Wednesday

It's only Wednesday morning and my desk already looks like a bomb hit it. Part of it is that my project right now requires about fifteen different references with charts and the like and they're all on 11" x 17" paper. I'm going to tackle that before moving on this morning. But then, oh, the stuff on my to-do list. First up, I get to finish writing a play using nothing but short a, short o, some consonants--no words more than one syllable. Most blends and digraphs are a no-no. No long vowels.

In other news, I had to tear out Ben's sleeve for the second time--this time I'd completely finished one sleeve and was a good four inches into the second sleeve when I decided to try the sweater on said child. Well, the body is just fine (and, to my horror, not nearly as big as I thought), but the sleeve was too narrow from armpit to wrist, and too short. It fits fine as long as he holds his arm straight out. But, most kids don't walk that way.

So I ripped it all the way back (this sleeve is cast on to the body and knit to the wrist instead of the other way around) and cast on WAY more stitches. I only gained about two and a half more inches, but the sleeve as a whole is bigger now. I thought I was probably going to have to rip it out and redo it again, but eyeballing it--it looks more in proportion with the rest of the sweater. So, maybe not. Unfortunately, it also means I probably can't even finish the one sleeve until my last skein of yarn comes in over at the yarn shop. (:::taps fingers:::) I'm in the mood to finish Ben's sweater so I can start on Milo's. Did I mention how beautiful I find this yarn? I know I did. I'll say it again. So much so that I'm not contemplating making Max one in orange or red stripes and then having these sweaters be the sweaters we take their annual family portraits in. If I wait until Fall and get real portraits done (outside instead of in a studio), it could be a real keepsake. 'Cause I know as soon as I let them wear the sweaters to school they're going to come home with tempra paint on those white stripes and I'll have to shrug and say, "Oh, well. It's only a wool, mohair, and silk blend. No biggie." And since I'm definitely in the "wear it till it wears out" camp and not the "you take CARE of that HEIRLOOM I knit you!" category (meaning, I know you love it if it has tempra stains on it--but if it still looks beautiful a year after I gave it to you, I know it's been shoved in a drawer somewhere) I'm totally cool with that. But I'm not beyond holding the sweaters until they've been properly photographed before I let you wear them to school.

It's unnatural, my adoration of this yarn.

Speaking of yarn--so I finished that second baby sweater for Baby Oliver last week, pretty much AT the baby shower, right? We brought it home to block it and Charlotte discovered that it bleeds like nobody's business. After it was all dry I discovered that not only did it bleed, but it bled in such a way that the front was one big green blob and the back looked like it hadn't bled at all. That's even worse than having it bleed green everywhere. So I washed it again and it bled and bled and bled and . . .

Forget it! The label says it's machine washable. I machine washed it (in cold, I'm not a complete nimrod) with ordinary old Sam's club ($10 for one metric ton) detergent THREE times with the extra rinse cycle and ta-da! It seems to be done bleeding. I washed it with two yellow towels, a white and green table cloth, and a white table cloth--and none of them came out green, so . . . I think we're good to go. It's still more greenish than it started (there isn't a lot of bright yellow left) but it's a lot less green than it was after the first two washes, so I'm satisfied. One more day of drying and I'm mailing it to Baby Oliver's parents to deal with. At least we all know for sure that it's machine washable (in cold).

Max update. Max seems to be adjusting well to school. He hops out of the truck every morning and has a new best friend there (Little John). He went through a period there (that I totally predicted) where he had to learn a thing or two about How Classrooms Work (dude, you can't make that much noise here) and about What Fourth Graders Write (dude, one paragraph won't cut it). He is still the youngest (or one of the youngest) kids in the class. I think Little John might actually be a month or two younger than Max. Neither of them are the smallest in the class. They keep each other company as the two big, but a little immature, kids. That said, the teacher is stellar--totally keeps things in order, has big expectations for my guy, and isn't afraid to issue appropriate consequences as they are earned. I really appreciate this since one of my BIGGEST frustrations the first time around with public (I know this is a charter school, but . . . it's public, okay?) school was that the teacher seemed to locked Max into this little box in which she didn't EXPECT that Max could be this cooperative, productive, well-behaved child. This teacher was willing to take my word for it that he could be (plus, she'd seen some of that when I was with him during the day we observed) and she has made sure that he knows she knows he can be that kid. So, on more days than not, he is. God bless her for that. At any rate, as I had predicted, we're seeing a positive effect on his writing and he's getting beans for being good at math.

The Sister Missionaries came over yesterday and I was amused to see that neither of them really had a lot of experience with food storage--it's something their Mom does. One said, "I hope my Mom doesn't find out I'm doing this, she'll make me help with ours when I get home." They are such KIDS! So cute. At any rate, they helped me measure out 100 lbs of chicken broth into 1 and 1 1/2 lb bags (4 lbs fits in a mylar envelope, but since 1 tsp=1 cup of broth, noone can use that much chicken broth in a reasonable amount of time. So I cut the envelopes in half and we did smaller sacks. I have to go through tomorrow and see which envelopes didn't seal properly and re-do those, but the worst is done.) Now I can start calling people and get them to come get their stuff. Yay!

Alright, enough. Back to work. I have an office to clean and then I need to get cranking out some short a words.