Home stretch

     The thumb on my mitts is finally finished! From what I can tell so far, it's pretty good and fits pretty well. Here's a few angles

    

     I wanted to put the images all together but Blogger is not cooperating. I am actually really awesome at layout so this is quite distressing. Here's more

 

     Not too shabby and they fit pretty well, but perhaps not quite too a T. I haven't blogged for 3 days because I wanted to have this figured out. While still reading Apple Tree Yard, I needed a little breaky because of the rather heavy subject matter, so I finally started reading Knitting Without Tears. I realized that maybe EZ had something to say about thumbs, and indeed she did, describing the very thumb I was doing. Well, if it's good enough for her. There was a difference, however. In the pattern and in most knitting that we do, when it says pick up it means pick up and knit. EZ says to pick up the stitches that were on the waste yarn and a stitch on each side (mine was 3) and then knit them on the next round, knitting the picked up stitches through the back loop to eliminate those pesky holes. Even though I had to do some tinking, I thought it was worth a try on an academic level. The stitches look pretty smooth, but we'll see what we have when the ends are woven in. I managed to get a pretty smooth transition with the gradient, even with having to break the yarn 5 rows after the thumb then rejoining. This is what I have after the decreases, so now it's just knitting straight till I run out of yarn. 

     As I've mentioned, my hands are rather large. The challenges of fitting are why I don't own a dozen of these, because they are my favorite things and so appropriate for LA. It occurs to me that I may want to invest the time in creating the perfect plain vanilla mitts for myself in each weight of yarn, so that I have easy adjustments for any pattern, and also a blank canvas for creating my own designs. It's probably a good idea to do this for socks as well, although there seem to be so many different ways you can do a plain sock. Once you've knit them every way you can figure out your preferred heel and toe and whatnot and go from there.

     

     It's Friday (yay) and so I get to enjoy some Pinot a little earlier than usual (my own rules). I was in the mood for something sweet to go along with it, but a particular kind of sweet thing, you know how that is? I try to be good and healthy and not go overboard, and then it came to me: maple walnuts like the kind you get at Whole Foods at $10.00 a pound. Turns out I had the ingredients and it couldn't be easier

     2 cups walnuts, 1/3 cup maple syrup and some salt in a non-stick pan, and 3 minutes later you are in heaven. Warning - these are very addictive. Also, don't put them on wax paper because they stick. I added extra salt and could have even added more. Yum.

     I've been struggling with some chronic pain issues in my lower back for many years. It's the kind of thing that I've managed to control quite well through yoga, but sometimes things get aggravated to the point where certain exercises can be counter-productive. This unfortunately puts you in a spiral of   inactivity, which aggravates the condition, you see where I'm going. I decided to take a proactive approach and listen to Mindfulness Meditation for Pain Relief by Jon Kabat-Zinn. I layed out on a Pilates mat with a bolster under my legs and a pillow, but since the first part was explaining the program, I eventually felt good enough to move into some pretty aggressive stretches which I haven't been in for a few months. It seems like something really worth exploring in depth, with the end result for me being a return to a full and regular yoga practice. His focus in the introduction was being in the present moment and using it to see what it can teach us, either good or bad. For whatever reason, I feel that I'm now in a place of opening, pushing past resistance, and embracing the now in everything.

     On a lighter note, I started listening to a hilarious audiobook called People I Want to Punch in the Throat by Jen Mann. I just love the light-hearted and irreverent tone of this book. The narrator is fantastic. I've been on such a podcast kick and it's been too long since I've listened to a good audiobook. Last year I listened to Where'd You Go, Bernadette and I just loved it. It's a novel, but in the same vein. I checked out Jen Mann's blog, too. She's been at it for a few years and has a very informative blogging FAQ which I skimmed but seems very helpful. I need all the help I can get at this point.

     The hubs was off for a few days so we got to do some intensive and collaborative TV viewing. On the DVR: The Middle (one of the few we all watch as a family), Cougar Town (I love it, he's over it), and we finally watched the series finale of The Killing on Netflix. We loved all 3 seasons of it and don't know why it had such a hard time. BTW, Mariel Enos is gorgeous.

She's always cast in these very unglamorous roles, like the fundamentalist wife in Big Love, but as you can see she's stunning.

     

     I've been on a real Tom Waits kick lately. He is one of my favorites of all time, and I mean for the last 30 years, but weirdly, I haven't listened to his whole oeuvre, even the ones I own. It's totally weird. I'm the same way with Haruki Murakami, but it's more understandable because he writes rather long books and we've only been together 15 years or so. When I read a Murakami, it takes about 3 years for it to sink in till I'm ready for the next one. Also, I'm saving them so that I will never run out. Last year I read 1Q84 which is really 3 books and as long as War and Peace, so I'm good for a while. But with music, there's no such time constraint. Again, I think I'm just spacing it out because it blows my mind so hard. This week I listened to Orphans which is a 3 CD set, but there were things on disc 2 and 3 I'd never heard before. This came out when my son was a toddler, so it explains why I wasn't able to spend long, luxurious hours absorbing it. So I'm doing it now. It even makes scouring the bathroom seem like a cool thing to be doing.