Don't forget: It's still Delurking Week. So if you want to "uncloak" and leave a comment, PLEASE do.

I finished the socks I was talking about last night:



This is the best picture of them as it's the truest in terms of color. The yarn is Lorna's Laces "Watercolor." It's one of those yarns that looked seductively pretty in the skein, but when I wound it up, I kind of went, "Ruh-roh!*" and realized it would muddify if knitted up using a "plain" sock pattern.

So, enter the slipped stitch. (If knitting were like Ninja movies...) The pattern I used is called "Classy Slip-Up" and is from "Knit Socks" (I think that's what it's called - it's the sock book that's shaped like a sock.**)

I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. The slip stitch brings some colors to the fore and downplays others. I do wish it was a bit more bluey and a bit less greeney, but them's the breaks.

Here's a close up, without flash, taken under my make-everything-in-photos-look-yellow fluorescent light. It shows the slipped stitches a little better.



(Yeah, yeah, I know. It's a little out of focus.)


(*Scooby-Doo reference. I have a colleague who says "Ruh-roh!" jokingly when there's some kind of minor problem).

(**Did anyone else, when they were a child, have a bunch of picture books that were in the shape of the thing on the cover? They were very thin and flat - not very many pages - and had heavy sort of shiny paper covers. They were staple-bound, as I remember. I know I had one about forest animals where the whole cover of the book was designed to look like a raccoon curled up to sleep, and the book was cut into the shape of the raccoon. I think I also had one about trains (or maybe my brother did) that featured an engine on the cover and the book was cut to the outlines of the engine. As I remember they were pretty cheap books, I think my mom used to buy them at the Gold Circle or the Click or somewhere like that).

*****

Also, the first of my recent purchases came:



This is the "sound soother." It's surprisingly small - not really any bigger than a large paperback book. I had a lot of fun with it yesterday evening. It has some odd sounds...it will do a hair dryer and also a clothes dryer. (I suppose some people are soothed by that; I had friends with a colicky baby that was ONLY soothed if they put her in her car seat and set it on top of the dryer while it was running.)

There's also a heartbeat, which made me laugh, but I know there have been a lot of studies that say that new babies are soothed by it, because it's like being back in the womb. (and it's a slow heartbeat - about 60 bpm. I may try it myself one of those nights when PMS makes me feel like my heart is racing crazy, maybe my body will entrain with it and I will be able to calm down).

There are lots of other atmospheric things. I used "pink noise" (which is EXACTLY what I was looking for, it's just the right sound) last night, but I also like the one that sounds like waves breaking on the shore, and the one that sounds like a sailboat, and "night train" (heh....that was a James Brown song), which sounds like a train going by in the distance (without the whistles though). And there's one of crickets and one of frogs. I like the frog one; it reminds me of summers when I was a kid. The house I grew up in was near kind of a boggy area and there were lots of frogs, and I realize now the characteristic "summer sound" I would hear at night when the windows were open was not crickets but was hundreds of little frogs.

There are some other, more oddball ones. There's "Range Rider," which sounds like someone on the pony express (hoofbeats and the jangle of the bridle, etc.). And some jungle ones with lots of birds and stuff, which I'd frankly find distracting to try to sleep to. And there's one that sounds like a motorcycle. And one with loons. Neither of which I find particularly soothing to listen to.

And I got to thinking....maybe people don't always sleep to them, maybe the advert is one of those "read between the lines" things, and some of the sounds are there for couples to use, as sort of an "aid to the imagination." If you get my drift.

There is ONE design flaw in the thing, though, as far as I'm concerned. The two big buttons on the top light up with a rather bright blue light when the thing is turned on - it is as bright as a nightlight. I can't sleep with a nightlight on; some nights my digital clock is too bright for me. I draped a couple of handkerchiefs over it last night but I think I'm going to have to make a little "bra" for it out of heavy paper - two cones that I can set over the buttons so that they don't light up my room. Because there's really nowhere I can put it in the room that the light's not kind of distracting. I'm one of those people who needs a perfectly dark, not too warm, (and ideally perfectly quiet, but failing that, no "unexpected" noises) room to be able to sleep. A psychologist once told me I was a "high arousal" person - meaning I was easily startled by things and that was part of why I had such a hard time sleeping sometimes.

****

Well, we're on Ice Storm Watch. I really hope we get just sleet or snow instead of ice. I can deal with sleet or snow by staying home. But if we get ice, power lines will snap, and although I've got a camp lantern and extra batteries and also candles, I have no good way of keeping my house warm if I'm without power for very long. My furnace is gas but the igniter is electrical. The only thing I think I could do would be to go into the bathroom and close the door and run the hot water really long (the hot water heater is totally gas and has a pilot light) and make the room warm with steam, but that would get kind of clammy once it cooled down.

There is one branch on my redbud I want to cut off; it's way too close to the electrical line leading into my house and if it got loaded down with ice, it could snap the line. I am going to run home at noon and do that. (I went out and contemplated if I could remove it before coming to work, but it was still too dark and I was afraid I couldn't see well enough. And I'll have to be careful getting the branch down; I can't tell if it's intertwined with the line or just above it. I don't want to snap the line trying to PREVENT a problem).