Kiss My Knits!

That was fun! Yarns Forever was great – the owner really knew her stuff, and I came out of there lighter in the wallet and heavier in the stash.

Bowling was also very fun, and I met some neat people from Greenville. I bowled an average of 81. Er… it’s not whether you win or lose; it’s how you play the game, right?

(By the way, contrary to what my last post may have implied, I really don’t drink. Which is good, because my game was bad enough as it is!)

As I’m completely wiped out now, I’m off to bed. Pictures another time!

Today prostiturtle and I are hitting some yarn stores in upstate South Carolina, then going bowling in Spartanburg with contingents of Browncoats from Charlotte, NC and Greenville, SC. Prepare to be boarded, Greenville! We’ll choke your rivers with our dead! I mean, it should be a nice friendly game!

One of the yarn stores, Yarns Forever, also sells spinning wheels. I may call ahead and see if it’d be possible to get a demo and a chance to spin. Let’s hope this isn’t the beginning of a new hobby.

Found an error in a pattern I’m knitting. It looks like it was probably just a little glitch that got introduced somewhere in the editing process – like maybe an extra line got cut out during formatting or some such. Contacted the designer, who was very nice about it. It’s a super-cute pattern, but I don’t want to say what it is since it’s going to be a gift. I’m very excited about it. I’ll post up the finished object when it’s all done.

(To the tune of the Firefly theme)
Take my shoes, take my lane,
Give me beer, I won’t complain.
Get me drunk so I can’t see,
but you can’t take my balls from me!

Okay, that went a much worse place than I thought it would, so I think I’d best stop there.

In case you were wondering, here’s what we’re planning for our first Brownie meeting.

Last week a Brownie parent called me. Her daughter and another little girl had been part of a troop where the rest of the girls had aged up into Juniors, and two girls wasn’t enough for a standalone troop. She had spoken with another mom and with the co-leader, both of whom said to call me to get the okay for them to join our troop. Which I gave. We talked about cookie sales, activities, etc. for a while. When I got off the phone, it hit me that everybody said to talk to me to be sure it was okay. I AM NOT THE LEADER.

So to be sure everyone realized that we were back up and running, I drafted a “hi, parents!” letter. I sent it to the co-leader to get her input on it, since I AM NOT THE LEADER and unilaterally doing this kind of thing makes it easier for people to think that I am. Last night she wrote back and said, “sounds good! Have you thought about what we’re going to say at the meeting?”

I got home from the weekly stitch session last night just before 11pm and saw the mail. Since I was still hopped up on caffeine, I stayed up ’til midnight and wrote a freakin’ novel outlining how the meeting should probably go, what we were going to say, what materials we still needed, etc. Then I e-mailed GS HQ to ask for details on how badges are handled.

The letter looks like I’m detailing how we’re going to invade Normandy, not run a Brownie meeting. This is not the action of a mere interested mom.

Crap. I’m the freakin’ leader.

Emily brought home her handwriting workbook from school. It’s the first time in a long time they’ve had handwriting homework.

They’ve started cursive.

We’d just gotten the whole printing thing down. This isn’t going to be pretty.

Socks!

Or, more accurately, sock. Singular. I’m calling these my “two year socks” because I did finish the first in 2006, and I’m hopeful that I’ll actually buckle down and make the second in 2007.

This is the Crusoe pattern from Knitty. I cast on 64 instead of the called-for 48 in order to get gauge on size 1 needles, then sized all the numbers up appropriately. I probably shouldn’t get too in-depth so that I actually have something to post on that glorious day when I actually finish the second one. Or, you know, start the second one.

My kitchener stitch on the toe is the best I’ve done, I think. However, there is a small line down the sole where my two needles met. Eh, I’m okay with it. It’s a very small flaw.

And one for my mom: over the holidays at the in-laws’ I finally saw the TV program she’s mentioned to me, “What Not To Wear.” I thought she’d be pleased to see that thanks to her other grandparents, Emily now has a nice structured jacket, which the show says that every woman should have in their closet. She looks quite stylish playing Zoo Tycoon 2!

“Work, work, work.”

…a Macintosh laptop.

We’ve talked about getting one for, oh, about ten years now, but there are always more necessary things to spend our money on. Now I can work on weddings AND lie on the couch in the same room as my husband. SCORE!

Also:

Futurama for PS2. Gamespot says: “Unless you’re a rabid fan who simply has to be in contact with all things Futurama, this game is playable enough to warrant a rental but little else.” Well, Mr. Smartypants Game Reviewer, fortunately I am just such a rabid fan, and I’ve already had fun testing this out this morning. Yay!



Astaire and Rogers’ Collection Volume 1. I could watch these guys dance forever. That includes the blackface Mr. Bojangles tribute number, God help us. Thanks, Mom!



Inside Job by Connie Willis – autographed, no less! Connie Willis could publish a list of ingredients and I would want it. Also Book of Ballads, hardcover, by Charles Vess. These and a blank journal were gifts from my mother-in-law. Yay! I really wanted both of these!



A book weight! I wanted one of these so that I can have a book lying flat in front of me while I’m knitting, to help keep my hands free. Very handy in waiting rooms and other places I have to be parked for long periods of time. Stylish and practical, just like my mom, who gave it to me!



This gigantic paint can. Okay, I exaggerate. Actually we got a very generous cash gift from my father that let us paint the house. And by “paint the house” I mean “pay someone else to paint the house.” Because I’ve painted those eaves, and I was a teenager then, and there’s no way I could get it done in my current physical condition before 2010. It’s killer on the arms and shoulders. The house really needed to be painted, since it had been at least ten years, and we had a lot of flaking and peeling. This is something we were very happy to be able to do. Thanks, Dad!


I’m so fortunate to have such loving people in my life, and that we all have the resources to be able to do this kind of thing. I have such a sweet family!

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Many thanks to the person who sent me the lovely package of yarn, stitch markers, soap, and a very cute ornament. Who sent it? My Simu Secret Santa? Some other Christmas Elf? I have no idea! I’m leaning toward “Simu Secret Santa” though, as one of the items was some sparkly purple yarn, and an item my GM character wears in-game is “a hand-knit scarf made of glitzy purple yarn.” It was a great treat to have this package waiting for me when I arrived back in town. I particularly like the “heart 2 K N I T” stitch markers. Thank you very much for the whole shebang!

I’d like to leave you with a picture of it, as well as a traditional holiday pic, but http://www.tvini.org is having issues. We’re also having intermittent connection issues all around, and it’s going to be difficult to resolve until after the holidays. At least http://www.wearwithstyle.com is staying up.

I’ve got hats done and ready to go out to Arizona, Australia, and D.C., but of course there’ll be no mail service until Tuesday. Next up are Canada and a couple of places I don’t have addresses for.

Time to go to bed. Somehow I don’t think my daughter will let me sleep in on Christmas morning.

“Mommy, I want you to knit me a Bratz doll.”

Did I mention she was killing me? Yeesh.

Today, Emily has her holiday Christmas party in school. I asked her last Friday what she did in school, and she told me that they were having the party today, and that she needed to bring napkins. I was THRILLED. This is the first time she’s remembered to relay something that I or she needs to do or bring for school. Just to be sure, I e-mailed the teacher on Monday, and she confirmed that yes, every child is bringing something, and that’s Emily’s job. Emily reminded me about it again on Tuesday. Then yesterday evening, she said, “Mom, do we have napkins?” So we looked, and sure enough, we were out. We went to the store and got some.

When we got home, she said, “there are 18 children in the class,” figuring out how many napkins we’d need without me suggesting it. I said we should probably bring more than 18, just in case someone needed extra. We packed up the napkins in a Ziploc bag and stuck them in her backpack.

I could not be more excited about this. It’s the first time she’s remembered something this long, and followed through on a responsibility on her own to be sure it’s taken care of. I guess Christmas parties are a powerful motivator. This speaks to an ability to focus and remember that is very hopeful and encouraging.

She’s at school now, with a backpack of napkins and a pair of unfelted teal Fuzzyfeet that she picked out the yarn color for. I give Fuzzyfeet to the teacher every year, along with a zippered pillowcase and instructions on how to felt them. I think felting is such a neat, interesting thing to do. This year I was so short on knitting time I had to get an assist from prostiturtle. And yes, I did think very, very hard about just claiming I’d knitted them myself, but I’m just not wired to do that, I guess.

By the way, I can put those pages up as .docs if anybody wants to modify them for their own use. It’s just such a fun gift, I always enjoy doing it.

All Christmas gifts are bought and wrapped, all that remains is to get ingredients for our traditional Christmas dinner – ravioli from scratch. I think I’ll hit the breakfast bar at the big Harris Teeter to celebrate.