Busy Busy Busy

(as indicated by the title, there's a lot in this post)

This week is supposed to be my winter break, but as I mentioned before, I was asked to continue working to bring three boys back and forth to their school for other services. One of my new best friends is also driving for that school, but she has enough kids to need an actual baby bus and drives a longer route to drop them all off.

For some reason, I feel like I've been really busy. I get up at the same time in the morning, but then the kids need to be picked up at one o'clock, instead of the usual three o'clock for my high school. Then I get home earlier, but I think my body is programmed to be sleepy a certain amount of time after I get there. I've been ready to drop at an obscenely early six o'clock or so. Weird, and not really a good thing.


I've also been occupied with a few artsy endeavors. Over the weekend I decided that I was sick of not doing anything with my lovely bright green yarn. I bought the yarn for $5.60 from this really neat little yarn shop at the end of Summers Lane where both the bus shop and the high school I service are located. It's called Come Yarn Over (personally I think they could use some webpage help). I've met two wonderful ladies there, one who actually makes yarn, and the other I think is the owner. Oh gosh, for the life of me I cannot remember either of their names! I thought I had them memorized by now... bad me.

Anyway, the owner lady offered to teach me to knit if I wanted to buy some yarn. She normally charges only a little bit more for a formal class, so I thought it was a great deal. I chose green yarn (of course!). She sat down with me and taught me to cast on, knit, purl, and identify twisted stitches. She seemed very impressed that I caught on quickly, and the spinning lady told me she was jealous because I knit continental style. In any case, I left very happy with a bundle of yarn and two needles sticking out from the center.

My ears were starting to get cold at that point from the chilly fall weather, so for my first practice project I knit half of some helmet earwarmers.

As you can see on this one, I accidentally figured out how to do twisted knitting, which is why the part on the left looks funky. Actually, I like the effect. However, I quickly got bored with that project for a few reasons. I have to sew the two halves together and then would still have to knit two more triangles to make a strap sandwich for my other ear. Also, I wasn't sure these would solve my cold ear issue, as my new Kryptonics helmet seems like the straps are held further away from my face- there would still be a gap for wind to get in. So I abandoned knitting for a while...

I have another project in the sewing department which has been a few months in the making. Or planning, rather- I haven't even begun actual construction yet! The project is an adaptation of a special vest that one of our friends owns, a Scottevest. The thing has maybe a billion pockets (slight exaggeration) and Jamie would like a jacket version with sleeves. Not having a pattern to use, I needed to make my own. I borrowed his vest and sort of drew a diagram with most of the important aspects of it noted. Our friend is also considerably smaller, so I've had to take those sketches and draw them on this pattern in order to enlarge it. Considering the complexity of this garment, it's not easy! This has to be the most complicated project I've attempted. Even the couch slipcover was easy compared to the mind-boggle of how everything needs to fit together on this jacket. Sometimes I get in a groove and things just click, and then others it's like I'm trying to do math homework with fatigue clouding my mind, making everything into a gigantic impossible puzzle. However, slowly I'm figuring things out. Now I am at the point where I am taping computer paper together to form a layered paper version- to make sure everything seems right as well as to give me pattern pieces. Oi...

It's no wonder with that colossal task that I wanted something else easy to do for a while, and that green yarn kept catching my eye. I found a few videos on Youtube that made averything seem so simple, I decided to jump in to make my first sock, which is the entire reason I wanted to learn to knit in the first place. This playlist is what I followed.

Casting on.

Gone circular with some round of ribbing done. 

Yes, I know it's actually a triangle. They call it circular, or knitting in the round because I just knit around and around, instead of making flat fabric with edges that have to then be sewn together.

Ribbed cuff done, and working on the leg of the sock.

Heel flap.

Heel turn done.

Gusset

Almost ready for toe decreases!

My sock is too large, obviously. The lady in the video was using worsted weight yarn (I think of it as regular yarn, it's like mine) and cast on 32 stitches. I thought that was just to knit a small sock for teaching purposes, and she had mentioned that most people would have 64 stitches. I also knitted a pseudo gauge swatch (usually a 4inch by 4 inch square used to see how many stitches you can expect to get per inch and how many rows on the size needles you use- I only knit a two inch section and several rows) and came up with 6 stitches per inch. Somewhere along the way I measured my leg and thought 10 inches around would be good, so 64 stitches seemed perfectly reasonable to me at the time. 

So I'm making a cozy slipper sock. Whatever. It's just for practice anyway, and I may or may not get more yarn to do a second matching one. I played around with enough of my yarn before this sock that I doubt I have enough here to make a pair. Now, I have gotten down to where I can start toe decreases, but I lost a stitch and have no idea how to fix it. I unraveled a bunch of rows, thinking I would just pick everything up and keep going, but then I lost one of those stitches and decided to give up for the time being and go to bed before I stabbed something in frustration.

Lastly, I have finally had my first casualty from riding my bike through the winter. There was a thin coating of little pellet-looking snow, a dusting really. I had no trouble going to work, but on the way home maybe I was going too fast, or the cars had gotten that area more melted by going over it. 

I tried to turn a corner to the right and quickly realized that my bike was slipping sideways to the left out from under me. I clearly heard myself let out a comical-sounding "oooh!". I put out my right leg to try and catch myself, which was a useless gesture because I was also still moving forward. I can't remember if I tried to brake or not. I ended up sort of sprawling out beside the curb as Zoomie and I both continued falling anyway. I hit my right knee and the bike sort of tangled with me on my left ( I think it sort of ran me over). I scurried up while making sure my knee was only merely banged (I didn't even rip my favorite jeans, yay!), picked up my water bottle, hanky, and purse, straightened my handlebars, and got back on to continue pedaling home.

I wasn't embarrassed at all, only sort of kicking myself mentally for not being more careful, and glad that I hadn't hurt my bike more than a crooked handlebar. I could have smashed the derailleur or something. I did have to put the bungee back in it's proper place holding up my tail light. I guess the crate shifting messed it up, the bungee keeps my light in the right spot under the crate.

You had hardly even see the discoloration that I'm not even going to call a "bruise".

Thank goodness today is Thursday and tomorrow is considered a holiday. I'm going to sleep in.

If you have been super busy lately with work, shopping or other activities, feel free to leave a comment and share!

Almost there!

Winter break is only 4 days away, now. While the holiday spirits have been rising, the temperature has started dropping. More Christmas lights twinkle. And traffic is horrendous, in my opinion.

The canal finally froze.

This morning is the new record (for school days anyway, I'm not getting up at 5am to check temps on my days off) so far at 12F. The truck I use now has a digital readout that went from 10 to 14 on my trip out to get the boys this morning. They ride with me in the truck to the bus, ride the bus on my regular route, and then  I drop them off at their school right on time after I leave the high school. I'm getting an extra hour per day at least until Christmas. After that I'll continue unless whatever situation that gave me this extra duty is resolved. I've also gotten a couple of elementary routes Friday and yesterday, so those will help pad out the next paycheck. I may not even notice the two weeks of vacation as far as income goes.

I wore my snow pants this morning. I'm numb at 17F, no way am I letting the wind get to my legs at 10, ok? My windbreaker did fine with a long-sleeved shirt and my silkies. I didn't particularly like how the cold touched me without something like a sweater to keep the wind-chilled nylon away, but then I got hot and that concern disappeared. I had wrapped my scarf over my head like a bonnet so it would cover my ears and then around my neck went the rest. I had a little bit of it pulled up to cover my chin. This actually worked really well, until I warmed up and couldn't find my simple knot to loosen it from my neck. But I was having other issues to worry about, so I just stayed hot.

Apparently, at 10 degrees, the Aimee is willing but the Zoomie is not. It was surprisingly hard to pedal! I felt like I accidentally attached the trailer full of recycling to the bike. I couldn't go above 2nd gear without having to work really hard, and even 2 was a pretty good effort to keep going. 

I've heard that at really low temperatures the grease in the bike will stiffen up. Maybe I've found the temperature limit at which that happens? It's the only real scenario I can come up with to explain why I suddenly have to muscle myself to work like it was the first day back in September. I'm desperately hoping that I don't have to do that again tomorrow morning. Tig says that January and February are the coldest months, though.

Well, I still won't give up. Zoomie will have to get me to work the rest of this week and then to other interesting places on my vacation. Like the library. Maybe a park. Zoomie just HAS to show off its new bow, too. If you had a bow like this, wouldn't you want everyone to see it too?

This plastic bow was a casualty of what seems to be pretty rare winter wind here. It was run over in the road, I taped it back together and voila! Christmas bike decoration. Whoo!

Are you decorating your house/bike/self/other things? Leave a comment and share with me!

Snowflake Parade

I found out this morning from another driver that tonight was the winter parade for Klamath Falls. Having meant to attend the winter choir concert (it was free) but not feeling up to it due to my cold, I was glad to find out I hadn't missed this fun opportunity. So I sent a text message at 6:23am to my roommate best friend Tig who I knew would be getting up soon. She left the car seat at home so I could take her daughter Marty and meet her downtown where she works. After some initial bummed feeling on my part due to both our boys not wanting to attend, we made a fun night out of it by ourselves anyway.

I attempted to document the parade, but I have no idea how to work my camera anymore, so pardon the bad photos.

This is me. You can't see them like I hoped, but I have on really cute green sparkly Christmas tree earrings. The people behind me made it difficult to see very far down the road.

I was mostly interested in two things- buses and bikes. The pictures of everything else are so bad they aren't worth sharing. Bikes first:

I tried valiantly to get pictures of the bicycle officers. They gave me plenty of opportunity, but I lack the skill.

Beware the pedaling yeti!!

And now buses:

Best decorated.

I wish MY bus was pink! I vote that be the new county color.

Maybe next year I will ask that we get a "float" to represent the student transportation department. I'll put people on the roof, though. Always wanted to stick my head out of a roof hatch!

And a couple other cool pictures.

Ghosts!

These dresses were so gorgeous.

The parade ended rather suddenly at 96 floats. There were two police cars and then lots of traffic behind them, so it wasn't hard to tell. We walked back to our cars, finding a garbage can along the way. My feet were cold the entire time and by that point them and my fingers were numb. I need better shoes.

Traffic was of course slow. I drove 10 miles per hour nearly the whole way home- I could have beaten me on a bike! But I had a great time and I'll go again next year. Marty has a few lollipops and candy canes.

Family Bike Ride!

Yesterday was a great Sunday.

My friend and roommate wanted to go bike riding, but I'm the only other person with a bike right now. I've wanted other people to ride with for a while now. Jamie has a bike borrowed from a friend also, the bike that makes me paranoid of thieves. My roommate wanted the bike ride to be a family deal, so that meant going to the store to get him a bicycle, and them all some helmets.

We had a great time picking out helmets for their little daughter and feeding her a cheeseburger and chasing her around the aisles while a great employee named Eric searched for the specific bicycle we were asking about- the Next Parowan which had gone on super-sale for Black Friday. As I might have mentioned earlier, we were in Wal-Mart to try and get a Kinnect on that busy shopping day (they got a better deal later on anyway, so ha!) and I knew those bikes had been available, but were never even assembled at all. Eric went and found keys to an out-of-the-way shed and located the bike we wanted. He brought us a girl version. Bright pink. We sent the poor guy back to relocate keys and dig through the stuff to find the nice white male version for us.

Bike box, helmets, and child in tow, we found a price scanner on the way to checkout. The price was still the $50 discounted Black Friday price! (We were requesting this particular bike because it was still listed as the cheapest one available at $60, our next option was $100.) We debated only very shortly, and then sent another great employee, Craig, to track down poor Eric before he left for lunch to get us one last bicycle for Jamie. We figure we'll pay our roommate back in small installments as we have extra each month from bill-paying.

Craig, who had been headed way on over to pet food when we interrupted, found us again later then hauling two bike boxes awkwardly through the store with armloads of baby and stuff. He grabbed a spare merchandise cart for us and helped get the boxes in there, then followed us to checkout where the lady had a gun to laser beam the bar codes for us.

Bike rack nearly useless, the boxes got perched into the trunk and tied in with the lower rack straps. Homeward!

We got home just find and unloaded everything, then started assembly. These bikes were packed better than my Schwinn, so had no scratches or anything at all, but they weren't nearly as far along in the assembly process. Brakes needed adjusting, derailleurs didn't cooperate, generally frustrating things. Poor Grunt saw us all with bikes being fiddled with and the trailer coming out and even though he disliked it very much when I tried to get him in the trailer once, he knew we would be leaving and he wanted to go very much.

Finally we had things pretty well together, I had my water bottle and extra bike cable lock plus some washrags if anyone needed hankies (not sharing, thankyouverymuch). The boys had match brand new bikes, I had mine and our roommate had hers minus the gel cushion which she graciously gave to her husband. Little Marty was NOT happy in her trailer chariot. She had tried to take a nap on the way to Wal-Mart and woke up when we arrived, so crankiness was expected, but still not pleasant. Finally she fell asleep in the trailer as we pedaled. We should get her a neck pillow, I think.

We had to stop several times, but I didn't expect a flawless first try. One of the new bikes gave our roommate's husband a hard time. The tire had inflated not fully seated on the rim so after a while, it bulged out. We noticed this during the first stop which had actually been to allow him a rest. So I got my nifty little frame pump (thanks dad!) which lives attached to my seat post between it and the rear fender on my awesome bike (thanks mom!) and passably fixed the tire with Jamie's help. The front wheel also had become untrue very slightly due to the weight of a rider and probably the fact that really cheap bikes usually don't have great wheels with even spoke tension anyway.

A little after that, we stopped because that bike was not shifting properly on the front cassette. It turns out the derailleur is bent and gets stuck on the little plastic ring that sort of serves as a chain guard outside the biggest cog. We talked about various things I learned about pedaling cadence (pedal easy and faster, not slowly trying to muscle the bike forward) that might be why he was tiring out quicker. That the front cog should sort of stay put while the rear one went up and down to make pedaling easier. He had sort of lost patience at that point, or maybe pain tolerance, and he walked the rest of the way to our destination- Black Bear restaurant.

We got all locked up against the fence behind the restaurant because I hadn't seen that there was a nice whole parking spot corralled off with railings for the paper dispensers. We know for next time that we get preferred parking, whoo. I'm proud of my cable lock for being able to stretch through TWO bicycles wheel-to-wheel.

Black Bear might be my favorite restaurant here. They have monstrous portions for very reasonable prices, and a great variety of food, though breakfast is still my favorite meal. Plus, how can you not smile at such a lovely themed place? They love bears and there are statues and pictures and paw marks everywhere.

We ate and then sent Mr. roommate across the street with his bike and a lock to pick up some things at the grocery store while the rest of us rode home. We unpacked everyone and then drove to get him and the few groceries on the way to a yummy dinner at their parent's house and some card-playing.

All in all, I'm very happy with our first big bike ride. It wasn't the greatest, and we had some troubles, but we did make it, and I had a great time. A bike exchange at Wal-Mart and a different bike seat should solve things nicely. Soon we'll go on bike rides so often that it will be routine and I'll have other topics to get excited and write about!

One Week Down, Two To Go

Technically this should be posted tomorrow, but close enough.

We had a second Thanksgiving Sunday, which was to make up for the Bonanza folks being sick. I'm not sure they were sick stomache-wise, as they ate lots more than I would have thought possible recovering from that. The second fried turkey was just as heavenly as the first, and the sweet potatoes, while mushier this time, were also just as awesome. I toasted little marshmallows on fork tines over the wood stove outside that was serving as a heat source for Jamie on fryer-watch. And then I forgot the fork was hot and burned my tongue attempting to get the rest of the marshmallow goo off it. Dummy!

We poked around through the stuff out there, and I found some thin #2 knitting needles wrapped in a cloth calendar or 1970. We'll likely work on helping them organize the clutter, maybe get some free stuff, and surely have a lot of fun getting dusty discovering old antique things. Jamie may be ab;e to exchange labor for a truck, if he wants it. They also used to run a ceramics shop and have molds and a kiln that if we were interested in using, we could start a business with. It's all very exciting.

I got an addition to my school bus route, coming back from the break. I now get up 30 minutes earlier to get a couple boys from Keno (15 minutes one-way) before I run my regular route. I drive a truck to go get them, then they ride my big bus with me, and after I drop off the high school kids I take them to their school. On Thursdays I don't have them, but a girl just a little further down the road, and she goes to the high school with the rest. I'm starting to miss the extra half-hour right at the moment, but really there isn't much difference in my day. I still pedal to work in the dark, but I'm wide awake and happy when I get there.

I've been asking around to try and get Jamie a regular bike that can be used without worries. I'm paranoid that if we take our friend's expensive bike somewhere, it will get stolen. So far we haven't gone anywhere together, and that's my reason why. So I put an ad on craigslist, a thread on the bike forums, and a sticky note on my mailbox at work for a free or very cheap bicycle. A coworker brought me a girl's mountain bike, but she wanted much more than expected for it, and it may have been small anyway. It looked tiny, really. I gave it back with a thank you and I still have my eye out to get him something.

I really want to go places together, like the store. It would be fun not to take the car, and everything really is so close around here that its kind of silly to drive. Even Wal-Mart, our most frequent destination, is only 20 minutes away by bike, which isn't that long at all when you're riding. Jamie was very surprised at how fast I'd gotten to the bowling alley bar, which is nearly across from Wal-Mart. Anyway, we'll get him a bike soon and be zipping all over the place.

I was aiming to have us ride to the game store each Saturday, but we have decided that the costs of feeding everyone out of the house is too high to be worth the privilege of the open gameroom upstairs. I think it's been worked out that Jamie will cook for us with a smaller budget. I got to pick dragon kabobs for this weekend, which makes me happy. I'll be having my little Grippli (frog-person) rogue shooting people full of arrows while I munch on tasty skewers with pineapple-peanutty goodness. I suppose that makes up for a missed bike-ride opportunity. Is it Saturday yet?