Kiss My Knits!

My husband recently got a raise at work. We’re both very happy about this, talking about what bills we can pay off or down, and all that other practical stuff. However, I told him that while that was a great idea, he had worked hard, and I wanted him to buy something stupid and impractical with his very first higher paycheck.

Mission Accomplished!

We’d been talking about a wii for a while, but it definitely falls under the “stupid and impractical” category so we never got one. But he was really going on about it one morning, so I started calling around, and finally found one in stock, one place in Charlotte, way out in the sticks. So while he was at work that day, I took a long car drive and an hour later we were the proud owners of a wii. I also got an extra controller (bundled with more games) so that we could play together.

We’ve had fun with this! I personally have a sore keister from wii bowling, and my husband has a sore shoulder and arm from wii baseball. We both agree that this says sad things about the state of our fitness. However, from the looks of the flickr wii motion pool I have a feeling we’re not alone. One of my favorite pics is the one at left. No, that is not my husband.

I want to bring this over to my Dad’s house so he can check it out too. I think he’d get a kick out of it. He’s a good pool player, and this does have a 9-ball game. I had trouble figuring out the amount of force to put on the remote and also keeping it lined up with the sensor properly. As a result, when I played with my husband last night, I sometimes wound up leaving the ball juuuust shy of the pocket, setting him up for perfect shots. He skunked me. What a disgrace to the family name!

In case any of y’all out there have wiis and want to connect, my number is 5471 7965 3600 6004.

I’m still figuring this thing out, but so far, it’s fun!

We’re off to the Storytelling Festival of Carolina for the weekend. Y’all be good!

After hearing that Jenna Fischer, Pam on “The Office,” had fallen and fractured her back (she’s expected to make a full recovery) I decided to send her a card. community posted up her agent’s address for this purpose.

Note feathers pasted to card with glue stick. Am I #11 yet? No? What’s a gal gotta do?

As a side note, ladies, I don’t care how good you think they make your legs look, don’t wear high heels. Learn from Jenna.

http://www.wearwithstyle.com orders continue to pick up, bucking the general flat trend in summer. Must be the upcoming Serenity screenings.

In other news, I now have no jeans without holes in the knees – again – so I’m off to go clothes shopping. Tomorrow I go in for my semiannual haircut. Let’s hope the stylist does a good job since I’ll be seeing my in-laws this weekend.

I’m off to the mall! Woo!

I have Statcounter on www.wearwithstyle.com now, and I enjoy seeing the various places that people hit the site from. Please note, I do not use this tool in a creepy stalker way, more as a fun way to see where Browncoats are, and what I might need to fine-tune about the site should demand ever drop off. When I see someone from an unexpected country hit the site, I look to see what they were searching for when they found me.

Apparently, when you search for “nice lady” in Egypt, I’m the #2 hit.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!! WOO! How the hell did that happen?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA!!

But wait! It’s not just our friends in the Middle East who have been misled. Apparently www.wearwithstyle.com is #12 for “nice lady” in the U.S. Which honestly shocks me more, because I would have expected porn or possibly Russian brides for that search.

I’m going to walk around all day today with my head held high, knowing that I have an international reputation as a nice lady.

HAHAHAHAHAAAAA*wheeze*HAHAHAHAHAAAAA!!!!!

I don’t know why that frog prince from yesterday’s sandwich bag got stuck in my head, but it did. I made a couple more drawings of it. They might be good for embroidery, they might not. Jayne orders are picking back up so I need to be sure I’m staying ahead of the line again, so embroidery will have to wait.


I’ve been enjoying my carders, having fun blending some garishly bright fibers together to see the results. It’s also good practice to forego the diz and spin from the cloud of fibers the cards produce. The center mini-skein was plied onto a bigger bobbin than the ones I used to spin the singles. I didn’t notice until after it was done and it was a twisted mess. Oh well, live and learn. It was all for practice anyway. I’ll bring these tonight to Books-a-Million four our weekly knitting group.

Off to the grocery store – we’re out of milk, and Tvini want cereal!

Jayne hats up for: NC, CA, NJ.

First, re: Heroes, the person who considered George Takei as Hiro’s father should get the Nobel Prize for Casting. Because George Takei on Heroes really rocks. I mean, really, really rocks.

Note: out of deference to folks who haven’t seen the show yet, I am not including a pic of Takei from the actual series. Plus Sulu fencing shirtless on the Enterprise really rocks. I mean, really, really rocks.

And did you read this bit of news? “NBC “bulks up” with 30 combined episodes of “HEROES” and “HEROES: Origins,” an innovative new spin-off that each week will introduce a new character — one of whom will be chosen by viewers through the “HEROES” website on NBC.com to become a cast regular the following season….” I guess it’s only exciting if you’re a Heroes fan, but I am, so yay!

Moving on!

I had to stop spinning yesterday because I was cramping up in my left hand, but I still wanted to do a non-knitting craft, so I started on this embroidery idea that I’d had for a while. (The hoop is from the Sublime Stitching kit that got for me a few years ago. Thanks, !)

This shirt was originally designed for a friend who had a baby, but I’ve lost contact with him, so I’m not sure who will receive it now. If it goes well maybe I’ll sell it. Or maybe I’ll hold onto it for the next baby to come along – people are always having babies, it seems. The picture shows the design incomplete. I couldn’t watch Heroes and embroider at the same time, so I worked on a Jayne hat instead. Embroidery isn’t my strong suit – that’s my mother and grandmother’s area of expertise – but this is a fairly simple design. I’d like to do more embroidery, but there are very few things in my house which I think would be improved by more embellishment, or maybe I just have trouble envisioning them embroidered.

However!

Every day for my daughter’s lunch, she gets a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in a bag. I always draw a little picture on it and write a few words. It might be about a story we’ve been reading, or related to something they’ve been doing in school, or just a question she might like to talk about. I know the other kids look at these, so maybe it’ll give them a topic of conversation. I do these early in the morning, so they’re not exactly great art. But it occurred to me this morning that if modified, they might make nice embroidery patterns for kids’ stuff. I only wish I’d thought of this several years ago, as I do a different picture every day. Oh well.

We’ll see how this goes. Maybe it’ll be a one-shot deal, or maybe I’ll be inspired to do more.


Jayne hats up for: FL, NC, CA

“Mom, I want to get you a Mother’s Day cupcake.”

“How nice! Why don’t you ask your father if you guys can go do that?”

(She asks, he says yes.)

“We’re going to go get a Mother’s Day cupcake… for you to share with me.”

Aha. Now I see. Heh.

Six years ago, when my daughter was two, she was at a local preschool which was doing a Mother’s Day thing. Handprints on cards, pompom caterpillars, I don’t really remember what it was. The day after they’d done this, but before they’d given the crafts to us, I heard the other moms talking.

“Jordan couldn’t keep it a secret, he just had to tell me.”

“I know! Haley was the same way, she blurted it right out.”

“Kids this age just can’t keep things secret, can they?”

And they all laughed knowingly. Gosh, kids say the darndest things.

I was so angry I was literally seeing red. We were learning about Emily’s problems and figuring out what it all meant. The other moms didn’t know, since we didn’t socialize. My daughter hadn’t breathed a peep about anything they were doing in class, because she didn’t talk the way theirs did. How dare these mothers sit and make light of their children’s ability to communicate with them. I would give anything in the world for my daughter to spill the beans on something. These women didn’t know how lucky they were. I wanted to strangle them for the good fortune they had, all unknowing. (Yes, some months later I did go on drugs for depression.)

That feeling really stayed with me, obviously, and it did rear its head again from time to time, lessening as I came to terms with my child’s differences.

Last night in bed, my daughter told me, “I have something to give you tomorrow for Mother’s Day.”
“Do you?”
“Yes, it’s a secret.”

Six years late, but she got there. My heart is very full.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there.

I brought a silk hanky (a silk cocoon spread out into a thin square) to the Brownie presentation and stretched it way out so the girls could see how strong and long the silk was. Because it was going to be difficult to store in that form, I decided to go ahead and spin it.

Wow. Just wow. I’m stunned at how fine a thread it can make. No wonder they used to use this for parachutes. This stuff just does not break. Mark this as something else I want to tackle when I get better.