works in progress

Reese got a magic kit for Christmas this year, and he's been doing a lot of practicing. He's got some good tricks, too - there's one he does with a pair of dice that's very cool. The part that's really a work in progress is his magician's patter. For example, he has this trick that consists of pulling a yellow rope out of an egg. Not much to it, so it's kind of all in the presentation. His first attempt was to hold up the egg, forcefully declare, "This has no openings in it!" then pull out the rope. Um.



We suggested he might add more drama by saying he has an ordinary egg, and oh my gosh! what's this? etc. etc. So he held up the egg and said, "I have an egg!" Then, pulling out the rope, "WITH A ROPE IN IT!"



Which is our new catchphrase. Even Jane can be heard walking around the house muttering "I have an egg with a rope in it!" to herself.



As for my own works in progress, I finished the February baby sweater:

So fun to knit. pattern: EZ's February baby sweater, from the Knitter's Almanac. yarn: Dream in Color Classy. needles: size 6 Addi Turbos. mods: None really. I screwed up on the first repeat of the lace pattern, and forgot to keep the border in garter stitch. Once I noticed, I was too chicken to drop the border stitches down because I had a buttonhole in there too, so I just kept making the same mistake. It's a design element now.

So now that that's done, I am officially Working On Sam's Cobblestone. But at this point, the rows are still really long, and I've got most of the sweater hanging off the needles as I work, and
I just can't do a lot of it without wanting to either fall asleep or bury the thing under the 5-foot snow pile in the front yard. So I've also . . . cast on a sock. Don't judge.

Besides all the knitting, another reason I've been sort of blog-absent is playing around with shop stuff. I've been spending some time (time when I should probably be sleeping, mostly) working on things like getting my pictures to look better, reading up on stuff in the Etsy forums, and, of course, making things. And I've got a little prototype to show you:

So what the hell is the picture on that? It's a ray diagram. I've been messing around with some embroidery, but I wanted to do something a little different, that would reflect a little more of me. I hit upon this idea of doing glasses cases with pictures on them of the ray diagrams that show how the lenses work. This one is a converging lens, used to correct farsightedness.

I've also done one with a diverging lens, for nearsightedness. What do you think - too geeky? I thought it would be fun to keep my glasses in a case that shows how the lenses work, but then I'm kind of a nerd.

Well. I don't even know anymore what the time stamp on this post will be, but it's actually about 12:30 on Friday night. I keep getting pulled away, pulled in every direction. Both Jane and Sam have had bouts of fever and barfing (that part was just Sam, thank goodness), I've had to pinch-hit and go into work two nights this week, and I have still not found out how to get the laundry to do itself. And life goes on . . .

craft fair report - for real

Well, I'll come right out and say we did not do as well as we had wanted to, sales-wise. I'll also say it's not a big deal. We had fun, we got a lot of knitting/spinning/planning done, and we do plan to do it again at some point. And all the leftovers will be up on the etsy shop by the end of this week, so hopefully it will get bought anyway.

As for the day itself, I took notes throughout because I am a nerd like that, so here is what a day at a craft fair (well, this particular craft fair) is like:

6:24 - Woke up, 24 minutes later than I meant to. Because of course this is the day my trusty Baby Sister alarm clock does not go off at about 5:30.

7:20 - Most things were packed up already, except for Cricket (the spinning wheel). I covered her with a blanket and strapped her into the backseat. It looks rather like I am kidnapping a small child. I decided to bring it because I figured it would be something interesting for people to check out. I did get a bunch of questions, and "Look - she's making yarn!" Didn't really seem to interest anybody enough to make them buy anything, though.

8:47 - We arrived at the school. Only 17 minutes late - not bad.

8:50 - I bring in Cricket, and a Rumpelstiltskin joke is made immediately.

9:29 - We finished setting up. Whaddya think?

10:00 - Fair officially starts. I don't think anybody really noticed.

10:20 - First sale! Yay!

11:00 - Knit knit knit. Jess is working on three of these at once, because she doesn't like knitting the same thing twice. Clearly, the girl is crazy.

12:30 - My family shows up to say hello. The boys got to make some crafts and play some games; I think they had a good time. They arrived just in time to steal some of my lunch -thanks, guys.

1:15 - It's Jess' family's turn. I think there was a brief overlap when everybody was there, but you know, a baby's nap time can only be tampered with so much before consequences must be paid. Basically the men & kids left when the babies told them to.

1:40 - A guy making balloon animals shows up. He does a nice job, and he entertains the children by making sound effects and yelling really loudly when he finishes a balloon. It scares the crap out of me every time.

2:03 - Speaking of scaring the crap out of me, a kid comes up and starts grabbing at Cricket. This was not unexpected, and I did bring her with the intention of letting kids (or adults) give it a spin (ha!) if they wanted to. But my heart nearly stopped when he just ran up, all hands and no supervision. I didn't freak out or anything, I just showed him how to sit and treadle (he treadled really fast) and answered all of his questions. Some of them were really cute, not that I remember any of them now, and I managed to keep him from losing a finger to a rapidly spinning hook. Or breaking anything. So all was well.

2:24 - Mmmm . . . . sugar cookies.

2:30 - Scary fur lady. Check out Jess' pictures - not to be believed.

3:48 - We clean up and head out. I had a good time, and I saw some really beautiful things that other people were selling. I have to take a minute to show them to you - no affiliation or anything, of course, just things I thought were really nice and I'd like to share. Here and here, go take a peek.

As I said before, the planning time alone was so great to have. Jess and I tossed around a lot of ideas. I don't know where we're going to go with all this stuff, or how serious about it we're going to get, but it certainly is exciting to think about.

post #100

For the record, I have never in my whole life kept a diary that had 100 entries in it. Not even close. I guess there is something about blogging, and knitting, too - it's all about the feedback and the community.


And I suppose it is fitting that my 100th post should find me taking another leap. Not a big one - more a chasse than a grand jete, for any ballet types. Old Friend and I have signed up to do a craft fair in November and have set up an etsy shop. Right now there are only stitch markers, but we'd like to work on adding some patterns and doing some dyeing, too. If you click, pardon the quickly cobbled-together banner. If all goes well, our yarn-dyeing, pattern-writing, and photo-manipulating skills will improve soon. Maybe I'll even get around to putting pictures in the header of this blog, since Amy sent me very clear directions, oh, about a month ago.


With kids at home, of course, all this goes at its own (slow) pace. Especially when one encounters bumps in the road, such as, say, the fifth grade. Big Brother is a very bright kid, but as the years go by, he gets increasingly mired in seas of homework. Because they don't give less of it every year. If I don't stay within, say, fifteen feet of him and intermittently ask him how it's going, he's apt to start staring into space, making lovely elaborate margin-drawings, or simply daydreaming. This may present a problem when he's in college, is all I'm saying.
It also does not help that second-grader Little Brother gets so little homework he can sometimes finish it, literally, in less than a minute. Part of Big Brother's problem, I think, is that he skipped a grade when he was younger. I still believe that was the right choice for him - he really was bored working on the alphabet when he could read Harry freaking Potter, and he ended up with the nicest group of kids you can imagine - but it means he's got just that one year less maturity needed to sit down and get stuff done. (Not that I, the alleged adult, have mastered sitting down and getting stuff done, but that's for another day.) I certainly hope he catches up in that regard soon. I worry about it; I remember from teaching what huge difference there is between a 9th-grader and an 11th-grader. But anyway.


I appreciate anybody who has read any number of these 100 posts. I just added the most addicting little counter near the bottom of the sidebar there, so I now I know there there are more than I thought! (Yay!) I'm so glad I decided to jump into the knitting and blogging communities, both on and off the computer. It's inspiration, support, and a chance for adult comversation for a homebody mom like me. What a gift!