Another Brick in the Wall

The missing floss (WDW cinnabar--2 skeins) arrived in the mail last week, so I was able to return to stitching bricks (in brick stitch!) on Kindred House by Chessie and Me. It's addictive, and I've been neglecting my other projects. It's a bit hard to count, though, and a frog came to visit a few times already; the brick stitch involves running 2 threads (over two) horizontally through the top holes as well as the bottom holes of each square, so I tend to lose count.

But I did spend a bit of time searching for the fibers for this Victoria Sampler design that I'm adapting to Nicole's RR. The original calls for silk, but I think it might look odd if it's a silk square along with cotton ones, so I'm doing the conversion on the fly. My picture is a bit blurry but you can see Nicole's square; Leslie's is outside the picture. They're both beautiful and detailed, and I searched long and hard to find something compatible in flavor. At the moment it looks like the periscope on a submarine.

Although it hasn't exactly become fall yet, I've got the itch to knit fall things, and I ran across this nifty cabled sweater in the Interweave Knits magazine. Yum. I have 20 balls of Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran that I have been saving for a special project. Maybe this one? I haven't bought Vogue Knitting's Silver Anniversary edition yet but plan to. I find an awful lot of knitting magazines, I suppose to appeal to more people, or to develop patterns that don't all look the same, or which take advantage of some of the new, more outrageous fibers, are offering "cutting-edge" designs. I'm a bit old and out of shape for a "belly" sweater. And I wince thinking about how I'd look in some of the other fashion yarn extravaganzas (itchy knitted corset and panties, anyone?). And frankly, I've missed the whole sock thing: I wear only soft white cotton socks with my sneakers. I can't see messing with stranding colors and worrying about size to knit socks no one sees (or worse, that they do see) when one can knit a nice, cozy, classic sweater. It's partly my lifestyle: I'm going to wear Birkenstocks and loud striped socks at stuffy Big Law? I remember a short time after I learned to knit, pointing out to my mom (the world's most amazing knitter) a sweater with clever scotty dogs incorporated into the pattern. Mom shook her head and said I'd regret it because I would put tons of work into it, but it was so memorable and unique that I wouldn't want to wear it very often.

Counting Sheep

I've been hard at work on "Keep Me" this week. It doesn't look like much has been accomplished, but this bit took a while. And it's dull to stitch, so it made me very sleepy to work on it. I'd work on a couple of rows in the evening, and my eyes would begin to shut.

Speaking of sleeping, we shopped for a new bed today, weighing the pros and cons of various kinds of springs and foam and stuffing. I dutifully tried them out, but I mostly left the decision up to DBF; I can literally sleep on anything, anywhere, any time, through virtually any noise. I sleep on my commuter bus, head lolling or knocking against the window when we lurch in traffic; and I fall asleep most nights within about a minute. When I worked in Manhattan and slept every night in a hotel, I could sleep on the third floor of a low rise right through the noise of the traffic and the incessant honking. It's a gift. Poor BF tends toward insomnia, he takes a long time to fall asleep and he sleeps lightly; a cricket will awaken him.

Speaking of BF, he's decided to embark on the Nutrisystem diet plant to shed some weight. I applaud the effort and am trimming my own calories, but in a different way. My cardiologist recommends Nutrisystem, along with a couple of other programs. BF ordered two months' worth of the guy plan, and this is roughly one-fourth of the box of food that showed up at the door. He likes that portions are measured out for him and that there's a schedule for eating (6 times a day) along a recommendation of which food to eat each time from the plan as well as what fruits and vegetables to add. I personally would prefer to grapple with it myself, using fresh food I prepare, although I will admit to not being particularly successful at it. I don't care for the idea of the aseptic packaging and whatever mysterious substance is contained therein. While it's not my preference, I support it wholeheartedly, especially since we both need to lose weight. And we'll certainly get a nice break from preparing traditional meals. Guess what I can spend the extra time doing?

In honor of the diet, of course, we visted Carl's, a local institution, to say goodbye for the summer. Since we very seldom eat ice cream (our tastes run more to the savory than the sweet; we can tear up a bag of Fritos in my house whereas ice cream in the freezer sits until it's unfit to eat from freezer burn), it was a nice treat.