Finished Object: Blackrose Socks

Pattern: Blackrose Socks by Suzi Anvin, Knitty Winter 2008
Yarn: Zitron Trekking (XXL)
Started: January 13, 2009
Finished: January 19,2009

I finished these quite a while ago, but due to the unwieldy nature of my physique lately, making it nearly impossible to get a good camera angle of my own feet, I have been unable to get any photos up of the finished object. Overall, I love how these turned out. the pattern was fun, interesting to knit, and pretty quick. Because I'm a tight knitter, I went up a needle size (I used 3 instead of 2) to get the appropriate gauge, but I probably could have knit them with the 2s and had them fit better---I have pretty narrow feet and ankles. They stay up for the most part, and look nice, but they're not as snug as I would like, and they stretch when they're worn or washed. I loved the yarn; the colors are gorgeous and it's wonderfully soft and warm, if a bit prone to the fuzzies. I'd definitely use it again.

Belly Update

Thirty-two weeks:



This is going to be just a quick blog update...this picture was taken on Sunday, a day before i came down with the worst stomach bug of all time. It's had me pretty much bed-ridden for the last three days.

Anyway, I have some FO shots of my Blackrose socks to show, as well as progress made on my February lady sweater (which is what I decided to make out of my frogged cardigan). I've finished the yoke and am working on the lace body. It's going pretty quickly, so I hope to have it finished soon. I'm also ordering the rest of the yarn I need for my Pfeiffer Falls hooded scarf, which I really want to finish as well. I'm also ordering some lovely cashmere-cotton blend fingering that I found on closeout on WEBs for a baby blanket which I have only two months to knit, so I'm looking forward to starting that as well.

Sorry, not too much of excitement, what with the stomach flu and all, but i promise some juicy knitting photos soon.

Until then, if you get the stomach thing that has been going around, I promise you, you're not dying, even though it feels like it.

Black Bean Chili

Last night I made a big pot of chili, one of my husband's favorite meals, and one of the first things I learned to cook after we were married. Since then, I've become a much more accomplished cook (if I do say so myself), and my chili is one of my best creations, as I've had nearly six years to perfect it. Although I originally learned to cook chili from a recipe, it has since been so completely changed and adapted, that it is a recipe I consider truly my own. This is how I make it:

Beef and Black Bean Chili

2 lbs ground beef
1 large onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1-3 jalapenos, minced (depending on how spicy you want, and how hot the peppers are)
3 tablespoons chili powder, or more according to taste
1 tablespoon ground cumin
4 14.5 oz cans diced tomatoes
3 oz dark unsweetend or bittersweet chocolate
1 1/2 tablespoons molasses
3 14.5 oz cans black beans, rinsed and drained
salt
grated cheese

In a large stock pot or dutch oven brown ground beef until no longer pink, breaking up meat with a spoon as it cooks. Drain off most of the fat, leaving about 1-2 tablespoons to cook the onion in. Add onion, garlic and jalapenos, cook until onion is tender. Add chili powder and cumin, mix and cook until fragrant, about 30 sec to 1 minute. Add tomatoes, and one tomato can full of water, bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer. Add chocolate and molasses, stir until melted and incorporated. Salt to taste, also add more chili powder if needed. Simmer for about an hour. Add beans and simmer for another 15 minutes to half hour, or until desired thickness.

Serve with grated cheese and cornbread if you like.

I'm lucky enough to have an excellent source of local free-range beef that is quite affordable, so I cook with more beef than I would otherwise. (I'm very wary of non-organic or otherwise conventional factory beef.) If your family doesn't eat beef, this recipe can easily be made with ground turkey. When I make it this way, however, I usually use pinto beans instead of black beans, since I think that they're milder and more complimentary to turkey. If I use turkey, I also start the recipe by browning about 4 slices of chopped bacon in the pan, and then cooking the turkey in the bacon fat, which adds a deeper flavor--of course, you can skip that if you want a leaner chili.

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In knitting news, I've nearly finished the Blackrose socks--I just have to finish the toe decreases on the second sock and then graft the toe. I still haven't been able to get the right yarn to continue my Pfeiffer Falls scarf, so I'll have to order it, and in the meantime, I'm thinking of knitting a cardigan out of some Brown Sheep Company Cotton Fleece in black that I'm planning to frog out of an unsuccessful cardigan I made a year ago. Any suggestions for a cardigan pattern appropriate for that yarn that would look nice in black?

January Socks

The Pfeiffer Falls hooded scarf has been put on hold until I can get more yarn--yes, I committed the cardinal sin of starting the scarf without the requisite amount of yarn, thinking that something like Lion Brand Solid Wool would be easy to come by...even if the dye lot ended up slightly different. Imagine my surprise when I went back to Michael's last week and found the entire yarn aisle completely decimated with no wool of any sort to be found. Apparently they had a huge after holiday sale that I missed. The lady there was very vague about when they might be getting more. I've been checking back and so far, no luck. Looks like I may have to order it online.

In the meantime I've been knitting the Blackrose Lace Socks from this winter's Knitty. I want to knit more socks this year--hopefully a pair per month, though with all that's going to be on my plate, I'm quite flexible on that goal. I started the first of this pair night before last and I've already finished and casted on the second.



Isn't the colorway beauteous?



It's the Zitron Trekking (XXL) in an unnamed gorgeous purpley variegation. I love the yarn. No pooling, and the color changes are subtle , which I like. I can't wait until they're finished.

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On another note, I want to thank all of you for the comments on my last post. I can't believe the kind words from such virtual strangers. I'm feeling better this week, and being able to share some of that in words, and have such thoughtful responses definitely paid a part in that. I really look forward to reading more of your blogs and getting to know you better.

Happiness

A group of friends and I were talking the other day, and the question came up: are you happy? What does happiness mean anyway? Most of us agreed that it is not a state of constant bliss and excitement, but rather a state of peace and acceptance of one's life. Of not constantly wanting to move on to the next thing, or constantly wishing for something new and better.

I do not think I can describe myself as a happy person by these standards. It's not because I'm thy type of person who wants a lot of stuff; in fact I'm satisfied with very simple things. I'm rather a homebody and like most to be at home with my husband, or with close friends or family. I don't have lots of friends, but the ones I have are very dear to me. I like to putter around my house, cook and knit. I like my job, and I'm excited about becoming a nurse one day soon. I love my husband more than anything and can't imagine my life without him. And the baby--well, it brings tears to my eyes every time she moves. The very idea that she's here, that I'm able to actually grow her in my belly, that she will be my daughter, really and truly, is a miracle to me after more than three long years of waiting for her to come.

Yes, I know I have many blessings. and yet this constant cloud of anxiety and hopelessness follows me throughout life. In all honesty, we are in sort of a crisis phase, on of those periods where things are about to get either much better or much worse, and the anxiety is worse than usual. But this isn't a feeling unique to those difficult times in life. This is a feeling that is with me more often than it is not. And I'm starting to wonder if it is really the stress of life, or something inherent in me that is wrong. I'm tired of always waiting for things to get better, especially now that I have so many things that I've wanted for so long. On the other hand, I wonder why new difficulties have sprung up to ruin the sense of contentment I hoped to have. Most of all, I worry that my negative thought will somehow affect the baby, that she is doomed to some kind of melancholy existence because I didn't think happy enough thoughts when she was forming. I worry that my depression and anxiety will keep me from being a good mother. I worry about my husband, who is under his own stress, and try to be positive and not make things worse. I'm tired of being sad and afraid all the time.

I took the beach grass photo above almost exactly a year ago, on a walk on the beach with the Mister. It seems so peaceful and happy to be walking on the beach with my husband and my dog--I remember it as a good day. But was it? Did I let the day be clouded by thoughts and worries? Sadly, I probably did. Can I learn to get to a place where I feel at peace with myself, and with the present? I want a peaceful and open heart, and the ability to accept the bad with the good. Is this something some are born with, or something we have to learn? Is it something I can learn?

Odds and Ends

The Pfeiffer Falls aka New Mama Scarf is coming along nicely, although I think I'm going to have to add at least two or three more repeats on each side of the scarf body to get it to the length I want. I'm working on the second half of the scarf part, so I'll probably have to go back and add more length to the other half before I graft them together. I feel like I should have more done since I've been sick with a terrible cold all weekend, stayed home from work and had plenty of time to knit, but pretty much just slept on the couch and watched bad TV. Today, I felt much better, but I spent most of the day tidying up the house which had somehow degenerated into a wreck over the three days I was couch-bound and finally taking down my Christmas tree, which was a huge relief.

The bigger news today is that we got a new pellet stove for our living room. It's a beautiful restored stove that looks like a woodstove, except no chimney. I'm so excited because we don't have central heat, so we had to use very ineffective and expensive space heaters to try to heat the house, but mostly we were just freezing because we didn't ant a ginormous electric bill. However, I really wanted to find an effective heating solution before the baby's born. The hearth we built is still only plywood; we're going to tile it after the wood we used to build it completely dries, so I didn't take any pictures. But it is certainly nice to have a warm place to curl up and knit.

Dear Baby

You have been growing inside me for seven months now. When I first found out you were in there, I thought I would write about you all the time, and tell you how wonderful it was that you were here inside me, and to be able to tell you all about what it was like when you were in my tummy. But even though I talked to you constantly, and was continually amazed by the little miracles that happened daily inside me, I did not keep my resolution of writing it all down for you. So today, the first day of the year in which you will be born, I thought I would keep a little bit of that original intention.

The first thing I want to tell you is how very much I missed you when you weren't here. It may seem odd that a person could miss someone they'd never met, someone that hasn't even been put into the world yet, but I did. I missed you so much it was unbearable at times. Even though there were times I worried that you would never get here, deep down, I never lost the sense that you were out there somewhere, my little spirit baby, circling around my life, waiting for the right time to be born. Your daddy and I used to ask your little baby cousin, "where's our baby?", and he would look purposefully up with his big blue eyes, just as if he could see you and that let me know that you were out there waiting to be born.

One day last summer, I found out that you were finally here, in this very universe, this very world, right here with me...inside me, in fact. I almost couldn't believe it. Your daddy and your uncle and your auntie were so happy that you were coming, and your Poppy was so excited, that when I told him he danced me around right in the middle of the bleachers at a baseball game! That's how much everybody missed you before you even got here.

The first time we saw a picture of you, you looked like a little jelly bean, and your heartbeat was so strong that we nicknamed you Thumper, and that's what we call you, even now that we know you are a little girl, and we know what your name will be. It's even more fitting now that you are thumping around inside me! What exactly are you doing in there anyway? The next time we saw you, you looked like you. We could see your little nose, and your perfect round head, your little toes like sweet peas lined up in a pod. This is what you looked like. I think it looks like you are rubbing your hands together gleefully thinking what mischief you're going to cause when you come out.



Now you're two whole months bigger than you were then, and you constantly remind me you're there by doing your special gymnastics inside. Your daddy likes to pretend you are a little intellectual wearing a beret, curled up inside my belly with an existential book and a chai latte, comfortably waiting until it's time to come out and tell us all the answers to the universe. But I know that, even though I have no doubt how smart you are, you are actually quite the athlete. Either that, or you like to do fancy yoga poses while you read your Sartre.

No matter who you are, the thing I look forward to most this year is meeting you, and being able to touch your skin and smell your head and give you kisses on that funny little nose. But I'm also going to enjoy these last few months of having you being inside of me, here but not here. You, but still part of me at the same time.

Love, Mama