The Monster Giveth, And The Monster Taketh Away

Happy Labor Day! (at least to those of you in the United States)

Thank goodness summer is almost over. I hate the heat. Let me repeat myself. I HATE THE HEAT. When we lived in Phoenix, I used to start moaning when it hit 80 - you know, in February. I wouldn't stop moaning until December. I hated Phoenix. Sacramento wasn't much better. At least I had the pool there and got to ruin my skin baking in the sun with water cradling my body. Here, it's much cooler. The pool doesn't see a lot of use.

But I digress. That isn't what this post is about.

First of all, today's porn shot of yarny goodness.



With the exception of the cake in the center, all this yarn is Spunky Eclectic. I'll get to the cake in a minute. In the usual order:

Tough Sock - Navajo Gems
Tough Sock - Hot Rock
Skinny Socks - Dinah
Skinny Socks - Breathtaking
Skinny Socks - Ravelry

The cake in the center is by Prairie Daisy Handspun and is called "A Touch of Autumn".

I also got a killer yarn bag (I'll do a picture of all my yarn bags over the weekend) by a lovely seller on Etsy (not my usual bag, but a really good one). Get ready to fall off your chair. And this is after I debagged. I have to sell about half of them, so once the picture is up and anybody is interested (I'll let you know which ones are for sale), just give me a holler. I'd rather sell them to my readers than list them on eBay. What a pain in the ass.

So what's up with the Monster, you ask?

Last night was not a good night for knitting. We ate dinner at a reasonable hour for a change, and I settled into the Monster for an enjoyable evening of horror movie watching and knitting. One of my all-time favorites, "House of 1000 Corpses" was on the tube, so I put that on (no having to muscle through commercials every five minutes), picked up the swatch that will never work, and set to it.

I opened my eyes to find that the Monster had swallowed one of the DPN's, the movie was rolling the closing credits, and I didn't know where I was. Those pills are killer, I'm telling you.

I found the missing needle, confirmed that the swatch was not going to fly, unraveled it, wound it back on the ball so the kink would work its way out of the yarn, picked up my own socks, and began knitting those. Unfortunately, there was nothing else on TV that interested me, so I started watching "People's Court", which I TIVO every day.

When I looked at the TV again, People's Court was long gone and some strange show was on. There was also some strange time on the clock - something like 3 a.m.

Oh good, I thought - I still have lots of time for knitting. So I began knitting again. But then something made me set down my work. I knew the Monster had eaten something else, but I didn't know what. I just KNEW that something had disappeared into it's bowels.

I bought the Monster new as part of the furniture we got for this shithole of a house. You'd never know it by looking at it. Cigarette burns (and all you have to do is wave a flame an inch above the chair for the microfiber to disappear), coffee stains, and who knows what else have befallen this poor thing. In other words, the perfect knitter's chair. And the back looks worse than the front. Unbeknownst to me, every time I leaned back to get the footrest up, part of the back edge of the chair was literally TRENCHING into the wood trim around the hole cut in the wall so you can enter the hall. Not only was the wood full of deep trench cuts, the chair had gone balder than me and had a piece of metal sticking out. The back had pulled away from the chair in this location, causing me to shove it back into place. But the metal remains for all the world to see. Sigh. So I know what's going on here. The Monster is punishing me for being a bad chair owner. That's why it ate something of mine.

So I heaved myself out of it (no small feat, because I have to remove everything from the footrest (I use it as a shelf), put it on the part of the chair where I sit, put the footrest back down, and then try to get out of it (remember that it's a chair and a half and very deep), which usually causes other things to fall down between the cushion and the side of the chair. I began running my hand down along the cushion to see what was there. Nothing. I ran my hand down the other side. Nothing. But I KNEW that the Monster had taken something as retribution for my carelessness.

I sighed. I sat back down. I hit the lever on the side for the catapult footrest to come springing up (it can fling a ball of yarn clear across the room and smack it into the wall - really, I've done it), adjusted my jammies (well, a nightshirt - it's too hot for jammies), and there it was. Hidden in a spot I'd never have thought to look. Buried way under where the footrest resided when it wasn't being used and under the cushion. Just the tiniest flash of metal sticking out. I KNEW the damn thing had eaten something.

I pulled it out. I looked at it. I looked at it again. It was a stitch marker.

No big deal, right? Except that I didn't have any stitch markers out and hadn't been using any. The only ones I've got in use are the ones on my socks, and those are rubber bands. This was one of my nice stitch markers from Hide and Sheep on Etsy.

That can mean only one thing. The Monster walks when I'm sleeping and eats random things. It must be influenced by the monster movies I so dearly love.

So I put the stitch marker back in its zippered pouch, set that back in place, and began knitting again.

So far, from about 10:00 last night to 9:00 this morning, I've managed to knit a grand total of one round. Yep. You read that right. At this rate, I should be done with this particular pair of socks some time in the winter of 2013.

I think maybe I should start another hobby. Something simple. Like pot holder weaving.

I did get a bit of interesting news today which has nothing to do with knitting. I got a letter in the mail that had been forwarded from my old address (it took a month - I only moved 100 miles) asking me if I would be interested in teaching Native American flute to inmates at the California State Prison in Reseda. It was legit - it gave the name of a disc jockey and the prison chaplain who are running the program. So I gave the chaplain a call. The upshot of all this is that they're going to start my clearance paperwork so I can enter the prison and get up close and personal with real live inmates. For a prison program junkie like me, this is a dream come true. I'm also performing in a benefit concert this October down in Poway (by San Diego), which is very exciting, but this is PRISON. I have to go through metal detectors and the whole nine yards. Since I'm from a cop family, I'm well aware of the dangers, but danger is my middle name (at least this week). Too bad I don't have my 50th birthday present to ride up there (a Harley Heritage Softtail Classic in white with gold trim - sweet), so I'll have to settle for taking the lid off the T-Bird and ragtopping it down the freeway with my flutes sticking up and belted into the passenger seat. A bike would just make me look bad. I have the tats. I have the bald head. Too bad I don't have the muscles, but I think the boys will overlook that when they see the melons in my shirt. The chaplain told me to keep my cell on in case there's a last-minute problem. You know... like a lockdown. They can't let me in then.

Hubster is all for it. He thought it was very cool. In fact, he only asked one thing of me, since he knows that I talk to anybody and seem to draw people like flies to a turd:

"Please don't give them our address and phone number - you know, for if they have problems playing or something."

What does the man think - that I want an inmate moving in with us? It'll never happen.

We don't have the room.