sara skates

I love this sock:

Austermann Step yarn – the stuff with aloe and jojoba in it   It’s my second pair (different color this time though). 

But Houston, we have a problem:

I’m sure you can see it.  I offset the toe stitches from the instep stitches.  Actually, how it happened makes sense – it’s a 3-1 rib pattern, that I continued on the top of the instep but not the bottom.  So the first three knit stitches got put onto the needle before where they belonged – from a knitting "flow" perspective – it was easier to keep knitting until I had to switch needles and switch to a purl at the same time (rather than splitting that to 2 steps). 

Course, it would have had a lot more "flow" if I had remembered to switch ‘em back before knitting the toe.  Especially since I grafted the toe together before releasing the needles to the second pair.

Redoing the toe is an example of entropy, not flow, but you know – it’s hardly a major life stressing event.  Eventually, it’ll be a finished pair of socks.

Hannah and I watched 60 Minutes last night.  The real head-full was on their story about donor insemination "siblings" – genetically-related half brothers and half-sisters from different families but with the same anonymous donor father…and them getting in touch with each other.

There’s an online sibling registry website.

In some cases, the anonymous donor is also becoming known to these families (by choice).

I’m really not sure what to think.  Hannah would probably be quite interested in some kind of contact with other children conceived with her donor.  We have always been open about the possibility of her meeting her donor dad once she’s 18 – we purposely picked a "willing to be known" donor. 

But the possibility of connecting with other families using the same donor never really crossed our minds much.  We have NOT memorized and advertised the donor id number – while at social gatherings with other alternative insemination children for example – explicity b/c we did not want to be "surprised" with knowledge of a genetic half-sibling being in the same room   As a conscious choice though??  Making contact via such a registry?  Insofar as people are curious about their genetic makeup – I totally understand the motivation.  Insofar as our family expanding to include lots of other kids – hmm.

No other way to summarize it other than "head-full".

It’s no secret that I thrive on using mind-mapping software to keep work projects organized.  I use this package, but there are others – like this and this and this and – oh, here’s someone else’s summary.  I like it because – rather than storing information in a hierarchical structure (folders and filenames, or more likely, filenames within folders within folders within folders – generally with the structure repeated across types of software uses – databases, word processing, email, etc.), you can store it conceptually.  So for example, I have a "to-do" list mapped – where I have a branch of stuff that’s completed, another of stuff that I do on a regular basis, and one of stuff that comes in on an ad-hoc basis.  For each item on each branch, I can link the heck out of all files related to that item – emails, calendar info, contact info, text files, statistical processing files, output, weblinks, etc.  SO – rather than  having to hunt for files of a different type related to the same project – it’s all there.

Ravelry is sort of similar.  NO, it’s not a conceptual mind-map – not at all.  But, it’s like a knitting project journal, with things stored (and hyperlinked) conceptually – projects on the needles, in queue, yarns, books, patterns – the whole shebang.  Bonus that you can pull up (for any project) links of other folks who have done the same – and check their modification notes, yarn usage, gauge, etc.

What I see in a tool like this is how differently our minds function when trying to retrieve information online, vs. a hard copy.  In print form, we generally go to alphabetical or at least hierarchical linear systems of information storage and retrieval  You open a file drawer, and then go through files alphabetically until you find the one you need – if they are sorted by project, the projects themselves are first sorted alphabetically. 

But think of trying to do the same online.  It’s much more cumbersome.  Even for something as simple as looking up the definition of a word.  Think of dictionary sites where you first click on a hyperlink for the first letter – and then scan through for your word.  It takes forever. 

Think instead of a place like dictionary.com – where you type the word you want to look up in a search box, and a slew of info pops up – dictionary entries from a handful of dictionaries.  There are also links to find words translated into other languages, thesaurus entries, word-based games like crossword puzzles, etc.  The key is that information is organized conceptually for the user.  (I have no doubt that there’s a LOT of hierarchical processing that occurs on the website’s part in retrieving the information for the user.  That’s not what I’m talking about.  I mean the process the user goes through…).

Anyway – what I find so striking (and at the same time utterly simple) is how tools like this change our daily lives.  The same day that I started to play around with putting some of my projects onto Ravelry, I also found PDF files of knitting journal pages , designed by Grace and Alice Schnebly at this blog.  I have been meaning to start keeping a written log of projects for some time now.  Yes, some partial information makes it to my blog – but I talk about a lot of stuff on my blog, it’s not purely a knitting journal/log.  Even if I used categories – project notes end up in multiple posts – sometimes scattered amongst a bunch of random information blogged about in that same post.  So retrieving it is still rather cumbersome.  (And the goal of my blog is not to keep detailed track of knitting projects – if it were, maybe it’d be somewhat less cumbersome – but still, not conceptually organized.)

Yesterday’s news posted at Ravelry.com summarized that there are presently 3063 beta users, 602 unclaimed invitations, and 7303 people on the waiting list for an invitation.  They will shortly have two people working full time on getting invitations out and developing the site – so if you’re still on the waiting list, or you want to be – I trust that they will get to everyone eventually. 

I do recommend checking out the site.  During my first look, I never thought I’d ever put the time into summarizing project information.  In short order, I was hooked.  Much of it is not too laborious – as if someone else has used the same pattern or the same yarn, you click on it and it populates your information (you don’t re-type everything). 

And I LOVE having all the information at my fingertips.  I can easily take a peek at my current list of WIPs, and ponder my (ever expanding in-queue list), and it motivates me in a way that the pile of WIPs by my couch does not. 

And it’s all organized more like my brain thinks of knitting projects – conceptually, not purely in a linear hierarchy.

There’s a lot of Toby news.  First up – he has lost two front teeth:

He lost the first one about a week and a half before he lost the second one – both events were pretty exciting.  While the tooth fairy disappointed a bit by only leaving a dollar a tooth (and not the elusive Fly Pen that is still MUCH coveted), the disappointment was short-lived

We went to one of his last days at school – where they were celebrating Author’s Day – each kid read a story that they had written during the year.  Toby was third up to read, and got an attack of the giggles before he started – prompting his teacher to introduce him as quite the comedian.  He is enthralled with microphones – so it was all very exciting for him.  He read a story about our soft serve ice cream maker, and making cherry ice cream.  If I can ever figure out how to upload a video, I will – the giggles are pretty funny.

He’s officially a second grader now.  (And Hannah’s a 5th grader – holy heck).  He is lobbying to go to a "sports camp" this summer – any sport will do – as the primary goal is to win a trophy.   Hmm hmm hmm…  He is going to camp as part of his IEP (extended school year….) – perhaps we’ll engineer some sort of trophy experience.

The other night I took them with to the rink while I skated – as Terry had some horse thing to go to.  Toby was enthralled with watching Hannah play a Nintendo DS game – one he hadn’t played yet and was thrilled to start learning.  I got off the session when it was close to over, he looked at me with big eyes and asked quite seriously why I was getting off.  I replied something like "I dunno, I thought maybe it was time to get home," and then followed up with a tag question "do you think I should stay on longer Toby?".  He looked up even more seriously and nodded his head and said "well it IS good exercise Mama."  Well then.  Far be it from me to NOT take the opportunity to skate a little more!

Knitting.  I have finally conquered  variants of  the cat’s paw lace pattern (see here, and here, and here).  I started one for myself, using some merino/silk sock yarn that I thought didn’t have the right drape for socks, but it’d make a lovely scarf.  The colors remind me of my beloved Hobbes – my first cat, who died back in 1995 or so, but I still think of him a lot.  (He used to drag my shoes around the house – with the top of the heel in his mouth, and the rest of the shoe under his belly – I could never find a pair of shoes and he was always blamed.  I still have constant trouble finding my shoes – and I still blame him out loud frequently   ).  Anyway.  I had *immense* trouble getting this pattern going:


If you embiggen, you’ll note that the bottom-most paw print has and extra set of pads.  that was one issue that got me to rip back – another iteration had a stitch from what should have been a K2tog that didn’t get knitted together with the other – since it was 3 paws below, there was no way I was going to be able to drop down through the paw prints and just fix that stitch.  And I messed up the edge slip stitches – which wouldn’t have been a big deal by itself, but it really didn’t look as nicely as the section where they were neatly slipped.  And I forget what else happened – but I rippedback to the start at least four times.

Being ever so slightly perseverative, I decided to knit a slightly different variation for Amy who recently had to put her beloved and extremely long lived kitty to sleep – Bandit.  Cate helped me pick out yarn (Jade Sapphire 2-ply cashmere – in the film noir colorway – yum), so I started another scarf (this time using a slightly different pattern – the second one linked above).  That one took 3 full frogging sessions to get it going – but it has 13 repeats now – and is cruising right along.  I can now READ the pattern as the knitting builds – and catch errors before I’m beyond the next row – and fix them.  I never thought I’d get to that point.   Note how much ripping and iterations it took…but whew.

Since my office is cold during the summer with ample use of AC, and since I now have probably too much lace confidence, a shawl is now on my "in queue" list.  Probably Evelyn Clark’s Swallowtail – as per much obsession and input from Cate.  (I do have another lace project that has long been in the time-out corner – Fiddlesticks’ Lilly of the Valley .  While I made  decent progress on it a while ago – there are  at least three or four repeats of the lilly of the valley pattern – I never got to the point where I felt like I could "read" it, and it got shoved aside for a long spate of stockinette socks easy-knitting only.)

I have nearly completed the fifth day of a week and a half attempt to reset my body’s love of all things glycemic.  This involves no sugar and nothing that converts to sugar once ingested.  After 10 days to 2 weeks, I add back in fruit and whole wheat flour and any not-overly-processed grains etc.  I did it a few years ago – and a week and a half into the first (most brutal) period, the kids went trick-or-treating for Halloween, and I had a small bite of a candy out of their bag – it about took the skin of my teeth off with its sweetness!  Then followed several years of my body being pretty happy – I didn’t diet beyond trying to eat foods with a decently high nutritional impact, sugar/high-glycemic stuff was eaten in small quantities, etc.  I gradually added a bit more and a bit more sugar in … until recently when I was just overboard.  On my fifth trip to the cookie drawer and eating 8-10 oreos per trip…I decided that I was way beyond the "a little will do" phase.  Anyway.  I am not a proponent of cutting out an entire category of food (e.g., low carb diets etc.) – but this works for me, and the restriction phase only lasts for 10 days or so. 

Nor am I much tolerant of the reality for 99.999999% of womenkind who have a lifelong stress over their own weight.  I don’t escape the stress – but I mostly try to be rational with myself – and push away the "if only you were x pounds thinner" thoughts.  In this case, I’m just trying to get back to a point where my food intake felt a whole lot healthier and had a bunch of positivec health effects – better blood levels, NO acne, etc. etc.  Yes, I dropped pounds – but…I spent a lot of time arguing with myself about trying not to focus on the "get thin" part of the equation, KWIM???

Skating??  RIT ice has opened up again – which is practically a personal annual holiday in my book.  The first session is great – the ice is BRAND NEW – which means it’s clear – and you can see clear to the bottom.  I always lay out some patch on that session – it enthralls me to look at it.  Jump-wise, I am still working on putting together the pieces I worked on in North Carolina – we broke my axel to pieces there with the goal of rebuilding a new better one.  It’s not back yet by a long stretch – but I think it’s heading in the right direction.  I’m working on letting loose more with the pots and pans routine too, which is SO hard.  With dances, the Rocker Foxtrot is coming along quite nicely and I’ll probably test it in a month or so.  The silver Tango finally feels like I have enough of it down to work on it – rather than feeling like a puppet on strings barely holding on. 

I could probably write more but it’s late, and I need to shower off the little pokey hairs from tonight’s hair cut and then hit my pillow.  Oh, I have started to get some things organized on Ravelry – it’s pretty cool.

Happy summer everyone!

So I’m chaperoning Hannah’s class to the Genesee Country Village Museum tomorrow – a fabulous living history museum. One of the activities the kids need to do is locate three or four different signs which illustrate the trade offered within each building.  WIth the following helpful factoid:

    Visual signs were often used due to the fact that many colonists were *alliterate!
    *alliterate=unable to read

I confess I have never seen or heard the word "alliterate" before, so I googled it.  It means to use alliteration  -  ok, I buy that.

I’m pretty sure the factoid meant to refer to the word illiterate.

The irony is pretty perfect.

In other news, Hannah had her clarinet/band concert last night. She put her clarinet away in about 2.5 seconds when they were done, so I only got a picture of her holding the case ROFL:

But she’s really excited because she came home with a note – she has been selected to be one of two clarinet players to move up to play the bassoon in band next year.  Apparently it’s an instrument where rent out a school-owned instrument for a nominal fee, and it’s big enough that they give her two – one to keep at school, and one to keep at home.  She tried out for both the oboe and the bassoon – and liked the sound of bassoon better.

Plus, she’ll be off to school early for three mornings every six day cycle – more if she keeps up with chorus too

me!

I am well yarned and well skated and lack for very little on the material end of things in this life.  Things on the friends-and-family end are utterly plentiful too. 

Everyone went to bed giggling tonight as Toby was mulling over the possibility of throwing me a surprise party tomorrow as I tucked him in.  I said "well don’t tell me about it Toby!" to which he replied "yeah, you forget about that by tomorrow ok?"  I relayed the story to Hannah as Terry and I kissed Hannah good night – so we all got some good chuckles. 

Terry is desperately trying to stay up ’til midnight to gloat that I am officially "old" (at least as old as she is – in terms of years), but she didn’t make it.  She is crashed out on the couch with some Winston Churchill documentary on the TV.  I am off to bed before she notices  

I went from conferencing with Cate and Teej to skating with Amy in NC.  We skated and skated and skated – I had a series of lessons with two coaches there.  One series was on jump technique (I’m tackling the challenge of changing to jumping with my feet crossed rather than side-by-side in the air), and I also had a bunch of lesson time on the choreography for my pots/pans routine – music by these guys, the CD is here and a dowloadable soundclip too.  The rest of the time we ate really yummy food, and knit (Amy doesn’t knit, but knows people who do), and talked, and patted kitties (they have 4), and last but high on my list of trip highlights – we met Greta at The Hillsborough Yarn Shop (a really lovely shop – lots of good stuff).  Greta is one of those folks who makes me smile in so many ways – her stories of her boybird and girlbird, her creativity, and how she feeds the community as well as herself.  And bonus, I believe there’s some potential for enabling a return to skating on her part.  She came to watch some a session of Amy and I at the rink – including several rather specatcular splats (both of us found our toepicks unexpectedly, me twice), and lots of playing with choreography.  Amy is starting a new freestyle program too – bits of it are coming together.  It’s going to be amazing.

So there’s a rather haphazard update.  It’s great to be home.  I’m getting the best hugs!  Toby has a great new toothless grin and lisp going on, and Hannah has a massively dramatic construction of ace bandages and ice packs on an ankle from an encounter with the bottom of a pool without bending her knees.  (She’s running around though and excited about a soccer game tonight so we’re not all that worried.)

Much knitting was accomplished this last week – I finished a pair of socks (including the kitchnering), did the grafting and weaving in of ends on Alyson’s hat and mittens out of sock yarn, made much progress on another sock, and also on two scarves with kitty paw lace in them.  Photos to come. 

Terry’s off riding today – she won her event last week – lookie at this photo – in short, wow.

Cate posted the first up to date –

Today, we did our work presentation-network-learning thing – and then took another wee road trip.

To a yarn store that does not yet have a web presence!  But one with lovely proprietors:

The Studio – Knitting and Weaving on 1211 W. 47th St., Kansas City MO.  Where they had ALL kinds of hard to find yarn – Twisted Sisters,  Dancing Fibers; Alchemy Yarns; a local hand dyer named Andrea Scott/Crafty in a Good Way with STUNNING colorways and a range of weights/fibers – whoops, some sock yarn came home with me Oh My GOODNESS it’s 70% superfine merino, 15% silk, and 15% cashmere;  Rio del Plata yarn from Uruguay (oops, more sock yarn), Regia Silk (whoops more…),  – - – you get the picture.  To find a store with so many unique yarns was really really fun.

The owner  has written and published a kids’ knitting book:

They’re starting a sock club.  Call (816)531-4466 or email www.thestudiokc.com for more info.  It’s sock yarn in the mail every other month, with a pattern – the specific yarns were a secret but they’re specializing in harder to find yarns and patterns.  Not exotic like camel fiber – just less well -known unique sock yarns.  Tempting…mighty tempting.

Fondling some 100% cashmere…there are a few photos of me doing that in that corner of the store

THEN we went to a local out-of-the-way BBQ joint – L.C.’s BBQ.  Y-u-m.  The ribs were good, but the baked beans – out of this world.  Check out the pile of lumber in the back – presumably for barbecuing the bbq:

Dry rub – coming home to Rochester baby.

Photos are courtesy of Cate.  Right now, she’s kitchenering a pair of
socks, before she starts a new pair from our yarn store raid of earlier
today.  Gotta love academic conferences – knitting for hours and hours.