The squirrels around here beg like dogs. Probably because we feed them peanuts to keep them out of our birdseed. This one was literally 18 inches from my face when I took the picture.

It’s going to be a looong day. Abigail was up at 5:30, Liv was up at 6:30, and Veronica, who is normally asleep until after 9, was up at 6:45.

Did I miss something? Is it Christmas?

I haven’t swatched any argyle yet, because I was distracted by the koigu.

Speaking of…. this may have already made it around Blogland, but since I haven’t been around Blogland much myself, I don’t really know.

Someone from my Yahoo group linked cashmere koigu. Can you imagine? Quite frankly, being mostly unfamiliar with cashmere, I can’t. But I want to.

So, Koigu. Abigail coerced me into turning one of my beautiful new skeins of koigu into fingerless mitts for an eight year old (herself).

Last week was ok. I still can’t find my scale, but I feel bigger. And that’s ok too. I’m going to do my sugar purge again between Halloween and Thanksgiving to regain some control. It will be good for me. In the past when I’ve done this, it’s helped me to enjoy the rest of the holidays like a sane person, eating in moderation because I’d killed the craving monster. My exception to this is going to be Nate’s birthday on Thursday, and a special pre-Thanksgiving dinner we’re going to on Saturday, to warmly send off some friends who are moving to Georgia.

Abigail and Olivia each have homework charts where they can put a star sticker on each day that they do their homework with a good attitude (no yelling, stomping, crying, dragging it out for 3 hours, etc). When they get 5 stickers, we go out on a mommy or daddy-daughter date.

I made myself an eating chart yesterday, so when I eat no sugar junk for the whole day, and I’ve made sure I’ve fed my body well, I get a star. My incentive at the moment is simply to have some success. And I’m not even talking about weight loss. I want to stick to something. I want to re-prove to myself that I’m capable of self control. I’m excited. I have one star already, and I’m going for two.

How are you doing?

Well, my laundry isn’t completely done, and I’m not moving to Fiji. It’s mostly done and put away. It’s very, very close. I have a load of delicates and a load of Clark’s clothes left. Nate helped, although he denies being concerned about Fiji. I think he should be very concerned.

I wasn’t able to even look at my needles yesterday, so there isn’t any more stocking progress to show, beyond the yellow cuff you saw yesterday.

I remember a particularly wonderful laundry day over a year ago, where I spent the entire day doing laundry. I’d put in a load, put one away, and sit and knit until it was time to rotate again. It was fantastic. At the end of the day, all the clothes and linens were clean and put away, and I had, in my mind, spent the day knitting. I’ll bet dinner was even in the crock pot before lunch. The day was that good. I remember thinking that this was by far the best way to do laundry, and quite justified. I intended to do it again. That was one laundry day over a year ago.

Why is that?

Right now I can sum it up in a word, and that word would be Clark. But before he was born, I still couldn’t manage it. However, in thinking about it, the 8 months before he was born I was too horribly sick to knit anyway. So that laundry day must have been shortly before the pregnancy and certainly before the moving insanity. Yup, must have been.

One day, I tell you. One day I will look forward to laundry day, because it will mean knitting. It will be synonymous. Isn’t that a happy thought? Doesn’t it make you want to sort dirty clothes right now?

Me neither. But it’s a good way to sweeten an inevitable and continuous chore.

So, knit-along day. What’ve you got? It sounds like some of you are discouraged and distracted. Tell us about it. Anyone have anything great? Finished?

I need to swatch some argyle still, and I leave you with a pretty picture of my mom’s birthday flowers.

If nothing else, in that weather, I don’t have to wear and therefore wash clothes. I’ve been trying to do laundry for weeks. Weeks. It’s driving me crazy.

I did take the time to start our next Christmas stocking last night while visiting with Hayden. Now don’t mock or laugh, I haven’t seen her in forever, thus last night, the laundry continued to wait.

My next step is the argyle. I’ve got some planning and swatching ahead of me. Oh yeah, and laundry.

Neat pattern. Soft and warm yarn.

I think if I were to knit them again, say, for me, I’d add an inch or so up the hand.

I like it in black.

I’m not going to talk about last week. It sucked in terms of Health Group.

Anyone have anything?

I’ve made some new plans and commitments to myself for this week, but after the humiliation of shirking the goals and commitments I made last week, I don’t have the heart to get into it here.

It’s so hard trying to be healthy and keep a house going and keep resistant kids going on homework and help out in class at school and feed everyone and carry and care for a baby all day and provide myself with some down time by knitting occasionally, or if it’s been a particularly trying day, just staring at the wall and and and….

On a happy note, we had an acorn woodpecker on our deck last week.

It was SO cool, it made us late for kindergarten.

Unfortunately, I have more to gripe about today. Some of which is knitting related, so if I have time later, I’ll post again.

Tell me what you’ve got. I haven’t started another stocking yet, I’ve had other knits on my plate.

A mom in Liv’s class has some weird health condition in which her body thinks she’s freezing to death at any temperature under 72 degrees, so it routes all of her blood to her vital organs and not to her limbs. She has to wear gloves all the time now to avoid her fingernails falling off and her hands eventually shriveling and dying, if I understand correctly. She was wearing those small, stretchy gloves you get at the grocery store, and was complaining about what a pain it is to wear gloves all the time. I asked her if she could wear fingerless mitts and she didn’t know what I meant.

Oh sweetie, let me show you a beautiful new world.

Janel blogged about Fetching, the fingerless mitts she was knitting, and I thought they might be a good fit for Mary. I emailed her the pattern, she liked it a lot, so I’m knitting with Cashmerino again.

Fetching is a one skein pattern, so I went to the yarn store intending to buy one skein for Mary, and one for me if I found a color I liked. I didn’t see a color for me, but I came home with so much more.

The very first yarn I ever fondled and strongly desired was alpaca, back when I was a newbie and didn’t even know what I was looking at/for. Six years later, I finally have a project in mind for alpaca. Don’t cringe, but I want leg warmers. Not decorative, wear over my pants, ’80s throwback leg warmers, but something lower profile that I can wear under my jeans or long skirt to keep cozy. Maybe in an eyelet rib or something. I don’t know, but it’s alpaca, it’s a fantastically dark, earthy green color, and it’s mine. Six skeins of sport weight and it’s about time, I say.

Also, this particular yarn store frequently has sinful and indulging amounts of Koigu. I usually say no, but Wednesday, I said yes.

This will start out as an earflap hat for Clark, hopefully one that buttons under the chin so he won’t pull it off. If when knit up it isn’t looking “boy” enough, I’ll appropriate it for socks. For me. Along with this

Which seemed destined for my feet the moment I saw it. In the form of cable ribs or something, at which point I will step into the world of toe up socks. I’ve never done them before, as I really enjoy making heel flaps and turns, but I want to use every gram of this beautiful yarn, so toe up seems like the way to go.

So I want to knit stockings again. I really do. But I need to finish the mitts for Mary, and I might dabble in alpaca a bit before I get there again.

I love these little frogs. When I was a kid, we had them in a bowl on the kitchen counter for many years. As an adult, I came to find out that the pet stores say they are “warm water” frogs, for heated aquariums only. Well, my personal experience wins out, and I have some in a bowl on my kitchen counter again.

I don’t know how they behave in an aquarium, but in a bowl of still water, they casually swim around. They like to hold air bubbles in their tummy and float on the surface of the water, then they burp and sink back to the bottom. I feed them freeze dried blood worms, and when they smell it, they paddle around on the surface, looking for food. My mom had a pair that you could hear sing under the water. They’re immensely cool. Clark loves to watch them.

Mine are thin and scrawny now as we’ve only had them for a couple weeks, but they’re already filling out, and soon they’ll be nice and thick.

I couldn’t get to sleep last night, so I stayed up until 1am finishing Abby’s stocking and looking at argyle charts.

I need to weave the duplicate stitch ends in still, but that’s it. I really like it.