Spinning for Sanity

Sounds like a fiber fundraiser, doesn't it? Get your friends to pledge money for every yard spun, then sit down and spin until you drop? Hmm, not a bad idea.

That is not, in fact, what I meant though.

It's been a long week and the sanity I'm spinning for is my own.

My mother is in the hospital, three thousand miles away, and short of getting on a plane to go see her there is not much I can do other than provide moral support to my dad over the phone.

This has left me feeling very stressed and anxious.

I have been spinning. It helps, but not enough.

Edited to add: my mother had a better night last night, encouraging news.

WTF? The Air Travel Edition

So I have a question for any and all of you that travel on planes:

When you board an airplane where you stow your carryon baggage? Do you proceed to your row and stow your baggage in the overhead bin directly above your seat (assuming there is room)? Or do you stick your bags in any old overhead bin, regardless of where your seat is?

Before you answer, let me tell you that I have a strong opinion on The Right Way this should be done. I think your bags should go over your seat, or as close as you can get to it.

We traveled during the holidays. Normally I don't like to travel at the holidays - we used to do it every year but there's a reason I put my foot down about four years ago and said "I'm done". I like to be with my immediate family in my own house, with our rules, our food, our pajamas, etc. on Christmas day. Traveling in and out of the Northeast in the winter is a crap shoot and doing it with small children can be awful.

But things are complicated at "home", and I told my father we would come. So we went East on the 27th for a week.

Travel wasn't too bad on the way there: sure the line to get through security was long, but our plane wasn't full (when was the last time that happened) and we had six seats for the four of us - it was great.

The way home was another story. We had a 6:17 am departure so we left the house at 4:00. It was snowing, and had been for days, but the plows were out so it wasn't too bad. We got to the terminal and found a long line in front of the Air Tran terminal, but we were taking United so we kept on walking past the line. And walking, until we found that the line in front of the Air Tran counter was the United line which went across the terminal and had already doubled back on itself (the fact that it was 12 degrees Fahrenheit outside was the only reason the line wasn't going out the door.)

One thing we noticed on all parts of our journey was the increasingly strident tone the airline staff was taking in regards to carryon baggage. We were "advised" over and over that we could only take two bags, that any wheeled bag had to go in the overhead, that purses and coats were not allowed in the overhead, etc. etc.

On our flight out of Boston we were among the first in our seating area to board. We were about halfway down the plane, and we stowed one bag for each of us in the overhead, and put our other belongings under the seat in front of us. Safely seated, we were free to watch other passengers and how they dealt with their baggage.

The Italian and I both watched one group of four people stop at our row and enthusiastically stow all of their carryon baggage in the overhead compartment, filling two bins with their bags, purses, wheelies, coats, etc. Then, as if that wasn't bad enough, they then proceeded to the last row of the plane, ten rows farther back, and took their seats.

Come on, that's just rude. I can understand if the compartments in the neighborhood of your seats are full needing to put your things somewhere else, but to just randomly stop and fill up a bin? Of course, when the other people who were sitting in our row, and the rows in front and behind, came to take their seats there was no place for their bags and they had to scramble to find space for it all.

The Italian and I were both amused and incensed, and it was a poor way to start the trip.

And I'm flying back at the end of the month. Let's see what travel conditions are like then!

Socks of Love

I have been knitting socks for a long time. I put off making my first sock for an even longer time before that.

As an experienced knitter I spent a couple of years (off and on) reading a sock knitting pattern and wondering "what the hell?" There just didn't seem to be any way that it would work! I don't have a good visual/spacial mental imagery ability, so as I read the instructions I would get to a point where I just couldn't picture how the next step would work, and I wasn't going to start the pattern if I couldn't understand it.

That went on for some time, until I got fed up and just started knitting. I got to the confusing point and kept on going, trusting the pattern writer (and technical editor) that it would work.

And it did. It was magic, pure effing magic.

I don't know how many years ago I knit that first sock, but I think it was before we moved to the west coast so that's been at least twelve years. I have knit lots of socks since then, and have for the last five years or so always had a sock in progress. I've knit them for myself, for two different friends, for my husband, for my MIL, my FIL, but for the longest time I didn't knit any for my mother.

She didn't want any.

This was strange for so many reasons:
-my mom was a knitter. A fabulous knitter who appreciated handknits.
-my mom is from the South but lives in the Northeast, and she is always cold. Always.
-she wears wool socks much of the year (again, always cold).

I asked her once why she didn't like hand knit wool socks, and she said they would be too scratchy, too rough, not washable, she liked the store bought ones, etc.

Finally I got tired of asking for explanations and I just handed a sock to her one day and told her to try it on (after first explaining that she couldn't have that one, it was already promised to someone else).

She skeptically pulled the sock on her foot and her eyes went wide. "OH" she said in tones of wonderment, "I like this!"

I graciously refrained from saying "I told you so" and promised to make her socks for her very own. I made her one pair in Socks that Rock, and the next time she came to visit she very coyly told me that if I made her more socks she would wear them!

So I made her another pair in STR. And another pair in Cherry Tree Hill Supersock. And she wore them and wore them and wore them. Until, you guessed it, she wore through them.

So I have learned how to darn socks. (In the meantime I made her another pair in a yarn with 20% nylon and am working on yet another pair with nylon content).

One pair just had little holes at the toe, those were fairly quick to darn.

You can tell where they are darned because I was darning in green/yellow leftover sock yarn. One of the downsides of almost always knitting socks toe-up is that I have almost no leftover sock yarn in the house.

The remaining two pair have big holes under the heel of the foot.


Because my mother is very sensitive to rough edges and ridges in her clothes, I am darning a large amount of surface area. It's tedious, you have to watch carefully what you are doing, and it generates lot of ends. I am not enjoying it very much, but I will do this for my mother. My mother is not well and living three thousand miles away there's not a lot I can do for her, but this I can and will do.

Let's not talk about the holes in The Italian's socks.