First sock -- a little over half done.

One down and 2/3 done with the second -- but starting to get a bit nervous. Not a lot of yarn left at this point!!

A really close finish!!

By the time that I got to the toe, I was checking and re checking my yardage (or should I say footage!) hoping that I had enough to finish.  That little loop of yarn in the upper right corner is just about one yard of yarn.  I had another ball, but I really wanted to keep that one for something else and now I can!

Anyway, after some thought I decided Sweet Baboo could use a pair.  Off to Woolworks, found some fabulous yum yum yarn called Malabrigo which is pure Merino wool and superwash to boot.  I knit socks with two circular needles rather than 3 or 4 or 5 or whatever is needed for double points.  What’s nice about that is that you can stretch the sock in progress over the foot of the intended recipient.  I must have asked him to try the first one on 43 times.  Good natured as he is, there was no complaint.  He’s been down this road before and knows what he’ll get at the end.

There is nothing like being able to measure and re-measure a foot during knitting.  The fit is fabulous and if there’s any tightness or looseness anywhere,  it’s not a hardship to frog a few rows back and knit it correctly, rather than finding out at the end that there’s a problem.  These are like a second skin for him, plus the yarn is so smooth and itch-free. The colors aren’t even close, but he’s happy!

This pattern is a mishmash of several that I have, but mostly starts with Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles by Cat Bordhi.  Love her pattern, just kind of improved on it for these socks.  Plans are to add the pattern here.

Immediately, I started queuing up space and universe documentaries. Total heaven!!  LOVE those shows and in HD they’re even better. Maybe it’s because I was watching so many that a lot of what was being said actually stuck with me.

And this just boggles my mind.

When you look up at the night sky, you will see about 2,500 stars with the naked eye at any point anywhere on earth.  There are about 5800 to 8000 visible stars total. However, astronomers estimate that there are about 200 BILLION stars contained within our galaxy, The Milky Way.  This is an artist’s rendition , of course.  But still.  It’s a pretty spiral galaxy, isn’t it?

So, 200 or so billion stars in our galaxy, which is actually an average sized  galaxy.  Dwarf galaxies can have as little as 10 million or so stars, and gigantic mega monstrous galaxies can have as many as 10 trillion.

And how many galaxies are there? Conservative estimates are placed at between 100 and 200 billion.  Other estimates put it at around 500 billion.

And with these numbers in mind, a rough estimate of stars in the universe are set at 10 sextillion  and 1 septillion stars.  Lottsa stars.  Uber stars. More than we can ever count. Kinda makes you step back and think, doesn’t it?

I used Universe Today with all of their fabulous articles to assemble the facts that I’ve listed.  It’s a great resource for anything space or universe related.  I like to get lost in their pages — I never know where I’ll end up. (No pun intended!)

A little lady came into work today to make an appointment.  She could only give us her insurance ID numbers, because she didn’t have her insurance card and wasn’t able to get it because she has a restraining order against her husband.  She is essentially hiding out from him, because her address is the other side of the state, although she gave us an address from our part of the state that she said was safe. I sincerely hope that it is.  There were still bruises on her face and a cut on her upper lip.  And she was limping.  I shudder to think of what the rest of her looked like. Her glasses were of course a casualty of his latest drunken or drug induced rage.

This little lady weighed maybe 110 pounds.  Just the fact that she was able to extricate herself from an intolerable situation shows her strength and courage.  He, on the other hand, needs to have a particular part of his anatomy nailed to a barn floor with a rusty nail, and then handed a rusty spoon.  Then drop a match on the floor. He’ll have a choice to make.  Nuff said.

And I was complaining about a little Sweet Baboo clutter.    Shame on me.

Moral of the story — don’t blog when you’re overtired, it will surely come back and bite you on the ass.

The urge to accrue has passed. The only want I have now is to walk into a room and feel calm and peace — not feel like my heart wants to beat itself out of my chest.

So what’s the problem you ask?  Why am I whining?  Why aren’t I getting out the trash bags and having at it all?

Sweet Baboo.

He keeps bringing “stuff” in to the house but nothing leaves.  A human version of a Macafee antivirus program.  And for all their manliness and toughness, oh, those fragile egos to be tiptoed around!!

I understand his frugality and his love of getting something for nothing.  Case in point — he recently brought home 3 lamps and 2 end tables from a house giving these things away.  No matter that they go with nothing we own.  No matter that they don’t even go with each other!!!  He has this idea in his head that he will make them fit somewhere.  And of course they don’t.

So how do you on the one hand tell him that you appreciate his efforts but on the other hand,  for the luvvaGod get this crap out of our house?

This is the kind of thing that keeps me lying awake at 2:28 in the morning when I should be sleeping.

Pretty yarn,  isn’t it?  Thursday was a day from hell.  This is my version of a middle of the week margarita.  After feeling like I had been beaten up at work,  I had stopped at my LYS, Woolworks on my way home on Thursday and picked up a couple hanks of Malabrigo Rios.  Believe it or not, they are from the same dye lot (sort of)  but Jen & I unwound all the hanks and chose two that were somewhat close, without any lime highlights.  Aesthetically, I’m really the only one that cares about how close the shades are. This will be socks for Sweet Baboo, and he wouldn’t care if one sock was blue and one was orange.

Next was picking a pattern that would be different from the one that I’ve been making socks from for a couple of years now.  I love the pattern from Cat Bordhi (Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles, the very first pattern in the book, just a basic crew sock) but I thought I’d look for something else.  Well, that something else turned into a huge search (incredible how many patterns there are out there) but I didn’t want anything too complicated.  Then I found this pattern Quick Knit Socks and it was a free pattern — two of my very favorite things!!  Check out Chris’ site, Chris Knits in Niagara — lots of really cool knitting patterns.

Anyway —  I don’t do dpn’s, so I’ll do a little shuck and jive with the pattern so that I can use my two circular needles.  Nothing like creating something to clear out the cobwebs and drive away the poor little me’s!!!

And a brand new, never been bitten Bic pen.  Ahhhhhh………..

The reason being, I got an idea in my head that journaling would be good for my soul, or something like that.  At the very least, I could write down the randomness that invades my brain some nights that keep me from sleeping.  I like the idea of no one knowing what I’m writing, (mwah-ah-ah-hah) not that I have such fabulous secrets to keep to myself. I must write myself a note to make a list of promising secrets that I could write about.

But really, am I the only person in the world that loves, I mean really LOVES a brand new notebook and a brand new pen, to the point that it’s hard to make myself begin writing in it?  I look at it, all nice and new and shiny (the edges of both notebooks/journals are shiny gold, maybe that’s what makes them journals! ) and the fabulous possibilities of what I could write, and how extraordinarily neatly I could write with that new, unbitten Bic pen, paralyzes me.

I’ve walked past them for three days now — just giving them a passing glance, don’t want them to think they’ve got the upper hand.  But even now, I can hear them taunting me from my craft room.

But in spite of all my grand ideas and literary dreams,  I’ll probably use them for grocery lists and keeping track of stitches when I’m knitting, or just notes to remind myself of something I’ll probably forget anyway.  Or some such like.

But, oh the possibilities………

As soon as that thought went through my brain, I heard an old Biddy who was walking out as I was walking in  say to the girls, “I was going to give you a dollar but you said Happy Holidays to me instead of Merry Christmas so now I’m not going to.”  The two girls looked at each other in disbelief; I looked at the old Biddy and said, “Seriously?  You think they can read minds?”  The Biddy then shot me a murderous look and kept on going. Everybody in the area stopped talking and turned to look.  The girls looked mortified.

(Why, yes, as a matter of fact, I do take extreme exception to any kind of bullying.  I’m normally pretty placid until something like this happens, then my mama bear rears her head.)

So, she implies that she’s a Christian by rejecting the Happy Holidays greeting, that Merry Christmas is what she will accept and no other. Is she doing this because she is truly offended that Merry Christmas has been replaced by Happy Holidays? Does she think the girls are implying that she is of a religion other than Christian?  Does she not have a dollar in her pocket to give them?

Well, I thought a good Christian was supposed to be tolerant of other religions, which is what Happy Holidays is all about.  Perhaps she is one of those that wears her religion on her arm for all to see, but inside she considers herself such a good church-going person that she doesn’t have to adhere to Christian teachings.

I know people who are devoted to their religion and follow the doctrine in every aspect of their lives.  I also know people who aren’t fans of organized religion. Both are kind, tolerant and accepting of others.

If The Biddy truly felt that Happy Holidays was a personal affront, she could have acknowledged it with her own “Merry Christmas” just to prove her point and then been on her way. She could have worn a button that is prevalent in our area this year that says, “It’s okay to say Merry Christmas to me.” Instead, she chose to be a Grinch to two kids that were volunteering for a charity.  She certainly gave them a lesson about the joys of volunteering, didn’t she?  I hope this doesn’t turn them off from volunteering again.

Happy Holidays to me is the best way we have to acknowledge that there are several different celebrations going on at this time of year.  It’s not a definitive solution, but we live in a very imperfect world.  Pleasing everybody may not be possible, but trying to get along with everybody should be. Practice being kind.  If being kind isn’t an option, then being still should be. Taking a stand on every little thing is just too exhausting.  Save your energy for the things that really matter.

Our first stop was Arlington National Cemetery.  In spite of the heat and humidity, there were throngs of people waiting to experience the Cemetery.  We only had about an hour and a half to see as much as we could, which really isn’t very long.  I would think that at the very least, one full day should be devoted to Arlington. We took a trolley tour that hit the highlights, but you only had time to take a couple quick pics and then hop back on the trolley.  You see pictures of  Arlington on TV or in books or magazines, but you need to see it in person to appreciate it.

Arlington National Cemetery had very humble beginnings.  During and after the Civil War, cemeteries were  burying more and more soldiers and were quickly running out of room. In addition,  there were many families that were too poor to have their loved one shipped home. As a last resort, they started burying soldiers at Arlington.

Arlington National Cemetery encompasses 612 acres.  As of May 2011, there were over 300,000 interred in the cemetery.  There are 27 burials per day, on average.  While we were there, we heard 3 different 21 gun salutes and saw a very large funeral  procession; six horses pulling a black artillery caisson, upon which a flag draped casket had been placed, followed by a riderless horse, which I believe is reserved for officers above colonel. The rhythmic “clip clopping” of the horses hooves as they pulled the caisson echoed on the pavement as a reminder that this is a solemn and sacred place. Visitors are asked to please be quiet and respectful if you happen upon a procession such as this and I can’t imagine anybody doing anything else.   The men and horses who train constantly for this duty are members of “The Old Guard“, also known as the Caisson platoon of the 3rd United States Infantry.

I found it interesting that the headstones that come to mind when you think of Arlington are not the only markers in the cemetery.  At the family’s expense, a personalized marker can be placed on their loved one’s grave.

BTW, the house in the far background is the Arlington House, owned by Robert E. Lee and his wife Mary.

President John F Kennedy‘s slate grave marker and Eternal Flame.  Jackie’s marker is just to the right of the President’s.  There is also a slate marker where two Kennedy infants are buried.

Senator Robert F Kennedy‘s plain cross marker.  I remember JFK’s assassination but I was in 4th grade when it happened.  RFK’s assassination made a bigger impact on me, I was in 8th grade and more aware of the world around me.

The Columbia was another “where were you when it happened” event.  I was on my way from work, about 1:00 in the afternoon to pick up Jodie at school because she was ill and I heard it on the car radio.  I was so stunned that this could happen, it was quite a few seconds before I remembered that I was driving on an interstate highway and needed to pay attention to what I was doing.

I searched for an aerial photo of Arlington Cemetery to show just how large it is.  No luck, but I did find this file photo showing the density of the markers.  Seeing and reading the names on the stones really brought home the fact that these are real veterans that are buried here.  For some reason, I had it in my head that the stones were plain. Duh.

A visit to Arlington should leave you with overwhelming feelings of respect, horror at the incredible loss of life, empathy for the families that lost these loved ones, and gratitude for the ultimate sacrifice that these heroes gave. At the very least, feelings of alternating sorrow and pride should be bubbling up inside.  I can’t imagine anybody leaving any other way.

Finally, our bus trip to DC was one day traveling down, one day sightseeing, and one day traveling back.  Sincerely, you need at least 4 or 5 days to see everything, and even then there will be things that you will miss.  We enjoyed it but would love to go back again with a laundry list of other things we’d like to do.

Museums and monuments are on deck!!

I’ve started knitting again — it was just too hot this summer in Connecticut to even just hold yarn, let alone make it in to something.  I have to hand it to diehard knitters — maybe it’s the hot flashes but I don’t find any satisfaction knitting in 90 degree weather.  It’s going to be socks all around for all 3 grands this year.  I’ve got one sock almost done but my camera is in the shop (Yes, my brand new, just bought it in Niagara Falls camera that took the place of my old camera that Ed and I dropped on Table Rock in Niagara Falls!! )  At any rate, it should be back soon and I’ll have lots of pictures to post then, of both the Falls and kiddo socks!!

And as I like to say to everybody I meet, if you’ve never been to Niagara Falls, get yourself a passport and by all means GO!!  All the television shows and documentaries do not do it justice.

More later.  I promise.