a milestone for a five-year-old

For those of you who care about our lives, I thought I'd mention that K just lost her first tooth. She has a relatively small gap at the front on the bottom that you can't even see in pictures :-) I think it is quite a milestone, although I'm the only one who seems to be excited about it. And for those of you who remember a Party-lite candle party many eons ago, the toothfairy candle holder finally fulfilled the duty for which she was selected: she held the tooth for the toothfairy to find. I still remember crying over that... sigh!

identity crisis

I've been reading over other people's blogs for a bit, and I came back to my own blog and thought YUCK! I can't possibly be that boring person who posts about craft projects she is working, can I? The new car thing is ok, but everything else -- boring!!

But I can't decide who I *do* want to be -- do I want to be the folks who just got married (naming no names) and who have gorgeous wedding pics, or the gurl who is posting articles about women gamers, or the ladies & gents who post thoughtful pieces about how events in their lives make them think about the future and other dept thoughts. Or ... someone else. None of this really reflects "me" as I picture myself. I feel like I've got too many hats on, or something -- I mean no one on tv lives a life as a Computer Science professor, and then goes home and knits! And in between that I do laundry and play the toothfairy and bandage scrapes and buy school supplies and do the wife thing with my husband... but none of the parts feel like they make a whole. And none of the people I interact with seem to think that either; when I'm at work I kind of feel like I have to pretend I don't have a family, and hobbies, and outside interests; when I'm at home I don't want to think about work; and when I'm with friends I mostly play mom these days. And I even have separate blogs about all these things, which, if you think about it, is kind of weird. Unfortunately they've all been neglected except this one for about a year now.

Does everyone have this self-image inconsistency? I feel like my blog is kind of a mirror; a mirror of my soul, if you like. And right now it's not reflecting "me". Who is it reflecting? Well, now that's a good question.

I guess the mirror analogy is a good one; if you look in the mirror and don't like what you see, well, my advice would be to change it! So maybe that's what I should do...

new car!!!

So we bought a new car. It's a 2006 Honda Civic. Consumer Reports raves about it and we really needed something a little better on gas!!
Anyone want to buy a used Ford Explorer?




And my latest completed project: butterfly bath mats. They're a lot of fun, but they make my wrists hurt, so I don't think I'll do any more. These are another project that had been stashed in my closet for the last year or so, so it's nice to get it all out and finally finish them!

Back to work next week, guess my craft progress will slow down a bit! I did finish the leg warmers for Andra, but haven't started Kaitlyn's...

ongoing projects

I forgot to say what my ongoing projects are!!

1. a pair of leg-warmers for my girls, since they are both going to be doing dance this fall. Yes, leg-warmers are back in style, or so I'm told!
2. a ballet sweater for both (not started yet).
3. table mats (those are my car project), mainly started to use up the yarn that I bought last year to make an outfit that I later hated and unravelled.

And after the leg-warmers are done I'm going to take the plunge and make myself a sweater. I've never successfully knit or crocheted an adult-sized garment (except ponchos, which are pretty much blankets with a hole in the middle -- that I can do!) so this is a big deal to me.

projects

I've been working on a bunch of crochet and knitting projects, and finally got around to taking some pics of them. One of them is a cute little knitted blanket-bunny. It took me a few tries to get it right, but here's one of them. The pattern I used is here.



The second project was a little dress for my brand new niece, born July 3 2006. It won't fit her yet, but I thought that with a little turtle-neck and frilly tights it could even be a winter outfit! (here's the pattern).



The third project is a little coat for some friends who also just had a baby. They're in Victoria, though, so I thought this little coat would be perfect for coolish, but not frigidly cold days. The pattern for it is here.

an interesting experience

As the title says, he have recently had an interesting experience. I don't know if "interesting" is the best word, but it's all I can come up with being so short on sleep (my oldest had nightmares about black things and wolves all night, sigh!!). This interesting experience took place Monday morning, when my youngest started crying after her sister wouldn't let her choose her cereal. Now this, on its own is not unusual, but she simply wouldn't calm down! So I used my standard tactic: ignore and move on. I put her in her chair and asked her what cereal she would like. No response. Head kind of lolled to one side. Now this IS unusual -- Andra not wanting cereal? The sky must be falling!! After repeated attempts to get her to focus on what was going on, I started getting worried. She was pale, her lips were almost blue, and her eyelids kept drooping. I thought she was going to pass out! At this point we are seriously worried, and after she refuses to eat for the umpteenth time I finally said ok -- off to the hospital. Joe grabs her and whips her off down to the front door at which point she screams bloody murder. With anger... we've taken her food away. Lips go red (face goes red), eyes brighten up and focus, and all is well.

So we moved on with our day, but it was a really odd and scary experience.