Tribalism

 

It struck me the other day just how much we seem to be separating out into tribes, sometimes warring ones.  Many years ago I was one of a small number of homeschooling parents in my state.  Around the time my daughter was two someone else set up a meeting for homeschoolers to talk about some of the changes at the DOE homestudy office.  I went to the meeting and met some people for the very first time.  We had a pleasant meeting and scheduled another one.  Over the months people offered suggestions, a legislative committee was established and people chosen to be our spokespeople with the DOE and with the legislators.  It took two legislative sessions, but we ultimately got a homestudy bill that was much more pleasing to us, as well as being one that the DOE was willing to endorse.

Now, the homeschooling families in that group were not monolithic.  Some were definitely on the counter culture end of the spectrum, liberal in politics, and unschooling in educational methods.  Some were on the traditional/fundamentalist end of the spectrum, conservative in politics, and pretty much textbook/school at home types.   I fell somewhere in between.  We had vegans, and meat eaters. We had dad's with long hair, and dads with short. We had atheists and conservative Christians.  Even the legislators who sponsored out bill were not monolithic.  They also fell on both ends of the political spectrum.  Yet somehow we were all able to talk to each other, work with each other, and even enjoy each other's company.

 I honestly wonder whether that would even be true in most cases today.  People have become so polarized, that it seems difficult  to even work together for a common cause. Back in that era I learned from people who came from a very different position.  I was able to work with them and appreciate things like their humor, their dedication to their kids, even some of the curriculum they used,books they read (or in the case of Frank Asch, wrote).

 I think we would be better off today if we were able to appreciate the fact that people don't have to always agree in order to get along. It makes me sad that someone whom I went to elementary school with unfriended me on Facebook because we had a different political perspective.  I didn't unfriend anyone.  There are people I follow less than before, but I do check in on them from time to time. I fully recognize that relationships change as interests change and as our lives move in different directions, but it always makes me sad when I suddenly find someone who was a really close friend at one point has simply shut off communication, with no explanation or warning.  It's happened more than once.  

 Once upon a time shared interests seemed to be enough.  Homeschoolers could get together for a whale watch without agreeing on politics or religion. People who raised sheep could do the same. My kids grew up with 4-H friends who went to school and not to church. They got to know people who came from very different perspectives.  I like to think it served them well as they grew into adults. 

 It is certainly fun to find kindred spirits with whom you have a lot in common, but it's also fun to find friends with whom you may only share one or two particular passions.  It might be knitting, or gardening, or riding a horse.  It might be faith related issues that you share with someone who may never bake a loaf of bread or knit a hat. It is too easy to let ourselves be clustered in tribes and never speak with anyone outside of those tribes.  I happen to think it's a dangerous trend.

 Happy New Year

I haven't signed in here for a long time, but I'm still alive and kicking. More later.

Failing to Pass the Torch

What this election season has demonstrated to me in stark colors is the fact that a prediction that Mike Farris made in The Teaching Home a couple decades ago is coming to naught. He was convinced that because homeschooling families were having more kids and that Christian homeschooling families were instilling their values that the culture was going to change and that by now we would "be winning.". What I am observing, at least among the homeschooled adults who were in our homeschool group, that to a very large extent what has happened is that the culture changed them. Their certainly are exceptions, and I cherish each and everyone of those exceptional people, but it has to break the heart of homeschooled moms to find that their daughters are reading Fifty Shades of Gray or putting rainbow flags on their profile picture. I am watching kids who grew up in pretty orthodox homes falling prey to the emergent church movement, or abandoning Christianity entirely.

 I honestly can't explain it. It's not what happened in our home, despite the fact that my kids socialized a lot with unchurched kids, and went to a secular university. I keep hoping that it's an anomaly among the population of first generation homeschoolers, but I've seen enough bloggers online from that community to recognize that isn't the case. The stricter the family, the more rigid the curriculum, the more it seems like their kids abandoned the faith entirely.

 I'm now watching a new batch of first generation homeschoolers who seem to believe that they can discipline their kids into following the faith and countering the culture. I continue to believe that it is more important to put kids in touch with the good, the true, and the beautiful, and to place relationships ahead of a rigid curriculum. I'm now watching my daughter look for a group of homeschoolers that are less rigid than the one she is in. She feels a group of unschoolers would be more accepting of her 'teaching from rest" approach than the group she is currently in where she's viewed as a bit odd. I know the feeling well, having been for much of my homeschool life a pariah to at least some of the Christian homeschoolers in our county because I did odd things like read John Holt, and occasionally serve wine at dinner. I got uninvited from the very first small group of homeschoolers I was in simply because I didn't use ACE curriculum and I was well aware that even in our far more accepting Christian homeschool group I was pretty widely regarded as liberal. I even got criticized for having my lit class kids read C.S. Lewis's space trilogy because it had "bad language" in it, despite the fact that it was one of the best indictments of current cultural trends out there. I have to say, that only one of the kids who read that trilogy has fallen by the wayside (and it wasn't the cape wearing rebel that everyone but me would have predicted). Most of them are solidly orthodox Christians of either a Protestant or Catholic stripe. 

A number of of the kids who fell by the wayside from our larger group were children from that very first homeschool small group that I got uninvited from, every single family lost at least one of their kids to the larger culture. I'm not at all saying that I got it all right, and they got it all wrong. I could outline for you exactly where I totally blew it. Some of their kids are faithful (although one family I'm thinking of has scored a four for four failure to pass the torch rate), I'm simply observing that Mike Farris's approach doesn't seem to have had the overall effect he predicted (whether it worked perfectly in the Farris family I have no idea).

 Somehow the public schools seem to have been much more effective in inculcating their message than many homeschool families have been. It was easier for them because the media was working hand in glove with them. It was easier for them because the path of least resistance is always easier. Passing on the torch to the next generation is a lot more difficult than Abeka teachers' guides made it look, but it sure looks to me like the kids who came out of homes where the teacher's guide was abandoned early in the game have ended up with more kids who have picked up the torch to pass it to the next generation. Those moms who homeschooled more with read alouds than with Abeka nit picky tests or ACE thermometers seem to have kids who are more apt to be following the faith. I'm thankful for friends who used Sonlight, or simply library books, and who dared to send their kids to my lit class, even when they questioned some of my selections, or considered my approach rather liberal. I'm thankful for the kids who eventually learned how not to change tense in the middle of a paragraph and learned to appreciate the wisdom of a C.S. Lewis in a world where the controllers are becoming more and more a problem.

 I wish Mike Farris had been right, it would be a happier situation if he had. However, we live in a generation where once again the words of Tertullian are proving to be true: "the blood of the martyrs are the seed of the Church." Muslims are converting in places where Christians have been killed, exactly as they did in ancient Rome. Sadly, some of our children have chosen to side with the culture, even some of our children who still sit in pews every Sunday morning because the pews that they sit in are in churches who have also chosen to side with the culture. It may, sadly, take real persecution to help them see the truth and beauty of what their parents tried to teach them. I wish Mike Farris had been right in his prediction, but I suspect that he was wrong in his prediction precisely because vehicles like The Teaching Home were wrong in the approach that they were advocating. Right at the point that I got uninvited from that ACE dominated group I discovered a book called For The Children's Sake that showed me that I wasn't crazy, that you could both be Christian and homeschool your children in a manner that truly respected them as persons. These days I still recommend that book, but there are two newer ones that I recommend as well" A Little Way of Homeschooling, and Teaching From Rest. They are the books I wish I'd had to read when I was 37 instead of 67. The authors of those books have discovered all the good things I did, but they've discovered some things I didn't. I'm just sorry that there is a whole new batch of first generation homeschoolers that are falling into some of the same  traps that many of my fellow homeschooling moms fell into.

Don't get me wrong. These were good families. They loved their kids. They wanted to do right by them. These were moms who sacrificed careers and lifestyles in order to be home with their kids. They drove their kids all over the place to co-op classes, to ski lessons, to field trips. They paid out of pocket for things the public schools provided for free. They were really and truly trying to do the best. They simply got sold a bill of goods by people whose idea of education was rooted in a philosophy that saw children as basically corrupt, instead of one that really listened to the teachings of Jesus, "let the little ones come to me."

One of the things I observed was that there was little joy in that type of education. There was a lot of discipline, but not a lot of enjoyment of learning. In Teaching From Rest, the author asks how we would like our adult children to describe their homeschooling experience. I actually know how my adult daughter described it.  Someone asked her when she was in college what it was like being homeschooled. Her memory was this " We got up in the morning and mom made cocoa and muffins and we sat on the couch and ate while she read aloud to us." One of her friends said that homeschooling sounded like school with all the bad parts left out. That's what I hope they remember. I hope they don't remember fights over math sheets. For us there was for years a lot of pressure to complete a certain amount of stuff for the dreaded portfolio. These days, people have portfolios that are much slimmer, and there's a real recognition that not every kid moves in lockstep at every grade level. They may make big strides this year in math and next year in reading, and the year after that in writing. They may spell horribly at 18 and by 21 be the best speller in the family by far. They may hate history and geography until they discover the joys of it while teaching their own kids. 

At the end of the day we aren't teaching curriculum, we are teaching children. So much of what got thrown at our generation of homeschooling mothers was all about curriculum. It was hard to buck that and sit on the couch and read. The good, the true, the beautiful,  really giving them a Christian worldview that they hold clear down to their bones, that was the goal. It was supported by Tolkien, and Lewis, by Stephen Lawhead,, Dorothy Sayers, and Madeline L'Engle. It was nourished ultimately by Chesterton, and the early Church fathers. None of that, not one single little bit of that was encouraged by Abeka or Bob Jones University Press, or The Teaching Home. I only know that when my daughter talked about what formed her Christian worldview a couple of summers ago there wasn't one canned textbook on her list of influences. I'm not totally opposed to canned textbooks. If we use them like our servants instead of our masters, they can prove useful in moderation. The problem as I see it is that too much of the time the books, and all to frequently the correspondence school that may be providing them, becomes the master in our homes. Their interest is in curriculum, not in the child who is in front of the parent. When the assignments become overwhelming for both parent and child, when there is no longer time for the read aloud books, or nature walks, or an afternoon cooking in the kitchen together, than something has gone horribly, horribly wrong. I would really encourage this generation of homeschooling families to read Teaching From Rest. The author puts the whole thing much more eloquently than I have.  I hope that Mike Farris's prediction eventually does come true, and that eventually families do pass the torch in such a manner that their kids can explain the hope that they have in them to those who are currently without hope at all. Teaching from rest, teaching with joy, may have a large part in that.

Failing to Pass the Torch

What this election season has demonstrated to me in stark colors is the fact that a prediction that Mike Farris made in The Teaching Home a couple decades ago is coming to naught. He was convinced that because homeschooling families were having more kids and that Christian homeschooling families were instilling their values that the culture was going to change and that by now we would "be winning.". What I am observing, at least among the homeschooled adults who were in our homeschool group, that to a very large extent what has happened is that the culture changed them. Their certainly are exceptions, and I cherish each and everyone of those exceptional people, but it has to break the heart of homeschooled moms to find that their daughters are reading Fifty Shades of Gray or putting rainbow flags on their profile picture. I am watching kids who grew up in pretty orthodox homes falling prey to the emergent church movement, or abandoning Christianity entirely.

 I honestly can't explain it. It's not what happened in our home, despite the fact that my kids socialized a lot with unchurched kids, and went to a secular university. I keep hoping that it's an anomaly among the population of first generation homeschoolers, but I've seen enough bloggers online from that community to recognize that isn't the case. The stricter the family, the more rigid the curriculum, the more it seems like their kids abandoned the faith entirely.

 I'm now watching a new batch of first generation homeschoolers who seem to believe that they can discipline their kids into following the faith and countering the culture. I continue to believe that it is more important to put kids in touch with the good, the true, and the beautiful, and to place relationships ahead of a rigid curriculum. I'm now watching my daughter look for a group of homeschoolers that are less rigid than the one she is in. She feels a group of unschoolers would be more accepting of her 'teaching from rest" approach than the group she is currently in where she's viewed as a bit odd. I know the feeling well, having been for much of my homeschool life a pariah to at least some of the Christian homeschoolers in our county because I did odd things like read John Holt, and occasionally serve wine at dinner. I got uninvited from the very first small group of homeschoolers I was in simply because I didn't use ACE curriculum and I was well aware that even in our far more accepting Christian homeschool group I was pretty widely regarded as liberal. I even got criticized for having my lit class kids read C.S. Lewis's space trilogy because it had "bad language" in it, despite the fact that it was one of the best indictments of current cultural trends out there. I have to say, that only one of the kids who read that trilogy has fallen by the wayside (and it wasn't the cape wearing rebel that everyone but me would have predicted). Most of them are solidly orthodox Christians of either a Protestant or Catholic stripe. 

A number of of the kids who fell by the wayside from our larger group were children from that very first homeschool small group that I got uninvited from, every single family lost at least one of their kids to the larger culture. I'm not at all saying that I got it all right, and they got it all wrong. I could outline for you exactly where I totally blew it. Some of their kids are faithful (although one family I'm thinking of has scored a four for four failure to pass the torch rate), I'm simply observing that Mike Farris's approach doesn't seem to have had the overall effect he predicted (whether it worked perfectly in the Farris family I have no idea).

 Somehow the public schools seem to have been much more effective in inculcating their message than many homeschool families have been. It was easier for them because the media was working hand in glove with them. It was easier for them because the path of least resistance is always easier. Passing on the torch to the next generation is a lot more difficult than Abeka teachers' guides made it look, but it sure looks to me like the kids who came out of homes where the teacher's guide was abandoned early in the game have ended up with more kids who have picked up the torch to pass it to the next generation. Those moms who homeschooled more with read alouds than with Abeka nit picky tests or ACE thermometers seem to have kids who are more apt to be following the faith. I'm thankful for friends who used Sonlight, or simply library books, and who dared to send their kids to my lit class, even when they questioned some of my selections, or considered my approach rather liberal. I'm thankful for the kids who eventually learned how not to change tense in the middle of a paragraph and learned to appreciate the wisdom of a C.S. Lewis in a world where the controllers are becoming more and more a problem.

 I wish Mike Farris had been right, it would be a happier situation if he had. However, we live in a generation where once again the words of Tertullian are proving to be true: "the blood of the martyrs are the seed of the Church." Muslims are converting in places where Christians have been killed, exactly as they did in ancient Rome. Sadly, some of our children have chosen to side with the culture, even some of our children who still sit in pews every Sunday morning because the pews that they sit in are in churches who have also chosen to side with the culture. It may, sadly, take real persecution to help them see the truth and beauty of what their parents tried to teach them. I wish Mike Farris had been right in his prediction, but I suspect that he was wrong in his prediction precisely because vehicles like The Teaching Home were wrong in the approach that they were advocating. Right at the point that I got uninvited from that ACE dominated group I discovered a book called For The Children's Sake that showed me that I wasn't crazy, that you could both be Christian and homeschool your children in a manner that truly respected them as persons. These days I still recommend that book, but there are two newer ones that I recommend as well" A Little Way of Homeschooling, and Teaching From Rest. They are the books I wish I'd had to read when I was 37 instead of 67. The authors of those books have discovered all the good things I did, but they've discovered some things I didn't. I'm just sorry that there is a whole new batch of first generation homeschoolers that are falling into some of the same  traps that many of my fellow homeschooling moms fell into.

Don't get me wrong. These were good families. They loved their kids. They wanted to do right by them. These were moms who sacrificed careers and lifestyles in order to be home with their kids. They drove their kids all over the place to co-op classes, to ski lessons, to field trips. They paid out of pocket for things the public schools provided for free. They were really and truly trying to do the best. They simply got sold a bill of goods by people whose idea of education was rooted in a philosophy that saw children as basically corrupt, instead of one that really listened to the teachings of Jesus, "let the little ones come to me."

One of the things I observed was that there was little joy in that type of education. There was a lot of discipline, but not a lot of enjoyment of learning. In Teaching From Rest, the author asks how we would like our adult children to describe their homeschooling experience. I actually know how my adult daughter described it.  Someone asked her when she was in college what it was like being homeschooled. Her memory was this " We got up in the morning and mom made cocoa and muffins and we sat on the couch and ate while she read aloud to us." One of her friends said that homeschooling sounded like school with all the bad parts left out. That's what I hope they remember. I hope they don't remember fights over math sheets. For us there was for years a lot of pressure to complete a certain amount of stuff for the dreaded portfolio. These days, people have portfolios that are much slimmer, and there's a real recognition that not every kid moves in lockstep at every grade level. They may make big strides this year in math and next year in reading, and the year after that in writing. They may spell horribly at 18 and by 21 be the best speller in the family by far. They may hate history and geography until they discover the joys of it while teaching their own kids. At the end of the day we aren't teaching curriculum, we are teaching children. So much of what got thrown at our generation of homeschooling mothers was all about curriculum. It was hard to buck that and sit on the couch and read. The good, the true, the beautiful,  really giving them a Christian worldview that they hold clear down to their bones, that was the goal. It was supported by Tolkien, and Lewis, by Stephen Lawhead,, Dorothy Sayers, and Madeline L'Engle. It was nourished ultimately by Chesterton, and the early Church fathers. None of that, not one single little bit of that was encouraged by Abeka or Bob Jones University Press, or The Teaching Home. I only know that when my daughter talked about what formed her Christian worldview a couple of summers ago there wasn't one canned textbook on her list of influences. I'm not totally opposed to canned textbooks. If we use them like our servants instead of our masters, they can prove useful in moderation. The problem as I see it is that too much of the time the books and all to frequently the correspondence school that may be providing them becomes the master in our homes. Their interest is in curriculum, not in the child who is in front of the parent. When the assignments become overwhelming for both parent and child, when there is no longer time for the read aloud books, or nature walks, or an afternoon cooking in the kitchen together, than something has gone horribly, horribly wrong. I would really encourage this generation of homeschooling families to read Teaching From Rest. The author puts the whole thing much more eloquently than I have.  I hope that Mike Farris's prediction eventually does come true, and that eventually families do pass the torch in such a manner that their kids can explain the hope that they have in them to those who are currently without hope at all. Teaching from rest, teaching with joy, may have a large part in that.

The Yarn Is Very Happy Now

I finally finished the February Lady Sweater.  It's actually not a difficult pattern (so long as you keep your wits about you, if you don't there's some frogging involved!).  It came out fitting perfectly.  My sleeves are longer than the picture that came with the pattern (deliberately so) and the sweater itself is also longer.  I have probably about 3/4 of a skein of the yarn left.

I really do like the color now.  This sweater will go both with dressy skirts and casual pants, so it's a definite win/win all around.  I'm really glad that I went to the trouble of dying the yarn.  I'm amazed at how evenly it dyed because frequently when I've dyed homespun I've ended up with variations in the color, sometimes pretty variations, but definitely not the even color I got this time.

My next project is supposed to be a dress for my granddaughter, but I'm currently allowing myself to be temporarily sidetracked by a pair of socks.  The yarn is a wool bamboo mix in a pink and sort of purple (almost brown) color way (I love those yarns that make their own stripes).  It's incredibly soft and I'm loving knitting with bamboo sock needles (this is the first time I've tried them).  I needed a mindless knitting break after all that lace before I attack another more fiddly pattern and socks are my main knitting addiction.  When I knit a pair of plain socks I no longer even need a pattern.  I know that for me I can simply cast on 64 stitches with most sock yarns (with Kroy I sometimes reduce that down to 60), and simply have at it.  I do a knit 2 purl 2 cuff for as long as I feel like then switch to plain stockinette until I get to the heel.  I knit the heel on half the stitches, turn it, pick up 17 stitches on each side for the gusset then decrease back down to 64 stitches around until I start the decreases for the toe.  Easy peasy.  I will admit I still smile every time I turn a heel because my mother used to tell me how hard that was (it isn't).

So all's right with the yarn at the moment.  Stay tuned to find out whether the dress for the almost four year old turns into an adventure or not.

Yup, The Yarn Had Other Ideas

That yarn that I bought for the Effortless Cardigan clearly was looking for a major makeover.  I started a February Lady Sweater (a pattern I've been meaning to try for  a couple of  years, and got a new enthusiasm for when my daughter made one for herself and said how easy it was).  Every single person in the family indicated either by look or actual expression something along the lines of "do you REALLY like that color?"  Now I must admit that I'd had my doubts about the color myself.  I bought it because it was the type of yarn I wanted and it was the only color the store had with enough skeins to make a sweater for me.  My doubts really came from the fact that, while it might have been a decent color for me before my hair started to go gray, it really didn't work all that well with the graying hair.  It also was sort of the color of baby sheep poop.  So I could kind of see the all around objections.

So, I abandoned the project for awhile.  We ended up in the midst of a hospitalization for my husband (for brain surgery no less), and many, many doctor's appointments.  I needed something to work on so I started a very easy shawl and finished up my daughter's socks. Reskeining and dyeing yarn simply didn't work into the schedule.

Finally, I got the time to reskein the yarn (a several hour long process), and begin figuring out what I wanted to do about changing its color.  I pulled out my bag of Jacquard dyes purchased several years ago at the Sheep and Wool Festival, thinking that I had a nice cocoa brown in there that would be just perfect.  Alas, no cocoa brown to be seen.  What I had was various shades of red, purple, and blue.  I decided to do a test dye using several different colors.  I got small jars and put a piece of yarn and some hot water in them, then I added just a smidge of dye.  I tried vermillion, cherry red, sky blue, and teal.  Then I simmered the jars in my steamer/dyepot for the requisite amount of time.  The colors were all pretty fantastic, although none of them were the color the dye stated.  The blue came out a very, very deep blue (not quite navy), the vermillion came out rather a maroon, the cherry red was a sort of rusty red, and the teal came out something between a teal green and a hunter green.  After examining them closely and looking at the options in my wardrobe, I decided to go with the teal dye.  The next step was to actually dye the yarn.  That meant soaking it in hot water for a bit and then popping it into the dyepot and stirring for a half an hour.  Then I had to wash it to get the excess dye out, then I had to spin it in the washing machine to get the excess water out, then it had to hang overnight to finish drying.  The next day I had to begin putting it into balls, no easy task since yarn that's been through the dyepot always seems to get a bit tangles.  It was a several hours job (even more hours than the re-skeining had been).  However, it was worth it.  The color is lovely, and the sweater knitting has commenced.

Thanks to Ravelry (and a tip from my daughter) I've made it past the garter stitch yoke, through the separating of the sleeves, and onto the gull lace without many glitches (I did have to start it twice because of a bone headed mistake somewhere in the increases and I forgot to stay in garter stitch at the button band for one row which required me to go back and redo eight stitches over six vertical rows).  This particular lace pattern is easy to remember which means I can take this project with me to meetings etc.

The yarn now appears to be happy in its present state.  It's so much easier to knit with a color you really like than with one you're trying to convince yourself to love.  So all's right with the knitting right now.  The yarn is no longer asserting an ugly side to its personality (it was very uncooperative in its former color) and now I'll I have to hope (since I haven't actually really tried this puppy on yet), is that it's actually going to fit.  It should, I'm getting gauge, and the garter stitch and gull lace should be reasonably stretchy anyway.

The other thing I've figured out is that as much as I love Addi-Turbo needles for their slickness, I'm having a really difficult time knitting for long periods of time with either the Addi's or my metal double points.  I can knit comfortably with bamboo needles for much longer periods of time, although I do get frustrated when the stitches don't slip as easily as they would with slicker needles.  However, knitting without pain is worth the frustration.  I also have figured out that using yarn loops for markers may work okay when you've only got four markers in a row, but when you've got markers every 7 stitches across 320+ stitches the yarn loops begin to get annoying.  I ran out of nice plastic markers with this project, and so I've resorted to safety pins, not as nice as the commercial makers, but better than the yarn loops.  I'm thinking about going to Joanne's and buying some jewelry making pieces that I can use to make my own markers.  I've seen some really pretty ones at the yarn store, but I think I can make for less than I'd pay for them.  I've also seen some really cool ones (like scrabble tiles for example) on other people's blogs.  So apparently markers have become a new novelty for knitters.  My current commercial markers are simply the ones that look like safety pins.  I actually like them in a project where I need to move markers around a lot, but they aren't strictly necessary to this project.  I just need markers that slip easily (and preferably don't go flying across the room when I slip them too quickly).

As I've rambled on about the knitting, you may have wondered about the brain surgery, and how I can seem so calm.  Well, it was weeks ago, my husband is back to work, and as far as brain surgery goes, the surgery itself was pretty uncomplicated.  The overall prognosis is another matter.  The tumor was a metastasis from a melanoma he had removed from his arm in the fall, and it looks like we may be heading into drug therapy to try to ward off another metastasis.  At the moment he's had radiation at the surgery site (which fortunately was just on the surface of the brain), his most recent PET scan was clear, and well we're moving on from there.  I'm not always calm, although knitting has been a calming presence through all of this.  I've driven on  slippery roads I didn't think I could, I've dealt with the claims department at the insurance company in an organized calm manner that I didn't know I had in me.  I've put one foot in front of the other on days I would have simply hidden under the covers all day.  The prayers of friends and family have kept me going and an at least weekly reception of the Eucharist has sustained me in a way that I never could have imagined two decades ago.

It's been a roller coaster winter.  Not only have we had brain surgery to deal with, but three weeks after that my daughter delivered her second baby by an unexpected C-section (well unexpected up until a week or so beforehand) because her little boy was stubbornly in a breech position.  Everyone came through that well and now they are adjusting to life as a foursome.  I had a marvelous (an exhausting) few days taking care of my granddaughter, and now I'm back home again and trying to pick up the threads of normal life that got completely dropped in the middle of January.

This was supposed to be a winter of quiet knitting and spinning.  It's been a winter where some knitting has gotten done, but the spinning wheels continue to gather dust in corners.  All my plans have been put on hold so many times that I've pretty much stopped making plans.  I'm taking one day at a time, and trying to keep at least one easy to travel project in my bag to carry with me.  I've been very thankful for a cell phone, a Kindle, a knitting project that doesn't require a lot of thought, and easily eaten foods (soup and pudding works for better for me in a crisis than deli-sandwiches, however).

Oh well, that's the winter so far.  Not being an adrenaline junkie, it's had far more excitement than I would have preferred.  I have to say that knitting truly has been a gift in the middle of all this.  I knit through the surgery quite calmly, just as I knit through two previous surgeries fairly calmly.  When I think back to the absolute panic I was in when my husband had surgery on his leg when we were in our early 30's and I didn't think to pull out some knitting, I know that having a knitting lifestyle has been helpful.  Stephanie Pearl McPhee talks in her most recent book about the time of the great not knitting, but thus far knitting rather than not knitting has made a lot more sense.  I think it provides a sense of routine that makes the abnormal situation at least feel somewhat normal.  At a time where I had to remain calm and optimistic being able to sit down and simply knit stitch after stitch helped me to do that. 

Clearly the Yarn Had Other Ideas

Well, I finished the Effortless Cardigan yesterday, tried it on and decided that I hated it.  The yarn clearly didn't want to be that.  The sweater was way too big (despite the fact that I "got gauge") it hung funny, it just plain looked stupid.  My daughter told me on Thursday, when I was already having serious doubts about the project, that she thought that pattern probably only looked good on someone who was six feet tall and weighed 110 pounds.  Since I am neither of those and never will be either of those, it didn't look good on me.  So I spent three hours unraveling the sweater (and if I'd only unraveled the sleeves first it would have gone faster).  Now I've cast on and knit the first dozen rows of a February Lady Sweater.  Abby just made one and I really liked it.  So far my first modification is to decide I don't like the ultra heavy buttons that the designer used, so I'm using a simpler buttonhole than she suggests and will go with slightly smaller buttons.  Because I've got other knitting to do, this will almost certainly not be done by Christmas.   So I guess it's a good thing I have the other two sweaters I've knit this year.

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee says that sometimes the yarn has other ideas from the project you chose it for.  Well this time, it clearly had other ideas.  I probably should have taken a picture of just how ugly this sweater was, but, suffice it to say that the males in the family agreed.  Although, to be fair they both pointed out that they didn't even like the style on the ultra thin model that the pattern showed.  As my son pointed out, the way she was posed didn't even show what was going to happen when she was standing more normally or walking.  So clearly I forgot one of the first rules of knitting, "don't trust a pattern where the model has to be posed in a special way."  Perhaps there's a reason why most of the "Ravelers" seemed to show their sweater off their bodies.  They mostly complained about it needing to be sized down, but I did that, so that wasn't the problem.  I did use (as did many of them) a slightly heavier yarn than the pattern called for, but it wasn't just the drape of the sweater that was wrong (and many of the people who used it got a decent drape).  It was truly that the pattern was a. wrong for me and b. perhaps too "high fashion" in style for someone who really prefers something a little more fitted and classic.  I love slouchy sweaters to hang around the house in, but this one just didn't do it ---  even for that.  I also like sweaters that I can wear with a skirt to church or with jeans for just running around elsewhere, and this really wasn't going to be that.  Hence it the yarn now sits in balls waiting for a second incarnation.

This new sweater is based on the baby sweater in Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitting Almanac.  I think I'm going to knit one of those for the new baby, but using stockinette stitch where she uses the gull lace, since Abby thinks the lace would be too girly for a little boy.  I've seen renditions of this sweater using stockinette, so I'm pretty sure it will work just fine.  It will also knit up faster that way.

We've got Mass today for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception  and then I'll come home and do some major knitting, at least if my arthritic hands don't object too badly.  I don't have all the yarn I need for all the projects I intend to do, but I've got enough yarn to get me through the weekend.

I Guess I Have To Like IT

That sweater I wasn't so sure about got completely unsolicited compliments this week from three total strangers.  First the loan officer at the credit union complimented it, when I said I'd made it she was astonished because she said it didn't look homemade.  Then, a nurse at the hospital (who saw me knitting) asked me if I made the sweater too and told me how much she liked it.  Then the checkout person in the cafeteria told me how nice my sweater looked and asked if I'd made it.  Three times in three days (twice in one day).  I guess it's a winner.  I think it's partly the color, which is a pretty incredibly pretty blue.  But since everyone is also complimenting how well it's made, I guess I did a good job of it.

Now I'm on to working on the next sweater (called Effortless Cardigan).  This one is in a sort of gold color called straw.  It was the only color the yarn shop had in the type of yarn I wanted with a sufficient amount.  I was looking at the chocolate brown, but I would have been one skein short.  This will work with the brown items in my wardrobe (which I seem to have a lot of), and it would have been pretty much overkill to knit yet another blue sweater (even though I'm not sure I can really every have too much  blue in my wardrobe).  I had a couple of false starts with this one, but once I got used to the m1L, m1R pattern it started being pretty effortless.  I've got about another 14 rows until I put the sleeve stitches on holders. 

I've also got another pair of socks nearly done (1 done, 1 halfway down the foot).  So the needles have been busy lately, partly due to many, many minutes sitting in waiting rooms (for hubby, not me). I will say that knitting in waiting rooms really does make me both more patient and less anxious.  I'm trying to convince my husband he should take it up to lower his blood pressure.  So far he's not buying the idea.  He says he thinks it would raise his blood pressure.

Now we'll see whether we're really getting Frankenstorm here this next week.  On the upside, I won't run out of yarn while knitting my way through a storm.