Year: 2011

MilSpouse Friday Fill-In #28

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If you were a famous movie star, what types of movies would you star in?

I think it would be a blast to star in a big, loud, epic superhero movie.

What is a vacation you would like to take if money were no object?

Ever since reading Troubling a Star by Madeleine L’Engle when I was a child, I have wanted to see Antarctica. Since money is no object in this dream vacation, my trip to the planet’s deep freeze would be followed by a sojourn to some more temperate clime to thaw out.

Did you have pets growing up?

I sure did. My family had a dog that had been with them since the early days of their marriage, so my childhood is filled with memories of a good-natured, if not overly smart, mutt. After he went on to his great canine reward, my family adopted a cat, one we selected from the shelter because he was the only one who didn’t cringe in fear from my then-three-year-old brother. A few years later, my brother and I were desperate for a kitten. When my parents finally relented, off to the shelter we went. We came home with a darling black-and-white kitten whom the shelter thought to be nine weeks old. According to the vet, though, she was about four months old and just that tiny. She never got very big, but her personality was more than wacky enough to make up for it.

My husband never had pets growing up, having been born into a family with a severely allergic father and sister. The cats and I are very glad that he doesn’t share those allergies.

What do you do for exercise?

Not nearly enough, probably. I will confess my dorkiness and say that I do enjoy Wii Fit Plus. It may not count as serious exercise, but it gets my sedentary behind off the couch and moving and stretching. The little time piggy bank in the game does a happy little dance when I hit thirty minutes of actual activity, and I shudder to think what it says about me that I’m motivated by such things. I even sent away for a freebie tote bag from Nintendo.

I will be the most stylin’ gal at the commissary with this reusable bag, let me tell you.

What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received as a MilSpouse?

“Semper Gumbi.” Live it. Do it. (I frequently fail at this, but it’s still good advice.) 😉

Are you a military spouse/fiancée/fiancé/girlfriend/boyfriend? Hie thee to ENS Wifey’s blog, snag the questions, and add yourself to the Mr. Linky for this week’s MilSpouse Friday Fill-In!

Sock the First!

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I finished my very first sock last night, and it turned out sock-shaped and everything.

Sock the First

Two nights ago, I stayed up until midnight knitting because I got it into my head that I couldn’t possibly go to sleep until I finished the gusset decreases. Despite the late hour I retired, I awoke bright and early yesterday morning determined that I would have a completed sock off the needles and on my foot before going to bed that night.

And I did it!

New skills learned in the course of Sock the First:

  • Working with small-sized, stabbity DPNs (double-pointed needles)
  • Turning a heel
  • Picking up stitches
  • Kitchener stitch (for grafting the toe)

I had better cast on for Sock the Second real soon, lest I get distracted by some shiny new knitting project and wind up having a lonely sock forever pining for its mate (a feeling to which I can relate at the moment, alas).

Besides, my other foot is cold.

New Year, New… Socks?

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Once upon a time, I was not a knitter. (Bet you didn’t know  “once upon a time” meant “last summer,” did you?) With the help of a scrying pool that suspiciously resembled my MacBook, I studied the lore of needles, knits, and purls. With much trial and error was this arcane knowledge won, and with each error I expanded my vocabulary of, ah… magic words of the sort with which Sailors (and *cough* some of their wives, apparently) pepper their speech and mothers attempt to keep from the tongues of their babes.

I have knit long scarves, lace dishcloths, and cabled hats. I have knit woolly fingerless mitts and Navy uniform-spec watch caps. I have knit for myself and for gifts and for no real reason at all. While by no means a master of the craft, I believe I am vanishingly close to being able to claim the title of sorceress Knitter, with a capital ‘K.’

Only one thing stands in my way of my own self-perception of knitting accomplishment: a pair of socks.

For reasons obscure even in my own mind, I will not feel I have truly arrived in the knitting world until I complete my first pair of socks. For me, hand-knit socks carry a cachet that outstrips the apparent humbleness of a couple of modified tubes into which one jams one’s chilly feet. You knit and purl and knit and purl forever. Then, screwing up your courage, you perform the mysterious rite known as “turning the heel,” which to me really does appear to be a magic spell one casts with wands shaped like double-pointed needles. Then you knit some more, conjuring up something called a “gusset,” and before you know it, there sits before you a sock where once was only a ball of yarn.

I’m still in the “knit and purl forever” phase of my first sock.

Sock cuff, with many stabbity needles.

Two-by-two ribbing, on and on and on.

I am a little concerned that I might just keep knitting the cuff forever, for fear that I will thoroughly embarrass myself with a pitiful first attempt at turning the heel. Things might progress a wee bit faster, however, if I had a mite less “help” from the feline contingent.

Cat noms yarn. Yum.

Vera's possession of four paws does little to help her manipulate four DPNs, so she prefers to snack on the raw material instead.

Actually, I feel fairly well prepared (thanks to Silver’s Sock Class) to turn the heel and make a go at finishing Sock the First. It’s Sock the Second that worries me. After the sense of accomplishment that comes from learning the skills necessary to complete the first, will the lack of novelty make the second an exercise in drudgery? Will I be whining, “But I just did this. I don’t want to do it again yet!”

Come to think of it, I have the same questions about deployment. We are in the early days of our first one, and I can’t help but wonder if the fact that I don’t really know what to expect is a blessing. I have yet to experience the kinds of things that can go wrong, so I can focus on the novel aspects of this type of separation. I wonder if it hasn’t quite sunk in yet that I really and truly will not have my husband home with me for several months. I fear that after we get through all the new challenges this deployment will present, after the joyful rush of homecoming and after the comfortable routine of having our family on one continent again, that the inevitable preparations for his second deployment will be all the more difficult. I’ll know what I’m in for, and it won’t even be shiny and new.

All those are worries based on borrowed trouble, of course, and are probably best saved for later. Meanwhile, I need to get a move on if I want to have a completed pair of handmade socks to show off before we get too far into this deployment.