Yay! I finally feel better today. No idea what that was all about, but I started feeling better late yesterday afternoon and was able to eat a decent dinner (one chicken filet and a baked potato0, which helped. The leftover wine sauce (butter, flour, white wine, lemon juice, herbs) did not reheat well, but even if it was semisolid it still tasted good on the potato. Also, beer – for some strange reason if my gut is just a little confused, beer sometimes helps.
I did do my erg workout this morning, maybe not quite at the intensity I should but nearly. (warmup, 3x1500m pieces, 5 minutes rest between.)
And I have a new poem, which will be done sometime after I find a balance between non-vague images and simplicity. It’s been a few weeks since I’d written much, so that feels good. (Its secret title in my head is “IBS, the Moon and Me”, and it’s about deluding myself into feeling better, which is a whole post I want to write here sometime. The short version is, deliberate self-delusion can be very useful when stress is part of what’s making you feel bad.)
Also among today’s good things: someone just came over and asked for help in using a Six Sigma tool in making a work decision, which is delighting my little Black Belt heart. It’s a minor nontechnical decision but I think the Cause and Effect Matrix not only helped him decide but will also help explain the decision to management.
The request part:
I’ve promised to make my mom a cardigan for her birthday – I haven’t promised to finish it for her birthday, but since that’s early December, it would be good timing for sweater season. She uses the internet some and I’ve shown her a few pattern sites (Knitty, Twist Collective) asked asked her to try to avoid anything horrendously complicated (“extraspicy”, in Knitty terms). But I think since she doesn’t know much about knitting and is likely to be bowled over by all the possibilities, it will be better if I just present a few specific options and tell her what things I can easily customize. She says her office is warm and doesn’t want anything too heavy, so cotton or silk or bamboo or just lighter-weight wool are possibilities (I’m not eager to do a whole sweater in much less than a 22sts / 10 cm gauge, though.)
I think she’d love Kate Gilbert’s Sunrise Circle jacket, but that looks like it needs to be in a heavy gauge and worn closed for best effect. (I might present it anyway, since I really do think she’d liked it.) Other possibilities include Gilbert’s Pearl Buck jacket, Sonnet from Knitty, Cosmicpluto’s basic top-down raglan (link is to my version in Manos del Uruguay wool – Mom likes varigated yarn and I’m thinking something like Manos silk blend might give a similar effect and not be too heavy). Suggestions are welcome: parameters are that it should be fun to knit (mindless is OK), not insanely complicated, suitable for her to wear to the office and not too warm. Also, Mom really likes unique styles; it took us years to convince her “different” and “good” were not synonymous. Suggestions that don’t involve specific patterns are welcome too. (Anything like “I find 3/4 length sleeves difficult to wear” or “Silk is great for being a little warm but not too much”) or “I think variegated yarn looks better in sweaters when the color segments are more than 10.32″ but less than 36.57 cm” or whatever.)
I agree about the Sunrise jacket needing to be worn closed, but it IS gorgeous. I very much like the Pearl Buck but wonder if the back pleat would be such a stunner in variegated yarn though. However of the options shown the Pearl Buck seems like the most useful (wearable) of them, I can see it being the go-to sweater that I’d grab again and again to jazz up office wear and a plain t-shirt and jeans. I don’t know anything about knitting, but you know me and clothes, and that jacket rocks. ~LA