What’s old is new again!!

Sweet Baboo and I watch our two granddollies on Monday afternoons while their parents work.  They’re five and two and a half now and love to glue pompoms and buttons and other scraps of paper onto big pieces of paper.  They love to have me make them a tent/fort/cave with a card table with a couple of blankets thrown over the top.  They love having their pillows and blankets in the tent/fort/cave with them, along with assorted babies and snacks.

 And coolest of cool — they LOVE watching Fraggle Rock on Netflix.  Their mother adored that show when she was little and their dad told me that he also loved watching it.  I’m thrilled that I don’t have to listen to Dora and Boots for awhile. =). Not that there’s anything wrong with Dora and Boots, but if you’ve seen one you’ve seen all 800.

 Today the granddollies also discovered the animated series, so they have even more episodes to watch.  Isn’t it incredibly cool that a twenty something year old program still has the legs to attract a new generation of viewers!!!

More Malabrigo love

I just finished my own pair of 3 X 1 socks in Malabrigo and they are every bit as comfortable as Sweet Baboo said they were.  This yarn is truly fabulous.  It knits like a dream and is so, so soft and smooth.

First sock -- a little over half done.

One down and 2/3 done with the second -- but starting to get a bit nervous. Not a lot of yarn left at this point!!

 

A really close finish!!

By the time that I got to the toe, I was checking and re checking my yardage (or should I say footage!) hoping that I had enough to finish.  That little loop of yarn in the upper right corner is just about one yard of yarn.  I had another ball, but I really wanted to keep that one for something else and now I can!

 

 

 

 

Ed’s Perfect Fit Socks

Not long ago, having hit a knitting brick wall, and not knowing what I wanted to do next,  I told my sister to send me measurements for her husband’s foot so that I could make a pair of socks for him.  He’s big on outdoorsy stuff, bow hunts, makes maple syrup, farms, etc.  A pair of wool socks would be a good choice.  However, sister hasn’t sent me the measurements yet — have you sister? 😉

Anyway, after some thought I decided Sweet Baboo could use a pair.  Off to Woolworks, found some fabulous yum yum yarn called Malabrigo which is pure Merino wool and superwash to boot.  I knit socks with two circular needles rather than 3 or 4 or 5 or whatever is needed for double points.  What’s nice about that is that you can stretch the sock in progress over the foot of the intended recipient.  I must have asked him to try the first one on 43 times.  Good natured as he is, there was no complaint.  He’s been down this road before and knows what he’ll get at the end.

There is nothing like being able to measure and re-measure a foot during knitting.  The fit is fabulous and if there’s any tightness or looseness anywhere,  it’s not a hardship to frog a few rows back and knit it correctly, rather than finding out at the end that there’s a problem.  These are like a second skin for him, plus the yarn is so smooth and itch-free. The colors aren’t even close, but he’s happy!

This pattern is a mishmash of several that I have, but mostly starts with Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles by Cat Bordhi.  Love her pattern, just kind of improved on it for these socks.  Plans are to add the pattern here.

Wow!!!

Sweet Baboo decided a few weeks ago that Netflix would fill a yawning hole in our viewing pleasure.   Being a self-proclaimed documentary loving geek, I totally agreed and voila, we signed up.

Immediately, I started queuing up space and universe documentaries. Total heaven!!  LOVE those shows and in HD they’re even better. Maybe it’s because I was watching so many that a lot of what was being said actually stuck with me.

And this just boggles my mind.

When you look up at the night sky, you will see about 2,500 stars with the naked eye at any point anywhere on earth.  There are about 5800 to 8000 visible stars total. However, astronomers estimate that there are about 200 BILLION stars contained within our galaxy, The Milky Way.  This is an artist’s rendition , of course.  But still.  It’s a pretty spiral galaxy, isn’t it?

So, 200 or so billion stars in our galaxy, which is actually an average sized  galaxy.  Dwarf galaxies can have as little as 10 million or so stars, and gigantic mega monstrous galaxies can have as many as 10 trillion.

And how many galaxies are there? Conservative estimates are placed at between 100 and 200 billion.  Other estimates put it at around 500 billion.

And with these numbers in mind, a rough estimate of stars in the universe are set at 10 sextillion  and 1 septillion stars.  Lottsa stars.  Uber stars. More than we can ever count. Kinda makes you step back and think, doesn’t it?

I used Universe Today with all of their fabulous articles to assemble the facts that I’ve listed.  It’s a great resource for anything space or universe related.  I like to get lost in their pages — I never know where I’ll end up. (No pun intended!)

And then life smacks me up side the head —- with a shovel!!!

Y’know how cranky you can get when it’s two in the morning and you haven’t had a good night’s sleep in a week?  Well…….

A little lady came into work today to make an appointment.  She could only give us her insurance ID numbers, because she didn’t have her insurance card and wasn’t able to get it because she has a restraining order against her husband.  She is essentially hiding out from him, because her address is the other side of the state, although she gave us an address from our part of the state that she said was safe. I sincerely hope that it is.  There were still bruises on her face and a cut on her upper lip.  And she was limping.  I shudder to think of what the rest of her looked like. Her glasses were of course a casualty of his latest drunken or drug induced rage.

This little lady weighed maybe 110 pounds.  Just the fact that she was able to extricate herself from an intolerable situation shows her strength and courage.  He, on the other hand, needs to have a particular part of his anatomy nailed to a barn floor with a rusty nail, and then handed a rusty spoon.  Then drop a match on the floor. He’ll have a choice to make.  Nuff said.

And I was complaining about a little Sweet Baboo clutter.   😦  Shame on me.

Moral of the story — don’t blog when you’re overtired, it will surely come back and bite you on the ass.

On the road to minimalism!!!

Yep, it’s official — I’ve gotten to a place in my life where more is definitely way TOO more!!  I have a constant urge to cull, purge, toss, pare.  Clutter is making me NUTS!!  And it’s not like I have so much clutter — but just enough to irritate and nudge at me.  I’m sitting in the living room at 2:28 in the morning (sleeplessness, just another service offered by menopause) looking around and making a mental list of what I want to throw out.  So far, it’s 3 pictures that don’t go with anything (I don’t think there’s a room in this world that they would go with) a box of toys that the dollies don’t play with, and a pile of magazines.

The urge to accrue has passed. The only want I have now is to walk into a room and feel calm and peace — not feel like my heart wants to beat itself out of my chest.

So what’s the problem you ask?  Why am I whining?  Why aren’t I getting out the trash bags and having at it all?

Sweet Baboo.

He keeps bringing “stuff” in to the house but nothing leaves.  A human version of a Macafee antivirus program.  And for all their manliness and toughness, oh, those fragile egos to be tiptoed around!!

I understand his frugality and his love of getting something for nothing.  Case in point — he recently brought home 3 lamps and 2 end tables from a house giving these things away.  No matter that they go with nothing we own.  No matter that they don’t even go with each other!!!  He has this idea in his head that he will make them fit somewhere.  And of course they don’t.

So how do you on the one hand tell him that you appreciate his efforts but on the other hand,  for the luvvaGod get this crap out of our house?

This is the kind of thing that keeps me lying awake at 2:28 in the morning when I should be sleeping.