How to Get Rid of Cold Feet

My feet and hands are nearly always cold. During the winter, I am always wearing socks around the house and to sleep in, and I have several pairs of socks just for this purpose: extra-thick, cushy, and nearly impossible to wear with shoes. James, on the other hand, rarely wears socks unless he is wearing shoes, even when his feet are cold. It is most unpleasant when one of his sockless cold feet brushes against my leg at night. Or, it was. I think I have solved this problem.

This is what I did during my day off Wednesday, due to the icy roads. It seemed appropriate considering the weather, and it was very quick--since I finished it last night without staying up late. (That's the magic of using worsted weight yarn for socks!) I have a large bag of wool and wool-blend yarns that I have accumulated, and James picked these two colors that were leftover from my Day of the Dead scarf. The colors would not have been my own choice or what I would've predicted James to choose, but whatever. I guess all the better to get rid of the less attractive colors. I was really worried about running out of the yellow color, but I lucked out and had just a little bit left when I was done with it. It feels so nice to use stash yarn left over from another project. I need to do that more often.

As if that wasn't enough to have accomplished on my day off, I also washed and blocked my Cabaret Raglan. I think it should be dry by this evening and I can start the process of trying to shrink it gently in the dryer. I'm a little worried, but after seeing how much it grew when blocked, I feel it is totally necessary.

Inclimate Weather

I live in a pretty interesting place as far as weather is concerned. Summer is always predictably hot. Very hot. But winter can be very cold one day (like 19 degrees this morning) and 80 degrees another day (like a week ago when I wore shorts and a tank top to the park).

However, we don't get a lot of wintry precipitation most of the time. I would say three different storms in one winter would be considered a lot. But it seems that at least once a year, we get an ice storm that throws everything out of sync, and last night we got the one for this year. My internal clock woke me up this morning, and as I turned to look at the alarm clock, I saw it was flashing numbers at me. The power went out during the night. After forcing myself to walk into the living room to retrieve my cell phone, I discovered it was 5:20am. I went back to bed and stayed there until the heat kicked on (at 5:30am) and then off after the house was a cozy 68 degrees.

I was 'encouraged' to not take a lunch yesterday and to eat pizza provided by the company since we were dismissed at 2:00pm. We were told to check the school closings and call the company number to see if the office would open late or at all today. School is closed, and (squee!) work is closed, too. Well, my work anyway. James still has to work. You won't find me complaining about the weather ;)

I would take a picture for you, but it's too cold to go outside and it doesn't look as impressive as it sounds. There is nothing on TV except the news people talking dramatically about the weather, telling you not to leave your house, and showing all the traffic accidents (all 500+ of them). When will people learn that it is dangerous to drive on ice? This is ICE people, and you are TEXANS.

Still Knitting...

I finished my second Noro Striped Scarf last week. I'm putting it away for safe-keeping in order to give it as a gift in the future. If you are a person to whom I might consider giving a gift to at some point, and you like this scarf, let me know...by the way, the colors are much prettier in person. Though James admires my Noro scarves very much, he thinks the colors are 'too girly.' I have agreed to make him one using 'manly' colors at some point.

I also started some Monkey socks that will be a gift for a friend. It is truly amazing how much more quickly knitting goes when using bigger needles and fewer stitches. Those socks for my mom took FOREVER but these monkey socks are FAST! After a knitting and family-filled weekend at my parents' house, I am almost finished with sock #1. It has some weird pooling going on, but I think it looks kinda neat, myself. I hope the recipient likes it, too, seeing as how these socks will not fit any other person that I know. I intend for these to be a birthday present in 3 months, so I'm not really rushing them. Mostly I want to finish them so I can start some socks for myself without breaking my one sock rule. My one sock rule means I am only allowed to work on one sock at a time, and I must finish a pair before starting a new sock. I didn't create this rule....it just kinda imposes itself on me, and my willpower cannot allow me to break it.

I have a problem. I finished my Cabaret Raglan sweater over a week ago. I mean REALLY finished--down to the the sewing and weaving-in of ends--but I still haven't washed and blocked it. I have no idea why I've been putting it off for so long (except maybe that I hate hand-washing clothes and really fear that I will ruin all of my knitting work), but that has caused me to put off blogging about it until it's finished blocking. It now occurs to me that it might be a while before I block it, so I might as well blog about it a little.

While it is a good deal larger than a sweater I would normally wear, I will still wear it in this state, so I'm not going to try any desperate means (steeking, frogging) to get a better fit. It seems that I have a higher ill-fit tolerance for items that I make for myself. That's probably because of the insane amount of time/money spent on a too big handmade sweater when compared to a cheap, slightly too long store-bought sweater. I do plan to attempt some minor shrinking techniques after blocking it, so we'll see how that goes.

Required Reading

Back when I was in high school, I came across a list of books and authors that frequently appeared on AP English (advanced placement) tests. (AP tests could/can be taken by high school students to qualify them for college credit hours on some subjects, depending on the college. I never took one, myself.) Anyway, this list consisted completely of well-known classic literature, and it became somewhat of a goal of mine to read every book on the list. At the time I found the list, I had already read several, and in the years since, I have gradually read more and more of them, though I'm not even halfway done. I know I have this list somewhere, but I haven't looked at it in a while since I hadn't been reading lately. I think it's time to find it.

A few weeks ago, I happened to watch Tess of the D'Ubervilles on PBS, a Masterpiece Theater production based on the book by Thomas Hardy. I wasn't familiar with the book or Thomas Hardy, but after reading a thread on Ravelry started to admire the handknits in the movie, I found out that Thomas Hardy was also the author of Jude the Obscure and Far From the Maddening Crowd, both of which I have heard of (and feel certain are probably on The List, but I have yet to check that). Because I enjoyed Tess so much, I decided to try one of these books, and I had a suspicion that they would be on the public domain because of their age. I was right!

There is a website--www.gutenberg.org--called Project Gutenberg that is a library of books (mostly classics, all pretty old) that have went into the public domain, so you can download (for free) and read them. I read the few Jane Austen novels I'm missing this way as well as a few other random books I've come across. Both books (as well as Tess) by Thomas Hardy are there, and I finished reading Jude the Obscure last week. I enjoyed it a lot, but it was pretty darn depressing (like Tess). I'm just starting Far From the Maddening Crowd today since finishing Silas Marner by George Eliot, which was a quick read after Jude. Perhaps that one was on The List, too...

This website is an awesome resource and I plan to read many more books this way. It may not be ideal for a lot of people to read books this way, but it doesn't bother me much. And they're free (unlike Barnes and Noble) and instantly accessible and without late charges (unlike the library). Another cool reader-friendly website is www.librarything.com, though I admit I haven't used it much.

I'm pretty happy 'cause at this rate, I'm going to meet my 12-book goal for the year by March.

Traveling Scarf Update

I never posted a picture from my photoshoot (ha!) with my finished, blocked traveling scarf, so here it is:

To be honest, I've been grabbing my Noro scarf more often in the mornings, but I still think it's a pretty work of art. More than anything, I love the story of it--where it's been, whose hands have worked on it, and the fellow knitters who are represented by it. Priceless.

How I could I possibly NOT do another scarf with these incredible women?!

My upstream partner (who sends scarves to me) has already sent me her starter section. James brought it to me when he checked the mail Sunday. I was a little overwhelmed because I hadn't even started my own starter section yet, much less mailed it to my downstream partner. It's not that I'm behind, though--my upstream partner just so happens to be one of the most enthusiastic of our bunch and is ahead of schedule. Any time that I have a scarf that needs to be worked on, though, it tends to take priority over all other knitting and most other activities, so Sunday afternoon was devoted to my traveling scarf group.

I resolved to have my starter package ready to go before I opened her scarf package, so I first tackled the issue of the scarf booklet. My last scarf booklet was a nightmare to print and took many hours, lots of paper, and several curse words. Thankfully, this one was much easier since I saved the template for the first one and had the first booklet in my possession to make sure I was printing the sheets out correctly. If this doesn't sound hard to you, consider that I had to manually print double-sided pages that would be folded in half to make the booklet, so each pice of paper had four booklet pages on it that had to be in such an order that they could stacked, bound down the center, and then be in the right order. (It seems like my printer AND my computer should make this easy to do, but not so, apparently). I admit, it sounded easy to me, too, until I first tried to do it. Anyway, it only took about 15 minutes this time.

About a week ago, I had begun knitting my starter section, but I kept screwing up each lace pattern I attempted. I think I ripped it completely out three times over the course of several hours before I gave up and decided to leave it for the weekend. It was very frustrating for me, and when I again started yesterday, it seemed to follow a similar pattern as I ripped out my first attempt after 11 rows. It would seem that not the third, but rather the "fifth time's a charm" in my case, because I finally managed to complete my fifth attempt with no problems! The cotton is a little stiff, so I pinned it in place to take a picture. Pretty, huh?

With my package all ready to go, I opened the waiting scarf and selected the yarn that would best match it. I ended up using my Manos Cotton Stria because neither of my purples were anywhere close to the same shade used in the first section, but this green was pretty close, which is good because my other green is a pale lime color. I ended up using the first pattern I came across (I did consider others, but still came back to this one) which happened to use exactly the amount of stitches I had to work with. Perfect! I think it came out very nice. I think I'll wait a few days (or maybe a week?) in between sending my starter and this scarf so as not to overwhelm my downstream, but it sure feels good to be completely caught up. I can now focus attention back on the Cabaret Raglan, which has been neglected for a few days now.

Our First Anniversary

Wow, time flies when you're having fun! Amber told me last night that she's heard that the first year of marriage is the hardest. If that is true, then I'm not sure what to think: the past year has been one of the easiest years of my life (apart from Sugar-related incidents). I'm so lucky to have found someone I get along with so well, and who is such a kind, caring, intelligent, funny person. Thanks, James.

We officially celebrated our anniversary on Saturday ('cause it's no fun to celebrate on a Monday), and at my request, James did all the planning himself. If you know us, you know this is highly unusual since I plan or lead the planning effort in most aspects of our life. James did an excellent job, though! It makes me want to hand over all control more often!

First, we went to see Frost/Nixon at the Angelika Dallas, which we had been wanting to see for a while. In fact, I want to see every single movie currently playing at the Angelika, so I'm sure we'll be frequenting there in the next few weeks. It was a very good movie, but a bit of a letdown from the hyped up, out-of-context previews. From there, we went and ate lunch at a nearby Chipotle, where I hadn't been to eat since New Year's Eve! Yes, I had chicken in my burrito, but this was already permitted when we first made our plans to give up meat--the exclusion of special occasions like wedding anniversaries, birthdays, and important holidays. This was also my first time to have a Dr. Pepper in the new year, which I have also been avoiding. This Chipotle was HUGE and VERY BUSY, and I realized that it is probably the SMU Chipotle, since it was mostly college-aged kids eating there. Since James had never seen SMU, we drove by it after we left.

The main event of the day was visiting the King Tut exhibit at the Dallas Museum of Art. It was extremely crowded, and we had to wait a very long time between standing in line for tickets and actually entering the exhibit. I should have brought something to knit on. The exhibit was fascinating, and I learned a ton about ancient Egypt. I won't spoil it for you (since I know that you are going to see it--it closes in May, so you have time), but I should warn you: King Tut is not actually part of the exhibit. Yes, they show what appears to be his gold coffin in the commercials and advertisements, but not one of his eight (!) coffins is actually there. They do have a gold coffin belonging to someone else, and the tiny gold coffins of his stillborn children (sad, but probably common when you marry your sister), but no King Tut. James and I were a little disappointed (and after reading reviews online, I see we were not alone), but I still think the exhibit was fanstastic.

After King Tut, James and I looked around the museum a little longer and saw some things we hadn't gotten to see last time we were there. Maybe one day we will finally get to see it all before being ushered out at closing time.

We headed to Addison to check into our room at the Intercontinental Hotel and get ready for dinner. This was the largest hotel I've ever been in--it even had a boutique, a gift shop, and a coffee shop. Our room was on the 16th floor (I think) and we could see a lot of Addision from the window.

For dinner, we went to Texas de Brazil, a churrascaria restaurant where they walk around with skewers of meat and offer you steak, lamb, chicken, pork, ribs, etc. I didn't have much meat, though the little I did eat was very good. James had a LOT of meat. I am often amazed at how much he can consume. I did enjoy the "salad" bar, which had much, much more than salad. I think the salad bar is reason enough to go back, even without eating any meat. Yum! We had creme brulee for dessert, which was very, very good. It had just a hint of a lemon flavor that was perfect. I kinda feel like I had two desserts, though, since they serve fried bananas as one of our sides. Our server told us it was to cleanse our palate between different meats, so though I didn't have much occassion to use it for that, I did eat it all.

While James slept in yesterday, I worked on my Noro Scarf #2 for a while. I got this much done:

Do You Ever...

Catch yourself thinking or doing something subconsciously?

Like counting your stitches as you knit even when you don't need to?

I hope I'm not the only one.

At lunch I cast on for the first sleeve of my Cabaret Raglan. I finished the entire body last night, and I am hopeful that it will fit after modeling it against my body last night. It's a little (or maybe a lot) longer than I'd like, but I now realize that I should have accounted for my (apparently) unusually short torso, even though I only made it the length specified for the extra small while I am making the medium size. And, no, I'm not short. By all American standards I've seen, I'm exactly average at 5'4". I will wear it, I think, too long or not. (Note to self: next time, either use a provisional cast on and start halfway up so I can knit down to appropriate length or alter pattern to be top-down. Wow, I feel like a real knitter when I say that.) Maybe I will finish the sweater this weekend if I work really, really hard at it. I think I can do it.

Did you know that I'm lucky? I don't mean this in a general way, because I tend to think all bad luck/good luck pretty much equals out, and that most things in my life are not the result of luck, but are the results of what I put into my life. I just mean that I get to go home every day for lunch (I live that close) and that James, too, gets to go home every day for lunch, and we, every day, get to eat lunch together and chill for a few minutes in the middle of the work day. So nice. The only downside is the occasional day (like today) when I wear black pants and our solid white, long-haired cat rubs against my legs all during lunch so that everyone at work can admire my cat hair-covered pants in the afternoon. Thanks, again, Sugar.

A Neat Cat Trick

We have some inflated balloons on the floor that have been hanging around since New Year's. Sugar has been playing with them some, and surprisingly, has not yet popped one. I keep anxiously awaiting the loud POP! every time I see her playing with one, but I am always sadly disappointed. In my head, I imagine her freaking out and darting far, far away (the bathroom maybe?) when it happens and I imagine myself laughing hysterically (or diabolically if you consider it mean to laugh at a scaredy cat).

Anyway, just now as I was playing with (errr...torturing?) the cat, I had an incredible idea! I got her riled up a bit, went and held her exactly over a balloon about three feet in the air and then dropped her on it--POP! I was completely devastated by her reaction, which is to say, she basically had no reaction. She immediately started sniffing and then chewing the balloon remnants. No fear whatsoever.

Why must this cat always frustrate and disappoint me? Whether it's breaking irreplaceable Christmas tree ornaments or refusing to amuse me by being a dumb scared animal, she always lets me down. Anyone need a cute white cat? (Don't tell James I'm trying to give her away. And don't remind me it was one of my resolutions to try harder to like her.)

Pescetarianism

I'm not much of a meat-lover. I enjoy steak and chicken, but I never crave it, and I'm usually just as happy to eat something without meat if it tastes good. If I had to actually kill my own food in order to eat meat, though,it probably wouldn't happen. Not as long as I had plenty of other food, anyway. If I were starving...who knows what a starving woman is capable of?

Over Thanksgiving, James was helping his uncle feed the calves on the farm, and they were so cute as they played and ran around. They have soft hair and big eyes and it was hard for me to not think of them as pets. I felt a little sad knowing their fate. This was the first moment I felt a little guilty about eating beef. It also occurred to me that I could stop eating beef, that it wasn't impossible, and that for me, it would probably be easier than for most people since I only have beef a few times a year when eating out. We rarely--as in twice this year--cook beef at home, opting for ground turkey instead of ground beef for our spaghetti and chili.

Then this idea spread to pork and poultry. James and I typically eat about one or two pork loins per month, and though James eats ham for breakfast sometimes, I never do. It would be easy to stop making pork loins. Poultry--chicken and turkey--would, by far, be the most difficult to do away with, but it didn't seem impossible. We probably have ground turkey once a week or less and we have chicken less than once a week. The toughest part about the chicken is that I always get that in my Chipotle burritos, but since I hope to cut back on that, anyway, maybe it won't be so bad.

As heartless as this may sound, I can't bring myself to think of fish as cute or worth not eating. I would probably be able to kill and cook my own fish without feeling too bad about it. Besides that, most fish/seafood is much healthier for people than other meat (or that's what I've been led to believe) and I don't think I eat enough of it as is. So, if I cut out the beef, pork, and poultry, I will probably consume more fish and seafood, which is good. I will probably also consume more vegetables, which is great. I think my diet would greatly improve just out of necessity.

So, I have decided to practice some form of 'pescetarianism' in 2009. As you may have guessed, this means the only meat I will consume will be fish and seafood--no land animals. By 'some form' I mean that I will not be super-strict about it--obviously, if the moral dilemma was bothering me so much, I wouldn't have eaten pork loin for dinner three times since Thanksgiving, right? My only goal is to not purchase beef, chicken, or pork for my consumption. This means that if I eat dinner at my parents' house and they are eating steak, I will eat steak, too. Or, for example, I will still eat all the frozen meat in our freezer--I just won't buy any more of it. Anyway, this whole thing is more of an experiment, not a goal. If I can easily live without the meat, great! If it causes a lot of problems, and I end up missing it more than I thought, maybe it will be a short-lived experiment.

When I told James of my ideas, he was supportive and wanted to join me, so that will make it easier, too. We are five days into the plan, and so far it has been fine, but I don't think that's saying much. We still have a LOT of meat in our freezer, so I don't feel like we're having to go without yet. Yesterday was our first trip to the grocery store in which we bypassed all meat, and it was probably the cheapest trip to the store we've ever had since being married. One unexpected thing I've noticed is that I'm not really wanting to go out to eat--fast food or otherwise--since I know what I typically would eat would contain meat, so I would be forced to get something other than what I might really want. Maybe I'll be saving more money than I thought.

A New Year, A New Blog

I have decided to change blogs for a few reasons:

• There are many things I would like to have as part of my blog that I cannot do with Yahoo 360 but that I will be able to do with Blogger. I have not implemented these things yet, but I will at some point now that I can.


• I couldn't think of a single advantage that Yahoo 360 has over Blogger or other similar sites--not for my purposes, anyway.


• Since my blog has become largely knitting oriented, I decided I would go ahead and hint at that (see my title? For non-yarnies, 'worsted' is a play on worsted weight yarn.)


• It's the new year, and why not?!

I didn't have to work today, so I went to a yarn store I've never been to before in order to procure some plant fiber yarns for the next round of traveling scarves. The store, The Shabby Sheep, is located right in the middle of Dallas, and everyone in there was SO nice and helpful. I can't wait to go back, which is more than I can say for the other dallas LYS I've been to. They didn't have a huge selection, but the owner told me that they had just had a huge sale and that they were low on stock right now, so I'm optimistic about going back later on. I did manage to get four different plant fiber yarns: two in green and two in purple. They are all very, very pretty (and if you're REALLY curious, you can check out my Flickr or my Stash on Ravelry).

I also got some lace yarn! Finally! A lady in the store was knitting with some and showed it to me, so I decided to get some, too. It's actually the hank shown in the background of my title bar. Another lady showed me a picture of a pattern on Knitty that is made using this yarn, and it was very, very pretty. I can't remember the name of it, but I think I'll recognize the name and/or the picture when I see it. I also got some more Claudia Handpainted sock yarn in light blue, and I can't wait to make some socks with it. Pretty, no?

I have also started on a sweater using some burnt orange Debbie Bliss Cashmerino, and I'm about this much into it:

Remember when I told you that I showed one of my friends, Sara, how to knit and sent her on her way with needles and yarn? I helped her bind off on this on New Year's Day:

The scarf kept tricking her by putting more and more stitches on her needles until she had 10 more than she started with. Her stitches were really pretty, though--Awesome job for her first finished object! She has already purchsed some really pretty brown and pink variegated and her own needles for her next project :)

Did I mention our New Year's party? It was pretty fun, and I'm still eating the leftovers. I'll leave out the gory details and just give you this nice picture of Amber (and Jeff, Robby, and Brandon, L to R) instead. She REALLY had a fun New Year's Eve ;)