It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

Remember this post last week? Where I was making fun of myself for thinking I had taken all the Christmas decorations down and then I noticed that red-and-green paper chain hanging in clear view on my kitchen wall?

Yeah, that one.

Well, for starters, it is still there. Apparently, I am too busy blogging about it to take it down. And then, the other night, while I was taking pictures of Rachel modeling my Nurmilintu shawl, I noticed that there was a chain hanging above the dining room doors. Hey, that's understandable, I thought. It's way high up and out of the way.

Who would even look up there, amirite?

So tonight I was taking that picture of it there to share with all of you, when Susie said, "What are you doing?"

"I'm taking a picture of that paper chain. I thought they were all gone, but I missed one."

"But there's more," Susie said.

"What? No, there isn't."

"Mommy, turn around."

Note the 2 pieces of stolen wood propped decoratively on our mantel

Danged if she wasn't right - there was a HUGE chain stretching across the entrance of the den. I must walk under that thing 50 times a day on my way to the computer.

"Shoot," I said, aiming my camera (see what I did there?) at the offending decoration, "I thought they were all gone!"

By this time, I kid you not, Susie was rolling on the floor and screeching with laughter. "Look at the windows, Mommy! The windows!"

Feels like a horror movie - the Christmas that wouldn't DIE

Double dang. These living room windows are in my direct line of sight every single time I walk in the front door. My only defense is that all of these are hung out of my reach, so it's hard for me to take them down. Although that wouldn't explain why I don't even SEE them, right? Yikes.

What else am I missing, I wonder...

It's Saturday - No One Is Even Reading This

I think this is the post where I am supposed to announce the winner of the Yarn Harlot book, but I haven't gotten around to figuring that out yet (not least because some people who want the book are commenting on the wrong post, so I have to go find those comments and include them and WHY are you people making my life so difficult, anyway?). So, yeah, you have another day to comment (ON THE CORRECT POST) and let me know you want the book.

Who knew giveaways could be so hard?

It's like a hotel...

In other news, let me introduce you to our new shower doors! It's been an entire 24 hours and they still stay on track, don't get stuck, and have not once tried to hit me over the head. I call that a home improvement win, don't you? I took my first shower in there today, and it would have been a marvelous experience if we weren't having this weird problem lately with our tankless water heater - i.e., we never know if our shower will be hot, warm, or barely tepid. It's like Russian Roulette, only not as fatal.

Yes, I HAVE called the repairman, who couldn't find any error codes on our electronic wonder and left with a vague promise of calling the manufacturer to find out if there have been similar complaints. In the meantime, mornings (which were already a little unpleasant, although not hiding-out-from-the-Nazis unpleasant, I'll admit that) have become downright unsatisfactory. Turns out I really need that hot water shower to start my day off right - who knew?

See the toilet in that picture? It's new. It flushes in one fell swoop and then refills in under 30 seconds. It would be perfect except that it has a self-closing lid. You can't close it on your own, or it will break. Instead you have to lightly start it on its descent and it does the rest.

I hate this.

One, I resent the implication that one needs automation to close a toilet seat lid all the way down to the bowl. Two, how long will it be before someone mistakenly tries to push it down and breaks it? Three, YOU CANNOT SIT ON IT.

There are actually innumerable instances when you use the closed toilet as a seat: when you are spending half an hour straightening your tween's hair and she wants to sit down; when you are watching your kids in the tub and want to sit down somewhere that is not wet; when you are applying lotion to your feet and don't want to stand on one leg and then the other to do that, because you don't want to end up in the ER explaining how you got that gash across your forehead from falling face first onto the edge of the vanity.

Okay, maybe that last one is just me. Still, who would want a toilet that you can't occasionally sit down on its lid? Who would be stupid enough to buy one?

Me, apparently. I now own three of them.

Let's end this post on a positive note: I am finally blocking the Nurmilintu shawl.

Please note the thousands of tiny stitches that went into this piece of work. Think about the hours spent pulling the yarn through one loop and then another, over and over and over. And then wonder at my complaining that blocking this shawl was the single most tedious thing I have ever done. But it was - I thought I would jump out of my skin by the time I finally threaded through all those wires and pushed that last pin into the foam pads.

Experienced knitters will note that I got the shape wrong. I know. That bottom part should be more to the left. I am still trying to decide if I have the fortitude to redo it.

Oh, who am I kidding? I'll have to. Just looking at that picture is upsetting me.

Knitting - where OCD calls home.

Snapshots

See that red-and-green paper chain hanging in full view on my kitchen wall? Well, I certainly didn't, not until today. Apparently, when I say that I have taken all the Christmas stuff down, someone should check my work.

Oh, and here's a lovely picture of what Larry, in his quixotic quest to insulate our entire home, has done to our basement over the past week or so. Just to be clear here, that is the INSIDE of our basement, not the outside. Feels very cozy, for sure...

Susie, unfortunately, has taught herself how to make lemon bars. She baked 2 batches over the past 3 days. Double batches, really. This new hobby of hers is wreaking havoc with my already nonexistent waistline.

And, lest you forget, make sure to comment on this post from earlier in the week if you are interested in winning a copy of the book Knitting Rules by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee. It's much more than your standard learn-to-knit book, filled as it is with ruminations on the knitting lifestyle and the nature of creativity. It also has a sock recipe.

A SOCK RECIPE. I mean, that's almost as irresistible as lemon bars...

Putting On The Blitz

Another day, another crazy morning of having to get out of bed, line up for our showers, and dash around like mad neatening up the bedroom and covering everything with tarps before the contractor gets here to work on the master bath. At 7:30.

Did they even HAVE a bathroom?

Yeah, it's fun. It brings to mind Anne Frank, actually, because I'm Jewish and was therefore expected to read Anne Frank's Diary at an impressionable age, including the part about how she and all the people who were hiding in that attic behind the bookcase had to get up super early and rush around and get dressed and neaten up before anyone came to work downstairs; after that, they had to be super quiet and not move all day until the workers left. I read that when I was 10 or so, and I remember being glad that I didn't live in hiding, because I didn't like getting up and dressed that early.

Growing up Jewish can be special sometimes. Especially because everything reminds you of Anne Frank, in one way or another. I mean, I just compared having my bathroom redone to hiding from the Nazis. If you're not offended, you certainly should be.

In other news, I drove one of my elderly clients to the dentist today, and then sat and knitted in the waiting room while she had her teeth cleaned. (I know, it's a tough job, but somebody has to do it.) There was another elderly woman there (92, as it turns out), with a British accent, and we got to talking, first about knitting.

"I used to knit at boarding school," she said. "We would knit socks in the evening for the seamen."

"Really?" I said.

"We would put notes in with the socks, and I remember being disappointed when none of those gentlemen replied."

Picture me, sitting there, trying to imagine this very old woman as a disappointed English schoolgirl.

"Of course," she continued, "I couldn't wait to graduate. I joined the WAAFs right away."

And here, people, is where I started paying attention.

These women here - she was one of them

"The WAAFs?" I asked. "The Royal Air Force? In WWII?" Because, yes, I can do math. This woman was born in 1924.

"Oh, yes, have you heard of them?" she said.

"YOU were one of the women in those bunkers? The ones marking incoming German planes during the Blitz?"

"Oh, certainly - we all stood around that big table with the maps and pushed those planes around," she reminisced.

OMG, thought my inner history buff. I'm talking to a WAAF. She's a living piece of history. 


"Hitler was a terrible man," she added, unbidden. "And this guy in charge now doesn't look much better."

Heck, I guess she'd be one to know, wouldn't she?






[Anne Frank bookcase: Wikimedia Commons]
[WAAF plotters image: Wikipedia]

Harlotry

It's the Yarn Harlot's blogiversary again (gee, it feels as though that happens EVERY year around this time - weird), and I am once again celebrating the occasion by giving away a copy of her book Knitting Rules. Not your ordinary how-to-knit book, it's more a compendium of whimsical ruminations on the art of knitting, the nature of creativity, and the intoxicating effects of yarn fumes. All wrapped together with a few knitting recipes for an ambitious beginner to try at his/her leisure, of course...

Oh, look, it has a new cover!

As I mentioned in this space 2 years ago, this book changed my life. By treating failure as a normal part of the creative process, it freed me to try new things; by virtue of her personal knitting anecdotes, Stephanie gave me permission to knit even though my supplies were not organized and I could never find the right needles. She allowed me to make mistakes and keep going, because really, who cares? This book helped shatter the bonds of perfectionism that kept me from ever getting anything done.

Also, it's very funny.

I know, it's just a knitting book. How the heck could it do all that? Beats me. And maybe your results will differ. But if you are interested, drop a comment on this post and I will draw a name out of a hat (figuratively speaking, of course) on, oh, I don't know...Friday? Yeah, Friday - that's usually a slow news day around here.

And, speaking of news, Larry forwarded this BBC article to me yesterday. According to some scientists, "Browned toast and potatoes are 'potential cancer risks'..." Apparently, browned foods contain large amounts of acrylamide, which is a cancer-causing chemical.

To which I say, just kill me now. I mean, our thrift-store toaster alone must have taken years off our lives already.

Click that link - it explains an awful lot about our family.

And buttered toast just so happens to be one of humankind's universal comfort foods - can the world afford to have that taken away at this point? From where I sit, lately it feels as though the only things holding us all together are pink knitted hats and nice, crunchy toast.

Buttered toast.





[Mercy Watson image: Randomly Reading]