Knot Knecessarily Known Knitting

Some months back, I thought of writing this post ahead of time and having it ready. Those of you who know me personally understand what this passing means to me. The Cuddly Hubby has the week off, so when the precipitating crisis occurred, we were able to go to the vet together. Right off, I need to thank Dr. Friedlander and all the great staff at Cat Care of Vinings. And a special thank you to Lisa, who was there today and had to take my call first thing in the morning. Copernicus had a major stroke last night, after an otherwise good day and an overall very good December. Cuddly Hubby and I stayed up off and on with him, knowing that it would be his last night. Sophia pretty much stayed out of it. She did come downstairs to see him off this morning, but she is now back upstairs and ignoring us. I do not know what she will be like as she realizes she has the place to herself. For me, his passing is my first milestone of middle age. Nearly all the major milestones of yo...

Well, not all that shameless. Cuddly Hubby and I are of the age that we don't need all that much. And if we need or want something, usually we go get it -- unless the cats have managed another unplanned veterinary expedition. I'll not bother to post pictures of what we exchanged between ourselves. Cuddly Hubby got three hardback books and a stack of filk music. The artists of The FuMP ought to be sending greeting cards to him or possibly writing lyrics about him. As Cuddly Hubby is already paying for my Stitches South excursion, I only did a little bit of yarn shopping the other night. I bought one book, a skein of sock yarn, a skein of handpainted silk lace weight that I had been stalking for two months, and a skein of handpaint in a green and purple colorway that I somehow couldn't resist even though there was only one skein and what am I ever going to be able to do with only 118 yards of this? We agreed with the Cuddly Hubby's dad and step-mom not to exchange...

Just had to put up a post of my house on Christmas Eve. The lawn is well-lit due to the overhead streetlight. Not the greatest picture with the dark. Oddly enough, our house does not have an external electrical outlet anywhere near the front of the building. This makes it a mite difficult to do electric lights. Even if there were an outlet, I wouldn't want to decorate the eaves -- that 45-degree pitch does not make anybody want to crawl up on the roof. And the apex of the roof is plenty high enough that a plain eight-foot step ladder is inadequate to the task. Thus, the classic non-electric luminarias. Maybe some year I'll get fancy and cut out patterns or make colored pictures on them or something. By the way, these are also very economical. They consist of sand (Home Depot), plain paper lunch bags (Kroger), tea lights (Michael's or Hobby Lobby), and empty glass salsa jars (Kroger or Publix). If you plan ahead, you just save the empty salsa jars from Dungeons and ...

I got these as a Christmas gift a year or two ago from a co-worker. These are just plain glass photo coasters. However, they are also an opportunity to find another use for those Ravelry yarn pictures. So, I now have Noro Kureyon coasters, without having to take any said yarn out of my stash. Glee!

If you are shopping for a knitter who already has everything -- yarn, needle sets, holders, stitch markers, cable needles, scissors, tape measures, gauge measures -- here is an idea. A kitchen scale. Really. This is one of those advanced knitter gifts. I bought mine back in the spring from King Arthur Flour. It is meant for use in the kitchen, for those baking recipes that are written in weights. (Flour is a particularly poor ingredient to measure by volume, so some traditional recipes are written in ounces or grams.) Mine weighs in grams or tenths of ounces. I'd prefer one that weighed in tenths of a gram, but this one will do. So, why would a knitter want a scale? If you are knitting socks, gloves, or anything in a pair (or multiple) you can weigh the skein of yarn at the start. Then you can weigh it as you get close to finishing the first of the pair. This can keep you from running over on the first sock and having to tear it out so that you can finish the second sock....

If you've noticed the lack of posting, that had something to do with having guests in the house during Thanksgiving. I won't bore you with the sordid details. We'll just say that I did spring cleaning in the autumn this year. (Raising the question, was that 2008 spring cleaning done late, or 2009 done early? 'Cause if it's early . . . .) And I'll also insert a tease here. I finished knitting something nifty, but I might publish the design. Hence, I've sequestered it. So that's why no new knitting up on Ravelry or here on the blog. I'm glad I have the 2009 pages for my Dayrunner. The postcards confirming Dragon*Con registration arrived last week. I called the Hyatt yesterday and booked the room. Cuddly Hubby and I have upped the ante -- we'll arrive Thursday evening for Dragon*Con. So much goes on the night before, and it will be nice to be ready to go on Friday. The Bard and his wife have also reserved their room at the Hilton -- to b...