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Taking a quick trip Home this weekend (my weekend, that is, which by now you know is the opposite of YOUR weekend).

Home, I’m sure you know is vastly different from home. For me, Home is the Central Coast, just south of San Luis Obispo, a little town called Arroyo Grande. Little h home is Oakland. There’s a world of difference between Home and home, and some of those differences are:

Strawberries
Clam chowder
Little Mama
Fog
Pops
No TV channels, cell phone reception, or fast internet connection

Therefore, when at Home, I knit a lot. Mom’s got some physical stuff going on, and I’m going home to kick some ass. Nicely. Sweetly. But firmly. Her doctors don’t seem to take her seriously, and how can you blame them? She’s the cutest thing ever. But HEY! She don’t feel so hot. They need to fix ‘er. Or I’ll know the reason why. I’m the biggest pushover in the world, seriously. Too Nice, according to all who know me, especially exes. But not when it comes to my family. Just try it. *balled fists*

Bethany’ll hate me, but here’s a shot of the little Mama and Bethy on a bench where we eat donuts in the mornings. (That was the last we saw of that leather jacket hung over the end of the bench — Beth’s heart is still broken about it. We drove away and left it behind. Shoot.)

Non-sequitur: Iris Dement makes me happy.

Off to pack a little (surreptitiously – if Digit gets wind of my road trip, he’ll won’t come back in tomorrow morning after his necessary potty run. Don’t tell him).

Oh, and go say hi to my knittin’ friend Laura, who has a new blog here and a preggers one here. And alison also posted an Eye Up shot of a hat, too! And Anne just slays me, no matter what.

I had eight hours off last night, got off at 11pm after a fourteen hour shift and I’m now back, at 7am for a twelve hour shift. I always forget that eight hours off doesn’t mean eight hours sleep. If you get off work and are asleep in bed in an hour, and get up one hour before you have to sit down at your terminal, you’re still only getting 6 hours. And who goes right to sleep like that? Not me, man. I’m thinking too many wild cashmere thoughts.

Like this, hanging in my bathroom:

That’s sin on a stick, baybee. It’s proving rather a pain in the ass to wind into balls. The swift and winder are ESSENTIAL, but it kind of sticks to itself on the swift, making the winding slow and tedious. It’ll be worth it, it’ll be worth it, it’ll be worth, I tell myself.

Of course, soon I’ll be spinning cashmere, I assume. My blog-friends are such freaking enablers. I love them, madly.

And one of them sent me a little treat not long ago, a glorious cone of some buttery yellow wool which I happily wound up into balls (I told someone the other day that I love winding so much that I’m about to wind the cat). Then I married it with a strand of the Paton’s Classic Wool in light natural that I used for the Must-Bolero and started working it into another Bucket-O-Chic (having given my blue one to Bethy–it looked way better on her).

I love the way this one turned out! BonneMarie ROCKS!

Now, for a full work day. I’m going to try to take it easy and hope the citizens are in happy, mellow moods. Yeah. Well, I’ll be in one, so that’s all that matters. Enjoy your day.

I have now officially gone crazy. You heard it here first.

Went to Marshalls with my friend Marama and found a little something. Okay, a big something. A big, cushy cashmere sweater, size men’s large. It was kind of gray/brown tweedy, and I LOVED it. I wore it around the store, begging Marama to tell me it was WAY too big for me.

– Nah, it’s all right.
– No, TELL me it’s too big.
– It’s kinda cute in that sloppy weekend way.
– I canNOT buy it.
– Fine. Don’t buy it, then.
– I HAVE to buy it.

Then I told her I was gonna buy it and rip it apart for the yarn. She looked at me like I had grown a third ear. But come on — it was huge, and the yarn itself was pretty heavy-gauge, as cashmere goes. Standing in the Marshalls aisle, I studied it: Looked to be about 6 thin plies, threads of gray, brown and a soft off-white. I examined the seams: It was made in pieces, not in the round, but I could see the seaming okay, and I thought I could do it. I figgered it would either be the best or the worst fifty bucks I had ever spent. (Fifty bucks! Imagine! At Marshalls! It had originally been two hundred, then marked to ninety-nine when it hit the discount store, and then another 50% off by the time I arrived. Meant to be, I tell you.)

Got home, and got nervous. So I tried it on.

Yep, a leetle big. Then I sat down and started snipping. Okay, ripping up sweaters is HARD. Especially when it’s fifty bucks of glorious cashmere. (Some people love it, some are ambivalent, but I am a cashmere whore. I mean it. It makes my stomach drop to touch the good stuff.)

I worked for about three hours on it and now it’s mostly in pieces and I managed to get one sleeve unravelled. I put it into a loose, curly skein using the swift, then wet the strands and hung them in the bathroom from a coat hanger, another coat hanger hung from the bottom (with a box of shower-curtain rings attached for weight.) When they’re dry, and straighter, I’m gonna wind them into balls.

Dude. Good thing I got that ballwinder and swift! (But if I hadn’t, I prolly wouldn’t have bought the sweater. Damn. Chicken or the egg?)

I hope it works I hope it works I hope it works. I want to make a nice, simple V-neck raglan, in this thick cashmere sin. Oh, yes. I’ll keep you posted.

And just for Friday fun, here’s where Adah slept last night. I didn’t have the heart to move her. It’s my overflow yarn basket, where I had thrown a couple of sweaters. And yes, that’s Indulgence to the left. Shhh.

P.S. Got some Imitrex from the doc yesterday for the migraines. Whoopee!

We put Bethany on the plane this morning. For those of you following her adventures, she’s my little sister (twenty-four, but I’ll call her Kiddo ‘til she’s eighty-two) and she’s out on the road, seeing the big ole country in her pickup truck named Tach. She left the truck in long-term parking in Atlanta in order to fly back for Christmas (which, you saw, was AWESOME) and now she’s back to the rambles. (Lord, I hope no one broke into her truck over the holiday. Cross your fingers for her….)

And you know how Mapquest is either really right or really wrong? Wrong this time, yep (I use Yahoo maps, myself). Got a leetle bit lost on our way to San Jose airport, but Bethany and I are so incredibly, overly fixated on being early that we managed to dump her curbside about two hours early. This was AFTER getting lost, and hitting a horrid snarl of traffic from a big accident, and two donuts each.

Here we is:

See, darling Greta? My sunglasses! Now, I’m home to play catch-up, all those things like bills and laundry that need to be done now that the fun is over…. (And a whole pile of yarn from the Boys needs to be swifted and ball-wound. Have I told you how much fun a swift and ball-winder are? Seriously, put a yarn purchase or two on hold and buy these things iffen you don’t already have them. When you get up to speed and the yarn is flying, FLYING, I tell you, onto the winder, it’s comparable to the feeling you get downhill skiing. Just for a second, but it’s there, I promise.)

Oh! Almost forgot: Go see The Station Agent. What a brilliant little jewel of a movie, enjoyable from the first moment to the last. Sigh. A good, wake-up-the-next-morning-and-think-Oh-That-Was-Nice-kind-of-movie. Enjoy.

Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for the comments on Orange Alert! Wore her last night to the movies, and she was warrrrmmmm…. (but not overly so, love Paton’s Classic Merino.)

Went to see Cold Mountain. Hmmm. I really don’t know how I feel about it, which is odd. I’m usually quite opinionated about movies (and lotsa other things, too, come to think of it). I enjoyed watching it. Mostly. I think. I remembered why I didn’t finish the book: It’s about WAR. I really hate war books and movies, ‘specially the ultra-realistic ones. This one had moments that saw me walking out of the theater.

(Didn’t tell my group this, but I left once during a particularly wrenching gonna-be-bloody-awful scene and came back after chatting with the candy people and washing my hands in the bathroom. And I couldn’t find my folks. I stood and stared at where I should have been sitting, but the group of four kicked back with their feet up on the railing in the front row were just too young. Shoulda been two guys and two gals, thirty-something range. The group I stared at was the same configuration, with a gap-seat for me where I should have been sitting, but they were all about nineteen. I TRIPPED for about three seconds. Then I giggled all the way back to my real seat down the hall in the right theater.)

It also had beautiful moments, incredible scenery (oh, Maggi, is that really North Carolina?), and truly stunning people (Jude AND Nicole? Perfect). Renee Zellweger, I have to admit, was amazing. I sat and actively enjoyed a great deal of it. Then I was grumpy upon leaving and remain rather ambivalent about it, and I’m still not sure why. Anyone seen it? Any thoughts?

Hey! More pop-culture:

Did you see Carrie’s arm-warmers on the Sex and the City premiere? Oh, my knit-gals are so cutting edge! Look:

Em’s:

Eve’s:

(And while we’re on the subject of her, Eve’s finished pretty-pretty Wave-Along, too!)

Of course, Carrie’s armers were blue camo fabric, but the sentiment is the same. She would have probably preferred hand-knit.

And I just have to address one of my comments. La Brainy says of Orange Alert: “What a great sweater! Is there any colour that DOESN’T look good on you? :)” Darling, please. It’s all in the digital camera. You have to know that for most pictures I post, I’ve taken at least ten more. You’re seeing the good stuff.

What you’re not seeing is this, where I appear to be addressing the spirit world. Or this, where I have lost my arms. Snort. Damn, every time I look at those I crack the hell up.

Last day with Bethany before we put her on the plane tomorrow…. Off to play!

https://rachaelherron.com/went_to_see_col/