Z is for Zoo


It wouldn't be right of me as a Bronx girl if I didn't have the Bronx Zoo as my Z. The Bronx Zoo has brought people to the Bronx even when people were still scared of the Bronx (silly people;)). It's a fantastic zoo and one of the first to start eliminating cages and putting animals into more natural seeming setting. Let's not forget that the buffalo (ok really the bison) were saved by the Bronx Zoo.

Oddly enough the name of the Wildlife Conservation Society's zoo only officially became the Bronx Zoo a little over a year ago. It's only been the nickname all these years. Glad they finally caught on.

During the holiday season the zoo is lit up with beautifully designed lights.

We saw giraffes:

...and of course the bison:


...silly monkeys:

...and a few animals you don't normally see at the zoo:

...the butterfly garden was set up as a scavenger hunt inspired by The Very Hungry Caterpillar, which Ian had a great deal of fun with:



I think Avery and Cheyenne enjoyed the hot chocolate best:



I'm amazed that I actually made it all the way to "z". It's funny that Vicki and I had the exact same "y" and "z" but I chalk it up to great minds and all that;).

Have a wonderful new year!

Y is for Yard


Rinaldo decided that "y" really had to be for yard (he's kind of taking over at the last minute dontcha think?). He has put so much work into it that he appreciates any chance for it to be admired.

I've shown this before, but just to remind you. This is what my yard looked like in June of 2005:


Here it is in June 2006:



...we were able to host lots of BBQs this year and much fun was had:



...this is when the tree limb fell on Labor Day weekend:



...and here it is today:



A little worse for wear after the tree limb came down. We can't fix the fence until the woman to the left of us pulls down her stone fence as it will continue putting pressure on ours, but aside from the obvious damage it's still a great yard and has made having a house so much more fun for this born apartment dweller.

X is for eXtra time

I couldn't for the life of me come up with anything for "x". Rinaldo suggested a wish list of what I would do with more free time. So here's a few things I came up with:

The most obvious thing of course is more time with the kids. I'd like to be able to actual sit and play with them more than I do.

I'd like more date time with the husband. Movies, dinner that kind of thing.

Naturally I would also like more knitting time and now spinning time.

I'd finally get back to school which I've been putting off forever.

I'd like to become a notary public. I can't say why but my grandfather was one and for some reason I've always wanted to be one too.

Of course none of these are impossible to do within the time I actually have. Time these days is like money, if it's budgeted well you can get get a lot done but I've always sucked at budgeting! Although I don't make it a habit of doing new year's resolutions maybe I will make a concerted effort to try to spend a little time on each of these things. It can only make life more satisfying so why not?

For my "w" we most go into the most secret depths of my basement:


...into these boxes...

to discover that...W is for Wonder Woman:

These are my oldest issues. They date from 1961, but I have a complete collection starting in 1968, when Wonder Woman lost her powers and became something of a secret agent:

This is my favorite run on the old Wonder Woman series, but Gloria Steinem had it killed.

I, of course loved the Wonder Woman tv show and spent many an hour twirling in my bedroom, if you don't know what I mean it's rather difficult to explain, if you do know then I'm sure you did it too;).

In the eighties the writer and artist George Perez took over and did another re-do of the character which brought her back to her roots in Greek Mythology:


Other writers have brought her more firmly down to earth again. In fact the most recent writer is Allan Heinberg who is a writer for the O.C. and Grey's Anatomy:

In honor of my favorite super hero here is a little quiz that Susan put up, which means I had to do it since we are playing blog tag at the moment:

You Are Bold And Brave

But daring? Not usually? You tend to like to make calculated risks. So while you may not be base jumping any time soon... You are up for whatever's new and (a little) exciting!

How Daring Are You?

That sounds just about right to me!

V is for Veronica Mars


I did come up with another V I was going to use but frankly I love Veronica too much not to use this as an excuse to pimp the show. It's intelligent, well written and just a lot of doggone fun (Tuesdays at 9 on the CW). I suspect this may be the last season as it's never really picked up the ratings. In the first two seasons Veronica always had a mystery of the week as well as a season long mystery that would culminate in the season finale. This season it will be two mysteries. The first one was finished in the first 9 episodes. The next will be 7 episodes long, then there will be stand alone mysteries for the rest of the season. Should it survive to the fourth it will probably just be stand alone mysteries. I'm not sure I like that idea as I think this season's shorter arcs have worked really well but people still aren't investing the time to watch so I guess it's worth a shot.

When I grow up I want to be Veronica Mars...although I have a theory that Veronica Mars grows up to be Jordan Cavanaugh but that's another story...

We will be fast forwarding through the rest of the alphabet so I can get it done beofre midnight tomorrow...

It's nice to be loved...

Life is quite amazing when your husband and your best friend conspire to chip in and get you one of these:




Christmas freakin' rocks!!!

Special thanks to Risa and Chante for advising and keeping secrets so well...

Day 5

wherein our heroine must face reality...the reality of abject failure...

So here we are on Friday and here is the last hat:



...beautiful isn't it? Yeah well it obviously had bad karma so I gave up. I tried to fix it at lunchtime but I kept dropping stitches and so I finally just said, "fuck it" (literally) and gave up. I read on the train trip home. Watched a little TV, took a shower, and was in bed by 10:15...heaven.

The gifts that did make it were much appreciated. I held a couple back so that Avery can give all his teachers theirs when break is over. Carla and I have voted that this whole holiday knitting thing is so over and Gina promises to stop me should I breathe a word of attempting any next year. I'm steadfast in my resolve this time.

Just so you don't feel completely bereft of finished objects here's a long overdue shot of the Christmas stockings. They came out pretty well in the end:



I am way happier now that the pressure is off...oh yeah the fact that I am out of here in a few minutes doesn't hurt either...

I doubt I'll post this weekend so have a wonderful Christmas to all who celebrate it and for those who don't enjoy the long weekend!

Day 4

Wherein the runner stumbles...

This is where I was late last night:



...looking good right? Five completed hats. Then I started the sixth one and somehow at 1:15 in the morning, while watching Golden Girls, I could not quite figure out how to knit around the first row of the magic loop. Although I've done 3 out of 5 hats this way. I've hit this wall late at night before. I decided to call it a night. This morning I cast on again and knit happily on the first five rows. Then I worked the first cable row. I couldn't quite finish it before I got off the train so I tried to do the last bit once I got to my desk while my morning reports printed. The pattern consists of a 12 stitch repeat. I reached the penultimate one, do you see a problem:



...'cause I do. That kinda looks like 6 stitches not 12. There's a screw up somewhere, now I need to take the time to find it. This hat takes me over a day to complete. I was up until 2 on Monday finishing the first one and that was with doing the first five rows the night before. It's not looking good people. The hats are supposed to go with the boys to school in the morning. I've not yet given up but realistically this may be it. Let's see how far I can get today.

I've decided to join Risa on Wendy's new knitalong Knit from your stash.

I've got a lot of nice yarn in stash and projects that I want to make but as is the case with most of us I am easily seduced by the new and different. I'm hoping to at least make it to my birthday in June without knitting something that I need to buy yarn for. I'm officially starting this January 1st. There are potential yarn shop visits next week so why ruin it from the start!

I haven't shared any shots of the boys in a while so here is some kid eye candy for you. The other night Avery wasn't feeling well, so he actually fell asleep on the couch waiting for dinner, he had some company:



That cat is so attached to Avery that we don't say he's Avery's cat, we say that Avery is Hiro's boy.

Not to be outdone in cuteness however. Mr. Ian received a late birthday present from his grandpa in Florida. It was a Superman shirt and cape that has a fan to blow it up like muscles. Ian is quite fond of it:



Thursday just a day away from Friday, have a good one...

Day 3

Wherein our heroine starts to flag just a bit in her the sprint toward the finish...

I did not get as much knitting done yesterday as I expected to. I did knit for about an hour on line for Colbert but then they make you stand up (I was sitting on the ground prior to that) so in the close quarters it was a bit difficult to cable. I am about 5 pattern repeats (out of seven) into the second hat:



I promise to give you nice pictures taken with a real camera on Friday.

My eye is even pinker today so I am hoping to get my work done and ditch out of work early. This should lead to some quality knitting time to get back on track. If I can start the third hat tonight I should be fine but we'll see what happens.

Steven Colbert was even funnier in person than he is on the air. He is also genuinely very nice. Rinaldo and I had a great time.

My dear cousin in law (yes I choose to believe that there is such a thing), Linda left a comment yesterday about what was missing from my "Year in Posts", as in everything of importance. She made me realize that I totally forgot to post the instructions for the meme. I have corrected that and updated the post. Just for the record the idea is to copy and paste the first sentence posted for each month of 2006. So in reality no Icelanders were dissed in the making of that meme;)

Happy Wednesday!

The Good the Bad and the Blech

First up the good, I actually finished the first hat, see:



I finished it on the train this morning. It did involve much late night knitting but that puts me on a good schedule of a day and half each for the other two. The other good thing is Rinaldo and I have tickets to The Colbert Report tonight. That's good on two levels; one being simply that I love the show and have been dying to see it in person. The other being there will be much knitting time while I stand in line since they suggest you show up at least 90 minutes before the doors open.

The bad is that my ear has yet to clear up. I had an infection last week in my ear, nose and throat. The antibiotic cleared it right up and just left me with a plain old cold but my ear is still stuffed. It's driving me insane!

The blech, well last week Rinaldo managed to not catch my cold, nor my infection but he somehow developed pink eye. Typically this comes home on a kid but they have both been pink eye free so I'm not sure where he picked it up from. We're old hands at it so we did all the right things to make sure he kept it to himself. Yet it appears to not have been enough, I woke up this morning and my eye was a lovely shade of fuscia. So it's off to the dr for some drops before I hit Colbert. I am being religious about not touching my eye so I don't share the wealth. I'll take some antibacterial liquid with me also just to be extra safe. Can you imagine the headlines, "Entire Studio Audience Comes Down with Conjunctivitis, Typhoid Nancy Blamed". Yeah, I don't want that to happen. Of course the real reason I'm ticked is that I used my favorite eyeliner yesterday which means it's probably infected and I have to throw it out. Damn, good eyeliner is so hard to find these days.

Here's yet another meme to keep you warm. I stole it from Kim, although it's all over the place.
added later - The idea is to copy and paste the first sentence posted for each month of 2006.

The Year in Posts
January - Happy Birthday Cara!

February - Phenomenal Women by Maya Angelou

March - You may recall this post from a few weeks back.

April - It is actually warm enough to sit on my deck and blog, see...

May - Happy May Day/Day Without Immigrants

June - There once was a hat named Odessa.

July - The last few days I've been wanting to blog but the heat has me feeling horribly lazy.

August - Yes, ok it's pushing it a bit but I already did D so I can't do D for Disney.

September - If a tree falls......in your backyard, you're totally screwed.

October - Hi my name is Nancy, I am 37 years old and I still have a learner's permit...

November - No excuses for the lack of posting this week, it just is the way it is.

December - My title does not mean that I was the recipient of unexpected charity.

Here we are one week before the holiday break and what do I have to show for it? I have 7 teachers to knit for. I have already given up hope of having the Moebius scarf ready for Avery's science teacher by Friday. She'll get it when break is over. I have two Odessas finished and one nearly complete. It would be finished but I couldn't locate my size 8 double points last night so I just stopped where I was and started another hat. I figure the decreases will take me 15-30 minutes to complete so that can keep. I started the cabled lady hat last night and man I forgot just how long it takes me to do the 4 row repeat. I think it will get faster at least I hope. I'm not sure if it's the magic loop method or the slippery yarn or the bumping of the train this morning but I couldn't for the life of me do the cables without a needle. Cabling goes way slower for me when I have to actually use a needle. So 3 hats in 4 days. As of 9 this morning this is where I was:

I don't really have to go into the whole Monday morning, camera phone thing again, right?

I'll check in tomorrow so you can see how far I've progressed.

I picked this up from Susan:

How evil are you?

...really are any of you surprised? I do feel I should mention that she got the exact same result. I guess evil loves company, right?

She also had this one which I got a different result for:

You Are Dancer

Carefree and fun, you always find reasons to do a happy dance. Why You're Naughty: That dark stint you had as Santa's private dancer. Why You're Nice: You're friendly. Very friendly.

Which of Santa's Reindeer Are You?

...there was no way I couldn't post something that said I was "Santa's private dancer"...

More proof that knitters are intent on world domination. I was reading this article this morning all about Veronica Mars availability on ITunes. Imagine my surprise to see that the author refers to shows as skeins. Really. Skeins. I suspect this is more about spell check run amok but whatever. I have no problem with referring to Veronica Mars as my "favorite skein" in fact her "handpainted drama" is what "knits" me in episode after episode.

101 hours 'til break...not that I'm counting...

As I have been sick as a freakin' dog since the weekend. I am totally phoning it in today. Here is the meme that's been going around. I've seen it everywhere so I'll be damned if I can remember who I actually stole it from:

1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate?

Hot Chocolate, preferably with a bit of peppermint in it.

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just set them under the tree?

Santa not only wraps but he wraps in special paper to differentiate from gifts given by parents. He takes this quite seriously.

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white?

Colored.

4. Do you hang mistletoe?

Nope.

5. When do you put up your decorations?

Usually right after Thanksgiving but I've been running late this year.

6. What is your favorite holiday dish?

Ham basted with orange juice and ginger ale, like my Aunt Ruth used to make.

7. Favorite Holiday memory as a child?

Everyone going over to my grandmother's, we even packed up the cat a few times!

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa?

My best friend Susan when I was 7 or 8. I was devastated...still am.


9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve?

Yup, usually new jammies for everyone and whatever Maribel gets me!


10. What kind of decorations are on your Christmas Tree?

Typically we have character ornaments but due to the arrival of Hiro the nutty kitten we bought what I like to call Class in a Box from Target. So all the ornaments this year are gold, balls, bells, icicles and beads.

11. Snow! Love it or Dread?

LOVE IT!!!

12. Can you ice skate?

Yes, but badly.

13. Do you remember your favorite gift?

I really don't. I usually get some fantastic stuff for Christmas.

14. What’s the most important thing about the Holidays for you?

The break from work and school. Time to just relax and be a family without outside obligations pulling us this way and that.


15. What is your favorite Holiday Dessert?

Pumpkin Pie, yes I know it's really for Thanksgiving but since I only get it around this time of year I keep getting them all the way to New Years.

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition?

I'm really not sure...

17. What tops your tree?

An angel bought at Macy's.


18. What is your favourite holiday book?

Miracle on 34th Street.

19. What is your favorite Christmas Song?

Either Happy Christmas by John and Yoko or Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas the Judy Garland or Chrissie Hynde versions.

20. Candy Canes! Yuck or Yummy?

Eh, they're ok, but they get old fast. I can never finish one.

I did finish the Christmas stockings, pictures will be forthcoming. I am now working on the moebius scarf, with at least 4 more hats to be done...in 7 days...Goddess help me...

Stolen from Bronxie and Cara:

Unexpected Charity

My title does not mean that I was the recipient of unexpected charity. No, in actuality it refers to those knitting projects that don't come out quite the way you intended. It can't be given to the recipient it was intended for but it's complete so you don't really want to tear the whole thing apart. Rather than letting it litter the bottom of the knitting basket I send them off to someone who can actually get use out of it.

This happened to me last year. I tried to create a hat that duplicated one worn by Veronica on Veronica Mars. A poor choice of yarn meant that it came out nothing like I intended. Still and all it was a good hat so off to Dulaan it went.

My latest Odessa will travel to Tibet next year as well:

if it's a crappy cellphone photo, it must be Monday...

Crappy photo aside, the hat came out well, hell the yarn even striped like I wanted it to on the other two hats. The flaw came, I'm convinced, from hubris. Maribel has been fighting with Odessa for a little over a week now. She must have frogged the damn thing 3 or 4 times. Every time she called to complain I would sympathize but I would say while I did vaguely recall problems with my first Odessa, I could do them in my sleep now! HA! I must have been doing this one in my sleep because I never changed the needle from 6 to 8 when I finished the ribbing. So it's a lovely hat for a small child, not a grown teacher. Oh well that's life. I decided to go back to my Christmas stockings.

The knitting group yesterday was fun. Maribel and I had a good time. They hope to have it once a month so I'll definitely go back.

Happy Monday (is that an oxymoron or what?) everyone...

A Knitting Event in the Bronx

Any of you out there who live in the Bronx or wouldn't mind taking a trip to visit, a good friend of mine is hosting a knitting event on Sunday at The Riverdale-Yonkers Society for Ethical Culture. Maribel and I will be there (which really isn't that reason enough to come?) and a good time is sure to be had by all. The event starts at 1:00 and all are welcome, I believe I heard tale of a bake sale going on at the same time, yum!

E-mail me or leave a comment if you're interested and need directions or have any questions.

Have a great weekend all...

Time to mess with the squints, Jody, Cate and Norma have all mentioned this but basically someone is studying how fast a meme can travel through blogdom. We want the knitters to dominate, so link to this and then ping technorati so they can track it. Come on people it's all in the name of science and world domination by knitters. I think that's a cause we can all get behind!

Besides, it's great blog fodder...

Thanks for all the kind and supportive words after my last post. It's really is nice to have so many people willing to hear you rant and rave a bit when life gets a little hard to handle.

I promised some knitting for you this time. I finished the first of three Christmas Stockings:



It's a little tighter than I would have liked. I needed to go up a needle size or two but I figure grownups use them mostly for decorative purposes anyway. The pattern was quick and easy. I'll start the next one soon. At the moment I decided to make my third Odessa. I really needed some instant gratification and nice mindless knitting.

I've been really hung up on my mother in laws socks for the past week but ta da:


...they too are done. Yay!

Happy Wednesday y'all...

Strange days indeed...

So it's Monday morning and I'm locked out of my office. We have two doors we can use to get in. One is a door that opens onto the sales floor which is always locked when we leave. The other is a door that leads to the stock area which we never lock...except someone seems to have locked it. The problem is that no one has a key to either of these doors. I have a key to my office but that is inside the textbook office which is the room I can't get into. Great way to start the week, right?

I haven't posted because I've had some stuff going on and I've been obsessing on it quite a bit. Ian's parent teacher conference did not go well. His teachers feel he is lost and they want him to go back to a self contained special ed class. The problem is he is getting far more than they realize. One of the teacher's even admitted how shocked she was when she worked with him one on one as to how much he knew. He's learning beautifully. He comes home overflowing with new things. He is simply not sharing it in class. If he is uncertain of what to do he will simply sit there while all the other kids go and do what their supposed to do. Needless to say we were devastated. His pre-school teacher had recommended an integrated setting as had CSE which is the committee that assesses kids in the NYC Public School system. I fought that to get him into the school he is in because it's small and progressive. I felt that he could do better there than in an integrated class in a regular school. Oddly enough it turned out that the Kindergarten this year is an integrated class. I figured that was the best of both worlds, he's certified general ed but in a class with two teachers so he will get extra attention anyway. Doesn't seem to be working out that way.

The thing is Ian is extremely introverted when he goes to school. He is a completely different child from the one that we see at home and everywhere else. Mind you since September he has blossomed tremendously, he speaks to everyone in the school (that's amazing for him). He's got a ton of friends and he's happy to go to school everyday. I feel that to pull him out of this school that he loves would be a breach of his trust. Unfortunately they don't currently have a Kindergarten Special Ed class. It's a third grade at the moment. It may cycle back down to K next September but that hasn't been decided yet. Which means if he does go into special ed he leaves the school, frankly in my district, special ed is spotty at best. I won't let him go into a class where the other kids all have behavioral and emotional issues. That mix won't help him at all.

Of course I'm more than a little pissed that they can just make this decision 2 months into the school year. So what does that mean? Have they given up on him? Are they even trying anymore? I wonder also if he would be getting more attention in the class itself from the special ed teacher if he was certified as special ed. She seems to not have much experience and I wonder how well the team teaching is going overall. It seems to me no child should be getting "lost" in a class with two full teachers. We spoke to his speech teacher, who he is doing wonderfully with, and asked her to "push in" for one of his sessions. Basically she will work with him within the context of the class. We'll see if that helps. In the meantime I am trying to have him independently evaluated here at NYU so I have some idea of what he is capable of. I am also going to call his pre-school teacher to see if there is any strategies she found particularly helpful with him. I am also not completely against him repeating Kindergarten. I'm not a big believer in four year olds starting Kindergarten (Ian turned five in late October). I realize many kids are ready at that age but I would bet just as many are not. I think it should be a choice, based on the individual kid. It seems to me that turning five by December 31 is a bit too wide a window. Many districts elsewhere require a child to be 5 by September 1st. Why can't there be more leeway for parents to decide what's best for their child.

Ok, sorry for venting on you. Now you see why I haven't posted. Of course oddly enough I'm not the only parent going through this exact thing right now. The problem I have is I can't separate the fact that the stress should come from the decision about what's best for Ian today, rather than stressing about what it means for the rest of his life. I tend to be a bit obsessive about this kind of thing.

Aah here's someone with a key, time to start my workday. I promise some knitting next time...

I swear to god I wasn't drunk for Thanksgiving, even though the photographic evidence makes it look that way...

U is for Umbrella



I have a love/hate relationship with umbrellas and it took me years to figure out why. I rarely use them even if I remember to carry one with me, which I never do. I do recall having a really cool bubble one that I loved beyond comprehension when I was a little girl, otherwise umbrellas were not an accessory I really had use for.

It occurred to me awhile back that blind people do not use umbrellas. Kind of hard to navigate with a cane or a dog while carrying an umbrella. As an older child I wouldn't have carried one because it would get it the way of me guiding my parents. As a rule this was accomplished by my dad putting his hand on my shoulder so I could lead while my mother held his arm. An umbrella would have been hopelessly in the way in that situation.

Now I find that as a mother and wife I am an umbrella fan. Both boys have umbrellas in their bookbags at all times, Avery's is the light blue and Ian's is the Go Diego Go. I strongly encourage Rinaldo to use his, the purple NYU AMC one, yet I still often forget mine, the lovely Egyptian one (a birthday gift from Maribel). I was pondering this on Monday when Avery and I were waiting for a bus to get home from Parent Teacher conferences. I was drenched and my beautiful umbrella, which I will say I love more than any I have had before, was sitting at home nice and dry.

Old habits die hard...

In between ABC Along catch ups there is actually some knitting going on. I finished the first Odessa on Friday, then I made another on Sunday. I really love the pattern but I'm not overly thrilled with this yarn and pattern combo. See the pooling:



and the flip side:












Now the red is much nicer in my opinion but I have to say everyone else loves these hats so I'm calling them a success and they will be given. I have one more Odessa to do with my third skein of Four Play, then it's on to 2 lady hats. I am however taking a little break to finish my mother in law's other sock first. I posted a bit more about the hats over at the Love Thy Teacher blog if anyone is interested.

I had Avery's parent teacher conference last night. It went very well. I am very proud of how hard he is working and the way he has transitioned from his Bronx Laid Back progressive school into a much more intense traditional middle school. He's really coming into his own. His teachers love him and he loves them as well. I still had huge anxiety over the meetings simply because I have scars from past parent teacher conferences. I am torn about going to Ian's. I'm worried that the teachers don't see all the progress I am seeing. Ian is good at not showing his teachers what he knows. As far as I can see he's doing beautifully. He's learned all his letter sounds, and can spell words that we sound out together pretty damn well. I'm very proud of him and I'll be distraught if they tell me anything different. I think I will let Rinaldo go and we will switch for the Spring meeting.

I am still waiting for my damn KnitPicks order. The tracking says it got to NYC on Thursday but it can take days for it to get through NYU Mail Services sometimes. I'm ready to try the magic loop method on the Christmas Stockings. Maribel came over on Saturday to go over it with me again and I think I got it but I need my 32 inch KnitPicks needles to do it.

I. Hate. Waiting.

...and it's only Tuesday, that so sucks...

T is for Tea...

Yup, how obvious can I be, but tea is serious business in our house, see:


I remember when I was a little girl my mother's friend would come over and make coffee for everyone but she would always make me tea with milk so I could feel included. When I sip a cup of tea, if it's made just right I can still remember that feeling, of playing at being a grown up.

I had a dalliance with coffee as a teenager. Black of course, no sugar. It matched my clothes and my persona. When I met my husband he was a huge tea drinker. In fact he had a nightly tradition of a cup of tea before bed. I found it so funny when his dad stayed with us the first time, he too had to have a cup of tea before retiring.

Mostly I drink plain old Lipton tea but my morning preference is Chai tea. I like the one that comes from concentrate best but I will settle for the teabag version if that's all I have. It's just not quite spicy enough for me (I usually take an extra shot of the concentrate as it is). Peppermint tea is also a favorite and a friend of mine got me into kukicha tea which is amazingly relaxing.

We usually still have our tea at night and on weekends Avery joins us. Ian liked tea as a baby but won't touch it at the moment. I'm sure that will change in time. It brings a nice moment of peace at the end of the day and helps me wind down for the night.

Tea, it's so civilized...

I've up and joined another knit along:

I had already ordered the yarn for the Twirl Top Stocking from KnitPicks and we all know how I love to join a knit along that I've already planned something for.

Then I got to thinking, I know of at least a few bloggers who are making gifts for teachers at the moment so why not host a knit along myself! It's been awhile. I hosted the Devan Along a few years ago, and Ian is just now wearing his Devan but it was fun. Katy reminded me that it was how we "met". So ladies and gentleman I present to you the:

Love Thy Teacher Knit Along

I'm giving it it's own blog so it will be fairly low maintenance. Frankly it can go on and on because there will probably be teacher knitting going on near the end of the school year as well. I am envisioning this as less of a "start this now, finish it by..." kind of knit along and more of a sharing of ideas. We all need some inspiration at one time or another so maybe we can help each other out. Join up if you like!

My morning kind of sucked. I spent almost all of it in the dentist's chair. My Root Scaling and Planing is done but now all three wisdom teeth need to be removed and I, at 37, need braces. Yup, thanks ma! My mother thought it was just vanity when the dentist told her to get me braces when I was a kid but now it seems my overbite is causing trauma to my teeth so they ache all the freakin' time. Oh yay, well at least it should be Invisaligns.

I finished the first sock for my mother in law. It went nice and fast, gotta love a small foot. I didn't take a picture yet so I'll make you wait for the pair. She tried it on yesterday and pronounced it perfect. I'd best get to the second one and fast or she'll nag me to death!

I cast on for one of the teacher gifts yesterday. Here is the start of Odessa in Four Play:


I've decided to not do the beads this time. I really do love the pattern, nice and mindless but pretty and of course you all know how orgasmic Four Play makes me;)

I am actively trying to not start a cute cat blog but I felt the need to share. On Halloween while Rinaldo and the boys were up in Rockland trick or treating, Maribel and I were hanging out watching some stuff on the DVR and an old movie. Maribel it should be said is a dog person, not a cat person...not at all, not even a little. She loves her some Hiro though, he even survived stealing her sock:
Rinaldo had the camera hence the crappy cell phone shot

He's a handful that one...

...it's Tuesday, go vote!!!

No excuses for the lack of posting this week, it just is the way it is. Of course I have Halloween pictures to share.

Here is a very distracted Ian as Buzz Lightyear:
Avery as a dementor not doing a very good job of intimidating Sleeping Beauty (that's the boys' cousin Zeyda):
...last but not least cousin Cheyenne as a very fetching Supergirl:

Here's some shots of Gyrid, they're not very impressive since I've done no blocking nor seaming but the knitting is done as I said:
I tried to do a close up of the cable pattern but none of them really show it well. It does pop nicely in person but is completely lost in pictures. Here's the best of the shots:
I am actually almost finished with the first sock for my mother in law. It's coming along quite nicely. There's nothing wrong with plain and simple sometimes:
Unfortunately my new kitten has a great fondness for attacking my yarn, particularly when I am working on it but sometimes when it is just sitting there doing nothing. This is what I found of the ball I am currently using after my shower this morning:
He's trouble that one, he's currently obsessed with chasing the few balloons left from Ian's party last week. This is his favorite stalking perch:


...damned if I know how he gets up there, I've yet to see him do it.

Go give you congratulations to displaced Bronx Girl Alison, she had a beautiful baby boy last night. Welcome to the world Avishai Reilly Fox!

Have a great weekend...