FO: Blanket Squares

Two small finished objects! Both were quick knits but SLOOOOW finishers. I am just too lame when it comes to weaving in ends. I have had the knitting done since before Beeb was born and I finally took the whole two minutes (no joke) to weave in the ends today. I swear I am going to take them to the post office tomorrow! Please feel free to slap me around if I don't. Anyhoo, will be shipping them off to Ms. K for the Miner's Blankets she is assembling.

Specifications
Yarn: Paton's Soy Wool Stripes (Natural Berry, left and Natural Blue, right)
Needles: KnitPicks Options, size 8
Pattern: Seat of the pants log cabin block for Berry block, mitered square (based on pattern for blocks in New Knits on the Block)
Verdict: Love SWS! A soft cushy yarn to knit with, a neat lady organizing the project, and a good cause. What's not to love??

As long as I caught a brief ray of sunshine to get the blanket block pics, I tried to capture the gorgeous roving I got last weekend. I have a little assistant helping me to keep the ball from rolling away in the wind. Even with the sun, the picture really doesn't do the colors justice. Plus you can't see the green and blue sparkly synthetic fibers that are mixed in. I guess you're just going to have to take my word for how purdy it is...

Oh Crud.

We have been just having quite the series of mishaps and plans fallen through this month! Kitty Daddy's mom was schedule to be here the first week of October to see the grandkids and to keep Kitty Mommy company while Kitty Daddy went to Minneapolis for a two-day conference. However, because of some health issues, her doctor suggested that she remain close to home until things are better resolved.

Next, my parents were supposed to leave Oregon last Saturday and arrive in Wisconsin today. Unfortunately, Grandma Dell (my dad's mom), who also has some on-going health issues ended up in the emergency room on Friday morning, so my folks had to scratch the trip, too. That puts poor little Beebster at 0-2 with the grandmas (through no fault of his *or* theirs!). Of course, Bug and Bean (as well as my parents and I) are way more disappointed than Mr. Beeb.

Then, if that weren't enough, we had yet another flat tire on the van yesterday. The interesting part is that we were on the way to the library and had the flat within a half of a block of where the last flat occurred. The good news is that this time, it wasn't cold, dark, and raining...the bad news is that this time, I had three little assistants in the car with me. Fortunately, Kitty Daddy was able to make an appointment close to where he works and will be taking it in tomorrow morning, so we are only house bound (other than outings on foot) for two and a half days instead of waiting until Saturday, when we usually take care of these things!

Fortunately, we have also had a lot of good stuff too. Last weekend was lovely. We went to the Fitchburg Fire Department open house for the third year in a row we've gone. No new pictures this year, but we did a lot of the same things as last year. On Sunday, we drove down to Rainbow Fleece Farms near New Glarus. I oohed and aahed over Patty's beautiful roving colorways and ended up coming home with just under four ounces of "Deep End of the Ocean." Deciding which one I wanted to try was NOT an easy choice! If we get a sunny day (and I remember), I will see if I can get a picture that does it justice!

The Many Faces of the Beebster

Last night after bath time, we did a photo shoot of BB. The HR folks at KittyDaddy's work needed a picture for the employee newsletter. This is the picture we sent along of our devastatingly handsome (pronounced "devathtatingly handthome") little dude:

And here are a few others that are particularly cute or silly looking:




And lest you think he might be a perfect angel ALL of the time:

"'Nuff pictures, mama, leave me alone!"

Haircuts, Produce, and October Crafts

or, yet another get-caught-up post in pictures! Fall is such a wonderful time for getting out and doing fun things that it doesn't leave much time for blogging about all our adventures!

Bug has been in increasingly desperate need of a hair cut for the last month or so, but every time we tried to cut it, he announced that he didn't want a haircut, he would get one in four days. I'm not sure what the significance of "four days" was, but he was extremely consistent in his response. He finally gave in last weekend. Probably because he was starting to bump into walls because he couldn't see ;o). Here's the "before" picture:

and the "after" picture:

He wasn't doing that great of a job sitting still, so it's not too even, but at least it is out of his eyes.

We continue to take advantage of fresh veggies from farmers market. Week before last, we got the fixings for gazpacho:

Yummm! It's one of those seasonal things that a little goes a long way, and I tend to get tired of it after one batch, but man does that one batch taste good. I also don't have the patience to peel tomatoes for more than one batch! Though the smooshing of those tomatoes can be very therapeutic!

A couple of days after making the gazpacho, we got a newsletter from our HMO that had an article saying that they would be offering a "healthy living" rebate that includes CSA memberships for 2008. They currently offer this for working out at a health club (if you work out a certain number of times between Jan 1 and Jun 30 or Jul 1 to Dec 31). For 2008, they will still have the work out one, but they are expanding the program to include CSA membership or membership in Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig. I think it is very cool that health care is finally getting the idea of preventive measures! Especially since we went back and forth last spring trying to decide whether we wanted to join a CSA.

We also made a second trip to the apple orchard last weekend for another huge bag of apples and a gallon of apple cider. We made a wonderful caramel apple cake and a batch of apple sauce right away:

Then, this past weekend, we made a crockpot full of apple butter. I got the recipe from another local blogging mama and it turned out wonderfully! We also did another batch of applesauce.

Finally, our other favorite past-time this time of year is getting ready for Bug's mostest, bestest, favoritest holiday: Halloween. In addition to a grand tour of the "spookables aisle" every time we go to Target, we have started getting our house into the mood, too. Our first project was Bug's current favorite animal, bats, on the sliding glass door:

This is the one that Bug cut out himself. He also drew in fangs:

Bean just drew on black paper with a white colored pencil and snipped fringes on her paper, so it didn't make the exhibit, but she had a blast doing it and was just as proud of her finished product (which managed to escape picture taking). Today, we made paper plate masks. We saw this in one of the Halloween books we have out from the library, so had to try for ourselves. Here, Bug models his masterpiece:

and Bean models hers:

and BB tries out Bug's mask:

Talk about a little bobble head!

We have a couple of other Halloween decorating projects in mind before Grandma and Grandpa come to visit and will post pictures when we do them!

Knitting continues, but I seem to be in a black hole phase with everything right now! I had one of the mystery socks done except for the cuff ribbing, but after turning the heel on the second sock, I discovered that adding two rows to the foot made the self-striping yarn behave much better, so I frogged the first one back to just before the heel, added two rows and redid the heel. So now, both socks are just past the heel turning, but I'm pretty sure that I have done more than two socks worth of knitting by now. On my lace shawl, I only have about ten rounds and the border left, but the rounds have gotten stinkin' huge (the last round before the border is the 194th round and it has a paltry 1035 stitches!!! Thank goodness the first round only had eight!). Plus, the last chart (16 rounds) is a lot more repetitive than the rest of the shawl, so it just isn't holding my interested as well. Also, this past weekend was near 90°F...I'm sure I will be more motivated to have a beautiful shawl to wrap up in when the weather returns to something more seasonal!

Going Hiking

Today, the kids and I took a lovely fall hike. The Moms in Madison group is organizing Tyke Hikes now that we have the lovely fall weather. Today, we met up with other moms and little ones and took a walk through the University of Wisconsin Arboretum. We walked around the edge of the restored prairie and then took the path back through the middle of the prairie. I forgot my camera in the car when we got there, but managed to snap a couple of pics from the parking lot before the wee ones completely lost patiences with me. There were lots of gorgeous fall flowers:

And here you can see the pretty rust color of the big and little bluestem in the prairie (just past the parked cars):

We also got to see lots of cool buggies and animals, including several furry black and brown caterpillars, a slug, and a frog. We also got to examine all kinds of leaves and sticks and grass and rocks up close and personal. But probably the best part was getting to hang out with "fends"...some adult conversation for mama and some flesh and blood friends for Bug and Bean to hang out with (as opposed to our usual invisible animal friends).

Unfortunately, after our lovely, relaxing walk, I had some run-ins with a couple of my arch-nemeses: the "special people to whom the rules don't apply." First, a disclaimer: I am delighted to share the road with bikers. I wish more people rode bikes and left their cars at home. I have nothing at all against bikers. Unless they are jerks. Then jerkness trumps bicyclist. There were a couple of bikers that had a very casual relationship with the actual rules of the road that I did my best to not run over, but one in particular irked me. The road through the arboretum is quite winding, so I just drove slowly to stay behind this bicyclist for a while until there was a long enough straight section so I could pull over into the other lane to pass him. Well, the way is clear and I pull into the opposing traffic lane and start to speed up to pass him and the dimbulb decides that he needs to be riding smack along the dotted yellow line. So I slow down again and resign myself to following him. A few minutes later we get back into another curvy, winding section of the road and this guy suddenly discovers that I am behind him and starts waving me around. Since I want to give him plenty of room (and hopefully, thereby minimize my urge to flatten him), I am waiting until I can see far enough ahead on the road to pass safely. Meanwhile, he is making increasingly larger and more enthusiastic gestures that he wants me to pass, as if he is starting to get ticked off because I'm not passing quickly enough. I doubt he realizes how lucky he is to be upright rather than a big smudge on the road. In general, it is not wise to irritate the bejesus out of a hormonal post-partum mama with a wailing 3½ week old baby in the back seat (since we were driving too slowly to lull him to sleep...the motion of the car usually puts him right out, assuming we are going more than 10 mph). I'm just sayin'...

Fortunately, the mood swings go in both directions, so by the time we were done with lunch, the nice walk and lovely weather won out over the bad bicyclists.

More Fall Fun!

Okay, first off, a confession: I am pathetic. On my laptop, I had a drive that I could pop my photo card into and download photos. Now, with the desktop, I have a little USB card reader. Unfortunately, I have to unplug the printer from the USB port to use the card reader, so that one hugetastic extra step (yes, that was said with eyes rolling) means I take forever to finally get photos downloaded and blogged about. So, this is a catch-up post...

Thursday

On Thursday morning, the kids and I went apple picking at Eplegaarden, which is just south of us. We picked Haralson, Cortland, Jonnee, and Redmax apples. A total of 14 pounds...the orchard has a $10 minimum for self-pick and at $0.75 per pound, that is around 13 pounds. While I completely understand it from a business point of view, the minimum is kind of a pain from a mom-of-apple-pickers-with-short-attention-spans point of view.

After apple picking, we posed for "How Tall This Fall" pictures, since this would be a fun annual activity.

Since then, we have been enjoying raw apples for snacks as well as an apple crisp on Saturday and an apple pie on Sunday. I was planning on making a bunch of applesauce to freeze, but I'm not sure we have enough apples left! We may need to make a second trip this fall!

Also on Thursday, we went to Farmer's Market and bought the fixin's for this:

That's fresh mozzarella from Farmer Johns' (where we also get our squeaky curd for snacking) and fresh tomatoes and basil from other vendors. Add a little salt, pepper, olive oil, and vinegar and voila! Of course, Thursday night supper ended up being an exercise in contrasts. We had the classy, wholesome tomato, mozzarella, and basil salad with chili mac (macaroni, Hormel's chili and Velveeta...the ultimate in class and nutrition).

Friday

On Friday, Mama had a hard time waking up, and discovered that while she was dozing, Bug got hold of the digital camera and took a whole bunch of picture. They are actually fairly entertaining to see what captures his attention, but I thought this was the coolest of the bunch:

I have no clue what it is. It shall remain one of the great mysteries.

We did our regular library run on Friday afternoon, so stacks and stacks of more books to read! One group of books of note that we have discovered are a couple of easy reader non-fiction: Pebble Books and Pebble Plus Books. We discovered a whole slew of Pebble Plus animal books on the shelves at the branch library about bugs and ocean animals and have been putting more on hold since then. They are short (approximately 100 words) and have great pictures, so we can read a whole stack in one sitting and after we have read them several times, Bug can "read" them to himself by looking at the pictures and remembering the text. Right now, we have a bunch of books out (and on hold) about seasons, fall activities, and getting ready for winter. They have a whole bunch of beginning science, social studies, health, and animal books. They should keep us entertained for a while!

Saturday

Saturday, the kids decided that they need to express their creative side. Bug specifically requested cutting and gluing, so we got out some construction paper, scissors and glue. Bug made a trio of monsters:

And Bean went a bit more free-form:

We ended our Saturday cheering on the Hawkeyes, who were here playing in Wisconsin. It was on network TV, so we actually got to see the game. BB wasn't given a choice of who to cheer for. With Kitty Daddy's coworkers trying to dress him in Badger red, we had to counteract!

The first half was as good as a game could be with no noticeable offense on either team, but we ended up losing. *sigh*

Falling for Fall!!!

Last weekend we went for a drive and saw soybeans turning color and some corn being harvested and my will to live finally returned. Today is glorious fall weather. The thermometer is sitting at 55°F and there is a *frost warning* for tonight! I am loving it!

Baby Brother's Y-chromosome is certainly shining through...he eats like a truck driver, belches like a frat boy, and swears like a sailor. Oh wait...that was KittyDaddy when our little man managed to launch a poop from the changing table into the drawer with the diapering supplies (creams, Snappis, extra washcloths, etc.). You would think that by kid #3, he would have figured out the whole drape a clean diaper over things to catch a misfire. Oh well, I didn't laugh at him (well, not too much).

BB has also mastered the art of dining supported by the Boppy pillow, so I have been getting some knitting time in! I am starting to accumulate some finished except for weaving in ends things, so I need to get weaving and posting some FOs. One is the little hat I made to match the MDK baby kimono. I actually finished it before BB arrived and even remembered to take it to the hospital, but discovered that I had neglected to weave in ends. It worked out okay, though, since even though it looked too small to fit anything human, it was huge on BB. It will serve him this winter! I have also nearly finished one blanket square for Ms. Knitingale's Miner Blanket Project and am halfway through a second. My lace shawl is feeling a little bit too intellectually challenging for my sleep-deprived brain, but now that the weather is feeling fallish, the thought of curling up with the shawl will probably draw me back to it. I am on the last chart before the edging, so the end is in sight!

It's Official...A Very Soggy Summer!

Courtesy of the National Weather Service...

Public Information Statement

Statement as of 2:18 PM CDT on September 10, 2007

... August 2007 was the wettest August on record for Madison...
... August 2007 was the wettest calendar month ever for Madison...
... Meteorological Summer 2007 was the wettest Summer ever for
Madison...

For the month of August 2007... 15.18 inches of rain fell at Truax
field in Madison. This smashed the previous record rainfall for
August... which was 9.49 inches... set back in 1980.

The 15.18 inches for August 2007 also smashed the record for the
wettest calendar month ever in Madison... which was 10.93
inches... set back in July 1950.

The 22.69 inches that fell during meteorological Summer of
2007... the months of June... July... and August... was also the wettest
ever in Madison. The previous wettest meteorological Summer in
Madison was 21.58 inches... set back in 1993.

Below is the list of the top 5 wettest calendar months in Madison...

1... 15.18 inches... **aug 2007**
2... 10.93 inches... Jul 1950
3... 10.84 inches... may 2004
4... 10.69 inches... Sep 1915
5... 10.34 inches... Sep 1941

Below is the list of the top 10 wettest meteorological Summers in
Madison...

1... 22.69 inches... **2007**
2... 21.58 inches... 1993
3... 21.21 inches... 1880
4... 19.86 inches... 1950
5... 19.20 inches... 1883
6... 18.82 inches... 1885
7... 18.30 inches... 1884
8... 17.29 inches... 1882
9... 16.86 inches... 1981
10... 16.41 inches... 1952

Weather records have been kept in Madison since 1871.

The one little irony here that I would like to point out is that during the wettest meteorological summer of record, we spent a good chunk of the summer in official drought conditions, while the second wettest meteorological summer was in 1993 when the entire upper Midwest was under water.

Super Siblings

Bug and Bean are still completely enamored of their new baby brother. When they came to the hospital to visit on Tuesday, they each had their first turn getting to hold Baby Brother in the rocking chair. Bean was completely transfixed:




Bug thought it was pretty neat, too, but wasn't nearly as impressed as Bean. That was probably fortunate as Bean was already begging for her second turn holding Baby Brother the whole time Bug was taking his turn!

Tonight, we were running a couple of errands and the last errand was at Walgreens, just a few blocks from home. Baby Brother was starting to make time-to-eat noises and since the weather is finally pleasant again, we decided that Kitty Daddy would go in by himself and then walk home, while the kids and I drove straight home for Baby Brother's chow time. As we pulled out of the parking lot, BB decided that he had been patient long enough and started crying in earnest. Miss Bean held his hand while Mr. Bug sang "Rock-a-Bye Baby" the whole rest of the way home. Awwwwwww. BB wasn't much impressed, but Mama sure thought it was sweet!

The only big sibling trauma so far has been having to go home and leave Mama at the hospital for two nights, especially for my sensitive Bug. Somewhere along the line, Bug had asked for an explanation of the pain scale pictures on the wall:

When it was getting close to time for them to leave on Tuesday evening, Bug was feeling very sad (and overexcited and overtired and everything else), so he tearfully climbed up on my lap on the rocking chair for a few last moments of Mama time. While we were rocking and discussing that I would be home the next day and that I would miss him too, he told me that he was feeling like #10 on the picture. Fortunately, the next morning, when they all came to take me home, he pulled me to the side and confided that he was feeling like #0 again. That's my Bug...all or none, perfectly okay or full-scale tragedy.

A Finished Object!

And, if I do say so myself, this one turned out pretty cute! But first, a progress photo from 6 days before "casting off":

Not quite so cute yet, but it did lead to this picture of Bean showing off her "Beebee Bruddah" belly:

And, why yes, those are Hello Kitty underpants peeking out from her shorts. She has been peeing in the potty on and off and wearing underpants on some days and diapers on others (which she can take off to pee on the potty if she decides to). We have been letting her completely take the lead for now (for obvious reasons).

Anyway, on Monday (why, yes it REALLY was Labor Day), we got to meet this little fella:

He arrived a 6:27 pm on Monday 9/3, weighing in a 7 lb, 8 oz and measuring 20 inches. Both Bug and Bean are quite taken by Baby Brother. When Bean was born, Bug took one look at his new little sister, wasn't too impressed, grabbed me by the hand and conveyed in 22-month-old Bug-speak that we could leave the newbie, but it was time for Mama to come home. In contrast, Bean was quite insistent that we bring Baby Brother home!

His own web-page is right here. The password is my last name.