Snapshots: Mid-February 2011

It has been really quiet around this blog lately, and for good reason. I spend half my waking hours in the car these days, shuttling Piper to school, running errands, taking care of business. I will be glad when we can move farther into town, closer to everything. 

*****

You know when you hear stories about crazy families who scream at each other in hospital corridors and get into fistfights next to someone's deathbed and call the cops on each other and steal a dying relative's possessions just so the rest of the family can't get at them? Those people are my family. My mother's family, to be more precise. And all of those things have happened in the past two weeks.  My grandma died the other day, and most of us found out from an aunt who called because she saw it posted on an acquaintance's Facebook page. It was all very surreal and the truth is I have been too busy comprehending the scope of the craziness that is going on to really mourn my grandmother. We were close when I was little - she always had root-beer barrel candies and she would give me some. She drove me around in her big old Buick with the green bench seats and sometimes bought me those wax-bottle candies with the syrupy stuff inside. She liked Rambo movies and told me that she thought Bruce Springsteen's music was okay, but that truthfully she liked him because he had a cute butt. One time when my brother and I were at her house, he actually stuck a fork in her light socket. She met my husband a couple of times and loved him to pieces. I wrote to her about once a month, letting her know what was new with me and how Piper was doing. Sometimes she sent things for Piper, coloring books or stickers or whatever she could afford. A couple of weeks before she died, I sent a hat I'd made her, to keep her head warm during the last of her chemotherapy treatments. I heard from relatives that she did receive it. I hope she got to wear it at least once.

*****

 We have carpet in our dining room, which you have to walk through to get to the entire back half of our house. I'd like to have a conversation with the idiot who thought it was a good idea to carpet a dining room. Between the eating and the constant foot traffic, it's in sad shape. We've made the decision not to replace the carpeting before listing the house, so I am just trying to get up the worst of the stains. Today I used a carpet cleaner that not only burned my skin and stank up the entire house, but stripped my fingernails of their lovely red polish. I would've used gloves, but our only pair of waterproof work gloves we have are bright blue, and I didn't think swapping red-velvet cake stains for bright blue smears of molten work glove was such a good idea.

For Christmas this year, we asked the grandparents for a family membership to the children's museums in this area, and that has turned out to be a genius idea. It was a gift they were more than happy to give, and which we use all the time, yet which does not take up any space in my house. And now I can just ask them to renew it for Christmas every year, thus heading off piles of crappy plastic toys and unwearable clothing for years to come. We've been going to the museum aimed at younger kids at least once a week, because it is awesome. The only way it could be better is if they put in a nice cafe like the main museum downtown has - lots of healthy options, organic and local ingredients, and super delicious to boot. It would certainly save me dragging a lunchbox full of snacks around the museum with us.

I have been knitting up a storm, but I've had to tear out the last four things I started. I just can't make anything work. I got 3/4 done with the 5-color yoke on a sweater for Piper before I discovered that I was doing the special stitch pattern wrong and had to tear it out. That dratted Tomten is still not done, because now I have to tear out the entire second sleeve because my decreases look like stair steps. I keep starting this sweater for Piper in a lovely gray merino, and I can't seem to get past the first row. I work sporadically on the shawl I started for my mom over a year ago, I keep screwing it up and having to frog every row I knit. Although I dearly loved this hat (so soft so warm so cute so perfect), I gave it to my mom because it was a smidge too big for me. It fits her perfectly, and she really loves it. Strangers keep walking up to her and asking where she got it or if they can buy it from her, which makes me feel pretty good. I'm making myself a replacement, in a different, not-as-soft yarn, and I am hoping that knitting for myself rather than everyone else will break the terrible knitting curse I seem to be under.

At the Thrift Store

Unfortunately, it was missing most of its pieces, so we didn't buy it. What good is an alien autopsy if there's no guts?

Snapshots: Late January 2011

I. Am. So. Tired.

That's about it. Just sheer, mind-numbing, circles-under-the-eyes, drooling-while-awake exhaustion. I can't even pinpoint why, unless it's the sinus infection plus my grandma is dying plus I'm de-cluttering the house plus getting it ready to show plus spending an hour in the car every day minimum plus all the running errands plus all the planning plus all the budgeting plus all the shopping plus all the cooking plus all the extended-family drama plus my kid apparently needs to be crawling all over me and sticking her fingers in my ears/up my nose/in my eyes every second of the day. I'm trying to do one of those take-a-photo-every-day things, but I don't have time to get the pictures off the memory cards. I'm trying to knit more and use up my yarn stash, but my head is just not in it and I've had to frog the last four projects I started. I'm trying to sew more, but by the end of the day I'm too tired to drag out my machine and supplies, work on a project, and stay up until 3:00 am to clean it all up.

In short, just life. Nothing that a week or five spent lounging on the beach wouldn't cure.

Amateur Photographer

Tomten...still.

This is the sweater on my lap while I am having breakfast at I kea, because I drag it EVERYWHERE  in hopes of finishing it sometime before next Christmas.

Still the Tomten. I am so sick of this thing. I am sick of the endless garter stitch, I am sick of the vague instructions, I am sick of trying to keep track of my rows to make the sleeve increases come out exactly the same on both sides. I am sick of the huge ball of ghastly pink acrylic yarn I had to buy to finish this thing (615 yards of the white only got me halfway). I am really, really sick of lugging around a huge tote bag with this monstrosity and its accompanying gigundo-size ball of yarn shoved inside. On the good side of things, I've tried it on the kid a couple of times and I think the fit will be about right. When I started it, I thought it would be huge, but I think that is not the case. I already had to take apart the hood and add more rows because it was not tall enough. When did my little girl get so BIG?!

Trying it all on

Because we were shopping with Grandma, she got to wear all this out of the store.

Making a Break For It

She loves to arrange a herd of wind-up animals and let them roam.

Snowy

We got a white Christmas...barely. It started snowing at 10 pm December 25 and didn't stop until 1l am the next day.

Improvised Reindeer

Since we introduced her to Rudolph, reindeer have been a big topic of discussion around here. She did this all on her own, and was quite pleased with it.

Happy Holidays, wherever you may be. 

All Aglow

Holiday lights at Stowe Gardens.

A Little Christmas Crafting

Well, I am knee-deep in red worsted-weight wool and elbow-high in bread dough right now, but I thought I'd share what I made last night. It looked like this when I started:

Remind me to sew in the daytime next year so I can take a decent photo.

This was a t-shirt I gave my husband the first or second Christmas we were together. He loved it and wore it and wore it and wore it, until it had paint splatters and holes and frayed seams and the decal was starting to flake off. It had reached the end of its life as a garment, but I wanted to keep it in the family and he needed a good stocking. He's been using some cheapie dollar-bin one for a few years now and last year Piper and I both got cool stockings, so it was his turn. This was a pretty fast project, once I got going. I traced one of our existing stockings for a pattern, and spent some time fussing with placement to try and get the most leftover t-shirt fabric when I was done, but by then it was 11:43 on December 23rd and I decided just to hack it out of the middle because otherwise it would never get done.

 Here is the finished product, which will probably bring a smile to the face of anyone who has played Super Mario Bros: 

Hello, I am a Goomba Stocking. Nice to meet you.

I had the seam on the inside but didn't like the way it looked, so I just went around the outside, in dark-green thread because I have a huge cone of green thread and no green projects to use it on. The top band/hanging loop is a piece from the jelly roll pack I bought to make the binding for Piper's Beatles quilt (I thought the green was festive and it matched the stitching). I didn't line it, and I probably should've, but it will only have stuff in it for a few hours so I hope it won't get too stretched out of shape. The seam is extremely sturdy and I think it will be okay. Maybe before I put it away with the rest of the Christmas decorations I'll make a lining and tuck it inside and patch a couple tiny holes in the fabric and patch up the paint on the decal. Probably not, but I'll think about it really hard.

My husband is just tickled to death with the thing. He was touched because it's a shirt that has history for us, but he also thinks it's a pretty kick-ass stocking. 

I Want This So Much

It's a magnet, which is awesome, but I'd take a t-shirt or an iron-on/sew-on patch, too.

Rocking Out With Rankin/Bass

It took me two full weeks to clean up the mess that resulted from our recent visit to my parents' house. This is pretty typical - any time we visit them or they visit us, it takes forever for the piles of stuff they dump off in our living room to filter through the house. I am trying to get rid of as much junk as possible, because even though we asked the grandparents to chip in on a family membership to the kids' science museum instead of more doodads and clothes my kid doesn't need, I am anticipating that quite a few pieces of useless plastic crap will find their way to our house anyway. It is always such a job to sort and box and drive and donate and haul and sell and toss.

Between that, the huge amounts of holiday knitting I've been tending to, and all the other holiday-related running around that needs done, I have not had much time for blogging lately. I've also been trying to spend more time with my kid and less time online, which is not always as easy as I'd like it to be.

We have been doing a lot of playing with her new dollhouse, snuggling under blankets on the couch, and watching Christmas movies. Our kid-friendly collection of holiday viewables was pretty lacking (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, while one of my favorite movies ever, and set during the holiday season, is not exactly appropriate viewing for a 3.5-year-old). My husband came to the rescue, sailing through the door one evening with this under his arm, and one or more of the discs have been in constant rotation ever since. We both fondly remember most of these from our childhood, and waiting impatiently every December for them to pop up on the TV schedule. Even though we've both seen them dozens of times, it's pretty fun to watch them again with Piper, who is seeing them all for the first time. And the second. And the fifth. We have watched Rudolph every night for a week. I'm getting a little tired of his oh-so-shiny-nose.

Fortunately, I have plenty of knitting to distract me. Did you notice how this is sitting on that still-unfinished Tomten?

In The Trees

Walk of Trees, downtown Plymouth, Mi.

Stuff It.

We have so much stuff.

Towering piles of it. Stuff on every surface. Books tumbling from shelves, cd's stacked in towers on the office floor. Junk and crap and things and stuff. And I still can't find anything I want.

I've started to go through another period of missing things that I gave away during previous moves. Right now, I desperately miss the camo military jacket I bought at in Kalamazoo at a kick-ass vintage shop that was going out of business. I got up early on a Sunday and made my friend with a car drive me from our dorm to downtown just so I could go to their closing sale. That jacket fit me like a glove, went with everything, saw me through all manner of college hijinks, kept me just the right amount of warm...and I stupidly got rid of it two or three moves ago, when we were bailing our stuff out of the apartment like water from a sinking ship. I'm really, really tired of reaching for a favorite object and remembering that I gave it away, to I-don't-remember-who or Goodwill or, a homeless man who happened by (true story). We have so much stuff, and yet I can't find anything I want when I want it, and I've had to give away things I should've kept to accommodate all this crap now towering around me. It's very frustrating.

I just spent two weeks visiting my parents, whose house is also crammed with stuff, and they seem to think it's their job to fill up my house as well. Every time they come visit, they cram their car absolutely full of stuff, and pile it all in my living room as soon as they arrive. They laugh about it, they think it's funny. Every time I go visit them, I come back with suitcases and tote bags and boxes of more stuff. My mom will actually pay the airline's $25-each-checked-bag fee for me, so she can send home extra suitcases full of crap.

This time, just to add to the chaos, we brought back a four-foot-tall dollhouse my uncle built for Piper. He is staying at my parents' house while getting cancer treatment at the University of Michigan hospitals, and he is doing well. But he tires easily and can't work a regular job at the moment, and has set up a makeshift woodworking studio on my parents' back porch. He worked as a professional carpenter for more than 30 years, so my mom has had him busy repairing the trim, building porch railings and steps, and building new windowsills for her house. He's also built my sister a huge shoe-rack and my brother a desk large enough to accommodate his computer-gaming habits. The dollhouse is gorgeous, four floors and each with its own staircase and fireplace. His specialty was finish carpentry, so there are amazing details, and Piper loves the thing. It is a wonderful gift, worthy of heirloom status.

I just wish they had consulted me on the design, and not given us a 50-pound, four-foot item to stuff into our already-bursting house, only a few months before we put it up for sale. I wouldn't have said "no, don't build it," but I would have shown my uncle something like this or this one, which we could take apart and pack up easily.

Did I mention the matching barn?

Oy.