After the Fall

Just before the snow started falling yesterday, hubby and I went to the Sleep Doctor. Now, while Mister is having trouble with his sleep for about the last year, we didn’t see the Sleep Doctor for his inability to sleep—this is where we bought our bed and pillows.

You see, I must have misunderstood what happened to his pillow—in fact, the dog didn’t chew it up—the thing fell apart on it’s own. So it WAS defective, and even though we purchased it sometime back in 2005, the store took it back and gave him another pillow.

So I returned the one I purchased him for Christmas for a refund. Now I have to think of another present…ouch. Or maybe not…since he only purchased coffee for my Christmas present and forgot to get me anything for my birthday entirely. Yes, I am still fuming about that one.

So instead I made him a hat—well, the hat was intended for me, but since I still have lots of leftover yarn, I can still make one for me with no trouble, so I just gave him this one. He poses well for the camera don’t you think?

Always the joker! No, there wasn’t anything on my feet at the time other than a pair of store-bought white socks. Yes, I did have clothing on.

He’s a good looking fellow—when he’s not being the goofy nut he can be—but I like his goofiness.

The hat matches his eyes!

I wish he didn’t remind me of Captain Kangaroo with that expression, though. Kind of weird, isn’t he?

I made the hat out of black and Camouflage Bernat worsted. The hat is just a simple 100 stitch 2x2 rib for about 25 rows in black, then 25 rows in Camo. Then I started doing 2 rows of black (in which I decreased a stitch every 9th stitch, IOW, I count to 8, then knit 9 & 10 together in the first row), then 4 rows of the camo. As the hat got smaller, I transferred stitches to dpns. When I had the length I wanted, I decreased every other stitch by sl1, k1, psso then knit 1 row even, then decreased again (by now, I’m knitting just with black). I had 13 stitches at the end, and I cut my yarn and passed it through the loops to draw the hat up into a small circle at the top.

To make the tassel, I wrapped the camo around a porcelain coaster, tied the yarn around the top, cut the tassel off the coaster, and then wrapped the tassel near where the yarn was tied to make a ball. Then I passed the tied threads through to the inside of the hat and tied it there, leaving long strings (in case something came undone). DONE! Hats are so easy, it just seems to take forever to make them.

So after giving this to my hubby I decided that I needed to get on the work of knitting up the beater covers in the green and nylon glow in the dark yarn. I’ve been putting this off a bit, because I wasn’t sure how nice a knit that nylon would be to knit. I was also extremely disappointed in the eyelash yarn, because there isn’t really much “eyelash” to it….see here

This is the eyelash.

This is the glow in the dark nylon.


Together, they make this—the actual beater cover, and I have three of them done. I need to make 3 more. They are a quick knit, but the nylon is pretty rough on the hands.


All they are is 21 stitches, knit 15 rows, with both strands. Sew up the short ends, running stitch through the stitches at one end, tie off and they are done. Stick them on top of a beater (a tenor stick), and do another running stitch at the bottom, leaving a bit longer ends to tie off in a bow so you can get them undone when you need to put them away. These are for when the pipe band does their pub crawl on St. Patrick’s Day. They glow in the dark, so when it’s dark, and the tenor drummers are swinging their sticks in the air, it will give off a really cool effect.

The snare drummers (Ray and I) painted our sticks with glow in the dark paint, which peeled off with use, and I would have much preferred to use lighted sticks that lit up every time you hit the drum head. Yes, there really is such an item! Unfortunately, the company couldn’t make them last year because they couldn’t get the little LED that does the lighting, and so they ran out of stock. I’m not sure that they’re even making them anymore. I’d sure like to get my hands on some. Even if they only worked for one performance, they would probably be worth having.

So I’m drinking cold coffee, thinking about what my plans are for the day. I could certainly get the last 3 of those beater covers done—I could start another hat! I could work on getting the crud out of the bedroom in the basement and putting up a blanket to cover the windows...because hubby is starting to sound like his son is going to move in with us.

Oh, let’s not go there. The last time his son moved in with us, we had all sorts of difficulty—the final straw was when I was moderating a chat room, and he wanted to call his mother. It was a battle of wills at that point and he moved out soon after. I’m not about to go through that sort of situation AGAIN. He’ll just have to make do with his own cell phone, which may not work so well because we live in BFE, and even my SPRINT and Verizon phones didn’t pick up well here.

I tried a broadband card—without much success. If I want a faster internet connection that doesn’t tie up the telephone, I need to get a connection to satellite Direct TV—but that costs a lot more money than I’m prepared to spend…so I have dialup, a good internet provider who is local, and lots of support if I should ever need it (and thank heavens I’ve not needed it—EVER).

Of course, my step son has done a little “growing” in the last 6 years. He’s no longer a teenager, and has been on his own for a while-traveled and lived in California for a while with friends, so perhaps he has learned a thing or three. A girl can hope, right?

Presently, hubby and step son are on the phone, talking about setting up the computer with Ethernet to play games together on the pc. I told hubby he needs a wireless router and both machines set up with wireless internet. I think my printer can also do wireless, and that would make it pretty cool. I know that my laptop can do wireless internet—but I’d have to get hold of my computer guru to work it all out. My old machine downstairs works on Cat5 cable—the really old style. I used to deal with the network, until we got a virus. Maybe having things connected to the internet isn’t so good an idea. It would be different if the server was DSL—but it’s dialup, and slow, even by my standards.

Today’s Tarot Card is the 9 of Wands entitled Recovery. I asked how things would work out if step son moves in—the answer sounds pretty positive, frankly. Release from a worrying situation. Be strong and don’t let anybody drag you down. Maybe we’ll find out that step son doesn’t really want to move in after all!!!! Yippee!

And on that positive note, I’ll close to go work on the other three tenor beaters.