Fiberrant

Oh, the dismay! I pulled out the Lamb’s Pride last night to whip out a Bucket o’ Chic, and discovered I’d inadvertently bought Bulky yarn. I won’t share the gory details. But by switching gears to an un-felted hat, and the fantastic range of sizes in Bonnie Marie’s pattern, I went up a needle size and down three hat sizes – and I think it’ll fit great. It’s not done )one more row on the brim, and then the crown) but this should be the last FO of 2003.

Christmas has been duly celebrated with all the parental and family units. The most lasting by-product of divorce is having so many discrete holiday gatherings. Good thing: You get to see your sibs & kids multiple times. Both my parents and Paul’s are divorced, so that’s 4 trips to the ‘rents, instead of two.

Fortunately, we still have a “clan” that sticks together. Here we all are, stuffed and gifted Christmas night.

Today it’s back to the salt mines … tons of stuff to clean up before year-end on Wednesday.

Oh – and the oddest thing we saw in our travels this weekend? A house with our porch on it. We have a very distinctive porch – curved corner-things (corbels?), unusually shaped spindles on the railing, carved circles on the posts. We thought it was one-of-a-kind. But no! This house is exactly the same. The house itself is different, but the porch is identical.

The beef roasts need 35 min/lb. at 325F. The turkey breast, also happily at 325F, should take 2 or 2.5 hrs. Both should sit for 15-30 min.

The ham, naturally, needs 250F for about the same time. Crock pot to the rescue!

So the ham goes into the crock pot oh, noonish. The turkey and roasts go in the oven around 3 pm. Dinner will be served at 6.

Now I’m off to vacuum and mop, and finish picking up in the living room. Then off to pick up card tables and chairs. We’ll set them up tomorrow afternoon. Really, everything is under control …

Have a wonderful Christmas!

Feeling a bit better today, and getting a lot accomplished. Year-end inventory is underway at work. I’ve left the actual counting to the people who do that best. They’ll input the quantities, and if all goes well, they won’t even have to call me to help get the final adjustment recap report. As far as I’m concerned, I’m now on vacation until the 29th.

For the first time I can remember, I’m completely ready for Christmas. I stopped at the liquor store today, got some champagne (for Christmas morning mimosas, a tradition in my house) and boxes of wine for dinner. All the gifts are not only bought, but wrapped. Even the stockings are ready to be filled! So tomorrow, nothing for me to do except clean … and make a detailed prep plan for Thursday dinner. We’ve got a ham, two beef roasts and a turkey breast; ideally, they’ll all be ready to serve at the same time. Hmm. Does it make a difference in cooking time when you have multiple items in the oven? I know a 10-lb roast takes longer than a 5-lb roast, but that’s due to the thickness of the meat. Do two 5-lb roasts take longer than one?

I cast on for a new sock last night, while watching Tears of the Sun with Bruce Willis. Way too many extended shots of him trying to look thoughtful, or concerned, or maybe he just swallowed a bug. But the socks … Wildfoote sock yarn, in navy and white, and I’m going to try a Celtic pattern a la Catherine. Hers are stunning. We’ll see how it goes.

On top of the pre-Christmas madness, I have to go and catch a cold. Grr. But the holiday decorations are, for the most part, complete.

Yes, Mom, I hung these on the tree this year. It seemed such a waste not to. They’re Waterford ornaments, from 1978 – 1984. Staffan was charmed with the boxes, and figuring out who was how old when each of them was first hung on the tree.

The house looks beautiful. Funny how a late-Victorian house is complete when you put up a tree. Not that we have late-Victorian furnishings, or anything. It’s just magical. I tried to get a room shot, but messed up the lighting – I have some ideas, though, and I’ll try again tonight. Time and energy permitting.

I did knit on the black alpaca FnF shawl yesterday [during the Bills' total collapse against Miami]. As I knit, I’m thinking about pi, the increases, and just how much I’ve done so far. At row 95 of 190, you’d think it’s half done. But not even close. Something about the square of the diameter. It’s up to ~425 sts around now, and each increase row adds 48 sts. The last rows will have 1320 sts each. So no, I won’t be wearing this Christmas eve. Maybe next year.

(Okay, I did the math. The area of a circle A, at 30″ diameter, is 2,826 sq in. The area of circle B, at 60″ diameter, is 11,304 sq in. So I’m at (2826 / 11304) or 25% complete.)

No, this is not a rant. We hear enough of that, this time of year.

I had a WONDERFUL shopping experience yesterday, at the Parkleigh Pharmacy. Not a real pharmacy any more, it’s very gifty, very trendy, in the most exclusive city neighborhood, with scant parking. They have great cards, which is why I stopped in. Pulled into the lot, which of course was packed. Oh well, I thought, I’ll just drive through and go to CVS. But, who do I find in the middle of the lot? The owner, directing traffic most congenially. He thanked me over and over for my patience, found me a spot, and helped me manouver my large-ish car into it.

Thus brightened, I dashed into the store. Very, very crowded; lots of browsers. On a regular day, the store is hard to navigate – narrow aisles, lots of little rooms with strange connections. I found my card, but then (in a good mood from the parking experience) I looked around a little. Found a couple small gifts – $30 I wasn’t planning on spending there.

The line at the register was long, but moved very fast. Would you like these gift wrapped?- yes, I’d like that, please, for that odd-shaped item I’ll never find a box for. Free, fast, handsome and pleasant. Would you like to be added to our mailing list? Certainly! I’m now in love with this store. And with my receipt, she gave me a handful of tiny jingle bells – “for your pocket”. Swoon!

Out to the lot, where the owner again thanked me for my patience and helped me wiggle my car out of the parking space. I wanted to kiss him. As consumers go, I’m a pushover – I’ll accept long lines, cranky clerks, bad service, as if I deserve it. A store doesn’t have to do much to make me happy. But these folks surprised and, yes, delighted me.

Valerie, you’re a lifesaver! I will, when I get a round tuit, tink these last four rows and do it right. And the Perler site is awesome. I want to run downstairs and make some right now. But that wouldn’t be right.

We haven’t actually made any ornaments yet. He’s got three trays of beads, each color in its own compartment. But at some point, two of the trays got mixed together. He prefers having the colors separate – so we spent a total of 6 hrs painstakingly sorting these tiny plastic beads. So now, come Saturday, we’re ready to create.

I spent a lot of time thinking, What the heck do they do at the factory, when they accidentally spill these and mix them together? Now I can see – they put them all in a bucket and sell them.

Hey! I did get some knitting in yesterday – it was data-transfer day, part one (today is part two) and I finished the Icelandic socks. As my mom would say, I live in a zoo: I finished both socks from a single skein with 2 yds to spare, although I didn’t measure or worry much about it (I have another skein in the same color).

I bought my first Hall’s Cough Drops of the season last night. Sugar-free Cherry, of course. They help dry up my runny nose, and generally just make me feel loved. Vestiges of Mom giving me spoonfuls of cherry Robitussin?

So, while I didn’t knit a stitch, I did cogitate on the F&F pattern error.

The stitch count for row 61 is correct. But row 65 only increases by 3 sts, not by 5 as the pattern demands. The official correction, should I ever find it, will probably be to omit the SSK in row 61.

I’m tending toward eliminating the SSK in the 6th st, thus the pattern will be yo, k1, yo, k3, k2tog, k2, yo, k1, yo, k1. No way will I tink four rows of lace for one st.

Chances are tonight will be fiber-free again, since Staffan and I have our “date night” tonight. We’ll be making Christmas ornaments. I’ll stop at the store and get some candy and red tissue paper, so we can make candy “crackers” to hang on the tree Swedish-style. And we’ll be doing those little plastic beads, the ones that melt together when you iron them. (Better get some parchment paper, too.)

I started a new shawl yesterday from the black alpaca. Courtesy of the snow, football, and Angels in America, I knit for about 9 hours straight. There were several points where a picture would have been more … picturesque, like when the lace was stretched on the needle like a dreamcatcher. But I didn’t take a photo break! So here you have it.

The pattern is the circular Feather and Fan shawl from A Gathering of Lace. I finished the center motif – an eight-petalled flower – and must look now for errata. There’s an error on pattern row 65. Unfortunately, there’s an error on the XRX Books errata page, and the page cannot be found. Grr!