The Sweater

In all it's glory!



PS- for those of you who don't know my brother, he is 6'8". There's not really much to scale him against in the picture, but I assure you, that is one long sweater! Esp the arm part of the sweater.

That's how it is with Saturdays

This morning I got to hear Robert shouting, "Don't run with scissors!!" to Liel. I think she stopped, too! We were waiting for the mail to arrive before heading to Brooklyn...I bought some lovely Malabrigo on sale and am anxiously awaiting its arrival. Today was not the day, but I did get some gorgeous handspun yarn from a Ravelry swap. I can't get a good pic now cause it's dark and all, but needless to say it takes my own handspun pic down a notch. I need to try plying my yarn- maybe tomorrow.

Anyway, after my exciting mail we packed up and headed out. Big day: giving Kenny his birthday sweater! Because he's so very tall and thin it was a total custom job and involved at least 10 phone calls during which I demanded that he measure from underarm to wrist, shoulder to wrist, neck to hip, hip to underarm, the sleeves on a sweater that nearly fit, etc. etc. The sweater used more than a kilometer of yarn and took between 100,000 and 150,000 stitches. So you can see why I was a little nervous about whether or not it would actually fit. I'll put you out of your suspenseful misery quickly: IT FIT PERFECTLY. I should've had more confidence in my own rockstarness, ya know? Seriously, it looks awesome on him. I'd post a pic for you, but we forgot our camera, and Kenny hasn't emailed me the pic I took with his yet. I plan to call and harangue him about it in the morning.

Zion had a kind of hard day at Uncle Kenny and Aunt Giselle's. He was underslept, grumpy, kind of bored, and really happy to be there all at the same time. In practice this meant that he spent a lot of time alternately antagonizing Liel for the fun of hearing her shriek at him, and telling his aunt and uncle how glad he was to be there, and how nice it was to see them. Pretty much your standard 4 year old Jeckyll and Hyde.

Kenny's been on about this fabulous Thai place they discovered in the neighborhood, so naturally I had to try it. It was quite, quite good. Wish it had been there/we had known about it when we lived there! I love coconut milk.

No visit with Kenn and Giselle seems to be complete without a debate about some point of grammar or pronunciation, so today we all learned how to correctly conguate the verb "to forsake" (it's "Chester has forsaken his sausage" or "Chester forsook his sausage"). Well, 3 of us learned. One of us already knew the correct answer, and she's typing this blog post. And no, being right never gets tiring!

Can't talk, spinning

You've probably missed me, and wondered why I wasn't blogging, right? Well, I've been doing the usual work/preschool stuff AND I've been spinning. Yarn! Real yarn! Right now I'm working on some lovely undyed stuff that is destined to become a hat for my dear brother, but here is a pic of the first batch of wool I spun. It's only part of the batch, and was my third attempt at spinning.



You may now tell me how totally rad I am. Making yarn = the heavens obey my commands!!

Do you think those drugs are legal?

Cause we just have to take it as a given that no sober person dreamed this shit up.

Can't stop laughing

So, my friend Stacie linked me up to a new-to-me blog today- Dad gone Mad. She knew I'd appreciate his post from last week about the Beastie Boys, kids, and life lessons, and I did. I liked it so much that I went to see what he'd written this week and almost peed my pants laughing at this post. Seriously- I could. not. stop. laughing. I still can't. I'm laughing while I type!

There was one rather disappointing bit, however. A comment left on the blog indicated the existence of a book about carpet beetles and such, titled Who Munches Carpet? And again, I couldn't stop laughing. I came here to blog about it to y'all and made the sad discovery that no such book appears to exist. Oh, the disappointment! My best guess is that the commenter meant this book, which is about the weird things animals eat, and which includes a section (perhaps- hopefully!) with the carpet munching title.

I'm feelin' great after my laugh, hope you are, too!

Oh, and guess what else?? My darling husband disassembled the toilet for me today in order to clean all pee (*cough*Zion*cough*) out of the hinges. Bathroom doesn't smell like a subway station! AND he did it even though he had actual paid work that needed doing. I swooned a little when I got home. Who knew that cleaning a preschooler's pee out of toilet hinges could take on semi-romantic overtones?? Man, no wonder teenagers think adults are kind of lame and out of touch. I mean, imagine your teenage self and whoever you had a crush on at the time. Would TeenageYou have gone all weak in the knees if Crush had cleaned your toilet? No. TeenageYou would have been mortified (or at least confused), and probably rightly so. After all, "I cleaned your toilet" doesn't exactly have "Dangerous" and "Wants to sweep me off my feet" written all over it...at least not until you're the parent of a small child with bad aim.

Little ears

Liel and I were reading stories on the couch a few minutes ago. We finished our book and she climbed onto the back of the couch. She made an unhappy face at the toys Zion had piled there, picked one up, and hefted it experimentally.

"Throw shit!", she shouted, launching it into the living room.

PS sorry for the sparseness of posts lately. Things at our house have been Crazy. Both kids are now attending our parent run, co-op nursery school and we are on the board of the school. Plus work (and we are both teaching new classes this semester), house, cooking, shopping, knitting, and visitors (see below). I expect I'll catch up with my tail one of these days and get back to regular blogging!

Moonwaffles

The Texas State Fair is, as you may know, home to deep fried goodness. They fry shit you wouldn't even think could be fried, like Coke. Someday I will journey to this mecca of deliciousness, but for now I will have to content myself with reading the list of finalists at this year's fair, and possibly trying to duplicate some of them at home. I think Chicken-fried bacon would be very do-able for the home cook, for instance! Oh G-d, and with ranch sauce?? Excuse me while I attempt not to fry my precious laptop with drool.

Of course special mention must go to Chocolate Covered Strawberry Waffle Balls cause, well, if that doesn't sound an awful lot like Chef's Chocolate Salty Balls I don't know what does. Plus, balls. Hee hee.