Here comes Halloween

Going grocery shopping last night reminded me of how close Halloween is. For the last 10 years or so I haven’t paid an awful lot of attention to it as a holiday. There has been the occasional party, but for the most part it’s just been another night in my life. Jacob’s first Halloween was an exception; we dressed him up like a little pumpkin and took him from place to place so people could see how cute our little 12 week old bundle was. The next two Halloweens (ages 1 and 2) were disasters!!! Both years when trying to get him a costume, he freaked out and completely refused to even try it on. There was no way he was participating in something that required him to dress up. He could tell the difference between regular clothes and a costume, even without a mask or any sort of head piece, and he wasn’t having anything. For those two years I told people he was going as the cutest little boy in town (pretentious? Maybe a little bit, but I couldn’t come up with anything better; I’m just not a very creative person, I guess.) This year is going to be different. We’re living in a new place, in the middle of a subdivision, where he can trick or treat, and by God he’s going to. He’s got a lot more interest in the kind of characters that you can find costumes of and I think he’s going to be more excited about it this year. My fingers are crossed, anyway. To be honest so are my toes and I’m willing to go as far as my eyes…LOL We’re going to look at some costume web sites today and see how he reacts to what he sees.

I found a really cute trick or treat bag to crochet and felt for him (here). I hope he gets some use from it.

Wish me luck!

No longer a virgin…spinning wheel virgin, that is…

LOL I can’t imagine how many people will inadvertently  end up here after searching. I have the feeling some people are going to be disappointed.  Boy my number of page views is going to go through the roof, though…LOL

So I got to spin on a wheel for the first time last night.  How fun was that?!?!  I’m obviously not great at it, but it was great. I love to spin on a spindle, but I think I like the wheel even better.  Shannon and Em came over last night and Nan and I had such a good time!  I can’t wait to go to the next knit night…I’m really hoping that Nan and I can make it to the spinning guild meeting next week.  I’ve found that knitting with a group is so much more fun that knitting alone.

I reconnected with an old friend this week.  I love when that happens.  Nan needs a guy who is a real person, someone who isn’t there just for sex.  She saw Bubba’s picture on MySpace, said he was cute and I dropped him an email.  He called, they talked and we’re going down to Detroit in a few weeks so she can meet him.  How fun.  I’ll get to see some old friends and she’ll meet a new guy.  I really hope they hit it off.  He’s a great guy, she’s a great girl and they both deserve to meet someone great!!!  I hope this doesn’t end up being a hot mess.  I just love that turn of phrase, although I’m not sure what it means…LOL

First Knit Night

Hello all my little pretties…LOL  I attended my first knit night tonight at Barnes and Noble in Battle Creek.  What a blast it was!!!  I’d been planning to go for a few months now and for one reason or another I’ve always missed the night.  Tonight, TJ watched Jake so Nan and I could go together.  It was enlightening; I learned things, I met people and I had a really good time.  It’s been so long since I’ve gone out and done something social and I’m proud of myself!!

The best part of the night, other than the camaraderie, was actually learning to spin.  YAY!!!   Shannon, how odd is it that my spinning mentor/new friend also has my name (I guess I have hers since she’s older…LOL), taught me to spin with a spindle that she made (check out her selection in her etsy shop, she does amazing work.) after telling me that a part of the problem I’ve been having is that the spindle that I’ve been using is made with a toy wheel for the whorl which is generally not a good choice for a useful spindle.  This spindle is not only gorgeous (picture to come once we find the digital camera.  Who loses their digital camera in their house?!?!) but it spins like a dream.  Huge difference between it and my old one.  The old ones are pretty, though, so they will become display pieces; I don’t like to waste pretty things.  I immediately fell in love with the spindle and asked her how much for it.  What did she say?  “Keep it.”  Can I tell you I love this chick?!  It was such a sweet gesture to someone she just met and it’s a most useful gift.  Her spindles are so light that they spin beautifully.  Tonight I spun both the wool that I brought as well as some very soft, very light merino/silk that she was working on and I was amazed with the ease that I picked the skills up with after struggling so long.  Don’t get me wrong, I still have a LONG way to go:  I tend to spin in different directions and I have a problem with letting the twist go up into the roving as well as matting it as I draft, but I’ll get the hang of it.  Really, you should check out her store if you’re in the market for a spindle, they rock.

I’m thinking very strongly about joining the South Central Knitting Guild now as well.  Most of the people there tonight were from the guild, so it was an easy choice.  I liked everyone and had a great time, why not get together with them twice a month instead of just once?  I also think that Nan might have been talked into trying to learn to knit, maybe.  She also seems to be interested in learning to spin.  I knew I’d “get” her sooner or later.  Crochet was just the gateway drug; knitting is the hard stuff.

Night y’all, I’m off to spin me some purple and green yarn!!!

Cleaning, cleaning and more cleaning

I’m home alone again. TJ and Jake are up north for the “weekend” (which is denoted by the days TJ has off work – Tues-Thurs – rather than the traditional weekend) and I’m at home with a cold and a ton of housework. I didn’t feel right leaving for a party and a mini-vacation while my house was in disarray. My how I’ve changed. I should be a lot farther ahead than I am, but I wasn’t feeling well yesterday and I was lazy. I got the maintenance stuff done, but I didn’t make a dent in the stuff that I need to get done in addition to that. I’ve been going through the stuff that we packed from the trailer and brought to the new house that’s been sitting in our garage for the last 4 months. I got through all the clothes last week, sorted them into fits and doesn’t fit, like and don’t like etc. as well as sorting all of the clothes that don’t fit Jacob anymore. They need to be washed and put away so that they’ll be ready for baby number 2, whenever that is – soon, I hope. Those clothes are all down the basement, sorted into piles and ready to go, I just haven’t washed it yet. That’s my goal for tonight. I also want to clean the kitchen and get the living room in tip top shape. I’ve lived in a house that’s a pig sty for so long, that this is like a revelation for me and I’m almost rabid about keeping it this way. I feel like if I slack for even one day it will all go to hell again and I’ll never get it clean again. It’s my current biggest fear, silly isn’t it?

I feel like it’s a whole new life and I’m trying to find a balance to it all. I don’t know how to reconcile the cleaning, child care and personal care and time with each other. Welcome to the real world, Shannon. I’ve lived in my own little world for far too long and now I’m trying to make the transition to a “normal” person and it’s definitely a challenge. I have so many things that I have to do and then things that I need to do and it’s hard to find a way to blend the two. I’m sure that I’ll figure it out in time, but right now I’m kind of struggling.

I’ve got the knitting that I have to get done: my scarf swap, which is so close to being done and my Christmas gifts that are also coming along. Those are the only things that I’m allowing myself to work on right now even though there are so many cute things that I really want to tackle. After Christmas, though, it’s on. I’ll allow my “startitis” to take over and I’ll allow myself to become overwhelmed with UFO’s. LOL Until then, I’ll be lost in my three big projects. I’m hoping to have the scarf swap scarf done in the next few weeks…less if possible. And then it’s all X-mas. The Garden Path shawl is proving to be a bigger challenge than I anticipated; I’ve had to tear it back to almost the beginning at least twice and last night I had to go back about 15 rows. I’m not giving up, though. I will persevere. I’ve put too much time and energy into this thing to give up now. I know I can do it. It’s generally just stupid mistakes that cause the problems; I work when I’m too tired to concentrate properly or I’m distracted while I knit and I don’t notice the mistake until rows later. I’m going to be more diligent about it from now on!!

I’m off now to put in laundry and read some blogs before getting out the knitting for the night. I think tonight will be a work on scarf until it’s done or I can’t see straight kind of night. Are you reading, Melinda? I’m still working on it. I haven’t forgotten or blown it off. Don’t lose faith in me…LOL

Later, y’all.

Sick, clean and being a good mommy

I feel like shit today. Not a good way to feel. I have a sore throat, a toothache from hell that I’m going to have to break down and call a dentist about (not good; not good at all) and I just all around feel icky. There’s an interesting word…icky. It’s actually quite ugly looking, but enough about stupid words that look ugly…LOL.

There’s not a whole lot to say. I’ve been keeping up with the housework which is a big plus for me. I think that it’s going to stick this time; fingers crossed that I’m not jinxing myself right back into the depths of I don’t care depression. I find that I really like living in an organized house and that the “organized mess” I claimed to love wasn’t organized at all, it was just a mess that I was too lazy to deal with. I’m a little bummed that I’ve only maintained, though. I was really hoping that I’d keep going totally gung ho and get all the laundry in the basement done; I finally got out to the garage and unpacked all the bags of clothes that came from the trailer, and let me tell you they were nasty!! I keep reminding myself, though, that when I did all that extra work, I was home alone for 2 1/2 days and I could work on this house all day and all night with no interruptions. Now I have Jake and he’s not an interruption, per se, but he does need a lot of attention and I’m not going to blow him off to get extra laundry done. I think it’s actually pretty good that I managed to maintain the level of cleanliness I achieved last weekend and I’m thinking that if I can keep that up and gradually work towards getting more done in a day, I’m golden.

We’ve made serious progress in the Jake sleeping by himself ordeal. This whole week he’s finally slept in his own bed. The first night was hell, but after that not so bad. Either TJ or myself has to stay in his room with him for a little while after we first put him down and if he wakes up he needs to be tucked back in, but the number of times he’s waking up and the duration of “up time” has decreased. He’s still climbing into our bed around 5 or 6 and we’re letting him b/c with him getting up around 7:30 it’s not worth the hassle of trying to get him back to bed and then trying to get back to sleep. That, too, will go eventually. I’m thinking we can start working on that after he gets his tonsils out.

The Garden Path Shawl is finally coming along nicely. I’m now (finally) past the point where I had to do the big rip out before and I’m up to the 40″ cable on my circular needles. Have I mentioned how much I adore the Knit Pick’s Options needles? I’m also thinking about getting the newest addition to the Options family, the Harmony wooden interchangeable needle set. When I first heard about the new needles, I was a little bit bummed out that they came out so soon after I got my nickel plated original set, but now I’m really glad they did. If they had come out first, I would have bought them and I never would have known how much I love the slippery, cool feeling of the nickel plated set. I would have really missed out.

Time to go now. Jake and TJ will be back from the store soon and that means bath and bedtime for Jake is imminent and that’s my department.

Night, y’all.

Playing with bread

I’ve become obsessed with the beer bread.  I’ve made the homemade version of it three times in the last week.  I’ve been playing with the recipe; I didn’t like the fact that it was so thick with the three cups of  flour.   I think it has to do with the fact that I really liked the  Tastefully Simple Bountiful Beer Bread and the batter was thick but it was batter nonetheless.  With the recipe that I have for the bread, you end up with a dough rather than a batter.  So I’ve been playing with the amount of flour to see what happens.  I used 2 1/2 cups the other day and it didn’t seem to make much difference in the dough/batter dilemma but the taste of the beer was more noticeable.   Tonight I went down to  2 cups instead of 3 and got a thick batter instead of a dough.  I was a little concerned about how it would come out b/c of taking so much flour out  and not changing the amount of any other ingredients, but I pressed on anyway.  The bread came out a little bit flatter than its predecessors, but it was still really good.  The taste of the beer is much more noticeable in this version and I like the consistency of it.  The other thing I did differently was exchanging the brushed on egg yolk for the top of the dough in the recipe for pouring 3 tablespoons of melted butter (the real stuff) on the top like they do in the Bountiful Beer Bread.  It gives a nice bit of flavor to the top of the bread as well as a nice little crunch to the crust.  I’m happy with my experiments and I think this is how I’ll make it from now on.  This is the first time I’ve played with a recipe while baking, I usually follow them to the letter.  I’m glad I stepped out of my comfort zone this time; I got a really great bread out of it that’s easy and inexpensive to make.  Isn’t that what the joy of cooking/baking is supposed to be about, taking a recipe and tweaking it to make it your own?  Oh yeah, I also changed the amount of time to bake the bread from 45 minutes to 55 minutes which seems to work out better as well.

Onto the knitting:

I’m having a bit of trouble with the Garden Path Shawl, still.  I’ve frogged back to that lifeline so many times for screwed up stitch counts I can’t even tell you how many.  I think a big part of it is that I continue to work even when I’m tired and that causes me to lose count or count something twice etc.  I’m all the way to row 7 now (can you “hear” the sarcasm in my voice?) and shooting for an ambitious goal of 10 rows of the chart tonight.  With the way things have been going for me lately in this project, that might actually be a lofty goal.  I’m not giving up on this, though.  I might beat me down a bit, but it will never break me…unless it’s getting really close to X-mas and I don’t think I’ll be able to get it and the other items I have to knit done in time…LOL

Night y’all.

Tripping down the Garden Path and walking through the garden

Have I mentioned lately that I hate it when I screw up?!?! I made it to row 30 of the Garden Path Shawl; it was a big accomplishment for me. I was looking at it, and to my horror I realized that I had made a mistake way back in the first row of the chart. OUCH!!! I knew there had been a few problems with the chart; I took a few shortcuts, I admit it, and just did a make 1 when the number of stitches didn’t line up. It seemed to fix the problem, but I know that I should have known that the quick fix is never the right one. If I had been diligent from the beginning, this wouldn’t have happened. I just finished frogging 28 rows of TGP shawl, and I’m going to take everything I’ve learned into account and rock this shawl the second time around. I actually did manage to figure out why I kept finding my count off on the second RS row of each stitch count group: I kept forgetting the Y.O. at the end of each repeat – that’s the one stitch, I think, that I could skip and still have it seem like the count was coming out right until I got to the end of the next RS row where I would end up being short a stitch. I really wish I had figured this out long before now, but at least I’m on the right track. All I can say is thank God for the life line or I would have had to start over from the beginning.

I’ve already learned a lot from this experience:

• I really do like working with lace. It’s a challenge and it makes you stay on your toes.
• There is a lot of instant gratification in lace knitting. You can see the pattern emerging and it makes me want to keep going even when I’m tired or have something else that I ought to be doing (dangerous…LOL)
• check and recheck and then recheck again, your Y.O’s against the chart. Use the return, WS, row to check the count for each section

I’m still on my “perfect little housewife” kick. I’ve been reveling in how clean this house is. I can’t get enough of it. Anyone who’s known me for any length of time knows what a total slob I’ve always been. I’ve always thrived in chaos and even just total messiness. Are you reading this D?!?! Unfortunately, TJ happens to be the same way; not involved with the way that the house looks, at least not to the point where he’s willing to do anything about it. I don’t know what it is that’s changed inside me, but I fully intend to find a way to hold onto it b/c it makes me feel happy, it makes me feel useful and it makes me feel like anything is possible. I made us dinner tonight. The crazy thing is that he offered to take me to Outback (my favorite restaurant at the moment) for a steak dinner, but I declined and said that I would rather cook a meal at home and have a quiet evening. What’s happening to me?!?! I made spaghetti with sauce from scratch, baked a loaf of beer bread (recipe here) also from scratch as well as garlic crescent rolls, which I admit I burned a bit, and one of those everything in the box desserts in the Apple Crisp flavor. He seemed to enjoy it all, but didn’t eat dessert. It was a really nice evening. After dinner we went to Hobby Lobby, for him not me this time, to get paint for his airbrush gun. He’s been so eager to use it since he got it. I have the feeling our walls are in for some “updating”. I love seeing him this excited about something that’s a leisure time activity rather than something work related. I picked up some of those glass bead things that you put in vases and such. I want to put it in our triangular vase and then store my straight knitting needles in there – decorative and functional all at the same time.

I’ve discovered another new passion (or at least possible passion; we’ll see next spring) in gardening. I went out to the garden on whim today to pick the tomatoes that were ready. We never got around to using the”tomato cages” to jeep the plants upright and now I completely understand why they are needed. They are huge and heavy and after the storms and the high winds that we had last week, they just couldn’t stay upright anymore. They are fallen over and lying in a tangled heap all over the edge of the garden. I picked up a few of the stalks to pick a tomato from it and most of them just snapped right off in my hand. It’s time for us to pull those plants completely out of the ground, I think. There’s no way that the tomatoes left on the vine are going to ripen laying on the ground, covered with the rest of the plant. We’ve got three GREAT pumpkins!! One is already off the vine; when TJ tried to turn it, the stem snapped off. It’s sitting on the back lawn to “cure” for the next 10 days and then it will be off to the basement (dark, dry and cool) until it’s time for carving the big guy up. I’m so excited about carving pumpkins this year b/c they’re ours. I really wasn’t prepared for pumpkin growing; I didn’t realize just how out of control those vines were going to become. They took over the garden! We only got two watermelons b/c the pumpkins choked them and the squash is buried alive under the pumpkin vines somewhere, not that the squash vines didn’t go crazy as well. I love vine plants. I have such big plans for next year’s garden. Right now, though, it’s time to think about bulb plants. Garlic and Onion, Lilies and Tulips, here I come. I have never planted a bulb before, hell, I’ve never really planted anything before. This garden was TJ’s baby. Still is, but I’m horning in a bit. It’s inexplicable. I got online to find out when we should pluck the pumpkins and a gardening obsession was born. LOL I’m going to go research how to deal with bulbs now.

Have a great night, y’all.