Pulling.

sometimes i'm tempted to forget myself
jump back into the skirmish as a mercenary.
what little time my poor soul may have left
i'd rather that i lived it in sanctuary.
i don't take orders from the war room anymore
this is one recruit who's surrendered.
i don't take orders from the war room anymore
now i am my own defender.


I realized tonight that I've worked at JoAnn in Davenport longer than I worked at JoAnn in Rochester. I really do live here. How geeky that JoAnn is my barometer.

I think I need to go to St. Ambrose University for Early Childhood Development and then everything will be just fine. How could it not be? Ambrose is walking distance from my house. I could be there in less than ten minutes.

Happy Birthdays out to Alex, my sister, who is 21 today, and Sophia, one of my kindergarteners, who is 5.

I'm gonna fall asleep at the keys and I have to work in 8 hours. This is the LiveJournaliest entry ever. BYE.

Reassessing.

I know this is boring by now, but this is seriously how stupid I've gotten.

I got my order of Alexander Henry prints (tattoo, city girl, beauty bar, kissable color, & tsukiyo) from Denver Fabrics on Monday, yesterday at work I killed the bolt of pink skulls (flora de los muertos), because it is on sale and all of the sudden I grew terrified someone else was going to get it before I could, I'm working on making someone to go with me on a trip to get more (inked, etc.), and I'm on eBay right now looking at the AH offerings, contemplating some Bad Choices...

I think I need to make an Alexander Henry label for all these dunb posts. I've seen some pretty crazy quilters (and I've spent 45 minutes cutting their fabric) but this, to me, is weird. Never in all my crafting life have I had an obsession this bad, this single-minded, that I couldn't snap out of. It is not normal.

Does anyone else have a crafty crush that they simply cannot shake, that makes them do dumb, irrational things? Please say yes. I'll give you a prize if it makes me feel better about my addiction.

P.S. I do have a couple of projects in the works. I swear. All of the recent haul was bought with a destination in mind and that is no lie. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't make my heart pound and the blood rush to my head. I suppose it can't kill me but dang, it's, like, $8.95 a yard!

Falling.

Alone at home after school with the sun coming in through the curtains, the cats have been fed and are lounging contentedly, just the white noise of cars outside and birds that have built a nest in our fireplace chirping (don't ask). It's quiet. Peaceful. I want to pretend it's fall but I know that outside it's 86 degrees and Mississippi River Valley humid. It can be fall inside at my house, anyway.



I ran around like a lunatic all last week stressing about the brief ( nonetheless, short-notice) visit from A's family. I changed the sheets on the guest bed and went and did something else and this is how I found Norton upon my return to the spare room. It just made me laugh. He climbed into the blanket tunnel to escape the whirling crazy person tearin' it up all over HIS house. When we moved here, for the longest time he spent most of his days under that blanket, which was the bedspread at the time. He would not come out for nothin'. This went on for what seemed like forever.
"Hey, have you seen Norton?"
"Um, no. Check the futon."
Cat-shaped lump under the red blanket. Yep. And now that he's settled in, he is into everything. While I don't appreciate him knocking every object in sight off the kitchen counter, I felt sick knowing he was so uncomfortable he wanted to hide in bed all day. But he's all better now, and back to his old tricks.



So on my home inprovement binge, this happened and it's just as cute as I imagined it would be. I love when that happens. Mary Engelbreit's "Chair Of Bowlies" print, my salt & peppers, a can of red spray paint, and some homesewn aprons. It's my new favorite spot in the house. Bless A's heart for hanging that stuff for me. And powertools. Bless powertools.



We did a very grown up thing and got a mirror for over the fireplace. It's like, the thing to do. Nothing lights a quick-decorating fire under the arse like a visit from A's mother, no?



Knitting: The sistergloves grew fingers, spontaneously. It amazes me how creepy they look spread out on the table versus how classy they look on. But the ends need to be darned up and also it's astonishingly hard to photograph your own arm with results that even approach normal. It's hilarious, actually. Try it sometime.

Catching.

This is a cute little baby rabbit I spotted through the kitchen window, just chillin' out in the alley.


The dining room table needed a reminder that it is a dining table, not just dumping grounds for junk mail and bills. And thus, Baby's First Floral Arrangement. I broke a pair of scissors trying to trim the stem off a fake glob of hydrangeas. The orange flowers are from the only line of pretend flowers I like from the Fabric and Craft Hole (they look like calico to me and I decided I liked them long ago but was only able to bring myself to buy them because they were 50% off), and the yellow ones are from an odd bag I picked up at the DAV once that prompted my dearest Aaron to ask, "What are you going to do with all the funeral flowers?". The hurricane is from Pier One and the plastic citrus are yet another weird DAV find. No faux floral without irony here. OH, hell to the hell to the nooooo.



Hey this is hush hush but someone very chic and special is going to be 21 soon and needs her own pair of cashmere (OK, CASHMERE-BLEND) opera-length fingerless gloves with a scalloped edge and lacey travelling vine pattern (#135, VK Stitchionary Vol. 1, pg. 91). Cross your fingers that her sister can finish them in the next ten days and get them in the mail quickly.

OK, Knit Talk: I pored over the usual knitting library suspects (a book or two by the completely insane Nicki Epstein, etc.) and the difficulty in choosing a lace pattern was compounded by the fact that I needed one that could be simply translated to knitting in the round. I SO wanted to do the Nosegay with all the bobbles (there WILL be bobbles, make no mistake, whether she'll like them or not, so-help-me-Jesus) but only the patterns with the "rest rows" seemed within do-ability (I'm just knitting when I'd be purling if I were knitting flat). Has this happened to you?!! Am I weird?!! Don't most peeps prefer knitting in the round to avoid purling and seaming?? I also remember reading somewhere about the difference between "lace knitting" and "knitted lace" which to me is splitting hairs but I think I am knitting knitted lace. I don't have a good reason to give a damn one way or the other, I just want to make a nice prezzie for somone fancy on her birthday!!

Ummm, if I am not mistaken, SNL ought to be on at this time and yet there is pro-wrestling on my TV. I must be off to go rectify this situation. I will check you later, blog. Don't tell my sister you know what she's getting for her birthday. xoxoxox.

Melting.

There must be something wrong with me.

Innocently enough, as I occasionally do, this morning I checked the local NBC affiliate's website, KWQC.com, for the weather report. I walk most of the places I go. I like to know just how miserable I am going to be. Pretty effin' miserable:


WTF, IOWA?! WHAT FOR? WHO NEEDS THAT!! Ack ack ack, a thousand times, ack.

The weird part though, is that while most folks are currently experiencing cooking ennui, not I. Oh no. Since I got back, I swear the oven has been going going going and the little house has just been hotter than hot. But we've enjoyed lovely lasagna (see 7/27/07 for the Lasagna Show), some molasses cookies that promised soft and chewy but delivered cakey, Alton Brown's Good Eats Granola, samosas (Molly Katzen style), and today, easily 90 degrees out, I made banana walnut bread. It needed to be done. I added a sprinklin' of nutmeg and a generous dose of cinnamon and it's pretty awesome. Aaron keeps coming home saying "Hi peanut something smells good Jeeeeesus it's hot in here". Next up: SEITAN!

I've also started knitting the Twinkle Shopping Tunic from VK Holiday 05 out of some white Wool Ease Thick&Quick that I picked up from work for 97 cents a ball, crocheted a handful of granny squares AND I've completely fallen madly for the quilts of Kaffe Fassett (a topic for another post). There has to be some kind of seasonal disorder that explains why I am dreaming of blankets and knitting sweaters when the temperature of my house rivals that of the earth's core.