Back On The Needles

Ok, so you thought my home remedies hadn't worked and I'd dropped off my perch, didn't you? Well......no, I've survived the avalanche of illness that has inflicted us in recent weeks and made Thanksgiving.....interesting. I cooked like a mad thing as usual and the family ate like mad things. We had a cracking game of Monopoly that only ended when the Little Guy went bankrupt, and the Handy Husband made a good start on the outdoor Christmas lights. The vaporizer worked overtime as the Little Guy spent his holiday stuffed up and running a fever, but fortunately he was better in time to go back to school, even although he'd hoped he wouldn't be!

Meanwhile, the Geek has been freaking out trying to fill in college applications and write the appropriate essays. I believe we have a meeting later on today to try to sort out the one enormous application that has to be in tomorrow. I may well need to spend my morning in a soporific knitting haze just to face the prospect of it all. Teenage tantrums are no fun and we're getting plenty of them these days.

Saving my sanity right now is Ysolda Teague's "Gretel" which I'm knitting up in Frog Tree Merino. The yarn is a beautifully soft single ply in cream. I wasn't quite sure how it would look, but I'm thrilled with the definition of the cables in this yarn. It's not at all splitty (which I was a little afraid of) and is creating the most luscious piece of work. I really just can't stop knitting it!

To encourage me the weather has suddenly turned remarkably cold. The whole family is crying out for wool and looking to me for the answer. No, I take that back, 75% of them are. Thank goodness Little Miss Knitty (Susielusie on Ravelry) is a knitter and can make her own woolen products. She's thrilled to have finished a cute brown hat last night in eyelet mock cable stitch ("Slouchy Copy Cat Hat" by Terra Jamieson) which she's showcasing on her head today. Add to that the darling "Give A Hoot" mittens she's made and one child can at least fend for herself in the cold and have a lot of fun doing it. Now all I have to do is hide my stash from her!

Photo Credit: Susielusie

The WTK Essential Flu Guide

Well, it sure as heck has dragged on........this flu thing that I've had. I'm really fed up now. My nose has been running for well over a week, in fact it's now day 10 since I came down with 'the-sore-throat-to-end-all-sore-throats!' It's actually been so long since I've had so much as a sniffle that I'd totally forgotten what it's like to feel so under the weather that even the prospect of a day in bed with Sarah Palin's new book looks appealing (I haven't and I won't though.)

The kids have really started to complain about the lack of available foods to snack on in the house (I'm normally an avid baker) so I had to resort to a box of something full of E numbers and hydrogenated fat that I grabbed off the shelf at a local chemist to stop them whining. The Handy Husband managed to get milk on his way home from work, but otherwise we've lived out of the freezer and our earthquake supplies. To be honest, it's not been a bad thing. As we're between pay cheques right now, it's probably just as well to go carefully until we know where we stand.

Home remedies have never been a problem for me though. I'm so hugely allergic to medicine that the very sight of the pharmacy is enough to bring me out in hives. As I've coughed, sneezed and spluttered through the past week, the Handy Husband has regularly demanded that I "take some chemicals....please!" Eventually, I did resort to an old box of lemsip that we had at the back of the cupboard but only because I know that I'm fine with it. Sadly I can only buy it in the UK, so I've had to ration myself. In fact it would be good to know if you can get it in Canada? That way next time I'm north of the border I could stock up.

When my lips started to crack I searched in my bedside drawer for another essential ingredient to feeling better: Burt's Bees Lip Balm. Their Lifeguard's Choice weatherproofing lip balm contains peppermint oil and repaired my broken lips within a few days. It was then that I decided to make a note of everything I'd used on the road to recovery:

1. Kleenex - boxes and boxes. Gave me a sore nose but I couldn't have coped without them.

2.Burt's Bees Lip Balm - a godsend.

3. Vicks Vapour Rub - brought back comforting memories of childhood sick days and made me feel all warm and cosy.

4. Vicks Vapouriser - steamed up the bedroom nicely and allowed me to inhale menthol without having to hang my head over a bowl, under a towel and then burn my face.

5.Honey - great for that nasty sore throat.

6. Lemon Juice - added to the honey, hot water (and maybe a spot of whiskey) to make a hot toddy.

7. Lots and lots of tea! - after all I am British.

8. Knitting - well that goes without saying really.

Add plenty of sleep and minimal interruptions and you should manage to fight off the worst of the germs. Speaking of which, I've also used a lot of hand sanitizer....pretty essential when you're still chief cook and bottle washer to your family.

Looking at this list, I think I'll be making a few other investments. Shares in Kleenex might be quite a good idea right now and I wonder how the market's looking for Proctor and Gamble?.........

Autumn Leaves, Apple Pie Yarn And College Apps.

Thanks to everyone who left a comment on my last post wishing us well in our new situation. Your kind words and thoughts have been a great source of encouragement throughout the months of uncertainty that preceded the 'Handy Husband's' job move and have helped me to maintain my rock-like resolve to 'hang-on-in-there!' Not surprisingly, the rock has crumbled this week under the weight of 'the-world's-worst-cold' and has been dragging itself around trying to stay on top of things when it should have been resting. My low point came when the crossing lady at the Little Guy's school introduced herself to his sister and said she'd only ever seen his mother and grandma collecting him from school. As both our mothers live in the UK, I can only summize that it's....... time to put on make-up again!!

I did however sneak outside yesterday (sans Elizabeth Arden!) as we were finally blessed with a beautiful sunny day here in the Pacific Northwest and I didn't want to miss it completely. I'd been staring for weeks at my neighbours beautiful maple tree and never has it looked so glorious as it did yesterday. The colours were amazing as I gazed at it from the kitchen window, so I grabbed my new camera and headed into the garden.

The 'Handy Husband' has recently upgraded his camera, thanks to all those points he's earned from travelling, so guess who's inherited the old one? Yes, I'm thrilled. Now I just have to find a moment to work out how to use it properly and I'll be away. I hung my finished vanilla sock amongst the maple leaves just to test it out. The colours clash horribly, but the sock looks wonderful, don't you think? The yarn is one of the best sock yarns I've ever used. It's hand-dyed fingering weight called Apple Pie....65% Superwash Merino, 20% Kid Mohair, 10% Nylon, 5% Silk .......a delightfully soft blend in a colour rather appropriately called "English Garden." It's made by "Apple Laine," a small independent company in Ontario,Canada selling handpainted yarn. I was lucky enough to pick it up at our local Spinner's Guild annual sale earlier in the year, but I will definitely be sourcing more.

Meanwhile, in between coughs and sneezes, I've been assisting The Geek with her first college application and ordering all her High School graduation stuff. What a nightmare. Everything has a deadline and ofcourse both things had to be completed (and paid for) by yesterday. No time to feel like you've been hit by the back end of a bus!

It is particularly difficult to plan an event for your child which is such a part of your new culture, when you've never experienced it yourself. We did attend a ceremony last summer, so we now know how that goes, but what the rest of the expectations are have been a bit of a mystery. I'd done a bit of research (generally grilled other people into revealing details that they think are obvious), so was prepared for the extremely complicated, computer read order form that came home this week, but boy, did it take me hours to work out what was necessary and what was just marketing!

.....And all the time, all I really wanted to do was lay in bed, cough, sneeze and knit a sock..............

And The Good News Is.........

............the good news is that 'The Handy Husband' started a new job on Monday! Yes, all the waiting, hoping and anxious nail biting right up until the last minute resulted in him just having a weekend off between jobs.

The relief is intense. From past experience, we knew that things wouldn't always stay the same, but we never dreamed that we'd ever be a mere three weeks away from losing our medical coverage (yes, politicians, this is what you're supposed to be working to prevent: abuses of the system that result in good, hardworking people getting ripped off!) Consequently, for the first time in 5yrs I am happy to be filling out medical insurance applications. I've done this many times since I've been here, but never has it meant more to us than it does this time.

To celebrate, I took to my sick bed and continued knitting on my sock. That sore throat that I developed on Sunday has turned into a heavy cold, you see. I swear that its nearly eighteen months of stress and worry coming out of my body.....a sort of 'purging' you could say. Well, my nose seems to think so anyway. It's running faster than an Olympian!

Mind you, today is Veterans Day here in the US, so the kids are all home today. Somehow it seems the perfect day to reflect on how lucky we are as a family.........how much we have...... and to thank the people in our past and our present who have fought to maintain the freedom we enjoy today.

Thank You.

Glass Half Full

I think I can be forgiven for feeling less than humourous recently. In the past few weeks I have witnessed first hand a catalogue of events that would test the most resilient among us. First up, my brother-in-law fell through a glass skylight during a police raid (he was the police); my husband was hit by flying glass last week when a hotel window shattered next to him during his last business trip; my other brother-in-law has had his shed burgled; my husband lost his job; Little Miss Knitty has requested $500 over the next few months for a winter sport and The Geek (DD1) needs much the same amount to pay for college in the high school credits and graduation gear (final payment date the same as hubby's last day on the job!) To top it all I woke up today with the world's worst sore throat.

With life spiralling out of control recently though, I have decided to become more of a 'glass-half-full' kind of person. Let's face it, there's really nothing to lose when you choose to look on the brighter side of things. So in my new spirit of optimism, my view of the present situation now looks something like this:

My brother-in-law survived his experience and his injuries thanks to the skill and dedication of the staff at his local hospital. He will live to fight crime another day. My husband too, survived a deep gash to his leg and made it home from Florida with just some butterfly stitches and a ziploc bag of 'bloody' cycling socks to show for his ordeal. My other brother-in-law hopes to recover all of his garden tools as the foolish burglers turned out to live just at the end of the street and, I believe, had used his wheelbarrow as a getaway vehicle!

The job loss is a real bummer....but a relief to be out of when the atmosphere and disrespect has been so bad. The business world is changing at a rapid rate and companies who treat their employees as badly as this one did, won't survive very long. When the time comes, I for one will NOT be throwing them a lifeline! It's time to separate the wheat from the chaff and my 'old' man is most definitely the wheat!

With regard to the teenage expenses, a great deal of budgeting over the past year has meant that I had the money in the bank for those college credits when I needed it. Now I just have to pray that the car doesn't break down or the roof leak!

The sore throat's been a challenge to my optimism I have to admit. I really don't do well when I'm sick. What I've discovered though is that even although I've baked bread, finished the laundry and cooked dinner, for the most part the rest of the family wants to keep me out of the way. They are so afraid of my germs that they've banished me to the bedroom.......... Yes, they've sent me to Utopia where I have my knitting, my tv and my iPod with its set of regular podcasts. I'm in heaven I can tell you! The enforced rest is doing wonders for my state of mind not to mention my knitting. I don't know about a glass half full, I now almost have a pair of socks half done on the needles (yes that means one sock is nearly complete!).......and......I'm lovin' it!

Jaywalkers

Pattern: "Jaywalker" by Grumperina

Yarn: Fabel by Drops

Needles: US 1

Well here they are, the completed Jaywalker socks. They have been an absolute blast to knit...not so complicated that I wanted to give up and throw them in a corner for months, but not so easy that I got bored either. All in all they've been a great experience and one I'd recommend to anyone who happens to have some self-striping sock yarn to hand.

I used Grumperina's cast off to complete them, going back to Jaywalker 1, unpicking it and redoing the cast-off on needles two sizes larger (US3). It gave me a very elastic cast off which did flair quite a bit, so maybe I'll only go up one needle size next time. On this particular pair of socks though, it didn't seem to matter as they are so long that they come halfway up my calf anyway. Even I need some extra flair there!

The Fabel yarn by Drops was also easy to knit with. It didn't split or fray at all and the colours look a treat. The only thing I did notice is that right before the cuff on Jaywalker II the dye sequence changed. Up until then the socks were set to match perfectly. Initially I was a bit disappointed, but then I thought "Who likes matchy, matchy? This way the socks are as individual as the person wearing them!!"

For a step-by-step breakdown of my alterations to the construction of this sock, see my previous post, "One Sock."

A Glimmer Of Hope

As you can see in my sidebar, I've cast on for a vanilla sock. It's the first week in November and our future in America is hanging on a small glimmer of hope twinkling on the horizon. Unemployment beckons by the end of the week, but so too does the faint hope of a new job. It's all coming down to the wire, as these things often do.

My philosphy is "When in doubt, knit!" so ofcourse I've cast on for another pair of socks using some Apple Pie yarn from Apple Laine which I found in my stash. It's a little 'hairy' shall we say, but the colours are lushious and it has a soft silky sheen that I find very appealing. What do you think?

I know what you're wondering though. What happened to the Jaywalkers? Well, guess what? (whispers) I finished.....and I'll tell you all about them tomorrow.