Annie Knits

Awright, Already!

Yes.  A hiatus from blogging.  I took one.

Now that I'm past that confession, I'll make a few more.

• I don't like blogging about negative personal stuff.  It just prolongs and exacerbates it.  That's why I'm not doing it.
• I drink too much coffee and I should probably stop.  Ha.  Ok, at least slow down.
• I've watched all of Monarch of the Glen that I can get ahold of.  It's a fluffy BBC series/soap opera that you can stream on Netflix.  It's addictive.  It takes place in the Highlands of Scotland and I love love love the accents.  That's probably why I watch it -- the accents.  I think a Scots accent is hot.  My GYN for years was a Scotsman so I should have relatively negative associations with the brogue, but my affinity for it persevered.
• I let my 13-year-old buy a lot of 24 Airsoft guns on Ebay.  The lot ended up to cost him about $50, but with shipping he had to cough up a surprising (to him) $97 dollars.  The whole lot is cruddy handguns capable of relatively short shooting distances ( evident from the sale description but the idea of owning 24 of them took hold of his fragile psyche).  Their arrival has been an instant cure forhis Ebay fixation.  And I have $97 to blow at Starbucks -- see number 2.  Tough love that gets me coffee.  I can live with it.
• Speaking of the 13-year-old, he was Confirmed on a Thursday and turned 13 on the following Saturday.  The juxtaposition of these two pictures amuses me:                                    
  His Uncle (husband's brother) is his sponsor -- and to the boy's credit, he took the whole thing very seriously and together he and his uncle really enjoyed the experience.  Of course the other is the only picture I remembered to take of my baby on his 13th birthday.  Crimeny. 
   
• Last week, husband asked me what I wanted for Mother's day.  I told him absolutely nothing -- let's save the money for our vacation I told him.  He didn't fall for it.  Once before, when we were very young -- 2 or 3 years into our marriage I'd guess, he asked what I wanted for some holiday -- birthday maybe?  I told him nothing, that I'd bought clothes, and he took me at my word.  Not a card, not a cake, not even a wish.  No acknowledgement of the day whatsoever... I let him know how I felt about that level of "nothing" and ever since then, he's a little touchy about holidays.  Ok, I told him last week, flowers.  That would be great.  How about fruit, he asked.  Fine. 
    The man in incapable of austerity.  I'll keep him... even though he doesn't have a Scots accent.  (What I also told him was that his being home for the day instead of in Saudi Arabia as he was supposed to be until the trip got postponed was gift enough...)

edited to add for Tracy:  The painting is by a STL native, John Peg, and I own another of his.  Husband found out where I got the first (for his birthday last year) and got this one because he knows I like Peg's style of painting.  Again, I'll keep him.

• The CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) group has started up again.  My confession here is that I heaved a huge sigh of relief.  Now I don't have to think about what's for dinner.  What's for dinner is whatever they decided we should have.  Did you note the key word there?  They.  The CSA people.  The farmers.  The powers that be.  Not me.  I'm a lazy cook.  Scratch that... I'm a lazy shopper.  I hate deciding from among the gazillion choices at the grocery store what to feed my family.  I don't mind 20 steps to a recipe once I have the stuff, I just don't want to generate the menu.  Tuesday night we had grilled trout with a lemon/parsely/white wine sauce, orzo with olive oil and parmesan cheese, brussels sprouts and bacon and cucumber salad.  Some of that was from the CSA, some from the pantry, some from the grocery -- family ate it all.  I just opened the fridge and freezer and cooked for 1/2 an hour.  Ah.  Freedom.  Tonight?  Swedish Meatballs (made with bison from Potosi, MO) over pasta.  
• My knitting has been as lazy as my cooking.  The new Rowan came out, it had three patterns in it for yarn I own... I cast on for one of them.  So much for the resolution that I'd work on a UFO when I finished a project.  Well, to my credit, I didn't actually finish the Peace Fleece Sweater... I still have to finish the top of one sleeve.  But the wool in my lap wasn't making me happy when the weather warmed up here so I'll finish it in time for him to wear it in the fall.  Yeah... remind me, will ya?  
   The specifics?  Rowan Magazine, #47.  The sweater is called Relax.  I'm more than half way thru the body and I've used 6 skeins of Summer Tweed, #544 Jardinier.  The yarn is interesting -- lots of VM, but light and the knit hand is nice.  I think it'll be fine.  If I could read directions and follow them I'd be further along, but the requisite ripping back of the neckline has happened twice.  Whatever.  Current socks are magic loop, two at a time, garter rib from Sensational Knitted Socks, using Flat Feet sock yarn.  I'd call this stuff knitterly.  The fun is watching how the socks knit up in relation to the dyed blank.  Paint drying holds more interest for the uninitiated, but sock knitters are fascinated when I pull these out at the shop.  I kind of secretly love them, even though, as everyone who knows me has commented, the colors aren't my usual preference.

On now to a quiet day.  Maybe I'll see you tomorrow ; )

Break Out the Cigars

The Annie Knits family has a baby in the house.  Psych.

 

This, blog friends, is Dear Daughter's Parenting Class baby, Stirling.  With an 'i'.  

Stirling is Dear Daughter's responsibility for six days.  24 hours a day.  

He does many of the things a 2 month old baby does.  He needs his diapers changed often.  A chip in his anatomically correct nether regions tells his micro processor whether she's changed his chip imbedded diaper for another one.  Once new pants are installed, he coos contentedly.

He eats about every 2 hours -- she's chosen to breast feed.  I'll give you a moment to clean the coffee off of your keyboard.  Ahem.  That square clipped to his chest?  She clips it to hers and he ... well ... feeds.  There's also some kind of attitude measuring do-dad that records whether she's holding him right or if she's cheating and just sticking that thing on his face.  There is a lot of fussing if he's not held in the correct attitude.  FYI, if you want to freak your husband out completely, have your 16 year old daughter breast feed her plastic baby at the dinner table.  It's a sure thing.

After Stirling eats, he has to burp.  Sometimes he burps right away, sometimes it takes awhile.  Dear Daughter is very patient with him.

Sometimes Stirling just fusses.  Like yesterday at 5 p.m. he just fussed for half an hour.  He didn't want food (no contented sucking at the blue square) and his diaper wasn't in need of a change (no cooing when we swapped them out).  He didn't burp either.  He just fussed.  Sound familiar?

Stirling doesn't sleep through the night yet either.  I heard him fuss last night at about 1:40 and again at about 6:00 a.m.  Dear Daughter said she fed, changed, and burped him and that he stayed up about 20 minutes each time.  That's a pretty good baby.  I remember mine would want to play in the middle of the night after they'd eaten.

Anyhoo, she's upstairs now taking a shower.  She asked if she should take him in the bathroom with her because what would happen if he cried and she couldn't hear him.  I told her that I'd taken showers with her in the bathroom at that age when her dad was traveling.  See, if it takes her more than two minutes to respond to him, when the teacher downloads his activity for the week, it'll show up and affect her Parenting grade.  

I'm seriously glad that my babies didn't come with microprocessors that recorded my level of attentiveness to them.  Yikes.

As an aside, I laughed until I cried and had hiccups when she fed him at the table last night.  Then I went and got my camera and took a bunch of pictures.  To which Dear Husband archly responded, "You know, we are not all here for your amusement."  

Could have fooled me.

 

Here's the giant pile of cables next to my knitting chair.  I'm 6 inches from finishing the back of Portland.  Still loving it.  And the Aran Wrap Cardigan of Doom?  6 20-minute rows from finishing that sucker too.  Since I have to ice my lower back several times a day to reduce the inflammation there, I'll certainly be done with both soon.  Before the Olympics are done?  No Way.

Finally, I watched a little Curling with Dear Husband who's home with a cold today.  Donald Sutherland was in the audience.  He looked about as glazed over as I felt.  I have composed an email to NBC requesting that there be subtitles translating future curling commentary.  Because, at this even end, my rock is not even in the house and my pool shot swept wide.  Whatever.

Watch Out Knitting....

I forgot how much I love to paint.

 

White letters plus torn strips of blue tape plus three colors of paint plus stippling brushes equals too stinkin' cute for words!

 

Godson's room is decorated with giraffes and these will grace the room in time for his first birthday. 

Do you think anyone would buy Dr. Scholl's sandals painted like this? (It's an inside joke.  Ask me.)

The gray sweater is growing.  One repeat down, 9 to go.  I think, though, that I will do only about half of the repeats.  Ribbed cables eat yarn and I'm not buying another skein.

I'm sitting here watching the Super Bowl.  Bullet thoughts:

• The commercials are about three things: phones, cars, and movies.  They're not that funny.  Ok, the Google ad was a clever one...
• The Who are old.  Husband called the views we kept getting of Pete Townsend's belly a "wardrobe malfunction."
• The game is ... well ... a game.  I don't really have a horse in the race so I guess I don't have that much to say about this football game.

Oh, and is anyone else a total Weeds junkie?  Sheesh.  Streaming Netflix strikes again.  I'm enchanted. It's probably a generational thing.  I mean if you're a 40 something who attended high school during the 70's or 80's, it's enchanting.  Not because it's about smoking and/or dealing pot, but because it's about grownups dealing with their kids and pot and tangentially the legality thing.  And because I just really like Mary-Louise Parker.

I gave up on the Tudors about halfway through the second season... the characters, while visually very appealing, were just such horrible people doing such horrible things that I couldn't have them in my life.  

Go figure... that I'll take pot-heads and serial killers over British monarchs says something about my deepest self, but I'm goll-danged if I can figure out what ...