mamacate

FO! Rhys went right to

FO! Rhys went right to bed when we got home (she drove the whole way, plus she packed the car while I took the kids to the beach), so I didn't have anyone to take a pic of me wearing it, so this is what we have for now. But I wanted to show it off ASAP.

Just back from vacation. Wonderful

Just back from vacation. Wonderful time, pictures to come. We went to the Adirondacks with Sara and family. We had a blast. Terry and I have decided that Eleanor is a clone of Hannah. It's truly scary, as is the hero worship going on as El follows Hannah around the house, doing absolutely everything that Hannah does.

Am, for some reason, polishing off half-bottle of white wine that has been languishing in the fridge in our absence. Dogs and cat seem to be feeling especially neglected, but otherwise healthy and generally gleaming thanks to the kind ministrations of Loren, our housesitter and erstwhile babysitter. Am relatively tipsy thanks to wine.

Must take self to bed and sleep this off. Much spinning and knitting was done during vacation, including a tragic mishap related to miscalculation in spin-knit-spin approach, which I confess I was warned about. Result: one half of sweater is about a size 3T, other half is, I dunno, maybe 5 or 6? All this is due to spinning the fiber in different batches and having it become increasingly thick as I went along. Not, not, not good. Ironically, if I had made the sweater in pieces instead of using the side-to-side Knitty Haiku pattern, I wouldn't be in such a pickle.

Photos of the gory details will also be forthcoming, as much as I would like to hide said object in a closet with all my knitting failures (such a closet does exist in my house) and forget about it. Instead I have devised a plan which involves CUTTING said sweater in two (one half with one gauge and one half with the other--see I told you it was bad) and then picking up and knitting (after spinning) each one into two different sweaters in two different sizes.

In better news, I have FINISHED shapely! After much worry that it would be too small, it fits wonderfully, if a teeny bit tight around the bust. I won't be nursing twins forever (though there are days I don't believe it) so hopefully the E cup short-rows will fit for the long term. The alternative would have involved darts that met in the middle and crossed, LOL, so I wasn't about to do that.

I seamed the damn thing in the car on the way home. Remember how I said I had gotten over my aversion to seaming? No, I just hadn't done it in a while for more than 2 inches at a time. Yep, still hate it. Glad I had a long car ride in which to do it! Making next project in the round. I think I'll join the scrap along.

Sara and I did some dyeing on vacation (and I am proud to say that we did not damage the vacation house in any way, shape, or form). I'm still experimenting and learning, so I'm doing about a yard or two of roving at a time, which spins up into about 60 meters of singles yarn. So I'm generating "scraps" at a rapid clip. I think they will add some great interest to a scrap sweater, though. Dyeing went great, and it's quite easy. Now that I have some stock solutions made up, it's something I can easily do in a couple hours after the kids go to bed, especially if I set up a table for it in the basement. Last night, in fact, I started dyeing at the beginning of Kerry's speech, and finished steaming before midnight! The main thing I learned is that it is okay if it looks kind of dark and muddy when it's wet--it lightens up considerably when dry.

Really must sleep. More, including a deluge of cute kid pics, tomorrow (if the posse allows me any computer time, that is).

I should probably explain the

I should probably explain the BIW thing, since I've been referring to her liberally in the comments on Karen's blog.  BIW stands for Bitter Infertile Woman.  She's a superhero that some friends from the old ParentsPlace IF board (iVillage basically destroyed those boards--most of them went to N54 and The Parent Perspective) and I created to help us through the nightmare of infertility, recurrent miscarriage, and treatment.  We were sick of trying to relax, stay positive, count our blessings, and say "it's no big deal" like everyone tried to tell us to do, so we decided to embrace our inner BIW, and we created a private email loop where we were free to be as bitter as we wanted to be.  I am so grateful for those women--we were each others' lifeline during that time, and I don't know where I'd be without them.  When you're in the thick of it, it seems like nobody understands.  And in a way, nobody does.  Even now, when I read blogs like Karen's and Tertia's, while I can relate to what they're going through, I can't feel it.  

The hardest part for me back then was not knowing how the story ends.  Not knowing if I would have to face the worst news of all, that I would have to stop without a baby, that the process would break me down so far that I would not be fit to parent, that donor egg wouldn't work, that I would be rejected by the adoption homestudy because I had literally gone insane from the pain and the stress and the devastation of it all.  I know that sounds crazy, but there were times when I thought: this is how it happens--this is how normal, functioning people end up in institutions.  I had clients when I worked in mental health who had held down jobs, even had families.  This is the kind of thing that breaks people, or at least that was my fear at the time (it doesn't help that my mom had a psychotic break around the same age I was when I was going through IF). 

I always said, if I just knew that it would end well, that I would have a baby in my arms at the end of all this, then maybe I'd be a little pissed at how long it's taking and how much crap I have to go through for it, but I'd really be okay.  But not knowing that, not knowing if it would ever work, if the hole in my heart would ever be filled, that was where the incredible pain and terror came from.

So now that I know my own happy ending, I can sympathize and I can hope and wish (I am not so sure about praying, see this and this for an absolutely gorgeous discussion of why), but I can't be there again. Not that I'd want to, god knows, but I'm glad these folks have each other, and I'm glad I had Gina and Giz and Anne and Hope and Dawn and D.  And I'm glad we had BIW.

That was the point of this post, wasn't it, to explain who BIW is.  She's a superhero in charge of protecting the infertile from dorky, stupid, useless, idiotic, horrible, rude, intrusive, misinformed, and obnoxious comments and attitudes of DFDs, or Damn Fertile Dorks.  She often takes the guise of a Xena-like character, wielding an ultrasound probe and an intramuscular needle charged with progesterone in oil.  We prefer to refer to her actions as "smiting" other people, in the vein of this comic Giz frequently cited while experiencing recurrent early miscarriages.  But BIW usually just smites the DFDs with harmless annoyances of life--despite our deep anger, we IF folks don't really want bad things to happen to the DFDs.  We just want them to be a little less smug about it.  BIW is also really good at reminding us to allow ourselves to be as bitter as we wanna be.  For a long time in there, I was constantly trying to relax and improve my attitude and get HAPPY so that it would a) make me pregnant, magically, just like the DFDs said it would and b) make me feel less like a bitter, dried up old hag (at 30, mind you).  BIW is glorious in her bitterness--she's mad, she has progesterone, and she's not afraid to use it!

So anyway, BIW is out there cheering on those who are fighting for what they deserved to have without a fight.  She'll be there to defend you from DFDs who have stupid advice to give you.  She's got Infertile Myrtle's back.  She is grieving with those who are climbing out of the depths of despair.  I still call on her from time to time, when people say "double trouble," or ask if I "took something" to get twins or when other twin moms brag about how "natural" their children are (yes, mine are made entirely of petroleum products and cellophane).

So BIW lives...rock on, BIW.

Silk on the niddy noddy.

Silk on the niddy noddy.

Haiku fiber on the bobbin.

Haiku fiber on the bobbin. The guide yarn, from the last batch, is hanging from the whoosis (I didn't study my course materials on spinning wheel parts!) below the flyer.

Same fiber, different colorway for

Same fiber, different colorway for Henry's Haiku.

The rest of the combed

The rest of the combed top fiber for Eleanor's Haiku.

Here is the first half

Here is the first half of the body of Haiku. The photo is a little washed out, but you get the idea. It is SOOO soft.

A dose of fiber for

A dose of fiber for the day....
 
This post would be much better with photos, but we'll have to wait until a couple of somebody's are in bed for that.  But I'll tell you...I suppose the exchange is a thousand words for each picture, right?  Sit back... ;)
 
Okay, so I started Haiku with the fervor of a zealot.  I let Rhys chase the kids, I knit in the car, at the playground, while chatting with friends, etc.  I am using the heather/tweedy purple merino top that started out as a sample pack item from Webs, and then I trotted out to get more of it as soon as I spun it up.  It's yummy.  My initial idea was socks, but it was too soft and satiny for feet (I know, true socknitters will be offended, but there you have it).  But this seemed great.  I have about 5 oz., knitting up at 4 sts/in in stockinette, 4.5 in garter.  That amount got me almost exactly halfway through the body.  So I got another 8 oz. of the purple, and got Henry to choose between a greenish and a blue heathered top for his sweater and got him about 14 oz. of that.  He chose the blue without a second thought, by the way--my guy knows his mind! 
 
So now I'm back to spinning the stuff and I really have my work cut out for me.  I'm a little worried about matching the gauge the second time around.  I am not worried about perfection--there's plenty of thick and thin in that yarn anyway, but it would be bad if it was consistent within itself, but at a larger or smaller gauge, you know?  I posted a thread about whether it is better to spin-spin-spin-knit-knit-knit or spin-knit-spin-knit-spin-knit on spindlers, and it looks like I'm going to see if I can do the latter successfully right now.  And forget that other project (Zeus)--I haven't touched that in a week with all this other stuff I have going on.  I'll be lucky if Zeus gets done before 2005 the way I'm distracting myself these days.
 
The only good thing about running out of the purple merino is it forced me to get back to Shapley.  I put in some good work on that project in the car going back and forth from Rhys' mom's house this Sunday and Monday.  I'm almost finished with the increases on the back.  I have to be sure to remember *not* to put the short rows on the back, though the idea makes me think of some kind of Hindu goddess of breastfeeding multiples, you know, with boobs on both the back and the front.  That would definitely  come in handy for the days when they keep trying to kill each other while nursing!
 
I finished the silk cap I started on my last class, and I put it on the niddy noddy last night.  My niddy noddy, oddly, seems to measure out to 62 inches or so, which is 10 inches shy of 2 yards, which is just weird.  Anyway, I tried to count it but lost track at 100 wraps when Rhys asked me a question. (Note: I didn't kill her.  I deserve credit for this.)  I think I was less than halfway through, so that's a lot of (very thin) silk.  I had an idea that I'd ply it with alpaca and then paint the two together for MIL, but I'm not sure I can spin the alpaca that small and I don't think it would work well as a wrap.
 
Maybe I'll give it a try, but I'm LOVING knitting with the handspun merino top, and it's hard to tear myself away from spinning more of it.  Forget about my mom's soy silk.  Honestly, spinning silk is so much easier, I'm a little spoiled for the nice vegan stuff.  Ah well, I'll get back to it eventually, I'm sure.

What a great weekend! We

What a great weekend!  We had a lovely time with Giz and family visiting.  Giz is an old buddy who I went through IVF with.  We once even miscarried on the same day.  Isn't that special?  We both wound up having twins on our fourth fresh IVF attempts; hers were born 8 months before mine, as she was always ahead of me in the process by a couple of tries.
 
I haven't seen the boys since they were 4 months old, and she had never met my two, since she had moved out of state shortly after my two were born.  But she came up for the weekend with the guys, and it was so wonderful to see them.  They're the kind of people you really want to live next door to.  So fun, down-to-earth, non-snobby, smart, fun, and sincere.  Rhys didn't know Giz that well before (our friendship was largely online--she was an original BIW), but she loved them just as much as I do.  It was a wonderful visit.
 
Rhys and I had a chat after they left about how watching Giz (and DH, Gizmo, not their real names, LMBO), was really good for us.  We learned a thing or two, and they helped me, at least for the moment, get over my mean mom phase.  I think they helped the kids check their tantrums a bit too--it's always good to have the influence of slightly older kids around.  Being with Giz and watching her with her boys reminded me to stop trying to do so much when I'm with them, and to try to be more collaborative with them in finding solutions. 
 
I think I came into it all with such high hopes, and then we had such severe biting, etc. problems so early (around 12 months), that all my high ideals about working with the kids, talking things through, and helping them find a solution that works for them, kind of went out the window because NONE of those things work to help stop a 12-month-old biting.  Really, I'm here to tell ya, I tried them all.  So I sort of gave up on all that and became much more authoritarian than I would have liked.  It was the right thing to do at the time, but they are so much more verbal and able to understand things now, and I think some of the tantrums we've been going through lately are a matter of them telling me that they're ready to participate more in discipline.  I've had a lot of luck with giving choices and talking things through, whereas as little as a few months ago those things only fed the fire of the tantrum or aggressive behavior.  We'll see how it goes when I'm solo on Wednesday and trying to do laundry and housework (though time with Giz reminded me that even at this age, when there are two, you really can't get much housework done except when they're sleeping).
 
Anyway, they're awesome role models for us, and I'm really glad she got pg first so I can learn from her and not feel like a total dork that she's so much better at this than I am (ok, so I do feel like kind of a dork, but I can rationalize it, which is good).
 
Back to work.  A colleague/friend of mine who's an economist is going to come over this week and make sure I don't hurt anyone while trying to do regression analysis, a tool which I am entirely unqualified to use.  I'd better put away the nice easy qualitative project I was supposed to be working on and get down to remembering what the heck that data set was all about.