Hello, my name is...

Well, not my real name, and I like to knit. I'm happy to show you all manner of yarnly things that I make (and mess up, and remake), but I'm not sure how much of my life I want to share with the world at large. And to such an extensive readership, and all, too.

My family and I are more than a bit privacy oriented, to say the least. We are on the do not call list, including our cell phone number. We opt out of junk mailings. We really get very little spam in general (dude, don't start...). I love seeing pictures of people's kids online, and hearing about the ups and downs of their lives. However, as a family, we've made the decision to not post pictures of our kids online. There have been too many instances of exploitation, and photoshop in the wrong hands can be a very bad thing. Then there was also the case of those absolutely psychotic women who have met pregnant ladies online and have attacked and killed them later via a do-it-yourself c-section to abduct their babies. I just assume that there is bad out there, and avoiding it is a good idea.

With that in mind, I'd love to ask you all - why do we blog? And where do you draw the line? I know many folks give just a general idea of where they live, or only use first names, but others seem to be content to just put it all out there. I love sharing ideas, and I like that I can vent or talk through something in a post. But I wonder how far I can really go with trying to say things that people would be interested in reading without saying much at all. I'm thinking this over for myself as well, and wondering whether this is worthwhile to continue (the blogging, folks, not life in general. sheesh, you guys are morbid.).

On another front, startitis has hit our house full on in the last couple of weeks, along with the delightful blast of gastroenteritis. I think I like startitis a little better. At least it doesn't involve cleaning the carpet repeatedly.

Retiring the ladies

I sit here tonight feeling a little like Pamela Anderson and Dolly Parton, because as of this week, the hooters are retired. They've been served their pink slips and had their exit interviews, but they don't seem to have gotten the memo yet.

I'm always of two minds about weaning when it comes around. On the one hand, it's nice to be done with that, and everyone's certainly at a point where they're fine with it. It will be nice to have my smaller shirts fit again without looking like I'm trying to advertise. On the other hand, it's been a really nice thing to do for all parties involved, and it's a little sad to end that chapter. It's been really interesting this time around with the twins, and I can certainly say that it has been an adventure. Being able to look down at two little sets of bright eyes (one pair blue, one pair brown), and stroking two soft downy noggins (one blond, one brunette), but also enduring the WWF nursing matches that nursing multiples entails ("get your foot out of his ear...") has been rather fun.

At this point, one of the guys couldn't care less about nursing, and hasn't been really into it for about a month or two ... unless his brother was doing it, then it looked like a fun thing to do. The other guy has been under the weather lately, to the point where all he wanted to do was play the shirt game. However, under the combination of broad spectrum antibiotics and a bad tummy bug that hit a few days after the antibiotics started, his gut was messed up to the point where he was getting a bit lactose intolerant. After a couple of days of nurse/puke/nurse/puke, etc., we've gone to mostly clear fluids and nondairy stuff, and it seems like the perfect opportunity to just finish weaning already. He's holding down soymilk just fine, and didn't have too hard a time early this morning without his morning slurp.

I'm absolutely glad that we were able to keep going for this long (18 months, which is as long as my older son was interested, too), and I'll admit that I took it on as a bit of a challenge as well. I'll miss it and I won't, and they'll forget all about it soon enough. In the past month they've started to really master the art of being toddlers, including ludicrous overreactions to being thwarted in any way, stripping off articles of clothing when we're not looking, and covertly attempting to acquire every electronic item in the house for their own evil plans. I look forward to the upcoming adventures ahead, and I can't wait until they can handle the stairs without thinking they can launch themselves into space.

I know that time just accelerates from this point on, and I find myself completely gobsmacked that my oldest daughter is now missing both front teeth as of this morning. My preschooler guy is starting to read and is writing words like RAT and VAN. Where the hell did that come from? I promise that I will try to pay closer attention as we all keep on.

Meanwhile, I'm going to go steam vac the carpet again in a vain effort to rid the house of yarf funk.

One FO, another not to be started

Pattern: Jaywalker socks by Grumperina. Size 1 dpns, Lana Grossa Mielenweit Fun in unknown color number. Started 12/22/05, finished 1/4/06.

On the other end of the spectrum, I'm as excited about the winter Olympics as everyone, but does this sweater make the model look a little chilly? It's a bit pointy out there in Torino. (apologies to the Dale of Norway folks, who otherwise design breathtakingly gorgeous things...)

An unexpected gift of time

I ended up failing the oral exams for boards in October (or as they put it, "not passing"), and it has turned out to be a good thing after all. Rather than blithely continuing down the road of whatever comes next and taking it as it comes, now I actually have more of a clue of what I might like to do with my professional life, how I'd like to divide my time, and I just generally feel a little more on top of things. I have a research plan, or at least a good idea for a grant application. I will retake boards in the spring, with more ample preparation beforehand. I will try to reorganize what it is I do at work so that I have more freedom to do what I find interesting (which would involve buying out more of my time with a grant if I can get that off the ground). I just feel like I've been floating along at work since I came back from maternity leave, but there are some nice changes I could make now, and I think I just might do that.

In the meantime, when one of my kids was sick last week, I ended up starting my Christmas break two days early. Our shopping and wrapping is done, so it was a nice opportunity to just be home and spend some time in my favorite recliner playing with pointy sticks and wool. On the FO front, I've finished a few small things since I last blogged. For my daughter, two pairs of socks, one from the yarn that we dyed with KoolAid this summer. The pattern is from the six socks KAL, Janine's stashbuster spirals.


The other pair is from Nancy Bush's Folk Knitting in Estonia, Juta's Stockings in Brown Sheep Wildfoote "Ragtime."

And just because it's dangerous to read the blogs, because you never know what new ideas you'll find, we have the Hermione Hat, referenced on Alison's Weasley KAL page. It's a quick and extremely cute knit (here in Lion WoolEase).


I have a new favorite pair of knit socks at the moment, and I'm loving the Trekking XXL sock yarn. Nope, they're not identical, but fraternal like all my socks seem to be. I was a little concerned at first because they were a touch itchy, but boy, did they soften up and relax in the wash. Mmm.


My sweet Grampa also has a pair of new Trekking socks for Christmas, because it's much colder up in New England than it is here. He sounded really tickled when he got them.


More socks to come, since they're so easy to travel with and quick to knit. Not to mention the big pile of Opal skeins I have up in the closet that need to be knit up sometime soon. May your holiday knitting be finished, and your cookies be tasty. May sanity reign at your houses as well. Light and love to all.

Road worrier

I'm not sure how Stephanie does the whole traveling bit with the book tour, and the hotels, and the flying all over the continent, and the not always being home every night, and the mild freaking out over not being home every night, and ... whew. Last week was One of Those Weeks (TM) for us, as I was gone overnight twice in one week (for the first time since the twins were born).

Sunday, I took the train to Charlotte, which is a lovely (and surprisingly inexpensive) way to travel. There was a lot of good knitting time, lovely scenery, and the added bonus that if your train breaks down and stops working, it does not plummet from the sky, but rather sits there sedately on the tracks. For three hours. In scenic Gibsonville. The guy sitting across the aisle was ready to tear his hair out for a smoke, and was really starting to get a bit manic when the extra engine (a much more useful one) from Greensboro came out to haul our train the rest of the way there. I finished a sock, and it was a relatively calm, quiet morning, so I was fine with the delay. While in Charlotte, I had to go to a few meetings and look official, and on Monday, I had to co-present a workshop to a couple hundred of my colleagues. The sock posed for a picture.


Coming home on the train was much shorter, just as scenic, and really just a delightful trip. North Carolina has historically been such a making things kind of state, and it's rather heartbreaking to see all the boarded-up warehouses right next to the train stations with familiar textile names in fading paint. I'm sure plenty of the golden leaf was loaded onto those trains as well.


The rest of the week was rather crazy, since I'd lost a day of the weekend (our only chance to catch up and tread water in our schedules) as well as Monday. By Thursday, we were all pretty overwhelmed and beat, and here I was packing again. I flew up to Chicago for the dreaded Oral Exams portion of the board certification process in my little specialty area of psychology. I love Chicago and have since college. The only thing there was to do in South Bend at that time was, well, drive over to Chicago to do stuff, and it's a great place to visit. Compared with our "you must drive everywhere" suburban sprawl (not that they don't have that, too), it's nice to get off a plane, get on a train, get off the train and walk a block or two to where you need to be. And they have Big Bowl, so I got to spend a nice evening in my jammies, studying frantically, and eating my favorite hot and sour soup.

The oral exams came and went, and I'll find out how I did by next week. Time goes faster if I don't think about it too much. After the exams, however, the day got much more interesting. A friend and I went down to see the tickertape parade for the Sox downtown, which was just a great way to blow off steam, although we weren't the ones collapsing the Port-a-Potties with our butts.



Covered with someone's shredded office reports that were dumped out of a very high window, we took the train back for lunch, and then I had time to hit the Field Museum and see dinosaurs and Pompeii before I had to head back to the airport. I was a little disappointed to see that a UFO had eaten Soldier Field, though. WTF?



Now I'm home, and it's quiet, and despite the futility of our attempts to vanquish the laundry piles, it's a cozy and wonderful place to be. We'll return to our scantily scheduled knitting content later in the week, when I'll pop up with portions of Eris in handspun chocolate brown wool. Mmmm.

Notes to self...

1. If you get a lot of yarn from ebay, and there is no mention of "nonsmoking home," then the yarn may whiff slightly of smoke when you get it.
2. If you know how to wash yarn, this is not a problem at all.
3. Center-pull skeins of yarn become spaghetti in the washer, even if you only accidentally let them agitate for a second or so. Even if you keep them in a mesh bag. Even if it's just the spin cycle.
4. Various colors of Opal (including the rare Bumblebee), when tangled up together, look rather pretty.
5. Superwash sock yarn really doesn't felt, which is a relief.
6. It takes a significantly longer time than you'd expect to skein up 400-odd yards of yarn on a 2-yard niddy noddy, but they sure dry faster than they would if left in a center-pull ball.
7. The Fisher-Price ring stacker (see above on the title bar) makes an excellent nostepinne for re-creating the center pull balls of Opal once the skeins are dry.
8. You can never have too much sock yarn.

How not to make a conference call

Often, to do two things at once is to do neither. - Fortune cookie I got last year

On Thursday night, I got a call from our nanny that she would not be able to come in on Friday due to having some sewer work done on her house. This was not a problem at all. I happen to think that getting one's sewer fixed is a rather high-priority deal, so I was more than happy to let her stay home. So, my new plan became: drop the older two kids off at their respective schools, bring the twins into work, show them off a little bit, let them play, pick up some things to work on at home, and go home just in time for the Late Morning Naps, after a small snack. This would make it such that I could participate in the 12:00 Conference Call. No sweat!

8:05 - Two out of four kids have shoes on, four out of four have pants. So far, so good.
8:10 - All kids have shoes, all are still dressed, all are finishing breakfast. I'm pouring my coffee.
8:12 - We're out the door, everyone's buckled into their respective carseats/booster seats.
8:30 - Drop off child one at school. Have a great day!
8:48 - Drop off child two at her school. Have fun!
9:00 - Arrive at work. Unfold and load up stroller (I love this stroller, incidentally - it's much more portable than the other one).
9 - 9:45 - Play at work. Blow bubbles, stack blocks, eat blocks. Get cranky.
10:00 - Get home. Snacks, play, watch some Noggin. Get crankier.
10:30 - Too cranky - down for Naps.
10:35 - 11:30 - Get minimal amount of work done. Reply to myriad email messages.
11:30 - Stirrings and grumblings from upstairs. Crud.
11:35 - Bring the boys, now awake beyond a shadow of a doubt, back downstairs for lunch. Make lunch. Set them up in their booster seats.
11:45 - Put scrambled eggs with ham and cheese, 1/2 banana, toast, milk in front of each boy, pop tacos in microwave. Plug headset into phone, and put phone in pants pocket.
11:46 - Remember bibs. Crud.
11:50 - Initial wipedown of hair, faces, hands. Hunting for sour cream, grating cheese.
11:55 - Put plate of tacos on table, pull diet coke from fridge. Bring laptop over to download file needed for call.
12:00 - Phone rings. Answer the phone and join in the conversation, while getting boys down from table. Step on dropped banana. In socks. (Not handknit, it's okay.) Realize that crunchy tacos are too loud to eat on the phone.
12:02 - Manage to sound professional and interested while sweeping scrambled eggs up off the floor with dustpan and hand broom. Catch the plate of too-loud-to-eat-on-the-phone tacos just in time before child three pulls it off the table. Provide insightful commentary and editorial comments.
12:15 - Change two diapers while muted out due to squeals of protest over said diaper-changing. Boys are happily trying to slam each other's hands in the shape sorter.
1:00 - Boys have gone back down for a nap, but are mildly grumbling about it. Look longingly at stupid crunchy tacos.
1:05 - Wonder, is this what people mean when they talk about balance and juggling it all?

On the up side, I did get the koolaid dyed socks done for my 4 year-old guy. He handpainted the wool himself this summer, and couldn't wait for me to spin it and knit it up. He's extremely proud of his creation. I need to teach him how to knit someday soon.