Rachael

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.

Another sweater done. And damn it, it’s too big.

Which is fine if you’re having a Good Day, you know, when you’re confident and your jeans look and feel good and your hair is working and you’re wearing this cute throw-over sweater.

However, there are those days when the jeans DON’T fit right and you’re trying to take pictures of yourself in your new sweater at night without the flash because OHMYGOD the flash makes you look like someone you don’t recognize, someone with way more chins that you had yesterday. Not a confidence booster. And a big ole wide sweater on top of that.

Meanwhile, what I should have done was just wait for daylight to take the pictures. I eventually figured that out, after a frustrating hour, and now I like the sweater just fine. For the Good Days, anyway. I won’t wear this while I’m PMS’d, I know that for sure.

Anyway:

Hi, can you see where I carry my cell phone? Speaking of new jeans, I need some…..

Specs:
Pattern: Simple Knitted Bodice, by Stephanie Japel
Size: L (40-42) aka too big
Yarn: Brown Sheep Serendipity, color Chocolate Lily, 5 skeins used
Needle: US 5

I love this new yarn. It’s 60% cotton, 40% wool, and it’s soft and heathered and gorgeous. Also, I got dyelot #001 of this color, and I swear I felt like I was buying a first edition.

So in recap, I like the sweater. I like it for Good Days. I will NOT reknit (you know me, not a ripper), and I won’t even reseam it with the machine, although I was thinking about it. Might someday, but for now I’ll just enjoy the swinginess of it.

We at the Hehu household took our lives into our own hands last night. We did it for you, our loyal readers. We know that it is more important to amuse you with the Tiny Tiny Venetian Gondola Hat than it is to avoid bloodshed. Would that our world leaders understood the same.

In this game, which we’ve played before, all members must participate. This is sometimes harder than it looks. I’m sure you’re surprised by this information. Some participants, however, are not only willing, but look good doing it.

Lala, looking rakish while attending the stir-fry.

There are days when Harriet, at approximately 112 people-years old, thinks that she would be better off living in Australia. Yesterday might have been one of them.

Miss Idaho, however, carries it off with elan. A dash of panache. It was, after, made just for her (and sold off the Venetian tchochke carts by the handfuls for 4 euros each — why, oh, why didn’t we get two?)

And it is just so impossible to take a picture of a black cat with a cell-phone camera that after three thousand attempts with Waylon, we never even attempted it with Willie. This is as good as it got:

He was quite disappointed in us, I think. He likes fun, and while he got into the spirit of it at first, since WE were having so much fun, wearing a hat didn’t amuse him as much as it did us. Again, weird.

Adah of the Arctic, living on top of the fridge, though, she didn’t seem to mind that much. Equanimity, that’s what she’s after:

She’s a California girl, though, all the way, and prefers the sombrero style, thank you very much.

Who are we missing? Oh, yes! Me!

And my girl, Clara, who didn’t get it, even though she’s a border collie:

Whiskey tango foxtrot.

However, and I can say this with no reservation, Digit had the most fun. That’s not what we thought might happen when we started. It didn’t go so well at first:

This is when a sensible person gets out the bandages they are sure to need within seconds. Moves the phone closer, in case a call to 911 for an ambulance is necessary. We threw caution to the cold California winds, though.

He is yelling at me. Of course.

But that’s where he surprised us. Big time. HE DIDN’T MIND THE HAT.

Let me say that again. He didn’t mind the hat. Was it perhaps because the chin elastic just felt like a collar, or because he wore that cone for 5 weeks earlier this year? That whole experience of getting lost for four months changed him. He is a new man (although still nice and jerk-ish, just like we like him). He just didn’t trip on the hat, which made it even funnier. Seriously, we were dying.

Here he was keeping an eye on the kittens playing below him, under the table. Can you imagine what they thought? Looking up at our grumpy gondolier?

And then he just felt good. Sexy. He knew he looked sexy, and he worked it:

Look at that smooth fellow. My little Venetian polpetta. Gads, we love him, don’t we?

Hat game! Hat game! You should play a hat game!

(Lala, enroute to work (sucka!) says that I should remind you that she’s playing this Friday night, and I believe it’s at the Starry Plough. Details HERE.)

Today I am off work and I will dye my hair in preparation for La’s Christmas work party tonight. When your wife is the web developer for Good Vibrations, you don’t really dread the work party, I find. Good times.

Goldang it. I’ve been using something called Don’t Break the Chain. It’s just a blank calendar, and you click on a day to make it red. (You can put it on your iGoogle home page so you see it every time you’re online.) If you’re trying to do something (or not do something, I suppose), you get to make the day red when you succeed — the equivalent of putting a big ole X through the day with a marker.

I use it to track my writing days. In September, about half the days are red. In October, month of travel and extreme flu, only one day is red. Shameful. Every single day in November is red, and then I continued the trend until yesterday. For thirty-six days in a row, I wrote. I was following my Latin mantra, Nulla die sine linea, no day without a line. (No one really knows to whom to attribute the saying (perhaps Horace, Apelles or Pliny), but when I was a kid I read that George MacDonald went by it, so I took it then. Loved me some George MacDonald. I’d like a tattoo of it someday. The saying, not George.)

Yesterday I didn’t write. I remembered on my way home, and meant to, just so I could keep that string red, with no gaps, but I forgot. Now, on my little calendar it says, "You’ve been dropping the ball for one day straight," instead of "You’ve been getting things done for thirty-seven days straight."

So now I have to beat 36 days in a row. That’s going to be hard. Dang it.

I’m going to count this as today’s writing, though. I don’t always count blog-writing, and I didn’t count it at all in November, but sometimes a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, you know?

Also, this morning, at 4:15am, on my way to getting up for work, I smashed my pinky finger in the bedroom door. I have NO idea how I did that, pure talent, I suppose, because our door hardly shuts on a good day, but it hurt like a sumbitch. I slammed it right on the nail, and then stood at the foot of the bed, whimpering-crying until I woke Lala up. Because, really, all that wakes her up is whimpering. A brass band won’t wake her, but a dog whining will shoot her right out of bed. It’s really a miracle. Usually it’s Harriet, begging to go outside, but today it was me. It was nice to have her say "Poor baby."

I think that’s one of the best things about being with someone you love. Someone to say that. And she was still in bed, so there were no flying peas, another nice thing. Usually when I hit the deck, slipping on the tiled floor, or tripping over a cat, she rushes to the freezer to grab the peas. Lala has always kept peas in the freezer for bumps and bruises, but she hates them as a food item. She rushes up to me with the bag, holding it out, flinging it my direction in her haste to help, and is astonished when peas fly out in a green spray all around me. Nowhere in her imagination do people (like me) actually open the peas-bag to eat them. This has happened more than once in our house. I fall, bump myself, and then duck, dodging well-intentioned frozen flying peas. No, none of that this morning. Just me whinging, holding my throbbing finger, dreading the alarm clock, Lala mumbling nice things to me through a sleep-haze.

So no more writing. For today, anyway. For your viewing pleasure, I present the Kits. My brother- and sister-in-law are in Korea, so we are watching his Siamese kitten, Viking. When she came to our house, she was smaller than our kits, Willie and Waylon. I think we have been feeding her a bit too much.