Sockcess!

I started knitting my first sock sometime back in...March, maybe? April? I found this very helpful online tutorial and knit away until I had produced one minimally screwed up ankle sock. Emboldened by my accomplishment, I immediately cast on its mate...and then that first half-inch of ribbing sat in my knitting basket for the next six months. Last week a few folks from work got together for a knitting night, so I pulled out the lonely second sock and returned my attentions to it again. Nine days later, I finally have a pair of socks!

Alas, this angle makes my ankles look enormous. Please don't judge me.



When I bought the yarn, I defiantly chose a colorway with all my favorite colors from about age 14. Teal! Purple! Blue! Why pretend I don't still love them; with these socks I reclaim my secret favorite colors once again. Next thing you know, I'll be carrying my dayplanner in a sparkly Trapper Keeper with a unicorn on the cover.



Alas, at knitting night last week I got a bit distracted, chatting and helping a coworker learn to knit. Can you see the sad wonky mistake I made, the first thing I notice when I see these socks?



CAN YOU SEE IT NOW?



It's okay, I'm still proud of them. I look forward to wearing them in the spring when ankle socks make sense again.

Satisfying the requirements of our possessions

Recently Mr. Thel bought a new computer. The old one frequently sent him into fits that involved a lot of roaring, twitching, and threatening to slam it against the nearest wall. I'm hoping this new one will merely compel him to rhapsodize fondly about its reliability, or to lovingly caress its sleek curves.

It's such a shiny new thing, though; we all seemed a little shabby by comparison. While Mr. Thel set it up in the office upstairs, humming cheerfully to himself, I felt it necessary to nervously sweep and vacuum and generally spruce up the place. I can only protest that those chores were on my list already...but yeah. You just know the next step is for the computer to begin outright ordering me to meet its demands.

Hopefully by that time I'll have collected enough of the clumps of hair Chloe sheds daily, wafting gently across the living room, that I can build myself a Clone Chloe army to defeat the computer.

Already out of things to say

I am halfway through the knitting of a second sock. The first sock was finished sometime around...March? April? Clearly I'll never be a super sock knitter. One pair a year...that's not even enough to let me build up a collection of beautiful, handknitted socks. A collection I could likely never bring myself to wear, being too aware of the enormous investment of time and energy in each sock to risk wearing them out. No, I'll frame each one and gaze proudly at them on the wall or something logical like that.

Chloe had a vet appointment this evening. We haven't yet made any effort to find a new vet closer to the south end, so we had to drive nearly up to Shoreline to get there. It was just a routine check-up and vaccination, but she ended up getting a blood test for heartworms too, so she had to endure four injections. As I helped pin her down in a corner so the vet could stab a needle in her shoulder, she looked utterly woeful. Her deep and grievous sense of betrayal was quickly left behind after a small handful of treats, though. Then we went back out to the front desk and I had to endure a painful siphoning myself when I paid the bill.

Oh, well, she's still cheaper than a kid, even if she's also far less useful. She is a total drain on society! She has no inherent value! She benefits nobody, and her living expenses are an indulgence which should induce fits of guilt in my soul!

My counterargument? Well, just wook at dat shmookum widdle boo boo face:



Also, if you should ever happen to misplace a small tidbit of, say, dried cow liver, Chloe will detect and home in on it like a meat-seeking missile. Case closed!

A Very Belated Happy November 1

Some people postpone their slacking until the end of NaBloPoMo, waiting until after they're completely sick of blogging once a day, until the thought of logging in and blathering on one more time is so repugnant they just can't bear to do it for a twenty-seventh day in a row. Me, I got my skipped day out of the way right up front! That's the earliest I've ever flaked out on a project like this before. I must be getting better at prioritizing.

And that's how I'm spinning that.

I went up to Weaving Works after work today and ended up spending about a third of my new raise on new yarn, because they're having a 20% off sale through Sunday. I bought a bunch of yarn for making various Christmas gifts, and a skein of Lamb's Pride Worsted so I can learn how to make myself a pair of mittens. That way not only my head and neck but also my hands will be snuggly warm in the morning when I wait for the bus.

As I walked home from the bus stop tonight, clutching my bag full of new yarn, I saw a contractor's truck parked in front of my neighbor's house. She and a man were standing out front amidst a stack of hoses and assorted toolboxes, and although it hasn't rained in a week her driveway was soaking wet.

"What happened?" I asked her, imagining broken lines or hoses or...something. (The details of plumbing disasters are still beyond my ken.)

She laughed and explained that he'd just finished powerwashing her house. Then she introduced me to the powerwasher, because he was the one who did all the fixing and remodeling on our house in the year and a half before we bought it. As it turns out, his mother was the original owner of the house! She had it built back in 1942 and it was in his family ever since. He said, "Every time I see her she asks if I've been by the house lately, and how it looks."

I asked him a couple of questions to satisfy my curiosity about the original configuration of the first floor (apparently what's now a 3 bedroom 2 bath house with a spacious laundry room used to have 4 bedrooms, 1 tiny bathroom, and no laundry room). I also told him about my frequent thought that the former owners must have had happy times in this house; it's never given me a creepy feeling or any unpleasantness. I guess that's a little more superstitious than the way I usually try to think--probably it's just that Mr. Thel and I have had such a lovely first year (ok, nine months) here.

It was a nice surprise to meet the man. I gave him a business card and told him that if his mother ever wants to come see the place, she can give me a call. I know how easy it is to get attached to a home that houses fond memories.

Still my favorite room in the house

Even when it's overcast or raining, the two large windows in the kitchen make it the brightest room in the house. We plan to take out part of the wall separating the living room from the kitchen and put in a breakfast bar. I look forward to having a little space to sit with a mug of cocoa and enjoy the light during the winter months.

Autumn light

Snuggling

For all that the forecast is "steady rain" for just about the entire six months between now and next April, I am consistently lucky enough to find breaks in the drizzle during which I can take Chloe for a nice long evening stroll. (And now I can step out through the grass and the puddles with cheerful, dry feet, thanks to these:



So very shallow of me, I know. But come on...I was actually wishing for it to rain since I got them, so I could have a valid reason to wear them. And! They match both my rainjacket and my warm coat. I take my joys where I can, babes.)

When we come back from a soggy walk, I have Chloe sit on the rug just inside the front door. We keep an old bath towel hanging on a hook next to the door, and when her head is all wet (whether from rain, or from her playful rolling in soaking wet grass...) she shoves insistently into the towel when I crouch down to dry her off. She nuzzles herself up under the crook of my arm...and while I know she just likes a) having her ears rubbed, and b) being dry again, it's still one of my favorite moments.

Cheaters never prosper

To the person who stumbled across my blog looking for a tidy answer to the "resolution of the Hobbit"--

1. Gandalf? Just a shapeshifting Warg.
2. After Gandalf devours Brand, Gollum becomes king of the lake-men.
3. Bilbo dies.

Watch your taillights blaze into nothingness

I hate goodbyes.

Last night I had to bid farewell to one of my best friends in this world or any other. She's moving to Nashville because she feels restless and ready for a change, and although I was at first quietly skeptical of her destination (What good can come out of Tennessee?), I am nothing but impressed by the way she has spent the last six months planning and doing and saving and now...she's actually going. Really and truly going to drive from Seattle to California to Tennessee.

We've been friends for ten years, a third of our lives (so far). I met her in college, where we shared a major, many classes, and volunteer experiences. Then after college we both spent a year with Americorps, and after that we were roommates for a couple of years.

When I look back on the last ten years, I'm amazed we've stayed so close. She had been good friends with my college boyfriend before he and I knew each other. When I decided I wasn't ready to get married and he and I broke up, various other friends found it too unfathomable and drifted away. (Not that that was the only reason I lost touch with various people...but it was a factor for a few.) She did not. When Mr. Thel and I first got together a couple of years later, she seriously disapproved of him, to the point that I really did think our friendship was over. But when her dire fears didn't pan out, she was big enough to put her reservations behind her and never speak of them again...

She's been like a sister to me, quarrels and bickerings and tears and all. I'm so proud of her for following through on a dream like this--and heaven knows, I understand how hard it is to go through with something others disapprove of, even when you know in your very core that it's the right thing for you to do. I've done it twice since I've known her. So even though I selfishly don't want her to go, even though I fret about how she'll do once she gets there, I understand her need to do this and I wish her well as she goes.

So bon voyage, anam chara. I promise to visit you in Nashville.

Commemoration

List of things I hope to accomplish between now and next July, the tenth anniversary of the year I had the cancer:

- dye my hair blue
- buy one of these and spend a month crisscrossing the continent
- ride the 2008 STP
- get a tattoo to mark the ten years

Gee, when you string it all together in one place like that, it looks awfully dramatic. Still, you only live once. Time to step out of the rut I've been treading for the last few years.

If I remember right, after ten years they start whispering the word "cured" instead of "remission." So now instead of fretting about a relapse, I can start worrying about my increased risk of breast cancer due to all the radiation I absorbed ten years ago. I get to start having mammograms ten years earlier than all the rest of you!