What's Under My Couch?

A Letter I Wish I Could Send

2009-08-01T13:40:00.002-04:00

Dear Heathrow:

Hi! I don't think you'll remember me, but I'm one of the many thousands of people who passed through on July 1 and again on July 31. I have brown hair, blue eyes, and was with my husband and two children. I was flying to and from Basel, Switzerland, if that helps. Well, I suppose it really doesn't matter.

I don't really know how to say this is a nice way, so I'm just going to come out with it. As an airport, you suck. I have been in a lot of different domestic and international airports during my 40+ years and you are the worst of them. Oh, I know you're clean and shiny, with lots of nice shops and restaurants, but dressing up in pretty clothes just doesn't hide your true nature. You suck. I'm sorry to be blunt, but there's just no denying it.

Here's the problem. Normal airports work this way: you pick up your boarding pass, either on line or at the counter, and it tells you the flight number, time the flight leaves and the gate where you will board the plane. It's a really simply process -- flight number, departure time, gate.

Ever since the World Trade Center bombing, I know you airports have had a lot of security. I'm not complaining about that, I think it's great and it makes me feel safe. But it has meant that instead of me arriving 30 minutes before a flight, it's become necessary for me to sometimes arrive as early as 2 hours before the flight. There's the line to check baggage, and then the security check, and then you usually want a little time to sit down and relax before the plan boards. Me, I like to relax in one of the chairs handily provided right in the gate where my flight will depart. Sometimes I even buy a cold drink and a magazine to read while I'm waiting.

Sadly, I can't really do that while waiting for my flight from you, Heathrow. Now don't give me that innocent look, you know the reason. Both times when I arrived at Heathrow, my boarding pass gave me the time of departure and the flight number, but no gate. Now, that wouldn't be a problem if your terminals were small with a central hub and a few gates around it, but you know quite well that in some terminals it can take 20 minutes to walk from the hub to the actual gate. And YET you don't actually let us know the gate number until about 20 minutes before boarding.

Do you do it for your own personal entertainment? Do you think it's funny to watch all the little travelers milling about the shopping mall in the center of the terminal like little confused ants until they suddenly have to make a made dash for their appointed departure gate? Are you just sitting back and laughing in your sleeve at us? It sure feels that way.

Other airports just don't do that, Heathrow. LAX is just as pretty as you are and probably just as busy, and definitely has gates just as far away, but it tells me my gate RIGHT AWAY. Even if I happen to get there 4 or 5 hours early for some reason, LAX tells me my gate. That means I can wander around looking at LAX's nice rotating art display, check out its stores and restaurants, and then head through security and stroll to my gate, all well before the plane is ready to board.

You should really change your ways, Heathrow. I've already decided to avoid you in the future if at all possible. I can only compare my time with you as time in some kind of nightmarish hell. I won't even go into your disappointing lack of air conditioning in some areas right now, although you know I could.

Check your attitude, Heathrow.

No longer a customer,

Wendy.

Thoughts About Switzerland

2009-07-29T08:49:00.003-04:00

I took the kids to their favorite park today -- Kannenfeldpark. While they were playing, I worked on my sweater and thought about our trip. Here are the random things was thinking:

Things I'll Miss:

1. The beautiful scenery, especially the mountains and the gorgeous old buildings.

2. The excellent public transportation system.

3. Chocolate made with real milk.

4. Coop Hazelnut yogurt.

5. Fresh croissants every morning.

6. Opportunities to practice my German.

7. The huge selection of playgrounds and family-friendly destinations.

8. Kinder Eggs.

9. Maid service.

10. The way the air smells in the mountains.

Things I Will Not Miss:

1. The outrageously high cost of living.

2. The lack of air conditioning.

3. The dearth of ice, especially when one orders ICED tea. Seriously, who serves that without ice? The Swiss, that's who.

4. The $18 per load laundry.

5. Living in one room with 2 small children.

6. Altitude sickness.

7. Being without access to a car.

8. Lack of access to American television, or even English speaking television.

9. $50 meals at Mcdonalds.

10. Hard water.

Things That Remain Inexplicable to Me:

1. What the heck IS air freshening?

2. Why don't the Swiss use screens in their windows?

3. Why don't they serve ice in their drinks, especially "iced" drinks?

4. Why is Basel so extremely clean and well maintained, and yet tons of graffiti can be seen everywhere?

5. Why don't they have a better yarn selection here? Hell, it's the world's most popular ski destination and they have places with snow 365 days a year. Don't they need sweaters, hats and mittens?

6. Do they have a much greater water supply here than most countries? Because they always have sprinklers going, but are otherwise very earth friendly and conservationist here.

7. How do they get their children to be so quiet and well behaved in public?

8. What is in the strange green plastic bales we saw in the fields near Zermatt?

9. Why do so many people stop for a glass of beer at 10 am?

10. What was the red and black haired woman screaming at me on the tram that day?

Seriously, we did have a lot of fun here, mixed in with the bad and uncomfortable. Jack's favorite thing about Switzerland is: "Having ice cream when we get back." Lily's favorite thing about Switzerland is: "I don't know, maybe everything but walking." You can tell this trip and all of the gorgeous places we traveled have REALLY left an impression.

Zermatt and the Gorngergrat

2009-07-27T07:30:00.011-04:00

As many of you know, this weekend was our big finale -- a two day trip to Zermatt and the Matterhorn. I've been looking forward to this trip the most, especially since we went to Mt. Pilatus and saw the gorgeous view. Also, we decided to book a hotel and stay overnight, so I was looking forward to that as well.

The weather on Saturday was sunny, cool and just all around gorgeous. We started out the trip as usual by taking the train to Visp, passing through Bern, Thun and Spieze, just as we did when we traveled to Interlaken and Grindewald. This time, we went through a long tunnel in the Alps and came out on the other side in Visp, and then headed from Visp up to Zermatt on the local train. Here are a couple of pictures of our first glimpses of the high alps.

We arrived in Zermatt at about 2pm, in time to have pizza for lunch ($52.00) and look around a bit. We stayed at the Hotel Schwiezerhof, which I can highly recommend to anyone traveling to Zermat. We were able to get a junior suite at about 1/3 of the cost through one of those discount travel sites (sorry, can't remember which one). It featured a double bed with down pillows and comforters and an adjoining sitting area with a couch, two chairs and a coffee table -- the couch turned into a double bed for the kid. The hotel has 5 (no, I'm not kidding) different restaurants, ranging from a casual cafe to fine dining. It also has an indoor pool, a tanning room, hot tubs and private saunas, as well as lots of spa treatments for guests who enjoy that kind of pampering. Our favorite part was the blacony, which gave us a gorgeous view of the garden and the mountains in the distance.

Our small sitting area:
Our bedroom:
Jim sitting out on the balcony:

A picture of the view rom my chair:

The town of Zermatt is very Swiss Mountain, with twisty side streets and lots of traditional buildings. There are no gas cars in Zermatt -- transportation in the downtown is available in horse drawn carriages or these funny, square electric taxis. The next series of pictures give you an idea of what the town is like:

The church:
One of the horses:
A view down the main drag:

We had a lot of fun checking out the area, and then we all went for a swim in the pool. Everyone enjoyed that a lot! We picked up some food from the grocery for dinner, and that's when the gastro-intestinal gurgling I'd been having all day turned bad. I ended up spending the evening, all night and part of the morning dealing with that. Fortunately, the apotheke opened around 9:30 am on Sunday, so Jim was able to pick me up a familiar medication (Immodium) and a strange Swiss medication prescribed by the pharmacist to straighten out the level of "flora" in my intestines. The combo worked -- by noon, I felt well enough to head out for our trip to the Gornergrat, a viewing summit across from the Matterhorn.

Lily wanted to wear ponytails that day, and Jack begged for one in his hair with a green rubber band. Jim told him his hair was too short and he was really upset, so I managed a small ponytail for him:
He totally thought he was the bomb! The Gornergrat Bahn was right next door to our hotel, and we were able to hop right on to the noon train. It was a twisty ride right up the side of the mountain with tons of switchbacks. At times, it was a sheer drop right from the side of the train tracks to the valley below. The views were incredible, though.

Here are the kids with their Gornergrat maps at the beginning of the ride. Because we had our Swiss Pass, we got to travel for half price -- the round trip was $76, and the kids rode free. It was well worth the extra cost.

This is a view from the side of the train down into one of the valleys:

The kids were impressed:

Eventually, we made it up to Gornergrat.
The elevation at the train station is 10,132 ft. I think I mentioned before that I've been having problems with altitude on this trip. Ever since my heart failure, I've noticed that really high plane flights cause my feet to swell and my chest to feel tight. I also noticed it here at Grindelwald and Pfingstegg, but attributed the chest issue to asthma. It was even worse at Mt. Pilatus. By that point, I had done a little internet research and learned that it was probably Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS). I know, never diagnose from the internet, but I was kind of worried that I was slipping back into heart failure, so I did a little researchbefore panicking.

Where was I? Oh yeah, I was a little worried about going to Gornergrat because of how bad I felt at Mt. Pilatus. I felt a little less concerned when we decided to make it an overnight trip because I knew I would have that time to acclimatize before going up to 10,000 feet, the highest altitude by a HUGE amount that we've done here. To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, here is a brief chart:

Melrose: 133 ft
Basel: 843 ft
Grindelwald: 3392 ft
Pfingstegg: 4567 ft
Zermatt: 5,276 ft
Mt. Pilatus Kulm: 6995 ft
Gornergrat: 10,269 ft (at its highest point)

My feet were a little swollen when we got to Zermatt, but I got adjusted fairly quickly and the swelling was gone by the time I went to bed. They blew up like balloons on the train to Gornergrat, but weirdly, I didn't have that tightness in my chest this time. It was harder to breathe if you were walking up the steep paths, but I felt no need to use my inhaler like the last two times. I did feel kind of light headed and spacey, but that might have been the aftereffects of being so sick the night before. Who know? I really do think that staying overnight before doing the high altitude (which was recommended for people who had signs of AMS) really made it better for me, though. The kids noticed nothing, but Jim admitted he was breathing pretty hard walking up even a small incline.

There is a huge stone viewing point, restaurant, hotel and observatory at Gornergrat:

As an aside, consistent with his usual difficulties pronouncing foreign (especially German) words, Jim continually referred to Gornergrat as either "Gorgomott" or "Gorgonaut" during most of our trip! I told him Gorgonaut sounded like the name of a Transformer toy or something. The name is actually pronounced exactly as it is spelled "Gor-ner-grat."

At the viewing point, they had these gorgeous St. Bernards with casks of whiskey on their necks available for photographs -- at 15 francs a shot. I tried to get a good picture of the dogs and thought I succeeded, but realized after I downloaded them that this is the best one I took. I'm telling you, the thin air made my thinking really wonky up there...at least, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Because it was almost 1, we headed up to the self-serve buffet restaurant and ate at a table overlooking the Matterhorn. This is the view from our table:

It was windy and a little cool, but you warmed up quickly in the sun. We bought a plate of pommes frites and two hot dogs, some apple struedel and hot cocoa for the kids. Jack said "I love hot chocolate!"

Lily gave it a thumbs up review:

Here are a few shots of the Matterhorn with my zoom feature:

These are some snow covered peaks to the left of the Matterhorn. The view at the top was amazing because we were surrounded by snow capped Alps. I took almost 100 pictures that day!

The obligatory shot of the kids and me in front of the Matterhorn:

They have a small church next to the observatory:

It has a beautifully painted wooden ceiling, wooden pews and a lovely carved grouping behind the candles, which you can buy and light for a franc each. The kids were really impressed -- Jack especially. He pointed at all of the candles and said "Oh, look Mama, fire!"

Here is a view of another peak visible from Gornergrat:

And a view of Jm in front of the Matterhorn on a walkway over the train station.

A fourth view from the observatory:

We spent about 2 hours at the peak and then took the Gornergrat Bahn back to Zermatt. Here is a picture of the train pulling into the station with the Alps in the background:

I snapped some shots on the way down because we were on the "good" side of the train (we sat on the "bad" side on the way up). Here are some hikers. There are about 100 different hikes you can take from the Gornergrat, of all different experience levels. It seems like everyone in Switzerland hikes and carries special poles for hiking.

Another view from the train:

A closer view of the Matterhorn:

A parasail. Cute story: on the ride back down, Jack kept telling Jim he saw a "flying lamp." Jim finally figured out he was talking about the parasailers! They have several different places in the Alps where you can parasail.

Another view of the Matterhorn from a different angle.

A couple of views of the mountain towns we passed through on the way to Zermatt. Again, the Matterhorn in the background.

We left for Basel about an hour after we returned to Zermatt. We made sure to get a seat on the good side of the train so I could get some more pictures on the way home. Here's an unusual church we saw:

And a gorgeous bridge spanning a huge gorge:

The lake at Thun -- the water is an amazingly bright blue, even on gray days.

And, as a final shot, the kids playing Uno on the train. Jim bought them Uno Jr., and even Jack has been enjoying the game! He gets a little confused, but is generally able to pick the right cards to play and actually won a few times. Lily has a bandage on her hand because Jim let her try out the orange peeler on his Swiss Army Knife and she immediately cut herself on it.

We got home around 8:00 pm. I really loved this trip, and only wish I'd been able to walk around the town and explore with Jim and the kids instead of staying close to the bathroom in the hotel!

We will be returning to Massachusetts soon. I think both the kids and I are ready to be in our own house with our own beds and all of our dear friends around us. Switzerland is so beautiful, and I've loved seeing everything, but home is best!

Lucerne and Mt. Pilatus

2009-07-20T15:41:00.009-04:00

We decided that for our second travel day this weekend, we would do a trip with fewer train transfers and something more kid-oriented. After researching our trusty embassy brochure, we decided to go to Lucerne and take a tour of Mt. Pilatus.

Because Lucerne is a direct, relatively short train ride from Basel, we were able to take the 10am train rather than an early train as we've done for our other trips. Although I hoped we'd have time to look around Lucerne a bit, the schedule required us to take a local train directly from the Lucerne station to Alpanstad, where we would then get on the "steepest cog rail" in the world to go to the top of Mt. Pilatus.

The weather here has been trying, and our last two train trips were a bit rainy and cold. We checked the weather for our Lucerne trip and saw that it promised to be sunny and cool, so we were really excited. As we left Basel, however, the weather was still gray and rainy.

By the time we reached Mt. Pilatus station, the sun was just starting to peek out of the clouds. Our Swiss Flexi Pass got us to the cog wheel train station for free, but to do the actual mountain tour, we had to pay 50% of the ticket cost -- about $60 US (the kids were free, as they are for most things in Switzerland). Since there were quite a few people in line ahead of us and the train runs regularly, we decided to grab lunch first and then go up the mountain.
We ate at the Cafe Chalet Restaurant across the street from the Pilatus station. Since it was still a bit cool outside, we ate inside the restaurant, which had plain pine walls and rustic tables. Jim ordered weinerschnitzel, I ordered macaroni and cheese with applesauce and the kids split a weiner and pommes frites platter -- it came with two weiners and plenty of fries, so they were thrilled.

I often joke with my friends that if I was limited to eating food of one color, I would pick white -- cheese, bread, pasta, cream, apples (the inside), potatoes -- anything that was white/off white in color suits me fine. The macaroni and cheese I ordered was the ultimate in all white meals! It was Emmentaler cheese over pasta and potato chunks, with applesauce in a side dish. I told Jim the next time he makes mac and cheese at home, I want him to do it the same way. Delicious!

After the meal, I took the antsy kids outside. They both picked seats on some stones in the garden next to the restaurant.

Then we headed over to the cog wheel train. It's built like a stair case -- each car of 8 people is a "step" up from the next car, so that even though the train is practically heading straight up the mountain, you are able to sit upright.

Once we started going, Jack was thrilled. From his seat, he could look straight up the train at the track ahead!
As we first left the station, this was our view:

After a few minutes, the sun really started to shine.

The ride up the mountain was something I'll never forget. The scenery was beautiful and there were places where the mountain just dropped away right next to the train. A couple of times, there were cows grazing so close to the tracks that I could have reached out the window and touched one. And...we had to travel through several tunnels in the mountain where the rock sides of the tunnel were close enough to touch. It was really unforgettable. Unfortunately, this is where I realized my camer battery was getting low, so I didn't take a lot of pictures.

At the top of Mt. Pilatus, there are two hotels. This is a view of the Pilatus Kulm Hotel. We stopped into their panoramic cafeteria for some hot drinks and dessert shortly after we arrived at the top.
Here are Jim and the kids at the top. We were up in the clouds and it was pretty cool with the wind up there. Below is a view from near the Hotel:

There are a number of hikes and walks that you can take from the hotel area. We chose to explore the "Gallery" which was a tunnel through the side of the mountain with various "windows" that opened up to see views of the opposite side of the mountain. This is the door to the Gallery.
Unfortunately, most of the cloud cover was on that side of the mountain -- here is a picture where you can see some lines from the mountain disappearing into the clouds. As we explored the cave, the clouds started to move over the mountain top and into the little cave with us.

Here is a picture of Jim and Jack inside the cave by one of the window views, with the clouds rolling in.

After spending some time at the top, and shopping at the little souvenir store, we took a large (30 person) cable car down to the next mountain level, where they had a ropes course set up and a Rodelbahn, or summer toboggan. Jim seems to be making the tour of Switzerland's Rodelbahns, because our sole purpose for stopping there was so he could take the kids on a couple of rides. As we headed down the other side of the mountain, the weather finally started to clear on that side.

This is Lake Lucerne from the first cable car stop.

This is a view of part of the city:

And this is an overhead view of a part of the Rodelbahn, which is apparently the longest in Switzerland.
Jim and kids bought tickets to the ride and I settled down at some tables near the start of the Rodelbahn. The sun finally came out to stay. Here is Jack in his Swiss Military cap (his souvenir choice).

I snapped another picture of the lake when the sky brightened up:

The kids (including Jim) really enjoyed the Rodelbahn. After they took their rides, we got into the smaller gondolas and headed to the next level, which featured a children's playground.

Here's Lily checking out the view:

The playground was absolutely amazing. It had a castle playhouse with all sorts of nets and ladders to climb, an underground "cave" complete with gnomes, a small brook to splash in, and a ton of other play equipment. Needless to say, the kids had a blast.

After they played for about and hour, we got on the small gondola again and descended to the bottom of the mountain. Here is the last shot I got on the camera before it died.

Jim got a number of great shots on his iPhone, too, so we'll have quite a collection for the family album. Once we arrived at the foot of the mountain, we took a quick 5 minute walk to a local bus station and went back to the train. We were home by 7:30. What a great trip!

Gruyeres and Broc

2009-07-20T07:06:00.011-04:00

This week, we spent Saturday doing something that the travel brochures from the Swiss Embassy calls "the Greedy Tour." We visited the town of Gruyeres and toured a cheese factory, and then we went to nearby Broc for a tour of the Nestle factory. Needless to say, this has been the best trip so far as the kids are concerned!

We planned this trip very carefully because it takes almost 3 hours one way to get to Gruyeres, what with the various train changes from inter-regional to local. We left our apartment at 7:00am and arrived in Gruyere at just after 11:00am. Our first order of business was getting lunch at the restaurant attached to the cheese factory. The interior was very rustic with a number of carved panels showing various cheese related scenes and phrases:

The kids were just glad to eat, as breakfast was just some bread and orange juice on the train.

The kids shared a weiner and pommes frites -- the portions are so large, we've just been ordering one meal for them to share. I got the local specialty, rosti (similar to hash browns) with pears and gruyere. It was delicious.

Jim opted for the fondue of Gruyere, of course. It came with potatoes and bread.

Here are Lily and Jack posing in the sign at the entrance of La Maison du Gruyere, which is what the factory is called. It is conveniently located right opposite the tran station.

These next pictures are somewhat out of order, for reasons I will explain later. Before you go into the factory tour, you can view the cheese caves from a glass viewing area. Since the cheeses need to be turned frequently, they have a robot that goes down the aisles and flips each cheese over. This is the robot:

All of the cheese are stamped on the sides, and they also have black letters and numbers pressed into the top on one side to identify when and where they were made. They are about as large as a big pizza, and about 3-4 inches thick.

We got into the tour for free because our Swiss Flexi-Pass for train travel includes free entrance to most museums in Switzerland. Every person received a free cheese sample with their entry -- slices of cheese aged very young, medium and very old so we could taste the difference. Yum!

The tour was narrated by a sort of phone that you held to your ear, and the speaker told us she was a cow named Cherry. She had a British accent, which seemed odd, since she is supposed to be from Gruyeres, which is French speaking Switzerland! There was a lot to see -- old prints and pictures of cheese making in early times, scent stations to smell all of the plants and things that flavor the Gruyeres cows' milk, and old-fashioned cheese making paraphernilia.

Then we got to view the cheese-making process from a gallery above the factory floor. This is the milk and other ingredients mixing in a big brass vat.

That is the Cheesemaker removing the paddles so that the cheese can drain into the presses. The containers start out huge and over time, the cheese is pressed to its final size. Afterwards, they soak the cheese in brine and then age it. It was interesting to see.

Now here's the part you don't know from looking at these pictures. Our original plan was to eat at Gruyeres, take the tour, take the 12:58 local to Broc, tour the factory, and then return home. The reason for this plan was that the Nestle factory closes at 4 and the next train after the 12:58 to Broc was at 3.

What happened instead was this. After lunch, we decided to skip the Gruyere tour in favor of doing the Nestle tour earlier, and then coming back to Gruyere and taking the cheese factory tour before heading home, since our itinerary required us to return to Gruyere anyway. The kids were impatient to get to the chocolate factory, so it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Sadly, we got to talking with an older couple and their adult daughter, all from New York State. Then all 7 of us proceeded to get on the train in the wrong direction. By the time we realized what happened, we had to get off in the middle of nowhere, at a station called Neirivue.

The town was so small, its station wasn't even open! We were stuck waiting there for 40 minutes for the train we were originally on to come back. At that point, we were stuck with the 3pm train to Broc as our only solution.
So... we ended up going on the cheese tour first, and then waiting for the 3pm train. Foolishly, we entertained the kids by giving them ice cream:

...thus ensuring that they would be good and wired for the next leg of the journey.

Broc

There are two stations in Broc -- Broc Village and Broc Fabrique, a stop expressly for the factory. It's about a block from the station to the main bulding.

The rest of the village looks like the above.

The little local train we took is old fashioned and very small. The kids loved it!

Once we got to the factory, we walked right in to the tour, which was the second to last of the day. The tour and the chocolate tasting at the end is free to everyone if you can believe it! If I lived in Broc, my kids would be sneaking off to that tour every day.

The first part of the tour was a theater that played three old movies showing the factory tours in the days when people were allowed to actually walk around next to the production lines. Today, they don't allow that, for health and safety reasons. The movies were probably from the 30s and 40s. Jack was captivated but Lily said they were boring.

The net part of the tour showed the old fashioned chocolate molds they used to use, and a lot of the old advertising posters.

Next, we went through a room where a worker described how the cacao beans are processed. Since she was talking in German, we basically just breezed through.

Next, we went through a series of rooms with video and audio displays discussing the choclate making process. Some of the rooms featured films shown on the floor and the kids really enjoyed those!

Then we came to the part of the tour that the kids were really looking forward to -- the chocolate tasting! It was set up on what looked to be about a 12 foot long counter. Trays of chocolate pieces and individual fancy chocolates were set out and replaced immediately when the trays got empty by two workers behind the counter. They had milk chocolate, dark chocolate, white chocolate, and hazelnut, different grades of chocolate, and all sorts of fancy chocolates.

Jack was just cramming chocolate into his mouth like he hadn't eaten a bite in 2 years. Jim finally had to pick him up to keep him from overeating!

The above is a view of just a portion of the giant chocolate buffet. The rule is that you can eat all you want, but you have to finish eating it in the buffet room and you can't take anything home.

After the tour, Jim bought more than $60 US worth of chocolate in the factory store, which sells everything about about 50% what we would pay in the US. A lot of people are getting chocolate as a souvenir when we get home, assuming that Jim doesn't consume it all before then. I had about 7 pieces of chocolate and I still feel like I won't be trying chocolate again for a while. It was just way too much. The European chocolate is made with real milk, and tastes richer than US chocolate, and eating a bunch at once was a little sick-making.

We had an epic journey home. Jack fell asleep on the little local train from Broc to Bulle. Instead of heading back to Gruyeres, we opted to stop in Bulle and take 30 minute bus ride to Fribourg. From there, we took a train to Bern, and then switched onto a train to Basel. Lily drew on the ride and Jack just enjoyed the view.

We skipped dinner that night because everyone was loaded up on chocolate and kind of feeling sick! More later on our second day of travels this weekend to Lucerne and Mt. Pilatus.

An Explanatory Map of the Tinguely Death March

2009-07-16T11:00:00.002-04:00

I just want to make sure you understand how crazy our trip was today:

The two blue dots are where we are staying (left) and the museum (right). The red lines represent places we took a bus or tram. The grayish line represents the death march walk.

Death March to Tinguely Museum

2009-07-16T07:36:00.006-04:00

I had a terrible day yesterday. Without going into the gory details, which would just lead into a lengthy rant about the Swiss and air conditioning, suffice it to say that there was a whole lot of pooping in pants, by BOTH children (no, I'm not joking), humidity, sweaty tram rides, damp laundry draped about, and fights where kids were touching each other. At the end of the day, I would have paid someone a million dollars to just take me home.

At the end of that terrible day, I said to Jim "Maybe tomorrow will be better." Apparently, the travel gods heard me and decided to strike me down.

The plan was beautifully simple. Everyone has raved about the Tinguely Museum. It has a lot of kinetic sculptures built by Basler Jean Tinguely, and many interactive exhibits. Although we were told it was great for a rainy day, a brilliant thought suddenly occurred to me. Air condition is banned in Basel, but cars, some trams and some buses still have it, so clearly there are exceptions. And everyone knows that museums are temperature controlled, right? Aha, I gloated to myself, let's visit the Tinguely tomorrow when we know it will be hot and we can stroll leisurely around in the cool air conditioning. Best of all, it will be FREE because the children are under 16 and I have a Swiss Pass!

I believed I had been to the Tinguely before -- at least, to the outside. There was a pool with lots of kinetic water sculptures in it next to a big building that I believed was the museum. I checked the website quickly but didn't really understand the directions -- they mentioned a bus, but I clearly recalled walking there the last time. So, the kids and I set off at about 10 am and got on the No.6 tram to Barfusserplatz, planning to hop onto a No.3 tram, which I believed would stop at the museum.

We got on the No.3 and within about 30 seconds passed the place I thought was the museum, so we hopped off at the next stop and walked about 5 blocks back to where the museum was. We stood for a while in the shade and admired the sculptures.

After about ten minutes, I started to lead the kids toward the entrance of the large building behind the pool and noticed a giant sign announcing "Theatre Basel." Yes, sadly, the scuplture pond was done by Tinguely for the theater and had nothing to do with the actual museum.

No problem, I thought. Basel is a relatively small town and almost everything is within walking distance. I vaguely remembered the the museum was near the Wettsteinbrucke (a bridge across the Rhine), so we hopped back on the No.3 and went ahead for a few more stops. Unfortunately, I could see we were heading away from the river, so we hopped off again and worked our way through alleys and back streets towards large bridge. Sure enough, as we approached the road to the bridge, there was a sign for the Tinguely Museum directing us straight ahead.

By this time, we were all getting hot from walking for about 20 minutes in the heat. The kids were already whining about when we could get a drink, and I promised we would get a cold drink at the museum as soon as we arrived. We walked about 4 blocks and saw... the bridge. No sign of a museum, nothing. I was confident the bridge was in Gross Basel and the bridge was leading us to Klein Basel (where our apartment is). I figured we would cross the bridge and see what the signage said on the other side. If there was something pointing us to the museum, we'd follow that, otherwise, we'd just head home.

It was nice and cool on the bridge, so that part of the walk was good. When we got to the other side of the river, there was a sign for the museum directing us to walk down the stairs to the path next to the river. We all rejoiced "Yay! We're at the museum!" By this time, we'd been walking for about 45 minutes -- that's a long time for two kids.

When we got to the bottom of the stairs, there was a sculptural playground. "This must be the museum playground!" said Lily. "Let's hurry up and go to the museum for our cool drink," I said (because I wanted to get in the AC as soon as possible). We wandered around the area for 10 minutes and saw nothing remotely resembling a museum. Then I glimpsed a small sign directing us toward the museum along a path by the Rhine.

"It's over here!" I said and we started down the path. We walked, and walked, and walked, and walked. My shirt front was soaked with sweat and even the kids were sweating. Periodically, we would pass a sign that directed us to the museum. We passed the hospital where Jack got his medical care, which I must note is about 5 blocks from our apartment. We kept going. "Is DIS the museum?" Jack asked every time we approached a new building. The answer was always no. After about 30 minutes of trudging, we came to a river boat landing that said "Tinguely Museum." "We're here!" I said. We looked around for a few minutes and found nothing but apartment buildings. "Let's walk up ahead," I said. "Is DIS the museum?" asked Jack. "Not yet," I said.

We trudged another 10 minutes and came to something called the Solitude Park. The river path ended abruptly. There was no sign suggesting where the museum might be, and the only buildings in sight were a preschool and Roche. "I'm really dizzy," said Jack. "I know," I said, "Let's see if we can find some place to get a drink." We walked across the park (the kids paused to go down a slide) and came out on the street, which turned out to be a four lane highway. There was nothing that looked like a museum or a place to get a drink. I saw a Roche security guard standing at the gate to the building and went over to him. I asked him in German where the museum was. "You go through the park," he said, pointing in the direction we came from. "Is DIS the museum?" Jack said. "No!" I said, "We have to go through the park."

We walked across the Solitude Park and came to a building -- a preschool. We walked a bit further and came to a middle school. We walked through some trees and finally Lily spotted a kinetic sculpture. "It's over here!"

When we got inside, it was mercifully air conditioned as I hoped. I showed my Swiss Pass when we approached the ticket counter and we were admitted for free. "Let's just go down to the restaurant and get something to eat." $52.30 Francs later (no, I'm not kidding), the kids having eaten a hotdog and fries and me having eaten quiche, we were ready to see the exhibit. The kids were really excited. I was just happy for the air conditioning.

We saw this:

and a few other non-moving exhibits of a similar nature. "Dis place is COOL," said Jack. Then we went up to the next floor and entered a room featuring a series of kinetic sculptures that you operated by stepping on a switch near the exhibit. The room was lit so that giant shadows of each sculpture were cast on the walls.

"Dis is a little SCARY," said Jack:

"I want to go to another museum!" said Jack when the last sculpture (shown above) began to whirl around. We headed downstairs to the next exhibit, which was a series of elaborate sets of armor and equally elaborate dresses.

"I don't like DOSE guys" said Jack, referring to the armor posed as if it were riding horses (above).
"DAT is SCARY!" said Jack when he noticed the mural of skeletons that went along the entire length of one wall.

"What DOSE guys doing, Mama?" he asked fearfully when we saw the group of armed men. "They have spears," I said. "I don't LIKE them. What is a SPEAR?" "A pointy stick," I said. "I want to go in another kind of museum," said Jack fearfully.

"I think these dresses are GORGEOUS!" said Lily and she asked me to take several pictures.

We both liked the red one.
Lily posed in front of a few.
Jack just kept asking when we were going to go to another kind of museum, so pretty soon we went to the bottom floor. The first two rooms had several sculptures that made noise. One of them was made out of a lot of drums. Jack screamed and ran when Lily started it up, so there was no time for me to take any pictures. We raced through the two rooms and ended up at the last room, where they had a series of sculptures set up that featured what looked like carnival lights.

Jack jumped about 3 feet and grabbed my hand when Lily made this giant hand move.

He kept a wide margin between himself and this horse sculpture. Lily wanted to climb up it and watch from inside while it moved. I knew Jack wasn't going to touch it with a 10 foot pole so I said no.

Jack's final comment: "I don't even KNOW what kind of fing DAT is," pointing to the scultpure above, that was hanging from the ceiling. "Can we go to a different kind of museum now?"

Interlaken, Grindelwald and Pfingstegg

2009-07-13T16:33:00.011-04:00

Sorry this post took so long to put up, but there are a lot of pictures!

Last weekend, we bit the bullet and bought a five day Swiss Rail Pass for about $560 US. It allows Jim and I to travel on any train we like, anywhere we like, on five specific days we get to choose. We also got a Family Pass (included for free) so Jack and Lily can travel with us for free. The pass also gives us a 15% discount on most tourist activities and allows us in all museums for free.

For our first day of travel, we decided to mimic one of the package trips we saw in a brochure Jim picked up at the Swiss Embassy in New York. We got up bright and early, bought our pass, and hopped on a train to Interlaken Ost, a town at the foot of the Swiss Alps. The kids loved the train!

The train journey was about 2 hours, figuring in all of the stops in between, and we all enjoyed looking at all the sites out the windows. I think Jim got some video, but my camera doesn't capture moving scenes well, so I didn't bother to take pictures.

Interlaken Ost

We arrived at Interlaken Ost around 10 am. This is a picture of the railway station. Our first stop was a local cafe so we could get some breakfast -- it was too crazy trying to eat on the train because the choice was to eat in the dining car (and potentially lose our seats in the crowded 2d class compartment) or wait for the dining cart to come by (our choice, but the cart never came to our car). After eating, we stopped at the Coop (a chain of cooperative markets) and picked up so food and drinks for later so we wouldn't get stuck without food again.

This picture is a beautiful fountain in the square near the train station. A thin layer of water flows over the top and down the sides. Jack was fascinated by it!

Grindelwald

Our pass allows us to just get on any train without reservations or tickets, so we hopped on the next train to Grindelwald, which is at the base of the Alps. I couldn't get over how stereotypically "Swiss" everything looked there, and wondered which came first -- the look of the town or the outside world's stereotype of a Swiss mountain village. Probably a bit of both! The above picture is a view from the train station towards the Alps, which were obscured by some low clouds.

We had to walk about 15 minutes to get to the next leg of our journey, which was a cable car to an outlook point on the mountain above Grindelwald, called Pfingstegg. I took a few pictures on our walk. The above is another view as we walk towards the Alps.

And another view as we got closer.
I loved this little chalet because it had the stereotypical window boxes filled with bright flowers and a big row of Swiss cowbells hung on the porch. Lily and I ended up buying a small bell for our Christmas tree. It has nostalgic significance for me, because when my Aunt visited Switzerland when I was small, she brought a similar bell home for me.

This is the church that was our landmark -- we walked until we came to the church and then we turned right. I love the architecture.

As we got closer to the cable cars, I was able to get some better shots of the mountains.

I wish the weather had been better, but we've had a lot of cloudy days here. Jim's coworkers have told him that July is the nicest month for weather here, but that this summer has been unusually cloudy.

Here we are about to get on the cable car at Grindelwald.

The kids loved this part of the journey, too!

Pfingstegg
Once we arrived at the outlook, Pfingstegg, we took a quick bathroom break. The signs on the building and on each door were hilarious. It's hard to see in this picture, but the mens' room had a picture of a man facing away, as if he were peeing, and a woman with her skirt lifted squatting! I felt a little weird photographing it until I saw several other tourists doing the same.

The primary reason Jim wanted to go to Pfingstegg was to ride on the Rodelbahn, which is a summer bobsled. This sign and weird carved face showed us the way.

As well as a small restaurant with a terrific patio view of the valley, Pfingstegg had lots for kids to do, including a trampoline, a slide, a swingset and a sandbox. I had some other pictures to post of those, but apparently they didn't get uploaded here. There were some pigs that lived up there -- Lily loved them and was excited to see them, but Jack was a little afraid. I carried him up near the pigs and he said "Too close!"

Here are my little kid and my giant kid on the Rodelbahn. There wasn't a good vantage point to get a picture of them when they were cruising around. This is at the very beginning. Jim bought 4 rides -- two adults and 2 children. Since both of the kids wanted to go with him, I waited at the top. Jim had so much fun, he bought 4 more rides and they did it again. I was kind of relieved not to have to go!

This is Lily pretending to be Cocolino. Cocolino is a cat with a fried egg eye patch who cooks with his little brother and sister. They are apparently characters in a popular series of books called Kuchen mit Cocolino (Cooking with Cocolino) - the books present a series of simple recipes for children. They had a little Cocolino play area next to the Rodelbahn that featured a place you could play Cocolino's theme song and add percussion. The theme song part was broken....

...but that didn't stop the kids from playing percussion!

After investigating all of the activities at Pfingstegg, we took a break and had cheese, fruit and cold drinks on a little bench set up overlooking the valley. This is Lily posing in front of the view.

And here's a view of the mountaintops from our bench.

The town of Grindelwald from the bench.

And, last but not least, my feet to give you and idea of how close we were to the edge.

All in all, it was a fun trip. We have so much flexibility with the train pass that we could pick and choose when to get our next train connection. That allowed us to take our time and really look at things without worrying about a deadline. The trains between Grindelwald and Interlaken Ost, and Interlaken and Basel run fairly frequently all day long.

I did check out a yarn store in Grindelwald, but it carried a rather boring stock of Regia, Opal and Lana Grossa. So no yarn purchases for now. Jim did pick up a jack knife (Swiss Army, of course). It has an orange peeler as one of its many features. Jim commented on how handy that was, and my response was "Yeah, I can't tell you how many times I've been out alone with just an orange and a regular knife and thought 'Gee, if only I had an oranger peeler and could get this orange open!"

Out and About

2009-07-06T14:47:00.004-04:00

Eating our $50 McDonald's Meal:

They do provide a better healthy choice with the Happy Meal here -- apple slices and grapes, with NO caramel dipping sauce! The kids enjoyed smiling with apple rind teeth.

Jack Bustin' a Move:

All I wanted was to take a picture of the two kids in front of the plant. I'm not sure why Jack felt it was necessary to gangsta rap.

The Tram in Clarastrasse:

We can get just about everywhere in and around Basel by tram. All visitors to Switzerland are given free "mobility passes" to use the trams. Most of the trams are just plain green, but some have ads and other decoration painted on them. This is the "I Love You" tram. Clarastrasse is the station nearest our hotel, and we can catch several trams from there. We are also within walking distance to Claraplatz, a big shopping area (they have H & M there, for example) and a major tram hub.

The Claramatte Park:

This park was recommended to me by one of the Ravelers in the Swiss Knitting group I joined. It has a huge wooden play structure with rope ladders, slides, several different kinds of swings, and all sorts of hidey holes. The kids just love it. Iy also has a wading pool with water spouts, but I'm not sure how often that's open. It was on the first day we went to the park and hasn't been on since.

Toy Museum:

These are all photos of the Toy Museum we visited. It was a 20 minute tram ride out of the city. We saw a lot of beautiful farms and little towns on the way and the kids really enjoyed the ride. The museum shows toys from the earliest times -- made from bone, sticks and stones -- all the way up to some modern toys. It was a very nice place with two play rooms on different floors set up with toys for kids to actually play with (probably to give moms and dads a chance to actually see the exhibits). It is housed in a big manor house with stone spiral stairs and these gorgeous tiled fireplaces and painted walls.

We Now Live in an IKEA Display

2009-07-05T12:28:00.005-04:00

Seriously. If you came in here, you would look around for staff in the blue and yellow aprons! Here are some pictures so you know what I mean:

Living Room:

The couch has a trundle bed underneath that pulls out, and combined with the seat, makes a double bed. That's where the kids sleep. There's a nice flat screen TV in the corner, but we only get two English language channels: BBC News and BBC One. The kids really like watching German language cartoons, though, especially SpongeBob SquareKopf.

Desk/Dining Area:

You can see that next to the couch there is a small desk with two chars tucked under it. It also has a small table that fits right underneath it. We pull it out into the room to eat. We use the two chairs provided with the desk and two more folding chairs kept in one of the many closets. That's one thing to be said for this apartment -- there is a lot of storage space. Kind of like IKEA...hmmmm. Also, that curvy chair behind the wall is soooo uncomfortable and such a temptation for children to climb. We'd love to have it taken out of here, but I don't think they would have anywhere to put it.

Kitchen:

Here are two views of the kitchenette. It is cunningly made for such a small space. The top photo shows the stove top, which has a storage cabinet overhead and a drawer and cabinet underneath. To the right of the stove is a refrigerator (the big gray cabinet) and an oven that works both as a microwave and a convection oven. There is also another stroage cabinet over the oven.

The lower picture shows the sink area. The garbage and compost waste is stored under the sink and there's a tiny little dishwasher next to the sink (you can't really see it here). It's the cutest little thing you've ever seen, and designed to easily fit the cooking utensils and dishes dirtied by a family of four. The cloth you see hanging on the door is hanging on one of two hooks that are there just to hang your cloths.

Bedroom:

There's not much to say about the bedroom. It's two separate beds pushed next to each other, which sounds uncomfortable but is actually kind of nice. They don't seem to move around or gap in the middle, so it's possible they are attached to each other. Since I don't have to make the beds (yay for maid service), I have no idea. The good part is that we each have our own sheets and blankets. Aside from the bed, there's not much more than two bedside tables and a closet in there.

Tub and shower area:

The separate toilet/tub and shower areas were heavily advertised as a feature of this apartment. This is the tub and shower area. The tub is really deep and the kids love bathing in there. The curvy sink is pretty but kind of impractical. The shower, which you can't really see, is tucked in the left corner. This room is quite large and a comfortable place to get changed after you bath.

Toilet area:

This room is very, very small. In fact, I don't really like being in there with the door shut all the way because it's a bit claustrophobic. The toilet has two options: small flush for when you pee and big flush for when you do something else. It also has it's own little wash basin, which is nice. You can sort of see Jack's potty on the floor in the foreground there. He's been doing great with peeing, but he had a little poop accident in his underwear this evening. Fortunately, it was Jim's turn to clean up the mess.

View across the street:

This is the view from our living room window. See all the shutters? They appear to be metal. Almost all of them have been pulled down since we arrived, but there are clearly people living on some of the floors who open theirs. I'm not sure what they're for -- they look kind of like hurricane shutters.

View down the street:

This is the view down Hammerstrasse. There's not much to say about it.

Anyway, if you want a 3-D tour of our apartment, you can check it out here. Click on the oval that says "virtueller besuch" underneath the photo on the page, and then click on "die wohnungen" to get a drop down menu. Make sure to choose the second option for 2 zimmer-wohnung -- the first one is a different style of apartment from ours. The second option gives you a 360 degree virtual tour of an apartment like ours -- you will really get an idea of how small it is!

Death March

2009-07-03T04:04:00.003-04:00

After a nightmare 18 hour trip, we arrived in Basel yesterday afternoon. The good thing about our trip: the kids were very well behaved, considering they had very little sleep during that time. The bad things about our trip:

diarrhea
6 hour surprise layover in Heathrow, the Airport of Sweaty Doom
sleeping on a stone floor
pulling what was basically an all-nighter at the age of 42

And this isn't even a comprehensive list.

The apartment is nice but compact. VERY compact. I could take a picture of the entire kitchen, bedroom and living room while sitting on the couch. Also, they don't exactly have air conditioning in Switzerland. They call it "air freshening." So far, the difference seems to be that the room eventually gets cool, but remains very humid. So, there's a lot of sweating if anyone moves around too much. Fortunately, the dainty size of the accommodations makes it nearly impossible to move around too much.

We have no food, so I have to try and find a supermarket today. We think there's one right down the street, but I have to go inside to tell for sure. We had italian for dinner last night. The owner spoke mostly Italian, a smattering of German and very little English. We only made it a part of the way through the meal when we realized the kids had to go home and get in bed, so I took the kids and left Jim to deal with the check.

Anyway, we have internet now, I have about 30 francs in my pocket and I've got to figure out how I'm going to feed the kids today, so I'm off. I'll try to post some pictures of the apartment and our street later. If we can get rid of this jet lag thing going on....

Procrastination

2009-06-30T22:08:00.003-04:00

I don't really feel like packing!

The kids are really excited about the upcoming trip. Jack believes that Switzerland will really like his light saber and his hair. Lily told her friend today that Switzerland is a place with really good chocolate stores. I hope they don't end up disappointed.

Jack made up a new word this week -- "slurb." He initially created it to describe a strawberry coolatta from Dunkin' Donuts. He took a sip and said "This is a really tasty slurb." He expanded the definition two nights ago while scraping up the cheese sauce from his macaroni and cheese, saying "I'm getting up all this macaroni slurb." I'm really into the word myself. It just sounds cool.

I really can't put off the rest of my work any longer. Catch you on the flip side, folks.

Half Way to 5K

2009-06-28T19:08:00.003-04:00

So...Week 5, Day 3

I ran for 20 minutes today with no walking. I feel like superwoman. If you had told me 5 weeks ago that I would run for 20 minutes and enjoy it, I would have laughed in your face. That first day of running, 30 seconds seemed like a lot! But today, I just went out and did it! And it didn't kill me, either.

I am still trying to get over the Cold of Eternity, and had to take a 4 day break between Week 5, Day 2 and the big run on Day 3. It was well worth it.

We are busy planning for our big adventure, so I can't much for now.

20 minutes! Wooo-hoooooooo!

Week 4, Day 2

2009-06-16T08:52:00.002-04:00

Great run this morning with no problems. I stupidly peeked ahead to next week and found out that on Week 5, Day 3, I have to do a 20 minute run. With no walking. I'm already dreading it, even though I suspect by the time I get to it, it will go just fine. Running 5 minutes at a stretch seemed very easy today.

In other news, Jack pooped on the potty...FINALLY. He got a "light saver" (light saber) as his reward, but was upset later in the day because he wished he had bought an "MP3-O" (C3PO) figure instead.

He also had his evaluation for speech at the preschool yesterday. We decided to have him checked out because of the squeaky voice thing and the weird way he talks. Some of it has been resolved by the acid reflux meds he's been on, but we thought it was worth having checked. He did just fine and nearly talked the ear off of the evaluator. Sadly, she was not a voice pathologist, which is what we needed for a proper evaluation. We'll have to get a referral from his ENT after we get back.

He told the evaluator we were going to Switzerland and she checked with me to see if he was telling a story! He also told her that when you're sick, you need to eat jello because it makes all the germs go away down into your stomach.

Things I learned from running today: It isn't that bad to go running when it's raining lightly. It's actually kind of nice.

Fat Girl Running

2009-06-14T20:45:00.002-04:00

Hey everyone! I am back for now because I finally have something to say. First, I'm going to blog about my whole fitness thing because it keeps me accountable if I think people are paying attention. Second, we are going to Basel, Switzerland, and I want to keep you all in the loop with our doings while we're there! So, back to blogging for me.

For those of you not in the know, my cardiologist pronounced my peripartum cardiomyopathy (PPCM) officially healed in April. I am not off the hook yet -- he would like to see one more normal echo before taking me off certain restrictions, but he did approve me to do more than light exercise. I will be seeing him again next year after an echo. He promised that if the echo was normal, I will not need to see him again unless I have some problem or future echos are wonky. I will have to get an annual echo for a while, though.

After discussing a few fitness plans with my cardiologist (he nixed the fitness bootcamp and anything requiring push ups or weightlifting), I settled on doing the Couch to 5K plan from the Cool Running web site. After 3 years of inactivity, doing something promising to gently take me from couch potato to 5K runner sounded pretty good. Also, it's inexpensive -- it only requires shoes and some flat running ground. So I started it up 3 weeks ago.

The first week alternated 60 seconds of jogging with 90 seconds of walking for a total of 20 minutes. That gave me about 8 minutes of actual jogging out of the 20 minutes. (I also do a 5 minute warm up walk and a 5 minute cool down walk, which brings my total exercise time up to 30 minutes). It went okay, but it was kind of hard to get into a natural run.

The second week alternated 90 seconds of jogging and 2 minutes of walking. That bumped me up to about 9 minutes of running. That week was hard because I started to get shin splints and this incredible knee pain like I never had before. After a couple of days limping around in pain, Jim convinced me that it would be worthwhile to stop in at Marathon Sports and have them fit me for the right running shoes. I was skeptical, but the pain drove me to go there. It turns out that my wonderful bargain Asics from the outlets were completely wrong for my pronation problem. You see, I had read that Asics were considered the best shoe for my problem, but didn't understand that I needed to buy a specific STYLE. I just assumed they were all the same. Anyway...they fit me with some "extreme support" Asics and the difference was immediately noticeable.

The third week switched up the routine to 90 seconds jogging, 90 walking, 3 minutes jogging, 3 minutes walking (repeated twice), for a total of 9 minutes jogging. I was ridiculously scared of running for 3 minutes, but it turned out to be okay.

That bring us to today -- Week 4, Day 1: 3 minutes seconds jogging, 90 seconds walking, 5 minutes jogging, 2.5 minutes walking (2 reps) for a total of 16 minutes of jogging. Yikes!! I dreaded this run, but it was also fine. My legs didn't hurt at all during or after the run, although they did feel pretty tired during the last 5 minute jog.

So, yeah, I'm running and sticking to the program. Next week, I'll be half way through. I'm actually curious to see if I can make it through the 9 week program without having to repeat a week, which is what you have to do if you find one of the workouts too tough. I thought this week would be too hard, but it wasn't, so maybe this will actually work!

P.S. I'm still knitting -- one pair of socks a month plus whatever else amuses me. I'll have to do a photo montage the next time I post.

I'm BAAAAACK!

2009-02-01T20:51:00.003-05:00

I'm not going to give some long apology for my absence from the blog. I've been busy and nothing interesting has happened to me. End of story.

I did have an incident on Friday that was a great source of amusement for my family. My mom wished she could have a picture, so I have drawn a series of diagrams to illustrate the incident.

THE STORY: Lily and Jack were dancing in the living room. Lily asked if we could play ballet school, so I said "Sure!" We stood together and I showed her all of the ballet positions and how to plie. She showed me how she twirls. Everyone was smiling and having fun, including Jack. Let me tell you, nothing is more amusing than watching Jack plie. But I digress....

It was about at that point that I said "Do you want me to show you how a real ballerina twirls?" Of course, Lily and Jack were thrilled and moved out of the way. I set myself up to do a turn on one leg as shown in Fig. A. below, and started to twirl.

Unfortunately, I haven't twirled in some time and after turning about 180 degrees, I started to tilt on my axis, much like a planet. See Fig. B. below. As shown in the diagram, once I started to tilt, I knew I was heading for disaster.

In what seemed to me like slow motion, I started to fall sideways to the floor. At the same time, I continued to turn another 180 degrees and my left arm flew out to the side and caught on a chair seat. See Fig. C. My other hand reached to the ground to try and break the fall.

As I hit the floor, my arm remained hung up on the seat of the chair. It is really hard to diagram, but I ended up on my stomach with my right arm out in front of my and my left arm caught raised up behind me on the seat of the chair. See Fig. D.

The pain was immediate and unbearable. As I lay writhing on the floor and moaning, Jack came running over and jumped on top of me, saying "Make a slide, Mommy!" Lily was laughing. I could only croak out the words "Don't touch me! Mommy's hurt!" Right about then, the phone rang. It was my mother. I told her what happened, and Jack piped up in the background "You should be more careful."

I seriously thought I would need to go to the ER, but after icing my arm for about an hour and taking Ibuprofen, everything was okay. It's pretty stiff and sore, but it only really hurts if I try to put it in the position it was in when it got caught on the chair. Since I hardly ever walk around with my arm up in the air behind my back, it barely bothers me.

Once I got out the ice pack, the kids both tried to hurt themselves and demanded ice packs for their "injuries." Lily actually purposely hit her head on the floor. Shne said "I want to be like you, Mommy!"

Needless to say, I won't be doing any fancy ballet moves in the near future...or ever again.

Get Thee on the Crafty Bus!

2008-12-05T20:37:00.003-05:00

If you're on Ravelry, check out my new group "The Crafty Bus." My knitting gal pal (I've always wanted to use that phrase) Sheila and I came up with the idea, and with a little help from the Crafty Mamas (you know who you are), we put together a list of 24 patterns for a Year of Socks. Well, to be fair, it might be more like 27 patterns, because we sometimes gave 3 suggested patterns if one of them must be purchased. Anyway, you can knit either 1 or 2 pairs of socks per month (or more, if you come up with more patterns) and bust that sock yarn stash.

Why the Crafty Bus? Sheila invented the phrase one day. If I remember correctly, she was talking about how her mother was pretty crafty, and how surprised she would be to find out that Sheila was now, as she so vividly described it, "on the Crafty Bus." I can't explain why the phrase struck me, but I've used it ever since. I've been on the crafty bus for a long, long, time. Once you get on, you never get off!

Why a Year of Socks? I am sad to admit that I have an addiction to Dream in Color Smooshy. In fact, I have enough Smooshy in my Level 1 stash right now to do the Year of Socks. I also have a lot of other sock yarn. It's soooo tempting to buy a skein because it comes with a built-in project. One skein usually equals one pair of socks. No math required, and those of you who know me know that I would move heaven and earth to avoid doing math if at all possible. The other thing about sock yarn? It comes in lots of pretty colors. Kettle dyed, hand painted, self-striping...I could go on and on. All of these things conspire against me and practically force me to buy lots of sock yarn.

Well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it, anyway....

There are also a lot of free sock patterns on the Internet, and on Ravelry in particular. Like sock yarn, the variety of patterns is endless. Cables, dropped stitches, lace, unique construction, you name it. Thousands of pretty socks that take just the one skein of pretty yarn. And it's a relatively quick project once you get into the habit of knitting socks. And sock projects are very portable.

My pledge is to knit down my stash of sock yarn during the Year of Socks. I'm committing to 12 pair for sure, and if it goes well, I might push for 24. On the other hand, I have a few projects planned for 2009, including the February Lady sweater, so I'll probably wimp out and do 12. We'll see. I'll keep you posted.

The Social Life of a 5 Year Old

2008-12-02T21:42:00.002-05:00

At dinner tonight, we were treated to a long explanation of the kind of social interactions kindergarteners engage in. It was very enlightening, to say the least. I wish I had it on tape, because it was hilarious. Sadly, I can only paraphrase here.

You see, Lily is friends with everyone in her class, except for Joey. Joey told Lily that he didn't like her, because there was a puzzle everyone was doing and he wanted to do it. Also, did you know that Joey doesn't even like girls? He only likes boys. But the boys all think that Joey really does like girls, so when he tells them not to like girls, they just ignore him.

The good thing is that Lily's friend Alex helped her tell the teacher what Joey said, and Joey got a yellow flag. That's bad. If you're at the top of the yellow flag, you can make it back up to green, which is good. If you're at the bottom and you keep being bad, you can get to red. You know what happens if you get to red? They call the principal and you get a letter sent home to your parents and they might even make you go home! Lily wasn't sure because so far no one has gotten the red flag in her class. Lily has only gotten one yellow flag and all the rest were green because she's good at school.

Her boyfriend is Matthew. Actually she has two boyfriends, Matthew and Patrick from her old school. Actually, she has three boyfriends, Matthew, Patrick and Kevin in the third grade. Those are her boyfriends. Alex doesn't have a boyfriend right now, but tomorrow, she's going to try out Nicholas L. She already tried out Luke and Hooper and Nicholas T. but none of them wanted her, so she's just going to have to keep trying out new ones until she finds her boyfriend. She doesn't even know who her boyfriend will be yet! You get a boyfriend when you ask a boy if he wants to be your boyfriend and he says yes. Boys can ask you to be their girlfriend, too. Four different boys asked Lily to be their girlfriend, but she told them all "I already have 3 boyfriends! I can't have any more!" Matthew's other girlfriend is his sister, Ella.

On the playground, she likes to chase Kevin. If you see girls in a group, Kevin is probably with them! That's when Lily says "Kevin is in trouble!" That doesn't mean Kevin did something wrong, it just means that something bad is going to happen from those girls. Kevin has a friend named Colin and he always steals Lily's hat and calls her "chicken." She doesn't know why he calls her that. He calls Sydney, Alex, Savannah and Lily chickens. The other girls chase him, but Lily tells them to stop. Even though she tells them to stop, Colin takes her hat and calls her a chicken, too! Who knows why he does that?

Tis' the Season...

2008-11-23T14:28:00.003-05:00

...for holiday memes! Here's the latest, sent to me by Ms. Can't Stop Knitting. It's everything you didn't want to know and didn't bother to ask me about what I do at Christmas! Actually, doing the meme got me kind of excited about Christmas -- we'll be getting our tree next weekend, most likely.

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? Gift bags, baby.

2. Real tree or Artificial? Real, especially Douglas Fir.

3. When do you put up the tree? The weekend after Thanksgiving, usually.

4. When do you take the tree down? Some time after New Year's Day.

5. Do you like eggnog? Only if there's rum in it!

6. Favorite gift received as a child? Raggedy Ann (and I still have her)

7. Hardest person to buy for? Daddy.

8. Easiest person to buy for? Jack. He's 2 and he Just. Doesn't. Care.

9. Do you have a nativity scene? Yes, a primitive wood set that the kids love.

10. Mail or email Christmas cards? Mail.

11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? I'd rather not say in case that person ever read this blog!

12. Favorite Christmas Movie? A Christmas Story -- "You'll shoot your eye out!"

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas? Any time I see something appropriate.

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? I think I've regifted a bottle of wine.

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Chili Egg Puff.

16. Lights on the tree? Only if they're the small white twinkle lights that don't blink.

17. Favorite Christmas song? Santa Baby as performed by Eartha Kitt.

18. Travel at Christmas or stay home? Stay home, please. At least until the kids are a lot older.

19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeer? Yes, if I sing the song!

20. Angel on the tree top or a star? Neither. We have a tall red glass tree topper

21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning? Morning.

22. Most annoying thing about this time of the year? Those Salvation Army workers that ring the bells and ask for donations. They're everywhere and the bell ringing makes me crazy.

23. Favorite ornament theme or color? I like the Victorian style glass ornaments.

24. Favorite for Christmas dinner? My special mashed potatoes.

25. What's on your Christmas wish list this year? A new wedding band in platinum.

26. What do you want for Christmas this year? A peaceful holiday with friends and family close by.

27. Who is most likely to respond to this? Why, everyone! Who wouldn't want to talk about Christmas and kick the season off?

3's About Me

2008-11-19T17:39:00.002-05:00

Another email meme that I thought would be fun to answer on the blog.

Three places I have lived: Minnesota, California, North Carolina

Three shows that I watch: NCIS, Top Chef, Dexter

Three places I have visited: Italy, Switzerland, France

Three places I have been this week: Yarn & Fiber Company, Trader Joe's and the pediatrician's office.

Three people who e-mail me regularly: My mom, the Crafty Mamas and Knitting Daily

Three of my favorite foods: mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese and broccoli

Three places I'd rather be right now: Emerald Isle, Antigua or a cruise to nowhere

Three people I think will respond: Who knows?

Three things I am looking forward to next year: Rhinebeck 2009, the March bonus check and Emerald Isle

It's Either Sadness or Euphoria

2008-11-18T16:20:00.002-05:00

Remember a few weeks ago, when I got the bad news from my GP about my echo results? I ended up doing a follow-up stress echo to get more information. The news was GOOD. My heart measurements were all normal, both at rest and under stress. My EF was normal (and up 8% from the "bad" echo, so that little dip was just a normal variation, I guess).

The only thing that looked bad was my blood pressure. It was low at resting and bottomed out at 70/35 after the test. Did you know that having a BP of 70/35 will make a lot of alarms go off? There was much flurry and concern, especially when my pressure was still 80/50 after everything else went back to normal. There was also some confusion as to why the low pressure wasn't bothering me in the least, at least until I explained that my resting BP was usually around 80/60. After that got straightened out, they let me leave.

My doctor brought it up when he was discussing the results with me on Friday. He told me, and I quote "It's not good to have pressure constantly that low." Oh, really? Because my pressure has been that low for almost 3 years and I've expressed my concern about that to him at least twice that I can remember. In fact, it started right after they put me on the BP medicine after my heart failure. Coincidence? I think NOT! Seriously, though, I was a little taken aback that my cardiologist and the staff doing my stress echo didn't seem to put together the facts that (1) I had low normal BP before my heart failure; (2) I was put on medication to lower my BP to help my heart rest; and (3) now I have unusually low BP. After I told my doctor how crappy, tired and dizzy I felt all the time, he said "let's try going without it for a while and see how you do."

So I am officially heart/BP medication free! Whee! I was a little afraid at first, but now (4 days later), I feel pretty darn good. I haven't felt the bone-crushing exhaustion that usually hits me around noon for a couple of days. I also started feeling a lot less depressed on Sunday, which led me to wonder if the BP meds could have been contributing to that as well. A quick tour of the internet revealed that low BP can cause depression, as well as forgetfulness. I've been dealing with both since Jack was born, so I'm curious to see if the med change will make a difference.

On the other hand, I might just be really, really happy and relieved after 3 years of taking meds that made me feel sick and 3 years of worrying that my heart would never get better. So, I'm withholding my judgment about the effect of going off the BP meds until I've had some time to get used to being a person with a healthy, normal heart again.

Oh yeah, tip to those of you who might have to take a stress echo in the future. Find out before you go in what kind of exercise you'll be doing. It won't make a difference in how hard they push you, but at least you'll be mentally prepared. I was expecting to "ride a stationary bike." I was a little confused when I got into the exam room when I didn't see a bike. It turned out that the "bike" was actually pedals mounted on a table. I had to lie flat on my back and pedal from that angle. When it was time for them to do the echo, the table rotated sideways at a 45% angle. Have you ever tried to pedal a bike on your back while tilted sideways? In the words of the echo technician, "They don't call it a stress echo because it's a walk in the park." No kidding!

Potty Training

2008-11-15T21:15:00.003-05:00

We are trying to train Jack. This summer, he self-trained for about 3 days at my mother's house when she gave him some "big boy" underpants. After the novelty wore off, though, he reverted to the pull-ups. Since he left daycare this fall, I've done intensive training several times. He usually pees in pair after pair of underpants until I give up. On the other hand, every time he takes a bath, he asks to pee on the potty before he gets in and does it successfully almost every time. So, we know he CAN train, but he seems to want to do it on his own time.

He has a potty chart right now where he can earn a black licorice dog when he's successful. Every single dog was earned at bathtime...until tonight.

I was knitting a pair of socks and half-watching a movie. Both kids were asleep, but suddenly, I heard "Mommy! Mommy!" I thought it was Lily at first, but then I heard "Mommy, pee started coming out and I have to use the potty!" Apparently, he suddenly woke up and had to pee!

I went into the hallway and saw Jack standing in the hall, wearing his blue footie pajamas and holding a black plastic gun. He said "Pee started coming out in a pullup! I need a potty!" He was waving the gun for emphasis. I took him into his bedroom and unzipped him so he could take his pullup off. We went into the bathroom and he sat down on his little potty.

Nothing happened. After a few minutes, I said "Are you done?" "I need a little more time," he said. I said "Would you like to read a book while you're waiting?" and he said "Yeah!" Then he pulled the bathroom stool towards his potty and laid the plastic gun on it. "I'm jus' gonna put my gun here," he said.

I went to his room and came back with a book, which he took and opened. I said "I'm going to go into the living room. Just let me know when you're all done." "Okay, Mommy!" A minute or two passed, and then I heard "Mommy! Come here, Mommy!" I went into the bathroom.

"Where did THIS come from?" he asked, holding up a small plastic dog. "I don't know," I said. "Are you finished?" "No, I need a little more time." I left the room again. Pretty soon, I heard "Mommy, come here, Mommy!" I went back in. "Are you finished?" "No, I need more time. I'm all done my book," he said, handing it to me. I took it and left.

Several more minutes passed and then he appeared in the living room, naked from the waist down with the bottom half of his pajamas trailing behind. "Come look! I peed! I gonna get a licorice dog!" I gave him his dog and took him to his room to get his pullup and pajamas back on. "I felt a pee coming out and I went potty!" he said. "Good job!" I said and turned off the light.

"Mommy?" I looked back in. "What?" He sat up in his bed and said "I need my gun."

What's Under My Couch This Week

2008-11-11T16:08:00.002-05:00

It's been a while, but rest assured, I have been cleaning under the couch. Life has just gotten in the way of posting about it lately. This is what I found last Tuesday:

Yoga Ball pum
empty 2 liter bottle of Orange Dry soda
2 small pumpkins (one was slightly squashy)
paper crown liberally decorated with gems by Lily
sucker ball
1 marker
paint brush
toy walkie talkie
2 binkies
2 halves of Jim's favorite yoyo (Jack took it apart)
book of stickers
felt witch hat from the pumpkin Jack decorated on the 18th of October
1 matching pair of socks
a piece belong to Lily's magic set
2 golf balls
Christmas napkin ring
3 magnet blocks and the entire set of cards showing different designs
silk daisy
harmonica
1 penny
letter from MGH reminding me of the date for my echocardiogram
2 Hotwheels cars
toy fishing rod
part to the old vacuum cleaner
cow doll
playdough tool (looks like a jackknife with lots of playdough shaping implements)
party blower
glass suncatcher
1 gigabyte thumb drive
1 card from the Wild Things themed UNO game
1 Good Times token
1 stitch marker

The two golf balls were the inspiration for Jack's latest song called "My Two Balls." Some of the priceless lines from the song "I got two balls" and "Eat my balls" (the second line was sung while he tried to shove one of the golf balls into his mouth).

Rhinebeck, Baby!

2008-10-22T08:04:00.005-04:00

We had so much fun. I'm already looking forward to next year. If you love yarn and the fiber arts, you really should go. Come on, Rhinebeck 2009!

FRIDAY:

After my cardiology appointment, which went fairly well, I drove home and met up with Lisa of Can't Stop Knitting fame. We drove out to Northampton to stay with her parents. We made it to Webs about 15 minutes before closing but we each still managed to pick up a few items. I was buying Malabrigo chunky for two friends, so I picked up a skein for myself and also managed to reach out and snag some lovely handpainted sock yarn. Of course, none of this came out of my Rhinebeck budget because we weren't at Rhinebeck yet.

The Webs bus was scheduled to leave at 7:30 am. Lisa and I set our alarms for 5:15 am. We were both overly concerned about missing the bus. We each set our phone alarms and then we set the alarm clock in the guest room where I was sleeping. We also got a little panicky and worried it might be daylight savings time. I ended up checking it out on the internet. Afterwards, when cooler heads prevailed, we both realized that daylight savings time always starts at midnight on a Saturday night, so it wouldn't have affected us. As I write this, I also realize that we "fall back," which means that instead of missing the bus, we would have been an hour EARLY if daylight savings time was in effect. All of which just goes to show you how excited we were to go on our trip.

SATURDAY:

After a quick stop at Dunkin' Donuts (I run on Dunkin' iced tea), we arrived at Webs well before the bus. In fact, we would have been well before the bus even if we arrived at 7:30 because the bus driver had a little trouble finding us! Lisa noticed a tour bus driving past the entrance to Webs, and speculated jokingly that it was our bus missing the turn. A few minutes later, the same bus drove past going the other direction. Eventually, the girl from Webs who was running the tour went out to the main road, met up with the driver and then rode back with him to give him directions.

Once we were on the road, the group leader from Webs asked several trivia questions. The winners got prizes ranging from Webs water bottles to pretty knitting bags complete with either the materials for drop spindle spinning or knitting a project! Lisa immediately won a water bottle. I stunk at the questions, so I won nothing. As we pulled up to the fair, the group leader announced that the first three people with birth dates coming up would win $10. Lisa was one of the big winners!

Now to describe Rhinebeck. It reminded me of the Topsfield Fair (for those of you in Massachusetts who are familiar with it), except that almost everything was fiber related. We started out in a big building with a ton of vendors. I immediately bought a skein of silk/merino blend, while Lisa got yarn and a pattern from the same vendor. The crowd was insane. It was difficult to move in and out of some of the booths, and I ended up giving Lisa my skein and some money, because by the time I was done shopping, she was about 10 people ahead of me in the checkout line.

She sent me on a mission to find the Blue Moon booth while she waited to check out. We had been warned that the Blue Moon would sell out in the first hour, and we were both interested in checking it out. She met me at the booth, which was pretty crammed. We each grabbed chose a skein and headed to the checkout line. There were about 4 people in front of the counter, but as we headed to the end of the line, we saw that it went around the corner...and all the way across the giant hall, where it then doubled back. There were at least 50 people in line! We both turned right around and put the skeins down, because that line just wasn't worth it.

I was pleased to see a lot of rug hooking vendors, and ended up buying a punch needle kit, pattern and some wool thread for the project. Because I TOTALLY need another craft to do! I also got some great ideas for my etsy store (I'm working on your pin, Lisa!).

We spent an inordinate amount of time trying to locate the Ancient Threads booth. The Rhinebeck website said it would be located between building 26 and 27, but we just couldn't find it. On the bus ride home, Lisa noticed that it didn't appear in the guidebook we got at the fair, so they probably weren't even there this year!

Here are a couple of "friends" from the fair:

We wandered around aimlessly for about 40 minutes trying to locate the Ravelry meet up as well. We wanted to get our Ravelry buttons because we heard a rumor that some vendors would give discounts to Ravelers (I didn't get any discounts, so I don't know if it was true or not). There was a vague description of the meet up site, and a map with an arrow pointing to nothing. Eventually we banded together with another Raveler and just stood in the general location suggested by the arrow. After a little while, Casey, the Very Nice Man who programmed Ravelry showed up with his brother-in-law, another guy and beer in hand. Several of us immediately used the opportunity to get photos with him, which made him very shy and prompted him to remind us that his wife, Jess, who thought up the idea of Ravelry, would be there soon and wouldn't we rather have a picture of her? Lisa and I just thanked him and grabbed our buttons so we could get back to the vendors.

That's little crocheted Bob in his pocket!

Here's what I bought:

- Decadent Fibers Creme Brulee in a semisolid blue (2000 yds)
- Socks that Rock medium weight sock yarn (3 skeins, I was out of control)
- Ellen's 1/2 Pint Farm sock yarn
- Shelridge Farms sock yarn (3 skeins), a Lucy Neatby scarf pattern, and a Cookie A sock pattern
- Briar Rose DK weight in deep reds and blue (1000 yds)
- Spirit Trails sock yarn in semisolid blue
- Some silk/merino blend yarn from a vendor whose name escapes me (blues and greens)
- Creatively Dyed sock in semisolid silver
- a punch needle design, wool thread and punch needle set
- 2 kinds of goat cheese for Jim
- Swedish Fish for the kids
- a Go-Monkey project bag (check out their website)

I might have left some stuff out, I'm doing this from memory. If you have access to Ravelry, you can look in my stash and see everything. Or you can just look at a picture of the whole thing here:

There were a lot of people wearing their Rhinebeck Sweaters. Lisa was wearing her beautiful February Lady, and about 1,000 people stopped us to compliment her. A couple of people even stopped to compliment me on my very detailed Talbot's sweater because they assumed I'd knit it myself. Sadly, I didn't even come close to finishing my Wisteria sweater in time for the trip.

After a long day of shopping, we trudged back to the bus. We were told at the beginning of the day that we had to be back at the bus by 4:00 pm. Lisa and I picked up some apple crisp and ice cream and made sure we were there by 3:45. Some people had such large purchases that they opened the luggage compartment under the bus! We all dragged ourselves into the bus and waited while the group leader took attendance. We had a few stragglers who showed up just before 4. She took the final attendance and one person was missing! The missing lady was apparently traveling alone. No one knew her and no one had a cell phone number for her. The store tried calling her home number and no one answered. Eventually, the group leader left the bus and went back into the fair to have her paged, to no avail. We finally left at about 4:45 without her! We are very curious as to what happened -- my guess is that she met up with someone she knew and decided to go back with that person.

On the drive home, we played a yarn version of "Let's Make a Deal." The group leader called out the description of an item and the first person to show one got a prize. I won a water bottle and a little kit that included needles, a pattern and a skein of yarn.

It was such a fun weekend. It could only have been better if we'd gone with a big group of friends. I hope we can get more people to go next year!

Off to Rhinebeck with a Broken Heart

2008-10-16T20:23:00.004-04:00

Well, folks, Lisa and I are heading out tomorrow afternoon! I am as excited as a kid on Christmas Eve. I have snacks, my head lamp (so I can knit on the bus after dark), two projects to work on and a wad of cash in my purse. Lisa's an old hat at Rhinebeck, but it's all new to me.

Sadly, I will not be wearing my Wisteria sweater, although I will bring it along to work on. I am only 20 rows from completing the body, but there are still two sleeves, each of which are cabled at the wrist. I toyed with staying up all night to finish it, but there's a point when you just have to let it go. I'm at that point.

I am going to operate on a cash only basis so that when the money runs out my shopping is done. That way I'll be less likely to go over my budget. I'm going to try very hard to stick to it. Of course, the budget doesn't include any monies spent at Webs tomorrow afternoon. I will be taking a look in the warehouse, of course.

In other news, I got my echocardiogram results this week. I have had some regression since I stopped taking my beta blocker this summer. I will be seeing my cardiologist (who looks like a very cute 12 year old) tomorrow right before I leave on my trip.

I've been pretty down since my doctor sent me the results. People who are diagnosed with an Ejection Fraction (EF) of 30% or greater usually resolve their condition within a year. People diagnosed below that mark have a much lower chance of healing. Since I was at 33% +/- 5%, I could go either way. After leaving my job, I improved significantly and had an EF of 60% +/- 5% (totally normal) last fall. I was hopeful that if I maintained that level for a year, I might be able to stop the medications and resume my normal life. The regression means I might have to go back on my old meds, which means more problems with asthma and all the other crappy side effects I have from beta blockers. Sadly, I've had some slight enlargement and my EF droped to 52% +/- 5%.

I know intellectually that's not a big deal. Technically, I'm still in the normal range, and I have been for the last 3 echos. That's something to be really happy about. There can be variations in EF from day to day that could explain the slight regression.

Emotionally, I'm really fragile right now. I've felt so much better and so HOPEFUL since I stopped the beta blocker. I dread the thought of taking a step backwards when I was so looking forward to coming to an end of this whole episode. I am trying to accept that I may have to take the medications, and then additional medications to counteract the side effects, for the rest of my life. The good news is that I'll be perfectly healthy. The bad news is that this heart problem will be a permanent part of my life. Even though I've contemplated that eventuality for 2 years, deep down I always thought I'd get past this point.

So I'm heartbroken right now (no pun intended). The only thing helping me keep my chin up is the excitement of Rhinebeck. If I had to have bad news, it couldn't have come at a better time.

Anyway, I try to keep my blog light and don't want to make my crappy ticker a regular part of this blog. So that's the way things stand right now, and I have a gut feeling that my very conservative cardiologist is going to go for the cautious approach tomorrow. Guess I better bust out the granny pill organizer again!

BUT...I'm going to Rhinebeck! Wheeeee!

Yarns. I Haz Dem.

2008-10-12T08:15:00.001-04:00

Wanna see?

My two dyeing partners in crime (hi, ladies!) and I got together on Friday and had a little fun with acid dyes. All told, we did 8 lots of yarn. The gals (Larra and Sheila) each had a sock blank to dye for an upcoming swap, and they had to dye them in Christmas colors. Both of them looked really pretty when they were done, with reds, greens and a dash of gold (for the star, of course!). Larra did almost everything else in blue, as usual, but also threw together a gorgeous hank in the colors of indian corn -- brown, orange, yellow and red.

I had an interesting time. I had planned out colors for three hanks. The first one was meant to be brown and pink. In my mind, I saw it as a rich, chocolatey brown with pale baby pink. It came out much rosier than I planned, but I really like the end result. I named that colorway Cupcake.

The second skein was meant to be various shades of blue. I started out with my favorite Cushing Perfection color, Copenhagen Blue, and something odd happened. As soon as the dye hit the yarn, a pale pink tone leached out on either side of the applied dye. It didn't happen when Larra used it on her yarn, so I'm guessing it had something to do with the way mine was prepared or the type of fiber. At any rate, I loved the colors together. Sheila's suggestion was to go with it, so I dyed patches of yarn next to each other to make spots of pink. I called that skein Hyacinth. I wonder if I can replicate it, or if it was just one of those happy dyeing accidents?

The last colorway was meant to be blues, maroons and purples. In my mind's eye, the colors were going to be darker and more muted, but I fell in love with the brighter colors and they way they blended. The blue to purple range reminded me of irises, so I named that colorway Iris Setosa (the latin name for the flower).

The last time I dyed, I didn't make enough dye up, so this time I made big mason jars of dye. It was a bit of an overestimate, so now I have several mason jars of dye left over. I'm tempted to dye the two remaining hanks from my stash, but I'm going to try and hold out until the ladies can arrange another dyeing play date. I have some silk and merino blend yarn winging its way to me as I type and I want to do that yarn at the same time.

My plan is to sell some of the yarn on my etsy store, but I'm not sure I can part with it! Every skein is so personal and appeals to my specific taste (obviously). I am already planning socks for some of the colors. Partly for that reason, and partly because I have more sock yarn than I can ever knit, I have designated 2009 as my personal Year of the Sock. My goal is to knit 1 pair of socks each month, for a total of 12 pair. I'm not sure I can do it, but that's my goal.

In other yarny news, I bought some pretty stuff at The Yarn and Fiber Company. I got a skein of Kauni in the bright rainbow colors and a beautiful skein of Smooshy in Dusky Aurora, which seemed so familiar...when I got home, I saw that I'd bought Classy in the same colorway a few weeks ago AND FORGOT ALL ABOUT IT.

This upcoming weekend I'll be at Rhinebeck with my friend Lisa. I've decided to make cash-only purchases so I will be limited to a predetermined amount. I'll be armed with my new phone so I can check patterns for yardage. I'll be snapping some photos and just generally enoying the yarnage. Can't wait!

Pork... It's the Other White Meat

2008-10-03T21:19:00.002-04:00

You know when kids say or do things that give other people the wrong impression of your home life?

Yesterday, Lily had a homework assignment about nutrition. She was asked to draw a picture of her family eating a healthful meal. The sheet also included instructions to the parent. I was supposed to write down her description of the picture and label each of the healthful foods she drew. Also, for reasons unknown to me, I had to sign MY name at the bottom of the page. I think now it was so they can use the document against me in family court, but I digress.

Lily started out by drawing a large table with about 8 legs. Then she drew the four of us around the table. It was drawn as if she took a picture of the table, so Jim's back was to the viewer, I was drawn across the table from him and she and Jack were sitting at each end. I was pretty impressed with her attempt at realistic perspective, actually. She apologized to me because she drew my head "way small." She also felt she'd draw herself "ugh" and compensated by drawing her legs all the way down to the ground to show she was leaving the table. I'm not sure how that made her less "ugh" but that was her explanation.

Then she drew four platters on the table, each with a different food on it. As a final touch, she drew our chandelier over the table with lots of rays coming from the bulbs to show it was very bright.

Then it was my turn to ask her to describe the picture. I obviously don't have the picture here right now (they've probably turned it over to DSS), but I will quote it to the best of my memory:

"This is a picture of my family eating a healthful and delicious meal. The Grimsas is very bright so that we don't eat anything we're allergic to. Mama, Papa, Jack and Lily. Don't eat a healthful meal too much, at least once a day."

You are probably wondering what a Grimsas is. It happens to be the name IKEA gave the chandelier over our dining room table. It kind of stuck with us, and we refer to that light as the Grimsas. The "grim" portion of the name is actually kind of fitting, because the previous owner placed the wiring off center in the room. If we forget and center the table to the room, someone always bashes their head on the Grimsas. What was I talking about? Oh yeah, Lily's picture.

Right. The very last thing I had to do was label the "healthful food" she drew. She told me the four platters contained ham, sausage, salad and a banana.

As I was filling out the sheet per the instructions, I was flashing forward to what the teacher was going to think when she saw it. Lily has given her the impression that we load up our table with pork products, that we only eat a healthful meal once a day, and that we need to keep our lights very bright to avoid eating things we're allergic to...because we're recklessly putting out foods containing dangerous allergens every night. AND...she's referring to the lamp by a strange name as if it's alive.

I would like to state for the record that I am not a big fan of the pork products. I cannot recall a single time we've ever served a ham in our home. I can count the number of times we've served sausage on one hand. We actually eat a lot of chicken and beef. Also, none of us are allergic to any foods. Lily used to get a rash on her face when she ate raw tomatoes, but she outgrew that. I assure you, if we were allergic to foods, Jim wouldn't be serving them out at the table and forcing us to poke through the food under the brightly lighted Grimsas to avoid them.

If you're looking for me, I'll be sitting by the phone waiting for the Department of Social Services to call.

Blogging at the Beach

2008-09-26T20:50:00.003-04:00

Well, our vacation will be over tomorrow. We had a great time, though. Expect lots of ocean pictures in my next post, because we had a little storm here yesterday and the water was amazing.

Lily and Jack both had a great time. Jack was really scared of the water this year, so he tended to stay by our chairs and play in the sand. He also got some kind of stomach bug a couple of days into the trip and vomited pretty much all day one day. Poor little beggar. The kids made their annual trip to the aquarium, where Lily said the sea horses were her favorites and Jack said his favorites were the jellyfish. They both had a great time playing with Uncle Jeff. According to Lily, they "exercised" every day by climbing to the top of the bunk bed in Jeff's room and then climbing back down again.

Some funny things the kids did this week:

We took Jack to Pizza Inn, our favorite restaurant, and while he was eating, he started shaking. I asked him if he was cold, and he said in a piercing toddler voice "I'm shaking my POOP out!" I asked him if he needed to be changed and he said no, so Jim reached over to feel the back of his pants to see if he was carrying any extra cargo. Jack grabbed Jim's hand and gently moved it onto the table, and then he said in a whisper "Papa, don't touch my poop!" It was hilarious.

Jack also told us that if he could wish on a wishing tree, he would wish for a "giant, giant firetruck, and then put on my fireman hat, and my fireman jacket, and my fireman boots, and then drive around and go WOOOOOOO WOOOOOOO in the truck."

Lily apparently gave quite a lecture on the planets to the people renting the other side of our duplex tonight -- I'm sorry I missed that. She also learned how to do cartwheels. My mom told her to get a running start, and that led her to run for about 20 feet before throwing herself into the cartwheel. If only I'd had a video camera with me! Her wish was that I could have more "alone time" to do things for myself because I work so hard all day to take care of her and Jack. She also wished I could have a robot that would do all my chores for me so that I would have even more time to play with them during the day. She then wished that Jim wouldn't spoil her so much by buying her things all the time. Jim and I were trying very hard not to laugh at her sweet wishes.

We will be packing up tomorrow and flying home tomorrow night. It's been a nice vacation, but I think we're all ready to go home and get back into our regularly scheduled activities again.

Guess what? The +10 Scarf of Loathing (aka DNA scarf) is finally finished. Finally. It actually wasn't too bad once I started cabling without the needle. Sadly, I didn't even think of trying it until I only had 1.5 repeats left. It definitely knit up faster without the cable needle. I'll block it when I get home. I think it will look lovely when it's blocked and dried. Jim tried it on tonight, and it is long enough so both sides can be wrapped over the shoulders, which is something I like in a scarf. I think Jim wants one, but there is no way in HELL I'm ever knitting that pattern again.

So...9 Christmas gifts down, 1 to go and it's on the needles! I am quite confident I'll be done with everything by Christmas, so I'm going to indulge myself by working on the Wisteria sweater in order to have it done by Rhinebeck.

A Knitting Plan

2008-09-19T08:51:00.003-04:00

It's time for some kind of a plan. After the hellish weeks of the Christmas Knittng Marathon, I indulged myself with a couple of weeks of selfish knitting. Sadly, what with Lily starting school and Jack staying at home full time, I didn't get as much accomplished as I hoped.

Tomorrow is travel day. I promised myself that I would work on the two remaining Christmas knits while in NC. I think I can finish the dread DNA scarf on the way there, so that will be done and out of my hair at last. That means the rest of the week (and as much time after that as necessary) will be focussed on the Sunrise Circle Jacket for my mom. (Don't worry, she knows about it, because she picked out the yarn and the pattern months ago).

That means I have to put down my beloved Wisteria for a while. I was hoping to wear it to Rhinebeck, but I'm not sure I'm going to have time to finish it by then. I'm okay with that -- I'll definitely finish it as soon as the last two Christmas Knits are banged out, and 'tis almost the season where giving is better than receiving. My only question is whether it would be okay to bring the Swirl Shawl along as a second project? It's selfish knitting but it's so much more portable than a jacket. I will probably need a break away from the all stockinette, all the time jacket. I just can't see myself stuck on vacation with just one project, but on the other hand, if I have only one to work on, I'll be forced to get more done.

I think I just answered my own question. I should stick to the 2 Christmas knits and be done with it. That's less to pack and all knitters know how we always overestimate what we can get done on a vacation! I'll admit, there is a tiny voice in my head saying "what will you do if you finish the jacket and scarf?" but I think we all know that ain't gonna happen. If, by some chance it did, I could always pick up some yarn at Walmart and knit something off Ravelry to keep myself occupied.

So that's my plan. I'll let you know later if I stuck to it or if I somehow let the Swirl Shawl get into my suitcase when packing today!

Things I Made

2008-09-17T17:23:00.004-04:00

First, look at these:

I made them! Don't they look pretty now that they are dry and reskeined?

I made these, too. They are up on my etsy shop, along with a few other new things and some much prettier pictures of some of my older wares.

I'm in the middle of making this:

I am really enjoying it, but there's no way I'm going to get it finished before my vacation this weekend. Once I hit the shores of NC, I am all about knitting the Sunrise Circle Jacket and the rest of the DNA scarf.

Finally...

I made these, too. Some of my best work, if I do say so myself!

By the by, I really do know that Curious George is imaginary. I just require cartoons to have a certain internal logic, which Curious George lacks!

Curious About Curious George

2008-09-16T21:06:00.002-04:00

I know it's not my usual thing, but I've been thinking about Curious George for a while now and really feel the need to rant a bit.

My kids love Curious George. I think that the original art by H.A. Rey is darling, and the original story lines are cute. As you may already know, the Curious George franchise continues, with new books drawn in the style of the originals. For example, Jack adores his Curious George Dictionary book, and I have to say, the artwork is very close to the original. And then there's the cartoon show....

My kids want to watch the Curious George cartoon every morning (and if they miss it, the shows are repeated in the afternoon). As a result, I've seen a lot of the episodes multiple times and have become a sort of Curious George expert. Almost every time I watch the show, I start asking myself a lot of questions about the show. Maybe someone out there knows the answers?

First, why does the Man in the Yellow Hat always give George so much responsibility? Does he not realize that a) George is a monkey and b) every single time he gives George any responsibility, it ends up costing him money? For example, today the Man in the Yellow Hat (MITYH, for short) told George to go buy a dozen donuts. Since George doesn't talk, the MITYH gave him a note asking for 1 dozen donuts. George, who can apparently read and write, added 2 zeros, making it 100 dozen donuts. Ultimately, the MITYH came home to find 1200 donuts hidden in his apartment and an extremely large bill from the donut shop. They didn't tell us how much the donuts cost, but let us assume they are about 50 cents apiece. That means the MITYH had to pay $600 to clean up after George's shenanigans. (He ended up donating most of the donuts to the local firemen, in case you were wondering).

Off the top of my head, I can recall that George recently knocked down a brand new building, destroyed the vegetable garden that belongs to a local restauranteur, filled the MITYH's living room with soap and water after spilling grape juice on the MITYH's brand new rug, allowed a neighbor's pet snake and two pet mice to escape while supposedly "babysitting" them (who puts a monkey in charge of pets that could potentially eat each other?), and wasted three bags of goods meant for a card party by using them to build a bridge for ducks. That's just off the top of my head, folks. Almost every time George does something destructive, the MITYH sheepishly pulls out his wallet and takes care of the damages.

I would really like to know what kind of a job the MITYH is holding down. He doesn't ever seem to go to work. In one episode, he had to submit some kind of paper to the people at the museum, and in another he brought in some robot models for a display at the museum, so I'm thinking his work must have something to do with the museum. Maybe he's a consultant? Who knows? Whatever his job is, it must pay pretty well because he lives in a doorman building in New York City and owns a country house somewhere nearby, and he also has plenty of the ready to hand over whenever George does something destructive. And George always does something destructive.

And that leads me to the real puzzler of the show. Why doesn't the MITYH EVER catch on that leaving George unsupervised is a Very Bad Thing? As I'm typing this, I can recall episodes where George peeled a great deal of wallpaper off of the MITYH's bathroom and let a lot of small items go down the tub, thus blocking the pipes, which he then tried to fix himself. Needless to say, George not only flooded his own apartment but also flooded the basement (he took apart a pipe and forgot to put it back together) and a few other apartments in the building. I'm sure that the MITYH paid through the nose to clean up those messes, too. When the building across the street from my office had it's basement flooded by a broken pipe, they had to call in water removal specialists with high tech drying equipment. It took more than a week to clean up the mess. I'm guessing that the clean up for that job cost at least in the mid 5 figures.

But week after week, the MITYH blithely sends George on errands and leaves him unattended in the apartment or country house. He brings home priceless art, expensive furnishings and important museum exhibits and then leaves them unattended in George's vicinity. The MITYH doesn't even seem to lock his doors or windows, because George comes and goes as he pleases. He opens his wallet and takes care of the damages and then barely says a cross word to George.

Here's some free advice, Man in the Yellow Hat. Get George out on entertainment circuit. A lot of people would pay to see a monkey who can read and write. You could use that money to defray the high cost of fixing George's mistakes. Heck, if you kept him busy on the entertainment circuit, he wouldn't have the time to damage so many things. Alternatively, take a fraction of the cash you're doling out on a regular basis and hire a Monkey Sitter. Or just lock George into the apartment when you go out. You obviously don't mind his destructive nature, but I bet the people who had water blown into their kitchens during George's plumbing fiasco don't feel the same way AT ALL. Just sayin'.

Mouse in the House

2008-09-15T15:48:00.003-04:00

I have never (to my knowledge) lived in a house with resident mice. Cockroaches? Ants? House flies? Fruit flies? Spiders? Check. Mice? No way.

Until last week. Jim was off in Chatham on a company retreat and I was at home with the kids. Thursday night, I was sitting in the living room, knitting and watching Burn Notice. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move over by the radiator cover in front of our bay window. I turned my head to look more closely and saw a little brown mouse sitting in front of the TV. At almost exactly the same moment, he saw me and ran under the radiator as quick as a flash.

I was so stunned I couldn't move for almost a whole minute. All I could think was that the front door must be open and a mouse wandered in. I'm not afraid of mice per se, so I wasn't terrified, but the thought of a mouse running around, eating our food and potentially biting one of the kids made me VERY nervous. I was finally able to get up, and I immediately went to get the broom out of the kitchen.

I'm not really sure what I thought I was going to do with the broom. I think I had some vague plan to sort of sweep the mouse towards the open door and get him outside. Sadly, there were problems with my plan. As I approached the radiator, I could see that the front for was closed and locked. Clearly, the mouse had come from some other place in the house. Also, aside from moving the radiator cover and jabbing the broom around behind the radiator and underneath it, there wasn't much I could do to get the mouse out into the open. And, frankly, if I were a mouse, I would have stayed firmly beneath the radiator if a giant human started poking a broom near me. When the mouse failed to appear, I put the broom away and did what any rational gal would do -- I called my husband at his hotel two hours away and asked him to come home immediately to remove the mouse.

After assuring me that the mouse would not attack our children in the night, Jim opined that it was probably a field mouse who got in looking for shelter. It made sense. The weather was very cool last week. Jim has removed all of the siding from the house, and it could have left some points of access for mice to get in. Jim said we would buy traps on the weekend and get rid of the mouse. Somewhat reassured, I was able to finish up what I was doing and go to bed.

Now you have to understand something. We've lived here for almost 6 years. We've never seen mouse droppings. Nothing has ever been chewed as if by small creatures. I've never heard anything crawling around in the walls. Yes, there is sometimes a smell on the second floor when the wind blows that could be considered mouseish, but I always thought it was the remains of long dead things somewhere under the eaves. As a result, Jim's theory that a lone field mouse had gotten in seemed reasonable to me.

There was no sign of the mouse on Friday. The only thing unusual was the way Oskar spent the day sitting in front of the pie safe cabinet we have with an expectant look on his face. Since the pie safe is right next to the radiator, I tried poking my trusty broom behind and under the pie safe, but no mouse appeared. Jim came home, no mouse. We all went to bed with plans to buy some traps.

On Saturday morning, Lily and I got up and went to hang out in the living room. We were sitting on the couch reading when Lily suddenly said "Oskar found one of his toy mice!" Sure enough, there was a little mouse lying in the middle of the carpet, belly up. As Lily ran to get it, I yelled "Don't touch it! Don't touch it!" At almost the same time, Oskar came roaring into the room and started batting it about. Lily said "I think that might really be a live mouse, Mom! I didn't believe you when you said you saw a live mouse!"

Jim came down at that point and fished the very dead mouse from under the chair to dispose of it. Oskar was not thrilled to lose his new toy and had to be restrained in Jack's bedroom during the clean up. I was so pleased that Oskar was a mouser. All day long, we talked about how lucky we were that Oskar caught the lone field mouse almost immediately after it got in. Hurray!

That night, Jim went in to work. I sat in the living room working on some stitch markers for my store. Oskar came trotting right up to me and dropped a SECOND mouse on the floor at my feet. He looked as pleased as punch. Me, not so much.

This is clearly not a random mouse appearance. We clearly have some kind of mouse problem. Mouse No. 2 was a lot smaller than Mouse No. 1, suggesting it may be the offspring of Mouse No. 1. *Shudder* Since I heard Oskar barging around upstairs, I'm thinking that mouseish smell might be indicative of actual mice. After doing some research on the internet, I poked around upstairs looking for signs of mice. The only thing I found was the chewed up corner of a packing box under the eaves in my bedroom. It's been that way for some time and I always assumed it was from Maggie sharpening her claws or chewing the cardboard. Why? Because that's where Maggie spends 99.9% of her time. Now I'm wondering if there are mice living up there in Maggie's space and she's just been ignoring them all this time! Ugh.

Anyway, Oskar hasn't brought me any more vermin since Saturday night, so we'll see. In the mean time, I'll be busy mouse-proofing my house.

Cool Weather is for Dyeing

2008-09-12T20:52:00.005-04:00

We've had a lovely week of cool weather, so I finally pulled out my dyeing equipment the other night and had some fun. Last year, the cool weather was for dyeing rug hooking wool. This year, I'm going to dye some yarn as well and see how that turns out. In preparation, I recently bought some undyed sock yarn and some of the acid dyes that are popular for yarn dyeing. Here's how it went:

I put my yarn in to soak the night before in water and vinegar. About an hour before I applied the dye, I threw in some Jet Dry (it works just the same as synthropol). Then I spent some time setting up my dyeing area and preparing the 7 colors I was planning on using.

It kind of looks like a mad scientist's lab, doesn't it? As it turns out, yarn dyeing requires a lot less equipment than wool fabric dyeing, but it's much more time consuming. I ended up only using a portion of my usual equipment. I learned that I need bigger jars for my working dyes, possibly some squirt bottles to apply the dye with, and a much more concentrated dye solution if I want deeper colors. I also learned that it's pretty hard to get a good brown dye out of the Jacquard Starter Kit -- the different dyes I blended tended to separate. I think next time I'll go back to my tried and true Cushing Perfection dyes. Anyway, I had fun even though my end products look nothing like the colorways I envisioned when I started!

I call this colorway Hideous Kinky (after the movie...get your mind out of the gutter). It's pretty close to what I was trying for, except that I really needed more dye in each of the colors. Next time, I'll know better.

I call this one Elemental, because I was trying to get a blend of yellow (sun), blue (sky and water), brown (earth) and green (plants). I eventually got there, but the colors weren't what I planned. I am interested to see how it skeins up. I skeined it on the length of my dining room table before dyeing it.

Both skeins are still drying -- the humid weather we're having today is not helping matters! I'll post final pictures of the skeined yarn later.

Joking Jack

2008-09-09T13:33:00.002-04:00

Before I forget them, I want to memorialize the first two complete jokes Jack ever told. On Monday morning, Jack and Lily were eating breakfast in the dining room. Lily was telling some knock knock jokes and then Jack suddenly came up with two of his own:

Jack: Knock Knock!

Lily: Who's there?

Jack: Orange.

Lily: Orange who?

Jack: Lily is an orange! (with lots of fake laughter after the punch line)

Lily was angry about this joke for some reason, although God knows she's said way worse things about Jack.

Jack: Knock Knock!

Lily: Who's there?

Jack: Banana.

Lily: Banana who?

Jack: Banana Jackie! (more fake laughter after the punchline).

The fake laugher after the punchline is my favorite part. Jack's his own best audience. Jim and I were cracking up, but only because the jokes were so silly. Jack appears to have gotten his ideas from the old knock knock joke where the punch line is "Orange you glad I didn't say banana again?" It's the mainstay of Lily's knock knock repetoire.

First Day of School Photos

2008-09-05T18:15:00.003-04:00

It went surprisingly well!

Here's Lily in her pretty dress. Note her new haircut and her Hello Kitty backpack. She picked out the outfit herself this morning. She's thrilled that the new backpack matches the Hello Kitty lunch box that Aunt Jill gave her a few years ago (I think it was Aunt Jill).

Here she is waiting in line to go to school. You can't see her very well in this picture, but she was very scared! The boy on her left is her friend from daycare -- she's known him since she was 7 months old. They were amusingly relieved to see each other! He looks nervous, too.

Here she is at the end of the day. She's pointing me out to her teacher so she can be released from school.

Here she is on her run to me after they let her leave.

She told me she had a great day and school was fun. She was sad because she only had time to make three friends. One friend is a girl who has a Hello Kitty back pack, but not the same one as she has. She can't remember her new friend's name. She had fun playing outside but got wood chips in her shoes. She worries that there are a bunch of new rules to follow. She seemed most concerned about the rule that you have to first talk to three people that can help you and if they can't help, then ask the teacher. She told me they don't have cubbies, but they have a hook for their back packs (which are required for each student).

Tonight she seemed a little sad and worried. Hopefully having a full week of school will help her settle in a bit more. She's very excited because I told her she can buy her lunch on pizza day!

Musings on my Dream Project and Rhinebeck

2008-09-02T17:24:00.008-04:00

Ever since I saw the February Lady sweater, I've wanted to knit it. Ever since I saw Blue Heron rayon metallic yarn, I've wanted to knit the February Lady sweater in it. Even though the Blue Heron is DK and the sweater pattern is for worsted weight, I think I can work out the gauge. The drape of that yarn is sooo beautiful.

Last week, I ordered the yarn. Every night since then, I've spent a little time thinking about knitting it. I have everything ready. I've promised myself that I can cast it on and work on it until I go to the beach during the last week in September, when I'm dedicating myself to the final Christmas present project.

My only question is whether the actual project will live up to the dream. Since I decided last week to take a break from the Christmas knitting (now that it's clear I have plenty of time to the last two projects done before December 1) I've gotten back to my Clapotis, also in the Blue Heron. That yarn is pretty slippy. Beautifully soft but really, really slippery. Also, I chose the colorway Ice, but what if it looks different in person than on line?

I've spent most of the summer thinking about this project, and now I'm worried it won't meet my expectations. I hope that's not true!

In other knitting related news, I booked my trip to Rhinebeck. For some reason, whenever I think of Rhinebeck, I think of the Beastie Boys song "No Sleep 'til Brooklyn!" Except, this is what I hear:

No sleep 'til - Rhinebeck!

Foot on the pedal - never ever false metal
Engine running hotter than a boiling kettle
I don't have a job - it's a damn good time
City to city - spending every last dime
Local yarn stores - touring around the nation
Knitting mama is always on vacation
Itchy throwing finger when I'm doing a cable
Knit's what I do best because I'm willing and able
Ain't no lying - it's your yarn I'm buying
Going coast to coast - watching all the spinners dyeing
While you're at the job working nine to five
The knitting mama's on the road on a long drive

No sleep 'til Rhinebeck!

Another place - another train
Another sock yarn in a skein
Another gorgeous colorway
Another drive all day
My stash is so crazy - it's getting really bad
It's got its own room at the back of my pad
Tour around the world - I shop around the clock
Plane to hotel - knitting on a sock
I'm thrashing hotels like it's going out of style
Rolling all around on my yarn in a pile
Skeins on the floor - another by the door
Ten in the trunk because I'm going to buy more
Got my money in my pocket, 'cause that's what money's for

No sleep 'til Rhinebeck!

No sleep 'til Rhinebeck!

Ain't seen the light since we started this journey
I won't leave until they strap me on a gurney
Looking at yarn and roving all day
I don't care how much I have to pay
Purple, orange, green, blue, red and lemon
I'll pet the soft yarn with all the knitting women
Got Cascade, Regia, Cherry Tree Hill
Classic Elite, my yarn don't pill
Step off knitters - get out of my way
Or I'll be snatching your alpaca away
I'm a tough knitting mama, you better believe
Cause I'll be rocking this festival 'til I leave

No sleep 'til Rhinebeck!

There is just something wrong with me, isn't there?

Photo Post - Jack's Hair

2008-08-31T19:44:00.003-04:00

As you know, Lily went on a mad haircutting spree this week.

This is Jack sporting the remedial haircut he had to get to cover up the giant almost-bald spot on the front of his head. This is the best photo I was able to take -- he was eating a pluot and kept trying to shove it in front of the camera. Most of the other shots are just a pluot-y blur.

If you look carefully, you can see that the hair near the front is still shorter than the rest. The barber left as much as he could without completely shaving Jack's head.

Lily refused to pose for a picture. This is a shot of the back of her head. The blur on the bottom is Jack trying to shove his pluot in front of the camera. Lily's hair is now chin length since that's how short she cut one side.

These are the socks I'm knitting with my kool-ade yarn. I just threw them in for fun. The yarn smells like cherry!

Photo Post - George's Island

2008-08-31T19:32:00.003-04:00

Here are the pictures from our weekend trip to George's Island:

Lily on the boat in Boston Harbor.

Jack enjoyed the boat ride too!

Here's the old fort we explored.

Creepy!

I took this picture because the doors were so pretty.

Here's a shot looking out one of the cannon slots.

We saw some beautiful wildflowers growing around the fort.

We tried very hard to get a picture of all four friends looking at the camera. It was harder than we thought!

Jack got some chewing gum. He was very excited!

Etsy Update!

2008-08-31T14:51:00.005-04:00

I put two new sets of markers up on etsy today. Here's a preview of the sets I'll be adding during the upcoming week:

If you want to reserve one in advance of it going up on etsy, contact me!

Placeholder

2008-08-30T23:58:00.003-04:00

Here's a placeholder post until I can write a few longer posts about these things.

First, I've been busy lately getting Lily ready for her first day of school next week. She is very excited and a little nervous. I'm very nervous and a little sad. It seems like only a few weeks ago that she was an infant.

Second, now that Lily is in Kindergarten, we've decided to put Jack in a smaller, less expensive preschool program that is closer to home and has much more convenient hours. Unfortunately, he won't be eligible to start until he is 2.9 years old (why don't they just use months? I don't get it).

Third, I have almost completed the Marathon of Christmas Gift Knitting. I have about 10% left to do on one project and only 1 more project to do after that. I'm pretty confident I'll be done with everything well before my self-imposed December 1 deadline.

Fourth, I am knitting my first project with yarn I dyed myself -- my Electric Kool-Ade Acid Test yarn. It's the one dyed with every single flavor of Kool-Ade I had access to. I'm doing socks for myself and it's nice to do a little selfish knitting after 2+ months of knitting for others.

Fifth, Lily gave herself and Jack haircuts yesterday morning. As a result, she and Jack now have significantly shorter hair than they did earlier this week. She claims that Jack asked her to cut his hair. His only comment when asked was "Lily do it."

Sixth, my etsy store is doing a nice, brisk business and I will be updating this week with more of my itty bitty knitty markers in some new and exciting styles. Well, new and exciting if you're a knitter and like stitch markers.

So that's where I am right now. Also, I want to close this post by saying:

I'm totally on the Crafty Bus! Hi, Sheila!

Sorry, inside joke.

Here Be Pirates!

2008-08-24T19:11:00.002-04:00

We went on a trip to George's Island today, along with our neighbor and his two kids. Jack was very excited. He got to go on a boat and then he was promised a trip into the "caves." George's Island is home to Fort Warren, and visitors are allowed to explore portions of the underground fort. Some of the passageways are pretty dark, so flashlights are necessary. Once we got home, Jack could not stop talking about his adventure.

I decided to interview Jack about the trip. Unfortunately, the interview reads like some kind of surreal, stream of consciousness speech, but you'll eventually get the point -- HE LIKED THE CAVES.

Me: Did you see any ghosts in the cave?

Jack: No.

Me: Did you see any pirates in the cave?

Jack: No. They write in the cave (Jim told our kids grafitti was "pirate writing.")

Me: Did you see any monsters in the cave?

Jack: I saw pirates!

Me: Really? You saw pirates?

Jack: I just jokin', mama! (big giggle)

Me: You know what I saw in the cave? A big dragon!

Jack. Noooo. Dragons is too loud.

Me: Well, I saw an alligator in the cave.

Jack: No. A alligator open and close his mouth. No noise!

Me: I saw a grizzly bear in the cave!

Jack. No, bear too loud, too!

Me: I saw Santa in the cave.

Jack: Santa? He a good boy! He in a cave.

Me: I saw a ghost in the cave.

Jack. No, no ghosts in the cave.

Me: I saw a pirate in the cave.

Jack: No, just pirate writing. That is what it means.

Me: Did you like the caves?

Jack: No.

Me: No?

Jack: I like the caves.

Me: What else did you do at George's Island?

Jack: I like my, I go in another cave. I got my feet in there and it was.... (he is suddenly distracted by my typing). You type my word?

Me: Yes.

Jack: (pointing at screen) That is mommy words? That is Lily's words?

Me: Do you want me to type your words?

Jack: Yes. Type my words.

Me: What you want to say?

Jack: My word! My word! My word!

Me: Do want to tell a story about George's Island?

Jack: Where George's Island?

Me: Where we went today.

Jack: (pointing at the edge of the computer screen where the scroll bar is) I peek in that kind world!

Me: That's where I am typing. See my typing?

Jack: What does that kind says? This one says papa (pointing to the button marked "publish post"). Open this kind up. What that says? Open that kind page. What is that?

Me: I can't open that, it's the computer screen. Why don't you tell me about George's Island?

Jack: Georges Island. Where is George's Island go?

Me: That's where we went today.

Jack: (pointing at the last thing typed) That says George's Island?

Me: Yep.

Jack: That says George's Island?

Me: Yep.

Jack: No, that not say George's Island! This kind says George's Island (pointing to the "publish post" button again).

Me: Do you want to tell what you did there?

Jack: What? I go and see all the caves in George's Island, George's Island has all the caves.

Me: What else did you do?

Jack: Saw caves at George's Island.

Me: How we get there?

Jack: I saw some caves at George's Island.

Me: What did we do to get there?

Jack: Some a boat at George's Island that has a really fire at George's Island. (No, I have no idea what this means).

Me: Did we go on a boat?

Jack: We go on a other boat.

Me: Did you like that?

Jack: I liked the cave.

Me: What did you see in the cave?

At this point, Jack spotted an am/fm radio headset lying on the windowsill and lost interest in our conversation.

Things I Didn't Know About My Kids

2008-08-22T21:10:00.002-04:00

In the spirit of my recent post, here are a few things I learned this week about my own kids that I never knew before:

1. Lily has a boyfriend -- her friend Patrick. She advised us at dinner tonight that she would be "getting a new boyfriend" when she starts kindergarten. We were a little surprised, since we didn't know she had an "old boyfriend." She said "I will meet a new boyfriend and I'll have to get used to him." I am not so sure she fully understands the term "boyfriend." That's fine by me!

2. Jack's favorite song is "I kissed a girl" by Katy Perry. I linked to the YouTube video so you could hear the song lyrics (don't worry, Jack has not seen the video). The song was playing on my car radio yesterday and Jack suddenly piped up from the back "Dis my favorite song, Mama!" Who knew?

3. Jack's favorite house is a blue house in the Highlands.

4. Lily can read one of her "I can read" books from cover to cover. She came out in the living room last night and read the whole thing out loud. Kind of makes it difficult for her to continue claiming she can't read.

5. Lily likes having me at home better than when I was at work because "I take care of her better." Talk about a double edged sword of a compliment!

6. Jack will ask for something 27 times in a row, even if you tell him "no" the first time. Occasionally, he will leave the immediate area and then return and ask again. I think he believes that by going away, he can make me forget he already asked.

7. Jack can take off his pants and pull-up by himself. He did it during his "nap" on Wednesday. I have placed the word "nap" in quotations because he did not actually sleep. Not only did I find him naked from the waist down, but I couldn't located the diaper he removed for about ten minutes. He told me he "couldn't remember" where he threw it. I eventually discovered he had wedged it between his crib (where I was trying to get him to nap) and the wall. It was completely dry, so I'm not even sure why he removed it in the first place. When I got over to the crib, he said "Look at MEEEEEE!" with glee.

8. Lily is no longer afraid of water splashing on her face. She went on every kid's slide at Water Country, even the ones that took her through spraying water spouts.

9. Jack does not like getting splashed in the face. He really does not like it when Mama tries to "help" him by sliding down with him, and ends up throwing him face down into the water when she gets to the bottom of the slide. Actually, no one liked that whole incident. I don't think Jack will be trying a water slide for some time.

10. Lily is interested in learning to play badminton.

11. Jack's favorite color is green. Unfortunately, he uses "green" as his default name for any color he doesn't know, so "green" could mean anything. I guess what I learned is that he has a favorite color.

12. Jack is already planning his next birthday party. He wants cake and balloons. He informed Jim of his plans this morning as we went out to the car.

New Stuff on Etsy!

2008-08-19T16:49:00.007-04:00

I've been a very busy girl lately. I just put up some red hot chili markers on etsy:

Aren't they cute? I got the beads at the Knit and Crochet Show in Manchester. They are hand blown glass. The markers are good sized, so I would recommend them as best for a project on larger needles -- maybe size 5 and up.

I'll be updating the store every day for the next few days with my new markers. Here's a preview for you all. See something you like? Let me know! (You can also click on my shop name, pennywenny, on the etsy widget in the side bar -- it'll take you right to the store).

With the exception of the chilis, these markers were designed to be used on smaller projects. Most are shown on a US 3 needle for reference. They all feature my new seamless loop. Enjoy.

Knitting Olympics Update

2008-08-19T09:56:00.002-04:00

Things are going well with the knitting olympics. My designated project, the Entrelac Clutch, got finished so quickly that I felt guilty. I started the Lucy Bag, and finished that up over the weekend. Now I'm working on a Pirate Hat (decorated with skulls and crossbones). As of today, I have 7 gifts completed, 2 on the needles and only one that hasn't yet been started.

My goal was to finish everything by December 1, but I'm starting to feel pretty confident that I'll be done by the end of October! I am really looking forward to the end of these projects because I'd like to finish up my Sunrise Circle Jacket, knit a February Lady Sweater, a Koolhaas hat and the Druid Mittens. Gotta get ready for the cold weather! Also, I have yarn in the basket for sweaters for the kids and Jim wants him some felted clogs for around the house. Of course, working on all those projects seems so desirable when I'm in the middle of the Christmas knitting. I'm sure it will feel just as drudge-y when I finally get to it.

Just gotta give a shout out to Becky -- ever since last Tuesday, every time I think of knitting the Koolhaas Hat, I call it the Kool Ass hat. That's one Kool Ass hat!!!

Things You Might Not Know About Me

2008-08-17T09:04:00.002-04:00

My sister-in-law sent me a meme e-mail. Normally, I don't answer those, but I thought this one was interesting. I learned a lot about my sister in law that I didn't know! (You can read her blog here).

So, without further ado:

1. WHAT TIME DID YOU GET UP THIS MORNING? 2:00 am when Jack came upstairs and asked us to get up. 4:00 am when Lily came upstairs and asked to get up (both eventually ended up sleeping with me). 8:44 am when Jim kindly let me sleep in after an unusually busy night!

2. DIAMONDS OR PEARLS? Pearls

3. WHAT WAS THE LAST FILM YOU SAW AT THE CINEMA? Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull with my Mom. I don't get to the movies much these days!

4. WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE TV SHOWS? Project Runway, Burn Notice, NCIS and Ghost Hunters, for now.

5. WHAT DO YOU USUALLY HAVE FOR BREAKFAST? Iced tea and a bowl of granola with milk.

6. WHAT IS YOUR MIDDLE NAME? Catherine

7. WHAT FOOD DO YOU NOT LIKE? Meat loaf, green peppers, most citrus fruits, raspberries and blackberries, peaches with the skin on, honey-baked ham or any ham with sweet glazing on it.... The list goes on, I have a lot of peculiar food things going on.

8. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ALBUM? This is hard, because it's not often that I like a whole album. Most recently, it would be Evanescence.

9. WHAT KIND OF CAR DO YOU DRIVE? A red Honda CRV named, appropriately, "Reddy."

10. FAVORITE SANDWICH? Falafel and hummus with tomatoes and lettuce on a pita bread.

11. WHAT CHARACTERISTIC DO YOU DESPISE? Deceitfulness.

12. FAVORITE ITEM OF CLOTHING? My lime green Keene sandals.

13. IF YOU COULD GO ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD ON VACATION, WHERE WOULD YOU GO? Scotland, particularly the Isle of Skye.

14. WHAT COLOR IS YOUR BATHROOM? Pink. Ugh.

15. FAVORITE BRAND OF CLOTHING? For work, Talbot's. For play, anything I kind find on sale at Kohl's or WalMart.

16. WHERE WOULD YOU RETIRE TO? Anywhere with an ocean view.

17. FAVORITE SPORT TO WATCH? Hockey.

18. FURTHEST PLACE YOU ARE SENDING THIS? Based on my Google Analytics report, this could be read as far away as Australia, if my Australian readership is still checking in! Shout out to Australia!

19. WHO DO YOU LEAST EXPECT TO SEND THIS BACK TO YOU? No one, because I'm not sending it out, I'm just posting it here.

20. PERSON YOU EXPECT TO SEND IT BACK FIRST? No one, see above!

21. FAVORITE SAYING: Suck it up, Buttercup.

22. WHEN IS YOUR BIRTHDAY? May 12

23. ARE YOU A MORNING OR NIGHT PERSON? Night.

24. WHAT IS YOUR SHOE SIZE? 9

25. PETS? Oskar and Magdala (Maggie), our two cats.

26. ANY NEW AND EXCITING NEWS YOU WOULD LIKE TO SHARE WITH US? I only have 3 more Christmas gifts to knit!

27. WHAT DID YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE? Miss America or the President of the United States. You can all see how that turned out.

28. HOW ARE YOU TODAY? Sleep deprived.

29. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CANDY? Licorice pastilles.

30. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE FLOWER? White roses.

31. WHAT IS A DAY ON THE CALENDAR YOU ARE LOOKING FORWARD TO? September 20, the day we fly to North Carolina for our annual beach vacation in Emerald Isle.

32. WHAT IS YOUR FULL NAME? Wendy Catherine

33. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW? My son talking to himself while playing with a green water rescue matchbox truck.

34. WHAT WAS THE LAST THING YOU ATE? Iced tea and a bowl of ginger and almond granola with milk.

35. DO YOU WISH ON STARS? Yes, whenever I get the chance.

36. IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE? Almost any shade of blue.

37. HOW IS THE WEATHER RIGHT NOW? Sunny and, for the moment, no thunder storms in sight.

38. FAVORITE SOFT DRINK? Diet Coke

39. FAVORITE RESTAURANT? Sandrine's in Cambridge

40. SIBLINGS? 1

41. FAVORITE DAY OF THE YEAR? Christmas

42. WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE TOY AS A CHILD? Raggedy Ann (I still have her!)

43. SUMMER OR WINTER? Winter, definitely. It's sweater weather!

44. HUGS OR KISSES? Don't make me choose.

45. COFFEE OR TEA? Tea, preferably iced.

46. CHOCOLATE OR VANILLA? Vanilla.

47. YOU WANT YOUR FRIENDS TO E-MAIL YOU BACK? Only if they feel like it.

48. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED? I can't remember the last time I truly cried, but the last time I almost cried (out of frustration) was when I couldn't figure out the entrelac bag instructions!

49. WHAT IS UNDER YOUR BED? The parts that make up the top bed on Lily's bunk bed. We're not using them right now.

50. WHO IS THE FRIEND YOU HAVE HAD THE LONGEST? Chuck. We're going on 15 years this year.

51. WHAT DID YOU DO LAST NIGHT? I watched "Pride and Prejudice" (the 2005 movie version) and worked on the Lucy Bag I'm making as a Christmas present.

52. WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF? Poverty and death.

53. SALTY OR SWEET? Salty. And yet, I fear that too much salt will kick me into another heart failure....

54. HOW MANY KEYS ON YOUR RING? Good lord! At least six. I'm too lazy to go get me keys and count them.

55. FAVORITE DAY OF THE WEEK? Monday. I can like Monday now that I'm not working.

57. HOW MANY TOWNS HAVE YOU LIVED IN? 11.

58. DO YOU MAKE FRIENDS EASILY? If I force myself to get out there and meet people, I do.

59. HOW MANY WILL RESPOND? Who knows? I'm issuing a challenge to my blogging friends -- put this meme on your blog and tell me some things I might not know about you!

Lily and Jack on Knitting

2008-08-14T12:41:00.005-04:00

Do you see what I did there? A post that combines my kids and knitting. Clever, clever me. Anyway, I took a page from Ms. Knitty McGillicutty and decided to interview my husband about my knitting. Sadly, he has been very busy in the evenings of late, what with some last minute papers to get out and free tickets to see Radiohead. Accordingly, I turned to the only other people who care, my children.

Lily graciously agreed to be interviewed, asking only "What is an interview?" When I explained I would be asking questions, she expressed some concern "What if I don't know the answers?" I reassured her that there were no right and wrong answers.

Me: What is your favorite thing about my knitting?

Lily: Let me tell you. Okay, it's the hats you make.

Me: What is the best thing about me having a knitting hobby?

Lily: I don't know what a hobby is.

Me: Name something I've knit that you really like.

Lily: Jack's bunny you knitted.

Me: Do you think knitting is an expensive hobby?

Lily: Uh-uh (no)

Me: How come?

Lily: Because I'm crazy. To you is it special?

Me: Yes.

Lily: I'd say I'm wrong then.

Me: Do you have any hobbies?

Lily: No, I don't have any hobbies.

Me: What's your favorite style of dance?

Lily: A plie.

Me: Does it embarass you if I knit in public?

Lily: No. Why did you say that?

Me: I'm just asking you. Do you know my favorite kind of yarn?

Lily: Your Kool-ade yarn! Kool-ade yarn. I would say it's your Kool-ade yarn.

Me: Can you name another knitting blog?

Lily: Butterfly Yarns! I remember that one.

Me: Do you mind it when I go to yarn stores?

Lily: Mmm-hmm. (yes)

Me: You do?

Lily: Mmm-hmm. (yes)

Me: Why?

Lily: Because it's very fun to see when you come back with new yarn.

Me: Do you understand the importance of a swatch?

Lily: No. (giggles)

Me: Do you read my blog?

Lily: No.

Me: Is there anything in particular you'd like me to knit?

Lily: Socks.

Me: For you?

Lily: Yes. And I'd like them to be pink and purple.

Me: Anything else you'd like to add?

Lily: Nope.

As you can see, the interview turned out to be somewhat surreal, since Lily didn't really understand what "hobby," "expensive" and "do you mind" meant. I next approached Jack for an interview.

Me: Jack, do you want to be interviewed for my blog?

Jack: NOOOOOOooooooooo! (runs away giggling)

Anyway, I was pleased to see Lily giving a shout out to my local yarn store, Butterfly Yarns (link in the side bar). She enjoys visiting there and touching the yarn, so I guess it's made an impression. I highly doubt she's ever seen the blog before, though. Sorry, Kim.

And now a word from the kidlets....

2008-08-13T10:29:00.003-04:00

SOME people want to see more posts about the kids. SOME people are getting tired of all the knitting posts. Dear SOME people -- it's the Knitting Olympics! Sheesh! Nobody complains to NBC or whoever is covering the Olympics this time that there are too many sports broadcasts.

Anyway, in order to keep SOME people happy, here are a few words from and about the kids.

Some funny things: Lily told me she had a really bad day at school yesterday. When I asked why, she said her "cart" broke at nap time. I eventually realized she meant her cot. As we left the school, I mentioned her bad day to the center director, who commented "Yes, those cots collapse all the time." Lily said "Well, I think it's because I'm 5 now."

Jack got to have a pop tart last week when we tried out GymStreet USA (great place for kids, by the way). They had an open house this weekend, so Jim and I took the kids to meet some of their friends there. We told the kids they could get something at the snack bar, and Jack repeatedly insisted he wanted a "monkey bar." We finally figured out that he wanted a "pop tart." He still insists they are monkey bars.

I bought Lily a detective kit a few weeks ago, because her new goal is to become a detective when she grows up. On the way home from school that evening, I told her I had bought a real detective kit with fingerprint powder and everything. She said, very seriously, "Does it have a gun?" I assured her I wouldn't buy a gun for a 5 year old.

Sweet story: The center director told me last week that one of Jack's classmates was crying after her mom left her at school. Jack went over and hugged her to try and make her feel better. He has also stopped crying when I leave him at school. He just insists I have to give him a hug and a kiss before I leave.

Sorry, that's all I've got. Sometimes the kids don't really do anything funny or interesting enough for me to blog about. Not much has been happening around here lately -- we do our play dates, the kids play and we knit. It's the knitting olympics!!!

Here is some cute to hold you over until something a bit more blogworthy happens:

Entrelac Blues

2008-08-10T08:58:00.003-04:00

The first day of the Knitting Olympics did not go well.

I'm afraid that the pattern for the Entrelac Bag I'm working on was written for people who have some idea of how to actually knit entrelac. I struggled on my own for hours and couldn't figure out how to knit the middle squares on the second row. After about 6 hours of work, I had what looked like 4 Tibetan prayer flags flying on my circular, one with a little blue triangle stuck on the side.

The good news? Having a lot of knitting friends means I got a lot of offers of assistance. The bad news? Because the power went out at my house during the whole process, I didn't find out about these offers until almost 4:30 pm. I ended up stopping at a friend's house on my way to pick up the kids from school. She couldn't figure out the pattern at first, either, but by laying the pieces out on the table and looking at a tiny, fuzzy picture of the pre-felted finished product, we were able at last to figure out where to pick up the stitches to start the first middle square. Once I figured that out, the rest of the pattern became clear.

Question: Assume you have two squares next to each other on a needle (let's call them Square 1 and Square 2). The instructions tell you to do some knitting on the edge of Square 1. Then the instructions tell you to pick up stitches on the "next square." Wouldn't you think they meant Square 2? Therein lay my confusion. "Next Square" did not mean Square 2, it actually meant the edge of Square 1 adjacent to where I'd just finished knitting. BIG difference. Can you tell I'm still a little annoyed?

Happily, once you figure out how to add new squares, you are doing entrelac! It's actually quite easy. I'm still fascinated by how you knit straight across, but end up making a diamond (because the square is in between two catty-corner squares). Intellectually, I understand what's happening, but it's still like a little magic trick. "Ladies and Gentlemen, watch as I knit across these flat stitches. Presto! Now it's a diamond!" Cue applause.

I only have 3 rows of diamonds left and the main portion of the bag will be finished. Somehow, I thought it would take longer. I'm going to try to finish the Lucy bag within the deadline as well, and if that's done early, then I'll work on the DNA scarf. Yes, I sound optimistic, but if you could turn straight rows of knitting into a diamond attached to other diamonds, wouldn't you feel like you could do anything?

Knitting Olympics

2008-08-06T23:49:00.002-04:00

Initially, I said I wouldn't join the Ravelympics. What is the Ravelympics? Basically, you pick a challenging project, cast it on on opening day (August 8) and try to complete it by the closing ceremony (8/24). Yes, I do have quite a list of Christmas projects to get done, but I didn't want to put myself under too much pressure.

Then, Butterfly Yarns (link in side bar) offered its own Olympic Challenge. In fact, I think it was originally suggested by Knitty McGillicutty, one of the knitters at the Tuesday Night Knitting Group at Butterfly Yarns. I swore I would only participate if there was a Special Olympics for Pressure Challenged Knitters. Sadly, no one was willing to accommodate my aversion to time limited knitting.

Last night, when everyone was talking about their new projects and the Olympics, I got sucked in by the joinitis and signed up for an event (Felted Freestyle). I have been itching to cast on the Entrelac Bag, so I figured, what the hell, I need to knit the bag for my Christmas Gift Marathon of Knitting anyway, why not join in the Ravelympic fun? If I make it, I will get a badge for my blog! Woo hoo!

My goal is to try and finish up the Pinwheel before I cast on the bag, so I really have to get going on that.

Hang Me By My Magic Loop

2008-08-05T09:40:00.002-04:00

Magic loop, you say? So awesome, you say?

So far, I am not a big fan of magic loop. I don't know if it's the really small circumference of the work (36 stitches) or the large size of the needles (US 9), but magic looping the sleeves on the Pinwheel Sweater has been wearing my last nerve.

So I did what any wise woman would do. I brought the work to knitting night and asked if I was doing magic loop the right way (I am). I then commented that my problem was trying to drag the inactive stitches back onto the needle part when I transitioned from one side to the next. As I said that, someone commented I was knitting really tight.

I never knit tight. I almost always have to go down at least one needle size because I knit so loosely. But when I heard that comment and checked my gauge against the rest of the sweater, I could see it was way tighter than the rest of the garment.

One of the ladies suggested "You'll have to rip it back and reknit it with a larger needle." I replied" Hell no, I'm not doing that!"

I went home and proceeded to knit the rest of the stockinette portion of the sleeve, and then started on the ribbed portion, paying careful attention to keeping my gauge loose. You know what? The knitting went a lot smoother when I didn't have to struggle to drag those tight little stitches onto the needle each time. Am I now in love with magic looping? No, but I loathe it a little less than before.

I have about 4 inches left on the sleeve. This morning, I tried the coat on my daughter because I was worried about how tight the sleeve looked in the upper arm (where I knit so tight it looks like chain mail). Lily said "I think this sleeve is TOO SMALL!" She's right.

Soooooooo...long story short, I will be ripping that sleeve all the way back today and reknitting it while paying much closer attention to my gauge. I'm also going to pick up a couple of stitches where the yarnover holes are, because one of them is huge and needs to be tightened up. So that will give me a little more room in the sleeve. I hate ripping back, but I can't finish a sweater with such tight sleeves, even if they will probably fit my niece. I want her to be able to wear this sweater for a couple of years.

In more positive news, I crocheted an edging on the jacket and it looks really pretty. I just did 5 double crochets into one stitch, chain two, skip a stitch, single crochet into the next stitch, chain two, skip a stitch all the way around the edge. It looks nice on both sides, so it will be fine when the jacket edge is flipped over to make the shawl collar. I think I will edge the sleeves the same way, even though the pattern doesn't call for it.

If I have the energy, I'm pretty sure I can finish up the jacket by tomorrow, leaving me free to finally cast on the Entrelac Bag. I'm really looking forward to hat project. I think it will be pretty quick. I continue to plod along with the DNA scarf. It would go much more quickly if I would stop losing my way in the chart. Yes, I am using a post-it as a marker, but I still manage to move it or forget to move it enough to screw up every 10 rows or so. I've finished 2 repeats and the pattern calls for 5 per side. I think I'm going to drop a repeat on each side to save myself some time. I really like how the DNA cabling is turning out, though.

Hey, Kool-Ade!

2008-08-03T23:15:00.003-04:00

I did some kool-ade dying last week and it was so much fun! I got together with two friends and our 6 kids, and we dyed up a storm. I practiced on some kitchen cotton first, just to get an idea of how the dyes worked. Then I dyed a hank of fingering weight superwash wool in a bunch of wild colors. I was nervous because it looked kind of ugly while I was doing it, but as I wind it into a cake, it's looking kind of neat. Pictures later -- I got sidetracked while winding it and never got back to it.

I dyed a second hank of the same yarn in flame colors. I really like how it came out:

The kids tie-dyed some cotton t-shirts. Here they are, modeling their work:

Jack's shirt front is also decorated with chocolate ice cream.

Sadly, I have it on good authority that cotton does not take kool-ade well as a dye, so the shirts won't look like this again. My wool should stay dyed, though.

I'm going to make a sock monkey out of some of this yarn...after the Marathon of Christmas Knitting ends.

I cast on another project today -- the DNA scarf. It's a fun little pattern, although I found the directions a bit confusing at first and then decided to frog the whole thing after 2 inches so that I could change one aspect of the design. I forgot how annoying it is to use a cable needle. I'm going to give cabling without a needle a try after I get used to the pattern.

One tip for those interested in kool-ade dyeing: wear gloves! I can't stress it enough. My hands ended up nearly black from all the kool-aid, and the only thing that cleaned them up was bleach. Even that didn't get the color out from under my nails. Today (almost a week later) the color finally wore off.

After the kool-ade practice, I think I'm ready to try some of my acid dyes. I like more muted colors better than the brights of kool-ade, so I think I'll enjoy being able to blend my own colors even more.

Now With New Blog Links!

2008-08-01T19:00:00.003-04:00

I've updated my blog links by getting rid of a few that don't interest me anymore and adding some new ones. Gotta change it up!

Very briefly:

(the customer is) Not Always Right: Hilarious stories about stupid customers. Good for at least one laugh a day!

A Wicked Good Yarn: Life and knitting from my friend Beth's point of view.

Behind the Counter: Snarky commentary by a former Wal-Mart employee. There's not much going on now, but the archive posts are a hoot.

Butterfly Yarns: What else is there to say? The best little yarn shop around.

Cake Wrecks: You'd better pray you don't get one of these cakes. This blog makes me laugh until I cry.

Can't Stop Knitting: My friend Lisa's blog -- she really can't stop knitting!

Fail Blog: Photo blog where the picture is worth 1,000 laughs.

I am Neurotic: Reading this blog will make you feel like the healthiest, sanest person you know.

New England Knitter: My friend Cathy's take on knitting and other good stuff.

Enjoy!

The Knitting's the Thing

2008-08-01T07:08:00.003-04:00

It's been a while since I blogged about knitting, so here goes.

The Twisted Tree sweater is finished! The neck seemed a little small, so I tried it on Jack and Lily. Big mistake. Both kids have a larger than average noggin, and the neck was indeed too tight. Fortunately, one of my friends has a daughter with a normal noggin. The neck fit over her head just fine. Since I have no idea whether the intended recipient has a large or normal noggin, I decided I'll have to rip back the neck a couple of rows and redo the cast off in a stretchier version. The sweater is ready to block today, assuming I have time to get to it.

I also finished the Noro Hat! It's been a big week for me! I love the way the Noro hat came out. I'm definitely going to make another one for myself after the Great Christmas Marathon is over. My only complaint was the instructions concerning the second to last decrease. Now, I now my ability to read and properly interpret patterns is questionable, ever since the whole 5 US 2 needles thing (See this post for more info). Still, when I see (K1, K2tog) 12 times, it tells me I'm supposed to K1 and then K2 together, and then K1, and then K2 together, etc., etc., 12 times. The thing is, when you only start with 25 stitches, and need to get to 13, this instruction is NOT going to get you there. After several false starts and quite a bit of frogging, I finally K1 and then did K2tog 12 times. Voila! 13 stitches. So simple if you actually sit down and use math instead of pigheadedly knitting the row with the same mistake 5 times!

The Pinwheel Sweater is coming along so quickly it's like a miracle. It's been a while since I knit anything with size 9 US needles. I'm just blazing through it, even though I've been dealing with Captain Puketastic and Whiney Girl for the last few days. I have 8 more rows until the circle that forms the body of the jacket is finished. Then I just need to bang out the two sleeves and decide what I'm doing for trim. Here's my dilemma: the pattern calls for a looped i-cord around the circumference of the circle. I don't know why (perhaps it's the mind-numbing repetition), but I loathe knitting i-cord with the fiery intensity of a thousand suns. At the same time, I really like the way the trim called for by the pattern looks. I'm torn between sucking it up and doing i-cord or figuring out a crocheted trim that I like.

My next project will be a felted entrelac bag. I haven't tried entrelac yet, so I'm really excited to start. Plus, I bought some beautiful Elizabeth Austin Andes yarn, and I'm dying to see how it knits up.

In Which We All Go Quietly Mad

2008-07-31T19:16:00.003-04:00

Lily, Jack and I have been in the house for two whole days. None of us has had enough sleep in two nights. Jack is a lot better, but still a little off his food. Lily is upset that she missed two play dates in a row, and frankly, so is Mommy. Mommy needs a play date, too.

Today we watched our Maurice Sendak DVD at least 20 times. Jack would have been happy to see "Where the Wild Things Are" over and over and over and over, world without end, amen. Fortunately, I was able to get him interested in something else every once and a while so that we could turn the TV off. Unfortunately, he could only be diverted for a few minutes before returning and saying "I wanna watch Wild Fings!"

I did get them out of the house in order to go to Butterfly Yarns and pick up the two patterns I ordered. They were relatively well behaved in the yarn store, except that Jack decided to "help" store owner Kim organize her crochet hook display on the front of the checkout counter. I noticed Lily immediately went over to a skein of yarn and petted it. Like mother, like daughter?

After stopping briefly to get the patterns, I took around the corner to Cravings as a special treat. Lily wanted a chocolate cone. Jack wanted a "green" cone. The store owner politely informed me that he only uses natural flavors and colors in his ice cream, so he didn't have any green ice cream. I told Jack there was no green and asked whether he wanted vanilla or chocolate. "I want purple," he said. I told the store owner to give him chocolate, just to end the discussion.

When I handed Lily her cone, Jack suddenly said "I want fwahklet! I want fwahklet!" Good thing I ordered that instead of "purple," assuming the store even had purple ice cream.

Jack got a lot of his ice cream on his shirt and then threw most of his cone into the trash. Lily was better at eating hers, but kept rubbing it across her lips (and, therefore, her face and chin) and saying "Look at my beautiful lipstick!" Indeed. On the way back to the car, Jack repeatedly asked me to carry him and Lily whined that it was too hot to be outside (it really was). All in all, not our best outing this summer. We were all glad to get back to our air conditioned house, where they immediately clamored for "Where the Wild Things Are." Again.

Did I mention that Jack refused his nap? He was more than content to play for two hours in bed, but did not sleep a wink. He did pass out on the floor watching Maurice Sendak after we got home from ice cream. He was flat on his back like a dead man. Lily continued to play in the living room, she just stepped over him like he wasn't there. He slept through it all.

Ah yes, I forgot to mention the terrible injury Lily sustained while standing over by the radiator cover. She scraped her foot just above the back of her heel, causing a minute flap of skin to come up. There was no blood, but she carried on as if someone had amputated her foot at the ankle. She demanded a band-aid, and when I couldn't find one, she cried and carried on for an hour, demanding that I call Jim and ask him to come home immediately so he could pick up some band-aids. She walked around with an exaggerated limp and told me her foot was probably broken. I finally unearthed a box of band-aids from the bowels of the bathroom cabinet and put one on her. It was a MIRACLE! She was instantly cured.

I don't know where Jack got his bug, but he definitely spread it to two of his friends. I am devoutly hoping that Lily missed out, because if she gets sick tonight, I will be stuck in the house with a pukey kid again, this time on one of my two "days off." I don't know if any of us can take another sick day at home.

This One Time, At Knit Night....

2008-07-30T10:14:00.003-04:00

When things are going pretty well, do you ever feel like you're just waiting for the other shoe to drop? Just me?

The other shoe dropped last night. Ever since the whole Dorkmobile saga, things have been going quite smoothly. Life's been kind of fun, actually. There was the Great Yarn Expedition to New Hampshire, there was the Kool-Aid Dyeing Jamboree (more on that in a later post, with pictures!), there were the back-to-back knit nights on Monday and Tuesday, and Tuesday also happened to be one of my two "days off." And, despite a few bumps and rattles on take off, the Pinwheel Sweater I started on Monday is now about 1/3 of the way done, so that will make 5 Christmas gifts under my belt by the end of next week (I hope).

Anyway, life has been pretty good lately. Last night at Butterfly Yarns in Wakefield, I was hanging out with the knitting gals, chatting about the weird pasty and merkin patterns on Ravelry. (Don't know what a merkin is? Google it, you won't be sorry. Actually, you might be sorry, but it will be educational, I promise.) As usual, we traded crazy stories from our lives and I mentioned how much cleaning up vomit bothers me, and how Lily once berated me for making gagging noises when I cleaned up the stairs after she was sick all over them. I might have even said "I'll clean up any mess, bu vomit really bother me."

Fast forward to 3:30 am. Lily comes up stairs and wakes us up to tell us that Jack is crying. He is indeed crying because he has vomited all over himself and his bed. Jim handed Jack off to me and cleaned up the bed. After some random milling about and confusion, we all sleepily sorted ourselves out and went back to bed. Lily got in our bed upstairs with Jim (she refused to go back to her bed) and I got to sleep with Captain Puketastic downstairs.

Sleep. Not the best word to describe the evening Jack and I had. The poor little guy was sick several times during a two hour period. Unlike Lily, who vomits in a dispassionate, businesslike fashion, Jack hates vomiting. He cries and tries to resist the urge. He won't vomit into any type of receptacle and he resists and attempt to guide him toward a safe place to get sick, like a towel. I felt heartbroken for him, and at the same time, a little annoyed that he kept getting himself and me soiled due to his struggle against the inevitable. Neither of us slept until about 5am, when Jack actually fell asleep in mid-puke (you've gotta be pretty darn exhausted to do that!)

Sadly, before I could doze off, he woke up again. And so it went all night and most of this morning. He is still sick, poor little beggar. No play date for Jack and Lily, no play date for Mommy. No one is in a happy mood at our house today, and two of us are so tired we keep dozing off sitting up.

Honestly, when Jack gets this sick, it freaks me out. He is such a high energy, happy little boy that it is unnerving to see him listless on the couch. I hope he perks up later today, for everyone's sake.

Update: Beth, the Dorkmobile is Fine!

2008-07-28T00:58:00.003-04:00

My friend Beth pointed out that I never told the rest of the Dorkmobile Road Trip Story.

After we got back from our day of yarn shopping decadence, I took another look at the Dorkmobile tires. They still looked perfectly normal to me, although, I must admit, they are those weird sports tires that are abnormally thin because they have such big hubs. They could have been flat and I might not have known it.

When I got home, I expected Jim to be waiting at the door like a nervous parent. Instead, he and the kids were watching Tom and Jerry cartoons. When I walked in, Jim said "Did you figure out how to turn off the warning light? There's nothing wrong with the tires."

It turns out that the sensor doesn't exactly tell you that the tire is flat. It is actually telling you that the tire pressure has changed. That means one tire has either lower or higher pressure than the others. Add a hot day into the mix and you might get some increased tire pressure -- which is exactly what happened. It turns out that all I had to do was

(1) Turn the key in the ignition until the console lights came on (but not far enough to start the engine)

(2) Push the spiky butt symbol button next to the stick shift in and hold it for 3 seconds until the spiky butt light on the dash started to blink, and

(3) Turn on the engine and drive for about 10 seconds.

These steps would have reset the sensor to accept the current tire pressure. Did the manual explain that? No, it just said "Stop driving immediately!"

Does anyone else think this is the most stupid feature ever? If it's going to go off all the time, why would you ever take it seriously? And resetting the sensor? How often are you going to have to go through that little song and dance?

I think I'm starting to dislike the Dorkmobile, and I think the Dorkmobile knows it.

Christmas Gift Count Down

2008-07-28T00:39:00.003-04:00

Given that I'm more organized as a SAHM this year, and given that I'm doing so much knitting, Jim and I agreed it would be a good plan to give as many handmade gifts this year as possible. As a result, with a few exceptions, if you're on my Christmas list, you are probably going to get something I knit.

It all seemed like such a wonderful plan back in March or April when I first hatched it. I immediately made one project and enjoyed myself quite a bit. And then, as I got more into the pattern archive on Ravelry, I started to get sidetracked by projects that looked fun. Hey! A felted knitting basket! That looks fun! Hey, a skull and bones hat! That looks fun! Hey, a funky cardigan made from a circle! That sounds fun! It was sort of like I had knitting attention deficit disorder. Show me a shiny new pattern and I lose my train of thought and buy the yarn.

And so I went merrily along until the Seed Stitch sale a few weeks ago. Since they were offering a lot of yarn at 50% off, it seemed like a good idea to buy whatever I needed for my remaining Christmas projects at the sale, if possible. In order to figure out what I needed, I had to sit down and make a list of all of the people who are getting knitted gifts and what I was planning to make for them. Doing so made me realize that I've only finished 2 Christmas projects!

I am knitting for 10 people. I have only finished 2 projects. It's almost August. That means I need to complete 8 projects in 4 months (I'm not counting December because if I rely on that, I'll still be knitting right up to the deadline).

Panic set in. I have been knitting like a madwoman for the last two weeks. Today, I finished Project Number 3 and Project Number 4 should be finished tomorrow. That means I will need to finish 6 projects in 4 months. I think I can do that...I hope.

Anyway, all of the yarn is in my stash and all of the patterns are ready to go, so I'll just be cranking them out like a knitting machine (I hope). I'll keep you updated!

Road Trip

2008-07-26T17:54:00.002-04:00

Remember back in the day when you and your pals used to pile into a car and head out to another state for some fun. Road trip, dude!

Well, I went on a road trip today. It all started a few weeks ago when one of my friends mentioned the annual Knit and Crochet Show in Manchester, New Hampshire. She'd been by herself last year and wanted some company this year. I immediately volunteered. Yarn shows and festivals are a lot of fun. You get to see, feel and smell fibers that you might have seen on the internet, but couldn't find locally. The people are generally friendly and helpful, and you run across knitting related fiber stuff you never even heard of.

About a week or so after the initial decision to go to the show, Jim started the nightmare car buying process. When I realized last weekend that we would actually have the car by today, I offered to drive. I thought it would be more like a college road trip that way -- three girls in a sporty little car heading out on the highway for some shopping adventures.

A few days ago, one of the girls mentioned that a wonderful yarn store in Nashua, New Hampshire called Ewe'll Love It! was moving its venue and having a 30-50% of sale to try and reduce its stock. Of course, my response to that was "How far is Nashua from Manchester? Can we do both?" Happily, we could!

So, at 8:30 this morning, I hopped into the Dorkmobile and headed off. My first stop was at Dunkin' Donuts for the requisite giant iced tea (I'm apparently a sucker for advertising and now believe I run on Dunkin' Donuts iced tea). I rolled up to the window to order and realized I had NO FREAKING IDEA how to open the window. There was no handle to roll it down manually. There was no button on the window. The girl at the register was looking at me like I was an idiot as I frantically searched for a button, switch or something to get the window down. I finally located a small button in front of the stick shift and got the window open, but not before a few cars had pulled up behind me. "Ha ha ha, it's my husband's car," I said feebly. I finished the drive through with no further incidents and headed onward.

I should have recognized the window incident as an omen of things to come. After I picked up the girls and we stashed some extra bags in the car boot (that's what the Mini manual calls it), we hit the atm machine and then I got on the highway. About 2 minutes later we heard a beep.

I was already familiar with the beep because it goes off when you don't wear a seatbelt. Everyone in the car was belted in, however. Then I noticed a small glowing circle on the speedometer. There was the symbol of what looked like a butt with spikes on the bottom.

"What does that mean?" I asked. One of the gals pulled out the manual and said "It's a flat tire warning. It says here 'Stop driving immediately.'" Oh GREAT.

I've had flat tires before. Usually you can tell by the way the car drives that something has gone wrong, but there was nothing different about the way the car was handling. We debated for a few minutes whether we should ignore the gauge (yarn road trip, remember?) or turn back. I pulled off at the next exit and we all got out (like clowns tumbling out of a clown car) to look at the tires. They looked just fine to me.

"Maybe now that you've turned the engine off, the warning light will go off." Nope. Warning light was still on. I found a little button next to the stick shift (why are there so many little buttons next to the stick shift in this car?) that had the spiked butt symbol on it and tried pressing it a couple of times. No change.

Since we've only owned the car for a little over 2 days, I ultimately felt it was prudent to drive back to the home of one of my fellow passengers, dump the Dorkmobile and take another car. Since we'd only driven about 3 miles from our original destination, this plan did not take long to execute. When we arrived to switch to another car, I looked at the tires again -- still no difference.

Fortunately, our little detour did not prevent us from arriving at the sale shortly after the store opened. We all bought a goodly amount of sale yarn and some regularly priced yarn, too (who could resist?) One of the gals got some gorgeous Blue Heron Rayon Metallic, but it was only because I somehow missed seeing it first. I'd like to think I would have had the restraint not to buy it, but I'm probably fooling myself on that account.

Next stop, yarn show. There were a lot of interesting booths. One booth had giant knitting needles (the size of a small baseball bat!) and giant yarn for sale. The Habu had a new type of yarn made from silk and stainless steel. I'd heard about it, so it was fun to touch it and see how it felt (a little stiff, frankly). Another booth had clear rubber boots for children, designed so you could see their lovely handmade socks through the boots! And then, there were a lot of gorgeous hand-painted yarns and beautiful luxury fibers. There was a whole lot of petting, stroking and cuddling of yarn going on.

The highlight of the day? We met Jess and Casey, Mama and Papa Rav! (The people who founded Ravelry). They are nice couple, and both are very friendly and sweet. At the yarn show, Jess and Casey were a little like two rock stars. One of the vendors came over and asked them to autograph her receipt booklet! We picked up some Ravelry buttons and a "daily dose of fiber" sticker from Jess, and I thanked Casey for programming such a great site.

I've already put all of the new yarn into my stash, but it will be a few days before I have time to photograph everything. I did get some funky hand-dyed nylon for making a really cute purse. I'll probably post pictures of that if I actually get to it in 2008 -- the Great Knitted Christmas Gift Marathon has begun and I'm going to try to focus only on knitting gifts until I've finished everything on my list. We'll see how long I manage that.

I'm working on a very cute Noro hat right now that's almost done. It's a great pattern for brainless knitting. More on that and other works in progress at a later date. Oh yeah, I got some awesome beads to make stitch markers for my store! More on that later as well.

Finally, because I promised my friend Kelly:

GETTING MARRIED? NEED DESIGN HELP? Get some awesome wedding related items at Busy Bride Designs. Kelly will help create a customized look for your wedding without busting your budget. She's got some monogram designs up already and I happen to know she has a lot of other great wedding designs and favors in the works. Check it out!

My Awesome Husband And His Car

2008-07-24T20:24:00.005-04:00

Lest anyone think I don't completely adore my husband based on my recent posts mocking his crazy car buying saga, let me reassure you that he is indeed awesome. He's funny, nice, a great friend, cute in a dorky way, a terrific father, and an excellent husband and head of the family. He just does a lot of hilariously ridiculous things. I can't help but laugh about it, and one of the things I love about him is that he can laugh at himself.

And now, I know you've all been waiting for these!

The family in front of Jim's new car. Look how happy they are! It was poring rain, so these aren't the best photos, I'm afraid.

Lily in the back seat, refusing to be photographed.

Hammy McHam hamming it up for the camera, as usual.

In a more serious moment, Jim reads his manual to find out how to operate the stereo system.

The part of the car that looks like an airplane cockpit. No wonder Jim needs to read the manual.

The funky little speedometer. Or is it a tachometer? I don't know, who am I kidding?

Side view. The Dorkmobile!

The kids in the back seat!

Hammy in the back seat.

The proud car owner.

A view of the steering wheel.

Lily really did name this car Jedi. Jim's off now to show it to all of his friends. He is as excited as a kid on Christmas and I'm happy so for him. He works pretty hard and he deserves a nice man toy. Even if it's a Dorkmobile.

Baking Cookies

2008-07-24T10:53:00.002-04:00

I am famous amongst my family and friends for my inability to cook. For those who don't know me, you may think I *could* cook if I really tried, but my friends and family know that I truly am a hopeless case when it comes to whipping up something on the stove.

That being said, I can bake with the best of them. I love baking and find it very relaxing. One of my fondest memories of childhood is baking with my mom (Hi, Mom!). Jim remembers the same with his mom, so I make an effort to bake with the kids a few times a month. Today was baking day.

We tried out a new recipe today: Nestle's White Chip Chocolate Cookies. The kids have never used baking cocoa before, so they insisted on tasting it even though I told them it was bitter. Jack said "It YUCKY mama!" Lily claimed it tasted sweet to her and tried to get Jack to taste it some more. Very sneaky, but he didn't fall for her trick. I think the initial taste was once too often for him!

I let them dump some of the dry ingredients into the bowl, and they take turns mixing them together with a whisk. We all get to taste the batter when it's done. Jack licks the beater and Lily licks the rubber spatula. (For those of you who worry about them eating raw eggs, all I can say is that my brother and I licked the spoons when we were little and we're still here, so how bad can it be?) Sometimes they help me spoon the cookies onto the sheet, but today they were too busy licking to help out. When I handed him the spoon, Jack said nervously "It still yucky, mama?" before he tasted it!

After I put the cookies in to bake, I told the kids to play in the playroom until the first batch was done and cooled, and then we would have a cookie and a glass of milk for snack. Lily went downstairs with Jack. A few minutes later, Jack came back into the kitchen.

"It ready now, mama?" "No." He went to play in his room. For about 15 seconds. I heard his little bare feet trotting across the dining room. "It ready NOW, mama?" "Nope, I let you know. Go play in your room." He disappeared for another 15 seconds and then I heard his footsteps again. "It ready NOW, mama?"

We repeated this scene 10 times. I know this because I counted. Boy loves his chocolate cookies!

When they came out of the oven, I noticed they didn't flatten out like Toll House cookies do. They were still lumpy little piles of dough, except that, having baked, they resembled steaming piles of turd with small white chunks. They did not look appetizing at all. The kids didn't notice and ate them anyway. They actually taste pretty good, if you can get past how they look.

The Midlife Crisis Car, Part Deux

2008-07-23T17:32:00.003-04:00

NOTE: My mother informed me I was talking about a bumper, not a fender, so post has been edited accordingly!

Aaaaaannnnnnddddd the saga continues.

As you know, we put some money down to reserve Jim's Midlife Crisis car on Sunday. On Monday, he advised me that the rest of the down payment would have to come out of our family checking account instead of out of one of his bonus stock accounts as he originally planned. He didn't realize until Monday that his bonus stock doesn't vest until February 2009. On Tuesday, he advised me of his plan to take the money out of one of our 401K accounts. This plan was quickly nixed when he realized we would have to pay it back with interest, just like a real loan. After much investigation, he was able to cobble together the down payment from an old investment account that we thought was closed and our childcare expense account. His one job for the day was to put in requests from both of those accounts to get the money transferred, because it will take a few days. For reasons known only to him, he wasn't able to get that done today.

As some of you already know, I have a borderline psychotic paranoia about running out of money in our family account. We've come up short a few times in the past when we had large, unexpected expenses and I hate how out of control that feels. As a result, I need to have a certain amount of buffer in the account to feel safe. Paying for the down payment tomorrow is going to take us perilously close to dropping below that buffer, so I am freaking out. Thank goodness Jim gets paid this week -- I'll be able to relax until he replaces the money sometime next week -- assuming he can get himself organized enough to get the money transferred.

I learned some interesting things about him during this nightmare of car purchasing.

1. His estimate of how much money we carry in our family account borders on the delusional.

2. He appears to be blissfully unaware that they deduct things like taxes, health insurance, 401K, childcare spending, and educational fund money out of his paycheck each money. Accordingly, his estimate of how much gets deposited into our account once a month also bordered on the delusional.

3. He is terrified of driving on Route 1.

4. He can't remember the passwords to any of our investment accounts, all of which he chose, and he is terribly upset that I don't remember them, despite the fact that I didn't even know there were passwords to these accounts (guess what information I'm going to be gathering together this week?)

5. He grossly underestimates how much he spends each week on things like gas, lunch and entertainment. Grossly.

I also had an amusing telephone conversation with my car insurance company today. They called to "make sure you know James is adding a third car to your policy." I'm the policy holder, so they have to confirm it with me. I found it amusing because I wonder how often the policy holder says "New car? What new car???" I was tempted to say that myself, but I refrained. It did remind me of the second phase of the Midlife Crisis Car purchase, however. We've got to get Jedi towed away to some charity ASAP so we can stop paying insurance on three cars. This means I have to track down the title. I devoutly hope the title is in the safe deposit box.

Finally, the last and most aggravating incident in the whole saga occurred last night. My friends and I are planning to drive up to a yarn show in New Hampshire this weekend. Since Lily has a dentist appointment that morning, Jim will have to take the CR-V to drive the kids into Boston. That leaves me with the Mini for our trip. I let him know last night that I would be driving the Mini. We had the following conversation:

Me: I'll be taking the girls to NH in the Mini on Saturday.

Jim: Why?

Me: (explains about the whole dentist thing, see last paragraph)

Jim: I don't know...I don't want you to do something that hurts the car.

Me: (barely refraining from throttling him) Seriously?

You see, I have a perfectly unblemished driving history. No tickets, no accidents. my driving record is as pure as the driven snow. Jim's? Not so much. In fact, we are currently paying points on our insurance due to a little fender bender Jim had in the Jetta last year. I won't even mention the many dents and dings he's put in the Jetta, some of which occurred when he accidentally backed into the CR-V because he forgot it was parked behind him in the driveway. More than once. Or how about the time he stove in the side of the Chevette because he was "backing up but the car was moving sideways"? Or, infamously, how about this:

The Case of the Mysterious Bumper Damage

Way back in 1989-90, we lived in California, where Jim drove a vintage Volkswagen Bug. He was working and living about 45 minutes away from where I worked and lived. He would drive up to my apartment on Thursday mornings (his day off) and stay until Friday morning. Since I worked on Thursdays, he would hang out at my apartment until I got home. One day, when I got back from work, he met me at the door, very upset.

"Someone ran into the Volkswagen today while I was downtown and dented the bumper!" He took me outside and we looked at the chrome bumper. It had two vertical dents in it about 3 feet apart. "What would make dents like that?" I asked. "I don't know," he said. "Someone must have backed into me in the parking lot."

The next week, he was even more agitated when I got home. "Look!" he said, "This is unbelievable! Someone hit me AGAIN while I was downtown." Sure enough, there was another set of vertical dents in the bumper, also about 3 feet apart. "How could that happen twice in a row?" I said.

That Saturday, I drove out to his place after work (our usual routine). We decided to rent some movies, so we got into the VW to drive into town. Jim started the engine and then gunned backwards out of his driveway. As he backed into the road at the end of the driveway, I heard a bang and the car shook. "What was that?" I asked.

Jim put the car into drive and said offhandedly "Oh, there's a bump in the road there." As he started to drive forward, I noticed two metal posts sunk into the ground, both about 4 feet tall. They were spaced about 3 feet apart. "I think you hit those posts!" I said.

Jim stopped the car. "What posts?" I pointed. He pulled the car back into his driveway and we got out to inspect the bumper. There, glinting in the sunlight, was another set of vertical dents, about three feet apart.

"I think that explains the damage to your bumper." I said. "Didn't you know you were backing into those fence posts?"

He had no idea. And he's worried about me "hurting" his new car.

Seriously?

Return of the Jedi

2008-07-20T21:15:00.002-04:00

Ever since Jedi died a few weeks ago, life has been pretty miserable for all of us. First, there's sharing the CR-V. Jim will not take the bus that stops at the end of our street, for reasons unknown to me. As I like to point out every chance I get, I was riding that bus when I was 9 months pregnant in the summer and I survived. As a result, I have to get the kids together and drive him to the subway every morning, and then repeat the trip in the evening to bring him home. It's annoying, and not just to me -- just a few days ago, Lily said "I liked it better when Papa came home by himself." Me too, sweetie, me too.

Second, we have been Shopping For Cars. I capitalize the phrase because Jim's involvement in the Shopping makes it a major event. For those who are interested, this is how he does it. Step 1: he tells me he wants a Cooper Mini. I say "If that's what you want, then get that one. Just keep in mind our budget and don't go crazy."

Step 2: he spends a week exhaustively researching every car known to man, including the Mini. Each night he explains to me why it would make more sense for him to get a Mini. Each night I tell him to get one, keeping in mind our budget. The nightly conversation always involves me having to look at a bunch of car websites so I can read statistics and reviews. Ugh.

Step 3: he narrows his choice down to three cars: the Mini, the Fit and the xD. He spends a week exhaustively re-researching those three cars, discussing why a Mini is the best choice and forcing me to look at more websites. I tell him to get the Mini. There might be a few tears of frustration in my eyes.

Step 4: he makes plans to visit three dealerships and insists that I come with him, which means we have to bring the kids. Our visits do not go well, and only one dealership actually has a car he can test drive. I am left to entertain two sweaty, whining, tired children in a dealership showroom while Jim inspects cars and goes on air-conditioned test drives. Have you ever been in a dealership showroom? It has cars and desks. The kids tired of looking at them in about 12 seconds. I practically beg him to buy any car we see that falls within our budget just to avoid making this trip again. Ever.

Step 5: after agonizing all evening and consulting with friends (who of course tell him he should get whatever he wants) he decides he is getting the Mini, thus requiring us to make a fourth visit to a dealership in Boston. We arrive to learn that they have pulled a bait and switch on us. "Oh, those three cars that were available right before we closed last night? Wow, I guess they sold out right after you called, but we do have this incredibly expensive, fully loaded alternatives right here!" Ha ha ha, so amusing. As a result, we have to haul the kids back to one of the first three dealerships we visited to reconsider some of the options there.

Step 6: Jim sits back and looks smug as I plead with him to spend as much as he wants on one of the available cars as long as we don't have to take the kids to any more dealerships.

Step 7: Jim purchases a car that costs $5,000 more than the outside limit of what we originally agreed to spend. He gets a British Racing Green Mini, fully loaded with a sports package (leather seats, chrome exhaust tips, fancy tires), a sound system upgrade and a "heating/cooling" package which apparently includes automatic air conditioning, heated seats and heated side-view mirrors (God forbid he should have to actually knock snow off the car). It has white racing stripes that I find hideous, but he seems to love them. The inside looks like the cockpit of a small private jet.

I'm calling it his mid-life crisis car. Lily calls it Jedi because it's green like the Jetta. Jack doesn't have an opinion so far. Jim is off to brag about his sports car to his friends. He's so excited, he's like a little kid on Christmas Eve.

I hope I get to drive it sometime....

Justification

2008-07-15T23:26:00.002-04:00

I'll just start out by coming clean and admitting I bought more yarn tonight. Two skeins. I really don't need any more yarn, and with the carpentry work we need done on the house (three windows need new trim out before we can paint) and Jim's car Jedi rejoining The Force, I shouldn't be buying it.

That's what got me thinking. Whenever I make an unnecessary purchase of yarn, I always have a reason. When I look back on it, there are a number of ways I routinely justify my purchases. I thought it would be interesting to list them out and really think about them.

1. I will use the yarn to make a Christmas gift.

This is one of my all time favorite justifications. Hey, it's actually necessary spending if it's for a gift because I will have to spend that money eventually anyway. Great justification, as long as I actually use the yarn for a gift. Sometimes the gift ends up going to me. Oops.

2. The yarn was on sale, so I actually saved money.

Doesn't this one sound good? I'm saving money! Yay! On the flip side, I could save even more money by not spending it in the first place. I try to ignore the flip side.

3. The yarn is being discontinued, so this is the last opportunity to buy it.

At first glance, this justification has a lot of merit. I won't be able to get this yarn again, so it's now or never. I might regret passing up the purchase for the rest of my life. On the other hand, there is always going to be more yarn. When one colorway retires, another will take its place. I will probably buy that one, too.

4. The yarn will be used for a specific project I have planned, so I'll be buying it eventually anyway.

In theory, this is a good justification. I know I'm going to make a certain sweater, so why not buy the yarn now, when I've just discovered the perfect color? In reality, it means one of two things: either I'm going to start yet another project without finishing the ones I already have going, or I'll squirrel away the yarn, forget about it, and then buy more yarn for another project.

5. I won't have a chance to purchase this yarn again.

This might be the best justification I've got. When I buy from a small vendor at an event, there is a good chance I won't have the opportunity again. I'm not big on buying things online unless I've seen them in person, so unless I run across this vendor in person again, I won't be buying the yarn. Of course, you could take this too far, but since I don't get out to wool related events that often, I think I'm safe.

6. Other knitters made me buy it.

Peer pressure. I like this justification a lot because I can blame my bad behavior on others! In reality, I think anyone who knows me also knows that no one makes me do anything I don't want to do. In fact, sometimes I encourage people to "pressure" me just so I can make a guilt free purchase.

7. This is an Authorized Yarn Purchase (AYP).

Every once and a while, Jim tells me to go ahead and buy something for a project. This is what I call an AYP, and it allows me to pretty much do as I like with no fear of consequences. Of course, just because it's an AYP doesn't mean I actually need it.

8. I had a bad day and I deserve it.

Pretty much the worst justification on the books. I have bad days A LOT. I don't think we can afford all the bad days I have. I only pull out this excuse a few times a year.

9. I'm getting credits towards a discount that will save me money!

Two of the stores I frequent offer a 20% discount after you reach a certain dollar amount in purchases. I am very close to the discount at one store, so I sometimes justify a purchase as working towards that goal. I try no to think about this one too much. If I do, I realize that I am spending money to get a discount, which I will use to buy yarn far more expensive than I would normally purchase. In the end I'm probably spending more than I would to begin with.

Today's purchase was a No. 1, 8 and 9 combo. I find that multiple justifications work well to eradicate any lingering guilt. If you'll excuse me, I have to go work on some Christmas knitting now.

Interview with Jack, Man of Few Words

2008-07-15T06:45:00.005-04:00

This was my first attempt to interview Jack for the blog. I asked him in advance if he would do it and he eagerly hopped onto the couch next to me and watched me typing. I started with a softball question.

Me: What's your name?

Jack: This. (pointing at an icon on the screen). This. This.

Me: Can you tell me what your name is.

Jack: I have frocks (pointing at the word "this").

Me: Frocks? (I have no idea what he's trying to say)

Jack: Frocks. Frocks. (gets off couch) I go to my room.

Me: Where you going?

Jack: I'm going in my room. (He leaves and I hear his door close. A minute passes and he returns with a Thomas Tank Engine in his hand.)

Me: Are you ready to tell me what your name is?

Jack: Yeah. (Man, it's like pulling teeth to get this kid to talk)

Me: What is it?

Jack: Thomas.

Me: That's not your name. What's your name?

Jack: Thomas.

Me: Is Thomas your name?

Jack: Yeeeeeeaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh.

Me: What's your favorite color?

Jack: My color? My color name.

Me: What is it?

Jack: Thomas. This kind (pointing at the top of the train)

Me: You mean black?

Jack: Yeah, black.

Me: Are you going to school today?

Jack: No.

Me: Yes. You're going to play with friends, right?

Jack: Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Me: Are you done with interview?

Jack: No, I want to watch it!

Me: Can you tell me a story?

Jack: Yeah.

Me: Well, what is it?

Jack: My story name boo shoo this. (I have no idea what he's saying)

Me: Your story's named what?

Jack: (no response)

(Fireman Sam then came on, so the interview ended)

The Box of Broken Dreams

2008-07-14T22:34:00.003-04:00

So anyway, about three months ago, I purchased the Stained Glass Bag pattern and a bunch of gorgeous Noro Kureyon yarn. I was so excited to start it, but I forced myself to wait until I finished some WIP or other. Of course, by the time I finished whatever it was, I was already excited to start something else, and I forgot about the Stained Glass Bag.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago. We moved Jack into his "big boy bedroom" (formerly our guestroom) and I started planning to reclaim the small room where we had his crib as my craft room. This, of course, involved me going through my stash to organize things a bit and decide how I'm going to store it in the new space.

My stash is pretty small. I have two groups of yarn: the "good" yarn, which consists mostly of natural fiber (with an inordinate amount of alpaca), and the "craft" yarn, which consists mostly of manmade fibers that are left over from baby blankets and charity knitting, where washable yarn is preferred. I don't go into the craft yarn stash very often unless I need scrap yarn or the kids are doing an art project. The good yarn lives in a large basket and several small crates in my office. I'm pretty proud of myself for keeping it somewhat in control (if you ignore the many skeins of sock yarn I've accumulated in the last four months). Anyway, just as I was starting to feel pretty good about my self control, I realized something disturbing.

I have a coat rack in my office. There are several coats on the rack and a lot of bags. I don't really pay attention to the coat rack these days because it's summer here and there's no need for coats most days. As I was taking yarn out of the crates, I caught a glimpse of my old knitting basket hanging from the rack and pulled it down. It was stuffed with the Noro yarn I bought for the Stained Glass Bag.

Then I looked at the rack more carefully. There were many bags hanging from it (did I ever mention that I own a lot of Vera Bradley tote bags? It's another one of my little addictions). I started pulling them down. One bag had the yarn and a pattern for felted clogs. Another two bags held yarn and the unfinished projects to go with it. A third bag held all of my DPNs and most of my circular needles, because I still haven't gotten around to making needle cases for them (even though I bought the materials months ago). A few other bags were filled with more yarn that I'd forgotten about. It turns out my stash is a little bigger than I thought. I've just been tricking myself by squirreling it away.

It was kind of fun to rediscover the "lost" yarn and projects. It actually turned out to be a boon, because it gave me something to do while I let the problem of the gargantuan sleeve marinate for a bit. Now that the Stained Glass Bag is finished (providing me with another potential Christmas gift off my list), I'm kind of excited to knock out a few of the gift projects on my list before getting back to my regularly scheduled selfish knitting.

In the midst of organizing and rediscovering old projects, I happened to read something on Ravelry that seemed to fit amazingly well. Several knitters were discussing how they store their stash and their unfinished projects. One woman noted that her husband had boxed up all of her unfinished project and ugly finished projects and had labeled it "Box of Broken Dreams." Apparently, I have bags of broken dreams, or, as another knitting friend appropriately phrased it, an Island of Misfit Projects.

All of which leads me to present you with the following gallery of misfit projects and broken dreams:

The Calamitous Crocheted Sweater:

An alternative name for this finished object could be "I can't be bothered with sticking to one dye lot or checking gauge." I keep this project posted on Ravelry to remind myself what happens when you are in too much of a hurry to start something. The worst part about this project is that one of the pattern editors on Ravelry actually asked if they could use my picture for the online pattern. I gave permission, but noted that it was so ugly it would probably drive potential crocheters away. I never heard back again!

The Miniature Mitten, Part II:

Attempt No. 1

Attempt No. 2

See? Despite frogging and knitting with larger needles, it's still too small. Also, I've ripped this version back once because I forgot to make a thumb hole. I'm well aware that I will eventually have to frog it and start again. Perhaps this time I will be motivated to check my gauge.

And, last but not least, I bring you THE GARGANTUAN SLEEVE:

Yeah, I never got around to taking a picture of the horror that was the gargantuan sleeve, but you can kind of see it in this one. Tonight, I finally bit the bullet and cut off the end of the sleeve to reknit it. It was freakishly long. Trust me.

This Can't Be Good

2008-07-13T21:41:00.003-04:00

I have a new hobby. A photo should suffice:

Jim made me the drop spindle from: one wooden toy wheel, one dowel and one cup hook. Thanks to my friend Margaret for the supply list! I got the roving at Michael's where it just happened to be on the clearance rack for $1.00. The little blobby thing is my first yarn spun all on my own. It's very thick, lumpy and poorly plied, unfortunately. I learned the basics at a spinning night with some of the Saugus Knitting Ladies. I plan to practice a little every week until our next spinning night, because my first attempt was pretty darn bad. It looks so easy to do, but it's actually pretty hard. It doesn't help that I have no eye/hand coordination.

I may or may not have bought some nicer, hand dyed merino roving on eBay. If I did, I won't be breaking that out until I practice on the cheap stuff for quite a while.

A Photographic Interlude

2008-07-13T21:26:00.004-04:00

My two little nuts on the Fourth of July, complete with glo necklaces and cakey face.

No, she's not shy. Why do you ask?

Lily in her latest favorite dress. She calls it "the one with the sprinkles on it."

Jack showing off his latest ensemble: 1 black t-strap shoe (on the wrong foot), a diaper with PJ top, a pencil and a pink binky. All the toddlers are wearing this now. The one shoe look is a completely modern take on the whole Michael Jackson one glove thing. Don't you love his sweet little knock knees?

The birthday girl during a frenzy of gift opening. I can't believe she's 5!

Oskar gets in on the birthday action.

Lily's Big Birthday Party. 13 kids. I don't even want to talk about it except to say that it's over and everyone had a great time.

So that's a brief photo essay of what we've been doing for the last few weeks!

Just a Funny Story

2008-07-13T06:46:00.006-04:00

I finally located my camera, Lily's birthday party is finally over, and my parents will be leaving this afternoon. Therefore, in theory, I should have time to take pictures and post a couple of things I have saved in the draft stage right now. I will be posting the gargantuan sleeve, I promise.

In the meantime, I thought I would tell a funny story from my commuting days. It popped into my head recently because of a funny blog I've been reading called (The Customer is) Not Always Right. Check it out. It gives me a belly laugh every day, so it's good for the soul.

Anyway, a lot of the posts on Not Always Right are conversations with some really odd or dysfunctional people. That reminded me of someone I ran into when I was commuting into Boston for work. He fell clearly into the category of odd. So here it is.

Is That Custom?

When I was working in Boston, I had two ways of getting into work. Sometimes I drove into a nearby T station, parked for $3.00 and took the T into the city. Sometimes I took the bus, which stopped at the end of my street) to the T station and took the T into the city. On this particular day, I decided to take the bus.

As soon as I got on the bus, someone said "Hey! How are you?" I didn't think it was meant for me because there was no one on the bus that I knew. I sat down in the seat right behind the bus driver. Across the aisle from me was a gentleman in his 30s. He had a neat crewcut hair style, and was dressed in jeans, a pink dress shirt and a green tweed blazer. The combination was a little strange, but he looked relatively normal... or so I thought.

At the next stop, he said "Hey! How are you?" to every person that got on the bus. It was like he was the official bus greeter. Like me, no one acknowledged him, probably because they were taken off guard and had no idea he was talking to them. As they all took their seats, he said, quite loudly and to no one in particular "I'm going to court today!" That made me really look at him, mostly to see if I knew him from my job (I was a lawyer). Again, no one responded.

He rode quietly for a moment and then stood up and walked over to stand in the front of the bus next to the driver. "Hey!" he said suddenly, pointing to the fare machine, "Is that custom?"

The driver, somewhat startled, said "Uh, yeah, I guess."

The odd man then pointed at the dashboard. "What about this stuff? Is this all custom?"

I could sense that the driver was getting a little freaked out. "I guess," he said shortly. "You gotta stand behind the yellow line."

The odd man pointed at a newspaper that the driver had laid on top of the dashboard. "You reading that?"

Driver: "No. You gotta stand behind the yellow line, sir."

The odd man, showing no signs of moving, said "Can I have it?" The driver handed it to him and said "Now stand behind the yellow line or I have to stop the bus." The odd man took the paper and sat down across from me again. At this point, I was watching him like a hawk. One part of my job at the time was obtaining guardianships for incompetents, so I had a great deal of experience with the mentally ill. Patients like this man, who have no impulse control in public, occasionally act out without warning. I started thinking that his court date was probably for disturbing the peace.

As I'm thinking all of this, the man opened his paper with a snap and appeared to read it. For all of about 15 seconds. "FUCK this shit!" he yelled suddenly. I actually jumped in my seat, it was so sudden. "I'm not reading this crap." He threw the paper down on the seat next to him. I noticed that everyone in the surrounding seats was now giving him their full attention, because all conversation in the bus suddenly stopped.

At that point, we rolled up to the T station. Since he was in the front, he got off the bus first. I purposely stayed on the bus for a few minutes and was one of the last to get off, because I didn't want to risk walking near him. When I got to the T, I looked over the whole car before getting on to make sure he wasn't there. I didn't see him, so I sat down and read my paper.

A few minutes into the trip, an announcement came over the speaker from the driver "Can I help you, sir?" I looked up and, sure enough, the odd man was standing next to the door to the front of the T, repeatedly pressing the emergency assistance button.

"No! I'm good!" he said cheerfully. He continued to press the button.

"Sir, can you please stop pressing the button," came the announcement from the front of the train. Just then, the train came to its first stop, and the man got out. A few people laughed nervously and the train continued onward.

To this day, I have a running joke with my mom and a few friends, where we say "Is this custom?" or "No, I'm good!"

Requiem for Jedi

2008-07-09T20:20:00.004-04:00

We own a really old Volkswagen that my husband uses as his beater car. He calls it "Yoda" because it's an old, green Jetta (cue strained laughter at dorky pun). Our kids just call it Jedi.

We bought Jedi used in 1999. At that time, I was driving a beautifully restored 1972 BMW tii. Unfortunately, the BMW was a freak accident magnet. Park it on a deserted street and someone would appear out of nowhere, drive too close and knock off a mirror. Park it on a tree lined street and a branch would suddenly fall off of the one tree it was parked near and ding the hood. Case in point: one weekend, as I was driving to a friend's house in Western Massachusetts during a rain storm, the driver's side windshield wiper suddenly flew off completely. I was able to pull over at a car dealership, and someone there put the remaining wiper on the driver's side so I could get my car to its destination. 5 minutes down the road, the second wiper flew off and I was driving in the pounding rain with no wipers. AND... wait for it... because it was a 1972 model, anything required to repair even the most minor issue had to be mail ordered to our house or picked up from a specialty store in New Hampshire. Long story short, it just got too exhausting to manage the BMW, lovely though it was. When I was rear ended by an SUV while stopped at a red light and the entire back end crumpled up like tissue paper, we decided to get a sturdier car. Enter Jedi.

Jedi's been a good car with relatively few maintenance issues over the years. We bought him used and at a good price and we definitely got our money's worth. There was a two year period when something was gravely wrong with the AC unit and the car floor periodically swamped up with water (prompting my friend Chuck to dub the car "Swamp Thang"), but it was otherwise problem free. It is the car we used to bring both our babies home from the hospital, and the car Jim drove the babies around in at night when we couldn't get them to sleep.

In the past year, however, Jedi's been showing his age (and mileage). It started out with a couple hundred bucks a few times a year and then escalated to the point where every time we took him in for service, we could pretty much guarantee at least a $500 bill. As long as Jedi remained safe to drive, we didn't mind. And then, about six months ago, we got the news that some major part of the undercarriage was getting very worn. No, I have no idea what part it is because I know nothing about cars, but I know it's dangerous if it breaks! Our mechanic gave us two options -- pay about $1000 to fix it or keep Jedi off the highway. We kept him off the highway, but it was kind of like learning that Jedi had a fatal disease. We knew that the end was only a matter of time.

Yesterday, Jedi's brakes got really, really soft and Jim really worried about getting home without crashing. He took Jedi to Midas this morning and got the bad news this afternoon. There are so many things wrong with the brakes that it will cost at least $900 to repair them. Our new options are to either spend the money or get another car. We told the mechanic not to do the work. I took Jim over to pick up Jedi after work today. When he opened the car door, the car alarm went off and he could not get it to stop for about 10 minutes. I think Jedi knows that we are putting him out to pasture this time. I followed him home to make sure there were no problems, and it was a little like driving in a funeral cortege.

Alas, poor Jedi, we knew him well.

I Lied!

2008-07-08T23:21:00.003-04:00

Two knit nights and I never worked on the jacket! I did, however, finish a bunny doll and cast on a sweater for my nephew. I think the upside of the jacket fiasco is that it is pushing me to knock off a bunch of Christmas gifts from my queue.

I also lied about posting a kidcentric post today. I did take some photos, I just didn't get around to downloading them and writing them up. Here's a teaser: Lily drew a previously mentioned hilarious picture of Jack and I took a photo showing Jack's most recent foray into sartorial elegance. Maybe I'll even get a few birthday photos up, too. A girl can dream can't she? Ta for now.

My Bad and Some General News

2008-07-07T17:09:00.005-04:00

I have a long post written about some of my failure projects, but I have to take a picture of the gargantuan sunrise circle jacket sleeve, and somehow, I just can't seem to bring myself to do it! I can't explain it, but every time I see how long that sleeve is, I actually feel a little sick to my stomach. Seriously. Why didn't I stop knitting as soon as I saw how long it was getting? It's like I thought it would "ride up with wear."

That being said, I am bringing the mutant jacket to knitting night and forcing myself to finish the front hem. If that gets done, I'm going to cast on for the right sleeve and hope this time I'm not so much of a knittin' fool.

So, my apologies for not posting the longer, funnier post yet. I will do it tonight. Or maybe tomorrow. As soon as I can face up to the reality of the jacket mistake, I promise.

In other knitting related news: the Stained Glass Bag is felted and drying in the window as I speak. It looks lovely and it felted, but it barely shrunk at all, which really surprised me. I'm thinking about running for a second round of felting to get rid of a little more stitch definition. Usually, I run my stuff for 5-10 minutes and it's done. This bag went in for 20 minutes and I think it needs another go. I wonder if that's typical of Noro, or just related to the fact that I used towels in the washer instead of jeans, which is what I usually use. Anyway, I'm very proud of the bag and think it came out even better than I expected.

I got the kiddos a pool today and they are outside right now splashing in it with Grammy. Lily will turn five this week. It seems such a short time ago that she was born, it's almost frightening. We will be having a small celebration on her actual birthday, and then she will have a Little Pet Shop themed party this weekend. Unfortunately, only 4 kids can come. I always felt bad for kids born over Christmas because so many children are away at that time so a party is very difficult. It never occurred to me how many people are away during the summer, especially around July 4th! Jack, who was born in February, has a much better chance that his friends will be in town. I will be just heartbroken for Lily if any of the kids currently invited has to bow out.

Let's see, what else is new? I invented a kind of DPN project holder to try and sell on etsy. I love the one I'm using, but I need some feedback from other knitters on the length of needles they use. If you knit with DPNs, how long are they? I use 5 inches, but I think mine are short compared to most others. Anyway, once I get some of the bugs worked out and make some nicer sets (my prototypes are very primitive!) I'll post a picture here and put them on my etsy shop! If you haven't checked out my shop, you can go directly there by clicking the etsy icon on the side of the screen. Just some shameless marketing on my part. Gotta make some yarn money for my dream project (more on that another time, though).

I'm also having lots of fun with Google Analytics! It has a map that shows what part of the world my readers are from. So far, I have readers from the US, Australia, the UK and Iceland! I don't know why, but I get pretty excited seeing people from all over the place looking at my blog. I love comments, too (hint, hint) and would love to hear about your blog if you have one. I want to put some more knitting related blogs in my side bar and get rid of a few blogs I don't visit so often any more.

There's not much other news. I've been very knitcentric lately, so my next post will a kidcentric one. Lily drew a hilarious picture that must be displayed. And I'm going to post about my bad projects, I swear. Seriously.

Clap

2008-07-03T09:00:00.002-04:00

My Clapotis is zooming right along. I got to drop two rows of stitches last night. It was exciting, yet kind of scary. Even though the pattern calls for it, I still felt a little unsettled purposely dropping stitches all the way to the bottom of the work!

Of course, I had the usual pointless interaction with my husband when he got home from his weekly "guys' night out":

ME: Do you want to see my shawl?

JIM: (with absolutely no enthusiasm) Okay.

ME: See how pretty it will be? (said as I'm taking the project out)

JIM: Oh, yeah! (said before I even get a chance to spread the work on the couch)

ME: See how I dropped two rows of stitches? See?

JIM: That's really nice (still with a notable lack of enthusiasm)

ME: Feel this yarn, feel it! Isn't it soft?

JIM: Yep.

ME: This will be really gorgeous when it's done.

JIM: What is it supposed to be again?

At this point, I usually shove everything back in the knitting bag and walk away to prevent myself from poking him with pointy needles.

He does not have the love for yarn. We had knitting night on Tuesday and several of us commented on how most men don't "get" the whole fiber thing. I love the way good yarn feels, especially alpaca. I'm always saying I would knit sheets out of alpaca just so I could be completely immersed in it every night. I am only slightly embarrassed to admit that I have two skeins of alpaca yarn bought solely for petting with no project in mind. Most men also don't seem to get the whole "I made this from a ball of string" aspect of knitting. I still get a thrill of amazement watching a project emerge. I want to run around telling everyone "Look at me! I'm making this! Out of STRING! Can you believe it? I took some sticks and some string and made THIS! Come on, feel it...." etc. If you're reading this, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. Anyway, please note that, although I WANT to run around saying this, I don't actually do it. I don't want people to think I'm any more odd than they already do.

I will say this for Jim, he does get my need to have my obsessive hobbies and he never complains about how much I spend on them. He'll even suggest I make certain projects and tell me to get the yarn for them. Which is why I should really make the wool clogs he asked for in March. I swear, I'm going to cast them on as soon as I get rid of the Clap.

Get rid of the Clap! ha ha. See what I did there? Yeah, I'm a huge dork, which is why I try to hide my crazy crafting thing from the normal parents. I'm thinking of my kids and the potential for their future embarassment.

I'll post a picture later when I actually have one. Until then, you can simultaneously drool and feel horror while looking at the picture in this post about the beautiful Blue Heron yarn I'm working with for this project. Mine is in the Chesapeake colorway if you are interested. I cannot not praise this yarn too much. It's just gorgeous.

The UGG-ya

2008-07-02T17:45:00.002-04:00

I think Jack is getting just as creative at making up stories as his sister! It all started a few weeks ago when he told me the Big Bad Wolf drank all of my iced tea (actually, it was Jack himself who drank it). He then said the wolf was going to blow our house "all in pieces" but that he would catch him and eat him up.

I was pretty impressed. Jack hasn't been talking in sentences for very long, so it really stuck out when he suddenly told me a long story.

Today, he did something even more creative. He was down stairs in the playroom by himself. He came running upstairs and told me there was an UGG-ya in the basement and he was scared. I was on the phone with my mom at the time, and neither one of us could figure out what he meant by UGG-ya. I asked him if he meant "ogre" but he said "No, its a UGG-ya." I asked him what it looked like and he said "Come down with me."

I followed him downstairs and into the playroom. He walked about 4 feet from the door and then pointed out the door into the laundry room (which was dark). "It's in dere." I said "Where in there?" and he said "Oh, it's some clothes!" He ran out of the playroom and headed up the stairs. I started pointing at the various items of clothing in the laundry room. Was it Jim's shirts hanging on the clothes rack? No. Was it the pile of handwashing on top of the dryer? No. Was it the pile of clean clothes that Jim inexplicably dumped on the floor in front of the dryer? No. Was it the folded clothing on the table? No.

Finally, Jack said "I wanna go uptairs. I scared the UGG-ya!" I thought he meant he was too scared of the UGG-ya to stay in the playroom, so we both went back into the living room. Once we got there, this is what Jack told me about the UGG-ya:

The UGG-ya says "UGGGGGGG (deep growl) YAAAAAAH! (yell)" He is littler than Jack by about six inches. Jack is not scared of the UGG-ya because Jack "scared him away" when we were down in the basement. The UGG-ya is his friend Mimmo.

I was on the phone with mom the whole time and Jack's little story was cracking us both up. We both think he must be trying to say "ogre." He was just so serious about his story!

Kids. They act like little terrors one moment and then they tell you about the battle they won with the UGG-ya. It's moments like these that make me s glad I'm staying at home with the kids.

UGGGGGG-YAAAAAAH!

I Can Hear You Calling

2008-06-28T08:54:00.006-04:00

I have been pretty productive lately, knitwise. The gargantuan sleeve is still in the bottom of my knitting bag, but I cast on the Stained Glass Bag, which is a lot of fun. I have one more row to finish before I start the bottom and I think I can finish it this weekend.

That being said, I also have three sweaters, a pair of socks, a pair of mittens, and a stole on the needles that need to be finished up. That's not including the jacket-gone-wrong. Which brings me to the Blue Heron yarn.

Ahhh, the Blue Heron rayon metallic. I hate rayon and I'm not a fan of metallic yarn, but as soon as I saw the Blue Heron, I wanted to touch it. As soon as I touched it, I wanted to buy it. It's so soft and just has a hint of gold running through it. The colorway I bought looks like a peacock feather, with dark green, purple, and gold. I'd put up a picture for you, but pictures don't do this yarn justice. I spent more on one 550 yard skein of Blue Heron than I've spent on any other single skein of yarn I own, and I still think it was worth every penny.

For two weeks, the Blue Heron has been sitting in the basket in my office. I can hear it calling to me. It wants to be made into a clapotis shawl. I've been working very hard on the stained glass bag, but every day I've spent just a little time reading up on the Clapotis. I looked at a lot of different finished Clapotis shawls and read about modifications. I looked at all the Clapotis shawls people made with Blue Heron rayon metallic and read all of the comments. I printed out the pattern from Knitty and some notes from Ravelry projects discussing the modifications I want to make.

I started bargaining with the Blue Heron. First, I promised it I would make the Clapotis once the stained glass bag, circle jacket and socks were done. The Blue Heron was not amused. Then I offered to cast it on as soon as the circle jacket and bag were done. The Blue Heron just laughed mockingly and turned away. Finally, I begged the Blue Heron to consider waiting until the stained glass bag was done. The Blue Heron simply ignored me and kept up its siren call.

This morning, after a long struggle with my conscience, I decided that I could cast on the Clapotis this evening. I reasoned that the stained glass bag was almost finished, and I decided I would give the Clapotis to someone as a Christmas gift in order to justify starting yet another project.

I took out the skein, untied it and held it in my lap for a while. It is so beautiful that I started to wind it by hand just so I could touch it for a while. I quickly realized that even the beautiful hand of of Blue Heron rayon metallic was not worth winding for 550 yards, so I pulled out the ball winder and got it set up. I even convinced Lily to help me by turning the winder handle while I held the skein.

I am firmly convinced there is a knitting goddess. I think the knitting goddess would like me to balance out my selfish desire to knit things for myself with my selfless desire to make things for others. I think She is unhappy with the recent spate of projects I've made for myself. I think She totally knows that, even though I promised myself I would give the Clapotis as a Christmas gift, it's probably NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. In other words, you just can't fool the knitting goddess.

Several things happened as I started to wind up the Blue Heron (which was cheering me on, by the way). First, Jim cut his finger pretty badly and asked me to look up his injury on the internet to see if he ought to go to the ER. Second, while I was in the office looking up Jim's injury, Lily helped me out by winding some of the Blue Heron. The knitting goddess smiled somewhere. When I came back into the dining room and told Jim he should probably go to the ER, I saw this on the dining room table:

I worked on unwinding this knot (which is in the middle of the skein, by the way) from 3:30pm until 8:00pm. I stopped only to serve the kids dinner and to vacuum up the mess afterwards. At 7:00pm, I gave up and cut the yarn. I will end up with 3 skeins of this yarn -- the part on the ball winder, the tangled part, and the bulk of the yarn that was left in the skein after the knitting goddess struck me down. It is still not untangled. I was planning on casting it on tonight so that I would have something simple to work on when we have company tomorrow and Monday. I now think it quite likely that I will not finish straightening out this mess until well after our company has gone. As a result, I will be casting on the second sleeve of the circle jacket and working on that instead.

Jim did go to the ER and he's fine. He just needed a little super glue to fix up his cut. Of course, it took Melrose-Wakefield Hospital 3 hours to come to that conclusion. He would have been better off going to the walk-in clinic at MGH, even though it's farther away. I guess we both learned a lesson today. Jim's lesson: Unless it's an emergency, take the extra time to drive into Boston for medical care. My lesson: Don't mess with the knitting gods, you selfish bitch!

I've Been in a Terrible Knitting Accident

2008-06-22T15:00:00.004-04:00

This incident is something I have to blog about, if only to get over the sick feeling I get in my stomach every time I think about it.

I have been knitting, on and off, for more than 35 years. Don't you think that should mean something? And yet, during the last seven months of really concentrated knitting that I've been doing, I seem to make more rookie mistakes than someone who's been knitting for less than a year. Sigh.

So, about my terrible knitting accident. I have always admired the Sunrise Circle Jacket featured in Interweave Knits (scroll down the linked page a bit to see the pattern). Not wanting to buy the pattern, I put the jacket in my Ravelry queue and moved on to find great free patterns. I found enough patterns to give most of the people on my list some kind of handmade Christmas present. Awesome.

And then one day, out of the blue, I got an e-mail from Knitting Daily advising me that the Sunrise Circle Jacket and several other patterns were going to be offered for a free download for 1 month. I immediately downloaded the patterns and put them in my home computer pattern archive. From that moment onward, it was like I could hear the jacket calling to me. I would imagine it in different colors and yarns before falling asleep each night. I looked up every single project on Ravelry to see what other people used. I found myself looking at yarn with that project in mind every time I went yarn shopping. After about a month of fantasizing about the jacket, I broke down and bought some beautiful tone-on-tone variegated yarn in cranberry red.

I next spent three days measuring myself and working out how to alter the pattern to fit my measurements. I rewrote the sleeve/front pattern to make a wider upper sleeve, which required a calculator and math (ugh). I ordered two skeins of backup yarn just in case I had underestimated the yarn requirements. I checked and rechecked my gauge, and then I cast it on.

Even though the pattern is primarily straight stockinette stitch, I had a lovely time knitting. The sleeve went so fast it practically knit itself! My rewritten increases changed the width of the upper sleeve perfectly. There was only one problem. I saw that if I continued with the full number of increases, the sleeve was going to turn out much longer than the pattern called for. Since the width was already looking fine, I cut out the last two planned increases. In all, I modified the sleeve width by only 6 stitches in width (about an inch and a half).

And then I got into a terrible knitting accident. The sleeve measured exactly what the pattern called for when I stopped the increases. When I held it up to my arm, it seemed a little short. My arms are longer than average, so I thought "I'll just add two and a half inches in length to make the sleeves nice and long."

Once I added to the sleeve length, I started on the circular front. It, too, was a lot of fun to knit and I enjoyed myself. I had, by that time, read some of the blog entries about the pattern and picked up some good tips to fit the pattern even better. Many entries mentioned that the sleeves were too long.

I had been noticing the extreme length of my sleeve with growing trepidation for some time. The yarn I'm using is part mohair, so I thought "The mohair is stretching the piece a bit -- it will shorten up when I wash it and block it." I found myself frantically measuring the piece against my arm every two rows or so. I tried holding the work in my lap so the sleeve couldn't "grow" anymore, but the sleeve got longer anyway.

Last Monday, I took it out to knit the final rows before starting on the front edge hem. The sleeve was gargantuan. I laid out my favorite sweater on the floor and then forced myself to lay down the sweater sleeve/front on top of it for comparison. I literally fell down on my knees when I saw the two together. The sleeve of my jacket is at least 6 inches longer than the sleeve of my favorite sweater. AT LEAST. I may be in denial and unable to truly see how much longer it really is, but I know for sure it is at least 6 inches. Were I to wear this jacket as knit, the sleeve would hang down completely covering my hand and then some! It reminded me of something a Dr. Seuss character would wear. When I held the sleeve up to my leg, I realized it could double as a capri pant leg.

I took it to knitting night and showed it around. Nobody told me I was imagining things as I secretly hoped. Everyone was simultaneously amused and horrified. I put the monstrosity into the bottom of my knitting bag and cast on something else to work on while I figure out what to do.

I've talked it over with other knitters. I've looked on the blogs and other resources. I am going to have to put in a needle to hold the live stitches, CUT a stitch in the sleeve and RIP OFF a good 6.5 inches. Then I'll just knit the 11 rows required to make the fold and the hem. Easy, no?

For some reason, the thought just makes me feel awful. I'm getting over it, though. I'm ready to take out the jacket and try to finish off the left sleeve/front tonight so I can cast on for the other side. I'm not going to add any length this time, though.

If I can make myself do it, I will post a picture of the gargantuan sleeve. Until that time, here is a great picture of the beautiful (and normal sized) jacket front. Pretty, no?

My Etsy Store, Let Me Show You It!

2008-06-22T11:19:00.004-04:00

I finally registered my business and put up an etsy shop! It only took me a year.

I am only offering stitch markers right now, but I have big plans to expand over the next few months and offer handmade magnets, earrings, note cards, knitting patterns, and hand dyed wool and sock yarn! This, of course, assumes that I can find the time to be creative and make these things whilst simultaneously running two kids around all summer to the beach, school and play dates!

The creation of my new shop explains my lengthy absence from posting. Being the anal retentive lawyer type that I am, I did a lot of research into operating a business and all of its attendant requirements before setting up shop.

You can access my shop by clicking on the little widgety thing in the side bar. It will feature a picture of one of the items currently for sale in my shop! If you are local and you want to purchase something, let me know and I will be glad to remove the shipping costs for you so I can hand deliver it.

Check it out! I can make earrings in the same style as the stitch markers, too. I use sterling silver hoops. Enjoy.

My Kids Amuse Me

2008-06-08T23:25:00.002-04:00

Sorry for the radio silence lately, but after two weeks of adult only time, I'm now in North Carolina for a week with my parents, after which the kids and I will fly home. It is as hot as Hades here. Seriously. I do not kid, it's been about 100 for most of this week. Thank the powers that be for air conditioning.

But...I digress. The kids seems so much older after two weeks away, especially Jack. My dad took him to the barber. I told my parents to get him a "little boy cut" because we didn't have time to go to his usual barber before he left on his trip. My mom called to say my father had taken Jack to the barber and his cut was very short. I said "As long as it's not a 'high and tight.'" She said, and I quote "Oh, it's not, but it's a lot shorter than it was before." When I got to NC, I immediately saw that Jack was sporting a high and tight, contrary to my mother's claim. He looks like a miniature marine. Fortunately, the cut is very cute on him and I'll probably keep it that way until the fall. It also makes him look older.

The kids have been getting up to all kinds of shenanigans at Grammy and Granddaddy's house. My father has a giant Peanut M&M figure that shoots M&M's out of it's side (forgive me, but it is very hard to describe) if you crank its arm up and down. Lily "pressured" him into buying M&M's for it (she asked once) and the kids love getting a treat. In order to keep the candy consumption to a reasonable level, my father took to hiding the Peanut Man and telling the kids he had gone away. Lily somehow interpreted this to mean that the Peanut Man periodically goes away to the M&M Ball. Jack isn't as fanciful and just started hunting for Peanut Man and quickly located him in the closet. My father now hides him behind some boxes.

Now that Peanut Man is sometimes AWOL, Jack tries to get him to come back by holding his hand up to his ear and telling my father "I think I hear candy!" For some reason, this cracks me up. Lily, on the other hand, was happy in the thought that Peanut Man was having fun at the M&M Ball until yesterday, when she caught my father carrying him into his office. She ran out to the living room and told me "Peanut Man hasn't been at the M&M Ball! Granddaddy has been hiding him and moving him all along!" She was very indignant, and immediately left to confront my father. I don't know what he told her, but today she said he was at the M&M Ball again. Ah, to be a child again. Any time one of the kids discovers that Peanut Man has returned to my father's office, they run out and tell us that he's back. It's really funny.

In other big, big news, Jack suddenly started to use the potty four days ago. My mom bought him some big boy underpants and showed them to him when he first arrived. Fast forward to the day I arrived. Jack asked me to give him a lolly. I told him "You can have a lolly if you pee in your potty." He carried on and whined and then went away to play. About four hours later, however, he told my mom "I gotta pee!" and ran into the bathroom. To our surprise, he peed into his potty for the first time ever! He got his lolly, and then he told my mom "I wanta wear my big boy underwear." She let him put them on, but he refused to put pants on and asked to have his shirt off. He ran into the living room wearing only the underwear and said "Ta-Da!"

He's been using the potty one or two times a day ever since. He's also been wearing his big boy underwear for most of the day without incident. Unfortunately, he still usually insists on wearing ONLY the underwear. He did grudgingly allow me to dress him the other day when he got too cold from the AC. He still comes out and says "Ta-da!" when he first gets them on. In order to encourage his potty training, I supplmented the baseball themed underwear my mom provided with Thomas the Tank Engine and Bob the Builder. He is very serious when he picks out which pair to wear and discards two or three options before settling on a design. It's hilarious!

I'm knocking on wood that this self-training will last and become a permanent habit. I never thought he'd train this early. I feel like singing and dancing with joy, but I hold it in because I fear the potty training gods will smite me and send him back to the diaper. I'll keep you all posted. Send good potty vibes to Jack.

Childless!

2008-05-27T23:23:00.003-04:00

We've been without children for just over one week. So far, we have done the following adult-only activities:

1. Dinner at Mexico Lindo. I did not have a pleasant dining experience there. We've heard an equal amount of rave reviews and pans, so we're thinking there must be two chefs and we got the bad one.

2. Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull. Excellent film! If you like Indiana Jones and/or Harrison Ford, go and see it. Really.

3. Dinner at the Boston Grille, a sports bar/video game/pool hall. The Grille was nice, the games area, not so much. I think we would have had more fun there if 90% of the video games weren't BROKEN. I did get a couple of little plastic people who will stick to the wall if thrown there. Woot!

4. Massachusetts Sheep and Woolcraft Festival. I had lots of fun and bought more yarn, which always puts me in a good mood. We hung out for the rest of the day in Northampton, and Jim had fun, too. We had some difficulty finding a place to eat on the way home (long story...) and ended up at Cracker Barrel. Both of us ordered breakfast for dinner and both of us ate too much.

We had small group of friends over for a barbecue on Memorial Day, which was a lot of fun. There were ribs, delicious hamburgers seasoned with herbs and spices, grilled veggies, corn, watermelon and pie. We all had cocktails made with fresh fruit and mint (mine was a Mojito). The weather was just perfect, too.

Jim worked today but will be taking the rest of the week off so we can hang out, work on some stuff around the house and really enjoy the last half of our vacation without kids.

Meanwhile, the kids are having a great time at my parents' house. From what I can gather, they are eating candy and ice cream, watching awful television like "Barney" and generally having their every whim catered to. Sounds like fun! We call them twice a day. Typical conversation with Lily:

Me: Hi, Lily!

Lily: Hi, Mommy! Can I talk to Papa?

Me: (Version 1): He's at work. (Version 2): Okay.

Lily: Bye, Mommy!

Typical conversation with Jack:

Me: Hi, Jackie!

Jack: Hi, Mommy. (Version 1): I wanna talk a Papa! (Version 2): Grammy gave new shoes. Grandaddy go for walking. (Version 3): Mine plane fell inna dish washer!

Me: Okay!

Jack: Bye, Mommy!

We really do miss them, even if it is fun to have so much adult-only time. The house is clean and very quiet.

Wii Fit is Here!

2008-05-23T13:52:00.003-04:00

I asked Jim to get me a Wii for my birthday last year. At the time, they were difficult to find due to a shortage(they may still be difficult to find, but since I'm not currently looking for one, I don't know). ANYWAY, after some trouble, Jim managed to scare one up on Craig's List.

The primary reason I wanted the Wii is because I was told they were going to bring out an exercise program that worked with it. I later discovered that the Wii Fit program was not coming out until May 2008.

It's here! It comes with a little step platform that you can stand on. It weighs you and calculates your BMI based on your height and weight. It takes you through 4 types of workouts: Yoga, Strength, Balance, and Aerobic. I was skeptical at first, but it's really fun. The Yoga program is great because the platform tracks your center of balance and you work to align your body properly by keeping a dot on the screen within a certain area. It's challenging and you have the satisfaction of knowing you are holding the pose correctly.

I also like the step aerobics. You follow the footsteps as you step and kick on the platform. I made it to the advanced program today. I must admit, I really chuckled at the warning drawings at the beginning showing someone stepping off of the edge of the platform and falling. About halfway through the program, I almost fell! You really get going at one point, and I wasn't careful about my footing.

The strength and yoga workouts provide you with a trainer (you get to select male or female). The trainer says encouraging things, like "Great Job!" I really enjoy it when I totally fail to stand on one foot and have to step down and the trainer still says "Great Job!" Unfortunately, the trainer's mouth doesn't really move, so he's a little creepy when he's talking. You can make him shut up by pressing the A button to move him along. He can be a little wordy at times and he is very repetitive. I've been told about 100 times that doing yoga will build my core strength. Unless there will be a test later, I would rather get right to the workout.

You are rated on how well you perform. I'm a yoga master at most of the poses (having taken yoga and pilates for quite a while), but a workout novice at most of the strength activities.

All of your progress is tracked on the program. You can see how your BMI and weight has changed, set goals for yourself and keep track of how much time you spend working out. I've been using the program every day since I got it, so we'll see how long it keeps me entertained. So far, it's pretty fun!