Knotty Mouse

Today is Munchkin’s 7th birthday and our plans are to head for the all you can eat pizza buffet (the kidlet is all about some pizza) and the game store so he can get the new Lego Indiana Jones PS2 game that he’s been waiting for. I highly recommed the Lego games - we’ve LOVED the 2 Star Wars games and are looking forward to the release of Lego Batman in Sept.

I’ve already made chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast & he’s been watching whatever movies he wants (within reason of course..) all day. Tomorrow we’re having the ‘family’ party with grilled hot dogs, corn on the cob & a Batman cake at the in-laws house… which Munchkin can’t wait for because he picked out his gifts (Bakagan ‘battle brawler’ creatures & cards) at Box o’ Toys with grandma but couldn’t have them until his party.

I’m still floored by the idea that I have a seven year old son.. in 9 years he’ll be driving a real car and not this coin operated one in the photo! EEP!

Somehow I’ve managed to lose an entire week and I can’t stop thinking that Christmas is still about 2 weeks away.. I’m going to blame my wrist injury for that one. I am doing much better (look- capital letters & punctuation!!) which is proof that it was probably just a bad sprain rather than a fracture and I’m definitely taking that lucky break. I haven’t yet tried to knit and I’m limiting my computer/typing time so as to not injure it further - I have a habit of re-damaging things because I’m in a big fat hurry to get back to life. I wanted to thank everyone for their nice comments and even an offer to knit for me- y’all continue to wow me with your generosity. I’ve decided though that I will knit Munchkin’s hat as soon as I’m able and that he’ll end up with more than enough to open Christmas Eve (with the in-laws) and Christmas morning (Santa’s unwrapped toys & my parents gifts which usually come via UPS and that I’m hoping were mailed in ample time this year….)

If you’ve been here at my blog around Christmas time in the past.. then you’ve certainly heard me grumble about our pathetic Charlie Brown-esque fake tree and my hatred for said shrub. No more! As you can see.. this year I was gifted (thank the in-laws and their hording issues..) with a 7.5 foot, very realistic looking fake tree that I had to stand on chair to put the tree topper on and take off some of the back branches to fit into the space by the fireplace without blocking entrance to the guest bathroom & Munchkin’s room. I am so happy that I finally have a tree that resembles the beautiful live trees that my family had when I was a child (minus that lovely smell which I’m replicating with some gifted Yankee Candles..) that I can’t stop staring at it and sighing.

I’m actually READY for Christmas this year which is a far cry from my usual last minute knitting, gift shopping, freaking out nightmare that comes with it being 4 days to holiday family festivities.. and it feels nice to have basically nothing to do but make cookies & chocolate covered pretzels this coming weekend and decide on what this years “hot dish” contribution to the family dinner will be. I’m supposed to be cleaning the house b/c we’re supposed to have company but I’m really hoping to get out of that one. Munchkin starts his “Holiday Break” on Thursday at 3pm and I can’t wait to not have to get up at 6:30AM for an entire 2 weeks!!

	I, Mouse, being of sound mind, hereby bequeath my entire estate to my pet rock. I do this because it understands my needs. My only regret in this life was that I didn’t punch more people in the face.

Hee hee hee!! I can’t actually remember who I stole this from but I nearly snorted my coffee (iced..) when I read my results. I’ve got some finished 2 ply merino handspun to show off as soon as it cools down a little to take photographs outside..  its over 100 degrees here in Georgia and I’m absolutely miserable. Apparently when it gets this hot and you live in a house with no trees and no shade.. the best your air conditioner can do is 85 degrees inside. This is still too hot. I’d like to move somewhere that has no more than a month of summer- preferably in Canada… can that be arranged?

Other than alternating between complaining and roasting from the heat.. there’s nothing going on around here at Chez Mousie. Munchkin started school on Monday and is slowly adjusting to life as a first grader.. which he says is significantly less fun than being in kindergarten. Both of us are doing more than our fair share of complaining in the morning because getting up at 6:30am is just cruel and unusual punishment - not to mention that we have to be at the bus stop over an hour before last year and we have the bus driver from hell. If it wasn’t so hot.. I’d be driving Munchkin to school instead of putting him through that horrible woman’s attitude every morning and evening. Unfortunately both the car AND the people inside it would overheat before we got through the car rider line - I have one working window in the car and no AC. I’m still hoping to be able to get a new (to me) car in the next 6 months.. but I can’t do more than cross my fingers for that.

I haven’t been knitting anything for over a week now.. but I do still have a bunch of projects on the needles and my Ravelry queue is getting more and more out of control. At the moment I’m considering my choices for a sweater to wear to SAFF ala Jen of Jenla - though without the bet and the handspun. I don’t have a very big stash.. and I only have enough for one sweater (6 skeins of Cascade 220) so I’m rather limited in my choices. Right now I think I may knit Samus, or  Mariah, or the “A Cardigan for Arwen” from Winter 2006 Interweave Knits. I don’t have a very big stash.. and I only have enough for one sweater (6 skeins of Cascade 220) so I’m rather limited in my choices unless I can get the same dye lot of the cascade 220 that I already have. Everything about Samus looks pretty easy and I have the yarn to make it (and the zipper if I decide to use it) but I don’t like that Samus doesn’t have a hood. I’d like to add a hood but I’m clueless as of how to do so.. I’ve never made anything hooded.

Now if you’ll excuse me….. I’m going to go back to standing in front of the open freezer.

I haven’t been blogging much lately due to trying to get Munchkin ready for going back to school on Monday. I’ve also been rather miserable as I’ve got one of my wisdom teeth cutting through and its absolute hell. In between running around getting laundry washed and Munchkin’s room in order, I took a trip to the Mall of Georgia with my MIL so that Munchkin could play at the play area and fountain. You have to click on the photos to make them bigger because I took them with my cellphone. As you can see.. people were paying attention to the sign and refrained from ‘atherin in that there area.

Lest you think that the Mall of Georgia is without its own designated areas of fun.. here’s where you can pick someone up if you’re in the market. I think it would be faster, as you could weed out the folks who were taken or otherwise uninterested in being picked up. I was surprised that there weren’t many people in the “pick up” area but I guess it was too hot out there for trolling for a date. Most of the teens and tweens in the mall were too busy being in my way inside the mall and knocking into me with their giant Abercrombie shopping bags. Are those giant paper bags actually necessary? I could easily put half of my closet inside one of those… talk about wasteful! I hate the mall and I hate back to school shopping time.. especially on a Friday evening.
Here is the fruits of our labor.. all that for a Pirates lunchbox at the Disney store. The horrible migraine I received from spending an entire day at the stupid mall was not included in the picture - you can just imagine it along with the overwhelming urge for an alcoholic beverage and the thought of moving to somewhere where the words “Excuse Me” actually make people get out of your way without having to physically move them while glaring at them.

According to the rule book for the new elementary school Munchkin will be attending on Monday.. there is nothing against dress code about wearing or having things with skulls. HOOORAY!! I had already bought him some new running shoes before I found out about the dress code or he would have gotten the cool Airwalk shoes with the skulls that I found at Payless.
We got to meet Munchkin’s Grade 1 teacher and visit his new school on Thursday of last week.. she seems very nice and both the school and the classroom were so clean because of being a brand new school. I’m more than slightly peeved at the new bus schedule though.. the school is less than 2 miles away and we have to be at the bus stop over an HOUR earlier than last year. I am NOT happy about having to be at the bus at 7:20AM — and even less excited about the fact that they moved the bus stop TWO blocks farther away from my house. We’re the only people in this side of the subdivision that are putting their child on the bus.. so I’m assuming its why I will have to walk Munchkin 5 blocks one way to the bus on Monday morning. Regardless.. I’m going to be calling the transportation dept. bright and early to arrange for another stop. Just because the people in this community see it as something of a status symbol to drive their children to school in the morning (really.. I’m not just making broad assumptions here.. I was told that “car riders” are far superiour to “bus riders” and that only “trash” bus their kids) wasting time and gasoline.. is no reason for me to have to drag my poor 6 year old that far in the sweltering Georgia heat.

I’ve got nothin’ kids. I’ve spent the week being dragged around to different things for Munchkin’s birthday and watching what little money we had for said events fly away at rapid speeds. Plus side is that Munchkin was very happy with his birthday week and no horrible family scuffles occurred..

• I don’t anticipate much blog posting, IMing, or commenting going on around here as I’ve recently been slapped with a case of tendonitis in my right hand and it is killing me to type. I’ve pulled out an ergonomic keyboard from the garage and changed back to a regular click mouse from the trackball that I used before but it doesn’t seem to be making enough of a difference. I am reading blogs but I’m trying to keep the typing at a minimum to avoid making this any worse. Sock knitting is also out at the moment.. so I’ve been spending a lot of time walking around the house with nothing to do.
• I am able to knit for short periods on things with larger needles.. so I’ve been doing a bit of knitting on the Kureyon Entrelac scarf (danica from knitty) because its on size 8 bamboo needles and is easy to pick up and put down without losing my place.
• I finally managed to find Munchkin somewhere to get his hair cut without coming out either traumatized or scalped. We ended up in the same beauty salon that hubby’s grandmother gets her hair done… think Steel Magnolias and you’re pretty much there. The white haired ladies in the dryers looked at me like I had 15 heads as I walked by to use the restroom… though they were completely taken with my son. His hair (though much shorter than when we walked in) looks very cute and was exactly like he wanted.. just like “Zack and Cody” from the Disney channel. We’ll be going back before Munchkin starts school next month to have it touched up so that he doesn’t look like a shaggy dog.
• If I haven’t mentioned it lately.. I love Ravelry. They included a pattern search which allows you to browse all patterns in the system - I spent 2 hours looking at scarf patterns and adding them to my queue. My hand had better get well quickly because I have a LOT of knitting to do.
• Last night while watching tv I came across “A Model Life” on TLC which is shaping up like a less mean-spirited and less “Survivor meets Fear Factor” slower version of “Americas Next Top Model”.  I watched the entire show mostly because it was set during the winter months in NYC and the girls were wearing beautiful knit scarves and hats. I was very taken with the American (they’re all international - making things a bit more interesting) girl’s knit hat which was a large ’sloppy’ looking dark gray wool number with ribbing. I wonder if it actually was wool though due to the fact that she states she is a vegan and I know there are a lot of vegans who won’t wear wool or silk. I went browsing around online for a still of her wearing the hat but couldn’t find anything. I am hoping they replay the show so I can get a better look at it so I can duplicate it.

Hopefully I’ll be back to blogging soon.. but it might take me a while to respond to emails. Its already taken me close to 3 hours (I’m writing in bits) to make this post and my hand is burning. Catch y’all soon!

This is one of my favorite photos (taken about a year ago or more) and favorite times watching Munchkin in the world.. he’s watching the fish at the Atlanta Aquarium in a giant viewing window and loving every minute of it. For a child who never stops moving it is a rare vision to see him sitting calmly and just admiring the view. His birth six years ago in Colorado was so fast that I barely got to the hospital before it was time to give birth.. and he was (by the hospitals calculations) 4 weeks early. He’s always been a busy guy.. ever since he was born!
Today’s birthday celebration included Transformers toys & teeshirts, more Pirates, Ghost Rider, Legos, and a trip to Chuck E. Cheese where all of the children (my husband, father-in-law, and son) played games, and a trip to Krispy Kreme for donuts.   We’re all lazing around the house now while hubby and Munchkin put together new toys.. and I’m finally getting my daily iced coffee. We’re planning for his birthday celebration to last the rest of the week as there are two promised movie trips (Ratatouille & Transformers) and a trip to the Mall of GA with his great grandmother for ‘dinner’ at the food court and a visit to Build-A-Bear. I’m ready for a nap.

My first order from The Loopy Ewe came in the other day (talk about lightning fast shipping..) and I started on Munchkin’s snake socks last night while watching some crappy tv. The yarn is Opal Rainforest and I’m already finished with the first sock! Getting the right amount of stitches at the cast on for my son’s kid size 13 feet was very tricky and I was really getting frustrated until I hit on the right amount - 8th time is the charm and all that. I actually had him try on my second STR sock that was in progress and estimate the amount from that.. somehow it worked. The maths.. it is not my friend.

Its disgustingly hot here in GA and I’m pretty sure that my brain is going to melt before cool weather hits. So, in honor of my slightly mushy brain and lack of complete thoughts.. I give you random bullet points of nonsense!

• I’m motoring through the second STR sock and I’m actually ready to start the Broadripple cuff.. I love sport-weight yarn.
• I’m spending entirely too much time at Ravelry. I’m “Mouse” there and if you “friend” me, I’ll add you as well. Apparently I’m very whoreish with the friending - which is apparently obvious by my bloglines reading list of close to 200 feeds. “oh.. so-and-so commented and has a blog.. I’ll add it and read it too…” um yeah.. and I wonder why I feel like I spend all day online.
• There’s been a run the sheep bags at my Etsy shop and I’m painting, printing and packing up a storm. The only crap thing about the handmade stencils I’m using is that I can only get one to two prints before I have to draw and cut a new one. Slow going.. but worth it.
• I’m glad y’all liked the photos from the grocery store..  I’ll definitely have to take more pictures of silly things I find like that!
• I’m super proud of myself. Last week I cleaned my closet ( a walk in closet that I take up all on my own. Hubby’s clothes live downstairs) and I can WALK in it! Everything is hung up (not thrown on the floor) and I even managed to get rid of close to 4 trash bags of clothing to charity.  I still need to pair down more but I’ve definitely reduced the clothes by 1/3rd.

With a good portion of my internet friends out of town I’ve had a lot of knitting time on my hands and have actually managed to finish one of my STR socks. I had a lot of problems with finding a pattern that would work with the pooling and finally settled on Broadripple from Knitty. The pooling worked up awesome and I really loved how easy the stitch pattern is to memorize and follow. I’ve yet to cast on for the second sock but I’m already worried that it won’t match its mate. The only good thing with the second sock is thanks to my handy kitchen scale I know that I have more than enough yarn to make another sock of this size.

Tomorrow night is Munchkin’s first sleep over with his grandmother (MIL) and he’s thrilled. I however.. am a basketcase. I have to finish up some laundry and pack his bag and blankets in the morning but I still want to be sick over the thought of him not being here at night. I’m sure he’ll do fine.. and I’ll be up all night pacing the floors.

There are only 8 days left in the school year for Munchkin! Honestly I’m shocked at how quickly the year passed us by… it seems like yesterday I was putting him on the bus for the first time. Yesterday was Munchkin’s “School Birthday”- I spent the whole day calling it his “unbirthday” from Alice in Wonderland.. and cracking up a lot. While it was thoughtful of the teacher to lump all of the summer birthdays into their appropriate dates in May.. It would have been nice if I would have had some notice that I had to come up with baked goods. Judging from the response of the class mother when I called to ask how many children were in the class.. it was perfectly clear that most of the moms did store-bought goodies. I called and said “Hi.. this is Ms. Mousie.. Munchkin’s mom. I’m baking cupcakes and I wanted to know how many children were in the class.” and she said “your.. whatting.. what? baking.. like with an oven?” While I realize that most moms work and don’t have the ‘luxury’ of staying home - I was sort of surprised that homemade cupcakes were such a novelty.
Things are clearly getting weird around here.. I’m knitting lace. A few weeks ago another blogger set forth a challenge to knit lace this summer.. and here’s my second go round after the serious failure of the kiri shawl. This is (or at least I’m hoping it will be eventually..) Seraphim from Mimknits… Sandy and I are having sort of an informal knit-along for the pattern. In other words.. we’re both knitting it and she promised to help me learn to read charts when it gets all confusing later. At the moment its still a mouse (the animal..) sized shawl.. but its very pretty. The yarn is some from Handpaintedyarn.com and is my first real experience with knitting lace-weight yarn… I’m very nervous about screwing it up.

I’m totally over this whole “home sick” business with my son. Poor little guy still has the stuffy nose/hacking cough combination but its not as bad today.. I elected to keep him home again so that he’d only have one day to get through before having two more days to rest. I did get up twice very early in the morning because we were supposed to have a “wintery mix” (*insert giggling from a transplanted Yankee who spent some years in the mtns. of Colorado*) and I wanted to see if they called off school (and thus giving my son a ‘free’ day to get over this cold that won’t get marked against his attendance) but we weren’t on the list of over 110 schools. Boo-hiss.

Tomorrow is the blogger silent poetry reading.. (or so I’ve heard) and also my 9 year wedding anniversary. I’ll be back tomorrow with my poem. Hopefully I’ll be sending Munchkin to school - and fingers crossed that he’ll make it through the day.

After reading about it on another blog and remembering having it before.. I got the wild idea to make Monkey bread with munchkin. He loves to cook and bake.. and its something I’d definitely not like to overlook.

I used the recipe found here (thanks Sandy…) because I remembered that it was made easily with store bought biscuit dough (the other recipe was from Martha Stewart and required you to make your own dough and other silly things like that.. ). The one thing that I forgot was that it required a bundt pan but we could pick one  up at the grocery store in the baking aisle. Unfortunately we couldn’t spend $11.00 on a bundt pan at the local Publix- so I got all MacGyver in the kitchen with the tin foil.. and created my own bundt pan. Unfortunately I forgot that the real pans are hollow in the center to allow heat to get in and cook whatever is in there.. so our monkey bread had to cook quite a bit longer and required being slopped onto a cookie sheet mid baking.

Regardless.. you can see that it was well enjoyed by the whole family and is going to rate a bundt cake pan coming into our kitchen upon the next available paycheck.

mmm… sugary goodness.

When everything in my life goes haywire..  I clean. I guess its a way to make order out of chaos SOMEWHERE — or maybe its a way to take control of something… I don’t know. Regardless.. I’ve spent the morning cleaning up and organizing Munchkin’s clothes. The shot to the left is his closet -after my hard work. I should have taken a before shot of all of the clothes falling off a plastic shelf.. onto the floor.. and in laundry baskets in the hallway. I’ve also got 2 sets of plastic shelves that I can now re-purpose somewhere else that needs organizing..  like my closet or the “studio” that is still an absolute wreck. One step at a time..

Tonight the husband came home early from work so that we could go to an ‘art show’ at the elementary school that Munchkin goes to.. and we brought home this fabulous piece of art!  The deal was that they framed up the childrens artwork and you bought it for $28.95 with the money going (hopefully) to the art department of the school..  right now I’m trying really hard to focus on how happy my son is that his picture is now hanging in the living room and not the fact that it just cost me our grocery money. I’m going to abandon the Kureyon scarf for a while (one look at our budget was enough to convince me I didn’t need to spend $16+ on more yarn for a scarf) and possibly start knitting up another entrelac scarf with my singles from the other post…   I think the “fish” is much more important than a scratchy wool scarf any day.

Tomorrow I’ll be at work again.. but this time I’ll be behind a desk answering phones instead of moving heavy furniture.. what a relief! I’m pretty sure that muscles I didn’t know I had are currently hurting.. and I never did get the soothing bath I had dreamed about.  Munchkin has off  tomorrow because of the voting going on at his school and he’ll be coming into work with us since we can’t get anyone to watch him. I’m pretty sure that its just an excuse for husband’s boss to sit and watch Disney cartoons in the office.. but hey, that’s ok too!

 As you can see I’ve been working on the entrelac scarf and its gotten bigger - about 15 inches to the end of the needles right now. I took the photo on my keyboard at the computer earlier and surprisingly the colors are quite true to life. I’m still not sure what I think about the whole thing but I’m going to keep knitting on it. Unfortunately I’ve run out of yarn from the first skein.. and am debating what to do about dye lots. I know that Kureyon is sort of hit or miss even when you get skeins of the same dye lot (those weird colors that pop up at random and aren’t found in any other skein) and I’ve already called around looking for my dyelot to no avail. I know that this stuff has been sitting on my shelf for over a year now.. so the possibility of finding skeins of the same dye lot are sort of ‘needle in a haystack’ type odds. What I’m thinking is that I might want to samwich the 2 new skeins with different dye lots in between the old ones.. to maybe ( she says outloud so the knit-gods will surely smack her) keep the same colors on the ends of the scarf. Then there’s the part of me that wants to add in the two other skeins of Kureyon that I have on the shelf.. which don’t have much in common besides the brown tones.. and see what I end up with.

I’ve decided that I’m going to attempt to play along with NaBloPoMo this month (rather unofficially though.. since I’m not joining the list) so y’all will be subjected to daily ramblings from Chez Mousie until I completely botch it and forget to post.  If I go by my fabulous track record with the ABC-Along, Soctoberfest, Kyoto-Along ( I hosted it and never finished the knitting.. how’s that for failure to commit?), and Saturday sky - y’all will only have about a week of posts before I blow it. Marching on with randomness..

I’ve updated the shop again with 3 skeins of handspun merino yarn that y’all have seen before on the blog.. I’ve put them up for sale so that someone else can love them instead of them taking up space in my cluttered studio.

Trick or Treating last night was a nightmare due to Atlanta traffic. Apparently its notorious for taking forever to get home in rush hour on Halloween.. and we got stuck in the middle of it because we left work over an hour later than planned.  It took nearly 2 hours to get 20 miles - and I was trapped in a car with someone who is having heavy duty nicotine withdrawal symptoms and is ready to tear off peoples heads. Thankfully my mother-in-law was there at the house to pick up Munchkin, take him to eat, and then get him into his costume. We did hit the end of trick or treating..  for whatever it was worth.. since only 8 houses in our ENTIRE neighborhood were giving out candy. 

I’m just popping in before my birthday (I am writing this on Saturday night) to say that I totally botched Saturday Sky again.. because I was running around town with the husband and Munchkin.

I’m having a sucktacular birthday weekend at the moment.. we tried to go to Target (for metal stacking cubes for the office/studio), Staples office supply (for a computer cart/desk for the office turned studio..), and to a sub shop for samwiches.. all which turned out completely crappy. Each one of the shops had NOTHING I went in there for AND looked like the Village Idiot Convention had bussed everyone in for a shopping day..  I came home completely frazzled and wanting to crawl in bed and hide. Oh yes.. and then we found out that my birthday present from Munchkin (I’ll take a photo of it on Monday..) was broken! Poor little guy got me a locket and it wouldn’t shut! We’re exchanging it tomorrow for another one.. hopefully.

The one good thing that happened was that we decided to have lunch/early dinner at On the Border Mexican restaurant instead of at the sub shop. I ordered a giant burrito  ( called the Borderito.. its awesome.. I highly recommend it) with chicken.. and they ended up bringing it out with steak in it instead.  It was one of those happy accidents.. because the steak turned out to be absolutely wonderful AND they didn’t charge me for the “upgrade” since they screwed up. I have the other half of it (honestly.. it was huge.. I’m still full) in the fridge for tomorrow- I love restaurant leftovers.

Oh yes..  think positive thoughts for my husband..  he’s quitting smoking this weekend! His last cigarette was Friday night at 4am and he says he’s “never” smoking again. Its been a rough day (to put it mildly) for the whole family.. but he still hasn’t lit up 18 hours later.. and I’m proud of him.  I used to smoke but getting pregnant 5 years ago changed all of that..  husband continued to smoke outside the house and when I wasn’t around. I’ve never “nagged” at him to quit because I know how hard it is to do - but I have always hoped that he would stop smoking while Munchkin is still young.

I’ve spent most of the night playing with polymer clay.. so expect an update to the shop sometime in the next week. As it stands right now I have 3 new fimo designs going into the shop for fall..