Tuesday List

Well, yet again I've fallen behind on my blogging - sorry all ye faithful reader(s). In the consideration of time and trying to capture recent events, I will be conducting this blog in list form with no particular order in regards to importance or chronology.





1. My saving grace against the evils of Ravelry (an amazing database/community of knitters and yarn and patterns) is that my yarn is at home and my computer is at work. If they happened to be in the same place I don't think I would ever move and have thousands of knitting project's I'd be working on. I'm discovering an infinite amount of lovely patterns and even whole new worlds of knitting styles and subsets.





2. Continuing with knitting, project status is:



2a. I finially finished the Simply Marilyn sweater - sewing in the ends. Although, I still want to press it some more to prevent the bottom from rolling up so guess I'm not quite done yet.



2b.I finished the beautiful teal Jo Sharp cardigan which has become my favorite sweater (hand-knit and store bought). More info later when I finally get pictures.



2c. I'm almost done knitting my purple Oslo sweater. Having trouble finishing the neck and still have to sew it up and press it.





3. I visited dad this last weekend as I had a meeting in Springfield (western Mass) so was fairly close for a visit. I spent my giftcertificate money on a new book Loop d Loop. More fun projects, still trying to figure out which one gets to be first.





4. Bought more yarn at Webs, in Northampton. Again, it's good this store is just far enough away.

Weekend Update

This weekend I was "out of town" visiting my old college friend Cece. Usually I'll visit for the day but this time we had a sleep over and I came for breakfest on Saturday and left after dessert on Sunday. It was great, and just like old times when I lived with her and her husband when I first moved to the area. The goal of the weekend was to finally get her yarn room in order and relax. Unfortunately (more for her I think), I was a bit more focused on the first task. We had done this once or twice before, but only gotten about 3/4's of the way through, which doesn't quite work. This time, we made it!! Cece posted some pictures on her blog which I've lifted. Of course, as is always the case, we forgot to do the before pictures. But just imagine a room, where one forgets the color of the carpet - bags and boxes and stuff everywhere. We've all been there (maybe not with yarn, and maybe with yarn).

Now the funny part was that Cece was strangely apologetic throughout which was strange and it got me thinking. It all boils down to two key ingredients in keeping organized. First, every place must have a home. If that hasn't been idenitified, you just have things that turn out to be transients, floating from one spot to another. The second, is that unless you don't have a life or you are OCD, you need a designated holding ground. That is, a place to dump. It's fine to keep things that you don't use, and keep projects you've given up on but aren't ready to part with. You just have to have a home for them.

Well, Cece was very patient with me and we worked through everything in the room. The fun/dangerous part for me was seeing more of her stuff (I did end up borrowing a few knitting books that might make me cast on a few too many projects). And she did an awesome job of cateloging the majority of her yarn onto Ravelry (type, brand, colorway, and quantity of each yarn). It was crazy.

And the best part? We did the closet. Everythign is sorted in there. And if you've organized with me, my favorite mantra came true - like with like. We were able to display some of her awards (see the ribbons in the closet) and other stuff that were tucked away out of sight.

Now granted, even though all the needles are separated and sorted by size, and the yarn in the cubbyholes and the books on the shelves, we still will have a follow up visit. I'd like to go through the patterns and get those organized in her great system of binders. And of course, want to spend more time with her books, to make sure they're sorted properly. And of course, I was finding that as we put the yarn away in the cubby's, I had grossly underestimated the quantity of purple, so wouldn't mind readjusting some of the skeins of yarn. But that's really just me and everything is in working order which is good.

In other news, I had forgotten to take a picture of the one knitted Christmas gift this year. Dad is hard to shop for, so I had a great pattern I wanted to try and since it didn't have any sleeves, thought it would be a quick knit. It turned out to be a bit short in the torso, so had to rip it out some in early December, which put me into the time crunch. But I finished in time, before the year was out. It's another Rowan pattern from Rowan Classic Alpaca, size Large. I knit it with some wonderful wool yarn purchased back in my Berkeley days. The pattern is called Cambridge man and dad says he likes it (which is good) and it seems to fit. All though I want to reblock teh bottom so it doesn't poof so much, but that's just me.

Last Night

Boy, when it pours it rains. No blog entries for weeks and then, boom a ton all at once. I'm just worn and have been doing some thinking, so assume this must be why. So two pieces of information to report on.

First, when I got home last night, I was surprised to find I had a good mail day. My mail isn't that exciting and is sometimes non-existent (at least I don't get tons of junk mail). But last night, what was waiting on my steps to my apartment? Three great Netflix movies (the sight of the red envelopes still lifts my spirits). I finally broke down and got Little Miss Sunshine. Too many people said I would love it. But I guess I really should see it. I also got Ma Vie En Rose (netflix thinks I would love the film), and The Aviator (as I had enjoyed the Hoax that is based on Howard).

But in addition, I got: no bills, no junk mail, a hand written note from my local Yoga studio (dad got me, as requested, several sessions there - they seem like a nice little family and I am still hopeful this will be the magic pill and solve all my problems. Ok, I'm realistic, maybe not all, but am hoping my body will start feeling better. Especially now in the winter, I find I can't sneeze or cough as it kills my lower back - it's in pretty bad shape).

And the best part was not one but two personal letters from friends and family. And the kicker, they both sent pictures. Which of course, I share with you now. The first one is from an old college friend, Emilia and is of her beautiful daugher Griet. Isn't that a gorgeous sweater? Thankfully it's still a little big. I had pretty much knit it this summer, but took, oh, I don't know, 5 months to get around to sewing it up and sending it off. I was a bit worried that the opportunity would have been missed, but it was part of her rockin' New Year's Eve attire.

The second is from my cousin's in CT. We had gone camping this summer and Catherine sent some shots from the trip. We had a great time and it was nice to be reminded of the care-free summer days spent swimming and biking and hiking now that winter is on us. Don't Tyler and I look so cool? We were trying to be all laid back - plus were a bit worn out.

So all in all a good mail day. But I didn't get much time to enjoy it as I had to quickly switch gears and, yes, Richard and I ended up parting ways last night. It took awhile to get all the ornaments down. I really had a hard time getting the ones up on the top. The star I couldn't even get down, had to dismantle the tree first to get to it. I hacked away at the branches and tied them up. Maneuvered the tree down the stairs and to the curb. And then cleaning up all the needles. There were tons. And he was doing so well. I guess his time had come after all. I spent an hour cleaning up the porch and stairs and am afraid my apartment is strewn with needles as it was too late to vacuum and the boys keep tracking them all over the place. The living room looks really weird. Imagine a rectangle. At one of the short ends is a bookcase of yarn. On the opposite side is the couch and table in the corner. And in between. Nothingness. A huge expanse of void. Not quite sure what to do, but figure vacuuming comes first.

I miss Richard, and did catch a glimpse of them picking him up this morning. He was a great tree and will be one to be remembered for years to come.

I Think I'm Getting Old

First, I should preface that I know I've aged since starting this sentenance. But it's all relative and it's the scale of things really that one considers. But all of a sudden, this afternoon, I just realized that time has been going by really fast. It's like in the movies where they have the character frozen in time staring at the camera while the world behind is moving in accelerated speeds. Well, I feel like that guy the second the two times are reconnected - all of a sudden tons has changed. And where was I when this all happened?



This feeling began last night. I had a wonderful time meeting up with some old friends for dinner. It was at a place near work which was very busy and loud in the bar but perfect in the dining room area - not too crowded and easy to hear things. I'm finding that I've started picking locations based on the noise level since it seems that I just don't have the patience to deal with not hearing very well nor straining the voice to be heard.



Anyways, it was a nice happy reunion with Maggie and Nima who I had gone to highschool with as well as meeting Nima's wife. We've been pretty much out of touch since highschool which ha been quite awhile. We had a fun time chatting, mainly about politics and changes in the old home town and our lives. It was just what I needed, a nice change of pace and a relaxed evening. We ended up not being able to catch up as much as we had wanted so will hopefully reconnect again soon, but the time just flew. I didn't get home until midnight which meant this morning was a bit rough. The old body just isn't great at the late nights.



Talking, I discovered that Nima's wife who is a teacher has to deal with students and their ipods (did you know in her school they are allowed to listen to them during class?) and cell phones and stuff like that. We were talking about texting and although I did finally discover the wonderful pros of texting, I have a fairly limited texting quota I perform.



I think it was an evening of accumulated things. Here I was with professional, grown-ups, talking about grown-up things. And it was strange because the last time we were together was when we were kids. And comparing notes about how things have changed back home just made it all the stranger. I have to admit we did throw out the phrase "back in our day" a couple of time. But the times really have changed.



Really, the kicker came this afternoon at work. I was eating some M&Ms and I look down and think to myself, I don't recognize these anymore. They were completely different. And I know they had changed, but it hadn't really sunk in, or it snuck up on me, or it was a gradual change, I don't know. But there in my hand were orange and yellow and brown and green and blue and red M&Ms. It was all different - where did the red M&Ms come from and blue?! Who makes blue M&Ms? That's just strange. And really, what happened to the two shades of brown M&Ms? It was just a complete mess, sitting there in my hand. Without change where would we be? But did we really have to change the colors in M&Ms? And why hadn't I noticed? It's going to take some time for me to get used to this. I just hope there aren't any big things I've missed lurking out there around the corner waiting for me to run into.

Is it time to say goodbye?

Quick post here before I head off to a meeting, but wanted to jot down the question I have been wrestling with recently. Whether or not to keep Richard longer? So the paper said that the Christmas tree collection occurs on your regular trash day of the week of 1/7. Well, that's this week. I had planned to denude the tree this past weekend but didn't have the heart and even ended up putting some additional recently found/created decorations on the tree.



Then last night, as I was heading home late in the evening, I turn the corner onto my street and there all up the block were several tossed Christmas trees on the curb. They hadn't been there in the morning, so it got me worried that the collection day wasn't my trash day (thursday) but the next day (tuesday). My initial instict was to quickly bring the tree out that night. But frankly it was about 9:30 pm, I hadn't had dinner yet, and taking the tree out wasn't as simple as taking the garbage out. I still had to take all the decorations off, the lights, double check I got all the decorations off, and then proceed to chop the tree to pieces before bringing it to the curb (don't forget Richard is fairly large and heavy and it took two grown people to bring him in). And then I would have to bind up all the branches and bring them out too, then clean up the fallen needles in the common area of my apartment so that I didn't leave a mess literally at the doorstep of my landlords. And, well, the thought just exhausted me. I just wanted to make a quick dinner, curl up on the couch, watch tv and knit (I'm so close to being done this wonderful caridgan, I can't wait - please let it fit the first time around).



So that's what I did. And as I sat, in the company of Richard I started wondering why I was listening to what other people were telling me to do. Shouldn't it be Richard and I who decided when to end the relationship and part our ways. I value friends and family's opinions but they didn't provide the final verdict, and especially not the local municipality. It was a private matter and should be decided upon in-house. Just because my city set a date for our departure, does that mean I should abide by it. I really like Richard. He's been a great companion, so big and warm and always welcoming me home in the evening with a twinkle in his branches. And he's been good, actually great. Over the holidays, I was worried I would find him keeled over from the boys playing with him (the base isn't that large after all and he is tall and friendly). Or at the least completely dehydrated and on his last legs (again the boys use his water - he's very sharing like that). But no, both times I got back after a week away each time, he was good. Just how I had left him, patiently waiting for my return.



And this weekend, while I was cleaning up my holiday mess and he was standing by happy I was home, I noticed he was still in good health. He should have been on his last legs by now. It was exactly a month ago that I first met him and chopped him down. And was he dropping his needles? Not at all. In fact, even when pulling on the branches not a needle fell off. He's still in the peek of his health. And I've grown accustomed to his company. Frankly, I don't know what I will do with the space in the living room when he leaves - about 2/3's of the room will just be empty. So why rush into that situation? Why can't we spend some more time? Yes, I know it must end one day, in the next month or two (or three), but until then can't we be together. But when it does end, what do I do then. Where do I bring him? How do I bring him anywhere? It would be easiest to part ways this week, but is that the right decision? Am I short changing our situation?



Well, that's the question. The answer I don't know. We have until Thursday (well Wed night really - tomorrow night). I almost hope the pick up was today and I missed it. That would be the easiest.

A "little" something different for Christmas

I've been in my wonderful apartment for over two years now which translates into three christmas's, counting this one in 2007. The first year I had been temporarily carless in mid-December (forget why), but remember I took the opportunity with a visit from my brother (and his Civic) to pick up a tree at the local Boys and Girls Club. I think it cost $35 with tip and everything (yes, I live in the city, tipping occurs). I put it up in the far corner of my living room, where it lived quite comfortably and integrated with my life. It was glorious.



Then, the second Christmas was really hectic with a monstrous project at work that took over my life (am still trying to block that out), and I decided to forgo a tree that year. Did I really need one? It's not like I spend Christmas at my place. And last year I even went to a farm in the outback of Vermont where you put your $20 in the envelope, grab a saw and drive onto their land and cut down your tree. I got to help Dad put it up and decorate it and everything. But felt like I only got a small slice of Christmas - not really getting into the holiday spirit until much later in the month.



So this year, I knew I was going to get a tree. I also thought I would try to wrangle getting it from the farm in VT (would require using dad's pick-up to bring it back to Boston). In November I started laying my ground work and thinking about exactly what type of tree to get. The more I thought about it the more it made sense to try out a larger tree. I have this wonderful living room that is quite open, two stories tall. The first tree seemed a bit dwarfed in the space as it was so short in relation to the height of the room. It looked like it was cowering in the corner (a bit of an exageration, but I was learning to justify my new plan). Plus, as I thought some more, if I'm paying a flat fee for the tree, it would make the most economical sense to get the largest one possible - more bang for the buck. Plus a tall tree bought in the city would cost in the range of $80 (I ended up only paying $25 - their taxes went up). I thought about it and then some more. And it helped that my brother was coming back into the country and claiming one of the cars at dad's meaning there was a shortage. This opened up the opportunity to get not only the pick-up but my dad's assistance in bringing in and putting up a tree (I got the first tree all by myself, but couldn't handle a bigger tree on my own).



Fast forward to last weekend. I drove up to VT Saturday afternoon and Dad and I hoped into the truck and booked it up to the farm before it got dark (at 3 pm). We walked around a bunch and selected two trees - one for him and one for me. Mine was a bit big, but then again his was a bit small. We bungy chorded both into the bed of the truck and made it back to his house. Spent the evening putting up the tree and decorating it. The next morning, I was looking out the window at my tree in the truck and parked near by was the neighbor's humongous SUV with a tree strapped on. My tree looked big. But again, I explained it away in that it was one of those optical illusions related to the diminutive size of Dad's pick-up in relation to the SUV. We headed off that morning and spent the afternoon bringing my tree in and putting it up.



Bringing it in was a little difficult and one of the tragic casualities was that the wonderous crooked top branch broke off. But otherwise after a quick sweeping afterward, you couldn't tell that I had brought a monstorous tree upstairs into my apartment. Yes, it turns out that my big tree is quite enormous. It's colossal. I was going to put it in the same corner, but was unsuccessful. I decided I will now catelog my lessons learned so that future Christmases I can learn from this one.


1. A room may be tall, but only in the center if you have a sloped roof/ceiling line. This means the tree cannot be in the corner.

2. Those exposed cross beams in the air way above your head are genrally invisible in daily life but can become quite an obsticale when putting up an object that reaches that height. They may seem invisible but they are still solid. This further restricts the positioning of the tree in the room.

3. Suprisingly, a tall tree translates into a big tree. Let me elaborate. Let's call the height of any given tree, H. And the diameter of any given tree at the widest point (near the base), D. As H increases, apparently, so does D - they're related, nature's funny like that. So the taller a tree the larger the girth.

4. A room may seem big because of tall ceilings, but that doesn't mean it's a big room. The floor area may still be limited. Again, an elaboration. Let's call the height of a room, H. And let's call the floor area of a given room, A. As H increases, A does nothing - they are not related. In the end you still have the same A.

5. Combining a large tree with a tall room that has a small floor area results in a room with a tree in it... and almost nothing else.

6. Also related to the girth of the tree is possible positioning of the tree in the room. Tucking the tree into a corner, or along the perimeter is no longer possible as the tree, although "tucked" is still a ways into the room. Actually, once you reach a certain size the tree will always appear to be in the center of the room no matter where it's placed.

7. If you have a tall tree, it would be helpful to have a foot stool. Unless you are really tall too. (getting that star on top was a bit tricky).



So that's my tree. It's 9'-4". I think it was over 10' before I broke the crooked top branch off. It's a big tree. I was worried I wouldn't have enough lights and decorations but buying just one more small string of lights it worked out wonderfully.



Well, the snow is really coming down this afternoon. We should be getting a foot or so. It is really turning out to be quite a christmassy Christmas!

3 Babies and a Wedding

So in my lapse of writing, tons have happened - of course. The big news though is that I now have three friends who are expecting and another that is engaged (no overlaps). And one of the due dates is on my birthday in February! So congrats to all - not sure, if it's public yet, so am being on the safe side and not naming names. But the due dates are February, April and July, wedding unknown.

In other news, this is my life. Well at least my mornings. It wasn't always like this, but for the last year or so we have been on a diet (the we being Winston). I can't tell you how close this is, other than the baseball bat - it's got the mornign routine down to a tee.

And to wrap up this brief post, can I just say how much I dislike it when I accidentially hit a button and things go screwy with the computer. I was cleaning up my office this afternoon as we have a public event. I was dusting (where does this dust come from - I think it's all my dry, dead skin) and the keyboard got knocked. Anyways, the settings are all strange now and I have no idea how to reset it all back to the way it was. Hopefully tomorrow when I turn the computer back on that will do the trick.