Stop, children, what’s that sound…

It is the sound…of silence.

Please. I…I…I need…a moment. {sniffle, sob} {deep, cleansing breath}

The only sound in the house right now is the Scooba, which is bumbling around my kitchen scrubbing up the fifteen or so layers of !filth! the children deposited over the last three days.

It cannot help but be a good day, people.

Children: In school

Husband: At client site, broken toe and all.

Me: In home office. With waaaaay too much to do, but nevertheless taking the next twenty minutes to collect myself. I shall start work-work at 8:00, and not a nanosecond before.

Yesterday was really, really hard, for everybody. TECHNICALLY, I took the day off. But I really honestly truly did have a lot of unanswered questions at work and a few too many tasks in my pipeline to just blow it off, so I said, “Wellllllllllll…I’ll just, you know, pop in real quick here and there, set things running, maybe use naptime as an opportunity to actually get some things done…”

Uh huh. Well, problem being: It was Day 3 of the three day weekend. Not a good day for the Mother of Chaos to be vanishing into her cave to become engrossed in banging two rocks together in search of fire.

The Denizens were bored. They were bored with everything from Little Einsteins to coloring books to sparkle glue and my truly stunning set of scrapbooking scissors – you know, the ones that will cut wavy lines and triangle lines and all kinds of other groovy patterns? These are good for hours of Denizen contentment. Unless, of course, it is Day 3 of a three day weekend, in which case…YAWN!

Outside? Boring. Unless you were throwing rocks at the side of the house, hitting a sister with a willow switch (yes, really) or trying to pry the falling board completely out of the fence. Boo Bug got a sliver in her palm and honestly? I had very little sympathy.

Inside? DOUBLE boring. Unless you were throwing toys over the stair railings, hitting a sister with a drum stick, banging on the piano, or asking mommy for a snack six hundred times in rapid succession so she would turn those interesting shades of pink, purple and red.

There were moments when I about lost my Zen entirely, people.

But on the bright side, I finished these:



Whew! OK, these are for B-I-G feet. I’ve gotten spoiled by all the little girl and ‘women’s small’ sized socks I’ve done in the last year – these are the first Tall Boy socks I’ve made in a long, long time and dudes. They aged me. I’m serious. I was doing That Thing where you take the measuring tape and then, when it doesn’t show you that you’ve made more than 0.25” progress, smooth the knitting (which should be pronounced, ‘stretch it like crazy trying to FORCE it to be 0.50 instead of 0.25”, which JUST CAN’T BE RIGHT!’).

And last night, I cast on some Semi-Instant Gratification.



It’s a striped romper (you’ll have to take this on faith right now, because I know it looks like…well, I’m not sure what…but this is the first leg finished, and the wee little bit on the right is the second leg being worked on…it will all become clear soon, I swear it will…) 3-6 month size. This Jail Bird pattern comes out of Jil Eaton’s MinnowKnits, and is one of her QuickKnits™.

I’m going to be modifying the pattern slightly because frankly…I don’t have enough dark blue yarn to make it dark blue striped all the way. I haven’t decided if I’m going to just switch to another primary-color stripe at the top, or just do some red in the middle, or go all wild-eyed maverick and maybe do some light blue fishies or something like that. I am a wild, wild thing, people. Watch out. Hide the children. SHE’S GOT #6 CIRCULARS AND SHE AIN’T AFRAID TO USE THEM!!!

But this pattern lends itself well to having the occasional creative impulse, and when she says QuickKnit™? She means QuickKnit™. I got one entire leg and started the second in about one hour. It felt good to see actual progress on something, because otherwise I feel as though my whole life is one big ‘in a minute’.

Also, I have to say: I am loving this yarn. It’s KnitPicks ‘Swish’, their superwash wool? Nice. Very, very soft. Very, very warm. Very ‘keep a precious, sweet little baby warm’ worthy. We are pleased. They have our royal permission to continue selling it to us.

Ahem. Moving on.

Stitches West is this weekend. And I am going. I would like to remind myself that I am on a yarn diet. I would also like to remind myself that I have plenty of yarn. I would further like to point out to myself that I promised myself I would behave.

I would also like to point out that I am a pathological liar, especially when it comes to yarns, and that I have absolutely no prayer whatsoever of coming out of that yarn market without a skein or two of something luscious. Hmm. Apropos of nothing, I wonder what the going rate is for a home equity line these days…

Hokay. 7:59. Time to put on my work-work hat and get busy.

And, in a perfect Freudian slip, I just typed ‘work-work hate’.

Yes, sometimes, indeed I do…