December Updates

I wonder if everyone takes as long as I do to feel at home in a new place. I suspect that on a bell curve of adaptability, I would fall toward the end of slow-to-adapt. That said, I feel like I'm getting there in our new house. I have my new lair just about set up and almost always know where to find stuff I need within an hour of starting the search. Of course, if I had less stuff, I could find things within a minute or two. I'm working on the "Less Stuff" goal, but it's slow progress.

On Saturday, Mr. SABLE and I made a quick trip out to St. Vincent's to see if there were any couches we could live with. Our couch and comfy chair from our other living room are in the family room here. The living room here has been a big empty space, with some of my equipment camped out in it, but no real comfortable place to sit. Until we sell our old house, it was out of the question that we would go buy new furniture. We found a couch we both really like, in good condition, at a good price. Suddenly, the living room feels more like home. Then I was keeping an eye on Craigslist for a small table to go in the dinette area of our kitchen. Monday evening, Owen and I went and got a nice round table and two chairs that works perfectly. $30 for the set. Those two purchases have done so much for my morale, I might actually tackle some of the random boxes stacked around in corners and such.

Even though there's been little action in the blog, I've been doing stuff to keep my hands busy. I did a fair amount of spinning this fall and a bit of weaving.

Here's a scarf I'll be giving to my mom for Decemberween/Giftmas/Festivus/what-have-you:






She only reads my blog if I send her an actual link to a post, like when I compose a rant I think she'd enjoy, so I think it's ok to post it here.

I also knit a scarf for my mother-in-law, whom I also believe does not read my blog.






This is from the book 60 Quick Knits, which features projects using Cascade 220. I used some mystery yarn I found in my stash. I believe it's a wool-dominant blend that came to me in a big thrift-shop grab bag more than 10 years ago. Mr. SABLE and I agreed the color was completely right for his mom, though I seem to get different results on the color every time I photograph it.

I also knit a blue ribbed watch cap for my mother-in-law's husband and, finally, after months of dormancy, fixed and finished a sweater I started to machine-knit for my dad in March. I just need to get some stuff packed up and taken to the post office and then brace myself for the two-week school vacation which is fast approaching!

All the News

I guess my blog posts are kind of thin on the ground these days, eh?

I have been knitting. I'll try to get some pictures in a bit. I'm making a machine knit sweater for my dad, some socks, some handwarmers, a men's sweater for a future Knitcircus... I think that's all the current projects.

But the big news is, we have made and had accepted an offer on a house and plan to move in June. When I look around at all the stuff we own and all the chaos, I can't quite imagine how we're going to pull this off. But we will. The house is very convenient to all kinds of stuff: all the schools, Mister SABLE's work, many shopping options, and most of Owen's friends. It's generously-sized and will give us a bit of breathing room. We'll have a real family room!

Spring has come to Madison this last week or so. Of course, we'll have a brief return to winter this weekend, but still, I'm encouraged that the snow pack we had since December pretty much vanished in last week's warm rain/fog misery. And we've had abundant sunshine and warm days so far this week, so the mud is drying out.

In early December, right before the first big blizzard that kicked off the winter, the little guy had lost an iPod in the yard. We looked for it that night, but in the dark without a real clue as to where it might be, it was hopeless. We weren't even positive it was lost in our yard, but retracing our steps of that night did no good. Then the snow came and we assumed that even if we found it, it would be toast. When the snow pack was mostly melted, he went out looking for it in the yard. He was about to give it up as hopeless, but glanced over toward our neighbor's fence line and saw something orange. BINGO. We dried it out overnight in a baggie of dry rice. Plugged it in to charge the next day and it works just fine.

Now I must start the phone calls and other details. Phone the mortgage guy. Phone the storage place. Phone a house inspector. And begin the purge. I might even do some yarn give-aways: we'll see.

Maybe it's the change in the weather...

I don't know.

I never knit Christmas presents. Well, sometimes someone gets a thing I knit for Christmas, but only if it happens to be ready and done about that time. But I'm not one of those knitters who sets out to make things for a long list of relatives and goes crazy in the process.

First, the whole mid-winter holiday makes me a bit conflicted, which is an essay and a half.

Then my relationship with my extended family (including the in-laws) is a bit laissez-faire, so that throws a little more confusion into things.

And then you have my essentially anti-consumerist mentality.

And I have a hard time knitting for anyone but myself because I always talk myself out of what I think might be a good idea. It'll be a bad choice of yarn or color or style. They'll think it's weird. It'll be too much. and yet, not enough.

But somehow, just now, with the cold air blowing in and snow showers knocking the remaining leaves from the trees, I got the idea of knitting a bunch of presents for folks this year. Not sure where that came from. Maybe I'll see where it leads me.

We've had an interesting time this week. On Wednesday both kids had some troubles related to school. Owen was on the receiving end of harassment on the bus ride home and the Little Emperor was dishing it out to an innocent kid at recess. Mr. SABLE caught the virus we've been passing around, featuring an annoyingly long-lasting sore throat accompanying a cold. And the LE came down with a GI thing yesterday morning. The LE was much perkier this morning but I kept him home today, because I thought it might be bad if the trouble moves south, so to speak, and he were to have a mishap at school. (You know, try to sneak out a little gas and get more than you bargain for... Or maybe you don't know.) So it's been a week of disruptions and grumbling and malaise in our house, even though it's also a week of great triumph and change in the national political scene. Now, we're just hoping for a bit of triumph in the national economic scene. Though that leaves me conflicted, too.

And why should that be? Well, I have this really strong anti-consumerist attitude. And yet, our economy's health is largely judged on the quantity of consumer spending. I know that for our planet's health, it would be much better if everyone tried to stop buying stuff, just for stuff's sake. But as people have done that, because they are living with economic insecurity, then it causes more economic trouble. I'm glad I'm not in charge of solving these problems. They are big and complicated. And the experts are predicting that things will get worse before they get better.

So maybe I'll go cast on a few nice cozy projects that I can give away in December. It seems like a good thing to do on a cold dreary November day, a week before I turn 47.

More about Knitcircus

I've been formatting until I'm cross-eyed! Yowza. But I'm excited about the upcoming Issue #4 of Knitcircus. Jaala and I hope to email it to the lovely and talented Beth tomorrow afternoon/evening for a fine-tooth-comb editing. She's really good at that! She knows when we have a sneaky extra space to delete, finds all those hyphens that should be em-dashes, knows when to bold , when to italicize, and remembers all the formatting things that we set up on p.3 that are being done differently on p 38. After Beth sends back all the big and little things she finds, then we do a final check for any formatting problems that the printer won't like. Then, make the huge mega-file pdf (bigger than my first hard disc!) and off it goes to Texas. Then we wait seven business days for turnaround and about 4 more business days for shipping, and boxes will appear.

In Other News
We have been in the throes of a full-fledged machine conspiracy Chez SABLE. The focus of this one is cars and computers. Must be C is the letter of the week, eh? Both our vehicles have required very expensive repairs and maintenance of the mandatory kind. You know, the "Don't drive until you fix this" kind of stuff. The computer issues have been more annoying than expensive. Owen's laptop has gone in twice for a backlight issue (under Apple Care warranty) and my mouse needed replacing. Mr. SABLE found his PC had over 365 viruses!!! He thinks he got them all, but they were seriously messing with things over there.

The kids are settling into their school routines, which is a blessing. So far, so good.

I haven't knit at all in a week or so. I've just been plugging away at the 'zine. I'm eager to get back into it.

I Sense a Theme Here...

Kathy, from Milwaukee came over to Last Saturday Knitting with her friend Lynne. Kathy wanted to give me this perfectly apropos gift that she bought for me as a "Thank you" for organizing the Alt Knitting Camp aka Gourmet S'mores Camp. Now, when I see the WienerMobile in my neighborhood, I'll be ready!

Last Saturday Knitting was a gas, as usual. We had just about the largest gathering yet! It was all the usual suspects, only all of us were there. Usually, we top out around 6 knitters, but this time we had 10, plus Owen! Thankfully, the nice young man who works weekends seems happy to have us there.

I've been spinning on the Mixed Berries yarn and working on the plain grey knitting project. And of course, counting down the seconds until school starts tomorrow (for the little guy) and Wednesday (for Owen). And I've been sitting around on the porch, under the fan, waiting for this little heat wave to pass. Tomorrow will be steamy again, then nice cooler weather blows in. Ah! True autumn can't be far behind, right?