The best-laid plans...

...usually turn into one-night stands.

I can't even begin to tell you how the shit fairy has been dumping on us, but of course I'll try. Every time I think I've come up with a better plan to circumvent the crap, or found a way to deal with it more constructively, said plan thumbs its nose and walks out on me. More grave illness in the family, more insanity with teachers who should be smacked and then fired, a totalled car thanks to ice and a jackass taxi driver, no real way to replace the poor car with anything younger than a Model T(ransmission-challenged dinosaur), and a fried power supply on my computer. If I haven't e-mailed you lately, your messages, along with your address, may be frozen in time on my dead computer. I'm blogging and mailing from my kid's machine until a certain computer case company decides to grace me with a replacement part for its warranteed product and a certain shop who sold it to me gets a life and realises I am SO not qualified to remove my own power supply. My own hair, fistful by fistful, yes, but not my own power supply.

So we're all feeling a bit like our power supplies have been ripped out, but we are still putting our heads together to think up ideas for boosting the morale of a certain crazy French dude who has just started his chemo and appears to be taking it quite well:

This is the only family-friendly example from the hat photo session.
(And it's in focus! I swear I did nothing new! Technology hates me!)
All of the other photos merely illustrate the benefits of a good bra.
Which is nice, but I didn't knit a bra, no matter what Franklin says.

For these hats, I modified the Half Dome hat from Knitty to include a folded brim, which is knit in reverse stockinette so that it may be folded up to match the right side of the hat. I'm particularly happy that the stripes on the blue and white hat match from brim to hat. This was a classic case of me winging it and hoping for the best, and when you start with a great pattern like this one, it's not too hard to add in your own ideas.

The red one's done in Rowan Calmer, and the blue and white one is done in Nashua Cilantro, which is a stretchy, squishy, soft cotton that begs to be made into something slinky. (I am SO getting Cilantro in red for myself.) We're sending both hats with a squishy brain stress ball, because who doesn't need a squishy brain stress ball when one's brain is feeling squishy and stressed? I know I do.

My daughter's lending the brain to her grandfather
with the caveat that he has to return it when he's done,
"otherwise I'll be brainless." Well said, kid.

My other attempt at winging it, knitting-wise, did not work out so well. Pairing Fleece Artist sock yarn with their silk/kid yarn works great for the simple scarf pattern I showed you in my last post. It does not, however, work so well for the Norah Gaughan reversible cable scarf from Scarf Style. I kept hoping the cables would get floppier, but they never did, and I just can't see putting the knitting equivalent of an only slightly flexible pine 2 x 4 on my husband's neck.

So, you know what I had to do. Spiff watched in sheer amazement as I frogged the whole damned thing and started over with the simple three-row horizontal rib. This way, his delicate neck will be protected, and there's even a chance I'll finish this thing in time for him to wear it. He's going to need it, because we're going to be doing a hell of a lot of walking over the next few weeks.

You didn't think it would be red, now, did you?
This is as fancy as Spiff gets with the color choices.

Speaking of Spiff, since my exile to the kitchen computer, I haven't really seen much of Spiff. All week I've got evening classes I have to take for a tech writing certificate, and on the weekends, he's playing World of Warcraft. We used to play together, or he'd play while I work, so we'd see each other even if he ended up having a "computer dinner." We have always had our desks side by side, but now we can't even yell across the apartment to each other. He periodically surfaces to raid the fridge, so I know he's still there, but.... He seems fine with this arrangement, seeing as the playing schedule has remained the same and even increased in frequency, despite what should be my glaring absence. The empty chair in our office where the love of his life used to sit. The lonely whine of the air cleaner and only one working machine. I mean, shouldn't he be pining for me right about now? Shouldn't he be plotting strategy for clandestine meetings in the hallway? Shouldn't he be leaving his screen for more than five minutes at a time, bearing the verbal and/or snuggly equivalent of a rose in his teeth and a spring in his step?

Yeah, right.

Me, I'm suffering. I miss my husband and I'm freezing my ass off in the kitchen. So, what's a girl-in-exile to do when her attitude has gone from bad to worse and her get-up-and-go has got up and gone?

Kick ass and take names. Say hello to my new hip-hop shoes.
At first, I was terrified to do this—I've only ever taken ballet and modern jazz, a loooong time ago.
But surprisingly, I'm just as good as the twenty-year-olds in my "jazz-funky" class.

See? Never underestimate the power of a good bra and a bad attitude. Peace out, yo.

January 13, 2007 9:50 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (30)  | Print