Plans

A friend just asked in email what I plan to do next week, since the teen is off school. Last year at this time we went skiing in Utah, but this year nothing nearly so exciting. As I was thinking about my list of things and what to reply, I figured this was a great opportunity to say Hi to the blog. Hi, blog!

My plans:

• Nag the teen. He must
  

1. Finish Application for next year's school dream
   
2. Do homework
3. Figure out his LA Honor's project and get cracking
4. Work on two Merit Badge requirements
5. Practice the horn. Solo & Ensemble recital is just around the corner
6. Make dinner one night and do other various chores
7. Complete paperwork on service learning hours he's accomplished so far. He needs 60 to graduate, has turned in Zero, but has actually done maybe 15. Can't get credit if he doesn't fill out the forms.
   

• Prepare the budget for a volunteer board position I've held way too long. (My term is up in December 2009!) This should have been done already. It should have been done this week, but instead the computer has been busy running thorough scans and removing viruses, thanks to the teen.
• Watch eBay. That's my first edition/first printing signed copy of Twilight. Stephenie Meyer came to All For Kids on her very first tour; we were her very first audience. There were maybe a dozen girls and women present. Our buyer really liked the book, thought it would sell, but it was hardback and brand new. We had to scramble to get the dozen people to come so the room wouldn't be deserted for this novice author. My how things have changed! Last time she came to Seattle, she talked at Benaroya and tickets sold out in about a half hour. Erika is a dear and listed it for me, as I have never figured out how to sell things on eBay.
• Nag the teen. Make him show me his application essays.
• Knit! I'd kinda lost the knitting mojo, but a knit-blogger I follow started talking about her group challenging themselves to knit a dozen sweaters in 2009. Vests and short-sleeve tops count as well, as long as they are sized for adult. It was just the challenge I needed. I had some sweater quantities of yarn in stash, plus I had my eye on some new yarn. As much as I wanted to help stimulate the economy, I could not justify yarn shopping if I wasn't knitting. I have three completed (photos below) and two more in process. Details on my ravelry projects page.
  
• Nag the teen. Remind him that merit badges are earned, not gifted.
• Take the teen to his ortho appointment.
• Provide ibuprofen and soft foods for a couple days.
• Nag the teen to practice the horn even if his mouth hurts. The recital won't wait.
• Knit some more. Maybe some lace, something different than sweaters.
• Read! I have looming deadlines for two book groups. All the King's Men and Catcher in the Rye both need to be finished in two weeks and I haven't started either. (If only I had a kindle, would make knitting and reading simultaneously much easier.)
• Consider signing up to purchase a Kindle if the eBay auction is a success.
• Try to avoid reading the news. This never works though, I can't help it and end up reading all about how bad the economy is and why and what's not being done to fix it. As someone who'd been following Krugman and CalculatedRisk and other smart, logical, rational folks, I knew this all was going to happen, but it doesn't stop me from being pissed off at everyone who let it happen.
• Maybe I should also start working on the taxes. Won't that be fun!
• Get caught up in Lost. We haven't watched any of the new episodes.

Teaching the kid to fly

Last weekend my husband took a brief vacation and left the kid behind. Sure, we've been away from him before overnight. He's been to sleepovers and sleep away camp. When he was younger we even occasionally left him with a sitter and went away for an anniversary or birthday weekend. But this felt different.

This time we told our 14 year old that we wanted to go camping without him and he needed to call a friend and get himself invited over to spend the night. And he did. Friday he rode his bike to school with his pannier packed with pajamas and toothbrush, because his sleepover friend commuted by bike. He would bike home the next morning (from Phinney Ridge! Crossing Aurora by himself!) then leave to spend the day with another friend. He could then come home, make himself dinner and keep himself occupied (that's what the internet and video games are for, right?) until we got home Saturday evening. We had the cell phone and alerted several neighbors who were happy to be available in case he needed assistance. And we were off. Did I worry? Of course! Independence is a long and gradual process, a process we have to encourage, even if it's scary. (More scary for me than the kid, actually.)



We went to the Columbia National Wildlife Refuge in the Channeled Scablands. Eastern Washington has the wildest geologic history I can imagine. No recent natural event has come close to the forces that have shaped that landscape. First, the earth opened and lava flooded the land, hundreds of miles covered fifty feet thick. Over about a million years, this happened over and over again. Enough lava in total to cover the entire continental US 39 feet deep. Then, some time elapsed and the world went into an ice age. Eastern Washington was not covered by the continental ice shelf, but Northeast of there, a finger of the continental glacier formed a dam in the mountains of Montana, creating a massive lake behind. The dam failed in a cataclysmic flood where all the water drained from Montana through Eastern Washington to the Columbia River and to the sea. Took less than a week and estimates say that the flow was more than the combined flow of all rivers in the world combined. This happened again and again, perhaps once every 50 years for a couple thousand years. The flooding tore up the land, eroding the basalt layers into a complex of channels and potholes. Giant ripple marks that are only recognizable as such from airplanes. Gravel bars the size of small mountain ranges.



The Columbia National Wildlife Refuge was formed because the Potholes Reservoir dam created by The Project in the 1940s raised the water table nearby. So the desert south of the reservoir now held water in the potholes and the lowest parts of the channels, water that attracts and aids wildlife of all sorts.



We hiked in the refuge and in the neighboring Drumheller Channels. Although we didn't time our hikes to optimize wildlife viewing --- the crepuscular hours are ideal for that --- we did see quite a variety. Birds, bugs, frogs, even a couple coyotes, but fortunately no snakes.

Saturday's hike we were treated to the sound of ravens making a fuss. We stopped and observed an adult pair and a juvenile pair up on the edge of a mesa. The adult pair each flew off the mesa, around the corner and perched back up top aways off. Then they called and called. Eventually the juveniles followed, but instead of flying out and around, they took the shorter path across the top, flying inexpertly no more than a few feet off the ground. Well, the parents did not sound too pleased about that and cawed up a storm.

That was the coolest thing we saw until lunchtime we were sitting in the shade under a cliff and noticed that a coyote was watching us from across the channel. Just standing on the edge of the opposite mesa and staring. He looked just like a large dog, but with the binoculars we could see the distinctive fur patterns and scrabbier body of a wild coyote.

That was the coolest thing until we were walking back in the bottom of a channel when we suddenly saw a huge bird flying away from us along the top of the mesa to our right. It stopped and looked back and had the unmistakable face of an owl! I've never seen an owl in the wild and what is it doing out in the day?

Right then another huge bird flew in front of us from the right cliff to the taller left cliff. We stopped and got out the binoculars and saw that the bird on the right was a juvenile, still fluffy and downy while the bird now on the left was an adult Great Horned Owl. Parent number two soon made its presence known and was also above us on the higher cliffs on our left. Unlike the ravens, these birds were not ignoring us and getting on with their teaching. We were being watched. Franz also got the impression that if we kept walking the trajectory we were going, we'd be pretty close to the fledgling and perhaps attacked by the parents. So after watching through the binoculars for a while, we continued on, passing much closer to the left side than the right. After we were through, I looked back and saw that the juvenile was now down in the channel, practicing flying maneuvers near the ground.

Our fledgling? Well, he managed just fine without us.

Backpack part 1: When a tree falls in a forest...

A couple weeks ago my family took a hike. A three day hike. It was supposed to be a four day hike, but we'll get to that later. We like to backpack, but don't actually do it that often. Before the kid, Franz and I maintained about a 50-50 ratio of car camping and backpacking. Well, maybe not 50-50, you know how memory is. Next I will be saying I walked 6 miles every day to school, uphill in both directions. After child, we continued the occasional backpack (starting when Zach was 10 months) but mostly turned to car camping.

So anyway, back to this trip. We hiked a popular loop in the Olympic National Park called The High Divide, although that name more accurately refers to just one section. Starting at the Sol Duc Hot Springs trailhead, the trail follows a river valley up through the forest. Our first day and night we remained in the forest. We have big trees here. Big trees. The day was overcast and damp. Rain was predicted but didn't fall. In the past, such a walk through the damp dark forest with the sound of the river nearby has felt peaceful. But this trip...



Try this experiment. Get a piece of paper and cover up the right side of that photo. Doesn't that look lovely? Peaceful, serene, green and full of oxygen producing old-growth forest? Now remove the paper. Newly shattered stump. Yes, shattered. What kind of force could do that? Just another tree falling over. And trees fall. We like it when trees fall, it is part of the circle, the cycle, nature at its finest. See the foreground. Trees fell years ago and are turning back into soil. Take your paper and cover up the top of the photo. Don't the logs turning back into soil look peaceful and quiet? Then take the paper away again. Does that look quiet? Do you wish you were witness to that event?

Here's another view. The tree that fell which shattered the other tree was at least 100 feet tall.



Nurse logs, fungus, termites, worms, all seem such a beautiful serene, slow part of nature. I never really concentrated on the dramatic events that start the process. But this hike, as I walked through the woods, every tree reminded me that behind their quiet beauty lies the capability for extreme violence.

I wasn't worried. I didn't expect something to fall on us. It was more a sense of power and darkness, the unknown and unknowable that fueled awareness and anxiety. I was glad to climb above treeline. More about that part of the trip later.

Multiple topics in one handy post

First: Happy Anniversary to me! I've been extra stressed lately and I forgot all about it. I don't feel too bad because so did my husband. It wasn't until I read Canadian Dorothy's blog that I realized what day it was. Turns out that she and I have the same wedding anniversary. So go over there and wish her and her husband many more years of happiness.

Second: Although I am really good with numbers in general, and dates in particular, for some reason, I can never remember my wedding date. I wrote three checks yesterday, all of them accidentally postdated, since my brain insists that we got married on the 18th. Oops.

Third: We went out for dinner, and while it was fine, it was less than perfect. We ended up taking Zach, so not necessarily a romantic getaway, but logistically it made the most sense. Time for romantic meals sans offspring are being planned. As we have rediscovered our inner carnivores after a long journey into vegetarianism, we were hoping to go to Jak's for bacon cheeseburgers. Alas, we got a late start and the dinner rush was underway, the wait was an hour. So we walked across the street to Ciao Bella. We'd had some really nice meals at the old Ciao Bella, but have only been to the new location once, and it wasn't memorable. Last night was memorable because of the awful service. Was it because we had our teen with us on a Friday night? Was it that they noticed we came from Jak's? Whatever reason, they treated us like dirt the whole evening. And my salmon was way overcooked (but the rest of the food was good). Not that they were too crowded or busy with much besides stopping to flirt with the two thirty-something blonds at the next table. I am usually a generous tipper. But last night, no way.

Fourth: I managed to get a lot of errands done yesterday and for the first time in weeks, felt that I had gotten several monkeys off my back. I almost have some monkeys off the needles too. This one just needs a wee bit of decreasing then some grafting. The second sock is at the heel turn.


Fifth: Anyone who's been reading my blog for a while knows that I have enjoyed dyeing yarn and that I am a bit of a math geek. I think that the geekiness is one of the aspects of dyeing I most enjoy. I like to take the time to make very long skeins, so the final result is a bit unusual in that it won't pool or stack in the same way as many hand-dyed yarns. That's not to say it won't pool. I have seen hand-painted yarn with that assurance, but I just don't see how anyone can make such a universal claim. My latest endeavor involves at PVC niddy-noddy that makes skeins more than five yards in circumference. Using a dye process with multiple mason jars simmering in a roasting pan, I can make skeins that won't repeat their color pattern for 190 inches of yarn. But there are still so many factors, the colors may still stack or pool. It all depends.

This swatch is done with Brown Sheep Wildfoot that I dyed using the above long skein method. It has 75 stitches, started on US1 needles, I switched halfway to US0s. The ribbing on US1s gave 5.25 rounds til the yarn color sequence repeated. The stockinette on US1s resulted in 5.5 rounds til the colors repeated. After changing to US0s (and going from about 9 stitches per inch to almost 9.5 stitches per inch) the colors repeated at 5.75 rounds.

What does this mean? Well the long skein and the fact that it took at least five rounds for the color sequence to repeat means that even hugely wide socks in a pattern that takes lots of yarn ought to be able to get a couple three rounds before the color sequence repeats. That should alleviate a lot of dramatically disturbing pooling issues. However, it won't remove them. If the color sequence repeats at exactly N or N+.5 rounds, one could easily get a stacking issue that looks especially nice or especially unbalanced. And having a the sequence repeat at other intervals might end up with nice spirals or weird streakiness. You just never know, do you?

Some Summer Fun

Our two weeks with a Japanese Home Stay guest flew by. I had been so anxious, but Hitomi turned out to be a wonderful guest and is now a friend. She was able to relax and feel right at home, fulfilling the philosphy of a foreign exchange program. Of course she was the tour coordinator and seasoned traveler, not a high school student on her first overseas trip, so it was easier for her. I heard that the high school students all had great homestays as well. We met one of the two teachers whom we took to Stitch & Pitch. This was her first trip outside Japan and she was having a blast. However, I heard that the other teacher was finding the whole trip kind of stressful. We taught Hitomi an American idiom to describe that sort of person: High Maintenance. She laughed and agreed.

Hitomi likes to hike, so what better way to show her around than to take her to the mountains. We did the easy Barclay Lake hike, with its dramatic view of Mt Baring looming 3000 feet over the lake. I didn't get any photos. Before coming home we detoured a bit on Route 2 to Skykomish, a small town with a big problem. For about 100 years, the railroad has dumped or leaked or spilled fuel and who knows what else onto and into the ground. In order to clean it up, just about every building in town is being picked up, the contaminated dirt dug out and hauled away, then clean fill poured in and the building restored.

Our second weekend we had more adventures. Saturday we hiked to Snow Lake, a popular hike with an easy access trailhead at Snoqualmie Pass. The parking lot (a large lot for the Alpental ski resort) was quite full and we had to wait in line at the trailhead at the self-register station (because we were bozos and didn't notice that there were two(!) registration stations) but the trail did not seem crowded and the lake front was even less so.

The Japanese student group had been to Snoqualmie Falls, but a local bus driver who got lost (argg) meant that they hadn't had much time to walk around. So we took Hitomi back, on the way home from Snow Lake. No pictures, but if you ever watched Twin Peaks, you've seen the Falls.

Sunday, our last day to be tour guides, we took a quintessential Seattle trip on a ferry boat. We took Metro downtown and walked on the Bremerton Ferry. Not that we wanted to do anything in Bremerton, we just grabbed lunch and came home, but because it's a pretty ride. This was the last day of the airshow and the Blue Angels buzzed the ferry as they were playing around getting ready for the show.

The water was full of jellyfish, more than I had ever seen. The view of Seattle was clear and pretty (yes, that's the space needle above Hitomi's head) but we didn't see any orcas. I don't think I have ever seen them from the ferry though.







Our tour-guide hikes with Hitomi served a second purpose. With an upcoming backpack, we especially need to get some hiking in for conditioning purposes.

Our family vacation will occur at the end of August, a 4 day loop of the High Divide in the Olympic Mountains. This area is popular, so to keep it from being overrun, the National Parks requires reservations and permit. Franz called and got our campsite reservations, plus information on the bear can requirements. Bears? Yes, checking the trip reports of the Washington Trails Association, black bears are common.

Yesterday, I took Zach to REI for new boots.
clerk: NOLS trip?
me: No, we're going to do the High Divide.
clerk: You mean in the Olympics?
me: Yes.
clerk: Awesome. I was just there in June. In one afternoon we saw 7 bears and some cubs. They were having so much fun, eating berries and glissading on the snow.
me: Seven Bears! I'd heard they were around. Now I am really worried about getting eaten.
clerk. Nah, black bears don't eat people, they just maul.

My kid, now a high schooler

Zach finished middle school sans pomp and circumstance. He could have gone to graduation and played Pomp & Circumstance, but he didn't really feel like an 8th grader, nor, as a part-time student, did he feel the need for the ritual. Seating is limited so we were altruistic in not attending, gave up our tickets so some other student with more than two relatives could force them to sit in a hot, crowded auditorium for a tedious ceremony invite them.

Friday he biked up to Matthews Beach to meet with a group of kids for their own end of school celebration. Candy and Capture the Flag. Coming home on the Burke-Gilman trail, he took a tumble when he let his front wheel drift off the pavement. Nothing serious, just got some ugly road rash on his elbow and a scrape on his rib and hip. (In addition to helmet, he wears biking gloves. I don't know if his hand hit the pavement too, but gloves are great for avoiding road rash on one's hands. I never bike without them myself.)

We cleaned him up and he seemed fine. Even played some DDR Friday evening. Saturday we went to Icicle Creek Canyon to go camping, hiking and drop him off at music camp. Well, he ended up sleeping the entire three hour drive, then continued to nap on and off most of the afternoon while we set up camp and hung around. No wonder. I am sure he didn't break a rib or get a concussion, but he must have slammed pretty hard on the pavement and was feeling pretty sore. So instead of anything ambitious, late Saturday afternoon when he perked up we took a short hike, then Sunday did another short hike. The area is beautiful.

By Sunday his elbow was scabbed over with no sign of infection. We dropped him off at camp with strict instructions though, if it starts to look bad, streaky red or hot he is to alert the staff and make sure it gets looked at. His main question was ought he put a bandage on it, so as not to gross out the girls. Nah, I said. Just tell them he fell off his bike to avoid hitting a kitten.

Regatta with wool and monkeys

I spent most of the past weekend at Green Lake, sitting by the water. Those of you in the Northern Hemisphere but not in Seattle might think that sounded lovely, pass the sunscreen and lemonade. However, Summer in Seattle begins July 9th, says Cliff Mass, atmospheric scientist and local weather guru. While we often have some nice weather in May, June invariably is cold and damp. This past weekend was no exception. I wasn't at Green Lake because the weather was so nice it forced me to go, I was there because my kid was in his first regatta.

Saturday we did have some sun, and Franz and I had the opportunity to walk around the lake (about three miles) so that was fine, but Sunday was cold and wet. I had volunteered to work with the finish line officials. I wore a T-shirt and a long sleeve shirt over it and brought my Knitting Olympics wool sweater, just in case. I brought my knitting bag, mostly to finish a Dulaan hat. Little did I realise that instead of sewing in all the ends, I would be wearing the hat instead. And was I ever glad to find my wonky fingerless mitts hiding in my bag. The ones where I never sewed in the ends because I wasn't happy with the bind off and intend to redo it one of these days.


Quite a fashionable outfit, eh? Believe me, everyone else in the officiating tent was envious.



Zach's first kayak race. This is sprint kayaking, Olympic style. If you've ever been in a nice stable sea kayak, you need to know that these boats are different. They are designed for speed, not for stability. It takes lots of effort to simply stay afloat. There were enough new kids to warrant a novice division. Therefore, several of these ribbons are in the novice division sans competition and demonstrate that he (and in some cases, three teammates) were able to stay upright and paddle 1000 meters. Two of the second place ribbons were hard fought; he finished right behind another novice team member, a bigger and stronger boy.

My week

• Snaked the bathtub drain.
  
• Contemplated getting hair cut short to avoid that chore again.
  
• Mowed the lawn.
• Almost fell for Google's April Fool prank.
  
• Knitted on but did not finish

sea silk triangle shawl

green pullover sweater (EZ meets Pippa)

mini-clapotis in angoravalley Lacewing


sleeves for fibonacci sweater

• Renewed car license tag on-line.
• Found out I had waited to long to have it mailed to me before current tag expires.
• Took bus downtown to pick up car tag. Spent $2.50 in bus fare because I refuse to pay $4.00 to have the tabs sent to a local agency.
• Treated myself to latte and muffin downtown.
  
• While downtown, went shopping and bought myself new underwear. It had probably been 10 years since I bought underwear. I can now get hit by a car without embarrassment.
• Took car to shop for 90K check-up.
  
• Vacuumed car. Helped put roof box on car.
• Arranged temporary stop of newspaper, mail and milk for next week.
  
• Arranged foster care for Tasty Chicken for the week.
  
• Looking forward to a week of car-camping in SE Washington, emphasis on Washington State History and geology. History because it is a state educational requirement and we are homeschooling history. Geology because geology is fascinating and Washington's geology is visibly fascinating.
  
• Logged into checking account at credit union about two dozen times looking for IRS refund.
• Once the refund arrived, wrote checks for and mailed mortgage and property tax bill.
• Finished a marathon Harry Potter reread of all six books.
• Inspired The Nerd to reread them also. He's also finished.
  
• Discussed same with The Nerd and hypothesized about Book Seven.
• Tutored math at The Nerd's middle school
• Found out that he got into his first choice high school, even though for the upcoming school year, it has the longest waiting list of any Seattle public school ever. Very relieved.
  
• Found out what a close call it was. District uses a distance tiebreaker. This year, the boundary for enrolled vs wait-list was 1.81 miles from school. Mapquest puts us at 1.79 miles.
  
• Updated alumnae email and snail mail addresses for upcoming 30 year high school reunion
• Started searching airfare prices for Fall trip back East.
  
• Discovered that waiting a week to purchase airfare for reunion increased the cost by 35%
• Found out that by flying into Baltimore instead of Dulles, I could reduce airfare back to original estimate.
• Purchased ticket. I'm confirmed to attend Reunion and my niece's wedding on East Coast in October. Just me. Not going to disrupt high school attendance in the first semester.
  
• Started thinking about what shawl/stole/wrap I should knit for the events.
• Took The Nerd to an open house of a youth kayak racing club.
  
• Passed a Float Test at a local pool. I only needed a renewal if I want to take another sailing class which is a long shot. Really I did it so The Nerd would have company taking his float test, necessary to take a sprint kayaking class. Float test: wearing long sleeves, long pants, tread water for 9 minutes, then put on life jacket while treading water --- not as easy as it sounds but there's a trick that helps. Nice lifeguards share trick.
  
• Signed The Nerd up for the beginner sprint kayak class and braved Spring Afternoon Greenlake traffic getting him there and back again.
• Walked around Greenlake for the first time in years. Anyone free on Tues or Thurs at 4 PM and want to walk the lake with me? (starting April 17th)
• Rest of today will be packing, organizing, grocery shopping for trip. We leave tomorrow morning. Fort Vancouver here we come.
  

Catching Up

Greetings from the family room.

I usually blog, surf the net, read the news, correspond with family and friends from my computer, situated in a sunny corner of the kitchen. Centrally located, it allows me to monitor meal preparation and offers easy access to the coffee pot. But the wooden chair is not super comfortable. Zach was given an old computer sans peripherals which he set up using our TV as the monitor. I hijacked it for the morning so I could blog in the comfort of a beanbag chair.

Time for some random catching up. Let's get the hard part over first. The sad part. Elaine, maybe you should stop reading now, ok?

My chickens. I haven't really blogged about the chickens in a long while. Well, recall that Amelia had gotten sick, was getting better but moulted and the other girls were picking on her? Well, we may have underestimated how much she was picked on until it was too late. She started escaping from the yard so we sent her to a friend's coop to see if she'd be happier. Alas, she started escaping from their yard and the third time she escaped, she was gone for good. We searched all the neighboring yards, but no signs of anything. We suspect coyotes.

The four remaining birds were doing fine, handled the cold and wet winter fairly well, but alas, more predation a couple weeks ago. Something came into the yard and ate three of them. This time, the carnage was obvious. Sigh. We suspect raccoons. Annie and Lucy were laid to rest in Nancy's pet cemetery aka side yard, and Orpie met her end at a separate event and is at peace in our yard, not far from gerbils Vivek and Rollie.

Tasty has surprised us all and so far avoided the same fate. She has also learned how to get out of the backyard, but not so much escaping as exploring. Fortunately the neighbors are all pretty cool about it, except for one neighbor's downstairs tenant who claims that Tasty scares her cat. They have a bird feeder situated in a tree about 10 feet from the entrance to her garden apartment. And of course right below the feeder is a great spot for Tasty to collect all the dropped food. When Tasty is over there enjoying a snack, her poor cat is too freaked out to come home. Tenant knocks on my door and I grab the tupperware of corn I keep in the fridge and coax Tasty home.

Chickens get lonely and need to be in flocks. (However they also are mean to each other; pecking order is not just a metaphor. go figure) For Tasty's long term health, we've had a note posted in an urban chicken newsletter offering her up for adoption. No takers yet though.

On to other topics.

The Nerd's application to Transition School, an early entrance program at the University of Washington, is in and being considered. We will find out this week whether he advances to the next stage and be invited to an interview. I have no idea what the likelihood of that and they interview about40 candidates for 16 slots, so the odds are still low. His grades and scores are mostly good. His ACT scores are respectable for a 13 year old, but are perhaps not high enough for Transition School. But he is in his first of two years of eligibility so there's a good chance they will say try again next year. That wouldn't be the end of the world, as we've been able to have him skip 8th grade next year so he will be in high school in the fall.

I've got a cold, my throat hurts, my head hurts. It's not too bad though, I've been able to listen to archived This American Life podcasts and knit. Franz offered to make me soup, but I made his volunteer efforts easier by having a craving for Chicken Tom Ka Gai from Marlai Thai. It hit the spot.

I've been knitting way too many projects, for my sake more than others, I will list them below in no particular order. I don't really mind knitting on multiple projects at once, because they all have different size needles --- easier on my hands to switch around --- and they require different levels of concentration.

• Franz's Cambridge Jacket. while exploring the possibility of reknitting the sleeves, I decided to unseam the sleeve caps and see if reseaming them will help. I suspect it will. Current state: One sleeve is about 5/6th unseamed.
  
• Ribbi Cardi. All done except one sleeve. I have started the sleeve but haven't gotten far. The stumbling block is that knitting the sleeve done entirely in k2p2 rib is tiresome and the increases look sloppy, although I have tried many variants on Make1. I'll finish eventually though. If I ever do something like this again, I think I might knit the sleeve cap using a provisional cast on, then pick up the stitches on the bottom and knit the sleeve proper using decreases instead of increases. Can't help but think it would be tidier.
  
• Moebius shoulder bag ala Cat Bordhi. Her Moebius Cast-on is fascinatingly clever. The felted bags are constructed by knitting the shoulder strap as a moebius strip with an after-thought opening for the bag. I have almost finished the shoulder strap, using Lamb's Pride bulky. It has an i-cord bind off which is really really slow, given that I had about320 stitches to bind off. I have less than 100 stitches to go. I think the bag part of this will be a fast knit.
  
• Tartan Plaid. Yup, the reason I have so much Lamb's Pride lying around ready for a felted bag is because of choosing colors for this jacket. I haven't abandoned it for good, but am unsure about its potential as a wearable FO. I love this jacket, I covet this jacket. I have the back and one front completed and one sleeve halfway finished. They look great. But I am worried that seaming is going to look like crap. The pattern has no specific instructions for how to seam the slip stitch pattern and I just can't see how it can be done in a tidy fashion given the bulkiness of the fabric. I plan to purchase some Lambs Pride worsted in the appropriate color for the seaming. I figure my next step will be to procure this yarn and practice seaming the pieces I have finished. If I can make it look good enough, that will encourage me to finish.
  
• Pippa/EZ hybrid. Using my hand-dyed Aurora 6 which is very similar to DB Baby Cashmerino (the recommended yarn for Pippa) but is 100% wool, I've started a pullover using EZ's percentage system and the mock rib detailing from Pippa. Knit in the round from the bottom up, it will probably become a raglan crew neck. Coolest thing about it is the tubular cast-on k1p1 ribbing along the bottom.
  
• Vintage bawneen cardigan. I dyed most of the rest of the vintage bawneen in semi-solids and started a striped cardigan. Knit in the round I will steek it where the colors change. I'm sort of copying a store-bought acrylic V-neck cardigan that I have had for years and always (inexplicably) get lots of compliments when I wear it. Seriously, I keep almost throwing it into the Goodwill bag, then every once in a while I find everything else in the laundry so I wear it and everyone notices and says how nice it is.
  
• Micro Clapotis. Inspired by Erika's micro clapotis scarf, I started one myself. This is a portable project being knit on bamboo straight needles, which make it a quiet knit --- good for knitting in public during a talk or concert.
  

That's about it. A few random things in the closet go unmentioned, a Dulaan hat, a warshrag. And the log cabin which is a long term project, I knit on it occasionally when I want completely mindless garter stitch for TV watching. But I don't feel any anxiety about finishing it.

Out of the mouths of teens

My kid just complimented me (I think) by saying that I ought to write a book, because I have a "coherent philosophy of life."

This happened just after he was rummaging through the fridge for a snack and whined that we were out of jam and I said "Yeah, life's a bitch. Deal."

conversation to make my weekend

Me: Zach, can you pick up your clean laundry and put it away, please?
Zach: I already did.

Tales from the City

I can parallel park better than my husband. I considered this for the list of weird things about me, but it really isn't that odd. I grew up in DC, started driving at 16 and hung out in trendy Georgetown. I got good at parking. Preferably with the zippy compact VW Rabbit, but sometimes I got stuck with the VW Bus. I got way beyond simple rules such as "when the steering wheels are aligned start the turn..." because hello! cars vary and the steering wheels are in different locations relative to the length of the vehicles. Can I articulate what I do? Nope. Could I guide someone while I was seated in the passenger seat? I've tried, but is it my fault they won't listen? No. My husband, on the other hand, learned to drive while living in the burbs around L.A. Land of driveways and parking lots.

Neither of us owned a car when we started dating, but once he borrowed a car to take me out. Someplace with limited on-street parking. So after driving around a bit with me saying "there's one," and him saying "that's not big enough," I timidly suggested I might try one of these too small spots. He was impressed. Good thing he's not too macho to admit it. He tries, but he still is trapped in the simplified rules and just doesn't understand how when he follows those rules and lines up the bumpers or steering wheels just so, the car refuses to go where it should. Instead of arguing over how the rules don't apply, if a trip will require parking skill, I drive. My high school and college find-a-spot-weekly-to-have-fun years turned into the Chicago find-a-spot-daily-so-I-can-get-home years. Therefore while I still have the magic touch, I've used up my quota of tolerance for the hunt. More than five minutes driving around to find a spot and I'm a complete grouch.

Franz saw that author Jennifer Ouellette was speaking at Elliot Bay Bookstore last night. Zach had gotten Black Bodies and Quantum Cats for his birthday and just finished reading it. He thought it was pretty good. She's on tour for her new book: The Physics of the Buffyverse. I was a bit reluctant to go, partly because of the weather and partly because of the hassle of either driving or taking the bus to Pioneer Square. If I gave in to my initial reluctance to go places I'd never leave the house, so I dismissed my desire to get a headstart on Sunday's International Pajama Day and agreed to go. Car or bus? Well, in order to have time for dinner, it just seemed less hassle to drive. So we did. Parking was involved; I drove. That means I got to choose the route which means getting on I5 at NE 50th where we merge onto the freeway from the right instead of Franz's (admittedly more logical) preference of 520 with the left entrance ramp onto I5.

Should have realised that things were not going our way when the NE 50th leg took forever and then was closed before the I5 exit for an accident investigation. Then NE 45th was a mess, but I figured that was just because of the closure of Ne 50th. I5 wasn't too bad, but when we got off the freeway and entered Pioneer Square the sign on the Sinking Ship garage read Event Parking $30. "Holy crap!" I said. "What's going on. The only thing that would warrant that would be the Seahawks." Franz said "Um, yeah, Seahawks. Didn't think of that. I think they are playing Dallas. Don't know if it's in town or not." Well, I think he had the answer right there. At this point you can pity my family, but I asserted my authority as driver and declared that I was not going to stress out over a futile parking spot hunt. I headed north on First Avenue and said if a spot appears I'll take it but otherwise we are heading home. Way up on Union there was an open garage with the sign Weekends and Evenings $4.00. Turned into it and was told they close in 10 minutes. Then why don't they take down the damn sign already. In the space of time it took me to turn around and exit, at least 6 other cars pulled in. So, no author lecture for us.

Coming back home via Montlake the U District congestion was explained as we intersected traffic leaving the UW Husky basketball game. Took a while before we got through, but at least it wasn't Husky Football where the cops would have diverted us a good mile north out of our way.