Comfort Knitting

So...it's been stressful around here. Some good - the boy, getting my car back after not having it for over a year. Some just stress, neither good nor bad - possible new place to live, training new baristas for my cafe. Some bad - other work stuff, worry about mom. All these thoughts & decisions & worry are taken a toll on me & my health. I haven't been eating well, lots of bad things. I've been eating out a lot, the boy likes to go out & neither of our studio apt are set up to cook for each other. But I just crave the wrong things (then the e.coli found in my favourite healthy food doesn't help). I woke up Saturday with a stomach pains, which I know has to do with the stess & food I've been eating. I spent most of Satuday wanting to die but trying to ignore it since I was training new baristas...and then that night I passed out early & slept for 10 hours. I think my body is trying to tell me something. I have a tendency to interanize stress until I break...or pass out. And lets not even discuss the teenage-like breakouts I'm getting.

So instead of creating more stress for myself, I have turned to comfort knitting. Nothing difficult or frustrating or things that will take forever. The coffeehouse socks are draining me, I'm working on the second one & it doesn't seem to grow in length, even when I knitted on it durring the 2 final episodes of Rome - speaking of, is it wrong to find Brutus really hot? Yes, that's him on the left. Anyway, with comfort knitting, I'm talking hats, washclothes, & scarves. It's so relaxing to just mindlessly knit. And the bonus is stashbusting! I think as soon as the living situation is settled, I'll turn back to things like the Bolero...and Christmas presents - eek, more stress!

Some FOs:

The BiL Cowboy Hatter (look, Betty is back!) I'm not going to do stats on it, because it's basically the same as the PDX hatter. I used up the reminder of my Cotton Fleece in Twilight for the main colour & some Cotton Fleece Lapis I had laying around. The main change I made was I started with the contrast colour like the pattern I used as a template did - if you have the Knitting A Day calander, the pattern is The Pismo Hat. Then, even though you can't see it in this photograph, I used the Lapis for the final rounds because I was afraid I would run out of Twilight before I finished. I like the look of it. The hat is going to my BiL, he's a huge Cowboy fan and since it's the team colours, he'll probably like it a lot. I thought about keeping it for a Christmas present but it's such a lightweight hat & he works outdoors so it wouldn't work in the very cold Central Oregon after October & before spring. So when I go down to my moms next weekend to get my car & see my sister and the new baby, he'll have a gift. Presents for no reason are the best ever I think.

Then one morning I found myself with idle hands & decided to knit myself a washcloth. I had small amount of Shine Worsted leftover from my Apple cardigan & I had read that it made nice washclothes. So , since I always need face clothes (see comment about teenage skin above), I thought I'd try it out. It's very small for a washcloth - basically 4.5 x 4.5 - more of a swatch really - but it works really well. I just knit 4 rows of garter on size 7 needles, then switched to seed stitch, keeping the first & last 2 stitches in garter. When I was about out of the Shine, I switched back to just garter. It only took like a hour or two to make & I immediatly used it - lovely. I think I might make a bunch of these for Christmas gifts with some Lush products, at least for my mom and possibly my sister, even though the sister isn't so into the girly stuff. My neice perhaps. I know there is several groups & knitalongs out there for washclothes so I can get ideas for patterns for them - although me & knitalongs don't work out so well. (I think it's my knitting ADD) I really love Shine Worsted to work with. The only problem I seem to have is working in the ends - they pop out very annoyingly.

Now I making a simple seed stitch scarf out of some random yarn I've had - my mom gave it to me months ago & I haven't done I thing with it. I'm not quite sure what it is, I think it might be some type of Berroco yarn, now discontinued. The photo might not show it, but it's white with dark blue, teal, & green strands mixed through it. I'm using a smaller needle than I usually do for scarves so it's pretty dense. I have two balls of the yarn so I'm hoping to get a long skinny scarf out of it, I plan on working on it until I'm out of yarn, so we'll see. I've been wearing my Tartlet scarf this week, it's been cooler in the morning & evenings, though fairly warm in the afternoon this week, so this will be nice to have as a back up - I own a lot of scarves but most of them are big thick warm ones. Too warm for the fall days & nights. I wore my long stripy scarf one night but then I nearly left it at the theatre when the boy dragged me to see Snakes on A Plane. Word of warning when seeing it, see it for cheap in a drinking theatre if there is one there nearby (there's lots here in Portland, not a shock), it's so bad you'll want to drink. But so bad it's fun to watch in a theatre with other people who know it's bad -everyone's just waiting for the Samuel L Jackson line - "Get these motherfucking snakes of this motherfucking plane" - and when it was finally said, everyone in the theatre errupted in cheers. Hee. Good times. Still not worth the very expensive regular theatre admission, and I don't think it'll be very fun to watch on your own at home. Well maybe if it's with a huge group of people all drinking.

Wow, I just connected my new scarf to Snakes on a Plane. This is why the blog is called babbling brook, I guess. I talk like this too, changing subjects in the middle of talking about something else. Hence, my MySpace name is BabblingStacey. Is it just here or is EVERYONE on MySpace now? Anytime we have new employees, they always seem to be on it as well. I actually don't use it very often, but it's nice to have all of my friends from all over the country in one place. The boy won't use it, although the Coffeehouse does have a profile, set up by a friend of ours.

I'm in a writing mood this morning, I guess - I do miss writing on my blog. That's the problem of having no internet connection at home (well unless you count me out on the fire escape, which is a pain in the neck) and I get distracted if I'm at the Coffeehouse and can't concentrate on blogging, so I just end up giving up. I'm actually writing this at home, and I'll post it later today, so that would explain my verbal diharea. I'm so happy people are still reading my whines - thank you to everyone who reads, I've been lacking on my reading & commenting on the knitting blogs but I still can see who comes & goes from here. (Special shoutout to my favourite blogs - Gina, Amber, Turtlegirl, Carrie, & Rain, who all rock). My first order of business when I move is to get an internet connection at home, so I can keep up with the knitting blog world.

Love to all.
Stacey