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Got a great email from Jane of the Venice-Adventure who said to my “This…. Was going to be this…..” entry from yesterday, “Why is Rachael trying to knit a baby?” And then she said various charming things about me and this blog, none true, and attached this picture which made my morning. They don’t have a dog.

As to the pattern for the baby sweater, I don’t really have one. I have the beginnings of it written down as follows (from unknown source):

Bring on the SpitUp Baby Sweater

With sport-weight yarn and size 5(US) needles, cast on 22 st. Row1: P3, place marker (PM), P2, PM, P12, PM, P2, PM, P3. Row3: Knit across, increasing on both sides of marker by knitting into front and back of st before and after each marker (8 increased stitches). Row3: Purl.

Now the Rachael part: Repeat rows 2 and 3 until you think it’s big enough (that’s the hard part for non-mom me). Separate for sleeves by knitting to them, placing them on scrap yarn holders, and connecting the body portions. Knit the cardigan body until it’s long enough. Change colors and rib the bottom about four or five rows. Bind off. Go back, pick up sleeve stitches, knit down about three or four inches, change colors and rib 3 or 4 rows. Bind off, sew sleeve seams. Using the contrast yarn, pick up stitches all around sides and neck, rib four or five rows, putting in button holes at appropriate spacings, bind off. Add buttons (always my LEAST favorite part). Voila.

Sorry it’s not more scientific. I knit loosely, so I actually use size 4(US). Sometimes I use worsted weight and start at casting on about 18 stitches and modifying.

It’s my weekend! I have Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays off – I love having midweek days off ‘cause I can run around and do things while it’s less crowded. Hate crowds. Today I’m getting checked for glasses. After a scary weird episode last week where I saw jagged lines across my vision and then couldn’t focus on anything for about thirty minutes, and after reading darling Greta’s trials and tribs with her eyes, I’m not putting it off anymore. Can I just say to the salesperson, in a very little voice, I want super-cute glasses, please?

My eyes were SO bad while I was growing up that by the time I was six I was wearing bifocals. And I HATED my glasses. Despised them. At one point, when I was perhaps eight or nine, I I lost my glasses. I remember seriously not knowing where they had gone. I was standing on the stairs that led to my attic bedroom and my mother confronted me, thrusting my muddy glasses at me. “I. Found. THESE. Buried. In. The. GARDEN.”

I didn’t remember burying them. Truly and honestly. Maybe Christy buried them for me, but I don’t think so. I think I must have hated them so much that I subconsciously took ‘em out there and stuck them in the ground, hoping that either I’d never see them again, or…. or what? We’d grow a glasses-tree and all the kids would want some and I’d finally be cool? Dunno. Don’t remember.

As I grew, though, the farsightedness got better and better and finally I had almost-perfect vision. I was warned at age nineteen that someday my eyes would get bad again. That day has come. Dammit. I want really cute glasses, okay?

I’ll keep you posted.

This:

Was going to be this:

But I totally effed up, twice, and spent two days ripping. I finally figured out that I had started the garment twice using the wrong row for the right side, and those cables would never pop out. Damn it all to hell and back.

I know many people are accomplished froggers. They don’t mind pulling and rewinding and starting over. I MIND! I ain’t doing this again. It’s Mission Falls 1824 cotton, and I never knew how fab that stuff is. I’m making a ChicKami someday out of it, not that damn baby sweater.

This is more like it:

Easy, quick, cute enough, just needs some buttons and I’ll be done. I know it’s not half as impressive, but the baby’s gonna throw up all over it, so it’ll be fine. Yow!

almost my weekend almost my weekend almost my weekend almost my weekend almost my weekend almost my weekend almost my weekend almost my weekend almost my weekend……

Only ten hours off last night, and that makes it hard to get enough time to sleep, let alone write…. I hate it when I slip into using ellipses…. all the time…..

Enough. Enjoy your day!

First of all, let me answer a couple of people before they come a-knocking – the Noro raglan took about eight skeins. Maybe a little less, but let’s call it eight and the small size is pretty darn safe. Or call it ten and make a little Booga J bag out of the leftovers…..

And oo-la-la. This one makes me want to sing. It’s Sunday morning. Shawl we? I know we’ve seen it before, but let’s see it again: It’s Marcy’s and it’s fabulous.

I think the “draped over a chair” theme has to stick. Go check out her hair, too. Cute as a bug. That’s what I want MY hair to look like.

So I’ve done a little housekeeping. A little Italian upkeep – to the left are my Italy emails from the last three trips. The first was when I went alone to Venice for a week and then met a couple of friends for the grand tour. The second was Mama and me, two months after September 11th. The third is the latest one (prolly the most fun to read, since I was alone for the whole trip). They’re not for the faint of heart. Read only if you’re 1) deeply in love with Italy or 2) want to be. They’re saccharine love notes, I know. The only way to go.

What’s cool about them, though, is that they’re also posted on my old site. Every once in a while I get random notes from strangers asking where to stay and what to do, especially in Venice. Recently I got this question from a woman in Britain looking for cheap digs for her family. I gave her some pointers and info on my favorite hotel, Hotel Bernardi-Semenzato. I just got this fantastic note and picture from her (reprinted with her permission, of course):

Hi Rachael

…. I just wanted to say a HUMUNGOUS thank you. We have just returned
from an utterly fantastic two days in wonderful Venice and your
recommendation came up trumps. They gave us a whole suite
(two bedrooms, bathroom, hallway) in the annex with views
over the canal – must be the room they’ve
taken their picture from for the front of the brochure/website.

We took advantage of the ridiculously cheap ‘city break’ flights that
operate from our local airport. We departed Monday evening and had all
day Tuesday and all day Wednesday in Venice, leaving late Wed. evening
for flight home. We managed to see alot and do alot (Basilica,
Campanile, Acadamia, Guggenheim, water taxi, gondola, ice cream, cake,
bread, pizza, several other churches, human sculpture man and amazing
guy from Russia playing ‘glasses’) and actually felt like we’d been
away for at least a week. I think we broke some sort of record when all
7 of us piled into a gondola!

Have you ever been over to the glass factories on Murano? Seeing glass
being blown was something we thought would be good to do with the kids
but hadn’t appreciated that it all happened on a different island and
we weren’t sure whether we’d have enough time. In retrospect, had we
known exactly where we were heading and what times they were open to
the public, we could have fitted it in. Spotted at least a couple of
gorgeous yarn shops and all those beautiful beads!!!!!!!

I was going to attach a picture of us all enjoying ourselves but there
isn’t one with us all on in the ones I’ve downloaded, so I’ll have to
wait until I get film developed. Meanwhile here is an interesting shot
looking up the Campanile with some of the children’s feet in the
foreground!!

Lots of love and many thanks again –
Jane

Isn’t that the coolest? Makes me SOOO happy to help people with Italy questions or dreams, ‘specially the city of my heart.

Happy Sunday!

Another Wave done!

This one is by Debbie in Germany and the colors are amazing. (And I love the shot of it over the chair – isn’t it romantic looking?)

It’s hot here. It’s six-thirty in the morning and it’s blessed hot. Gonna be a scorcher today, that horrible easterly wind that we get up here. Down south on the Central Coast where I grew up, we call these the Santa Anas. Here they’re just called crappy weather. They make you feel sick and sneezy and grumpy and generally cause people to punch each other unexpectedly. They aren’t pleasant. It’ll make for a busy Saturday at work.

God, I’m so slow-witted today. I got up and did my morning pages, and while the point is to “keep the hand moving,” my hand kept resting on the page while my mind traispsed off without me. That’s not uncommon, and it’s happening now, too, but I like to at least keep it somewhere in the same room…..

One cool thing though: Yesterday I lost my calendar. Before the job I have now, I had never been a calendar person, but with this job and the amount of overtime and rep work we do, we all have to LIVE by our calendars. If I want to get something done on a workday (like this writing right now), it has to be scheduled in. My calendar holds my official overtime balance and the running balances of how much time I owe people and how much is owed me. And it wasn’t in my purse.

It’s ALWAYS in my purse. I’m anal. I never lose anything. That’s an exaggeration. I assume that I’ve lost something in the last ten years, but if I did, I can’t remember what it was. I’m one of those people that walks in the door and hangs my keys on the peg without thinking. Everything has a place. And I couldn’t find the goddamned calendar. I tried not to panic and looked in every bag I carry to work, around the places where the purse had been, under the balls of yarn next to the bookcase (because doesn’t EVERYTHING fall into the yarn basket?). Nothing. I tried to put it out of my mind, but I wrote myself a note before bed. “Where is my calendar?” Then I put a little “Thanks” after it.

I went to sleep comfortable in the knowledge that my mind would figure it out while I slept. I woke up, ready to remember. And the calendar is…. I waited. Nothing.

Terribly disappointed. My subconscious had let me down.

I did my morning pages, thinking about it (maybe that’s why I kept wandering away from them).

Then I sat down to write this, looked down at the carry bag that I had torn apart four times yesterday and thought, oh, yeah. There’s one more pocket I never checked and I know it’s in there. It was.

Don’t know if that’s a result of asking the question or just recovering from a brain fart but it just goes to prove that it’s okay to be anal. It’s okay for everything to have a place. I can’t take the stress. Lord, how do people live with other people? I understand a little more now why my mother got so upset when we would borrow her hammer and leave it in the backyard. Or the treehouse. Or at Jenny’s under the boat. “Use your father’s hammer!” Yeah, well, Dad couldn’t find any of his six hammers (because they were in the back yard, or under the car, or at Paul’s on the roof), and we knew hers was always in the kitchen cabinet, hanging to the left of her gloves, above the rags, next to the box of matches and her pliers.

I swear there will be knitting pictures in the next few days. I’ve just been doing too much else and haven’t made much progress on the sweater I started. The unnamed sweater. I’m using a minty green yarn that looks kinda irritating and cloying while in the ball but has surprising flecks of yellow and blue when knit up. I already know I’ll NEVER be able to catch the color on a digital camera, so I’ve been slow to document its progress.

Slow to move, period. Must have coffee. Enjoy your weekend!
PS – Bethany’s still in MN! And Alissa did her own virtual ramble along the Texas highways. How fun! Anyone else?

All day training yesterday and today out in Antioch, a suburb just west of Hell, so no post today. Just – THANKS, y’all, for coming with me on the road trip. I loved loved loved getting your comments. Man. No wonder I used a lot of gas. There was a lot of cumulative weight in that little car.

Oh, it makes me happy……