My true friend

They say (and by they I mean Dr. Phil) that the trick to life is to find the one thing about you that is unique to you, and makes you special and is your alone. I've found it. And it's not knitting or being the world's best mother, or the greatest wife or anything good. I have a talent for killing. My name is Goddess and I kill computers. My Father is a computer programmer. I've always had a computer in my home, even before personal computers were in every home (that makes me sound so old). You would think I'd be better with them, but I'm not. In college I was alway losing papers and locking up computers. They threatened to ban me from the computer lab. Now my prefered method of killing is computer viruses. I find viruses that Nortons has no definition for. Viruses that freeze up the computer and can't even be back doored by dos. Viruses that the only cure for is the delete the entire hard drive effectively removing all files, photos, memories. In the past six months I have had to reimage two computers a combined total of nine times, including three times this week. I don't know how I find these viruses. It's not like I'm p0rn surfing. I'm mostly on other blogs and knitting sites. The worst part is after I reimaged the laptop for the second time this week I found the worm hanging out in a different file. How is the stupid thing still on my computer? That's my special gift.
How can you tell a true friend? A true friend listens to you whine about how you've killed two machines in one week and still offers to let you come over and check your e-mail from her computer.

Procrastination

I'm Goddess, and I procrastinate. Take this morning for example. I told my friend I would bring a dessert to playgroup today. Have I made the dessert yet? Of course not. When do I have to leave? In an hour and a half. Plus I need to shower and dress and get three children dressed and ready to go in that time. Am I mixing cake batter as I type? Of course not. Am I simultaniously conditioning my hair as I upload photographs? No way, that would take attention to detail. Instead I'm blogging.

We're moving next weekend. I live in a three bedroom house with five people. I keep looking around going "Damn, we've got a lot of stuff." Have I started packing? Not really. Do I even have boxes yet? I've got about a dozen. That should be enough shouldn't it. Why do I put off things until they reach a crisis point? I always have. Write a ten page term paper in college, not until the night before. I do my best work under pressure.

If I neglect my blog next week please forgive. The Greatest has threatened to pack the computer first so I will not be able to use my blog as a forum for procrastinating. He's also threatened to pack my knitting needles second. So I must buckle down and be disciplined.

In the meantime gaze upon the lovliness that is my Vogue Sweater blocking.

What happened to the Baby?

What do you mean chocolate cake for breakfast wasn't a good idea?

Knitting and Evil

I haven't had much knitting content lately. That doesn't mean I haven't spent every waking minute knitting. It just means I HAVE in fact spent every waking minute knitting and haven't had time to take pictures and put them on my blog. I will admit I haven't touched The Greatest's sweater since it damaged me. I'm waiting for it to apologize. It can sit in a corner until it does.



I have made great progress on my Vogue sweater. Right now it's a tangled mess of half sewn seams and loose ends waiting to be sewn in.



I'll probably never knit another Vogue pattern again. But over all I like this sweater. I'm only gonna wear it for a season or so, it's not an heirloom, so the acrylic will be just fine. I found a great camisole to wear underneath it. My new trendy look should be complete.

I've joined the Mariposa KAL.



It starts in the end of May. I'm way to excited about knitting something with strangers over the internet. I have a few weeks before it starts to whip The Greatest's sweater into submission. But who am I kidding, he's not going to wear the thing before the fall, so I'm not in any real hurry to finish it. I have a feeling this sweater will be around for months and months and months (I've already mentioned it twice in one post). This itchy wool sweater could be, dare I say it, an heirloom. So hence forth rather than refer to it as "The Greatest's Sweater", which takes a long time to type and involves the shift key twice, I'll just call it Evil.

She finally found a man.

For months we have been trying to get Bird to attatch to a lovie. Any lovie. We have bought her a virtual parade of soft squishy toys trying to gain her approval. Anything she holds for more than ten seconds in the store is rushed home only to be instantly discarded at the front door. We are spending her meager college fund on stuffed animals. When she is upset instead of cuddling a lovie she sits on my lap and pinches me. See why I want her to bond with something, for the love of all that's good anything, so badly. I think she finally found true love. Let me introduce Kung Fu Chuck



She met him at my Parent's home, and despite my insistence that she didn't need him, he ended up stowing away in the car. I was sure he would be dumped uncerimoniously at the front door like all the other potential loves before him, but for some reason it's been three days and he is still a favorite. I don't know if it's his cool clothes, the styling headband, or the fact that when you press his arm he twirls his numchucks and sing "Kung Fu Fighting." But I think she's found True Love at last.

Do ducks say Moo?

After watching me breastfeed two of her siblings Pork Chop is suddenly very interested in exactly how the milk gets in my breasts. When she first asked how I get the milk to feed Bird I told her my body makes it. That was enough for her and she ran off to play.

The next day she was drinking milk and suddenly had a "lightbulb" moment and said "hey, does your body take the milk you drink and then just put it in your boobs for Bird?" When I stopped laughing I told her that my body takes all the food I eat and drink to make milk. She just looked at me and ran off to play.

Then yesterday she was eating lunch she suddenly asked me again how I make milk. Once again I told her about how my body takes all the good stuff out of what I eat and drink to make milk. The rest of the conversation went like this.
"I know that but HOW does it make milk?"
"Your body just knows how"
"But how"
"Well there are milk ducts"
"......What"
"Milk ducts, my breasts have milk ducts in them that make the milk"
"Oh like DUCKS"
And off she went, I was laughing too hard to catch her and explain it further.

But the story doesn't end there. Pork Chop has this annoying habit of listening in on conversations between her Daddy and myself. I was repeating the duck story to him and finished by saying "So now she thinks I have little ducks in my breasts." She piped up from around the corner of the couch "No Mom, I think you have big ducks in your breasts." She thinks I have big boobs, I'm gonna have to work on spatial relationships and concepts like big and little before she starts school this fall.

Deception

The Greatest is up to something. I can tell. He thinks he's so sneaky, but I'm on to him. I'm not sure of his agenda, but he will make it known in a day or so. This is how I know he's working an angle.

I have my first knitting-related injury. I've been working so diligently on his sweater with the twine-ish yarn I've hurt myself. The twine-like yarn is removing the skin from my index finger, so knitting with it has become physically painful. This luckily coincided with the release of Spring Knitty. I showed him my finger and explained that I needed to stop working on his sweater for a while. He kissed my finger and suggested we go buy some new yarn so I can work on something with soft yarn while I wait for my finger to heal. I was agreable to the idea, but didn't haul my lazy butt off the couch where I had just been sitting and staring, mesmerized, at my raw finger. A few minutes later He was bugging me again about going out that night to buy new yarn. I said we could go if he wanted to. He then proceeded to get all the kids ready, shoes, coats, and in the car, while I sat still hypnotized by my finger (how can something I love so much betray me with such red ugly pain). He proceeded to pack me up in the car and take me to Jo-Anns. I was sad I couldn't find the yarn in the color I needed for this. But I did buy this.



Yes it's acrylic, but it's cheap and soft and just what I need right now. Plus you can't tell from the bad photo, but it's the most wonderful coral shade. I'm making this



Yes, it's another bad photo. It's not Knitty, it's Vogue, and I've already found typos in the pattern. Honestly, you'd think they'd proof read the patterns before they send them for publication. After knitting the Nicole Camisole I've decided I like lace knitting and wanted to knit another lace-like thing. But I'm not going to make it so it ties in the back. Mine will button on the side.

But here's The Greatest's angle. In addition to being unusually sweet and supportive (I think that was the first time in her entire life that he had put a coat on Bird) He asked me on theway home if I was going to blog our SEX (Stash EXpanding EXpedition, get your mind out of the gutter, my Mother reads this blog, I wouldn't document that, geesh). I told him I probably would, and he told me to make sure I mentioned that buying yarn was all HIS idea. Wonder what's up with that.

THE reason I love Spring

My parents bought a house with a rather sizeable hill on the side of it. The previous owners must have really loved to garden, or just really hated mowing the hill because they took out the lawn and put in tiered flower beds. There are four tiers. They are huge. They are a lot of work. My parents like to garden the normal amount. It is exhausting trying to keep those flower beds in shape. They've planted daffodils and have now given up and let them take over the flower beds. The bulbs that grow into daffodils will double every year or so, so each year they get more flowers than the year before. In the Spring the hill is a sea of yellow and green. It is beautiful. The sun warms the earth. Fat Bumblebees float between the blooms. It is the magic of spring in action. All this beauty translates into a house full of flowers for me. Mom lets me go out and whack down as many as I want. This year I wanted this many.



I got all seven of these vases from that basket.



My favorite is my pitcher full o flowers.



I don't know what it is about fresh flowers that transform the mundane in something inviting and special. My house is suddenly cheery and smells wonderful. This is my favorite part of spring. It's fun to go out in the warm sun and cut the flowers. It's fun to pretend I know what I'm doing when I arrange them in vases. It's really fun when I accidentally get an arrangement that looks really good. And it's fun to have the wonderful smell of flowers in the house. I love spring. Or maybe I really just love my Mom who lets me decimate her flower population year after year killing the magic of spring for my own amusement.

Sugarfest 2005 Part II

How do you know your Easter Egg Hunt has gotten out of control? When the children get tired of hunting eggs before they have all been found.

We had a replacement Egg Hunt on Saturday to make up for the one the kids missed on Easter Sunday. There were five kids (my three and their two cousins) and they had to find all these:



It was a lot of fun to watch. Being the oldest of the children Pork Chop was the quickest and most adept at finding eggs, but she still needed help finding some. (How many can you see in this photo, I'll bet she found them all, she had over 60 eggs)



She filled her entire Easter Bucket and moved on to a blue Wal-Mart bag to hold her eggs. Meaty had a fairly good time, but he kept wandering off to count the fish in the Koi pond (there are three).



Bird wouldn't crawl around in the grass, such a diva already. But if you set her down in front of an egg she would pick it up and put it in her basket.



She got about a dozen when one of her eggs opened and she realized they were full of jelly beans. After that she had no interest in new eggs, she just wanted to open the eggs she alreay had. She was pretty happy eating jelly beans and gummy bears.



After the eggs had been emptied this is what their buckets looked like



Bear in mind that is pure candy, no easter grass, no toys, no filler, just full to the brim with candy. Let the sugar rush begin.

Spring has Sprung

Can't blog, the new issue of Spring Knitty is here.

I did want to answer some questions really quickly.

The Nicole Camisole is from White Lies Designs. It is the first pattern I've paid for and well worth every penny. I knit is using an acrylic yarn called Micro Spun. I usually modify the pattern when I knit them. On this pattern I took out a few of the lace repeats around the body so it would fit better (I'm right between a small and a medium). I also added a row of single crochet along the back edges and across the top to the bodice cups to help with stockingnette curling.

The yarn I am using to knit The Greatest's sweater is from ebay. It is a very nice color and wonderful once washed with a bottle of conditioner. But in it's unwashed form it is like knitting with twine. It is stiff and scratchy and leaves deep grooves in my fingers. But I love him, so I knit on. I've got ten inches done! Only six more inches, two sleeves, the raglan top and a mock turtle neck to go. Wait, that didn't make me feel better. Especially when I need to knit this and this and I've got two baby sweaters to make (and those really are on a deadline) and I just have to do this and, oh you get the idea.

Another reason why we are the best parents ever

Warning this post contains adult language. If this will be offensive please come back tomorrow. If you are just here for the sweater please scroll down.

Here's another example of our great parenting skills. Yesterday The Greatest bought two movies out of the five dollar bin at Wal-Mart. This morning he decides to unwrap them, bear in mind he hasn't had his morning coffee yet. I'm not sure what would possess him to do something challenging like open dvd packaging without his morning medication? Before he's had his coffee he can barely work the coffee maker. So he's opened the plastic and is now struggling with the stupid stickers that they put on all three sides of the stupid case, that are almost impossible to take off without stretching the plastic beneath them. Do they really need that much protection from shoplifters? Don't shop lifters just take the entire package with them instead of opening the stupid thing and taking just the disk? I don't know for sure, as I've never shoplifted a dvd. I don't know what the official MO is for a theif. Anyways, as he is wrestling with the security tape he declares "Come off fucker." And sweet Meaty who is playing with Bird at The Greatest's feet repeats "fucker." I look at The Greatest in horror. He looks at me in surprize. And we both start laughing. The Greatest laughs so hard he crys. Why is it swear words sound so cute in a two year old falsetto voice? I keep reminding The Greatest that they're not so cute coming from an older child. We didn't say a word to Meaty because if he knows that word gets a reaction he'll just keep saying it. Hopefully he'll just forget the word in a few days. Atleast when Meaty sweats today at Knitting Group I can have all the angry mothers call The Greatest for an explaination.

The agony and the ecstacy

Let's start with the agony. I blocked Belle Epoque and the yarn is just so soft, it's a dream. I love the color, I love the soft texture, I hate the sweater.



The belt is just to fiddly for me and I haven't even attached the crushable ribbon roses yet. Plus the empire waist instead of camoflaging my less than perfect stomach just accentuates the fact that I've had three children and can't do a proper sit up. But the sweater is miles to long to wear without the belt. Without the belt I'm swimming in a sea of blue yarn. I may try to frog it from the bottom because I think I might like it if it looks like this



Doesn't that look better? Or I might just frog the entire thing and try to make it something new, but mohair is so hard to frog. I'll probably just hide it in the back of my closet for a few years until I can donate it to Goodwill with minimal guilt about all the time and effort I put into it.

That's the agony, here's the ecstacy and her name is the Nicole Camisole



She's just as pretty from the back too



I finished her in three days. She took two days to knit, and one day to sew together. She's beautiful, and fits like she was made just for me (and she was). She's one of those rare projects that just flow together with minimal swearing and makes it all worth it. Her buttons need changed though.



They're very pretty and I like them alot but they are a tad too small. They keep slipping out of the eyelet holes which The Greatest likes, but I'm a little uncomfortable with. I was eyeing some really cute green dinosaur buttons and I think I will get those to go on the camisole. I like adding a touch of whimsy. I'll save these buttons to go on a dress I'm going to sew for Bird. Speaking of Bird isn't she cute?



I can't believe she's going to be one next month. In unrelated topics I'm impatiently waiting for the Spring issue of Knitty, and while I wait I've been working on The Greatest's sweater



I love him, I hate the sweater. I hate the yarn, I hate trying to make this with no pattern, I love him, I hate size three needles with 315 stitches per round, I love him, I hate ribbing. But I love him so knit away I will, until a better project comes along.

Spring is in the air

I just love early spring, when the air is cool and smells green. It was such a perfect day yesterday. I sat on the front porch with Bird and tried to explain the changing seasons to her. She replied "ba ba ba maaaaaa." So I think she gets it. We opened all the windows in the house and just let the green air flow through (of course we all wore sweatshirts and the kids will probably wind up with pnemonia but I still loved it). It was kite flying weather so we hit the park. There is a very cool local park that is one huge wooden castle. Here's the picture I tried to take of the kids.



I try to stage such beautiful poses of sibling love but Meaty was on his own program. He couldn't pose for a picture, he had things to do (notice Pork Chop is trying to hold him in the frame). He's scared of heights, so I thought he would stick to the sandpit, the wooden car, maybe the swings. Imagine my surprize when he discovered that he was built for speed.



He loved the slides. He took one feet first on his belly, hit the bottom and went flying through the air. He got up muddy and laughing. He really enjoyed himself. These slides had gentle wooden staircases you take to get to the top, not ladders, that may have made the difference. I'm glad he took to the slides. It is more daring than he usually is.

Bird discovered swings.



She loves them! She could have spent the entire two hours just sitting in a swing. I didn't even have to be standing in front of her, I just had to come by often enought to keep her moving.

Pork Chop was just happy to be outside.



Even The Greatest didn't have a terrible time.



It was a completely novel experience for me to go to the park with him. Usually this is the kind of activity I do with the kids by myself while he is at work. I must confess sometimes it is insufferably boring to go to the park with the kids. I had the best time ever with him there.

I've been knitting like crazy on my camisole. Here's the bottom two thirds. Notice it's all finished.



Here's a close up of the lace. My camera doesn't take good yarn pictures, but you get the general idea. The first picture is closer to the true color than the second picture.



I love this pattern. It's very easy to knit. I modified it to fit me better (I was exactly between a small and a medium) but even that was easy math. I should have this sucker done in no time. The yarn is fun to work with too. I'm test driving the pattern in cheap yarn. It's Lion Brand microspun (gasp acrylic) It's so bright and soft and easy to knit. It's much better than working on The Greatest's sweater (which is currently sitting neglected on top of the entertainment center).