My life of danger

Some time ago I knitted E a pair of wool socks. I did it partially out of generosity toward my new husband, and partially to prove to him all the time and money I would be spending over the course of the rest of our natural lives producing hand knitted socks is worth it. Well, my plot worked. He loved his socks and even worked on behalf of all knitters to try to convert others to wearing handmade socks. Until he lost one.

Since the loss of his sock, he's been bugging the heck out of me over his lack of hand knit socks. He's even complained publicly about how I had not made him more socks. Until a couple of weeks ago when I cast on this:
So I finished the first of a pair of new wool socks made especially for the Amazing E. There are two reasons why I avoid knitting socks for him. The first is that I am a selfish knitter. The second reason is more relevant to my point here; my husband has ridiculous feet. He wears a size 8 EEE. In other words, he has short, wide feet. It takes a lot of yarn to cover them. But I did break out a skein of Cherry Tree Hill Supersock and knit him this sock and cast on the second.

Then today I realized something frightening. The unused half of the ball of yarn seemed light. Uh oh. I just went downstairs and weighed the finished sock. 48 grams. Yikes! I'll be cutting things pretty close.

Merry Gentlemen and the Amazing E versus Key West

Alright. So the title makes it sound way more exciting than it was. Last week E and I took a week long vacation to Key West, Florida. Reviving the time-tested tradition of going on holiday to recover from something bad seemed like a really good idea, and our friends and family agreed. So we got online and found a package we could afford, and off we went.

Key West is a great vacation spot. For real. Not only is it a chance to experience Caribbean Island life without a passport or anti-malarials, it seems to have some fun for everyone. There is beautiful blue water and some nice beaches on the southwest end...















Places of historical and literary significance...
















And kosher sealife that can be enjoyed with or without swim fins.















(That's a Jewfish, BTW)

All in all, we got some much needed rest in a beautiful place.

Now, I'm sure some are asking the big question. Did it have yarn? Yes, it did have yarn. I knitted most of a Mingus sock while I was there. To bad I didn't get a Yarn Harlot-esque beach picture of that. There was one yarn store on the island, and I spent a whopping $40.00 there. One one skein. In my defense, it was souvenir yarn and it was Tilli Tomas Rock Star in an excellent shade of red. To bad don't have a picture of that, either.

Back to work

Life here is some how continuing. Everything feels wrong and weird. We were so outrageously happy just a little while ago and then yesterday we buried our son. It's been devastating. I mean, what do you do when you become parents, and there's no child in your home? Someone is missing in this house, but we can't do anything about it but keep up hope for the future and keep our marriage strong. Elijah and I are zombies, barely keeping thoughts in our heads long enough to act on them. Despite all this, we keep getting up in the morning and going about our days however slowly and ineffectively we manage to move forward. Elijah is going back to work on Thursday. I'm starting to go about some of my normal routines of daily living, and today I'm working on getting Rock Creek Yarn back up and running after taking the winter off. Working should be good for me.

Some cool things with the yarn are happening around here. I've got two new sock yarns to introduce. And Rock Creek Yarn has been accepted to the Homespun Yarn Party next month, and we've been invited to come to a vendor's booth at Maryland Sheep and Wool this year (so I better get moving on that paperwork). One day soon I'm going to have to take yarn pictures, so I'll likely also get my 2009 FO's up here as well. On a brighter, sunnier day.

Baruch Weisberg 2/10/10

Our son, Baruch was born Wednesday, February 10 at 9:13 pm. He had passed away inside me about 36 hours before, 5 days past his due date.

We discovered that our baby was dead the morning before at a routine doctor appointment. There was no warning or signs that anything was wrong. No test had ever indicated any problems. I had not even yet noticed that he'd stopped moving. When we were taken in for the appointment, they did the standard check for a heartbeat and did not find one. That was followed by an ultrasound confirming that his heart was not beating and that he was not moving. The results of the ultrasound indicated that he'd been gone for only a few hours. But it was clearly too late for emergency life saving measures.

At that time we were given the choice to wait a few days to absorb the news, or to go to the maternity ward straight away for labor induction. We chose to move forward immediately with the induction and were taken to a private suite to start the procedure. At that time we also called a few loved ones and asked them to inform our family and friends of what was happening.

I was admitted to the hospital right away and was prepared for the procedure of forcing my body into labor and childbirth. Elijah called the doula (private birth attendant) we'd hired to be with me through my entire labor, and she came to the hospital right away. I was given epidural anesthesia to numb me below my waist and the first round of medicine to start labor by early afternoon. Later in the afternoon I was started on stronger medicine to bring on contractions.

The labor progressed very slowly from my point of view, as it was not coming on through my body's own natural means. I also had an unpleasant but not dangerous reaction to one of the medicines I was given, but was switched to another. The doctors also gave me an antihistamine on a regular basis that made me drowsy and occasionally able to doze. I was not in any physical pain, but as the hours went by the situation became more and more emotionally painful for both me and Elijah as reality that we would not go home with a baby became real.

I have to say that we had great people working with us at the hospital. Ursula, our doula, stayed in the room with us and took turns with Elijah napping and sitting with me. The doctors and nurses changed every several hours, but were very kind, gentle, and concerned with keeping me as comfortable as possible. One doctor from the anesthesia department even came down just to visit us because he had lost a daughter under nearly identical circumstances three years ago. Our rabbi also came to visit us in the hospital to speak to us. Elijah was wonderful, even at the lowest times when we both thought that neither of could handle the protracted ordeal or the grief that would come later.

By Wednesday evening, we were exhausted. The medicine that is supposed to bring on childbirth was not working well, I had not eaten a meal in two days, and neither Elijah nor I had slept in any restful way. The doctors decided that they had to turn off that medicine for a while and then start again to see if it would work better after some rest. I also was feeling very strange and was in my exhausted state feeling confused over the fact that over half of my body was completely numb. At that time I also asked the doctors to turn off my anesthesia pump so I could regain sensation and control over my body.

Very shortly after stopping the medications, I started being able to feel and move my lower body again. Within two hours, I felt the need to start pushing the baby out. I guess at some point, my body needed to take over the birth process and had been rejecting the medicine. It took only about a half hour to bring the baby out. Besides coaching from the doula and hospital staff, I needed no more interventions. Baruch was born rather easily and with little discomfort, even though I did not have pain medication anymore.

When Baruch was born, the Navy Corpsman took him aside right away to clean him up while the doctors examined my body. I had come through the birth with basically no trauma or complication. It is expected that I will heal very quickly and be able to have another baby whenever Elijah and I want to. They had dressed him and put him in a blanket. The doctors had also examined him and learned that there was no sign of what had gone wrong. There was no visible injury or birth defect and no sign that anything had gone wrong with the umbilical cord.

After my exam was over, they brought the back to us and told us we'd had a son. Elijah and I immediately named him Baruch (Bah - rook), which means "blessing" in Hebrew. It had not been the planned name for a baby, as we had wanted to honor our families had the baby been born alive.. In the nine months he lived with us, he brought such joy to our lives and enriched our marriage in ways we cannot begin to express. We chose to honor him with the name.

Our son was beautiful and perfect. He was born 7 lbs, 11 oz, a normal full term weight for a baby. He had a little silky black hair, and very fair skin. He also looked shockingly like his daddy, with a few facial features that resembled me. We spent about an hour with him, looking him over, touching him, and telling him we loved in and were sorry he could not come home with us. After that, we asked them to take him away and told him goodbye. Pictures were taken. However, we do not know if we will be releasing any for viewing because Baruch experienced lividity after death that made his face appear badly bruised.

I was released from the hospital at my request 12 hours after the birth so we could rest in our own home. Given how well my body fared in the birth, my request was honored without reservation. So we are at home now.
Elijah and I are experiencing grief that we hadn't imagined existed. To us, we lost a living child whom we'd gotten to know and expected to meet any second up until the moment we learned of his death.

I would like to publicly thank several people for their help. First, Elijah, I love you. Thank you for being such a source of love an support throughout my pregnancy and the birth. Ursula, our doula, who provided months of education before the birth and unwavering support and comfort during the most difficult time of my life. The doctors, nurses, and staff at National Naval Medical Center who provided the highest quality of care to us with utmost compassion. The entire maternity staff at the hospital whom paid our son the respect of witnessing his birth regardless of whether we were their patients. Thanks to Rabbi Landman and the HTAA congregation for their chesed during this difficult time. Finally, thank you to our little son, Baruch, for blessing our lives and marriage for nine months. We love you so much and will think of you always.

Love,

MB a E

Stash Organization

Perhaps it was because we've been in the house for a year and the stash got spread out in bits and balls of yarn all over the place. Perhaps I was nesting. Either way, I felt the need to gather, organize, and put away my stash this week. So I went around searching in closets, under sofas, in rarely used tote bags, and even in the truckster looking for my yarn.

Somehow I'm shocked at the amount of yarn I own. That's it. Right here. Two biggish totes and a small cardboard box. AND THAT'S IT! Well, I do have two pairs of socks, a baby blanket, and a jumper based on Alice Zimmerman's Baby Surprise jacket in progress that are not shown here. But everything else is right in these containers. Somehow I'm surprised that my stash has become so meager. What surprises me even more is that only a bit more than half of the volume of this yarn is actually good stuff.

Observe.
The tote on the left is actually nice yarn. It's stuff I cherish, made of the loveliest wools, linens, alpacas, and such. The tote on the right, however, is filled with stuff I barely want to admit I have. Now, there are remnants of nice yarns in there. But none of the balls is really enough to use for anything. Then there's the skanky yarn like Lion Brand stuff and gobs of single ply silk that I Kool-Aid dyed some years ago. I don't know why I can't let go of this yarn, but I can't. Lastly is the utterly weird. Most of that yarn came in the Cherry Tree Hill Bag O' Crap sales, and includes gigantic hanks of loopy mohair, eye searing pink chenille, and yarn I'm certain was made from the hides of dead Muppets. These yarns I keep because I have a suspicion that someday I'll have a six-year-old who wishes to have toys or scarves that will horrify the yarn snob in me, but that I will knit with glee. Lastly is the small cardboard box. I've had it for a year, and have not started the Luskentyre sweater inside. I'm just waiting for my chance to dive in to that one, believe me.

So now I'm wondering, how did my stash come to this? A three or four cubic feet of nice yarn, and a big bin of crap? Have I become a low stasher by accident? Or is this something more insidious?

PSA for law enforcement and the victims of Jeremy Clark-Erskine

For knitting related readers, sorry I haven't updated here in a long time. I'm sure you want to see progress on the Chick and knitting. Somehow being in my third trimester has just sucked away my desire to do anything but sleep and sort through layette items. Rest assured, I've been knitting and will post 2009 FO's soon enough.

For law enforcement, government agencies, victims, and friends concerned with the fate of the Scoundrel, Jeremy Clark-Erskine, I have just received a message originating with the city of Culver City, CA. It appears Erskine was arrested and is in custody there. If you know of any outstanding complaints against this guy or warrants for his arrest anywhere in the US, please call the police in Culver City at 310 837-1221. As for the Culver City officials taking care of him, I don't think anyone ever looked into how he obtained a drivers license in Kenosha, WI back in 2006. He was arrested with it in Jasper,AB. I expect that it was obtained with false documents. Perhaps this is considered a serious crime. I can provide more particulars if needed.

If someone knows anything about the arrest and can share details, I'm curious. Please contact me through the blog or email an interested citizen cuchulain1973@yahoo.com. That person forwards information to me.

Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival

This past weekend, The Amazing E and I took Rock Creek Yarn to the Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival for the second year. Now I wish I'd had the presence of mind to post something here before the show, but I've been so busy getting ready for the show that I didn't think seriously about it. Between being 6 months pregnant and needing to dye 20 pounds of yarn in less than a week, life was completely taken over by wool and sleeping. The show was worth all the hard work. It was the most fun show yet, and close to home. E and I didn't get out of our booth much to see all the other vendors or the events, but I'm told there was sheep herding, local wine tasting (E did get to that), classes, and lots and lots of fiber to buy. The best part were all the customers. If you've ever been to a fiber festival, you know that it's full of super friendly people just looking for a good time. And we were inundated by friendly people.

Too bad we also didn't get any pictures. Hopefully the festival will post some good ones soon.

We had a really great location in the front of one of the barns. That of course meant a lot of foot traffic, but we were also sitting right across from Rivanna River Farm and Fiber Studio. They are a local alpaca producer, and really fantastic ladies. I'll tell you. I spent the entire show pining over their hand dyed 100% baby alpaca yarn. I touched and cuddled it. I stared at it. And finally I bought five skeins of a rose and taupe colorway. There is a total of 1100 yards here. Enough for a sweater for me if I can put down the baby knitting.

Talk like a pirate day

It's that time of year again. Tomorrow is the day each year when those dastardly pirates all show their colors by speaking their stoopid and secret language in public. It'll be on Yahoo, I'm sure. And Ravelry. Grr. I guess it's good for me. A a ninja, this day each year helps me identify pirates and know who in my immediate surroundings are my sworn enemies. Silly pirates. You'd figure they'd want to hide their identities from us ninjas. But NOOO. They podcast their silliness all over the place. I wonder who I'll discover is a pirate this year.

On another note, this weekend is Rosh Hashannah, the Jewish New Year. The Rabbi's sermon might be very interesting....

Speculation

Pregnancy isn't always fun. I mean, the anticipation of a little one is very exciting, and the miracle of having another person growing inside me blows my mind. But the nausea, aches, sleep interruptions, and other discomforts you don't want to hear about tend to get me down.

But there is one part I find completely hilarious. It's the "what kind is it?" guessing. The Amazing E and I are waiting until our Chick is born to find out the sex of the baby. We figure there are very few genuine pleasant surprises in life, and this situation is one of them. So we're happy to wait. Some others, however, are not so patient. Indeed, many people are absolutely shocked that we're not taking advantage of the technology to find out. So in their curiosity they try to guess. And it's just hilarious to me.

So let's see? What do the Old Wives Tales tell us about "what kind it is?"

1. One story goes that if the fetal heart rate is above 140, it is a girl. According to the doctor this morning, The Chick's heart is beating 145 times a minute. So we're having a GIRL.

2. Some other people say that carrying the baby high, it's a girl. If it's low and around the hips, it's a boy. Well, my belly isn't big, but so far the baby feels like it's sitting pretty low. So we're having a BOY.

3. Then there's the acne test. Sorry to say, but I have acne. So it must be a GIRL.

4. One friend told me that since I have cravings for spicy meat, it must me a BOY.

5. But the same friend also said that if I still like my husband while I'm pregnant, we're having a GIRL.

6. 71% of the time the mommy guesses right. I think we're having a GIRL.

7. Apparently the baby effects the growth of leg hair. They, whoever they are, say that if your leg hair grows faster it's a boy. It might be TMI, but mine is growing just the same. And I hope our GIRL doesn't get cursed with fast growing leg hair.

8. I dropped the mac 'n cheese right on the floor yesterday. Clumsiness is supposed to be a sign of a BOY.

9. I just put my wedding ring on an string and held it over my belly. It swung in a circle rather than back and forth. This would indicate a BOY.

10. Lastly, my favorite one. Craving chocolate is a sign of a GIRL. I must be destined to have only GIRLS forever.

DH's latest revelation from ON HIGH

He wrote his new insight into the nature of the universe this morning:

I have a new theory about cats
I have an entirely new theology.
In the beginning, god created the universe. It was, in fact, a revelation of this world from beyond the shadow that he installed to hide us from his presence
There is, however, a personage that evolved from this shadow - the Lord of Chaos
Indeed, this Chaos Lord is responsible for entropy and the nature of the universe ending in a heat death
For the Chaos lord has agents in this universe
In the form of kittens and cats. Cats are indeed sent from the Lord of Chaos to be adorable and irresistable to humans
Yet they are agents of entropy, forces of destruction
For in fact they are responsible for random placement of socks, hair ties, toy mice, and other objects around the house
That we put away previously
This morning's evil deed was hiding my wife's wallet
Right when she needed it
They knocked it down
Knocked it down behind the couch
Much as they were responsible for the downfall of many civilizations
Egypt
Babylon

I got got

Maven over at Fiber P*rn tagged me with a Meme. I don't think she understands what she's done, tagging me like that. I am happy to oblige her, because now I'll have the opportunity to exercise my stealthy and mad ninja skills on her at a time of my choosing. Yesss. Yesss indeed. Revenge is a dish best served cold, and I'll savor and plan the meal for a long time.

As the first step in initiating my newest vendetta, I'm posting here 7 things you probably didn't know about me.

1. I am a ninja, not a pirate. The pirate thing is just my cover. Don't tell anyone.

2. I can make fire without matches.

3. I am not left handed. Even if both my parents are.

4. I feel great shame when my floors are dirty, but I can't give a hoot about the state of the windows.

5. I have only been knitting for 4 1/2 years.

6. I am clueless about computers. For real. As far as I'm concerned they are powered by a tiny fairy. And I do not care to learn the truth.

7. I find sweet corn detestable. In all forms. Yes, some of you know that, but probably you don't actually believe it.

As I recall, Mrs. Strauss tagged me for a meme centuries ago. I am tagging her again.

First knit for baby

The other day I finished this project for the Chick. The Chick is too small to model it now, so the Bear bottom is filling it out for us.
The pattern is WHW Plain Wrap by Ruth Garcia. Tzurriz recommended the pattern. It's a size small. The yarn is Mission Falls 1824 Wool merino superwash. It only took a couple days of work, and I'm likely to make more and then re-lanolize them.

My latest project

I've been working on a really big project lately, but I didn't want to show it until making a good start. The Amazing E helped with getting it started, and has been supportive and helpful during the last 10 weeks of working on it.

Here is the result of our hard work up til now.
You can see here the little arms, the cute button nose, and the giant head. So it takes after both of us.

What's Jeremy Clark-Erskine up to now?

As some of you know, Jeremy Clark-Erskine is a convicted identity fraud artist who sneaked into my life about three years ago. I believe he stole my credit cards and car in an attempt to flee to Canada after escaping from jail in Indianapolis. Since then he's been accused of pulling off some serious fraud in Canada, and was eventually sent back to Indiana to serve out the rest of his sentence. Canada sent him back without prosecuting him for the thousands of dollars in theft and fraud I'm told he committed. Oh yeah, and my local police completely dropped the ball on prosecuting him.

Well, he served his sentence, but then was charged with escape. He served a few months for that, and was released last summer. Then early this year I was contacted by a very confused woman who had been dating him at the time of his last arrest. She was completely innocent in what he did, and she told me about his latest caper. I don't know that I should relate it all here, but it was an elaborate scam against a large corporation that she said got him new clothes and a long stay in a fancy hotel. He was arrested and convicted of some crime related to theft, even though I understand that he also commited a number of other crimes. The sentence passed was two years. He served three months and was just paroled. Really, this multiple felon was paroled after serving three months of a two year sentence.

So why bring him up again? Two reasons. One is that I got a flurry of hits to this blog today from private and government servers in Indianapolis. I would guess that he's been arrested again or some damn thing. I hope so. The other reason is that I contacted the Indiana Department of Correction in the last week to let them know that a bug in their system makes it hard for the public to find out the status of this guy's incarceration. After all, Jeremy has a lot of victims who would like to know when he's out of jail and if he's complying with parole. When I contacted them, I encountered a complete idiot who could not find his records, claimed he'd never been in an Indiana jail, and got nasty when I was finally able to pull them up and sent her the link to the record. Once again, the State of Indiana proves its incompetence when dealing with this guy.

So Erskine's out there. I know he's been paroled, but since the morons who are supposed to be keeping track of him can't seem to, I do not know if he's complying with parole or on the run again. If you know what's up with this guy, send me a comment. I don't have to publish it, if you ask me not to. My motives here are to see to it that people get him charged for the crimes he commits so he spends as much time as possible in jail.

If you are his latest victim and looking for information, first please go to the police and cooperate with the prosecution. Second, don't believe anything he's told you and don't blame yourself for whatever he did.

Jeremy Clark-Erskine is a convicted con artist. One arresting officer I've spoken to called him "a real predator." I personally have spoken to nearly a dozen people he's scammed in the last ten years. The aliases he uses that I know of are Jeremy Erskine, Jeremiah Clark, and Duncan McDonald. He is from Indiana, but has claimed to be from Canada, Boston, Ireland, and Scotland. For grins, here's his picture:

Silk Aeolian Shawl

In an amazing feat of knitting monogamy, I knitted this shawl in just over a month.
Pattern: Aeolian Shawl from the Spring 2009 Knitty
Yarn: Rock Creek Yarn Silk Lace
Needles: Knitpicks circular size 3.
Start Date: May 9, 2009
Finished: June 12, 2009

Notes: I added two repeats of the yucca chart and a repeat of the agave chart, so this is a hybrid of the two sizes. The size 8 glass seed beads where added using a crochet hook I made from the wire inside a twist tie.

It rains a lot in Maryland

First of all, thank you to Creative Crocheter. She once again identified one of the plants growing in my yard.

Like I was saying. It rains a lot in Maryland. At least compared to Chicago. It rains here at all times of the year, often for hours or days at a time. In fact, it's raining now, and will be for four more days. All the rain here has several effects for homeowners.

The nice thing the rain does for us is cause lots of things to grow outdoors. There's more stuff popping up now, like this weed in my yard. Right now the property is covered in strawberries. But they're the wild kind that don't taste like anything. Believe me, I ate them. At least they're pretty.

The peas are pea-ing.
And the roses are making an early show.
The other thing that all this rain does is back up into basements. We woke up to that this morning. The water probably came out of the sump pump pit, and if it did we're covered. But today we're working really hard to make sure things (like mold) don't start growing indoors, too.

Proving that I do things other than knitting

It being summer and all, we figured that we needed some sort of window treatments in the bedroom. You know, it cuts back on sleeping time to have daylight streaming into the room before 6am. So off to the fabric store E and I went.

I told E I could do it, even if I'd never made any type of curtain before. He picked the fabric, a striped blue silk dupioni; I picked the design. After working forever to get the hardware properly installed, there is a working Roman shade on one of the two bedroom windows.
Perhaps I'll even make the second one before the days start getting shorter.

More beauty this week

Nothing really new popped up for a little while, so I didn't stretch things here by taking pictures of wilting flowers. But today there are some nice things to show around the new house.

Last weekend, the Amazing E planted me a new garden. We decided on what will eventually be an informal perennial garden based on one my grandma had, plus some other things that attract butterflies and hummingbirds. This weekend the plants are staring to take root. This project will probably go on for a year or two more, but we have a start now. There is a pretty dark red flower that smells good; I don't remember the name. He also planted a butterfly bush, yarrow, a coneflower, and some flowering thyme and other low lying plants. Eventually, I would like some black eye susans, more coneflowers, and astilbe. Planting in the back yard turned out to be a challenge because a previous owner had an above ground pool back there. There's at least a foot of sand in the back yard, so we have to put soil wherever we plant.

There was also another azalea that bloomed. This one is a really nice pink.Then there is the mystery purple flower. I'm pretty sure these are from a bulb patch on the side of the house.
Lastly, an iris bloomed this week. Some others are making buds. I can't wait to see what they look like.
I also have an update on the mystery coral colored flowers. Those of you who guessed flowering quince must be right. This week it has little fruit on it.

There ought to be more soon; E and I are looking forward to it.

My Masterpiece

I'm jumping ahead of myself a little, but I can't resist. Rock Creek Yarn's silk spinner only gets about 300 grams of this yarn to me per week, but I've been saving it up and dying it for the Sedalia Fiber Festival this weekend. It's the previously mentions Silk Lace yarn. Now I've got 8 one hundred gram skeins for the show. There would have been more, but the Cherry Blossom Festival Sale was wildly successful for this yarn. Thanks for that.

I have to say something. I love this yarn. Really. For lace yarn, it's very strong. And soft. And shiny. Pretty soon a picture of an in progress project will show up here. But I've been working lately at dyeing up this super special yarn, and I'm in love. Take a peek at an "unofficial" picture taken just now with my iphone.

FO: +3 Red Socks of Doom

I'm actually quite pleased with these socks. They fit great, they're pretty, and the yarn feels really nice. If you recall, I started these socks back on November 30, 2007 in a fit of nerves over my wedding. It was the next day, so what did I do? Cast on socks of course. Since then, they've moved with me three times, gotten lost several times, and have had their needles repurposed more than once. Why +3 Red Socks of Doom? The beautiful lace killed my hands.

These socks were made according to Cookie A's Hedera pattern, which is available free on Knitty. They were knitted on size 1.5 DPN's out of Mountian Colors Bearfoot Yarn in a varigated red. I will be knitting socks from this yarn again someday.

Very pretty. Very dangerous.