Jane has a shopping trip to do. Tomorrow is MY day to shop. And I’ll get my glasses.
We’re not doing that much for Christmas—but we do have to shop. I can’t believe I’ve asked for socks. That was the dreadfulest gift when I was a kid, well, except when my feet were growing and I kept having holes in the toes—then it was darn ’em or replace them. Now, well, I need a few socks.
Ever learn how to darn socks and sheets? It involves a stone egg or a lightbulb, and a lot of patience; I even know how to do inweaving on some amendable fabrics, like wool. You pick a spot nobody will see, like inside a lining, take apart an area to get wool thread, then weave it into the damaged spot, sometimes (if it’s scarce) even using thread to tie on like a messenger cable, and tow the thicker wool thread into place where it needs to be for a patch that’s not too obvious. We used to have to do that. We throw out so much nowadays that could be mended. And I’ve stopped giving to some charities, including Goodwill, that don’t treat their employees well, but I do give to the teen outreach place down the road. They don’t have middlemen or a CEO living in a mansion.
Jane and I have decided we want a toaster/convection oven, because I could make good things better…without oil. And we’ve picked one out.
I need to get her something and heck if I know what. She hasn’t given me a hint, but I think I’ll find something tomorrow.
Had to darn my school socks; white ankle socks for summer and long black lisle stockings for winter. We’re of that generation.
Yep!
I remember darning the fingertips of my gloves in junior high, and being very pleased when it actually held together and looked like I had woven it.
The quilt is pau! It is wrapped and ready to be presented to the newlyweds when they come back from their trip. I was disgusted when the cute little paw print appliques I had used to cover a couple of small holes in the backing came off in the wash, so I made mo’ bettah ones and sewed them on. The wedding was… wet. Rain came sideways in several chilly, windy directions during the event, and undoubtedly contributed to my catching cold later. Rain during the ceremony is supposed to be fortuitous, however, so there is that.
Yup, occasionally darned the gloves we wore to school. It was part of the uniform. We were supposed to be young ladies, not girls. Though often the fingertips were worn all the way through and would flap about. THAT had to be hidden during inspection.
There is exactly one toaster oven that can toast bread evenly (and actually replace your toaster) – the Breville Smart Oven (BOV800XL, and perhaps its smaller sibling). Cooks’ Illustrated loves it, and I’ve been a happy owner for a while now.
(It’s possible something new has come out, but when CI tested them, they were mostly terrible)
I’ll second the nomination on the Breville Smart Oven, BOV800XL, according to Consumer Reports, it was rated excellent or very good in 8 different categories. It’s $219.99 on Amazon.com, but it’s $416.99 on Macy’s….go figure….you can buy it at Sears, but it’s $30 more, about the same as most of the other places. Amazon has the cheapest price for the same unit…..
Thanks! 🙂
Either a gift card to a fabric shop, an excellent pair of scissors, or a box full of neat/exotic/interesting remnants?
A good pair of Fiskars, pref. embroidery scale, for all those fiddly little sewing bits. Just don’t let either the cats or the house-elves make off with them!
I use cuticle scissors for that. I seem to be able to see what I’m cutting better.
Good ideas!
Breville makes the best convection oven on the market. We currently have a Waring countertop convection oven which is good, but not as good as the Breville. Plus it comes in different sizes. I’ve been using countertop convection ovens for many years now. They are so handy when cooking for two. Enjoy! Both the oven and the new glasses!
Jane has all the basic tools she wants, so a sonic screwdriver for those really difficult jobs.
I ‘darned’ a T-shirt once – it was one my mother had made, a patterned fabric, so I very carefully matched the pattern in sewing thread. (It helped that I’m used to knitting and dealing with loose ends.)
I’ve started knitting socks and I have discovered that once you’ve spent several hours knitting something like a pair of socks, you really can’t bear to see them get tossed just because there is a little hole in the toe or a worn heel. We throw things out so readily because there is a disconnect between the labour involved in getting the thing and the thing itself. We don’t think “that pair of jeans cost me 4 hours of work!” because we just don’t make that link most of the time. But when you can look at a pair of socks and see 8 solid hours of knitting, you are much less inclined to take them lightly. In fact, you start collecting tails of spare yarn in the same colour in little bags tucked away with a label that says “son’s socks” or “daughter’s mittens” expressly so you’ll have a little of the right yarn when it comes time to darn them. The best darning egg, IMO, is a wooden one that has been finely sanded and then rubbed with a little beeswax.
As for people I gift my handmades to, I expect they’ll treasure them enough to come to me if they aren’t looking their best or if something dire happens to them. The ones who I catch treating their handmades with disrespect don’t tend to get gifted handmades a second time.
Have you tried the magic loop method for knitting socks two at a time? It is too cool for words. . .
I do the magic loop, two at a time, and also,toe-up (rather than knitting from the cuff down) when I knit socks. Not only do you finish both socks at the same time (rather than finishing one and then realizing you have an entire other one to knit before you can wear your creation) but because you are knitting “up the leg” rather than down to the toe, you never run out of yarn before you finish the toes. Definitely the way to knit socks!
The other good thing about starting at the toe is that you don’t have to figure out ahead of time how big around it has to be. (For my foot, it’s 64 stitches on US size 1. I use a set of four DPs.)
The magic loop method was designed to prevent “second sock syndrome.” LOL!
I wish they’d come up with a “remote” remote control that has a mute button to shut up the stupid comments that the “experts” on sports shows make by causing their nerve impulses to their jaws to go haywire. It’s as if the viewer is so stupid, that they can’t figure out what they’re seeing, even though it goes on “instant replay” 4 or 5 times, while the “expert” draws lines here and there to explain what you’ve already figured out for yourself…..it’s not just in football or baseball, it’s in just about any show that involves an athletic performance. For myself, I’d use it gleefully on such personalities as Simon Cowell, just because…..and at odd times….. call me malicious…..you could use it for such shows as “DWTS” or “SYTYCD” and click it when the commentator starts to say something stupid about why they think the judge(s) made the wrong call…. 😀
I’ll second the stupid comments. I really appreciated a baseball announcer like Dave Niehaus, whose monument is a bronze lifesize ‘Dave at his Desk’ which sits on the Safeco field terrace, overlooking the field—much beloved, locally. When he called a game, he’d do it with quietly given technicals of the rules, so new listeners could learn and understood the call. Certain Grand Old Guys of the game just can’t be replaced…and certainly not by mouthy people who actually distract you from the game. We use a recorder to ‘time-shift’ a performance we don’t want interrupted, so we can fast-forward through commercials and blather.
My mom is a closet sports fan. She loves basketball, especially women’s basketball (she played in high school). She’s taken to turning the sound off for that very reason. You don’t need somebody telling you what’s happening, and you can see the score on the screen. She puts on the University classical radio station. Much better audio to her mind.
I’m also a knitter and once I found beautiful wool yarn to make socks with that you could throw in the washer and the dryer, I’ve made a bunch now. Nothing like handmade socks! But I subscribe to the YarnHarlot’s method of darning – “Darn! As I throw the sock in the trash…”
As any dedicated crafter will tell you, knitters don’t need a reason to knit. They knit because they love to knit. What they need are excuses. A sock with a hole in it is a wonderful excuse to knit another pair of socks. . (for about the past 10 years now, in the heat of typing, I will mess up at a homonym — e.g., took me three tries to come up with “pair.” (Pear, no,(backspace-backspace-backspace) pare, no! (backspace-backspace-backspace) . .)
My once or twice upon a time bête-noir was “does”. No, I don’t mean the does I saw running down the hedgerow the other morning! “dose”? No, not sleep, do! Reluctantly deciding I was OK the first time.
I think I’d turn it into a cat-toy (sew leg close, fill with catnip, close hole, or fold foot up, fill, and sew closed – darn, it’s a cat-toy!)
You could also fold the foot up and sew it in place, and use it to hold a pair of glasses, or a cell phone.
Oh yeah, I darn. Gloves, sweater elbows and cuffs and many, many grey wool work socks for the menfolk in the family. Never used a darning egg though, just spread fingers inside the sock and used a bit of care (and perhaps a blunt-tipped bodkin).
You will appreciate the toaster oven in the summer as its a lot cooler than baking in a big oven. They also do small jobs like drying herbs and toasting nuts. I broil stuff in mine as I’d rather clean the little thing than the stove oven. Toasters make better toast but the trade-off is worth it.
Please foreward best season wishes to Lynn. Extrapolating from last summer’s blog entry I suspect that her season may not be easy.
I was just wondering how she and her family were doing. She posts infrequently, but after the last posting, I was hoping things had taken an upswing.
She games with us nearly nightly. Now and again things get rough, but her mum has made a good recovery. There’ve been some rough bits, but she’s getting along, and I’ll relay your good wishes.
CJ, how are the new glasses, and have you had any luck locating the “lost” pair?
I wish I’d gotten a pair with a larger lense—the rims bother me a bit, but at least the image is sharp. Still haven’t found the missing pair. Is a puzzlement, to quote Yul Brynner.
I’ll bet you the old glasses are in a “DOH!” place. They always are. Or else they’re “underwear” — under (something) where the cats pushed them. (Every time I rearrange the furniture, it’s like kitty Christmas — Momma found all the cat toys!) I trust you’ve already looked in all the places where they can’t possibly be.
So, my mother-in-law has been diagnosed with dementia. It was either that or alzhiemers(can’t spell it, so use your best guess. Now we at least know.
It makes me wonder how the atevi deal with that kind of aging, especially in an aiji, which she most assuredly is/would be. She was the first woman in Japan to be admitted to a mathmatics program at university level. As rumor has it, she graduated as valedictorian. Plus, she is hereditary nobility of the senior line, and inherited in her own right.
Sorry to hear it, Tommie. It is a difficult diagnosis. My dad had what is called multi-infarct dementia — a function of atherosclerotic small vessel disease. The brain suffers multiple tiny strokes. The damage is tiny in every case, but the effect is cumulative. Made so much worse in his case because his ability to grasp reality was already impaired by near blindness and being very hard of hearing. It is a terrifying and bewildering process for all involved, and especially poignant for someone with such intellectual abilities as your mother in law. It always seemed to me to be like watching someone you love suffer a horrific, fatal fall in excruciatingly slow motion and being powerless to intervene.
Interesting thought to go to the assassin’s guild to ask to file on an elderly relative. I suspect they would approach same in a rather sanguine and practical fashion. If the relative in question was in a position of power, it would be a coup de grace in more ways than one.
My grandmother had something like that. Mostly vision, in her case, and her vision came and went unpredictably. The last couple of years she mostly didn’t talk, but when she did it was clear she was aware of what was going on around her – her remarks, at least the ones I heard about, were relevant. Not dementia in any of the usual ways, anyway. She was 97 when she stopped living (her heart and lungs stopped).
Oh Tommie, I am so sorry. It’s rotten to see someone you love start slowly losing their marbles, and have nothing you can do about it. About the only thing worse is when the person takes the tack that they are NOT losing their faculties, and how dare you accuse them of same.
Sorry to hear, Tommie. It’s very hard–but probably harder on the one watching it. In cases I’ve known, it’s sort of like a time-slip, in which ‘now’ means less and less, and bits and pieces of the past assert themselves and sometimes form their own world. I hope it may be that kind of gentle world.
Dear Tommie. you have my sincere sympathy. My grandmother had Alzheimer’s, and it was a hard thing to see, to be her grandson and caregiver. It is a thing I would not wish on anyone.
My best wishes to you and your family. :hugs:
— Ben
I have no problem with someone living in other timestreams. My Mother’s Mother gave me her blessing not knowing who I was, then asked after her little Tommie Ann. My only tattoo says, “Verna blessed me”. It is the difficulty involved in being a gentle, humble, obedient bully to someone whose language you do not understand which frightens me. I am scared spitless. I am superstitiously making a funeral dress, so that I will not have anywhere to wear it until I outgrow it.
Tommie — My advice, from experience and hindsight, is: Do the best you can, do what you think is right, and — do NOT worry about it. (That last is the hard part.) I found the hardest things were to be responsible and insistent for another adult’s well being (and not to take nonsense for others, including the one cared for); not to worry about it all and have the emotional burden for your loved one (very hard to bear); and to know what to do, how best to motivate an adult who believed she knew best, when she most profoundly did not always know what she was doing anymore. She loved me very much, but she always thought she knew best, and I was, to her, so much younger, and ~male~.
It is hard to be a good caregiver, when you must insist at times that your loved one must do what’s good for her, or not dangerous, or other hazards, such as giving things away, and so on.
However — You have always shown you’re a caring, smart, gracious person here. I am sure you will do your best when caring for your mother-in-law. How to get around the language barrier, I’m not sure, though yes, I’d suggest you take lessons in the language. (Self-study with audio, if you can’t do otherwise.)
I will also say…my grandmother had most of her faculties for a long time, before it became truly a problem. The process was drawn out. So I mostly had already grieved beforehand. It still affected me, of course. We were very close.
Long-term care “ain’t for sissies,” but you are a good, strong person. You will do the best you know how.
Best wishes for the best possible outcome for her, for you, and for your family.
I understand where you’re coming from. The only thing I can suggest is if you get worried about cooking and stoves, quietly throwing the breaker for the range/oven and anything else of hazard is a safety measure that can protect you both. If the stove ‘breaks’ in that fashion, an induction cookplate might be safer, because it only heats when the appropriate pan is atop it, as I understand them.