Mossy Cottage Knits

Rock-a-bye, Baby......NOT!

I recently developed permanent tinnitus (ringing) in my right ear. I would describe the sound as sharp fingernails being scraped along an infinitely long chalkboard. I went through a horrible period of depression (what K and I referred to as “My Dark Place”), fueled by weeks of little sleep and the inability to accept that the condition was permanent. To help myself sleep, I bought a little machine (dubbed “R2D2”) which theoretically makes soothing natural noises to lull you to sleep. My report: The three “running water” sounds make you want to pee right then and there, without the benefit of a toilet; the “white noise” option sounds like someone is running a vacuum cleaner on the floor above you (uh, yeah, very soothing); and the “wind” option gives you nightmares. Rather than use the sound of a warm breeze whispering gently through tender new spring leaves, they used the wind sound from a horror film, that creepy, tormented, hollow, rising and falling moaning sound. I say the only noise they left out is the one that sounds like sharp fingernails being scraped along an infinitely long chalkboard.

(Epilogue: I am no longer in My Dark Place. And, to my utter astonishment, I now fall asleep to the vacuum cleaner sound. Who knew?)

Knitting Knews
If you want to drive yourself crazy, try doing some “knitting math” on a project. To torture myself, I applied knitting math to a pair of Lorna’s Laces socks I knitted last month, using 72 stitches and a checkerboard lace pattern. The results: For every checkerboard repeat I did, I knit 1008 stitches (14 rounds x 72 stitches). And there were 11 repeats of the checkerboard pattern which makes a minimum of 11,088 stitches, not including the cuff and toe. So, for a pair of socks, I knit at least 22,176 stitches. My wrist and elbow just ache at the thought. And I wasted time doing these calculations why?

Dye Garden Dyegest – A Dyegression
For K's birthday, I gave her a gecko stepping stone mold from this site. When I read the 4-page, double-sided, 8-point-type instructions that came with the mold, I was thoroughly taken aback, but K attacked this project with gusto, regardless of the fact that it requires cement, cement dye, muriatic acid, some mysterious liquid called a releasing agent, and 4 days to complete one gecko.

Here is a picture of the mold:

Here is a picture of the mold filled with concrete with some red concrete dye in it or, as K calls it, a gecko mud pie:

And, ta-da! Here is a picture of three geckos, all of varying colors, interlocked together. The one in the lower left corner is the one shown in the "mud pie" picture. I post this picture especially for my sister in San Diego who found the gecko stone link in the first place! Hi, sistah!

Posted by Ryan at May 9, 2003 09:08 AM