Adrift

For the second time this year, we've lost a friend. For the second time this year, that friend was mother to two sons, like me. This time it was a good friend, someone I was close with. I look at my boys, whom I love desperately, and want to hold on tight, smother them with love, so that if the worst happens, they'll be able to hold onto that. They, however, are at an age when that kind of motherly love is eeew, ick, geez Mom, leave me alone. Yeah, yeah, you love me, blah blah blah, get away you crazy old woman. Sigh.

So I took that yarn that I just finished spinning and started a shawl. No pattern, just whatever I want, whenever I want to put it in there.



So far there's an eyelet row, some seed stitch, and some double seed stitch. I don't know what I'll add next. I'm just going to knit until I run out of yarn.

I've been working on the handspun socks, too --


These feel amazing on my feet, so thick and soft. They're my waiting room knitting at the moment, so they're not going too quickly.

I've finished most of the knitting on Mary Jane. The body is done and the neckline finishing is done. I just need to knit the sleeves. I think I'm going to go with 3/4 length sleeves. When I tried the sweater on, it seemed too warm for short sleeves.

Current spinning is really just palate cleansing spinning, nothing major. I sent one of the spinners back for some tinkering. I'd hoped that with the two spinners, I could work on more than one spinning project at a time, but now I'm back to waiting. With spinning, as with knitting, there are so many projects that I want to do that it's hard to limit myself to one.

I have not cast on for Simplicity yet because I want to finish Mary Jane first.

Today, however, I work in the garden. Jr. Jr. is home sick, and I need to get my veggie plants in the ground. The strawberry plant I put in last year has spread and already has little berries growing:


My camera did NOT want to focus on those little pre-berries.

Off to weed and plant and take care of the sick kiddo.

Forest/Trees

You know the old saying "You couldn't see the forest for the trees." The gist of it is that you get so focused on the little details that you miss the bigger picture.

Like when we get upset when Sr. Jr. seems to have issues handing in his homework, and we forget that he's a good kid, not getting in trouble and still managing to do well in school.

Like when I get cranky about not getting enough spinning and knitting time, when I've got just about the best life possible -- I get to stay home with my kids, we don't struggle with money, everyone's healthy, doing well in school, and enjoying all that childhood has to offer. (Well, I could really do without Mr. T's current state of work overload...)

Spinning is a real forest/trees exercise for me. When I spin, I'm so focused on the little bit of single I'm drafting, or the little span of yarn that I'm plying, that it's hard to step back and visualize what the finished yarn will look like and if it will turn out well.

It started this time with a braid called -- appropriately enough -- "Woodsy." It's a handpainted braid of variegated BFL from the dyer FatCatKnits:


I was a little concerned that all those reds and greens would look a little Christmassy. While I was spinning it, I was so focused on the single -- is it even? Am I being consistent? How is this going to ply up? Will it be clear or muddy?

I finished the two bobbins of singles and started plying. The questions started up again. Do I like how those two colors are barber poling together? Is it muddy? Is my plying even?

I held my breath as I wound the finished yarn into a skein. Just off the bobbin it looked wonderful! I plopped it into a bath for some finishing and hung it to dry.

All those trees, and finally a vision of the forest:




I love it! It's very slinky and pretty damn even. I need to find a good pattern to show it off.

I've been spinning more than knitting, but I'm almost done with the body of my Mary Jane sweater. I have one more patterning row, and then the ribbing. Then I'll do the neck treatment, see how much yarn I have left, assess how much patience I have left, and decide how long to make the sleeves.

I swatched for the next sweater I want to knit, but I haven't cast on yet, because I don't want the new sweater to push Mary Jane off to the side so she doesn't get finished.


Blue! My color trending continues. As you can see, I opted for the more dramatic multi over the safer semi-solid.

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We had a lovely first night of Passover. Normally, since my family is so small and far-flung, and Mr. T's family isn't Jewish, we have seders for just the four of us. It's not nearly as fun as when I was a kid and all the cousins got together. But this year we had first night with friends. The evening was hosted by the Susan for whom I knit those Fiddlehead Mittens earlier this year. Her older son is one of Jr. Jr.'s best buddies. There were two other families there with more of Jr. Jr.'s friends, and a family from another school who we'd never met before. They were very nice, and had two girls slightly younger than Jr. Jr. I think there were 10 kids total, including poor Sr. Jr. who was by far the oldest "kid" there. Although he had no one to socialize with, he made the best of it as the littler kids attacked him and climbed all over him.

Everyone brought things, so the burden didn't fall too heavily on the hosts, and it was a really nice time.

A Nook of my Own

I don't rate a whole room yet ;p

I don't have a dedicated crafting area in the house. Mr. T will tell you that the whole house is a dedicated crafting area, but I really felt like I needed a little area of my own. Most of my knitting is done on the couch in the family room, and that's fine. But I was spinning at the dining room table, and winding yarn on the breakfast bar of the kitchen counter. I wanted to free those areas of clutter and create a place where those activities could have a home.

So, a little re-jiggering and furniture moving, a new table and lamp, and here we are. This is a bump-out area in our bedroom, with a nice big window overlooking a gorgeous plum tree and some evergreens. There's just enough room for the table and another, smaller bedside table, perfect for spinning and winding yarn. All I need now is some pretty stuff on the wall and something like a little iHome or something so I can play music while I spin.

And yes, that's a new addition to my spinning collection on that table. It's a Hansen Mini-Spinner and I am totally in love with it. It's so well-crafted. Such a pleasure to spin with. I spun up an entire strip of my braid yesterday before I even knew it. It's so portable that I'm already planning to bring it with me when we go to Hilton Head this summer. Spinning by the pool!



No spinning today, unfortunately, since I spent the morning doing stuff around the house and waiting for a repairman. Tomorrow! Yes, tomorrow.

And that blue thing on my table? The handspun squooshy sock.


Here she is, all moody and dramatic. She came with me to Westover Woolies on Tuesday, and she'll come with me to piano lessons today.

I'm closing in on the end of the Mary Jane sweater, so naturally I'm thinking of what to knit next. Even though I already have one laceweight sweater on the needles, I think I'm going to start another one. I need something lightweight that I can throw on during the summer, at a cold restaurant or on the beach... who knows? At first I was leaning toward the Featherweight Cardigan, but now I think I'm going to knit Simplicity. Color? Don't know. Part of me wants to use something dark and dramatic, but the sensible part of me thinks I should stick with something that will go with everything, given that it will be a utilitarian sweater.


Sr. Jr. says, "Don't go away!"

Something Blue

Something old, something new, something borrowed...

Yesterday was our anniversary. 17 years. Time flies doesn't it? 17 years seems so long to me. I left for college shortly after I turned 17, so I've been married to Mr. T about as long as I lived full-time with my parents. We've been together for almost 21 years now. That's almost half my life! It seems unreal that we've been together that long. How did this happen? How did I get here? (This is not my beautiful house...)

I have no complaints. Well, very few. Well, no dealbreakers, anyway. Happy anniversary, love :)

What my life lacks at the moment (ok, always) is balance. Some aspect of my life is always suffering for the sake of something else. If I do A and B, then C suffers, and if I try to catch up on C, then A suffers. And so on. So I always feel like I'm failing in some aspect of what I want/need to do. I feel guilty about things I'm not accomplishing. This isn't a temporary thing, like when getting sick throws me off schedule. It's an ongoing issue. Maybe someday I'll figure out how to get all the parts moving at the same time, all the balls balanced effortlessly in the air.

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I've clearly entered my blue period. Knitting with blue, spinning blue. But no blue skies. Just how much rain and grey can Washington have, anyway?


Cute, huh? I like it, but I haven't been knitting on it as much as I could. I've been spinning more.

I had this:


which turned into this:



which I'm now knitting up into socks:


The fiber is an 70-20-10 MCN blend, the first installment of The Sanguine Gryphon fiber club. It was nice to spin, even with all the spinner trouble I have while doing it. I'm amazed the yarn came out as well as it did, given that I spent more of my energy fighting the spinner than I did making sure the yarn was turning out ok. It's very soft and squishy.

I wanted to get the socks started so I could knit on them tomorrow at our Westover Wooly meetup (Tracey - when school's out, you should join us! Sharon - I don't know if your schedule would permit, but you should see if you could come by, too.) It's very nice to have knitters and spinners to hang with in real life, too. I love meeting up with Rav folks when we can, but a regular get-together is nice to have.

I've been working on a little project for meeeeee, and it's almost done. Pictures to come.

In parental news, Sr. Jr. got a Gold Medal for his performance on the National Latin Exam. He was one of only two kids in Latin 1 in his school to get a GM. And Jr. Jr. got straight As yet again. Very proud!

Monochrome (but not Green)

I don't know how it has happened that I've managed to keep my projects all in one color range. I'm not usually the type of person who cares about matchiness, nor am I the type of person to obsess over a particular color to the extent that I will only wear or work with it. I thought the green thing was a happenstance.

Perhaps I was wrong.

After finishing the green sweater and the pair of green socks, I cast on for another sweater. I even posted a teaser last time -- blue! I like blue. I don't love blue. Other than my jeans, I don't even wear too much blue. So a blue sweater might be a good thing. Fill a hole in the wardrobe. So I took the beautiful blue Squoosh yarn and cast on:



I'm a good four inches farther along now than when I took these photos. The pattern is Mary Jane, from Twist Collective. The yarn is Squoosh's Merino Cashmere Sport, in Oil Slick. This is another nice and quick pattern, although I'm making some modifications as I go (e.g., NO puff sleeves, please). The pattern calls for short sleeves, but I think how long my sleeves end up will be determined by 1) how much yarn I have; and 2) how ready I am to move on to another pattern.

Until recently, I didn't really see the point of short sleeved sweaters. If I'm cold enough to wear a sweater, then I'm cold enough to want sleeves. But I'm trying to be open-minded and try new things. Be fashion-forward, as they say. (If you knew me in real life, you'd laugh at the idea of me being fashion-anything.)

And after my frustrated spinning interlude last weekend, the interlude that produced the cute pink and green singles, I've gone back to the spinning project I was working on:



(One with flash, one without.) The return of the blue Bugga fiber. I love this fiber. And look, it's blue! I'm spinning three bobbins of singles, which I will then ply together, hopefully getting a nice, squooshy three-ply yarn that I can use for socks. I didn't do anything organized or scientific to get this ready or to spin it. I just took the length of fiber and divided it as evenly as I could into three pieces. I split each piece in half and then grab off chunks and spin as is, or sometimes, depending on my mood, I split those chunks in half again. There's no color progression that I'm trying to maintain or follow, so randomness is ok.

The fiber reminds me of a sky-study. It has bright blues for spring skies, deep dark summer blues, white for clouds and greys to grey-purples for rainy and stormy skies.

The spinner is still irking me. When I finish the third bobbin and get this plied up, the spinner is going back to the manufacturer for a check-up.

Soon the newest installment of the Cookie A sock club should arrive, and I'll laugh if it's blue.

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I can't believe it's April already. Spring is really sneaking up on me.


(blossom from my plum tree)

Soon I'll blink and the school year will be over. They're going faster and faster as the boys get older. I'm sure there will be a lot of angst and depression this summer as Sr. Jr. gets ready for high school. I'm not ready to have him be so close to leaving the house! I suspect he's anxious about what high school holds in store for him. The gang from middle school is splitting up and there will be a whole new bunch of kids for him to meet and get to know. Some of them will be friends from elementary school, some will be entirely new.

He's definitely pulling away, adolescent-style. It makes me sad, even though I know it's necessary.

Ugh, if I'm this bad now, imagine how I'll be four years from now, when I'm crying about how my baby is going off to college?

One, Two, Many, Lots

I have many things to show today.

Slipped Hours: done, blocked, dried, photograped:



Phew! It fits. I like it, too.

Specs: Pattern is Slipped Hours, by Gudrun Johnson. Yarn is Wollmeise Twin, color, Silberdistel. I used about 2.75 skeins. The main body of the sweater was knit on US 3s, the rolled neckline was knit on US 4s. I made a couple of modifications: I knit the hem in stockinette rather than reverse stockinette, eliminated the faux side-seam, added a little bit of waist shaping, and changed the neckline from a cowl to a short rolled neck. All in all, this was a great pattern and it knit up quickly.

Continuing in the theme of green, I finished the first intallment of Cookie A's sock club. I knit the first pattern, the Rippled Leaf socks, in the club yarn, a lovely skein of Caper Sock from String Theory.


And no photo shoot is complete without my little attention ho:


This was another fun pattern to knit, especially after so many months of knitting nothing but toe-up short-row heel plain old stripey socks. I can't remember the last time I knit socks from the top down, with a flap heel! The Caper sock is lovely -- very soft, but strong. I have a couple more skeins of this down in the stash. I'd like to knit the second sock club pattern, too, but April's installment is coming up soon, so I'll hold off.

I've been spinning too. I finished the first bobbin of the Bugga fiber and started the second, and that's where things went all pear-shaped. My spinner was acting up, rebelling, being a total pain in the ass. Spinning on it was Not Fun. I kept making all sorts of adjustments to try to get it back in line, but it was refusing. So even though I hate doing this, I took the bobbin in progress off the spinner.

I was pissed. I was really pissed. I was going to show that spinner a thing or two. I grabbed a clean bobbin, grabbed some random fiber, and started spinning. I wasn't spinning for accuracy; I wasn't spinning with a plan. I didn't care if the singles were even or what. I just cranked up the spinner to 11 and practically threw the fiber onto the bobbin. It was very cathartic. After a while, I looked at what I had on the bobbin and went, "Huh. I kind of like that."


I KNOW. It's green. That's kind of why I chose it. I figured I was so overloaded on green that if I was going to waste some fiber, green was the color to waste. But I liked! This was part of Bee Mice Elf's Fiber Collections, where you get 6 different 1-oz braids. Three are multicolored braids, and three are semi-solids to complement the multis. So the most I could waste was an ounce anyway.

So I spun some more.


Pink, blue, green... I feel like I mugged the Easter bunny. The blue fiber is the Bugga fiber that I was spinning when things went to crap.

But as I said, I liked! And then I looked over at those cute little Herdy mugs that I got last weekend. Looked back at my little fiber collection braids. Back at the Herdy mugs...


How cute is that? Total serendipity.

But wait! There's more!

Now that Slipped Hours is done, I started a new sweater.


It's not green! Paradigm shift. More to come...

Almost Done

I seem to have lost last week. I didn't blog because I didn't have too much to show you. The weekend before was knit and spin free, unfortunately. So I worked my little fingers off during the week to try to get some stuff done.

I finished the main knitting on Slipped Hours, but couldn't decide how to handle the neck/collar. The pattern calls for a cowl, but I didn't like the way it looked. One of the finished projects that I like has a split collar, so that the collar lies flat instead of looking floppy. I took the sweater-in-progress with me to a Rav meet-up yesterday, where the consensus was that a plain old rolled neck would be best.

So that's what I did:


This was me, trying on the sweater before blocking, just to see if it would fit and if I would hate a snug sweater. I was pleasantly surprised. The sweater fits nicely, even before having a growth spurt when it hits the water. I like it a lot! I think if I had to knit it again, I'd start the slipped-stitch pattern an inch or two earlier. We'll see how it looks after blocking, but I think I'd like it better if the patterning started more definitively below my boobline.

Here's a blocking shot:


Believe it or not, this took less than three skeins of Wollmeise. Closer to 2.5, as a matter of fact.

I've also been spinning again, finally. I missed it and it's nice to be spinning again. My last spinning project was finished before Thanksgiving, and then with our guests, the early Chanukah, the holidays overall, the Venusian Spotted Death Fever Cold from January... I just never managed to get anything back on the wheel.



The color in the top photo is more accurate, but I like the close-up, too. The fiber is from The Sanguine Gryphon, the Bugga blend, so it's 70% merino, 20% cashmere, and 10% nylon. It's sooooo soft. I'm spinning a three ply yarn, hopefully for knitting socks.

We had quite a lot of fun at our Rav meet-up yesterday. We started out hanging out at Fibre Space, which was packed. It was really nice to see a yarn store so busy. I love that store. It has a nice selection of indie dyers, very nice staff, and a comfy knitting place. I didn't buy any yarn, but I did get...


Herdy mugs! (And a keychain, too) How cute are these? I've seen these around, but they haven't been available too widely in the US. But Fibre Space has them, so I couldn't resist.

So now I need to figure out which sweater to knit next... and with what yarn...

Cuffs

So yesterday I knit two cuffs. One cuff was for a sock:


And one cuff was for a sleeve:


Cuffs are beginnings, right? So what about the stuff from last week? Oh, that! Finished some of that.

A sock:


And some close up:


Sock #1 of Pattern #1 of the first installment of Cookie A's sock club. The yarn is String Theory's Caper sock yarn, very soft and lovely. The pattern was perfect. There wasn't a moment of confusion or an error or anything amiss. The sock feels great on my foot.

The next installment of her club isn't until April, so I'm debating whether to take another skein of Caper from my stash to knit the other pattern to keep me busy until the next package arrives. We'll see. My sock queue is long.

And the cuff? Well, I finished the first sleeve for Slipped Hours and attached it to the body of the sweater:


For a fingering weight sweater, this is going very quickly! I'm sure I'll bog down a bit once I get the second sleeve finished and attached, because then each round will be really long. But it will get smaller as it goes up and the sleeve shaping progresses.

Green... so much green... I think I pull out the green every year at this time, looking for something to spur Spring's arrival. At our Westover Woolies meetup this morning, almost all of use were knitting with green in some form or another.

Watch for me to flip out and scream "NO MORE GREEN!!!" in a couple of weeks.

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Jr. Jr.'s basketball team cruised into the second round of the playoffs this weekend with a rousing first-round victory. Unfortunately, they couldn't keep the momentum going and lost in the second round. Tears all around. Nonetheless, they had a great season. They were so much better than they were last year, with excellent teamwork and admirable sportsmanship. And most of them will reassemble this weekend on the baseball diamond! Not even a weekend off.

I'm a little upset about some stuff that's happening with the local schools. Crowding has been a growing issue in our county for a number of years, but the School Board has for the most part punted on the issue every time it's come up. They've tinkered a bit, moved a planning unit or two from one school to another, rearranged some programs, but they haven't taken any steps to address the big picture. For years, many of us have been telling them that the increase in school population isn't a blip or an outlier, but a trend. We look around our neighborhoods, see all the young families moving in with preschoolers, see all the infill development and realize that we're nearly bursting at the seams with young kids.

Now the school board realizes that it has a problem. Almost every school in the county, elementary, middle, and high included, will be over capacity in a couple of years. Many of these schools were recently renovated as well. The county cannot afford to build new schools. I'm not even sure if they have the land to build new schools. I don't even think they have any buildings (like community centers, for example) that could effectively be re-purposed as schools.

Up until now this hasn't been too much of an issue. We get trailers, we turn the computer lab mobile with laptops, we double up on PE. Class sizes have increased slightly, but not too alarmingly.

However, I found out recently that the fifth graders at Jr. Jr.'s school no longer take weekly trips to the library to get new reading material. I think that there just isn't time to schedule weekly library time for all the classes at the school. So instead of coming up with a solution that allows all the kids to get library time -- for example, by having the fourth and fifth grades alternate weeks -- they've just eliminated it for the fifth grade. (We won't even go into how the school didn't tell the parents that this was happening...)

One of the primary missions of elementary schools is to get kids reading and foster in them a love of reading. Eliminating library time undermines this goal, to put it mildly, and makes me wonder what will be taken away from the kids next.

Fields of Green

I haven't posted until now because there's only so much green stockinette I can show you. Boring.

But switching to bigger yarn (sock weight!) on bigger needles (size 3!!) made for some quicker knitting.


This is Slipped Hours finished up to the armhole bindoffs. Amazingly, this is about 1 1/5 skeins of yarn. Now I'm instructed to set aside the body and knit the sleeves. Then I attach the sleeves to the body and finish it off.

The design calls for sleeves that just cover the elbows, so that shouldn't take too long. But I'm not sure I like that length. Do I want actual long sleeves? Three-quarter length sleeves? Sleeves as written? I haven't quite decided. If you have opinions, please comment and let me know.

Given that I'm waffling on sleeve design, I turned to my Ripple Leaf socks to distract me. This pattern is one of the two in the first installment of Cookie A's sock club. At this point I've knit the whole leg and I'm partway through the heel flap, so the sock should be done soon.


I spent so much time knitting plain old stripey socks recently that it's nice to knit a patterned sock again! As luck would have it, I cast on using needles slightly larger than those called for in the pattern. I think I'm using 2.5 mm needles instead of 2.25 mm needles. This turns out to have been a lucky break, because the pattern is not very stretchy, and somewhat difficult to get over my heel/ankle area. Once it's on, it fits perfectly, but the fabric doesn't have too much give. If I'd knit it on the called-for needles, I don't think I could get them on. But I certainly couldn't knit the next size up, which would end up being too big on me.

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I can't believe it's March already. This year has flown by. It's incomprehensible to me that I will have a son in High School next year. His baby years are still so vivid to me! I remember holding him, nursing him, singing to him and playing with him. I remember him sitting in my lap, with one of those word books open in front of us. He would grab my pointer finger and jab at the words, giggling and soaking up language like a sponge. And now he grunts and snarls and tells dirty jokes. I can't fathom sending him off to college in only four more years. I just got him!

Spring also means the transition from basketball to baseball and biking. This weekend Jr. Jr's basketball playoffs continue. His team won their first playoff game in a rout. Their next opponent will be tougher. I think they lost to this team by one point when they played them a few weeks ago. If they win, they go to the finals on Saturday, to play the only team that beat them handily this year. They've improved so much since last year! However, I'm most proud of them for their sportsmanship, team play, and demeanor during games. They play clean, they don't get angry or emotional, and they really play like a team. Such a good group of kids :)

It Ain't Easy Being Green: Variations on a Theme

My January finish-fest left me with very little on the needles, so I've slowly been building up my WIP stash.

I started out by casting on for a new version of Paper Crane, this one converted to a pullover:


Looks like my hands could use some moisturizer. More lace, more tiny needles. This one IS going faster than the last because I'm knitting it in the round. The knitting is going smoothly and happily, but I thought I ought to have something else to knit, something that's not laceweight on size 2 needles.

So what do I do? I cast on for another sweater:


This is Wollmeise sock, on size 3 needles. Vastly different that Wollmeise lace on 2s. Not. It's even green. (The colorway is Silberdistel, which I love.) The pattern, by the way, is called Slipped Hours. I'm a little afraid of this one, because I generally don't like my sweaters too fitted. But I like how this looks on the people who've knit it. I should try to lose weight before this is done.

Sooooo, two sweaters, both green, both on small needles. Variation! I need variation! As luck would have it, I joined Cookie A's sock club, and the first installment arrived last week. This is a fantastic club. Cookie is an amazing sock designer, one of my favorites. The club consists of 2 patterns and 2 recipes, plus a skein of yarn in each installment. I think I read originally that one of the sock patterns would be easier than the other, Cookie's socks normally being fairly complicated. I don't think this is the case with this installment. Both patterns are gorgeous.

So, hey! Complicated sock versus lots of stockinette... yeah, that's the ticket. I cast on.


Yup. Green. Size 1 needles.

After this, I'll probably go on a worsted and bulky weight tear.

Personal History + a Recipe

This weekend I attended a friend's bat mitzvah. I knew that C had converted years ago, and she's a very active member of our temple. So I was thrilled to be able to share the day with her and her family. What I didn't know, as I walked into the temple this weekend, was that she was one of a group of 16 adult congregation members who were being bar/bat mitzvahed this weekend.

Now I am not a religious person at all. But I was really moved by this group of men and women and the histories that led them to the bimah this weekend. Some, like C, had converted, either when they got married or just on their own. A couple of people had been raised Jewish, but decided not to have a bar or bat mitzvah at the traditional age of 13. Now, as adults, they were returning to that part of their life. One woman talked about how World War II prevented her from having her bat mitzvah, and dedicated her accomplishment to all the Jewish boys and girls who perished in the Holocaust. One woman was raised in a Conservative tradition, which at the time didn't allow girls to be bat mitzvahed.

Some of the group were learning Hebrew and studying Torah along with their children. Others were doing it as an example to their children. But all of them were there because they chose to be there. They pursued this goal, studying and learning while raising children, working full-time, and doing all the rest of the things that we do in our busy lives.

Most bar and bat mitzvahs are fun. But it was so much different when the person on the bimah is there because they chose to be there, as opposed to because mom and dad are making them.

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A little bit of knitting :) Paper Crane II moves along, slowly but steadily:


Hopefully this one won't take me 6 months. Because I'm making this one a pullover, I am knitting the bottom portion in the round. So far I think this makes it go faster.

My waiting room sock progresses as well:


(Yarntini MCN sock, "Don Stripe" from the Mad Men collection)

I need to cast on for another sweater, just for a change of pace from all the tiny yarns on tiny needles. I have not identified what that will be yet. I honestly haven't had that much time to focus lately.

So Happy Monday, Happy Valentine's Day, and Congratulations to Jess, Kippi's lovely daughter, who is getting married today! May she and her love have a long and happy life together, filled with love and laughter.

A little Valentine's treat for you all -- a recipe I cooked up this weekend when I was drafted into making scones for Jr. Jr.'s class Valentine's Tea.

Kid-friendly Chocolate Chip Scones

Preheat oven to 450 degrees

4 cups of all-purpose flour
2 tsp cream of tartar
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1/4 cup (packed) brown sugar
8 tbs (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1 1/2 cups milk
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup of chocolate chips

Whisk the dry ingredients together. With your fingers, crumble the brown sugar into the flour mixture to distribute it evenly.

Cut in the flour until the mixture resembles a coarse meal. Add chocolate chips and mix. Pour in milk and vanilla, mix until the dough just comes together. My dough was wetter than my normal scone dough, but this is fine.

Drop roughly 1/4 cup of dough per scone onto parchment-lined cookie sheets and bake for about 8 minutes. Cool on cookie sheets for about 2 minutes, then move to a rack.

Not a single scone was left after the kids got at them, seconds and all.

Watching History

I've been glued to television coverage of the revolution in Egypt this week. It's amazing watching people come together, rise up, and, with nothing more than their voices and their will, topple a dictator. Who knows what will come next. I hope that it's some form of self-determination, rather than another oppressor. I will watch, and hope for the best.

Life is good here:


How can it not be?

I finished my second Annis. This one's for me:




You get good bang for your buck with this pattern -- it's fast, it's enjoyable, it looks great. I've shied away from using multi-color yarns in lace before, because often the colors obscure the lace. I picked this color (Agatha dark, Wollmeise) because I thought it would be tonal enough to provide some color interest without looking like barf. I think it worked. I hope so, anyway.

I love the scarf/shawl hybrid because they're lacy enough to provide interest without being so lacy that I feel conspicuous wearing them. I'd go ahead and knit another Annis, but I'm sick of nupps for the moment. I have other patterns like this to try out, so look for one coming up.

Now that the Annis is done, I've picked up the second Paper Crane. Because I'm making this one a pullover, I can just go ahead and knit that bottom section in the round. I think it will go much faster... as fast as a laceweight sweater on size 2 needles can go, anyway. I've got three-quarters of an inch so far. I'm rocking and rolling, aren't I?

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One of the things that has been brewing here in our little corner of the world for a few years has to do with crowding in the schools. Back when Sr. Jr. was in 1st grade, there was a big fight over re-drawing the boundaries in the schools. Our elementary school was overcrowded, and it seemed like rejiggering the boundaries might solve that. No one wanted that, there was a big stink, and ultimately nothing much was done.

A couple of blocks away from us was a building that used to be an elementary school. Now it's being used to house the teacher day-care facilities, the teen pregnancy program, and a couple of other things. The plan was to rebuild and renovate that building, and some of us suggested turning it back into an elementary school. We argued that it was clear that the school-age population was growing and the county would need to deal with it. The county didn't agree. "It's just a blip," they said. "A momentary bulge in the school-age population." We looked around us, at all the young families moving in and having babies, twins, even, and wondered what county officials were smoking. The county seemed to have no clue, no matter what people tried to tell them.

Now, all these years and several additional overcrowding fights later, the county has come to realize that it has a wee problem. Now, almost ALL the schools in the county are at or above capacity, with, again, almost ALL of them projected to be significantly overcrowded in another year or two. Our elementary school will be at nearly 150% of capacity soon, even after cramming classrooms in wherever they could, creating a mobile computer lab, adding trailers (oh, excuse me, relocatables), and more. *

The PTA has announced that the only thing we can do for our school at this point is add another trailer, but because of space constraints, the trailer that will be added for the 2011-12 school year will have to be on the blacktop. Yes -- on the playground. Sooooo, where will the kids play? How will the poor kids in the blacktop trailer be able to concentrate with the noise of kids playing right outside? This is ridiculous.

The problem is that it's now almost too late to do anything about this. Changing school boundaries won't make a difference, because there's nowhere to move the kids to -- all the schools are overfull. It's a bit late to think about new construction. Many of the county buildings that used to be schools are really too old, small, and out-of-date to be repurposed.

And what about the middle and high schools? All of the high schools were just renovated (some are still under construction!), and they're already over capacity.

Long-range planning and thinking -- Arlington does not have it.

* Most distressing were the comments on a local online article about this situation. Many people were blaming the crowding situation on illegal immigration. Arlington has traditionally been immigrant-friendly, but lately they've sold off some low-income properties to developers, reducing the availability of low-income housing. In fact, census figures show that in all of Northern Virginia, Arlington is the only county that saw a decrease in its non-caucasian population.