My New Gig

I got a new gig. I'm the Lake YMCA's new knitting teacher.

I'm really excited about the position for many reasons:
I'll meet new people in my still-fairly-new community and they won't all be moms of young children- I like variety in my friends
I get to pass along the craft I've grown to really love
I get to hone my skills in the process
I get to unload some of my yarn stash

A little over a year ago I recognized how much I love knitting. I love the feel of the yarn in my hands. I love the way the needles slide against each other in a gentle shhh shhh as I knit. I make garments in vivid colors, warm and durable and soft; sweaters, hats, mittens and blankets to embrace my husband, my children, my family, my friends and myself.

The process of creation is multi-step and every step is one of discovery. The pattern choice is probably the most important and most exciting- who will it be for? What season? What function will the garment have? What will it have to match? Cables? Or color?

The pattern choice drives the yarn choice. Choosing the yarn is the most exciting step- what fibers? What weight? What colors? Does it need to be machine washable? Where will I get the yarn? When do I get to feel it?

Next comes the gauge swatch and then measuring the intended recipient- torso length, arm length, shoulder to fall line, chest size. The most exciting step is next: starting. Seeing the sweater or hat or mittens or blanket begin to take shape on the needles it delightful. Does it look just as I thought it was going to look, or is it a little different? How quickly is the project going to appear. Seeing the project grow off the needles is like watching a genie come swirling out of a lamp- it's just as magical.

Blocking comes next and blocking is usually fairly straightforward. However, I have had an item or two completely change again during the blocking process. A knit blanket once went from being lumpy-bumpy and cute to being flat and sleek and beautiful. Even blocking delivers an occasional surprise.

The final stage I can't complete fast enough- the finishing up so that the knitted item can be used. The sewing together and weaving-in of the ends always looks like it will take forever until I actually start doing it. Suddenly I'm down to the last end and I can give it away. Giving something away is like giving someone a perpetual hug. It's love and warmth and comfort.

I get to pass it all along to a new group of people. That makes me one lucky person. Maybe the most exciting part will be seeing a new group of knitters complete their first projects.

Life is good.

I Want a Hot Dog

My oldest child is in Kindergarten. He's sensitive and high-strung and inquisitive, stubborn, smart and very sweet. Putting him on the bus that first day in August and pushing him out of the nest was hard, but I knew he'd love school. I knew it was the first major step towards him becoming his own person, independent from me.

He's got his own friends and his own relationships now. He knows people I don't know- the gym teacher and the lunch ladies, the librarian and the school nurse. He had some conflict two days ago with one of the women who monitors the playground- yesterday afternoon he told me it had been resolved.

It's fascinating to me to see the evolution of my child. I see glimpses of the person he's going to be, even while the majority of his self is still firmly rooted in the 5 year-old person he is now.

Many of the changes are subtle; this morning's was not. "I want a hot dog for lunch today, Mom." Ted announced at breakfast. For the first time ever, he went to school without a lunch I'd packed. He's going to stand in line with the other kids and get his lunch, typing his code into the cash register to take the payment out of his account. He's not going to have me there to cut it up for him- he'll have to manage it by himself.

I want to be a fly on the wall and check on him. I'd like to ride in his pocket and just make sure that he's doing fine- give him encouragement throughout the day. Of course, that's not mine to do. He's got to figure it out on his own, just like I did when I was his age.

He took charge of another area of his life today. I am proud of him each time he takes another step towards independence.

I'd already packed his lunch when he asked for the hot dog. I didn't tell him that though, and his sandwich, vegetables and goldfish crackers are in the fridge. He can have them tomorrow.

Today he's having a hot dog.

.....And They're Off

We got a puppy. He's going to be a big dog- he's 4 months old now and is almost the size of a small Lab. He's jumpy and nippy and boisterous, but we can tell that he'll eventually settle down into a very nice dog. He's sweet, tolerant and lovable.

Henry adores him. He can't get enough of Skipper. Every day I run interference so that Skipper can sleep without being piled with toys, blankets and Henry. Eventually, despite my best efforts, Skipper has to give up his nap, get up and play with Henry instead.

We were outside one morning- Skipper was minding his own business, napping under a lilac bush. I was pulling weeds in the herb garden. Henry was playing with a bungee cord he found. Henry spied Skipper sleeping and took the bungee cord over and used it to attach the lid of the sand box to Skipper's collar. Henry then came over to me to get sun-screened for the morning.

The sandbox lid is made of a lightweight plastic, but it's fairly large- maybe 2'x 3'Here's a picture of it:

As I was spraying Henry down with sunscreen, Skipper must have moved. The lid moved with him and spooked him. Skipper took off like a shot. Howling and running as fast as he could, he bolted past me and down the driveway, turned the corner and flew in front of the house, sandbox lid trailing behind him like a flying carpet. "Rooooooooooo! Roooooooooooo!" I dropped the sunscreen and started running after him as fast as I could, "Skipper! I'll saaaave youuuuuuuuu!" With a scramble of nails against asphalt, he turned the corner and ran past the garage. "Roooooooooooo!" all the while pulling his airborne sled. He scrambled around the last corner and got the sandbox lid wedged between the trashcans and our yard trailer. I finally caught up to him there and was able to release him from his pursuer.

Skipper ran off to recuperate. Henry, I'm sure, was already thinking of the next thing he's going to do with Skipper. Yesterday Henry covered him with truck stickers. Henry tells me that Skipper is his best friend and I believe it, but I don't think Skipper is going to fall asleep near the sandbox any time soon.

Changed Again

I changed my comment posting policy to something that may cut back on the spam but that allows my friends to leave comments again. Hopefully this will help- I'm still getting spam comments so my attempts to curb it haven't been totally successful. I still don't think my readers are interested in German Viagra so I've been vigilant about removing the spam comments.

An Unfortunate Name

Winnie the Pooh has been around forever, but I am still sometimes taken aback when my kids say his name.

Every mom has probably snapped to attention when she's heard her kid squeal with delight, "Look mom! There's Pooh!" (The first thing you think as a mom is "Where's poo? Do I have wipes? Is this going to require doing a load of laundry?" Then you realize it's "Pooh," not "poo." Sigh of relief.)

Never is this so true for me as in the evenings. I'm tired and ready for the kids to go to bed so that I can unwind for a little while.

I get a little burst of adrenaline every evening when Ted shouts "Mom! There's Pooh on my toothbrush!"

I really ought to get him a new toothbrush.

I'm Supposed to Care?

Tiger Woods apologized the other day for cheating on his wife. He said that he hoped that the public could forgive him.

I was puzzled by the apology.

The pundits came on and told us how we were supposed to feel about it and psychologists told us about his body language and whether or not they felt he was being honest.

I was even more puzzled by all of that.

Tiger Woods is a golfer. Period. Tiger Woods probably owed his wife an apology, but I don't know what their arrangement was (nor do I care to) and I don't know what kinds of things she was engaged in while Tiger was... busy.

If Mr. Woods was my moral Northstar from whom I sought guidance on how to live a moral and corruption-free life, then I would surely be confused by his transgressions. But as far as I can tell, Mr. Woods never claimed to be an awesome family man from whom others could learn. If he ever marketed himself to the public as a domestic bliss Svengali, then the public would have a right to expect an apology.

I feel sort-of sorry for celebrities sometimes- I think that the public expects way too much from them. Actors are folks who are good at pretending to be someone else. This does not give them political insight greater than anyone else. I don't care who Tim Robbins or Spike Lee or Susan Sarandon thinks should be president. I see the ads and the interviews where the celebrities are giving their opinion on political issues and I wonder why they think they've got the answers.

I don't care what they think about gun control, same-sex marriage, the war in Iraq or wearing fur because they aren't experts in the field- they're actors.

I'd like to know what Sarah Jessica Parker does for her skin (truly, not just what the ads say she does) because she's my age and I look 15 years older than she does. Clearly she has some kind of insider information on how to keep your eyelids from being baggy, but I still don't care who she's going to vote for.

So Tiger cheated on his wife and apparently disappointed his public. Maybe they shouldn't count on him to be anything other than a really good golfer. Maybe the public should have apologized to him for expecting him to be more than simply an impressive athlete. Maybe we got it backwards. Maybe when the spotlight fell upon him for his off-the-course behavior we all should have turned the spotlight off and said, "We're sorry; we forgot- you're an incredibly good golfer- nothing more, nothing less. We'll see you on the course."

Is it Spring Yet?

I have my garden planned and my seeds purchased already. They're waiting in the basement for warmer weather, or at least for the calendar date when I can put the seeds in some soil, under the lights in their fake Spring in order to get a jump on our growing season.

Yes, I know it's only January, but the snapdragons get started at the end of February and I was one of the last people to order my snapdragon seeds before the company ran out of the variety I wanted, so I'm not that crazy to have them this early.

Besides, ordering my seeds makes the weather outside seem less bleak, less endless.

We're putting in a garden this year. For the last couple of years I've had an ever-growing series of pots lining my driveway. We had no room for a garden in the front without turning the front yard into a garden and the back yard was shady and wooded. I'd have had to take down the neighbors' trees in order to get enough sunlight in the back, and I think they would have objected.

We bought a new house and moved in November; I brought along all of my pots so that I could plant flowers around the back deck. In our new house we have 3 acres of land with only one line of trees at the back of the property, so we have plenty of room for a garden. We've walked the property and decided exactly where the garden should go and I wait.

The neighbor, a Mennonite carpenter named Elmer Yoder who's lived in his house forever, told me that our property is largely "muck." While this sounded to me like it meant rich, fertile soil, I have since discovered that "muck" is actually a technical term used to describe property that is too wet for crops. There is a broken field tile in the front that will need to be fixed in order to alleviate some of the drainage issues and the county is overdue for dredging the creek that abuts our parcel.

The spot which we've chosen sits a little bit higher than some of the surrounding yard and I'm hopeful that there will be no standing water in that spot at the end of Spring. We'll figure something out, I'm sure, but if I end up using my old system for growing my tomatoes this year, heck, at least I've already got the pots for it.

Change to Blog

I've got another post coming, probably more than one, but I made a change today that I wanted to alert my readers to.

I've been getting spam posts in my "comments" sections on my posts and it's been a pain to log in and clear them out- invariably they show up on older posts and I have to figure out when I wrote the entry first.

I am no longer able to accept anonymous comments on the blog- I am hoping that the change will completely eliminate spam postings (I really don't think anyone who reads this is interested in German Viagra) but I know that some of my regulars will no longer be able to post comments. I've hesitated to make the change for that reason, but I'm sure you all will understand.

Check back soon- I'm in a writing mood- I just need the time to sit down. I'll get something up this month though, for sure.

Edited to add: I got another spam comment today, written in a character language, so clearly the problem hasn't been solved yet. Spam is something, like vandalism, that I just don't "get." Hmph.