Damn it, Honu.

She's gone invisible again.

A QUESTION!

There was a question in the comments, and I never know WTF to blog about these days, so yeah! I can answer that!

Measurement of hand-spun yarn is rather... hit or miss. Accuracy can vary quite a lot, and then it can vary quite a lot again, when it hits water. (It his highly advisable to skein your new yarn, wash, and dry it, before trying to use it for knitting/crochet/weaving/macrame/tatting/rigging sailing ships. Sets the twist [like setting a curl in your hair] and makes it easier to work with.)

There are two ways to measure. One that is PROBABLY, under ideal conditions, most accurate, is by weight. You need a really accurate scale:

This one is from Harbor Freight, and weighs in tenths of a gram. I think I got it on sale for $14. I know it was under twenty. You get a yard of your yarn, weigh it, weigh the rest of the skein, and do the math. If you stick with metric, the math is even easy. Drawbacks are, for real accuracy, you need to cut the yard from the rest of the skein, if you've spun frog hair (finer than frog hair? that saying?) you may need to weigh five or more yards to get it to freaking register as weight, and if you spin unevenly, the whole thing's out the window. 

The more traditional method is to wrap the yarn around something of known circumference, count as you go, and do that math. (This is where the song "Pop Goes the Weasel" is from. Around and around the swift, and old production ones would make a pop or click every one, five, or ten yards. Which is cool, except this song is guaranteed to piss me off thanks to my friend W, who introduced me to Plants Vs. Zombies. BUT I DIGRESS.) For winding off, I use a 1.5 yard niddy-noddy: 

(Fun story, since I'm digressing all the hell over the place anyway: I used to hang out with a former pro hokey player, and when he'd jokingly threaten about hockey sticks, I'd tell him I was ready to take him down with my niddy-noddy. After a couple years, he finally saw a picture of one and was all "THOSE THINGS LOOK DEADLY!" and I was "Well, duh, I'm not gonna threaten an intruder with a pillow for fuck's sake.") Anyway. My usual method is to count as I wrap, unless the hub, kid, and cat are anywhere near me, then I lose count, yell at everybody, and go back and count later. Depending on how much it shrinks in the wash, I will multiply by 1.25 instead of 1.5. Drawbacks include all the above, plus for true devotees of accuracy, the way the wrap gets larger/longer as you go on really big spins will make you kinda crazy. But it's a good way to get a ballpark when you can't even guess to within a hundred yards because you had a migraine while you spun it. I know I chronically underestimate this way, but I've never run out of yarn and haven't ever heard from anyone else who bought my yarn that it was underestimated. This is the method I use most often, and is used most by spinners, at least the ones I hang out with. 

Since I was taking pictures anyway, and this was on the niddy-noddy, I got a closeup: 

It's a four-strand hawser ply. It's how they used to make rope. Z-twist four singles, then do two pairs of them, Z-twisting AGAIN, then S-ply the whole shooting match. For as much twist as there is in this stuff, it is awfully not-squishy. When I finished it, my thought process went "awfully sturdy... feels like rope... no shit Julie, you think?" But there are spinners who swear by this for cuffs and socks. Dunno, I think I'll be sticking cable ply if I want to knit or weave body armor. 

Better! ...and then worse. Um.

I got a nerve block at the beginning of March. That and the milder weather combined to make me feel better. So I went insane, unpacked moving boxes (THERE ARE STILL MORE HERE OMG JULIE WTELF?) and cleaned half my kitchen.

Now I have an appointment next week to go in and arrange another nerve block. Whoops.

The good news is, in terms of drugs and my health, I can have pretty much unlimited nerve blocks. I'm only limited by the assholes making decisions at my insurance company. But I'm covered by two policies (military retirees, hub's work) so even then I should be good. Also, my pain doc gets operating room space to do this stuff one day a week at a plastic surgery spa, so the whole thing is just hilarious from start to finish. (We've all started calling nerve blocks "spa days".) They have to do the block in an OR 'cause they stick needles in my neck and if they miss I can quit breathing, so yay, life support equipment and all kinds of trained people nearby. I've had four now, and the three with this crew have all gone so smoothly I almost didn't even have a sore spot after. (The one at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center gave me a migraine for a month. I intend to rag on them incessantly, for the rest of my Old Sailor's Bitch Wife time on this planet.) So, the pain thing is leveling out, in that I've got qualified care that's serious about making things work, but it's not leveling out because as I feel better, I do more, and actually need more pain drugs.

Needing more meds as you feel better is weirdly common, and with experienced people, you only get eye rolls and "We know, we know."

I'm rambling. But anyway. Oddly better yet not. Bodies are weird.

When I'm not cleaning or throwing things away, I finished the pink to orange spin. Got really crap yardage, like 200 yards, so I'm dyeing 8oz (this was four) and trying again. Because damn it, I want a really elaborate shawl in this gradient, DAMN IT.

Been knitting. The chart I'm on looks like this:

Something about the fiber has made Honu goony, and she's been scent-marking it every chance she gets.

So far all she's done is rub her face on it, so I've let her live. That can change if the evil fucker starts messing with it.

Spun some tencel and wool, got crap yardage. WTF do you do with 185 yards of something?

Also spun a cabled yarn, copying the structure of a 15,000 year old cord found in the caves at Lascaux, with the paintings.

Twenty yards from four ounces of fiber (!!!!) but at least this is six ply, really thick, and practically bullet proof. I'm actually teaching a class on cabled yarns at the end of May at Natural Stitches. Just sayin'. This went to the shop as a sample. I get better sign-ups when there's something for people to touch and fondle.

I'm also experimenting with hawser plying, but that's how they make rope and so far my efforts are pretty bad. Pictures when they don't suck.

Also, fed up with the shitty yardage I've been getting, I started on a practice run for some lace yarn I've wanted to do for years. Orenburg lace (Rav link) is traditionally knit with yarn made of one strand of silk and one strand of "goat" that's essentially cashmere (they're right over the mountains from Kashmir). I'm doing the same, but with an American-ish twist. Western Europe, for sure: one ply silk, and one ply angora.

So far I'm working on the silk ply.

It's pretty slow going, but it's really shiny and kinda blue. Love it. Will dye the angora the same way I dyed the silk. (Bottle cap for scale, by request from my Kiwi friends. They pointed out most of them have never seen an American quarter.)

So, yeah, same old, same old. Once I finish this purple lace monster (I'm on row 205 of 257, but each row gets longer, exponentially) I'm going back to the blue and white stranded color sweater I started last winter. It needs sleeves. Two. TWO SLEEVES.

In the mean time, Honu is laying on my lap, and occasionally reaching out to smack the ruler that keeps my place:

Elizabeth Wayland Barber is giving a talk in Pittsburgh Tuesday night, and I'm going. After, there will probably be shrieking over fiber history. Or Scythians. Or frozen tombs containing felt fabric in Kazakhstan. Or something.

Musings while re-knitting lace mistakes.

While "mostly stockinette" does translate to "less difficult", having umpty-eleven double yarnovers all over the place bumps up the difficulty again. Pulling the whole thing off the needles and simply unraveling is almost impossible with double and triple yarnovers, so you have to tink back stitch by stitch to correct mistakes, and that's always fucking tedious. Especially on center-out laces that have more stitches per row, the further on you knit.

Various types of yarnovers jumbled into a single row also ups the difficulty. I've got here, I shit thee not, a row with single, double, and triple yarnovers in it. You'd think 'oh, it's just like any other stitch', but no. It can get pretty damn confusing.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. IT IS NOT COMPLICATED, BRAIN, SO QUIT FUCKING IT UP YOU STUPID PUDDLE OF WATER.

I really like a good blurple.

Variegated yarn and lace to not mix well. Even an ombre/semi-solid like this one isn't the best choice. BUT, the varied colors do make it easier to see where in hell the yarn is going, when you need to tink back or fix something later.

Feh.

COUNT YOUR FUCKING STITCHES AND QUIT WITH THIS SMUG "I can read my knitting, I'll go by landmarks" BULLSHIT. This is how you wind up ten rows into something going "hey, where did that fourth pattern repeat go?" you idiot.

HOW IS IT I AM MISSING ANOTHER MOTHERFUCKING STITCH WHEN I GODDAMN COUNTED THESE LAST THREE MOTHERFUCKING ROWS?

...brain, you piece of shit. I said EIGHTEEN.

I need more medication. Or less. Hmmmm. Caffeine could solve this. Sleep is for the weak.

For a balanced single decrease (hey, I'm obsessive about symmetry), slip one, knit ONE, pass the slipped stitch over. Two stitches into one, and it doesn't lean in either direction. You're welcome.

Back to where I started tinking back. Pretty sure all my yarnovers are where they belong and the stitch counts came out right. Instead of hitting post, I guess I'm gonna stay on, blather a bit, and then do some commentary about a shawl I need to block.

Next, row eighty-two. Of two hundred and fifty-seven.

"It'll be an interesting zombie project" I said. BULLSHIT, BITCH, YOU'RE ALTERING GERMAN LACE ARE YOU CRAZY?

Took a break to play one of those stupid Facebook-integrated games on my iThing. I have been destroyed by fanged Easter eggs and a zombie bunny. Where do I file the complaint.

ROW EIGHTY TWO. DAMN IT.

Checking on a calculator to make sure eight and eight make sixteen. It is turning into that kind of a day. Now singing the inchworm song I can only remember the numbers part of.

If this ear worm doesn't back off soon, I will play John Phillip Sousa and show it who is boss. Except then I'd have JPS marches stuck in my head. Decisions.

If Honu had thumbs, I could teach her to make me tea.

I cannot begin to express how much I wish medical marijuana was legal in this state. LOTS. LOTS AND LOTS. AND THEN MORE.

Got the blocking boards out of the basement while I threw in a load of laundry. I think I heard the husbeast muttering something about an apocalypse while I was sorting laundry.

Dropping the needles in the middle of a row to explain fractions and ratios and numerators and denominators to the Goober is not doing a single damn thing to help my ability to count to eight.

My beloved child has decided to play SkyLanders loudly in the same room I'm in. May the sweet baby Buddha and his eight tiny reindeer save me. Upcoming, Goob quotes.

"Wait, that guy's a guy?" Now spelling out her name with destruction and shrapnel. "Okay, this is awesome!"

Me: "You do know, if I catch you doing this to real, actual sheep, I will kill you, right?"

I met a gin-soaked barroom queen in Memphis. She tried to take me upstairs for a ride. (Kid doing backup vocals.)

As soon as I picked up the knitting after dinner, the laundry buzzer went off. Heavy sigh.


...right. Headache medication finally kicked in and I've decided tomorrow is soon enough for blocking ANYTHING that requires eleventy-hundred pins. I'm going to bed. Here, have pictures of the finished spinning and the cat helping me knit.

And then, fiber!

Yay, I'm back to my 'normal' behavior of hunkering down over yarn and spinning wheels and similar things when I'm running low. It's maybe kinda slightly possible that my brain is kicking back into gear. This is the best winter I've had for pain control since we moved north.

A couple days ago I pulled out some "Into the Whirled" 80/10/10 wool/cashmere/nylon fiber and started spinning. The colors hooked me, and I'm making good progress.

I loooove it and want to hug it and keep it and love it. I'm settling for making it into a scarf. 

I finished the grey-blue-lavender-periwinkle lace shawl (except for blocking) and am casting around for another lace knit, since my brain seems to be going for it. 

I think I'm going with this. It's "Herbst", one of the insane German lace patterns. Not sure if it's a Niebling, don't think so. Just kinda crazy. I'm dividing it in half and knitting it flat for extra challenge, because I'm crazy. 

This ought to be interesting. (No, that's not the right chart, but it gives you an idea what these charts look like, if you've never seen one.) 

I finished the pink and orange. 

275 stinking yards. What in hell am I supposed to do with 275 yards?? I think I'm going to re-dye on eight ounces of fiber this time (that was five ounces), get more serious about producing frog hair, and TRY AGAIN. 

There's a Fiber Optic gradient here, "Blackbird" waiting for me to get my shit together. Hmm. 

Oh, and this was a class project, I was teaching how to ply from both ends of a center ply ball. 

Oh, and this, just for the hell of it. 

I know it looks like I was super productive and stuff, but imagine me in a corner (literally, my wheel and knitting nest are in the corner of the living room) communicating in grunts and fighting with the cat. 

And, in the middle of all that, while bitching about my hair, I managed to get a picture of myself that I kind of actually like. 

We had this discussion: 

ME: I'm changing my name to Ursula and getting some pet eels. 

HUSBEAST, without missing a beat, knows I'm talking about Little Mermaid: Hey, I'm not the one who did my hair that way. 

I'm thinking that silver needs some color. Like purple. 

I've been thinking of doing more history. There's a show on TV here called Drunk History, where they get people drunk and have them tell the story of their favorite episode in American history. There is lots of bleeping. And famous people stop in to help act out the stories. I was thinking hey, I could do that on my blog, but then I realized, I kind of already do. I mean, my history posts aren't composed while LITERALLY drunk, but they're definitely bleep-able and not exactly ivory tower material. Maybe I just need to do more history posts. I'm thinking Africa. People need more African history. 

In the mean time, I'm gonna go cast on this shawl like a lunatic, and yell at the cat when she smacks the ruler off it and I get lost. Must be Tuesday. 

It's all fun and games

until you see the hand specialist.

Honest, I'm sitting here trying to figure out where the entire last week went. I mean, I know where it went, but dude. AN ENTIRE WEEK.

Last Wednesday, I saw a hand specialist. One who didn't suck. His conclusion was pretty much "you're doing better than any other case like this I know of, OMG, don't look at your hand wrong or breathe funny, you'll jinx it". (Okay, thanks, I think?) But the exam consisted of lots of poking and twisting and at one point shifting the bones in my wrist, and when they ground together, the doc goes "you feel that?" and I said "you're kidding, right?" and he looked sheepish and said, well, that was the arthritis and messed up cartilage taking. Then he went on to smoosh the other wrist to show how it doesn't do grinding stuff. THANKS. I WOULD TAKE YOUR WORD FOR IT.

Anyway. That torn ligament that's driving me nuts? Fixing it would make a worse mess than it already is. All those little bones and tiny spaces between them, So apparently the laundry list of WTF that is setting off the pain thing is a permanent fixture and I'm back to the usual bullshit.

Although, a steady diet of nerve blocks is helping that, too, so with luck I might be functional one of these days.

--

Last night was the shop's holiday party (everyone's always busy at Christmas, so they do it in the spring, it is very awesome, no one is stressed and it is a very good time). Everyone gives each other knits, and I'd done a Batkus with some yarnovers and beads, in some of my hand spun.

I never got a full picture of it, because I'm a ding-dong. But! World's easiest beaded edge! You know how when you're normally knitting along, for a selvedge, you slip every first stitch in the row? Use a crochet hook and put a bead on every other slipped stitch. Looks fab, is fast and easy, and it's never so many beads at one time you go crazy. I love how it worked, and now want to put beaded edges on everything. (And probably will.)

The person I gave it to made squeaky noises and wore it the rest of the night, so that's a win.

--

The spinning continues. Remember the pink and orange gradient? Honu decided to help me with that.

Did the fucker eat one of the ENDS? No. It's a gradient, so OF COURSE she chewed up a hunk in the middle. I picked out the cat spit and kept spinning. Damned cat.

Uh, still working on the blue shawl? And some evidence for why I let the cat live. She's very warm.

Oh, the foot stool? Yeah. It's got storage space in it. We were buying it, and hub said oh, we should get a bigger one. I told him a bigger one would be filled up with fiber. Right then, small one! (Instead of fiber, it's full of electronics odds and ends - cords, Wii bits and bobs, the usual. So far no fiber. I'm fighting the urge.)

Ah! One last bit. My buddy W does millinery, and hooked me up with an on line shop that sells hand dyed silk ribbon for not-extortionate prices. www.fabricandart.com is the place. Ordered last Friday, and here they are.

Aren't they PREEEEETTY? I love how silk takes dye. Hub was muttering until I said this may finally motivate me to unpack my work room. That cheered him right up.

With luck I'll actually do something this week, that'll be more interesting than taking painkillers, watching Netflix, and going "buh?" blearily at loud noises. At the least, no more doctor's visits for a while.

And then-

Nothing really happened. I've got a nerve block Tuesday and the cold's been brutal, so I've been hunkered down reading and doing fiber stuff. How about pictures? That's all I've got.

Honu's getting into this spinning thing. She keeps investigating the wheel, poking at it mostly. She tried to bite the drive band WHILE IT WAS SPINNING the other night, I'm waiting for it to pull out a whisker.

She also likes yarn, which is news to no one.

A couple weeks back, I had the dye stuff out and decided to do a gradient. They're getting more popular, but are hard to find in really bright colors, or unusual combinations. This one probably counts as both.

I'm trying to get some decent yardage, so I can knit a lace shawl with it. Something really traditional. So far, so good:

That's a comparison shot, with my hand. On the left is the spinning, on the right is #10 crochet cotton. I'm hoping for 800 yards but would settle for 600.

I also am trying to knock out a really quick gift, a shawl, "Damask".

I feel rather 'eh' about it. It's not a bad pattern, just not one of my favorites. Part of the problem is that the lace charts use a blank square for purl and I'm used to blank meaning no stitch or knit, so it's really screwing me up. And apparently I can't count to seven, either.

So, not much going on. Typical end of winter behavior for me, I've hunkered down with some fiber and I'm not moving again 'til it gets warmer out.

I married a crazy man, part -- what was it, again?

I'm a slob. I mean, I know I'm a slob, I'm not arguing that, but. Having lived with that for a while, wouldn't someone begin to realize that, hey, stuff on the floor doesn't mean, well, much of anything?

Last autumn, a fleece blanket (NOT HAND KNIT) I was rather fond of was thrown on the floor. It disappeared, and I figured the husbeast had taken it downstairs to the man cave, where it usually lives on the back of the couch. Eventually I asked where it was, and he said, oh, he'd put it in his truck.

That made sense. We're sitting here now under a severe cold advisory, and it's -2 F outside. So even though his commute is six minutes long, I could see keeping a blanket in the truck for the winter. I keep a towel in my Jeep. (All love to Douglas Adams aside, I got in the habit when I was in school the last time, when I never knew when a "study group" would wind up on a beach somewhere.)

Tonight, with the cancellation of school tomorrow, the Goober started the construction of an epic blanket cave. Over dinner, I asked if the blanket was still in the husbeast's truck. He said it was. I said, if we brought it inside now, it might be thawed for the kiddo to build with tomorrow.

Well, no, he'd used the blanket to pack the rusting-out wheel well. It would need washed.

Washed. It's been picking up road muck for three months of winter and it "needs washed".

If I'm out tomorrow I'll just swing through Target and buy another blanket.

I... just... what?

ETA: He brought the blanket in and was very nice and didn't act like I'd flipped out at all. It's a bit dirty, but nothing like I had expected.

Now I'm left with his stories yesterday of how he and his buddies would clean out mops while underway by tying a rope around them and throwing them overboard to splash through the ship's wake. I'm told it worked great.

Maybe I should just declare being boggled my natural state.

Damn it, Honu.

Bah.

"Cast on 300 and join without twisting" can kiss my ass.

So yeah. Spinning. Finally.

Spent the last week trying to upload photos and I still don't know WTF. It was supposed to be pictures of spinning.

Oh, fine, NOW it works.

Well, right there above us is a sample I made for my students (!). Chain/navajo ply on the right, true three ply on the left. Everyone always wants to know the difference and it's usually pretty obvious when you put them both together; these were spun from two halves of a single braid, so the colors themselves were exactly the same.

Yep, that's right, students! The big news (in fiber, at my house, anyway) for the last year is, I'm now a spinning instructor at Natural Stitches in Pittsburgh. It's been fun, and my students are learning, so we're all happy with each other.

However, being a teacher? I feel like something of a fraud, because for instance, that true three ply up there in that picture? Only one I've ever done. I know how a lot of this stuff works, mechanically, but have never done it. So lately, I've been trying to fix that.

Here's a cable ply.

Looks all complicated, but really it's just a four ply that you create by making a two ply, then plying it back on itself.

I finally spun some shorter fibers. This is camel, I think. Maybe yak. With silk, and enough wool to make you not scream when working with it.

I'm enjoying my new magnifier thingie on my new iThing, I'm getting some great close up pictures of all kinds of stuff, including yarn and fiber.

This is some swap yarn I need to get off my ass and mail. Not my preferred colors, but it turned out okay.

This was another sample for my students: It's dual drafting, in this case using regular wool and some glittery angelina what the hell held together and spun at the same time.

I don't know if I blogged last winter's insane-athon. I'd wanted as much yardage as possible, so I'd spun it as fine as possible, which apparently is pretty damn fine. It was half silk, which also makes the frog's hair stuff easier to do. It took three damn months.

I got 750 yards of three ply yarn out of four ounces of fiber. I'm pretty sure that's a new record.

I'm never doing it again, at least not without a tensioned lazy kate. That was ridiculous.

I even know what I want to do with this yarn. It's just a matter of finishing sixty other things first. As usual.

Right, finally got the spinning photos to show up. Maybe tomorrow I can mess around with something new.

Secret Recipe

This was supposed to be pictures of my spinning for the last year-ish, but, yeah.That would involve stash-diving in the Fiber Closet (of DOOM), and I'm trying to get more organized, not less. Maybe tomorrow if the kid goes to school. (It's snowing right now, we're due for freezing rain [OF DOOM] later tonight.)

Instead, one of those family (and by family, I mean just me and the husbeast, the way it started) jokes that get really out of hand and before you know it, you're hearing it from a friend of a friend and going "wait, what?"

Okay. This is a food joke, and there has to be background on this one. I'm one of the freakazoids the geneticists (or whoever names this stuff) have been calling "super tasters", which I personally think is a shit name that makes an annoying genetic glitch sound like a super power. Long story short, any complex flavor, and my brain goes "Derp, dunno how to sort that out, BITTER!" (More info on this, HERE.) As a kid, I had a reputation as a picky eater, for obvious reasons. Of course instead of taking this as a legit issue, or even POSSIBLY a legit issue, the whole extended family thought it was some kind of prima-donna attitude case behavior. (I don't like dark chocolate. CHOCOLATE. What kid turns their nose up at good chocolate? That's not attitude, that's weird.)

So, me, picky eater and attitude case as thought of by the family.

I spent summers with my cousins in Indiana until I was about fifteen. And, of course, my mother and my aunt somehow made a huge deal about my diet, as usual. (I was more than happy to not eat, and didn't whine much, if at all, but somehow no one noticed this while having hour-long discussions about what to feed me.) This was the status quo. You know how you get this fixed image of someone in your head, however they were, the last time you saw a lot of them? This is the image that got stuck in everyone's head.

Oh, and also? I couldn't cook.

Right. Well, as we all (hopefully) do, I grew up, moved away, got a life, and decided to learn too cook so I didn't starve or go broke on takeout. Cooking for myself made it possible to tailor the food to my tastes, so, shocker, I started eating more diverse things. And if I couldn't eat EXACTLY what I made everyone else, I could do a mini version for myself. (I still do this. Big pot of spaghetti sauce, then I pull out some for me before I throw herbs in the rest that make it taste funky to me. I can be as picky as I want, when I'm the cook.)

My aunt and uncle, of the Early Years, visited Hawaii on vacation while I was living out there. So I invited them over for dinner. AS ONE DOES WHEN ONE IS AN ADULT. I was about thirty at the time. Late twenties, for sure. You know, just possibly changed from the skinny thirteen year old they remembered. Just a tiny bit.

I made, oh, I don't remember, but a decent meal. Chicken, veggies, rolls, the usual. From scratch, though I bought the bread. My aunt and uncle, who apparently were expecting me to call out for (plain) pizza or something, were flabbergasted. They went on and on and on about how good it all was. My aunt had wanted to know what I did to the corn to make it so good. Was it a secret recipe?

Heh.

General rule? The fewer ingredients you have in a dish, the better the quality needs to be, of all the ingredients because you'll notice them more. I'd gotten the best quality corn I could find, warmed it up, and put butter, salt, and pepper on it.

Obviously, "Secret Recipe" in this house means "Warm it up and put butter on it." We have secret recipe bread, and secret recipe veggies of all kinds, and occasionally secret recipe steak without the butter. Long, long LONG running joke. "How'd you cook this?" "Secret recipe." "Oh, cool."

Fast-forward ANOTHER fifteen-odd years, to Thanksgiving at my in-laws' this year. Some friends of the family had gotten stuck in town due to weather, and so my MIL had invited them over. Her friend had brought asparagus, and we're chatting in the kitchen, and the friend says "Oh, I thought I'd just use the secret recipe." I stared, and she immediately added "You know, warm it up and put butter on it."

Right. Secret Recipe. Sounds good. Pass it over.

And so, the Goober.

I'll eventually get around to where I've been for the last year (if for no other reason than to document it and hopefully get a few laughs). But it veered mostly between lots of pain and lots of annoyance. I'm trying to decide if I should name names, with the doctors. At the least, I'll get into where you can find the one who called me "sweetie".

But first, some year in review stuff, and of course, the best thing of the year was the kiddo. Because she's awesome.

This is the best thing, I think. That's her, face down and asleep with a book. She's started reading voraciously, mostly YA novels. I started the European tradition of letting her open a book gift on Christmas Eve, and allowing her to stay up as late as she liked, reading. Most weekends she'll fall asleep reading in the evenings. It's awesome.

There was a thing I'm having trouble adjusting to, though.

She's got all these OPINIONS all of a sudden. (No, really, it's a hoot.)

She turned nine. After a week of not being able to make up her mind, at the last minute, she asked for the same cake I always make.

And, big one, SHE IS WEARING MY CLOTHES. 

Granted, the shirt is from the Skinny Years, and the boots were tight, but. THOSE ARE MY CLOTHES. How did this happen? (I totally earned Mom Points though, she told me half an hour before the bus that she needed a "Hawaiian shirt" to wear. OH LOOK WHO HAS A COLLECTION.)

She finally learned to swim, thank the gods. And she started piano lessons a couple weeks ago. (Husbeast and I have been debating... is it wrong to push your kid - into band, in our case - when we're pushing them toward something FUN?)

Lately, she's been yelling "MOM, I'M HOME." every afternoon on the front walk before coming inside. I guess so the neighbors know too? Whatever, it's adorable.

Another landmark this year, though not a positive one like the others.

Emergency room trip. That there's an infected salivary gland. (Honestly. When does anyone do anything normal in this house? Forget strep throat or tonsillitis, no, let's puff up like a lopsided hamster instead.) Usually that doesn't warrant an ER trip, but that puff up there appeared in a single hour. That thing where you're freaked out, but you can't freak out or your kid will freak out? Definitely a suckier side of parenting. We went to the children's hospital. They prescribed antibiotics and Sour Patch Kids candy. I wish I were kidding. The sour makes the salivary glands work over time, which is good. But. How many kids in the world go to the ER and come home with a prescription for candy? SERIOUSLY?

But yeah, the year in Goobie. She's chugging along, nothing gets her down for long. Of course, when you lead a charmed life with prescriptions for candy, life is pretty good.

Oh, and she went as Bubbles at Halloween

We spent the two weeks ahead of the holiday, while I was making the costume, singing the theme song. Doot doot do do dee doo do!