For the third time in my life

This morning I was, yet again, obliged to pronounce that "there is no use crying over spilt milk" when Dorian was covered in spilt milk from his cereal bowl and was, of course, crying.

That Christian Bale sure can act...

I defy you to find a better Wolfman. See for yourself.

What do accountants get paid?

Whatever it is, it probably isn't enough and is certainly more than the $0 I made after spending 8 hours today dealing with the money from the raffle/Halloween event. My money counting muscles hurt, the numbers stopped making sense around 3:00 and my hands will probably never come clean.

Good times.

The invention of boring

Jeremy and I got to have a much needed date night on Friday which I will rate thusly:

• Food: B. We went to the restaurant in a local brew pub and while my Indian turkey burger was fine, they forgot to bring me my soup that I desperately needed to warm myself after Sebastian's soccer game.
• Games and Tea: A. I won both checkers and Trivial Pursuit. And the chai at the Twilight Tea Lounge was delicious as always.
• Movie: C- to D+. We saw The Invention of Lying. It was truly boring. Sadly, profoundly boring. I do not recommend watching it, except for the part with my favorite Wallace lookalike. Except for that all too brief moment, it was deadly dull. And all the more depressing for the abundance of actors that I like. Boo.
• Companion: A+. Jeremy's still my favorite person in the whole wide world.

And in other news, the body of my sweater is finally done. I am not fond of the angle at which this shot was taken, but it is the only one I've got.

And a closeup of the edging (which I cribbed from the mystery sock):

And on to the sleeves!

If only it weren't true

After driving to Sebastian's school for the third time today, this time with a bagel for the boys to split before soccer practice.

Me: Sebastian, here. Put these shorts and things on for soccer.

Sebastian (in his skivvies): Mom! It's almost like we live in the car.

Because it actually can get worse... or at least weirder

So, after my rotten day of rottenness, I decided to go to the grocery store alone. Should have been a pretty easy thing to do. So I get to the car and realize I don't have my 2 fold up reusable bags. I go back in the house and get them.

I get to the store. I toss them, along with my purse, in the cart. I shop. I get everything on the list. So far so good. I put everything on the conveyor belt.

But where are my bags? They are not in the cart. They are not in my purse. They are not mixed in with my groceries.

Okay, I think, it has been a rough day, maybe I just think I put them in the cart but they are sitting on the seat of my car. Stranger things have happened.

Stranger things have happened. Somebody stole my store brand reusable bags! They were not in the car. I wasn't crazy after all.

My wallet full of cash and credit cards with absurd lines of credit? Nope.
The boys' awesome space hat? Nah.
The keys to my car and house? Not so much.
But my banged up reusable bags? Score!

Metal or bamboo?

The knitting needles may have to become a weapon now that I have found out that a certain insane person in charge of a certain crazy event thinks I'm not doing anything even though I have wasted both of my free mornings this week doing shit for her. And I already have an hour tomorrow to look forward to as well as Monday morning. She's lucky I don't know the first thing about how to fire bomb a house.

I knit so I don't kill people

This is a somewhat popular slogan amongst knitters, and it has never been more true for me than lately as my stress level continues to rise. But I won't mention the PTA or the out of control event we are throwing this weekend or the fact that I haven't had a day off in over a month. No, I'll just show you my handiwork. Because even though I am sure a knitting needle would make an awesome murder weapon, I don't want to get blood on my wool.

My mystery sock:

I do wish that the yarn weren't quite so stripy so that the pattern would be more visible, but I like the pattern so much that I will probably knit it again in a color that shows it off a little better. The second clue took me almost the whole week to complete because it was a longer section and I didn't set aside a lot of time for it, but I finished the third clue in one day. I like how the fake cables and the ribbing continue down the heel. I'm really happy I started this project.

My sweater:

The heathery gray simplicity of this knit sort of depresses me, especially since it has been reflecting our weather for the week, but I'm sure that what is not so fun about it to knit is exactly what will make it a staple of my wardrobe. So now I'm on a search for an interesting edge for the cuffs and the bottom, so I can spice it up a little bit.

And, finally, a purse:

Kaci gave me this yarn from her trip to Ireland and I decided a long time ago that I would use it for a bag of some sort. I found a pattern yesterday while I was working and started knitting last night during Mad Men. I have 4 more rows for this piece which will be the front. What I thought was cute in the pattern book is looking suspiciously like underwear. But I'm going to ignore that and keep going. I'm sure when it is finished it won't look like it belongs over a cloth diaper.

It's official

The weather this year has been insane. After a Summer that was only hot for approximately two weeks (not that I minded that), we have had a very cold Fall-- at least at night, with frost and temperatures in the 20s. I have already had the heat on for a week, where normally I would have tried to hold out until some arbitrary date like October 15th or Halloween or something.

And now it is snowing. That's right. Snowing. It's not sticking. It's not accumulating. But it's snowing.

I think I'll go knit.

Is it wrong of me to be happy that our raffle didn't sell a single ticket over the weekend so that, instead of counting money for the PTA, I am sitting on my couch in an empty house enjoying a cup of coffee?

I didn't think so.

Putting the "mal" in malabrigo

Well, just as I was about to get to the part where I put the sleeve stitches on holders, I discovered that I had screwed up yet again and was going to have to start my sweater over from scratch for a fourth time. And therefore, this skein of yarn is cursed.

I will be starting with a new ball. And I will be understanding the directions a little better. And I will not be giving up. But it is pretty disheartening after two perfect sweaters for the boys for which I didn't even use a pattern to not even be able to follow one properly, or to follow it only to have it be wrong.

The first pattern I used was a formula that you plug your gauge into and it spits out a pattern supposedly tailor-made to your knitting. Well, after two goes at that pattern where it became obvious that nothing but a newborn's head would ever fit through the neck hole, I found a different pattern.

The second pattern is already at my gauge and had many glowing reviews on Ravelry. And it was free. But it is also very confusingly written and involves doing one thing while also doing two other things AT THE SAME TIME. Somehow I misunderstood one of the AT THE SAME TIMEs and didn't do it which left me with perfect sleeves but a chest measurement of about half what it was supposed to be. I am not that flat that I can wear a top that measures 17 inches around.

So, I'll be casting back on later with a new ball of yarn. But maybe I should just focus on clue #2 for the mystery socks.

The knitting is the only thing keeping me sane

I think the only way to make my life more hectic right now would be moving. So thank goodness I'm not doing that, even if there is a cardboard box in the background of the picture.

No, I'm just busy regretting ever joining the PTA or a cooperative preschool. And having wonderful, interesting children who feel the need to do things to make their lives more wonderful and interesting, like soccer and spelling team and such. Doesn't the world know I just want to wear my slippers and eat chocolate? Ha!

But I digress... I have gotten as far as I can get with my mystery sock until the next clue arrives on Thursday. Here is the cuff, with a background of sweet peas from Christine who brought a little Spring back to my life this early Fall:

The colors are 10x more intense than that, but I couldn't get them to photograph better. Think peacock. And I tried to photograph the (3rd) start of my top down raglan sweater, but it is not so impressive at this point, being gray and 3 inches long. (Insert joke here.)

Sock it to me!

I forced myself to finish these babies yesterday so I could retrieve my needles for a new project-- a mystery knit along. I apparently started these socks back in February (!) to use up the leftover yarn from my socks. And then I was done with one and most of the other and somehow they slipped to the bottom of the basket and the back of my mind as other more pressing matters arose. If you are my facebook friend, you already know that these socks are up for grabs. They don't fit anyone in this house, that's for sure. They are size ~6-18mos, soft machine washable and dryable wool, and available to whoever wants them.

The gray day is not ideal for photographing my new socks, so they will remain even more of a mystery to you than they are to me. But this is the yarn and here is the pattern. The way it works is that every Thursday in October there will be another part of the pattern. So right now, I only have the cuff to work on until next week, meaning I will have to also start my other project for me, my new sweater made with this yarn which is mostly charcoal but with a greenish cast.

Why you couldn't pay me enough to knit sweaters for anyone larger than a 6 month old

Yesterday, all the pieces of Sebastian's cardigan were done, so at 8am I commenced putting it all together. It is my least favorite part of the process and involves a lot of hand sewing. Can you guess when I was finally finished? 9:30pm. Yes, 9:30. I will not pretend to have worked on it the entire time, but I did put in an hour from 8-9am, work on it off and on until 1:15pm, did a half hour's work while making dinner, schlepped it to Sebastian's soccer game, took it to knitting circle, and finally brought it home to insert the zipper during Survivor and something called Husbands Who Murder.

And here it is:

Note the "DNA" running down the side:
A handsome sweater for a handsome boy. Let's hope it makes it home from school today.