butterflies and wishes

Next Saturday I'm participating in a Walk for Lupus in my Mom's memory. Lupus is an autoimmune disease where the body produces antibodies which attack the patient's own body causing inflammation, damage and pain. So why the picture of the butterfly? Two thirds of lupus patients suffer from chronic skin rashes and in many lupus patients the characteristic rash is butterfly-shaped across the cheeks and nose. As a result the butterfly symbol has been adopted by Lupus organizations around the world. Monarch butterflies were a particular favourite of Mom's - this picture I snapped a few years ago was her pick for her personal stationery.

At the end of the walk there's a butterfly release planned and I've arranged for a butterfly to be released in Mom's honour. I'm really looking forward to that. There's apparently a legend that by whispering a wish to a butterfly and giving it freedom, the butterfly will carry the wish to heaven and it will be granted. I'm guessing we'll all be wishing the same thing - an effective treatment and cure for this terrible disease.

making my own luck

After breakfast this morning I knit a couple more rounds bringing my second Soft Serve sock back to where I was a couple of days ago. All the rewound yarn has been reknit. Phew. And this time, I threaded a lifeline after completing the heel - that way, if I have to rip back at least I can save all the work done to that point.

The third time may be lucky but I'm not relying on luck alone. These socks are put side after dark; the light in our living room just isn't bright enough to keep close watch on tiny dark stitches on tiny dark needles. I'm counting stitches every row - just to make sure that errors are caught and corrected quickly. And, if all else fails, there's that lifeline. All prudent steps, I think, to ensure my own lucky outcome!

Montague Shelf Liners

As I've mentioned before, this is the year in which I'm determined to knit through the yarn in my stash. All the DK yarn is knit - the last scraps were knit up into little hats for a fundraising drive in Ireland. All the full skeins of sock yarn are matched up to patterns for Christmas knitting. I've got a few ideas for the worsted yarn - sweaters, mittens and blankets. But two boxes of natural colour dishcloth cotton had me stumped. That'd be a lot of dishcloths!

A few weeks ago at a friend's cottage I noticed that she had almost a dozen tea towels folded to line her open shelves in the kitchen. And it dawned on me - dishcloth cotton might be a good choice for knit shelf liners! With its seed stitch borders and lace pattern inset, Montague looked like the perfect pattern choice. I ordered the pattern, waited a week or two for the pattern book to arrive by post, and then cast on. The first bit of good news is that I've been able to achieve exactly the size needed. The second bit of good news is that after a couple of days of knitting I'm about a quarter of the way through the first shelf-liner. Considering there are three shelves to line, I'm very relieved that it's knitting up quickly.

working and reworking

A particularly difficult week at work wound up with an absolutely brutal Friday. Faced with projects that overwhelmed them, sales and production alternately dragged their feet and waffled until the 11th hour when they dumped the whole mess in my lap and ran. So Friday turned into a marathon workday of questioning and sorting, prepping and fixing until late into the evening.

On the train ride home, I reflected about the whole mess. I can't help but feel that I owe our clients my best efforts to make their work come right, BUT ... my coworkers won't learn anything from this except that when time runs short I'll do their jobs for them. Aargh. My conclusion? I need to rebalance the situation.

So this weekend, Gavin and I spent our time quietly at home. I finished my library book, Her Fearful Symmetry. It was readable and I enjoyed it at times, but I'm never entirely satisfied with novels when I dislike most of the characters or when the ending is lame. I spent a couple of hours in the garden, mostly tidying my daylilies to remove spent flower stalks and browned leaves. I removed an Artemesia Silver Mound which was in the way of a Bird's Nest Spruce. We went to the movies to see The Expendables. The movie won't win any awards, but it was surprisingly funny and entertaining despite all the comic book gore. And I've reworked my second Soft Serve sock up to the heel. All in all, a satisfying weekend. Now let's see what this week brings.

a third try

The earliest citation found for the expression "third time's a charm" comes from the US in The Weekly Sentinel, June 1912:

That Mrs. Martha Carliss evidently believes in peace and happiness in wedlock and that she probably thinks third time's a charm is shown by the fact that she was granted a license today to marry Andrew W. Mowery.

Presumably the third try is more likely to succeed than the previous two tries. Apparently, two tries is not enough - there's some sort of virtue in not giving up and quitting after trying twice. Four tries? Too much - like beating your head against a brick wall.

I'm going to find out today whether the third time's a charm for this second Soft Serve Sock. I ripped out the first try after a couple of inches of the instep after noticing an error that created a jog in the pattern. And yesterday I ripped out my second try, an almost entirely completed sock. A couple of stitches had dropped from the back end of the needle and laddered down several rows. Tiny needles + dark splitty yarn + traveling stitches = a disaster I couldn't fix. But I'm determined; I'll give it one more try before I put this project in a Time Out and knit a dishcloth instead.

surprises

My second Soft Serve sock is turning out to be a fraternal twin of the first sock. No surprise there. But as I prepared the photo for this blog post I noticed a jog in the pattern across the instep of the second sock. That's odd, I thought. Then I looked more carefully at the sock. Surprise! I did mess up and I'm going to have to rip back an inch or so to fix it. Grrrrr.

There's another surprise I've been working on over the last few weeks - a surprise Caribbean trip for Gavin's birthday in November. I just about pulled it off too. The resort package was selected, the flights and hotel were booked and I'd arranged for time off. Everything was going according to plan. Until I came out of the shower to find Gavin on the phone with the travel agency insisting we hadn't booked any trip. I took the phone, confirmed our advance seat selections and 'fessed up to Gavin, ruining the surprise. Drat.

It feels a bit like bad luck, but it's hard to take it all very seriously. After all, it's not so bad to notice a mistake a few rows back - it'd be much worse if the sock was nearly done. And it's not so bad that Gavin knows about the trip - I was busting to tell him anyway.

a stay at home weekend

This weekend was our quiet, stay at home weekend. A weekend to do chores like grocery shopping and laundry. A weekend to tidy and fix things around the house. A weekend to poke through cupboards and cook up stuff that's been cluttering shelves for months. And the perfect weekend to replace the track lighting in the kitchen with a ceiling fan and overhead light.

Getting through our to do list was not an unqualified success. We did have tacos for supper last night to use up the taco shells hiding at the back of the cupboard, but the shells were very stale so we composted the bulk of the package and ate taco fillings on toast. I did bake apple pie on Sunday morning so that lone can of pie filling is used up after sitting on the shelf for over a year. Gavin did install the ceiling fan in the kitchen only to discover that the remote control turned on the bedroom fan as well, necessitating an uninstall of the bedroom fan, a change of code and then reinstall. At least the laundry got done without a hitch.

And so did the first Soft Serve Sock ... get done without a hitch, that is. The pattern is really easy and creates quite a dramatic effect. We'll just have to see what the second sock looks like. Based on what the second half of the Zauerball looks like, it's not going to look much like the first.