...this cup is empty and the barista is closing the cafe.

I'll be knitting as usual...I just won't be blogging about it. I'm going to leave my blog up until I have a chance to transfer my gallery pictures to a place for safe keeping.

I know I've said I was going to quit blogging before and didn't.
This time is for sure.

Thanks for all the friendship, support and camaraderie over the past few years.
I hold each and every online knit friend very dear to my heart.
OXO
Teresa

Done!
'cept for the few little ends I wove in shortly after taking this picture!

...I actually took pictures of knitting yesterday.

The Lacy Sweater...


...drying/blocking on my front porch.

Staggered Fern Lace sweater progress:
(I first wrote "Staggering Fern"
Fern Lace after a few too many Iced Kaluah Latte's ~grin~)


Using Endless Summer Collection - Sonata.
I LOVE THIS YARN! Just checked Elann to see what's left of it -
NUTHIN'! Zilch! Natta! Not even a link...
Harumpft! I'm not the only one who loves this yarn.
I sent 'em an email asking if they plan to restock.

My last two projects have taught me a lesson - never say hate, as in, "I hate cotton."
From now on I will say, "I dislike _____________ (fill in the blank with specific yarn.)
Never say "never."
Never say "hate."

Last but not least, trying to finish by tomorrow night, so I can block and give as a going-away/remember me gift to my current but soon to be former beloved supervisor who's last day is Friday:


Sorry about the dark picture.
Susan's totally awesome Knitty offering Branching Out.
I'm using Elsebeth Lavold's Silky Wool for the first time - what loverly yarn.

Loverly.

Another heartfelt thank-you all who left a comment or emailed me regarding my last post. I'm really grateful for your words of support and comfort and for the personal info you've shared with me. 

I found a wonderful Ala-non group that is for parents of chemically dependent children. It meets on Monday evening - last Monday was my first time to attend. I'm going again tonight. It is the place for me to be right now.

I also found another Ala-non meeting that meets on Friday nights and have been there twice. Last Friday I made a great connection there with a guy who attends because of his son's addiction. We talked for a long time after the meeting. It was good.

I am knitting - at least a little everyday. I know I don't have to explain to you what comfort and peace I find in  focusing on nothing but those two sticks and the string. For some reason though, I haven't been able to motivate myself to write or take and post pictures of my knitting...it seems kind of silly and inconsequential.
Existential knitting blogger's angst.

 

Dusty did his time in detox last week - 6 days in all and the treatment center picked him up a little after 8 Monday morning, as planned. By 2 pm he walked out.

He said he thought he was going to have a panic attack and that he HAD to get out of there. So. He left. Twenty minutes later, when he realized being out hadn't made him feel any better - he went back and asked if he could come back. They said no, he'd have to wait 90 days and then go back on the waiting list.

He found a way back to Dayton (the treatment center is about 20 miles away) and came to my house and didn't want me to be mad at him. I wasn't as much mad as deeply, DEEPLY disappointed in him. So disappointed I couldn't really find words to express how I felt. I told him, even though I love him and that will never change, I was at my limit of answers to his questions of how to fix all the problems he has created for himself. He was there for about 45 minutes.

C came home from work, and we headed out to get something for supper, so we dropped Dusty off at a NA meeting downtown. On the way C, asked me - in front of Dusty - if I had told him what my limits were going to be with him now - which I'm so glad she did. But that got me crying, crying and talking about how scared I am for him and how hard it is to know when I'm enabling and when helping is really helping. Once I opened all that up - that was pretty much it for me, for the evening. I let myself feel what I needed to feel and cry as much as I wanted. I think I fell asleep on the couch about 10:15.

Right now, I'm working on accepting that not everyone has to go to treatment to get/stay clean - it just makes it a hellofalot harder. I'm also working on staying strong and clear headed so I can set boundaries with him as things come up, 'cause he's a little tornado, right now just looking for places to touch down.

Remember my post from a week or so ago - me, visualizing myself as a tree?
A tree has no choice but to weather a tornado.
Me? Well, this is where the analogy ends.

The most loving thing I can do for myself and Dusty is to step away and let him twist and turn and find his own way to either his bottom or a path out of destruction toward a peaceful, drug free life.

And I thought it would be Dusty who would be doing the hard work of surrendering to the disease of drug addiction this week...
...silly me.

...but the flowers sure are pretty!



Thanks to those of you who left a comment to my last post.
I'm terrible about responding directly via email - but that doesn't mean that I don't value every thought, word or prayer. Thank you.

Dusty was admitted into detox about an hour ago. It looks like there should be an opening at a local residential treatment center when he's released at the end of this week. I'm praying for that - no gap between detox and treatment.

New Project!!
I came across the Summer Fern Top



whilst clicking around One Fine Yarn's website.

I was looking for something to knit with Rowan's Handknit DK Cotton. So, why did I end up ordering Elann's Endless Summer Collection Sonata?

Yarn for Fern Top:
Rowan Handknit Cotton DK = $70+ before S/H
Endless Summer Collection Sonata = $25.74 before S/H

I'm a Rowanette wannabe on an Elannette budget.

When I ordered a week or so ago, they had white in stock. I bought white.

From the Summer Fern Top page/One Fine Yarn:
Sleeveless shell is a delight in cool cotton. The feminine look of the staggered fern lace pattern will make this a favorite choice for your summer evenings.

Pattern is designed by Velma Nickerson and published in Inknitters magazine summer 2004.

I cast on the Fern top last night - which BTW is knit in the round (size L/270 stitches) and got 4 of 6 seed stitch /edge rows knit before I fell alseep in the chair- needles in hand. I'll post a picture when there's something worth showing.

Lacy Sweater
All but one sleeve sewn together.

Speaking of the Lacy Sweater -
"Kara Faith" nickname "Frankie" - my great niece - was born Friday March 25th.
7 pounds something. She was the featured guest at my family Easter Sunday get-together.
At that time, 2 days old.
So sweet.

Pictures of baby and sweater next week.

I've got SANDLES on today!!

...that's what I'm working on.

Ups and downs with my son Dusty are beginning to take a toll on me.

The way I check in with myself to see how I'm doing emotionally and spiritually is to visualize myself as a tree...

(Ok. I see some eye rolling out there...
I realize that may be too corny for some, but it works for me.)

...and I try to visualize what I look like...am I firmly rooted in the ground and mostly calm, with maybe a slight ruffle of my branches every once in a while? Or do I look like I've just been hit by a tornado, roots all hanging out and debris strewn all around me?

Right now, I see myself/my feet pretty firmly planted in the grounded but there's a pretty good breeze blowing me around. Every now and then my roots tremble a little as a gust takes me by surprise.

As of this morning, working with a counselor Dusty has decided to stop the treatment plan he's been doing for the past 12 days. 7 days from now he'll go back into detox and hopefully from there to a 65+ day residential treatment facility.

Today, that's the plan.

I think I've been doing an ok job of walking the line between being supportive and enabling. It's just so hard when it's your child - and an adult child, at that - to know when you are being a caring, concerned, supportive parent and when you are enabling.

Mostly, I listen to my gut, and today my gut says, it's time to pull back and re-group mentally and emotionally.

Time to not answer the phones, to sit in the quiet and knit and to make sure I go to bed a little earlier than usual the next few nights.

Time to let go and let the Universe take over.
Time to trust that there's a higher plan.

It doesn't help that I'm feeling out of sorts with my knitting.

I only have about an hour of work left to do on Frankie's Lacy Sweater...pick up the neck stitches and knit 5 or so rows that make the eyelet neckband, then sew together. I keep forgetting to stick size 5 needles in my bag, or I'd be showin you a FO picture today.

I cast on BM's Mondo Cable Shell using some stash yarn, but it's not getting it for me. It's the yarn, not the pattern.

~sigh~

What's a gurl to do?
Maybe I'll get sparked by something when the new Knitty goes up next week.

The things I have seen that have sparked me - in the new Rowan and Vogue - then make me feel depressed that I didn't follow through with losing weight this winter. All the really cute stuff is midriff baring and fitted.

My midriff? Well let's just say, Sunday I put on a pretty pink regular length sweater to go to my families Easter dinner and after passing the mirror a couple times took it off and put on a blouse-y button up shirt thing.

I couldn't bear going out of the house looking like a human Easter egg.

Crocus in our front flowerbed

"Greetings on this most exceedingly beautiful spring morning.

A morning swollen with new life, a morning on which, if I had the voice, I would let loose with song. It's hard to believe just a few short weeks ago we were eating our cornflakes in the wintery dark. Now, well it's still kind of dim out there, but I can see the golden glow of Apollo's chariot waiting in the wings, about to make its entrance.

Winter's on the lam, no doubt."

Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider Northern Exposure, Wake Up Call, 1992

Spring is about birth and re-birth.
I'm grateful that my family is being blessed by both this Spring.

Re-birth.
My 27 year old son was released from the hospital today. He's been there since last Sunday going through detox. He relapsed after 1 year and 10 months (or so) of clean time.

Today he's headed back down the path to recovery and I'm thankful for that.
Add him to your prayer/good vibes list if you are into that kind of thing.
His name is Dusty.

Birth:
My niece is having a little girl, any day now.
Her name is going to be Kara, but my niece has decided she's going to call her "Frankie" after my dad.

So, I'm knitting this for "Frankie."


...the Lacy Sweater from Zoë Mellor's Adorable Knits for Tots.



I'm using Rowan Handknit DK Cotton in Lupin #305.
In my pic the yarn looks more blue/purple.
This
is what Lupin really looks like.

There was a Knit-Along for the Lacy Sweater that started a year ago this month.
That's me...always a few steps behind the crowd.

One irritating and fairly well documented thing about this pattern is that the lace at the bottom of the sweater doesn't play well with the rest of the sweater. Because the non-scalloped edge is lacy to the very edge of the edge, when you pick up the number of stitches needed to start the sweater, it pulls the lace edge taunt, which in turn makes a nasty pucker along the few rows of stockinette stitch between the lace edge and the eyelet at the bottom of the sweater. (Whew!)

I tried a couple things to relieve this, like adding a couple more repeats to the lace; only to realize that it's not the length of the lace that makes it pucker - it's how/where you have to pick up stitches along the unscalloped edge. It doesn't allow for any give and so - puckers.

I decided to find another lace pattern and settled on Baby Tears from Nicky Epstein's Knitting on the Edge and it's working perfectly! That nasty pucker is gone, gone gone! The Baby Tears lace is not as intricate as the lace the pattern calls for and it's not as long. It's a 7 to 9 stitch length lace as opposed to the 8 to 16 inch stitch lace in the pattern. I like it a lot better...I think it's more baby like.

The picture shows a completed back and a started front.
Since the picture I've begun the flower motif.

Again this week, knitting time has been in short supply -
I'm keeping my fingers crossed for some solid knitting time this weekend.