The Week in Review

Ah, Halloween. This year, Baby M went trick-or-treating for the first time. (No, I do not have any photos to post. I am a bad mommy and forgot to bring the digital camera to Grandma and Grandpa's house, so we had to use the "old-fashioned" film camera. Lord knows when I'll see those photos, but let me tell you, Baby M was cuter than cute in her little green froggy costume.) She seemed unfazed by the parade of strange-looking creatures on the streets (the super-warm weather brought the trick-or-treaters out in droves) but didn't show much interest in what was being dropped in her little pumpkin-shaped goodie bucket until she got a little orange bag of pretzels. Those she recognized from her library story hour -- one of the other little girls had brought the pretzel bags in to share with all the kids -- and then...well, then she realized that the stuff in the pumpkin was important. She clung to that bucket all night like it was full of diamonds (and at 18 months old, a bucket full of Halloween candy is better than diamonds any day). The only thing she really recognized was the pretzel bag -- so far we've managed to keep her fairly candy-free, so she didn't have any concept of what the other brightly-colored wrappers contained -- so getting most of the candy away from her by the end of the night was fairly easy. She kept the pretzels and the little bags of Teddy Grahams (I love the parents who handed those out), and I also saved the little Kit Kat bars for her on the assumption that they're more cookie than candy, really, and if we parcel them out between now and Christmas it'll be fine. Again, at under 2 years old, Baby M is still pretty easygoing (though I do have the sneaking suspicion that after the first Kit Kat bar, there'll be no turning back). All in all, a good Halloween was had by all.

Of course, all that goodwill couldn't come for free. Today at work I had to mediate a crisis of stupid proportions -- way too stupid to get into save to mention that this is why I hate hate HATE doing admin work. As a teacher, I get one crazy student maybe once every few years; as an administrator, everyone's crazy students cross my path at one point or another, which tends to make for a lot of craziness.

I don't even have my knitting for solace. *grumble* Stupid finger. *grumble* Stupid tendonitis. But at least I've figured out something that's nearly as good.

I have one of those Ultimate Sweater Machines, bought in a fit of desire to whip up beautiful handknits at a fraction of the time that handknitting actually takes. While I don't think I would ever knit a sweater with this thing, it does do a good job of churning out large panels of stockinette stitch. Now, I've been wanting to do some charity knitting for quite awhile. I debated the merits of various charities -- the Dulaan Project, Operation Toasty Toes, Warm Up America, Afghans for Afghans -- but nothing really captured my heart...until I ran across the Soaring Eagles Project. They're looking for holiday gifts for impoverished elementary school children in Oklahoma; what had I seen on Ren's blog not two days earlier but a pattern for the cutest little bunny stuffed animal made from a single square of knitted fabric, folded origami-style, stitched, stuffed and embellished with a pair of knitted ears and a tuft for a tail.

Bingo! For the past two days, I've been churning out bunny-colored squares on my knitting machine, and once I have a nice pile I'll start sewing and stuffing. The last step will be to handknit the ears, but they're only 5 stitches wide apiece, so how much knitting will that really take? If I'm lucky I'll be able to put together a box full of these folksy little dolls and help make some kids very happy. And I'll be able to use up a bunch of my old acrylic that's been lying around for ages (they specifically asked for only acrylic or cotton items to avoid shrinking/felting problems once the kids have the gifts) AND stick to my Stashalong "diet" at the same time.

I love it when a plan comes together. :)