Hey

Not sure you've had a day like mine yet. Let me share.

1. Woke up at 6:30 for substituting assignments. Rejected it. Put head back on pillow. At 6:32, was woken again by the same system. Told them I was off duty for the day.
2. Go to the bathroom. Look at clock. Note the time. Wake up the high schooler (who slept with her window open--idiot) and my other two sisters (you know the ones with a job).
3. Get woken up again by my phone. My sister calling me from down stairs--my brother's not going to school today.
4. 8-ish (this is pure conjecture), get woken up again by the dang, stupid substitute system. Again. Listen and choose an afternoon assignment for today.
5. Get woken up by my mom: baby brother is in my bathroom and to pull him off when he's done. 6. Go in to check on him. He insists on matching up the radio with the microphone that's downstairs. He finally put together his missing karaoke machine with the stereo upstairs.
7. Knowing the implication of this, I bring the radio downstairs. Pull out the DVD the kid put in there. Put in the actual music CD he finds. Listen in abject torture to kid songs. Really bad kid songs. I need to buy the kid a mother goose/nursery rhyme CD, it will be less painful.
8. Need to get ready to drop sister off at work. Seeing as she woke up late and is physically incapable of getting herself ready with anything less that 2 hours of prep time.

Time 8:30. Weather: Snow. Again. Cold. Really cold. I read on someones blog yesterday that the only snow she enjoys is when it's over 30 degrees outside. I have to agree. Anything below that sucks.

You may go back to your regularly scheduled programming.

sniff....

It's....snowing. AGAIN.

WAAHHHH!!!!!

Yesterday was so lovely, around 40F. Gosh darned Michigan weather.

I lived in Riverside, CA for 2 1/2 years while working on my MA. Even though summer/fall completely sucked. Winter there was wonderfully mild. February/March were the spring months in Riverside. Of course it balanced out. The place had only about 4 months of good weather, while the other 8 left you in fear of strong winds, crazy heat, smog, wildfires, droughts, mudslides and earthquakes.

So maybe I will take the snow. Nothing like a little bit of perspective, and the reminder that being woken up by your house shaking all around you, was not my idea of a good time.

Thinking

So I really like these bags. Am wondering if a certain boy would actually use one. My life is plagued by the lack of girl children in the under-16 category---well, girls I would actually knit for, I'm not throwing my money on yarn and pattern for someone only distantly related, especially when the boy children in my life like it when I make them stuff.

That's all.

So...

I'm knitting Henry from Knitty.com. It's a really lovely pattern. Once you figure out the stitch pattern, things can go very smoothly... or crash and slowly burn.

I'll give you a minute to think about which point I'm on for this pattern.

I'm almost 30 rows into the pattern, which is worked length-wise not width-wise like most scarf patterns. I like working it length-wise because I don't have to keep turning the work. It's fun. But, and it's a big but, if you're off on your stitch count, things don't line up properly. If you're off early on, you know---when you're still not sure what the pattern looks like and how it works up--you don't realize you're making a mistake. At least not until row 20.

So I finally figured out my mistake (an extra stitch---one extra stitch). I adjusted the stitch count and worked up a few more rows and I now understand the way it's supposed to look. I like the way it looks, but I don't want to rip anything back.

I'm divided by whether I want to try to match things up on the other end or just stick to the original pattern and have two different sides.

I'm still thinking.

Thinking.

Screw thinking, I'm just going to knit until I get to the end and I'll make do then.

Hush

Not to alarm anyone or anything....but I'm actually knitting.

Shocking isn't it? No pictures though--the camera and the knitting are both on separate floors. I've finally gotten around to starting the supposedly for Christmas wish list that I had going. This scarf is going to take me a while though, I'm knitting a scarf on size 3 needles--yeah I'm not sure what I was thinking either.

I'm thinking of dyeing/knitting some things through the Project Spectrum theme. Fire is up first. I can work with that. Except for the scarf--that's in green. My sister's favorite color. Who knew?

It's birthday time

When you have a soon to be 4-year-old boy in the house, firefighters are constantly saving you from imaginary fires and catastrophes--you know that kitten just needs to get down from that tree. So it's no surprise that for his birthday party we are having a firefighter cake and cupcakes for school.

This is the cupcake design:


Which goes in this box with its friends:


Times 3.

Yeah, yesterday was fun. Actually it wasn't so bad, once I simplified things up a bit.

Here are some easy simplification techniques:
1. Use box cake, BUT, replace the oil with the same amount applesauce.
2. Add chocolate chips. I use semi-sweet, since my frosting tends to be sweet.
3. Pull out the butter early in the day--it helps when making buttercream icing.
4. Small touches help make the cupcakes very special. In my case, I wanted to get red or firefighter themed cupcake liners--but they don't have any. Anywhere. I think I need to write Wilton a letter. So instead I got a bag of red chocolate melts and a mold for firemen hats. Repeat 4 times and an instant topper.

Although this isn't a simplification thing, please keep in mind: Do not make frosting, color it red, yellow and orange, pipe it like flames and top it with a fireman hat. Yeah, think about it. Luckily I thought this out before I went through my plan.

As a break away from the simple, and relatively straightforward, here comes the actual birthday cake.
Yeah, it's a burning building with firefighters. He got a kick out of it. After we cut some of it up, he started using the firefighter figurines to fight the fire in the building. It was really cute.

The original design was a lot more complicated, involving a firetruck 2-D design along the base and fondant made firefighters. I wish I could use fondant for family cakes, but then everybody in my family would have been in an uproar--they really don't like fondant.

Everybody had a good time, he enjoyed the cake and his gifts. Unfortunately for me, I deeply regret one of the games already--A computer game sounds like such a good idea, until I was woken up at 8 am on a Saturday to help him with the game. Sigh.

Me

I should preface this by pointing out that I had a very lovely post about my brother's birthday cake and cupcakes. I'll post that later.

Generally speaking, I am not a nice person. I'm not a mean person, but I am very blunt and may even, on occasion, be called moody. I detest being taken for granted. One should never assume that I will be available at one's beck and call whenever they should require it. This especially applies to a certain 17 year old who keeps texting me with requests to pick her up at certain times. What the heck am I? A paid driver? No. I am unemployed* and, apparently for my sister, that means available. I have a list about a mile long that needs to get gone through and I am not playing around with people's pick up and drop off times. So I told her she can't stay after school and I'm picking her up at her regular time. Not a minute later. Bite me. I am quite willing to be paid for my troubles, she however, chooses to ignore this and sulks.

I'd like to end this with the following: I will be back later after I have calmed down. and vented. and possibly even yelled.

*Ha. When I had a job and went to school full time, I had more free time than I do now. Maybe I should call what I do with my time: volunteering--it certainly sounds better than unemployed. Of course both mean the same thing: Broke.

It's kinda sad

Yes it's very sad--my titles that is--I'm not sure if they're really necessary. I know I generally don't read them.

So lately I've been spinning. and spinning. and spinning. Let me show you:

After spinning some small different colored balls of yarn, I move on to my nice stuff:

Alpaca:

I think the larger one is a 2-ply and the smaller one is my attempt at navajo plying.

Then came my gorgeous, soft, black merino:


This is my second attempt, something went horribly wrong with the first batch that I spun and tried to ply:

It's horribly twisted and tangled. I think it's going to go in the bin.

On Monday, I'm going to be dyeing some superwash sock yarn. Maybe something springy.

The next few days are going to be rather stressful. My family has three people employed in the same company, the same company that just declared bankruptcy (chapter 11 not 7, so they need to restructure). Hopefully they'll announce a restructuring plan early next week and my stomach pains will start to decrease.