It is one of the wonders of this world that citizens of this country have been able to vote for what kind of government they want for over 200 years. Without fear of reprisal we can decide to throw out the current bunch of elected officials if we decide that we don’t like the job they have done for us. I’ve certainly not made any secret of which side of the political fence that I am on. If you are on the other side of that fence, go vote anyway. We’ll all sit on the edge of our chairs Tuesday night and wait for the results.

GO VOTE! I’ve already cast my ballot. (I vote absentee every year, even if I’m in town, just so I don’t get sidetracked by work and not get it done.) My husband joined the local campaign workers this week and spent the day today going door to door reminding people to get out there Tuesday and do their civic duty. I would have gone too, if I hadn’t had to go to work today.

Many of the knit bloggers that I read seem to be Kerry/Edwards supporters, though I doubt that I read a representative sample of all knit bloggers. In the spirit of the election season, who are you going to vote for in the presidential election? Cast your ballot in the comment section, and I’ll tally them up and post the results. As in real life, duplicate ballots will not be counted!

And my parting shot:

I want to know if it’s OK to drink beverages with little paper umbrellas while vacationing on Sleeve Island. Though now that I think about that, maybe it’s not such a great idea. We were invited to a party last night and I took my knitting bag along, as it was about an hour’s drive from home. We got there about 2 hours before the party started (don’t ask; it’s a really long story, and it’s NOT my fault). The hosts were nice enough to let us in anyway and give us something to drink. I really wasn’t going to bring my knitting in to the party until the sister of the hostess arrived (also about 2 hours early, but then she was family). She promptly brought out her knitting and stated that she just couldn’t sit still without it. So I went out and got my purple sweater and worked on the sleeve. She very politely commented that working on knitted lace while drinking bourbon and watching a World Series game might not be a good plan. Well what the hell did she know? I just ignored her and kept knitting until I realized that I just had seriously f***ed things up. I finished the row anyway (never stop in the middle of a row, you know) and put it away until tonight. After looking at it awhile, I decided that I just needed to go back to the beginning of the row I had been working on. Then I realized that, in my bourbon-induced knitting zeal, I had done one whole repeat more of the lace pattern than what I needed to. I started to rip back the whole repeat, lost count, and just ripped the whole thing out. During tonight’s World Series game, I redid the lace border for the first sleeve. It turned out fine, which leads me to believe that it was the bourbon that was the problem, and not the excitement of the game.

I’m done with the back and both front pieces. I was too lazy to take a good picture; here’s a pile of knitted pieces;

And the sleeve, after the ripping and re-knitting:

I know learning new things is good for me. It’s supposed to stretch my brain and keep my mind nimble. My green striped sock pattern is a toe-up version with a short row heel. I have never tried this before, and I’m beginning to see why. Now, I like the idea of doing the socks from the toe up. You can just knit till your yarn is half gone without doing all that guessing as to whether there will be enough to get the second sock done. I keep reminding myself that I wasn’t so hot at doing flap heels and gussets either, the first several times I did it. I’ve only ripped this sucker back once so far, but we shall see. It’s really not a difficult concept once you try it and just follow the freaking directions. Here are some pictures:

Let me tell you, I’m not feeling very guru-ish right at the moment, despite what this quiz says.

You appear to be a Knitting Guru. You love knitting
and do it all the time. While finishing a piece
is the plan, you still love the process, and
can’t imagine a day going by without giving
some time to your yarn. Packing for vacation
involves leaving ample space for the stash and
supplies. It can be hard to tell where the yarn
ends and you begin.

http://marniemaclean.com

What Kind of Knitter Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

If I sound cranky, I’m not really. It’s actually fun to do something new, even if it is a bit fidgety at first.

I promised Norma a picture from my yard the next time the sun was shining. I figured I better not wait till April to do this, so here’s one with the sun NOT shining. This is from our back deck.

Note that there is actually some blue sky there!

No, this blog isn’t going to morph into The Crocheting Doctor. I had one of those moments at work this past week that reminds me why I will always love being a physician. I had admitted an elderly lady with dementia to the hospital earlier in the week with a diagnosis of “altered mental status”. Basically she was sent in for placement in a nursing home because they couldn’t take care of her at the facility she was in. Always the optimist, I tinkered with her medications and stopped some sedating drugs she was on, and the next thing I knew, she was awake and alert. She was still quite demented, mind you, but now very alert and interactive. One of the staff had mentioned that she was once a knitter, so I asked her about it. She looked at me and promptly said, “No, crochet.” The next day I took her some leftover yarn (the leftover balls from this) and a crochet hook. When I took it out of the bag, she didn’t even wait for me to explain. Her eyes lit up and she took it out of my hands and just started in. I checked back periodically through the day, thinking she might need a bit of help. She never did get past that first row, but she crocheted one heck of a long blue chain. The yarn and hook were discharged happily from the hospital with her.

Many thanks to everyone who left birthday wishes. I had to work, but my guy cooked me a wonderful dinner when I got home. He’s upstairs making Ethiopian Doro Wat tonight. I have no idea what inspired this, but I’m not about to complain.

Just so I don’t get kicked out of the Knitting Kitty ring, here are some pictures of Lucy. Lucy found a pile of old papers that were slated for the shredder earlier this week. Note how she looks so freaking innocent in this one.

A while later I found her under the pile. This photo didn’t quite capture all the little shredded bits around her. I guess she was just trying to help.

You might wonder why there are rarely pictures of Willie. Will thinks he’s a dog, and doesn’t usually stay in one place long enough for pictures.

I have been slogging along on my three little projects, making slow but steady progress. Just because it’s so damned purty, here is a picture of Birch:

This yarn is pretty fidgety to knit with, but I adore this color. It’s finally getting to the point where I can see some progress! Oooooh! Little Birch leaves!

My birthday was this week, and I received some lovely gifts from relatives that have left me speechless.

The first was from my husband. We had decided we weren’t going to “do” gifts this year, as we just spent a week in San Francisco and spent enough money in some very fine restaurants to feed a third-world country for months. I came home from work Tuesday and found these:

And this:

It’s a wine and cheese teapot, of course.

And from my sister-in-law:

And this tasteful refrigerator magnet:

From one of my sisters:

And:

From my other sister:

You of course want to see what’s in it, don’t you? Sure you do.

It’s a Bunko card game, complete with Barbie cards.

Last, but certainly not least, is the gift from Jen, my husband’s daughter.

She starts out looking like this:

You push a button on the back, and she “shushes” you:

This comes complete with librarian bookmarks, and a Librarian Action Figure Trading Card. By the way, the librarian is supposed to be Seattle librarian Nancy Pearl, author of Book Lust. It’s a great book.

Some women get jewelry or kitchen appliances for their birthdays. What can I say; my family knows me too well.

And just because it was on the same photo card as all of these pictures, I’ll leave you with a photo of where I live. Well, near where I live.

Purty, ain’t it?

My favorite part of the San Francisco trip was the little foray out to ArtFibers.  All I can say is that it is probably a good thing for the sake of my credit card bill that I don’t live near this place.  (Yes, I know they ship, but it ain’t the same…)

For those of you who have never been there, here is the Wall of Yarn:

I sat through FOUR whole days of medical conference just waiting for the chance to get done and go to this place.  I learned many new things, and didn’t fall asleep once, thanks to my trusty knitting project.  The conference had perhaps 400 attendees, pretty well mixed half and half, men and women.   (Oh, I remember the good old days, when I was one of a minority of women physicians!  “Lady Doctors”, we were called way back then.)  I was the only person knitting, although there was one other woman doing needlepoint.  I found it rather amusing that the only people that commented on my knitting were a couple of men sitting near me that said some favorable things.

Here’s what I worked on:

I figure I’m about a third done with this.  It was great conference knitting, with those miles of stockinette that I didn’t have to pay any attention to.

Oh, I suppose you want to know what yarn I came home with??

The ribbon yarn in both of these pictures is called “Houdini”.  The first one really is as red as it looks.  The red shiny stuff with it is Baccarat, which is a nylon sequin ribbon novelty yarn.  The red combo will be a long skinny scarf.

The other combo is the Houdini ribbon in a fall color blend, along with Kyoto, a silk/mohair/wool blend in a lovely gold color.  This will be a wide rectangular shawl.   The women in the store are unbelievably helpful in assisting you with pattern and color suggestions.  I sort of had an idea what I wanted for a pattern for this, and the woman helping me sat right down and hand wrote a pattern for this yarn combo that I think will be perfect.

I’ve decided that as an incentive to finish that Birch shawl, I will NOT start either one of these until I finish that one.  I tried to work on it while watching the VP debate last night, but got a little worked up and lost track of where I was.  Maybe I won’t really try to finish it till after the election.