My Latest Dilemma

I realized that I really haven't addressed the whole "dilemma" situation that this blog is supposed to deal with. Hmmm...Yes, I actually do have one that I would like to begin working on. This dilemma pertains to the use of natural ingredients in the attempt to stop putting so many toxic substances into our environment.

What prompted my interest in this subject? Well, let's just say I have a healthy curiosity in how someone could possibly develop a fatal lung disease while avoiding the things we normally associate with unhealthy habits, particularly smoking or even being around second-hand smoke. So, let's see where my quest is leading me.

First off, a couple of years ago, I began switching over to non-toxic everything I could get my hands on. I found a great company that carries items for cleaning, bathing, makeup, vitamins, medicines, etc. I love the products and I use them religiously. The only problem...it's getting expensive for me. I won't name the company here because I really like them and I don't want to give you the wrong impression. It's not that their items are expensive but that I simply can't afford them right now. If anyone wants to contact me directly, I will be glad to share the info with you. I actually signed up with them to be a distributor but, you know what? I'm just not a salesperson. I would love to see more people using this stuff but I just can't make a living doing it.

So, today while I was listening to a knitting podcast (Stitch-It) I was also developing an increasing interest in making my own cleaning products. Meghan, who is the podcaster, had recently made her own laundry soap. Sounded pretty easy and certainly cheaper than what I use. I began researching on the Net and found a lot of helpful sites with recipes which, of course, led to hunting down natural shampoo, drain cleaner, fabric softener, etc. You know how you start at website A and end up at website Z in about 30 minutes? Yep, that was me.

Well, here is what I'm going to do. My dilemma is that I am now in the information overload phase and I need to narrow things down. I also feel the calling to share this info with as many people as possible. So, as I discover really good sites and directions for useful products that are not expensive , I will post the info here. And please share your experiences with me so I can glean even more wisdom from this neverending thirst for knowledge.

Just to tie things back in with my original interest in this healthful environment quest, this is the question I often pose. If a person who doesn't smoke and isn't around second-hand smoke can develop a fatal lung disease, what factors may have contributed to the problem? I know that this is a person who didn't get out of the house much. So, let's think about the fact that fresh air is minimal. Okay. Then what is in the house? Toxic cleaners, for starters. Also, consider that she burned candles a lot. And I do mean a lot! And used those air fresheners in aerosol cans...a lot. Starting to get a possible bigger picture? All of this gunking up the air and no real chance to get away from it to clean out one's lungs. Did this do damage or not? We probably won't ever know, but I don't think it would hurt to see how I can do my part to avoid the situation.

So, probably tomorrow I shall begin adding to the usual topics of family, knitting, quilting, reading, and whatever catches my interest. Don't get me wrong - I'm not a rabid health nut or tree hugger. I'm just trying to learn more and, you know me, I'm all about education outside the confines of an institution. Develop an interest and delve deeply, then share the results with others. Don't proselytize. Don't try to convert people who are obviously unreceptive. And don't beat people over the head with information just because you think it's good for them. Unless you really get off on that and then, hey, knock yourself out. ;-)

Until next time, just to let you know: Knitting projects - more fingerless gloves and a blanket for Heather; Books - Finished the Carolyn Hart book and back to the Diana Wynne Jones (both books are noted above in my Shelfari book shelf). I also picked up Don Quixote again because I want to intersperse more classical lit in with my casual reading. And my latest culture experience: we attended a play yesterday at Gainesville College. Finding Hamlet was the Senior Thesis project of one of Heather's theatre cohorts (Will Bradley) at Gainesville College. (Oh yeah, Heather just happened to be the lighting designer. Her able-bodied assistant was Michael. Nepotism works.) I found it thought-provoking and now I want to go back and reread Harold Bloom's book, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. I guess I shall just add that to the neverending big damn stack o'books on the side of the bed...and in every other room of the house.

Knitting4Children Knitathon 2009

I am taking a short break from the 2008 Christmas postings for a word from one of my charity knitting organizations. Today I will be working on a schedule for the annual Knitathon that Knitting4Children, which is a group on Yahoo that I've been working with for at least nine years, holds in honour of its founder. The following description of the Knitathon is from Becky Carter, who is the head of the group...

"Knitting 4 Children was started in 1999 by Lorraine Kretzmer, a talented knitter
and new grandma. In 2000 she was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. As her
illness progressed, I had the honor of taking over the list. In early 2001, in
an effort to help us deal with Lorraine's declining health, we decided to have a
Knitathon in her honor. Our plans were to have someone from our list knitting at
all times during a 24 hour period to let her know we were thinking of her. We
chose Sunday, January 7, 2001 as the day.

As I often say, truth is stranger than fiction. At shortly after 1:00 pm on
January 7, while surrounded by her real life family, Lorraine passed away. Her
cyber family at Knitting4Children, knitted in her honor while she passed from
this life. Every year since we have designated a day to hold a Knitathon in her
honor.

On this day members sign up for a time slot and we make sure we have someone
knitting for charity for every minute of a 24 hour period. Patti, who
homeschools her children, has moderated this event and used it as a geography
lesson for her kids. It is a great bonding experience for us as a group, and a
special way to honor our founder. It is also interesting to see where everyone
is knitting!"

It is hard to believe that we have been doing this since 2001. I remember having the kids stick pins into the maps on the kitchen wall to show the locations of our members who, by now, I can pretty well remember from year to year. Gee, and that only took maybe 6 or 7 years to get into my tiny brain. Okay, that does exclude Margaret from Adelaide, Australia, who I never forget. We also have a member in New Zealand. The challenge of having members all over the globe is that I get to figure out what time they are knitting here on the East Coast when they are halfway across the globe. It is actually lots of fun to plan this out and it keeps my geographic and mathematical skills sharp. Whenever possible, I get the kidlets to help with the time zones and, of course, it counts as schooltime.

So, now I shall begin the scheduling and also contemplate what I would like to work on for Sunday's Knitathon. My donations stay local - usually going to Birthright. But that's the nice thing about our organization. You can either donate to the charities that we support as a group, or you can donate locally. As long as you are knitting for some sort of children's charity, you get to count your items toward our yearly totals. One suggestion has been made to do chemo caps in Lorraine's honour and that sounds like a good plan to me. I will probably scope out the need for them at the children's hospitals nearby. Lord knows I have the stash to make them!

So, this year my charity knitting will pretty much be centered on the K4C projects and Friends of Pine Ridge Reservation. I'll be posting pictures of the completed projects, possibly once monthly in order to keep me motivated. Please take a look at the websites for these two groups if you would like to become involved in knitting or crocheting for these worthy causes.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming...otherwise known as the Dilettante's Dilemma.

Houseguests and the Hazards of Knitting

Disclaimer: Lest anyone get the wrong impression, the houseguests were not the cause of the hazardous knitting episode. I just wanted to show y'all the two little furballs who have been staying with me whilst their mama moves to her new apartment. On the left is Captain Jack (who would not cooperate and the first couple of pictures were just of his butt) and on the right, Commodore Norrington aka The Guinea Pigs of DOOM...at least that's what they are known as while they visit. I love to spoil them by giving them fun food like apples, parsley, cucumbers, and peppers. Some things go over well and others just get the cold shoulder. But there's always the old standby romaine lettuce and carrots should their palates not be tempted by the new menu. At least now Norrington will come and sniff my fingers, which is a major accomplishment on the guinea pig social scale. Jack is a little friendlier and I have even let him watch me read blogs and Plurk whilst sitting in my lap. It's fun to have them visit and, yes, for the cynical people out there, I would still have them over even if Heather didn't bring me the XBox 360 as a perk. So, there!

Onto the knitting front -

Another pair of fingerless gloves heading for Texas will fly out of here Monday evening. A second pair, same colour but a different design, is completed and spoken for. Some denim blue shorties are on the needles and I have to buy yarn for a men's pair which was ordered earlier this evening. Whew!

For some reason, this last pair proved to be a temporary thorn in my side. I messed up the pattern twice so I took out first about 3 inches and then 1 inch. Frustrated, I decided to start over. Okay, I also thought I'd change my knitting method from dpn's to using 2 circular needles. It's not a method I'm unfamiliar with, so I thought I'd see if it was faster than using 4 or 5 dpn's. (For the record, the dpn's I've been using are bamboo and I enjoy working with them. I don't want any dpn's out there to feel that I'm prejudiced against them.)

Okay, so I went through my two pencil pouches full of circulars, sizing everything, trying to find two size 7's for the project. One 16-inch Addi Turbo - great! Then there were a couple others that were various brands and lengths. I grabbed one that was much longer and hoped the length wouldn't annoy me too greatly.

For some reason, I had a bad feeling about this glove. (cue Star Wars music) Something wasn't quite right. Some little voice (my Inner Knitter, most likely) was trying to get my attention but I kept telling IK to shut up. Finally, with six rows to go (I kid you not), I decided to walk across the room and pick up the first glove (previously, I had been too lazy to get up. Laziness cost me dearly.) When I compared glove 1 to glove 2, I discovered that the one on the needles was smaller! WTF? I grabbed the needle gauge and discovered the culprit. One of my circs was a size 6. So, I had knitted the entire palm in stockinette stitch on a smaller needle. And it ended up making a difference which, in my "perfectionista" brain was egregious.

--An aside to the knitting audience: Some knitters, who shall remain nameless, might even consider it truly odious if I dared pass off this flawed garment as first-rate. Therefore, a monumental decision hung over my head or (to use another visual) the glove was like an albatross around my neck.

The way I saw it, I had two options. I could either knit two more gloves - a left one to match Thing One (dpn glove) and a right one to match Thing Two (circ size 6/7 glove). Or, I could frog the one on the needles and start over...again.

My decision? Well, I really didn't care for the size 6 needle because it was long and unwieldy and actually slowed down my knitting, so I didn't relish the thought of spending a couple more hours knitting with it. I opted to frog the nearly-finished glove.

Then, after the yarn had resumed its unknit form, I had a brainstorm. Actually, I call it a Scarlett O'Hara moment. "As God is my witness, I'll never use the wrong size circulars again!" And an idea burst forth (I wish it had emerged fully-formed from my head, but I actually had to mosey downstairs to the sewing nook to implement my devious plan). I would make a slap-dash, quickie circular needle holder that I could hang on the wall and store all my needles by size.

I remembered a refashioning that I had seen somewhere on the Net, using a pair of jeans to make a holder, so I grabbed an old pair that are now too big and have a hole in one knee. They were destined to become a skirt or who-knows-what, anyway. I borrowed about 30 minutes from my knitting self, loaned it to my sewing self, and ended up with this.


It's not visually exciting or aesthetic but we're going for function here, folks. Now I can easily find the right needles without spending about fifteen minutes sizing them all. And, whilst arranging all the needles in their proper slots, I discovered the reason why I ultimately ended up with two different sized needles for the glove fiasco. Lo and behold, I only have one number 7 circular needle. Duh!

(Since this unfortunate incident, Heather graciously picked up another size 7 for me - a 16-inch Balene. We'll see how I like working with this brand as I've only used straights and crochet hooks by them before. Thank you bunches to Heather!)

So, on Sunday evening after our regular Chili's dinner, I camped out in Borders' cafe and made a lovely left glove which is happy warming my hand as I write this (not as I enter it into the computer. I actually wrote this entire blog after I finished said glove and was waiting for Ded to get off work at 10pm)

(Note to Syler: Yes, Sis, I wear each pair for a while to see how they fit and assess if I want to make any future design adjustments. So you could say I "broke in" your gloves. I wore Seguin's too, if you recall. The way I look at it, if I'm not happy with the way they fit, you probably won't be either, so I have to take each pair for a test drive.)

So, that's about it on the knitting front. Elsewhere, I've been playing Sims2 because it runs so well now that there's nothing else installed on the compy. Giuli got the 24-hour flu early in the week, followed a couple of days later by Michael and Mary. Heather moved to a new apartment. And the Lost Boys had a cd release gig last night which I missed because I was having way too much fun knitting, frogging, sewing, and wishing Mary wasn't sick or I would have grabbed her and Giuli and enjoyed an evening of "Heroes and Scoundrels". One last picture here - the other pair of fingerless gloves...aka the ones that didn't drive me over the edge.

;-)

Facebook...And You Thought It Was Just a Social Network

I will admit that I joined Facebook just for fun and because the Jacksonville office had started a group and I wanted to see what they actually looked like. I mean, answering the phone gave me the unique capability of knowing who was calling by identifying the appropriate voice but putting faces with them was impossible. So, having only met about a half dozen of the Jax people, I finally could see who those wacky creatives were.

Another perk was that I actually reconnected with a few of my high school friends (yes, from back in the dark ages when it was still safe to go to school downtown). And I even have a Facebook friend who I went to school with (get this) back in Los Angeles from 1st to 3rd grade.

So, yes, I thought the social aspect of Facebook was lots of fun and I became addicted fairly quickly. When I started my knitting/quilting business I thought that I could benefit from having made lots of friends there - I can post pictures of my finished projects quickly and easily so, voila, instant free advertising! It's all good (as Herbal from Dark Angel would say).

So, the other day, I found someone I had met years ago when Heather was high school age and she apprenticed at the Gateway Mask and Mime Theatre down in Little Five Points. Also, Caitlin did some Irish dancing for them at an Irish Christmas party...I vaguely remember Mummers and singing What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor...weird selective memory. Anyway, who knows how anyone finds people on Facebook but I guess I just started clicking one thing which led to another and bam! there was a familiar face. I found John Jaramillo so I decided to send him an "Add Friend" request. Fortunately, he obliged and here's where the awesome Facebook perk kicks in.

For those of you who knew my mom, the fact that I inherited an entire closet of yarn from her (all acrylic) would not surprise you in the least. Right? And, for those of you who know me (and why would you be reading this if you didn't?) you know that I've been doing charity knitting since I think Caitlin was a baby. Most of my items are baby things and they usually go to Birthright as I've known Terry Weaver, the U.S. National Director, for many, many years. In fact, I have a pretty good-sized stash of things to take them this month. Mom always had a soft spot for the Native Americans and she would donate to every American Indian organization that managed to get her on their mailing list, I think. (BTW, I just visited Wikipedia and will admit that I didn't realize that Native American does not only apply to the American Indians, but also Native Alaskans, Native Hawaiians, and several other groups.) Now, how does this tie in with Facebook and reconnecting with John, you ask? (of course you do; inquiring minds want to know)

Well...knowing John is a performer of Aztec dances and his background is Pueblo Indian Native American (and please go to his website to check him out - he does wander back to the Atlanta area occasionally) I asked him where I could donate knitted goods to benefit a reservation that needed help. John immediately suggested that the neediest reservations were in South Dakota and the Friends of Pine Ridge Reservation would be worth looking into. The description from the website listing numerous charities said: "An online group of volunteers who support the Native American community of Pine Ridge by sewing, knitting, crocheting and donating desperately needed items." I found that they have a Yahoo group which I immediately joined.

Hopefully, you have figured out that Facebook has put me in touch with a charity that will benefit from both my mom's yarn and my knitting skills, and I can donate to them in her memory, thus proving that a silly little social networking site can serve a greater purpose in the grand scheme of things. It was pretty serendipitous that I found all this info so easily and I hope this will inspire some of my readers to remember those who have less than we do (even when the budget is squeezed until it just begs for mercy). I figure that my only cost involved in this project will be my time and postage and I can certainly spare a little of that to help keep somebody warm this winter.