Mystery solved

So, it turns out the stapler was a present from El Husbando.  Isn't it pretty???!??  Plus, my old stapler seems to like it; they look very happy together.  I think I'll keep it.

Three eggs and a stapler

We've had an insane amount of busy-ness here.  Birthdays (2), school concerts (5), holidays (8 days of Chanukah, plus Thanksgiving), teacher gifts, staff gifts, hockey, basketball (x2) and, of course, work. I coped with it by drinking a lot of coffee and buying a bunch of compensatory yarn. My yarn is like my books.  It is a lot more about what I want to be (or do or read) than what I actually will be (or do or read), and right now --judging by recent book and yarn acquisitions--- I'm feeling pretty optimistic about my future self.  This is the only way to explain why I now have yarn for 3 sweaters, a knit t-shirt, a dozen pairs of socks, and (this is the part that gives me the giggles) two shawls.  Yes, shawls.  I hear they are magic to knit--a noodle-y tangle of yarn that suddenly blossoms  into a work of great beauty--but I have worn a shawl exactly once in 41 years.  I enjoyed the experience, but I also felt like a bit of a fraud.  I have no style, and a shawl, or even a "wrap", at a formal event is clearly something that only a person of style can carry off.   Apparently, in addition to becoming a prolific knitter and a voracious reader, I plan to become a person of style.  I'll let you know how this works out.

My chickens--who have no pretensions to style but who would look very much at home, if a bit old-biddy-ish, all wrapped up in shawls -- have discovered exactly who they plan to be.  I helped.  Monday, when I went to turn their ice maker back into a waterer (it has been a bit frosty here), I gave them a pep talk in which I explained that it was time for someone around here to start laying a few eggs, dammit. My words must have gone straight to their little birdy hearts, and they are now hens with a purpose. I discovered the first egg yesterday morning and it was the most perfect little egg I have ever seen.



Nate was so excited to hear the news when he got home from school that he bundled up and ran out to check for more eggs.   Sure enough, there were two more:



There ensued a great deal of discussion among the children over egg-finding privileges.  There was even a small battle over who would get to do the chore next, which my eldest quickly ended through a clever deployment of the "rights of the first-born" argument coupled with some astonishing volume. The kids were so fired up about doing that job, that two of them INSISTED on helping with dinner too.  Not just the stand-next-to-mommy-and-eat-the-dinner-ingredients kind of helping, but actual, constructive participation like making a complete salad and properly setting the table. I think I'm going to lecture the chickens more often.  It seems to have miraculous results.

Another way that I have coped with excessive busy-ness is by starting new projects.  One might think that an excessively busy person would long to simplify, but evidently what I like to do is start a heap of projects and then complain that I don't have time to work on all my projects.  One thing that has been finished, however, is my last weaving project.  I don't mean my last project forever, I just mean the most recently started project.  Even this is a ridiculous statement, because I set up this project in August, and on a small loom like mine, the only excuse for starting something in August and finishing it in December is pure laziness.  Once I actually sat down with the loom and decided  to weave, the project took about two nights to finish. The result was two placemats, both well received by the family despite my reservations as to their artistic merits:



and a "mug rug," which is what you get when you don't calculate the length of your warp accurately.



The mug rug is my favorite and I keep it on my desk as a cozy alternative to a coaster.  Today, however, I noticed something out of place.



Can you tell what it is?  The stapler to the right of the mug does not belong there.

I have a stapler:



It is a very friendly little stapler that I have had for about 10 years.  It is reliable and reasonably safe (as far as staplers go) and minds its own business, hiding quietly behind my computer in case I need its services.  Every once in a while it goes on a little vacation to someone else's room, but it always makes its way back where it belongs.  It is the only stapler we have and the only stapler we need, and I -- the only authorized purchaser of office supplies in this family-- did NOT buy a new stapler.

This new stapler, with its modern design and its sneaky way of appearing unexpectedly, clearly does not belong here.  I think it even looks a little sinister



and I hope it leaves soon.  I really don't like these kinds of mysteries.

Getting ready for The Season

I am really really really supposed to be working right now.  I have a deadline coming up on Tuesday and another deadline three weeks after that and really there is just not enough time to get all of this work done unless I start working weekends (although a fly on my wall might argue that I would have much better luck if I would just start working period; I tend to buckle down to a lot of solitaire when I'm under the gun).  Working weekends is completely and totally out of the question right now because we are a winter sports family.  Not so much in the getting-out-and-enjoying-the-freezing-cold-weather manner, but in the all-hockey-all-basketball-all-the-time manner. This weekend, if I am reading the schedules right (and I sincerely hope I am not), will be offering us a triple header plus tournament frenzy. Two basketball games at roughly the same time, plus a hockey game to keep the biggest boy busy (and unable to drive) just when we need his driving skills the most.  To sprinkle a little spice on the day, we do not yet have the tournament schedule, because why should we know in advance where we need to go and when we are supposed to be there schedules are for sissies.

But I digress.  The only reason I checked in this morning was because my bohunk is now part of the YouTube generation and I was just too excited to contain myself. Here is the link to the article about the brilliant veteran hockey coach who is now running the Varsity Ice Hockey (yes, in our world those words are always capitalized) program at one of the local schools.

http://www.mpnnow.com/sports/x215406322/Welcome-to-the-Ross-era

And here (this just KILLS me) is El Husbando on YouTube.


And here is a picture of the cuff of a mitten that I am absolutely not supposed to be knitting right now:



I also have a sock, sweater, scarf and hat that I am not supposed to be knitting.  And I'm in the middle of 3 or four books right now. Did I mention that I have epic procrastination skills (not to mention a total inability to commit) when I don't want to be working?  There will be a full craft and sports update this weekend, after I am -- theoretically at least -- done with my current deadline. For now, my morning coffee is ready and I feel a game of solitaire coming on . . .

Looking on the Bright Side . . .

Some weeks are fun and some weeks are productive and some weeks are full of the fabulous moments you will remember when you are old and gray and can't really remember anything else.  This week was not. This week was kind of a stinker and I spent most of it taking temperatures and administering medicine and fetching cups of juice. One by one, my kids got sick with some suspiciously flu-like illness.  This makes sense because they were all scheduled (finally, I might add, and yes, Dear, you were right: I should have scheduled  sooner) to get their flu shots on Thursday. And what better way to prepare for the flu shot than to actually have the flu? By the time that El Husbando got sick as well, I was convinced I was part of some secret reality show (Survivor: Influenza) and I was ready to pack up my knitting and sneak off to the nearest hotel (well, no; probably one a lot farther away) for some R&R.  But I didn't.  Instead, I spent the week in my office failing entirely to get my work done and watching a lot of PBS Kids.

All of this makes for a snoozer of a blog, so instead I'm revisiting a couple of the more pleasant events of this Fall.

Part I:  In Which Matty Conquers The Devil's Potato Tractor

Matty's nursery school takes a fall trip to the potato farm.  He went with us when his big brother took the trip and I thought he was ready for it, if lacking a little in enthusiasm.  The morning of  the trip, I thought I would get him a little wound up so he could fully appreciate all the fun he was about to have.
"It will be great," I told him.  "There will be pumpkins and goats and horses and we'll go on a wagon pulled by a  . . ."
"NO!!" cut in my husband . . . a moment too late as I finished with "tractor!"
"AAAAUUUGGGHHH!" explained the three year old.
I had forgotten. The little man does not care for tractors. They are loud and smelly and some of them go BANG when you turn them off.  Plus, he can tell that they are all coming to get him.  Clearly they are the Devil's playthings and Matty wants nothing to do with them.  Whenever El Husbando  mows the lawn, the poor child bursts into tears and locks himself in the house.  So this was not the best way to get him excited for the trip.

First, he refused to put his clothes on.  Then he refused to eat breakfast.  After I threw the clothes and the breakfast in the car, he refused to get into his seat and when we got there he refused to come out of the car.  When he did agree to come out, it was expressly stipulated that he would go only as far as the pretty red tent, where he could see there were some very safe apples and pumpkins. He did like the spiffy orange potato-collecting bags his teacher was handing out, right up until she said "Hey Matty, want to come see the tractor?" No, he explained, he really wanted to stay by the nice red tent.  Only it sounded a lot more like "AAAAAAUUUUGGGGHHHH!"

Peer pressure did nothing to help.  If his fool classmates were willing to follow their parents on the Ride of Terror then that was too bad for them.  It took a Very Patient Potato Farmer -- who explained that he would stop the tractor any time Matty wanted him to-- and a Fed-Up Mommy to haul the small protester aboard and then we were off.  The only thing louder than the Devil Tractor was the sound of Matty screaming.  He spent the entire ride with his hands clamped firmly over his ears.  When we reached the potato field and the farmer turned off the tractor, the hands unclamped the ears and Matty hopped very happily down onto the field only to be confronted with . . .



The Devil's Potato Tractor.  Apparently the only thing worse than being pulled by one tractor is watching another tractor pull the way-cool potato picker.  Matthew didn't care that this thing could dig into the ground, shuffle potatoes up its conveyor belt, and poop them back onto the ground for us to pick up.  There was a tractor involved and he was not going to stand by and watch it do its dirty work. 



He closed his eyes and clamped his hands over his ears and retreated to (get this) the safety of the wagon pulled by the first tractor.  When all tractoring was done, he hopped down again and warily surveyed the pickings. Maintaining a safe distance from both tractors at all times, he scouted the potatoes . . .



lobbed a few into his spiffy orange potato bag . . .



and declared the adventure a success.



We topped off the morning with a quick visit to the pumpkin patch, then we petted the goats and fled before anyone could start up another tractor.



Part II: In Which I May Have Acquired More Fiber Than Was Strictly Necessary

I learned to spin last year and I really really really enjoy it, which is not the same as saying that I really really spin a lot.  But apparently I intend to spin a lot.  To be completely accurate, spinning is not the only hobby in which I have gotten a little ahead of myself.  I own a bunch of yarn, but most of it is attached to projects that I have in mind, and most of those are socks and scarves, for which a skein or two will do.  I have shelves full of books that I intend to read, but mostly I  borrow from the library so that when I fail to read them, the most I'll have spent is a small late fee. When I used to quilt (not really used to; I'll get back to it.  Right?) I had fabric on hand for at least half a dozen future projects.  So I get that there's a pattern of behavior here. But what gets me about spinning is that I buy the stuff with no clear goal in mind. The aimlessness of this kind of freaks me out, but not enough to keep me from buying more of the fluffy stuff.

A few weeks ago, my friend Deb and I made our pilgrimage to the New York Sheep & Wool Festival in Rhinebeck.  This is the absolute favorite coolest best worst kind of place for an aimless spinner to go.  It is a hefty trip: we get on the bus at 4:30 a.m. and don't get home until 11:30 p.m. and how can you not try to make the most of an event that requires that much travel?  It is our once-a-year full day away from our kids-- a grand total of 8 between the two of us-- and our responsibilities and how can you not spend a chunk of change in celebration of that kind of crazy freedom? And (here's the key) THERE'S SO MUCH STUFF!!!!!

So I bought  a bunch of it.

Here is my first purchase of the day, a trio of blues (2 ounces each) destined to become a three ply, though heaven only knows what I'm going to use it for.


Here is a later purchase, a big-ol' heap of some pretty colored wool with some shiny stuff mixed in.  No real plans for that either.



Here is some stuff from Spinner's Hill-- 8 ounces of totally random wool.  Normally, I buy it from my local spinning shop, so you might wonder why I would drive 5 hours to get some more, but the display was overwhelming and I was powerless to disobey its commands.



Which might also explain why I bought this little chunk of wool (4 ounces) from the same place.  The red is the deepest, richest, most seductive color you can imagine.  Nothing like the picture below.



Here is some fluff from Hope Spinnery in Maine.  I bought some last year and labeled it a mystery color.  It spun up into the most comforting shade of heathered green and so I just had to have more.  It was one of the few things I actually intended to buy this year, even though I have not knit the last batch and have no particular goal for this one.



Really, it's a good thing I bought a whole bunch of extra random wool.  Because I probably spin about 3 pounds of wool a year.  And before Rhinebeck, I only had 9 pounds of wool sitting around.  And now I have more than 11 pounds.  And it is vitally important to have that much wool in reserve because you never know when I might run into a few extra years of completely free time.


(Spunky Eclectic, 4 oz BFL; Spinner's Hill, 4 oz BFL?; Spinner's Hill, 24 oz batt from heaven in colors that look just like autumn)



(Yes Sir, Yes Sir, Three bags full-- ~4 pounds washed corriedale fleece purchased from a fleece sale with no clear goal in mind--Surprise!)



(myriad other bits of wool, 4 or 8 ounces each, still not spun from last year)



But, that's not all.  While I was chucking pound after pound of fiber into my bags at Rhinebeck, I also made time to shop for yarn.  Below is a Zauberball.  This was a total impulse purchase (Fine.  It was even more of an impulse purchase than the rest of the stuff I got) and I'm still a little surprised that I shelled out $20 for it, but I loved the colors and I have already started a pair of socks with it.



And then there was the crowning moment of the festival.  At the end of the day, Deb and I took a second walk through the first building we had gone into in the morning.  In the morning, there had been a line so long at one of the booths that we couldn't even see what was there.  We were pretty sure that whatever the people were so excited about was long gone, but we stopped by to ask.  Toni at the booth for The Fold explained that they were selling Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks that Rock yarn and that the reason people were so excited was that she was the only distributor on the east coast (I don't know when Illinois became the east coast, but that's not really important), so people didn't get to see the yarn in person too often.  I started blithering about how my husband had gotten me a Sheep to Shoe kit for my birthday.  Eight ounces of superwash wool from Blue Moon etc etc all waiting to be spun into sock yarn, only I really didn't want to mess with it until my spinning skills were a little better  . . .



and Generous Toni said "Why don't I give you a skein of it so you can see what it's like.  You go pick one out."  At which point all noise stopped coming out of my mouth and I stared at her in wonder.   So she turned to Deb and said "Are you with her?  Why don't you go pick one out too?"

So we giggled like a couple of idiots and went to pet the yarn.  It took us forever to choose (we were a little store-stupid by that time). We walked away with our skeins of the regular sock yarn for free, but to say thank you we each bought a skein of the mill ends.  El Husbando ridiculed me over this, but I still think that $14 is an unbeatable price for two skeins of really cool sock yarn. Can you even tell the difference?

Peppermint Pattie Goes Lawn Surfing

Here is El Husbando.  He is a man of dreams and ambition.  A man of plans and determination.  A man who would never let his desire to become a cowboy be stymied by the mere fact that WE HAVE NO HORSES OR COWS. 

Instead, we have rocks.  Periodically, we catch them and put them to work for us.  Here is El Husbando's most recent project:

It is not a holding pen for baby rocks.  It is, as you can clearly see, a fire pit. The rocks, large and small, were all organically grown and tamed by our own Rock Whisperer. They were  hand selected and arranged and rearranged and then re-rearranged to create the perfect pit.  They are the product of great labor and my husband takes knows each of them personally.

But sometimes the little rocks are not enough to fulfill the needs of a true artist.  What is needed is a Challenge.  An Everest to be scaled. ATitan to be battled.  A Moby Dick to be hunted.  What is needed, is a Peppermint Pattie.

Peppermint Pattie is the Rock Whisperer's personal Everest. She was discovered by the RW along the western border of our lands (sounds grand, doesn't it?  Really she was about 30 feet to the left of the driveway).  She was partly buried in the dirt, but the part sticking out was a perfect stone replica of the almighty mint candy itself. And all the RW could think was what a perfect seat Peppermint Pattie would make at the council fire. Unfortunately, PP is several hundred pounds of rock and it was not immediately clear how she would make it the quarter mile from the driveway to the fire pit.  Carried by hand? Nope. Pulled by lawn tractor?  Nope.  Levered out and rolled all the way home?  HAHAHAHAHAHA. 

But the Rock Whisperer is  a man of dreams and ambition, a man of plans and determination, and not a man to be defeated by a rock.  There may be no horses and no cattle, but the RW had a plan and the roundup was about to begin.

Meet the sled:



With a great deal of labor and a lot of rope, the RW did manage to lever PP out of the ground and on to the sled. 



The sled was then tied to the modern suburban substitute for the ranch horse, the minivan.



And off we went.  Above is Peppermint Pattie taking a little ride up the driveway.  Below is PP hauling @$$ across the lawn.



A ranch hand easing the mighty beast into her new home:



And the second in command showing poor Pattie who is boss:



Here is a dizzying picture of PP in her new digs. Considering that she spent the last bajillion years stuck in the ground at a 45 degree angle, this is probably a pretty accurate view of things from her perspective. The RW has taken good care of her, though.  She has been washed and polished and is now just waiting for us to find three more giant rocks to complete the seating.



In knitting news, here is the lovely Isabel showing off the latest in finished garments:



It is the Central Park Hoodie and it is DONE!!!  The only alteration I made to the pattern was to continue the back cable up the hood and over the top of the head.  Took a little fiddling, but I like it better than seeing a plain stockinette hood (and the hood seam, which was supposed to run across the top of the hood) blocking the back cable.  The sweater is extremely warm and it actually fits (me, not Isabel) and it is (did I mention this?) DONE!