Simple Pleasures, or how Elizabeth Zimmermann could bankrupt Big Pharma when it comes to anxiolytics

Well, we had another trip to Urgent Care last night, not for F this time, but for his accident-prone father. It's a long story that involved much swearing and frustration on my part, but he's fine. It was just a soccer injury (a broken nose, nothing too dramatic), but a chain of circumstance meant that there was an ENORMOUS hassle about it. The kiddos didn't get into bed until 9.30, which led to a (rainy) day of crazy crankiness from everyone. Plus, as the resident insomniac in the family, I felt it was my duty last night to wake up at 2am. I stayed that way until everyone got up at 6.30, when I promptly fell into a deep, wonderful, yet painfully only 10 minute sleep.

Anyway, onto knitting. I've been coming to the realisation that I use knitting as a form of therapy. As anxieties increase, so does my knitting. It also seems to correspond to my drive to clean the house. At least my neuroses are productive. Thoughts of our pending international move have begun to be more intrusive, so my knitting pace has picked up.

This is my first EPS Sweater. Suitably small, I know, but I wasn't going to chance anything bigger. I made it a bit large on purpose - sweater season in SoCal is so brief that I wanted it to fit next season as well.




I love the elegance of the simple arithmetic that produces the finished garment. I love the yarn: Lamb's Pride Superwash Worsted in Rose Quartz. I'm going to make another ASAP, but a bit less plain this time. And because I had to do some maths to make the pattern, I felt much more accomplished and ordered than just plugging away at a usual pattern. So I've decided that it's official: Elizabeth Zimmermann cures my anxiety.

Hurrah for Sleep

We're getting to the point where I can (almost) confidently declare that the littlest family member is sleeping a more reasonable amount of the night. Some mornings we even get through to 6am. With this Great Leap Forward, I find that I'm feeling alternately a lot more human/craving even more sleep. The best part of all, is that R and I have decamped to the spare room, so we can read at night again. I'd forgotten how much I really love to read. Believe me, the quality of the reading material does not matter in the slightest. I've downloaded Barack Obama's book to the Kindle, but I find myself gravitating towards crappy, trashy bestsellers.

The boy F had his birthday the other week. We got him bike, and he now seems a little less like a really wee boy. It brought a motherly tear to my eye to see him take off down the garden path on his new acquisition, and it takes a lot for that to happen!

He also had his first real injury, and I was surprised it was related to plain old clumsiness, not the bike. He tripped over a rug in the sitting room and gashed his forehead. He had a couple of staples put in to close it up, and had a sore neck for a couple of days. He must have hit the table leg really hard. Anyway, he's fine now, and he even had the staples taken out today, so hopefully it'll be nothing but a bad memory soon.

Onto knitting.

I started this cardigan (Sirdar leaflet 1752 for Snuggly Baby Bamboo DK) for A just after Xmas. The pattern and the yarn were a gift from my mother for Xmas. I loved the yarn, as I seem to love all bamboo yarn. Unfortunately the pattern had to be pieced together. Seaming is not my strong point. I should have just converted it to be seamless, but I was impatient to get going on it. Suffice to say, A will not be phased by the crappy seaming, but I am. To the point that I want to try and find a seaming class to go to some time this year before we leave for the old country and the knitting hinterland.



And then for the heck of it, I made a few dishcloths.