me and mine and yeah.

One of the first things I ask people who meet my son is, "do you think he looks like me?" In my mind, the answer to this is a resounding yes-- that he is my clone and oh goodness I didn't know they'd gotten that whole asexual reproduction for humans thing down yet. Most people are honest with me and say no, or tell me something sweet like its obvious he is my son (because he's hanging off my breast or armpit, but whatever)... I think a lot of this stems from my mom, a taller than paul white woman with blonde hair and blue eyes (me: dark hair and eyes and undertones of yellow and not pink). She would be accosted approached in the malls of my first hometown, stopped by strangers asking "where she had adopted us from," which bothered her enough to tell these stories to me over and over; told strangers with a chuckle, "they look just like me right?!" when our "exotic" looks would garner comments from onlookers when I was old enough to remember.

So even though my son may not look like me (except maybe in disproportionate head diameter), he is MY SON in the little things. Like carsick things.

(Queasy readers can skip on down to past the photo of the wheel! Fair warning, but I won't be too graphic.)

See, I can't go on the rides at the county fair that spin you around and around, the apple core rides? Yeah. Sick all over, which totally sucks for the people inside with me cos its spinning. One of my very earliest memories was going to McDonalds with my daycare and noshing on chicken nuggets and orange soda, climbing in the "teacups" and... yeah. I *know* this stuff. A spontaneous cartrip north to see the redwoods when I was newly pregnant ("c'mon! we'll never get to do this stuff when the kid's here!") was sprinkled with about 7734 stops on the winding side roads to be sick-- at the time I blamed it on the pregnancy and not the cartrip.

I should have known better.

I took the same roads this past weekend to pick up my wheel (!!), to Mendocino; Highway 128 is my official inanimate nemesis (this week). It truly wouldn't be so bad except, you know that whole thing about my son being my son? He starts squirming and crying in his carseat, and I turn to comfort him... yeah. All over himself, and I'm heartbroken to have passed on this weak stomach gene-- moreso since he doesn't understand why he feels sick. We still have miles to go before we sleep are slated to hit Mendocino, and I sit in the back and comfort my son who is just beside himself (he's quite picky about being clean, and I'm sure this was just shocking to him). It starts to get to me too, and before you know it it's like the scene from Stand by Me, the freaking pie eating contest? Total domino effect.

Anyway :) I can laugh now but ugh. At least my kid got a brand spanking new "Mendocino Environmental Center" tshirt out of it, and we got to see the coast.

Oh yeah, and I got a wheel out of it, too! :)



I've been "spinning" up miles and miles of yarn barf (hah! you thought i was done!)... The guy (yeah, a guy! and he was wearing a mycology lovers' tshirt, yum! if only i were 21 again) gave me a white fleece, dirty but not badly (a little dirt, definite grease, but no sticks or poo or anything like that)-- I asked him if I had to clean it up (not wanting to take it, thinking it would be just a lot of work and not a lot of help for newbie me) and he grabbed a bit, started spinning it and said I could if I wanted, but I could spin in the grease and not to be afraid of it. So I have, and its pretty cool!

He sold me about a pound of another fleece, this one's straight off a jacketed sheep and very neat... ($15, not bad!) I haven't tried spinning it yet.



So of course there hasn't been too much in the way of knitting here. I'm up to the leg of my bright stripey sock...



I hate k2p2 ribbing, it seems like it takes forever when its supposed to be "simple." My master plan is to use 1/2 of the yarn and start another, but I may get bored with it and cut off the cuff "early."

I also started a scarf; Midnight Purls posted a free pattern ("diagonal lace scarf") that really caught my eye and I knew I had the right yarn for and would be great car knitting (sans yeah yeah yeahs though!)...



I'd bought this beautiful merino/tussah silk handspun from Grace but had no idea what to do with it-- it had the most wonderful smell though, smelled like an old lost love (literally). It sat on my desk til the smell evaporated, then went into the stash for me to think about... seeing MP's pattern reminded me of it right away.



This is just over 2 oz/half of the yarn, and about +30". I think I'll block it when done to help it lay flat, but otherwise I don't think I'll pin/stretch it, I like how it looks now.



No progress on the thighhighs, I'll admit to yall I'm a little intimidated at placing the increases up the leg, so they've been languishing here on my desk. They'll definitely be done though, sometime.

Otherwise, a dear (non-knitting) friend is right... spinning is cutting into my knitting time, so there's likely going to be less to talk about here as I try to conquer this new (frustrating!) thing :)



...ps! to all users of blogger (like me!) who use blogger's image hosting (not me! i use flickr), fyi-- blogger is blocking all external referrers from posting their images. this means for those who use rss readers (like me-- bloglines fan here), we cannot see pictures you post anymore thru an aggregator. some bloggers may elect to publish only a partial feed which requires readers to click into the blog to view the whole post so that's not really a big deal to yall, but for those who want their readers to be able to read via rss and not have to necessarily click in (like me!) this is a major pita... just fyi and you may want to look at external image hosting if it bugs you/you didn't know. i emailed bloglines about this ages ago but they didn't respond past "we're looking into it," and when i saw the post at knittyboard (scroll down to last few entries) it jogged my memory and wanted to share :)