#KnittingWhileConservative

So Ravelry (a website where I tend to go for crochet and knitting patterns -- and seriously, that's the only reason I'm ever over there. Or, well, why I would have been over there in the past because I'll be doing my darndest to shop elsewhere now.) decided that supporting Trump is equal to being a white supremacist and has now banned anything having to do with Trump support from their site.

This is the site where the ridiculous pink cat hats came from. So overtly anti-conservative things are all still well and good.

Frankly, in my mind, a crafting site ought to be politics free - it's crafts, but they wanted discussion forums so whatever. And if someone wants to make a Trump 2020 knitted something or other and share the pattern, well, I'm not really sure how that hurts anyone (just like the pink hats don't. You want to help people knit ridiculous, politically charged cat hats, have at it. I'm just looking for scarves.)

Trump has his faults. No question. I don't particularly care for him as a person (at least based on what I know of him as a person) -- but if the Bill Clinton presidency taught me ANYTHING it was that a president can be a rapist and murderer so long as he's doing his job. (Because please, Lewinsky didn't consent. There was no possible way in the given situation that it was anything other than an abuse of power.) But the mantra then was "a person's personal life has nothing to do with his ability to be president." So okay, fine, a president can be a douche. Got it. I will now expect you to apply that across the board.

I kid, I kid.

Of course a conservative president isn't held to the same standards the left cries for when it's their own in office.

My bad.

And so we see the cycle of "Oh, I only meant that when it applied to liberals" in full force over on Ravelry. And part of me wonders just how long it will be before anyone who doesn't toe the liberal line is lined up against the wall and shot. Because honestly, if a knitting pattern site cares this deeply that they're going to censor? What's next?

Michelle Malkin has a good piece up on the whole shebang.

Anyway, as I did with Target years ago when they decided you just had to feel like a woman to go into the women's restroom, I'll be stopping use of Ravelry. I know my lone act of defiance means exactly nothing in the overall scheme of things - but it's all I can do. (I don't miss Target all that much, and when I hear from friends about the enormous section of gay pride apparel they had out this month, I remember that I really don't miss it all. I mean if people want to be gay, be gay. Just don't force me to have your opinion about it. That's where I get annoyed.)

I'll be over here -- a white conservative, knitting.

An Amusing Exchange

At the start of the year, I got it into my head to crochet a temperature blanket this year. It was a bit of temporary insanity coupled with peer pressure, I think, as I have a number of friends doing this as well. Essentially, it's a blanket wherein each row has a color based on the temperature for that day. I'm doing 10 degree increments, because I hate switching yarn and wanted to minimize that as much as possible.

Regardless, when I made that decision, I ambled off to Hobby Lobby to procure the needed yarn and spent a lot longer than was probably necessary sorting out the scale of colors that would take us through the year. For the 80s and 90s, I was hoping for some oranges, but the selection was somewhat lacking. I ended up with a terra cotta like color (which I like) and then a burnt pumpkin for the 90s.

Since we managed to hit 90+ the past three days, I finally had a chance to add a row of that burnt pumpkin and...it looked a lot like poo. Given what the temps around here do in the summer, I really wasn't on board with a huge swath of poo in the middle of my blanket. So this afternoon, while we were out and about running errands, I ambled off to Hobby Lobby to exchange the two skeins of poo for something else.

I checked in at the return/exchange counter, left the old yarn, and headed back to the appropriate aisle. The selection of orange was still not what I was hoping for. So, where I had been planning to use red only for days we went over 100, I finally decided to make red for the 90s and then found a darker red (cranberry something or other) for those few over 100 days. Pleased with the solution (and with the fact that hubby had taken the kids to Game Stop to browse while I ran this errand, so I could actually think easily and quickly and get the job accomplished in very little time), I headed back up to the counter.

Of course, in the intervening time from January to now, the price of yarn went up by a dollar. No biggie, we'd just return the other two and I'd buy the new ones. Smiling at the cashier, I said, "Great, that'll give me a chance to use my coupon."

So she rang up the return, then she rang up the new purchase and, because I was going to use my 40% off one item coupon, double-checked that the yarn wasn't on sale. Except, it was. For 30% off. Yay!

Applying the discount, it ended up that she had to refund me $0.36. I told her we could go for the straight exchange if it was easier, because I'm not going to quibble about thirty six cents. But since she'd already started the rigamarole on the cash register, she said it was easier to just go with it, if I didn't mind have that amount sent back to my credit card.

I assured her I didn't. And I might have chuckled the whole way home.

Easy Thrift

I spent the morning turning a few pairs of the elder kiddo's slacks into shorts. See, 4 year olds apparently are incapable of keeping the knees of pants intact (or at least, my 4 year old is). The waist still fits fine. The rest of the pants are fine. And if we were heading into more pants weather, I would be tempted to buy some of the patches I loathed as a child (but oh how I realize why my mom used them, now) and just patch them. However, seeing as I was going to need to buy some shorts soon anyway, I figured hey, scissors, roll hem, sewing machine. Done.

I'm pretty pleased with the outcome. The kiddo seems excited too - he thinks it's like getting a whole new outfit. I'm going to enjoy that for as long as I'm able (I suspect the rolled eyes and sighs of disdain at such a procedure are not as far off as I'd like to think.)

Sew Annoyed

Last year, in a fit of inspiration (brought on by the stunning prices they want to charge for clothes a child will wear for just about 6 seconds before they no longer fit), I purchased some sale priced flannel and an Easy McCalls kids pajama pattern and decided to just make some instead. Shortly after cutting out the first set and getting the majority of the shirt sewn, my sewing machine died. I got a new one for my birthday, but by then (late Feb) it was no longer really flannel pajama weather, so I tucked them away with the thought that I would just make them the next year.

So it was that I found myself pulling out the cut pieces and my new machine this weekend and whipping up the first pair of pajamas. Only to find that something was decidedly amiss. Because while the pants turned out well in the front:

The process of getting them put together (and indeed the final result) revealed that all was not well in the rear:

Because in order to get them to go together properly, I had to turn the back pieces wrong way out. To say I was annoyed is to put much too small an emphasis on my thoughts at the time.

Still, they're pajamas. For an almost-4-year-old. He isn't going to care all that much and might, in fact, find it fun that he has trains pointing in AND out. (Note: putting them on this evening, he was convinced I had them inside out. So much for the thinking it'd be fun idea.)

So I pulled out the next set of flannel and took a good look at the layout instructions, figuring that I must have done something stupid when cutting out the fabric on the first set.

What you see here is the layout guide. It shows the fabric being folded right sides (that's the patterned side that should be seen on the outside of a garment) together. Then it shows you putting the pattern pieces onto the folded fabric face up and cutting them out. I checked, rechecked, and checked one more that I was interpreting this correctly and then cut out the next set of jammies.

Which also turned out to look like really bizarre chaps for toddlers.

I explained the conundrum to my sister, who is a much better sewer than I have any hopes of becoming and she immediately said the directions made no sense but that clearly one of the pattern pieces should be flipped over. Then she went on to say that at least I got a blog post out of it. I guess there's always that.

Lampworking Fun

On Sunday, my sister and I played hooky from church and headed off to an introduction to lampwork class that we got through Groupon. Basically it's half of their usually 2-day intro course (the 1st day, clearly) to get people more interested in taking further classes. But for $70, it seemed like a nice way to spend 6 hours and get to try something that has always been fascinating to me.

We got there and found a group of about 12 (a full room), each station had its own torch and a box of tools. The first thing you learn is how to turn on the torch. As the mother of a boy, this is something I will never forget, because the acronym is POOP. (Propane Oxygen / Oxygen Propane) For turning it on, you PO, to turn off, you OP. Simple, easy, and something my son likes to run around chanting. (What is it with that Y chromosome?)

So you spend a little time turning your torch off and on and then you get basic instruction on how to hold your mandrel (not to be confused with a mandrill). The mandrel is a long, thin rod around which you wrap your molten glass - so it forms the hole in your bead (or whatever you're making, but generally, it's a bead of some sort.) They have various thicknesses, depending on how large a hole you want to have. The end you wrap the glass around is coated with a compound that keeps the glass from sticking to it (so that your mandrel doesn't become a permanent part of the bead). The key is that the mandrel has to be continually spinning while the glass is molten, otherwise gravity takes over and your beads are more like teardrops (or worse). It's trickier than you think, since you've also got to keep it level perpendicular to your body. They suggest that you spin the mandrel with your non-dominant hand and melt your glass and wrap said molten glass with your dominant hand. For whatever reason, doing it exactly the opposite of that was much better for me. (I have enough dexterity to collect a gather of molten glass and wrap it with my left hand, not enough dexterity in the left hand to keep anything resembling a constant, easy spin going.)

Once you've got the hang of spinning your mandrel in the flame, you get to practice with simple beads (a single wrap of one color - basically you're just practicing getting a good enough gather of glass and trying to get a reasonable shape out of things.) Here were the results of this practice:

Nothing terribly earth shaking in there - though the aqua ones turned out nicely. I also like the light blue with red stripe (I was getting fancy with that one, adding a second color - it was the last practice bead I made.) None of these got fired, so they may break pretty easily, but they also may not. I figured it was worth keeping them, they're kind of pretty.

Then we learned some more techniques, such as adding additional gathers, making dots and swirls and barrels (vs. round beads, a longer more barrel-like bead) and so forth. Such as these:

Some of these I'm very pleased with (the red white and blue is probably my favorite (far left) the light blue on the far right is fun and bumpy and I like it as well. These I actually did fire, so they're all official and everything.

The instructor said they're working on finding a time that we could take the 2nd half of the class if we're interested - and then we'd be eligible to do go to open lamp times at the studio. If I can make it work with the schedule, I'll definitely go to the 2nd class. It was lots of fun and it'd be fun to be able to go to open lamp and play some more.

Frustrated

So, after a lot of praying and a lot of talking with people whose opinions I value, I decided that I was supposed to go ahead and stick with doing the MOPS crafts this next year.

With a renewed sense of purpose, I planned out our craft for today and was really thinking it would be cool and well received. The craft itself was an introduction to paper cutting (scherenschnitte if you want the "technical" German word for it) and something that I've found to be a fun thing since grade school. The pattern was an easy one - two bunnies under a tree with flowers. It's done on a fold, so you have a mirror image when you're finished with the project. Then I also printed patterns for some filigree type Easter eggs for them to take home (or do if they finished the bunnies quickly) - those are fun if you put colored tissue paper behind them and hang them in the window. I planned for them all to have a pair of paper cutting scissors they could take home and keep.

Well, to start off, the panel discussion today went long. As in late to pick up our kids long. So the craft was a serious afterthought. No problem, I thought to myself, this is an easy one to take home and do. So we said "Come pick up your supplies and you can take your craft home."

Of the 55 women in the group, only maybe 15 came by to actually get their materials.

Of those 15, only 7 or 8 actually took them when they saw what the craft was.

Le sigh.

I know you can't please everyone all of the time, but honestly with this job, I feel like I never please anyone any of the time.

I just need to remind myself that God has a sense of humor. Even when I've lost mine.

Back In My Day...

I was perusing the Michael's circular yesterday afternoon (as I am wont to do for any number of reasons, but I'm trying to think of something cute that the kiddo can do for Tim for Valentine's day) and I spotted with no small bit of amazement the foam pink mailbox - essentially full assembled and ready for taking to school (I assume).

I had to stop and wonder...are kids today too incapable of imagination to make something fun out of a shoebox? Or is it that parents won't take the time for the moderate help required to do this? Honestly, I remember one year we all decorated lunch sacks. Or is there something culturally insensitive about those crafts and now we're required to have foam mail boxes because we couldn't possibly stoop so low as to *gasp* recycle junk into a fun craft.

This is much the same reaction I have to the stupid pre-made stretchy book covers. Honestly. Get a paper bag and make one.

It was good enough for me, by golly...it ought to be good enough for kids today.

I guess I really am getting old.

Craft-tacular

I'm in charge of crafts at our MOPS group. At the outset, this seemed like a wonderful thing. I love crafts. I love planning. I love planning crafts. What's not to love? But oh, I did not factor in the "large group of women" factor. Everyone has an opinion, and they all want to share it. Well, at least, they all want to share the negative ones. I swear to you, I never hear anything about a craft that's positive - if there's feedback, it's because something went horribly awry (or they just hated it and felt I should know). And if I hear it from one, I hear it from 30 of them. Sometimes I go home from a meeting and wonder if their mothers never mentioned that little nugget about not saying anything at all.

So it is with great trepidation that I approach next week's meeting, wherein we will be putting together 24 ornaments for a Jesse Tree. I'm especially dreading the negativity this go-round because putting these sets together has been a TON of hard work on my end - all designed to try and make their craft experience just the right balance of crafty but not too crafty, easy but not too easy, challenging but not too challenging, and fun. Which, of course, I will never strike for all 55 of them at one time. And so rather than having them spend the mind numbing 10 minutes it takes to chop up 24 pieces of crochet thread into hangers to glue on the ornaments, I am cutting 55 sets of 24 and grouping them together. And so on, and so forth. At the end of the day, they will simply need to glue on hangers, paint 2 of them, do a little cutting out, a little more gluing, and some stapling. I suspect I will hear from the three or four crafty in the bunch that it was too much assembly and not enough craft. Everyone else will complain that there was too much to do in the allotted time. (Which there probably is, which is why I'm sending very complete instructions home. But still.)

And honestly it has me trying to decide if I need to just bow out of MOPS all together next year. I'll stick out this current year because I made a commitment and it would seriously leave them in the lurch if I said to heck with it now. But it's that commitment and the fact that the kiddo enjoys the play time that keeps me going back, and I suspect it's supposed to be more than that. I was hoping, in fact, that it might provide some friends who are home during the day - for both me and the kiddo. I'm bummed that it didn't. But I can't help wondering if I stick it out another year if it might. On the other hand, what was that definition of insanity again?

Made By Hand

I have always enjoyed crafty things (really, it seems like always - I remember hook latch rugs at a young age  morphing into cross stitch and so on and so forth). The major problem with this is that one only has so much room for hand made items in their own house before it's just ridiculous. So I put a moratorium on my craftiness and allowed it only for gift making. Because who doesn't love a hand made gift?

And then, several years ago (really, it was close to 20) I was prepping for the wedding of my then best friend and she chanced to see me working away at something (which had, in fact, been intended as their wedding gift) she commented on how she couldn't understand why I enjoyed that and besides what did I do with it because didn't I know that no one likes hand made gifts? They're just a burden. So I tucked that away and instead bought the towels off her registry. My mother enjoyed the gift I had been putting together, though I'll admit to wondering then if it was simply because she'd enjoy anything from me and not because there was any value or merit in the gift.

That faded, somewhat, over the next several years and I gradually allowed myself to make gifts here and there for folks who I thought would appreciate them - usually just baby blankets, as that seems to be the only socially acceptable time to give someone something hand made. Until six years ago when my then best friend (different person, though it seems same mindset) commented on how terrible hand made baby blankets were because they were drafty and you couldn't return them and honestly, why did people think they were a good idea? So I tucked away the blanket I'd been working on and got her something off her registry instead.

And it's been only here and there, when I've verified with the putative recipient that a hand made gift would be welcome, that I've bothered from that point forward. Because really, no one likes to give a gift that's unwelcome.

But it makes me sad. I really, really enjoy the process of crocheting (or whatever other crafty outlet I've decided on) and find such joy in giving someone something that came out of my time and love (especially over the two and a half minutes it takes to go online and buy something and have it shipped to their house.) I can see the other side, we still have picture frames (not hand made, though) from our wedding that I have no idea what to do with - many have been regifted, many more were returned, and I remember wondering why someone would bother spending money on something like that and how I would have preferred a gift card or check. So I can, sort of, see the other side. But that was to do with crystal picture frames...not something that someone actually spent time creating.

Regardless, as the weather starts to turn cold, I find myself wishing for a project to work on in the evenings if we decide to watch TV. But really, I don't see the point in just making something with no recipient in mind, and we don't really need anything ourselves.

I guess I need a different hobby.

In Which She Unearths the Sewing Machine

Owing to a combination of good prices on fabric and actually finding two patterns I think may be flattering, I am, for the first time since...prom (gosh...really? Yeah, I think so.) I am going to undertake to create for myself an article of clothing. A dress, to be exact. (Well, two dresses if you want to get all exact exact about it.)

Now, usually, as my sister will more than happily point out, I put something together and then try it on and roll my eyes and never wear said item of clothing because to me, it looks homemade. So I hereby promise, in public, that I will wear these two dresses at least two times without whining about how horrible they look. Not that I am saying ahead of time that they'll look horrible, I'm just saying I'm not going to whine.

Hopefully I can manage to make them such that this will not make me die a little inside.

Anyway, I really like the fabric so...fingers crossed. Expect to hear all the gory details and gnashing of teeth here.

Item one for your consideration:
Why is it that I can go into just about any clothing store out there and pick up an item in my current size (the same number at any store) and it fits, yet when I look at the measurements for said number on a pattern, my measurements correspond to two sizes up from that?

The fashion industry is just one big conspiracy to make women feel crappy about themselves.

Bits and Pieces

I was going to play around with the Fiction Friday prompt today - and I might still - but really, it's not all that exciting to me. You're to start your story during a religious ceremony. I had one snarky idea that I may follow up on, but beyond that, well, not so inspiring right now. That could be because it's so cold I can't feel my toes. (Ok, fine, slight exaggeration, but my feet really are quite cold, despite two pair of socks and slippers.)

I've started on a pair of crocheted fingerless gloves for my sister (she brought me the pattern and the yarn and said, "I must have these!" and since I'm currently between crochet projects at the moment, I figured why not?) They use thread instead of yarn and I'd forgotten how much I dislike crocheting with thread. Doilies and such are just not my forte - I can do it, but keeping the gauge right is next to impossible for me. As it is, the gauge is fine, but the wrists the pattern was written for belong to an anorexic two year old. I'm thinking that blocking will make them reasonable (hoping, at least) but for now I keep looking at them and wondering if I counted stitches right at the start. (I did. I checked.) I may have to make another set with slightly larger thread (sock yarn maybe?) if they're really going to be wearable.

My sister also gave me a pattern for a little crocheted elephant. I got the yarn for that yesterday cause it's just too cute not to have one. Plus, the kiddo really like elephants so...he needs one.

I have to go to my GP this afternoon for a checkup. She apparently likes to see her patients twice a year. I'm not clear on why, but I like her so I'm not going to rock the boat. Yet. It may depend on how long I sit in her waiting room. It usually averages somewhere around an hour...but maybe I can finish the first glove while I sit. I would be all excited about the 30 pounds I've lost since I was there in the summer, except I suspect with clothes and such it won't actually look like I've lost any weight - that's my typical fate with doctor office scales. They never match my home scale. I think they add ten pounds at the get go just to make you feel bad about yourself, let alone the 5 from your clothes and the fact that you've eaten lunch and so forth. On the other hand, the main reason I like this doctor is that she herself is overweight so she doesn't lecture about such things like most others do (consequently I don't dread the visit and sit there fretting the whole time in the waiting room so in turn don't end up looking like I have high blood pressure. White coat syndrome? Why yes, thank you.)

My aunt and uncle are in town this weekend, so they'll be over for supper tomorrow night. Not sure what else the weekend holds, though I'm hoping for some sleep in there somewhere.

On A Completely Unrelated Note

The first pair of socks (ever) has been cast on and I'm loving them already. Self-striping yarn rocks.

The LSU/Notre Dame cat blanket is nearly done - picture to come when it's completely finished.

I couldn't help myself...I bought more sock yarn today. I think this may be a sickness...I really want to find the sock blockers.

Of course, all this craftiness is brought to you by a PhD that's hovering somewhere right around the household appliance that flushes.

Crochet-y

The blankets keep tumbling off the hook around here, owing largely to a small baby boom amongst my friends. This evening I finished the second of this pattern (slightly different yarn this go round, but not so crazy that you need a picture of both) for a friend who just brought her daughter home from Ethiopia. (The first went to some nearby friends who just had their second daughter.)

I will admit that normally I'm not a blocker - but I think I may give blocking a shot on this one as it doesn't quite fold up the way I'd like (meaning that it's not really square - or rectangular if you'd like to be all crazy precise) so I figure it can't hurt. And who knows, I may decide that it's the new thing for a good and finished look.

Next up is a blanket for our friends' older daughter who loves the one I made for her baby sister and asked very politely if I would make one for her. I found a pattern called Kitties on a Fence that I'm going to give a whirl - it uses 3 colors and I'm a tad nervous. In theory I know how to switch colors...we'll see how that theory translates into practice.

At the same time, I may also start a knitting project - I have some sock yarn that's calling my name. And while it's too warm right now for socks, at the rate I knit, they'll be close to finished sometime close to when the weather changes. They'll be my first pair of socks, at that, so that promises to be a heap of fun and new fascinating experiences. (I'm hoping to avoid frustration on the level that has me swearing off knitting for the rest of my life and running back into the arms of my crochet hook. Knitting just seems so much more versatile...though it pains me to write that as crocheting is so much easier and faster.)

If the knitting goes well, I may actually return to the sweater I started five...six? years ago. I think I'm almost finished with the back panel. And I had told my mom I'd make her a shawl for her birthday but, owing to the underwhelming response, I may frog what I'd started of that and do something else with the yarn. Cause the yarn is gorgeous and soft and I'm thinking that Tim and I might need another blanket to snuggle under while watching TV - something a bit more aesthetically pleasing than our usual poncho liner. (Don't get me wrong, the poncho liner is a thing of beauty on the "keeps me warm" scale, but it's camo - and camo really doesn't go with my decor.)

All this to keep from dwelling on the fact that unless a miracle happens - and oh how I'm praying for that miracle! - my PhD is probably back to square one. As in choosing a new idea and starting over. Bleh. I can't even type about it yet. Sufficient to say that things are currently pear shaped and so...we crochet.

Slip Covers

When Tim and I got married, lo these almost 14 years ago, we stopped off at Ikea on our way from our honeymoon to our new apartment in the Chicago suburbs. There we purchased a table and chairs that would be our only table and chairs for close to 10 years and our primary choice of table and chairs for the remaining years past that. However...as is common with Ikea furniture that is moved hither, thither and yon with any amount of frequency, the chairs were becoming less and less reliable. In fact, it was to the point that before sitting, it was a wise idea to carefully survey the legs and make sure that they hadn't come unscrewed (and if they had to see if you could find the screw and put the chair back together) before sitting. (Tim's mom learned this the hard way when they lived with us. Sadly, her 90 pounds was enough to send the chair crashing to the floor. She was uninjured but the chair was totaled. I was hardpressed to do anything other than be thankful that someone who weighed more was not the one who broke the thing.)

So it's been on our minds to replace the set and finally we did. In the meantime, I've been craving an island that can actually be sat at. (There's something wrong with the grammar there, but I'm not really inclined to fuss with it.) So, putting the two needs together, we ended up back at Ikea, where we purchased two of their Stenstorp kitchen islands, and the Hendriksdal barstools.

Currently, the islands are in an L off our existing island, but I'm not sure if that configuration will be permanent. We could turn them to face one another and approximate a square table and I will at least play with that configuration at some point to see what I think. Regardless, the chairs are lovely, though I didn't realize that I needed slip covers for them. So...I looked at what Ikea offered and found that they offered only white. Now seriously, I don't know about you, but I do not need to put white slip covers on a chair that I'm eating on. (Let alone something a kid is going to eat on). I might as well just splatter food all over the chair and be done with it before I do that. I found some aftermarket slip covers, but they're from overseas and it was going to be $300 for 4 of them plus they were dry clean only. And I can sew reasonably enough to avoid that. Even better, I can pin and my sister can sew better than I can.

Thus it was that we went from this:



To this:



To the final product of this:


I'm very pleased.

Finished...And Better Than Expected

The first blanket mentioned in this post is now complete, and I'm happy to report that it did in fact turn out to be 1) baby sized and 2) very similar to the photo (ok, and 3) rather pretty, if I say so myself.))

Ok, ok, you be the judge:

Making Progress and Other Thoughts

I am slowly - but indeed surely - making progress on my dissertation. In fact, just yesterday I plotted out a tentative schedule that should, if all the stars align, actually have me graduating in December. I've got my fingers crossed. But I've also got the fairly realistic expectation of needing the spring semester in order for my final various approvals (because my schedule has me turning in my final dissertation 13 days before the end of the semester, and while I'd like to believe they could turn it around quickly...we all know that there's still a pretty high probability that he's going to read it and turn it back to me telling me that he's not sure there's a study in there. Or something.)

I am also making progress (again slow but sure) on the various baby blankets that need to get made. I probably am not going to get one done in time, but maybe if I really hustle I can still manage it. Of course, the big problem with it is that I'm trying a new pattern that is really pretty in the picture, but you can't convince me that the picture actually corresponds to the pattern they printed. That and even though my gauge is dead on, the blanket is turning out to be sized roughly correct if either a) the baby is a doll or b) it's really a washcloth and not a blanket. So. I'm probably going to have to improvise something to make it a reasonable sized thing (cause at this point I've put too much work into it to rip it apart and do a different pattern). Thus it will likely be late to the show. Ah well.

The blankets have put the thing I'm making for my mom on hold a bit. Her birthday is in May and my idea is that this'll be for that - though she keeps sending me ideas of what she'd like for her birthday, so I may save it (since it's taking longer than I expected anyway) and give it to her later. Or just keep it for myself as she wasn't super thrilled with the idea when I told her about it in the first place. (Not from the not wanting something I made aspect but from the "when would I use it" aspect - which is fine. I will use it. And getting to back burner it for a bit is helpful as well.)

In the "other thoughts" category, we almost got a puppy this last week. There was a sign just outside our church for Sheltie puppies and honestly, I thought it might have been a Sign sign, not just a sign. So after much hemming and hawing I called and the breeder sounds lovely and the puppies sound perfect...and so we put our name down to be notified about her next litter (which will likely be in about 2 years as she's giving the dog a break for a bit since she's had two litters in a row). Because at the end of the day we decided now probably isn't the best time for a new puppy that needs housebreaking and all the things new puppies need. But in twoish years, well, that might be just about perfect. But we'll see what we see when we get there. I'm just stoked to have found a breeder nearby who breeds the colors I love whose puppies aren't crazy expensive.

A Hankering for Yarn

I am in the mood to crochet something. Or knit. I see all these people knitting socks and I think to myself, "Gosh, that would be cool." but really, knitting and I are not great friends. I mean, I know *how* to knit...it's just best summed up by the fact that I started knitting a sweater about 5 years ago and I am about 1/2 way up the back panel and completely and utterly bored with it. I even dragged it out on Sunday afternoon because I really wanted to be doing something with yarn...but it turns out that I'd just like to be doing something other than working on that sweater. Realistically, I should probably stick with crocheting...it goes much faster for me.

I have 3? 4? friends/cousins/what-have-you who are pregnant currently, so I could make some blankets...but I asked one of the cousins what colors she'd like for the one I intended to make for her little girl and got a fifteen minute explanation about how that was really sweet but they had far too many blankets already so she'd hate for me to waste my time. Then my friend had me over to help get organized for her new baby and she was boxing up stuff from the last baby to make room (to give away) and the only blankets she was getting rid of were the handmade ones because she just thinks that handmade stuff is tacky. And so...I wonder if I'm being inconsiderate by making blankets as gifts since apparently the only person who actually enjoys them is me.

So. I have been toying with making a larger blanket that I could use myself while watching TV but I'm torn...because I have a feeling the "gosh I'm so bored" issue could become a factor with the bigger than baby size blanket. Which circles me back around to thinking maybe I just need to learn how to knit socks. Though I suspect that what will happen there is I'll have a whole lot of single socks lying about with mates that need to be made at some point.

And to just round out the ennui and indecision...I'm bored with the yarn at Michaels. Seriously, you'd think there would be a yarn store somewhere in the DC area where I could go and feel the yarn, cause I hesitate to buy it mail order because I want to see/touch/snuggle before I commit. I may have to break down and dig out the yellow pages to see if such a creature exists. No one I've asked has any thoughts other than Michaels...and we've already discussed that.

It's not like I have a ton of time when using pointy objects is possible - but it just would be nice to have something to fiddle with when watching TV or during the odd naptime when I just can't bring myself to scrub a toilet.

I've Got Nothing

Unless you count a fussy, hiccupy baby who won't nap, despite the dark circles under his eyes, a husband who is practicing/making up Native American rain chants in hopes of removing some of the allergens from the air so that he might breathe, and an aging puppy dog who hurt herself whirling with glee when it was time to eat this morning and is still limping six hours later.

In other news, I've temporarily taken leave of my senses and will be tackling a knitting project soon. I'm a crochet girl most of the time. I don't know if I just don't have the hand eye coordination to rock the double needle or what, but knitting and I have a long, sordid history. However, I told my sister I would make fingerless gloves for her and found a pattern we both like and, of course, there aren't any good crochet patterns for said gloves (which I get - because crochet always ends up...chunky. And who wants chunky gloves?) So, we'll give it a shot. She laughs because I'm going to start them now, and so she thinks I'll be done with them in the summer when it's too hot to need them. What she doesn't seem to realize is that this sweater is still not finished. In fact, I'm pretty sure the back panel still isn't finished.

She'll get them in winter. No promises on winter of what year though.