I Will Finish These Socks If It Kills Me

Talk about second sock syndrome. Last JUNE I started these, using a perfectly lovely and wonderfully squishy skein of Madelinetosh (is it one word or two???) sock yarn in Clematis. Using the “sock recipe” from the Knitting Rules book by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, I cast on fully expecting that in a week or two I’d have a new pair of socks.

Not quite.

I’ve been carrying these around with me for months, knitting one round here and one round there, but no matter what I did that second sock seemed stuck at 4 inches. Infuriating. But after a big push on Sunday night while catching up on Fringe (football? what’s that, exactly???), I made it to the heel. This, my friends, is progress. And none too soon, as one of my first hand-knit pairs recently bit the dust. (As an aside, I’d love to know what people do with the remnants of hand knit socks, when the hole is way too big to fix but there’s still enough sock left that you feel like you should be able to make something out of it. Coasters come to mind.)

In other news, the baby quilt now has sides, and is being hand quilted (when my hands are not busy sock knitting or cat appeasing). Another should-have-been-obvious observation? Hand quilting black fabric is pretty difficult.

Happiness Project: Proofs of Love

I'm following along on Gretchen Rubin's Happiness Project challenge. This is my seventh installment:

February’s Happiness Project topic is LOVE. Truthfully, it’s hard to write about romantic relationships when you are not in one. It’s particularly difficult to write about CHOOSING to not be in a relationship at the ripe old age of 38 ½ , without it sounding like sour grapes or some pathetic attempt at justifying one’s inability to find a mate.

Believe me, I tried.

So, without going into the boring and painful details, suffice it to say that for a variety of reasons, I needed a break – a time out, if you will, from the quest for a romantic relationship. It’s not that I don’t want one, or would turn one down if it happened, it’s just that it became clear that I really needed to work on myself for awhile. I needed to establish for myself that I could be happy “all by myselps”, as my nephew liked to say when he was little….hence the Happiness Project.

(I strongly suspect my father wishes I would embark on a “Find a Nice Boy and Settle Down” project. Maybe next year.)

Alas, the challenge this week is “proofs of love” – finding small ways of making sure the people in your life know you love them. Honestly? As some of you know, when my sister and her family relocated to California for a couple of years I got possession of their cat, Wilbert. And I feel like I prove my love for my nieces and nephew each and every morning at 4:30 am, when Wilbert starts howling at me to get up and watch him eat. Because only for those children would I put up with such nonsense.

Trust me, he just looks all cute and innocent.

Happiness Project: Nagging Tasks & January Recap

In addition to getting the car taken care of, my nagging task was to pay up my library fines ($4.65 – I had feared it would be infinitely worse). I have many other nagging tasks still lingering, but this will have to suffice for the week. It was crazy-busy at work, plus I’ve been trying to get my exercise in.

It’s sort of amazing, really, how much I’ve managed to accomplish in one month. Well, ok, really six weeks, because I started some of my baby steps mid-December. Still.

1) Vitamins: still taking them most days. Easy to forget, though.
2) Bedtime: I’m still enforcing it, but have not been sleeping well at all these past few weeks. Anxiety, I think, but hopefully this will pass.
3) Reduced electricity consumption: alas, electric bill went up $2 due to rate increase. Boo.
4) Started exercising 3x a week: only third week of this, so too soon to tell whether it will stick. Got some good advice from an ex-boyfriend who is (sort of astoundingly) a certified fitness trainer.
5) Cleaned out bathroom shelves, bedroom closet, and car. Have a good 3 months worth of paper goods and cleaning supplies stocked up.

Some of this stuff has been on my to-do list for YEARS, and so it feels unbelievably gratifying to have finally started tackling them. But what would happen is, I’d see this laundry list of things and get so overwhelmed that I didn’t know where or how to begin. Breaking things down into small steps enabled me to make tiny improvements without getting overwhelmed or stressed out. Right now, I’m struggling to not throw in the towel – like if I miss taking vitamins for a few days, my inclination is to think, “oh forget it”, rather than “start again now”. It’s very much my diet mentality, when I’ll be fine for a week and then one evening I will succumb to my friends Ben and Jerry, and figure well, that’s the end of that…as opposed to starting fresh in the morning.

Another thing not on the official list is that I tried embracing Twitter to capture a one-sentence “happiness journal”. My jury is still out on this one; I have my reservations about adding yet another techie/social media thing to my life. Also? I have to believe that when you start Twittering about the cat’s happiness, chances are you shouldn’t be Twittering. And not 100% of my tweets were happy...but like I said yesterday, only God is perfect.

Mostly, I’ve realized that I can experiment with my life. This is ridiculous, of course, coming from a 38 year old woman who, on little more than a whim, picked up and moved from Boston to Memphis to go to grad school, and who later moved from Maine to NYC...in truth, my entire adult life has been a series of experiments. This feels different, though, although I'm not sure I could articulate how or why it feels different. Something to ponder this weekend as I hurtle myself to Long Island to have dinner with two ex-boyfriends (yes, at the same table). Lovely.

Speaking of which...February’s Happiness Project challenge focus is Love… things will either get really interesting or terribly boring around here as I tackle that one.

Quilt Project - Hippos, Giraffes, and Elephants, Oh My!

Last week I was browsing in the fabric store and came upon this fabulous Michael Miller print ("Zoology"). I normally am not attracted to bold colors, particularly for baby quilts, but I was overwhelmed with this cuteness:

My "go to" pattern for large prints (in this case, directional) is the Double Irish Chain pattern from the Quilts from the Quiltmaker's Gift book. It's a really easy project; I cut and sewed the patchwork in one afternoon, and then sewed the blocks together and added the borders in an hour or so the next day. I also like that it uses 3 fabrics, and depending on how you place the fabrics you can have three quilts that look entirely different. I am annoyed I ran out of the animal print - I should have known I would need a bit more because it's a directional print. I am hoping the bolt will still be there when I go back to the fabric store!

You know how the Amish say that only God is perfect? Well, I realized once I saw the photo (below) that I should have added another row on the bottom...oh well, c'est la vie, non? I found a tiny bit of turquoise fabric in my boxes and made a small folded border, and frankly it would be such a pain to rip out that I'm leaving it as-is. This is destined to be a baby quilt for a cousin of mine, and I doubt the baby will care that there should be another row.

What I really, really find fascinating about this is that from far away, this looks like some old, exotic Indian print. It's actually quite startling. In addition to a black solid (oh, the cat hair....) I used a multi-colored dot print (also by Michael Miller), which doesn't show up too well here. But trust me, it's fun and funky.

Happiness Project: Organization

I'm following along on Gretchen Rubin's Happiness Project challenge. Here's the fifth installment:

This week's challenge was "get organized". Now, I am not an organized person - not at home, not in the office, not in my car. Frankly, I am a walking disaster, and have been since I was a child. If I had a nickel for every argument I had with my parents over my messy bedroom, I would have gotten out of college debt-free. It’s not that I don’t mind clutter, it’s that I don’t even really SEE it. And I like being surrounded by my stuff, and I like leaving projects laying about so that I can pick them up whenever my fancy strikes. I was a little vindicated when my youngest niece started demonstrating the same tendencies – but, don’t you know, when a grandchild does something it’s cute and funny and a sign of her extraordinary creative talent. When it’s your own kid, it’s apparently a sign of your failure as a parent to teach your kid how to pick up after herself. I am here to publicly declare my failings in this area are categorically NOT my parents fault – they tried really, really hard to enforce neatness upon me, and the failure to comply is entirely mine.

So, needless to say this was a difficult challenge for me. Starting off was fun, as it required a trip to Target to stock up on what Gretchen Rubin calls “needful things” – in my case, paper towels, tissues, contact solution, and miscellaneous cleaning supplies. This in turn forced me to organize my bathroom shelves. The bathroom is actually the cleanest room in my apartment – because whatever else I may be, I am a freak about good personal hygiene. The shelves, however, were a hodgepodge mess, so buying this stuff forced me to throw out a bunch of old makeup, lotion, perfume, and sunblock – some of which I’d had for three or four years. Score one for organization!

After that project, I moved on to my bedroom closet...nothing short of a monumental task that stretched over the course of the week, and is still not 100% done yet. I did end up with several trash bags of clothes to donate, except I have no idea where to donate them locally so they are now cluttering up my bedroom. I also packed away all of the wrong-sized sheets that were piled on the top shelf, making way for sweaters. Then I hung up my clean clothes, and realized most of what I own is black, gray, or purple, which I found sort of odd. I also found a stash of shoes I’d totally forgotten about (alas, all summer styles) and a blue-green sweater, the whereabouts of which I had been pondering for several weeks. But there's still a couple of boxes that need to be tackled. Score a half point for organization.

Finally, this afternoon I cleaned out my car and got an oil change, along with a tail-light replaced. THAT is worth 2 points - one for organization, and one for "tackle a nagging task”, which is this upcoming week's challenge. I have a number of these, including needing to go to the library and pay up on my fines from the summer, when I borrowed a movie and forgot to return it for 3 weeks. (I got confused & thought it was one of my Netflix movies). And, while it is not exactly a nagging task, I am working on a baby quilt and may I just state the obvious? People with a gray and white cat should not sew with black fabric.

It's Hard to Photograph the Back of One's Own Head

Finally finished another knitting project, though! This is the first thing I've ever knit without an exact pattern. I used the twisted rib stitch from the scarf I made a few months ago, and just kind of wung the rest. I wish I could have figured out how to continue the ribbing all the way to the top, but instead I switched to a plain knit stitch when I had to make the decreases. It's a smidge big, though, and I'm contemplating shrinking it up a bit in some hot water since it will most likely stretch more after a few wearings. If I can find another skein of this yarn, I'll make some mittens to match.

Happiness Project: Exercise

I'm following along on Gretchen Rubin's Happiness Project challenge. Here's my fourth installment:

I was very sorry to have missed Gretchen Rubin’s book tour stop in Brookline this week – as much as I wanted to go, I'm still trying to shake this cold and not only did I not want to be out late in freezing temperatures, I also did not want to subject the other attendees to my coughing fits. It sounds like it was a packed house, though!

So…the second Happiness Project challenge was to get more exercise. Honestly, I was trying to carefully craft my “energy” focus so that I could avoid exercise. I mean, I’ve been avoiding it for years – decades, really, since they first started requiring gym class (I think I was in 4th grade at the time). I’m the sort of person who was GIDDY over the prospect of having 4 impacted wisdom teeth removed in high school, because it got me out of gym for a whole week while I had stitches in my mouth. There’s a part of me that would like to be the perky girl who gets out of bed and runs 3 miles before work, or goes to a 6 am yoga class…but there’s a much stronger part of me that insists upon whacking the snooze button.

I’m also incredibly klutzy. Several years ago I bought a treadmill and promptly fell off, pulling a quad muscle and hurting my knee, resulting in months of physical therapy. Then I took a yoga class for awhile, and everybody would be all blissed out doing their poses when there’d be this big thud from the back of the room – I’d fallen over again. A few months ago I signed up for a Zumba class and couldn’t keep up, as I was too busy tripping over my own two feet.

There are also just infinitely more interesting things I’d rather be doing with my time. If there was a way to walk on a treadmill while knitting or quilting, I’d be there in a second.

But, alas, here I am, 38 and overweight and Something Must Be Done. I’ve been seriously lucky in that I have had not developed any weight-related diseases, but I fear the clock is ticking on that one. It’s just a matter of time before something goes awry, and while I suppose that’s true for all of us, it will really annoy me if I wind up checking out early because I can’t stop eating chocolate.

Nevertheless, I whined and wrung my hands and insisted it just wasn’t possible to find a baby step, I couldn’t possibly start a full-on exercise program, and it’s just so….well, TRENDY to do it NOW of all times, and I don’t know where on earth I could find the time, I barely practice my guitar as it is, and I really need to reorganize my fabric and yarn stashes…oh yes, I used every excuse I could possibly think of.

Then I remembered that the challenge was to get MORE exercise, not become a triathlete overnight. And when the only exercise you get is walking ~6 blocks a day between work and the train station, it’s pretty easy to increase one’s efforts. So I stopped whining. I briefly (but seriously) considered the Couch-to-5K program, despite the fact that I have never been able to run much more than 10 feet without hyperventilating. However, after reading a number of blogs and articles on the program, I decided that I needed more of a Floor-to-Couch-to-5K program first; I need to strengthen my knee and lose some weight before even thinking about a running program.

So, my baby step is hauling out my weights and stretch bands from physical therapy and using them when I watch TV. [Months ago, I realized that watching too much TV was a bad thing for me – it leaves me feeling depressed and lethargic – so I restrict myself to one hour per night during the week.] I plan to do this for a few weeks and then graduate to the small gym in the basement of my apartment building, which has recombinant bikes, treadmills and a cross-trainer. I’m also signing up for a once-a-week evening yoga class that starts at the end of February.

I can’t say that I am off to a roaring start on this one. To tell you the truth, I’ve slacked off a lot this week from all of my little baby steps…still trying to get over this pesky cold that has me feeling totally run down. I think one of my personal truths is “don’t try to make any life changes when you’re sick”. Hopefully a long weekend will help me catch up again.

The next challenge is organization…the only thing I do less than exercise. Oh dear me.

If you are in the need of inspiration, please visit Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's website, where over 1,000 knitters from around the world are making me proud to be human as they rack up the donations to Doctors Without Borders.