Absintence Pledge

On my honor, I pledge to make a dent in my yarn stash. To knit or crochet up as many items as I can using existing yarn. Have bags and bags of sock yarn. I think that some of it is begging to be make into fingerless mittens and gloves for Christmas. Maybe a baby or toddler sweater or two. And don't forget socks, lots and lots of socks.

I swear this on my stack of knitting books, magazines, pattern booklets, and individual patterns both in hardcopy and those stored on my laptop. So help me Elizabeth Zimmerman.

Of course, that might not count some lucious, exotic lace weight yarn if I decide to try my hand at some delicate lace.

Shhhhhh, don't tell my son-in-law and daughter how much I have hidden away in closets.

Memoriable Books

15 Memorable Books
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Today at 7:50 AM
Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. These are in no particular order. Tag some friends, including me because I'm interested in seeing what books my friends choose.
you.

Andre Norton
1. Star Man's Son
2. Beast Master
3. The Witch World
4. Stranger in a Strange Land- Robert Heinline
5. The Halloween Tree - Ray Bradbury
Tolkien
6 The Hobbit
7. The Fellowship of the Ring
8. The Two Towers
9. The Return of the King
10. The Good Earth - Pearl S. Buck
Not sure of the authors
11. The Grapes of Wrath
12. The Columbian Exchange - history
13. The Radicalism of the American Revolution - history
Stephen King
14. The Stand
15. Salem's Lot

Parent Job Description

Received this in an email. I do not know who the author is, but he/she has to have been a parent.

PARENT - Job Description

This is hysterical. If it had been presented this way,
I don't believe any of us would have done it!!!!

POSITION :
Mom, Mommy, Mama, Ma
Dad, Daddy, Dada, Pa, Pop

JOB DESCRIPTION :

Long term, team players needed, for challenging,
Permanent work in an
Often chaotic environment.
Candidates must possess excellent communication
And organizational skills and be willing to work
Variable hours, which will include evenings and weekends
And frequent 24 hour shifts on call.
Some overnight travel required, including trips to
Primitive camping sites on rainy weekends and endless sports tournaments in far away cities!
Travel expenses not reimbursed.
Extensive courier duties also required.

RESPONSIBILITIES :

The rest of your life.
Must be willing to be hated, at least temporarily,
Until someone needs $5.
Must be willing to bite tongue repeatedly.
Also, must possess the physical stamina of a
Pack mule
And be able to go from zero to 60 mph in three seconds flat
In case, this time, the screams from
The backyard are not someone just crying wolf.
Must be willing to face stimulating technical challenges,
Such as small gadget repair, mysteriously sluggish toilets
And stuck zippers.
Must screen phone calls, maintain calendars and
Coordinate production of multiple homework projects.
Must have ability to plan and organize social gatherings
For clients of all ages and mental outlooks.
Must be a willing to be indispensable one minute,
An embarrassment the next.
Must handle assembly and product safety testing of a
Half million cheap, plastic toys, and battery operated devices.
Must always hope for the best but be prepared for the worst.
Must assume final, complete accountability for
The quality of the end product.
Responsibilities also include floor maintenance and
Janitorial work throughout the facility.

POSSIBILITY FOR ADVANCEMENT & PROMOTION :

None.
Your job is to remain in the same position for years, without complaining, constantly retraining and updating your skills,
So that those in your charge can ultimately surpass you

PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE :

None required unfortunately.
On-the-job training offered on a continually exhausting basis.

WAGES AND COMPENSATION :

Get this! You pay them!
Offering frequent raises and bonuses.
A balloon payment is due when they turn 18 because
Of the assumption that college will help them
Become financially independent.
When you die, you give them whatever is left.
The oddest thing about this reverse-salary scheme is that
You actually enjoy it and wish you could only do more.

BENEFITS :

While no health or dental insurance, no pension,
No tuition reimbursement, no paid holidays and
No stock options are offered;
This job supplies limitless opportunities for personal growth, unconditional love,
And free hugs and kisses for life if you play your cards right.

Forward this on to all the PARENTS you know, in appreciation for everything they do on a daily basis,
Letting them know they are appreciated
For the fabulous job they do...
Or forward with love
To anyone thinking of applying for the job.
** AND A FOOTNOTE 'THERE IS NO RETIREMENT -- EVER!!!

Sheila's T

I finished Sheila's T last night. I know that it is large, but I wanted to make sure she would get some wear out of it after I spent so much time knitting it. I really liked this pattern. Since it goes down to a size two, I think I will make Emily one also.

Baby Kisses

How time flies. From no kisses as a baby, just a receiver of kisses, to sloppy open mouth kisses, now Emily gives kisses with her mouth shut. Still just as sweet, just not as juicy.

Literacy test

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

(you should probably copy and paste this into your own note and do it. if you want. :) )

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
1b) put an "x-" next to the ones you've started but not finished.
2) Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total at the bottom.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen *
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien X +
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte BronteX-
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X +
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee *
6 The Bible x
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte x
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell x
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens x
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X-
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller X
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare X-
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier X+
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X+
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell x
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck x+
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll x
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens *
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis *
34 Emma - Jane Austen*
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen*
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis *
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell x
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown x
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Gar
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins*
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding x
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert X+
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen*
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens *
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley X
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville X
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens x
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker X
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens x
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker x
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White x
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle X-
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams x
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas X-
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl x
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

My score: 41, now I just need to figure out what it means.

Easter Eggs

This evening Sheila and I dyed Easter eggs for tomorrow. This is really the first time she actually helped to dye eggs I must confess that some years I skipped dying eggs completely when she was younger. Plastic eggs with candy substituted for the real thing. Sheila ended up with her fingers stained brown by dipping fingers into all the colors, and her shirt is an abstract work of art now, proudly displaying all the different colors.

After Easter, I will buy up steeply discounted dye kits to use for dying yarn and for next year. The pink, red, and purple dyes were unimpressive. The blue is beautiful, I tried to talk Sheila into dying more eggs blue, but she wanted more of all the colors. I do believe that the lime green and green dyes would make a really pretty sock yarn.

Next year, I might set everything up for her, but allow her to do the dipping of eggs herself. Maybe I can talk Katie into bring Emily over for a really messy, fun time.

I have an addiction

I don't know what it is about yarn. I have sworn to knit down my stash, and not buy any more yarn. But there are so many soft, beautiful yarns out there. And sock yarns! Lots and lots of sock yarns. Seems that I am adding yarn faster than I can knit it. MUST QUIT BUYING YARN. MUST KNIT MORE!

dying with kool-aide

Finally did it, tried to dye some yarn using kool-aide. I had a skein of Lion Brand Aran in off white that I knew I would never knit up into anything and I was told that the lighter colors of wool often do not felt well. Seemed to take forever to put up into two skeins.

I used cherry, lemon-lime, lemonaide, and twisted blueberry for the colors. Put the wet skeins in two microwave safe dishes and rotated nuking each one for two minutes. Not sure how I like it, but my dgd wanted colorful yarn. So, here it is hanging from the shower head.

Babies and Knitting Needles

Just what is it about babies and knitting needles? Do they come with a little needle homing device in their diapers? Or do the needles call to them from inside boxes and bags like a siren to come and get them? Why is it that when a baby does get a hold of our knitting, they unerringly pull out the needle with all the stitches on it?

Emily quietly and swiftly found my knitting bag, and took out the needle holding most of the stitches on a scarf I am knitting for my father for Christmas. At least I was able to save my work. I am such a slow knitter that loosing a row or two can become a real tragedy. Fixed it and will work on it some tonight.

Popcorn Perils

Popcorn Perils

It was in the kitchen that I learned that flour explodes. My younger sister, Kathy, and I were home alone one Saturday night. I have long since forgotten why my parents were gone, perhaps bowling, but absent they were. I do remember the kitchen though, painted bright enamel yellow, and the popcorn popper.
I don’t see that kind of popper in the stores anymore. It had a bottom-heating element, sort of like a mini-hot plate for heating the oil. There was also a deep pan with a close fitting lid. The pan had a line marking the level needed for the oil, much like the measuring lines on an old metal measuring cup. The process was in theory very simple. Pour the oil into the pan to the oil line. Place the pan on the bottom-heating unit and then plug it in. Wait a minute or so to let the oil heat up. When a couple of corn kernels in the oil begin to sizzle, then it was time to pour in a carefully pre-measured amount of popcorn, place the lid tightly on the pan, and wait for the sound of popping corn. Timing was critical, and only experience would teach you to recognize when the corn had just about finished. Removing the pan too soon from the heating element resulted in a lot of old maids, or unpopped corn kernels, and leaving it on too long meant burnt popcorn.
Kathy and I were experienced popcorn makers. Popping corn was not a forbidden activity. All we wanted was some popcorn to go along with out cherry Kool-Aid and Creature Feature movie. To this day, I don’t know what went wrong. Kathy was supposed to be watching the two kernels in the oil for signs that the oil was hot enough for the rest of the popcorn.
Suddenly Kathy was screaming, “Call the fire department!” and “Get the neighbors!” Clouds of greasy, black smoke were billowing from the popcorn popper, filling the cheerful yellow kitchen. Kathy danced around the kitchen floor, ineffectively waving her hands at the smoke, and yelling for the neighbors or the fire department.
Because I was the oldest, I knew I was responsible for whatever happened. Quickly sizing up the situation, I realized it was not yet a matter for the fire department. Our family was having an on again, off again feud with the neighbors, and I wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of coming to the rescue. Quickly I pulled the cord on the popper and unplugged it. Flames still shot up from the popper, creating a dense, oily smoke. Suddenly I remembered something from the home economics class I had one semester in Junior High. You were supposed to smother a grease fire. My mother, like most good housewives in the sixties had canisters lined up in a neat row on one counter. There they were, standing in formation, labeled flour, sugar, coffee, and tea. I grabbed the orange, plastic canister inscribed Flour, threw its white lid on the floor, and dumped the whole canister of flour on the fire. No magician could have created a better white, smoky, poof explosion during an act to mystify an audience. The flour exploded.
The flour had smothered the fire. Stunned, Kathy and I surveyed the disaster. Flour and soot covered every surface of the kitchen. We looked at each other. Sure and certain knowledge of Mom’s reaction to this disaster cased dread’s cold, clammy fingers to run up our spines and clench our heats in a death grip.
“Mom’s going to kill us!” Our mother’s displeasure was something to be avoided at all costs. A marine drill sergeant would have admired the way in which one look could cause knees to quake. Quickly we dug out buckets, rags, the broom, and mop. Cleanser was poured liberally into a bucket of warm water to aid in the removal of the oily smoke. With broom, mop, and rags we removed all traces of the exploded flour. Kathy and I have never worked so hard or so fast to remove all traces of “the incident.” We even pulled out a kitchen chair, stacked Omaha phone books on the seat, and tottered perilously in an effort to clean the ceiling. Finally our work was done. Except for the missing flour, we thought we had removed all traces of the oil fire and flour explosion. And we were in luck; our parents had not yet come back home. Tired, but convinced we had narrowly diverted a disaster and that no one would know what happened, we crept up the stairs to our beds.
I’ll never forget that morning. Kathy was still asleep or maybe just delaying facing the day. I walked down the stairs. My mother was sitting at the kitchen table in her flannel nightgown, a cup of coffee in her hand.
“What happened last night, Leslie?”
“What do you mean?”
She glanced at the ceiling. “Did you catch the popcorn on fire?”
I spilled my guts right there and then. Told her of the oil fire, the flour explosion, everything, and waited for the eruption of her temper.
“You can use salt or baking soda to smother a fire, or a tight lid,” was all she said.
Maybe my memory fails me. It could be I was so afraid of the possible consequences that I made myself believe that Kathy and I had removed all traces of the oil fire and flour explosion. To my immense relief, and surprise, nothing more was said.
However, my mother smiles when she tells her version of the story. Our dumbfound expressions at her knowledge of the incident. She laughs when she describes the burned popcorn popper soaking in the sink, and the ceiling swirled and streaked with smoke. Perhaps she was relieved that nothing more serious happened. The dreaded yelling and punishment never happened. It had become one of her favorite stories to tell. Mine also.

Buster Gets a Child

Buster Gets a Child

The owners of the Curly Tail Kennel were famous for their prizewinning pug dogs. Their pugs won many blue ribbons in dog shows. Many people wanted a Curly Tail puppy. All of Mrs. Puggy’s puppies had homes waiting for them when they became old enough to leave home. All except her little black son.

Miss Puggy worried about her little black puppy. People who came to buy a puppy didn’t want him. They said things about him that hurt his feelings.

“His nose is too long!”

“His ears are bad, they are not button ears.”

One woman looked at him and said, “He is too skinny to be a good pug.”

The little black puppy’s feelings were hurt. He couldn’t help how he looked. He always tried to be a very good puppy. He wanted a home of his own. The little black puppy became very sad. He sat in a corner and cried. The little black puppy stopped playing with his brothers and sisters.

“Not every pug can go to dog shows and win ribbons.” His mother sat next to him. She washed the tears from his face. “Some pugs are very lucky, they have children to play with. Maybe you one day will get a child of your own.”

The little black pug quit crying. He began to play with his red ball again. He played chase with his brothers and sisters. While they were playing he heard somebody say, “Mommy look at that little black pug! He can run faster than all the other puppies!”

He looked up. Standing between two grown-ups was a little girl. She pointed at him and tugged on her mother’s hand. “That one, Mommy, I want to see that one!”

The owners of the kennel let the little black puppy out of the pen. He barked and ran up to the little girl. They rolled on the grass. He untied her shoelaces. He played with her hair when she picked him up. He ran in circles around her feet.

“Look at me,” the little black puppy, barked to his brothers and sisters, “I have a child!” He gave the little girl many puppy kisses on her cheek and chin as she held him in her arms.

His brothers and sisters were very happy. All the other pugs were very happy. The little girl’s mother asked if she had a name for the puppy. The little girl answered, “Yes, he told me his name is Buster.” Her parents laughed.

The family took him to his new home that very same day. On the way to his new home, the little black pug and the little girl snuggled together in the back seat of the car. The little girl fell asleep. The little black pug yawned and settled down for a nap, too. He was very happy. Buster knew that he and the little girl would have many wonderful adventures.

Lace Knitting

What is it with lace knitting. Last night I tried to start three lace scarf patterns and ended up quitting and frogging each one? Oh well, I will finish my socks then have another try at a lace pattern.