How depressing...or not.

Despite the lack of sepia tones, barefoot children in overalls and lots of dust, we are surely in a recession of depressing proportions (at least that is what the brains on TV keep telling me). So it got me to wondering what good things could possibly come from this situation, I have been challenging myself to come up with a list. Maybe you can add to it and together we can spread a little sunshine, so with out further ado, here is my list of depression inspired happiness.

1. The return of the commercial jingle. I have noticed that there are several radio jingles out and I've seen ads for jingle contests. It looks like industry is actually trying some new techniques to get us to buy up products, it is a nice change from the old "you have money, we want it, buh-bye"

2. Acrylic yarn may make a major comeback and we can all get over our yarn-snobbery and embrace the .99 cent barrel at Hobby-Lobby. Red heart rusts and oranges ponchos that squeak when they get wet will be the new rage! I'm so excited, I can't wait till it rains. (just an aside here, but I never knew that there was no cent key on my keyboard till about thirty seconds ago. )

3. Five dollar foot longs. 'nuf said

4. This isn't technically a piece of sunshine, but I do smirk each time I hear one of these...Angry bank commercials. The president of some small time bank insists that they are not taking bail out money and that they never will. I'll go ahead and take your bail-out money guys. Seriously.

5. I get to challenge my family to eat and enjoy on the cheap. We're pretty cheap anyway, but I feel like a super-star when I can make a meal for a few cents (blast, I need that cent key)and they will actually eat in and like it. Beans and rice: makin' a comeback!

6. Parks are free, the backyard is free. Free is good.

7. Mimi and I spend a lot of time window shopping, which has been a lot of fun. This will probably go away as soon school lets out and we don't have to hang out so much, but still. The best window shopping is at places like Big Lots and Tuesday Morning. They have so much cool stuff and it is different all the time, and if you need to buy something, it is usually a few dollars. Plus, window-shopping is a lot like real shopping, I find it to be almost as satisfying.

8. Network TV, but especially PBS. We've been enjoying this perk for almost three years now, but I thought I'd add it in, because it just keeps giving.

9. (Juan's) Craigslist. We love to sell junk that we don't want and there is always someone looking for new junk at slashed prices. Garage-sales and thrift stores don't get added, even though I love these too, they've always been around.

Ok, now its your turn. Ready, set, go.

just when you were going to give up

At the urging of my husband, (who started his own blog) I am logging on to say I am alive. We have been alive for all these weeks (as opposed to mostly dead all day) but we have been in the process of moving, buying a new car and house-training a puppy. In that time, we also had family visits three different times, and a trip to the Rancho. Whew! No wonder I haven't had time to knit or blog. I've barely had time to breath.

We have moved into an actual house, with an actual yard, and an actual garage the last week of March. It was crazy, we had an offer we couldn't refuse; to rent a home for the same price as our little town-home that we had been outgrowing. I can't tell you how much I love having a yard. True, it is nothing but dirt right now, but we are in the process of thinking about doing some landscaping, and in the meantime, the kids and Buddy-dog run wild in the dirt patch. They are so excited, and it is wonderful to see them play and burn off some of the energy they seem to have in abundance. There are many nice things about having a home, the main thing that pleases me is the storage. FINALLY! I love having space for all the things that make my home look messy. We have an office for the computer desk and the fly-tying/fly-fishing things, which instantly makes my house look 50 times cleaner. There is an entire room of children's playthings downstairs, which makes it look like adults actually live in our home, and the garage has room for things that don't need to be hanging around my living room, ie: bikes, snow-shovels, spare-tires. We are being conscientious not to fill our home with junk just because there is more room, but it is about to be garage-sale time, at least I won't have to remove 1 thing for every new thing I bring home. There is still a lot of unpacking to do, and I am still arranging things a lot. I haven't hung any pictures yet, but that is coming too. One thing that makes me so slow about the unpacking and moving-in stuff is that I now have to drive both my boys to school. It is a huge part of my day to transport them back and forth. I feel like I don't have time to start any big projects before it is time to hop in the car and drop someone off or pick someone up. Only a few more weeks of that and then summer vacation starts up and we will have more time at home. I am ready for those lazy days when we can just spend time here. I can't wait to start planting stuff in our back yard and enjoying the sun and warmth.

I have been half-heatedly training for a half-marathon this summer, we got up to 11 miles in March, but have gone back to 5-7 now just because it has been so hard to be consistent. I haven't actually signed up for any races, so that makes it a little easier to be inconsistent about it too, and the other thing is that I have less access to my running partner now, so we are only going out about 1 time a week . My dog is a terrible running partner, he is only good for about 1/2 mile before his little corgi legs give out and he just plops down. I am finding that I am a better runner when I have someone to go with, so I use that as an excuse too. Somewhere inside of me, I know that there is a Kenyan struggling to run, I just need to release her. Riiiiggghttt.

I haven't completed my Tess Shawl, and I haven't really started anything new either. I am planning on making some baby booties and a hat to send to a friend who just adopted a lovely little baby girl. But so far, I haven't started them. I am just going to get to it, but probably not for a few weeks.

That is the long and short of mi Vida loca. Run here and there, move here, chase the dog there, dust, dish, run, run, run, sleep and do it all again!

Here are a few pictures of our living room, I will try to post some more when I have made some house-keeping progress. Ignore the tool box in the window, and all the boxes and junk. Don't ignore the dog, he is impossible to miss! Enjoy the kitchey kitchen, which is growing on me by the day. I do love me a turquoise oven...and everyone knows that diamonds are a girl's best friend!

Crazy Times

Hello All. Things have been quite crazy around this house lately. Firstly, my dryer died for over a week, and I am just now getting caught up on laundry. I don't like to let it pile up, but it always gets that way, but let me tell you that for 7 days we could neither wash nor dry, and things got pretty ugly. I finally feel like I am back into my schedule, and I also came to realize that our family has far too much clothing. I, however, ran out of everything and spent about 4 days wearing men's clothing. Ugh. So that is now behind us, thank goodness.

I spent three fantastic days at a knitting retreat with a lovely group of women from Denver and Santa Fe in Buena Vista, Colorado. It was so great, and relaxing and wonderful, and would you believe that not a single one of us brought a camera?! The weekend was perfect, and we have all vowed to meet again next year, when I'll be sure to remember a camera. A bed and breakfast in town, The Liar's Lodge, hosts groups of knitters, quilters, scrapbookers etc. for weekend retreats. It was so nice to sit around and let someone else worry about the cooking and cleaning while we just sat around knitting and chatting. We checked out the local yarn shop, Serendipity, which had quite an extensive bunch of yarns, books, and gifts for such a small town. I didn't buy a single skein of yarn, but I picked up a pretty cool purse/knitting bag, which I am pretty excited about. It is from Tute-La bags, and is the Rosa style. I love that it has pockets on the inside where I can stash needles, or my cell-phone and other stuff that I used daily. I am using it as a purse that can carry knitting, too.

I worked on the side to side shawl pattern that I purchased a few days before we left. I am a little under half way through it, and I am enjoying the mindless knitting. It is on size 13's and is done in Patons Showers of Flowers. This picture shows the variegation very well, it is beautiful. I also made a little sweetheart hat for Mimi, seeing how her birthday is on Saturday. It is cute, and I want her to wear it now, but I am holding off till her birthday. It is perfect for a gal born on Valentine's day. Susan B. Anderson wrote the pattern, and is the author of Itty-bitty Hats, so I knew that I wouldn't have any trouble knitting this up, her patterns are so easy to follow and so straight forward. I'll post some pictures of her wearing it.

The exciting news in our house is that we are getting a dog. Yes, you read right. We are getting a little Australian Shepard/Corgi mix. My mom is on her way to bring him this very moment. I might have just made the worst decision of my life, but I am sure that the kids will love him, and at the very least, he will keep my floor clean after the kids eat...We haven't picked a name yet, but we are narrowing it down. I hope my marriage will survive, J isn't thrilled at the idea of it, but I think he will learn to enjoy him too, as long as he doesn't eat any of his fly-rods!

Other than that, we are pretty much hating winter, ready for the terrible wind storms to stop and are looking forward to spring.

random blogging

I spent the past two Sunday nights watching Tess of the D'Ubervilles on PBS Masterpiece Theatre. It was pretty sad, and made me glad to live in a time when women are treated more equal to men and have more say in their own lives and homes. It was very well done, though, and I am positively enchanted with Tess' shawl that she wears throughout the movie. It is a simple garter stitch brown wool shawl and I really love the way they wrap her in it for this movie. I can't seem to find a decent picture, but if you go on the wedsite you can see a not-so-great picture. I am attending a knitting retreat in the first weekend of February, and I am determined to find a good project to take along. This may fit the bill, I am going to dig around and see if I can find a pattern that would make a duplicate. I somehow doubt that I could contact the Emmy winning costume designer, James Keast, for his pattern...

Also, I found two new knitting books at the library last week, one called Woolbur, about a sheep that refuses to follow his herd, and Knitalong, which has a lot of cool patterns for knitalongs. One in particular that I love is the Pillow of Sei Shonagon. I think it is beautiful, but I wonder what quick work my kids would make of tearing that ribbon out of it. Maybe it would be a good project for a hope-chest for a daughter. Do people even do such things as hope-chests any more? I'll have to check Ravelry to see who is making that pillow, and for what.

One other thing that might interest some budding etymologist out there; This weekend, our family attended a fly-fishing show in Denver, and there was a woman there selling Caddisfly made jewelry. She collects the caddisfly puppa, then gives them gems and gold to build their cases, she then makes it into unique jewlery. What a novel idea! The jewelry can be seen on her website: http://www.wildscapes.com/, and if you want to know more about caddisflies, look here. The cases are made in stage three of the life-cycle. She was so kind, she gave each of the kids a necklace, and me a zipper pull.

How about a picture to make you smile?

Mimi dresses herself these days...

what of the future? shall we look to the past?

I have been off scene more than on in 2008, and when I started this blog almost two years ago (collective gasp ensues), I fully intended it to be a writing and knitting blog...how much has been happening lately? None. Neither, unless I count facebook as writing, which I don't. But, I did post my resolutions on facebook, and one of them happened to be that I planned to blog more. I didn't really add knitting as one of my resolutions, because I really haven't had the desire to knit much, since I made a bunch of micro-mitts for Christmas presents this year, my fingers are still a little cramped. So the question becomes: do I continue to present this as a knitting blog, or just a blog of randomness and a few pictures thrown, in to appease the granny, or do I even continue this blog at all? Can I answer you later? Maybe after the wool-muse returns, or after I get my nose out of facebook and back into a reasonably constructive past time? I know in my heart that the answer is probably the second. That seems to be all I can promise. And since this so-called knitting blog is lacking anything knitterly today, I will admit that it may be a while before it becomes one again. I never even got started on the laughing carrots cardigan that I agonized over all those weeks (or months) ago. Let me say that I have noticed a trend in all blogs, at least the ones that I have kept up with over the years, and it seems that I am not the only one suffering from writer's/knitter's block. Some of the very regular bloggers have simply stopped posting. I know it is a thin excuse, but I am not the only one, which gives me some kind of comfort. I also noticed that there is a general lack of comment on much of anything about blogging these days. Are the winds of change a'blowing? I hope not. I do love reading other blogs, and at one time, it was a simple joy for me to sit down and post an entry. Maybe I just need to find my joy (nod to Lucinda). I'll be looking for it, in the past, and today.

Hello Darlings. I promised a voting opportunity, and I have come through for you, something that you may not see in most elections. (Speaking of which, I am still waiting on my mail in ballot. Who is trying to block my vote!?) So, let me set you up with a little voter-education before you cast off(hee hee), I have five skeins of Naturally Tussock dark blue yarn, which was bought by my mom at a fantastically discounted price, so any vote is a vote for a pure blue knitted item. There will be no color work because I can't get my hands on more yarn, nor do I want to. That would require more time and thought than I have or could muster at this point in my life. So you're voting on style, not color.

Choice # 1:

Sporty Hooded Pullover from Now You're Knitting Super How-To Hand Book and Design Treasury (whew! what an exhausting title)

The pros of this is that it looks super easy, it would be a quick knit (theoretically) and it would look good in a single color. The cons are that it has a really dorky name, and a hood, which looks tricky, and let's not forget that this book also gave us the hideous-halter-feather-roach-clip-thing...can we trust the integrity of such a publication?

choice #2 Sherwood (sorry I can't seem to get a picture of these next choices, please follow the links)

pros on this guy are that it would be a very challenging knit, I might enjoy that, and that little model looks so darn cute in this sweater...

cons: it would be a very challenging knit, I might not be up for that, and that I might think the model is cuter than the sweater...I could be biased.

choice #3 Laughing Carrots

I think this is really cute, but again, it might be tricky, which could go either way. I might totally get into it, but I might hate all the thinking involved.

And finally, Choice # 4 Accordion

this one is pretty straight-forward knitting, right up till I have to sew a zipper, then I have a little fear, but it is really, really cute and would look smashing on Jack.

Ok, think of this as the preliminary election, I will carefully take into account all your votes (I am hoping for at least enough to eliminate two sweaters) and then I will ask for votes again on the remaining sweaters. How about that for an election you can believe in!?

And just for fun, here is a picture of Mimi wearing a dress that was made for me when I was a wee-lass. My mom tells me that I was wearing it as a smallish-baby, so little Miss Sassypants is quite small for her age...she looks very Holly Hobby though, doesn't she? All except for a bonnet. Cute, cute, cute!

Return of the...me

Wow, fall out of blog-land for a few months and everything changes. I nearly forgot my password, it has been so long since I logged on. What has happened? Nothing, just not particularly bloggy lately. School and all of our activities have kept us pretty busy, but that is always the case. I just fell off the map for a few months. Now I'm back...for today anyway.

I finished up the legless socks back in the first week of September and I have been wearing them frequently. Not much for spinning class (the stationary bike, not the wool spinning wheel), but that is only because I haven't been going much. I can't believe how nice hand-knit socks feel on my feet, it feels like someone is hugging my toes...

They are really cute too, no? I love them, all except the hand-washing part. Next time I think I'll go for the superwash stuff.

I have a birthday knit going on for a friend and I will hopefully be done by next Saturday so that she can actually use them, otherwise, I will have to give her a picture of the pattern, and once I miss a deadline, well, let's just say that she will probably be waiting for quite a while.

The kids have had the last two days off school and we are enjoying some gloriously warm weather, we have a walk and a trip to the park on the agenda, same as yesterday. We took a "nature hike" yesterday and collected lots of natural stuff, including some seed pods and dirt and rocks. I wish that I had had my camera, because we had a great time with the fuzz from some cattails and it was really cute to see them out enjoying such a simple pleasure. Jack and I enjoyed it a little less because it made both of us sneeze, but it sure was amazing to see how many seeds are in one cattail. Fun fun fun.

What else has been going on? Not much. We've celebrated a birthday, gone to New Mexico and Durango, had an entire season of Xcountry, started swimming, ran a 5k, harvested at least 30 tomatoes and other things that are probably everyday life. I've gotten some beautiful new wool from my mom and I think that as soon it gets cooler, I'll start a sweater for Jack Jack. Originally, I was going to make one for B, but I realized that I haven't ever knit for Jack Jack. He deserves a nice sweater. I have a few patterns in mind, and I will present them for a vote very soon. He is also in line for a pair of mittens and an hat. He is woefully unprepared for cold weather. There is no excuse for a child of a knitter to suffer wind and snow in store-bought mittens.