Trixie has teeth! Two front bottom. And is crawling. So fast she’s grown!

Abaigeal has gone from making two scribbles and saying “I don’t like to color” to drawing many, many things all in the space of a week. Also writing. And Faith now has two-digit addition and subtraction down. All personally decided, all interest driven, all unschooled. I love my family. I wonder where they’ll take me next?

Gilbert is deep in an imaginative play phase, his first. I had forgotten how sweet it is to enjoy the simple happiness of an almost-two year old and a toy farm set. Moo! Baa! Tra la la!

Bede has been typing a lot. Yesterday he wrote “With the financial support of viewers like you,” which cracked me up. He’s also still naked basically all the time (we are inching toward using the toilet, always progress!) and has made big strides in asking us for help. I read Emergence, by Temple Grandin, and have been attempting to see the world as visually as Bede likely does. Mister Enigma! I’m going to get some other books on visual-spatial learners. Bede has a few sensory processing differences too, which I’ve been trying to work with. He likes to jump! and run! and get big tight squeezy hugs! and then things get better. Sometimes. He is three, for goodness sake!

And that is all.

I’m knitting a scrap raglan for Gilbert out of worsted Wool-Ease oddments. I’d take a picture but my camera is defunct. I love the way raglan one-piece sweaters come together so magically. This one is bottom up, so it suddenly poof! looks like a sweater. I think I’ve made four or five of these and I love them.

And anyone reading this (who knows how to knit) can make this sweater. Anyone! If I can manage it with five children to tend to and an inability to count more than two stitches at a time, you can too. And if you make it in all stockinette, pure knit stitch with cute rolley cuffs, neck and hem, you don’t have to count (or purl), even.

Here’s the pattern, if you can call it that: Knit By the Numbers. The armseye (sounds nicer than armpit, eh?) part looks funny, where you attach them to the body, but trust it, it works out fine.

Get to it!

Talk Like A Pirate Day!

We drew pirate pictures, ate fish sandwiches, wore headscarves, said ARRRR! and are (arrr) watching Peter Pan, Jonah, and Dora’s Pirate Adventure! The girls are too young for POTC, alas.

Hope your day was filled with pirattitude as well.

In a parenthetical note, did anyone see Wife Swap last night? I loved the pirate family, and suddenly felt swept back to seventh grade when faced with the girl in the organized family! Gah. Shudder. I’m recovering.

See, I grew up in a house like the pirate house. Free speech, free thought, a touch grimy here and there, (maybe even a flea or two if we were fostering a mama cat with her kittens too young for flea treatment) and above all, TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE. So hey Mad Sally, you can come hang with us any old time.

Until then, avast!

It’s so late, but this is the only time I have to write at all. I’m tired but I have to do a core dump here so I can stop having to remember thngs.

Bede is following direction quite a bit more lately. He sits at the table when we ask him to, which is new. Now if he’d only wear clothes… And I just can’t figure out how to get him to use the toilet. Sigh. He’s a wild wolf boy!

It’s a very tiring point right now. Trixie is superneedy of my arms and lap, so the two-handed chores are stacking up. It’s depressing to have such an untidy kitchen, but hey, if she needs this for a few months out of her life of hopefully 80+ years, I’m more than ready to give it.

Faith and Abby are doing great. FAith is so big, suddenly. ANd Abby too. I don’t quite get it. They’re reading The Boxcar Children at night with Sean now, and really enjoying it. Oh, and Faith is into jokes. Really corny jokes. But gosh, she loves them.

Gilbert is talking and talking. and so loving and sweet. He still adores Trixie.

Really, it’s so fragmented around here I can’t order my thoughts. And the typing is making Bede stir, so I’m going to stop.

Changed yarn. The boucle was making me batty. Abby approved a sportweight wool blend from stash in a really pretty grapey burgundy. So so long, quick knit, hello easy to read knitting. A good trade off.

New neck stats:

front: 11
(marker)
sleeve: 9
(marker)
back: 20
(marker)
sleeve: 9
(marker)
front: 11

Total: 60 st

Yarn is Wool-Ease sportweight, on Clover US 6.

Total neck st: 40

front: 7
(marker)
sleeve: 6
(marker)
back: 14
(marker)
sleeve: 6
(marker)
front: 7

total: 40! Yay! Fee can add!

One head red cabbage, chopped
1-2 lbs corned beef
Enough water to barely cover
salt, ground coriander, cinammon to taste
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar

Cook it forever (2-3 hours) at a low simmer. So good!

You can make it w/o the beef, but it needs a little fat to feel good, so add some olive oil. Also great with carrots, potatoes, onions.

Trixie is upset unless I’m holding her, and has been for about a week. Gilbert went through the same thing at the same age. I’m just noting it for future reference.

She sure is cute.

We got a new computer! It arrived about 2 days before the old one died. As in “BOOT DISK FAILURE INSERT SYSTEM DISK” died. Yay new computer! Thanks Dad!

However I had no backups of my old data (I was planning to backup to this new computer, see) so now I got nuffin.

It’s like losing a Pensieve. The interwebs and my computer are where I keep all the things I can’t remember all the time, especially knitting related stuff. I feel bereft with no bookmarks! It inspired me to go make a del.icio.us account so with God as my witness, I’ll never be crashed again. (Am I the only one who hears Dell Ishy Oh Us whenever I see that typed?)

I bet I can get all the old data off the old computer, by the way, I just need a boot disk. I’ll rescue the photos and kid art and a few other things and then it will be wiped clean and turn into my computer for mail and web, letting the kids have this one all nice and fast and gameplayey. It’s for them, not me.

Anyway, until then I probably won’t have email. I’m not bothering to set one up on this box for now. If you need me, comment and I’ll reply somehow or other.

I’ll be knitting a cardigan for Abby and Faith out of some purty acrylic/nylon boucle. I have about twenty seconds to note here that I am getting a gauge of 3.6 st/in, nice and fat to knit quick!

It’s also time to point out that I hate purling. Bleh.