Sent quilts two friends who had three babies between them. (For the math challenged, that included a set of twins). These were SUPAH SEECRET projects, so I didn’t blog about them at the time of creation. Mommies would have known (one mommy is nursery theming with mushrooms, and the other, well, two quilts for twins kinda gives it away as to who they were for).

Knit a looooong scarf, out of two skeins of Manos that I had sitting in the stash:

Started work on a One Block Wonder quilt. This has been a lot more fiddly than I thought it would be, but then again, I’m a super simple quilter; I like straight lines and quilt tops that go together in a single day. This ain’t that kinda party, y’all. It’s pretty, and I’m looking forward to it being done, but I’m not sure I’ll be making another one.

And, I RAN. I ran in the mornings, I ran in the evenings, and on Valentine’s Day, I got up at 4:30 in the morning and drove to downtown Austin, where I stood around for TWO HOURS before the races started (my sister ran the half marathon, remember) and then I ran a 5K in a very shameful amount of time. But the point here? Is that I did it. Proof positive (I’m the one WITHOUT a medal, because they don’t give those to 5k runners. We were lucky to get a banana and a bagel at the end of our race):

And that I plan on doing it again in April. And in May. And maaaaaybe next February, when I’ve committed to running a half marathon. 13.1 miles. Which is further than my DRIVE TO WORK. Seriously. But I’m going to do it; I’m still excited about running, which is a positive thing I think. Of course, after watching my sister limp around after her race, I’m not sure that I”m ready for what I’m getting in to, but she’s going to run the FULL marathon next year, so she will still be in more pain (and have more bragging rights) than me.

February is on its way out, and I’m hoping to finish up another baby quilt, and knock out sleeves for Cassidy. I’m stranded on Sleeve Island, y’all, and I’m struggling to find the motivation to haul myself out of there and finish that damn sweater. It will be done just in time for the heat to return to Texas, so my timing is (as ususal) fantastic. Now, if I had finished it LAST week, it would have been perfect for this:

That would be snow. In Austin. This happens every few years, and it doesn’t stick around all that long, but we get all excited and freaked out while it’s here. Schools close, people stock up on essentials, and anyone that has lived anywhere north of Lubbock starts eyeballing us like we’re crazy. The small amount of snow we got would not cause them to bat an eye, but to us? It’s a juicy disaster waiting to happen. However, throw a tornado our way and we’re out on our front lawns starting up at it, slack jawed, and narrating the whole thing to our camera phone for later uploading to YouTube.

I’m not a very physical being; my favorite place in the entire world is curled up in the corner of my couch, Kindle in hand, blanket draped across my legs. I don’t relish sweating. I don’t get the high from working out that everyone else does (and quite frankly, I think they are lying out of their asses about it, because really, endorphins? That sounds totally made up.) But I’m coming to that crossroads that every woman eventually hits – where you have to make the decision to either move your ass or buy bigger pants. And y’all, bigger pants are NOT an option. Bigger pants are the sign of failure. Bigger pants might make me cry into my delicious bowl of ice cream and caramel sauce, and you don’t want to ruin ice cream with salty tears.

Austin is a big running community. At any point during the day, or even possibly the night because these people are crazy insane, you will find people jogging and running and walking and generally doing that exercise thing. We have trails and paths and specialty running shops and running clinics and all sorts of things to help you get into top running shape. And in the spirit of all of that, I got myself up and went out into the FREEZING COLD (seriously, it was below freezing) and I…jogged. This morning. Before the sun was up.

If you have any inkling of how hard it is for me to get up before dawn, then maybe you get just how monumental this is. Like…angels wept at my effort.

Getting back to the goals, the entire purpose of this is to get ready for this:

Ha, I kid.

Oh, ha. Hahaha. Except not. Just the thought of THAT much distance makes my legs curl up in defeat, like someone dropped a house on me. That’s the big race on that day, but there’s a smaller one that starts about 30 minutes after the Captain Freakin’ Insane group has already started, and that would be the race I’m participating in. Although, it’s less of a race and more of a “OHMIGOD, DON’T LET ME DIE OR MAKE A FOOL OF MYSELF.” Both of which are equally possible.

That's more like it

The best part about this is that my sister, who’s a Runner, will be doing the half-marathon. I’ll get to be down there with her, before she takes off on her absolutely insane 13.1 miles. And then I’ll take off on my pathetic little 3.1 mile run, and I’ll be there to cheer her on when she makes it back across the finish line. Of course, with my pace, she might just beat me back. And then I’ll beat her with my iPod. I was looking for an excuse to buy a new one anyway.

Unfortunately, while everyone EXPECTS something, I’m all about SURPRISE, HERE IS YOUR QUILT/SWEATER/WHATEVER, so I like to keep it on the d-l. Hence, I cannot show you pictures of said quilts until they are sent out to the mommies. (Let’s face it – the daddies generally don’t care.) But I do happen to have something I can show you, in the form of  a finished quilt top:

That would be a half-squares quilt, with Moda Tranquility for the pattern and some Kona cotton for the solid. I FREAKIN’ LOVE IT. Who knew that two triangles could make something so fantastic?!  I haven’t gotten anything to back it with as of yet, but I think that I’m going to leave this downstairs as Mommy’s Blanket (No, You May Not Play Superman With It, Go Find Your Own Blanket). I have to have a blanket on me when I’m chillin’ on the couch, and this one looks to be mine.

Also, I made baby shoes. Considering that 99% of the babies that are popping out these days are boys, you would think that I’d make them in some boy appropriate fabric so that I could give them to someone.

They are decidedly pink, and also decidedly for a baby, which my two-year old was rather unhappy about as she tried to squeeze her fat little foot into one of them. I couldn’t find anything heavy to give them more padding on the bottom, so I made something up:

THAT’S RIGHT. I quilted baby slippers. Lord knows what else I could have been doing with my time, but I got the bug out of my system and they can sit until Sarah realizes that they will fit her Cabbage Patch. After that, I’m not sure I want them back.

ANYWAY, I have put my time to good use – setting up the house, hosting parties, and trying to figure out exactly why my two-year-old is attempting to wear me down with the shrill sound of her scream. Whatever the situation, it’s apparently appropriate to scream your little, tiny, red-faced head off, making it difficult to determine if you are in actual pain or just being a pain in the ass.

(Hint: most times? PAIN IN THE ASS. Trust me on this.)

Regardless of how insane she’s been acting, I still found the courage to dress them both up and hit the new neighborhood for Trick or Treating this year. I was accompanied by Optimus Prime and a ladybug fairy. And no, I’m not really sure what a ladybug fairy is, either, but when you’re two it’s really about getting to put on a fancy dress.

They made a pretty decent haul on the candy, half of which was confiscated because it isn’t age appropriate – like, she can’t have small, hard candy because she’ll choke on it. The Snickers bars we took are what we like to call the “Parent Tax”. It’s totally legal, I assure you.

There has also been some sewing and quilting being done. This:

Became this:

And I’m now plowing my way through a giant effing quilt for my husband; there is nothing I’d rather NOT be doing than dragging a full size quilt through my machine, but in the name of marital harmony, I’m totally doing it. Do you REALIZE how much hand sewing is required to turn the binding on something that large? I have a strained wrist, no joke, because of it.  I will totally be sticking to baby quilts in the future.

I thought that this move would be glorious, and that every box that was unpacked would be accompanied by the sounds of angels singing from up high. Or hell, that the boxes would unpack themselves. We postponed our actual move for two days after closing so that we could get some stuff done around the house before the furniture arrived; pendant lights installed in the kitchen, a ceiling fan on the back patio, and a ton of other small things that have to be configured and messed with when it is just easier to do it with nothing in the way. Sunday arrived, bright and shiny, and after a friend popped over to the house to watch the kids (Christina, I owe you BIG TIME), I took off back to our old apartment to box up the odds and ends.

Did I mention that I had the flu the entire week before we moved? Not the SWINE FLU! but the normal flu? 103 fever? No energy? Yeah. We literally had nothing in boxes on Sunday morning because of that damn flu. Mike and I flew around boxing things up as quickly as we could before the movers showed up, and we still had a ton of stuff in closets and cabinets when they moved our furniture out that we had to come back and get on our own. Let me be a PSA for the lot of you and tell you , right now: GO GET A FLU SHOT. If you can save yourself TEN DAYS of fevers, exhaustion, and all the other joys of being sick, then GO DO IT. I have never been as sick as I was the week before we moved, and it did not completely clear up until Tuesday after we were in the house. You don’t want to jack with this, folks. Trust me on this.

We’ve had something delivered or adjusted or painted or connected every damn day since we moved in; strange people flitter in and out of here like a train station. Painters turned my dining room into a shade of delicate, soft blue and our media room into a deep slate blue; furniture delivery men dropped off new couches and punctured a hole in the door to the same media room with a couch. (I kid you not – I thought Mike was going to explode in a shower of fury when he saw it, but he managed to stay calm long enough to tell the delivery folks that he would not be signing the “no damage” sheet when they offered it to him. I probably would have punched him in the nuts for even suggesting it.) Rooms are starting to take shape, slowly but surely. And we’re getting to know the staff at IKEA rather well, as their furniture graces many of the rooms of our home.

I’m going to get pictures next week, when everything is more organized, but for now I’m just glad to be here. In my own home, on my couch, watching the rain.

This is my new porn.

So many things are going on – trying to get the apartment repacked to move, although that starts next week; trying to get movers scheduled, closings scheduled, childcare scheduled, painters, furniture, it’s like I’m going a mile a minute and it doesn’t feel like there is an end but I know there is because HELLO GIANT EMPTY HOUSE WAITING FOR ME. I’m driving my kids crazy. And my husband. And probably a million other people that want me to just shut my face up about the house. I will, I promise, in about 11 days.

In the meantime, I’m keeping myself busy with this:

Funny what a ton of triangles can look like when sewn together.

And this:

All sewn by hand, y'all!

And I’ve even dabbled in a bit of this:

The craftiness is about to be boxed up, though, and shifted about two miles west to the new digs.  This is one move that I’m not dreading one little bit.

While I type this, I’m watching an informercial with Billy Blanks and some weird English guy hawking some power tool, and all I can think about is that Billy Blanks had drugs in his system when he died. Is that why OxyClean yanked all of his ads and replaced them with Generic Blonde Motherly Type? I refuse to believe they did it out of any sort of respect for him.

Randomness. Anyway.

With the liberal application of air conditioning and 44 oz iced teas from Sonic I’ve been getting back into the groove lately.

Hello! I'm Cassidy!?

What? You don’t immediately want to knit a sweater in the middle of summer, too? I’m not really a fan of knitting sweaters, but about once a year I get the bug and I have to knit one to get it out of my system, and this year is Cassidy’s turn. My progress is slow, due to the aforementioned BLAH going on, but the b/4 ack is done. Now I have to figure out how to shorten the sleeves to 3/4 length (math is not what I’d call my “strong point”) and I’ll have something useable by Christmas.

I am also working my way through a quilt. I saw this awesome tutorial online (which I now cannot find, but a search for Half Square triangle shows me that it’s not like this is a NEW idea) – you take two squares, draw a diagonal line down the center of one of them, and then sew a quarter inch seam on either side of the line. Then cut through the line, flip open and press seams in any direction that you would like. I won’t judge you if you like to press them completely open, or press to the dark side, or whatever wackiness you’ve come up with. I accept you, whatever your pressing style.

I’m not sure what this is going to turn into in the end, but I’ve had some pretty awesome inspiration. I’m sure I’ll come up with something. In the meantime, I’ll continue making half squares until I’ve exhausted my supply of charm squares, or until I’m sick of making them. Whichever comes first.

Kitchen Cabinets, or alternately: Where We Decided to Invest The Children's College Funds

These are the cabinets that we picked out, after hours of dickering back and forth. That giant white thing in front there is going to be the bar facing into our family room. It will invariably be covered with mail, keys, gadgets, toys, crayons, cups, paper, and the various other things that we’re just too lazy to put away. It is amazing how something as simple as a kitchen cabinet can completely define a room, and I love these more than when we saw them in the design center. And as of a few hours ago, our walls are painted, our banister is in, and our house officially has doors that my children will become well acquainted with slamming.

In the mean time, I’m spending my time with this:

Cassidy, by Bonnie Marie Burns

This looks complex, I’ll give you that. Don’t trust your eyeballs. There isn’t really any crazy difficulty here, and once I got into the rhythm of the cables, it is basically knitting itself. This is another one of those difficult, eye-catching type patterns that I love. Big bang for my buck (especially considering that I am knitting it in Valley Yarns Northhampton, excellent yardage for the price).  And there has been sewing, of both the hand and machine variety.

Look! I made a dress!

Hexagon Wreath

All in all, I’d say things are clicking along nicely.