room to grow

As you may have gathered from the vacation photos, we had a lovely and relaxing time at the beach. Dirty sheep, upcoming fairs, rainy days, muddy dogs... all were blissfully miles and miles from my mind.

As you may have gathered from my silence this week, I came home from vacation and landed straight into the proverbial frying pan. This is fair week in our town, a.k.a. hell week. I love fairs as much the next person, but they are a lot of work, even with my peripheral involvement on this one.

We organized our exhibit entries (flower arrangements, vegetables from the garden, potted plants, oatmeal raisin cookies, tomato sauce) on Tuesday.

I pulled an educational display, entitled "How does a sheep's wool get made into yarn?" and complete with illustrative photos, out of my rear end yesterday.

I still have a fleece show to organize. That is tomorrow's problem.

We also have seven disgustingly filthy sheep to get ready for the big livestock show on Saturday, but I have discovered one decided advantage of the boys getting older: they can do things for themselves now, as long as I just get out of their way. I can't help them today, even if I wanted to, because I am working in my LSH's office. All on their own, they have already wrestled their show sheep out of the field and into the barn. They dealt with an escapee lamb without me even knowing about the problem. They set up the fitting stands in the barn, organized their equipment, fixed the clippers and got down to work.

I just need to remind myself from time to time to give them the room to impress me with their skills -- as their favorite movie character, Napoleon Dynamite, would put it.

tuesday quote

Sitting by the pool, under the overhang, trying to dry off while avoiding the inevitable rainstorm that blew in 5 minutes after my children jumped in:

Secondo: Primo, you have a mustache! Mom, did you see that Primo has a mustache?

Primo: So what? Mom has a mustache.

At this point, all three stare intently at my upper lip while I text-google the nearest salon for an emergency appointment.

re-entry is the hardest part

We returned late yesterday afternoon, and I am still not caught up...

with laundry...

with work...

with the collected mail...

with sleep...

and so on and so forth... but here's a representative sampling of vacation shots to keep you occupied while I dig myself out from under various piles.

away we go

I have spent the last three days getting ready to get the heck out of here. Supplies purchased, house cleaned, vet check (for the sheep shows taking place shortly after we return), laundry conquered, arrangements made, mail stopped, bags packed... The list, as usual, goes on and on.

But at the end, I had the sweetest part of all: deciding what yarn gets to come along with me for the projet(s) du vacation. (If you say the latter in a french accent it sounds even more vacation-y.)

I already knew that I had to bring along a lacy scarf project. I had the perfect (I hope) handspun to use, a single-ply spun two (or more? really need to start keeping better notes) years ago from a batt of Lincoln cross purchased from Barneswallow at Rhinebeck.

The socks that I have been working on, from my sock-of-the-month club; they are a very different construction, but almost at the point where I pick up the stitches and knit down the heel.

In case I get bored, more sock yarn: Plymouth Yarn's Happy Feet. This yarn was chosen for our wonderful, awesome vet; her visit this morning reminded me that this project has been aging for a bit, but that's OK because it really isn't needed until Christmas.

I don't have a pattern chosen for this yarn, so I'd better bring my best resource book for sock patterns, plus another book to help me remember how to kitchener the toes (because of course I will get to the toes in at least one pair! plus I need to kitchener together the body of the first pair).

I need a little mindless knitting, so that baby blanket from the ball field is coming along; only three balls of yarn to go, so I should easily finish that up on the 8 hour car ride. (In case you are worried that I am going to blind the baby it's intended for, let me assure you that it isn't really that neon orange, more of a fall russet. Which isn't really a baby color, I know, but what can I say, they live in New York City.)

And I had better bring along a little charity knitting, because I am behind on my projects for that particular cause.

Plus all the little supplies that I might need...

Et voila! (One might think that I am going to France, what with all this francais, but one would be wrong.) I manage to jam all the projects neatly into one bag, but no room for all the novels I am going to read as well.

I am sure I will get through all this, and probably have need to visit the local yarn and book store to tide me over until I return in one week.

What's that you say? What happened to the sweater I intended to knit to keep me warm while there? La la la, can't hear you right now, too busy humming with the joy of getting away for a bit. I'll have to fill you in on that particular disaster when I return, but one thing's for sure: it's not coming with me.

soggy stitch n pitch

One of my LSH's brilliant ideas this summer was to invest in a ticket package for our local baseball farm team. It is a great deal that includes six games and free meals. (The stadium really makes out on our deal because the free food is only an appetizer for our kids, who end up consuming an amazing amount of junk food during the game.)

I agreed to go to all the games, provided that (1) I was allowed to knit during the games and (2) no one would give me flak about said knitting. An agreement was reached and the tickets were purchased.

Tonight was our third game, and guess what the weather prediction was? That's right, more rain, but this time with the exciting possibility of hail stones. We couldn't miss such an opportunity, so we headed down to the ball field, me with my latest knitting project in tow.

We had just settled into our seats with our free hot dogs, when the clouds started looking pretty ominous...

Before we even had the chance to sing the Star Spangled Banner, out came the tarp, and just in time too.

The heavens opened, and we were forced onto the concourse with everyone else. Terzo was pretty amazed to see Santa Claus was in attendance incognito. Not wanting to offend anyone, he was openly supporting both teams playing, as the Thunder is a farm team for the Yankees, but they were playing a Phillies affiliate.

I managed to do a little knitting while standing there (I was wishing I had brought along a sock instead of a baby blanket), but we finally made it back to our seats.

A few rounds of YMCA and some Crackerjack while they de-tarped the field...

Finally! Stitching while some pitching was going on!

But in the second inning, we felt more drops, and we beat a hasty retreat to our car. Final score: three hits*, several outs, wet shoes, unfinished knitting project, untallied number of dollars spent in keeping kids entertained while we waited for game to start. The kids were unanimous that this was the best game they had attended yet, which just goes to show you that I know nothing about what might please my kids.

* ETA: I have just been informed, by Primo reading over my shoulder, that there was, in fact, only one hit. Apparently you have to make it on the base safely for it to count as a hit; it doesn't count if you are thrown out (or whatever the technical baseball term is). Goes to show you that I know even less about baseball.

rain, rain, go away

Dear Heavens:

I love a good rainy day. Indeed, I think it would be hard to find someone who is more enamored of being stuck inside, even on a summer day, while the rain beats on the roof. I didn't even complain -- much -- when it poured every day during our summer vacation in Vermont last year.

But I've had enough. Uncle. You win. Please send us some dry sunny days, so our veggies can grow and we can mow the raggedly lawn and my kids can take advantage of the pool membership I splurged on this year so they wouldn't drive me crazy in my own house now that they are home for the summer.

Thank you,

Your Biggest Fan
(who will try not to complain too much when the drought hits)

say what?

Seen on a bumper sticker, next to a picture of a confederate flag (not exactly common in this state, but can still be seen in some pockets):

Fate denied us victory

but deemed us

glorious immortality

Unfortunately I was too busy trying to make sure that my eyes were not playing tricks on me to take a picture as proof, and before I knew it the light had changed.

Is it just me, or does this make NO sense whatsoever? (Leaving aside the historical sentiment, mind you; I am just talking about grammatical structure here.)

I was so sure that it must be a typo that I had to come home and google it. Surely it must have said glorious immortally, which still isn't great but represents an improvement on the original.

Nope. It is apparently based upon the following quote, which I was unable to accurately source: "Fate denied us victory, but crowned us with glorious immortality." Now that does make some sort of sense (again, focusing strictly on the grammar).

But that is not what is on thousands of T-shirts and bumper stickers. Sheesh. Seems like it might have been more than luck that cost them the war.