Prairie Knitter

In Fight Club, our hero Edward Norton goes to see the doctor about his insomnia. His doctor tells him that you can’t die from lack of sleep. Now, I can separate fact from fiction enough to know that I can’t believe what this doctor character says. He is in a movie. But right now, it’s about all the hope I have.

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve had anywhere from 3-6 hours of sleep per day. Never more than 6. And I am an 8-9 hour kind of girl. When you are awake for SO long, you have time to think about things like your sleep to wake ratio, how dangerous it is for you to be responsible for seven patients on the CARDIAC floor after sleeping for three hours, and whether you have built up a tolerance to Benadryl since you can no longer take one pill and expect to get some freakin’ sleep.

But enough about me. I’ll sleep when I’m dead.

It’s Halloween. And I won’t be able to slip a nap in before work because the little brats will be pounding on the door demanding candy, like they don’t eat candy every day because their parents don’t give a rat’s ass about their health habits, not to mention teaching them common courtesy, like “On Halloween, act respectful, and don’t stampede the poor girl handing out the candy. And yes, though it seems corny, you should actually say ‘Trick or Treat’, because the adults, they like that kind of stuff. And since they have spent their hard earned money to give you candy, even though I let you eat candy every day and it’s not really anything special anymore, you should at least try to give a little something back. Like courtesy.”

Oh yeah, this wasn’t supposed to be about me, but about Halloween. And I already told you guys that Oklahomans are nice. Let's amend that. Oklahomans are nice when they’ve had their sleep.

Back to Halloween. Rick is the Halloween king. He has decided, since we bought the house, that Halloween will be his holiday for going all out, so he has spent the last few weeks building our Halloween decorations. We’re not big on Christmas, so our neighbors are probably slightly frightened of us. What kind of Oklahomans don’t hang a single Christmas light, but completely transform their front yard for Halloween?





The kind that worship Satan! *cue evil laughter*

I’m kidding. We don’t really worship Satan. But we do love us some boy wizards!!! Happy Halloween and Happy November! Eighteen days til Goblet of Fire!!!

Haven't been knitting much this week. Been a bit wiped out with the studies. Of course, that's what happens when you don't study for weeks and then realize that you have two tests on the same day. Whoops.

Anyway, here is some mystery knitting for the week:

It's mystery knitting because I couldn't keep my big mouth shut and I told several people about my blog and some of those people may or may not be receiving the above mystery knitting for Christmas. We can assume that they may. In order to protect the innocent, I only photographed a small detail of the said knitting.

So...that's what I got on knitting. Not much.

But eating? I got lots on eating! Rick was stuck doing overtime Wednesday night so I went to visit him at his office in Edmond, where I hardly ever go (remember how I said that I am not courteous while driving? well, the last time I drove to Edmond, it took me one and a half hours to drive 20 miles due to construction, shitty traffic signs, and even worse drivers...I was definitely not courteous that day and I haven't driven there much since). So we went to eat at Thai Palace, where I have wanted to go for some time. We live right next to the Asian district here in OKC, but can't eat at most of the Thai restaurants because they don't make their entrees vegetarian. And I must confess, I got Thai Palace and Thai Basil mixed up, but since we arrived at Thai Palace first, we went there.

We got there at 5:30 and there were already a few tables taken. There was only one waiter/host, and I think he is the owner as well. He told us to sit wherever we wanted and he was very kind when I asked what he recommended for vegetarians. He explained that any dish that was made with meat could be substituted with tofu and could be made "strictly vegetarian." Pay dirt! We had an appetizer of spring rolls with peanut sauce, which were wonderful. For the entrees, we shared a potato, onion, and tofu yellow curry and a red curry with tofu. I ordered them with medium spiciness and it came out HOT! It was a good hot, I tell you, but a little surprising. Still, I'd probably order medium again because it was SO GOOD, y'all! There is so much flavor in Thai food! Rick and I were both very impressed and vowed to return to try more of the spicy vegetarian Thai food that left us stuffed and with clear sinuses.

Want to know more about what I'm eating? Don't be silly, of course you do! After class yesterday, I went to...you guessed it! Los Tacos!!! Cheese nacho with jalapenos and a bean burrito, beans only. These guys know me and my order. "I'll have the usual." I'm like Norm at the Los Tacos, people.

Here's some free advertising, guys. You can just take it off my tab.

Note to anyone still reading this: Thai Palace will be closed for the next three weeks, because the owner is taking a vacation in Thailand.

Happy Halloween weekend to everyone!

My anatomy professor (and no, that is not what I call Rick in private) announced in class today, “I’ve only seen one of the Star Wars movies, and it was one of the first ones, not one of the new ones, but I think you could compare Yoda to macrophages...and the lymphocytes are like the rest of the jedis.”

And then…he did not elaborate. At all.

The other day, Rick mentioned that it seemed kind of strange that the name of my blog is Prairie Knitter, since I live in a city, not out on a farm or anything. I just blew it off at the time, but have been thinking about that comment this morning.

Why do I feel like someone from the prairie? I have always lived in either a city or a suburb of a city. Never on a farm. Never in a rural area. Shouldn’t I be a “City Knitter”, flaunting my uptown cultural sensibilities?

Nope.

Oklahoma City, in my mind, falls somewhere between prairie and “actual” city. Sure, it’s a city. It is, in fact, one of the largest cities (in square miles, not population) in our country. There are lots of city things to do. We go to the art museum and the Nobel theater which plays indie and foreign films. There is live theater, live music, good restaurants. City stuff.

But it’s also (and I’m going to sound hopelessly corny here) a down-home kind of place. The people are friendly. We smile at you and chit-chat with you when we’re standing in line together at Hobby Lobby. We sit on the front porch and wave as the neighbors drive by. We have barbecues, not wine-tastings. We are terribly overweight from all the eating that we do. We are not very cool, us down-home folks.

And besides, even if OKC is a city, it is also in the middle of big-ass prairie. Any direction that you leave the city, you will drive through prairie on your way to your destination. If you choose to leave us on a plane, you will fly over prairie for quite a while.

When I moved to Boise (a small city), I missed the bigger-city stuff. Mainly the restaurants. Dang, I love to eat. And there was only one restaurant that I loved in Boise. Whenever I returned on vacations, I spent a lot of time catching up at Ted’s, Tommy’s, and Gopuram. And when I learned that Los Tacos closed a year or so after I moved, I was sure that they went under without me forking over so much money for burritos and nachos.

I also missed the people. There is so much friendliness and hospitality in this area. People love to talk to each other, and it’s like that old Will Rogers line, “I never met a man I didn’t like.” Well, anyone who knows me knows that there are LOTS of people that I don’t like. But it doesn’t mean I’m not courteous. Except when I'm driving.

And I really, really missed the land. Yes, the flat land. There I was, living in the foothills and Boise is a very pretty little city. A river runs through the entire city, creating a little green oasis in the desert. The foothills are beautiful in the winter, covered in snow. The Sawtooth mountains are just a short drive away. But I missed the prairie. The wheatfields and the flat horizon. The great big sky with its dark gray and purple thunderclouds and its mean tornadoes. And can I say it again, just to get it off my chest? I missed…wheatfields.

And so there you have it. Without any other supporting statements, I think that the simple fact that I can miss wheatfields when I am away from them for too long makes me a prairie person. I just happen to live in the city.

P.S. I have good news for you guys. About a year after I moved back, Los Tacos RE-OPENED! Coincidence, I think not.

Well, this entry is devoted to my husband Rick, who bravely threw himself out of a plane last Saturday despite a big, big fear of heights. That's right, the guy who goes rock-climbing out in BFE is actually really afraid of heights. Sure he'll tie himself up to a harness and climb up 200 feet, but free-falling at 120 mph from 10,000 feet is a different story. This has been a goal of his for awhile, something that has been on his "Do before dying" list. So last Christmas, Mom, Tracy, Grandma, and I went in together for a gift certificate for a tandem jump at Oklahoma Skydiving Center. With a gift certificate, there is no backing out due to the "use it or lose it" aspect, making my evil plan complete. Mwaahahaha!!!

Here's a write-up I posted about it on a message board that we participate in with our friends:


Rick and I kept Adain this weekend while Andrea and Jason avoid Wilma on their cruise in the gulf, so we woke him up early and ate a big breakfast at Beverly’s here in the city (really good breakfast, if you’ve never been there). I suggested just eating at home, but I think Rick was worried that Saturday’s breakfast just might be the last meal of his life. When the time came, we headed out for Cushing with Adain and my mom. We started out discussing the weather, among other topics, because it was very cloudy. Rick and I contemplated how high those clouds were and whether they were of the rain variety, and consequently, whether the jump would be cancelled. As we got closer and closer to Cushing, Rick got quieter and quieter. I knew he was scared and tried to joke with him, but to no avail. We had brought some Southern Comfort for us, and I suggested a little swig before going inside, but then Mom said, “What if they can smell alcohol on your breath and won’t let you jump?” So we saved that for later.

The skydiving center is a small hanger at the small airport in Cushing. Within minutes of arriving, we were joined by Justin and our friends Allyson and Jon from Oklahoma City. We arrived on time for his noon appointment, but the jumps were running late because of the cloud coverage earlier in the day. Rick spent the next two hours learning what his role in a tandem jump would be (which is primarily falling at 120 mph until the shute opens), getting outfitted in his spacesuit, and lounging around with the rest of us. There were big, old, comfy couches to sit on and a sweet black lab named Hunter that Adain was particularly fond of. A girl that worked there told us that Adain could play around on anything in the hanger, because nothing is breakable. So he had a good time swinging from harnesses and jumping out of a “little” plane.

Rick watched a couple jumps that were scheduled ahead of him and told me later that it made him feel better about it, since everyone seemed to really enjoy it and no one was screaming uncontrollably or crying when they got down. Allyson, who has gone on over 80 jumps herself and spent a short time working at the Okahoma Skydiving Center packing parachutes to help pay for her habit (oops! I mean hobby), also helped to prepare Rick for the big jump.

So when the time came, Rick and his tandem guy Bobby, loaded up with another first-timer and his tandem guy in a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny plane. We weren’t allowed to go up and inspect the plane, but Rick said it was completely empty, no seats or anything, and all four of them were crammed up so tight that there was no room to move. After a couple minutes, they took off, and it took what seemed like forever until the jump. After the plane finally reached 10,000 feet, we saw a tiny dot left behind in the air as the plane continued forward. That was the first diver. About thirty seconds later, there was a second dot that was Rick and Bobby. I don’t know how long they free-fell, but it seemed like a long time before that parachute appeared.

Then it was a slow drift down to the landing area directly in front of the hanger, where they landed gracefully. At least in my opinion it was graceful, since I had visions of tumbling bodies and broken ankles.

After the jump, Rick was all grins and even said that he would like to go up again sometime (I just hope it wasn’t Bobby that caused all that grinning)! Allyson and Jon headed back to the city and the rest of us had a tasty lunch at the Mazzio’s in Cushing. Rick and Mom celebrated with shots on the ride home.
Thank you, Justin, for video-taping for us. You did a great job. And thanks to everybody who came and supported Rickus. Amanda, we missed you and hope you are feeling better!

Merry Christmas, Rickus!

Drumroll, please.

Here are the wrist warmers, in all their glory, wrapped around our nephew Adain, otherwise known as the little monkey. In case you're wondering, I am the big monkey. Tried to get him to wear the cuffs, but no go. Here's an action shot of eating grapes, Blair Witch Style:


We're keeping the little monkey for the weekend, and we have already discovered that he can now open doors. He couldn't do that last time he was here. So much for putting all the non-child-safe stuff in the spare bedroom. Hee, hee...um, yeah.

I had the day off from both work and school, and it has been a nice cool day. Cool as in the temperature cool. This is important because for the last several months, I haven’t been able to knit for more than five minutes before my hands would heat up so much that the combined sweat and movement of knitting started to felt the wool. And if it didn’t start to felt, the wool at least developed that lovely wet sheep smell. Enough to cause me to put down the needles or crank the AC to a subarctic temperature.

Today, however, there is no need for the AC. The windows are open and I have been able to finish both of the wrist cuffs and a scarf for my grandma for Christmas. I’m not going to tell the fam about this blog til after that time, since we have a particularly crafty Christmas planned, and I can’t have them looking at pictures here. And I can’t not post. Duh.

The scarf is knit with Cascade 220 in crimson and cream, which are University of Oklahoma colors. My grandmother, and really, my entire family are crazy about OU football. And though I couldn’t care less about the sport, I think that grandma will enjoy an OU scarf. I knit it up sideways in garter stitch, after seeing a pattern for this style on the Blue Blog, and it took like NO time at all. Who knew that what takes so long to knit a scarf is switching the needles every row? Well, when your row is fifty inches long, you don’t have to switch so much. FANTASTIC quick knit! I hope grandma enjoys her scarf more than she has enjoyed OU’s playing this season.

Most people in this state are football CRAZY. Which has always been a mystery to me. I’m not a sporty person and I don’t spend time watching people be sporty. In fact, I never went to a single high school football game way back when I was in high school. But there is huge competition here between OU and OSU, and between their fans. Also between OU and Texas. Last year, my husband and I went out to eat on OU/Texas weekend, unbeknownst to us. The restaurant was empty. Deserted. The waiter looked at us and asked “You guys aren’t watching the game?” “Game?” we asked. “Yeah,” he chuckled, “The OU/Texas game?” “Oh,” we replied, “Is that today?”

That said, I’ve been interested in going to a high school football game at the high school near our house. I don’t know if it’s because it’s fall and it seems like the thing to do, or because we live in a neighborhood in a house now and it seems like the thing to do to support your neighborhood, but anyway, I think I’ll go to a game next weekend. And if it feels like a waste of time, I can always pull out the knitting during the game.

P.S. Pictures of wrist cuffs later tonight.

I am making a pair of wrist cuffs from Stitch ‘N Bitch for my friend Kim for her birthday. The pattern calls for a little intarsia design which is why I have not attempted the pattern before (I’ve had this book for two years). Intarsia scares me. Doesn’t it just sound scary? Intarsia?

But I decided that I could play around with it for a couple hours for the wrist cuffs, and guess what? It was freakin’ hard! But still not as hard as I thought it would be. So here is my newest achievement, resting on my Halloween placemat:

And by the way, is the back of intarsia supposed to look like this??


It only took me a couple hours to make one of these, but since I used a worsted weight yarn and completely disregarded the instructions for gauge, the wrist cuff came out more like half a sleeve. So I made another one, altering the pattern to make it a little longer and a lot shorter. But since I was concentrating so dang hard on the design, I started knitting the chart at the same number of stitches in as the first one. So now I have one wrist cuff that is the size of a DVD box and one that is the right size but off-center just enough to DRIVE ME CRAZY!

I wonder how many partially completed wrist cuffs I'll make before I end up with a pair.

My husband finally talked me into starting up this blog since I've only been talking about it for, I don't know, a year or so! Perhaps he hopes that I'll stop talking about blogs now, but I have the feeling that this is just the beginning. Soon, I'll be toting the camera around everywhere I go, just in case I want to take a picture for the blog. I'll say things like, "You know, I posted a topic like that on my blog just the other day...." I don't think he knows what he's getting himself into.

Anyway, I have wanted to start a blog for sometime now. I taught myself to knit about two years ago, but have no real record of my FO's since I have given most of them away and never wanted to waste film taking pictures of them. Now we've had a digital camera for 4 years or so, but as a self-proclaimed technophobe, I have only recently started to use it. And guess what? I can take lots of pictures of my knitting, without feeling guilty about wasting film.

Somehow it doesn't seem so self-important to post crafty pics in blogland as it would be to sit down with guests and say, "Would you like to look at my photo album? There are LOADS of knitting pictures."

Yeah. That would go over.

I want to use this space as a kind of digital scrapbook, I guess. I will try to post often, and hopefully, the pressure to post often will help me get even more knitting done. "Honey, I have to finish knitting this tonight, so I'll have a post for the blog."

See. He may have created a monster.