Meanest Mom Award

Yeah, I'm a Mean Mom. Seems like every time Rebecca has a playdate, Ben ends up showing off his posterior to them. It's partly because he just likes to make people laugh (and what's funnier than a ghostly pale bum?) and partly because his sister likes to humiliate him. It's happened before, and I warned and threatened that it should never happen again. I'm furious at both of them, and yelled at them both in front of the playdate child. So, out of the pool they came and into the house. They decided to paint. On the floor of the craft room. Which is carpeted. And they had nothing under the paper. And the dog walked through the wet paint. That one will be dealt with when their father comes home. Also, there was a lot of mean talk going on in the pool, but that had something to do with the competitive nature of the playdate child so I let it go with minimal intervention. It was one of the worst playdate days we've had around here, and right now they are banned from TV and computer. When my husband comes home we will have to discuss further punishment, because I simply won't allow Ben to humiliate himself, or Rebecca to encourage it, any longer. I'm much angrier about the nakedness than I am about the paint. The paint will clean up (or rather, THE KIDS will clean the paint up) but the scars from being humiliated last a long time. She said from experience. In happier news, we have scheduled a Mad Science party for Ben's 7th. He loves that kind of stuff. I can't wait! It's a small guest list, but I actually prefer that since it's at our house. Knitting on the February Lady Sweater continues. I'd like it to be slightly long, so I'll probably be working on the body for a good while longer. I would like to finish before the end of August, though, so I can get my husband's sweater going and done before the cold weather arrives.

Photos, finally.

I took a few moments to photograph my current projects and some yarn today. This is yarn I've had for a while but not yet added to my Ravelry stash, but after the plumbing bill we got today I won't be buying any new yarn for a while so I better appreciate what I've got. :) First, here is my February Lady Sweater. I'm really crazy about how it's coming out, especially now that I have a "feel" for the lace and can see pretty quickly when I've made a mistake. It's so much easier to tink back a few stitches and fix a problem than it is to try and fix it three rows later. The yarn is slightly darker and brighter than it looks in this photo. The color is very similar to the cardigan I made for my daughter last year, and it also happens to be knit in the round from the top down with raglan sleeves. A very easy and fun knit! Next, I can finally share with you a "secret" project that I had hoped would be finished by now. I started a lacy scarf for my friend Pam, and despite knitting on it pretty regularly at camp I still have a long long way to go. But she's seen it and approved it, so I can share it with the world at large. Pam's favorite colors are pink and brown, and although the colors don't separate very much in this knit she still likes it. Phew! And finally, here are the socks that I really got tired of. The problem was that the yarn was VERY thick, and the linen stitch gets very tight on the needles because it's so dense. These will probably end up being house socks for my husband. In other news, Pam and her boys were here for four days and got to do some pretty fun NY kinds of things. We went to the beach, where we were literally frightened for our lives due to the GIGANTIC waves and deadly undertow. Several swimmers did tragically lose their lives this weekend. Thank goodness we had hypervigilant lifeguards on duty at Robert Moses State Park, and our kids didn't want to go out far enough to be in any real risk anyway. The only thing that worried me was that the little skinny guys (Ben and Josh) might get knocked over by a wave and then pulled out. But everything was fine. We also went into the city and got to visit one of my favorite places, the Museum of Natural History. I absolutely adore the Hall of Biodiversity with its rainforest full of camoflaged creatures, and a tour guide with a flashlight helped us find some animals that we never even knew were there, including a huge gorilla! Thanks again for coming, Pam! Hope your boys are getting caught up on their sleep! The bad news is that we had to get some plumbing work done, so there won't be much frivolous money-spending going on around here. We will need to throw Ben a birthday party soon--I can hardly believe he'll be seven!--and I think he wants a Mad Science party. But no yarn for a while, and no eating out or buying books or other unnecessary expenses. The new fixtures in the kids' bathroom sink look lovely, though. :)

Summer of Fizzle

This is supposed to be the Summer of Socks. I signed up for the Summer of Socks contest. I cast on two pairs of socks on June 21st, the day the competition began. I actually stayed awake until 12:01 am on that date so I could cast on right away. And how many pairs of socks have I completed? ... Yep. Nada. Now, one of the pairs I have on the needles is "done enough" to qualify for the contest. Each pair has to have at least 2" of cuff, and my Spring Forward socks have that. But I'm a big old Scrooge and want to use up all my yarn. So even though I could bind off and submit, I'm plugging away to use up the rest of the skein. Okay, well technically I'm not actually plugging away because I'm good and tired of socks and I cast on a sweater. Blush. See, I have all this Peace Fleece to make my husband a Cobblestone Sweater, which is gorgeous, but then at camp my friend and I drove up to a large yarn store (WEBS) and I found the original yarn I wanted but couldn't afford. ON SALE. So I bought it, naturally, and now I have all this Peace Fleece just crying out to be made into a February Lady Sweater. So I cast that on yesterday and woke up in the middle of the night realizing what I had done wrong with the raglan sleeve increases. I hate that. So this morning I had to rip the ENTIRE thing back (it was only about 5 inches but still) and start over. So far I have maybe seven inches, one nice buttonhole and one raggedy buttonhole that will need a bit of corrective surgery later. And proper raglan sleeves. I'm pretty excited about how that one will turn out. So the long and short of it is...Summer of Socks is not turning out how I pictured it. I'm a little less enthusiastic about socks than I was when I began. And since this whole knitting gig is supposed to be fun, after all, I'm going where my heart leads me. Here are some photos of what I've got going on, but these are not my projects. These are samples done by knitters far superior to me (but I'm getting better every day!). The Spring Forward socks: The Cobblestone Sweater for my dearie: And the February Lady sweater I'm making for myself: As I say, these are NOT my own work. But I hope to have photos of what I'm working on sometime soon. And if not soon, then maybe when the kids go back to school. :sigh:

We're home!

It feels like I've been gone for months. Dan explains that camp-time is different from realworld-time. In camp, a day is like a week in the real world. This explains why the friendships formed feel so strong even after a relatively short period. For example, Ben met a boy named Nat who was in his group. After less than a day, Ben told me Nat was his best friend. Fortunately Nat felt the same way, and they were inseparable for the entire two weeks. I had to pry them apart for an hour a day for "rest time" after lunch. Ben was in tears when the group went on a trip to the local ice cream parlor, and he wasn't able to ride in Nat's car because there wasn't enough room. Rebecca didn't seem to form an attachment to one single person, but she loved camp so much that she sobbed as we pulled away. I felt like a heel. Dan comforted her by recounting that he felt the same way as a boy, when camp was over for the summer. He even teared up a little. It's a very powerful place. All that being said, I was pretty darn happy to come home. I love being in my own place with the ability to get a little privacy once in a while. Plus, I do love air conditioning. And television. And my coolio NASA foam mattress. But I had a very enjoyable time at camp, and I made some new friends and strengthened some established connections. The best part was teaching arts and crafts to the kids; most of them were very enthusiastic about learning new things or just playing around with stuff they already knew they liked. One exciting thing happened. Not exciting in a good way, but it turned out okay. Dan picked up some cash that he was going to use to pay for the dog's kennel stay (he stayed at a farm upstate while we were at camp). On the day we took the little kids for ice cream, I asked him for some cash. He went to get it and it was gone. He freaked out completely. It was almost $300. He figured he probably left it in his shorts pocket, which had gone to the laundry earlier that day. He was convinced it wouldn't be there when they came back the next day. Sure enough, the laundry arrived and no cash. He was distraught. We had both searched the shelves where he had been keeping his money several times, but as I was putting the clean laundry away I decided to take ALL the clothes off the shelf and search the pockets. I was coming up empty until I picked up his swim trunks and the money fell out. Evidently I had been moving things around but not picking them up and shaking them out, and the money had been twisted up in there somehow. It was a huge relief for both of us, and tensions evened out. Until then, things had been pretty rough. We are very fortunate that Dan makes enough money that I can stay home with the kids, but with the way things are going with the economy that $300 was NOT disposable. We're both very thankful that I was brilliant enough to find it. ;) Now all that's left is to wade through all this stinky lake-water-smelling laundry and try to get the house back in order. I left it a mess when I went, and Dan didn't do too much to remedy it while I was away, so here it still is for me to fix. I have to get things ready for my friend Pam to come visit in just over a week! Yay!!! (She's heard me talk about my lack of housekeeping skills, so she won't be TOO shocked to find a mess.) So happy to be back and blogging again, and hopefully I'll have some knitting progress to share soon.