Kiss My Knits!

We’ve been asking Emily for about a month what she wants to be for Halloween. Finally, this week she settled on a costume.

For a few years, she wanted to be a pig. I got pink leggings and a pink turtleneck, sewed a piece of velcro to a pink pipe cleaner for a tail, and cut out and glued pink foam ears to a headband. I also made a snout with a piece of elastic. I have pics, but I can’t dig them up. She was too sick to go trick-or-treating that year.

The next year, she wanted to be a cat. I got black leggings and a shirt and used fusible interfacing to adhere white felt to the front. I took a piece of cording and encased it in black T-shirt material and sewed it to the seat of her pants for a tail. Unfortunately, she was too sick to trick-or-treat again. Talk about bad luck.

One year she wanted to be Jo Jo the clown. That required a trip to the Disney store.

One year, she wanted to be a princess, a decision she made on Halloween evening, requiring me to McGyver together various pink and purple bits of fluff into a costume.



This year? Well, this year she is fascinated with ghosts and vampires and such, and she remembered watching Charlie Brown.

Find a worn-out white sheet in the closet. Cut out the elastic, since it’s a fitted sheet. Snip out two eye holes.

Easiest. Costume. Ever.

Thank you, parenting gods, for smiling upon me this year!

How much of a sleep deficit was I running? I went to bed late on Saturday after staying up to do Jayne stuff… and didn’t wake up until noon on Sunday. And that was only because the phone rang. Ah, bliss.

In spite of the shortness of it, it was a productive day. Stamped up more boxes, wrote more Jayne notes, ripped out an unsatisfactory Jayne hat in untraditional colors and pattern and reworked it so it looks… pretty darned good, if I do say so myself. (, I did get your mail, I’ll take pics of it and a few other things for you hopefully tomorrow.) Did dishes, laundry, picked up long pants in school uniform colors for Emily since the weather’s cooling down. I found the pajamas to the left while shopping for the uniform and just had to buy them. When Emily saw them, she immediately shucked her clothes and climbed in. I hope she’s not sweating too much in bed.

I’m off to bed now, too, to try to stay caught up on my sleep. Y’all have a good night!

…brought the movies to me.

I suddenly got a craving to see one of my favorite movies of all time, The Lion in Winter. I figured I should actually own it. What luck – Borders had a copy for $15. Emily didn’t go to occupational therapy today because she was visiting her grandparents, so that’s Jayne hat money just burnin’ a hole in my pocket!

So I didn’t go to the movies. I stayed in and watched O’Toole and Hepburn, ate grocery store sushi, and boxed up Jayne hats. Yay!

I’m sweating like I’ve been locked in a sauna.

A sauna on the surface of the sun.

Apparently, when it’s 58 degrees F, it’s too hot to run in sweatpants and a sweatshirt. I need a better solution for cool weather.

My husband is taking our daughter to visit her grandparents this weekend, so I’ll be footloose and fancy free! Sadly, these days “footloose and fancy free” generally translates to “eat pancakes and sleep in.”

One thing I’ll be doing is a knit-in at The Levine Museum of the New South from noon to two for the Charlotte Folk Society 25th anniversary. Turtlegirl76 and funfairiegirl will be there during that time as well. We’ll have our spinning wheels, too, so if you’re in Charlotte and you want to try your hand at knitting or spinning, come on down. There’ll also be singing and dancing and such, and I think you can check The Charlotte Folk Society’s webpage for a schedule.

After falling behind in my Jayne hat estimates, I’m knitting like the wind to get caught back up. We’re getting there!

Emily told us this morning that she would like a horse from her aunt’s stables. She’d keep the horse in the back yard and bring it inside when it rains. She was laughing as she said this – even she recognizes the impracticality of this plan. It’s still better than her first plan, which was to keep the horse in the washing machine.

Emily has discovered Looney Tunes. We have a box set which she’s enjoying greatly. I’m sure half of these jokes don’t mean anything to her, but then, a lot of these were geared towards adults anyway. The rest, though, she gets. She thinks it’s just delicious how naughty and bad these folks are.

“He shouldn’t go in a mine shaft! Why not?” she’ll ask us, squealing with delight. She knows, she just wants to involve us in the madcap zaniness. They sure don’t show stuff like this on TV anymore. I doubt you’ll find Dora the Explorer with a cigarette dangling from her lips, but the cartoon above showed Bugs rolling one.

Speaking of cigarettes, we were outside at Starbucks yesterday, and someone sat down near us and was about to light one up. I had to put away my Jayne hat knitting because I didn’t want it to smell like smoke, and I think Emily took that as the signal we were going to leave. I told her, “I’m glad we’re leaving, that lady was about to light a cigarette and I don’t like the smell of the smoke.” “What’s a cigarette?” Emily asked. I hadn’t really thought about it, but I guess nobody in her life smokes. Well, good! We had a conversation and then let it drop. I’m not worried about it. The kid won’t eat cinnamon toast if I tell her I put extra cinnamon on it, she’s not going to start experimenting with tobacco.

I took a week off of the couch to 5k program because I was feeling under the weather. I did, however, start back up. Go me! Today will be day two of getting back on the horse.

Hey, look, I brought it all back around to horses again! I’m queen of the segue!

I’m going to pack up and mail a kit, go run, then arrange for more red yarn. This is the last kit for a while. I’ve had to discontinue the kits until I can get more so that I don’t short my finished hat clients. This shall not stand – I want a chicken in every pot and a Jayne hat on every head!

A big shout-out to my fiber godmother, who has sent me TWO cards in the mail. You’re a sweetie! Thanks!

Y’all have a good day!

As you can see, my orange arrived. CD for scale. So now I have plenty of yellow and orange to last through Christmas.

You know what I don’t have?

RED.

You’re killing me, Brown Sheep, you’re killing me.

Mo’ Jaynes and Jayne kits. Today I’m knitting yours, , for the Geekstravaganza.

I ripped out the Pomatomus and started up Vinnland. Turtlegirl76 recommended a pattern from Knitting Vintage Socks, and it did have a stitch pattern very similar to Pomatomus, but it had the disadvantage of being in a book which cost $21.95. I put it on my Amazon Wish List since Christmas isn’t that far off, and went with a free pattern instead. I actually really like the way this looks in this yarn!

While figuring out the math for my father’s Charlie Brown sweater stripe, I realized I’d lost the swatch I’d made several months ago. D’oh! So the next non-Jayne project will be a 4×4″ yellow rectangle. Hold me back.

ponk is using wearwithstyle in a design project for university. I really like what he’s done. The color schemes match my personal preferences more closely than the admittedly kicky and fun but very bright tones that designed when we just had to get something up there because orders were coming in and we needed a site, already.

On an unrelated note, if anyone hears of a product which can be used to zap sleep directly into your brain, please let me know.

Moments ago, my dad sent me a link to a trailer for the new Futurama feature. Thanks, Dad!

Emily has said for the last few days that the girl at school with whom she’s been having trouble is “not my enemy anymore. She’s not quite my friend yet.” But that’s good, both because relations have improved, and because it shows progress from the black/white view that Emily often has of things.

My husband/geek genius has been helping investigate setting up an actual storefront with a checkout cart, etc. It’s an interesting process. My basic html skills aren’t cutting it with this setup, so I may have to learn more about php and forms. Of course, with eight weeks of orders in line, it’s not that crucial to get it up and running, but it would still be nice to have available for already-made goods.

Orders are down to 28 from 32. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but bear in mind they keep coming in while I’m knitting, so any little bit I can whittle the line down helps! Tonight, more Jayne hat knitting while I watch Casablanca. I swear, I’m starting to see Jayne hats everywhere…