Congratulations to Mom+SIS+Auntie for winning the movie line contest from Gladiator. The Count and I use both of those lines on a regular basis here in this house: "That vexes me. I'm terribly vexed" (spoken by the great Joaquin) and of course the classic "Are you not entertained?!?" We usually say that last line when we've done something for the other--like when I've brought the Count something he's asked for, or after I've made dinner. We've tried it on the kids, but they look at us kind of scared-like. Snaps to you, mSISa.
The next movie lines up for consideration are:
"You uncultured swine!"
and
"What are you looking at, you hockey puck?"
Good luck to all.
I finally felted the clogs that I knit up last January, and let me tell you, they are uuuuuuuuuugly. Not even mildly, but full-on ugly as sin. I was afraid of that. I think that's why I put off felting them for so long. First of all, it's hard for me to felt in my washing machine because I have a front-loader. No matter what I do, it always makes a terrible wet mess all over my laundry room. And felting two thick clogs by hand in the sink, agitating them for 20 minutes each until they shrink? You've got to be kidding me. The kids would immediately sniff out the fact that I would be busy for an undetermined amount of time and find the worst possible trouble to get into. And I don't know why I knit them in browns, because I don't really like brown. I guess I thought that if they got dirty it wouldn't really matter. But they look to me like two unshapely pieces of, well, poo-dee. I actually liked the look of the stitches before felting, but of course when something is felted you no longer see the stitch detail, because it all gets shrunken together. So without further ado, here are "the doo-doo clogs":
I don't know why I ever thought I would like to own a pair of felted clogs in the first place. I'm just not a felted clog type of person. I'm more of a fuzzy slipper kind of gal. Ask anyone that knows me, and they will tell you that you will never go wrong buying me a pair of fuzzy slippers. Preferably purple. In fact, that's what I'm wearing right this second:
I guess the felted slipper fiasco belongs in the "I can knit that!" file, you know, the kind of ghastly thing you see in a picture and immediately start knitting it without thinking how horribly ugly and unusable and embarrassing to the wearer it will be. Yes, these things are ug-ly. Even my mother-in-law, the slipper thief, would not touch these. So, to my dismay, this is the first finished knitted object that I have made that I cannot stand. I can't even unwind them and use the yarn for something else because they've been felted. Maybe I could use them as firewood, perhaps? Or dust with them? Put one on each hand and go crazy cleaning all the objects in my house? Maybe the neighbor's dog needs a nose warmer? Or a pair of nose warmers? The one place you will NEVER see them again (besides in the awful pictures above) is on my feet. And before you tell me that they aren't so bad, answer this question: would YOU wear them? I didn't think so.
Chalk this one up to a learning experience. At least while knitting these, I got comfortable with doing short rows and mastered picking up stitches. Hey, I've got to find something to make me feel better wasting my time and money on all that Nashua yarn, which the pattern called for DOUBLE what I needed. Why do they do that? At least the yarn store was fine with taking back the extra skeins. Otherwise I would have been really upset.
In conclusion, that's knitting time I'll never get back.
Now for gratuitous cute baby picture to cheer me up:
Sorry it's blurry, but remember the flash freaks him out.
Much love to all.
That, my friends, is a look of pure happiness on my face as I lay collapsed in her lap. You must understand, I love my sister more than I can ever put mere words to. She was snatched away from me in an evil corporate relocation almost four years ago, and I have never been the same since. Most heartbreaking of all was that she had to move when ZimDee was just two weeks old, and I didn't even get to see her during my entire pregnancy and the birth of Sprout. So the moments we can capture together are very precious to me.
Look at how big the snowflakes are in this picture, especially the one on the lower right. You must understand, we might get snow here once every 2-3 years, usually in January. Since it is so infrequent and doesn't hang around long enough to be a nuisance, it is greeted with childhood glee by everyone in my household. I immediately ran upstairs and woke up the Count, who giggled like a little kid. Here are some views from our bedroom window:
