Ok.. I admit it.

I'm panicking about swine flu.

Fine.. everyone I talk to is being all too-cool and  calm and detatched and jokey and tsk tsking the media for being all inflammatory and overreacting and making fun of people walking around in masks, but me? I'm nervous.

Maybe its because I stupidly read everything i could find on the 1918 flu.

Maybe its because I'm vaguely nuts anyway. Or because I'm asthmatic.  Or because I live in a densely populated metropolitan area and take public transportation with people who cough, sneeze and drool all over everything. Or because the background on my Twitter page is a flu virus.  Or because I have an internet connection and an unbearable compulsion to read.  Whatever it is, I can't seem to get calm about this.

There, I said it - anyone else?

Um. so yeah.. that was a Joke..

So for those of you who were genuinely concerned that I might have a Madame DeFarge/Richard Nixon complex.. No, I do not really have an enemies list.  Unless you count walnuts, mohair, health insurance companies and oak pollen as enemies (which at the moment, I do).

Atchoo.

:)

(p.s. does anyone know where my Optivar eye drops are?)

Knittiing Updates

The Cashmere neckwarmer is mostly finished, It needs to be blocked and have buttons added. and the ends woven in. I'm actually considering adding a single crochet border to compensate for the weird mistake where its wider in one spot than others. Its driving me a little crazy. Ok. a lot crazy. I have this bad habit of permanently back-burnering projects when i've discovered I've made a mistake and it is too far back to fix, so it was a really big deal for me that I actually went thru and finished this

When I was a kid and took piano lessons my instructor always used to yell at me because if I made a mistake I had to go back to the beginning of the piece and start over. I see I've brought that compulsion forward.

I liked knitting this, Its just simple enough that I can do it on the train while watching tv on my phone, and the yarn is gorgeous. (Artyarns 5 ply cashmere) I've started a second one (to be given as a gift) solely to be worked on on the train. (and other periods where I want to knit but can't pay attention to it) . As I discovered this morning, I can even balance a cup of coffee while knitting this pattern and watching tv on the train- perfect.

For non-train knitting I've revived my Falling Water Scarf. I'd completely forgotten I started one and was glad I could easily figure out where I left off. I was looking thru my ravelry page and saw this listed in my projects, and had no memory of it at all. Fortunately it was one of two things I've managed to list in Ravelry (I have tons of others i've been meaning to) because it was the only way I remembered what yarn I was using. (Malabrigo Silky Merino)

My goal for the summer is to finish or frog every project that was left stranded in the middle.

Seems reasonable.

Well. this will clearly need blocking.

scarf
Originally uploaded by weaselrina

The scarf is nearly done, it will SO need to be blocked
and while i really like it, the one break in the color pattern is driving me batty. I may do a duplicate stitch over it.

How does my enemies list look? ;)

There are two types of people in this world.

Ok.. so apparently I fell asleep last night before posting this because I took a benadryl and it knocked me out and I just noticed it sitting in my drafts.
I intended to include more links
but now I don't remember what they were.
Seriously, benadryl should be a controlled substance.

There are two types of people in this world.
And a million ways to finish that sentence.
The first time remember hearing that opener it was followed by "Beatles people and Rolling Stones People"
and the most unusual one I'd heard was "Those that like Halvah and those that don't"

Growing up in Brooklyn in the late 70s and into the very early 80s there truly were two types of people in the world: Those that listened to Rock and those that listened to Disco. I distinctly remember narrowly escaping several fistfights that were precipitated by someone throwing down the "rock sucks" or "disco sucks" gauntlet
And if you happened to be in Junior High at the time, everything about your existence was defined by which of these you chose. Who your friends were, what clothes you wore, where you hung out, what hairstyle you had.. all of these fell in line behind your musical choice.
.
I was a rock person, driven, at least in part, by my lack of desire to style my hair every morning. Rock people definitely had it easier in terms of the personal maintenance, and I think my wardrobe for a few years consisted largely of black rock concert t-shirts. Perhaps if i had the easily-styled hair that neatly and easily fell into those Farrah Fawcett flips, the entire course of my liie might have been different.

Fortunately Junior High ended and we all moved on to more meaningful pursuits and became passionate about more important things, such as Atkins vs. Weight Watchers, Facebook vs. Twitter and the all-important Mac vs. PC . . Musical rivalries of this type do still exist though (the styles have changed but the dynamics haven't).

So anyway, my point. Because I grew up in such a volatile musical climate, it suprised me tremendously when I first learned that the artists don't always share the same allegiences as their fans. For this reason I always enjoy hearing musical artists talk about their influences and likes and have them be things that you would never associate with them.

Here we have Wyclef talking about Bruce Springsteen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6psg0BEg94


An article on Frank Sinatra and a whole bunch of people:

http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2008-05-11-frank-sinatra_N.htm

On a related note: I also really got a big kick out of seeing Dee Snider singing "Tradition" from Fiddler on the Roof on one of those VH1 "I love a decade that isn't this one" things. I would love to see a remake of Fiddler starring Dee Snider as Tevye.

Creative aging.

When I was a kid, my mother gradually developed diminished hearing in one of her ears. 

She said it was the best thing that had ever happened to her, and gleefully pointed her deaf ear at anyone she didn't feel like listening to.  It was  indicative of her personality for sure, but I'd imagine teaching first grade for 30 years made her appreciate quiet when she heard it.

My father had the same joyful reaction to losing his sense of smell as he got older.  As a life-long New Yorker, this I understood  immediately.

As my mother's hearing in her (left i think) ear worsened, she would often 

mishear things in peculiar ways.  Most memorable to me was a public service annoucement that New York City ran in the late 70s encouraging people to put their garbage in garbage bags (as opposed to piling their refuse in the cans, attracting all manner of wildlife --->>). I don't remember most of the song, but the chorus was the repeated words "bag it, bag it", prompting my mother to run in all offended at the insulting language and to yell at me for listening to such things.

Imagine my sense of nostalgia today as we drove home from our luxurious weekend in Danbury CT (yes, really), and Kanye West's "Amazing" came on the radio, and I turned  to my husband to say .. "Ok, so I know he can't really be singing about raisins, can he?".  (At another point, it sounded like "Raisinettes" too).

I can only imagine this is going to get worse.  

I didn't mind the song per se, but it sounded like he was singing Karaoke,  rather than a song,  (the vocal track sounded completely disconnected from the music -  DH's observation)

On a completely different note,  today I discovered yet another difference between living in the suburbs (as I have for the last year and a half),  and NYC where i spent the preceding 40 1/2 years.  Living in Brooklyn for that many years, you grow used to hearing people scream at sporting events.  You can hear them from blocks away.  When the Rangers finally won the Stanley Cup after 54 years, people were going to their windows in between periods and bellowing random gutteral sounds out the window.  

Here in Westchester, they scream at golf.

on television.

Really. 

I'm not kidding

I came home from my weekend away to hear someone screaming "Attaboy Tiger" from behind their closed door. 

Its a whole new world.

So I still remember how to knit.. who knew..

I love long weekends.

And I've been in dire need of a break.
Never content to have one thing going on at a time, I was seduced into picking up a second project heading into my long weekend.

To backtrack a little - my husband and I never seem to have time to work on the stuff we enjoy.. life tends to interfere. So we committed to spending this weekend doing the things we never seem to get to - in my case its knittng and blog stuff.

I started the weekend in Katonah Yarn where I picked up some Artyarns Cashmere 5 in a blend of purply colors to make this Cashmere neckwarmer  (note: links to a pdf).

I'm enjoying this so far, and its looking pretty good...

The only real complaint I have, is that the two projects I have going at the moment are this, and the baby raglan sweater made from the yak/marino blend, and both yarns are stranded rather than plyed so I'm constantly splitting stitches, which is starting to drive me a little nuts.

Make that two complaints - or one and a half really, this scarf has a psso 2 purl stitches on the purl side, and with the splittiness of the yarn it gets a little wearing. 

Still, its yummy, soft, and easy and fast, exactly what I needed for this weekend.

Oh yeah.. went to Stew Leonards today too - forget the Disney folk, this is truly the happiest place on earth

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