Life as a Spectator Sport

when you've been gone for three days. This is what I found when we dragged in late Thursday night. Except it was pitch black, it was raining, and there were three trees, not two. The third one was much larger and had actually broken off near the ground. I suspect it may have been hit by lightning. In any case, it was lying flat across the driveway and had to be dispatched with the chain saw. Remnants of it are visible in the lower left corner.



I whacked limbs off the other two until they rose up a bit on their own, and then we drove gingerly underneath, and Friday morning I cut them down close to the ground.

I'm still working on Kay's sock, and it has become obvious that I won't finish any of the UFO's by July 4, the deadline for the UFO challenge. But it shouldn't take much longer than that. Then it's back to the second Sockotta sock for myself, and maybe slogging through the rest of the squares for the afghan. I keep reading knitting blogs where the author tosses off, "Finished the carpet-sized shawl that I started last week, two pairs of socks from yesterday, and a dozen hats for charity. Tomorrow I plan to make Aran sweaters for the whole family."

When do these people clean house, raise their children, cook meals and do the laundry? Not to mention working.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

What I was doing this weekend

Instead of what I should have been doing this weekend, like laundry and housecleaning and yardwork, and cleaning out my front bedroom that looks like a tornado hit it.



This is more of the Lorna's Laces Rainbow. I can only make so many baby socks out of it, so I've been watching for other small pieces. This is Vicki Sever's mitred square heart sachet from the Summer 2005 issue of Interweave Knits. I knew the instant I saw it that I wanted to make it. So I grabbed five minutes here and ten minutes there over the weekend to complete it.

Vicki suggests stuffing it with lavender flowers. Since I didn't happen to have any of those hanging about, mine is stuffed with cotton balls. One of these days, I'll unearth my soapmaking supplies from whatever box they're in, and inject some essential oil into the interior with a syringe. I made it more as an ornament than as a sachet, though.

The pattern is super simple, just knit, purl and decrease. By the time I finished the first square, the progression was obvious and I really didn't need the pattern after that. I'll definitely be making more of these.

Saturday, June 23, 2007

A big disappointment

I decided to treat myself to an early birthday present and check out the new Hobby Lobby in Danville. I had been hearing how wonderful the Hobby Lobby stores were, and was waiting impatiently for one to open in Virginia. Now I know, and I won't be tempted to go into one again.

If I were primarily interested in art, or in paper-related crafts like scrapbooking, I might not have felt so let down. They were much better represented than fiber crafts. Even so, well over half the store was devoted to the kind of decorative trash that Kate would call foo-foo. We've been known to argue over what constitutes foo-foo, but in this case I would emphatically agree. Virtually all of it from China as well. I'm about to the point where if I see a label saying "Made in China," I'll put the product back no matter how badly I need it. I watched a community go from vibrant health, with a wide range of manufacturing, to an economic wasteland, and I don't buy imported goods unless I just have no choice. So most of what Hobby Lobby was selling wouldn't have interested me to begin with.

But the yarn was a total washout. Three aisles of synthetic novelty yarn--fun fur, eyelash yarn, bobbles, etc--with a few skeins here and there of Lion Brand Wool and something called Sinfonia mercerized cotton, and that was it. Joann Fabrics has a better variety, if not quite so much quantity. Joann Fabrics also has a far better selection of needles and crochet hooks.

There was a selection of fashion and upholstery fabrics as well, but nothing that the local Joann Fabrics or the Danville Hancock Fabrics didn't have just as much of.

Oh well. I'll go back to visiting local yarn shops in the areas I'm working in when I can, and ordering off the net when I can't.

Sunday, June 17, 2007

More food

Knitters all seem to be great foodies too, so I thought I'd get into the act. I hate the pressure of having to come up with something interesting every single day. But in spite of that, I do like to cook, and I have to say that one of Clarence's few really good points is that he'll eat whatever I put in front of him without complaint. So he gets some classic good home-cooked meals, and then sometimes he gets a sandwich and a salad. It's a good thing he doesn't complain, because there are times when even a sandwich and a salad are almost beyond me. But today I felt like cooking.

After I posted the Eggplant Parmigiana recipe, my daughter sent me one of her favorites, and tonight I made a version of it. The original is made with ground beef and some generic supermarket ingredients, but Kay created a new version with chicken. I actually made the ground beef version, but substituted all the other things she recommended in place of what the original recipe called for.

Kay's Spinach Cheese Bake
1/2 lb skinless, boneless chicken breast, chopped into 1/2" cubes (or about the same amount of ground beef)
1/2 medium onion, chopped
1 package (10 oz) frozen chopped spinach, thawed, drained
1 can (4 oz) mushroom stems and pieces, drained
1 tablespoon garlic granules or 3-4 cloves fresh garlic
2-3 tablespoons dried basil
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup all purpose flour
Couple spins of fresh ground sea salt
2 cups whole milk
1 cup (4 oz) freshly shredded mozzarella cheese

In an ovenproof skillet, cook chicken and onion until no longer pink; drain. Add the spinach, mushrooms, garlic and basil and a couple of spins of fresh ground sea salt. Cover and cook on very low heat until sauce is done. While chicken and onion are first cooking, set butter over very low heat in a small saucepan. Once chicken is covered, stir in the flour and salt until smooth. Gradually add milk and slowly bring to boil, simmer two minutes, stirring continuously, or until thickened. Pour over meat mixture; mix well. Shred cheese over mixture. Bake uncovered at 320 degrees for 20-25 minutes or until cheese turns golden (like pizza). Serve over pasta. Yield: 4-6 servings.

Kay says to make sure you squeeze the excess moisture out of the spinach before adding it to the meat mixture. Since it came out a bit soupy even with doing that, I'm glad she mentioned it. She also says it's a great pasta sauce, so I cooked some rotini to serve it on, and it is indeed very good over pasta.

Clarence gobbled it up and asked for seconds.

The finished afghan

No, I haven't finished mine. This is the picture from the Bernat book I'm making it from. I was looking for something else and found the book, so I dragged out the old flat-bed scanner and grabbed an image of it.



I still have three squares to go, and discovered, alas, that in several years of making almost nothing but socks (small needles, fine yarn), my gauge has tightened up considerably. I knew that it had, but didn't think it was as drastic a difference as it has turned out to be. The recently completed squares are an inch and a half smaller on each side than the original ones. So no more knitting until I run over to the next town and hit up Joann Fabrics for larger needles. I've never liked large needles and bulky yarn, so I didn't have anything larger than what I was using for these.

And these squares will obviously have to be ripped out and re-done. I may make the July 4th deadline and I may not.

Saturday, June 16, 2007

The urge to . . .

One doesn't want to say "kill," because if Clarence drops over dead, I don't want to be suspected of having anything to do with it. But there are days when I wouldn't grieve, and this has to be one of them.

I returned from my weekly morning visit to the coffee shop in town, to be greeted with "Cut them down! I can't get the tv! Cut them down!"

Prodding for details revealed that he wanted me to cut down the trees behind the trailer that were blocking the satellite signal. That was definitely not what I had planned for this afternoon, especially since the ground between the trailer and said trees is a sea of poison ivy. I could get to the trees by walking around onto the neighbor's hay field and approaching them from behind, so to speak, but I have an electric chain saw and not enough extension cord to reach that far. The only way to get the saw to the trees was to drag the cable through the poison ivy. Clarence wasn't interested in excuses. He wanted a working tv, period.

So I did it. I put on my oldest grubbiest jeans with the pretty much non-repairable hole in the seat (meaning I could repair it but it would still be very visible), and my old boots and a long sleeved shirt just in case the poison ivy rose up and attacked me, and I cut down six trees. Those were the only ones small enough to use a 16" chain saw on, and small enough for one person to cut them safely. Then I took a shower and threw my clothes in the washer and scrubbed my boots, and then I checked on Clarence's tv.

Still not working. Completely black, in fact. He was waving the remote at it and getting up a head of steam. I took the remote out of his hand, replaced the batteries and turned the tv on. It worked. I said something unprintable and haven't spoken to him since then.

The worst of this is that I still have two hundred feet of heavy duty extension cord to wash off.

We have concrete . . .

And we have fence!



I dug the post holes a year ago, telling myself that as soon as I had time, I'd buy three bags of Quickcrete and plumb it all up. That's as far as I ever got, and in the meantime, the weeds took over and you couldn't even get to the fence posts, much less to the elderberry bushes I had planted along the fence line. Thanks to the leftovers from the concrete pad, I now have a proper fence too. You can't see the elderberries in this picture, but they are there, freed from their weedy prison. I meant to plant another one this year, as a pollinator for the two I already have, but waited too long to order it. So that will be next year. In the meantime, I'll put my raspberry canes on the opposite side of the fence and perhaps next year I'll have raspberries too.

It feels as though the work here is going at a turtle's pace, compared to what I did when I first moved here--azaleas, hostas, fruit trees, etc. But every little bit helps. Next step is to buy some heavy-duty landscape fabric to put under all the shrubbery. On top of that I'm going to put a thick layer of gravel. The huge amount of pine needles we get here is contributing to the ant problem inside, so I've got to be able to clear it away. Gravel will stay put while I use a blower to get rid of fallen pine needles.

But that is probably going to be next month's project, because the work is coming in fast and furious again.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

How about that

I've never considered myself to be a particularly fast knitter. I have no desire to be a fast knitter. I enjoy the knitting itself, the formation of each stitch and the progression of the finished item. The knitting lists I'm on go through periodic arguments over what style allows one to knit fastest, and my comment always has been "Why? Who cares?"

So it was with considerable surprise that I watched a video of Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (aka The Yarn Harlot), and realized that not only do I use almost exactly the same motions, but I can knit equally as fast. I don't always knit that fast, because, as I say, I enjoy watching the fabric grow more than just whacking it out at top speed. But I can. Stephanie's style is what she calls "Irish Cottage knitting," supposedly because it was used by Scottish and Irish knitters during the period when many people were supporting themselves by knitting and had to complete items as fast as possible.

I don't knit that fast when I'm using fingering yarn and wooden or bamboo needles, and I'll bet Stephanie wouldn't either, because of the very much increased friction between the yarn and the needles. In the video, she is using metal needles.

Stephanie holds the needle in her right hand like a pencil, while I hold my hand above the needle. That appears to be pretty much the only difference between us. I thought what I did was just . . . knitting. Like my mother taught me. Nothing special, nothing with a "name."

Who knew. But I'm still toiling down the leg of Kay's Opal Mosaik sock, fast knitter or not, and on Monday, I'll be on the road again, so I've got three days to get it finished. I know people who can knit a whole pair of socks in three days. But maybe not in a fine fingering yarn on size 1 Brittany birches.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Eggplant Parmagiana, and concrete

Today we have a much longer and less steep wheelchair ramp. Tomorrow, if the forecasted thunderstorms don't actually materialize, we will have a 12 foot concrete pad extending from the end of the ramp out into the gravel driveway, so I can get Clarence from the car to the ramp. Next year, if I'm able to do the hoped for addition to the house, it will all have to be moved. Billy looked glum when I told him that, but there's no help for it.

"Add on to the other side of the trailer," he suggested. No, that would leave us with no back yard at all, because we're only about 30 feet from the property line as it is.

"Add on from where the porch starts and leave the rest of it as it is," he said hopefully. I sympathized, because I don't like the idea of tearing out something I paid considerable money for. But we have to have the wheelchair ramp and concrete pad now, and we will have to move the porch and the ramp later. That's all there is to it.

So he and his helper will be back tomorrow to dig out the area where the concrete will go and build the form for the section that will slope up to the ramp. He says the ready-mix truck can probably come tomorrow afternoon, weather permitting, so by the end of the week, at least, I won't have any more worries about getting Clarence in and out of the house.

We celebrated his return, more or less, to intestinal health with a pan of Eggplant Parmigiana. This is one of my favorite dishes, and it's amazingly easy to make.

Peel as much eggplant as you think the number of people will eat. One medium eggplant is about right for two adults. Cut it into half-inch slices, dip the slices in a bowl of whisked egg, and then into a bowl of flour or bread crumbs, whichever you prefer. Fry them gently in oil until they are soft. Most recipes say to fry them just until the coating is golden, but I've found out the hard way that if you don't get them soft in the frying pan, they won't be soft after you take them out of the oven.

While the slices of eggplant are frying, for every eggplant shred about a cup of fresh mozzarella (pre-shredded low-fat mozzarella is nasty stuff compared to the real thing) into a bowl. Add about the same amount of fresh grated Parmesan. Throw in about a teaspoon of fresh basil and a teaspoon of fresh parsley, and mix it all together.

You can use grocery store spaghetti sauce for this recipe, but of course your own is better. You'll need about two cups for one eggplant, and another cup for each additional one if you're making a larger amount. Spread a third of the spaghetti sauce in an appropriately-sized pan (an 8x8 cake pan is about right for a one-eggplant recipe). Put a layer of fried eggplant slices on top, throw half the cheese mixture on top of that and then another third of the spaghetti sauce. Lay the rest of the eggplant slices on top, sprinkle the rest of the cheese on the eggplant, and spread the rest of the spaghetti sauce on top of the whole thing. Stick it in the oven for about 20 minutes, then let it sit on top of the stove for another 10 or 15 minutes to let it thicken so it doesn't run all over when you dish it up. Yum!

Monday, June 11, 2007

More knitting

This is one square of a knitted afghan called "Martha Squares." I'm not certain where the name comes from--something to do with Martha Washington, perhaps. Googling it turned up numerous eBay entries for a Bernat knitted afghan kit, but the pictures don't look exactly like this one.



Twenty-four of these are put together in 4-square blocks, with the large petal of each square in the center. The other diagonal lines form larger squares around the petals. If I could find the original pamphlet, I'd grab a scan of the picture, but all I have at hand is a photocopy of the directions, without the picture.

This was number eighteen of the twenty-four, and another one is nearly finished, so I may actually have the afghan before long. I listed it in the UFO challenge I'm taking part in, so I have some real motivation to get it done. After all, it's been on the needles for at least twelve years, so it deserves to be finished and in use.

I hate indoor plumbing

Yes, it's convenient. When it isn't leaking, or otherwise not working.

I woke up this morning all ready for my helpers to come and work on extending the wheelchair ramp to a less steep slope than it has now. Clarence can walk up the ramp just fine, but when things come to the point where he can't walk at all any more, I wouldn't be able to safely push him up or down. So we were going to make it about eight feet longer and thus considerably less steep. As I walked past the still connected washing machine, I heard what sound like a fan blowing. Or water running. I shut off the pump and the noise slowed to a trickle. I went outside and pulled the skirting off in the general area of the noise, and sure enough, water was still pouring from some broken pipe or connection under the washing machine.

So Billy spent the day fixing the leak. As it turned out, we had thunderstorms during much of the day and we wouldn't have been able to work on the ramp anyway.

I was tempted to tell him to just shut the water off to the washer, but with the enormous amount of soiled clothing, bedding and linens I've had to deal with this weekend, I was grateful to have it.

And we do at least know what Clarence is suffering from, courtesy of six hours in the emergency room. The antibiotic that the Michigan doctors gave him for the ulcer on his foot apparently killed off the good bugs in his gut and allowed clostridium to multiply. Clostridium normally coexists with the other flora of a healthy gut and doesn't get out of hand. Some antibiotics affect this balance, and the clostridium overgrows, causing the persistent and severe diarrhea that Clarence has had since last Thursday. So now he's taking a different antibiotic that will kill the clostridium, with the hope that the infection in his foot won't recur.

I've stayed healthy by virtue of obsessive hand-washing, and hope to remain that way. The amount of yoghurt and vitamin C that I consume daily probably doesn't hurt either.

Obligatory knitting content: well, what else does one do while waiting in the ER? The leg to Kay's second sock is almost finished.

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Knitting pics - Girls' Pixie Hood

EDIT - added October 2008. I see I'm getting a lot of hits for the Girls' Pixie Hood. If anyone knows where this pattern came from, I'd sure appreciate hearing from you. Also, my mother says my version of it doesn't look like the one she made all those years ago for me, but I've checked the directions over and over, and I did make it as the directions say. I've wondered whether the garter stitch trim section around the face should actually be the neckline--that would give it more of a pixie shape. But that would put the seam at the top of the hat, not at the back, as the directions clearly state it should be.

---

This is a hat I made at least a month ago, and for some reason never mentioned. The reason probably was that I was going to remove the tie/scarf and redo it. I never got around to that, and probably won't any time soon, so I'm posting it as it is.



The pattern is from some point in the first half of the 20th century. I know that because my mother made one for me. I recently learned that she still had the directions, and asked for a copy. Curious about it, I ran some searches on the net and got numerous hits for "Pixie Cap" and "Pixie Hood," from the early World War II era. There were many references to girls being made to knit pixie caps at school, and to people knitting pixie caps in bomb shelters with the bombs falling around them. Interestingly, these came from both English and German sources. The phrase "Had to work on my pixie cap" cropped up quite often (in a rather disgusted tone, usually!). So I'm guessing that the pixie cap was a pretty ubiquitous pre-war item. But I never found a picture nor any other directions for it.

My mother described it as a little girl's cap, but it really would be suitable for a boy in a smaller size and traditionally boyish colors. I say a "smaller size" because it flares out around the baby's face, and while this would be perfectly acceptable for a small infant, I suspect it might not look as well on a larger one or a toddler. But made in fingering rather than sport weight or DK, and in yellow or light green, I think it would be fine for a baby boy as well as a girl. The detail shows the garter stitch trim around the front, which is not at all girlish.



As written, the pattern calls for "Shetland wool," used double. The gauge worked out just about right for a heavy-weight DK for me. I can't remember now exactly which yarn I used, but I do recall that it was something in DK. The only problem I had with it is that the attached scarf seems way too short to me to be useful. I couldn't make this one longer, as I ran out of yarn right at the end. What I had thought to do was to ravel back the scarf and work it half as wide, so it would be softer and more flexible, and long enough to tie properly.

Since I can't find any trace of a published pattern, I'm going to provide the instructions, but if anyone knows where this came from, and who to either attribute it to or apologize to for publishing it, I'd be happy to hear from them.

Girls Pixie Hood, with attached scarf
Materials: 2 (1 oz) skeins of Shetland wool, 1 pr. of no. 9 knitting needles

Gauge: 9 sts make 2 inches, 6 rows make 1 inch

Directions: Using double yarn, cast on 30 sts.

1st row: K across
2nd row: P23, K7 (front edge)
3rd row to 15th rows inclusive: Repeat 1st & 2nd rows alternately 6 more times, then the 1st row once more.
* 16th row: P18, k12
17th row: K across
18th row: P17, K13
19th row: K across
20th row: P16, K14
21st row: K across
22nd row: P17, K13
23rd row: K across
24th row: P18, K12
25th row: K across
26th row: P23, K7
27th to 33rd row: Repeat 25th & 26th rows, alternately 3 more times, then the 25th row once more.

Repeat from * 2 more times; repeat the 25th & 26th rows alternately 3 more times. Bind off.

Tie: With double yarn, cast on 2 sts. Work in garter st (k each row), increasing 1 st at end of each row until there are 12 sts on needle. Work straight until piece measure 22 inches in all. Decrease 1 st at end of each row until 2 sts remain. Bind off.

Press pieces through damp cloth. Fold head piece in half and sew back edges together. Sew center 9-inch edge of tie along lower edge of hood, leaving 4-1/2 inches on each side of back seam.

Saturday, June 09, 2007

World Wide Knit in Public Day

Yes, there is such a thing, and I sponsored the local instance of it, today. Only one other person showed up, but she brought her spinning wheel, and we sat there for an hour and a half spinning and knitting. I had brought my wheel also, but somehow managed to go off without the fiber I had planned to spin, so she spun and I knitted, getting the leg to Kay's second sock almost finished.

We gathered much attention, and one woman asked if either of us was willing to teach her to knit. What she actually said was, "Do you give lessons?" I'm not certain whether she thought we were representing a yarn shop or what, but I suggested that she simply turn up next Saturday at about the same time, along with her brand new knitting kit that she couldn't figure out what to do with, and one of us would probably be there to help her.

Then I came home to find Clarence still being sick all over everywhere. He was sick all over my car for two days in northern Virginia, which was interesting, because I had packed only one extra set of clothing for him. He ended up coming home in Depends with a couple of large disposable plastic pads covering up the rest of him. But this morning he felt much better, and ate a piece of toast for breakfast with no immediate adverse results. When I came back in, I knew from the odor, before I ever got back to his room, that it was going to be sheet-changing and floor-cleaning time again.

So, no birthday dinner for him. He is 66 today, but his dinner-and-a-movie birthday gift will have to wait for next week. I'm not taking a chance on it tomorrow.

Now all I have to do is get the stench out of the car.

ADDENDUM: I forgot to mention something odd that happened this morning. The woman who was spinning remarked that it was strange that the person who put up the flyers for WWKIP wasn't there.

"I'm the one who put up the flyers," I said, surprised that she had thought it was someone else. She and I have turned up at the coffee shop at the same time with knitting and/or crochet on several other occasions, and I remembered telling her about WWKIP.

"Oh," she said, looking rather taken aback. "But there was someone else, a dark-haired woman in her thirties. She was telling everyone about it, and saying we should all get together today. I thought she was the organizer."

I explained that this was an international event and that the organizer was somewhere else altogether, and that was the end of the conversation. But later, another woman came up and commented that the person who had put up the flyers had told her about the event, and that if she had remembered, she would have brought her knitting and joined us.

I went through the same explanation as before, and got the same response. A dark-haired woman in her thirties had been publicizing the event, and everyone assumed she had put up the flyers. Now, I'm told I look younger than I am, but no one would think I was that young, and my hair is (and always has been) light brown streaked with blonde (now rather more streaked with gray). This person was definitely not me. So whoever it was, thanks for telling everyone about WWKIP, and next year, bring your knitting and join us!

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

No work! Oh no!

I finished all the work I had to do, checked the contract site for more, found nothing, and drove home. Checked it again, and it still showed nothing at all. That's totally inexplicable this time of year, when I should have work running out my ears. So I took out Kay's sock (the mate to this), and managed to finish the k2p2 ribbed cuff.

Then I checked the site once more and found an inspection package for northern Virginia and DC. The world is righting upon its axis again. The greatest fear of anyone who works for oneself is to see the work dry up. I knew it wouldn't, of course, but it's still a bit unnerving to have none at all during the period when I should be the most busy.

Of course, in another week or so, I'll be bitching about how I don't have time to knit any more. At one point last year, I had 147 pending inspections. That was the day Kate's rector called to say Kate had just been taken to the emergency room, five mintues before I arrived at home to find Clarence semi-conscious on the bedroom floor. I wasn't doing much knitting then either, so I suppose I should be grateful that I have time for it now at all.

I must at least complete this sock before July 4, or I won't have finished anything for the UFO challenge I'm in. I knew I wouldn't win the challenge for the most finished objects, but I wanted to get something completed!

Back to knitting . . .

Saturday, June 02, 2007

You know you've been working too hard when . . .

1) you get 200 miles from home and realize you've forgotten your camera (irritating and time-wasting).

I dithered about for a while trying to decide whether to drive back and just put off the day's work, or buy another one to have as a backup. I always carried a second camera with me when I was using 35mm film, just in case something happened to the regular one, but hadn't done that with the digital camera, because of the cost. This time I had more money than time, so I sighed and bought another camera. It's cheap and doesn't have all the features of the nice Canon I was using, but it did the job. Now it's in the house too. Let's see if I can manage to forget both of them when I head out on Monday.

2) you lose your wallet (catastrophic)

We stopped in Wytheville at the Flying J truck stop for dinner--truck stop food, but Clarence likes it. I paid for dinner, put my wallet back in my pocket, wrestled Clarence and the wheelchair into the car, and headed home. We decided to stop at the grocery store in town, at which point I realized my wallet was no longer in my pocket. I retraced my steps all through the store, called the Flying J, wailed and fussed and cussed, but in the end had to accept the fact that I had lost it. Both my credit cards, my DC Metro pass with at least $50 left on it, Clarence's insurance card, my driver's license, on and on. And at the worst possible time, too, the beginning of the month when half the world is charging things to one or the other of the credit cards. The business storage units, the business and personal internet hosting, several insurance policies, the satellite internet service, the XM radio, etc, etc. More things than I could remember without going back to the statements. And because it was a Friday night after business hours, I wasn't certain how much luck I was going to have trying to get the credit cards canceled.

Not to mention the chaos that would result from having to contact all the people who are charging the credit cards and make alternate arrangements that I would have to change again when I got new cards. And find my birth certificate so I could replace my license. And apply for a new insurance card for Clarence, and twenty more things.

And then I found the wallet on the floor in the back of the car. I have no earthly idea how it got there. All I can surmise is that it worked its way out of my pocket somehow and slid down next to the seat. How it got all the way into the back is a total mystery.

So I suppose I'm going to have to start carrying a purse. I HATE carrying a purse. It gets in the way when I'm dealing with the wheelchair, it's one more thing to keep up with, it collects junk, and it's otherwise useless to me. But it will keep my wallet where it's supposed to be and eliminate hours of hair-tearing-out worry and stress if I think I've lost the wallet.

I need to put all this aside and knit something. I've started Kay's second sock, but haven't had time to work more than a few rows of the cuff.

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