sara skates

as the i-cord bind-off just looked wrong.  As a design feature I mean – not so great with this particular hat.

Not to worry, I consulted several of Nicky Epstein’s "… the Edge" books and came up with something that (a) looks nice and (b) is something new that I haven’t done before – one criteria for this hat

Photos tomorrow I hope – the finish line awaits!

I know, I shouldn’t given my chosen profession, but I am.

If I have a stitch guage of 8 stitches to the inch, and a row gauge of 11 rows per inch, if I am attaching applied i-cord along the row edge of some knitting, how many of the rows do i pick up for how many of the i-cord rows?

It’s the same question as if I were picking up for a button band.  How many sweater edge stitches (at 8 per inch) do I pick up for the button band (at 11 rows per inch)?  Typically, on picks up about one less stitch than the stitch gauge but that seems off.

Clearly, I need to sleep on it   This is for a hat knit out of sock yarn (probably a first and a last for me – way too itty bitty yarn for a hat).  The i-cord will go around the bottom edge (it has been knit top-down).

My weekend improved immeasurably after the crappy Saturday (which involved the van and Toby’s walker duking out an argument).  We didn’t do much special, except Terry rode in an event and won (squee!).  I spent a LOT of time purging the toy excess.  And a little time pondering the possibility of saving it for a yard sale.  I punted that idea pretty quickly in favor of donating to any number of local child care centers (probably ones that serve kids with special needs).  Phew.  Any tax write-off more than balances out how much it’ll cost me in time to run a yard sale …

EDITED for clarity based on Mel’s comment – !  I have live stitches going horizontally around the head – at 8 stitches per inch.  The i-cord will be knit vertically – at 11 rows per inch.  So that’s about 3 i-cord stitches for every 2 hat-body stitches.  So rather than skipping  a hat-body stitch every now and then, I have to knit in one stitch twice every 3 stitches?? Right??  That’s just SO different from any button band I have ever picked up.  Admittedly, I have never done a button band with sock yarn..,

Yes, I am an insanely tight knitter   Just ask Cate.

On top of a fairly long list of rather run-of-the-mill whines, today I managed to back the van into Toby’s walker (I forgot to load it before trying to drive).

It’s probably fix-able, but for the moment it has a rather substantial ‘lilt’ – it goes to the left (so it’s no problem as long as he’s trying to walk in a circle).  Getting the seat up and down is also now really hard (and no longer on the list of things that Toby can do independently).

I’m sure we’ll get it fixed, but doing that won’t happen before Tuesday when things open up again, and it also probably won’t happen in a flash – so we’ll have to cope without it for a bit. 

Which is just inconceivable really.

And you know?  It’s just not fair for it to be *harder* for him to walk than it already is.

Off to find cake, chocolate, and who knows what else…

See?

Mittens for Alyson, the one I sucked into the knitting vortex when she
and Amy visited a few months ago.  The mittens were done, sans grafting
and weaving in of ends, until I pulled out the wrong needles from my
bag the other day.

There’s a hat plodding along too.  Let me just say that knitting a hat out of sock yarn?  It’s a slow process.

I went on a bit of a stash enhancement expedition:


Etsy, sock yarn.  The first in light "metals" colors and some peach – from dharmafey.etsy.com.  The second maroons from Fearless Fibers.  Yum.

Toby and I went to the closing sale of a local store.  I’m very sad to
see them close.  Toby picked one bag for shopping, and I got another -
he labeled them.  Sock yarn (again) went into "his" bag, and 5 skeins
of Jo Sharp silkroad Aran went into "my" bag.  Ultimately, it’s all
mine:

And last – some lace weight Midnight Rainbow/"Harlot’s Peacock":


It’s from Perchance to Knit (also an etsy seller), who doesn’t have any of this up right now but I think if you email her she’ll make you some…

I’m going back on a stash-busting yarn diet type of thing, but the momentary lapse has been fun

I have been bizarrely, inexplicably, and rather frighteningly obsessed with watching The Bachelor:  An Officer and a Gentleman.  I know, I know – what’s a feminist lesbian happily-involved-with-Terry-for-15-years doing watching THAT?  I started watching I think when there were 9 women being rosed down to 6 – part way through the season.  Admittedly, as the episodes wore on – I became less "interested" in them – in part, because the level of "cat fighting" decreased as there were fewer women.

Honestly, the bizarre obsession I think had to do with just a "Oh My GOODNESS – can you believe these women" kind of thing.  It just astounds me what many women in our culture and society go through to get married.  For the most part, it seems like they’d be happy to be in a fairly unequal partnership at that.  I realize that in the end, he and Tessa honestly seem to have fallen in love during the course of the show – which I applaud.  But I think that’s probably the exception rather than the rule of such shows.  And I gather that most of the women on the show were really rather devastated to not be chosen as the show wore on.  Which I find just head-shakingly "huh???".

Anyway.  I missed the "After the Rose" episode on Tues night, which promised to have some of the earlier-episode flavor – as the un-rosed bachelorettes returned.

Terry is mighty pleased that this little TV focus has ended.

One of our babysitters is graduating.  And moving to Chicago.  We’re very sad.  Not only b/c she’s
a really fun person and a fun sitter, but also b/c she’s a photography major.

We did schedule one last photo shoot before she leaves.  We haven’t gotten the photo cd yet, but she put some up on her flicker account.

There’s some wicked cuteness here.

I am having trouble picking which one(s) to put on my office wall.  Any suggestions?

Toby has started a blog.

(It’s rather tightly controlled at this point – under my name and password – but still.)

He dictated the subject header to me, and then I let him loose.  He found the font color choices by himself, and note how they match the actual coins

I have been meaning to get these scanned in and blogged for some time – children’s artwork of Toby and his mobility stuff.  It just makes me smile every time I look at it.  My scanner at work still needs a cable – but this morning I decided heck – just take a picture of it and upload that.  Without further ado:

This is from a birthday to Toby from one of his classmates.  It’s her and Toby, playing, with Toby in his walker.

This is from another classmate of Toby’s.  They each had to fill out a worksheet thing about a "friend", she picked Toby.  She drew them on the playground – her on the swings, him walking towards them with his canes.

Here’s why:

"This person is my friend because he makes me feel happy becucus he is awes nise to me"

And third, from the home front, a family drawing that Hannah did recently:

Toby’s in his walker in the middle, I’m on the right, that’s Hannah and Terry on the left.  Note that most of us are holding a cat – I think she got the whole menagerie.

Lastly, I’ll leave a story Toby wrote at school (not transcribed verbatim, I have done the grown up editing of spelling for ease of reading…)

Author:  Toby.
Title:  How I got Cerebral Palsy.
Mom got sick while she was pregnant with me so I had to be born early.  THe doctor took me out.  I was very tiny because I was born so early.  I had the tiniest feet.  I have a book, called Nathan’s Wish.  The book is about a bird that is an owl.  She seems to have a broken wing.  Nathan, who has cerebal palsy like me, tries to help the owl.  He checks on the computer for information.  This story reminds me of me because I have cerebral palsy too.  The hardest part is that I can’t get rid of it and sometimes I would like to.  A good part is that I cna use special equipment.  I have gotten better at standing and walking.

I just adore reading how he’s sorting through "his" story.  Yes, we have talked about this with him a few times – not that often though all things considered.  He has expressed his frustrations at having ’several palsy" a few times (but again, not that often).  It’s not that different from the kids coming to terms with having two moms (and developing their own stories and responses to questions about that).  He’s on his way…and mighty cute at it.

I have an odd sort of cold – physically, I feel ok – well, skating is continuing as usual and it’s going well.  My head though – it alternates between feeling stuffed with concrete, and feeling as leaky as a sieve – like, every 5 minutes it alternates.  Very odd.

My skate schedule has changed – my usual rink has gone into shut-down mode until late June, so I am skating at another rink most weekdays from 9-10 am.  It’s a rather nice way to start the day.  I get in to work late, and then work fairly productively in a post-skate coma until mid-afternoon.  Though it’s a shorter on-ice session than I am used to – since it’s more consistent on a daily basis, I’ll probably get as much done as I usually do.  (Typically, I have a bit of an erratic ice schedule – when and how long I skate depends on the day.)

Though yesterday afternoon was entertaining – I had to do a really simple little date extract and analysis, but it took me All Friggin’ Afternoon and more than a few emails to various others (thanks, others) to sort it out.  I blame it on the cold.

I’m off to knit.  I’m closing in on the home stretch with a pair of mittens for someone.  Though I think I have a hat planned with the leftover yarn too…

Cece queried whether Tobes called me "Odd!" too or not.  Nope, he didn’t (though I was out of town when he called Terry odd, so it could just be that.)

I did get this though.  Toby was playing with his KidPix digital camera (made by Fisher Price, excellent for kiddos not yet super dexterous). He’s a whiz at shooting photos, looking at a low-resolution preview on a teeny tiny screen about the size of half of a postage stamp, and deleting liberally.  (Buttons, you know – it’s really fun to push the buttons.)  He took a bunch of photos of us at dinner, and kept deleting them (most were of our empty post-eating dinner plates, but a few I would have kept – photos of Terry and Hannah solo, and one of Terry, Hannah and me all together).  Then he took one of me solo, and said as he stared adoringly at the preview screen:

"Yeah, now that’s a beauty."

There you have it.