Friday, March 29, 2013

En garde! (finger guards)

When I'm doing something, I like to be in complete control. You might call it "uptight." But I wouldn't. No, I'd call it "precise." Crocheting is no different for me. I keep my yarn tight so my stitches are tight and even. There have been times that my yarn has gotten a little looser, and I have to frog those stitches because I don't like it. (This is why I can't knit. The yarn is too tight and I can't get the needle into the loops.)

But being so precise takes a toll on my hands. I am rubbing a raw dent in my index finger where the yarn wraps over it. Since my stitches are so tight, I have to use my middle finger to push the hook through the fabric, so I'm getting a nasty callus there. And my pinky is getting so raw from where the hook handle rubs that the skin is splitting in the knuckles. Hooking is not for wimps, y'all.

So in order to save on Band-Aids and hand lotion, I decided to make some finger guards. I had some of this vinyl stuff left over from when my mom made the kids cowboy costumes a couple of years ago, and I figured that would be thick enough to protect my skin but not so bulky that it would get in my way and make my stitches loose. So, armed with my trusty hot glue gun (which again reminded me that hot glue is HOT), I proceeded to make some really fugly glove things.

Which did not work AT ALL. I'd show you, but I already cut them all to hell trying to make them work.

Anyway. So on to the next idea. I remembered that I had some mateless "one-size" knit gloves (which have never fit me properly because I have giant alien fingers) in the glove bag. So I proceeded to cut some fingers out of them and make something that worked. I couldn't leave them whole because then I wouldn't be able to feel, and plus it would make my hands hot.

So this is what I came up with. 


(Shut up about my manicure.)

Yay! I'm going to look for some cheap ones with grippy palms, because I really need a grippy pad for my right thumb but the only grippy glove I had was a lefty. So right now, as you can see, the thumb pad is not connected to anything, which means it's going to get lost, so I'm going to cuss, and really that'll just ruin my day.



Wednesday, March 27, 2013

BBT

Things I have learned from The Big Bang Theory:

1. When using a pumice stone on your feet, you should go with the grain.
2. Astronauts need special toilets on the space station.
3. If you have a laser that's powerful enough, you can bounce it off the moon.
4. There are LOTS of Spiderman comic book series. You can't just go to a comic book store and pick up the latest issue of "Spiderman."
5. Wil Wheaton is freaking hilarious.
6. If prepared improperly, the root from which tapioca is extracted is poisonous to humans.
7. The capybara is the largest member of the rodent family. And it eats its own poo.
8. Depending on when the comic you're reading was written, Green Lantern can be defeated by either wood or the color yellow. Which is stupid.
9. Engineers typically don't need anything beyond a Master's degree to be super-successful.
10. Nerds are awesome. Which actually isn't news. I already knew that. :)

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Bag lady

I finished my little bag!



Like I said before, it's smaller than I thought it would be. But as it turn out, it's the perfect size to hold one ball o yarn. And the right single crochet stitches are great for holding my hook and needle. I just thread them through a couple of stitches and they stay put. So this is now my "take it with me so I can crochet while I wait for people" bag.

It won't hold a large project, but for what I'm working on right now, it's pretty perfect. It could use some kind of coordinating trim at the edges, but I don't have any yarn that I want to use for that right now, so I'm leaving it as is.



Monday, March 25, 2013

Anyway

Just a moment for some serious business.

I've been thinking a lot lately about "good moms." Seems like a lot of parents I know feel like they're failing in one way or another. Or lots of ways. I know I do. I feel like a failure because I get so frustrated by behaviors that never change, that seem ingrained into the tiny personalities that I've brought into the world. And they're my kids, so I should love everything about them, right? And if I don't, then I'm a horrible parent. Right?

But this morning, after an email exchange with a friend who's struggling with some of those thoughts, I realized that we DON'T have to love everything about them. My kid is prone to angry outbursts. Sometimes he gets violent. He screams often. I don't have to love that. I can be frustrated with that, I can wish he didn't have that aspect of his personality. Sometimes I can even wish he would just chill out for two hours so I could drink my coffee without having to hear any yelling, or without having to argue with someone about why I don't feel like cooking a five-course breakfast at 6 a.m. And sometimes I can cry and think, "WHY ME?!" And that doesn't make me a bad person, or a bad parent.

The trick is remembering that they're people. Kids are people. And people are flawed. We don't have to love their flaws. We don't have to love their behaviors, or their morning breath, or the choices they make, or the friends they hang out with. We don't have to love the boyfriends and girlfriends they bring home. We don't have to love the way they sing at the top of their lungs in the pre-dawn hours, or the bedtime arguments about every little thing. We don't have to love the dried toothpaste they leave on the bathroom counter, or that super annoying baby voice they've recently discovered. We don't have to love it when they throw toys, or scream, or hit their siblings. None of those things require our love or acceptance. But we do have to LOVE THEM ANYWAY. It's not about loving all of who they are or what they do. It's about loving them anyway, regardless of who they are or what they do.

Our kids don't need our acceptance for everything they do. And if it's something that needs to change, by all means, we need to tell them, and try to help them change it. But they do need to know that thought everything, we love them anyway. That's all that matters.


Tuesday, March 12, 2013

It's not a sale or anything

Feeling a little grouchy this morning because of the ridiculous amount of misinformation about DST this week. 

Daylight Saving Time. Not Daylight SavingS Time. There's no coupon here. And I don't know why it's even called "saving" when it doesn't save a thing. It just changes things.

It's also not "normal" time. Setting the clocks back in the fall is when we go back to normal time. People in Arizona live on our "winter" time. That's why setting the clocks forward in the spring has a special name, and setting them back in the fall doesn't. If you grew up in Arizona and then moved to another state, DST is actually the new thing you're having to get used to.

It doesn't actually "save" anything. There's not "more" light. It just lasts later into the evening, because it starts later in the morning. Which people would realize if they were used to getting up before dawn, but I understand that most people don't have insane children who think 5:30 is a perfectly acceptable "good morning time." There are still the same number of hours of daylight in the day. It's just the number on the clock that's different.

Some people prefer DST, and that's ok. Everybody has their preferences. But I do wish more people understood what was actually happening. You're not getting more of anything. Use a little logic. Our clocks do not dictate the spinning of the earth or its rotation around the sun.

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Hobbeh Lobbeh

What does $40 get you at The Lobb?














A whoooooole lot of cheap yarn. And a thing of Sticky Tack.

Sad part is, all this yarn is already spoken for. And I don't get to use any of it for something for me. Don't you feel sorry for me, using all this yarn on other people? :P

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Run like the wind, zombies!

Just a short random thought for the morning:

I hate it when the wind rattles my living room window. It sounds like the zombies are trying to get in. But then I remember that there's an egress window right below the one in the living room, so zombies wouldn't possibly be able to reach the living room window to rattle it.

No, they're much more likely to try to get in through the basement.


Saturday, March 2, 2013

Waiting for spring...

I'm so tired of all the germs. Seriously. Somebody has been sick in this house almost constantly since December. And Claire has been waking up in the night throwing up every two weeks on the dot. Seriously. It's always Thursday nights, meaning she misses school on Friday, and she's fine by Friday afternoon. I'd think she was faking it except, hello, who would want to MAKE themselves throw up in their bed and then do it again? Nobody. I'm considering doing a craft project where I made a pretty puke bucket for her room. 

Also, I want sunshine. And warm breezes. I want to be able to take walks again. I miss doing that. And I want to open the windows (on days that the neighborhood doesn't smell like hot poo) and not feel so penned-in. And I want to see if my flowers grow back this year. And whether or not I killed my hostas. I think I might have.

I am really glad that winter got one last hurrah though. We'd gone two winters with almost no snow, and the one good snow we did have this year was all melted by the time we were over the flu, so the kids didn't get to play in it at all. But now that's it's been here for about a week, and it's all crusted over from melting and re-freezing, I'm ready for it to go away.