Meme too!

Two knitbloggers now have tagged me for this meme, my Doppelganger Laurie (she and I have uncannily similar knitting taste, at least), and Holly, with whom I also have a few things in common (besides knitting, of course) and whom I have met in person, accompanied by drama and laceweight yarn, on a certain stormy Yarn Harlot night in St. Paul (of which, by the way, I recently remember I never posted my photo, which makes Stephanie and I look a bit like sibs, so here it is, gratuitously and following an extremely run-on sentence!).

Stephanie is holding my first Springtime in Sherwood sock, whose heel I turned while waiting in line to have books signed (it was a long line….). By the way, I promised someone on Ravelry to put the pattern for that sock up, so look for that soon.

OK, meme time.

Rules: “The rules of the game get posted at the beginning. Each player answers the questions about themselves. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.”

Except that, many of the people I would tag have already done the meme or have declared themselves meme-free. So I will leave it up to any readers to answer if they’d like. I’d love to know more about you!

1. What was I doing 10 years ago?

I had just come back from Maryknoll, New York, from my great-uncle Jim’s Jubilee (50th anniversary of ordination as a priest) with a 4-month-old nursing baby and a terror of a 2 ½ year-old, as well as the whole of my mother’s side of the family (good thing the plane didn’t go down, my mother said somewhat morbidly, or my father’s mother would have inherited everything). I was working where I am now, just starting to work more with couples experiencing problems with fertility, as I continue to do to this day.

2. What are 5 things on my to-do list today — not in any particular order?
Knit, do laundry, go for a walk downtown to buy a local souvenir for a Ravelry swap, clean up and harass my children into doing the same (particularly as friends are coming over tonight to knit), wash and block a shawl which was the first one I ever knit, and the first thing I ever designed from scratch, I think.

3. Snacks I enjoy.

Cinnamon almonds, pita and hummus, cheese curds or any of a number of good cheeses (hey, I live in Wisconsin!) — with Triscuits.

4. Places I’ve lived: In order, Minneapolis, Minnesota; vicinity of Los Angeles, California; Butzbach, Germany; Rochester, Minnesota; La Crosse, Wisconsin (junior high/high school years and back now); Minneapolis again and then St. Paul, Minnesota; Roseville, Minnesota; Ann Arbor, Michigan.

5. Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

Hire someone to build the back porch that my husband tore down three years ago (actually, renovate the whole house, and rent a place for us to live elsewhere while the house was under construction); put money aside for college and pay off debts; then divide the rest between a charitable trust (so I could donate the interest income to charities every year), and ‘fun money’ for travel. I love to travel, but it’s a lot more pricey for four than one or two, especially with the price of fuel. Yet I want the girls to experience other countries and cultures.

6. What are some jobs you’ve had?

1. First job was at McDonald’s, where I did pretty much everything except grill; I still remember the different buzz of the bun toaster vs. the French fries being done.
2. Summer after high school, housekeeping at the same clinic I work at now; great job for a teen, as I worked 5 to midnight, and therefore could sleep in without my parents bugging me….and try vainly for a tan during the day. I finally gave up on tanning after that, fortunately for my skin.
3. Minnesota Daily — classified adtaker, proofreader, typesetter, and assistant production manager.
4. Strangest one, perhaps: I had to obtain mouse embryos for a study. This involved putting a guy mouse with a small harem of ladies, checking daily to see who’d done the deed, taking those females out of the group, and then a certain number of days later, um, ‘sacrificing’ them to harvest the embryos under a microscope. Yes, for these rodents, sex = death. I now have (and have memorably had to use) the ability to humanely and quickly kill a rodent with my bare hands. Great. Also, the ability to tell when a mouse is early pregnant (haven’t had to use that one since).

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Later that same day….

I started the post earlier, and then indeed accomplished laundry, cleaning, etc. Just didn’t make it downtown yet.

Here’s proof of part of my to-do list being done:

This is the first shawl I ever made, as above. And the first thing I ever sat down to design, or that I designed ‘from scratch’ rather than modifying from some sort of a template (well, maybe not, there is a highly creative sweater up in the attic — so creative it’s hard to get one’s neck through the spiraling neck opening; but it was based on EZ’s EPS). This was for elann.com‘s first design contest a few years ago. The parameters were a half circle shawl based on garter or stockinette, with increases done a certain way, and using certain of their yarns. I used elann Peruvian Highland Silk (no longer made, but it was 80% highland wool/20% silk, light worsted weight).

My design was a finalist, in the top 10, so my shawl, which I christened the Hill and Valley shawl, went to Point Roberts, WA to be judged. Alas, I did not win a big gift certificate to elann, but I got a nifty design notebook, with a photo of a model, modeling my shawl, on the front. Very cool. (I wish I could lay hands on it right now to show you….)

I also wish I’d known then what I know now. I’d never blocked lace. I blocked it on my couch (not big enough), misting it with a spray bottle and pinning it out (and of course, time was running short). And desperately hoping the cat wouldn’t go tearing across it. It ended up rather smaller than I had planned. (There’s a reason I had my daughter — the Preteen, then about 9 or 10 — model it for the initial photo submission rather than me….) (She’s going to kill me for putting these pictures in. C’est la vie!)

Well, today, measuring it properly blocked, the shawl measures 58 inches by 31 inches. Which is a fairly decent shawl size. The very nice feedback I received back with the shawl mentioned that the judges thought it was too bad I didn’t have time to make the shawl as big as I had planned….easy enough to do, of course, just knitting a few more repeats.

Ah, well, maybe it’s for the best that I didn’t win. Now I can offer the pattern myself on Ravelry if I wish! It’s all written up, after all.

Maybe I can get the Preteen to model again. She’s grown — but so has the shawl!