Chocolate Sheep v2.0

Well, this is my official first birthday of my blog. Someone mentioned in the comments that they thought I had been blogging longer than that.

That’s sort of true.

A few years ago, upon being threatened with having to go work at Target, I came up with a Master Plan for working from home. I created an entity called Wisconsin Crafter, which would be an e-mail newsletter covering craft-related news and events across the state. My quilting group signed up, and I was off.

I started with events in Portage County and gradually added more areas. I subscribed to every mailing list I could find, and had signup sheets at a couple of relevant shows. By the time it became nearly unmanageable, I had about 150 people on my mailing list. It was a little challenging, but really fun.

Part of my newsletter was what I called “Beth’s Luddite Blog.” I wrote a few lines almost every day about stuff that was happening, and put it at the end of the newsletter in chronological order. I did an “Editor’s Message” too, which was a little longer; I have posted a couple of them on the blog.

The next phase of everything was the great Wisconsin Crafter website. It had an events calendar, forums, private messaging, photo albums, a real blog, book reviews, and all kinds of other goodies. Somehow it just didn’t take off the way the newsletter had, but it was definitely easier to do than the newsletter (thanks to the hard work put in, mostly gratis, by my IT guy, who has my everlasting gratitude — see below).

Phase Three was blogdom! Now we were on to something. Free, quick, easy, fun, all that good stuff. And Wordpress gives you statistics out the wazoo, which is exactly how I like it. That all started a year ago. I left witty comments on other blogs until, voila! I somehow attracted the six loyal readers I have today. Thank you all!

Wisconsin Crafter isn’t dead at all, but the website is being completely redone (cf. IT guy above, still mostly gratis, thankyou thankyou thankyou) to turn it into a more corporate site for the small publishing I plan to do. The first project is big, really big, but I need to just buckle down and get it together during January, then I’ll be all ready to promote it. And I get smaller project ideas all the time, like knitting pattern booklets and coffee table books about quilting. I hope to have a shopping cart there someday, as well as solicitations for manuscripts from outside writers so I can work as an editor and publisher instead of trying to write everything myself.

But that’s just my odd blogging history. If it seems I’ve been doing this for more than a year, there’s a good reason. Maybe as I stagger under self-imposed deadlines next month, I’ll pull a Lynn Johnston (a la For Better or For Worse) and present “vintage” blog entries from time to time. Children were born, knitting was learned, quilts were started and finished. It was a good time.

Thanks for sharing my crafting with me!

Today’s Impossible List: Pack for a weeklong trip, prepare road snacks, clean the house, prepare the knitting for a weeklong trip, take the dog to the kennel, make a fantastic dinner using everything that must be cooked up before we go (pork tenderloin, mashed potatoes, and fancy mushrooms and onions?), and go to Knit Night.

And knit and knit and knit and knit….

Merry Christmas!

Here’s my version for June 26. If you’d like to do this, consider yourself tagged, go to Wikipedia and type in your birth month and day. Now list 3 events, 2 birthdays, and one holiday that occurred on your birthday.

Events

1284 - According to legend, the Pied Piper lures 130 children of Hamelin away.
1948 - The Western allies start an airlift to Berlin after the Soviet Union has blockaded West Berlin.
1974 - The Universal Product Code is scanned for the first time to sell a package of Wrigley’s chewing gum at the Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio.

Birthdays

1898 - Willy Messerschmitt, German aircraft designer (d. 1978)
1961 - Greg LeMond, American cyclist

Holiday

International Day in Support of Torture Victims

The meme didn’t say to look up deaths, but I did. I clicked on Soccer, the dog actor, and found this. How sad. Even my four year old daughter recognized him immediately. Here is another link for poor Soccer.

(this line intentionally left blank)

And, a Ravelry footnote. I finally gave in and added my name to the waiting list. Looks like this is where the action will be, even if I don’t take full advantage of all the features. Then I clicked on something that told me where I was in the queue.

Found you!

• You signed up on Today
• You are #18656 on the list.
• 12488 people are ahead of you in line.
• 0 people are behind you in line.
• 31% of the list has been invited so far

Wow, that’s a few knitters huh? Maybe there will be a feature to allow these cyber knitters to find IRL knitters close to them. It would be cool to see someone actually knit. (No offense Ann K. or Brandy, but when either or you were here, did you knit anything? Nope. Maybe next time?)

Yesterday was Mr. Beth’s birthday. (All together now: happy birthday Mr. Beth! Okay.) I struck a deal: the only knitting I would do, would be on a project that was just for him. Agreed. So the pattern I picked was one I’ve wanted to try for a long time. It’s a Red Cross pattern distributed during WWII, kind of a knit-one-for-a-sailor deal. I downloaded it from the web site for the Red Cross Museum, here.

It’s a watch cap in navy blue, but it’s the strangest pattern I’ve worked on so far. Maybe I just have to pretend it’s an EZ pattern and trust it. But still.

There are no indications about the thickness of the yarn (I picked worsted weight) or the size of the needles (I picked US size 4, I’m a loose knitter).

You start by casting on 140 stitches. Yes, for a hat.

You work back and forth in seed stitch for six rows, then in the round in single rib for 12 inches. You are supposed to be on three dpns when you work in the round, but I just couldn’t fathom dividing this many stitches on three needles for a hat, so I substituted a 24 inch circ.

The stitches are scrunched on the 24 inch circ.

I feel I may be knitting a woolen motorcycle helmet.

Here’s the best part: after knitting one foot in single rib, I am supposed to knit plain for an inch, then draw up the final stitches and sew up the seed stitch band. That’s it, all done. A fourteen-inch-tall hat two feet around. I guess it would fit any sailor as well as another. Maybe it self-felted during active duty?

I’m just starting the rib part and am wondering why I didn’t notice that almost the whole pattern alternates knit and purl, which I am especially slow at. Because it’s for Dear Husband, and the wool is good (Plymouth Galway), I will press on. But if you plan to knit this hat, or have knitted this hat, please share your experience! I keep telling myself, it was intended to be easy.

P.S. I plan to tour an alpaca farm sometime this week, to see how they are set up and get ideas for my own future farm. Whee!

Tomorrow is my birthday. My kids are 8, 4.5, 3, and just-past-one, and I will be turning forty. Normally I don’t regard my age at all. I came late to the parenting gig after spending a decade in troubled relationships, about which that is already ’nuff said. I try to ignore the chickie-poo tattooed and pierced moms I will necessarily be hanging out with as I take my kids to school and pick them up — it is what it is. Besides, now that I have acquired Instant Knitter Friends, age differences seem to make no difference to them.

But the 4-0, which seems to mean “I have to buy a Miata now” to men (these days, maybe it’s a Mustang), means a different set of things to women. Basically, I now have doctor appointments to dread, and I have one eye constantly monitoring risk factors and mortality. With the two normal eyes plus the one in the back of my head constantly targeted on the children, I don’t know where this other eye is, but I assume it’s there. Maybe it’s the sector of my brain newly dedicated to clicking on links about breast cancer and ovarian cancer and menopause. (What fun!)

Tomorrow I am going to try to shut this eye. I know, it’s the first day of being forty, I should let it do what it needs to do. But it’s my eye, darnit, so here’s the plan.

* The first thing I eat or drink tomorrow morning will have chocolate in it. Instant mocha coffee, chocolate chips out of the bag, chocolate chip mint ice cream — I don’t care. We’re going to start this day right.

*  I am buying myself the cake I want. For about a decade I have wanted an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen. Nobody asked, I didn’t tell, I never had one. Tomorrow is the day. I will even share it with the kids. I just want a little bit.

* I am going to knit. Right, how is that different from any other day? Tomorrow I am not going to feel guilty about it or wait until I conquer the world to have five minutes to myself. I’ll just knit, right in front of real live people. If they complain I’ll just remind them that it’s my birthday and I get to do one thing that I want to do. This is it.

* As usual, I will call my mother just about lunchtime, and ask if she’s feeling better now. I just think it’s the considerate thing to do.
That’s tomorrow. Here’s yesterday. The weekend showing went okay, but the house only finished in the middle of the pack with the show-ees. (They want something with more character. Boy, will they live to regret that! Kids these days.) The good news is it showed better than most of the other houses in the same price range, so we’re on the right track.

While they were looking at the house, we caravanned (motorcycle followed by van full of kids) to Milwaukee, dropped off the motorcycle, and returned home. I cast on slowly for the HSS but was worried about dropping stitches off the size 1? 0? needles, so put it away. Then I cast on for the racing knitting, but only knit a few rows before I found myself patternless. (More about that tomorrow.) I put that away too.

Mr. Beth: “We have a two and a half hour drive and you have no knitting?” So eventually I picked up the socks again and carefully worked on my 1×1 rib cuff.

I just dread the first five rows or so of sock cuff. It takes about that long for my stitches to hang together, and until then I am a nervous wreck. It may sound strange to tackle that part in a moving car using double-pointed needles, but it’s the only time I’m not going to be constantly interrupted to provide a drink, stop a fight, clean a room, or change a diaper. So I do my best. As of now I’m still in that tentative zone, but my goal is to finish the first cuff tonight.

I also put up brackets for a curtain rod for the bathroom window, which Mr. Beth framed on Sunday morning (replacing the handyman’s framing from Saturday morning). Pictures coming of that, too!

So I’ll see you tomorrow, with my ice cream cake and my knitting. When I will perhaps be a little bit wiser.

P.S. Happy birthday Sheila, my birthday buddy from March 99 Moms! The card is in the mail. No really, it is. 

Spam Quote of the Day

Hello ))) I know that you don’t like this spam, but theese sites are amazing.

Just to give you an idea of exactly how amazing these sites are, each URL contained the phrase “wet-party.” Not exactly a Continental cast-on video tutorial, is it? Now that would be amazing.

Where to start? Mr. Beth was working from home last Thursday and Friday after returning from his trip to Maine…and somehow, when he’s home the routine always changes and I don’t manage to blog. I am going to have to do something about that.
I will just give updates on everything I can think of, Dad style, but with a little more detail.

Mr. Beth got home from the Maine trip (via Boston and Milwaukee) on Wednesday afternoon. He brought me the current edition of the Quilter’s Travel Companion, and a huge cake of hand-dyed sock yarn from End of the World Farms. In fact, we shopped for it together last Monday. Via cell phone I gave him turn by turn directions to Quiltessentials, a knitting and quilting store in Auburn, Maine, and he kept talking to me as he went into the store and sifted through the sale bins. Later he used the cell to e-mail me a picture of the yarn. (This was pretty fun. Yes, I know I’m a geek.)

After that conversation I re-dyed the Merino. I mixed up some Grape Kool-Aid concentrate in a squirt bottle, laid the washed and rinsed skeins on a plastic bag one at a time, then applied color, squished it in, and set the color in the microwave. The colors look a little dull again, but I guess it’s better than fakey-bright. I put the skeins in a Longaberger basket and keep carrying them around with me and petting them.

Did I ever mention Lauren handspun this Merino? She did a really good job and it is so soft. I am entertaining several notions of what to knit it up into, but for now it makes a very nice pet. I wish my photos didn’t distort the color and wash it out so much!

We didn’t end up doing anything special for Tom on his birthday, except the kids sang Happy Birthday to him practically every time they saw him. He had his one-year checkup on Thursday, and he had gained less than a pound in six months. The doc recommended we put him on a formula designed for toddlers, and feed him everything we can think of. They also tapped an arm vein to do some blood work to make sure it’s just lack of calories that is keeping him so small and not a thyroid thing. With all that in mind, I skipped the immunizations. We’ll do those next month when he has some more heft to him. (He weighed 14 pounds, 15 ounces.) You can tell this was taken the day after his birthday because Jack hasn’t ripped the band-aid off his arm yet.

The new kitchen floor was installed on Thursday. I know it is an inexpensive vinyl but it looks so much better than what we had. (And yes, we will be putting up some new baseboard.)

While the floor was being installed, the dogs had to be outside in their doggie area. Sometime during the day, they barked, and the neighbors once again sicced the Humane Society on us. They did this twice in a week when we first moved here. Fortunately I think the Humane Society has a note in the file by now that our neighbors have “issues.” Sigh. I’d better not say anything else. I just hope whoever moves into this house does not have dogs.

I snuck out at some point (Saturday night?) and went to the Blue Bead to get some items for stitch markers. I do not wear jewelry but I can see how this bead thing could be totally addictive. I have my rosary done, so I don’t need to get into this further than stitch markers. But still. Neat stuff there, and it’s a very small shop. So I have most of what I need for the stitch markers I have promised I would make, and a little extra.

No bead pictures here, I have to be able to surprise people once in a while!

At some point I cast one for the pair to the baby sock. As of right now I think I’m ready to do the heel flap, but I want to check the pattern directions again. Colleen says she wants to have a sock collection, all of socks that look just like this one. Urg!

Let’s see…the dumpster came on Friday morning and left this morning. Colleen and Jack helped by throwing the couch cushions in. Then Mr. Beth and I threw in the couch. It was great to see it go. Ann K., I’ll bet you’re happy to see it go, too, though you were nice enough not to say anything about how awful it looked.

Oh yes, the Mother’s Day update. I scored big on my favorite chocolates, including Dark Chocolate with Marzipan filling, which I recommended to another blogger (I don’t remember who). And I was totally shocked when Mr. Beth had the kids bring in a huge shopping bag containing…the four skeins of Sirdar Country Style purple yarn I whined about not getting from the Herrschners clearance rack! I blogged about it on a Thursday, and he went there on Friday after work and snagged them. Three. Weeks. Ago. Now, you have to understand that when Mr. Beth buys me something he knows is wonderful, it just kills him that he can’t tell me right away. He is usually begging me to let him give it to me immediately. I don’t know how he kept this secret, but the beautiful yarn was sitting in the back of his car for three weeks.

I have not found the perfect pattern for using the yarn (the sweater I wanted to make with it turns out to call for something super bulky), so I am designing my own seamless sweater a la Elizabeth Zimmermann. I just have to get her EPS explanation in hand so I can figure out the numbers. For the body size I want to have by the time I finish the sweater. I would like to be a Medium.

What else? No quilting progress to report. I still haven’t grafted the Moebius. But I did finish a Hufflepuff beret for the Charmed Knits KAL, and won myself a free craft book for the other HP hats I sent in last week. I get to pick from anything in the Wiley craft catalog, does anyone have any suggestions?

Whew! I am sure I am forgetting something. But it’s good to be back. I missed this!

Well, here’s the update on Mama Robin. After I moved her nest from

to

we had some rain last night. While I was talking to Mr. Beth this morning I looked out the window and saw

I went outside to check. No Mama Robin hanging around. One smooshed egg. One empty nest. Three eggs unaccounted for. There are several possible scenarios, but since the eggs weren’t that far along I am hoping Mama is somewhere else making a new nest and laying new eggs. I bagged the nest and sent it along to the elementary school for a science exhibit. Last year I found a cocoon and his class got to watch a moth emerge, so it’s kind of a trend.

No knitting last night, not that I remember. But I did stop at the new quilt shop after a couple of hours worth of futile escapades with an appliance dolly. The short version is the fridge is still in the kitchen, but Mr. Beth will be able to muscle it to the garage this afternoon. (He is bringing me hand-dyed sock yarn from a small sheep farm in Maine, so I will have to be extra nice!)

Oh, yes, this is much better. Now I just have to find places for two filled filing cabinets, three plastic crates, and everything that’s sitting on all of the above, and pull the rest of the baseboard and quarter round. And contact someone to be here to disconnect the gas stove and reconnect it on Friday. And the antiques guy, so he can pick up the desk and chair I’m selling. And add some more color to the Merino. You thought that I thought that you forgot about that, didn’t you? I am taking pictures at each step but won’t do a reveal until the fun is done.

I don’t want to forget Big Tom. He is one year old today! I will be baking mini chocolate cupcakes, but since the kids say he doesn’t have enough teeth to eat them, I thought maybe we would all dine on applesauce, pudding, and Jell-O. First birthdays are a little ridiculous anyway, why not make them extra silly? I will have pictures and stats tomorrow after his checkup tomorrow.

Didn’t you always hate seeing that on your report card? As in, you had some but you weren’t currently working up to it? Welcome to knitting. It will give you flashbacks like that all the freaking time.

Like, why can’t you finish a garter-stitch scarf? Makes a fine effort and then does not follow through. B-.

And, make the second baby sock already and then a pair of adult socks so you are not giving your Hogwarts Sock Swap Pal the first socks you ever knitted in your life. Truly, she is a nice person and deserves better. Fails to plan ahead for complex tasks. C.

Imagining several new projects before the old one have freed up the needles? Unable to stick to plans, daydreams instead of applying self to present task. D.

And taking nine months to make a T-shirt quilt is bound to get some extra commentary. Needlessly procrastinates. Afraid of success. Perpetuates self-deating fantasies. See me after class for conference.

Yes, I know and believe there are no Knitting Police. (If EZ said so and the Harlot says say, there is no reason to dispute it.) However, there’s always that inner Superego, critic, Editor, or deejay from radio station KFKD (thank you Anne Lamott) to tell you you’re doing the wrong thing, you’re doing the right thing the wrong way, you’re doing too much, you’re not doing enough and why do you bother doing this anyway?

Well, strange as it sounds, I am doing this because I love it. Sometimes love is a struggle. (Ask me how I know.) And with knitting, there’s always the frog pond, your knitting friends, and the LYS to help you undo, reset, and redo when necessary. The rest of life is a whole lot messier than this. (Ask me how I know.)

So, in the interest of looking at the carrot rather than fearing the whip, here are this weekend’s goals and some glimpses of future projects:

* Kitchener up the Moebius. Just do it.
* Cast on for the second baby sock. It’s the quickest pair you’ll ever make. The first one was perfect, so you have nothing to worry about.
* Keep plugging on the Charmed Knits hats. They’re quick, easy, and going to charity. Besides, when the book comes out you’ll want to make all the other patterns.
* Make a square for the Virginia Tech project. You won’t regret it. And since you have a cousin going to VT this fall, consider making her something comforting.
* Start a project for yourself. I know, how about socks?
* Keep working the repeats for the Irish Hiking Scarf. Mr. Beth’s birthday is in July and Christmas is in December. You’re bound to finish it before one of those dates, and you know he will like it.

Now relax and start knitting something. It’s all good.

Oh…by the way…yes, we did surpass Comment Two Hundred. However, I want to put together a little gift basket for that person, and I haven’t had a chance to do that yet. I’m currently lurking on her blog trying to get a sense of what she likes. Oh, and it’s someone for whom I already have a mailing address. So I can shop and send, and she’ll be surprised, and she can do the reveal on her blog. Need any more clues?

And my One Hundredth Post is coming up rapidly. Maybe I should try to have everything off the needles to celebrate, so I can cast on for fresh projects. Any ideas? Oh wait….

Jack’s birthday party (Saturday) was fun. We keep these things super low-key here, so the most fun part was “decorating” the room with streamers and balloons while Jack was out shopping with Dad. Jack got to pick out his own treat, so they came home with a cake with balloons on it instead of blue cupcakes with blue icing (which I was supposed to make, but I abdicated my baking responsibilities).

JC made up Jack’s name in Duplos — his original idea. And that’s our “happy birthday” banner taped to the table. Jack seemed to like everything, though the presents were very simple: a sailboat for the tub, another Thomas train (Mike), some shirts, and “Blue Mater” from Cars. Colleen offered to wrap up her pink and purple cell phone for him, so we did. And after the big celebration we found him here:

Hey, it’s exhausting to turn three. Apparently.

Later in the day, I heard a strange sound from upstairs. All the other kids were downstairs, so I had the feeling Jack was stuck somewhere. I was right:

Colleen’s room was trashed, so I assured him that I would let him out as soon as I got the room clean. Which I did. The thing he’s stuck in is the seat to an old baby swing, the rest of which is broken. I thought Colleen would like to put her dolls in it. Every so often, Jack wants to put himself in it. Same results, every time.

Well. Knitwise, I have three projects on the verge of finishing, and I’m going to try to do that tonight. After taking everyone to the Pack meeting, in which JC is part of both the opening and closing ceremonies. Don’t ask how I’m going to accomplish this, because, frankly, I don’t know yet. Pack meetings are held in the school lunchroom, which is down about twenty steps in the grade school basement. So no double stroller. Tom will be in his car seat. And oh yes, JC is requested to be there early to be ready to do the flag ceremony. I don’t know if anyone will be helping me manage the Wonder Twins.

So, after we get done with all that and everyone is in bed, here’s the plan. Finish the baby sock by grafting the toe. Take my newfound Kitchenering skills and put them to immediate use to finish the Moebius. Then pick up the Charmed Knits Gryffindor cap and start decreasing for the crown. It’s a 14-round process to the end, which is all familiar stuff. I just have to throw a stitch marker in there and get going.

If tonight is Finishing Night, tomorrow can be Picture Day and maybe I can get some new stuff on the needles.

Speaking of which…when I was shopping at Herrschners yesterday for my swap buddies, I just about broke my heart at the yarn I didn’t buy. It was a variegated purple with just a touch of blue in it, and there were four skeins of it…easily enough to do a sweater pattern in a German magazine I have. It was marked down to $3.99 a skein. DAMN you, Knit From Your Stash! I’m sure it will be gone the next time I go there, and I’m trying not to think about it.

I am creeping along with my baby sock, but I have turned the heel and completed the gusset. I would just like to bask in the glow of this marvelous accomplishment for a few minutes before I get back to the manual and see what I need to do to head down towards the toe. I feel like First Knitter, who Steph writes about in Casts Off. This accomplishment is radically tempered by the fact that I’m reading explicit step by step instructions and am making up absolutely nothing as I go along. But still. I’m really knitting a freaking sock! (Perhaps I should have learned how to do this before I signed up for a sock swap?)

The kids have sort of been cooperating — they left the room when Knitty Gritty was on, so I worked on the sock then.

All this was only able to take place after I finished reading Circle of Quilters by Jennifer Chiaverini, which I started last night. The usual Chiaverini spell overcame me again. I can’t explain it. She’s not a florid writer, and the people she writes about aren’t sensational. Yet I turn the pages as fast as I can because I so want to see what happens to these quilters. This time, kind of like in The Cross-Country Quilters, I just wanted to shake them all by the shoulders for not seeing what terrible relationships they were in. I shut out the rest of the world and blow through each book in 24 hours. So I’m caught up with her, and with Earlene Fowler’s Benni Harper series (until next month, anyway), and with Michele Scott’s Wine Lover’s Mystery series.

Back to knitting and life. Tomorrow is Jack’s third birthday. [He seems to have been three years old for a long time, but I guess that’s normal.] He wants “blue cupcakes with blue icing.” Maybe I will surprise him and put little Blue’s Clues sugar pawprints on them. Mr. Beth is taking him for a drive tomorrow so the rest of us can decorate the living room and give him a surprise party — surprise parties seem to be the theme this year.

I picked up some much-needed chocolate this morning. At the gas station store I got the largest possible cup of Hershey’s Double Dark Cocoa cappuccino, and was drawn to a Hershey’s Special Dark display. Here’s the text: “First red wine, and now this. Yes, life is good.” In the display were two limited edition Special Dark bars: raspberry with macadamia nut, and almond. Yes, I got one of each.

Oh yes — I snuck out of the scout meeting last night to raid the bead store for the stitch markers for the swap. Here’s a benefit of having taken a class at a local store: the store was closed, but since they were having a class right then, the owner waved me in to look at what everyone was making. She also asked to see my completed wirework project (from two years ago) and sold me beads. And gave me tips on making my own jump rings. Do you think she’d like to see my Camp Fire beads? I am thinking about turning them into stitch markers.

First off, the birthday party went pretty well. JC was actually surprised that two of his friends came over. That was enough to put him over the top. They both brought presents, everyone loved the cake, they even liked the little cardboard containers I put their popcorn in.

Here’s the cake. It’s a Hershey’s chocolate cake from the recipe on the cocoa box, with generic buttercream frosting with one part yellow food dye and one part blue food dye. Unfortunately, the blue was a pastel, so I didn’t really get the green I was hoping for.

The green in the picture is actually nicer than it really looked. The shade of green it really was, was the shade you would have picked for a cake for someone enlisting in the Army. Just sayin’. A little too close to lima-bean green, but since I didn’t want to spend all afternoon adjusting the color of frosting, I just spread it on the sucker.

James happily announced the cake to his friends thusly:

“My mom made a green cake! But don’t worry, it’s not poison!”

They were suitably wary at first, but being brave Wolf Scouts they soldiered on and eventually had seconds. And gave compliments, bless their hearts. Then I made popcorn and in a stroke of genius put theirs in the little cardboard popcorn containers that came with the popper when we bought it for Father’s Day. They were flabbergasted. Wow, it was just like the movies. (They didn’t actually say that.)

Speaking of which, here is the Transformers movie from 1986 that they watched a little bit of, when they weren’t running up and down stairs playing spies.

Right then, they were playing spies.

Two hours of two extra boys was just enough! Both parents dropped the boys and ran, but really everyone acted their age, which was fine.

I was kind of itching to get started on a command performance knitting project. Here is what I have so far:

The reason it’s being moved to the top of the list is that JC’s second grade class is studying Britain and Ireland right now, and they’re having High Tea on Friday. All the girls and boys are encouraged to dress up a notch or two. I picked up the shirt at Target, but since they didn’t have any little-boy young-man ties and I didn’t have any money anyway, voila! I’m trying to make it a little wider than my “I Love the 80s” sensibilities want it to be, but I think it’s a little too wide. (Yes, I’m going to narrow it after about 12 inches.) I just don’t know how wide the eight-year-olds are wearing their ties these days.

Mr. Beth says the length should be 2 times the neck to waist measurement, plus the neck around, plus 1-2 inches for the knot. Sound about right? (Lisa, please limit yourself to the executive summary.)

So that’s what I started working on after I finally got Jack to sleep at almost 10:30. That, and the 6th episode of Remington Steele, plus a little featurette about Season One that they snuck onto that disc. Why, since it was only halfway through the season? Because that disc had room on it, I guess.

Since even JC doesn’t think I’ll get it done in time for Tea, I’d better get back to work!

2pm update: