The Big Question

My son has a new friend from school, I’ll call him Billy.  He lives in the neighborhood across the field from us, and the boys are able to easily trek to each other’s house.  I met Billy’s mother several weeks ago and found her very likable.  We have daughters a year apart and I found myself thinking we should get together for coffee or a playdate.  But I had a nagging thought half the time we were chatting, I had to actually fight off the urge to ask her if she knits.  I didn’t want it to be awkward if she said no.  But now every time I see her it bugs me, I am dying to know if does or doesn’t!  Does it matter?  Will I think less of her?  Will I still want to get to know her better?  Do I like my non-knitter friends less? (No, of course not, they’re just less fun to take to a yarn shop.)    I have to find a way to weave the question politely and non-threateningly into the next conversation, before I go insane.  Maybe if she says “no” it will be followed by, “But I’ve always wanted to learn!”

In weather related news . . .

We’re anxiously awaiting a huge snowstorm here in Iowa.  4-6 inches, 8-10, 12-14, where she stops, nobody knows!  But I’m pretty sure we’ll get some sledding time in sometime tomorrow!  Hurray!

Happy Winter!

Yardsale SCORE!

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DH thought I’d lost my mind a couple months ago when I asked him to stop by a local yard sale in the heart of our city’s  ghetto (it’s Iowa, how bad do you think it could be!)  to check out this hunk of junk. It was in need of much love. I’m amazed I saw the potential in it, normally I don’t visualize well. I offered the sale guy $25 for it and he countered with $40. We met in the middle and DH hauled it home. I spent last Saturday in the yard giving it love and am quite proud of how it turned out. Martha I ain’t, but man did I do good this time. Yay!

I am still kicking myself for not buying a beautiful handcarved organ about 10 years ago.  The people at the sale said, “we don’t like it and if it doesn’t sell we’re busting it up and making shelves out of it.”  I wanted it, but it was about $100 and I couldn’t justify the space it would take up.  It still makes me sad.  Shelves!  What a bunch of idiots.

Also, Update for gardenmommy: Paypal rocks and refunded all but $20 of my $242 I spent for the silverware which never arrived. I love paypal. Also, I still have no Elann.com babysilk in olive.  I am at least one skein short due to my mistake of not realizing a difference in yarn weight.  Icarus is about 2/3 finished and hopefully Elann will get more like they promised. No luck yet.  The person who offered up her remainder hasn’t been heard from again.  She must have used it all.  If anyone out there has any to part with, I’ll happily pay for it.  I’m not desperate yet, but getting close. 

Happy Birthday Jean Bean!  I’ll be eating brownies, drinking a dew and thinking of you!

Thankful

I am thankful for…

 a long holiday weekend to spend with family, wonderful spring-like weather in NOVEMBER, my sweet hard-working  husband, our cozy home, healthy kids,  my parents who have always been there when I needed them, our neighbors who work with us to clean up both of our yardsful of leaves every fall, my new job which has enabled me to save money for Christmas (and my dream spinning wheel), my understanding boss who allows me to still be a full-time mom, my health and keen eyes and nimble fingers which allow me to knit to save my sanity (thank you God!),  my dear friends near and far , my really red merino socks I knitted a few months back which I thought sucked at the time, but now I am totally in love with now that they’re on my feet.   

And now, a recipe.  I took this recipe to our turkey day gathering and it was a hit.  I found it online and was so amazed at how awesome it was.  I’m taking it to the Christmas gathering too!

Maple Glazed Yams and Cranberries

4 pounds yams, peeled, cut into 1 inch pieces

1 cup pure maple syrup

1/3 cup butter, melted

1 12 oz bag fresh cranberries

1/2 tsp. salt (i use sea salt)

1.  preheat oven to 350 deg..  Cook yams in large pot of boiling salted water 5 minutes.  Drain; transfer to 13 x 9 x 2 baking dish (glass); add cranberries.  Blend syrup, butter, orange peel and salt in small bowl; pour over yams and cranberries; toss to coat.

2. bake uncovered until just tender, stirring and basting occasionally.  Bake until yams are very tender and juices from thick glaze (won’t really thicken until removed from oven!) about 45 minutes. 

My note: make sure you don’t slice the potatoes or cut in very small pieces because it will end up mushy after the baking. This recipe is mildly sweet and tart, totally perfect with turkey, totally different from the boring marshmallow topped canned yams my mother normally serves.  Let me know what you think!

Sweet Relief

The two day craft fair that was making my life a living hell for the past few weeks is finally over.  I’m happy to report it was a smashing success for my soap business.  It’s such a great feeling of relief to be done with it.  I was so stressed out on Thursday night last week that I broke out in hives, and again on Friday.   Once I got there and set up I was fine.  Procrastination has always my M.O. whether it was college, housework, soap business, etc.  Maybe I need to rethink that.   I would not have been so stressed if I’d been prepared earlier. 

The soldier socks are coming along and I am determined to get them done quickly so I can get busy on Christmas gifts.  What was that I was saying about procrastination? 

I gotta share this dream I had the other day.  I have characters from my past that repeatedly appear in my dreams.  One of them is an old boyfriend. Old in the sense that he’s from my past, and old in the sense that he’s eleven years older than I am.  Usually in my dreams he is not friendly to me and I usually end up telling him off, or in the most gratifying dreams, punching him until the blood flows.  In this particular dream it began as usual, with him acting creepy and pretending he didn’t recognize me.  Then suddenly he asks me go accompany him into a room where we’re alone.  He propositions me and I’m repulsed.  Then he says, “What would it take for you to consider it?”  Instantly the thought pops into my head.  For $600 I could have the spinning wheel of my dreams.  Then, thank God,  I woke up. 

I am a sick, obsessed puppy.

New FOs!

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I am so excited to finally get the Mystery Birthday Socks done and shipped to my good buddy Jean. My biggest fear is that they’re too big. And hopefully she also won’t notice that one leg is a bit longer than the other. Isn’t that the charm of handknit gifts? Also in the package was junior’s hat. The pattern was “Dotty” and came from Itty Bitty Hats. That book is awesome. Great patterns for wee ones. Okay, that’s it till after the craft fair. I’m swamped. Just had to share the knit joy.

Annual Craziness

I’m a nutcase getting ready for the New London craft show.  Any locals out there?  It’s Friday night 5:30-8pm and Sat 8am-2pm.  It’s kind of a cool show.  One woman makes these quilted pillows I just love.  Another woman makes these bags in the Vera Bradley style. 

I’ve got two weeks of work to do for the show and one week to do it in.  Pardon me for being absent from here this week.  It’s not pretty.  I should be off packaging soap right now instead of sitting here.  On top of everything I had the most perfect post and I swear to God it just deleted itself before my very eyes.  WordPress is run by ass monkeys.

Come see me at the craft show.  I’ll be the one knitting enormous white soldier socks for ’socks for soldiers’.  And if you can’t make it, go order up some soap and lotion sticks for some people on your list.  They’ll think you’re cool.  The holiday soaps go quick, so don’t wait too long.  My favorite is Frankincense and Myrrh! 

See you next week. 

When Square Pegs Go to School

Tonight we had parent-teacher conferences at the kids’ school.  I knew two of the three would be good so I didn’t need a Valium before I went.  I did, however, need one afterwards.  Middle son is still struggling in third grade.  He’s bright, witty, a joy to be around, and his teachers have all said the same.  His problem is focusing on the work long enough to complete it.  He is learning the third grade material and can regurgitate it if required to verbally, but written tests and papers are dragging down his grades.  Yet, when his teacher calls on him when he seems to not be paying attention (which is his normal state in the classroom), he knows the answer.  Unfortunately,  method used in the public school system for evaluating student’s progress 99% of the time is written homework and written tests.  They cannot make exceptions for him unless we get him on the ’special education’ path, which we’re evaluating.  The one blessing in all of this is that he has none of the behavior issues which sometimes accompany attention issues, so he is not a disturbance in the classroom.

All of this is not news, we went through it all last school year.  My feelings of helpless is increasing and I don’t know how to help my child.  Last spring we had him tested through the school district and they said he was borderline ADD.   I am not sure I believe it, but I do believe he is different than most kids in his class (most of them are medicated for ADD or behavior problems).  I have received all kinds of advice from other parents from ‘get his eyes tested’ to ‘take milk out of his diet’, to ‘relax, he’ll be a normal, well-adjusted adult in the end”.   I’m nearly at my wits end. 

How do I help my child succeed in school without medicating him?  How can I give this issue the 100% of my time in the evenings to help him with homework when I have two ‘normal’ children who also need help?  How will he get through this without his self esteem destroyed?  (He already calls himself ’stupid’. Amazingly, he never complains about going to school and enjoys school.)  How is he going to progress through elementary, middle and high school if he cannot perform the required work of homework and test-taking?  How will he go to college?  How will he ever hold a job?  These questions keep me up at night.  And just about the time I feel confident that it will all work out okay somehow we have another conference. 

Evil Voting Technology

I try to keep up with technology, and I’m all for doing my civic duty of voting .  But what’s wrong with paper ballots?  I voted today and now resolve to take the paper ballot option next time I vote.  Earlier this year I had no problem using the electronic ballot.  This time, however, it wasn’t so easy.  Each time I pressed “Next” to page on, it beeped but did not change.  It took two or three times to get it to change to the next page.  Then, later when I had to select “no more than five” for a particular conservation board in my county (and only four were running), I selected all four.  On the summary at the end it said “No vote cast” on that particular section.  I have no idea if my vote actually registered for that selection.  If the position was for governor or other state level position I think I would have asked for help.  How many other people have problems with electronic voting and do not report them?

I am fairly comfortable with technology but from now on I will choose a paper ballot.  There is less room for error, there is a ‘paper trail’ to follow, and in the this case, it would have been a faster method of voting. 

There was an elderly woman next to me in the voting area.  She chose the electronic method and in the early stage of my voting process I felt so proud of her.  She was showing she could keep up with the times and was being very brave I thought.  By the time I was done casting my ballot I felt sorry for her and wondered how she could manage getting through the process.

How will you vote today??

Attention Murderers and Meth-heads

After a morning browsing books at the library used book fair and half-assed cleaning my house, I’m spending the afternoon waiting for a shipment of lye to arrive.  I spent way too much time last week on-line and on the phone trying to track down a sizable quantity (for the right price) for the soap business.  Most people have no idea how easy it is to obtain lye, and why it shouldn’t be so easy. Lye has a long history of being used in soap-making, but there are many other uses.  Did you know you could dissolve nearly anything organic, including a human body in a vat of lye-water?  You probably know it’s a fabulous environmentally friendly drain cleaner, but did you know it’s a key ingredient for making meth?  And last week I learned a new one; a sweet little German-American grandmother uses a weak lye solution to make soft pretzels.  Who knew?

One thing I noticed when trying to locate lye in my area several years ago was that I could buysmall quantities in the drain-cleaner section of a walmart or grocery store.  Not anymore.  The meth-makers have ruined that option for me.  I quickly graduated to buying bulk lye, so I wasn’t too affected.  But in three years the price of lye has tripled, mostly due to demand from meth-makers I believe.  I’ve noticed that the suppliers play games witht their pricing. One supplier quoted a price of 11 pounds for the same price another supplier quoted for one hundred pounds.  Another interesting fact is that aside from general questions from suppliers, not one questioned me extensively about my intentions, required ID, or mentioned any restrictions on the sale of lye to discourage meth-making.  I expected to be required to sign my life away and end up on some watch-list or something.  Not even close.  One supplier emailed saying, “this formulation of lye can be dissolved in methanol”.  When looking up methanol online I found it’s used to make meth.  So I supposed she wanted to let me know I was buying the right thing if I was making meth.  And the company I’m buying it from is so kind that they’re delivering it directly to me from another town with no added fee.  I suppose that is because of hazardous chemical regulations, but I thought it odd.  If I was a meth-maker how nice it would be to have it delivered to me in case I got pulled over on the way home.   

Another chemical used to make meth, anhydrous ammonia, has been disappearing from fertilizer supplier’s backlots by the tankfull for years.    Huge tanks would just vanish overnight, being stolen by those intending to make meth with it.  Recently it was announced that a harmless additive has been included in the tanks (and tanks labeled accordingly) to make the chemical ineffective for meth making. Now they’ve noticed they’re not being stolen anymore and they don’t even have to lock them up!  I’m half-expecting them to do the same thing to lye.  And if they do it could render it useless in soapmaking.   There will always be soapmaking websites who sell it for $10 per pound, but that isn’t cost effective for me.   

It pisses me off that I have to pay more for this material because of idiot meth-heads.  It annoys me that our government isn’t requiring tighter regulation of the chemical.  They can make it nearly impossible to buy Sudafed, but they can’t regulate bulk sale of lye?  What a crock.  I should shut up, if they get tough on lye sales, I’ll be out of business.

Halloween Fun

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We had such a great time last night tick or treating. It was pretty chilly, but we are die-hards so out we went.  We ended up at my sister’s for chili, bread spiders, mummy dogs, and caramel apple-rum drinks. A good time was had by all.  I could hardly drag my ass out of bed this morning.  Trick or treating is hard work.