There Oughta Be A Law

So I decided that the root of all that is messy in my house is the pantry. If the pantry is disorganized we don't put things away; if we don't put things away they end up on the counter; if the counter is cluttered things get dumped on the table, and so on and so on.


Today the mailman (yes, it's a man) brought one of those coupon packets and inside was an advertisement for a storage/organizing/shelf building place. I decided to see what magic they could perform on my pantry.




Here's an example of what they can do. Jeez, if I had that much room in my pantry, I'd put a rocking chair in there, call it "mom's room" and close the door. Organization problem solved.

Socks, Yarn and The Heat of the Sun

I finished the socks that I've been thinking about for two years. The picture doesn't do them justice. The colors are so rich, and it was mesmerizing to watch the colors change. Each time a new color would show up I thought it was the best color there was; then the next color would show up.

Since I spent more money on this yarn than on any other yarn, I waited to find a perfect pattern. Pablo Blue proved to be just about the best pattern. It's easy to memorize (and very easy to figure out where you are) and looks wonderful. I may even break my rule, and make another pair with the same pattern.]

Also, I got some Wollmeise yarn in a swap with a fellow Raveler in Germany. This yarn is highly sought after here, so I am very lucky. Now that I've seen the yarn in person, I think that it prized because the colors are so rich. I know it will be a while before I find a sock pattern for this new acquisition.

And, may I say, it's HOT, HOT, HOT!!! All of these beautiful wool socks and the only shoes I can bring myself to wear are flip flops.

When You're Hot, You're Hot

Between this insufferable, stifling heat and my hot flashes, I spend most of the day and night wilting. Staying inside with a bunch of active kids doesn't work for long, so I need to find some creative ways to keep cool and give the kids the energy buster they need.

I keep looking at the neighborhood pool, but it has absolutely no shade; so is not much of an option during the heat of the day. We just put in some new grass (to fill in the dirt patch left from taking down the derelict playscape), so the kids can't run in the backyard through a sprinkler.

What happened to the summers of my youth? I used to spend most of the day outside. Were the summers cooler? Probably - California is not as hot as Texas. Also, there were actual trees where I grew up - we're not so lucky here. Our lone tree is still a relative baby. It's an oak tree, and they grow pretty slowly.

Will the summer memories be happy ones for my children? As homeschoolers we tend to do more schoolwork during the hot summer months, so I worry that their memories of those 'lazy days of summer' will be full of math equations and grammar.

Yesterday we watched "The King and I" because the middle child and I had just finished reading "Anna and the King" and I'd promised to watch the movie when we finished the book. I've seen the movie before (or so I thought) and it wasn't at all like the book. Guess that's a good lesson to learn. We agreed that the book was much better.

Oh no! Time for the smiling child to listen to patriotic songs for school - something about a boll weevil. In the meantime, the middle child is practicing his guitar (the song is totally unrelated to boll weevils); the teen is doing calculus - even though I told him he didn't need to do any math this summer; the princess is waiting for me to do music flash cards, and the dog is trying to find a cool spot to sleep (it's his job).

No wonder I'm loosing my mind.

Socks and Such

I finished my Anni socks for the month - Lazy Leaves. The pattern was leaves, and since I had green yarn, I went with it. Love the socks, but since it's heading into the depths of summer, I won't be able to wear them for months. The one and only benefit, as I see it, to the extreme heat is that my lovely wool socks will last a lifetime.

Also, Saturday was Knit in Public Day, so we went to Yarnorama because they had advertised that they were going to set up for sock yarn dyeing. Well, the princess chose colors for me (red, blue and green) and I set to dyeing my yarn. As I was the first guinea pig, all of the ladies wanted to watch; then they wanted to "help". Soon I had additional colors added: Yellow and orange.

The yarn is colorful, to say the least. The middle child thinks it looks like clown yarn, the princess says it looks like lots of rainbows. Me, I think it looks like an explosion at the sno-cone factory (or, more accurately, it looks like the easter bunny threw up).

I've started knitting socks from this wacky yarn. No blobs of color like I expected; more like teeny confetti sprinkles. The man I married says they'll probably end up being my favorite socks. We'll have to see about that, but they are quite colorful and bright enough so that I can knit on them in the dark.

Haven't started the pattern yet (I'm almost done with the toe), but I think that I'm going to use the Waterfall Socks pattern from WendyKnits. It looks like a perfect "carry around" pattern - easy to memorize, not too boring, and looks pretty. Just hope she doesn't cringe when she sees what I've done with her pattern.

Choose Your Colors Wisely

I admit it - I'm a sock knitting junkie. I always have a pair of socks going at home, and also like to have a pair of socks to take along with me so that I can knit when I'm waiting.

Take along socks have to have an easy to memorize, yet fun to knit pattern. My current take along pattern is Pablo Blue. The pattern is great - several rows of pattern, but it makes perfect sense and is easy to remember.

The yarn, on the other hand, is problematic. It's beautiful, but the colors are so dark that it's hard to see what I'm doing. I sat waiting for the middle child to have a guitar lesson, and the room was dim, and I made a mistake that required so much frogging that I just decided to start over. This is against the concept of a "fun, take along" project.



So now the Pablo Blue socks have been moved to home knitting and I'm on the lookout for a new pattern. I'm going to use pink yarn - that oughta be easy to see.

How I Came To Be 31

For years I told my kids that I was 29. It was a joke, they knew it, I knew it; but somehow it made me feel younger. That is until the princess learned about birthdays.

Two years ago, the princess realized that on birthdays you become a year older. Until that time, this concept had eluded her; but after her 4th birthday she knew.

On my birthday that year she announced that I was now 30. Being as how that's a bit younger than my actual age, I accepted this new fact of life. Then the next year, I became 31.

All was well until my boys started trying to confuse the situation. How could mom be 31, they'd ask the princess, if the eldest child (aka Thor) was 25? For a while I was able to distract her with shiny things, but I knew that could not last.

"Mom is 31 and Thor is 25?" Her little brain works diligently at this math problem. Her beautiful, trusting eyes look up at me.

"Time was different when I was little." The answer seems to have quieted her for now.

In the mean time, the boys have been threated with dire consequences if they bring up my age again.

The Sun Is Out

We've had quite a few days lately without the sun shining. I know that it's the end of January, but we're used to the sun. So today, it's sunny and not too cold (52º), so it's time to be outside again.


In the spirit of fun, the man I married is going to work on the grill. Being true Southwesterners, we love to grill. We'll grill anything. We love our grill. But, alas, our grill has a problem.


Fire! Something has been wrong with it (as in - there is a blazing inferno everytime we try to cook), so the man I married took the thing apart and discovered that the burner is toast.


Normally this would mean a trip to the grill store (or an order over the internet), but our grill manufacturer has gone out of business. So, we will now have a Frankengrill.


He bought a new burner and will now configure it to work with our old grill. Fingers are crossed, meat is at the ready. We trust this man, so we know there will be meat charring on our grill in time for dinner.


And, in case all else fails, salad is good too.

edit: It's working! Hot dogs for lunch!

When Your World is Spinning, Make Yarn

I've always been fascinated by spinning wheels. Not really sure why, but I love them. In October I had the opportunity to watch someone spin on a drop spindle, and I was smitten.



Thanks to craigslist, I got a really great deal on a barely used spinning wheel. So, now I spin with drop spindles and with my wheel. Actually, I mainly use the wheel to ply, but who's counting.







Anyway: There is something hypnotic about taking a wad of wool and spinning, spinning, spinning. You end up with yarn! It's amazing. I keep thinking that there must be some piece of me that is autistic - I just love the spinning. It's like meditating without actually having to think. You have to focus, but you don't have to count (kinda like knitting stockinette). And the wool is very forgiving - if you make a mistake, or don't like what's going on; you just unspin it and do it again.



So now I have actual yarn that I've made. I'm still trying to figure out what to do with it. It's pretty to look at and pet, so it may just have to find a pretty bowl and sit around, wowing all who see it. I found a pattern for a purse that I'm thinking of making. I need a new purse, I've got lots of balls of yarn that need a purpose in life. Seems like the perfect match to me.

All I have to do is break down and use my precious balls. As my family is fond of saying: Those are some good balls.

A Clean Dog is a Happy Dog?

Ed is a very dirty dog. When clean, he had a beautiful, curly, very soft, white coat. But Ed hasn't looked like that for a while.

It's the poodle in him: It matts at the drop of a hat. Unfortunately, I believed the middle child when he told me that he wanted it to be his responsibility to brush the dog. The middle child lies.

What he actually does is to sit on the couch and brush a teeny tiny spot on Ed's back and then just pet him while everyone else does their chores. To be honest, the middle child does anything possible to avoid work, so I should have seen this coming.

Today I finally got up the gumption to give the dog a bath. Ed is very good when he's getting a bath. He stands still for the indignity of it all, and doesn't shake until I tell him it's okay. Unfortunately it's very cold outside today, so he has to stay inside until he's dry. Also, it has been very dry here, so our yard is mostly just a bunch of dry grass and dirt. This means that on a normal day Ed rolls in this mess and gets full of sprigs and twigs - but on a day when he's wet, those sprigs and twigs combine with the dirt (that was our lawn) and he becomes a brown muddy mess.

Not gonna happen on my watch!

So, for now, Ed must stay inside, must stay clean, and must deal with my haphazard grooming attempts. He looks like a poor little lamb who was shorn by Mike Rowe.

Do you think that the other dogs will make fun of him?

Things and Thoughts

I haven't posted for a looooong time. Holidays, family dilemmas, flu and cedar fever kept me busy and not wanting to share. But, the man I married keeps asking why I'm not posting, so here goes.

My new years promise for 2008 was to knit every pair of Anni's socks for the year, and I did it. I now have enough hand knit socks so that I can wear only knit socks. What a treat it is - although I am questioning my choice of sock yarn colors. What was I thinking? I've already knit my January 2009 pair, so I'm planning to continue the knit-ahton. Here they are, in all their glory, my Sockamania socks from 2008.

I've already finished my first pair for 2009, so I'm on my way. Here's that picture:

I'm currently knitting the BareNakedLacy socks with leftover Sockotta yarn. I've been wanting to knit these socks, but never seemed to find the time. I've been calling these the "Bare Naked Lady" socks because I misread the pattern name the first time I saw it - may have had something to do with the fact that the smiling child was smitten with the Bare Naked Ladies at the time.

And happy birthday yesterday to my teen - now 16. He's a joy and all he wanted for his birthday was a special meal and dessert and an entire day alone in the house. Gotta love that boy.

What Makes Me Feel Young

They say that smell is one of those things that can take you back. No one forgets the smell of a crayon or the smell of freshly cut grass on a warm summer day.

For me, songs work the same way. I can hear a song from long ago and suddenly I'm transported to the past. Luckily the only songs that seem to do this are ones associated with happy memories.

Here are some of my favorites:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKUBTX9kKEo

The Who "Baba O'Riley" - this reminds me of hanging out at Mary Sue's house (yes, I had a friend named Mary Sue - how 50's). They had a cool pool and horses. What a great place to be when you're a young teen aged girl.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6h0Od2F1wk

Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons - Marge and I spent many hours singing into our brushes listening to these guys.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQTRIrFmL94

Orleans - "Still the One" combined with M*A*S*H - Does it get any better? This clip combines high school and college for me.

Now my poor kids will have to listen to oldies for the rest of the day. Luckily they don't seem to mind - they probably just think it's funny to watch me dance around and sing.

Shopping and Kids

Lately the princess hasn't been willing to let me leave her sight. I had been in the habit of leaving her with her brothers so that I could go to the grocery store by myself. This cut the shopping time in half, and cost less since I didn't have any little people asking for food and saying that they were starving to death (even though I'd just fed them).

But, since returning from vacation, the princess has been uber attached to me. Today she actually threw a fit insisting that she needed to come with me or she'd cry. I decided to dig in and told her that she absolutely was not going to come with me. In the end we agreed that if she stayed with her brothers (without crying) while I went to the warehouse store, she could come with me to the grocery store.

The teen reported that she'd been good, so the princess got to come with me. I also needed to run a few extra errands, so it was a long trip. Every time she got naggy I just reminded her that coming with me was a privilege reserved only for the best behaved children, and she settled down.

It still took a lot longer with her in tow than it would have taken without her, but I reminded myself that it wouldn't be much longer that she'd actually want to come with me and I let her pick out new yogurt. Isn't it nice when children are still young and sweet enough that picking out yogurt flavors is a treat? And besides, she put on her nicest dress and brushed her hair. How could I say no?

Knit and Glo

A year or so ago I got the bright idea that if I could find yarn that glows in the dark, I could knit things like moons and stars and they would glow in the dark and my kids would be thrilled. I even found yarn, but it was very expensive. So that plan was abandoned.

In the Sunday adds, Michael's advertised that they had Glow in the Dark yarn on sale, so I went to check it out. The skeins are pretty small (less than 200 yards), but the idea that I could knit something that glowed had me willing to make do.

Currently I'm almost finished making the princess a pink glow in the dark scarf. This should come in handy if it EVER gets cold here, and she is outside in the pitch dark (after spending at least five minutes in direct light). What will really happen is that she'll spend time running back and forth between the lighted bedroom and the dark bathroom so that she can watch her scarf glow.

My suggestion for the smiling child was to make a stuffed animal that glows. He thinks that sounds cool, and is currently deciding what type of small stuffed thing he'd like. I'm hoping he picks a bunny, because that is a very easy pattern. With my luck he'll want some complicated thing for which there is no pattern.

The middle child will probably want a knitted something related to fencing. But there is no fencing/knitting projects. I'm thinking of combining the glo yarn with some regular yarn and making him an illusion something. I'm thinking that an illusion scarf with a skull would be way cool. Of course, my other color would probably be black, not pink.

The teen isn't into knitted things. He has his big afghan on his bed. He doesn't have a hat, but it is so rarely cold here..... I'll have to do some thinking.

I got started on the new scarf for my MIL. It's a beigey color and very soft. Hope she likes it. Last Christmas when she opened the slew of knitted dishcloths I'd made her (she always swipes the dishcloths I knit while driving to her house for visits) she got all excited and thought it was a shawl. Expecting/hoping for a shawl and then seeing a bunch of dishcloths is apparently quite a letdown. So this year, she'll get a shawl.

Why We Didn't Go

Juniper Pollen

Ragweed Pollen

These lovely pollens are making me miserable. I just couldn't bear the thought of being in the beautiful outdoors and feeling like I might succumb at any moment. For some reason (probably the extreme lack of rain) my allergies are much worse this year. There doesn't seem to be a concoction that helps much. So, we took the trailer back to it's home away from home, and resigned ourselves to trying another weekend.

The teen had his braces adjusted on Thursday and isn't feeling too great, so he was more than happy to stay home this weekend. The smiling child and the middle child were still itching to go, so the man I married took them to an outdoorsy festival. They'll be shooting, fishing and paddling all day. They'll arrive home this evening tired, dirty and sunburned; but it is the best we can do. If they'd gone camping, they'd have also added mosquito bitten, but this will have to do.

The smiling child didn't want me to tell the princess where he was going; he was afraid that she'd want to come and that would ruin the "guy" day. Since she's been in a "I need to be with mommy" mood lately, I knew that I could tell her the truth and she'd still want to stay with me. I was right. She's excited to have a girl day (she knows that the teen will just want to hang around the house anyway) and is already planning what color we'll paint our nails. I might even pull out the hidden stash of "fairy dust" and fill her with glitter!

Wish me luck - I still haven't gotten the glitter out of her hair from our visit to the mouse, and we've been home for three weeks.

Camping Plans

We bought a trailer at the worst possible time (probably why we got such a great deal). It was summer, it was hot, it was a miserable time to be outside. So we parked the trailer and waited.

Now it's finally time to go camping again. The weather is lovely. The man I married and I decided that we should go camping this weekend. The reservations have been made. But (insert whiny voice here) we don't want to go camping - we feel yucky - it's too much trouble - what will we eat?

But we're tough, the man I married and I: yes we are. We're going camping this weekend. I'll pack lots of allergy medicine. We'll have fun. We won't whine.

I'm sure that the reason it seems like so much trouble is that we've only gone camping once. And that time was VERY hot, and the campground was really not much more than a parking lot. We pretty much spent the entire time inside the trailer playing games. The only outside fun was watching the park rangers catch a stray dog.

To make life easier on this, our first trip, I've decided that I won't even try to pack food. We'll set up camp and go to the nearby WalMart and shop. The kids love to have bacon for breakfast and we can get by for two days on hot dogs and sandwiches.

We're taking the dog too. Last time he got a bit (a bit?!!) nervous and wanted to sit in my lap the whole time. I'll give him a bath tomorrow so he'll at least be clean when he sits on my lap. We can give the bird some extra food, so he should be fine.

Hope we still remember how to do everything. If you see us looking confused, please feel free to help us out.