Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Busy December

It's been a pretty crazy couple of weeks around the Purple Castle. Teaching children anything between Thanksgiving and Christmas is impossible. The Hubby is sick (sinus infection), which sets off his asthma and coughing. Dork Boy is ignoring huge hints to get off the computer and go to bed...what else is new!?

We made a last minute decision to take The Dork to a Junior Olympics qualifying event up in San Francisco last weekend. I guess it helps if you check your spam email folder once in a while, because I missed an email from his coach notifying anyone who was interested. Anyway, he didn't expect to qualify, but thought it would be nice if he did (and a trip to North Carolina for JOs in Feb.). He placed 8th out of 10 epee fencers, and had some very good bouts. He almost won his 2nd direct elimination bout, except that time ran out. That one was against the young man who was seeded 2nd after the pool rounds and who ended up with the silver medal (and IS going to NC). The kid with the orange shoes on the right is mine. Some parents I talked to were very complimentary about The Dork's fencing style. We were going to go back for the foil competition, but when he woke up, he said that he was very tired and that he wouldn't do very well. No problem - there's always next year.

On the knitting front, Nathania had a baby shower on last Thursday, and I really wanted to make Baby Boo something special. Let's just say that baby stuff and I weren't getting along. I cast on 3 different projects, and none of them cooperated with me. 2 baby hats, one with extremely unattractive pooling, and one was cute until I started the patterning on it. One baby sweater - wrong size, not even close! So, Baby Boo received lots of books from me instead!

Of course I took my projects to the fencing competition, and was >thiiiis close< to binding off the back of Twist when I realized that my pattern was missing because I had left it at Purlescence. Oops. Got it back, but still haven't worked on it since then because I decided that the fencing club is so cold that the coaches and office manager need fingerless gloves (by Friday) and that my hair stylist needed a scarf. So much for "not knitting anything for Christmas!

I'm partway through turning the heel on the 1st Midsummer Night sock for The Hubby. Purlescence received the Raven collection from Blue Moon, and The Dork is getting socks from the Korppi colorway.

I decided that I needed to clean off the couch of accumulated yarn, which led to stash reorganization and major purging. There are 4 large bags of yarn that are heading out to Goodwill in the morning. I'm not offering it up to any of you, because most of it is cheap acrylic that was my preferred yarn for baby blankets several years ago. However, I've found different sources for wonderful baby blanket yarn - trust me, you don't want this old stuff. 4 miles worth of old yarn -- gone! Feels good to reclaim some space in my yarn bins for stuff that I still want to use, instead of having it all over the couch.

What's next this vacation? Cleaning the bathroom so the plumber that's coming tomorrow to fix a shower leak won't think I'm a horrible housekeeper. Okay, never mind the rest of the house he has to go through to get there...

2 comments:

(formerly) no-blog-rachel said...

I did a recent yarn purge too - it's a nice feeling. Not only do you clear out some space but a little 'I should really use that' guilt goes out the window too.

Cindy/Snid said...

Congrats to "the dork" (he's gotta hate you for that one!) on his comp! Always a good experience to fence with others at that level. You learn regardless!