Paul Newman's Funeral

During my lunch break today, while I was at work, I noticed that I received a couple of messages on my cell phone. One was from a friend, and one was from my mom. A frantic message informing me that Paul Newman had died. Apparently my dad had been warming up the truck and heard the information on the radio. He came back in the house to tell my mom that sad news, then left for the day.

So, being the rational, reasonable, sane person that she is, she gets on the horn and starts calling everyone she knows--Did you hear the news? Paul Newman has died! All the great ones are gone....She was doing some serious lamenting into my voicemail about this. If you told her Heath Ledger has just died, her response would be "Heath who?", but for Paul she is starting to pack her bags to attend the service. Her casserole for Joanne Woodward is already in the oven.

I called Mike during lunch and during our conversation I mentioned, Oh yeah, and I guess Paul Newman died today.

Mike: Yeah she called me too. Funny thing is, there is nothing on the news or the internet about his death. Nothing.

Me: Well, my dad heard it on the radio

Mike (checking the internet): Well here is something saying today is his 83rd birthday...

So I called my mom.

Me: Mom, what exactly did dad say?

Mom: He just heard the tail end of the story--Paul Newman is 83.

Me: Yes, that is because IT IS HIS BIRTHDAY. HE IS NOT DEAD. You can take off the black now, Mom. Paul is still alive and kicking. Quit calling people to tell them Paul Newman has died. He's eating cake right now.

Mom (Laughing): Oh, Whew! Hmmm...maybe I should let your dad know.

Captain Cowlick

Captain Cowlick

The Pressure is Mounting

Eric and I made the trek to Venue today. I dropped off 5 hats, checked out my inventory, removed 4 sets of booties that are clearly never going to sell, and talked with Caitlin for awhile about this Artist of the Month business. She showed me my spot for the month of March, which is a prominent place near the front of the store. I am going to have to knit a lot of hats in the next month to fill that space up. And according to Caitlin, the place will be jam packed the night of the Art Walk. Apparently I will need a ton of inventory since it will all fly out the door that night. I should also have pictures and perhaps even a sign.

I am so out of my league. I know NOTHING about displaying my merchandise. Caitlin wants me to think about just how I want to display my hats. Well, that tiered shelf that I'm currently using seems to be working just fine--can't we keep using that? Apparently I need to be creative and dazzle the baby-hat buying public. Seriously, I have no ideas. Zero. How about a box with a bunch of hats thrown in it? Would that work? A long table with some hats strewn about? Is that not appealing enough? Anyone who might be planning to stop by that night--I would seriously lower my expectations if I were you.

I've pulled some loser items from both Happy Delusions and Venue and have placed them ever-so-appealingly on Etsy. There is no reason anyone perusing my Etsy shop has to know that these items are apparently poisonous and will make their baby's head turn green. So they can sit there for awhile getting no attention and then I will sneak them back over to one of my shops so they look like brand new items again. Clearly these are items I will NOT be making anytime again in the foreseeable future, but I would like to at least recoup my costs.

I would like to finish my own pair of convertible mittens, now that I've calmed down and figured out how to make the flap. I would also like to finish my Tilli Tomas scarf while it is still winter (and winter it is! It was 19 degrees when we woke up this morning! And they're talking snow later on this week. It will either be Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, depending on which channel you watch). I also want to finish my sister's socks, begin Leah's convertible mittens (which are way more exciting than mine, truth be told), and finish Cinderella #2. I have been narrowing down my project options for Tiffany's baby and I'm pretty excited about my selections. When I will actually find the time to begin that project I have no idea, but it's still a step in the right direction. And I found a pattern for a sweater for myself that I am dying to try.

Oh, and I do have a job and a house to maintain. Can't say I'm really on top of the house portion of my life (Eric officially ran out of underwear this weekend. The good new is, Mike was able to teach himself how to use the new washing machine while I was at work), but work is great. I am truly amazed at my ability to sell yarn and books to people. Expensive things that I easily talk people into--people who clearly have much more money that I do. If I can't buy it myself, it is somewhat satisfying to help someone else buy it!

And my parting thought for the day: school holidays should be banned. The only benefit I got out of this 3 day weekend is an especially evil 7 year old who yelled at me all day because I told him to find something else, anything else, to do other than play the Wii.

Things were ho-hum and then....

This has been an annoying week. School has been delayed by 2 hours the past 2 days due to ice and snow. And while I appreciate the Issaquah School District looking out for our safety and all, clearly they didn't pick up on the fact that a 2 hour delay means an additional 2 hours I have to spend with my kids. My kids who have been fighting this week. My kids who seem to miraculously discover the same forgotten toy at the same time and then start to fight to the death over ownership of said toy. One child, who shall remain nameless but is just about to turn 5 years old, is especially annoying because he has given up his naps once and for all (I don't want to hear it, you people whose toddlers quit napping at the age of 6 months. It hurts whenever it happens. The kid has been napping in the afternoon for nearly 5 years--you try giving up a tried and true habit that you have employed daily for 5 years. You'd be grumpy too...). I keep putting him in his bed and order him to close his eyes and his mouth, and he lies there very sneakily and quietly until 42 minutes later when his CD is done. And then I hear the THUMP of his annoying little feet hitting the floor and the pantless wonder appears at the top of the stairs.

The other annoying child, who frankly, is equally annoying, has decided that he is the boss of us all. No one in this house can do anything to his standards. We can't play Wii tennis correctly, we can't use a lightsaber correctly, and our wizarding powers are severely lacking as well. And we have the audacity to ask him to do his homework, eat food, pee, and clean up his own toys. We suck as parents.

So I've been doing my best to ignore these wretched little beasts and KNIT. Oh, the knitting list....

--I'm finishing up a special order of 2 viking hats to send off to Spokane
--I still have the Tillie Tomas scarf
--Cinderella is a mere 2 rows bigger
--Leah's self patterning Regia sock yarn just arrived for her convertible mittens
--Venue and Happy Delusions need some sprucing up
--Erin just asked me for a girl viking hat for her 4 year old

and, the biggie:

Venue just asked me to be their Artist of the Month in March. This means I need to have HATS, HATS, and more HATS by the beginning of March. And as Artist of the Month I am to help host Venue's portion of the Ballard Art Walk, which takes place the 2nd Saturday of each month. So of course I said YES, knowing full well how certifiably crazy this will make me. But how do you turn that down?

I think it's time to teach the boys to knit. If for no other reason than to keep them from fighting over who owns which dvd in our cupboard because my answer that they belong to the family is the lamest answer ever. Honestly, if they could, they would walk around the house with a label maker, slapping their names on every single solitary item in the house. Oh, there I go again, I was talking about something fun and now we're back to the boys. See how annoying they are?

Oh the pressure!

Valentine's Hats

At Leah's request, here are my Valentine's hats. Pretty cute, don't you think?

Last night was fraught with knitting frustration. After a day of parenting frustration. I have not been happy with my beloved Tilli Tomas scarf. It was too wide and I'm not completely sold on the lace concept. I would really like to do a cable knit scarf and I finally found one after spending hours searching for just the right pattern. And now I'm back to my original plan. I always forget--cabling takes up so much yarn. The cable pattern I found calls for twice as much yarn as I have. And while I would normally consider purchasing more yarn to complete the project, at $39.95 a skein for Tilli Tomas, I'm not doing that. So I restarted the scarf with my original pattern and I'm making it narrower. It will be fine and I will wear my $80.00 scarf that has nearly brought me to tears every day.

I also spent time with those horrid convertible mittens. I restarted the flap 3 times before I realized that I was doing it backwards and there was going to be no way it would actually go over my fingers. By the time I realized this I was so angry I just had to put it away and try to finish up my mom's sock (which would be finished by now if I had not spend my entire morning assembling and reassembling, and then reassembling again Eric's Aqua Raiders legos so he could play with them in a big bucket of water in the kitchen because he begs me to do this every day and won't use the bathtub because he's convinced all his legos will go down the drain and he then proceeded to get water all over the kitchen floor and I then had to force him to change his soaking wet clothes while he tried to convince me that they would dry).

And then I am reminded why I don't knit for myself. It's so much easier to knit for others. I don't know why. But I am rarely happy with projects I choose for myself. I guess I feel that if I have to look at something every single solitary day for the rest of my life, I want it to be perfect. Not that I'm prone to exaggeration. Ever.

And I have just learned that the new baby in the family is going to be a boy. What to knit for the new nephew?! It certainly can't be one of my stock items. I need to find just the absolutely perfect and unique pattern that will bring me joy with every stitch and not once make me want to chuck it across the room. All before mid June.

Perhaps he would like 1/2 of a pair of black convertible mittens and beaded scarf?