Four out of five doctors agree that Pringle's potato chips will cure most foot problems

Today, Little Miss wanted Pringle's Newfangled Potato Chips to take to school as a snack. ("Ev'ry single Pringle's po-tay-to chip, is a perfect, po-tay-to chip, they're not broken, fresh and crunchy too -- the canister keeps them that way for you") Avoiding the whole "are potato chips, even newfangled ones, an appropriate school snack" debate, I informed Her Nibs that we were in fact out of Pringle's potato chips -- or indeed, any brand of potato chips.

A snit ensued. (This will not surprise my regular readers, I daresay.)

But even the snittiest of snitters must realize that if there are no Pringle's newfangled potato chips in the cupboard, they cannot be taken to school, even if one's mother would allow one to do so.

Suddenly Little Miss was stricken with an amorphous pain. In her, um, foot.

I examined the foot, and there was no splinter, no bruise, no bump, no mark, no redness or swelling, no bug bite, no anything that might conceivably cause foot pain. Yet there she was, hobbling around. This foot had given her no trouble when she leaped out of bed onto it, nor did it seem to cause her any distress when she began stamping it upon realizing there were no potato chips.

This foot pain was so crafty, so Machiavellian, that it sometimes appeared to be in the left foot, then, in a dastardly stroke of deviousness, would cause Little Miss to limp on the right foot. (In Lyme disease, this is known as "migrating joint pain." In childrearing, this is known as "a huge pain.")

Because I am a mother who does not know how to love, I insisted that Little Miss limp down to the bus stop, turning away, in my typical not-knowing-how-to-love manner, from her obvious pain and suffering.

At the bus, she asked what would happen if her foot still hurt when she got back from school, and I told her about the very large needles full of painkillers that most emergency room nurses will inject in one's foot when a patient presents with Amorphous Pringle's Deprivation Syndrome ("APDS").

Little Miss was unmoved, but her twin brother turned white and said "Mommy, I think I'm getting nauseous."

The timely arrival of the bus put an end to our struggle, and the brave patient -- and her nauseated brother -- climbed aboard the bus to face another day of second grade.

P.S. No children were limping or nauseous by the time the bus returned. I cannot, however, vouch for the condition of their mother.

Best turn of phrase all week

award goes to Middle Child:



who told us that the waves that break way before they get to shore so that they are bubbly white on top are called "foam-overs."

UPDATE: Little Miss did not get her long locks cut off, but they must have been tucked in her collar in the last photo or two. The rainbow-colored flats that Angela so beautifully knit are Black Bunny Fibers, and hopefully I'll get a chance to dye some more soon.

Mother's Day update

You may recall that a few weeks ago, I was told by my daughter that I was "the meanest, worst, most horrible mommy in the world" and that I "don't know how to love." For this reason, I wasn't exactly sure what kind of a Mother's Day I would have -- especially since my husband, knowing exactly what I would want to do on Mother's Day, ensured that I would actually be doing the opposite. (He and the boys went to a Phillies game, leaving me alone with my nemesis daughter.)

Luckily for me, one essential part of Mother's Day is that all is forgiven.

Sort of.

From the lovely montage of Mother's Day tributes I received from Miss Thang:

an ode to me:

-- although I'd kill to know what was edited out ("Who fears my wrath"? "Who fears being left alone with her 7-yr-old daughter" "who fears her daughter's teenage years"?);

a letter (competitive much?):


And my favorite, the back-handed compliment:



I am nice "often." The rest of the time? Not so much.

I guess it's the best you could expect for a woman who doesn't know how to love.

A question to ponder today

Last year, Elvis asked us if the Easter Bunny and Charcoal chat with each other when the Easter Bunny comes to fill the kids' baskets.

Easter Bunny: Dude, how'd you get this gig? I have to run my ass off filling baskets all over the world, and you just get to sit here and eat hay.

Charcoal: Sistah, please. You only work one night of the year; I have to sustain this level of cuteness 24/7, 365 days a year.




Happy Easter, Passover or whatever you celebrate, from our family to yours.

Another knitter is born

Incentivized by her "Learn to Knit with Harris the Bear" kit, a thoughtful present from Mom and Dad, Miss Thang learns to knit.



Partial transcript follows (maternal profanity sanitized for your protection):

M.T.: Mom, when I can I do it?
Me: I have to show you what to do, or else how will you know what to do?
M.T.: Hurry up.
Me (demonstrating): See how it goes in, around, through and off?
M.T.: In, around, through and off. I KNOW, Mommy.
Me: Okay, give it a try. In, aro---
M.T.: I KNOW. Through and OFF! Do you think I'm dumb, Mommy?

15 minutes later.

M.T.: MOMMY! Why is this so tight?
Me: Let me take a look.
M.T.: Why did you give me knitting with extra-tight stitches? Did you purposely make them tight so I couldn't do it?
Me: Don't be silly. [Fixes knitting and goes to visit bathroom]

3 minutes later.

M.T. [at the top of her lungs]: MOMMY! MOMMY! I NEED YOU! MOMMY!!!

Me (rushing downstairs half-clothed, ready to call 911): What?! Are you okay?

M.T.: I need you to help me with my knitting. There are too many loops.

Each one, teach one, so the teached one, can kvetch some...

Peers

Last night Elvis and I had a talk about some of the other kids in his class. Now, while Elvis is incredibly smart in a book sense, he has a hard time deciphering some of the social cues that his schoolmates give off. He was telling me how certain classmates make him feel weird, and how he doesn't quite get what they're talking about all the time. After my heartfelt explanation of how when you're in school, you get stuck with kids in your class and if you don't get along with them, you just have to suck it up until you're an adult and can choose who to hang out with, and the importance of finding your tribe, and how sometimes people can be intimidated by really smart kids... it became clear to me that the nub of the problem (this time) was slang.

Apparently there is a kid who sits by Elvis who says things like "Oh no, you did-n't!" or when Elvis laughs and his face turns red, tells him he's having "a red crayon moment." Sometimes when Elvis says something, Matt will say "Inappropriate content" (whatever that means; that one's not in the Urban Dictionary). We had a laugh about it -- I couldn't help but crack up and then he realized that maybe it wasn't social death to not understand this strange pre-adolescent lingo -- and then I did the only thing a self-respecting mother could do:

I taught him the Z-snap and told him to tell Matt he's a hot mess.

Mixed bag

Today is one of those posts where I try to mention all sorts of unrelated things, a kind of mental housekeeping. But I tried to put in some pretty fiber-y pictures (and a kute kid shot), so you won't get bored.

Incoming

I just discovered that Franklin's book, It Itches: A Stash of Knitting Cartoons, is now available for pre-order on Amazon. Yay! My copy is pre-ordered, I assure you. Franklin's cartoons are wonderful and he is a superb writer. I feel very strongly that this book is going to be this fall's Next Big Thing. Someday, our house will have a plaque on it that says "Dolores slept here." (Although after her recent visit, there are quite a few houses on the Main Line that could display that plaque...)

Outgoing

Between yesterday and today, it's been wind, wind, wind. (Um, that would be wind with a long-i sound. Not windy at all here.) I just mailed the last shipment of my four-month BBF Sock Club and it's been amazingly fun. These are some of the skeins that were mailed:

I lucked out with an extremely great group, and I hope most or all of them will want to continue on with the Club. . .

Today there's a BBF update featuring some lighter yarns for spring. I've got merino/tencel sock yarn, some of which are here:

and three batches of 50% wool/50% silk, designed with the Clapotis in mind. (You can see Liz's gorgeous Clapotis here. Her photos rock, too.) This is the same yarn she used, in the same amount, but in different colorways.


There'll also be some Norwegian roving (a sturdier fleece, good for socks or outdoorwear). So stop by midday and see what Charcoal and I have cooked up for you.

Upcoming

Thank you for all of your kind words about Knit So Fine: Designs with Skinny Yarn! I was excited to see that we've cracked the Top Ten on Amazon's Knitting Books list. We are going to be doing a really cool blog tour in June. I'll post the schedule with links in a few days -- we're still ironing out a few details -- but my co-authors and I will be doing guest posts on other people's blogs to talk about the book. In particular, we're going to talk about specific skinny yarns we love -- the ones we chose to use in the book. So you'll get to hear about specific projects and read some mini-yarn reviews, as the bloggers hosting us will get sample skeins of the same yarns we used so they can swatch and give us their opinions.

We're also going to have a KSF Knitalong; the website is being set up even as we speak by our awesome publicist (I know, can you believe it? I have a publicist!) so I'll give you the link as soon as it's ready.

In the meantime, Joe is going to do a very special episode of Blossom his blog on Monday featuring an interview with yours truly. Rest assured, the questions will have a Steven Colbert-like flair to them...

Ongoing

April's book report: Let's see, Tudor-ama continued, as I read most of Mary Queen of Scotland & The Isles: A Novel by Margaret George. I got really interested in Mary, and although I knew what was going to happen to her at the end, I had to stop reading before I reached the end because I, um, got kind of attached to her. (Am I a complete whackjob or what?).

I opted out of the Tudor thing in order to read The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, which had a Gothic but timeless quality reminiscent of books like Rebecca and Jane Eyre. I enjoyed that one a lot. I also read The Chameleon's Shadow by Minette Walters (my clever and talented friend Selma recommended Minette Walters to me) which was a mystery set in present-day London; it wasn't as good as the Setterfield one.

One Final Observation

If you've never heard an auditorium full of ten-year-old kids play "Swing Low Sweet Chariot" on kazoos (in harmony, no less), you just haven't lived.

Happy Speranza'a

I have hesitated to write about this before for fear that people would think I was disrespecting their holiday traditions, but I hope by now you know that's not how I roll. So here's what we've been doing this week.

A couple of years ago, my kids got a Sesame Street DVD called Elmo's Happy Holidays.
It's very cute, and covers Christmas, Hannukah, Eid and Kwanzaa, explaining the basic idea behind the holidays and showing real kids and their families celebrating them. My kids have watched this DVD over and over (and over). Somehow they got the idea that we should create and celebrate our own family holiday. Since their last name, like my husband's, is "Speranza," the obscure festival of Speranza'a was born.

Each winter, when the days are gray and cold and it seems like spring will never come, it is time for Speranza'a. (Technically speaking, it begins on the first Monday after Valentine's Day.) Each person in the family gets their own day. Monday is Tom's, mine is Tuesday, and so on, and the sixth and final day is for Charcoal. The person whose day it is gets to pick what we are having for dinner. Candles are lit and the person whose day it is gets to make a wish and blow out the candles. After dinner, we dance in the living room.

We are still working out some of the finer details; for example, someday I will have to take the kids to one of those paint-your-own pottery places so we can make special candleholders (a spenorah?). We still need to work on the Six Principles of Speranza'a: so far we've got the Principles of Irony, Gluttony and Magnetism, but I think they need tweaking.

But all silliness aside, it is sweet and surprising to see how much this family tradition means to my kids. They've been talking about it for weeks. They talk about what they are going to pick for their dinner (Elvis picked turkey breast; N. is opting for shells in tomato sauce; G. will probably ask for bacon and popcorn) and they are thrilled when it's their turn to make a wish and blow out the candles. From the parents' perspective, it is heartwarming to feel like we are making some special memories with our kids. I have little daydreams about them coming over when they are grownups, still celebrating this made-up holiday with us as we all grow older.

So from my family to yours, we wish you a happy Speranza'a!

I think I'll keep her

I mean, you gotta love a girl who does this



to Ken.

I did have a nice relaxing weekend -- including a dinner out with Tom on Saturday night -- and feel much less prone to committing child abuse today. I do find that trying to laugh about it with my blog-friends is the best antidote to these awful, stressful times.

In the meantime, I've been dyeing and website-building. Today will be my first update on the new dot cahm.




There's some wool/nylon sock, a few Corriedale blend sock, a few DK merinos and some rovings. Please be patient in case there are things that don't go perfectly smoothly. I need to throw out a huge mea culpa to my non-United States friends: right now, the website is only accepting U.S. orders but I hope to have that fixed soon. After today's update I'm going to tinker with it some more.

Please. Don't forget the condoms.

I spent the morning hard at work, and was happy to see the kindergarten bus pull up mid-day. Had I but known, I would not have been nearly so happy to see it. Here is what happened next.

1.Daughter comes off bus. She gets mad when I remind her she lost computer privileges because she called me "stupid mommy" this morning
2. She screams and throws tantrum
3. She screams for lunch, then screams when told it will take a few minutes to prepare
4. Still calm, I ask her if she wants juice; she refuses to answer, making "unga bunga" noises.
5. Screams because i haven't given her juice
6. Gets a sheet of paper to draw
7. Crumples sheet of paper b/c she's still mad at me
8. Yells at me b/c there is flour on the table
9. Yells at me b/c I have wiped table off with wet paper towel and now it will make her paper wet, forgetting she's already crumpled it
10. Remembers paper is crumpled, lays on floor because I refuse to get her a new sheet of paper after she hurls crumpled one at me
11. Lays on floor screaming and kicking
12. Refuses to get up, notwithstanding loss of other privileges, no dessert, being sent to her room (refuses to go), and various other non-corporal punishments
12a. Gets up and hits me
13. When I say "aha, so you can move," she falls back on floor pretending to have legs that are "too tired" to walk
14. Misc. screaming, yelling, hitting and throwing things (by her)
14a. I try to hug her and hold her, talking in soft voice to see if she'll calm down
15. She gets splashed with cup of water
16. Goes ballistic and takes off dress, uses a la twirled towel in locker room
to snap me
17. Undresses and says she won't put on underwear again
18. I pretend to leave a message on Nana's answering machine telling her how bratty her only granddaughter is.
19. Panics and puts on underwear (her, not me)
20. I tell her next stop if she doesn't stop screaming is back porch. (Hollow threat)
21. She runs onto front porch wearing only underwear.
21a. I bring her back into house before child protective services is alerted.
22. More sundry screaming, hitting, kicking
23. Dumps over 2 clothesbaskets of folded laundry
24. Runs upstairs to evade my wrath and gets stuffed cat
25. I confiscate stuffed cat and tell her she can't have it back unless she picks up laundry and goes into room and quiets down
25. Picks up laundry
26. Has spent last 25 minutes screaming "kitteh" while pointing at high shelf where I placed it.

See, the thing about kids is they don't read the same parenting books that adults do. So they tell you your kid will get his first tooth at age 4 to 6 months, but your baby doesn't read that book, and so soon your kid is a year old and has barely a tooth bud. Likewise, they tell you you can "Ferberize" your baby, but they don't tell your kid that, so you end up listening to the kid scream all night, every night for a week, then give up. Your nerves are shot; your kid is fine.

So here's a kid who gets disciplined consistently, is showered with love & attention, has no physical or mental disabilities, and -- much to my surprise today -- doesn't get smacked. But she still doesn't listen.

I don't know where she gets that from. (Hint: her father.)

Busy weekend

Whew. After baring my soul in the last post (and thank you for your comments), today's post is going to seem a little bland. Ah well, there's always some yarn pr0n at the end to spice things up.

Today I'm recovering from an extremely eventful weekend. It began Friday evening, when the whole family had dinner with the judge for whom I clerked, many years ago. The judge is an amazing woman, one of the smartest and most capable people I know, with a finely-honed sense of justice and a remarkable ability to achieve consensus on a fractured appellate court. She's also quite a character. I had not seen her for a few years because of her schedule; however, she recently handed off most of her administrative duties to the next judge in line, and is getting a chance to do some things other than hearing appeals and wrangling disputes about the administration of the court. It was great to see her again and to catch up on the gossip.

The next morning, I drove up to my parents' house, with Elvis riding shotgun (and vibrating from excitement). My oldest kid has an extremely close relationship with his Nana and has been anticipating a sleepover there for a while. The drive is fairly quick -- Wilkes-Barre is ninety miles and fifty years away, as my husband likes to say -- and we had a jam-packed twenty-four hours there.

We began with a visit to my aunt, where we met the inimitable Minnie Mae:



She makes the weirdest sounds of any dog I have ever met: growls, yelps, a noise in throat that sounded like purring...I never knew a dog could make that many sounds.

After lunch, we took in my twelve-year-old nephew's basketball game:



It was very exciting and this was the final score:



(Mikey's team won.) Mikey is an excellent player and scored several baskets and foul shots.

My parents took us to dinner at 5:00 o'clock sharp like the good senior citizens they are. We hung out at the homestead after dinner, at which point I cast on for a new project. The next morning, we hit the dreaded Chuck E. Cheese. At nine o'clock on a Sunday morning, it was just us and a couple of athiests, so we had the Skee-Ball to ourselves.



You haven't lived until you have heard a bizarre six-foot-tall animatronic mouse singing a Patsy Cline song at nine in the morning. ("Crazy," if you must know.) I had a chance to knit a few rounds on my new project, which I will talk about in a future post, once I get more to show you, but it's from Veronik's book and it's in Classic Elite Wool Bam Boo, which I think may become one of my all-time favorite yarns.

We had a teary good-bye,


(Tom cracked up at the family resemblance he discerned in the above photo) but Nana promised to come visit in two weeks, so we drove back home. When we got back, I found that G. was wearing her new sweater that I finally sewed the buttons on. She looks adorable, as she usually does.



After kvelling, I began preparing today's Etsy update. It's a big one, with lots of superwash merino sock


and some more bamboo/merino sock



and even a couple of skeins of merino/silk sock that I found in the inventory, so if you're on-line around two p.m. EST, stop by Etsy.

For those of you who are strangely obsessed with knitting in public, I leave you with this souvenir, photographic proof that I did indeed knit my sweater in Chuck E. Cheese's.

A newly-minted knitter

Yesterday, Elvis learned to knit. He has been asking me for a while, and we've tried it a few times before that never seemed to take, but yesterday afternoon, worn down by all the sick people in my house (Elvis has strep, Tom has ... something icky and nasty but we're hoping it's not N.'s pneumonia), I pulled out a ball of chunky crap yarn and some child-friendly needles. Ably assisted by Kids Knitting, he was soon fascinated and produced this:


His first garter-stitch swatch. That's one for the scrapbook...

Just a few hours later, he had graduated to this:


Hah! Only kidding. His later squares still look like the first one, but he's enjoying it and getting better. And what nicer way could there be to spend a Sunday afternoon?

A timely reminder

Charcoal









wishes to remind you that it's Fire Prevention Month. At our house, Elvis handily drew our Evacuation Plan so that we might study it in the event of a "fire event" (as I'm sure they call them now).




Everybody got that?





Charcoal also reminds you to check the batteries in your smoke detector.

We don't want your house to turn into a lump of you-know-what...

Catch up: Garden State Sheep festival

I'm a little overdue, but here are some photos from the Garden State Sheep festival that I took the kids to two weeks ago.

Just as we walked toward the gate, we were treated to an exhibition of sheep-herding skills. It didn't look intentional, because a few sheep seemed to sneak out of the festival grounds and head onto the gravel road leading to the parking lot and the highway where they could easily have been hit by a car. Shortly thereafter, two dogs came running hellbent



and rounded the sheep up in front of us. At one point, a sneaky straggler sheep tried to avoid the herding dog and ran toward us. We stood very still and we could have touched the sheep as it ran past, then the dog as it herded the sheep around us.

It was much more sedate after that and we saw farm animals

and the obligatory sheep shearing (it must be a testament to my regular attendance at sheep shows, because this used to fascinate me and now it seems almost jejune)

and we saw some gorgeous alpacas and llamas, including a white one



and a black one in the same pen (Ebony and Ivory?):

This is a very small festival, but it's charming and good for smaller children. My kids are getting a bit old for it, especially Elvis, but I'm thinking about getting a table there next year as a vendor and selling Black Bunny yarns.

In other news, it's been pretty quiet here. I'm knitting and dyeing and trying to pick up the slack given Tom's very busy work schedule right now. We are doing some edits to the book manuscript, and still on track for a June 2008 release date. (I've been told to hold off on giving you details about the book for now, but as soon as the publicist okays it, I'll give you the scoop.)

The best laid plans....

So I had to (sniffle, sniffle) own the fact that I wasn't going to make it to FibreFest North this year. (Insert frowny-face emoticon here.) It was logistics that doomed me -- Wiarton is so damn far from me -- and my transportation plans fell through. It truly sucks that I won't be getting to spend time with Ted, or meet Mona, or get to say G-day to M-H, or get a big bear hug from Lars, or take a jacuzzi with the Knitting Curmudgeon.

I was especially looking forward to the jacuzzi part.

But as God as my witness, I AM going to Rhinebeck, and I am going to Stitches East. I've got hotel rooms booked for both, I've got wicked cool traveling companions lined up, and both events are within driving distance. See you there. Especially YOU, Anonymous L**** of the Blogless (for now) Knitterati.

Closer to home

My weekend plans took a little U-turn, too. I had planned to take Elvis to the Garden State Sheep Breeders festival on Saturday, which isn't too far from here -- and has the distinction of being the fiber festival where we were enticed to consider getting a pet bunny. Just as I returned from bringing Li'l Miss home from her first ballet lesson (gulp)

I was met at the door by Tom, briefcase and laptop in hand. Going into the office at 10 a.m. on a Saturday morning. Feh. So the kids and I went to N.'s soccer game instead.

Which led to way too many encounters with Malibu Barbie moms (orange vinyl skin and white-yellow hair that never occurs in nature, at least not with black eyebrows), and their jocky stockbroker husbands (nearly always named "Jack," with ironed polo shirts and decidedly firm handshakes). Double feh.

So we had to postpone our trip to the sheep show 'til Sunday. I'm still trying to load some photos from there (I'm thinking my USB cable is on the fritz) and I'll try to post them tomorrow.

How could I have forgotten?

Crapola. I completely forgot Kristin Knits, Kristin Nicholas' new book which is coming out soon -- maybe around mid-October? Kristin has an exquisite eye for color and I've got some of her other books, like Kids' Embroidery: Projects for Kids of All Ages which is a great one (even though I haven't done that kind of stitchery in years). (I think I might add Colorful Stitchery

to my Christmas wish list -- hint, hint, Tom.) Rumor has it that there is a bitchin' interview of her in a forthcoming IK but I don't want to steal the author's thunder so I'll just tease you. Anyway, I've met Kristin briefly and she is extremely warm, down-to-earth and friendly, and add to that her multi-faceted talents and devotion to family, and you've got the kind of knitting designer I want to support whole-heartedly. So I'm sorry I forgot to put that one on the list and thanks for reminding me...

Art show

Frantically finishing the last sweater, and when my fingers need a rest, I've been doing some book reviews. (I'm hoping to post one in the next day or two.) In the meantime, our first photo shoot for the book was yesterday, and we've been told it went really well. (Phew.)

In the meantime, enjoy with me the lovely art of my five-and-a-half year old twins from cubism week at art camp:



Inspired by Erik Carle's Very Hungry Caterpillar.



Chagall-inspired mixed media by N.



Picasso-esqure portrait by G.



and Mondrian collage by G.

Mixed Bag

This Kute Kid Story will give you a sense of where my head's at this week:

Child criticizes mother's grammar.
Exasperated Mother: I don't feel like being constantly corrected by a five-year-old!
Child: Five-and-a-half.

It's a crazy time chez Go Knit In Your Hat. The last book deadline is July 31st, and I've got a sweater -- at 7 sts to the inch -- to finish, and some text to write, and some patterns to draft. (Stop snickering.) The first photo shoot is August 1st through 3rd, which is extremely exciting.

Also exciting is the fact that Reynolds has commissioned me to do two sweater patterns and a sock pattern for their Spring '08 collection. So get yer asses to thy local knitting shop and buy some Reynolds yarn... Soft Sea Wool anyone? Whiskey? Revue? And I'm sure there are some new yarns coming soon for fall from our friends in Montreal, which I shall endeavour to tell you about if my sources come through with preview info. (V.? M.?)

In the meantime, the kids are all at day camp this week (N. and G. are at a morning art camp learning about... cubism. Do you believe it? I'm sure I was 35 before I understood cubism.) and I'm frantically preparing a Black Bunny Fibers update for this Friday. Sock yarn, one straggler of alpaca/silk laceweight, and some rovings. I'm still waiting for some more silk and some wool/silk blend (like Liz's Clapotis) to arrive.

And if you haven't heard about FibreFest North (is there a FibreFest South?) check it out. A weekend of fiber stuff -- knitting, spinning, maybe even some crochet? -- in lovely Ontario. I'm going, along with Mar and Fredda (we have a jacuzzi in our room -- rare and handy indeed) and I hope to see at least a few of you there.

Last but not least, it's Socksational July at Rosie's Yarn Cellar. Word on the street is that a fresh batch of Lorna's Laces has arrived (mmm!) and I'm sending Tom, a.k.a. Errand Boy in tomorrow with some BBF superwash merino and merino/silk. Courtney says there are also some great sales on top quality sock yarn to make room for fall (like Trekking, one of my faves), so stop by or call the shop. Maybe Courtney will entice Tom into bringing home some Lorna's Laces for me to knit -- I owe the poor man a pair of socks (or twelve).

Happy 4th of July to our Amurrican friends!

(Now I've got to get the red, white and blue sequined tiara back to my favorite drag queen before she kicks my ass.)