Still here...

Um, er. Yeah, we are still here. The summer continues to fly past and I think I finally figured out where the unaccounted for time went! I had been on top of our scheduled activities: park dates with friends on Monday and Tuesday, library on Wednesday, getting together with our adopted grandma on Thursday or Friday, CSA on Thursday, and sometime other things with friends late in the week. So I knew we were busy, but since most of our stuff is half days or less, I couldn't figure out why I never got around to blogging. However, I think I finally solved it! Both park days plus some of the Thursday and Friday things are up in Madison, which adds a half an hour of driving on each end. It doesn't seem like much when we are driving it, but it sure adds up.

We have started listening to books on CD in the car, which makes the drive more enjoyable for everyone! We are almost through The Birchbark House, which Bean has really enjoyed. She and I are all about the 19th century these days. We have been reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder books at bedtime all summer and are almost through with The Long Winter (the sixth book in the series). The Birchbark House is slightly earlier than the Little House books, but tells the story of Omakayas, an eight-year-old Ojibwe girl. Although we haven't gotten there yet, the story continues in The Game of Silence and The Porcupine Year and we plan to get those from the library once we finish the first book.

Spring Cleaning

Whoa! How did it get so dusty and cobwebby around here? I hope the chirping crickets have kept you company while I was away.

Of course, away is figurative. We have been here doing much of the same-old same-old. I figured I had finally better pop in and get back in the blogging groove (well, if not in, at least near...will being on the same landmass be close enough? same planet?). At least we are finally getting someplace close to being adjusted to daylight savings time. Clearly a flexible, roll-with-the-punches kind of crowd. Anyhoo. What have we been doing?

Knitting, of course. Lots o' stuff happening, but not a lot to show for it. The only finished objects that I haven't blogged about is a wonky little hat for the Beeb (in Peace Fleece that coordinates with his blue longies and mitts) and the February dishcloth from the Sow's Ear Dish-Cloth-Along. Then I missed March's due to a crabby mood and an illuminated engine light on the van (which has since been fixed). The close, but no cigar pile is immense right now. The third market bag is very close...just a couple more rows and then working the handles in and doing the top edge. The first Raspberry Charade sock is getting close...about 10 gram of yarn left on the leg and cuff. Bug's and Bean's hats are also almost done. Bean's is technically done, but they eyes keep falling off and Bug only has the tail, fins, and eyes left.

Spinning. I have finally been spinning again, semi-regularly. Perhaps quasi-regularly would be more accurate. Last August was my last "Spin my Spindle" check in, so I'll update since then.

Spin My Spindle
	September 2008		February 2009
Activity:	Spinning	Plying	Spinning
Fiber:	Targhee	Targhee	Targhee
Spindle:	Schacht 3"	Ashford	Schacht 3"
Amount:	9 grams	25 grams	5 grams

That is actually more spinning than it looks like. I have been spinning the Targhee quite fine and the singles are about 9 yards (27 feet) per gram. So I'm lucky if I can get through a gram or two at a time. Plus, having put it down for a while, I just don't think to pick it up sometimes.

Planting and thinking about planting. Our Fast Plants are going great guns...going to seed already! The gory details are here. The kids and I have been reading about plants and pollination and all that a lot a bedtime. We are also working on planning a small garden in our yard. We're going to grow some beets for pickling, carrots, radishes, onions, and maybe garlic for cooking and eating and freezing, herbs, and lots of tomatoes. We are also planning to put a couple of pumpkin vines in the landscaping rock beside the house so they can spread without taking over the whole garden and lawn! We are also deciding what to do for a CSA this year too. We did JenEhr last summer and loved it, but are thinking about trying something a little bit closer to us. With the kids, I really like the idea of driving to a farm to pick up rather than to someone's garage and I know there are some closer to Stoughton. However, the drive to JenEhr was just stunning, so I wouldn't be completely opposed to sticking with them. The local CSA open house is next weekend, so hopefully we will be deciding soon.

Organizing. Still chipping away at the chaos that has accumulated with three move and three small ones over four years. I have finally made headway with my recipes. I had started a three-ring binder to organize recipes I had typed up, but fell sadly behind and had to dig through folders and files and other piles of crap to find recipes I was looking for. I finally tamed the piles, printed out things that I had on my computer but not in my binder and have started formatting and printing other things that I want in my binder (goes pretty quick with recipes copied from the internet and a scanner with OCR!). I just do a couple at a time out of that folder and eventually will be caught up. I am also planning on sorting the other piles of recipes by type in an expanding folder, so I have a place to go looking when I need inspiration.

We found out that we have guests coming in early May, so there is some additional inspiration to get my studio/the guestroom organized. We also need to get loft beds built for the bigger two so we can move the old futon down to the guest room, so there is an actual place for them to sleep!

Missing out. A certain knitting celebrity was in town for the Madison Knitters' Guild annual knit-in. I did the responsible thing and stuck to the budget rather than dropping everything and signing up. I'm clearly an idiot. Rumor has it that it was even cooler than I imagined. Damn you, recession and fiscal responsibility...

To all Beeb fans...

I have a few cute Beeb videos on YouTube that I don't want to post publicly, but would be happy to share with non-anonymous friends. If you aren't Namma, mamatee and Uncle J (who already have access), go here and add me as a friend and I can add you to the list of who's allowed to see the Beebster!

There will be a real blog post before too long...

Yeah, we're still here...

There has been much going on and not much in the Mama motivation department lately. There are four groups of pictures I need to catch up on: (1) Some early October fallness, (2) A very Beanish birthday, (3) some early Halloweenies, and (4) some gratuitous kid pics. There are also some FO posts that need to be caught up on. *sigh*

*snort*

I just saw a link to this on another blog and had to share.

My little fishies

I often affectionately refer to my crazy bunch as a zoo, but I am starting to think that "aquarium" might be more appropriate! Bug and Bean finished their swimming lessons last Thursday. Each had a few things on their report cards that "need work" before advancing to another level, but I am just amazed by how much they learned! In addition to swimming lessons, we took advantage of a free day at the local pool last Wednesday with a friend. Bug was finally big enough to go on the water slide so it was a good thing that we had a friend with us. She and Bug went on the slide several times. Beeb was being a Mama's boy and didn't want me out of his sight, so I didn't get to go.

We also spend a fair amount of time at the apartment swimming pool (one thing we will miss when we move!), where Bean has demonstrated her abilities to blow bubbles and kick. Her new favorite thing is to hold onto my hands and swim (with and without bubbles) while I pull her around the pool. She also likes coming with me to deeper water (4'6") and holding her breath and getting dunked to touch the bottom. She has also worked up the courage to jump in the shallow end where she can touch all by herself, with me just watching, but much prefers jumping into my arms! Bug likes jumping in at the shallow end (3') and then swimming underwater as far as he can get in one breath. He kicks like a champ, but hasn't quite coordinated the arms yet. Beeb loves standing on the steps and splashing with his arms. He can stand on three different steps and be ankle deep, hip deep, or armpit deep. He also loves playing "putt-putt." I help him "swim" around the pool by supporting him on his belly or back while he kicks his little froggy legs and splashes his arms. When he gets going on his belly, you'd swear that you could let go and he'd just keep swimming! (I haven't tried.)

I wish I had pictures, but after losing one very nice camera to an ill-fated canoe trip (don't wanna talk about it except to say that the guy who was laughing almost convulsively at the mishap went under with his even more expensive camera about ten minutes later. There is sometimes justice.), I am understandably nervous about having cameras around water! Maybe we can figure something out with Kitty Daddy to keep the camera far from the water.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

One last thing...please go and check out earthchick's raffle. She is raising money for a peer mentoring program for clergywomen that she participated it. While I am not involved in organized religion (nor do I even know earthchick's affiliation), I can speak firsthand of the benefits of this kind of thing for women in male-dominated professions. While women can match men performance-wise is any field (and vice-versa....KittyDaddy is a nurse, so we have seen both sides), having a great support system can really make the difference in advancement and retention of talented women in largely male fields and provide even more great role models for our daughters, granddaughters, nieces, and other favorite growing girls. Plus there are some AMAZING fibery prizes (and even some non-fibery ones). Go take a look...the drawing is in early August and rumor has it that a new prize will be added for every $500 in donations over the original goal (which has already been met).

Ack. A backlog

There seems to be a bit of a logjam somewhere between my brain and the Blogger publish button these days. I think his name is Beeb, but it's hard to say for sure. First, the spinning update I missed on Friday:

Spin My Spindle 8 Feb to 14 Feb 2008
Activity:	Spinning
Fiber:	Alpaca
Spindle:	Ashford
Amount:	13 grams

Next, a list of thing I need to catch up on postwise:

1. Valentine's Day
2. Another FO that has nothing to do with my to do list
3. Knit Night on Friday
4. Train Show on Saturday
5. Secret of the Stole update
6. A Beeb milestone
7. A Bean milestone

Numbers 1, 6, 7 need picture documentation before I post them. Number 2 I might try to pop in and out and finish up while working on dinner. Number 5 is another quick post. I'll try to get a proper post with 1, 3, 4, 6, and 7 tomorrow.

Although I am truly a winter person, I am getting a little tired of the snow. We passed up the record snowfall for the season last Tuesday. Since then, we have had more snow on Wednesday, Sunday and all day today. Little ones with cabin fever don't help.

Go ahead, make my day!

I received this award from Yarn Thrower:

"Give the award to 10 people whose blogs bring you happiness and inspiration and make you feel happy about blogland. Let them know by posting a comment on their blog so they can pass it on. Beware you may get the award several times."

Passing it on to others is too easy as there are so many blogs and bloggers that make my day: Marianne, Knotty Kitty, Knitty Mama, Mom in Madison, Molly Bees, Dale-Harriet, Yarn Thrower, No-sheep Cate, Mrs. Yes (as well as her goddess persona), Hege, my sister-in-law, and librarian Megan (she knits now!!!). And this is just a list of the first ten er, twelve I can think of that make me happy and inspire me regular or recently! Nor does it include any of the "big names" in blogland that I read, but don't (or rarely) comment.

A-Feltin' we will go

First, the good news...

The felted princess shoes are going swimmingly. They felted up beautifully...

...and fit the princess's feet.

I still need to put on buttons and button loops to hold the straps shut, and I am thinking about doing some embroidery/embellishment with some of the leftover sparkly yarn.

The bad news is that the princess hat has, shall we say, issues. It is the same yarn as the shoes and felted beautifully...

...however, the fit leaves a LOT to be desired:

Next trip to JoAnn's, I am going to pick up another skein of Paton's Classic Wool and start over. I think it was the felting, not the pattern, so this time I will try to find a time for felting with fewer distractions and see if that goes better. Hopefully, taking it out sooner will be the key. That whole "check felting progress every five minutes"? Yep, not just blowing smoke.

I am anxiously awaiting my yarn for the Secret of the Stole II. I ordered it last Thursday, but due to various glitches in the new warehouse at Knit Picks, it didn't ship until today. So think speedy delivery thoughts on my behalf as the first clue comes out in 9 days! I may try some swatching before it gets here as I have some Gossamer in the stash, and if I understand correctly, Gossamer, Shadow, and laceweight Bare are basically the same yarn, just hand-painted, heathered, and undyed respectively. It will look different, but at least I will have a good idea of needle size in case the yarn arrives at the last minute.

I actually got a little spindle time in earlier this week. After reading about it in Knittymama's blog, I am planning on joining Spin My Wheel (or in my case, Spin My Spindle). And, if that's not enough to keep me entertained (HA!), I am also starting another blog. The new blog is going to be less about staying in touch with the outside world and more about just having a place to keep track of stuff. For now, it will be mostly books we read. I am finding that I keep checking out the same books after forgetting that I have already read that one by my favorite author. I also want to keep track of some of our favorite read-together books and topics.

I still have a pile of pictures and blog fodder from our Iowa trip that I will hopefully get around to. Just a teaser for now: Marshalltown, Iowa has a used car dealership name Clemons. C-Lemons? They also have the local Chevy/Pontiac gig, but the sign that keep catching my eye every time we drove to and from the hotel was the used car lot. Seriously, you can't make this stuff up!

Watch this space!

We've been bustling post-Christmas. I have been knitting like crazy and will have some progress photos and FO coming down the pipeline soon. But first we have to finish Christmasing with Kitty Daddy's family! So off to Iowa!

P.S. Didja see the jump in gas prices a couple of days ago? Yeah, that was us. It does that EVERY time we go somewhere. Sorry. We don't have anymore trips planned for a while. ;o)

hee

We're in the newspaper! You can see the article here. And for the record...I said that I "sneak in" to blog during odd moments, not "streak in." Hee-hee...gotta love typos! Bean is currently the only streaker in this house, and that has been curtailed by the nippy weather and trying to save money by keeping the thermostat low!

Fellow Bloglines users...

I'm just curious..last night Bloglines belched and updated a bunch of feeds that I hadn't been getting updates on and reposted a whole bunch of stuff for blogs that have been updating. I occasionally get a bunch of back posts on one or two, but between the new ones and the reposts I had around 200 unread threads this morning (I usually have less than 30 if I am keeping up-to-date). Anyone else get this too, or am I just lucky?

Hello from the land of fried hard-drives

Dude, I just get caught up on blogging and reading blogs after our vacation and what do you suppose happens? Well, my nearly four-year-old laptop has developed a few, shall we say, "personality quirks" over the last several months, but if you could put up with a few minor annoyances, it was still doing fine. That is, until one evening last week when it informed me of an "unbootable system drive." I am not a computer expert by any means, but I was pretty sure this was a bad thing, so we took it in to the Geek Squad for a look-see. They say it is a "fixable" problem, but the price to fix it is almost as much as a new low-end laptop, so the laptop will be going to the big computer lab in the sky. We will probably take it in to see if they can retrieve the data first though, we just haven't gotten back to doing it yet. So for now, we move the big desktop (firmly pre-flat-screen-monitor vintage) down into the living room as an interim solution. It isn't even close to as nice as the laptop, but it works. We will probably be shopping cheap laptops in the not-too-distant future...

While the laptop was gradually dying, I discovered that I had been named a "Rockin' Girl Blogger" by KnottyKitty!

And then, when I started trying to catch up with blog reading, I found out that I had also been selected by KnittyMama. Wow, for a chick that does most of her rockin' either in a LazyBoy or to toddler tunes and who gave up on ever being one of the "cool kids" decades ago, I am extremely touched and honored! So now I am supposed nominate five more rockin' girl bloggers. There are certainly a lot of rockin' girl bloggers out there (and I read the blogs of a bunch of them), but since I am a fairly wimpy commenter, I will pick my top five that I read and comment on...which means that two of my top five are the two lovely gals that nominated me! So without further ado, my nominations for Rockin' Girl Bloggers are:

1. KnottyKitty Knits - Knitter, crazy cat lady, gainfully re-employed, what's not to love??
2. KnittyMama - A knitter, a Midwesterner, and a mama who's crunchy in all the right places
   
3. The Life and Times of Florence Knitingale - a very funny lady who knits and occasionally provides gratuitous kitty beefcake and cheesecake
   
4. Marianne's Knotminding - Lovely knitting, gorgeous flowers (my black thumb would be green with envy if it could manage it!), and an all-around nice gal!
   
5. The Toddler Whisperer - another former Hawkeye, Bug's first (and only regular) baby-sitter, and children's librarian. I don't think she knits, but we'll cut her some slack anyway ;o)
   

The littles still (and constantly) keep me entertained. Bug's new thing is telling jokes. In general, they usually include several nonsense words and the punch line is invariably either "A Cadillac and a beaver" or "A poodle in a dog house." The jokes never make any sense at all, but Bug amuses himself so much that you can't help laughing. Even though they don't make sense, the punch lines aren't as mystical as they sound. The first is misquoted from the movie "Cars," where McQueen says he "floats like a Cadillac, stings like a Beemer" and the second comes from the book "The Twelve Dogs of Christmas" where a poodle in a doghouse plays the role of a partridge in a pear tree.

Bean's vocabulary is blossoming and she is becoming quite the little conversationalist. I'm still about the only one who can understand most of what she is saying, but she is suddenly putting pretty complex ideas and concepts together in her discussions. She also our fearless, swimmy little fishy at the swimming pool. Our apartment complex has a pool and we spent time there both Saturday and Sunday when it was in the 90's. She loves to jump off the side of the pool and we basically just fish her out after she goes under. She could do this non-stop forever! Who says two-year-olds have short attention spans?? Bug loves going swimming too, but he is a little more tentative than his little sister.

In knitting news, the lace shawl continues on, though I haven't been keeping track since my über-geeky spreadsheet is residing on the dead hard-drive. I am on the fourth repeat of chart two (of eight, I think...to lazy to go look right now!) so things are cruising along and the rows are getting longer and longer! My Roza sock has been frogged. After knitting six inches of leg, turning the heel, shaping the gusset, and doing an inch or two of the foot, I got the bright idea earlier in the week to try it on. Ummmm...wouldn't go over my heel. Drat (what I actually said was a bit more colorful, but you get the idea). I am trying to decide whether to start over now or let the yarn sit in the stash and think about its sins for a while and start a different sock in the meantime. I need to decide, because I need to have a purse project! I also got my entrelac purse felted. Apparently, Cascade 220 and entrelac just love felting! As if entrelac weren't magical enough...add some felting! Whoa!

Spell check

Yipes! Spell check hasn't been working all the time recently, so I haven't been using it until today. I went back to check recent posts and, gosh, there were a bunch of boo-boos. Since reading Norma is making me paranoid, I fixed them...

We're back...

Sorry for the long hiatus, but sometimes life happens. Combine that with some unresolved guilt for having old pix that haven't been posted, and well, you know...

I haven't been completely away from the blog, even though I haven't been posting, I am still working on moving the posts from my knitting blog over. I only have a dozen or so left and then I will be unified into a single blog!

This morning we went for a walk and then spent a few minutes at close park. It is a brisk day...36.5°F right now, according to Weather Underground. When we went to the park on Tuesday, the weather was similar and mom ended up carrying all the hats, gloves, and mittens, so we tried just winter coats (Don't look at me like that...they both have hoods and the jackets are on the big side so hands can be turtled up into the sleeves...it's not like I sent 'em out nekkid. Really.), but everyone was pretty chilly by the time we got home. So we all had some hot cocoa and are now piled in the recliner with one big blanket over everyone and nummies for all comers. All in all, not a bad way to be on a cold, cloudy November day! Of course, having two hands to type would make my life easier, but it is pretty cozy, so I'm not complaining!

Still no Kitty Chai, but we are checking weekly at the animal shelter (cats are held for seven days before being adoptable) and aren't giving up hope. Mama misses her princess...

According to my thermometer...

Mom and Dad should be almost back to Oregon by now. Today is sunny and 66°! It was mostly overcast and chilly during their trip, so if it is warming up again, they must be almost home. We had a wonderful visit with them and I promise to get back to blogging and catching up soon. A sneak peak of what I need to catch up on (and post pictures of):

• Open house at the local fire station (10/14)
• A Kite Festival (10/15)
• Grandma and Grandpa visiting (10/20 - 10/27)
• Trick or Treating at the Zoo (10/21)
• A very Beanie birthday (10/21, party 10/22)
  
• Geology museum (10/26)

I also need to get back to knit blogging. I finally have some finished objects that I need to get blogging on!

Note to self:

Blogging while kids are eating spicy mustard on anything = Not a good idea.

I don't wanna talk about it...suffice to say that carpet was involved. *sigh*

ETA: Oops...sofa, too. *double sigh*

Changes coming...

I just switched to the new beta version of blogger. The lack of labels is the main reason that I had kept my knitting stuff separate, but I think I am going to be merging the two blogs and taking advantage of the now available labels. In the process, I'm hoping to go back and update some of the posts and probably update the template as well. It shouldn't change anything for reading, but don't be surprised if things suddenly start looking different!

Internet is back!

After a couple of days with no cable or internet, we're back. So far being 37 hasn't been a good thing. Thursday was my birthday. Friday, the mailbox finally rusted out and fell over (gotta love rentals). Saturday, a big tree fell on our apartment (more on that later). Sunday, our cable went out. Monday, I got stung by a wasp. Yesterday, we got a property tax bill for the house we sold (gotta make some phone calls today...). Just because you ain't paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't watching.

I will try and catch up with our weekend excitement later, if the kids take a good nap...

FYI

I have been getting comment spam, so I have added word verification. Sorry. While I love getting comments from real people (hint, hint), not so much so from computers.