...and the world slid sideways

Everything slid a tad off kilter as the enormity of slurping lusciously fresh watermelon on Memorial Day weekend in Minnesota landed in my head.

Our world is at times ever so surreal.

On Superior Fish Names...

Halibut.

I like saying "halibut". Even "tuna". Try "mahi mahi" out.

Lake fish...not quite so poetic. Northern. Walleye. Muskey. Pike. All best said with thick Minnesotan tripping off the tongue. Then we reach the ever lovely "crappie".

SIGH.

Ah, the wonders of nature.

One must admit, one was not expecting to arrive at the homestead fresh from one's intrepid adventures in the wild to find odd natural phenomena right in one's own back yarn. Or one's garage for that matter. It seems some of the local squirrels have not only developed thumbs, but have gained the oppositional abilities necessary to use said new evolutionary leap appendages to both open car doors and reprogram the stereo buttons found within. Apparently they have a predilection for country music yet unheard of in indigenous populations. One can only marvel at the ingenuity of urban wildlife...

Yo Ho, Yo Ho...

...a pirate's life for me!

Yes, the great sea voyage quite agreed with me. Great folks. Great scenes. Great yarns.

Um, perhaps a few too many great yarns.

I'm still staggering around like a drunk puppy though so for today I shall leave you with this not even a fragment of how stunning it was in person shot of Hubbard Glacier.

Can one be in lust with a glacier? I'm starting to wonder, because all I desire at this moment is to be in it's majestic presence once again. (as I penned in my kayak journal just moments ago...) If I could live on a float in the middle of this bay without freezing to death I so willingly would. We're about a half mile off the ice cliff itself here, what our captain informed us was the legal limit for closeness between such a large ship and such a large lump of ice. And yes, those lumpy things in the water are indeed icebergs.

I know, I'm a tease. The pictures shall start flowing once I have some time to play with them.

It's A-live!

'Tis true. I am slowly climbing out of the pit of sick, clogged, flu-ish allergy ridden days that became my April. A pox on April. It also snowed here like 4 times. Foul month.

Playing major catch-up, so there shall be more pretty, pretty pictures for you. Lucky dogs. (and speaking of, yes, I still miss Willy daily, particularly when the 2 year old wanders about looking for him, but our little girlie doggie is taking a turn for the frisky and has anointed herself protectress of the realm. Single dog-dom just may suit her.)

Twas a month o' socks. I finished the first of the Family Adventure socks in Paca Peds:


The Sock Madness rounds flew fast and furious over the past weeks, and as vacation, dog mourning and illness subsumed my life and knocked me out in round 2, I have me a new host of socks in progress to share:

Reversai. In a Trekking tweed. Totally reversible sock. Same patterning inside as out. Sole is garter and quite comfy squishy.

Round 3. Slippin' Strippin'. Double stranded laceweight. I'm using Dream in Color Baby. Quick workup but a bit futsy as you change up the color combo every 10 rows.

Round 4 was the Hippie Ripple sock. My first successful toe up attempt, though man I ripped Judy's magic cast on and EZ's firm backward loop increases about a bazillion times before I got it right. (thank you once again knittinghelp.com!) More Paca Peds. Better pic tomorrow. They rock.

Skipped round 5 completely though I scored some undyed from Aisha Celia to do it up right in later. Very purty lace pattern you overdye after it's done. Afterthought heel scared me. Currently have 2 at a time toe up going for the optional all play round while the front runners get a bit of a rest. Another great pattern. Pics soon.

...and last but certainly not least my Seven Deadly S(p)ins Club project #1, which just happened to be a sock also:

That brings the sock tally up to date. I've also got a recipe for you soon. And a crochet treat. And an update on the crazy packing going down this week. There's a trip on the horizon. And a mystery person sent me a book! A Diana Wynne Jones even. SO the best surprise ever. Whoooooooooo are you, (who who, who who) mystery benefactor???

Fevered fun with socks...

Things got a little loopy around here yesterday:

Had to frog the heel and foot I powered through despite the fever...it was, uh, a bit creative to say the least. As long as I was at it, thought perhaps a sacrifice to appease the evil Fates of Reversai was in order. Something's just gotta reverse this bad mojo we have rolling.

You know you're seriously sick when...

...you find yourself totally enthralled by the crazy oil painting people on PBS.

(for those still managing to keep track, #3 and I are still in the thick of it and now The Big Boy just brought #1 home from school totally fevered too)

I am not going to die...

I am not going to die, I am not going to die, I am not going to die.

It just feels that way.

In fact it is just a nasty fevery achy flu.

But I am not going to die.

But I am very out of the Sock Madness running, for which The Big Boy has been thanking all manner of deities because now perhaps I will start taking care of myself. But I think someone else has to do that at this point because I just want to lay here on the floor. The floor is good. Cool and gooooooood.

Heart.Ache.

We're home.

There's a hole here...a big one.


I don't know how to fill it. He's missing and I hurt.

The tears started as soon as the plane touched down. Waves and waves and waves of ache.

Our little girl dog is so not OK. She crawled to the door when we came home. She's scared. She's going to be coming everywhere with us. I can't bear to leave her.

The Big Boy is very sick. Major league flu sick. In bed feverish can't even think sick. #1 and #3 show signs of possibly heading that way. Moan. I need to fall apart and I have to be the one holding it together. Somehow I have to hold it together. Some one has to hold it together. Us together. Right now I need to be strong. Steel. Stone.

Doomsday ahead...

Got shamelessly drunk at our datenight dinner last night (yay grandparents!) due to the big boy plying me with $10 glasses of kiwi sav blanc...needless to say no progress was made on sock madness' newest Reversi gansey pattern, but the time was indeed well spent. ;)

Plus side:

The weather is beautiful, wish you were here (Indian Rocks Beach just outside of Tampa).

It appears you can consume multiple gin and tonics and still knit coherently if you also swim and sweat profusely.

Big scary down side:

Tomorrow looms large in my psyche. We head for home Saturday morning, so have figured to tell the small people about Willy tomorrow. (found a pic of him snoozing that I had posted on The Chum here BTW) Oh how I dread that. We lost my parent's dog just before the holidays and it was very hard on #1, #2 as usual took it in stride, very circle of life, and #3 in true two-ish style still asks after him everytime we visit. I think telling them will be the equivalent of ripping my heart out of my chest with my bare hands....

A Wally World respite...

The hub and I woke this morning determined to turn this mojo around. (though the FIL is now sick....but I absolutely refuse to contemplate the infectious implications of that right now)

Despite my prophesy, we did indeed find Busch Gardens open and delightfully slow this morning. We had a fab day with #1 and #2. There were hippos. There were soggy rides. There were french fries. There were several free beers.

Oh yeah, and we found a kick ass french bakery within walking distance. Complete with french baker. #1 has rightfully declared the superiority of the croissant as a bread form.

Much better. A bit peaceful, or at least calm.

...and I managed to not cry a once.Until now that is when I noticed the big gaping hole in my heart again. The next few days I hope are as good as today...but I want to stop time. No more passing minutes to bring us closer to hell please. Let's just stay here in purgatory please.

Nothing's really real until we get home. Until we tell the kids. Is reality strictly necessary? Isn't there a way to get around that? No? You're really, really sure? Well bollux that.

For those of you that want to keep score...

...here you go, my tale of woe. Start counting the ways in which the fates are mistreating me while on vacation.

1) The cab company sent a car instead of a van to pick us up, resulting in much scrambling and a last minute dash to the airport, where we got on the plane to find that NWA had reassigned our seats even though they knew we were traveling with 3 small children leaving us split up all over. Wonderfully nice people accommodated us and then watched the stews watch us install a carseat then inform us that it couldn't be in a row behind an exit row, necessitating removal and repositioning of said carseat and all 5 of us yet again while several hundred people glared holes in our heads. Y'all know about my compulsive tendencies...you can guess how wound I was by the time we got down here.

2) Less than 24 hours in Florida and the better part of a day is spent on the phone with our house/dog sitter, my parents, our vet, an emergency vet and various neighbors after our oldest dog collapsed. We had to have him euthanized while we were thousands of miles away. Seriously. This goes into my "proof that there is no benevolent god" file. No goodbye. No holding his big slobbery head in my lap as he faded out of our life. We weren't there when he was hurting and confused. He's just gone. He won't be there when we get home.

Somehow I have to find a time to tell my 2, 5 and 7 year olds that he won't be waiting for them when we open the door. This blows. I can't even process it or I cry and cry and cry. THIS IS INHUMAN.

3) ...and to top it off a contractor set up a wet saw outside out condo this morning to work on a remodel next door. Do you have any concept of how loud those are? So we re packed 7 people and 2 now full kitchens and spent day 2 of vacation moving to a new, hopefully quieter, condo.

(which has WIFI, so I can keep you, constant reader, informed of all our mishaps)

4) ...and we just tried to wander across the street to get an icecream after all that and guess what? Of course they are closed. Seriously, cut a girl a break please!

I fully expect to arrive at Bush Gardens tomorrow and have it be closed at which point my husband will start channeling Chevy Chase and I may become an alcoholic.

Seriously. I'm on vacation and I just want to go home because now I'm so worried about our little girl dog. But I don't ever want to go home because Willy isn't there. Looking out at this beautiful expanse of Gulf of Mexico and all I can do is cry because part of my life has been ripped out of my heart.

ESCAPE!

I'm off on vacation! Tomorrow! Really, really early! Like so early I don't think the grown-ups in our house will sleep at all because we have so much to do! There is so much bickering! I am crabby! I may have an aneurysm before tomorrow comes!

Oh so much to say (one of those weeks with more than my fair share going on) but oh so little time, so here are some pretty pictures:

This is the stash I am contemplating bringing for the start of Sock Madness round 2. I really shouldn't. It's not starting until Tuesday and by then I'm sure everyone will be in full meltdown, but I don't know if I can help myself. We've got DIC Smooshy in Gothic Rose sitting under Cherry Tree Hill Supersock that I can't remember the name of and the band is in the middle of, which is sitting next to 2 balls of Trekking that used to be part of a hat I was crocheting but when I saw the pattern teaser I frogged it cause I think it might be perfect. The big fellow on the end is Lisa Souza Sock! in Marsquake. The DPNs are my first, bought because I fear what airport security just might do to my Addi Turbo lace circs that I magic loop on.

...and the plane project. My first Seven Deadly Spins Club shipment. Mmmmmm gluttony.

OK kiddies, that be it. Off 'til the 5th. Play nice. Have fun. Try something new.

Zombies Vanquished!

The Big Boy walked in the door as I was tossing dinner on the table and I literally grafted the last toe and weaved ends as the fam ate. Was among the first 20ish finishers in my division, which is quite respectable I believe. Here they are, my vanquished zombies:

The yarn is by Dye Trying, done just for me by the dyer Tikabelle herself as a part of a L&V swap. Lovely zombie skin colorway, eh? The pattern is wicked stretchy with all of those dropped stitches, perfect for ridiculously wide feet like mine.

Lesson learned: Perseverance pays. Patience is a virtue. (and helps you not split the yarn when grafting which is a MAJOR problem when you go to snug those handily kitchnered stitches and you find yourself having to take many, many deep breaths and tear it all out and redo it when you hear a clock ticking like a fog horn in your head and all you want to do is dash out the door to meet fabulous friends like Bubbo and Joy for a bit of crochet and dinner and dessert and a beer thrown in for sanity's sake.)

Off to rescue the house and catch up on STUFF. So much STUFF in my head that needs letting out it's amazing my brain hasn't exploded. I'm sure the madness has killed off some brain cells. Let's hope the new neuronal connections were worth it.

Madness....

One Zombie down, one to go. Waaaaay too much going on around here for me to be very efficient, but it seems I'm still in the mix.

Today's lesson: Tim Tams rock. International law should read: "Every man, woman and child residing in either Australia or New Zealand shall forthwith send regular shipments of Tim Tams to peoples deprived of the aforementioned sugary goodness by their lack of geographic proximity to establishments that sell said biscuit wonderfulness."

ZOMBIES!!!

The Zombies have taken me hostage. There shall be little chitter chatter until they are complete. Want to know what I be blabbering about...go here.

Lessons learned thus far:
1) Sprint type activities are perhaps not advisable when you are responsible for small people and animals. They simply do not understand and try to play with the yarn.

2) Knitting instructions are at times mind-blowingly obtuse. Take this whole slipping stitches thing. For some reason you are supposed to possess powers that allow you to know which way to slip said stitches under about 5 million possible scenarios without the specifics being stated. I now know that in an eye of partridge hell flap the slip stitches should be done knitwise if they are alternating with knit stitches or else it looks like a big square o' nothin'....or in my case half a square o' nothin' and half a square of pleasingly patterned knitin'.

Live and learn.

Fun and Games, Part the First

If you don't want to know, go no further. This week is apparently dubbing itself "Week O' Fun", starting off with a huge bang. My first package from The Seven Deadly S(p)ins arrived with yesterday's mail!








Again, I warn you to venture no further unless you really want to know. Here there be gluttony:





















(how fun is that??? 4 , count them one two three FOUR colors specially made by the Unique Sheep in FOUR sickeningly sweet colorways to be merged together into one sockishly sweet, overindulgent creation.)
...and it's associated goodies (cause come one now, it IS gluttony...there must be goodies):
























That teeny hank? It's called "sinful" yeah for chocolate! And the jelly bellies...inspiration of the unique sheepy dying goddess be my guess.

The specs are up for the first sock maddness pattern, to be released Thursday. I am a ball of anxiety trying to figure out how I will find time to make a genuine try at getting through the first round...must start swatching!

It's a week of long overdue fun. Hang on, hopefully it only gets better.

It's NatCroMo...come play!

It be National Crochet Month, and Kaet is doing a NatCroMo Freeform CAL. She posts a prompt each and every day, gently leading you through the scary-to-some (AHEM) process of freeform crochet. They're short and sweet and oh so doable in only a few minutes with only a few scraps of yarn. That's mine, after Day 4. It has a little stumpy squiggly tail. I loves it.

No pink elephants!

Good news, good news!

There is no pink elephant in the middle of the living room. At least the one that has spent the last few weeks pounding on the front door and trying to sneak in the back has for the time being vacated the premises and we hope he won't be back.

Yes boys and girls, this means that as far as we know there is nothing absolutely nothing wrong with #2's heart, brain or eyes!

IT IS NOT A TUMOR! (best said Schwarzenegger-style)

We've ventured into the deepest, darkest realms of scary land and emerged relatively intact. Last week literally brought me to my knees. There were moments I couldn't breathe, couldn't stand, couldn't think. #3 picked up on it all and regressed to his monkey child ways, constantly attached to one or the other of us and waking up I swear a million times a night. #1 was snarky as only a snarky 7 year old girl could be. #2 was of course his ever mellow, oblivious self, charming the socks off every nurse and doctor he came within 20 feet of.

Can one have an emotional hangover? I believe I have one. After an initial few days of giddy relief, I have crashed HARD. All I want to do is sleep, eat, sleep some more, play with yarn and sleep yet again. Hopefully we'll all get back on track soon. If not we'll drown in dirty laundry. Here's to hoping!

Now we wait to see if there are any more "episodes". Hopefully it was all a fluke and they won't be back. If not, we start checking out stuff like blood sugar, brain waves and the like. All things meds handily deal with. These I can handle. (not that I want to, but hey, it's no brain tumor!)

After putting it down for fear of doing permanent hard to wither it or myself, I have again picked up my Secret of the Stole ii:

I'm into clue 3, somewhere's around row 158. As clue 7 came out last week, I'm a tad behind. Can't be helped. Lace apparently should not under any circumstances be attempted with a brain the consistency of marshmallow fluff. Believe me, I tried...and wanted to poke my eyes out for all the tinking. I do think I have some idea of where she's going with the clues. Seems my musical geekdom is serving me well....or at least it seems that way. We'll see how things play out. Only 2 clues left to come, so I'll know shortly.

In a moment of crazed desperation, I joined Sock Madness, which should kick off next week I hope. I cannot be held responsible. It's sock knitting. It's a contesty game with PRIZES. And it's technically considered research for some crochet fun and games I've been mulling over with Bubbo. Sock Wars turned out to be totally not my style, but I have hopes for this model. They're very organized, orderly and have a set of clearly laid out rules and regs...and there is no postal complication, no performance tied to that of others...it's all you and your needles in clearly defined rounds with beginning and end points. I love the orderly life!

They posted some general material guidelines for the seven projects they have planned...and that sent me stash-diving:

This is all of the un-committed sock yarn I have. Most of it from swaps last year. A couple I bought for myself without plans for it's future. Enough for 14 pairs of socks. Uff. Hopefully this will see 6 of them meet their sock-ish destiny. Materials for the 7th pair they listed I got to shop for. At the Loopy Ewe. Can you feel me smiling? They had used some superwash laceweight (yep lace...don't ask, I don't know how it all works up yet, but they hint at some dual colored sock with a slip stitch pattern...) from Tess' Yarns, but Tess was closed for 2 weeks to attend Stitches...so I went looking...or really I didn't quite have the fortitude for that, so I just emailed Sheri and she popped right back to me with Dream in Color Baby...superwash merino heaven. In my weakened condition I was really powerless to resist the suggestion:


These are Cocoa Kiss and Lipstick Lava (with the fun little Loopy extras they toss in their packages). I've got about twice as much as I'll need, so I'll even have enough for something extra fun afterward. I figure it's justified since it's the only yarn I'll need to buy for the games. Right?

That about catches us up, though I'm sure I've missed something. I don't think all my neurons are firing in quite an orderly fashion yet. Things pop in and out and I rarely keep hold of them for long. Eternal thanks for all of the support. All of your messages, prayers and magic mojo are deeply appreciated. It apparently takes a virtual village to maintain my sanity in times of crisis!

One.More.Day.

One more day. One more test.

Tomorrow #2 goes in for a MRI and angiogram of his brain. Then we shall know if there's anything we need to know. Everything else has checked out okie dokie, so we're now down to the big one. Cross those fingers, toes, hooks and needles people. We need all the luck we can get.

In the meantime, MY brain may explode. If there existed a word to describe something magnitudes beyond "stressed" that would be me. I swear I've gained 10 pounds in the last 2 weeks. And I've developed a twitch below my left eye. Put that on top of the sleep deprivation and I probably look like a freakin' maniac.