Wednesdays are a bit sucky for me it would seem. While the work situation is looking up I'm feeling a bit abandoned by a few friends. Nothing serious, just a bit disappointed is all. Of course the linky love I got yesterday from Cara is enough to wash away any blues I may get. Now I see what Ann was talking about, the hits just keep coming when Cara simply utters your name. Thanks!

Yesterday was Ian's IEP meeting. I walked in and told them I had no interest in their assessments or opinions let's just cut to the recommendations. If I disagree with any of them then they could backtrack and explain why they decided that. The thing about these meetings for me is what an inaccurate picture they have of my son, which then makes me defensive and I'm not pretty when I'm pissed. On the other hand I have come to realize that the mere fact that Ian can do so many things but refuses to do them in school is an issue in and of itself. Leaving him back in Kindergarten and putting him in a small special ed setting with a teacher I know and like is a good way to address that problem. It is also the way they want to address what they view as his low functioning. Interestingly I did let his speech teacher do her eval of him. As expected it sounded bad but she went on to say how far he has come, how he does play, talk and interact normally with the other kids when she pulls him out in a small group even though she hears he doesn't do that in class. So she sees the disconnect as well. Ian adores his speech teacher and she has done excellent work with him. Next year he will continue one on one with her but she also pushes in for the whole class so I think he'll get a great deal out of that. The special ed teacher whom we have known in passing for years came over to Rinaldo and told him how excited she was to have Ian with her next year and what a fantastic year she was sure he would have. That's all I want, someone who looks at him and sees all his potential, not all his deficits. She also said, which Rinaldo and I found very interesting, that he would have a few of his classmates with him so he would feel at home. So, more kids are being left back from his class and put into special ed. I think that's very telling about the class he is in.

I had joined Fiber Flix a few months back. It's a knit along/movie along. We all vote on which movies to watch in a given month and then discuss them. The moderator also tries to tie a knitting project in to the movies to keep it fun. I had some time on my hands this weekend when Avery participated in a Chess Tournament in Brooklyn:
...he won 2 out of 4 games by the way...

So I was able to catch this month's selection, Logan's Run on my Ipod and work on this month's project, RPM socks:
Here's where I am as of this morning:
I am really enjoying the pattern which is different for me when it comes to socks. Anything other than a plain vanilla sock has usually caused me drama but these are very intuitive. I never have to refer to the pattern anymore. I did have to rip them out after the first pattern repeat as they were coming out too small but I think it's just because the Lorna's Laces may be a bit thinner than the Socks that Rock it was designed for. Of course it could just be me since I tend to knit a bit tightly.

Dear lord I actually agreed to teaching a knitting class tonight at Ian's school and the people who said they would help ended up with other commitments. I don't really know why I agreed. I don't particularly like people and I am extremely anti-social. It should be interesting.

I'll let you know how it goes.

When spending the evening with a Harlot...

...you'll always get something for your time. In this case there was laughter, fun and of course needles and yarn:
Ostensibly the yarn was for us to knit a square for Warm up America while we listened to Stephanie speak. I don't knit that fast so I took it home. Where it was quickly claimed by my husband, who ordered it made into this:


Which led to this:















I figure I'll just knit up a square or two out of stash yarn to ease the little bit of a guilty consious that I have.

The harlot was hysterical as always. I really enjoy her speaking events. Her focus this time around about the lack of respect that knitters get from non-knitters is a valid one and she raised some interesting points about it. I sat with the sadly blogless Claudia and the blogged but barely posting Maribel. Chante was there at 3 and she and her friends managed to snag seats in the middle of the second row. The lovely Bakerina was a few rows back from us but other than that I didn't run into anyone else I knew. Of course the auditorium was large and nearly packed. It was a nice night out, of course I'm pretty easy to please when there's no children involved;) I didn't take any pictures because frankly I'm sure you'll see tons of pictures of Stephanie and people sitting in an auditiorium all over blogdom so I won't bore you with more. If you haven't seen any yet and you want to Amy has a nice guide to some of the better reports of the event.

Vacation is sadly over and I'm back at work. Gyrid's getting plenty of compliments. I'm nearly as bad as Ian when it comes to wearing my knits. I wore it to the thing on Thursday, I wore it to Avery's chess tournament this weekend and I am wearing it now. I'm enjoying all the compliments it's getting. I'm all warm and fuzzy about it.

Try to have a good day, even though it's Monday...

Dear Ann,

We have been friends for awhile now. I remember when I met you at my first blogger meet up I didn't even read your blog. We clicked and have been friends ever since. We have mutual friends and I've been to your lovely home and met the boar.I've sent you candy and you've rigged had contests that I've won.

The other day you wrote a public love letter to my husband. While at the time I was a bit concerned I must say I have changed my mind. You see the day that you linked to me I had nearly triple my normal amount of hits and I've run about double every day since. So I thank you.

Now I would appreciate it if you could work me into a blog post a week. Now that I've tasted the waters of high number stats I want to stay there. I mean I came up with the skimmer alert system right? Don't I deserve a little love? Hell I say fuck all the time, we've discussed the pros and cons of various sex toys, isn't that enough for you to share the wealth?

Once a week, that's all I ask.

All my love,

Nancy

I'm on vacation this week, which somehow always means I don't blog. I guess I spend so much time on the computer at work that I don't want to look at it when I'm home.

I have been somewhat productive though. This weekend I finally finished Gyrid:



I'm not thrilled with any of the pictures but this is the best. The sweater doesn't actually make me look bigger than I am but pictures tend to;) It's very comfortable and I think it works pretty well with the thermal shirt under it. I think I have enough to make a pair of fingerless gloves for myself.

I also completed two squares for the soldier blanket for my knitting group. I had hoped to make three but I am just a little short of yarn (I actually weighed it). I liked the stitch patterns I chose:



I am off in a few minutes to the Yarn Harlot's book launch. While a new book by her isn't the event it used to be (she's so damn prolific) I always love an excuse to hang out with knit buds. Maribel, Chante and the sadly blogless Claudia will all be there so that is reason enough to go.

I'll take pictures!

How an object becomes finished...

6:30 PM last night:



2:00 AM:



7:00 AM this morning:

I'd like to claim it was all love for my child that kept me up to finish this sweater and while that helped, the bottom line is I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. I needed to finish the damn thing. I have to admit for all the bitching and the endlessness of it I really love this sweater. It has a huge flaw in the placket portion. I really screwed up the spacing of the button holes that I added. The ones I made were kind of sucky too but I firmed them up with a bit of crochet. I also wish I had gone up a size. While it fits him perfectly he is a growing boy and I'm afraid it won't last him long. On the other hand I suspect it may stretch out a bit with wear so it may be fine. Of course without a trip to Katonah there's no way I could have gone bigger. This is all the yarn I have left:

I got a little panicky at the end and sped up my decreases in the last few rows and that seems to have been a wise decision. I love, love, love raglans at the moment. The lack of finishing at the end is an amazing and beautiful thing. A little kitchener under the arms and I'm done. I'd like to make ones for Rinaldo and Avery at some point.

My day yesterday was better. One of the issues that ticked me off on Wednesday was resolved and that brightened my mood quite a bit. The fact that I'm on vacation next week makes today a better day already.

I did have some linkage for you that I was too cranky to share.

My aunt was in the newspaper. I can't tell you what the article says, it being in Icelandic, although I can think of 4 people who read my blog who can read it but she attended a conference on services for blind children in Iceland. She's in the red coat with the glasses.

Ann alert!

Nora Ephron is an evil woman. I have had enough conversations with Ann alone to disprove her theory.

Finally here is an article I ran into this morning about a knitting ghost. I'm pretty sure my needles get red hot when I'm pissed too.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Today sucked. I am feeling unappreciated at work due to numerous things that came up today. It also isn't helping that I've received somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 comments in the past 48 hours on the blog and all but 1 of them were spam. So for my sucky mood you suffer through yet another meme:

From Butterfly a “bold the ones you’ve read” list of “someone’s version The Most Significant SF & Fantasy Books of the Last 50 Years, 1953-2002 .


The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
Dune, Frank Herbert
Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
Neuromancer, William Gibson
Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
Cities in Flight, James Blish
The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
Gateway, Frederik Pohl
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowlinghe
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
Little, Big, John Crowley
Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
On the Beach, Nevil Shute
Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
Ringworld, Larry Niven
Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Timescape, Gregory Benford
To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

I would have thought I read more of them. I guess I read a wider variety of genres than I thought or I read a lot of crappy fantasy and sci-fi.

Not a lot to show...

I moved along finally on Ian's sweater, then I got to the part where you make the placket and froze. Seriously, I was cursing the stupid pattern, how poorly written it was, you know the whole knitter's lament. I put it down and went to bed. This morning I decided it was time to start on Marsha's squares. Here is my swatch for the rolled rib pattern I chose for the first square:



Swatch for a square, yeah a little odd I know but they have to be 9 x 9 and since I wanted to try out new stitches I thought I should be safe.

I got to work and started hunting the blogs of knitters I knew had made the damn sweater. The ones I found just kept talking about how easy the corrected pattern was. Obviously the problem was mine. So I looked at the pattern again. Suddenly the clouds parted and the sun shown through...I'm an idiot. When they were referring to knitting back and forth I kept thinking you only worked one side of the placket at a time, but then it says to do seed stitch on each end, I couldn't wrap my head around that. Duh, of course it's the other side of the placket. You work back and forth across the whole sweater stupid! I'll get back to it tonight.

Along the lines of not my brighter moments I was reading the chart for the rolled rib in my Knitting Stitch Bible this morning on the train. As you all know I'm not a fan of charts. I don't hate them anymore but I'm still quite the novice at reading them. So I went to check what one of the symbols represented and it said this:

"From the back of the work, bring the yarn over the needle to the front of the work, then between the needles to the back of the work again to make a stitch, k1..."

HUH?

I could not figure it out for a good minute or two until I realized they meant do a yarn over. Sometimes spelling something out for me is obviously not helpful.

Happy Monday...

For the best friend's birthday this year I decided to do a fun post rather than my usual weep fest about what a great friend she is, how much I love her blah, blah, blah...instead may I present:

Six Weird Things You May Not Know About Maribel

1- She got me into Anne of Green Gables

2-She interviewed for her first position at Barnes and Noble in a Motley Crue t-shirt and jeans...she got the job.

3-She loves Bollywood movies (she got me hooked on those as well).

4-We would spend most Sundays of our teenage years baking and watching old movies on TV.

5- She has only beat me once at Trivial Pursuit(the original edition), ok maybe twice.

6- My mother didn't like her very much at first, she said she was very "brash" (we were about 12 at the time). She of course grew to love her as a second daughter as time went on.


So go wish my girl a fabulous birthday!

Happy Birthday Bel!

What Rinaldo did on his winter break...

Rinaldo took of the week of President's day to stay home with the boys. He had also decided to try to do a little work on the house. Now remember my husband does not consider himself a handy man. He would happily never pick up a hammer if he didn't have to but now that we have a house he's realized he needs to try to do some things himself. He decided the game room in the basement was the place to start. Some before shots:


...and after:




It's amazing what some drywall, paint, molding and sweat will do for a room. Of course the devil is in the details and this lightswitch is what he is most proud of:



...nice right, my baby got skilz;)

In addition to the video games, air hockey table and various toys down there, we picked up one more necessity for Mr. Ian:


Kathleen, I'm figuring the game room is now Owen approved;)

I have to add that I am absolutely devastated that poor Captain America is dead. I'm sure he'll be back at some point but he's a character I really like and I hate when they just kill them off for an event. The Mathews household is in mourning...

When people call you and ask why you've been so quiet you know you haven't blogged enough. There's no good reason I just didn't have anything I was dying to talk about.

I did get the second sleeve done on Ian's sweater. I've enjoyed the construction so far but the yoke is worrying me. Here is where I am:


It's a bit, umm, billowy, I guess? I'm not sure how it's going to look on Ian but he'll wear it no matter what, I know. If he sees it lying around he'll pick it up and ask, "Mommy is it finished yet?". He also carries around the book that its in and leaves it open on the page with the picture. The boy seriously wants his sweater.

Avery had a busy weekend this weekend. He had a meeting for a prep program to get into a private high school. I don't think he'll be participating though. The schools involved are all boarding schools and Avery is not really the type of kid who would be happy going away to high school. Then on Sunday he had his first chess tournament with his school chess team. He ended up losing 2 matches, winning one and winning one by default. I was very impressed. His team came in 4th of the twelve teams competing.

I went on a school trip with Ian on Friday. He's still pretty happy in school and he does seem to be doing a bit better, at least from what I can see. They are in the middle of all his assessments though to get him back in self contained special ed in the Fall.

Otherwise not a lot going on. Rinaldo did some home renovating during the winter break but I'll share those pictures with you next time. He would want it to have a post all to itself;)

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.