I’ve spent too many days with cold toes to let it go on any longer.
I bought some Wool-Ease Thick & Quick at the Arts and Crafts store, (although, they charge MSRP on the yarn there, a bit shocking for someone used to shopping sales in a multi-store-competition-based world) double-stranded it, and knit some of the ugliest slippers I have ever seen. You can find the pattern here, but I’m just gonna clue you in now that it’s a rectangle with cables on the sides and decreases in the last row. To be honest, double-stranding the Thick & Quick might have been overkill, but despite their thick and lumpy appearance, the slippers are cushy and warm.
So, yeah – I’m not too enamored of the pattern, but it’s fast and functional. Max saw that I made some slippers and told me that he needed some, too – because he had cold toes. “You make me some, Mama!” You bet, bud. I ended up using about a skein and a half in my gigantic slippers, so there was plenty left to make some little single-stranded ones. (Pictures to come later.) Charlie might want some, too! We’ll see.
Wow, a week since my last blog, huh? Let’s see…I bought a ‘learn to spin’ kit on Etsy from a helpful seller with a lot of nifty things in her shop – she was very communicative and helpful with regards to my shipping concerns, and it got here safely and in a timely fashion. I even made yarn!
Spinning is both simpler and more difficult than I expected; all you do is twist the fiber and it’s yarn! The brown yarn (my first attempt) varies wildly from superbulky to laceweight and back and was so badly overtwisted that I had to untwist it a little before I could wind it on my little bobbin. (That was also in the kit. Too cute!) The blue you may recognize as fiber I squirreled from Kid ‘n Ewe handouts last fall – and I’m glad I did. Spinning with something colored was way more fun than the undyed fiber (pretty much all I have at the moment). I’m going to have to get on that.
I’m afraid that’s the only picture you’re going to get today. I’ve gotten back to the end of the first clue for my Laceweight Mystery Shawl (no picture of that yet), but I’ve put it to the side for the time being. I’m knitting something (that I can’t show you) to submit to Knitty! It’s turning out well and I am so excited. I haven’t done a huge amount of designing knitwear – or any clothes, for that matter – but I had an idea, and I’m working it up, and it seems to be working. It’s an adventure! Doesn’t make for great blog fodder, though.
In other news, Greg is going to be going TDY for a few months and we had what is for us quite short notice, so we’re scrambling to get everything sorted for while he’s gone. I haven’t really come to terms with the fact that he’s leaving (likely aided by the fact that I actively avoid thinking too much about it) and I’m sure we’ll get down to the wire and not have enough time to do things…
The prospect of him leaving has made it clear how far from home we really are. Usually I make a trip back to my parents’ sometime during an extended separation, and I’m almost sure that I can’t this time, even though it’s scheduled to be the longest separation in our marriage. (Look for us some time next year, though!) It seems like they just keep getting longer and longer, even though I have little right to complain when I compare my situation with people who have a spouse ship out for a year, or deploy for 15 months…it’s tough.
I also feel like I’m struggling just to keep in touch with my family back home. It’s not something I thought we’d have a problem with. After all, there’s email. IM. We have phone service through the internet so we actually have a phone line with a stateside number. We figured it wouldn’t be too different from Texas – we were already far enough that most of our interaction was online or over the phone, right? The time difference is staggering, though. It’s easy to miss the time window to make phone calls. It’s easy to miss special days when you think, “I should call about this,” and realize you need to wait eight hours to catch someone. It’s easy to forget over those hours. I’m sure we’ll step up and get it sorted out, it’s just going to take some extra effort – much like the extra effort required to keep my dishes clean now that we live in a house without a dishwasher. (I do miss my old kitchen. Yes, I do. So many things about it…)
The boys and I went grocery shopping at the commissary today. (We tried to go yesterday, but we forgot that they recently changed the schedule so that the day they are closed is Monday instead of Sunday. The Japanese employees – meaning, almost all of them – are ticked off about it, too. If I understand correctly, they only take one day for weekends, and Sunday is it. I wasn’t too pleased to waste a trip to base, myself.) I was pleasantly surprised to see that they had more fruit than usual! We get strange gaps in stock and supply, and something they carry one day may never show up again. Today, though, they had strawberries (I haven’t seen those for a month or two) and green grapes for a reasonable price (last time they had grapes they were $4 a pound) and I was quick to snatch some up.
Unfortunately, we did not get out of the store without incident.
You know those little buttons under the counter by the cash register, that the cashier can push to call the police if they’re being robbed? Yeah, it’s a big red button about two and a half feet up from the floor – quite eye-catching if you’re three feet tall. We were checking out and no one was standing in the lane next to us, so Max wandered two steps away and pushed the bright red button.
The cashier said, “Oh, no, don’t push that -” (as he pushes the button) “…Police come now.”
We had to stand and wait about ten or fifteen minutes for the SP to show up to take the report. Wow, sure glad there wasn’t actually a gunman. Although, they may have told him that it was a false alarm, and if they did he surely took his time. He seemed annoyed, and pulled aside the store manager to discuss something that I’m not surprised to learn is a recurring problem.
SP: “Look, you’ve got to do something about this. This is the second time -”
Japanese Store Manager (politely interrupting): “Third time.”
SP: “Okay, the third time that this has happened. The kids just walk in there and push the button, you need to put something across there to cover it when no one’s using it, to keep people from going in there.”
Sounds like a plan. He came over and talked to me, took Max’s name, birth date, and social security number (baby’s got a rap sheet now!); then all of my information, a contact number, Greg’s squadron and info, and his work number. Apparently three-year-olds pushing the panic button is the sort of thing that they take very seriously. I mean come on. (I said that no one could possibly be getting in trouble over this, and he did tell me that most of the info was required solely for record keeping purposes. Sigh.) When he was done, we took our groceries and went home.
The rest of the day was better.
I cut up a few bananas, washed some (giant! but still sweet and red inside) strawberries, pulled off some small, succulent grapes, and we had fruit for lunch. I made a dip by mixing four ounces of cream cheese, about 1/2 tbsp honey, a dash of cinnamon, and a splash of milk in a bowl. I microwaved it until it stirred together fairly easily, and we were in decadent fruit heaven.
Here’s the culprit! Is this the face of a criminal? Nah. Max loves fruit, especially strawberries, although I think he was intimidated by the massive ones we bought today.
Charlie, on the other hand, detests fresh fruit. (I know, right? I think it’s a texture issue, since he will eat baby food fruit, or cooked fruit, but not fresh fruit or even applesauce.) He used one of the giant strawberries as an elaborate and messy scoop to get the honeyed cream cheese in his mouth. Mmmm, cream cheese.
A lot more is going on around here, but we’ll deal with that another day.
