Join Me in Snarkville

I wanted to write this morning about how I’d finished this big project I’d been working on with just enough yarn.  I’ve been working on my thoughts about how stressful it was at the very end knowing that it would be really close and then sighing with relief as I had a simple foot or so of yarn left.

I’ve also lived in denial for the past few days.  Serious denial.

So, around the time of Mother’s Day, I was stressed beyond belief and couldn’t pull it together to get something ahead of time for the Queen Mum.  I wagged a book of patterns across the country and handed it to her and said, you may have anything in this book you want.  We went page by page, we looked over all the patterns.  She liked this one or that one, but not this piece of it.  Then she saw it.  I knew she’d love it — but the yarn requirements were daunting.

Seriously, this is done in Sport/Sock Weight yarn (for the non-knitter, think about a fine gauge sweater) and it calls for 2205 yards of yarn.  The largest shawl I’d done to date wasn’t over 1000 yards.  I was afraid.

Now, the Queen Mum also wanted something soft and not as lacey as a 100% wool.  She mentioned cotton thinking it would be cooler or lighter than wool (common misconception of the non-knitter, cotton in a heavy fiber and has a nasty habit of just stretching and stretching).  I thought silk (though the cost was more daunting than the yardage.

Then I hit a sale, a really good sale, and happened upon a basket of the right yarn.  An Alpaca/Silk Blend from Jo Sharp.  (Let me stop to announce I’m a sucker for Jo Sharp lately — I’m in love with this yarn.)  I found a Pearl color that I think will be perfect, though it is a blue/gray/silver and ma be a touch too light.  However, the deal was right and I am confident I could dye it once knit, if needed.  I bought all the balls there were — 13 balls of yarn.

I cast on and knit.  I knit like a fiend.  I wanted to get this done and I loved knitting with the yarn.  The shawl grew and grew.  The rows closed in on 600 and 700 stitches.  It was a dream.  I looked into my bag of yarn and saw the balls dwindle and I was undaunted.  I used a special join to make sure I used every inch of the precious yarn, because I knew it would be close.  I was not doing the colorwork nor the beads (again, beads add weight) and figured that had to save yarn too, right?

With 4 balls in my left, I finally did the math.  The total yardage on the shawl in the book was 117 yards more than what I had (less than a ball).  I reasoned that with my joins, lack of color, and lack of beads, I’d surely have saved that much, but accepted it would be close.

I got to the second to the last ball a little before I’d wanted to.  I joined and it seemed that I knit that ball gone quickly.  I joined the last ball and hoped a little that I was right.  I knit and knit the last ball, then it happened.  I saw the lat bit of the ball, you know the stage where the ball only slightly still looks like a ball but there are still two or three rows left.  I made plans to cut the border short, to look up a different bind-off that uses no yarn.  Anything to make the last of this last to the end.

Yesterday I woke up and faced facts, I’m going to need ONE.MORE.BALL.  I’ve called every shop near me, no go.  I searched on the internet and found one shop that has my yarn (though probably no hope of the dye lot) and I put the ball in m cart and knitted on.  I begged the yarn to last, I begged it to make it through to the end so I wouldn’t have to spend full price plus shipping on ONE.MORE.BALL.

As I went to bed, I thought about it and finally accepted my defeat.  I tossed and turned all night thinking of possible edgings that could be in another yarn, but seriously, it was just one ball.  I woke and ordered the ball.

Then I wrote this, I redid my math and realized that had I only done the math on the yarn from the book in yards and not meters, I’d have seen clearly that trying to make 13 balls do 16 balls worth of duty was a fool’s errand.  I do however, firmly believe that I will be able to do this with 14 balls.  My denial is never ending, but seriously, I’m 7 rows from the end — so I think I’m right.

I know all of you are uber worried about if Duke will miss any of his shows or how we shall handle this.  (Also, Alison, my question to you is ‘what do you do when you are knitting?’  I mean I get that I can no longer sit in front of the TV and not do something else — so what’s the other thing you do while you knit?)

First, know that as Duke is maturing so are his shows.  He has abandoned his love affair with the Dirty Jobs and even American Chopper.  Today, his heart beats for Top Gear, a BBC car show.  He loves it and now loves everything about cars.

(Odd side note:  When I went to see my doctor last week, he was asking me what kinds of things does Duke like to do now that he’s nearly 5.  I said, he’s really into cars lately.  The doctor asks, “oh, is your husband a ‘Car Guy’?”  My response, “In as much as he drives one, yes.  However, I think my son who takes delight in naming all the cars he sees on the road and is BEGGING for me to buy him a Ferrari stole ‘Car Guy’ status in our family.”)

So, in the DVR to TIVO change out, we will have a bit of a loss of Top Gear — which is fine, because frankly, I need a break.  We will get to see tonight’s episode (hopefully the wind won’t blow and we can see it) and then have a week off until the new TIVO can record some for us.

Duke shall be fine.  Why?  How can I be so sure?

Simple, he now has a computer (Strictly controlled by his over-protective Mama).  He loves it.  He is in charge of it and is mostly really good with the rules.  We’ve done this for about two weeks now — he is limited on sites he can visit (made easier because is appears that the Mac and some sites don’t get along) and how long he can be on the computer.

On Thursday, Prince told Duke to turn the computer off and come to dinner.  When Prince didn’t see Duke jump up instantly, Prince began to remind him to COME.TO.DINNER.NOW.  Duke rolls his eyes and looks up and says, “I have to click on the Apple, DAAAAAD.”  “No, you need to turn it off and come to dinner.” At that point, Prince looks at the computer and realized the apple he was clicking was so he could log off.  That’s my boy.

I used to have a schedule.  After sending the boys off, I’d make coffee, sit down and blog.  My schedule is so far gone that the only thing that remains today is I make coffee.  Seriously this summer has thrown me for a loop and a half — so many things to share, so you get a list:

1. Remember me cutting down trees?  Well, it didn’t work.  It seems that I only thinned enough out in the upper canopy of FrankenYard to allow for MORE swaying of the trees and WORSE TV.  We’ve been back to cut more, but seriously, the trees that need to go at this point aren’t safe for ‘woman with hacksaw’ kind of cutting.
2. So, as you can imagine we have given up TV.  We will be putting the TVs on the street later this month.  Oh, wait, we aren’t.  We are getting cable.  Seriously. Stop laughing.  After careful research, we found that the 6 months of nearly free cable followed by the “Oh, my, make the bleeding stop” rate came out to exactly $28 more than we’d pay for satellite for the same year.  So, for $28 we are getting reception — now you understand right?
3. But wait there’s more.  You see with cable we get a REAL TIVO box again.  I miss TIVO.  Seriously, none of the non-TIVOs can compare to the goodness of TIVO.  (If I’m seriously honest, our first DVR was the Ultimate TV and that little Microsoft product was the best at the time — it took TIVO a few years to catch-up.)  But I get TIVO again.  TIVO, which will arrive on Monday.  TIVO which can not be set-up with a Cable Guy, because apparently shoving a card into a slot is HARD.  So my cable install appointment that would have given me clear TV yesterday has now been moved.
4. Enough about my TV woes.

My schedule will change again in August as I prep for school to begin (must.stop.crying).  I am still waiting on the supply list from the school, but Duke’s backpack arrived this past week (Thank you Queen Mum and Dad) and he loves it.  Now if I can only find shoes that meet his approval.

…scream “T-I-M-B-E-R”

Oh yes, I have just cut down my very first tree. And I’m bouncing with glee. No seriously.

First, I have to say that I’ve FINALLY done something I’ve wanted to do since we moved into Frankenhouse — I climbed the hill behind my house. And the worst thing about it is that it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. Oh, sure it is greater than a 45 degree angle and the first 10 feet or so has an apple tree that grows low near the ground (not hard when the ground is rising to meet you). But armed with clippers in my back pocket, gloves on my hands (did I mention the blackberry bushes? oh, yes and there’s a holly bush behind the apple tree too — what the heck did the owners like about plants with ‘pokies*’ on them?), and a hacksaw — I climbed the hill.

Now at this point you are asking yourself, “Queen, what was so important that you had to climb a hill, wield a saw, and cut down much of a tree all by yourself? Couldn’t Prince do it? Couldn’t you have ignored it?” In reverse order:

1. We’ve ignored it for too long and it was no longer ignorable.

2. Prince was not home and didn’t really want to do it and he might have mentioned that it would take me days and I’d really need a chainsaw and the thought of wielding a chain saw on even ground gives me the hives, so the thought of carrying it up there, turning it on, and cutting something down just about made me faint.

3. I need my TV.

So, yes, I climbed the hill and cut down a tree in the name of couch potatohood. You see, we have DirectTV. We have a dish ill placed (hello, this is Frankenhouse where nothing is in the best place for it, but is instead the lazy place) at the low corner of our roof. We also have this mountain full of trees in the back yard. Come to find out, trees GROW. This is especially true of Eucalyptus trees, who not only grow too tall have a tendency to just fall over. We have two stumps in the back that have sprouted trees again (I have a feeling this house has had a problem with these trees before). Well, the smaller crop seems to be problem (though as of this typing I’m too scared to turn the TV on to check lest I’ve just cut down the wrong set AND perhaps would have to go back up the hill and do it all again.) So, since camp is a whole hour longer today and I got some work done this morning. I rewarded myself not with quiet knitting or a shower, but by donning gear and climbing the mountain.

Yes, there was a moment up the hill with a saw (which for the record is completely different than up a creek without a paddle, but no less scary), that I thought “this is rather dumb, I’m up here, no one from the house — which is empty — could see me and I have a saw. A saw, I’m not entirely sure how to use.” But what the heck, since when has ignorance and bravado not gotten me into worse trouble?

So, I begin to saw at a random trunk. Briefly, I thought “Prince is right, this is going to take all day.” Then I spotted a trunk that was already leaning pretty hard and I cut on that a bit. I had it on the ground in a few minutes and thought, ok, now I know how to attack. Slowly, but surely, I keep sawing — sometimes wondering if a butter knife would have been faster — but one trunk feel, then another and another. I cut about 6 separate trunks down the smallest of which was about 3″ in diameter — the largest at least 6″. I learned that the reason these trees have a habit of just falling is that they are rather soft wood and thus I only had to cut halfway though and then push REALLY hard.

The last two trunks I cut were the largest and both fell with a satisfying “CRACK.” I wanted to jump for joy, but knew I’d land on my ass. So, I did what any girl would do. I threw the tools down the hill and slowly made my way down (without sliding on my butt). Then promptly called Prince and told him I cut down a tree and it didn’t fall on the house!!!

I’m high on adrenaline now. And in need of a shower.

*Pokies are any plant that has spikes/thorns/or is otherwise pointy.  This is Duke’s word and I like it, so I keep it.