It’s that time of year again

‘Tis the season for sniffles, runny noses, coughs, and fevers. It’s officially germ season. And my kids are infected big time. Baby girl is on her third round of antibiotics since December 29th. When she gets finished with this one, she will have been on antibiotics for 30 of the past 35 days. First it was a single ear infection, then a double ear infection right on the heels of the first, and now strep. She could really use a break. The boy was fortunate to get strep too so now they are both on meds. But between the illnesses and school being closed for a week due to icy roads, you can imagine what a fun month this has been. I started wondering if maybe I was experiencing some sort of delayed PPD, but after a couple of days of crying and feeling sorry for myself, I snapped out of it and started making a conscious effort to be more positive about the things that were going wrong around me. And I started feeling a lot better. But it’s starting to look like things are on the upswing and the kids are starting to feel better and hopefully (knocks on wood, crosses fingers, says prayer) we will all be going back to daycare/school/work tomorrow. Wish us luck!

Also, thank you for all the nice comments regarding my dog. It really means a lot to me and I’m sorry I haven’t responded to everyone. I’m really handling it better than I thought I would, but then I have loads of things to keep me busy so I don’t think about it as much. The hardest part has been explaining the concept of death to my son. He didn’t seem sad at all, but he definitely didn’t seem to understand. He kept asking when Oscar was coming home. We tried all the gentle ways to explain it, but finally I just thought I’d be brutally honest. I told him Oscar was dead and never coming back. He thought about it for a while and then asked, “Who killed him?” I said, “Nobody, honey. He was just old and sick and he died.” Then he asked, “Did a policeman shoot him?” (Apparently we need to monitor the television a little better.) I tried to explain that death was just a part of life, and that sometimes animals (and people) get old and sick and die. And then we took a walk today and passed a woman walking her dog. He told her that her dog was pretty and that our dog was dead. So maybe he gets it now.

Lookie - I made yarn

Sort of. Because KatyaR was eager to pass on another fiber obsession, she gave me some gorgeous targhee roving at Christmas and brought over her Babe spinning wheel and gave me spinning lessons. And y'all, spinning is hard. My first three attempts are pictured below.

Attempt 1 is greatly overspun, 2 is mostly underspun, and 3 is a nice mixture of the two. She brought over tons of practice fiber so that I can try to get the hang of it before spinning the good stuff she gave me at my birthday or Christmas, but I'm a little afraid that I will blow through the practice fiber and still suck. So stay tuned and we'll see if I can get the hang of it.

In addition to the fiber, she also brought me this:

It's sock yarn that she dyed herself! She calls this colorway Holiday and I can't wait to see how it knits up. I love the label she made for it too. Behind it is a heavy worsted wool hank that she spun herself with my little princess in mind. The colorway is called Muppet Guts (named by the lady who dyed the roving) and there's about 320 yards here, which I think is perfect for the cardigan on the cover of this book.

There were some other gifts as well and I'm extremely embarassed because my gift to her paled greatly in comparison, but my absolute favorite things are these:


They are adorable little clay stitch markers that she bought from this seller on Etsy. (LOVE Etsy!)

I'm telling you, she ROCKS! You know what else rocks? This stuff:

Brought all the way from Houston by my good friend, Kim. Take a cracker and put a little cream cheese and a small dollop of this stuff on it and you have Heaven on a cracker.

Thank you, guys! I love ya!

We've been stuck at home for a few days because of this:

I know it doesn't look like much, but underneath the snow/sleet mixture is an inch of ice. Oklahoma is full of idiot drivers on a good day, so you can imagine what ice does to our city. It pretty much shuts down. I know all over the country, they must be laughing their asses off, but trust me, it's safer if we just all stay home. The kids have been pretty good so far (knock on wood) so I'm getting a little bit of knitting done and have been able to tackle a couple of cleaning/reorganizing projects as well. One of the reorgaizing projects was to get all my yarn into one place. I was astonished at how much yarn I have. So I have decided to join Wendy's Knit From Your Stash this year.


I will follow her rules except I will try to refrain from even buying sock yarn. That shouldn't be too hard seeing as how I have enough sock yarn to keep me going for a couple of years. And that's good because knitting helps me relax and I'm all about relaxing here lately, but that's a post for another day.

Stay warm out there!