Thank you for another splendid season of our favorite show.
But seriously. What were you thinking?
I do hope you didn’t shoot your ratings in the foot. I don’t really see how you’ll recover, but I know you’ll try. You could start by sending Cora to see Dr. Clarkson. I fear she may stroke out from all those simpering side-long glances.
Very Truly Yours,
Anna
Well, it’s almost over, but Happy Valentine’s Day anyway. I’m popping in to wish you cookies and milk!
And while I’m here I have three little tidbits for you. ‘Cause I LUV ya!
Have a good weekend!
XOXO,
Anna
We made the trek to the Big City yesterday to visit TheFirstChild and SweetiePie. We had two main reasons for visiting:
The first reason was to give SweetiePie her very belated birthday presents. If you’ll recall, a few weeks ago, I showed you a knitting project. In late December, I took a class and learned how to double knit. Double Knitting involves using both hands and it was a BIG challenge for me. I’ve never been able to use my left hand effectively. Years ago, when we lived in Germany, I used to ride the train to work everyday, watching ladies knitting on the train in continental style. It seemed so much faster than the old English method of throwing the yarn. I tried and tried to teach myself continental style to no avail. Fast forward 30 years, and now I can knit with both hands!
Ha. I’m not very good at it yet (and I’m VERY slow), but I’m thinking I’ll give continental style a try again. Anyway, this project was for a Cowl from the pattern Double Knit Three: Dots, Spots & Arrows by Hilary Smith Callis. Here’s the outside of the cowl.
Double knitting is pretty cool — it produces a reversible piece of knitting. Every other stitch belongs to the other side. Did that make sense? For example, the odd stitches are knitting the outside and the even stitches are knitting the inside. Here’s the inside. you can see that I was having tension issues here and there, but hopefully I’ll get better.
I love the feel of double knitting — two soft, plush layers. I’m not sure I’ll ever knit anything terribly big with this method though — it is rather tedious. Here’s SweetiePie modeling her new cowl. We probably should have artfully placed it around her neck, but we were in a hurry and goofing off.
The reason we were in a hurry was because the boys were waiting on us. Which brings us to the second reason we were visiting the kids – to relive a piece of the boys’ childhood. Sadly, TheSecondChild couldn’t be with us. When the boys were little, they loved watching Top Gun. TheFirstChild was obsessed with it. We had little die-cast jet fighters to prove it and SweetiePie has told me that she refuses to watch the DVD version with TheFirstChild because he annoyingly recites all the lines. (Happily, SweetiePie, agreed to come along with us this time.) When I told TheSecondChild that we were going to go see the re-released IMAX 3D version, he laughed at me. Then he reminded me that I used to fast forward through the sex scenes and how could we possibly watch it in a theater where I didn’t have control? Yes, what a dilemma — I’m sure they’ve never seen those scenes before. When the time came, I made them cover their eyes.
We had a great time. TheFirstChild even commented he didn’t remember all the sexual overtones in the movie. I didn’t either. Obviously, speeding through the big scenes worked — and the spoken lines were over his head at the time. Bad Mother! Ah well, he doesn’t seem to have been damaged from it. The minute the music for the movie started, I could see my little 4-yr.old running around the house chanting “I feel the need…the need for speed!” How fun to go back and re-live those moments with my little boy.
One last photo for you. We were back in a corner of the theater taking pictures and laughing. SweetiePie pulling her model schtick and me snapping away. This was the best we could do for the sultry, pouty lip shot because we were laughing too hard.
So. A wonderful weekend in ThimbleannaLand. I hope you’ve had a good weekend too!
XOXO,
Anna
Hey there! Do you remember this cute little mouse that lives at MyDadLovesMeBestSister’s house?
Yeah? Well, we’re not talking about that kind of mouse. Noosireee. A few days ago, PaulKitty started acting funny. We’d find him staring at the wall for no reason. I told TheManoftheHouse that there must be something in there. (Knowing full well exactly what “something” meant.) Then, TheManoftheHouse found Paul Kitty staring at the pantry door. It does look kind of funny.
So, he opened the door and he saw it. IT dashed from the potato bin to hide behind the crockpot. But he couldn’t find it and he had stuff to do, so he left PaulKitty in charge. And then we sort of forgot about it. The next morning, both kitties were staring at the washer and dryer.
Clearly, our kitties are useless housekitties. Cassie and Sirius, they’re not. It had been a few days and I even found teeny tiny crumbs at the cat food station. Did they make friends with little mousy and share their food with him? Slackers. I threw TheManoftheHouse and PaulKitty in the laundry room and told them not to come out empty-handed. Twenty minutes and a lot of commotion later, TheManoftheHouse emerged victorious. PaulKitty was apparently hopeless. Wanna SEE???
Isn’t he cute???
Not.
He ruined the rest of my day. I had a nice relaxing day planned to read and sew a little bit. Instead, I had to clean out the pantry and laundry room. Very, very rude.
My week now is going much better. I hope yours it too!
XOXO,
Anna
Sometime before Christmas, my lovely invisible friend Brigette and I were chatting about all the gazillion quilts we want to make before we die. The conversation turned to Pinterest (as they do) and we ended up discussing this quilt. We decided that this quilt would be perfect for gifts that we both needed, so we decided to make versions of it.
I started mine before Christmas but didn’t get very far — too many other things demanding my time. But, it really wasn’t a time consuming quilt and it proved to be a great project for lazy January weekends.
This quilt is big — weighing in at 95″ x 95″. I’m not necessarily a fan of square quilts, but it just worked out this way. I started out to make it 90″ x 95″ (based on the amount of drop and tuck in that I wanted for a queen sized bed), but I didn’t like that one edge had the gray and white block row. The quilt just looks better when it’s “framed” by black and gray rows all around.
Each of my squares is 5″. Now that I’ve made this quilt, when I look back at the original, it looks to me like maybe she used 4″ squares. I probably would have liked the smaller squares, but since this quilt is so big, this is fine. I chose to bind my version in the lime green too, which I really like. I think this quilt would look great bound in most any color. I used Bella Solids White (98), Black (99) and Silver (183). I backed the quilt in the silver, so, between the front and the back, I used almost 9 yards. Well worth buying the bolt!
It was snowy this morning and I had fun traipsing around taking a few pictures. I couldn’t find any place tall enough to hang it. BigDaddy’s old swingset was as close as I could get but it’s about 10″ too short.
This was a fun, quick and easy quilt to make. My version is for a male, but Brigette is going to make one for a female (bound in hot pink — how cute!). Most importantly, making this quilt proves a point: All that time spent on Pinterest hasn’t been completely wasted! ;-D
XOXO,
Anna
