Kiss My Knits!

Today’s IEP meeting ran from 11am to 2:15pm. I had to cut out before all the paperwork was signed. We’d decided everything, but the printer broke and so they’re going to send it home tomorrow. I had to leave because Emily and I had to be across town at 3pm, and we also wanted to stop at Starbucks first. I hadn’t had lunch, so I scarfed down a croissant and some chocolate milk. Then I got some coffee once I had something in my system. Now that’s well-balanced!

My back was killing me after spending 3 hours in a child-sized chair (it still is). At her OT’s, I asked the receptionist if there was a room where I could lie down on a hard floor for a while. She found me a back room. I lay down at 3:20. At 3:58, I opened my eyes. I guess I fell asleep, but my internal mom-clock said “in two minutes your daughter will be ready to go. WAKE UP!” I felt fairly woozy afterward.

Because of all this, I didn’t get to go by the hardware store to get stuff to lock the shed. Let’s hope the thieves don’t come back tonight.

Right now I can hear a mouse in the kitchen. It may actually be a rodent jamboree, because it’s pretty darned loud. Our stupid cat is, of course, unconcerned. Unfortunately, I can’t find our Hav-a-Hart humane traps. One more thing to get at the hardware store in the morning.

Early to bed for me tonight.

I got to bed well after midnight after the lawnmower incident. Then at four a.m., my daughter came out of her room with a tooth that she had finally lost. I got her all set up for the tooth fairy, who left her a Susan B. Anthony dollar as usual. Then it was up at 6:30 to get ready for school. Fortunately I saved half of last night’s raspberry mocha. It’s definitely working its magic. I brought some paperwork for Emily’s IEP meeting to school this morning and then walked home. Then I bench-pressed a Volvo. No, wait, that last thing didn’t happen today. That was in college. Long story.

Instead of going to Maryland Sheep and Wool (too expensive, lack of energy) I’m thinking I might go to The Handmade Market event in Raleigh on Saturday. Looks like fun, and there are some yarn shops between here and there I’ve been wanting to hit. Plus we saved $350 by not having our lawnmower stolen, I gotta spend that somehow.

Whaddya mean it doesn’t work that way? Wet blanket!

My friend Laura’s in Raleigh this weekend, although she’s visiting family so I doubt I’ll get to see her. It’d still be nice to swing through Chapel Hill on the way home and walk around campus a little. Good times, good times.

I’d like to make a thank-you gift for our neighbor for stopping that ne’er-do-well from taking our mower, but I’m unsure what to make. I’ve never seen him wear any sort of knitted thing, so that probably leaves baked goods. The thing is, the man is in fantastic shape. I mean, seriously. He does his yardwork shirtless. Lemme tell you, you could cut diamonds on this guy’s abs. I’m not sure he’d enjoy brownies or muffins or whatever from the doughy lady next door. I could do a nice rosemary/olive oil bread braid but I don’t know if he eats carbs.

He’s probably a little over 40, recently married with a stepdaughter. He goes out on the weekends uptown for local entertainment. His musical tastes are eclectic, but we generally hear Journey or some other adult contemporary/rock/country genre coming from his radio when he’s out washing his car. Works as a network manager (or some other managerial computer-related position), but computers are just a job, not a way of life. He wears nice clothes to work, drinks wine and smokes good cigars, and his house and yard look immaculate. Yet he’s thoughtful and doesn’t give us a hard time (except occasional ribbing) about the general state of disrepair our home and lawn are in. I’m at a loss as to what to do for him. Completely stumped. Any ideas?

Wow, I really type more when I’m hopped up on coffee. Okay, enough blogging! I have to go fly like a hummingbird to the grocery store before my caffeine buzz wears off.

While we were watching LOST tonight, someone knocked on our door. It was our neighbor – and he was standing there with our lawnmower. Apparently he’d been washing dishes and looked out the window to notice that our shed door was open. He went outside and saw a guy dragging our lawnmower up the sidewalk. At 10:15 at night. No, that’s not conspicuous.

Our neighbor, a guy who loves his yard and has surely noticed what our mower looks like, yelled at him that that was our mower. He let it go and started jogging away, saying that he (our neighbor) could give it back to us. Which he did.

Thank God our neighbor was doing the dishes. He’s a good guy, and a good neighbor, even if his lawn does outshine ours by a factor of about a thousand. I imagine us not being able to mow our lawn because the mower was gone would make him nearly as crazy as it would us.

There was no lock on the shed door. The entire assembly which held the lock was broken off by thieves who made off with our weedeater a while back. Needless to say, we’ll be replacing it with a sturdy chain and keyed lock as soon as possible. I doubt the thieves will be back tonight, but until tomorrow, the mower stays inside. Tomorrow, we start beefing up security.

Or not.

The Creative Loafing article came out, and yes, I am in it. The woman who interviewed me admitted that she usually copy edits, so she was fairly new to this whole interviewing thing. I mentioned this later to my mother, longtime newspaper editor, and she asked, “Did she ask you how to spell your name?” I said no, and she shook her head disapprovingly. I answered, “You’re right, she should have, but it’s ‘Heather Hill.’ Surely she’ll get that right.”

Well, she did. But…

Another “comic addict” and longtime Heroes customer, Heather Hill “started [reading comics] in 1977 — the year Star Wars came out,” she laughs. Hill is a freelance writer for the online role playing game Dragon Realm and mother to 8-year-old Emily.

Dragon Realm? Dragon Realm? It’s DragonRealms. One word, plural. If anyone wanted to Google it based on that article, they’d be out of luck. I don’t go around calling Creative Loafing “Crate of Loathing.” If you’re not sure of what you heard, ASK.

I mentioned later in the interview with her that actually, I started reading earlier – my cousins and I read Richie Rich and other Harvey comics in the car trip up to Pennsylvania every year. That’s not as good of a hook, so I won’t quibble.

At one point during the discussion, she asked what I got out of comics, and I said that different people get different things based on where they are in their lives. For instance, right now Supergirl is doing a storyline – ‘don’t let your boyfriend hit you, no means no,’ that sort of thing. It doesn’t speak to me at all, because I already know these things. But I still remember a Wonder Woman comic when I was in high school that dealt with teen suicide. At that point in my life, it was more relevant to a teen girl. The things I read now speak to me more where I am in my life today.

What did I not say?

That’s what a good story does, whatever the medium. It becomes a part of you, woven into your past to remind who you were. “I’ve hung on to an issue of Wonder Woman that dealt with teen suicide for years now,” Heather says lightly.

For the record, I WAS NEVER SUICIDAL AS A TEEN. It never crossed my mind. This sounds to me as if this issue of Wonder Woman was some sort of magical talisman that guided me through a turbulent youth. I remember it because I thought it was interesting that a comic was trying to tackle such a serious issue. I didn’t exactly clutch it to my breast, weeping, “This is me!”

George Perez was doing the book back then. I enjoyed that run, and enjoyed Jill Thompson’s run, too, for that matter, since they didn’t draw her like she was constantly bending over for a good poling. Pardon my French. I actually had to stop reading the book for a while because she and her Amazon cohorts were clearly having some sort of mystical laundry problems that caused their uniforms to shrink and give them all wedgies.

I admit I’m probably overreacting a bit to the quote, and after I read it again I’ll see it differently. I did give her that awesome “hobble in my walker” quote, because baby, I know what the media wants in a sound bite. I’ll have to read it again later, preferably when I’m not hopped up on my Wednesday night raspberry mocha. Regardless, I will be speaking with the interviewer, if only to remind her of the importance of confirming your facts (Dragon Realm indeed). As my newshound mom says, “If your mother says she loves you, check it out!”

, I believe your title is safe.

Cribbed from .

It was that meteor/meteoroid thing that got me. D’oh!

In yesterday’s entry, I neglected to add that you, too, can have your very own Picard head! The trick is, you have to know where to look. This is from eBay seller donnyaol.com. Nowhere in the description of the item does he mention that the head is a dead ringer for Patrick Stewart. It’s quite mysterious. Does he know? How can he not? Because of this, entering any search terms you might normally use wouldn’t bring this up. I found it back in 2004 when I was looking for a mannequin head to display my hats, but I couldn’t justify the price. I saw it again a few weeks ago while looking for a dressform.

It looks like donnyaol.com has a supply of them, because this wasn’t the only one I saw. Also, there’s one that looks uncannily like a bald Jim Carrey (at least to me) and another one that somewhat resembles Tyrone Powers. WTF? Where is he getting these? Who has a continuous supply of Picard heads?

Last week we installed a new ceiling fan. The old one had three non-working light sockets and was a little out of balance. Plus it was white with gold trim, and the gold was peeling off from the heat of the bulbs. Time for a change. So my wonderful husband, all 6’2″ of him, crawled into the attic and across the rafters to install it. He did a great job, and while the fan might be a little too fancy for the room – I’m torn on this – it’s better than what was there before. More to the point, now I can use it with my Picard head for this classic tableau:

There are FOUR LIGHTS!

Hmm. A mysterious package, addressed to my husband. Rather large, too.

He says it’s for me, and that I should open it. I do. It’s filled with old copies of a Bakersfield newspaper and something vaguely head-shaped wrapped in a paper towel. Should I be worried? Knowing my husband, yes.

No way. NO. WAY. YOU MUST CLICK TO BELIEVE!!

Well, I think we can add something new to the list of Things Tvini Wants. Too cute shirt from Threadless!

And speaking of stuff I don’t really need, I’m considering doing a pretty big selloff of yarn. I’m working on de-cluttering the house, and I realized that I have yarn I haven’t used in quite a while. If I haven’t knitted with it in three years, then it doesn’t matter how pretty it is, it’s just taking up space. I’ve got Noro, some very nice sock yarn, novelty (of course), cotton chenille, and lots more. And I’ve still got the Cherry Tree Hill merino boucle pictured at right, which for some reason, didn’t get bought the last time I tried to unload it – at half retail, no less! At 370 yards a hank, one of these would make a super-cute toddler sweater for only about $15. I did add a “yarns” heading on http://www.wearwithstyle.com so I’m not sure if I’ll put my stash up there, in the community here, or just on eBay. If I put it on wearwithstyle, I’ll probably have to add a shopping cart and such, which I’ve never done before. I don’t know if it’s worth the bother.

Today, I need to pick up more straw for packing, stamp more boxes, and mail more hats. I noticed yesterday that one of the guys from the Hobo Hustle was back in front of the post office. Not Smokey Joe, the other guy. Maybe his 60 days were up, or maybe the pickings are just better in front of the post office. As long as he stays off of my car, we’re good.

Weather’s beautiful, wish you were here.

It looks like I’m going to be in this week’s Creative Loafing in Charlotte. Shelton Drum at Heroes Aren’t Hard to Find gave them my name as a long-time female customer. I was interviewed for an article about Free Comics Day, and the interviewer seemed pleased. The issue comes out on Wednesday, I believe.

If you’re in Charlotte, pick up a copy to see if I come off sounding like the biggest nerd in the world.

Knitted up some of the cuff on the Tofutsies sock. Now I think I’ll have to put it aside – again – because there are things I need to make for other people. Sweaters, slippers, and of course, paid orders.

After looking again at the waistline on Emily’s sweater, I think I may just scratch the hills and make it a straight green/blue delineation. I’m undecided. Either way, the green does need to be higher. Of course, since she hasn’t asked about it or mentioned it at all, maybe I can put that off a little longer. Not too long, though. This kid ain’t getting any shorter.


I have a couple of purses for a lady in Huntersville in my queue. I am really not looking forward to these. I have to make tons of i-cord and sew plastic pony beads around the flap. Neither is what I’d choose to do, given my druthers. However, I told her I’d do it, so I will. Apparently the original purse was knit by a little old lady in Davidson who has since passed on who sold these at craft fairs. My client bought one, and her sisters have been admiring it ever since. She decided to get some for her sisters, so they could all have them. It was a nice story, and looking at the purse I could see it wasn’t rocket science, so I agreed to recreate it. Since I initially took this commission last summer (she ordered several, she picks them up every now and then) I’ve gotten more firm about saying no to commissions I don’t think will be enjoyable.

I made another teeny tiny project, this one weaving instead of knitting. It’s pretty cute. I can’t show it to you yet because it’s about to be stuffed into the jar o’ joy. Why was this jar so hard for me to fill? I am terribly late in getting this out, so today will be devoted partially to mailing things!