Author: Sarah

Filed Under: What Was I Thinking?!?

Sarah Crafts

Massive cleaning is underway over here. We’re (finally) finishing converting the upstairs office into a guest room, the basement family room into a family room/office, the bedroom into a bedroom/weight room, and the craft room into…something approaching a clean craft room.

There are boxes of things I need to sort through. I won’t frighten anyone with a picture of how many boxes, but I don’t think Denis really understood exactly how much stuff I have in that room until today. (He tried to tell me I couldn’t buy any more yarn until I knit everything I had. Obviously, the man doesn’t understand the rules of stashing. I told him he should read Yarn Harlot. He said I had to own more yarn than she does. I seriously doubt it.) In my own defense, a fair amount of the contents of the boxes is stuff that doesn’t belong in my craft room in the first place – over the past two years it had become the catch-all room for anything that didn’t have a home but needed to be put somewhere – but instead of sorting before boxing I decided I’d go through it all later. The priority was getting the bed out of there and into the guest room.

Under the bed, I had two under-bed storage boxes with fabric in them. I poked through them briefly before dinner and found this:



There are, I kid you not, 5 3/4 yards of the three coffee-themed fabrics and 1 3/4 yards of the “coordinating” ugly brown fabric. I vaguely remember buying this intending to make placemats – I think, but don’t quote me on this, that it was my senior year of college, when I was renting instead of living in the dorms – but holy sh…sugar, how many placemats could I possibly have wanted to make?!? The salespeople at Jo-Ann’s must have had a really good belly laugh at my expense when I left, because I really think I could make enough placemats to cover a small country’s worth of tables with this much fabric.

What on earth do I do with it now?

Twenty-Two Months Old!

Sarah Monthly Updates

Dear Carolyn,

You’ve grown up so much in this past month it’s hard to believe! When I put your hair up in pigtails I swear you look about three, and with your language skills you might pass for that! Honestly, your manners are generally better than most adults’ are – you say “please”, “thank you”, “sorry”, “bless you” and “excuse me”, generally unprompted, and are even starting to remember to cover your mouth when you sneeze.

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You’re mostly talking in complete sentences now – granted, I’m still the only person who understands more than half of what you say. You can “read” to me the books we read most often nearly verbatim. Not only do you know your alphabet, but you say the “now I know my a b c’s” part too. My heart melted the other day when you were sitting on the piano bench and I started picking out the notes to “twinkle, twinkle little star” and you started singing along! And I was rather frightened to discover that your Sesame Street habit has apparently taught you that “milk” starts with the letter “m” which makes a “mmm” sound, that “p” says “puh” and is the first letter in “Poppy”, and that “d” starts words like “dog”, “Daddy” and “duck”.

20060812_crazy_clothes.jpgGradually over this month you’ve gotten over your bath phobia and you’re starting to be interested in the potty again, but you’ve picked up my spider phobia and a mean case of toddler OCD. I don’t know whether to laugh, cry, or scream when, for the 27th time during lunch, the dog licks your chair and you beg for a “nakkin” so you can “clean up the chair!” The thing is, if you just didn’t tease the dogs with your food and yell at them to lie down when they already are, they wouldn’t be licking your chair.

We’ve started playing with playdough. You like to cut the dough with the little plastic knife it came with. When we color or draw you insist on having me draw babies and dogs. Every page in your sketchpad and the various dollar-store coloring books you have has several smiley-faced babies and floppy-eared dogs.

I think you may have a crush on one of your playgroup friends, Luke. You know all the kids’ names, and are always very excited to talk about them on the way to playgroup, but the name you say first and most often is Luke. We’re invited to his birthday party next month, and since you’ve started to “get” what birthdays are about I’m sure you’ll have a great time. Since Henry’s party last weekend, whenever you see a cake with a candle in a book you say “happy birthday”, blow out a pretend candle, and then clap your hands. I imagine you’ll be thrilled with your birthday this year, since I’m planning to make a Blue’s Clues cake – your other major TV habit. (It sounds like I let you watch TV all day, but really I try to limit you to 1 episode of Sesame Street OR a Blue’s Clues episode a day – your choice. Some days you have a really hard time deciding, and other days you still want to watch Signing Time.)

You have 15 teeth now. The bottom right canine still has to make an appearance, and your big back molars haven’t come in yet. I’ve been bad about keeping track of which teeth came in when, so your baby book may be full of guesses once I finally get around to filling it in!

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Every month I see a little more “baby” melt away, and a little more “little girl” appears in her place. You’re becoming such a wonderful little girl, even if a tiny little part of me will always miss the baby!

Love, Mommy

My Dogs are Weird.

Sarah Dogs

Molly and Murphy have been tagged by Oscar. Here are the rules:

List 5 weird things about yourself, your children* or your pets. Tag 5 friends and list them. Then, those people need to write on their blogs about 5 weird things, and state the rules, and tag 5 more people. Don

Start-itis

Sarah Knitting

Uh-oh. Apparently, starting my Jaywalker socks on Saturday was a Bad Idea. Now I have a really bad case of start-itis. So far I’ve managed to channel it into just making a dishcloth:


This is a pattern called “garterlac” which I ran across last week and was charmed by. I love entrelac, and garter stitch entrelac is super easy!

In order to make progress on the ever-tedious second sock, I’ve been “bargaining” with myself – as in I can work on the dishcloth or my socks after I knit 15 rows on the gift socks. This is working so far, and I’m only 15 or so rows away from the cuff on that second sock.

And last week I picked up a UFO from my craft room, one I’d never actually documented. Remember the orange laceweight yarn I purchased at Rhinebeck three years ago? Six months later I started making a lace shawl out of that while we were in Italy. Then it ended up in the pile of UFOs when I started all the baby knitting.


(Sorry for the terrible picture. I guess orange knitting on my cedar-colored deck doesn’t work so well!)

I’ve decided that instead of beating myself up over my inability to focus on one project at the moment, I’ll cut myself some slack and keep four projects in my current rotation:

  1. one gift project
  2. one project for me
  3. something small and portable like socks or a dishcloth
  4. a UFO from my craft room

(Note that this only applies to knitting. Any sewing projects are over and above this list, and always have been.)

A Hiking We Will Go

Sarah Fitness

This morning I tried out the incline treadmill at the gym. The trainer wants me to walk at a 30° incline for 20 minutes at 2 miles per hour. Hah! I managed to alternate between 10° and 15°, with a minute or so of 20° thrown in there – all at 2 miles per hour at least. But I walked for 25 minutes, burned 186 calories, and ascended the equivalent of 407 vertical feet over .79 miles. Think I’m ready to climb Mt. Everest? Kidding!

And then, because I hadn’t punished my legs enough, I suggested we walk to the playground at the school after dinner. So I felt justified in splitting a strawberry italian ice with Carrie when we got home. ;)

No Self Control

Sarah Knitting

The pink socks from my sock kit are on the needles. So much for waiting until I was finished with the gift socks!

I justified it by telling myself I would just knit a swatch. But the thing is, this yarn is just amazing to work with. I think I mentioned it has aloe in it, and it’s so incredibly soft and wonderful to knit that I couldn’t just stop with the swatch.

The good news is that halfway through the ribbing I gave myself a swift mental kick and vowed to work the other sock at least through the heel turn before I could even look at the other sock again. So far it’s working…

But the fact that I couldn’t even wait 24 hours before casting on is a pretty good explanation as to why there are several unfinished mate-less socks and many, many other UFOs in my craft room. I’m just too fickle!

Oh, I do have to mention one thing, though. I ordered some new KnitPick’s needles for my pal, and a set for myself while I was at it, so I decided to start my new sock on those instead of my Addi’s. That pretty purple cable is the most flexible circular cable I’ve ever used, and the needles themselves are nice and sharp, perfect for the “slip two together, knit the next stitch, pass the two slipped stitches over” part of the pattern. So far I think these are my favorite sock needles. Don’t tell the Addi’s. ;)

KSKS Goodies!

Sarah Knit Sock Kit Swap

Look what came in the mail today! Aren’t I lucky?

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My secret pal was Valerie, and she did such a wonderful job on my kit! (I, on the other hand, did a terrible job photographing it. I was too scared to go outside on the deck (see last night’s post) and take advantage of natural light.) I really love both sock yarns – the pink one has aloe in it! – and I’m sitting here trying to convince myself that I really need to finish the gift socks I’m currently working on before I can even swatch the yarn. I was thinking that the crazy stripey yarn looked kind of familiar…and then I realized it’s all the colors I’ve just redecorated the living play room in:
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(Remind me not to leave my finished socks laying around on top of that blanket, or I’ll never find them.)

Thank you so much, Valerie!

And…

I don’t have to feel guilty about getting my kit, because Carrie and I went to the post office this morning and mailed out my pal’s kit:

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I had the hardest time giving this bag away, because I love the fabrics and how it turned out. I really hope my pal loves it just as much!

Scary, Scary Spider

Sarah General

Why do the freaky spiders gravitate to my house??

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This incredibly scary creature built an enormous web outside our sliding glass door in a matter of just an hour or two – we had some family over for dinner, and we were in and out through that door, and literally just a couple hours later Denis went to go out that door again and there it was. Oh, the unspeakable horror! If I had been the one to open that door and see it first, I’m sure I would have had a heart attack.

I’m going to live in terror of this spider for the next however many months until we get a deep freeze, because Denis just picked it up with the Swiffer and shook it into the lawn. Where it’s still alive. Somewhere. Waiting to attack me when I close my eyes. Whimper.

The Great Fitness Challenge

Sarah Fitness

I joined a gym. Again. Only this time, I was smart about it. I usually join, exercise aimlessly, see no results after what I think is long enough, and then lose motivation. So, this time I shelled out the $$ for a few personal training sessions. This way, I’ll have a plan for every time I go to the gym, hopefully tailored enough to my goals to show some results in a reasonable period of time.

My goals? Well, losing weight would be nice. Fitting into my clothes would be nicer. And even though I’m below my pre-pregnancy weight, I’d like to get enough below it before having another baby to not even see this number again on the scale the day before my due date. (If it’s the same weight gain as with Carrie, that would be somewhere between 30-40 pounds.) I’ve always wondered if the pregnancy-induced hypertension could have been avoided if I hadn’t been quite so overweight from the start (the OB said it could have been a factor, but wasn’t the only factor). If/when we have another baby on the way, I don’t want to have to put Carrie through 6 weeks of me being on bedrest if I can avoid it.

The other thing is, even though I strive to have a positive body image to be a good role model for Carrie, the bottom line is that I don’t like how I look. I hate that I can’t wear cute and trendy clothes. I don’t want to diet (beyond obviously making good choices and controlling how much I eat) because I don’t want Carrie to think dieting is good, or even necessary. So the only way I’m going to lose weight and feel better about myself is to move. A lot. It’s going to be a lot more work than I want. But hopefully it will actually work this time. I haven’t decided how much I’m going to actually blog about – the actual number on the scale right now, while not my heaviest non-pregnancy weight – is embarrassing, but we’ll see. Maybe some incredibly raw honesty with the entire internet will be enough to keep me motivated?

My first session is Friday morning. I went today and walked for 20 minutes on the treadmill, and burned 103 calories. And since I got an herbal iced tea instead of a sugary coffee drink at Sit & Knit tonight, that’s an extra bonus, right?