It's going to take forever!

My Flower Garden vest, that is. Here's the first set of motifs done (yarns are bright pink cochineal dyed comeback type, brown tea dyed Corriedale, natural grey CVM and natural white Corriedale):

And I don't think I posted the pics from Gilad's 5th birthday party held at school:

Hippo Gnu Year!

It's 2010 and I'm still catching up on 2009.

Gilad is now officially 5 years old (the cake is evidence that it's all official and everything):

Adele just keeps getting cuter and goofier:

Jeffrey just keeps getting more wonderful:

And I keep getting crazier, as evidenced by the fact that I'm proposing to do two OWLs for this new Term over in the Harry Potter Knit/Crochet House Cup game, for the glory of team Hufflepuff:

The one above is actually 4 different projects representing 4 different magical creatures: 2 pairs of socks (blast-ended scroots and kappas); a lace shawl (dragons); and a hat and mitts (bowtruckles).

This one is a Fair Isle steeked vest, to be knit in some of my hand spun (natural colored or natural dyed) yarns as shown above.

My little prodigies

Feivel, Gilad, and Adele are playing dreidel, having eaten their fill of latkes (served with chickpeas and green beans and rice and salad, this being our house after all). Oh, and of course brownies. On Feivel's first spin he got a "hay" ה which means he's supposed to get half of what's in the center. Gilad glanced at the pile of pennies and announced to Feivel that he should get six pennies. Sure enough, there were 12 total.
Then Adele spun, and proudly announced that she too had gotten a "hay" and sure enough she had.

Wake up and smell the pumpkin seeds

You can hide.

You can try to pretend you have other things to do.

You can be inordinately cute

But your pumpkin guts belong to us!

Addie and Gilad's preschool went to the farm this last week (and Addie's 2 year old class used it as an excuse to teach the children all the standard nursery rhymes and songs, so all week we heard her singing "Old MacDonald" and "Baa, baa, Black Sheep" and so on). They came home with popcorn and pumpkins. So we've hacked the tops of their heads off and scooped out the brains and guts and are soon to eat fresh roasted seeds.

So much going on

Jeffrey, Feivel and Sachy are still off at camp. Tirtze's home from her grandparents' and Kayla's gone with her Oma tonight to see the Harry Potter movie. Don't worry; everyone's still very cute.

Meanwhile, all continues as abnormal as ever. What do you keep on your counter? On ours, of course, it's fermenting dye.

The better to dye yarns:

lichen and osage orange on the left, just lichen dye on the right.

And Kayla wanted some goth style fingerless mitts, so I knit them for her:

talking with a 4 year old

Conversation with Gilad yesterday:

"Mommy, are there tests to be a firefighter?"

"Yes, you have to pass tests to prove you're big and strong and smart."

"I was afwaid of that."

That is exactly what he said, along with a sigh.

Oh, and Addie recognizes and can name most of the upper case letters of the alphabet now.

It's been 8 days?

Well, the middle of it was the holiday of Shavuos so I'll use that as my excuse for not posting for over a week. We had a perfectly nice holiday with plenty of dairy and parve cheesecake and lots of kids in the house (ours plus lots of visitors both afternoons). Sunday we had scouts, track, a birthday party, a play practice, a knitting get-together, and more; the usual schedule of insanity.

I did finish my charcoal grey CVM yarn; it's 2 ply fingering weight woolen spun, 5 ounces and about 550 yards:

And in case you thought the kids might be behaving more normally, I provide evidence to refute that:

As for Addie, more of her liver function tests have come back looking normal, so our pediatrician is sending her to the GI.

Sort of in a holding pattern

I haven't posted much because I don't have much to post. I'm part way through my cabled sweater (done with the back and most of the way done with the front). I'm part way done with a gift I'm knitting for a swap partner. I'm partway through the spinning I'm doing (the 6 oz of charcoal cvm from the cvm fleece):

I've washed 1 lb of white alpaca, but it's still wet so I can't do anything with it for now (when it arrived I thought it was fawn colored; then I washed it and it emerged bright white). I've carded the 4 oz of cvm that was white, and flicked the dark grey section (about a lb worth) so it's ready to drum card at some point (but first I have to spin the white, and card and spin some of the alpaca, which I received as a sample from someone trying to find out if her fiber is good enough quality to sell for profit).

As far as Addie goes, her stool samples were normal (I know you wanted to hear that), even though even the pediatrician can't explain why they were chalk white. Her ultrasound showed some possible inflammation in the liver and of course confirmed the enlargement of the liver and spleen. No blockages, no visible growths. Next up will be bloodwork first thing next week.

So I leave you with the obligatory gratuitous pic of Gilad at school:

and a general sense of incompletion.

Gilad and friends are ready

for birkas hachamah, the blessing on the sun we say once every 28 years, which occurs tomorrow (Wednesday):

Gilad is the one all the way on the right.  You can't recognize him in his sun glasses.

Well, that was an eventful Shabbos

First of all Tirtze finally invited a school friend (actually 2 but one couldn't come) to sleep over, plus Golda (one of the usual suspects from the neighborhood) slept over, and Adina (another one) spent the afternoon with us.  All 3 of the guests have mothers originally from Iran, so there was much discussion of Farsi vocabulary, and for at least one of them it was the first time in her life to eat brisket and shnitzel on Friday night rather than rice and stew.  I mean, we don't infrequently eat Sephardi style foods Friday nights, but it happens that the menu this week was brisket, shnitzel, challah kugel, and salads...quite the Ashkenazi stereotypical Shabbos dinner.

The real excitement came Saturday morning though.  The winds blew down 2 electrical wires right in our front yard, causing a half dozen explosions from the transformer on the pole at the corner of our property.  This totally freaked the kids out, what with the huge noises and sparks flying across the whole yard.  Thank G-d it rained a lot this week so all the tree branches and grass were wet enough not to catch fire.  The fire department came immediately and taped off our yard and the next door neighbors' and then Pepco came and fixed the lines and restored power within about 4 hours of the whole incident beginning.

And Gilad wanted everyone to see him and the train track Feivel built for him:

The promised pic

Of Gilad last night:

And an hour later after Jeffrey had put him back to bed, he came in to me to complain about the rain noise that was keeping him awake.  Once again, it wasn't raining.  I pointed out that Tatty was making more noise in his sleep than Gilad could hear in his own room, so Gilad wandered back to his own bed.

Finally done and my trouble maker

Well you haven't heard about this in months, because it was a temporary UFO--that's unfinished object.  I finally finished my Slow Bee II stole this week though, in a fit of Pesach cleaning avoidance:

Much to my relief, I finished with a few yards left on the spool.  It was a close thing though:

Since I am finally heavily cleaning (the little kids' room is already done this morning, and I bought good bathtub cleaner and a new tub scrubber and new mop stuff and everything, I leave you with a single image of Gilad the trouble monkey, with his "slide" made from his bed the other night:

It's the law

As I was just getting ready to go, Sachy ran up to me yelling, "Go! Go! Go!  SWAT Snuggling Team!"  So I swatted him.

Incidentally Addie and Gilad have both been sleeping really poorly the last few nights.  A couple of nights ago Gilad came running into my room at about midnight announcing, "Mommy, I don't like this storm!"

"Um, there's no storm."

"Oh."  And with that he turned around and pitter pattered back to his bed.

And now Sachy just came up behind me reiterating his status as head of the "SST."

Purim is over

Well, we got through it, though now the kids have to make it through Shushan Purim at school still--more costumes and candy to come.  We all got to megillah reading this morning, we sent and received many shalach manos, we relaxed, we discussed megillah and midrash, we made a nice seudah, and we visited Bubbie (my grandmother).  Yes, all of us visited Bubbie, I hope she doesn't need too long to recover.

And then this evening we sat and played and talked (and I knit) and Gilad practiced his spinning.

And while I feel like I should have some deep thoughts, I am too tired to think them.  I don't seem to be adding any commentary to this blog these days beyond the various asides and snarky comments.  I'm not really sure how much longer my intellect intends to remain on vacation, but I think it's time it started showing up to work.

I'm so very proud

This morning I got Addie ready to leave, headed for the door, and Gilad called out with perfect timing, "Have fun storming the castle!"  Now we just have to teach him to say, "I am not left handed!"  which would be particularly ironic given that he is left handed.

Meanwhile, I've finished my OWL Titania sweater:

Complete with proper mattress stitch finally,

and cast on socks for Kayla.

I also finished spinning about 360 yards of fingering weight Corriedale sock yarn and dyed it in tea this evening, but it's drying and I don't have photos of that yet.

I have to save it to proper format to share here on the blog, but Gilad's teacher also sent me a video of him and one of his friends in gym class; they're supposed to be having a snake race, wriggling forward on the ground, when all of a sudden these two get up on their feet and run to the finish line.

Giggle is approved as 4

Gilad went for his 4 year old check up today, and he is officially 38.5" tall and 33.5 lbs heavy.  He got 4 shots and was incredibly brave about them; according to Jeffrey, who took him, he sat and watched them give each injection and after the last one he said, quietly, "Ouch."  This evening though, he refused to let me take off the band-aids because that would make the boo-boos bad.  His hearing and vision were fine, but they're sending him for speech evaluation since he still can't pronounce his "l"s, "r"s or "v"s quite right (as when he tells me "I want wowwipops in my yunch [that would be lollipops in his lunch]").

Department of Things You Don't Expect to Hear

Four-year-old Gilad was on the computer, playing games on Disney's Club Penguin, a sort of gaming and social networking site for the preschool/grade school set.  All of a sudden he says excitedly to the screen, "Yeah!  I got his underwear!"

Kayla and I both agreed we did not want to know what was going on (Sachy later informed us though that it was probably a particular penguin mission in which you have to get the belt from a mannequin after which its pants fall down so you see boxers).

We weren't busy enough today

Because Feivel had swimming lessons, Gilad had his friend Hannah's birthday party to attend, Jeffrey and Sachy had Cub Scouts, Feivel and Jeffrey had Boy Scouts (though Feivel wound up not attending), and Kayla had Teen Talk (a girl's club run through a local Chabad House).  So we decided Jeffrey's parents should be in to visit

 and we should go ahead and celebrate Gilad's 4th birthday!

Oh, and since I have so much free time, I've cast on Titania for my O.W.L.s over at the Harry Potter Knitting game.  To fill up all those extra hours in my day.

5 bottles, no eating

At meal times, Addie wants a bowl and a fork to be like everyone else.  The way she is not like everyone else, though, is that she won't actually eat.  Well, I tell a lie; today she ate one Froot Loop and perhaps 5 peas (plus the one she got half up her nose).  She did drink about 36 ounces of toddler formula.  We absolutely have to get her off the bottle, I think.

For your amusement, meanwhile, here is a photo of Gilad not-quite-touching-Mommy's spindles

And what was on the spindles (110 yards of 2 ply laceweight yarn all spindle spun for a change; the fiber is wool scraps from someone else's scrap box I carded on her drum carder).

And I am 2 rolags away from finishing spinning the singles of the 8 ounces of Corriedale I washed and carded myself.  Then on to plying (a 3 ply medium weight yarn is what I'm aiming for) and possibly dyeing if the plying doesn't even out the color differences.  Oh, and I finished knitting my Charms homework for the month for the Harry Potter-themed group, but I'll try to get a decent photo tomorrow when it's dry and off the blocking board.