Today I got myself trapped in the attic at St. Ned's. No bears were involved.
The retractable attic ladder retracted itself a bit at the bottom and I couldn't get it to straighten out, and since I hadn't actually mentioned to anyone that I was going up there to get the Mardi Gras decorations, I was pretty much stuck.
I made a lot of noise, but the attic access is through the pantry, and no one heard me. Finally someone came into the kitchen and I stomped on the floor and yelled that I was trapped in the attic.
So, I'm out of the attic, and I've learned a Very Important Lesson about getting a spotter when I go up there.
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While the number one threat around St. Ned's is, of course, bears (if Stephen Colbert is to be believed, and clearly he is), I think we have Homeless Guys With Knives as a distinct #2.
Someone left the classrooms unlocked last night, and it was pouring down rain so two men found shelter in there. Which, eh, whatever...except that when Dennis came around early this morning to set up the rooms, one of them jumped out at him and put a knife to his chest.
Of course Dennis, being Dennis, diffused the situation and they went away, leaving behind only a giant mess in the bathroom and one seriously shaken-up sexton.
Who doesn't love toddlers dressed like muppets? Here is the fairy godchild, who is growing up entirely too fast, in the very very silly jacket I knit for her. It's Fun Fur (that yarn is DEAD to me now after eight skeins of it) knit together with a strand of matching sport yarn. It started off as the fur anorak on the cover of Knitting for the Pampered Baby, and then I split the front and added big heart buttons so it didn't have to go on over the head. It's pretty flipping cute. link | Comments []
It's early yet, but I realized today that I'm really looking forward to Lent. I love the depth of the liturgy in Lent, the way it tries to get us to flip over the rocks and see all the squirmy sightless things that live under there. The challenge is to see them with an understanding of grace, which is what holds the despair at bay.
There's a little thrill in facing something squarely and realizing that the opportunity for transformation exists. Watching an old pattern or habit peel away and lose its power is a tiny bite-size Easter, an unexpected place for life to break out. I see it all the time, if I remember to look.
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Other good upcoming events include Stitches West next week and the always-excellent White Elephant Sale in Oakland the first weekend in March. I couldn't go to the preview but there's probably still plenty of good stuff left. And it's the only day of the year that I get to buy a SuperDog from a cart and sit on a loading dock to have lunch.
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For the past [mumble mumble] months, I've had a couple pieces of what I believe the catalogs call 'occasional furniture' (no word on what the furniture is up to the rest of the time...oh, sure, I'm a side table for my day job, but I really want to be a supercomputer) at the end of my carport: two cute chairs from a garage sale, which were slightly too big for my kitchen, but which I couldn't get rid of because they were cute and red and maybe I would put them on the patio after the rainy season, and then two works-in-progress. These were things that I had started to paint and gussy up when we still lived in Oakland, and then I ran out of time because moving turned out to be, well, a lot of work, but I brought the paint and everything and I was totally going to finish painting them and they would be awesome. Awesome, I tell you.
One piece was a weird little narrow cabinet thing that I had put shabby chic-esque appliques on, and which would have been kind of useful for storing yarn, and the other was a little side table that I wanted to put plants on. Which shows you how deep into my fantasy life I was at that point, because the only thing I do to plants is kill them. So I was putting a lot of effort into something on which to display dead plants next to my red chairs on my imaginary patio, whereas my real patio has a semi-assembled gas grill and assorted debris and the whole thing gets wet whenever the woman upstairs waters the plants on her balcony.
Last week, one of the red chairs just disappeared, and I was kind of upset about it for a few minutes, because someone stole my chair. And then I worked up a nice little fantasy about how someone really needed that chair and it was better for them to have it. Just like Jesus would do, right?
This morning, as I dragged myself and various things out to the car I noticed that there is no longer any furniture in the carport. So now I can wonder if the chairs were reunited, or if there are two thieves out there who each have a random red chair. I don't know.
I also wonder if I should leave the rest of the paint out, since the table and cabinet really, really need at least one more coat and some serious finish sanding before they can be considered decent. What does it say about me that I am concerned that people might think badly of me because the stuff they stole from me isn't good enough?
Ultimately, though, I'm mostly happy to just have it all gone, since it's just more stuff that I don't actually need, and one more project to cross off the list.
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The yarn from last week's yarn emergency has been formed into this: Thereby ensuring that there is at least one Mystery Science Theater baby sweater in the world. There's more blah blah blah and a chart over at sewgeeky.
I also finished this stole/shawl thing for Ryan, so that when the future occupant of that sweater gets here, she can stay warm. The yarn is a wool/alpaca blend, and while blocking it I remembered why you don't see a lot of high-end scented candles in Wet Goat fragrance.
I was going to do a cool edge from Nicky Epstein's book, but something went stupid and very very wrong. So I went with knotted fringe.
I'm rather pleased that I turned the sweater around in a week. The stole took a bit longer; I got the yarn at the beginning of January. Even though the lace design is a pretty simple 12-row repeat, I found that I couldn't work on it with a lot of distractions, so I had to have a second, less engaging project going at the same time to have a portable option.
It's my first real lace project and I will definitely be doing more things like that; it appealed to the side of me that only wants to work on really complicated things. My secondary project right now involves Fun Fur and garter stitch, so I don't think I'm turning into too big of a knitting snob.
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While the number one threat around St. Ned's is, of course, bears (if 
