Friday, March 21, 2003

Goddess of Knit-and-Rip

If I am not the goddess of knit-and-rip, it is not for lack of trying.  I had almost finished a sweater for #1 son.  It was a design experiment.  The design was working but it just didn't look like anything #1 would be caught dead in.  RIPPPPPPPPPP; Wrap; Start a new design.  It makes my husband and kids crazy when they see me ripping out another sweater.  They think the objective of knitting is the sweater.  They don't understand the objective of knitting is the knitting.  

Saturday, March 15, 2003

Hide My Stash


I began knitting when I was 8.  Barbie doll clothes.  I learned to knit from the Coats & Clark learn-how book.  For some reason I learned the Continental method.  The instructions were English style.  I don't know how I made the switch.  My mother knew how to knit but did not enjoy it.  Every time she set her knitting down, when she picked it back up, she had no idea where she was at.  Her passion was for the sewing machine.  I hated the sewing machine.


My mother and I had a deal:  if anything happened to her, I was to go to her house and hide her stash of fabric, so folks would not find it and think she was nuts.  Likewise, if anything happened to me, she was to hide my stash of yarn.  When she died about a year ago, she left me about 2 pickup truck loads of fabric.  [Here in fly-over country, a pickup truck is an acceptable unit of measure.]  I am still trying to figure out what to do with all of it.


Today, I went to see my Dad.  I worked up his tax return.  He has been ill lately and is not fully recovered.  My daughter, Laura, went with me.  She got out a box of old photographs.  These were the wedding pictures of my aunts and uncles from the WWII years.  No big weddings.  No white silk dresses.  Since my mother died, my cynical core has been penetrated; those pictures bring up the tears.

     

Thursday, March 6, 2003

13th Step


Yesterday was a system engineer nightmare.  We had memory failure on one server.  Then as the memory was being replaced, someone (it wasn't me; I was upstairs in the BatCave) accidentally disconnected power to the production SQL Server.  It went down hard and came back slow because of all the recovery processes going on.  All the web sites were dependent on this server.  They were all down for about 20 minutes.  It sure made the case for database redundancy.  Wake up managers.  Let the moths out of your wallet.


I just had to come home and knit.  If I didn't knit, I would probably drink way too much.  There's a thought:  knitting as the 13th step of an AA program.


Today was much better.  We had a little domain controller hiccup, but not a big deal.  All quiet in the BatCave.  Hurrah.