Archives for December 2007

How simple an idea, and how nice to do. Let’s see, what did I do in 2007?

January – Started Runagogo, which got a whole lot of people (was it about 800 by the end? Can’t remember exactly how man) moving 100 miles in 3 months. And I said on January 12th, "I would like to finish writing a book. There. That’s all I’m thinking
this morning." And Lala and godson Dylan matched:

February – Got a travel piece on Venice published in Curve magazine. My writing seen nationally in all major bookstores. WOOT! And I got a ukulele. I can still only play the same seven chords, but they’re doozies, I tell you. Went to Stitches, saw my people. Discovered yams are good things, especially dipped in chipotle aioli (mayo with chipotle powder, salt, garlic and lemon).

March – Taught a knitting class for knit-one-one. Almost got hit by lightning. Finished my 100 running miles and only just. And Lala still had brown hair:

April – Married one year! Great hotel, great time. Hotel with spa-tub. Oh, yeah. I told you what I didn’t want you to know, that Digit was dead and gone since February, and that my heart would never heal. You were wonderful to me. And in his honor, I adopted a kitten from the kill-shelter. Only I accidentally wound up taking two of them home, one of the best spur-of-the-moment decisions I’ve ever made. Willie and Waylon:

May – The freeway here melted! That was something. I got sick as hell with tonsillitis and it stayed. Ran the Bay to Breakers! Naked people everywhere! Run! The square foot garden started giving us things:

June – My friend Bob died. I rode on a freaking motorcycle in the Dyke March, a dream come true. AND MY DIGIT CAME HOME. Came back after walking for four months, literally almost dead. Wouldn’t have lived another day, we think. Didn’t think he’d live another hour after he came in. But from wherever he’d been accidentally transported to (Seattle? Vegas?), he walked home. Went from 17 pounds to 7. Back end wide with wounds. One eye almost gone. But he made it home. My heart lived.

July – My birthday! I already had the best present I could ever want. Held a sweater raffle, and you lovely people paid every cent of his HUGE medical bills, with money left over for Milo and Best Friends. He went from being the Cat of My Heart to the Cat of Our Hearts. I’m happy to share, and he doesn’t mind, either. Also, in other news, Harry Potter came out and my sister’s band, Knockturn Alley, made a huge splash in the Wizard Rock world! And I had my second tonsillectomy in five years. Digit and I recovered together. 

August – Digit and I recovered some more. I Ravelry-d. I typed The End on a novel. And then I entered that first draft in the Borders/Simon&Schuster First Romance contest.

September – Camilla and Kirk got married! I rode my bike. I think I whined more than usual.

October – Was one of five finalists in the romance competition. WOOT! The Whoreshoes played Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, a great coup.  I went to New York! Rhinebeck!

November – I won Nanowrimo for the second time, writing more than 50,000 words during the month. Saw my first Raiders game. Got bangs. Put up a Christmas tree for the very first time as an adult. (Must take that down now.) Digit continued to get better, eat two cans of cat food a day, and still maintain his grumpy disposition.

December – Mellow. Early Xmas with my folks, on-time Xmas with La’s. Found out I am allergic to soy lecithin. Saw SNOW!

So to you and yours, Happy New Year. Here’s to a wonderful 2008. (Man, I keep typing 2009. What’s up with that?)

Good morning, my schmittens. How are you? I’m fine, feeling a little under the weather, but I think that’s due to the THREE Manhattans I had last night. Just two is enough to snocker me, and the third was probably an unwise decision. I don’t feel sick, really, I just feel…. weak. My legs ache. You might know the feeling. Maybe.

But I had such a good time. Lala and I end up having this kind of night quite often (not usually with three Manhattans, thank god), where we make a little dinner (she cooked good pork) and wind up spending the whole night sitting at the dining table, goin’ on about everything and nothing. We moved from the table after dinner and ended up in my yarn room, talking about music, listening to Concrete Blonde, of all things, and I realized yet again that I am so lucky to be with and live with such an amazing person, a person that fascinates me, and challenges me, and believes in me. Yep, we’re both pains in the ass sometimes, but we’re really damn good together.

That is so rad.

It’s been a great year.

Tonight the Whoreshoes play Amnesia with Rube Waddell, and we’ll be bringing 2008 in with style and perhaps a little less alcohol than last night. You should come if you can.

(Also of interest to locals: My friend Kira has a couple of classes coming up — she’s a great teacher and you would enjoy either one, I think: The Cocoon Sweater (baby sweater! So cute!) and Perforated Gloves (I love these). Even if you ain’t local, you should go click and look. Yep.)

Happy New Year, all!

I am in bed, nursing something annoying which I shall tell you about in good time, but first let me say that I had wonderful Christmases. The first one I already told you about, with my family on the coast.

The second one was with my family in Idaho, the in-laws, and IT SNOWED. I don’t think anyone except for Lala’s family knows how crazy I get in snow. It’s so foreign and interesting and cold and soft and fluffy and pretty and new snow does things I don’t expect it to, like NOT BE UNDER PARKED CARS! That’s just weird. And it blows on the road. Rain doesn’t blow like that! It’s so pretty! I love it! It’s my favorite weather! (I bow, of course, to those of you who have so much snow to spare they’d like to shove some my direction. Feel free! Mail it to me, and I’ll play in it!)

I got to wear knitted items, and I wore them with sheer determination. When exiting the car to go to the house, I would put on my hat and mittens and scarf, even though it’s a short walk, and it wasn’t really that cold. But I could, and I did. Because it was SNOWING! And we walked around a lot in it, and I think I might have gotten frostbite. In my cheeks, you know. Or maybe chillblains. Or windchill? Lala is rolling her eyes right now, as are you in the frozen north but HOW FUN!

That is not dandruff, folks.

And Christmas itself was lovely. While the standing rib roast was in the oven, we went to view the Christmas lights in the botanical gardens. Pictures to follow sometime, hopefully. When we got home, Lala and I made potatoes and asparagus and salad, and we ate. Couldn’t have been easier. Then we sat around the table and Tony, my father-in-law, put on stacks of Kingston Trio records and he and mom-Jeannie and I sat singing for hours. Lala listened, and appeared to like it. Excellent, lovely trip. I’m so glad I got to go.

But today, whew. I’m in bed, recovering from some kind of belly-unhappiness attack, and I think I know what it is. I’ve been fighting allergic reactions, mostly the facial lip/eye swelling kind, for a while now, similar to my MSG reactions, and I’ve narrowed it down (pretty easily, in fact) to soy lecithin. Every time I eat chocolate, I swell up. Soy sauce hasn’t been treating me well. Yesterday at work, trying to avoid all the chocolate surrounding me on all the flat surfaces, I was proud of myself for having only a sugar cookie and some wheat thins. Then the roof of my mouth started to itch, and my belly started to hurt badly. I read labels — both the cookie and the wheat thins had soy lecithin. WHY do they have soy lecithin? So annoying. The tummy upset got bad, and I’m still felled by it, so spending some time prone today. I’ll catch up on blog-reading, that’s a good thing.

I am certainly making an appointment with an allergist. Another one. But a question for you geniuses: Who’s allergic to soy lecithin or soy products? What are your symptoms? And how can I face life without sushi (without soy sauce, it is pointless) and chocolate? O, Cadbury Creme Egg, do not leave me in my time of need! WTF? Help!   

Brrr. It’s cold. And here at Chez Hehu, we do what we can to stave off the chill.

And one of my main man Digit, taken while we were at the little mama’s house:

He’s sitting on a sweater I’m going to attempt to duplicate, and I have a brain teaser for you Nordic knitters (Janine, I’m looking at you). This was made in Norway for my mother forty-ish years ago. The woman who made it was from the Shetland Islands and married a Norwegian. And there’s something going on here that I’ve never seen. Seems that she picked up and knit the collar, fine and dandy. Then she made one purl ridge at the top of the collar and started knitting a stockinette facing that you can see (the solid green) above. Another picture (turned sideways) here:

And here:

So you can see the facing not only gets used as a kind of hem-binding along the steek edges, but it makes the button band, as well.

I understand the construction. I understand how to knit it. What I’m not getting is how to attach it so neatly. I have pulled those seams apart and looked between the stitches, and while it looks like the knitter used a machine to reinforce the steek, I can’t for the life of me figure out how she used that long strip so neatly — as a perfect ribbed button-band, and as a stockinette facing to case the steek. She’s using that strip in two ways, and must require two perfect seams. Is there anything written about how to do this well? How, exactly, to sew it? Anyone?

That is the Christmas puzzle I leave you with. I’m off for Boise tomorrow. Snow! Skiing! So excited! Back next week. Much love to you, my pets.

Hello, my chickens.

I have been internet-less! By choice, not by anything else, and it’s been nice. I’m at the parents’ house right now, and I’m stealing just a few minutes to say hello because I miss you! I do!

We had a very sweet, very nice, impromptu Christmas visit (I’ll be with Lala’s family in Boise for the real day). Sisters Christy and Bethany were here already on Sunday and Monday, helping get the tree, and I came down on Monday morning. We did gifts (from them to me and from me to them) and it felt like Christmas morning, only with a little less fanfare, which was lovely. We even had stollen, our traditional Christmas breakfast. No one makes it like Mom, although Trader Joe’s isn’t bad.

I came away with SUCH a haul. A sock-dying kit, a subscription to the New Yorker (thank goodness I will be smart again), the sweatshirt that I wanted, the BEST tee-shirt evar (will post a picture sometime, it’s very wool related), and a copy of my great-great grandfather’s autobiography — Jim Herron was the first sheriff of the Oklahoma Panhandle (before it was such a thing) and then got accused of cattle-rustling, so lived for fifty years on the lam, on the Owl-Hoot Trail. It’s pretty well-written, actually. I’m loving it. And Christy found it on Amazon. Seriously, the internet is an amazing place, isn’t it?

Yesterday Mom and I did a massive grocery shop, and today we’ll just have fun. Going to the bead store, and the yarn store, and a winery or two…. Then tonight I’ll drive myself and The Cat home. Digit has been here, being admired by all his Arroyo Grande fans. He’s been kind of a jerk, as usual, bouncing poor Mouse, Mom’s old timid kitty, and waking me at 3:30 in the morning by yowling. But we’re glad to be here together, that’s all I know.

Oh, and we listened to a tape we recorded twenty-three years ago — I was twelve-ish, and the first thing you can hear me talking about is knitting. And interestingly enough, I talk about knitting a plain row, then a purl row. Knit a plain row, then a purl row. I think because I learned the basic stitches from Mom at age five or six and then taught myself everything else, I called the knit stitch the plain stitch. I remember calling it that, for years and years and years. Also, I knew I was bossy. Yes, I did. You can hear me bossing Christy and Beth around, which they took with grace. But such a ham! I sing! I play the piano! I identify myself by first and last name as least twice, as if people will someday be interested in listening in. Which I was. So I was right.

In his dreams, Digit is the Fishing Cat.
Oh. My. God.