we knitters and our incomprehensible speech. Thank goodness you don't sit in on knit night with the KnitSibs. You might need a knitting dictionary as we throw around terms and phrases like:

"I am loving this brioche knitting!"

"Is that an SSK or a K2Tog?"

"The charted pattern took me a bit to figure out but once I got the color dominance down I was on my way."

Where was I?

Socks. Yes, thank you. The Box O Sox 2017 KAL I think.

What IS the Box O Sox 2017 KAL you ask yourself. Well, it means that as I go along in the year 2017 and I knit socks, after those socks are finished, washed, blocked, photographed and put up on Ravelry I put them away in a box and I don't wear them.

I know. It is hard to believe. Let me say that again.

I do not wear them. I do not put them into podiatric rotation.

There is a specific reason for this. It is sort of like a gift to myself. I knit 12 pair of socks, one for each month, put them in the box and then on New Years day 2018 I open the box up and there are 12 pair of socks that have never been worn. Welcome to 2018!

Since I think I am going to do this every year I actually went to Hobby Lobby and got a special box and decorated it. Who doesn't want a box that has Sock Monkey paper and Llama/Alpaca washi tape.

And we won't even talk about my current obsession with washi tape. We won't talk about it at all. Not a bit. Not even about the 3mm washi tape that I buy. Nope.

I see the box every day when I go into my closet. And I think about the socks. And I can hardly wait for New Years Day. Of course, it has been a really warm summer so I haven't worn any wool socks for 3 months. But I still dream about them.

New Years Day is going to be so good.

It had better be because NYD 2017 saw me laid out on the couch trying to cough up a lung with the pneumonia.

2018 you had better be nicer.

It's ALIIIIIIIIVE!!!!

Yes, folks.

The sourdough starter is alive. Let's talk about it shall we.

When last we spoke, I had finally been "starter shamed" into getting my carefully prepared, and at one time tenderly nurtured, home developed sourdough starter out of the basement refrigerator where it had been languishing, unloved and starving for............18 months. I had only a glimmer of hope that it might be resurrected. Yes, after I had done "starter surgery" and fed it, there were bubbles and hope raised it's feeble head. But, bubbles do not a sourdough loaf make.

And can I just say that basement refrigerators, while extremely useful in so many ways, are the place where things go to die. Just saying. I finally cleaned out several jars of pickling experiment that I had carted over from OCK, 4 years ago, and hadn't eaten (I am the only one here at Chez Knit who eats pickles). They had languished in the basement frig as sort of a pickling science experiment and they weren't getting any better. So I tossed them.

Where was I? Oh yes, the starter.

Well, last Saturday, after several days of feeding, I thought I might give the starter a try. I had found a recipe that seemed easy (my first mistake with sourdough!) and so I embarked. What better thing to do on a Saturday.

It was not a success. And when I say it was not a success I mean you could use it as some sort of weapon to bash someone's head in OR perhaps as a hockey puck, even perhaps a weight during your workout. Whatever your choice I would not have suggested that you eat it. HHBL was like, "NO, don't throw that away!!" But I love him too much to do that to him.

And I am a perfectionist. We were not going to eat that. But, I was also not going to be defeated by a jar full of little living organisms swimming in water and flour. I have opposable thumbs thankyouverymuch. So, I fed them several more days and looked at more videos on YouTube and looked at Pinterest (I have a love/hate relationship with Pinterest that I will explore some other time) and waited. And I realized something. The thing that I really didn't take into account when making that first boulder loaf is that sourdough takes a LOOOOOONG time. Not long in the making of the dough, that I can now accomplish in about an hour. Nope, the proofing takes 12+ hours and THAT my friends is where I had totally screwed up on the first loaf. I am a long standing baker of bread with packaged yeast. I fear it not. But, yeast bread made with those little packages, or in my case measured out from a jar, rises fast and sure. With sourdough you just have to make the dough, trust that it "feels" right and then let all those organisms get busy in the frig overnight, at least 12 hours or more.

So Wednesday evening, after dinner and before the Indians game, I got to work making my next batch. I did my measuring (measure with a scale people!!) and mixing, and autolyse phase, and adding salt, and slap and knead, and stretch and fold. Then I floured a surgical towel (another story for another time but just let it me known that I have enough of these to outfit an entire surgical suite) and put it and the loaf in a colander and stuck it in the basement frig for 14 hours. I pulled it out on Thursday, followed the baking instructions and hoped for the best......

Folks, I have made sourdough bread. And can I just say that it is amazing. I was so excited about it that I made another batch yesterday afternoon and put it in the frig and then really quickly got it baked before leaving to drop Coco off at the dealership (Takata airbag recall) and then scooting to the office.......

The sky is the limit from here my friends.

And we are SO having BLTs this week.

I May Have Killed It...Or Not

I go through these phases. I think, "Oh I need to learn to do that!" Then I do it. Then I move on. Sometimes things "stick" and sometimes they don't. Knitting seems to have stuck. Scrap booking did not. Does anyone need any scrap booking materials. I have them.

A while ago I decided that I needed a home developed sourdough starter. I KNOW that I told you about it but for the life of me I cannot find the blog post that covered that. If I could just get my bahookie in gear and finish my spread sheet with all of my blogs over the past nine years I might have had better success than the whole floundering around and looking at years and trying to figure out which catchy title actually had the sourdough blogpost in it.

Where was I?

OH yes, sourdough. 

I went to all the trouble of growing my own sourdough starter (it isn't that hard) and using it for a while but then....then.... I have no idea why I decided that it would be a good idea to store the starter down in the basement refrigerator. I know for sure that I would never have thought to throw it out. It had use and as we ALL know I suffer occasionally from a severe case of BIMNISD (again, there is a blog post on this. There perhaps might be more than one. I cannot find them. Moving on.)

For whatever reason, at some point I stored my starter in the basement frig. My upstairs frig is very small and space is at a premium so that is most likely the reason why the starter ended up downstairs. But the result of the reason is that the starter went down into the basement and then just sort of stayed down there like a college student who has come home without a job, languishing in the basement. You know it is down there. You know you should do something about it but you figure, "I will take care of that tomorrow." And tomorrow never comes.

Every time I had to put something into the basement frig or get something out of the basement frig, I would see that container. It would sigh and suggest I use it. It would squeal with delight when I opened the door and then groan with depression when I passed over it.

Do I anthropomorphize things too much? Maybe.

This is probably the time to give you just a bit of sourdough starter knowledge. As the starter sits for any period of time and isn't regularly used a black looking liquid will form on the top. That is called "hooch" and it is exactly what you think. It is alcohol which is really the waste product of the yeast in the starter. It is also telling you that the starter is hungry and hasn't been fed. You can just pour the liquid off and then feed the starter.

Yeah, my starter had a black liquid on it for at least a year. So very appealing and, lets be honest, just a bit scary. After a certain point in time I just preferred to act like that container wasn't even there. I see nothing and move on. We all have that lingering science experiment somewhere in the depths of our refrigerators. Don't tell me that you don't! OK, maybe Heather K doesn't. I have seen her refrigerator and it is spotless and organized. But don't the rest of you tell me that there isn't something lurking. I will KNOW that you are lying.

What happened next is really all the fault of YouTube. I started watching videos produced by Simple Life Homestead (blog). Here is their YouTube channel. Why do I care? Well because Michelle of SLH was Cartoon Girl's BFF all through school. Two more different people there cannot be on the planet and yet. Bonded for life. I have been obsessively watching their videos and got to the series on Sourdough starter and I remembered.....

Yesterday was not a day at the office and I was in the midst of one of my "make all the things" jags so I gingerly brought the container upstairs to the light of day. And I opened the container. And it was so disgusting that....I didn't even take a picture of it. That is how funky it was in there. 

But I would not be deterred. Who cared if there was actually some fuzzy mold growing on the sides of the container? Not me. Mold is good for you. Just think Penicillin! Who cared if there was a whole boatload of hooch just floating sullenly on the top of the starter. That hooch is not the boss of me! I laugh in the face of unknown mold.

First thing to do was to drain off the hooch. That was just a pleasant job. Not quite Sam Tarly serving soup and cleaning poop gross (sorry all you non-Game of Thrones people) but it was still yuck! Then it was a matter of what to do with the sort of funchy growth on the sides of the container and the top of the starter. The starter itself was fairly solid, which I expected since it had been sitting for a long time. It wasn't dried out but was sort of the consistency of whipped cream cheese. It was also giving off a very "alcoholy" smell, also to be expected. I decided that the better part of valor was to just scrape off the top of the starter and then extract from the middle, avoiding the sides.

This is what it looked like once I had removed all that I thought was viable. Take a look at all the yummy stuff on the sides. All the rest of this was scraped out and discarded. Thank goodness!!

Then, because I am a nerd, I measured out what I had been able to safely extract and it came to about 1 cup worth of starter. I didn't want to use all of that in one jar so I actually then split it into two separate starters. Then, because I am REALLY nerdy sometimes, I weighed out each of the starters to see what was what. I came up with about 66 grams per starter. Then, because it is always better to weigh out your ingredients rather than just using a measuring cup (nerd alert again), I actually weighed out 66 grams of flour and 66 grams of warm water (times 2) and add it to each of the starters, stirred it around and covered them up. They did not smell all that promising. 

The initial process was completed around 11a. I kept an eye on them all through the day but not much happened. I fed them each again at 8p, covered them with a towel and went to bed. And this morning........

It's ALIIIIIIIIIIIVE!!!

Bubbles, it has nice bubbles. That is good. And it smelled less alcoholic and a bit more sourdough startery. We might have lift off people. I discarded half of each of the starters, fed each of them with another 66g of flour and 66g of warm water before I left for work and I put them in a place that is warm and draft free. If they are in the least happy I may, just may, try and bake with one of them tomorrow. If not tomorrow then it will more likely be on Tuesday. 

This must be how Dr. Frankenstein felt........ before the monster tried to kill him that is.

I will keep you posted on the progress but I am optimistically excited about this.

But now I have two starters and I really only need one.

Why Couldn't They Just Update It?

We all know that I love my technology. Well, all except for my actual to do list, where I have gone back to being an analog loving Luddite. And very happy I am with my modified Bullet Journal. But the rest of my apps that live on my phone and my iPad are part of my daily life. They all have a purpose. I don't like apps that I use once every three months or longer. That just means that the rest of the time they are sucking up space on my phone and I already have problems with using up the space on my phone.

But there is a problem with technology. It isn't static. It gets updated. They can't just leave things alone! Rude! The worst thing is.....when a developer stops updating an app that you DEPEND on and then Apple starts sending you little urgent messages saying things like,

"This app hasn't been updated in awhile and might slow down your iPhone!"

Yup, got it. I don't care if it slows the phone down just so long as it is doing what I want it to. But then comes this message. And then all bets are off.

"Contact the developer because this thing isn't going to work after the next iOS update!"

NOOOOOOO! Dang it times 20. Now, I am going to let you into a little something about me. Try not to be too surprised by this. 

I like my world to be neat and orderly. I KNOW! Quel suprise! HHBL looked at me the other day and said, "You really just need to clean something out every day don't you."

Ummm, YES! I like order. I like organization. When I am stressed I organize something. It makes me feel all warm and comfy and like I have control over my life. Heck, I was stressed a bit last week and organized and cleaned out my already well curated closet and then put a rug on the floor in there. Then all I wanted to do for the rest of the week was sit in the closet and be happy. Everybody does this right?

One of my favorite apps is the one that I use for my grocery shopping list. I have this thing, you see, about wanting to know EXACTLY how much I am going to spend at the store. My resources are finite in this regard and I need to have some control. So for the last 4 years or so I have been using an app that I actually PAID FOR and that I love. My list is very detailed, depending on store (Giant Eagle, CostCo, Heinens), it is well curated and it has taken a long time to get where it is. And this morning........

I got the dreaded "Call the developer and make him update your app because it is soon to be toast" message. Huh, WHAT? It hasn't been updated in a while? Like how long? Well, it turns out it hasn't been updated for three years. That is like I am driving the Edsel of grocery apps in the age of Tesla cars. Crap. Just what I want to do on a Saturday morning is try to find another grocery app that suits me. My brain just about exploded when I pulled up all of the possibilities.

But I have found something I think will work. It gets great reviews. And currently it seems like it is updated with regularity. I actually PAID for the upgraded app. I hate to pay for apps but it seemed like it was going to be necessary. But now, now I have to actually redo my ENTIRE list. Oh the pain and agony of this. Before I even started on that little monumental project I had to weed through all of the items that they "conveniently" had already input into the app because SURELY I would need to buy Utskho Suneli (what the heck IS that?) or perhaps some Belgian Pralines (don't think so). Or perhaps I wanted to choose between Tampons and Internal Tampons. Hmmmmm, definitely a list that was made by a man. Tampons, by their very nature, are internal. I have never seen a tampon worth a damn that was "external. An external tampon just means that you sneezed really hard. Nor was I ever going to chose the option of "Beef liver" of "Calf liver". Not even if I was starving.

So what am I doing on this lovely Saturday morning in between hanging out loads of laundry on the line? I am getting my new grocery/shopping list up to snuff.

The struggle is real. And this is stressful enough that I am looking for something to clean out this afternoon. Anyone have a closet handy because all of mine are neat as a pin.

A Cautionary Tale

Yeah, yeah. I know. Who am I.  Moving on.

I am attempting to type this blog post on my ipad without using my right thumb. Do you know how difficult that is. It is even more frustrating because the reason that I have that lovely brace on is because I have been stupid. Too much computer work and too much concentrated knitting will get you.....

De Quervain's tendonitis.

Otherwise known by the lovely name of "Mommy thumb." Look it up. You will probably be able to type it out faster than I can at the moment. I am a very fast and efficient typist, when I have the use of all of my fingers that is. You don't realize how much you use your right (or left) thumb until you don't have it.

The worst part of this, other than the fact that without the brace on, when I move my thumb in a certain way it feels like someone is simultaneously trying to rip my thumb off and stabbing my wrist with a red hot poker....

I am unable to knit. Just saying that makes me jittery. I knit when I watch TV. I knit when I read. I knit to calm myself down. That means that I knit every day for some portion of time. That has never been a problem before, but then HHBL and I drove to DC for a conference, and I knit almost all the way there and all the way back. Plus I have been doing a lot of repetitive motions on the computer. All was fine it seemed. There were slight "twinges" here and there but I ignored them, idiot that I am.

Tuesday morning I woke up and oh Mother Mary and all the saints did my wrist, right at the base of my thumb hurt and moving my thumb in certain ways made me wince for sure. Same on Wednesday and then last night the pain was so bad that it woke me up several times.

So here I am, with a "thumb stabilizer" that I will be wearing at all times unless showering and washing dishes. No heavy gardening, no knitting.

What makes this so very frustrating for me is that I KNOW the rules of knitting self care. You knit for no more than 20 minutes before you take a break, put the pointy sticks down a d do something else for a bit. You do not knit in 2 hour blocks. Idiot.

Also, I cannot take any NSAIDs like Ibuprophen. I can take Tylenol but it doesn't have the anti-inflammatory effects. I am a whiney, knitter unable to knit.

Fear me.

What Does That Switch Do?

A post also known as, "I guess our whirlpool tub does work."

I know, you have been missing my little "this could only happen to me" posts. I haven't done one in a long time. Things happen, I just haven't written about them. But this one is a classic, although it doesn't involve rivers of water or clogged toilets. It involves our whirlpool tub.

I have a love hate relationship with whirlpool tubs. I am not, but nature, a bath person. I am a shower person. I am a short and efficient shower person. You can thank my dad for that as I wasn't always such. I was a typical teenager who took her water resistant transistor radio (if you don't know what that is look it up) into the shower so that I could sing along on the AM station with the top hits of 1975. That is I WAS that typical teenager until I routinely would use all the hot water in the tank. Then I was no longer that typical teenager because my dad said, "You can take as many showers as you want...but they can be no more than 5 minutes long. We all need hot water in the morning."  

OK then, short showers it was.

We had a whirlpool tub at OCK, it came as a part of the custom house package. It was one of the few things that I didn't really make a decision on. It was there in the plans. It got put it. And in the 13 years that we lived there I used it less than 10 times. We had a well. Wells are tricky things. That tub used as much water as it would take to solve the California drought. Every time I filled up that tub I could hear my well gasping with distress. I will say that it is nice to get into a whirlpool tub after a long day of yard work...but still....the well guilt was strong.

And then we moved to Chez Knit. And there was another whirlpool tub. When we had Chez Knit inspected before the purchase, the inspector could not get the buttons on the tub to work. We just added it to the list of things that we would eventually fix. It wasn't a priority because there was also a shower (and remember, I am a shower girl.) In the mean time the tub was just the place that we draped wet towels and wet tee-shirts and a ledge to put things on and.....

You get the picture.

I occasionally used it just to soak in the tub with some epsom salts. I will admit that it is a good way to relieve some stress. And add a glass of wine and a good book. I am OK with this.

And then on Wednesday that all changed with one little question. HHBL walked into the bathroom, looked at this innocuous little timer switch on the wall by my sink area and asked, "Hey, what does this switch do?"

I am going to admit that I had never really investigated the switch. It looks just like one of those timer switches that you see in hotel bathrooms that turn on the "heater lamp" so you can be all toasty warm and live out your fantasies about being a rotisserie chicken.

What? No one else has that fantasy? Moving on.

I told him that I wasn't really sure, that I hadn't seen any kind of warming light in the ceiling and had dismissed the switch and moved on. So he turned the dial.

And the tub made a gosh awful noise. 

Wait a minute! The timer switch is at the opposite end of the bathroom from the tub. They can't be connected!  

Oh yes......they can.

We quickly surmised that if you turned the dial on the wall that the jets in the tub turned on, or at least we thought that was what was happening. There was no water in the tub to verify our tentative findings. But I knew the way to find out. It was too late to run a tub full of water on a Wednesday night so I had to wait until Thursday to put the tub jets to the test.

I filled the tub with deliciously hot water (a watched tub spout fills very slowly). I added my lilac scented epsom salts. I walked over and turned the dial for the tub jets....

Eureka! The jets bubbled the water with the same force that Old Faithful does.......I was all ready to get into the tub.....and then I realized that the jets hadn't been used in a LONG time and when they had been turned on they had spewed into my lovely bath water all the gunk that had built up in the them for however many years.

I was not going to get into the water that had black particles floating throughout it. 

Crap.

So, I emptied the tub of my lovely hot water. I scrubbed the tub. Started the water again to refill and went off to do something else so that I wasn't standing there watching the tub fill. All filled finally.....and it wasn't all that hot water....because if you fill up the whirlpool tub twice in the space of an hour you will drain the water heater just a bit. But the water was warm enough. I was not going to be denied. I turned on the timer.

Whirlpool!!!! I didn't care if the water was lukewarm. I got in there and enjoyed the heck out of this gift that we didn't even know we had.

I am ridiculously excited about this folks. But I don't think our water bill (or the water heater) can stand nightly filling of the Bubbling Behemoth. But once a week seems feasible.

Oh yes. Once a week seems very feasible.