Non-knititng related......

My oldest is learning her states this year. They are learning them in regions but she has the list of all the states to practice spelling. Her first test was a week ago and she failed it. We didn't realize she'd only been practicing her spelling of ALL the states and not trying to place the names with the ones in the given region. This is how the first test turned out:



See the blue arrow, that's the Maine upper peninsula. LOL! We then found this website to help her and on her next test she aced it. http://www.pibmug.com/files/map_test.swf She now knows where all the states are from repeated playing. So we are now having her practice spelling them and working on the site a couple times a week.

QOW #13

If you were told you could never again buy yarn, would would your last yarn purchase be?
If you were told you could never knit again, what would be the last thing you’d knit??
In a given year, how many times do you buy yarn? And what is your favorite place to buy yarn from? A festival? A shop? Online? Dish your favorite places!!
Lastly, with Fall in full swing in many areas, what is the one thing you look forward to most?

#1 I think my last yarn purchase would be a sheep. That way I could spin my own even after the dreaded no more yarn purchases date. :D

#2 Ummm can I say never ending scarf......... Yeah I didn't think so. ;) I think I'd knit a really super warm sweater that I loved the pattern of.

#3 In this year so far I have bought yarn.....ummm lemme count......at least 15 times so far I'd have to say. Hmmmm tie between buying on Ravelry in trade/sell and my LYS The Knitting Den.
Ravelry because I can get yarns from people who bought a colorway and didn't like it for about the same price they paid or less. The Knitting Den because the ladies there are super helpful and really nice. And they haven't kicked me out yet for having my monsters with me running around the store in and out of rooms they shouldn't be in. :D

#4 Fall wise the colors changing and being able to walk outside and crunch on the leaves. Knitting wise.....probably making some fingerless gloves to keep me warm. Oh and knitting on my porch once it gets too cold for bees.

I've enjoyed this swap and look forward to my reveal package and getting to know my upline spoiler and downline spoilee better. :)

And their off.......

I posted a few of my barbies on ebay a while back and they sold on the second go round. I needed the space for other stuff and I might post more on there in the future.......but that means venturing into the closet and I don't think I am ready for that right now. :) Anyways, I went to the post office today to mail the boxes and a little something to my brother........ok the box was 5 lbs. worth of blankets. Baby ones to be exact for miss Madelyn to use since my girls are too big for them. But holy crap - it cost me more to send a 1.75 lb. to CA & the same to TX than it did the 5 lbs one to within my own state. WTH is up with that?!?!?!?!

Moving on.....It is the start of fall allergy season for me and my oldest two girls. UGH! What did I do today, went to WalMart and bought the generic Claritin. DUMMY! I was on Claritin before and needed a decongestant for all the drainage down my throat. But I don't have a stuffy nose right now. :D Crap now I'm out $14 on meds that I can't use unless I don't want to sleep at night. :( It is of course a 24 hour pill which means that I can't take what I would at night without risking overdose or something like that. So it's a chicken noodle soup night here at our house. Homemade of course - YUM! It smells great right now.......I wonder if the chicken is cooked enough yet. I make it super easy - see below:

Super Easy Chicken Noodle Soup

4 - 5 Chicken breasts cut into cubes
1 12 oz. bag of Egg Yolk Noodle
Some bouillon cubes for flavoring
1 stock pot
1/2 pot of water

Thaw chicken and cut into cubes. Put pot on stove with water in it. Put bouillon cubes, chicken and about slightly over half the bag into the pot. Turn stove on and let sit until boiling, stir often. Let boil for about 5 minutes and soup should be ready to serve.

See easy. Otherwise I'd probably never make it. LOL Oh and this is pretty much my mom's recipe and yeah it's more details than I would have gotten from her. Her response to recipe requests is "I do a little of this, add a little of that and I get this size but eyeball how much I use each time...." really frustrating sometimes let me tell you! But yummy the noodles are super smooshy!

Girl drama......ugh!

My oldest being the brat that she can be has taken to not listening to mom lately. They have a friend who lives right across the street. Who is the same age as my youngest but loves playing with my oldest. They like to walk to the bus with her. The mom and I have traded off mornings and I walked the past two mornings with them. So this morning I woke up and my allergies have pretty much swollen my throat shut (ouch and thank god for tea!). I'd told the girls I wasn't walking this morning. Not that I won't get them to the bus, but I'm not walking. Mind you the bus doesn't get here until 8:15 am and it takes about 5 - 8 minutes walking to get to the bus stop, 1 minute driving. So at 7:41 am my oldest goes across the street to see if their friend can walk.......without asking to leave the house. The middle monster soon follows and the youngest is left here almost in tears. They knew I was going to brush her hair (too thick for her to get all the tangles out herself), but still left her. To make matters worse when she got out there she thought she saw her sisters and the friend walk around the corner. I quick caught up with her and walked to to the corner with the plan to call them back and make them wait the 10 minutes extra that they didn't need to leave so early. They weren't around the corner. This meant they had to have gone inside the friends house. So B starts to whine because we can't find them, she's cranky and upset of course. I tell her to knock on the door and see if they are there. She makes me come up to the porch with her and then proceed to knock so lightly that not even their dog hears her. And the dog will bark as soon as she thinks someone is there. I finally tell her if she isn't going to knock loud enough for someone to hear her then she can come back home and sit on our porch until they come out. We knew they were there still because she could see her sister's backpack inside the door.

Long story short, they come out 2 minutes later and she tells them they suck (in not these exact words :) ) because they left without her and didn't ask to go across the street. The friend's mom tells her all she had to do was knock or just come right in - which of course sets B crying. She has become SUPER emotional in the past year and the littlest thing will set her off. I don't get it but I have to live with it. To make it even better the oldest has a planner that must be signed daily, so does the middle kid. Well middle kid had dad sign last night and it's in her backpack. Oldest gave it to me and it was still sitting on the table where she put it. So I signed it and called her over to get it. She was almost ungrounded too. Man it sucks to not listen to mom. :) But she is to the point that she just keeps taking off and going somewhere and not letting us know. The biggest one was riding her bike with a friend to about 5 blocks away from where we live. So she goes and does something silly like this and gets another 2 days added to her grounding. She keeps this up and she will be grounded for the whole month all because she decides to not ask a simple question. Silliness I tell you!

On the knitting front.....

Spring Forward

I started a pair of socks in the Spring Forward pattern from knitty last night at knit night. It took me most of the night to remember what the heck I was doing. Good thing I brought my books! :D I decided to use my new Tofutsie yarn - so pretty. And to appease the hubby I started his scarf when I got home. I'd have taken it with my but I was in a super rush to get out the door last night that I didn't look well enough for it. My BFF Amy sent me this shoe link yesterday after asking all super sneaky like - "have you ever tried on sketchers? i want to know what size shoe you wear >.> an 11? i know you have monster feet :D" I asked her what she was looking at before she sent the link and she said "presents for you :o". hehe! I made a mad dash to the mall once the hubby got home to try on something similar in style - with my socks to see if they would fit and they do! :D

Question?

Has anyone ever gotten to the point in knitting that you have so many projects you'd like to start and have yarn for but don't know which one to do next? Or have yarn but aren't sure which pattern to use it with? That would be me right now. I have one scarf on the needles right now but I'm thinking of frogging it and possibly doing a different stitch as the moss/seed stitch for the scarf is driving me batty. So much so that I really don't want to pick it back up. Sad but I need to get it done soon before it gets too cold. Plus the hubby is insisting that I start his scarf next. Because he claims he will support the knitting habit as long as he gets something out of it. The downside - he's color blind so if I say "isn't this an awesome shade of green?" He says "green I thought it was red...." etc. Very frustrating. So the kids have to oh and ah with me over colors. :D

My dilemma now - do I start his scarf, finish Lily's, or start the next pair of socks? And if so on the socks - which yarn and pattern? Choices choices!

Well it's off to the post office for me now as I need to ship out ebay sales and a little somthing for my secret pal. Hope s/he enjoys it. :)

Then there were two......

I have now completed my first pair of socks! Just need to weave in ends and fix a gap in the heel pickup area. And now I am laughing really hard at my big dog* trying to crawl under the kitchen chair to get something that one of the kids must have dropped. She is literally on her belly under the chair with the back legs digging in to get further under it. Yup looked like bread or something. However when I moved the chair to help the dog I found the cat hiding back there while eating the said food. No wonder the dog was trying to get back there! She of course can't share with the cat.....it's not allowed! LOL


*Big dog = German Shepard mix with we thing greyhound or something along those lines.

Music Meme

As seen on Meg's blog the music meme. Here's the rules:

A.) Go to musicoutfitters.com

B.) Enter the year you graduated from high school in the search function and get the list of 100 most popular songs of that year

C.) Bold the songs you like, strike through the ones you hate and underline or italicize your favorite. Do nothing to the ones you don’t remember (or don’t care about)

D.) Optional, but I highly recommend checking out some videos on YouTube while you're at it.

Mind you there are more that I dislike but I didn't want to spend all night striking through all of them. Kinds bummed that there aren't more alternative music on here, but such is life. Now back to bed for me as I feel yucky!

1. Too Close, Next
2. The Boy Is Mine, Brandy and Monica
3. You're Still The One, Shania Twain
4. Truly Madly Deeply, Savage Garden
5. How Do I Live, LeAnn Rimes
6. Together Again, Janet
7. All My Life, K-Ci and JoJo
8. Candle In The Wind 1997, Elton John
9. Nice and Slow, Usher
10. I Don't Want To Wait, Paula Cole
11. How's It Going To Be, Third Eye Blind
12. No, No, No, Destiny's Child
13. My Heart Will Go On, Celine Dion
14. Gettin' Jiggy Wit, Will Smith
15. You Make Me Wanna..., Usher
16. My Way, Usher
17. My All, Mariah Carey
18. The First Night, Monica
19. Been Around The World, Puff Daddy and The Family
20. Adia, Sarah McLachlan
21. Crush, Jennifer Paige
22. Everybody (Backstreet's Back), Backstreet Boys
23. I Don't Want To Miss A Thing, Aerosmith
24. Body Bumpin Yippie-Yi-Yo, Public Announcement
25. This Kiss, Faith Hill
26. I Don't Ever Want To See You Again, Uncle Sam
27. Let's Ride, Montell Jordan
28. Sex And Candy, Marcy Playground
29. Show Me Love, Robyn
30. A Song For Mama, Boyz II Men
31. What You Want, Mase
32. Frozen, Madonna
33. Gone Till November, Wyclef Jean
34. My Body, Lsg
35. Tubthumping, Chumbawamba
36. Deja Vu (Uptown Baby), Lord Tariq and Peter Gunz
37. I Want You Back, 'N Sync
38. When The Lights Go Out, Five
39. They Don't Know, Jon B.
40. Make Em' Say Uhh!, Master P
41. Make It Hot, Nicole Featuring Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliott and Mocha
42. Never Eve, All Saints
43. I Get Lonely, Janet
44. Feel So Good, Mase
45. Say It, Voices Of Theory
46. Kiss The Rain, Billie Myers
47. Come With Me, Puff Daddy
48. Romeo And Juliet, Sylk-E Fyne
49. It's All About Me, Mya and Sisqo
50. I Will Come To You, Hanson
51. One Week, Barenaked Ladies
52. Swing My Way, K.P. and Envyi
53. The Arms Of The One Who Loves You, Xscape
54. My Love Is The Shhh!, Somethin' For The People
55. Daydreamin', Tatyana Ali
56. We're Not Making Love No More, Dru Hill
57. Semi-Charmed Life, Third Eye Blind
58. I Do, Lisa Loeb
59. Lookin' At Me, Mase
60. Looking Through Your Eyes, LeAnn Rimes
61. Lately, Divine
62. Quit Playing Games (With My Heart), Backstreet Boys
63. I Still Love You, Next
64. Time After Time, Inoj
65. Are You Jimmy Ray?, Jimmy Ray
66. Cruel Summer, Ace Of Base
67. I Got The Hook Up!, Master P
68. Victory, Puff Daddy and The Family
69. Too Much, Spice Girls
70. Ghetto Supastar (That Is What You Are), Pras Feat. Ol' Dirty Bastard and Mya
71. How Deep Is Your Love, Dru Hill Featuring Redman
72. Friend Of Mine, Kelly Price
73. Turn It Up [Remix]/Fire It Up, Busta Rhymes
74. I'll Be, Edwin McCain
75. Ray Of Light, Madonna
76. All For You, Sister Hazel
77. Touch It, Monifah
78. Money, Power and Respect, Lox
79. Bitter Sweet Symphony, The Verve
80. Dangerous, Busta Rhymes
81. Spice Up Your Life, Spice Girls
82. Because Of You, 98 Degrees
83. The Mummers' Dance, Loreena McKennitt
84. All Cried Out, Allure Featuring 112
85. Still Not A Player, Big Punisher Featuring Joe
86. The One I Gave My Heart To, Aaliyah
87. Foolish Games/You Were Meant For Me, Jewel
88. Love You Down, Inoj
89. Do For Love, 2Pac
90. Raise The Roof, Luke
91. Heaven, Nu Flavor
92. The Party Continues, Jd
93. Sock It 2 Me, Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliott Featuring Da Brat
94. Butta Love, Next
95. A Rose Is Still A Rose, Aretha Franklin
96. 4 Seasons Of Loneliness, Boyz II Men
97. Father, LL Cool J
98. Thinkin' Bout It, Gerald Levert
99. Nobody's Supposed To Be Here, Deborah Cox
100. Westside, TQ

It's a heel!

Sock number two is on the foot portion now. Well sorta I gotta go back and fix the pickup on one side but then I should be onto the heel.

But my brain was being sucked into a webcomic suggested by Laurell K. Hamilton in her blog - "The Devil's Panties". It runs with the subtitle "It's not satanic porn - Honest!" hehe Her site has her comic as well as her other drawings featured. I should also mention that LKH mentioned her in blog due to the fact that Jennie Breeden (TDP lady) was doing kilt blowing with a leaf blower at DragonCon. :D And there is or was this past year a calendar of said action. I love this lady! :D http://www.thedevilspanties.com/index.html