Kiss My Knits!

Dale Baby Ull swatch for Dad’s Charlie Brown sweater.

For some reason, Jayne hat knitting kit orders are up at least 300% this week. Why? Did someone post something somewhere that I don’t know about? Why are kit orders up over hat orders that disproportionately?

Weird.

Arrrrrr! Avast ye scurvy sheepdogs! Look what panzermama be sendin’ me out of the blue! If ye be notin’ that me brainpan is chopped off in me portrait, it’s because me first mate Emily the Snaggletoothed snapped the shot.

This was a nice lift on a day when I was notin’ that me treasure coffers be a little low. With mates like these, who cares? There’ll always be another ship to plunder! My thanks to ye, panzermama. You’re a great GM, mom, and all around wonderful wench. Arrrrrr!!

April Fool’s in bestest game ever Dragonrealms

Ah, April Fool’s. The day when GMs get to trick players in a more open fashion than usual. Piles of un-gettable coins, fake visions… I love it.

Think I’ll cause a little mayhem now.

Our meetings are normally over at 7pm, and we have to stretch to fill them. This one went more than 15 minutes over.

I’ll have to post later, since my daughter still isn’t in bed yet. However, I will say this: smartest move of the evening? Bringing a sheet to put down. Wow.

Thank you, ladies and germs! How did I miss that pun last time?

Moving on, I got an e-mail from Cindy, the charming creator of http://skiptomylou.wordpress.com/ saying that she had meant to mention using a knife to get out the eggs. Then we both went back and read, and oops, she had. My mistake! Also, she had used more water and less plaster in her mix. The plaster container backed her up on proportions, too, but who can be bothered to read the side of the jar? Armed with that knowledge, and wanting to try nonstick cooking spray as opposed to petroleum jelly, I gave it another go today!
Eggscitement galore below the cut!

So before I opened up a big container of plaster of Paris for a Brownie project with a bunch of second-graders, I thought I’d better give it a go first. And I’m glad I did!
Click for pics and details!

Yesterday my husband and daughter were roughhousing, and his knee caught her jaw, neatly finishing what he started yesterday. Her loose tooth came out. I’m pretty sure he’s getting a kickback from the tooth fairy. I’m going to have to watch my mouth around him, so to speak.

However, removing parts of her face wasn’t his only interaction with her. They also played outside, where my daughter indulged her favorite outdoor pastime, taking apart maple seeds. They got out the microscope and looked at various things under the lens. The slides were hastily prepared, which we thought prudent with her attention span, but we were able to see stripes and such that you wouldn’t see with the naked eye. It was fun!

On Wednesday, we have Brownies. We’ll be giving out the badges that we’ve worked on this year. They’ve gone through five so far. My mom had the good idea to pin them to a ribbon, then present the ribbon to the child. I’ll be going out to get some ribbon tonight if I don’t have some in my stash. I very well may – I picked up some extra at the Memories going out of business sale. I’ll be going out tomorrow morning to pick up the badges, and also a vest and some troop number patches for the girls who don’t have theirs yet.

I decided to give the badges a rest tomorrow. Instead, we’ll be making Easter egg chalk as posted on http://skiptomylou.wordpress.com . At least, that’s the theory. We’ve just put Emily to bed, so now I’ll be getting materials from Michael’s and giving this a try myself. If it doesn’t work well, then we’ll… uh… figure something else out. If all else fails, I can always bring some yarn and teach the kids to finger-knit. And I’ve asked the liaison for the church if we can use their playground. It’s just too nice to stay cooped up indoors.

I was somewhat gratified when, after I sent out early registration notes, several of my Brownie parents said, “does this mean you’re staying on next year? I really hope so!!!” I keep hearing feedback that I’m a pretty good leader. Of course, this could just mean they’re trying to keep me, the big sucker, so they’ve got a leader. Either way, I hadn’t thought that far ahead. Hm.

On the spinning front, I’m still spinning far faster when I ply than I am when I spin the singles, which means that my plied yarn is pretty overtwisted. The skein pictured is unwashed and fresh from the bobbin, so that may not be a fair example. C’est la vie – I’ve been busy, I haven’t been able to really focus on my spinning.

On the movie front, we’ve watched The Prestige and School of Rock recently. School of Rock was more fun than I was expecting. The Prestige was great, and very much in keeping with what you’d expect from the guy who directed Memento. Also today, on a whim, I stopped by CD Warehouse, which was across the street from my daughter’s speech therapy. I found Star Trek: Generations for $3.99 used and picked it up. They also had Star Trek: The Original Series seasons 1 and 2 for about $40 each. Amazon’s got it new for $68, and $40 seems to be about average for used copies, but I don’t really need this enough to spend the cash for it now. That’s why God made Netflix.

I’m off. I’m pretty tired, and I need to pick up these supplies before the craft store closes, and maybe swing by the grocery store as well.


Hats up for: NC, MD, IL

I had two “duh” knitting moments today. First, I had been puzzling over whether to purchase some Dale Baby Ull to make my dad’s Charlie Brown sweater. It’s on sale at Stitch Fine Yarns’ closing sale for $4.80 a ball, and they have 36 balls of a good Charlie Brown yellow. (**ETA: Because my sweet dad is concerned about the cost of this, I rush to assure him that it would not take anywhere near 36 balls of yarn to make a sweater.) However, I wasn’t sure about knitting an entire adult-sized sweater on #3 needles. To get a feel for its thinness, it’s the same yarn I knitted Emily’s doll from, as well as the tiny Charlie Brown sweater at left. But duh, I could just hold it double. So now I just need to figure out if it’s still such a great deal if I’m using twice as much as I thought. The Dale Baby Ull has great reviews, but I might be better off just getting some Cascade 220 superwash. It has good reviews, too.

Secondly, it occurred to me that I had a very easy way to see if I liked that sock better plain or patterned. Just turn it upside down so the plain sole was on the top. Duh.

Patterned…. and plain.

I showed them both to my husband, who said he liked plain better, and that there was so little distinction to the patterned side that it just looked “dirty.” I tend to agree. Plain looks just fine. Also, I think these may be a little bit snug. Not very, but just a little. Since I’ll be ripping them out anyway, I may do a swatch on my #2 needles. I do have two of those. Tonight, though, more Jayne hats.


Tonight while we were putting Emily to bed, she was playing around and kind of slipped off the bed. My husband moved to catch her, and instead knocked the underside of her jaw by accident. She had a tooth on the top that was already a little loose. We looked in the mirror and it was more loose, and also bloody. It doesn’t seem to be bothering her, though. She took it in stride.

As I was telling her a bedtime story, she kept having to stop and ask “what?” That’s because she was concentrating so hard on that top front tooth. She even told me, “I’m using my tongue to wiggle my tooth.” Her big concern? “I don’t want my tooth to fall on my Groovy Girls.” She seems to think it’ll come out tomorrow night. If she keeps wiggling it like she is, I don’t think it’ll last that long. I’ll alert the tooth fairy to reserve another Susan B. Anthony dollar.