I Found the Brown Suit!!!!!!

News Flash: I found my brown suit!!!!! I'm so happy! It was in a box with other unfinished stuff in my closet. All the pieces are there, except for the sleeves for the jacket. There's just one problem: for the long skirt, I can't figure out which is end is up and whether or not the one hem I have is indeed a hem or a casing for elastic. I can't find my knitting notebook, so I don't really remember which patterns I used. I think it was a Linda Schuster skirt and camisole, the jacket was partly from Sandy Cherry, and partly from some guy. I do remember the tension, however: tension 7. Good thing most of the suit is done.....all I have to do now is knit the sleeves and figure out which end of the skirt is the hem and do all the hems, and crochet the edgings. I'm so excited and so sleepy right now, that I can't think/write straight. Just wanted to go on the record that my brown suit has been found and is on its way to being finished and worn to my daughter's graduation!!!!!!

Can't Find My Brown Suit. Waaaaahhhhh!!!!!!

I still can't find the suit. I have so much yarn all over my bedroom (which doubles as my knitting room) and the living room that I can't find anything! I want to take pictures of all the yarn I have....and I will....but I am waiting for the card reader I ordered to arrive so I can download the pictures to my computer. Maybe taking pictures of my messy knitting area will inspire me to organize the yarn and look for my brown suit. Time is running out.....I fly to Boston on May 20th. But don't worry, I plan on wearing something I knit.....even if it is not the brown suit. I might just make a sweater set or two (I like Sandy Cherry's patterns). I have an apple green yarn (so fashionable now!) with the tank/camisole already made. All I would have to make is the cardigan, and I don't plan to put any ribbing or bands on it. I would just crochet the edges. I also have a baby/ballet pink, which is not so flattering with my coloring, but I have lots of it. Or I can fall back on my old standby color--black--but it is spring....almost summer....and I want to wear something other than black!

Here's a picture of me taken with my cell phone camera in my messy office. I'm going to surprise my boss and come in this weekend and clean out my office. It's job evaluation time!!!!!

To answer your question in a previous e-mail how I fringe my shawls, I've done both the hand fringing and the machine fringing. I like the look of the hand fringed shawls better, but the machine fringes are quicker. But either way, fringing is still really really boring!

Good (Knitting) News and Bad News

Well, at last some good news!!!! My dad gave me his digital camera! Yippeeeee!!!!! Now I can take pictures of my stuff and my knitting machine and post them online! Yaaaaayyyy!!! One catch, though: He gave me the camera and that is it, so I have been looking online for a charger and a reader so I can download the pictures from the camera into my computer. Look for pictures within the week!!!!!!

The bad news is this: I finally found the time and the energy to knit and even brought Sonja's (fusionknitting.com) directions for how to hem my brown suit home, but I can't find my brown suit!!!!!!! I've looked everywhere....I think the cleaning lady put it away somewhere....I just have to keep looking....

The other bad news is that I jammed my bulky machine, which is my main machine right now. I don't know how I did it, but the carriage is stuck on the main bed. I had just finished oiling down the main bed and the carriage and for some reason it got stuck. I'll wait a few days and maybe it will get unstuck. At least, that's what happened the last time my carriage got stuck on the machine.

I went to my favorite yarn lady yesterday and yes, I bought another huge lot of yarn. I am really getting out of control with this yarn obsession. I do not even want to think about how much my purchases cost me. The only good thing about my purchases yesterday was that I got a lot of great felting yarn (24 cones--like I have ever felted before, other than the little phone sock I made in March). Lots of variegated wool and matching mohair yarn. I guess felted bags are what everyone is getting for Christmas this year! She also gave me a great price on about 15 cones of mixed types of yarn. I got 3 cones of blue venetian with metallic blue thread running through it (good for my shawls), and a couple of cones of germaine yarn, which I also run with the expensive novelty yarn I buy from her. Those yarns I call the "birthday gift" yarns. My friends and co-workers all like the stuff I knit to sell, but they are way too expensive (for me, anyway) to just give away. I need nice yarn at reasonable, clearance sale prices. The felting yarn and the mixed lot of yarn were great deals and are nice enough to either sell, or more likely, give as knitted birthday/holiday gifts.

BUT I also bought some expensive yarn which I am looking at right now. Really pretty hand-dyed rayon boucle with a matching slinky variegated yarn in Monet-like water colors. The Japanese yarn in wonderful colors that cost and arm and a leg per ball (and it takes 4 balls to make a shawl). But I think that I could sell the shawls for close to $200, enough to make my money back and give me a tidy profit. My friend also told me I need to start putting fringe on my shawls to give my shawls a nicer look and a nicer feel. I hate fringing. But I guess I can do it if that's what it takes to set my work apart and get me the prices that I want.

I have so much yarn, it is not funny. I think I will donate most of the acrylics that I bought when I first started machine knitting to the ladies who knit for hospitals and preemies and for our soldiers.

My new preoccupation: my diet. At least, I am going to make it my new preoccupation. Since I hurt my ankle last fall and broke my arm in January and hurt my knee a couple of months ago, I have not been able to work out at the gym. I am very upset that I am beginning to look more and more disgusting. My stomach has gotten bigger, not just the lower abs, but also the part right under my boobs, where the diaphragm is. It is disgusting. My hips have gotten bigger, and so has my waist. And let's not even talk about my boobs. My face has gotten rounder. My thighs touch when walk. I CAN'T STAND IT!!!!! I am going to go on a diet. My physical therapists say I can't do the treadmill or the elliptical or swim. But they said I can bike and walk in the pool. Oh great. I tried to walk on the treadmill this morning, but my knee started hurting after 3 minutes. So I moved to the bike for 30 unsatisfactory minutes.

When I got home, I rummaged through my bookcases for my diet books and I've decided to do a modified Lindora/South Beach/Weight Watchers diet. I will start on Lindora for 1 week, then move on to the South Beach Diet, all the while keeping track of my Weight Watchers points on my palm. Sound complicated? It might be, but I will give it a try. I have got nothing left to lose....except my fat tummy and big butt and huge arms.

And all because I have no willpower. One drawback to my great job is that I eat a (usually nice) catered lunch every day at the hospitals and then at night I go out to eat at my favorite restaurants. That's the great thing about having my kids away at college; I can do whatever I want and eat whatever and whenever and wherever i want. I don't have to cook or set a good example for them. But boy oh boy am I paying for it!!!!!!!

Death and Dying and the Frailties of Life

I went to my friend Rochelle's funeral today. She died after being in the hospital for two months, 3 months after it was found that the cancer had metastasized to her brain. I wrote about her earlier......the news about the tumor in her brain was so difficult for me to take......well, now she's dead. Dead and buried.

I've mentioned before that she was a difficult woman, apparently, even in the best of times. But one thing that can be said about her was that she was the best mother to her two children. Not the "best mother given the circumstances", but the best mother, period. I saw it myself.

So why did her horrible husband, Jeff Marks, and her uber horrible in-laws make the last two years of her life so miserable? Why did they treat her so terribly during the last two weeks of her life? Why did they deny her the opportunity to talk to her babies as she lay in the hospital dying? They kept on hanging up the telephone when she'd call and beg to speak to her children. Even when Jeff knew that she was going for the morphine drip and would be dead in two days, even then he would not bring the children to the hospital. It took a court order for her to see her children in the last hours of her life. Imagine that. A court order. To see her own children. As she lay dying. I believe there is a special place in hell for people like that.

At the funeral, while everyone extolled Rochelle's devotion to her children, no one mentioned Jeff's name, or indeed, acknowledged his or his family's presence. No condolences were extended to him. Nothing. Only to her father and her brother and, of course, to her children. Jeff, meanwhile, wore a smirk through the whole memorial service and then later through the burial. Rochelle's friends wanted to spit on him. I wanted to go up to him and say, Are you happy now, Jeff? You won. Rochelle's dead. You have the children. Are you happy that you made this poor woman's last few conscious moments so miserable, so filled with anger? If Jeff hadn't fought with her, if he had extended the least bit of compassion, maybe Rochelle could have had a few more months or years to live, to spend with her children. Instead, she spent the last two years of her life fighting him, fighting his horrible family, fighting to spend hours and moments with her 2 year old and 4 year old, fighting to live. Her immune system was shot.....the cancer travelled everywhere in her body, and eventually made its way to her brain.

And what of me? Why could I not have been a better friend? Why was I not with her during her last few weeks?