Gratuitous Olympic post....

I LOVE the Olympics. I have no interest in sports, generally, but every two years (because I watch summer AND winter Olympics) I take complete control of the TV (not that anyone really gets control the rest of the time, but violence is promised if the channel is changed without permission during the Olympics). I enjoy watching the human beings of our world who commit themselves so fully to their passion. I love their stories. I love watching them at their absolute best (and sometimes worst). I cry when Canada takes a medal. I sobbed when Joannie Rochette skated only days after her Mother died, suddenly. I cried when I watched Silver Medalist Marianne St. Gelais' reaction in the stands as her boyfriend Charles Hamelin raced his way to a gold medal in the 500m short track speed skating. I had tears in my eyes when Alexandre Bilodeau's brother Frédéric raised his fist in triumph when Alexandre's score flashed across the screen and won the first gold for Canada. My heart ached when, on the first day, Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili died during a training run. There are so many more moments that I can't even list.... winning medals in long track speed skating, barely missing the quarter finals in the women's team pursuit, the loss of Canada to the USA in men's hockey and their fight back to the gold medal game in which Canada was fully redeemed with Sidney Crosby's sudden death goal in overtime (phew... that's quite the run-on sentence). The dominance of the women's hockey team and the men's curling team. Our best ever finish for men's cross country. Our medals at the Whistler sliding centre, at Cypress Mountain and more..... I love the fact that, for once... Canadians as a whole have stood up in front of the world and said in unison... WE ARE AWESOME!!! Canadians usually are much more reserved. We are proud of our country, but we are always understated in our outward displays of pride and patriotism. In a group of Canadians we might say that Canada is the best country in the world to live, but if there are other people from countries involved... well, we don't want to hurt anyone's feelings or make them feel bad or to seem antagonistic, so we say nothing at all. Several Canadian cities are constantly listed as being in the top 10 places in the world to live, but we are likely to say... "Thank you for the honour and sorry about that"....... than "You're Damn right!"....

But we should be proud... we DO live in one of the best countries (see... I still can't publicly say THE best... I'm bred to say ONE of the best) in the world...... Go Canada!

Freakshow.... a knitting story.

Once upon a time, a beautiful, smart and extremely talented princess (it's my story, I can describe the protagonist however I want to...) decided to expand her knitting repertoire with fair-isle (knitting with two colours or more). She had done some fair-isle in the past with moderate success, but really needed more experience and practice with the technique. She had also discovered (at around the same time) that mittens and gloves were extremely satisfying to knit (perhaps even MORE satisfying than socks) and, living in Canada, had friends and relatives galore to foist her knitted hand covers off on.

One day, shortly after (or maybe before, I can't remember) Christmas, she went into one of her favorite yarn stores and stumbled across a Tanis Fiber Arts, Fiddlehead mitten kit and immediately added it to her other purchases. This was an impulse buy because, although the colours were beautiful, the main colour of the mitten was supposed to be white (it's actually a light grey, but close enough) and white was not a good colour for her. This minor problem was fairly easily solved (or so she thought) by using the contrast colour stripes as the main colour and using the white as the contrast colour. She cast on and began knitting. It was then that the psychology phenomenon called the Stroop Effect, raised it's head and stared right in her eyes..... in short form, Stroop determined that it is harder (or at least slower) for people to read the words BLUE, RED, GREEN, when the colours of the words are different than the words (ie: BLUE, RED, GREEN). It turned out that the chart for the mitten was in black and white and if used the way the kit was intended, the white squares corresponded nicely with the white yarn. The princess, however, was a decently practiced knitter and adept at reading charts, so the fact that she had changed the colours around (darker colours would be white on the chart and white would be black on the chart) should not have bothered her.... The Stroop Effect was strong, however, and about 5 rounds into the pattern, the mitten started to look very wrong..... she had followed her brain and swapped the colours to the more natural white for white, colour for black....... She said some very un-princess-like words and pulled the mitten out.... she then cast on and began again. She would defeat Stroop..... and she failed.... two more times.....

Eventually, she learned that Stroop is a very powerful effect and grabbed her pink highlighter and coloured all the white squares pink....... She won....... against Stroop anyway.... the mitten had more surprises for her. Her next lesson was which style of circular knitting worked best (for her) when knitting fair-isle mittens.... after trial and error, she determined that knitting with two circular needles was easier.... it was then (on her third colour change on the chart, or about 1/3 of the way through the mitten) that the mitten started to look better.... Her tension was looser and the colours lay flatter. She had even learned (thanks to another knitter at one of her knit nights) how to catch the yarn when stranding the one way she couldn't seem to figure out on her own. All in all... the mitten was going well.... BUT she should have remembered about that tension change when she switched to the two circular method...... and how tension effects gauge.... and how gauge effects size.... she didn't think of it, however, and if she had, probably would have ignored it and kept going anyway.........

She finished the first mitten and marveled at it's beauty. It was a little puckered around the cuff when she was having tension difficulties, but a bath (for the mitten) and a STRONG block (think *S-t-r-e-t-c-h*), solved that problem. So she cast on for mitten number two and picked up the stitches of mitten number one to do the lining as her travel project. Now the mittens were separated and wouldn't be compared to each other until they were finished. Mitten number one was in her handbag as her travel project and mitten number two was sitting beside her place on the couch ... but they wouldn't be separated long..... they were her only project... they would be together again soon......

The Princess had read a few comments on Ravelry (I really do love Ravelry) about the lining of the mitten not fitting into the mitten when finished and decided to solve this problem by knitting the lining with smaller needles. She picked up the stitches and followed the pattern. The designer had compensated for the liner size issue by making it smaller, so she went against her initial impulse and switched the needles back to their original size..... and practiced her speed knitting.... the lining was done quickly and it was HUGE...... MUCH to large to fit into the mitten and although she was sorely tempted to leave it be, she did the right thing and ripped it out and re-knit it on the smaller needles..... MUCH better...... but then she made the liner too short for the mitten.... a problem that she decided to solve (once again) with blocking......

Mitten two was coming along nicely.... the stranding was lovely, the mitten flowed off her needles like a dream..... and before she knew it, she was finished...... she tried on the first mitten and looked at the second.... something was wrong...... VERY wrong...... they were different. The colours were the same, they had been knit by the same person on the same needles and yet.... the second mitten was well, a tad on the large size... especially in comparison to the first....... That's when the tension/gauge/size issue dawned on her....different tension=different size.....Her lovely mittens were ruined.... unless she could find someone with extraordinarily mis-sized hands (man hand and child hand?), she was screwed........ and to make matters worse, when she washed and blocked the mittens and the second mitten grew even BIGGER (which she forgot to take a picture of).





In desperation, she threw the second mitten in the dryer......... and it shrank...... it's still larger than the first mitten, but maybe, just maybe..she can find someone who won't mind "slightly" mismatched mittens...... They are still beautiful, after all......



The end.

Latest

I finished my Snowdrop Shawl today. This was the last pattern in the inaugural Year of Lace (2008). The original yarn was a 100% white merino, but I just wasn't thrilled with the feel of the yarn. I knit a good 10 inches of shawl before the "meh" feeling overwhelmed me and I stuffed the project in a drawer.... and tried to forget about it..... This didn't work, however, as my intense need to finish a project was a constant itch between my shoulder blades.... I couldn't quite ignore it. Finally, shortly after Christmas, I hauled it out of the drawer and looked at it, critically.... I was still "meh" about the yarn, so I did something that I rarely do.... I pulled out the needles and threw the yarn in the garbage....... I then decided that I still wanted to knit the pattern and thought that some qiviut/angora in my stash would work nicely...... I cast on and was off.... and today I finished it..... It's VERY pretty. The yarn is soft and lovely (although it sheds like a cat who is determined to become hairless, my entire house looks like small rabbits have invaded and had babies).



I also finished this cardigan a few weeks ago. I never got around to posting about it, but here is a picture.... It's Kelmscott, but with a modified collar ('cause I ran out of yarn). I love it!




I'm currently working on this Fiddlehead mitten kit and have finished one outside mitten. I haven't done a lot of fair isle, but I am enjoying these and my stranding is improving. I can see more colourwork in my future



I'm also working on a pattern for Chey's snake mitten scarf from Christmas.... Details coming soon.... There will be a LOT of knitting completed in the next 2 weeks... I LOVE the Olympics and plan to make a permanent butt mark on my couch during that time....

ADHD and defensive parenting......

As I've mentioned before, Eli is ADHD (I prefer IS to HAS.... HAS sounds like a disease, IS just..... IS). He was diagnosed in August of 2008 after a lengthy evaluation process which included a child psychologist and pediatrician. After his diagnosis, I went through all of the classic symptoms of grief..... anger, bargaining and acceptance and in the end did a LOT of research.... and I mean a LOT. I feel like I know more about ADHD than most general practitioners. I even feel a bit silly that I grieved in the first place.... after all, what did I lose?? Nothing.... I still have my son. He is still Eli.... he's just a little different than other kids in a more definable way... and I gained a LOT from his assessment. I gained Knowledge, knowledge about Eli and how his brain works. It was as close to an instruction manual as I'm ever going to get..... Do I like his label??? I don't actually care about it much, everyone has a label... the smart one, the pretty one, the successful one, the tall one, the short one, the fast one, the slow one, the writer, the dreamer, the musician, the clown, the athletic one, the clumsy one ..... the list is endless.... why should he be different??? What I do care about, is other people's ignorance. The judgement that is inherent when someone learns about Eli's ADHD. It's usually not obvious, most people are politically correct... but somewhere in the conversation over-diagnosis and medication are inevitably brought up (bringing up the fact that Eli *might* be one of those). So much of what we know (and I'm not just talking about ADHD) is based on the media.... I was guilty of it. I also thought ADHD was being over diagnosed and over medicated. In fact only 3-7% of children are diagnosed with ADHD.... in comparison, up to 8% of the American population is diagnosed with Diabetes (and that number is growing due to obesity). No one questions diabetes as an "real" illness or thinks that diabetes is caused by bad parenting. No one questions the need for insulin for Diabetes. It is just is. ADHD does not get that same respect, mostly because there is no black and white test for ADHD.... and medical treatment for ADHD, in particular, is a hot topic. I felt negatively about medication pre-diagnosis and research. Now that I now how the medication works... I feel differently. Ritalin and other forms of ADHD medications are stimulants (some work differently and I'm not getting into that... I'm just over generalizing here to make this post somewhat shorter). This may seem like an odd choice to prescribe to a person who is "hyperactive", but once you understand a little of how the brain of ADHD works.... it makes sense...... A main "cause" of ADHD can be traced to dopamine receptors in the brain (Dopamine is the brain's reward regulator.... IE: Self control). Usually there is a lack of dopamine or the dopamine that is produced is not being used by the brain effectively. Stimulants help the brain to absorb and/or produce more dopamine which has the effect of calming the brain..... in essence, a person without ADHD will be stimulated by stimulant drugs like Ritalin (how many stories have you heard about overworked mom's getting into their children's ADHD meds??), while a person WITH ADHD will be calmer and more able to focus.... and to more importantly.... exhibit SELF CONTROL (ADHD is essentially an impulse control issue, not the attention issue as it defined as). I'm not saying medication is the be-all-end-all of controlling ADHD, but used in conjunction with consistency, structure, exercise and a healthy diet, it can make all the difference...... it can "clear the fog" (Eli said he felt smarter when he first started meds.... a little scary for me LOL, he was diagnosed as being gifted at the same time as his ADHD diagnosis.... he said his brain slowed down enough that he could think more clearly) enough to help a child learn strategies to deal with their ADHD issues and hopefully, hopefully will continue to be another tool in my toolbox to help to shape Eli into a valuable, contributing member of society.


PS.... on re-reading this, I realize that there is no definable "point" to this post..... I was just "feeling" the need to say all of this today after a conversation with a friend.... hence, the defensive parenting title.....

PPS.... Statistics for Diabetes are from the American Diabetes Association. Statistics for ADHD are from the Center for Disease Control (and other ADHD sources)