I think I might want to participate in both NaNoWriMo and NaKniSweMo!

I’m never going to have time to do both…. or will I?  I saw knitgrrrl’s post about NaKniSweMo when she wrote about it a few days ago, and it seems like a reasonable thing to do.  And then I saw her link to NaNoWriMo, and I was inspired.  When I was younger I wanted to be a writer.  Until 10th grade, when I had a challenging teacher for AP Composition, who took the fun out of writing.  I was most interested in writing childrens books with fantastical illustrations, or fantasy novels for young adults.  When I was in middle school I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote.  I think I wrote a 100 page story in 6th grade, on wide-ruled notebook paper in my large hand-written script, but still…  My freshman year of high school I remember one writing assignment in which we had to write a 100 word story, kind of like a poem, but not exactly.  I had a lot of fun with that and wrote quite a few of them.  I went through a few-year stint of writing poetry and even entered some contests and had a poem or two published in some book(s?) of high school poetry contest winners or something.  I must have that book (those books?) somewhere.  I can’t recall what the poems were.  In any case, even if I don’t write 50,000 words, or even sign up for NaNoWriMo, I think I might start writing again… and I can certainly knit a sweater in November.

P.S.  My procedure did go well on Wednesday and while I’ve been in some of the worst pain of all this week, I’m hopeful that either this set of shots will help significantly or that my doctor will do a set of neurotomies in 2 1/2 weeks which will do the trick.  I start pool therapy this coming Wednesday, so I’m hoping that will help as well.  I did 4 weeks of regular physical therapy (which mostly consisted of ultrasound and TENS unit stimulation with heat after very mild stretching), which I think helped a bit, and I’m hoping pool therapy will help more.  I didn’t do it previously because it’s a 20 minute drive away and I couldn’t tolerate that much car time.  I’m not sure how well I’ll tolerate it now, but we’ll see.

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Now it’s time for some more catching up!  My sock pattern Caged uses two-color fair-isle to create a cage-like pattern down the leg and foot. The sole of this fun-to-knit top-down sock is pinstriped. You can see more pictures in the Flickr gallery here, and the Ravelry pattern link is here!  I think this might be my favorite of the socks I have designed…

Caged is knit in Fiber Fiend Soft & Sturdy Sock [75% Superwash Wool / 25% Nylon; 382 yd per 100g skein] in the Woods and Seas colorways on US#3/3.25mm double-pointed needles.

Thanks to Janice for test-knitting!

(Note: This pattern was first published at Stitches West 2008)

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R just read to me from this mornings’ paper that Sarah Palin thinks that abortion should be banned even in cases of rape or incest.  I guess that’s not too terribly surprising, but it’s frightening…

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Everyone should vote, but this is especially a message for women that I am passing on.  I encourage you to pass it on as well.

[Note: Although it's not technically a story of my great-grandmothers, since my parents came from Europe and their descendants spent their entire lives in Europe, I get the idea, and so should you.]

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How quickly we forget, if we every knew…

WHY WOMEN SHOULD VOTE

This is the story of our Grandmothers and Great-grandmothers; they lived only 90 years ago.
Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote. The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote. And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden’s blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of ‘obstructing sidewalk traffic.’

(Lucy Burns)
They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars aboveer head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air.

(Dora Lewis)
They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women. Thus unfolded the ‘Night of Terror’ on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson’s White House for the right to vote. For weeks, the women’s only water came from an open pail. Their food–all of it colorless slop–was infested with worms.

(Alice Paul)
When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.

HBO’s released a new movie, Iron Jawed Angels, on video and DVD about womens’ struggle to earn the right to vote.  In the movie, Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. The doctor refuses. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn’t make her crazy. The doctor admonished the men: ‘Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.’
It doesn’t matter what your party affiliation is, you should get out and vote on November 4th. But before then, I strongly encourage you to watch or at least listen to the presidential debates on September 26th, October 7th, and October 15th, and the Vice Presidential debate on October 2nd. It’s good to make an educated decision.

P.S. I’m voting for Obama because I care very deeply about a woman’s right to choose, and the environment, among other things.

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We haven’t been as obsessively tracking Helix’s growth progress, like we did Mojo’s (10 wks, 11 wks, 12 wks, 13 wks, 14 wks, 15 wks, 4 mo, 5 mo, bonus, 6 mo, 7 mo, bonus, 8 mo, 1 1/2 yrs).  In part that’s probably due to the fact that he’s our second puppy.  Mostly it’s probably due to the fact that I haven’t been able to lift anything heavier than 10 lbs. since we got him and he weighed more than that when we got him…  In any case, R weighed him and we team-measured him the other day and I thought I’d share the results compared to Mojo and Jezabelle. He’s right where we thought he’d be, about as heavy as Mojo, but much taller.

Here he is, on my lap. He weighs 37 lbs. now, but I think he was a few lbs. lighter in this picture. He’ll be 6 months old on the 13th. We’re getting him neutered on the 17th. There are MANY more pictures on flickr here.

Here’s Mojo on my lap for comparison, now age 2, weighing about 63 lbs. This was taken a few months ago when my back was feeling a little bit better.

And here’s a picture of Siena, in case anyone wasn’t aware of who our third current dog is. She’s about 7 or 8. We don’t really know how old she is because she was rescued with really messed up teeth, and that’s usually how a vet tells a dog’s age. I think she’s had 5 or 7 teeth extracted by now. She still protectively guards her food and is able to eat an entire pig ear, leaving no scraps behind. Once when I was sick, I made myself some chicken soup and didn’t put the lid on the recycling very well; she got into it and bit through the tin can, crushing it. She was trying to eat a tin can. NOT aluminum, I’m talking a hefty soup can. She’s hardcore. I think that’s how she screwed up her teeth. (Parenthetical blog contest: If you can correctly identify the objects in the foreground of this photograph, I will send you one free pattern pdf of your choice! Just send an email to thefiend AT fiberfiend DOT com by Friday September 19th. I’ll announce any winners on the 20th.) Anyhow, back to Helix’s growth progress…

As you can see from the chart, Helix is between Jezabelle and Mojo in height. (As always, click for larger versions.)

He is about equal to Mojo in length.

And he is slightly heavier than Mojo in weight.

One other piece of big Helix news is that we sheared him for his puppy coat! Hence the blog title. And GET THIS! It was Randall’s idea!!! He did all the work!

So, someday when I’m feeling better, I’ll be able to spin it up into some yummy yarn…

And then knit something SUPER soft!
Most of it is pretty short, but there’s quite a bit that’s between 2-3 inches.

In other Helix news, a few weeks ago, he decided he needed more headroom or something, so he tipped his crate over onto its side, after we had gone to bed. He made quite a racket doing so… It was after we moved the crates into the laundry room and put his on top of the access to underneath the house. His crate was mostly up on a ledge, but about 6 inches of it was hanging off the ledge, and somehow he managed to pivot the crate over the overhang and onto its side. There are now bricks under that 6 inches so there’s a flat surface underneath the entire bottom of his crate and he can’t do it again…

I will leave you with 2 more images of Helix with his snuggle buddy. I was told by the breeder and our obedience trainer that giving him a stuffed animal would help his separation anxiety. I’m not sure it really helps the whining, but he seems to like it…

Unfortunately, Mojo got ahold of it last week (read: broke into Helix’s crate and stole it) and tore its eye out, so I have to sew it up again. Yes, again. He bit a hole in its rump a few months ago, but I sewed that up pretty quickly. We try to keep it locked in Helix’s crate. The problem with that is that Mojo can open Helix’s crate, which is exactly what he did this most recent time.

In other news, I updated my About the Fiend page, as it was quite outdated.

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I knit up this quick Ribbed Baby Hat for a friend of mine who should have had a baby about a week ago and I wrote up the pattern for anyone who’s interested.   You can download it as a pdf directly from my website here or as a free Ravelry download here.  Thanks to Anabel for letting me use her adorable little model!

I also knit up this matching sweater for said baby.  I should find out if the baby has been born yet and if it’s a boy or a girl… =)

In other news, if it’s not obvious, I would love to have any of the local knitters stop by for a chat and/or a some knitting time as I’m getting quite bored of spending all my time alone.  You can just stop by for 15 minutes or 2 hours, whatever you have time for… R hasn’t been the best of company of late.  He’s pretty sick of me being grumpy.  It’s hard not to be, at the level of pain I’m in.  I don’t feel bad asking him to get me things all the time (put this ice pack in the freezer & get me a new one, fill up my glass of water so I can take the rest of my meds, feed me).  I mean, isn’t that what he’s there for?  To take care of me when I’m ill?  I promise not to be grumpy or ask you guys to wait on me hand and foot if any of you come over though, because it would just be so nice to see a fresh face!  Oh, but if any of you are allergic to dogs, you might want to stay at home.  Manit only kept Siena for 3 weeks, so there’s some dog hair on the floor, but not NEARLY as much now since we’re brushing her with the FURminator (we have the large deShedding tool – $60 at PetSmart, but TOTALLY worth it), thanks to Rachel!

More knitting news soon!

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last night that I was in so much pain I couldn’t concentrate enough to walk.  This past weekend my husband and I took the dogs to the dog park.  I didn’t handle any of them, I just sat in the car and stood in the park for 20 minutes and sat in the car and came home and sat in my IKEA chair.  It was too much, though, combined with standing in the yard for 15 minutes listening to him explain how he was going to tear out some plants and replace them with others and put up fencing to keep the dogs away from them later in the day.  The pain is back.  I saw my doctor again yesterday and we decided he’s going to perform nerve blocks (more details) on the affected joints next Wednesday.  I don’t recall if I mentioned I’m getting a cervical neurotomy (or three) this Friday at 5pm.  If the nerve blocks go well, I’ll get lumbar neurotomies on those facet joints as well, probably 3 weeks later.  It’s a lot of outpatient injections/minor surgery.  And a lot of pain.  AND I keep saying stupid things because I’m taking too much of this migraine preventative Topamax/Dopamax CRAP, but it makes me not have migraines every day, except I’ve had migraines the past 2 days.  I keep mixing up words, saying the wrong words for things, and getting confused about things and it’s so frustrating.  I know it’s the drugs.  As soon as I get the cervical neurotomy I should be able to decrease my dosage.  I just thought I would be able to go back to work yesterday, and my doctor gave me a piece of paper that said estimated return to work: October 1.  When I left work mid-July, my other doctor told me to take 2 weeks off…

I have been doing some knitting… nothing I can share, unfortunately.  I do have some stuff I did a while back that I didn’t share that I should share though, so I’ll try to get to that soon!  And I bought Wendy Bernard’s book Custom Knits, which I’d like to review in an upcoming post, so stay tuned!

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