A Day in the Life

Elisa did a "day in the life" post a few days ago and she invited others to do the same. Lord knows I've sold enough of those Day in the Life... books I figured what the hell.


My day begins at 7:30 by taking Avery on the bus to school. Ian and Rinaldo head in a different direction.
If you are a parent you know that it is simply par for the course when on the bus trip your child says to you, "hey mom can we buy something for today's writing celebration"? Which leads to an emergency trip to the Bodega:

Once Avery is all square away and dropped at school, I head to the D train:
While I ride the train I knit and watch my Ipod. Typically on weekday mornings I am watching General Hospital. Here poor Alan Quatermaine prepares to breathe his last:
Finally we get to the Village and I walk to work. There's construction going on but there's a sign to let you know my store is there:
That's Rinaldo's store on the left there.

This is my office, where I spend far too much of my day:
...note the Starbucks on the desk. Here is where I make life and death decisions like should we return all of this book, do we need 20 or 25 of that poetry anthology, really is anyone going to buy that $295 Real Estate title?

I have my desk facing the door so when I look out I see these guys:

That's Tisha in the back and Gary in the front. The desk covered in coursepacks is Andrew's, unfortunately he was on Jury Duty at the time so no pictures of him:
At 4:30 I'm out of there and by 5:30 I'm back home again:

Here's a couple of fun links and a meme to keep you busy while I get lost in the endless sleevage.

My friend Gary's wife Virginia whose ceramic work I adore (really, the only mug I drink my tea in and the only cup I'll drink my milk in are both Virginia originals) has opened an Etsy shop that you should all go and buy from now...

and some silly ones...

I'm glad there will be more coffin options for me since my original choice seems to have gone out of production.

I'm sorry for Mexico and Australia but any moth that doesn't eat wool is a friend of mine.

We're actually supposed to have faith in our government when they spend money on things like this.



This is a fun meme, stolen from Dephal I especially like my Soap Opera name and my Goth name:

1. YOUR GANGSTA NAME (First 3 letters of first name plus izzle)
Nanizzle

2. YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (fav color and fav animal)
Blue Tiger

3. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, and current street name)
Joyce Pond

4. YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first name, first 3 letters of mom's maiden name)
Matnacra

5. YOUR SUPERHERO NAME: (2nd favorite color, favorite drink).
Purple Root Beer

6. YOUR WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (mother's middle name)
Julia

7. YOUR GOTH NAME: (black, and the name of one your pets)
Black Valentine

Feel free to steal it if you like...

What happens when a knitter gets bored...

I finally have those pictures to show you. These were actually taken on Friday but as you may recall I forgot to bring my camera cable to work.

This is what 9.25 inches of stockinette and seed stitch border look like:



This is how much yarn I had left on the second ball:



I did end up tinking back and re-did the last row so I could get the necessary stitch holders on it. Now this was on Friday and today is Tuesday. You might expect a sleeve or two to be done by now. Right? No. I was so dreadfully bored with it that I started seeing knitting projects where there were none before. Case in point, may I introduce Wubbzy:



Now picture me on the couch early Sunday morning. Everyone else is asleep, except Ian who is watching his new favorite show. I am not knitting because I haven't touched that damn sweater since Friday. I look up from the book I am trying to finish and there is Wubbzy. My first thought is,"hey I could knit him". Yeah, I know, let's not get into how pathetic it is that all I can think about watching pre-school TV is the knittability of the characters.

This is what I had by last night:




...complete with posable tail:



Ian thinks I rock.

Have a good Tuesday...

I have finally reached the 9.25" mark on Ian's sweater. I have next to no yarn left on the second ball. I think I will tink back a row to do the last row to get it on stitch holders. I don't see any way the tiny amount that is left will get me through the last row and it would be ridiculous to add another ball at this point.

I did actually take a picture but, ha ha, I don't have my cable with me so you'll have to use your imagination.

Rinaldo called me when he got to work this morning and told me I can, "never, ever talk about knitting" in his presence again. It seems that after he dropped Ian off at school he went to the train and ended up sitting next to the woman we bought Hiro from. She has been trying to learn to knit since I first met her. She is taking a class at The Point. She then started talking to him about her project and the yarn and whatnot and my poor husband understood everything she was talking about. He found himself explaining to her that although she may hate to purl she will be greatly limited if she doesn't become comfortable with it. She said she would stick to scarves and other flat things. She would never be able to do a hat. Then the woman sitting on his other side chimed in saying that she was listening to their conversation and explained that you can make a hat by knitting it flat, decreasing and sewing up the side.

Now this is where it gets really funny. You see my husband admits he has become more than a bit of a snob about knitting, so he tells me this hat offended him. He said, "it was acrylic, it was in a mishmash of colors, the yarn was knit on needles to big for it so it had gaping holes and the seam looked like my appendectomy scar". LOL, then he said why would she ever show it to anyone. He's a little harsh but funny. This woman asked the woman he was with what kind of yarn she had, was it cotton? She answered that it was wool and Rinaldo pointed out that it was merino.

He is completely and utterly ashamed of himself that he could speak so knowingly of a hobby he doesn't even do himself.

I think he's awfully cute;)

Yay it's Friday and a long weekend whoo hoo! Enjoy the three days off if you have them!

I am so sure you are here to see endless rows of stockinette, right? Here ya go:


What too boring for you? Yeah me too. I should have 9.25 inches at this point. Last I checked I had 6. Boring, boring, boring. I know I said I was going to start something else to switch off to when I get too bored but I'm afraid I'll put it down and never pick it back up.

Of course I can't complain too much. It's Valentine's Day and snowing and I have the day off so that's all good. I also was given these when I woke up:




Who wouldn't have their day brightened by that?

I didn't take off for anything fun, I am taking my mother in law for her hearing aides. I am hoping this will help cure some of the strife that's been occurring in my house. At the very least if she gets into arguments with anyone she'll actually know what she's arguing about.

I had my knitting group last night. If what I am working on is boring at least I have friends who do more interesting things. Claudia whose work has appeared here before when she made a beautiful shawl is working on a yoke sweater for herself. This is her swatch:

The picture really washed out the color but it's a gorgeous eggplant purple and the fair isle is amazing.

Marsha, whose birthday it is today (happy birthday Marsha!), made this adorable teddy bear from Knitty Gritty:

Marsha is asking our group to make squares for an afghan for the injured soldiers who are getting rehabilitation at the Fisher Center in Texas. They held a tea party for the soldiers last year that was a big hit so they are doing it again this year and she wants to make an afghan to give as one of the door prizes. We're hoping to have enough squares by the end of March and we may even put it together at one of the meetings.

Finally since I've no real progress for you it's time for interesting links:

Claudia told me about this guy, I know Rinaldo wishes he had received one for Valentine's Day.
If you don't have a tarot deck handy just pull out your Ipod Tarot Deck.
Do you miss your Wonder Woman underoos as much as I do?

Ann read this!
Finally a peace protest I can totally support.

This may be the best news I've heard all day.

Yes, you really can knit anything.

Happy Valentine's Day!

My day off was fun. I didn't really knit much at all but I did relax and that's all I really wanted anyway. The weekend was a bit of a whirlwind. Saturdays are always kind of nuts now with the boys' classes. There's too little time in between them to really get anything done but it's long enough to feel like you could be doing something else. It was compounded this weekend by the fact that Rinaldo was working. This means taking the bus and that adds time to the whole endeavor.

On Sunday I took one look at my house and flipped out. I was supposed to go to my knitting group at Ethical but I decided I needed to do something with my living room. Our living room is truly a living room. We all spend nearly all of our time there. There's the playroom downstairs but Avery only goes down to play video games on weekends and Ian only goes to play with his trains. Otherwise Ian is playing with toys upstairs and Avery has various books and things hanging out on the coffee table. Every few weeks I go through all the crap that has made it's home there and I relegate it back downstairs or upstairs to the boys rooms but Ian in particular always makes sure the best toys make their way back to the living room. Yesterday I hit Target and bought this plus a few of these in beige and did this:



Not bad right? I've been trying to talk Rinaldo into letting me get one of these cube things for awhile but he wasn't convinced. Yesterday the clutter was so out of control that he would have agreed with anything I suggested. In the end he loves it. I put the pictures on the cubes of what should go in them, ostensibly for Ian, to get him to help clean up more but honestly it's more for my mother in law who believes that any empty space is a good place to put a stack of something or stick little things in. It drives me bananas.

I did some knitting on Ian's sweater as well:


It is so damn slow working with DK but it's finally looking like something. So I'll keep going. The alpaca is a pleasure to work with so I can't complain there.

Happy Monday all!

Hooky Day February 07

Let's see, I'm sitting on my couch watching Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, nice and cozy with my blanket. I've dyed away my grey and watched yesterday's General Hospital already. I think it's a successful day off so far.

I have been continuing to go through hell with the damn placket sweater. I got through the seed stitch band on the lower half but I realized that I hadn't cast on the right number of stitches. I was casting on when I was riding the train to work but I must not have finished by the time I got to my stop. When I picked it up again on the way home I just started knitting. I ripped it out when I realized it was too small and started yet again. I'm not sure I'll have the patience to do that again if I find another mistake. If Ian didn't love the sweater in the picture I would have given up all ready.

I"ve been very monogamous so far with projects but I think I'm going to need something going on the side to help me deal with the sweater. I'm thinking some socks, or maybe even the Swallowtail shawl. We'll see, all I know is that Ian can't bust me knitting on anything that isn't his sweater.

Ian's school called yesterday, it seems that in the process of doing all his assessments to get him back into special ed they have come to the conclusion that he may have a problem with his eyes. It seems that this can account for many of the problems he has in class. One of his eyes does seem a bit lazy and there are little things that make me think that it's a possibility. So we made an appointment for him to be assessed and we'll see what comes of it. The odd thing is that usually when they bring up some new thing they think is wrong I flip out or at the very least get depressed. Rinaldo is more than a little upset by this but I'm fine. My friend said that maybe it's because they are looking for a cause and giving us options to deal with it but I don't think I'm that rational. I think it's because I grew up in the blind and visually impaired community, it holds no mysteries for me. What they are talking about in Ian's case isn't even like my parents or their friends. His eyesight is seemingly quite good, if there's an issue it's with focusing or processing or something like that. That's nothing in comparison. It would be somewhat comforting to have a concrete reason that can be dealt with. Of course life isn't that simple so I'm adopting a wait and see attitude on the whole thing.

Risa and I have opened the Knitting Bloggers webring for the first time this year. I think I'll be doing a lot of work on it this weekend.

Have a good one...

Life is back down to a dull roar thankfully. Work is nice and quiet so I have been able to start tackling all the paperwork that I shoved aside during rush. I've also started interviewing for the floor manager's position again so hopefully we'll find someone soon. On the home front, the school is working on the paperwork that needs to be done to have Ian re-certified as special ed. Oddly enough Ian has been happier about school the past few weeks. I have to wonder if something I told them finally sunk in and they changed the way they interact with him. I don't know but a happier Ian makes a happier mommy and that works for me.

Knittingwise Ian's sweater is a bit problematic. While I was a good girl and I checked the gauge when I bought it so that it matched the pattern, in reality I can't get it to work. I'm getting 6 stitches to the inch instead of 5.25. What's really odd is that I got almost exactly the same gauge on 6s as I am getting on 7s. So I did the math and I'm going to try anyway. I decided to start on the sleeve, first I cast on the wrong amount, then I screwed up the seed stitch, then I got through the seed stitch cuff and realized I had reworked the math for the wrong size, nice. I ripped it out and cast on for the lower body. I figured I'd just cut my losses. Of course this sweater seems to have a bit of a curse on it anyway. It's the only pattern from the Last Minute Knitted Gifts book that had so many mistakes in it that they simply republished the entire pattern on the errata page. Great.

I've decided to take Friday off. This past Friday I really didn't want to be at work. I wanted to leave early but I had a late interview so I figured this week why not just stay the hell home. I have a Bollywood movie in the Netflix queue and certainly I have knitting to work on. I figure around 2:30 before the kids get out of school I will figure out some other place to be so I can really call it a day off. I'll have to be home by 6 or so but maybe there's a movie I can see or something. Hell I'll just sit in a Starbucks for 3 hours and read I don't care. In fact maybe I'll just go hang out in Maribel's store for the afternoon. They have chai...

I have to say as far as the knit from my stash goes I've done pretty well so far. I was inspired by Lisa to start actually tallying the balls of yarn used and I'm up to 8 already and it's only the beginning of February. Nice. The book thing is going well too. I've already finished 6 books. They were all quick, light reads as I require for rush but I'm still pretty happy about my progress. I've only fallen off the wagon once so far. I forced Rinaldo was kind enough to buy the second book of a series I just discovered. Otherwise I have made no book purchases.

Happy Wednesday all...only 2 more days until the weekend, one for me;)

Monday, Monday

It is too damn cold this morning for anybody to have to go out. Seriously if it's not at least double digits then everything should just bloody well close. When it's nine degrees outside, thats -12.78 °C for you celsius types, I should be able to stay under the covers and do nothing. My children should be able to as well. I just chalk it up to one of those if I ruled the world things, I have quite a few of those. Deciding how things would work if I was the benign dictator of the world that I was born to be is one of my favorite hobbies.

The other of course is why we're here yes? May I present the lovely clapotis:



...and in close up:



The color is lovely (sorry Bel) and it went quite quickly. I do love that pattern. I am not however loving the Morehouse Merino. While it is soft to the touch and makes for a very comfortable scarf it had so many freakin' knots in it and of course they all seemed to land on the drop stitches where they can't hide. Still and all I'll probably be the only person to notice them so it's being gifted nonetheless.

Back to the subject of cold. The main floor of my house is quite drafty. We did quite a bit to eliminate the draft but it can still be quite chilly, especially early in the morning before the heat has come up fully. The denziens of my house have different ways of dealing with this.

This is how Ian watched his Sunday morning cartoons yesterday:



The cats have other ideas, they typically fight over this corner but yesterday they found a way to share:



Stay warm!

In honor of the Blogger's (Silent) Poetry Reading :

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
Oh, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
Bur bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
- William Shakespeare

I first read this sonnet in eighth grade back when Maribel and I had the best english teacher ever, Mrs. Lois Cohen. I loved it then and I love it now, and yes I am more than a bit of a Shakespeare geek...

Thanks to Cara for reminding me about this in yesterday's post.