Farewell 2010, It Seems We Hardly Knew Ye

Are you an organized person? I used to be (?), and sometimes still try to be (?). I used to be able to plan the whole year in advance, or so I told myself. I'd get everything all lined up - on paper - nice and neat like paving stones. I like that analogy, because I always looked forward to a smooth road for the year ahead.


Please feel free to continue laughing hysterically at the folly of my youth. OK, that's enough now. You'll hurt yourself if you fall out of that chair again.

No matter how well I had planned the year ahead, by January 2nd whatever the Life equivalent of Photoshop is, it had grabbed aholt of my paving stone plans and run them through the Uncertainty Filter.


The thing is, no matter that it has a sinister kind of swirly, sharp-edged, hard to navigate appearance, Uncertainty also has a kind of beauty. It represents change, challenge, growth. It holds both the potential of great gain and the risk of great loss. So I decided long ago to go into each year ahead without a roadmap, and just hope that I'd come out the other end having learned from any lessons that were strewn along the path I'd travelled. Like the Coyote, I'm not always good at that.


I wonder if the Clever Road Runner is 2011, pulling away from the Foolish Coyote? I like that idea, I hope 2011 is a very clever year indeed. Or is the Road Runner the Good Old Days with the Coyote lagging further and further behind? OK, even I can't wrap my head around that one. I'm just typing. You're reading, so it's your job to make sense out of the words. I also have no idea what a Bake Satyr is, but this is cool street art!

I'm going to travel through the New Year with this band of adventurers. I hope you have an inspiring, confusing, supportive, challenging, exasperating group assembled for your journey.

Why not? That's what I say!

I thought I'd post a pic of my dinner tonight: Angel Hair Pasta and Garlic Sausage in Alfredo sauce with cracked red pepper and scallions. Fresh baked bread with dill and sesame seed, toasted and rubbed with fresh garlic. Avacodo. Diet Cherry Dr. Pepper.

I hope your Christmas was sorta kinda like this meal - A liitle bit sweet, a little bit spicy. Very rich and satisfying, but still a bit fresh and a smidge healthy. A bit handmade with love, and best of all, requiring a lot packages to be opened. Merry Christmas!

Skies Full Of Promise

I just stepped out to check the mail and these were the skies that greeted me.

These ORIGINAL, PATENTED, ACCEPT-NO-IMITATIONS GENUINE CLOUDS WITH SILVER LININGS were to my left

and this Rainbow was to my right. No pot of gold, just an apartment building, at the end of it, and the middle disappeared behind a non-silver-lined cloud, but I like it!


This is just a drive-by post to say Gee, I've missed you guys. I've been laid up thse last two weeks with a severe attack of sciatica, which had my whole left side from the waist down feeling either like it was being stabbed with hot knives or trapped in an antarctic ice floe. Fun stuff, I tell ya, real fun stuff!

I'm nearly totally recovered now, and even managed to walk to the store yeaterday for some health food (Ice Cream! Pizza! Chips!) and some junk food (Milk, apples, veggie soup).

Merry Holidays, whatever they may be for you, and Best Wishes for the New Year.

More Catching Up and Thrifting Again

Mom is grateful for your thoughts and wishes, and is doing wonderfully. The tests she took midway thru the antibiotics had better results than the original set which triggered the concern, and were vastly improved over the second set, so the infection was probably the cause of most, if not all, of the dip. We'll be retesting in a couple weeks and expect to see even more improvement, as she's also been advised about cutting down on some of the foods she loves. Hey, if I can give up devouring all those cute little critters with all their delicious cholesterol, she can give up a few servings of refried beans, eh?

She did like the yarn I dyed, but didn't claim any for a new hat or wristwarmers. She'll likely get them anyway.

Many Thanks for the comments on the review. Good luck One Sheep, and I hope anyone else considering a stand mixer found it helpful.

Elsa, you are absolutely welcome to visit, but remember ... There's no place like home.

Here's what I've found at the thrift shops lately:



Starting at the top there are 3 Brunswick Vivant, 75% Australian Zephyr Wool/25% Baby Kid Mohair, 2 oz skein, gorgeous red. A quick Google on this name turned up pattern books from the 60s calling for this yarn. I don't know when it was discontinued, but I love that yarn that old can still feel so marvelous.

Next are 3 Brown Sheep Company Country Classic Thick and Thin Special Heather American Home-spun Worsted (Say that three times fast!), approximately 100% wool - hey, that's what the label says, 4 oz., Thunderstorm Blue, which is a truly great name for this beautiful yarn.

Approx 2 oz of unlabeled wool, black & super soft.

The big white patch starting on the left and wrapping around to the front consists of:

2 Lily Sugar & Cream 100% Cotton, 2.5 oz, White

Unlabeled Cotton Boucle, approx 1.5 oz, White

Filati Bertagna Blues 70% Wool/30% Acryl, 1.75 oz, Off-white with blue and green accent ply, total approx 8oz. There was just one label band in the bag with these balls, and I haven't checked the condition yet as to how many breaks there may be.

Unlabeled Cotton Tape, approx 1.5 oz, White - looks like shoelace, but is much softer and nicer.

Behind the Filati Bertangna are six balls of Classic Elite Follies, 40% Modal Rayon/35% Alpaca/25% wool, total weight is approx just under 12 oz, which would be a little shy of 7 1.75 oz skeins. There were 5 lengths that were most likely complete skeins, and several shorter lengths. Now there's just one giant cake with a lot of slip knots! The company calls the color blue, the picture looks gray, but the yarn has a slight lavender cast like a Sterling Silver Rose.

Next to that are 8 complete skeins plus several odd bits of Mission Falls 1824 Cotton, 100% Cotton, full skeins 1/75 oz each, odd bits totaling approx. 7 oz. The full skeins are 2 brick red, 5 asst'd gray and one blue. The bits are the same colors, with one tiny ball of yellow. How'd that get in there?

Finally the little individually bagged skeins are Bernat Cassino, 100% Mercerized Cotton, 1.75 oz, 6 Blue and 1.5 Off white.

The only original store price tags were on the Brown Sheep, which was discounted to $5.40, which would have been $16.20 for the three skeins. Everything up there came to $14.96 at the thrift shops. Score!


What to do with all that yarn? Not a problem - there are lots of ideas in these magazines:

There are 14 American titles: 7 Knit 'n' Style, 3 Vogue Knitting, 2 Creative Knitting, 2 Knit Simple, and 16 from England: 8 Simply Knitting, 5 Knitting, 2 Knitting Today and 1 Yarn Forward.

The £3.99 and £4.49 prices for the British titles seem comparable to $6.99 for Vogue or Interweave, but they have fewer patterns. They are nice patterns, but as few as 12 or 13 in an issue. That's one of the reasons I don't care for Cast On magazine, too few patterns.

I can't recall if there are 2 or 3 men's sweater patterns total in the 16 mags. There are a lot of toy patterns, Alan Dart and others, which is nice, and lots of generous giveaways for prizes like yarn and tickets to fiber events, which is also nice. The articles are fun and informative, and I wish I had access to some of the yarns. How do you spell drool in European?

Honestly, I find them a little disappointing overall, and wouldn't value them the same as Vogue or Interweave. As imports, they have USA price tags of mostly $9.99 and $10.50 and one was $11.25. I certainly wouldn't have paid those prices. I hope I'm not offending any UK readers by saying that. How do you think the UK and US mags compare?

Well, the original prices are a moot point, as the thrift shop price was just 50¢ each, $16.42 total with tax. Score again! Who else is finding great bargains out there?