In the news....

Statins may not fight Alzheimer's and Frances Langford dies at 92. These are relevant to me because: (a) My MIL has pre-senile dementia (dementia before age 65, in her case Alzheimer's type probably) and (b) I grew up near Jensen Beach, FL, where Frances Langford lived. In fact, we went to dinner before prom at her former restaurant, the Outrigger Resort. We also went there once when I was little and she still owned it. I had the super-elegant meal of fried chicken and chocolate milk. My sister and I made the waiter come back with chocolate milk so many times that our mother cut us off. We were probably about 7 at the time. My sister and I are 13 months apart, and when either of us tell a story, we set the time as the narrator's age - lumping us both into the same age. So, not twins, but frequently confused.

I had a comment from fickleknitter about braided rugs. This is something my sister and I attempted back in the day (early middle school age?) and didn't get very far with. We recycled a bunch of my dad's old socks, cutting across the calves, so that they were like potholder loops, but wider. We looped them together, like in the demonstration linked previously, and braided three of these strands, sewing the braid into a spiral with ordinary needle and thread. Nothing glamorous and nothing complete, either. We must have gotten the idea out of an old craft book in my mother's stash. This would have been not long after the first Columbia launch, well before Internet resources.

In recent knitting news, we brough the boy to Boy Scout camp! In flashbacks to my formative years, I felt like I couldn't leave until the boy had mosquito netting hung up. I was channeling my mother. DH gave me a talk about how this is supposed to teach him independance, and blah, blah, blah, which made me cry. It was surprisingly hard for me to leave him there, and he's "only" my step-son. (His mother is a long story - she lives in the Crescent City, doesn't call or take advantage of her visitation rights.) OK. Here's the knitting part, really. It's about an hour, hour and a half up to the camp. I started a London Beanie on the way up. Made a mistake. Frogged it. Started over. Made a slew of mistakes. Frogged it again. It's like it never happened at this point. Luckily I brought the garter stitch blanket too, and got a couple rows done on that.

Did I mention that I got the boy's hat done? I need to tuck in the ends, but it's done and he seems to like it. This is good.