Becca's Blog

On the road.

This weekend I'll be in Seattle; next weekend I'll be in San Diego. Is it possible to get weather jet lag (weather whiplash?)?

I'm headed to Seattle to research another "Knitter's Guide" like the "Knitter's Guide to Santa Fe and Taos" that Knotions published in late September. (Unfortunately, the link to that last story is broken; I assume it's part of the magazine's current web-hosting woes.) So yeah, you should pity me: I have to spend the weekend investigating Seattle's yarn stores. Actually, there's a lot of ground to cover, and I'm going to have to plan my time wisely and hustle.

Next weekend I'll be support staff again as Jane does her second (and final) Breast Cancer 3-Day. This time she's walking with both of her sisters, and I think they'll have a fabulous time. Jane did a great job of fundraising and surpassed her goal, because she's organized and diligent. It also helps that Shirley, her mother, had tons of friends who love and miss her.

We'll do something like a substitute Thanksgiving with Jane's family before we return (including her Alaska-based sister), and then we get to spend Thanksgiving at home together! You have no idea how wonderful that is unless you too are compelled to travel to relatives for every single bloody holiday.  It's important to spend time with family, and I value it, but I hate the schlep. And leaving our aging, infirm beasties at home presents its own logistical challenges. My mother has agreed to let us bring the dogs with us to Reno for Christmas, but I suspect she has no idea how high-maintenance (that is, messy) Josie is these days.

Ten miles is nothing to sniff at.

Yesterday I went with Jane on her training walk for the Breast Cancer 3-Day, and we walked 10 miles in 3 hours. Jane has a much better fitness base than I do, since she exercises regularly, but I figured this would be a walk in the park (heh), because hey, I've run 10Ks plenty of times on practically no training.

Not really. I was tired after 5 miles, and by the time we got done, everything from my waist down hurt. I was hobbling slightly today. I'm very glad it's not me who's doing twice that distance for three consecutive days--and sleeping on the ground.

Team Shirley.

Jane's family, the one I married into, has always been very close. They--I mean we--face all of life's events, good and bad, together. Jane's mom, Shirley, was influential in keeping that connection going, and when Shirley became ill with breast cancer she had the best support team anyone could have. Her health and quality of life during her seven-year fight can be credited mostly to her devoted daughters and husband.

This year Jane's oldest sister, Susan (the one I ran my first half-marathon with), decided to do the San Diego Breast Cancer Three-Day to raise funds and honor Shirley's memory. Jane and I talked about how best to support Susan, and considered whether we should serve on the walk crew. We decided we'd go down to San Diego and cheer Susan on, and vowed that we'd walk next year. But our plans changed. When it looked like Susan's walking partner probably wouldn't be able to do the walk with her, Jane jumped in and signed up, three weeks before the event--because that's what sticking together means. So she's walking on November 9 to 11, and raising funds. She's trying to raise $2200 in the remaining 13 days before the walk, and I'm asking you to donate to her if you would support me in a similar venture. Because I'm a part of Team Shirley too, even if this time I'm the waterboy.

This makes me proud of my alma mater

I'm not a sports person, and I really don't care for basketball, but this is cool.

THE SHOT BLOCKER
Amador Valley's Laue intimidates despite disability

Busy weekends.

I just finished making cranberry-cherry relish for Thursday; it's my usual contribution to Thanksgiving dinner. I'm also intrigued by a recipe for port-glazed pearl onions that I found this morning, while I was pawing through my stack of old food magazines and wishing the weekend weren't over.

I have some photos to show you. Every once in a while, I actually do finish something. 
I finished it a few weeks ago but I'm still bored with it. It's a Christmas present. I have to figure out how to wrap it with a yoga mat inside. Schmeh.

I didn't finish any other WIPs over the weekend; instead, I started two a teeny Aran top-down cardigan and a child-size two-end sock, at the Olema Inn knitting workshops.


As I mentioned before, Beth Brown-Reinsel taught both workshops, and she's a wonderful teacher. She's very patient and very flexible about adapting to what people want to learn, and her handouts are incredibly clear. I got some good practice at working from a chart, which I haven't been doing much of lately.
Olema is in west Marin, very close to the ocean and on the edge of Pt. Reyes. It's an incredibly beautiful setting, and the weather was picture-perfect. But some people were so obsessed with finishing the class project that they couldn't even stop for lunch.
If anything, I'm a more dedicated eater than knitter. This was my breakfast on Sunday morning at Lingonberry Farm. I even tried pickled herring--not a new favorite, but I highly recommend Swedish pancakes. It was a kind of funny synergy to be staying in a place with such a distinct Swedish cultural theme, and then to head off down the road to learn a Swedish knitting technique, which two-end/twined knitting is.

The innkeeper was a knitter too, and was very interested in the workshop. There were even alpacas at the farm, which I felt was somehow appropriate, but I didn't want to scare them by taking their picture.
This was the view from the breakfast room window.
Now I've got to plan which WIPs to take with me on our Thanksgiving road trip to see my parents. I'm hoping for snow in the Sierras this week, but not on Wednesday, when we'll be driving!

Knitting saved my sanity again.

Much as it did last winter, on the afternoon I was stranded in stopped traffic on the Richmond-San Rafael bridge in 30mph winds and driving rain. Having a hat to work on while I sat with the ignition turned off for 30 minutes prevented a full-blown panic attack.

This past weekend, having a pair of socks to work on prevented me from throwing myself from a moving car or walking into the surf. (In-laws, remember? Not merely in-laws, but a road trip with in-laws, the logistics of which I had zero control over. Prescription for a Becca breakdown.) Picture four adults in a not-so-big station wagon a little bit lost in downtown Monterey. One of those adults has the map and is sitting in the front passenger seat--the navigator (that was me). The designated navigator likes to take in all the surroundings and landmarks and make considered decisions (she also likes to feel that the driver is paying the slightest attention to what she's saying). The backseat navigator likes to shout out instructions and helpful hints like  "it'll be on the left side of the road." Thanks. One glance would tell any of us that, but your multiple degrees sure are coming in handy right now. Combine that with color commentary from Passenger #3 along the lines of  "Ooh, look at that funny sign. It says ... Mike's ... Muffler ... Shop. I wonder what that is?" The designated navigator surrenders the map, checks out of the group problem-solving process, picks up her sock knitting, and wishes there were some earplugs in the glove compartment. At one point during the road trip, I told myself, "You have several days left in this visit. You'd better pace yourself on the outrage."

I'm so grateful that knitting is an individual sport.

It's all begun.

The in-law onslaught starts within the hour (Jane is at the airport picking up SIL #2); the hummingbird flying of the coop has begun; the photo and video testing has started. I have a sinus headache.

On the DL: My left thumb.

I thought I needed the tip of my thumb for knitting, but it turns out that I can hold it out of the way and still get yarn around needles (I'm not so sure this would work with continental style). I've found this out because on Monday night I was going to town putting vinyl tile down in the utility room and cut myself with a sharp new linoleum knife while trying to trim down an odd-sized piece. This is (hopefully) the conclusion of the new-floor project that was begun late last summer, after Orange Boy polluted the ratty old parquet floor. It's far from perfectly installed, but it looks better than what was there before.

In other domestic news, we have a hummingbird family living under our roof, we're about to have a big influx of in-laws, and I'm drugging my cat.

There's a pair of nestlings in a hummingbird nest under the eaves next to our bathroom window, so we have an OK, albeit backlit, view of the nest. We've been watching the mom for about three weeks, and about a week ago we saw two small, pointy beaks poking out of the nest. They're getting bigger by the day, and sometimes we see the mom feeding them. Unfortunately, the nest is in a terrible location to photograph, so I'm not likely to get any decent pictures. I did take pictures of fledging hummingbirds in our magnolia tree several years ago, but they're analog. I was a mushy, soppy, weepy mess the day those babies left the nest--you'd have thought I brooded them myself.

The imminent arrival of houseguests is kind of a kick in the pants to finish a few house projects, like the floor.  The in-laws will be in town because one of Jane's nieces is graduating from college in a couple of weeks, and another niece is attending her college orientation. Various family members will be staying with us for varying numbers of nights, and we'll be spending a night in the South Bay to make sure we arrive at the graduation birght and early. Can you tell that I'm excited?

And yes, I made good on my promise to start the cranky old man on Prozac. Now he gets a quarter of a human pill every evening and he seems a bit less cranky. We don't think he's sprayed since, but all of his favorite spots are still inaccessible to him most of the time, so it's hard to say the drugs are doing the trick. You don't know what fun is until you try jamming a tiny, crumbly, bitter-tasting pill fragment down a cat's gullet. One side effect is that he seems to hate me less. He doesn't scream at me as much and he's back to sitting on my lap or perching next to me on the couch. Which is nice, because I kind of missed his hairy, dandruffy ass.

Stupid Kitty Tricks

Um, sorry about the annoying sound on the clip below. There's a bit of static when I use QuickTime to play it, but something seems to have happened in the compression process. I am reviewing VideoEgg for my column, hence the dopey, low-res video of Orange Boy, who's been trying to prove lately that no, he's not slowing down, even if he is almost 16 and sleeps 20 hours a day. He makes those 4 hours count.

I shot that video with a borrowed digital (still) camera, and while it looks rather grainy full-screen, it works perfectly for a small window in a Web page. I'm pretty enamored of the camera, too. It corrected for the incandescent light, and kept the weaselcat in focus, even though I was holding the camera with one hand and badgering him with the other. I would pretty much really love to keep that camera, or buy one of my own--but it ain't happening right now.

My favorite Christmas gift (so far).

From Jane's sister and brother-in-law.  My favorite work-avoidance technique of the past week and a half has been to pull out a hank of the handpainted laceweight, set it up on my vintage swift and this thingy, and wind it into balls--it satisfies something in my perfectionist Virgo heart.

Jane's other sister gave me Perri Klass's Two Sweaters for My Father, which I can't wait to dig into, and she spoiled our beasties--special treats all around.

There was a bit of nail-biting last week, as the crocheted Noro scarf and some other Christmas gifts were temporarily lost in the mail--but they have now been united with their intended owners. I'm still waiting for some gifts from my family to be delivered, thanks to some utterly predictable family dynamics. 

I'm working on a final gift scarf (not a Christmas gift), of my own very idiosyncratic design, which involves working from side to side rather than top to bottom (so I have almost 500 stitches on a needle), and will involve paired increases and then decreases in the center to give it a bit of a V shape. I'm not at all sure it's going to work out--I'll report back.