One Down, One To Go

The first sockapalooza sock is done! I have to say, I love cables in socks, even if the colors are a little too busy to see them well.

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I did the picot cuff for the second sock at Sit & Knit tonight, so now it’s just a matter of doing the same thing I did for the first sock. I’ll easily be able to make the deadline if I don’t get distracted by too much! Now I have to start thinking of what other little goodies to send my pal.

Happy Fourth!

Our nieces Lizzy and Michelle – and their parents, of course! – are spending a couple of days with us. It was pretty rainy today, so we spent the day at the Strong Museum. Carrie was beyond thrilled to be there with her cousins – and was also quite excited to run into Simone there – and (I think) it made up for not being able to spend the day in the pool.

Unfortunately, the annual fireworks display that you can see from the top of our street apparently didn’t happen this year. I can’t say I’m all that disappointed – Carrie was already asleep, and fireworks really stress Molly out – but I know that Lizzy and Michelle were looking forward to them.

Pampered Chef

My Uncle John is a Pampered Chef consultant, so I hosted a party for him yesterday. The food was excellent: a sausage calzone (can’t find the link) and a berry salad, plus a berry tart for dessert. (And I was worried about what we were going to do with all the berries from Friday – they’ve pretty much all been eaten already!)

I can’t wait for all my neat new kitchen toys gadgets to arrive!

Strawberries!

Today is Lisa’s birthday, and to celebrate we went strawberry picking. Or, in Carrie’s case, strawberry eating. I really think I should have given them an extra couple of dollars for all the strawberries she ate! I wound up with something like six pounds of strawberries. Yummy!

We also picked some raspberries, which was much easier for Carrie to do – if they come off the bush easily they’re ripe. So she ate even more of those.

Is it any wonder she didn’t eat any lunch?

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Couch to 5K Update

A few weeks ago I started the Couch to 5K running program. I wound up doing week 1 twice, because I was so out of shape that I couldn’t actually run all eight 60-second intervals for the first week. :P

But I did the first day of week 3 today, and…it didn’t kill me!

However, at the end of this program I won’t be anywhere near actually running 5 kilometers (or, for those of us who struggle with metric, 3 miles) in the alloted 30 minutes, because that would require me to run at 6 miles per hour. Um. I have to admit that I can’t even run at a full 4 miles per hour, I’m running at a really pathetic 3.7 miles per hour. I think turtles run faster than that. But at least I’m jogging, right?

Thirty-Two Months Old!

Dear Carolyn,

I tried to tell you that you’re two and two-thirds now, but you insist that you are two-and-a-half! I guess you’re not quite ready for fractions.

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Quite by accident, I discovered the other day that you can repeat rhythms. I can clap pretty much anything and you can repeat it. I have no idea if this is normal or if you’re going to be the youngest lead snare in the marching band. Along those lines, you’re completely obsessed with The Little Einsteins right now, which is all about music and using different musical ideas to complete a task – like listening for a certain melody to find something or singing loudly (fortissimo!) to make something happen.

In other news, you tried your first s’more this month. Ah, the joys of toasted marshmallows! The best part? You preferred the graham crackers alone. Well, with a side of chocolate, of course. And after all that work toasting you a perfect marshmallow!

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When you were sick a couple of weeks ago, I let you watch Cinderella. It’s now your favorite movie – “Cinder-gerella!” I’ll probably regret this when you’re begging for every cheap plastic thing with princesses plastered all over it, but for now I think it’s adorable that you love my favorite childhood movie.

Oh! I almost forgot! You can put together a 24-piece puzzle! We have a Winnie the Pooh puzzle that your Aunt Jeannie gave you, and I had planned to put it away until you were at least three, since puzzles haven’t really been your strong suit. But you saw the box and begged to play with it, and you can put it together all on your own (with a little verbal coaching when you start trying to force a piece where it doesn’t quite belong).

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Every month I’m even more amazed by all the things you’ve learned. You’re one pretty amazing kid!

Love, Mommy

A Perfect Afternoon

It was a lovely, breezy 72 degrees this afternoon, so I took Carrie and the dogs out on the deck. Carrie and I sat for a bit on the swing while I knit and she ate animal crackers. She guessed I was knitting a glove (a reasonable guess, since it’s just the cuff of a sock so far) and then decided that it was a sock. Then Carrie played with her sand table, the dogs ran around and I knit for the better part of an hour. Oh, and Carrie and Murphy got in some serious cuddle time:

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I hope the whole summer can be as perfect as this afternoon.

Addicted.

This past Saturday, my mom and I went to the spinning guild meeting. I have to confess, after all of the excitement of learning how to spin, discovering that the spinning guild meets in my town and being given a wheel of my own, spinning kind of fell off the map in terms of my hobbies.

I think I may have figured out why – well, aside from the fact that in the intervening years I’ve had a small person take up a lot of my time. I wasn’t spinning the right kind of stuff. Everyone says to start with Blue Face Leicester, because it has such a long staple length and it’s really easy to spin. I bought some (OK, a lot) and didn’t like spinning it.

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On the other hand, I seem to have no problem with shorter staple lengths – like this absolutely scrumptious shetland/alpaca blend I bought at the guild meeting. Those four ounces you see on that bobbin there? I had spun it all between Saturday afternoon and Monday evening. I’d estimate there are maybe three hours of spinning on that bobbin, and it’s (relatively) even.

I just wrote a check to drop in the mail to the seller so she could send me the second four ounce ball of this roving she had in her basket. I’m planning to ply them and knit something for Carrie – maybe a new hat and scarf for winter? Eight ounces of worsted-ish ought to be plenty for those and maybe an extra hat or two to donate, right?