Author: afthead

More Travel Knitting

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So much knitting gets accomplished on vacation.  I found a darning needle in my “emergency knitting kit” in my carry on – yeah that’s a real thing in my life – so was able to remove the double pointed needles out of hat #1 for the younger cousin.    I then knit a bigger hat for the second older cousin.  Somehow I lost the picture of the second hat, but it was the same colors, slightly bigger with a different stripe pattern.  Can you picture it? With the baby hats out of the way, I moved onto my finger cramping knitting.  I love making tiny Mochimochi Land toys when traveling.  Nothing says “road trip” to me more than this image:  Tiny needles and yarn?  Sign me up.  Since Christmas is coming I brought along my kit to make tiny Santas.   I messed up the leg to body interface the first time but turned out a respectable tiny Santa the second try.  His name is Verona Tinypants.      Thankfully my aunt-in-law had a needle in her sewing kit smaller than my giant emergency darning needle so I could finish weaving in his octopus arms.  In case you are wondering about the gorgeous fluffy base in the featured image, Verona is on the cat-in-law, Mr. Belding.  Such a sweet guy!  One more day of vacation left and I’ve knit all the projects I brought, except the other tiny Santa – the kit makes two.  We’ll see if my hands are recovered enough to make one more tomorrow.  His name would be Kaukauna Tinypants.    

Travel knitting hacks

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I always take knitting when I travel, especially if there is going to be lots of car or train time.  This trip we are driving all over Wisconsin to visit new baby cousins, so the obvious project to bring is more baby hats!  This time the babies are boys though, so no fun poof and bow toppers.  

 
The downside of travel knitting is that I always forget something.  I’ve solved the “pattern forgetting” issue by taking a picture of the pattern.  If I have my phone I have the pattern.  Fingernail clippers work wonders for snipping yarn when you don’t have scissors.  There are apps on my Kindle and iPhone for measuring.  I haven’t figured out the darning needle replacement yet, but this may be the trip I have to get creative there. (I’m afraid it is in my backpack with my laptop, kindle, snacks, and “just in case I get puked on” spare clothes, which is sitting in my living room.  That story is my next blog post.)

My daughter’s favored travel craft solved my most frequent issue: no stitch markers.  It never fails that I cast on, start knitting in the round and ugh!  No way to mark the beginning of the round.  I can tie little yarn markers, but unless I have scissors or nail clippers I cannot cut my yarn.  I usually don’t have those on the plane.  Cue the tiny rubber band craft!  My daughter loves traveling with a huge bag of them.  She uses her fingers or a 4 prong loom to make huge ropes of rubber band weavings.  Now the bands are not ideal markers.  They are too sticky and can get trapped under stitches, but they are way better than nothing.  The best thing about knitting baby hats is that they are done in no time.  Off to start hat #2, once I find a darning needle hack.  I don’t think 10 month olds should wear hats attached to pointy sticks.   Anyone have an idea to help? 

(I’m really digging the stitch detail in these pictures.  I may do all my knitting photography in the plane from now on.  The lighting is fantastic!)

Tiny Cat

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Why yes, the new tiny cat is settling in to the Afthead household.  Thanks for asking!  Tomorrow she goes to the vet for her well kitten exam, and then we go on vacation.  Tiny cat will not like either of those situations.

Oh yes.  She has a real name, not just tiny cat:  Adventure.  Sweet dreams.  

The First Thanksgiving

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My first Thanksgiving at what would become my in-laws house.  I didn’t know it at the time, but their son would become my husband and I would give birth to their first grandchild.  Early family dinners are filled with such tension.  I wanted to impress them.  I wanted them to like me.

When I sat down, there was a marvel at my place.  A soup bowl filled with mashed potatoes.  At my home we serve our potatoes in a huge bowl that barely contains the almost 10 pounds of buttery mashed goodness, yet there is always bickering because everyone wants their fair share for the meal, and leftovers.  A curse on whoever leaves potatoes on their plate Thanksgiving day.  This pre-portioning solves all the problems.  My in-laws are geniuses!

We pass the food and fill our plates.  I take my fork and dip it into my potatoes.  Not as good as my parents, but edible.  I try another forkful.  My future husband leans over and whispers, “Those are for everyone.”

I have double dipped my fork in the soup bowl of potatoes meant to be shared with seven people.  Meekly I take a smidgen and pass to my left.  Then I get the “gravy” which looks like pan drippings with giblets floating in it.  I pass it on without dampening my dollop of potatoes.

It’s a wonder I stayed with him after that meal.  It’s a wonder I ever went back for another Thanksgiving.

The Gunslinger: Should You Read or Listen?

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The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed. – Stephen King, The Gunslinger: The Dark Tower I

My weekly post to help you decide the best format to enjoy a book.  Without further ado:

Should you read or listen to The Gunslinger, by Stephen King?

The Afthead Summary:

I adore Stephen King.  I’ve been reading his books since I was in my early teens, and attribute my cold-sweat fear of clowns (It) and aliens (The Tommyknockers) to his works.  I have always loved King’s scary worlds.  That said, The Dark Tower series is my absolute favorite of his works; it goes beyond horror to action, adventure, magical realism and moves toward epic.  This is not a series to begin lightly, because once you start it will suck you in and you’ll lose huge swaths of your life until the last book is read.  I read George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series (at least the first three) and The Lord of the Rings trilogy and this series trumps them both.  If my child was a boy his name would have been Roland.  I love the main character that much.

The Gunslinger is the first book in the series, and it’s a quick read.  The slim volume begins the entire series by introducing us the gunslinger (Roland) and the first of his foils, the man in black (Walter/Marten).  The first sentence, above, sets up the story and then the book is end to end heart racing action as the gunslinger travels across the desert and the mountains after the man in black.  Through the journey you begin to learn a bit about Roland’s history and how his world has moved on.  There is travel between Roland’s world and our own, magic, mutants, darkness, love (or at least lust), and death.

For all of you who think King is a hack, this book came forth from Robert Browning’s poem Childe Roland, which King studied as a sophomore in college.  His stuff may not be literature by the narrowest definition, but the man has a reader’s soul.  Only a serious reader can appreciate Browning’s poem.  (I’m not sure I count myself in that “serious reader” column.)

 Read:

This is the only one of the Gunslinger books I have read, and I was young when I read it.  My copy is from 1982, and while I’m sure I didn’t read it when it was published, I know I was no more than fifteen.  This is not a book for a fifteen year old girl, even one who loved Pet Semetary.  This is a book for action loving young men and grown ups with a little life under their belts.  Someday I’ll pick up the series and read it again, or I might just keep listening to it.

Listen:

George Guidall, the narrator of this book, is one of the absolute best readers ever.  I could listen to him read anything, which is good, since he’s recorded over 900 novels, according to his website.  He also read American Gods, by Neil Gaiman, another of one of my top audiobooks.  My spine shivers when I hear him start, “The man in black fled across the desert…” and it keeps shivering at varying intensities through the whole book.  The reading of this book is masterful.

There is a scene that begins in a dark cave where Roland and Jake, a boy he meets during his travels, come across the Slow Mutants.  Do not listen to this in the dark in your car.  Do not listen to this alone in the house after sunset.  This passage may be the scariest passage in any audiobook I have ever read and it will leave you breathless (if you are lucky) and crying (if you aren’t.)

Do yourself a favor and go download this book as soon as you are ready to commit hundreds of hours listening to one of the best series you’ve ever heard.  It will be the only time you are thrilled you have a long commute.

Recommendation:

Listen

As an addendum, there is an interesting story about the Dark Tower narrators.  If you look on Audible, Guidall reads book 1, and 5-7, but  Frank Muller reads book 2-4.  (It appears from Muller’s website that at some point he also recorded book 1.)  I don’t know why the reader changed, but if you listen to the series Muller was also amazing and I love his interpretation as much as Guidall’s.  Mueller’s reading of the series ended in 2001 when he suffered head injuries from a motorcycle accident.  For those of you who know Stephen King well, he suffered a serious accident in 1999, also while working on The Dark Tower.  This series was fraught with tragedy and injury during its writing and reading, which just adds to the hyperreality of the work.

Finish Something, Again – The Writer’s Digest Version

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Here I go again.  I’m sending my short story, The Fisherman, out into the world to see if it can find love and acceptance. I like shooting high, so this time I’m trying for the Writer’s Digest Short Short Story competition.  The word count limit is 1500, and I come in with plenty of room to spare at 1247.  I won’t find out until February if it gets accepted, so once this goes out I’ll turn my attention back to the second draft of my novel, which really needs some attention.

I’m amazed at how the story has morphed with each submission.  I like it better this time than I did with the Glimmer Train draft.  It’s more direct, and more intimate and that’s really a better voice for me.  Having already developed callouses from my first rejection, I’m not as excited this time, but I’m feeling more like a real writer.  Oh yeah, I’m just resubmitting to another contest.  I’m getting it out there.  You know how it is with writing.  I’m so blase.  (How do I make the ticky thing over the e in blase?)  Maybe this time I’ll even forget about the day the winners are announced and not go crazy as the day gets closer.  (Yeah, right!  Winners will be notified by mail by February 29th.  I’m sure if I haven’t heard by then I’ll be stalking the poor postman.)

Stay tuned blogging friends.  In a mere 3 months and 15 days I’ll be a crazy person again, but I’m doing what my BFF Neil Gaiman told me to do.  I’m finishing things and getting them out there.

Ostriching

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Sometimes when tragedy strikes far away, I can’t help but turn off my TV, avoid the internet, and limit my exposure to the horrors.  We are not a family that watches the news every day, and where I am very open and honest with my child about the day to day tragedies that happen to people we know and love, I have a hard time explaining coordinated suicide/murders in a city she only knows from watching cyclists race through at the Tour de France.  There is nothing in her worldview to help me explain what happened in Paris.

That said, this evening Facebook provided me with a quote from Fred Rogers that at least gives me a starting point.  He says:

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” To this day, especially in times of “disaster,” I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.”

– Fred Rogers

I love this.  It takes the focus away from the terrorists and the death and puts the focus on the people who are forced to be heroic when horrible things happen.  Those are the images I remember from tragedies like 9/11, Katrina, the Nepal Earthquake this past year, and the Boston Marathon bombings.  I remember the helpers.  With that context, I might be able to turn on the TV tomorrow and instead of focusing on the hopelessness of violence, I can focus on looking for the helpers, and I can help my daughter focus on the helpers too.  I can’t promise her that I will keep her safe.  I can’t promise that bad things will never happen to her, but I can tell her that “she will always find people who are helping,” and I can remind her that sometimes even we get to be those helpers.  That gives me hope, which will allow me to pull my head out of the sand, but not until tomorrow.