The Heathen Housewife

I’m trying to dig through my office room tonight. It’s gotten to be utterly unbearable. I mean, it’s gotten to the point where there is hardly an available surface for stashing one more thing that needs to be stashed, including the floor and the guest bed. It is so bad in here that I can barely think once I’ve entered the room. I come in here to retrieve one quick item, and some other important but forgotten thing catches my eye, distracting me long enough to forget what I came here fore, but not long enough to actually do anything about the thing that distracted me.

And then the girls come in. I can’t be in my office for more than 15 seconds during the day without someone coming in and disturbing my mess. They bring in their toys and their sippy cups, they attempt to grab and play with all the treasures I’ve stashed in here. We all know what happens when the under-four set gets ahold of a ball of yarn, and it’s not pretty. Sophie loves to turn the crank on my ball winder. Julie loves to climb up on the bed. I struggle to herd them out, and the cycle starts all over again twenty minutes later.

Cleaning up the mess is no small feat. Most of the things left out in my office are left out because they are somehow “pending.” Mail that needs sorting and bills that need paid, letters that need responses, receipts to be entered into Money. There is an innocent-looking button sitting on my desk that a casual observer might believe could just be put in the sewing box, but no, it is waiting to be sewn back on one of my favorite pairs of pants.*

The floor is covered with a giant box of yarn, a few things that I still need to list on e-Bay, but won’t till after the camp trip, a giant pile of stuff that I’ve bought to take to camp, and some other mystery debris along with the usual dust bunnies hiding under the desk. The table is covered with dye-related debris, bits and pieces of current knitting-related projects, and a bunch of stuff that is waiting for me to make a trip to the post office.

You know how they say “cluttered desk, cluttered mind”? Well, that is all about me right now. I really must get back to work tyeing up some of these loose ends so I can forget about them and put their paraphernalia away.

*By the way, I have two pairs of pants from Eddie Bauer that keep popping their buttons. I e-mailed their customer support asking if I could purchase some replacement buttons because I’ve now lost the ones that hold down the flaps on the back pockets. They won’t give me replacement buttons, but they’ve offered to replace the pants themselves! I am sorely tempted to take them up on this offer, and a shipping label is on its way to me now. There are two problems with the plan. One, I would have to mail back two of my favorite pairs of pants and await the new ones by mail. Since I don’t have very many pairs of pants, this would severely cramp my style. Two, they don’t have the exact same pants any more, even though I bought them this spring. I really like these pants. They fit well, and the style suits me. Plus, They roll up and pretend to be capris for summer-wear right now, but they are heavy enough to wear through fall and into winter. None of the current styles seem as perfect. So what I think I really need to do is find time to hit the fabric store, but replacement buttons and sew them on. It seems shameful, the thought of getting rid of perfectly good pants just because of poorly-sewn buttons.

Oh, and I did promise some answers to questions, didn’t I?

Here we go, and this is totally random, so if you asked a question lately, you’ll have to skim through and see if I got to yours:

I was cold-pressing the coffee because I had read a NYT article about it (I linked to it a while back, but don’t have time right now to look it up again) that said it was by far the superior way to make cold coffee. Maybe my palette’s not that refined, but I can’t tell all that much difference.

The Waving Lace socks I knit for Sockapalooza were indeed pretty stretchy as far as I could tell. I couldn’t try them on myself because my feet are much much longer than my pal’s.

There are about a million different ways to do a provisional cast-on. The one I used for the leggings recently was a crochet-chain version using a contrasting color scrap yarn. I like that one for things knit in the round because it stays secure till you want it out, and then rips out like the stitching on the top of a charcoal bag when you decide to pick up the stitches. My other favorite is the eensy-weensy spider version, but I usually use that one for things knit flat (like my blankie squares) and mid-stream cast-ons (like the underarms of a sweater). There are videos and tutorials for both of these all over the Internet. Try You-Tube or just Google it. Sometimes provisional cast-ons are also called temporary cast-ons.

I still need to explain a bit better about the crotch on those leggings, but I need pictures and I don’t have time for pictures. The mess is calling me!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 25th, 2007 at 2:47 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.