Remote Control Pizza

In September, my youngest son moved to Bullhead City, Arizona to be with his girlfriend who had gone out there to accept an exciting new job. Although he is a marvelously skilled mechanic he has yet to find a job out there, so he has been doing a lot of the cooking and (hopefully!) other household chores.

Yesterday he called me to ask about the necessary ingredients for my homemade pizza crust recipe. We chatted for a while, and then I emailed him the actual recipe after I got home from my craft fair.

A couple of hours later, he called me again with a question about measuring cups. I answered that question to his satisfaction (and he added a set of dry ingredient measuring cups to his next shopping list) and then as I heard rummaging noises over the phone, he commented, "Oh, wow, I don't think we have a rolling pin either."

I thought about it for a moment, then asked, "Do you have an empty beer bottle you could scrub and use instead?"

"Well, no, but I could have one in about two minutes," he replied, laughing. "You know, Mom, it's scary but I was actually thinking about that exact same thing when you mentioned it."

I agreed, and we chatted a while longer, discussing his plans for the pizza. Instead of our regular recipe using tomato sauce, onions, peppers, mushrooms, sausage, pepperoni, and cheese (and sometimes black and/or green olives) he was planning to use chicken and an Alfredo type sauce with mostly Parmesan cheese. He also was going to try making a stuffed crust. Then he commented that he should probably quit talking and start cooking and hung up.

Later I got an email saying that the pizza turned out well and they both liked it. It doesn't get much better than that!

It Isn't All About Knitting!

In addition to having 40+ years of knitting experience, I have also become a nationally certified Child Passenger Safety Technician, learning a great deal about child passenger safety, crash dynamics, and many other child transportation issues. After I became certified I had an opportunity to enroll in the supplemental Special Needs Transportation training, which I also found extremely valuable. My (grown) kids will tell you that when the topic of car seats arises for whatever reason I can and do tell anyone more than they ever wanted to know about car seats. When I'm not knitting, as likely as not I'm doing something car seat related (and when I AM knitting, I may very well be knitting in front of the computer reading car seat safety forums).

When my grandson, the light of my life, was born, I helped his parents to make sure that he was the safest he could possibly be riding in all of our various vehicles. I coerced strongly encouraged them to keep him rear-facing to the limits of his convertible seat, since rear-facing is so much safer. When he outgrew the convertible seats, I bought him higher weight harnessing seats for each of their vehicles because he was much too young to move into a booster seat at that time.

More recently, I was blessed to win a deluxe higher-weight harnessed seat in a Facebook drawing, and I agreed to submit a review of the seat. This week that review was published in Carseat Blog.

Now the review has generated more questions, and it looks like I'll be submitting another Carseat Blog post soon.

Meanwhile, the knitting continues, even if I'm not keeping up with the postings.............

I'm Definitely Not Keeping Up!

On Monday I posted about my Double Hearts blanket and that a couple of people had asked me to knit a blanket using that pattern for them. I was able to deliver the first completed blanket last Thursday, and started on the second soon afterward. On Monday evening I attended a Ladies' Night Out event at my mom's church, taking my knitting along (of course!), and one of the ladies in attendance at the church event requested that I knit a blanket for her as well. So instead of being almost caught up (I will finish the current blanket either tomorrow or Friday) I'm now a full blanket behind again.

I did manage to complete the designated hat of the day for Monday - a size small topknot hat. The Tuesday hat, a large pumpkin, didn't get finished last night so I'm scrambling to finish that up today. The Wednesday hat will once again be a smaller size since the small ones seem to be the most I can manage in the same day with the requisite blanket knitting. And as I STILL haven't figured out how to knit and type simultaneously, it's time to close this post and get back to the knitting part.

Long Time No Blogging

Wow, I can't believe how long it's been since I actually posted anything on the blog! I know that time flies, and it has definitely flown the last several months. Naturally I've still been doing a LOT of knitting, but Facebook, summer, a church canoe trip, vacation, and other chaotic events have resulted in a plethora of blog posts which have only been written in my head. Unfortunately I have not yet figured out how to transfer them from the depths of my mind to the pages of the blog without the intervention of my fingers, which have a marked tendency to be wrapped up in yarn and knitting needles at most any waking moment.

In the mean time, my Double Hearts blanket pattern has been published by Mary Maxim, and I've had a couple of people who have requested that I knit them a blanket using that pattern. I've also worked on a couple of other designs for next year's pattern contest, but both will need a bit of tweaking before they are ready to enter in the contest. I think they'll turn out really nicely though.

Right now I'm busy knitting up a storm to restock after a fairly successful craft fair on Saturday. This week I need to knit 1/5 of a Double Hearts blanket each day, to have it ready for the customer by the weekend. I also need to knit one hat each day this week, and three hats a day after the blanket is done, to have enough stock for the next upcoming craft fair. I also will need to squeeze a few dishcloths into the mix since my dishcloth stock took quite a hit on Saturday.

In addition, I'm crocheting on an afghan that one of my knitting customers had started and then talked me into finishing for her. I'm not really thrilled with the project at this point, for two reasons: first, it's very challenging to start in the middle of a project and try to match the gauge of the previous crocheter when the pattern that was provided doesn't even mention the recommended hook size - lots of trial and error here; second, although I have crocheted for nearly as long as I have knitted, I don't do as much of it, and because it is so much slower than knitting I'm much less patient with big crochet projects and therefore considerably less proficient at crochet than at knitting. There is no way that I'll be able to charge anything close to what my time and effort are worth for this project; however, considering that this is for a repeat customer who has paid me well for past projects, I'll finish it up and make her happy. However, I have no intention of taking on any further crochet projects of this nature at any point in the future.

And last but not least, my grandson started kindergarten last month. It's hard to believe that he could possibly be that old already but he's still incredibly cute and the highlight of my life.
He has recently shown some interest in knitting, and I'd love to have him for a while and work with him to see if he picks it up.

Meanwhile, my computer time is up for now, and I need to get back to the knitting since I still haven't figured out how to knit and type at the same time. I promise that it won't be nearly so long until the next post.

Winter Doldrums

Okay, so we're now solidly two weeks into the new year and I haven't blogged about any new knitting projects (or anything else for that matter!) in that time. Although I have done some knitting, I haven't actually completed anything blog-worthy, and I haven't been hugely motivated to get lots of things done.

Part of it has no doubt been a result of the weather. I think my brain was frozen for about a week while we suffered through the coldest winter weather in more than a decade. There's just something about a dark frozen winter morning that makes you want to pull the covers back up over your head and go back to sleep. When the sun doesn't shine for days on end it is very easy to lapse into a huge funk.

Fortunately we've had some warmer weather, lots of thawing and dripping, and finally even some sunny days in the past week, and I'm starting to feel more human again. Of course I'm still adding to my project list faster than I'm checking things off, but at least things are moving along a bit.

Currently on the needles:

• a prayer shawl for a church friend (should be finished this evening)
• camo socks for my grandson
• socks for dear hubby
• an original pattern baby blanket (restock for my etsy site)
• the second of two rainbow-striped scarves requested by a friend

Waiting in the wings:

• more socks for dear hubby
• a pair (or three) of socks for me
• two more baby blankets (etsy restock)
• three Christmas stockings (hooray for customers planning ahead!)
• a hat and pair of socks for a dear friend
• another prayer shawl or two
• three half-finished crocheted afghans from one of my customers (she started on them and was unable to finish for whatever reason so she sent them to me)
• four original design hats that I came up with ideas for on vacation and haven't had time to actually knit yet

In addition I still need to finalize my curriculum for my new knitting classes and pick up some class supplies. I'm also involved with a fundraising dinner which will be held at our church on Super Bowl Sunday.

So it's definitely not as if I'm running out of things to do!