Just another Terrible Tuesday

One of my best friend's mother died yesterday. I don't even know what to say about her, she's been part of my life for the last 30 years. She had this way of being accepting of human behavior, nothing really phased her, but she wasn't anything close to being saccharine, or even sweet. It's just sad and awful and I can't even begin to put it into words, much less here. But the world is a poorer place without her.



Okay. In other words, literally, why am I looking up so many words reading Middlemarch? I thought I had a decent vocabulary. Apparently not. My latest are:

Obloqouy - 1. abusively detractive language or utterance: calumny. 2. Loss of or damage to ones' reputation. [ME obloqui < Med Lat obloquium < Lat obloqui, to speak against: ob, against + loqui, to speak.

And then I had to look up calumny again even though I already had and had been surprised that I did not know the word. Still.

Calumny - 1. A false statement maliciously made to injure someone. 2. The utterance of calumny; slander.

Today is just a sad, sad day.

My Kingdom for a Crown

Hmm. That really doesn't look much like a crown, does it? But it is. Or it was, when I was a little girl. It was on a lamp my parents got through Green Stamps, like a hundred years ago. I accidentally broke the lamp last weekend and can you believe my mother wanted to throw my crown away? Unbelievable. Peasants.

Today's church service was the "old contemporary", I guess. I just want to know - whose contemporary? Some of that stuff sounds like they wI liked last week when we used the 1940 hymnal. I suppose if I was Catholic I'd still be whining we don't do the service in Latin.

I snuck my knitting in. I don't think anyone noticed, but then, I doubt they'd say anything to me. To my face. Maybe whispering behind my back. If I didn't do it myself on occasion, it would make me crazy, but then again, it's sort of the "telephone" of the congregation. I think gossip gets a bad rap because a) men always think that woman do it (as if men don't) and b) they think it's all catty. Sometimes it's just informational. I mean, who doesn't say," oh what's so and so up to? Still married to......"

Main Entry: pro·ve·nience
Pronunciation: pr&-'vE-ny&n(t)s, -nE-&n(t)s
Function: noun
Etymology: alteration of provenance, origin, source.

Main Entry: con·ve·nience
Pronunciation: k&n-'vEn-y&n(t)s
Function: noun
1 fitness or suitability for performing an action or fulfilling a requirement
2 something (as an appliance, device, or service) conducive to comfort or ease
3 a suitable or convenient time
4 freedom from discomfort : EASE

I had to look up provenience - but why is convenient completely unrelated? I expect pro and con to be prefixes, darn it! Yeah, yeah, provenience is a corruption of the French provenance but still. It just struck me.

Oldest UFO

Wow, what a terrible picture. Anyway, I was digging through my stash yesterday and discovered these socks. Now I have no idea why I decided to knit them in white and green, green being one of my least favorite colors and the sock pattern was a lovely black and white w/red accents, but there you are. They were my first socks. Or sock, as the case may be. Or, in fact, is.

I finished the one (and note the lovely stripe down the sole of the foot. This was before I learned to knit a few extra stitches on every needle when working in the round). I finished the one (oh, I said that), and then immediately cast on the other and knit the rib and the first pattern and then stuck it in the "Work" bag. Every once in a while, I pull it out.

It's now been every once in awhile going on 8 years. Why? They actually fit. They're warm. They're not really plural yet, but hey. I'm an eternal optimist. (Yeah, like my real middle name is patience, I'm an optimist).

In other exciting news, I started Middlemarch and so far, I'm enjoying it. Love this quote.

"And certainly, the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we are so fond of it. "

Of course, this comes right before it, but oh well. "A woman dictates before marriage in order that she may have an appetite for submission afterwards."

What is with the Supreme Court? They actually broadened the Eminent Domain statute to include taking your house for a freaking shopping mall? That's just a really disturbing ruling.

Terrible Tuesday

Not for any particular reason, but Tuesdays generally are just.......bad.

Mondays, at least you remember the weekend.

Wednesday is the halfway through mark, Thursdays mean just one more day and Finally Friday is so obvious there are Country songs written about the, but Tuesday?

Tuesdays the last weekend is but a distant memory and next weekend is but a wistful far off dream. I could probably write an *execrable poem about this, whaddaya think?

It would probably go faster if I got to work though, eh? Maybe. Maybe not.

In the knitting front, I managed to do a single knit row of the 3 ridge garter rows between the lace panels before I noticed it. Bah. I put it aside thinking that I might just let it go, but no way. I'll have to rip out the 14 rows of lace. It's not that big a deal, but it's annoying. I should **rename this blog the Frog Queen.

My last project, the 2005 Winter Vogue shawl collar pullover, I tweaked by adding double moss stitch edging instead of ribbing, got all the way to the shaping of the 2nd sleeve having decided to steek it and make it a cardigan before I thought "what if I hate it? "If I cut it, I'll have confetti. If I frog it, at least I can still make the vest for my dad that I actually bought the yarn for. So I frogged it.

* ex·e·cra·ble Pronunciation: 'ek-si-kr&-b&l
Function: adjective1 : deserving to be execrated : DETESTABLE 2 : very bad : WRETCHED - ex·e·cra·ble·ness noun- ex·e·cra·bly /-blE/ adverb (from Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Sorry, I'm sort of a freak for dictionary listings. In fact, I've bought dictionaries just to read.

**I changed the name from my actual name to make it a) more in line with the name of the blog and b) to give me a fighting chance for deniability when I invariably babble family secrets or more likely, shoot my mouth off. Part of me hopes that no one ever reads this at all and I can rant to my hearts content, but part of me would be sad if that happened.

A snowman? An elf? A cross? You're kidding.

No, I kid you not. Can't you tell that's a cross? Yeah, me either, and I made it.

You can see that it is very, very ugly What it really is, is my first attempt at bead knitting! It's actually pretty easy, however next time I think I'll go with a designer's pattern.

And now I have to think of something else for a Father's Day present. Anything special at 7-11 you think he'd like?

It was supposed to be a bookmark with a cross.......bead? charm? But the local Beverley's didn't have one and I couldn't find parking in Walnut Creek (of course. On a Saturday? Never happen) so I had the brilliant idea of making a cross and using that as the bead at the bottom of the bookmark. If you want to see the beautiful bookmark I was trying to copy, check it out here at The Stitching Sheep http://stitchinsheep.blogspot.com/ at the end of Monday, June 13th. It is gorgeous.

Also, if you have any idea how to explain to me how I link using not using the link, please let me know. I'm sure it has something to do with HTML, but that's about it.

Does changing anything change the name?

Do you see that wet stuff on the ground? It came from the sky. In June. Yesterday, in fact. In Concord, California. I think this might be the Eighth Sign.

And with all these earthquakes in California, I haven't felt a single one. Usually I do. Even the itty bitty 3. ones. They've been North and South with not much damage (I think). I hope we don't get another one. There are huge plate glass windows in my building at work, and I always seem to be standing in front of one during an earthquake. Yeah, I know you're not supposed to. But it's oddly compelling to be on the 9th floor and watching a tree move from one huge office window to another. That was the Loma Prieta quake. I was in Oakland at the time, a few miles away from where the freeway collapsed. Driving home? You can bet your life I counted overpasses and underpasses, not to mention the Caldicott Tunnel. I threw hiking boots in with my Earthquake Preparedness Kit. (matches, a jacket, a flannel shirt I stole from an ex, duct tape and hiking shoes. With my luck, it would be the first time in years I wore heels.)

I hope it rains through the weekend. I love to knit/read/lounge around the house in the rain.

(Nope, but it's weirdly cold this weekend. Sunny at least)

Valentine_wrap

Valentine wrap to go with the Valentine Tank top from White Lies Design. I actually have the tank knitted, just not sewn together.

And it looks like this is going be my Knit the Classics knitting part because I am having one hell of a time getting yarn that I like for the Pi Shawl (with sleeves) that I was going to make. It was in the Winter 2000 Knitter's Magazine. Apparently the Skacel/Mondial yarn is discontinued, the La Gran space dyed yarn colorway I liked is discontinued [Side note: wouldn't you think they would just say Not In Stock as opposed to "The Number you have selected does not exist" when I can see the freaking number on my computer? And the color next to it?] My LYS hasn't gotten back to me in two weeks whether or not they can find more of the Ironstone yarn that worked gauge wise, even after at least one follow up call.

A lesser person would take this as A Sign I Should Not Spend Money I Don't Have on Yarn, but I take it as a challenge to persevere. Somewhere there is the perfect yarn that will probably cost me a couple of hundred bucks that will then sit in my stash because by then? New pattern/yarn will have enticed me.

Sheba

What the heck?

Okay, I guess I've hopped on the blogging thing...... I wanted to join Knitting The Classics because I've had Middlemarch on my TBR shelf, I'm always looking for an excuse to buy yarn and I have about 50 knitting blogs bookmarked right now that don't update often enough to suit me.

I'm from the San Francisco Bay Area, the East Bay, I'm over........let's say, 30 (waaaay over 30), under 50, but sadly by not a big as margin. I knit, I read, I have a 19 year old cat and now I need to figure out how to add pictures - pictures are half the reason for blogs...and I have no idea what I'm doing. I mean, now, in Bloggerland.

Argh.

And, of course, my middle name is Patience. Because I knit. If one more person tells me "oh, you must have so much patience! I could never do that." I will whack them upside the head with my purse. (which is a lethal weapon, I've been told. Can I help it that I have to have a book with me - what if I'm stuck in a line? What if I'm bored out of my mind? Not to mention all the necessities that belong in a purse.) (Reading The Perfect Agreement by Michael Downing right now, who also wrote a fabulous book about Daylight Saving (one s) Time called Spring Forward.

Well, at least I managed to get back here to edit this. I had visions of one lonely post (which might still happen).

Hmm. What can I possibly post on a more or less public site? I once burned all my diaries because I caught my first husband reading one. Naturally he flipped right to my high school Perfect Guy fantasy entry. Gah.