Kiss My Knits!

Holding on to a box while my daughter spray painted it wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done.

I just bought eight bras and six pairs of panties from Lane Bryant for $36.17. SCORE!

I’m sorry to share too much information, it’s just that this is my brand, and I really, really needed some but was having trouble finding the time to get away to the mall to get some. And lo and behold, makes this post about a glitch in Lane Bryant’s shopping cart, whereby it’s taking 30 percent off of the total order, including the free items in the “buy two get two” promotion. Hot diggity! So now I’m set for a good long while. I kind of wish I’d gotten more, but I suppose there’s a limit to how many bras and panties should arrive on one’s doorstep in one fell swoop.

As you can see, I’m personalizing my laptop properly. I need to come up with a catchy name for it on our internal network. “Diana Prince” seems a little obvious. Am considering buying Sims2 for Mac, now that I have this spiffy new laptop. I can probably find it reasonably cheap on eBay now that it’s been out for a while.


Christmas pics! Here’s my husband and daughter making the traditional Christmas ravioli. Every year my husband makes ricotta cheese from whole milk, parsley, parmesan cheese, and vinegar. He does this the night before and we use it the following day as filling. He also makes sauce from crushed tomatoes, etc., according to his mother’s recipe. Then we make the dough from scratch, and it’s a good family activity to roll it out, cut it, fill it, and seal the ravioli closed. Later we boil ’em up and they’re delicious! We brought some to my dad, too. Maybe it’s not everyone’s traditional Christmas fare, but it’s pretty kid-friendly and crafty, so it’s a good thing to do together, which is what Christmas is all about.


This year was the first year that my daughter not only bought a present for my husband that she thought he might like, but she actually looked around instead of grabbing the first thing off the shelf. And her thoughtful choice?

My dad is great,
My dad is neat.
My dad really
likes to eat.

Hee hee hee!

Hats up for: NY, IL, FL

We got new windows in our home a couple of weeks ago. The new ones are double-paned, well-sealed, and generally much more weathertight than our previous wooden single-paned ones which came with the house forty years ago. Well, apparently the old ones had been providing an avenue for ladybugs to get in and lay their eggs. While looking out at the snow, I’ve found about 16 ladybugs on the south-facing windows of our house this weekend. They were on the inside, crawling up, trying to get out. Given the snow and ice, it’s probably just as well they couldn’t.

After looking on the internet (thank you, Ladybug lady!), I found out that they’d be just fine inside for a while with the right conditions. So now they’re in a plastic container with holes punched in the top, a moist paper towel (apparently they die inside of dehydration instead of starvation) and a few raisins, which they seem to enjoy greatly. Oh, and there’s some tufts of grass in there for good feng shui. At right is a pic for the curious.

We think we’ll take it to my daughter’s kindergarten class tomorrow, assuming school’s in. Quite the little science project!

Some of y’all know that I occasionally send care packages to guys and gals overseas through http://www.boooksforsoldiers.com (Politically, if I leaned any further left, I’d fall down, but I absolutely want to support these individual men and women who are far from home, working on behalf of our country.) Well, one guy in particular has been super about writing back. Which, happily, works to his benefit because then I want to send him and his buddies more stuff. “This Is Spinal Tap” is next up to go out. Sidetracking, if you haven’t seen the DVD of this, you really, really should. The commentary is done by the cast members as if they were in the band. So it’s Nigel and the rest doing the commentary, and it is freakin’ hilarious! I highly recommend it.

Aaaanyway, getting back on track. I had mentioned in a recent mail that my daughter had been sick on Halloween and hadn’t been able to go out. Well, apparently the guys in my soldier’s tent had gotten about 75 lbs of candy for Christmas from various organizations back home who wanted to be extra nice to the troops at the holidays.

Seventy five pounds. Five guys in the tent. That’s a lotta candy. So they sent a care package to my daughter consisting of four pounds of candy and a stuffed camel. The box is deeper than it looks in that pic, by the way. It was very unexpected, and so nice!

I’m going to have to hide the box, though. My daughter has already burned through at least five lollipops since yesterday afternoon.

I’m just really impressed with the thoughtfulness of these guys, to take the time and money to pack and ship a big box of candy to a five-year-old girl they’ve never met. It really reaffirms my faith in the basic goodness of people.

I finally bought the pattern to the Bottoms Up Bucket Hat from ChicKnits. I was going to make it for yet another baby. (Seriously, people. Just keep one foot on the floor. I can’t knit fast enough.) It knitted up nicely in Noro Lily, a blend of 70% cotton and 30% silk. It was fun! However, I knew it would be a little bit big. Soo… now, once again, I will probably wind up knitting another baby gift.

Aaanyway, here it is on my resident 5-year-old model. Brim down, and then with brim up. I’m thinking about making a little flower pin to go on the brim. We’ll see.

So two days ago, Emily finally mastered the mouse. (Well, mostly mastered.)

Today, she popped in the disk for Grand Theft Auto III.

That’s bad, isn’t it?

Just in time for a baby shower tomorrow night, I’ve completed booties and hat. They wanted something pink, so it’s pink with a vengeance. The hat is a combination of the “Li’l Devil Baby Hat” and the “Official Kitty62 Hat” from kittyville.com. I believe there’s an adult devil hat in “Stitch ‘N Bitch” too. In retrospect, I could have gone smaller and it would have been fine. The hat and booties together only used about 2/3 of a skein of Lamb’s Pride Worsted, and I even doubled it on the booties to make ’em nice and thick. So the whole project came in for less than 7 bucks in materials. We’ll leave aside the question of labor, of course.

It’s too small for my five-year-old, but nonetheless I made her put it on (before I attached the pom-poms) so I could see it. And now I must share with all of you.

I do like to do something new for every project, so for this one, the new thing was a provisional cast-on around a crochet chain. And pom-poms. I’d never made pom-poms. Pretty easy, since McGyverish directions are out there on the web. 🙂

I’m pleased! Now, I must wrap. And no, I won’t be hand-crafting the wrapping paper.

Sometimes it is very difficult to hear my daughter say the same thing over and over.

Sometimes it makes me very sad.

But she is my daughter, and I love her very much.

I’ll get over it. Soon. For a while.

I apologize for the uncharacteristic self-pity. I’ll be back to my hard-knittin’, hard-GMin’, hard-shootin’-my-D&D-comrades-in-the-ass self soon.

My kid tells me today that we’re learning about the letters U and V. She says U is for underwear and V is for vampire. I didn’t tell her that.

That’s my kid, future goth geek girl. Eat your heart out, middle America!

We got the yellow fabric, which is sort of batik-y with a leaf pattern. Leave it to my girl to pick the fabric that’s 5.99 a yard. 😛 So now I’m trying to work out a pattern on sheets of newspaper. I think when she does “My Gym” this afternoon (mama gets a break! woo!) I’ll slip off to the fabric/knitting store. They know me there, so maybe I can get some tips. And sign up for a sewing class. This is a good real world skill to have.