feeling meloncholy this morning, i miss my mom! i called her to wish her a happy mother’s day, but i wish i was home to give her a hug. fortunately i’ll be seeing her on wednesday, so i can give her the card we picked out and the gift i knit for her. and then on to a weekend with mellie! yay! double yay!
i knit this from annypurl’s ‘winged heart tattoo’ pattern, though i left off the wings. a trinket, really, but fun to knit and adorable to look at. i think she’ll get a kick out of it.
today is about knitting melanie’s scarf, which is slow going but so gorgeous. at some point erica is stopping by for a few minutes, and then we have to go to my mother in law’s house. yup.
how did it get to be thursday? this week went pretty quickly for a week with nothing doing. one week from today i’ll be in ohio, hugging my melanie and not letting go. i haven’t seen melanie since march of 2007, when she did me the great honour of standing up for me at my wedding. frankly, that is a long time to go without seeing your bff. yeah, that’s right. bff. i could probably write/talk for hours about what mel means to me, but i don’t want to get too sappy and scare off the two people who actually read this (i.e. mel and kc), so suffice to say that mel means the actual world to me and without her i would be pretty lost. everyone should have a friend like i have in mel.
so bearing that in mind, my current front burner knitting project is a present for her! mel’s birthday is coming up at the end of the month and when i asked what she wanted she requested a handknit scarf from me. which was pretty touching, being asked to make something. so i picked the pattern, mel helped me pick the yarn and colour (elann.com soie bambou in sea grass), and now i’m feverishly knitting, hoping to get the project done by next week, which might be doubtful, but even so, i’d like her to have it in hand by her birthday.
melanie- this one is for you, babes.
my mom came to visit over the weekend, and it was wonderful. we have always had such a complicated relationship, but despite that, she is everything to me and moving away from her has been harder than i could have ever imagined. usually i go visit mom in cleveland, but every so often she drives up here to see us and i really love that because, i mean, its awesome having my mom come visit me in my marital home.
but i miss her and i feel lonely for her right now. i’m really excited that the trip to cincinatti is only a couple of weeks away becuase not only do i get to see my mom again, i get to see melanie and her mom! i’m really really looking forward to that weekend.
i don’t talk about it a lot, but it really is harder than i thought, moving away from my family and friends and living in another country. i love it here, but sometimes i just crave the familiarity that comes with your home turf, and the comfort of my mom and grandparents being only a few minutes away.
anyway. i just wanted to put my great love for my mom out into the universe. i love my mom and i’m just so grateful for her.
“ close the door walk to the street
catching raindrops on your tongue
and for a minute it all stops
but it won’t last, man, just a passing moment gone
— white daisy passing - rocky votolato
i am, so far, kicking bayerische ass. the knitting is incredibly slow moving, as i am desperate to not make a mistake of any kind, but the reward is fantastic. i mean, look at this! this sock is a thing of true beauty! after the first sixteen round repeat, i’m starting to absorb what the symbols mean, which allows me to to continue knitting without checking the chart key after every stitch. i am totally enamored of the lattice-ish cable between the two plain twists. i am constantly in awe of the beauty of knitting, of the simplicity of twisting just two stitches at a time to create something so intricate and detailed.
right now i’m staring at my chart and sock and wishing i could knit more, but am presently in the midst of a nasty (maybe it is narsty?) fibromyalgia flare up. my hand is nearly useless and 96 teensy twisted stitches would only serve to make me cry in pain. so stare at the sock and not knit.
days like this, i mouse around ravelry. i’m trying to find a forum where the conversation interests me enough to participate (no luck, really, so far). i queue new projects, drool over yarns i’d like to buy someday.
i was meant to join a drop in aquafit class today at one of the local pools, but as i require pain pills to function today, this means i cannot drive to said pool, so i am once again alone in frustration. and frustrated i am! plus i’m getting whingey, and realizing this is perhaps the reason i haven’t been able to keep a blog for many years. hrm.
anyway! if you have read this, i hope you are not offended by my candid complaining!
it took around seven months to complete these socks, though actual knitting time was more like 8 days. i don’t know why i rush through some projects, eager to see the end, and let others languish in the pile for months on end. these were fall socks- the rich orange colour reminding me of thanksgiving and sweet potatoes. to finish in april, when i won’t be wearing wool socks for a few months- i’m sure there is some poetry there, i just can’t find it!
i spent a bit of time swatching, yesterday. i wanted to start one of the sweaters featured in the new ‘more big girl knits’ book. i, being of limited means, can only use in stash yarn and i don’t have much when it comes to sweater quantities. i was pretty pissed when my stitch gauge was dead on, but my row gauge was off by well over an inch. i’m sure if i really tried i could adjust the pattern, but i don’t trust my math skills and i hate to beg others for help. so i got mad and threw a ball of cotton ease across the room— ok, no i didn’t, but i thought about doing it. instead, after spending an hour or so clicking through my ravelry queue, i decided on eunny jang’s bayerische socks and cast on last night.
lovely, eh? that is 14 rows of twisted ribbing, one set up row and two rows of the charts. if i don’t go completely insane while knitting these socks it might just be a bit of a miracle.
a day of cross border shopping and family fun awaits me, so i better get myself together.
xo
hi! i’m rachel m and i’m making a blog. i never know what to write about myself. let’s see… i’m almost thirty, i live in southern ontario (canada), i’m married, i have two cats, i knit and spin, i like to read, i like to bake, and i like the colour pink.
i take a lot of boring photos and post them on my flickr. i use ravelry to keep track of my knitting and spinning and to get ideas and inspiration for future work.
i knit a lot of socks. i like to knit lace, and i like to chain ply the yarn i spin. i take a lot of silly photos of my cats. i enjoy having a small vegetable garden on my balcony in the summertime. i watch too much tv. i love listening to wait wait don’t tell me via npr podcasts. i like jack johnson and ben folds best. my all time favourite movie is forrest gump, but i watch bridget jones’s diary more often than anything else. i love my ipod and i use a mac. i love chocolate and cheese and grapes and popcorn.
i dream of living in vancouver, and of visiting ireland.