Numb...

 Seriously, I sat here and said, "Self, you have to write a blog about your sister's death."

And....I already did. My mind is numb. My heart is closed tighter than usual. My brother is also having the same problem. Yes, it's grief, but it's also shock and for me a bit of despair. 

I had gotten my sister a "twin" piece of jewelry; one for me and one for her. We share a birthstone. Hers is a bracelet and mine is a ring (because delicate bracelets on me are a lost cause...). She wore hers in her casket. I had my BIL take it off and will give it to her granddaughter. Or my mom can wear it for a while; she's got a small wrist. I have my dad's bones - man-hands and large wrists. 

They're garnets, set in rose gold. Hers are marquise-cut, and mine are oval cut. I was hoping we would share the joy in these pieces, but they are, now, what I would call "mourning jewelry." 

Mourning jewelry often has connotations of brooches, hair braids, lockets, etc. And there's a whole subset of jewelers who specialize in this, as well as antique dealers who have the Victorian market cornered. In our family, this is not a tradition. Or at least it hasn't been. I guess it is now. 

So at her wake, I didn't spent a lot of time near her coffin. Frankly, I wasn't impressed with the "job" the mortician did. She didn't look like herself. Of course, there's a flattening of features, a lifeless quality to the person, because, of course, they're dead. But I have to say, my dad looked more alive than my sister did. And he died over 25 years ago. Techniques should've improved in that time. Anyway, there were tons of flowers. We had the wake from 1 - 4, and thankfully, my BIL didn't want a funeral "luncheon." How would one time that? For the hours BEFORE the viewing? Certainly not after. And in their small town, there wasn't a restaurant capable of holding everyone without the event becoming a late-pandemic super-spreader, which is the last thing my sister would've wanted. 

I baked her favorite cookies. My mom said, "What if you can't bring them in? There may be health department issues." Not if you walk in assuming you own the place and don't give them the option of refusing...and not in a small town with lax mask requirements. If, in the midst of a global pandemic, their attitude toward masks is "meh," then they're not going to turn their noses up at homemade cookies. My dear friend also made triple-fudge brownies. My sister actually disliked chocolate, but the brownies were scarfed down...The funeral home staff was showing me around and said, "Here is our little snack area, and some snacks (consisting of maybe 4 granola bars and some saltines...) -- as the ladies who where there were unboxing my cookies. 

There were her ABSOLUTE FAVORITES, M & M cookies (and I realize the irony of her not liking chocolate, but loving these cookies), vanilla spice cookies, no-bake oatmeal cookies and my version of CPS Butter Cookies, using two very large vanilla beans, scraped into the batter. All that beautiful bean caviar...Yummy, if I do say so myself. 

I had to laugh (one of the few I've had, honestly) because her funeral baking threw a wrench into my vanilla production. I have some of the "old" double-fold vanilla, but my "new" stuff is only from July, 2021, so it's nowhere near being done. That's the Mother Jar where I fished out those 2 beans. So technically, I had to use some Penzey's vanilla. A decent vanilla, to be sure, but my "old" stash is getting slim, so I had to be careful to hoard it a bit till the "new" triple-fold is ready. So baking outside of the "Christmas Rotation" has tossed my carefully-planned system into a bit of disarray. 

But it was worth it. 

The Knitting...

I finally drew a template of my right foot (the larger of my 2 feet - check, because yours aren't the same size, either!). I marked it up for socks, so that I'd have the measurements and not have to keep referring to obscure notes or re-measuring every single time I knitted a sock. 

The blue sock is just about at the toe, probably another 12 rows? I have to get to 7.75" or 8 -- close enough either way. I'm going to do a rounded toe, even though the one I have to frog back has an absolutely perfect star toe. It's coming along in fits and starts. I was plugging away at it for a while, but I just stalled. It happens. This is a bit of an older picture; it's closer to the ball of my foot now. 

I have to remember to not do socks at 64 stitches...I need 68 or 70. When I do 72 stitches, that's like a men's medium, and they're a bit slouchy, even for me. But 64 is snug. Of course, I started this one when my sister got sick, so I'm pretty sure the tension is crazy-tight. 

I have FINALLY found a way to SSK and K2TOG that makes both sides look decent. Usually, my SSK (slip, slip, knit) side was a bit raggedy, while the K2TOG decreases were just beautiful. I came up on a video that confirmed what I was doing in the first place... I slip the first stitch knit-wise and the second one purl-wise. That makes the SSK lay nice and pretty. 

It was so good that I wrote it in my Sock Knitter's Handbook, for posterity. Long after I'm gone, if the kids haven't tossed all my knitting books, someone will benefit from that bit of annotation. 

It's a little hard to see the way these lay unless you increase the size of the picture. But I'm tickled. Seeing the other sock, it's a 100% better method. I'm jazzed and I'm looking forward to doing more socks, just so I can do this again. 

I have to find my notes on Petty Harbor; I have a partial of one sock, and I can't quite lay my hands on the directions. I think I need to finish those next. They're a plain tan sock. I have to find more plain yarn. 

While I love some self-patterning, and I have a bunch of socks that need mates (Petty Harbor being one of them), I need to maybe make some plain ones; that way I can use some lace on the leg, or maybe even a cable -- I don't need the yarn to fight the pattern. And I'm sick of ribbing.  

"Ribbing is like February: it's not really that long, but it takes forever." I modified that quote from something else comparing February to something that seems to have taken forever -- but I can't remember what it was!

Random Picture...

The tradition in the family had been to make rosaries out of the roses from funerals. The
Mantellate Sisters close to our town do this ministry, and there are a bunch of other places that have taken that over. I mean the "keepsake" business. 

Hubby asked if I wanted a diamond made from a bit of my sister, but...no. Sorry. Ick. 

I'm drying the flowers; even though I don't pray a lot of rosaries lately, I have options. So Hubby and I laid these out on newspapers on my office floor. He really wasn't aiming at a design; this just happened as I handed him roses. 

I think it's beautiful.