This year in review

Here are last year's resolutions:

Painting the spare room, dining room and hallway
Well, I'm one for 3 on this. The "spare" room is now Dorian's room. And it is painted. But the dining room has only been prepped and the hallway is still a hideous pale yellow with diarrhea brown trim. So this is a bit of a fail. Oh, well. At least I'm motivated to get the dining room done first thing in the spring.

Building a fence
It was built. It works.

Growing a great garden and canning some of my own produce
I grew a fine garden. I did not can any of my own produce. Only produce from local farms. I also don't foresee being able to can any of my own produce for a few more years. The raspberries and blueberries are too small just yet, and I'm terrified of pressure canning, so we'll ignore this one.


Not allowing myself to get roped into anything I don't really want to do, especially where Sebastian's school is involved
We all know what a joke this one is. I have resolved to not take over the nature program next year, so I have made some progress on this front. Just not as much as I should have. Where were the reminders of this resolution when I agreed to be Treasurer for the PTA? I need some sort of alarm other than my conscience and the friends who always warn me--- okay, I need to just plain get a grip. Gripping.

and trying to find realistic, non-pharmaceutical solutions to my mental health issues.
This didn't really happen either. But I'm not locked up in the Retreat yet, so I must be doing something right.

I'm going to try not to look at this year as a failure. Plenty of things have been fine if not good. The kids are doing well in school. Owning a house hasn't bankrupted us. I fell into a job I really enjoy. So what if I have gained a little weight and been a little lazy on the painting front? There's always next year.

As for next year, I will try to:

• get back in shape again.
• get the dining room painted and the laundry room painted and the organization system installed. Forget the hallway for now.
• continue doing things I enjoy and make my life better, and learn to stop doing the things that make me miserable and don't positively impact my life or anyone else's.

Wish me luck...

Color of the day

Knitting has recently become somewhat compulsive for me-- partly because I wanted to finish a lot of Xmas knitting and partly now force of habit. I hardly read anything... It took a month to finish the last book I read and the magazines languish next to the couch sometimes for months before being touched. (This changed a little yesterday when Katrina showed up at my house with EZ's Knitter's Almanac which I almost finished before bed last night, so I guess the reading just needs to be about knitting, too.) Anyway, here's what's on the needles, or recently off of them:

My cousin sent me two skeins of wool that I decided to turn into arm warmers. Normally, I would knit these from the bottom up, but since I wanted to use the whole skein and not knit a thumb, I went from the top down, left a thumb hole, and knit until I ran out of wool, so they are a nice elbow length. However, I can't decide what I think of the colorway. It isn't really me. And it keeps making me think of Trix in chocolate milk. The jury's still out.

This is the cowl that I designed as a store pattern. It is a feather and fan stitch pattern that makes little scallops. Even though I designed the pattern, I am still not following it properly because I didn't want it to be as wide as the original one I made. So I left out one pattern repeat. I'm not sure why I'm making this since i didn't really enjoy making it last time, but the result is nice and it's an easy project to keep in my purse for emergency knitting.

And here are the socks I started yesterday. I love my brown mary janes, but all my socks are too brightly colored and clash, so I'm making this neutral stripe. Not very exciting, but functional.

And this little lovely is the unbearably soft alpaca yarn my mother gave me for Xmas as part of a shawl kit. I have never made a shawl, but was thinking about it, and now the decision has been very nicely and luxuriously made for me. Can't wait to get this one on the needles. I just need to get the needles first...

And since I'm quite sure you've seen enough brown today...

These are the arm warmers I designed for Kaci. It was hard to part with them. She always signs her emails with X's and O's so I used this cable to represent that. It isn't a true x and o cable, but I liked it.

Unfortunately, though, I was in such a rush to wrap gifts that you will just have to imagine the felted pouch I made for Christine and the headband I made for Amanda (both my design) and the hat, scarf and skirt set I made for Lydia's American Girl dolls.

My 'do is a don't

I just had to cut my hair because I was putting plastic over the window in the kitchen.

How on earth does that make sense? you may ask.

Well, let's just say that when I leaned forward to inspect the plastic to determine whether or not there was a hole in a crease (there was), my hair got sucked into the motor of the hair dryer I was using to shrink the plastic. I turned the dryer off, but not fast enough, and then had to cut my hair or spend my life with a hair dryer hanging off the side of my head.

Another glamorous day...

Socks and mittens

Sebastian has been a bit jealous of Dorian's "Mommy socks" that I have made, since he doesn't have any. The guilt trip has been long and ridiculous lately, including an Eeyore-esque statement of "I guess these must be Dorian's since Mom never made me any socks." (Actually, they were mine.) So, the little whiner will get these for Christmas.

And Dorian's old mittens are looking a little sad since his thumbs are way too big and are splitting the knitting open. So I decided to whip up these for him.

Now I just need to finish everyone else's presents in 3 short days...

Weirdness

Today the kids went to the rec center for their "Holiday Drop Off" from 9am to 4pm. For the low, low price of $15 per kid, Jeremy and I had a whole day to ourselves.

It's weird enough to have a night to ourselves, but a day? Odd. We dropped the kids off and came home to make coffee and play RockBand and I felt bizarre. I'm used to a little time alone at home now that both boys have school, but having Jeremy with me was a nice treat.

We played RockBand, did a little shopping, had falafel for lunch, picked up some pastries, and came home to watch Bill Cosby: Himself while I was finishing knitting Dorian's Xmas mittens. We hadn't seen Himself since we were kids, and it is frickin' hilarious. The beginning is a little slow, but the parenting stuff in the second half was breaking my face I was laughing so hard. Laughing and duplicate stitch don't mix too well, but I made it work. It's only on Netflix Instant until the 22nd, so if you need a little nostalgia, you'd better get it quick.

I'll try to take some project pictures soon, but some still have to stay secret. Since the kids don't read the blog, I can at least show you all the socks and mittens...

It's official!

I literally have yarn coming out of my ears. I was cleaning my ears after a shower and a scrap of sock yarn was embedded in my earwax.

Awesome.

I'm terrible with secrets

It is extremely difficult right now to do this blog since most of my life is spent doing things I can't show you or tell you about or I would risk ruining a surprise or 10. So I'll tell you a little All School Sing story instead.

This morning, we were singing the ridiculous song "Down by the Bay" which always makes me think of Raffi (not good) and this picture (terrible). If you don't know the song, there is a verse that always ends with a silly rhyming question like, "Did you ever see a moose kissing a goose... down by the bay?"

So the music teacher is roving the crowd where children had prepared silly questions for the song. We would sing the chorus and then he'd hand a kid the mic to say "Did you ever see a star driving a car?" etc. The last child he comes to is sitting on her mother's lap and halfway through her question, she clams up and covers her face. The teacher says "Take 2!" and indicates that we should sing the chorus again.

"Relax," he says. "You just have to say, 'Did you ever see a teacher kissing a creature?' Here we go."

"Did you ever see a preacher kissing a teacher?"

Perhaps a little more risque than he was going for.

A prize in and of themselves

So, I didn't get them done in time for the contest. Oh, well. They are a prize on their own-- so soft and warm. I finished them last night, but I won't be wearing them today since it is almost 60 degrees outside for some strange reason.

And once the socks were off the needles, I immediately made this little cutie:

An ornament for the store. I'm in the middle of a tiny stocking also. I'm trying to use up all my extra bits of sock yarn left over from other projects. And in the midst of all that I need to find the time to finish all my Xmas knitting for presents...