I wish I knew how to knit you!

Letters from Africa

2007-07-09T20:39:00.001-07:00

Matt's brother Chris is leaving next week to go into the Peace Corps. He's going to Mali for two years. Makes me think back to when I left for the Peace Corps over 15 years ago now. Hard to believe. One of the best things I did was write home regularly, and thanks to my parents, I now have those letters again. So I'm going to relive some of my experiences by going through the letters. I left in June 1991 to go to the Central African Republic, much in the news these days along with Sudan, Chad, the Congo.

We stayed in Philadelphia for a few days (maybe even the same hotel that Chris will stay in) and then took a bus to JKF, where we climbed aboard a plane (not yet Air France I don't think), flew through Paris and onto Douala, Cameroun. We spent five weeks in a town called Batie for the first part of our training. From there, 20 of us left on another flight to Bangui, CAR.

Postcard from Batie, June 6th or June 13th:

"Mom and Dad,

It's Sunday about noon. Things are fine and we're getting going around here. I thought I would send you a short note w/ this postcard just to let you know we had a good time in Paris and got here to Batie safely. It reminds me so much of the mountains in Pakistan. We are in the mountains in Southwest Cameroun and it is so beautiful. Everything is fine and I love you. Tell everyone I say hello.

Love, Frank"

Cat Bite!

2007-06-26T06:15:00.000-07:00

I've been nursing a cat bite that I got Saturday afternoon. Matt and I were installing a new swamp cooler (works really well by the way) and Marcel, the silly one, got in the way. He didn't really get in the way, but he was lying down next to the house where we were installing the thing and I was walking backwards and stepped on him. I've stepped on him (and the other kitties) before, and while they usually let out the most god-awful screeches, this time Marcel actually sank his fangs around my Achilles Tendon. I lifted my foot up but unfortunately put it right back down on him again. He didn't bite the second time, but he shrieked again and got out from under my foot. All the while, Matt and I held onto the swamp cooler. They're not as heavy as air conditioners, thank god.

It looks like a vampire tried sucking blood from my ankle. One puncture wound on each side, one very shallow, but the other very deep. I tried cleaning the wounds with hydrogen peroxide and put antibiotic ointment on them and went back to work installing the swamp cooler. By the end of the evening, though, I was pretty sore and took some advil and had two gin & tonics to make it feel better. I finally went to Denver Urgent Care yesterday (stayed home from work) and was hooked up to an IV with antibiotics. I was very happy with the service... I would recommend this place. I will have had three IV antibiotic treatments and am taking two other oral antibiotics for 7 and 10 days. The lesson is... if you get a cat bite (even if it's your own cat) go to a doctor right away. Don't wait.

I'm about 4/5 done with the sweater I'm working on. It's an adult sized men's sweater worked in the round... no sewing and no seams. It's great.

Buying the House!

2007-05-11T06:36:00.000-07:00

We've been renting in Denver's Historic Baker Neighborhood for almost a year now, and we've decided to stay. We're going to buy the little house we're in on Archer Place. The decision was based mainly on trying to keep the kitties safe and happy.

Here are some pics of the house, taken from last summer.

Gone for a while, but not forgotten...

2007-02-14T19:44:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I've posted and so much has changed!! No we haven't left Denver, but the job that brought me out here is longer the job I have. I'm not having to commute up to Boulder anymore and I don't have to think about tenure anymore... I have a really great job at a law firm in downtown Denver.

So what about knitting... still going strong. I've done quite a few of the flat top hats and am doing a few more. My god son who lives in D.C. has a new sweater, since he's outgrown the last two. Check it out. Cute, huh?

I also decided to try to knit in alphabet beads to customize the hats. Did a couple of these... think they turned out allright. And it was fun!

Gift for Babies

2006-08-19T08:42:00.000-07:00

Friends having babies is what really got me started with knitting. And it's keeping me going too. I just finished this baby blanket for a friend in Minneapolis

and am finishing up a couple little I-cord hats for a friend's two sisters-in-law back in Indiana, both due in September.

Knitting in the Rockies

2006-08-05T08:19:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, Matt and I went camping with some friends up in the Rocky Mountain National Park. It was beautiful... and cooler than the 100 degree temps down in Denver. While up there, I started a baby blanket that needs to be finished within a week or so for a baby shower in Minneapolis! So I'm working on it at home and on the commute up to Boulder and back (on the bus... not while driving).

I finished up the Nepali hat project. I think it was the fourth attempt at getting the top flat. And although it's not completely flat like I'd like it, it's pretty close and I don't think I want to take it apart again and try a fifth time. It looks pretty good. Now I have a pile of hats. A couple of them will be going off in the mail pretty soon.

Nepali hat coming along...

2006-07-22T09:27:00.000-07:00

I think I'm figuring out how to recreate the Nepali style flat-top hat. To review, it's like the flat top hats that I've knitted (see below), but instead of knitting garter stitch (on a circular needle, knit one row, purl one row),

I'm knitting every row ending up with stockinette stitch all around, but knitting twice the length so I can fold the body in half and join the cast-on end with the top before starting on the flat top. I then end up with a thicker, two layered, stockinette stitch body for the hat.

The idea is to finish up with the 6 triangles on top, like the hats below, although the hat I got in Nepal has a flat stockinette stitch top that I guess is just circular and sewed onto the body. I'd like to find out how to just knit a flat top going in circles... decreasing in a spiral but keeping it completely flat. Any ideas?

Made it to Denver!!

2006-07-16T08:06:00.000-07:00

Okay!! So we're in Denver now and loving it. I started work up at CU in Boulder a couple weeks ago and it's going to be great. The trip from Indiana was actually fun and the three kitties were angels. No getting sick, no craziness, no meowing... they just sort of slept and poked around the cars but mostly slept and chilled out. Two days too! We love them. We high-tailed it out of Indiana and spent a night in Omaha with friends. The drive was quite pretty in parts. Then a few weeks ago we drove out to Utah to visit Matt's parents and to see his old stomping grounds. Beautiful beautiful beautiful. The picture with the tree was taken near Sundance and the drive was amazing.

On to the hats... the flat top hats are coming along! I think they're great and are easy to do... with a plan that is. My next attempt will be at knitting in the round with just a knit stitch rather than knitting/purling every other round, but knitting twice the length and then folding it together for thickness before knitting the six triangle on top. I want to have something that looks more like the hat from Nepal rather than one with garter stitch all around. We'll see how it goes.

Progress (or not) on the flat-top hat

2006-05-25T17:55:00.000-07:00

So I started on the flat top hat following the directions and thought it was going to be a tad small. I took it apart and started over again... this time with 96 stitches rather than the 84 it called for. I got pretty far along (see the photo) and realized I was doing something wrong. Obviously it looks okay, but there are major problems. Maybe not major, but it's coming undone and I'm starting over again. I think I know where I went wrong. I still have ideas for knitting a copy of the Nepali hat though. And I will be trying to socks too. All this while getting ready to move to Denver!!! Mountains!! Here
we come!!

The hat from Nepal

2006-05-23T15:13:00.000-07:00

So I bought two really great knit hats for probably a buck each back in '94 (or maybe '95) when I was in Nepal with the Peace Corps.

I still have both and still adore them. However, the first one (a green one) has almost completely had it. I still wear it some, but it's really thin and worn out and lost almost all of its color. It still has a place in my heart though. The grey one is still holding its own. Both are almost 12 years old now but they're wonderful. I only wish I'd bought more. I now want to try to recreate them on my own.

I've just bought a pattern for a flat top hat and have started on it, but will also try to just copy the Nepali hat that I have. We'll see how it goes. I also bought some sock yarn and will try a pair of socks next. I believe I'm going to use the Thuja pattern from Knitty... saw it on Jon's Colorado Knits blog.

What to do with the leftovers?

2006-05-21T13:17:00.000-07:00

So I've finished quite a few projects over the last couple of years. I have all this yarn sitting around and want to start another project... my urge of course is to find a project, go buy the yarn I want/need, and start it. But what about the yarn I have? Yesterday we had a house showing and had run out of fruit for the fruit bowl, so Matt filled it with yarn. I thought, "Good idea!" And it was a good idea. But still, I want to knit with it.

Another dilemma... I've misplaced my two sets of double-pointed needles and I sort of wanted to start another project with them. It's driving my crazy. They could be just packed up somewhere. I'm not terribly organized with the knitting yet, although Matt did get a nice bag from a friend when he started knitting a couple of years ago. She'd bought a denim bag and painted "Born to Knit" on it with some sort of paint pen. It's great. Marcel loves it too. Here he is on his favorite chair with the favorite bag and his favorite throw, which I finished just a couple weeks ago.

Leaving the Midwest...

2006-05-18T05:08:00.000-07:00

The mountains are calling again... it's time to go. Matt and I moved to the Indianapolis area about two years ago from Charlottesville, Virginia. He had just received his PhD in Spanish literature from UVa and took a position as an assistant professor at Wabash College, located in west central Indiana and one of the last three all male colleges in the country. I'm a librarian and found work at the Indiana State Library in Indianapolis. As we left Charlottesville, the Blue Ridge gave way to the hills of West Virginia. Beautiful and old mountains... I'd come to love the mountains as a Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal back in the mid-90s. Matt is a native of Utah and was raised by the Wasatch Mountains. Through West Virginia and on into the Ohio Valley, the land slowly becomes an ironed-out flatland full of soy and corn as far as the eye can see. And interstates. Indiana, the "Crossroads of America" - connecting Louisville to Chicago, Cincinnati to Champaign-Urbana, Columbus to St. Louis - check out a road atlas, it looks like an octopus landed on Indianapolis. The state motto, "The Crossroads of America", as if nobody stops there... but we did. Our ship landed in Lebanon, Indiana... a sleepy little Indiana county seat with a beautiful courthouse and affordable Victorian homes. We came with our cat, Leona, who got lost in the attic on day one. She has been joined by the brothers Juan and Marcel. Exhausted from unloading, Matt and I took a break for dinner and walked to a little Chinese joint on the courthouse square. Sitting down, we looked into each others' eyes and were suddenly confronted with the reality of our situation... "Oh my god! What have we done!!" I think tears were shed a little bit. I believe day three was July 4th, so we walked down to watch the Lebanon Independence Day Parade, standing in front of the First Baptist Church. Wow. Were we so naive then? It seems so long ago. We even got the local librarian to notarize an affadavit of domestic partnership so that Wabash would extend benefits to me. It was like spotlighting a deer, handing it a piece of paper and saying, "Sign here please."

So now we're calling this our "Peace Corps Indiana" experience and heading out west to Denver/Boulder. I'll be at the government publications library at CU-Boulder and we'll live in Denver to start out. We'll be out there in a couple weeks and look forward to the mountains and to being in a city where we can walk to the public library, coffee shops, light rail...

I started knitting a few years ago when a friend got breast cancer and I wanted to make something for her. So I knitted a purple hat. Then friends were having babies and I started in on baby blankets, sweaters and hats. I finally knitted an adult sweater for Matt last year, which turned out really well. My latest project, which I just finished a couple days ago is a set of six placemats knitted from four colors. I found the pattern in a book Matt's mother gave me called Knitting Year-Round, published by Better Homes and Gardens.