Fourth of July Saturday Sky

As of an hour ago.  A perfect night for fireworks over the Mississippi River.

Happy Fourth of July, everyone!

Oasis Eye Candy Friday

Not in the sense of desert, but in the sense of a place of calm, of sadly needed respite.

This was one of the areas tucked away around the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC.  We really wanted to stop at this museum, which is the newest national museum, but time did not allow, as we were walking quickly to an appointment with our Representative which had been arranged as part of the National History Day events.  But we walked through the National Mall side of the grounds, which were amazing.  This pond was tucked back by one of the markers for the cardinal directions (the building is aligned with the cardinal directions and also with the Capitol building).  And despite our time constraint, we all three paused for a moment here and just looked, and breathed, and listened, and were.

It was raining, but we didn’t mind.

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Click the thumbnails below to see the interesting architecture and landscaping in more detail, and here to read more about it.

I hope to go back and visit next time  –  and eat!  When we walked by and saw that it had a café, we wished we’d eaten there that day, too; the café serves “Native foods and contemporary cuisine with a Native American twist”.  Undoubtedly better than our Mall hot dogs in the rain, under siege by birds and a squirrel!

Prelude to a Personal Pandemic, with a little Knitting

This thirteen-year-old, on her way to her 8th-grade-graduation ceremony and dance, looks so happy and lovely, doesn’t she?

The picture of health, wearing her new lacy wrap that her mother made her to match her vintage dress.

She graduated,

danced her silver shoes off, had fun with all her friends, even posed for a few more wrap pics when she came home.

(as did the wrap, click to embiggen if desired)

Who knew that even as those pictures were taken, that microscopic virus particles were replicating madly in her body?

The next morning, she looked tired, but said she just hadn’t slept well.  It was the last day of school, a half day only, and the school talent show; she and a friend were performing Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” (she singing, he on acoustic guitar).  Her forehead was cool and she had no other symptoms, so off she went to school.

While backstage, waiting to perform, she had shaking chills so bad she couldn’t stand, aches, a headache, a sore throat that came out of nowhere.  Of course, all her friends came over and hugged her while she was curled up sitting on the floor, having chills…. The teacher backstage tried to send her to the nurse, but now it was their turn to perform.  She told the teacher she would go as soon as she sang — it would only take two minutes.  Such a performer. She got up, sang on her shaky legs (they disinfected the microphone immediately thereafter), and was promptly sent home with a fever.

So: my poor daughter, in the end, was found to have H1N1 (swine) flu.  But the drama goes on, because in less than 48 hours she, I, and her friend were supposed to fly to College Park, Maryland (on the outskirts of Washington DC) for the finals of National History Day.  If she couldn’t go, her friend couldn’t either; they would have to withdraw (they were doing a dramatic presentation).  They had been working on this project literally all school year, and won at regional and state levels to be going to the national competition.  My daughter wanted to go, if at all possible.

My first concern was for my daughter’s health; my second was that her friend not get sick; my third was that she was safe to fly (that is, not get anyone else sick).  Once I realized she probably had flu from her symptoms (Wisconsin has the largest number of reported confirmed cases of swine flu in the U.S.),  my first call was to make a doctor’s appointment for that day, and the second was to an infectious disease specialist I know, who happens to be the father of my daughter’s friend as well.  I needed to know what the criteria were for her being safe to fly.  “No fever and no cough”.  OK.

To make an already long story a little shorter, by getting on an antiviral immediately (which shortens the period of infectiousness and symptoms), she got better remarkably quickly, and had no fever within 24 hours, and no cough by 36 hours.  So we flew to DC.  Her friend never got sick.  Neither did I.  My daughter did not feel good, granted, since she felt like a truck ran over her and had a constant headache unless she had ibuprofen on board.  And when she finished the antivirals, some other symptoms flared.  But they did their performance and got good comments from the judges, though they didn’t go on to the final round, to their great relief, actually.  (And we had a couple days for sightseeing, therefore.)

While I was gone, my husband and my younger daughter came down with the flu too.  My younger daughter developed croup and needed to be put on steroids.  Sigh.  So I was monitoring them and worrying from long distance, while nursing my older one and trying to make sure my daughter’s friend didn’t get sick (or me).   And hoping my mother, who’d been exposed to both daughters separately right before they got sick (you’re infectious in the 24 hours before you develop clear symptoms also), didn’t become ill either.

I still can’t believe I didn’t get it, but obsessive handwashing goes a long way, I guess.  There’s still some coughing and tiredness going on around these parts, but everyone is well on their way to being back to health now.  Many other middle schoolers got sick, at least a couple directly from my daughter (like the boy who played guitar with her), but there had been an outbreak that week, as it turned out; the cases just hadn’t been confirmed yet, so there had not been a notification (and I don’t know that it would have changed much, except reminding parents to keep kids with fevers at home; mine had no fever in the morning, when I checked by mommy-thermometer).  A letter came in the mail the next week…..

So that’s what I’ve been up to!

I hope to tell you more about DC, when time allows.  (Like about the girls feeling right at home in the Oval Office….)

Raindrops on Roses Eye Candy Friday

A picture from a week and a half ago, in Washington DC.

Yes, I was in DC again for the second time this year, after not being there in 30 years.

Yes, it rained!

I’ll tell you all about it, but the recovery from swine flu at my house has me a little behind….

Knitting Blog? Well, yes

Based on the last month, casual droppers-by would be excused for having no idea that this was nominally a knitting blog.  (Or an active blog at all — thanks to my friends who checked up on me!  Yes, all is well.)

You’d think it was all flowers and Saturday Skies, like this Saturday Sky from two weeks ago a month ago,  from the top of the Washington Monument.

(click to embiggen if you wish!)

But I have been knitting, truly!  Just traveling and working a lot also, which leaves little time to blog about it.

I’m not going to catch up with all the knitting I’ve done all at once, but let me show you today what I actually finished while on the Washington DC 5th grade trip.  While on the bus, even! For my younger daughter, The Gothlet, who is 11:

Gothlet Gauntlets!

Even though it wasn’t cold when I finished weaving in the last end and gave them to her, the gauntlets were immediately put on.  I think she liked them….!

These were made from amazing GothSocks self-striping yarn from Rainy Days & Wooly Dogs (etsy shop at the link; there’s an update next week!).  This colorway was  ‘Little Goth Girl’, and how perfect for my Gothlet?  As I told you before, I bought this at Madrona, from the dyer, who was very kind in skeining up some more yarn she had at home, and bringing it in for me to choose from  (which I happily did).  As I may have mentioned before, I designed these in such a way that they will fit my daughter now (she’s skinny, being a picky eater) and in the future (she’s shooting up like the proverbial weed).

I did this by shaping the arm part of the gauntlet, to hug the arm, but also by putting in ribbing on the undersurface to draw the gauntlet to the arm now, and also in the future.  I used k2 p2 ribbing, which is the most resilient I know. Below is the back side and the front, when I had just started the hand portion with thumb gusset.

Here I am above, demonstrating that the gauntlet fits an adult!  And I am of average height and at least average weight, though perhaps my wrists are a bit on the bony side.

Back to the happy Gothlet.

I’ll write this up formally when I can, but in the meantime, I wanted to give a quick and dirty version for anyone who might want to knit something similar, because it really did work out well.

First of all, I knit this a touch loosely at least on the hand: I usually knit socks on 0s, sometimes 1s for thicker fingering weight.  I knit these mitts for a skinny 11-year-old on US size 1s (2.25 mm) for the ribbing, and size “1.5″s (2.5 mm) for the arm, then size US size 2s (size 2.75 mm) for the main part of the hand (because I didn’t put any ribbing on the palm, reasoning that it would bug me a bit to have that texture there, but still wanted this to fit in the future when she’s bigger; and for the looks part of the gauntlet, a little looser there was OK).

If I were knitting this for me, I’d probably go with 2s all the way. The ribbing makes it fit snugly, but I’d rather have the knitting flexible more than dense, on these, which are not by their very nature designed for wearing outdoors in a midwestern January, for example.

If you needed to fit this to a different size arm, I’d suggest looking at your gauge (mine was 7 stitches/inch on 2s) and the measurement of the forearm at its widest, and casting on stitches in a multiple of 4 to equal that measurement or slightly less.  But I would still decrease to the same number of stitches for the hand (48) because that fits pretty much anyone of adult or near-adult size.

One last note:  In this self-striping yarn, I took a trick from Meg Swansen, and every time the color changed in the ribbing, I KNIT every stitch of the first row of different color instead of knitting in pattern.  This makes the stripes very crisp, without the ‘ticking’ effect in the purl stitches.  It’s a cool trick!  Not essential, but I like it.

Without further ado, here’s the quick and dirty directions for the Gothlet Gauntlets:

Cast on 64 stitches loosely (I used the German Twisted Cast-on).  Consider using 1-2 sizes bigger needles than you might normally use for socks, for ‘give’ and comfort (you don’t need hard wear here, and you want flexibility in the upper arm).  Use method of choice (two circs, dpns, Magic Loop).

Knit 12 rows in k2 p2 ribbing.

Mark beginning of row with stitch marker.  Knit 38 then place stitch marker, k1, [p2, k2] four times, p2, k1, place marker, knit 6.

Knit approximately 1 1/2 inches (4 cm) in pattern as established (knit to marker, k1, [p2, k2] four times, p2, k1, slip marker, knit to end of row).

Begin decreases: Knit to two stitches before marker.  SSK (slip as if to knit, slip as if to knit, knit two slipped stitches together).  Slip marker.  Work stitches between markers in rib pattern as established. K2tog (knit two together).  Knit to end of row.

Knit next 7 rows in pattern as established (knit to marker, work in rib pattern between markers, knit to end of row).

Decrease as above on 8th row.

Continue decreasing every 8th row until you have decreased 8 times, down to a total of 48 stitches.  You will have had to shift stitches on your needles to do the last few decreases, unless you Magic Loop, possibly.  This is all right!

Knit in pattern as established until gauntlet is desired length to wrist. Then knit a row in all stockinette (knit every stitch), removing markers as you come to them, and dividing the stitches evenly between  needles (24 stitches front and back, with ribbing centered on the back: 3 knit stitches, 18 stitches of p2 k2 ribbing, 3 knit stitches).

NOW: (here’s where it gets a bit sketchier)

Follow the directions for the Fingerless Piano Mitts and Mini-Mitts on this blog, but plug in the correct numbers for this size:

starting with 48 stitches instead of 40.

For RIGHT gauntlet, knit 28, place marker for thumb gusset, k4, place marker, knit to end of round (16 st).  Then follow instructions until dividing stitches for thumb gusset.  For LEFT gauntlet, knit 40, place marker, knit 4, place marker, knit to end of row (4 st).  Then follow instructions until dividing stitches for thumb gusset.  At end of increases, you will have 64 stitches (again!) on the needles.  You may need to knit more plain rounds to make the gauntlet the correct length to reach to the crotch of the thumb.

At thumb gusset, after putting the thumb gusset stitches on a holder of spare yarn, and after casting on 4 stitches, you will have 52 stitches total.  The rest is as written.  Feel free to adjust the length of the stockinette and ribbing to desired length.  The thumb instructions are also as written.

*someday I’ll get this written up all formal-like.  But I thought I’d get the bare bones version out there, because I’ve been asked!

Here, in other news:  Saturday Skies of the last month, since DC.

More knitting, more flowers, more Saturday Skies to come!

Flowers for Mother’s Day

I both gave and received flowers, this Mother’s Day.  My husband’s mother, who sadly is no longer with us, had flowers too:  the tree we had planted in her honor is in full bloom right now.

Happy Mother’s Day to mothers past and mothers present.  And mothers-to-be!

Dogwood Days

I was gone almost all of last week, hence the blog blackout.  (And gone a long weekend before that.  I’ll catch up sometime in this lifetime!)

Here’s what I was seeing last week about this time:

Flowering dogwood, at Gettysburg National Cemetery.

A beautiful tree which is apparently not hardy up here.  But was in full bloom all over Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Washington DC.

Not so beautiful was the woman on the other side of the camera, who had just spent 24 hours straight on a bus at the time that she got off and took these pictures.

Please to have my mental status examined if I ever volunteer to chaperone a busful of 5th graders on a cross-country bus trip again, eh?

But the dogwood was lovely!

Saturday Skies In Arrears

Whirlwind tour of the last month as seen in Saturday Skies:

This Saturday just past was gray and cooler, but finally in the last few days I have seen incontrovertible signs of spring.

Buds on my mother-in-law Helen’s crabapple tree, among other signs.  Yes!

The  Saturday before, we (the family) were taking the train to Chicago for a special outing.  The girls had never been on the train before.  The RockStar, who was unconvinced beforehand, has declared it the only way to travel now!

Archetypal Chicago Skyscraper cityscape view upon arriving last Saturday:

(did you see the plane with contrail?)

and the sky behind Navy Pier on an early evening expedition:

Going backwards in time:

The previous Saturday was the day I was supposed to leave Seattle (um, yeah.  More about that later).  A lot of moving from place to place that day, so multiple Saturday Sky pictures, actually.

Saturday Sky as seen from the Kingston-Edmonds Ferry, leaving Port Ludlow and Sock Camp: with another ferry in the picture,

and without.

I caught an airplane going overhead from the ferry also.

Later in the day,  Saturday Sky behind the EMP (Experience Music Project/SciFi Museum) and the Space Needle.

(You can see it was a gorgeous day in the Seattle area!  Of course: it was the day I was (supposed to be) leaving….)

Then, at my friend Astrid’s house:

No,  the spider’s not on your screen, nor was it in Astrid’s and Greg’s house, but on the outside of the porch sliding door!  Here’s a prettier view sans arachnid….beautiful lakeside sunset in a safe harbor on the shore of Martha Lake.

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A week before, I got on the train in the evening to leave for Sock Camp, after a very busy day.  So the only picture I have of the Saturday Sky is a blurry twilight picture from the moving train, as we crossed over the Mississippi just after leaving the station.

Oh, and a picture of black almost-midnight sky over a different Mississippi River Bridge as we went through Minneapolis, a few hours later.

Yes, it’s been an eventful set of Saturdays!  Sorry to keep teasing about Sock Camp….despite kmkat’s valiant efforts to persuade my work to ‘let her knitter go’, it was another busy weekend.  Besides which, I took over 1000 pictures at Sock Camp and on the train.  And, frankly, condensing does not come naturally to me:  I want to show you ALL the best pictures and tell you EVERYTHING!  But that would take a very long time.

If you come over and knit sometime, and want to see, I’ll show and tell you everything.  In the meantime, I’ll work on the Reader’s Digest version.  (Before I leave again on Thursday….)

More Eye Candy Friday from Camp (and an IOU)

Flowers of the sea.

The bottom starfish there has a nudibranch buddy.  A Leopard Nudibranch, to be exact.  (Thanks, Astrid, for sleuthing that for me even while I was still on the train coming home!)

And… can someone PLEASE let my work know that working double time to seemingly make up for my vacation days at Sock Camp is playing havoc with my blogging time?  I work tomorrow too, but hopefully later this weekend I can fill you in on the camp goings-on!

The Story of Sock Camp as Told in T-Shirts

All of the above were worn at or connected with Sock Camp.

Except the kitten.

(All will be revealed in the fullness of time….)