Back & Forth, Knit & Purl

Yes, it's been a while. When things start getting rough, I stop blogging. Mom would say I should blog more when things are rough, which may be true...but not my native habit.

Round after my last post I retaught myself to knit. What insane bee was caught in my bonnet? I don't know but I'm glad I did it. More on that later.

The thing is, that last post was about a week and a half after Nick up and disappeared again. Sort of. He stopped going to work. He stopped coming home. That was bad, and we got calls from his boss for several days until Bill was convinced we didn't know where Nick was. Which we didn't, but I think at first Bill may have thought we were protecting Nick from him. Then Bill called to say that a car had been stolen from the lot and that Nick had "deleted the key from the key vault," whatever that means. That didn't look too good. We haven't heard anything about that since, so he may have been bluffing to see if we'd cough up Nick. Since we couldn't, we didn't. For a few days we thought he might actually be missing...but we kept seeing traces that he'd been visiting while we were at work. Things left out, doors left unlocked, a soda can lying around where none had been previously. Ok, he's staying at the Redgate Nick's, we thought. ("Redgate Nick" is the name for his his friend Nick who lived on Redgate Ave, and that was our way of distinguishing one Nick from the other in conversation). I drove by Redgate Nick's place, now living with a couple other friends in our neighborhood, and there was Nicholas' car, his little black Nissan Sentra 200SX.

I tried (once) to reach out. I left a note (sealed in a ziplock baggy to ward off the damp) on his car window, which he got (I drove by several times to see if he'd plucked it off the windshield), but which he may or may not have read. He's doing everything he can to stay out of touch and at this point I'm just going to respect that. The other night, though, and I thought this was kind of funny, we found little hairs in the bathroom sink. He'd come by to shave and, as usual, didn't rinse the sink. I laughed. Three weeks ago I'd have had an emotional meltdown over the little incident, and would have been very blue for the following two days. This is, I think, where the knitting comes in to play.

When Shanon and I ventured to Charlottesville we sent into a yarn store. I was enchanted and curious. So, about Nov 10 or so, I was at Michael's Arts & Crafts store getting supplies for Christmas gifts. I found myself in the knitting aisle and stood there for a long time, looking at the yarns, the needles, and fiddling with some of the books, and I went for it. Picked (what I thought was) a simple pattern from a $3 booklet, got the needles and the yarn and a little bag of "gotta have" tools (stitch gauge, pins, measuring tape, needle caps, etc.) and went home and tried to figure it out. Between the instructions in the booklet, the videos on http://www.knittinghelp.com, and my own smarts, I managed to figure this out enough to make something. I can't say what it is because it's a gift but I'll post a pic after Christmas.

This simple object was knitted in the round and felted. Call me ambitious, devil-may-care, stupid. The first version of the object failed to meet my expectations. So I tried again, this time being very careful to cast on the correct number of stitches!!! But I learned many lessons from this first foray:

• Felting is fun!!
• Felting hides a multitide of sins, such as suspect seaming and boo-boos when binding off.
  
• Felting shrinks pretty well vertically (stitches running up/down) but not much horizontally (side-to-side at the row level).
• Wool yarn bleeds. Just ask my bras, which I threw into the wash with this little fuschia thing.
• Knitting in the round is not nearly as difficult as it sounds. In fact, it's pretty easy, although the needles are shorter and I like them a little longer.
• I'm prone to dropping stitches.
• I can watches a marathon of CSI or Law and Order SVU for hours when I'm knitting.
• It's incredibly relaxing, and meditative (when not watching tv).

And, most importantly, it helped me get through the last few weeks, including Thanksgiving, with Nick MIA and Patrick still in Fort Leonard Wood.

I've since made a hat which is waaaay too small for anyone but Alison's baby doll. It also fits my model skull. Now I'm knitting three other things which I can't discuss because they, too, will likely be Christmas gifts if I can get them finished in time to avoid overnight Fed-Exing! I have a bunch of projects, small ones, lined up for the next year. I'm abuzz with ideas and want to knit every pattern I see! No, this isn't eclipsing photography. I can't take photos all day long, every day. But knitting fills the gaps and then some. haha!