Busy Days Present and Past

We're in Birthday Month, here at Chez Things. My original plan was to have four girls, all born in the month of March, so we could just have one big family blowout. The plan worked well for Thing 1, as you've already seen, but subsequently fell apart a bit more. But Spouseman and I still have our March birthdays, and now I'm all of 44. Yay. Or not, depending on my mood. I received a fantastic gift from my husband, a Dunder-Mifflin bathrobe. His birthday is tomorrow, so I have to make the best carrot cake. This birthday of mine, cresting middle age as it were, has made me rethink some things and like most Americans, I plan to exercise more.

I also plan to knit more, and spin more, and I have actual evidence of that. As I noted before, spinning the bamboo more finely seemed to solve many of the problems I was having with it.


I think I'm going to go ahead and ply it with that chocolate merino I've been making into the three-ply sock yarn, and then it will a) make more yarn and b) make bouncier yarn, with memory. It sure is pretty, and it makes me want to start spinning the green alpaca/bamboo mix rightthisminute. Patience is not my strong suit, hence my affinity for knitting. Got to learn what doesn't come naturally!

I love the yarn I'm using for the Pearl Buck Swing Jacket, I love the pattern, and I want the sweater. It's perfect for spring and summer here, it's soft, and it was just sitting in pieces -- missing a back -- in the yarn room/closet. So I literally said to myself, "It's not brain surgery, and if other people can knit it, so can you." (Duh.) So I brought the equipment and the pattern and am just going through it, noting those places where the ominous phrase "at the same time" appears before actually needing to. Progress.


Thing 4 has been working on drawing circles.

Now when I'm done with that, all I have to do is locate the missing yoke piece.

And I have at least two sweaters I'm desperate to get to -- the Cobblestone for my sister (can I do it by her birthday?) and my Kauni cardigan. Motivation is a beautiful thing.

The Barfghan which is supposed to be an album of my handspun also keeps growing. My family and friends are referring to it as "the intestine." Lovely.

It's the easy project -- but I don't always have yarn for it, of course. I'm playing catch up. My hope is that over time "funky" will overcome "barfy" as the appropriate adjective for this project. I think the circles may actually be Easter eggs.


Yesterday was the annual homeschooler's Trip Through Time history fair. It's such a kick -- projects about a completely eclectic range of "history" -- money, beekeeping, "mistakes that worked," fashion for women, pancakes, Paul Revere -- just the best about homeschooling. The participants are encouraged to have something interactive for their audience to do or try, and very few projects looked like the parents had actually done it. It was just the shot in the arm I needed. My kids did good work without much complaining. Thing 2 talked and presented about bread through the ages. Later, at home, she ground wheat into flour using rocks. . .


Thing 3, of course, did a section on knights with a model of a quintain for learning to joust. Here he is with Thing 4's best friend:


And Thing 1 did a sort of toss-off about waffles, but she got to hand them out with whipped cream and discovered that there were parties called "waffle frolics" in the late 1700s which simply cracked me up.


So I'm in a pretty good place right now for a middle-aged lady. I hope you are having a day full of spring, no matter what the weather.