Maine, Schmaine... or Kid Quote of the Week

I only caught part of this conversation (meaning, I froze in my tracks to listen in & make sure it was going okay), but it should give some solace to those of us who were just floored by yesterday's ballot results in Maine:

Teenage male student #1 (with beautiful Mexican accent): "You like guys?"
Teenage male student #2: "Yeah... "
Teenage male student #1: "That's cool. I mean, it doesn't make any difference to me, you know?"

End of discussion.

Would this conversation have gone this way when I was in school during the 80's? Hell no. Would this conversation have gone this way even ten years ago in my working class/high population minority school? Nope.

Times, they are a changin', folks. Like it or not.

Kid quote of the week

Discussing the first few pages of Lord of the Flies yesterday in Sophomore English...


Me: "How is Ralph treating Piggy?"

Student (with much enthusiasm): "Like his bitch!"

Carry on.

One more time with feeling.

The man & I went to an early Halloween party last night-- as little red riding hood & the wolf in grandmother's clothing. Those of you who know us, know that we hardly need to dress up for these characters. These roles were a reprise of Halloween 2000. My, how you've changed, Little Red!

Yeah... nurses put on a fun party.

The story of my life:Once in a blue moon a decent wolf comes along...

We returned to our gingerbread house after the clock struck midnight to spy two little pumpkins who had come under the spell of a sleeping potion that struck them down where they played.

Now, back to knitting....

Baby Blanket Pinafore Dress

I may be writing up the pattern for this dress, it turned out so cute. :) The same yarn I knit her pinwheel baby blanket from-- Rowan All Seasons Cotton, oh so many months ago! Could she BE more adorable? Her stepbrother, who grew up in Sweden, says she looks like a little Swedish girl. My dolly.

Birthday

You woke me up for this?
Hey, wait. Maybe this isn't so bad.

Is this what I asked for?

Yup!

Who knew ukalele's were this cool?!

Looks like a baby-sized guitar to me, brother!

Gratuitous cute little sister shot.

It's a good thing you gave me a Hot Topic gift card, dude, or I would so smash you right now.

Next up, driving permit. 'Course there is the small detail of GRADES to attend to first. Dude. Your parents are SO lame.

FO: Midnight Forecast

You already know I love Peace Fleece. My Forecast is knit up in the color Siberian Midnight. It's a navy blue tweed with flecks of black, royal blue, brown, cream & just an occasional speck of red. It's lovely and complex. It's also pretty cool that when I realized that this sweater was blocking out too wide across the chest, I was able to throw it in the dryer and shrink it up just a little without worrying that it would come out small enough to fit one of the hens. This yarn is sturdy & soft, spongy & durable, and very, very warm! There are three new colors out this season & that Baba's Sienna is really calling to me!

The buttons are a mismatched navy blue assortment from my horde of vintage buttons. This sweater is still a tad wider than I was planning, but overall, a good knit.

Off to enjoy a birthday party for the stepson. Happy Friday!

ETA: I think I'm going to wet down the bottom half of this cardigan and stretch it out some... it's looking just a wee little bit more cropped than I had intended. Oh, and the stepson loved his Ukulele. :)

Don't Ask Me!

How I ended up with such a gorgeous little girl! No purpose to this post other than to brag:

Fall Cleaning!

Last week I was sick for four days, so with teaching, trying to hold down the fort here at home and feeling like sh*t, the house fell into an abyss of jumbled toys, crumbs, dust bunnies & other various grit, hair, dirty dishes, and unfolded laundry. It was gross. Although still snuffly, yesterday I felt less like I was going to die & spent the whole day cleaning, dunging out, and organizing. Wow. I don't hate my house anymore. Here's a semi-complete list of what I accomplished yesterday:

• Sorted through all the toys, re-organized them into their bins & filled yet another bag to sneak to the donation pile in the garage.
• Cleaned up & organized the living room, which is really just an extension of the monsters' playroom.
  
• Sorted through & folded the mountain of clean laundry on the sofa.
• Did three more loads of laundry & folded those as well.
• Hauled the baskets of clean laundry upstairs... the sofa is free of laundry for the first time in a very long time!
• Cleared the boy's drawers of clothes that no longer fit & put his clean laundry away.
• Pulled more clothes that no longer fit baby girl out of her drawers and added to the pile that will go to my sister IF she is, in fact, having a girl!
• Cleared the kitchen peninsula of toys, papers, mail, knitting projects, crumbs, more mail & various other crap that had piled up there.
  
• Cleaned the kitchen.
  
• Cleaned the downstairs bathroom.
• Spot cleaned & swept the floors.
  
• Watered the orchids.
• Primed & replaced the filter in the refrigerator water pitcher.
• Cleared the dining room table of sewing projects, newspapers, sweaters & the box of cook books I haven't found a place for yet after removing them from the cupboard so I have a place to store my sewing machine.
• Put away the ironing board.
• Scraped all the dried art project gunk off of the boy's play table, threw away about a ream of old painting projects that were piled there, sorted through & organized his play dough tools, paint brushed, etc. He now has his trains set up on the table away from baby girl & is happily playing with them!
• Filled a large box with knitting books and stash yarn that Sherrill is going to take with her to knitting retreat & try & sell off.
• Sorted through the laundry basket of purchased sweaters that have been sitting in the garage for two years. One pile needs to go to the dry cleaners & the other will be donated.
  
• Made dinner (roasted pork steak, baked brown rice & steamed green beans).
• Made two batches of cookies (oatmeal raisin for the boy, 'cause he doesn't like chocolate & chocolate chip for everyone else, 'cause they pretty much won't eat anything BUT chocolate chip).
• Paid the bills.
  
• Finished knitting the first sleeve of my Midnight Forecast cardigan.

There's still tons more I could do, but isn't there always? At least now when I sit down to knit, I don't feel like I'm living here:My replacement camera showed up yesterday, too. It's still in the box, though.

ETA: I should 'fess up and add that I treated myself to some yarn after all that... Little Knits is having a pretty amazing Full Bag Sale!

Stupid, stupid, stupid!

ARG! Why doesn't Blogger allow you to reply to comments via email? This drives me nuts. Remember the nice comment left by Marty Tracy last week asking to use my soaker pattern? I replied immediately to it when it landed in my mailbox... it appeared to be sent out to Peace Fleece, no problem. Upon further investigation, the addy was one of those "no-reply" set-ups, so she did not receive my message!

Glad I noticed and sent another message to the PF email addy on the site!

Cripes, Blogger, what is the deal with this?! At the very least, don't make the email message look like it's something you can reply to... 'cause sometimes you can & sometimes you can't, and it takes real scrutiny to tell the difference. Bah!

Pic-less

I ripped this luscious image from the Purl Bee's blog... partly because it's too delectable not to share, and partly because I do not have any pics of my own to post right now. The little boy left my camera out on the deck railing overnight, um, in the rain a few weeks ago, and I haven't replaced my dead camera yet. Luckily the camera was less than $200 and will be easy to replace, but what am I supposed to do with the broken one? That's always a puzzler for me. Right now we have a dead microwave, a decade-old computer and now this camera kicking around the house. Shouldn't there be a system set up for the disposal of household electronics? You can't just throw them in the trash, can you? I hate this part of our disposable culture. Fixing any of this stuff, of course, is now out of the question. Consumer goods are no longer manufactured to be repaired & it's all so cheap anyway, it's not worth it even if you could find someone to fix things that break. It's lunacy, really. Oh. And the stepson informed me last night that the iPod that we purchased for him over the summer no longer recognizes usb cords... so he can't load anything onto it. He can charge it on the stand charger, but it's pretty worthless if you cannot add more music to it. What are we supposed to do with it?! Lunacy.

Anyway, none of this was my point in posting. My point was that I have three cardigans on the needles which will be finished sooner rather than later, but I haven't posted any progress pics because I'm camera-less at the moment. And, hey!, it was cold enough last night to actually wear one of my sweaters! The man & I snuck out for a quick bite to eat at the local Italian place. It wasn't too bad, and we'll probably try it again. The service was wonderful, the food had potential (about the best you can hope for out here so far), and it's really close to home. Since moving to the "exurbs", close has become relative. It's what we refer to as "walking distance in an extreme situation", you know, like in the event of total societal breakdown. It's probably five miles away. 'Cause when the zombies invade, we'll need to walk to the Italian place. sheesh.

I'll buy a new camera this week. More pics, less rambling will follow. ;)

Honored

This letter was sitting in my inbox when I arrived home from work today:

Dear Michelle, Hello from Peace Fleece. Are you out there? We've heard that our yarn works well for baby soakers and we'd like to encourage customers to try making some Peace Fleece soakers using your very cute, and well tested pattern. Is there any way we could copy your pattern and either give it to our customers free with the purchase of our yarns, or give you $1.00 everytime we send out the pattern. Or whatever arrangement you feel comfortable with. Hoping to hear from you.

Best regards,
Marty Tracy Co-owner Peace Fleece
Porter, Maine

How cool is that? :D

The boy, what seems like eons ago, in a pair of Peace Feece longies.

Sewing!

Sock knitting is on hold for the moment, as my gauge was way too loose on the one pair of size 2's I have, but I'm excited to get started on a new pair as soon as my tiny needles on 40" cables show! In the meantime, I dug out the sewing machine & serger to finally make up a couple of skirts I've been thinking about for awhile. I have a hard time finding simple A-line skirts in cute prints, but I do have one that fits me perfectly and has a very uncomplicated construction. Last night I traced out the skirt on pattern paper, adding 1/2" seam allowances, and today by 1:30 I had two skirts all finished! The stitching on my zippers will not win any prizes at the county fair, but these will be worn with shirts/sweaters covering them to the hips anyway, so no matter. Just some cotton fabric I had in a box of sewing stuff and some zippers I bought at a garage sale who knows when. What I like about this skirt pattern is that it has a fairly wide self-facing on the inside which covers the tummy area with a double layer of fabric and makes for a smoother line. I'm kind of excited that these were so easy to whip up-- the only thing better than cute skirts with hand knits are cute skirts made from $2/yard fabric with hand knits! I expect I'll be sewing more of these soon.
And look how well Mr. Greenjeans from last year matches the red one... not even on purpose! I've been grumbling about how ratty & pilly this sweater was looking, but I took a disposable razor to it, gave it a good washing & blocking, and added a little pewter clasp to the front & now it looks like new. I just ordered these shoes a couple of days ago, too... like I say every year, the one good thing about going back to work is the shoes.

Hope your Labor Day is finding you occupied with only labors of love!