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We went to my parents’ house — there was some talk of going to the in-laws’, which would have been fun, but poor Lala only got Monday and Tuesday off, and that’s not enough time to get to Idaho and back…..

But it was awesome — one of those perfect holidays where no one fights (I got bratty over a game of Taboo, but that’s to be expected, right? Those rules are so VAGUE and I LOVE to win), where the turkey is perfect, and the gifts are FANTASTIC. I mean, really, I ended up with a Tiffany necklace (from sister Christy), gorgeous earrings, new computer speakers, and the Nike +iPod running device, all from Lala. (iPod running! It charts your distance, just by clipping into your shoe! Woot!) And the new Jon Katz from Clara. Talk about a thoughtful border collie. And a spinning wheel which I’ve already enjoyed, from Mom and Dad, and a bunch of other wonderful gifts that I can’t remember now that I’m tired and ready for bed. We spent the day driving up the coast, stopping once in Paso Robles to look at fancy western shirts at the Boot Barn (where a couple of Very Straight women looked at us with slightly quizzical gazes — why was I so comfortable smoothing the shirt lines along Lala’s front? Hmmm).

A short, two-day trip, made perfect by the fact that Motel 6 allows dogs and doesn’t seem to mind how many you have as long as they’re quiet, which they blessedly were (although you’re technically only supposed to have just one, the desk clerk only said "whatever" with a shrug when I mentioned she might see us with more than one dog). And out of all the people I saw coming and going out of the Motel 6 rooms, only one room didn’t appear to have a dog in tow. People with pet allergies, beware. Pet lovers, take heart.

And who would want to leave Harriet behind, anyway?  Not us, that’s who.

    Lala would like me to add that this is not what her hair normally looks like — the camera distorts things, friends. Better coif-representation can be found elsewhere on the blog.

I got my wife one of the most un-romantic gifts EVER, a spice rack. But she had been begging for one for Christmas, and she was DEEELIGHTED to receive it. Magnetic, and everything! She actually said that I would have been in trouble had she NOT received it. And here I was feeling stupid about getting something so prosaic. She loved it, taking it out of the box immediately and playing with the lids like she was six and they were tinker-toys. Cute as hell.

I also did well with sister Christy:

I gave her a shiv. Yep, a knife. A wooden one, carved by one of the guys from the Old Crow Medicine Show. He carved it backstage when they were playing in Tahoe with Lala’s band, and while her bandmate Camilla had her hands on it for a while, it was headed for the trash when I lifted it at the end of the night. It was meant for Christy. I loved her reaction.

Bethany is getting a stereo for her truck from all of us:

And the little Mama is getting a dryer from us kids. For the first time in her WHOLE LIFE, my mother will use a dryer to dry her clothes. She is pretty happy about it, as she, ahem, hasn’t gotten any taller, although I will not say out loud that she has shrunk a tiny bit, and the clothesline that Dad put up in the backyard fifteen years ago, well, those trees are quite a bit taller now, ain’t they? Yes, they could lower the clothesline. No, we don’t like that solution and approve of Mom staying indoors in the inclement weather. Yay!

And she got socks:

Please ignore Miss Idaho in her party dress, trying to steal the limelight away from the possum/merino socks that the little Mama got for Xmas (patten: generic toe-up, with a lace rose-leaf panel thrown in once the toe is done). Soft, soft, soft, and just what Mom needs — she had darned the last pair I made until they were screaming for mercy. Just pathetic, for the mother of a Knitter.

And then, of course, we had to go for a Beach Walk. It was a lovely sixty-eight degrees in Pismo Beach, and the dogs were happy to feel the sand between their toes, although they were sad to have to wear their leashes (stupid laws. Whatever).

The sisters were there, too:

Of course, a better, more accurate picture of the proceedings can be seen HERE.

Lala found a quarter! Hooray!

Okay, we’re home now, and I’m listening to my FABULOUS new Joan Osborne CD, Pretty Little Stranger. No, really, go check it out. Besides that unfortunate God song that was so unreasonably popular, she has an AMAZING voice, and this is her country/Americana album, produced by Dolly Parton’s guy, with backups done by Alison Krauss, Vince Gill, and Dan Tyminski. It’s really great stuff — old-country sounding, with the warmth and strength of her voice at the front. It’s awesome. Another gift.

Yay for Christmas and family and holidays and drives with dogs, especially long drives with small dogs who keep your lap warm. Enjoy the rest of the week, won’t you?

The holiday Google graphic that’s been changing has been SO CUTE. I mean, come on, knitting kangaroos? What could be better?

Graphics can be seen HERE. (As I post this, only the first four images have gone up, and it looks like Mama and Baby Roo were doing a little knitting, and then gave a strange-looking sweater to a kangaroo friend. Do you think she’ll be seen wearing it in the next image, with two heads, a big mama one and little baby one, poking out?) (Hey! I think Reader Garnprinzessin is right — that IS a Kangaroo Papa and Baby Roo knitting FOR Mama. Oh, that’s even CUTER. And say hello to Rachael’s gender-stereotyping. Sheesh.)

Okay, I’m home for the holidays in a few hours, so enjoy your family and whatever you’re doing this weekend, hug on someone, knit a little bit, and laugh a lot. Be kind. Knit a sweater for a kangaroo. (And a special hello to Reader Maria who hugged me at Royal Coffee yesterday — you made my day.)

Yay!

Found via Jill, I leave you for the weekend with this. It’s brilliant. A second-violinist joke! Hahahaha! Never not funny! Plus, the end is wickedly funny. Good music-geek stuff.

Why does it feel like Christmas is about ten seconds away?
It’s still only Friday. Oh, I know why. Because with driving time, I have
worked EIGHTY SEVEN hours this week. Today I had eight hours off between
shifts. Excuse me while I yawn eight or nine more times.

So. 

If you were here, you’d see me looking up at the clock,
shifting around in my chair, biting my pen, taking a sip of water. Can you imagine? Have you ever heard of such a thing?

I am BORING. I am trying to think of some way to amuse you,
some trick that I can pull out of a hat for this long drive to Grandma’s house.
You kicking the back of the seat is NOT going to get us there any faster, young
lady (or gent). 

So this: What’s your accidental favorite handmade sweater?
By that I mean this: I have a few favorite sweaters. I love the recent Central Park hoodie, and the cashmere one with the
Venetian buttons. I wear my purple alpaca quite often. I’m proud of them – they
fit and they look good. (Click the Finito sweater on the left to see iffen you want.)

And then there’s the orange one. Remember Orange Alert?

Three years ago, I made it with a panel of five-stitch stockinette running down the
middle, because I was going to make it into a cardigan. But I never did, just
wore it occasionally as a pullover, usually while camping. 

It’s Paton’s Classic Wool, so it pills something fierce, and
it looks all raggedy now, in any light. And for the last two months, I have been
living in it. Ever since the weather changed, it’s my dog-walking sweater. I
pull it on over my tee-shirt on my way to the dog park or the beach, and
unfortunately for those around me, I don’t usually take it off when I get home.
It’s the most comfortable, lightweight, warm-but-not-too-hot sweater I’ve ever
worn. And because I don’t care about it, have never Loved it, I’m not concerned
about the dogs jumping up all muddy or sandy on me. I don’t care about pulling
the sleeves up past my elbows to do dishes. It’s just right.

I keep a hat, and some big clunky mittens (have I shown you
those yet?) and a scarf and a big zipped hoodie in case of rain in the back of
the car, and I pull them on as I load dogs in or out of the car. But the
sweater, it stays on, and now I capital-L Love it.

Walking dogs, in the cool sun.

So, tell me about your favorite sweater, the one you wear the most, even if it’s not the best one, the most elegant one you ever made. Send me a link to a picture. Entertain me. Please?

https://rachaelherron.com/why_does_it_fee/

Last week,
something strange happened to me. Lala noticed it first, I didn’t. She asked, one
evening, “Are your hands blue?

No, of
course they weren’t, I said.

Only, hey, check it out, when I really looked at
them and quit telling her that I had blue undertones to my skin naturally, it
kinda DID kind of look like my hands were blue. I felt fine. A little cold, but
it was cold in the house. My hands didn’t hurt, weren’t tingling. They were
just blue.

I did a
little online research, only a bit, I swear, because I know that madness lives
at the end of that road, and decided it was nothing to worry about if it didn’t
happen again.

But then
Sunday night, Lala noticed it again. “Your hands! Are blue!”

“Are they?”
I wasn’t convinced, but they got rapidly bluer as the night wore on. A friend
came over and told me my hands looked as if they had been dyed. Both Lala
and she were worried, and they started me worrying a bit. My hands were SO blue.
Grey-blue, that moldy-blue look that skin gets when there’s not enough oxygen
going through it. 

And I felt
fine. Completely fine. Again, quite cold, but dude, the house is cold and I’ve
been really tired, which makes my susceptibility to chills that much greater.

So I got in
the tub to warm up.

After a
while in the hot water, I’d warmed up. I put the book down and planned on just
lying there for a while, but I glanced down at my legs poking out of the
bubbles.

My thighs
were blue. I called Lala in and she confirmed: my legs were that ashen
grey-blue all the way down to my sock line, below which my feet were happy and
warm and pink.

What the
hell?

And you
know what? It still took me a few minutes to figure out.

Then it clicked. I started
scrubbing my legs and hands. I HAD washed my hands before this, of course, but
now I scrubbed them with all my might. The
bubbles turned blue. My skin went pink.

Dude.

New jeans,
from Gap. That I’d worn twice without washing first, the first time a week ago
and then again on Sunday night, when our friend had been over. I’d been
standing in the kitchen talking with her, my hands shoved into my back pocket,
my hands getting bluer and bluer as the night and the dye wore on.

Best diagnosis ever.

 

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Those boxes on the right are all Christmas things, so they won’t stay there. The dogs are usually cluttered like that, nothing I can do about them. Oh, this felt good to do. I worked for HOURS in my room and still didn’t get everything done. It isn’t even that evident in these pictures, but my room had gotten out of control. I maintain a pretty tight rein on the rest of the house (Lala, of course, has her room to mess up just like I do mine), and it’s usually pretty neat and clean, but my room was filling up with clothing and yarn piled up on the floor, papers piled in leaning stacks….. 

You can see in the top photo above the printer my horizontal filing system. I have a method that works for me — I stack all completed paperwork and get around to filing it maybe once or twice a year. In the meantime, the pile leans and pushes against the sock yarn basket, making skeins jump behind that bookcase, which I hate, because it’s always the skein I need next.

Instead of simply filing that pile and starting over, I went to Ikea and bought pretty paper boxes to maintain my system. Isn’t that kind of sick?

I didn’t touch the yarn, though. I was recovering from being sick. I’m not crazy. That’s a big commitment, one I’m not sure I’m yet ready for.

Other exciting news: In addition to having gained two pounds since her spaying, Miss Idaho, now eight little plump pounds of spazzy love, can almost not fit in my yarn bag. It amused me to make Lala hold it on the sidewalk:

OOOH! I forgot — I also got the organizing bug for the front sunporch. It’s been a completely unutilized room in our house — a dumping zone for boxes and things we didn’t know what to do with, a broken toilet tank lid (now that I think about it, why the hell didn’t I just throw that out?), a rope swing still in the box, a tent, boxes of papers and books to recycle, boxes that need to be kept but had no other home. It was ugly and I hadn’t ever gotten to the point where I could completely go blind to it, and it was visible from the living room through the inside window (which I love), making it that much worse. So I took a bunch of junk out, covered the stuff I can’t move yet with pretty fabric and set up a writing spot.

The chair will eventually be replaced with a comfy armchair from the thrift store or Craigslist, but I haven’t reached that point yet. Soon.

This room now makes me happy. That’s so cool. I love home.

https://rachaelherron.com/before_after_th/