We's back

Ha! It was the cable company's outage. And I suspect that's what it's been all along. You should have seen Zach speed dialing trying to get to a tech rep last night in between internet shutdowns. He finally got through and they told him in their not so upfront way that, yes, they were experiencing internet outages.

And then we had another one that lasted the rest of the night.

After an unsuccessful boot-up of the modem this morning, we rebooted the modem and we've been online all day.

Didn't make it to church this morning because there was a wall of snow at the end of the driveway three-feet high. We finally all got out there with our respective snow shovels and got the driveway, our sidewalk and the elderly neighbor's sidewalk. I seriously wonder about people and their snowblowers. Doing it with a shovel was hard work but we were better off for it. Okay, I'll give Warren his because he's in his 70s but the studly young man across the street? This is the guy that uses a riding mower on a yard that is only marginally bigger than ours. less than a quarter acre. And rakes his leaves with said mower.

Same with the young couple across the street from them.

Our next-door neighbor and his wife were out with their shovels while all three of us were out and it was a very nice time.

Oh, well.

I finished the scarf. I'm going to call it Creeping Fern because it looks like the leaves are creeping up the length of it. I'll try to write it out tomorrow. I just used the Fern stitch pattern that I got from who knows where and added a bit to it to make it seem a bit more symmetrical.

I've started on the hat but don't have size 3 circular needles in 16 inch so I'm using size 4 but knitting a bit tighter than I normally do. I'll switch to size 3 dpns when I start decreasing though. Meg has a lot of hair so she probably needs a bit more room. Since it's a cloche, the size won't be as critical around the face.

Then I'll make some fingerless mitts if I have the time. I feel so...strange...knitting monogamously like this. I look at my other projects and whimper but I'm on a schedule and need to be done by Dec 23. Not fair, I tell you. They need to draw names sooner than November.

I was talking with my mother today and realized I have to get Rylee's and Shae's gifts out this week if I want to make sure they get there on time. I still need buttons for Rylee's cardigan and need to weave in the ends on Shae's blanket. I don't know what I was thinking.

Tons of stuff going on behind the scenes here driving my stress level through the roof. I'm not sleeping but I am eating way too much. Nothing of a catastrophic nature but changes are being made that I will be able to talk about eventually. But it's not knitting-related.

At least not entirely.

I'm feeling very one-dimensional with my blog of late, feeling like there is more to me than knitting. I know this is a knitting blog and I still love knitting very much but I feel like I'm more than just a knitter.

There was a discussion on Ravelry about where it wasn't appropriate to knit and it surprised me the number of people who thought there wasn't any place that was inappropriate. Someone knitted while she drove with her knees. Scary, huh? I sure hope she's not in the same state I'm in.

But I got to thinking about it and while I do think that sitting in a meeting knitting could be appropriate, knitting in church isn't. Or knitting while at a performance. Or knitting at a wedding or funeral.

I mean...is knitting so important that we can't be away from it for a minute? I can see using it as a stress-buster while stuck in traffic, but grabbing the knitting at every stop light? Or needing to knit so much that you risk yours and others' lives because you can't be away from it that long? Knitting in long lines? Why not? You're not hurting anyone. It's down time anyway. But knitting at a performance that people have worked hard to perfect (or in the case of your children, that they have worked hard to just get the production on) is offensive to me. Why bother going if you're not going to give it your whole attention. And what message does that send to the performers and crew?

And isn't church about God and not about how many inches you can knit on that sock?

Maybe I'm just being obnoxious about it all but it seems like some people are making knitting the end-all, be-all of everything.

So...I've made some decisions about my blog. While it will be about knitting, I'm also going to talk more about things that interest me, that complete me as a person. I also want to talk about more than my mundane day.

You know..."got up, washed dishes, cooked meals, knitted, watched television, went to bed."

I want to be more than one dimension.

So...I may or may not get a bit controversial from time to time. I may talk about religion (although never politics...not that ever) or things dear to my heart.

I may lose readers and for that I would be very sorry. But I would be sorrier to be less than who I am.

I most likely won't be able to blog every day though. Zach's schedule is quite a time-devourer and I will be looking for a part-time job very soon so the time crunch will be on. But I hope to make the blogs more real and more interesting.

And maybe even more interactive.

I so appreciate all of you out there. You've made me feel special, like I had some value to my life. I hope I don't let you down.

But for now...off to knit the Rivendell cloche (see below.)

TTFN