Random Yarns

I'm so HUUUUUNNNNGRY

Today is day one of the Low Iodine Diet. 

It sucks.

I'm hungry. I know exactly what I can't have. I know I can't have cereal and milk, microwave popcorn with the kids, a sandwich of any type. Ice cream or cookies or chocolate. But I didn't plan what I CAN have!

Breakfast: Scrambled? Nope. Eggs not allowed. Cereal and Milk? Nope. Milk not allowed. Frozen Waffles? Nope. Not OK either. That left Oatmeal. With no milk. boring.

Lunch: Sandwich? Nope. Can't have commercially baked bread, can't have any luncheon meat, can't have peanut butter. Soup? Nope. Can't have anything canned, and can't use chicken bouillon to make my own even. That left a big salad with oil and vinegar dressing. Can't even use a bottled dressing.

Dinner: Friday is pizza night. Can't have that. Baked potato? Yeah, but can't have butter, margarine, sour cream or cheese on it. And I can't eat the skin (which I happen to really like). That left me to drizzle it with olive oil, and douse it heavily with Mrs. Dash. And then augment the meal with Frosted Mini Wheats cereal with Coffee Mate on it. Almost edible.

Dessert: No cookies or ice cream. My mother brought me Jello for dessert. But is has FD&C Red #40 in it, and couldn't use it. So I ate Cool Whip out of the container. Not so yummy with nothing under it.

Cyber Awesomeness

Not that there has ever been any doubt about the character of KnitBloggers, but if you need a reaffirmation of the goodness of fiber people, check out the comments on my Peanut Butter Brain post. Moved to tears, I was.

Progress continues on the Eris sweater, though slowly. I am only able to knit about 20 minutes out of a hour, else my wrists get too sore. I'm using Elann.com's Peruvian Highland, a budget yarn, to be sure. The price is certainly right, and the only reason that I am putting up with the knots in this stuff. After finding 2 knots in less than 5 yards (which necessitated ripping back to the under arm to rejoin), and at least one knot in the last three balls, I've taken to re-winding the center-pull balls. Wouldn't you know it, after winding 3 balls, I've not found a single knot?  Actually, except for the knots, I'm pretty happy with the character of this yarn.

Last night, while watching the Olympic Women's Fog Slalom, I began contemplating my next project. It will need to come out of my stash, as I'm on a yarn diet. I have the ingredients for the following dishes:

Eight Skeins of Artisan Merino (purchased from Ebay for the amazing price $41 including shipping),for the Tina Shawl from Fiddlesticks Knitting.

The Great American Aran Afghan, with Lion Brand WoolEase

Flake Cowl from Alchemy Yarns

Koigu for Charlotte's Web

Lace weight Hemp for Lacy Accents from FiberTrends

Red and Blue Koigu. Originally for a scarf. But since I've discovered that Koigu Socks are the ultimate in luxury.

Fingering Weight charcoal alpaca for Branching Out scarf.

A motley collection of sock yarns for 8 pairs of socks.

What do you think?

Olympic Observations

I love the Olympics. The vicarious thrill of victory, watching a slew of finely tuned athletes perform at a  superhuman level, all while limiting my personal energy expendature to approximately 6 calories, the amount burned while hitching my ass up to pull the remote out from under my left cheek.

Daytime Soaps ain't  got nuthin on the Ice Dancing world. I'm sure by now you've heard of The Glare.  I'm convinced some of the couples don't own a full length mirror. If they did, they'd never set foot out looking like that.

A good percentage  of winter olympians might possibly be crazy and/or suicidal. I mean, how else could you explain Luge, Bobsled, Skeleton, Ski Jumping?

I'm trying really hard to like Curling. But its not doing it for me. Too much screaming and yelling. I look up from my knitting, expecting to see some poor soul pinned under one of the 50 lb stones. But no, they're just scrubbing the ice. Again. No body checks, no icy glares, no high speed crashes. Not even any flashy outfits. I gave up.

I'm lovin those Canadian women on the Hockey team though. I felt a surge of estrogen, just watching those ladies go. Kick-ass!

Peanut Butter Brain

Once upon a time, in a previous life on the opposite shore, I had a life. I worked full time, putting in 10 of those hours working at home while caring for two children. I cooked real meals, I was a Sunday School teacher every single Sunday for a year ( thought I was going to help out once in a while, but got roped into full blown teaching. I was too chicken to back out), I volunteered about 20 hours a month for my son's preschool. I arranged play dates, I kept a reasonably clean home (reasonable being you weren't likely to get the plague from my toilet, or stick to the kitchen floor). I knit, read, and even found time to be nice to my poor husband. I even  worked right up until the near moment my kids were born (I'm not kidding. I was at work the day I went into labor with Alex, and was at work only 2 hours before Ryan came). I was.... SuperMom!

Today, after 11 hours of sleep, I got up, feeling as if I just climbed into bed 45 minutes earlier. I fed the kids dry cereal in front of the TV. I managed to get showered and dressed by 11AM.  We went to the grocery store, and somehow I mixed up a meatloaf for dinner. Husband had to put it into the oven for me. I needed a 3 hour nap to recover from the exertion. The house is trashed, Alex hasn't had clean sheets on his bed in 3 weeks, I managed to mop the kitchen floor this weekend, but it took me nearly all day on Saturday to accomplish it. Fish sticks and tater-tots are a legitimate culinary option now.

There's been very little knitting. I'm to the point where there is just mindless stockinette on the Eris, and I can't do it for long. Being Hypothyroid makes my joints ache with too much repetitive motion.

I'm getting slow and stupid. The house is 75 degrees, and I find this just barely comfortable. This is the last week where I have my half-assed medicine, Cytomel. On Friday, the medical experts yank that last leg out from under me, and to add insult to injury, they put me on a low-iodine diet. This means nothing with Egg, Milk, Salt (unless I add it myself. You never know who uses iodized salt). Have you ever looked in the grocery store for something without any salt at all? It eliminates all restaurant/fast food, anything canned, prepared, frozen, ready-mixed. I have to eat wholesome and healthy. Feh.

The experts tell me I shouldn't have to go through this again. If I need any further diagonistic tests (which I probably will, in a year or two), I can take this amazing (and amazingly expensive, at $1,200) new medicine called Thyrogen. Genetically engineered TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone). God bless the geneticists!

Knitting Terrorists

I have made a horrible discovery. Operating within my home is a knitting terrorist organization. They thrive by wreaking havoc on helpless instruments of knitting. Example one:

The remains of a pair of #6 Brittany Birch straights. They were cruelly tortured, their bodies left in pieces.
Example Two:

The decapitation of the measuring tape. Pressing the button results in the tape being completely
retracted into the case, and is no longer usuable. Cruel and unusual punnishment indeed.

Example three is too heinous to illustrate here, for the fear of permanently scaring the psyche of an innocent child who may happen upon the photos. Suffice it to say that it consisted of the compete eviceration of a center-pull ball of sock yarn. Tragic.

Who could be so vile, so ruthless, so inhumane? The cat?
Sadie says "Not Me!"

Here's a composite sketch of the terrorist ring leader:

2, 3, 4, 5, 7..

What's missing? Oh yeah, the number 6!  Somehow in my significant collection of miss-matched circular needles, I have no US number 6 needle. So the Eris is on hold until I can get to the store. I have a 40% off coupon for Michael's crafts, and they carry Clover circulars. Husband is on a shopping mission for me tomorrow night, so I can continue on.

So, here's the collar of Eris, as it stands now. The next step will be to pick up the stitches around the collar for knitting the body down.This pattern does have a lot of short rows, which aren't my favorite to work. But the end result, a sweeping curved one piece collar with the the delicately shaped and flowing cables is worth the work.

Not hearing things

Now, I'm not a big football fan, and I don't care much for the Rolling Stones, but I did tune in to watch both on Sunday. I know enough of their songs to notice that one word was missing from their rendition of "Start Me Up". They sang "You make a grown man cry, you make a dead man...". The word "come" had been censored. I cracked up at that, but several people watching with me didn't hear that there was anything wrong. They had me convinced I was (not) hearing things. Well, HA, I was right.

And we're back

Sorry about the break in blogging. I've been feeling kinda uninspired lately, what with being just ever so slightly under the weather.

Husband took my boys down to Cape Cod for the weekend to visit with his parents. I had all these uninterrupted knitting hours available to me. And I didn't pick up the needles once! You know I'm not feeling much like myself when that happens!

What did I do? I read novels until I went cross-eyed,  slept too much, watched too much TV, slept too much (assuming that's possible. I'm fairly certain its not), soaked in the tub until I was waterlogged, went out to dinner with my parents to Warren's Lobster House and ate far too much fried seafood, slept too much.  I love my boys, but it was really nice to have the time to myself. It has been at least 5 years since I spent the night alone. And six months or more since I've had more than 3 hours of alone time. Of course, I'd be miserably lonely if this happened too often. But it was nice for one or two days. Especially since I can feel that my "clock is running down" by being hypothyroid.

I'm sure you've ever seen the kinetic toy that executives like, called a  Newton's Cradle. You pull one ball back, and it crashes into the others, and the font ball on the stack jumps. Click clack, click clack. eventually, the swing gets shorter. The opposite ball doesn't bounce as high. Each bounce is just a little bit lower, and before you know it, they've stopped. But you can't see the difference is speed from one bounce to the next. But suddenly its just isn't moving as well.

That's Wendy. Going hypothyroid. Each day just a tiny little bit slower than the day before. I'm a hair bit more tired, a smidge bit more sore. It will get worse before it gets better. The only redeeming  thing is that I probably won't have to do this again.  Cold comfort.

There's been little progress the Eris collar. I've knit both sides now, and I'm ready to knit the center front section. I'm hoping to finish the collar off tonight. I wanted to take a picture, but after the kids got a hold of the camera, and took 75 flash photographs of each other- a few of which count as kiddie porn, since Ryan stripped down at somepoint during the photo shoot - the batteries have given up, and I'm not motivated enough to climb up on chair to get the spares from the top shelf of the closet. Tomorrow. I promise.