My mother is nuts

But she does crack me up. She's had all sorts of gruesome health problems over the past year or two -- really unpleasant, if not life-threatening shit -- but still, she maintains her own weird sense of humour. A couple of days ago, an envelope stuffed with newspaper clippings landed on the doormat, and when I opened it, I found two things:

A) A newspaper story from our hometown's newspaper about a local surgeon, complete with a full-colour photo of said surgeon, and the following handwritten notation from my mum: "This is the guy who ripped my ovaries out. Hysterectomy doc, stingy with pain meds."

B) An advert, again from the local paper, for a neurosurgery practice. The three physicians who own the practice are all featured, as is my mother's commentary on two of them, complete with numbers, arrows and circles, to wit:

Surgeon Number 1: "This fucker is the one who had to re-do my back surgery. Stingy with drugs." (She has had issues with being given sufficient pain meds, and is understandably resentful.)

Surgeon Number 2: "This guy is my doctor now. I am reserving judgment, because he is better-looking."

I just hope he gives her more drugs.

OK, I remember now why winter sucks.

Because of all the goddamned snow. Two days is clearly my limit. Yes, it was very pretty, and then it was grey and slushy, and goddamn, can we have spring now? My crocuses (croci?) and snowdrops were blooming when the snow hit, and now I think they're probably dead. Fuck you very much, winter.

still winter

still winter,
originally uploaded by tricoteuse.

Winter is making what I am guessing will be its last stand today. When I looked out the window before I went to bed last night, a bit past 1:00, there was only a light dusting of snow on the street and our hedge. This morning, I woke up when Phil opened the bedroom curtains and commented, "Wow. Winter wonderland out there."

And so it is. Cloudy and snowy though it was this morning, our bedroom faces north-east, and our curtains and bedding are all blindingly white, so we didn't need the sun to fill the room with light. It was all so very cosy that it wasn't hard for me to go right back to sleep, feeling smug and happy. I only slept for another hour and a bit, though, before Flash managed to chivvy me out of bed to make breakfast.

I like Sunday mornings like the one we had today. Phil was playing with his new camera (although I took that picture with my own little snapshot camera) while I cooked, and our house felt very peaceful and warm. I baked a fresh loaf of honey-whole wheat bread last night, specifically because the toast it makes is so crunchily wonderful, and we had it with eggs, bacon and big portabella mushrooms, then we sat at the dining room table for a while and drank coffee and talked.

Now a lazy afternoon and evening stretch out in front of me, and other than a quick trip down to the shops, the only thing I have to do is decide whether I want to spend my time reading or knitting. Every Sunday should be like this.

Why didn't anyone tell me...

...that Georgette Heyer is so much fun? Seriously, I picked up a couple of her books at WH Smith today, on a whim, because with all the knitting I have not been doing so much reading of late, and I miss it, and also the books were on Special Offer, and I love a Special Offer, and I am only about two chapters into Friday's Child, and already I can tell that I am going to love Georgette Heyer.

This is good! She writes well! The mother of the Regency Romance actually could, you know, totally fucking write! Unlike my somewhat pathetic Victoria Holt/Jean Plaidy addiction, I don't think I'm even slightly embarrassed to be reading Georgette Heyer. She's more like Patrick O'Brian than your standard crappy historical romance novelist, and believe me, I know from crappy historical romance novelists. Mind you, this doesn't mean I don't thoroughly enjoy a good trashy historical romance novel, but I wouldn't feel compelled to hide the cover of this one, which is more than I can say for something like My Enemy the Queen.

It could be worse. I could still be reading V.C. Andrews, an author I thankfully outgrew by the time I was in single-letter cup sizes, and whose ghost-written oeuvre I revisited in a brief spasm of nostalgie de la boue a few years ago, only to be stunned by just how terrible Flowers in the Attic actually was. I was embarrassed for myself, especially when the incestuous rape scene that the first three quarters of the book is merely killing time leading up to turned out to be so much less enthralling than I had remembered.

You really can't go home again.

Your hostess

after breakfast,
originally uploaded by tricoteuse.

I was all dubious about P buying yet another digital camera, until he took this photo of me, at which point, I decided it was a Miracle Camera (akin to the Miracle Bra, of course) and it magically had the ability to make my hair look good. So that's all right then.

Expect lots more pictures, if not necessarily of me, certainly of my yarn stash.

So I totally fuckin' made another jumper!

second sweater,
originally uploaded by tricoteuse.

This was planned to be my Knitting Olympics project, and it was, but I just overestimated my knitting speed, and the amount of free time I'd have to actually sit down and knit, so it ended up taking me four extra days to finish it. But that's still One Whole Jumper done in just about three weeks, meaning I shaved just over a week off the time it took me to knit my first jumper, and this one was a slightly more complicated pattern, what with the ribbing at the hem, wrists and crew neck. And I boldly deviated from the pattern by subbing a different yarn, fucking with the gauge, and changing it from a polo neck to a crew neck.

In other words, I rule.

The details:

Pattern: The Compromise, adapted from The Yarn Girls' Guide to Simple Knits

Yarn: Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Superchunky (the pattern called for something long-discontinued from Noro) in black.

Needles: Lantern Moon Blonde 8mm straights and Addi Turbo 8mm/40cm circs.

I am just so chuffed. I love knitting. Having always had crafty aspirations combined with a low threshold for boredom, and a tendency to not believe in my own abilities, I am so happy that I've taught myself to knit. I have a long way to go -- this is all just pretty simple stuff so far -- but I'm starting to think I might have the potential to be quite good at this. I'm already frustrated by the constraints of other people's patterns, and soon I'd like to try to either seriously adapt from an existing pattern, or just, you know, design something of my own. The worst that could happen is that it just wouldn't work, yes? I'd have to frog it all, and that would be sad, but hell, it's knitting wool, it can be re-used.

The really insane part of this knitting madness is that I'm already day-dreaming about learning to spin and dye my own yarn myself. I think I'll probably get quite a few more completed whole garments under my belt first, though.