Now Norma Knits

Spring Fever

The gardener is pouting. 

It's spring by the calendar, but it's only 28° F/-2C outside. 

Gazing longingly at the seed packets.  Looking out the window.  Pretending there is no cleaning to do.

The film on the window tells me otherwise.

Every year I get seduced into putting some seeds in the ground on April 1st.  It is the ultimate April Fool's joke on me.  A few of them germinate.  Most that do end up freezing or so stunted in growth that I pull them out when I am putting in the things that have a chance of survival at the tail end of May. 

Saturday Sky, Fool's Gold:  Blue, but definitely not warm. 

Cartoon Friday

Following Sandy's post of this morning, and somewhat reflective of my mood, I give you this:

From some wonderful cards I purchased at a shop in Stowe.  They come from here.

Random Wednesday

1.  Goddamnit. I ordered the pattern for Faina's Scarf from someplace online, and I can't remember where, and it just dawned on me last night that it should have been here a long, long time ago.  Crap, crap, crap.  A long time ago, (remember when I was dyeing Plain Vanilla?  Yeah, THEN) I also ordered some Jacquard dye from someplace in Connecticut or Rhode Island, and that has also never arrived.  (Honestly, I'm so Vermont-centric that all the other New England states get clumped together in my mind.  Well, except Maine.  I know Maine. It's big. And New Hampshire -- upside-down Vermont, right next door.  And Massachusetts, several of my best buddies live there; I-89 to I-93 and you're there.  So basically, I just clump Rhode Island and Connecticut together.  heh)  I think I should learn to be more organized about these orders, huh?  I just always assume (yes, I know) things are going to come as ordered, and I don't have time to chase down recalcitrant yarn shop owners.  Goddamnit, goddamnit. Now I'll have to figure out how I paid (Paypal or credit card would be my two choices) and track down whether I was charged.  Goddamnit, goddamnit. 

2.  I'm craving a dark chocolate cupcake (or six) and a Diet Coke something fierce.  Perhaps I should have fasted longer.  Dark chocolate cake and Diet Coke together is one of the best comfort food concoctions on the face of the earth, each bite and each slug laced with overwhelming guilt for what I'm doing to my body. I.will.remain.STRONG.  Don't you DARE offer me a chocolate cupcake or a Diet Coke.  I'll spit at you.  Then I'll snatch them from your hands and wolf them both down. 

3.  When I got home from work yesterday, I found that I was so exhausted that I needed a nap and felt I could not go to yoga class.  There goes my last chance for yoga this week.  I have evening classes at UVM tonight and Thursday.  Maybe I can make the 4:00 Friday yoga.

4.  Still knitting (sort of) on the 2nd little basketweave sock. 

5.  (see #1)  Goddamnit.

6.  If you have the opportunity to have a Phenomenal Touch massage, do it. My friend Michelle is a master-level practitioner of this method now, after flying back and forth to Colorado over a period of time for training sessions.  She's been my massage therapist for many years, and she's always been excellent, but this is really something special.  Incredibly nurturing and restorative.  For Michelle and me?  We barter -- yarn and knitting books and accessories from my stash, and wee knitting lessons from me, in exchange for this incredible massage.  I'm getting the better end of the deal.  Seriously.

7.  I discovered a hidden gem of a wonderful yarn store that was right under my nose and right under my feet for several months (or more?).  And I do mean gem.  And I do mean wonderful.  And I do mean under my nose and coulda-tripped-over-it close.  I am a schmuck for not checking it out sooner.  But now I have.  I'll tell you about it sometime soon when I can get back to take photos. 

Oops, I almost forgot the Pun of the Day:

Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root
canal? His goal:  transcend dental medication.

 

Breaking The Fast

Love your body.

How you break the fast is as important as the fast itself.  Many experts say that you should only eat raw vegetables for a day or two after a fast.  I've tried that, and I'm not a big fan.  I need something a little more substantial.  I do choose my foods carefully, though.  This time it was a half cup of goat's milk yogurt, a cup of frozen blueberries (because I didn't have any fresh on hand) a bit of Ezekiel Golden Flax cereal (this is a kind of bread that is allowed for my blood type on the Blood Type Diet, and they now make a boxed cereal), and a few walnut halves.  I savored it with great reverence at 9:45 a.m. Monday, and it tasted stupendously marvelous.  Later in the day, I had a dozen donuts and two Diet Cokes.  I'm kidding!  I'm kidding!  I remain chaste.  (what I really had:  two hard-boiled eggs for lunch with a few sips of unsweetened black cherry juice, and a chicken breast with garlic and spinach for dinner)

I was feeling fine - in fact, better than fine - and I wanted to carry the fast through the rest of Monday.  However, I had to go to work Tuesday, and I did not want any uncomfortable surprises, in the form of lack of physical or mental energy, dizziness, or stomach upset from eating.  So I broke the fast and eased into it on Monday.

I slept rather poorly the night before and did a lot of tossing and turning, but then at about 6 a.m., I fell into a deeeeep, hard sleep.  I woke up about 8:30 a.m.  I dreamt hard, too:  In my dream I forgot that I was fasting and I broke my fast with donuts and Diet Coke, and then I was out for lunch with a group of people and I was trying to figure out how I could break away from them and eat a greasy burger and fries.  I almost never remember my dreams, so this was quite something.  And when are dreams so very literal as that?  Weird. 

I made another "fasting sock" for Dulaan: 

I used this pattern and the Bainin wool again. The 2nd one is already done to the heel flap.

You will love this.  So funny.  Big thanks to Roxie for sending me the link. 

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PUN OF THE DAY: Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says, "I've lost my electron." The other says "Are you sure?" The first replies, "Yes, I'm positive."

Frumpy Is As Frumpy Does

(Pun of the day at the bottom.  I couldn't come up with a punny title.  I'm too focused on when my next burger is going to be.  Kidding. Still holding on the fast and feeling great.  Went to yoga and did fine.  I really don't understand how it's so "easy" this time, but it is.  I'll take it.  Except I really could use a burger right now.) 

A certain woman (Kay.  Not poor Ann.  Ann is always nice.  She's southern, you know.) who once alleged publicly that she could take me out with a well-placed hip check, also once alleged that I can be a bit frumpy.  Aggressive, that Kay.* 

Get out!  I am not frumpy!  Just coz I like to wear shapeless grandpa sweaters?  Whatev.  She was absent during my halter top phase last summer, so I can't blame her too much.  (*We kid!  We kid!  She did say it.  But she was kidding.  I think.)  But hey, she's a recovering lawyer; I'm a court reporter.  We both know where the power lies here, right?  Yer damn tootin' -- with the COURT REPORTER, MAN.   

Anyhoo.  Kay, my darlin', *mwah, mwah,* I just ordered one of these:

(front)  (back)

Of course, I will instantly be transformed into looking like this when I put it on: 

Who's frumpy now, huh, chica?  (as always, click for bigger pics. I swear those images were clearer when I uploaded them. They were also clearer on the Cafe Press site.  I don't get it.)

Wanna go help out the Dulaan project, even if you don't knit or don't have time to knit items for it, or even if you are knitting?  Buy some of their swag.  How can you resist that joyful photo of the little Mongolian person putting on the handknits from the project?! 

The proceeds from the Cafe Press items will all go toward helping F.I.R.E. ship their massive cartons of items to Mongolia.  It's very expensive to ship those big boxcars around the world, you know.  Read more about Dulaan here and (pdf) here.

I'm a proud member of the Knit 10,000 Or Bust Brigade.  This pair of socks for ages 2-4 that I made this weekend brings my tally up to 18 items (a pair of socks or mittens is one item) for 2007.

(Vincent needs grooming.)

I used worsted weight vintage Irish Bainin yarn that I purchased on eBay and which was languishing in the stash, cast on 28 stitches on US 6/4.0mm needles.  The foot is about 6 inches from heel to toe.  These took about a minute each.  Well, ok, longer than a minute, but you get my drift.  They were white when I started.

I dyed them indigo blue/purple, using first Grape Kool-Aid which did nothing but turn them a horrible, ugly almost-grey color, so then I brought out the big guns -- the Jacquard Acid Dyes.  I did it in the microwave, using, as Claudia puts it, "Norma's patented method.**"  (She also calls me one "l" short of normal.  Another one of those lawyer-types. You know.  Heh.) 

One of the socks has a little unexplained red splotch on the top of the foot.  That's what makes it unique, I maintain. 

The deadline for Dulaan is July 1st, if you'd like to join in, too.

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PUN OF THE DAY:  (courtesy of June, who sent me a lovely gift of these on Friday.)   A  vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons.  The flight attendant looks at him and says, "I'm sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger."

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**translation:  Just dump in dye and a little vinegar, and guess on the color outcome.  The thing is, I've had beginner's luck so many times that it's making me cocky.  It works.  Why mess with success?

For delicious change, try it with lemon and hiney, or your favorite sweetner

9:31 a.m. Sunday.  Feeling FINE.  I can't believe this.  I have a mild headache, but much like my labor pains being "nothing compared to my period cramps," and I kept wondering when it was really going to hurt, which is why my daughter was born 20 minutes after I got to the hospital, this headache is nothing compared to my hormonal headaches.  I just find this interesting, because when I fasted in the past -- incidentally, using all kinds of expensive purchased detox formulas and regimens -- I felt like I was going to die.  I was in detox the way a heroin addict is in detox. (well, I exaggerate a little) Not this time.  Perhaps that's the difference.  Perhaps it is more gentle this time because I am not using anything harsh.  Perhaps that also means the detox is not really happening, though. 

Is it just that I'm having hallucinations from the fast, or what?  I just read more closely that Blood Pressure Tea formulation.  It lists Horny Goat Weed as an ingredient (and a couple other things) but then says it has ZERO of it in it. Hmmmm. 

Then I read the instructions.  Well, I didn't read them.  I skimmed them.  And my proofreader eyes honed right in on the sentence that is used for the title of this post.  (typos left in.) Could you just DIE?

So speculating, speculating.  Is the ease of this fast because of the Blood Type Diet that I (95%) follow now?  Is it because of my age?  Is it because of Bikram?  Is it because of not using the fasting/detoxing agents?

Wondering if I should go to yoga at 4. 

Detox Talk

I got up Saturday morning thinking, "I think I'm gonna fast this weekend."  Just like that.  Huh.  I firmly believe in the health benefits of periodic fasting, and in my late 20s and throughout my 30s I fasted several times a year.  But I haven't done it in ages.  Maybe five years, ten years?  I can't remember.  Usually I go through a lot of preparation and gearing up for it, and it's a very big deal, but this time it was an unplanned and casual thing.  The funny thing is, the first day went so easy that it almost makes me uneasy.  Perhaps I am so heavily toxic now that my tissues and cells can't even release the toxins?  Perhaps I am beyond helping?  It can't possibly be that it's because I'm already the perfect specimen of excellent health. (see * below)

I'm writing this relatively contemporaneous with the events, so I can accurately chronicle how it goes.  (it's 10:20 p.m. Sat. as of this writing, and I'm feeling amazingly well.)

Anyway, this is what I did.  I'm not an expert in this, but I've done considerable reading on the subject and have practiced it enough times that I know what I should do and what I should avoid. 

I started out the day drinking a glass of water with almost a tablespoon of Bragg apple cider vinegar in it, and took two dandelion capsules. Throughout the day I drank a lot of water and a lot of herbal teas of various kinds:  chamomile/lavender, dandelion root, ginger root, something I had in my cupboard labeled "Blood Pressure Tea," which I had not yet opened.  It contains a lot of Chinese herbs.  Ann will enjoy reading the list of ingredients.  Read it closely, Ann.  You devil, you.  And I had more dandelion capsules and ginger capsules throughout the day.

I was massively productive, in avoidance of eating.  I got a 140-page transcript done -- edited, printed, collated, bound, and billed.  And I knit a small sock for Dulaan.  It was the second, and I'll show them to you on Monday.  I also dyed the socks. 

What will tomorrow bring?  Will the beast be unleashed? 

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*Some of this might have to do with the fact that I ate almost an entire box of donuts the day before, and I've been drinking far too much Diet Coke, and the discussion in Cell Biology class has been about cell mutation and cancer.  Or maybe I just had an independent epiphany.  You judge.

Punners Among Us

We're big punsters in this house.  I'm not so good at delivering them, but I am pretty quick on the uptake when someone around me makes one.  I have a lot of practice.  It's practically nonstop around here. 

At a parent-teacher conference when Abigail entered the 7th grade, the science teacher told us a story about the first day of school, when he was introducing the new class to the classroom.  He showed the new "big kid" students (7th grade is a BIG DEAL!  They're all GROWN UP!) the classroom pet, a python.  His name was Monty.  Of course you know the one kid who got it:  Yes, Abigail.  "Haha, Monty the Python!" 

We bloggers often seem to be masters of the punful title. 

Well, damn. That has brought me up short.  I've been searching all over the net for punny titles.  I ended up getting sucked into the black hole of blog-reading for almost an hour.  Found some great reading, but didn't find any more punny titles.  You've let me down, people! (How about we call next week the Week of Punny Titles?)  Not puny.  Punny.

Typical that when I'm looking for something that I usually trip over, I can't find it.  But I'm on limited time here, folks! I do have to work for a living!  So onward and upward. 

This was all intended as a lead-in to tell you that last night in the Bible Lit. class, the professor wrote this word on the board:

theodicy

and asked, did anyone know the definition.  A young man in the front row, completely deadpan, said, "It's by Homer, right?"

Ahhhhhahaha, that woke me up from my overworked, overtired stupor.  My kind of brain!  My faith in youth is restored.

Bits and Pieces

Remember the salt & pepper mittens that looked like this? 

 

Now they look like this:

Don't cry for me.  It's all good.  I like knitting, remember?  I ripped them back because I had run out of the cinnamon-colored wool and couldn't see the sense in buying another skein of the Eco-Wool to finish that one mitten for Dulaan.  Those skeins are h-u-g-e and a bit on the pricey side.  I have much more Eco-Wool in my stash, but not in that color. 

The not-quite-finished pair was distracting me, just sitting there in my office, taking up space and trying to get sexual with the dust bunnies.  (The several unfinished sweaters hanging out in various other places in the house don't seem to bother me one bit, but I digress.)

I started finishing the second mitten in brown, but it just wasn't satisfying me.  So I ripped them both back to the cuffs, and I'll reknit them in some sort of balanced color sequence that makes a better use of the yarn and I don't have to feel like I'm sending a "factory second" to Dulaan.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.  Warm is warm, and warmth is the main name of the game for Dulaan.

But, now, THIS is sad:  My Robin Hansen mitten book was left in Abigail's car, which is sitting in a parking lot in Albany while she finishes her spring break in New York City.  Permission to cry now granted.  And if you find her car and break into it to steal the book, I'll just have to come and break your kneecaps. 

Tomorrow, or sometime in the near or far future when I get around to it:  Why timestamps on emails are relevant to me, and All About My Foodie Contradictions.  Yes, Virginia, I do eat tuna casserole.  (and shepherd's pie and goulash, but never, ever, EVER "American Chop Suey.") 

WTF Wednesday, March 21 Edition

I wrote to "The Gmail Team" last evening to inform them that the time stamps on their emails have not yet caught up to Daylight Savings Time, and it's starting to annoy me almost as much as the stupid institution known as Daylight Savings Time does.  I got an automated response (signed "The Gmail Team") that the email address I used will not be responded to*, even though I found it through a Google search for "contact Gmail."   

Need I mention that Gmail is a sub-whatever** of Google?

So I tried again, using their "suggestion form." 

Their polite (automated) response to this was, basically, "We don't have that department."

Well, that's an approach.  It's so absurd, I almost like it.

Below, I paraphrase, take liberties, read between the lines, and embellish:

Hello, thank you for writing The Gmail Team. We value your business.  We want to take over the world of email. We're the best!  We love listening to our customers.  However, we cannot help you.  We don't have a department that deals with complicated things like Daylight Savings Time.  We are a hi-tech, very sophisticated email company situated in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, but, dude, we are not capable of correcting the time stamps on our emails.  And plus, we're from California, so our Daylight Savings Time is probably not the same as yours. 

But!  Check out the cool recipes for using Spam (the canned kind) and free searches for really great things like breastfeeding reminder bracelets (to remind you which side baby left off on, in case your exploding breast is not hint enough) that we provide free of charge in our toolbar.  We are sure this totally makes up for the fact that we don't know how to change our email time stamps to account for Daylight Savings Time. 

Sincerely,

The Gmail Team.

You just gotta love it.  Double-u tee eff. 

Happy....... spring?

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*Isn't it rich how they responded to say they will not respond?

**Yes, Meredith Grey's speech habits do creep in now and again...