Home

One of the greatest blessings in my life is that I had a very happy, secure childhood. My parents were happily married and worked hard to provide a loving, nurturing environment for my brother and me. In my heart and memory that warm, stable environment is inextricably linked to the house we lived in when I was young. I lived in the same house from birth until I left for college. It was my home so completely that I wasn’t even aware of how emotionally significant a home can be until the day, during my senior year of high school, when my father sat us down and explained that we needed to sell the house.

It was the early 90’s. The recession had been dragging on for quite a while. While it was an extraordinarily beautiful house, it was quite large and very old. My father had owned the house outright since before I was born, but the maintenance and taxes on the house were very expensive. Not only that, but I’m the youngest and I was to be leaving for college soon. The house was way more than my about-to-be empty-nester parents would need. In the coming years, my dad’s health would begin to decline rapidly. He didn’t say it (and I didn’t suspect it), but I think he knew that soon he simply wouldn’t be able to manage living in a house of that size and that more money would be needed for medical expenses. On that day he simply laid it out as a sensible, financial decision. He recognized how hard it would be for all of us to leave (he’d been living there for more than 30 years, himself) but explained that it was the wisest thing to do, given the state of the economy.

It was one of those life events when your perspective changes in an instant. The house represented all the stability and security I had had in my life so far. I realize how lucky I am to have been 18 and seeing for the first time that up until then I had had the luxury of taking that stability and security for granted. But at the time all I could feel was the loss. The idea of selling the house made me feel adrift, confused and very sad. At the risk of sounding overly dramatic, I felt emotionally homeless.

Over the next 10 years, I lived in a series of dorm rooms and rentals. I had roommates, my own apartment and then the apartments I shared with Chris before we were married. I visited my parents in their new house, sometimes staying for months at a time. All those places were perfectly nice, but none of them encompassed that feeling of Home the way the old house had. I was the right age to be leaving home, which helped me make peace with the sale of the old house. But I never lost my fondness for that house and what it represented. And I never forgot how I’d felt like everything I had ever relied upon might slip away if that house was no longer my family homestead.

Two months after we were married, Chris and I moved into the house we have just sold. (We actually made the winning offer on the house on an evening we were having a meeting with our wedding planner and DJ, but that’s another story.) We have lived there for the past four years. Somewhere along the way, I regained that feeling of Home and it was wonderful.

The process of selling that house and moving into a new one has made a lot of old feelings resurface. This time, though, I’m not a naïve teenager. Instead, I’m a reasonably well adjusted adult who knows that while a house can be a big part of one’s identity and is the place one might call “home,” it’s the bigger principles of love, security, peacefulness and family that really define Home.

Two days before the close of escrow, Chris and I had our final walk-through at our old house. It was completely empty, save for the alarmingly huge dust bunnies and the mysterious bottle of Miller Light that was there when we moved in. (Leaving it there just seemed like the right thing to do.) I allowed myself to cry and mourn leaving the place where I had once again felt so loved and secure that I could truly feel at Home.

We left there for the last time and came to our new house. We still have many unpacked boxes, there are still areas of the house under construction, the furniture for our bedroom and the nursery has not yet arrived, but this house is shaping up very nicely. I’ve been having a blast picking paint colors, light fixtures, window treatments, etc. We’re putting our own personal stamp on this house and it feels fantastic. I love that everywhere I look, I see my life with my husband. And when I think about bringing our baby daughter home from the hospital to this house, I feel overjoyed. This house is the beginning of our next series of adventures as our family expands. We are filling this house with love and making it a Home.

When we were standing in our old house on that final day, Chris and I talked about the things I’ve said here. We let ourselves feel the sadness of leaving that house and then we hugged and reminded each other of a certain part of our wedding vows. It was the thing that made it easy for me to wipe away my tears. It’s the thing that has made this transition one of joy. On our wedding day, we said to each other, “May my heart be your shelter and my arms be your home.”

Don't send out the search party just yet...

I'm back home, alive and in one piece.

I'll have a proper post tomorrow. But I've been in front of the computer all day and now I think it's time to grab some knitting and get in front of the TV.

(All this sitting and snacking...how am I not 700lbs?)

Fuzzy

I've come down with a cold and my head is fuzzier than a mohair angora blend. Given this state, I'm afraid the best I can do today is a random, list-style post.

A) Thank you so much for all of the wonderful tips, suggestions, and advise about pattern writing. I really appreciate the input. All of it was very helpful. You people are smart!

B) I finished the item necessitating the aforementioned tips and delivered it to my friend. She loved it. Yay!

C) I kept very detailed notes and, using your suggestions, I could actually write those notes up into a pattern. However, I'm going to keep working on it. The delivered FO holds "prototype" status. I'm going to make a few more. There are some things I want to do a little differently. I'd also like to come up with some alternative detailing. And I need to work out the different sizes.

D) Since then, I strung these beads onto this yarn (Debbie Bliss Pure Silk, Ecru)



The following picture is a more accurate representation of the beads.



I've been playing around, flipping through the stitch dictionaries and trying to incorporate the beads into various stitches. I'm not sure what I'm trying to accomplish. I'm just trying to find something I like which will speak to me and tell me what it wants to be. (A beaded handbag? Knitted jewelry? A beaded edging to a scarf or sweater?) I haven't gotten anything yet. Instead, all the knitting, frogging and sliding of beads up and down the yarn is pretty much just destroying that first length of silk. Sigh.

E) Round three of Sock Madness begins tomorrow sometime between 4am and 9am PST. It's a good thing I'm out of the running already. If I weren't I'd be real tempted to wake up at 4am to wait for the pattern. That would be very bad for getting over this stupid cold. Also...

F) I shouldn't spend too much time knitting tomorrow because I have to get ready to go out of town for Easter. We leave Friday morning. I have tomorrow to do laundry and pack because work is going to have me completely tied up on Thursday.

G) Here at casa de Golden Purl, we've been having fun with the I am in your base killing your d00ds-genre of captioned animal pictures. Steve started it over at Big Action!.



Sadie and her friend Cohen on a play-date. They were too wild in the house, so we put them in the yard. Then they just sat, steaming up the French doors, whining to come back inside. It was quite cute. Of course, in this picture, they look like earth-bound minions of Cerberus.



This adorable, Beagle puppy is Daisy. She belonged to a neighbor back in our pre-Sadie, apartment dwelling days. She had us completely wrapped around her little paw. Look at da giant ears! You totally would bring her treats, too.

H) I think I'm done. Thanks for tolerating the disjointed post.

Now What?

Eventually, I finished the Madtini socks.



Before Sock Madness started, I wondered if I would keep knitting the sock patterns after being eliminated from the competition.

At this point (post-elimination), I'm leaning towards YES, I will keep knitting the patterns.

Here are the reasons why:

1. I have plenty of sock yarn. In addition to the yarn I purchased in preparation for Sock Madness, I might have bought some more since then.


Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock, Tuscany colorway.

Last weekend, I went on a yarn crawl with my dear friend, Leslie and my new friend, Jackie. We went to three different yarn stores. At the last one, A Mano Yarn Center, after having already spent way too much money, I saw this yarn. They have a really excellent sock yarn selection, probably the best of the LYS's I know. I thought I was going to be able to stay strong in the face of this wonderful selection, but I absolutely could not resist this colorway. I mean c'mon! Even the name is irresistible. Even though I bought this, I still feel like I stayed (relatively) strong. You should have seen all the sock yarn I didn't buy.

At that store anyway.


Cherry Tree Hill Supersock Solids, Loden colorway.

I got this at the first store we went to on the yarn crawl, Compatto. They are so nice there. They really love getting to know their customers. And they love socks, too! The sock yarn display is positioned one half step into the store. This color is a perfect Jean green. I couldn't leave it behind.

2. Now that I will no longer be knitting the Mad Patterns for competition, I can feel free to modify with abandon. Not that I necessarily will modify them all that much (if at all), but I like the freedom.

3. The patterns are a prize unto themselves. If I don't knit them, it's like I don't get that prize.

4. I'll learn new things. As the patterns become more complex, I expect new techniques will show up. Even if it's something I've done before, lace or cables for example, I have not yet done those techniques on socks. And when something I've never done before (fair isle?) shows up, the sock will be a great learning ground.

5. Camaraderie. This has really been my favorite part of Sock Madness anyway. Meeting new people, cheering each other on, sharing frantic confusion and sorting it out together has made Sock Madness a blast. Knitting the socks from the bleachers is a way to keep the camaraderie going.

There is one more reason. But you're going to have to come back tomorrow for that.

Until then, here's some fun from the non-knitting, yet easily-amused department:
It's Raining 300 Men
OK Go on treadmills

Comments

There's been a lively discussion today at And She Knits Too! and January One about the relationship between blogging and comments. It was interesting for me to examine my own feelings on the subject as well as to hear what other people had to say. I may write more about that later, but that's not really the point of this post.

The point of this post is that since the very first comment I received (Hi Mayrav!), I have not been entirely happy with the basic Blogger comment system. I didn't like that I was unable to reply to most of the comments I got. And should my commenter have a blog of her/his own, I would only know it if it was a Blogger blog.

Coincidentally, today I saw a tip Pacalaga gave over in the Sock Madness discussion pool. She's a Blogger blogger (heh) who uses HaloScan for her comments. From what she said, it sounded like HaloScan would be a comment service I would find more satisfying than Blogger's.

So I loaded that HaloScan bad boy up.

Only now I see that in doing so, I've lost the previous comments I had through Blogger. Well, they're not showing here anymore. But they're not lost entirely, because I still have every one of them in my e mail.

I love getting comments. Thank you to everyone who's left me a comment. I have enjoyed and appreciated every one of them. I'm sad those comments no longer show here, but I hope that HaloScan will be better going forward.

And thank you to everyone who takes time out of her/his day to read what I write here. I feel incredibly honored that you would spend your time with me. Whether you comment or not, I really appreciate that you stopped by.

Now, because I'm risking getting too sentimental, I'm going to fall back on the safety of a Simpson's quote to wrap this all up.

"Thank you, come again."
- Apu Nahasapeemapetilon