Open Enrollment Fun

You know this isn’t fun really. I’m already considered a snob by a good chink of my friends for sending my daughter to Price Lab School. Now I’m a snob for fighting to keep it open. Soon, I’ll prove them right by sending her to an out of town school in a different district. Cuz I totally want to drive 10 miles one way just to get her into a school. It’s all about me.

Gag.

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Excited

I can’t wait to get the yarn from the reddit yarn exchange. I need some inspiration to do a new project!

Honest to god

Doesn’t like getting dirty. Doesn’t like trying even remotely hard to accomplish things as yet unlearned. Doesn’t like finding something to do solo. Doesn’t like being outside.

That’s my kid.

What does she like? Being entertained constantly. No, not tv. That doesn’t even cross her mind.

I’m fighting a losing battle that ends in my unhappiness, her unhappiness, and lots of fighting and frustration along the way.

I’ve just ordered her outside. She claimed to get an injury on the way out. From a flip-flop. This caused excessive whining. Then she whined “Mommy, will you please watch me play because I need you to watch me while I play.” and I went on a totally inappropriate tirade, directed at her, about how I don’t need to actually be staring at her for her to have fun, and if she can’t have fun without being watched blatantly, then she should damn well find something else to do. Then I told her to get outside and do something.

I feel awful. I feel frustrated. And, most of all, I’m about ready to kill her over something that is so stupid.

But I don’t wahhhhh-naaaa!

Normally, my daughter says things that sound like the title of this post. It’s the duty of children everywhere to be happy enough in life to spend a large chunk of it complaining and whining.

But this isn’t about that.

I haven’t crocheted in a while. Why? Well, in the nutshell, I’ve been spending all my time working on trying to keep my daughters school from being shut down by some very near-sighted and mismanaged government entities. The details aren’t important right now. What is important is that I’m exhausted. Completely and utterly exhausted. I’m pretty sure I can blame the illness I’ve got right now, which includes full-on laryngitis, on the stress this crap is causing me to go through.

I spend my days working on this, until my kid gets home from school (the one that’s closing), at which point people contact me and I spend even more time working on this. Then, the weekend comes, and my hard-working husband is around 24/7, and he wants me to help him work on this. I want to scream and say, “Haven’t I done enough? Don’t I get a break!?”

I know I’ve done other things in the last couple of weeks. Not just working on this save-our-school project, but it doesn’t feel like it. Not at all. And it seems like everyone else is working on it, but not all day every day, because they have jobs, and children at home during the day, and other things to distract them. I’ve got none of that.

Nothing but crochet. Which is what I should be doing to relax.

But then I’d feel bad for not doing everything to save-our-school.

BTW, please help us save-our-school.  

Department of Redundancy Department

Have I mentioned I’m tying to use up stash yarn?

Now you know.

One Crazy (Groovy) Blanket Complete

So this project was mostly taken from the Groovyghan pattern. I was working towards using up the tons and tons (and tons!) of stash yarn I have lying around the house. I didn’t come close to using it all up. I think that, while it’s got some issues (the stitching mostly) considering it didn’t get made with yarns that match at all and not all of the yarns are the same weight, it turned out pretty well. It’ll make a very good cozy afghan to sit under on a chilly day.

Oh, and now I’m going to try to use up more stash yarn with another afghan. Bulky yarn log cabin style afghan. One with completely mismatched colors!

A pretty crazycool afghan

A pretty crazycool afghan

Teaching Crochet, Which Makes Me Think About Learning Crochet

I’m about to go over to a good friends house and teach her how to crochet in the round.

I mostly taught myself to crochet. My grandma taught me, sort of, when I was a teenager. I was a teenager, so I didn’t really try that hard to work at getting it down well, and I became frustrated after finishing my first project, a scarf I made for my boyfriend. It didn’t look that good, and he never wore it. When I last saw it, as I recall, it was in a dresser drawer of his at his Dad’s house. He probably burned it. But that’s another story.

Later I decided to try to crochet again, so I got myself a Crochet-for-Dummies-type book and relearned the whole process. I think I’ve gotten pretty good at it, and it seems others think I’m good enough at it to ask me to teach them.

I suppose the next thing would be writing down some patterns for some of the projects I’ve made up. But I rather like the idea that I figured something out as I went, without pattern, and that the product will be the only one like that.

I didn't make this, but it is awesome.

I didn't make this, but it is awesome.

Warm Winter W….

As I sit here, about to write a little something-something about how relaxing it is to be making an afghan in the wintertime, getting all prepared to be all zen with my observations, the goddamned UNI Alert System starts whistling and talking to me from the large speakers located all over campus and the city tornado sirens start wailing. After all, it is 11am on the last Wednesday of the….

Wait. It’s the LAST Wednesday of the month, isn’t it? >> checking my calendar >> Bah. I’m a day behind. I was all prepared to be indignant about everyone else getting the date wrong. Oh well. I’m sure I will find something else to direct my bile at later today.

Anywho, I have this crazy afghan here. I’m sitting underneath it, feet up, crocheting away. It is patchwork, to say the least. And it keeps getting larger since I keep adding things on.

Crazy Photo of Crazy, but Lovely, Blanket

The point, originally, was to use up stash yarn. Apparently I have way more stash yarn lying around than I thought I did. I could make several more of these. If I do, I’ll want to do it while it’s still winter (barely, around these parts this year!).

To keep my feet warm.

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Little Aliens

I can’t help but see rows of 80s style video game aliens in this basic shell pattern. Either that or rows upon rows of colorful bats.

Or spiders. Maybe it’s spiders. I like spiders. Most of the time anyway.

This will be part of an afghan I’m making from stash yarn. I’ve got so much I’ll probably have to make another when I’m done with it.

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