Knitting, with Dogs

Thank you all so much

Many, many thanks to everyone for all the kind words and good wishes.  I apologize for not replying to each comment individually, but it's been a hectic few days.

When we all got home last weekend, it was obvious to us that Daddy wasn't feeling as well or doing as well as he said he was.  My sister got him an appointment with the doctor.  The doctor actually called us at home at about 8:00 that night and told us to take Dad to the local hospital that night.  The bloodwork values that he saw were so anomalous that he thought there had been a testing error.  Unfortunately, that wasn't the case.

My father had suffered a fairly rapid recurrence of the prostate cancer he'd struggled with for the past 10 years.  (In mid-December, his P.S.A. was 11.  That's considered moderatly elevated.  Last week it was 51.)  His prostate was significantly enlarged, and caused a backup that damaged his one remaining kidney.  The doctors tried what they could to relieve the backup and restart the kidney, but apparently the damage was too severe.

Me, my brother and his wife and daughter (Daddy's only grandchild), and my sister were with him pretty much 24/7 from about Tuesday evening through Saturday morning.  (We did take breaks to run home and put on clean clothes, etc., but at least two of us were always with him.)   His younger sister was with us much of the time also.  On Saturday morning, the nurses came in and said they could see from the heart monitor that his heart was starting to falter.  He died about 5 minutes later, very quietly, without any struggle or stress, with his children around him.  I washed his face one last time, and we sat with him until they came to take him to the funeral home.

If there's anything that can be said to be good about the whole experience, it was the way we all just did what needed to be done.  Dad's doctor said he'd seen situations like this either pull families apart, or put them together, and he was happy that we were pulling together.  We spent a lot of time sitting around his bed and talking over old memories and good times.  Our aunt told us stories about her childhood with my dad that made us laugh, and gave us insight into how he became the man he was.  My brother and I are only 16 months apart, so we both could remember a lot of the same things.  It was a blessing to all of us.  And though my dad wasn't obviously aware of very much after Thursday afternoon, we all had the sense that he could hear us, and was comforted by our presence.

Dear Robert was a tower of strength to me.  Starting Wednesday, he made the 160 mile round trip from home to here every day, going home at night to take care of the dogs and bring back anything that my sister or I might need from home.  I can't say enough about how wonderful he is.

He was buried by our mom, on a bright Monday morning, with the first spring flowers starting to bloom.

Everything's different now.  Nothing will ever be the same.  We loved him, and will miss him always.

I have always known...

I have always known
that someday
I would take this road
But yesterday
I did not know
that it would be today.

My dad passed away at 8:15 am, Saturday 2/23.  He was 83 years old.

Sorry...

I've let the Thing A Day in February drop, I'm afraid.  I've been at sixes and sevenses all week, worrying about my dad.  I've got one more thing to do tomorrow before I can go home to see what's going on with him.  My sister is down there now.

Posting will be spotty for a while.  I've knit almost nothing, and have been doing lots of stress eating.  :(

Thing a Day, 2/10: A Decision

I met with my brother and sister today.  We talked about a lot of things, including our dad.  The consensus is that he doesn't need to be living by himself anymore.

So starting next week (2/18), I'll be heading down to stay with him for most of the week, and my sister, the Fabulous Lisa, will come down on the weekends.  Our brother, the Amazing David, will get a much-needed break.  (He's having in-law issues of his own.) 

Dear Robert assures me that he and I will be fine, even if I'm away for a while.  He has close ties to family members, so I think he understands.

Wish us luck.

Thing A Day, 2/9: Dog video

Jasper has a funny way of playing with the ball.  Taken with the video option on my little HP camera.

ETA:  Crap, I thought I had this embedded-video-from-YouTube stuff figured out.  Apparently not.  So click on the picture for the video. 

In other news, our mailbox got graffiti'd last night. 

It's already painted over.

Thing a Day, 2/8: Bare floor

I admit that this one is a stretch.  I did, however, say at the beginning of this endeavor that I would have a loose interpretation for my Things.  Sometimes you just get busy and can't do anything more creative than this:

Yeah, that's the concrete slab my house is built onto, complete with marks where the painters wiped their brushes Og knows how many years ago.  We pulled up the carpet in this hall, with the idea that we're going to try installing laminate flooring ourselves.  Dear Robert is NOT a handyman at heart, so it takes some wheedling on my part to get him interested in something like this. 

It's not actually as dirty as it looks.  It's just old stained (and painted on) concrete.  I know, because I was down on hands and knees scraping and painting (I typed "paining" at first, which pretty much describes my hands and knees right now) the floor.  I'll probably go over it again just for good measure, but it will ultimately be covered up again anyway.  Then we'll have to fill in any uneven places in the concrete and I'll have to pull out my circular saw, or borrow my sister's power miter saw and get to work after a while.

Wish us luck.

BTW, I've recently gone to meet with some other knitters who meet just down the road from me.  I am in serious need of some community in my life, and most of the other Atlanta knitters meet down at Knitch, which is too far for me to drive even once a week right now.  So I'm missing out on a lot of the Atlanta knitting camaraderie.  But right now I have to keep a really, really tight rein on my finances as well as keeping my driving to an absolute minimum to eke out my car a while longer. 

Wish me luck.  :)

Thing a Day, 2/7: Papercraft

I'm running short of time today, so today's thing is pretty small.

There are lots of sites on the internet where you can find neat paper things to cut out, fold, and assemble.  Some of them are easy, like mine:

Of course mine is dog-related.  :) 

There are silly monsters and things like Speakerdogs (I want to make the Zombie Speakerdog) or the Spiky Babies.  And there are amazing things like the Lucky Cat Happiness figure.

Cool stuff.

I do hope I'll be able to keep up with my Thing A Day, but I've just found out that my dad isn't doing very well.  I may need to hie myself down to look after him at least part of the week.  Stay tuned.

Thing a Day, 2/6: Northumbrian Lullaby

I've dabbled in various kinds of music over the years.  It started with 8 years of piano before I graduated high school, and continued with folk-singing guitar playing in the 60's and recorders in college.  I've played with flutes, drums, fiddles, harps, and concertina.

Back when I started playing harp and fiddle, I was particularly interested in Scottish music, and particularly in the subset of Scottish music that came from the Northumberland, the borderland between Scotland and England.  (It doesn't hurt that my husband's surname is one that historically belonged to one of the families of border reivers and raiders from that area.)  My friends, there are some FINE Northumberland songs and tunes out there.  I heartily recommend anything by Kathryn Tickell!  I almost bought a set of Northumbrian smallpipes a few years ago.  I adore the sound of Northumbrian smallpipes.  They're bellows blown pipes, like uilleann pipes and unlike the Highland Pipes.  They have a cheerful bubbling quality that just makes me happy. 

Now, I'm not very good at any of these instruments, but I've sure had a lot of fun with them over the years.  Alas, most of them have languished since I got involved in this knitting thing.  You can only do so many things at a time with only one pair of hands. 

But I have a favorite Northumbrian tune.  It's called by the not very descriptive name, Felton Lonnen.  I first heard it one Kathryn Tickell's Northumberland Collection album.  It's a mother singing about her boy who's wandered off.  "Kye" is cow, "hyem" = home, "hinny"=honey (term of affection)

The kye's come hyem, but Aa see not me hinny;
 the kye's come hyem, but Aa see not me bairn;
 Aa'd rather loss aall the kye than loss me bairn.
 Fair faced is me hinny, his blue eyes are bonny,
 his hair in curled ringlets hung sweet to the sight;
 O mount the old pony, seek after me hinny,
 and bring to his mammy her only delight.

 He's always out roamin' the lang summer's day through,
 he's always out roamin' away from the farm;
 through hedges and ditches and valleys and fellsides,
 Aa hope that me hinny will come to no harm.
 Well, Aa've searched in the meadow and in the far acre,
 through stockyard and byre, but nowt could Aa find;
 so off ye go, daddy, seek after your laddie,
 bring back to his mammy some peace to her mind.

These are the only two verses on Kathryn's album.  But the Digital Tradition version goes on to the finding of the boy:

Well, look you here, Mother, we found the wee rascal
 and you'll never guess where the young devil got-
 asleep in Ben's manger with Jess and her puppies,
 as safe and as snug as he does in his cot.
 He left aall the flowers he'd pick on the wallend
 and the other treasures Aa found there as well;
 a dead butterfly and some pheasant's tail feathers,
 some purple sloe berries and a blackbird's eggshell

Oh, note the dog reference in that third line.  :)

So anyway, here's my Thing for the Day:  my very simple arrangement of the tune of Felton Lonnen, played by me on my 44-string double-strung harp.  It's an mp3 file, 1.5 meg and about 1 min. 45 seconds long.  It's not perfect, but it's ok.  :)  I recorded it on my Cowon D2, of all things, and edited the file in Audacity. 

And yes, it just ends like that.  It sounds unresolved, but to me, that's part of the charm.

Thing A Day, 2/5: One fiber, 2 handspun yarns

I've had this Ashland Bay merino/silk fiber in my stash for a couple of years.  The colorway is called Sea Mist.  It's a blend of merino and silk, but I'm not sure what the percentages of each fiber are.  It may be 70% wool, 30% silk.

I had 8 oz. of it, so I have a bit to play with.  Here's the first yarn I made:

2 ply yarn, 1.75 oz., 88 yards, or about 805 yards per pound.

Second yarn:

One ply (single).  2 oz., 600 yads, or 4800 ypp.

I always like finer yarns better than fat yarns.  :)  I should have enough fiber to end up with about 1800 yards of laceweight yarn.

Thing a Day, 2/4: Knitted wire moebius

I've always wanted to try knitting with wire.  So since I'm experimenting this month, I did.  :)

I used the 26 gauge copper wire that I used as decoration in the Twig Mat.  I made a trial run with some size 3 bamboo needles, decided I could go down in needle size, found some steel size 1 single point needles and started knitting.  Here's what I ended up with:

I cast on 5 sts and basically knit stockinette for about 9 inches.  (Actually the first few rows are garter st, but I decided I didn't like that and switched to stockinette.  You can't really tell.)  When I got it long enough, I kinda sorta  laced/grafted the ends together with a half-twist.

Was it hard?  Yes and no.  My wire didn't break, which surprised me a little, given the kinks and twists I put into it on some rows.  The first few rows are the worst.  After I got a little length, I'd stop at the end of each row and pull straight down on the "fabric", to straighten out the sts and open up the sts on the needles a little.  The wire tended to slip through my fingers.  It made my wrists hurt a bit.

It's a little big for a bracelet on me, but I have pretty small wrists.  That gives you a scale to judge the size though.  I finished both ends off by wrapping excess wire several times around an edge st and clipping close to the work.

The finished piece feels firm, but supple.  The wire moves and flexes easily.  I actually like it quite a bit more than I thought I would.

If I were to do this again, I think I'd string beads of two different colors alternately, and put them on the edges as I knit.  I think it would emphasize the one side/one edge property of the mobius.  But maybe not.  I'm a terrible visualizer.  I have to actually DO stuff to know what it would look like.