grieving

I haven't blogged in awhile.

A terrible thing happened last week at our house. We were petsitting our friends' dog while they were on their honeymoon. This dog, who I called Lulabelle, is my friend A's beloved, cherished child.

Three days before they were supposed to return, it was a beautiful spring day, and I decided (a decision I will regret forever) to leave Lu and our Harvey in our fenced yard for the afternoon. Lu, who had been missing her mom but seemed to perk up in the yard, found a weak spot in the fence and got out.

She's still missing 8 days later, despite every imaginable effort--including more than 500 flyers, daily visits to Humane Society, a trained canine search and rescue dog, an ad in the paper and several places online. We have followed up on every lead, no matter how slight.

We have had to put up with calls from crazy, mean people, yelling at us for putting flyers up or for not listing our address on the flyer so they'd know precisely where to search (yeah, lady, I know how you feel. I'd have liked a big red arrow to know where to search, too). We had one creepy man call to ask if he needed "to come make sure it didn't happen again."

We are not careless or cavalier people. In fact, I'm usually hypercareful, and so am beating myself up even more for not checking the fence thoroughly before leaving her out there unattended. We love Lu and would not have harmed her any more than our own. We are sick about it, and to think of the grief I've caused my friend during what should be a very special time in her life is nearly unbearable.

It has been an awful time, and though we are not giving up hope (in this journey, many people have told us their dog got lost and made it home under remarkable circumstances), we have begun to reach the end of what we can do, and are moving into the period where we just have to wait. I never realized how big my little world is until I had to begin to search it without knowing where to begin.

So, if you share your life with an animal, kiss them and love them today, for my friend A and her sweet Lu--

frogging and funk

I love knitting socks. I hate gussets. Picking up stitches evenly along the heel flap and without leaving holes is the bane of my existence (yes, I know the trick that's supposed to correct the hole at the top of the gusset, but because I seem to be a loose knitter no matter how hard I try to tighten those slipped stitches, it doesn't always work for me).

For some reason, on my sockbug lacy scallops socks, I've additionally struggled with translating the instructions for the pick up stitches/first round gusset part. (On the second gusset, the instructions are different, which I just can't wrap my brain around.) For example, how does one both pick up and knit stitches in the same row when knitting in the round? The working yarn isn't in the right place.

Well, one morning it popped into consciousness right after I woke up--you have to pick up one stitch, then knit it, then pick up the next, etc. One frog down. But now I find that I do have holes up and down the gusset where the heel flap edge has been stretched as I've picked up repeatedly. I don't want to spend all this time knitting these socks and always notice the gusset holes. It's back to the frog pond, I think, all the way back to the first heel flap round. Damn. There go my lovely turned heels, and I have to knit the weird heel flap pattern again.

So this pair of socks has been languishing. And my Heike socks, I've lost a little faith in my calculations and am not sure they'll fit. Maybe it's impending sandal season that makes me feel less socky.

I've not yet cast on for wobbly circles tote. I think I'm in a knitting funk. Starting a project before I finish the two WIPs seems like a bad idea--knitting is one area of my life where I can balance my need for variety and process with my desire to produce a perfect finish. I'm slow but dogged. I don't want these socks to linger any longer, and I want them to be beautiful. So frogging away--since Harvey woke me up at 5:30 a.m. on a Saturday, I might as well go dive in before I wake up and come to my senses.

back to (more) normal

It's a rare day (even for my off-work Mondays): nothing I have to do! It's a good thing--I think I got food poisoning at a salad bar last night and spent most of the 2-4 a.m. hours wishing to die. A great day to sit on the couch casting on for the Wobbly Circles Tote (or at least winding bobbins)!

I took advantage of the relative lull yesterday (after weeks of building up to my friend A's wedding, which went off hitchless on Saturday evening) to run up to the Seattle Knitting Expo. I had one hard-target goal:

I also debated buying colourway Alina and Dutch Canyon. Pebble Beach was nowhere to be found (at least not in STR), but I was arriving late on the last day of the Expo. I also saw some Sleeping Dragon sock yarn in Indian Corn and Spring Fling, but not in Spooky, so I didn't get any (I think my affinity right now is for the highly saturated colors and sproingy plies of STR, and Sleeping Dragon was much more subtle and soft). Other than that, I almost bought some Zephyr, but I just don't like the colors I saw. I really need to finish winding and start knitting that deep red merino laceweight yarn.

So, if there's no more barfing today, I'll probably spend a good bit of it knitting and writing. Happy May day!