They're Mine, and I Love 'em.

Isn't he cute?  This is Lightning McQueen, one of the subjects of this evening's blog post.  Lightning is 10 years old.  This is cause for celebration all by itself, since he is also one of the most ornery, stubborn, bullheaded and MESSY kids I know (and I'm Catholic, so I know a LOT of kids).

Lightning McQueen and his brother, Birdman, are the main reasons why this blog is not about how my children make me breathless with wonder at their perfection and sweet innocence.

They are pisspots, quite honestly.

I'd like to tell you about their bedroom.  Actually, the bed part of it is only shared by Eli the dog and Birdman, since there was so much nonsense going on in there at what I had determined was to be bedtime, that I have had to assign Lightning a sleeping spot in the living room.  Their clothing, books and toys (what toys they have, because in addition to messy they are also very bad about taking care of their things) are all still in there.....I think.

I can't really remember the last time I was in there.  It's too frightening (and I was in the Army, so I don't scare too easily).  Their floor has not been completely visible in MONTHS.  They live out of a laundry basket.  Books and old school papers are scattered willy-nilly all over the place.  Birdman has to do his schoolwork while sitting on my bed because his desk is covered in.....stuff.

Why do I not make them clean it up?  Why don't I just clean it up myself?  Because I am their MOTHER, not their MAID.  It's not my room, I don't have to go in there, if they want to live like pigs, well then go ahead on!  It's a battle I choose not to fight because I've got enough on my plate, honestly.  I'm a single mom who owns a home-based business, I homeschool three bright children, I am involved in local and state politics on an official basis, I get ZERO child support (I should clarify that I am supposed to receive support, but have not gotten any in I think a little over three years) from an ex-husband who is legally prohibited from coming within speaking distance of any of us.

I should also mention at this point that the last time I undertook to clean that room, I took out FOUR BAGS of trash, one of which was so full I had to shove it out the window of their room, across the roof of the addition, and push it off into the garden cart in order to get it to the curb.

It's really too bad that the Superfund money, for cleanup of environmental hazards, is all gone.  I could maybe have gotten some grant money to hire someone to come in and clean it.  But in 5 minutes it would all be messy again.

I really admire families whose kids are neatniks, who always pick up after themselves and never leave messes lying around, but I think the majority of kids are probably slobs, and it's silly and stupid of me to try to make my kids be like some imagined ideal of perfection (when that ideal probably doesn't even exist; I bet those neat children won't eat anything but lime Jello and pretzel sticks, whereas my kids will eat just about anything you put in front of them, everything's a trade-off, you know?)

So I have messy boys.  So what?  They're happy, healthy and smart.  I'd take that over neat any day.

And it doesn't hurt that they are also very cute.

Price Check #4

It's been a while since I did one of these, but then again it's been a while since I made a big trip to the store!  This week I shopped at Kroger, and as always if I don't mention a brand, it's the store brand.

Regular gas is $4.099 a gallon.  I didn't fill up this evening, but I will at some point this weekend.  I have enough shopping points to get 10 cents off per gallon.

Milk, 2%, $2.78 (I wonder if we could make a car that runs on milk......)
Frozen vegetables, 1# bags, average $1.49/bag
Knorr/Lipton Pasta Sides, $1.00
Bush's Baked Beans, Homestyle Recipe, large can, $1.67
Bacon, thick sliced, 1# package, $5.49
Oats, Old-Fashioned, 42-oz. canister, $2.99
Hearty Tomato Soup, Progresso, $1.50
Duchess Fried Pies, $0.50 each
Heavy Duty Aluminum Foil, 50 sq. ft., $3.19
Peanut Butter, 18 oz. jar, $1.89
Salted Butter, 1# quarters, $3.19
Red Potatoes, 5# bag, $4.59
Styrofoam bowls, 30 count, $2.09
Styrofoam plates, 50 count, $1.29
Plastic cups, 50 count, $1.50
Saltine crackers, $1.05
Vermicelli, 1# box, $1.05

I had a bunch of coupons and managed to save a little over $20 on the total bill.  I still need flour but I have to go to Wal-Mart to get that; I buy the 10# bag of King Arthur all purpose flour which is $6.29 there; the 5# bag of the same flour is over $5 at both Kroger and Giant Eagle.

What do some of these things cost where you are?  Flour? Butter? A pound of bacon?  Gallon of milk?  And what's gas costing you nowadays?

It's Official.

We got our 4-day tent permit for Lot 2 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in the mail on Saturday!  Along with the permit were a couple of very helpful brochures about shower facilities, ice and water availability, and the details of camping rules and regulations.  The Speedway's website lists Lot 2's atmosphere as "family festive" so I think we will have a great time.  And after all we won't be spending a great deal of time there except to sleep, there's so much going on at the track!

We plan to arrive and set up our campsite some time on Thursday the 26th.  If the gates are open we may walk over (right across the street BOOYAH) and just look around.  Then eat supper and relax, trying to get a good night's sleep to get ready for Carb Day on Friday.

Carb Day sounds exciting!  The last practice session for the Indy 500, plus an Indy Lights race and the pit stop competition.

There's a free concert on Carb Day afternoon, but the band(s) aren't really our taste in music so we'll take in the Museum and maybe drive downtown so I can show the kids Monument Circle, the War Memorial, and some of the other sights of my old home town.

Saturday is A.J. Foyt Day, with autograph opportunities (I have decided that I MUST have Takuma Sato's autograph) and all kinds of other fun stuff. I also plan to take a ticket stub from last year's race just in case I'm lucky enough to get to the head of Dario Franchitti's autograph line! Fortunately the day winds down at the track at just the time when we'll need to be heading over to St. Christopher parish in Speedway for Mass.

At some point over the weekend I'll be meeting up with the recipient of the Centennial Socks I started on Sunday - I'm past the heel and gusset decreases on sock #1 and may be able to finish it by this Saturday night. Can't wait to see what kind of swag I'll receive in barter for the socks!

I promise to take lots of pictures, and I'll even find people to take photos with me in them (I only have two pictures from last year's race that are of me, and one of them was taken with my phone).  This is a year to remember!

In Which I Dash Off A Blog Post With No Perceivable Topic Due to Exhaustion

Lightning McQueen got a double-yolk egg for lunch the other day.  I really wasn't surprised; the egg was really obscenely large.

 I went to the grocery store the other day and saw this license plate as I was going back to my car with my shopping.  I drove all the way around the parking lot to take this picture, it just gave me warm fuzzies to know that there is at least one other Foyt fan around here.  And no, the gentlemen at the far left of the photo are not the owner(s) of the vehicle; they were just there.  They did grin at me and ask if I wanted to take their picture; when I explained about the plate they gave me a chuckle and a thumbs-up.

This is Chuck the parakeet.  He's been rather un-photogenic lately, having been through a molt, but now is more like his normal dapper blue self.

And yes, in the background there is a sheep plushie and she is knitting.  Teehee.

I'm Dyeing! I'm Dyeing!

I've wanted to do a post about dyeing yarn for a while, so when I agreed to barter a pair of my Centennial socks for some great IndyCar swag, I decided to hand-dye the yarn for the socks and take a few photos.

You can dye wool yarn quite easily with powdered drink mix.  For this project I used four packets of Cherry, two packets of Black Cherry and two of Tropical Punch.

Yarn soaking before being put in the dyepot.

After you put your dyepot water on the stove (you want it just barely at a simmer), you have to soak the yarn thoroughly so the dye will strike relatively evenly.  The soaking water should be pretty warm, and you want to poke the yarn down into the water really well so it all gets wet, but if you don't have superwash yarn don't wiggle it around too much or you will end up with a felted mess.

Dyepot ready for drink mix dye solution.

 I put the drink mix powder into a glass jar and add hot water to it, stirring well to make sure it's all dissolved. then I add this to the dyepot on the stove.  One advantage to dyeing with drink mix is that you don't have to have separate utensils for dyeing because the ingredients are all food (sort of, lol).

Yarn in the dyepot.  It sits until all the dye strikes.

 Lower your sopping, soaked yarn hank (which hopefully you have tied loosely so it doesn't tangle) into the dyepot, poking it down well under the dye solution.  You can GENTLY stir and lift the yarn around, but don't be too enthusiastic if your yarn isn't superwash.  Simmer the yarn until all the dye has struck onto it; the water will either be clear or nearly so.  I use a wooden spoon to lift the dye out of the water, and I put it over a clothes hanger and let it drip over the sink:

Dyed yarn hank drip-drying.

 Once it's all dry, you can take a look at it and if you're happy with the result, wind it into a ball and knit away!  There are some places in my skein where the dye didn't strike well, but I decided to knit it up anyway and see how the socks look.  If I'm not happy I can overdye them to reduce any wild variation in color intensity!

Half a leg of sock #1

This evening I got to the heel flap of the first sock; I'll do the heel tomorrow and should be finished with the sock on Friday night (after which I will immediately cast on the mate).

So you see it's pretty easy to dye your own yarn....you don't have to do one color either.  The first yarn I ever dyed was a random mix of blue raspberry, black cherry and tropical punch!

What a Day it's Been

I got a LOT done at work today, in a relatively short amount of time!  Yay me!  I was also able to bake bread, work on the commissioned pair of Centennial socks I'm knitting (I dyed the yarn myself over the weekend) and got over halfway down the leg of sock #1, AND do a bit of straightening up (but not too much, lol).

I found this photo on my computer today; I'd forgotten about this project.  Each year the contestants in the Miss West Virginia (America) pageant take a quilt square to Orientation weekend.  The square has to reflect the young woman, the county or area of the state she represents, and her platform.  My client was Miss Tucker County, home of Dolly Sods recreation area, and her platform was Healthy Heart Living.  So I did a square that showed the mountains of Tucker County, the windwept trees at Dolly Sods, and a hiker (because walking is good for your heart).  I don't think it turned out half bad, and she LOVED it.

I put the "Devon" socks aside until I finish the Centennials, because I have to deliver the latter in Indianapolis at the end of the month and I need to have them done and blocked before we leave.  I am hoping to have time to knit another pair of them to have with me (just in case someone wants a pair already knit, you know).

I'm also working on a companion pattern to Centennial, a pair of baby socks.  When I get that done I will make a page for patterns and post it here, for free!

Awwwwwww...........

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In other totally unrelated news, it just came through my Twitter feed that Osama bin Laden is dead, and it has been confirmed.  US (I presume the military) has the body.  HOO-RAH!!!!!