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Originally uploaded by mintlatte

So this weekend I sent my girl (left) to a Homecoming Dance.
How on earth can you stall father time? He is running and I would settle for a nice crawl.

She came home just before her coach turned into a pumpkin having enjoyed her time as the bell of the ball.

Mel – thanks for the dress. It was super cute on her.

Me – I was dripping with teenage girls.  DD finally got her birthday party – and I beat a hasty retreat to my sewing room.

I am finally attending the yarn tasteing at Knitted Peace after wanting to go to one for a while and not being able to – that and just the general disarray of my needles had been forming thoughts in my head for some time.  I needed a way to keep track of my Options set so that I knew which points I had available.

There are times when I have something in mind and I sit down with random scrap fabric from my stash and just start cutting as sewing and ripping and experimenting until I get what I want.  This time I hit the jackpot – I got what I wanted on the first try.
Looks pretty simple from the outside – but inside is where the goodness is…

The pockets around the outer edges hold 16 sets of needle tips!  (More if I double small sizes in pockets Inside is enough room for all the other knit accessories I like to have handy – so finally I have a small accessory bag I can just throw in my knitting bag and run with.  Actual size is 8″ x 5.5″ x 2″.

This one is truly providence as I expected to go through at least a couple of iterations before I got what I wanted.  I didn’t even have a zipper on hand, and ended up using the zipper from one of those plastic bags sheets come in.  (reason I save so much worthless crap – someday I might need it – and I DID So my zipper pull says “imex vinylpackaging”  LOL.

Perhaps there is something to be said for letting ideas permeate for some time – I am truly happy this worked the first time, but if things keep working the first time, I may never get to my “good” fabric

Crazy scarf?

Embarrassing old lady shawl for a teenager?

Nope its a

snuggie for boy. Ever since he saw the infomercial he wanted one – size was no deterrent he had to have one.   So in celebration of the cheesetastic everywhere I presented him with a mom crocheted green snuggie. Told you it was bad.

The public schools system of torturing parents everywhere.  If we replaced waterboarding with repetitive back to school nights I am sure that we could get something out of those terrorists!

For all those parents who are thinking I am a wack job right now, let me ask what have you really ever gotten from going to back to school night? Usually for me it is just a heads up for which teachers my children are likely to hate. As of last year I am 100% dead on with girl – I can always tell who she will get along with.

Now Boy is in elementary school – so back to school night has a function – free ice cream Also boy likes to meet his teacher ahead of time and in elementary school back to school night is BEFORE they start school.  With DD it falls after the start date so things are set in motion already, I am powerless to do anything but sit and listen to the teachers tell me their rules, usually things I have already read and signed – so why go? At least I have a pretty good idea of when the shit is gonna hit the fan.

For all those curious about the crafty side of mintlatte’s crafty space – soon my friends I shall be posting an object of unspeakable horror.  I have been watching infomercials with my son – and we discovered something he couldn’t live without.  A quick scan of internetville awakened me to the fact that there was a pattern for this item… I think it is probably the worst thing I have ever made – right behind this crazy flight of reason…

My Kacey girl is 15 today.  She just started High School yesterday.  When I left her at the school I longed to cry – or just drag her back into my arms and take her home, where I could protect her from the world at large.   I didn’t do either.  I just said goodbye and watched her walk off into the school that is basically her second home now.

All I can do now is trust her.  And I do.  She is smart and self aware – and I think she might even listen to her mother sometimes – for this she deserves some major teen points.  It isn’t always easy to listen to your parents.  But still my heart flutters just thinking bout what lies ahead for her.  I look at her and I see big dreams, all of them within her grasp.  I just hope I have it in me to support a big dreamer.  Big dreamers can be squashed by doubt, there will be plenty of people in her life who will doubt her, so it is my job to believe in her.  Every day that I see her work her way through the world it gets easier and easier to believe.

Silly Kacey – Your mom loves you and thinks you are brilliant.  Happy Birthday

Yeah. So no apologies here.  I am guiltless blogger, blogging only when I feel the need. Right about now I am feeling awful needy.  I can’t help but feel that things at the day job are not going so hot – and it is things that are far beyond my control.  None the less I am bucking up and doing what I always do which is whatever work throws my way

Despite the work situation other things in my life are becoming VERY clear.  My daughter has been possessed by a psycho teenager.  Let’s face it  – the most important thing in the world right now is HER – in fact the entire frickin’ universe revolves around the status of her hair.  Sans the flavor of the moment (blue.  I just finished dying her hair blue.) there was no way she was going to start school.  Seriously.  Her little world would have crashed around her over blue hair.

Now I do remember the frantic feeling of a bad hair day way back when.  When my awesome wall o’ bang cut with the fiercely hairsprayed side slick back just didn’t work.  Days when my perms were too frizzy (I find it hard to believe there was such a thing as too frizzy and yet my perms always were too damn frizzy).  These days the fact that my hair is intact on my head is enough, I would go to work with bed head most days and it wouldn’t matter one whit.  So I find myself far removed from what she is experiencing right now – and yet am trying so hard to be properly sympathetic without losing sight of all the things that are important.

I have spent a lot of time reading lately, and it seems I have discovered  a lost love.  I have buried myself in books as though I have been starved for them for some time.  Any books, even the crazy trashy beach reads are holding me like they were high literature. Which means no book reviews from me.  Seriously a guilty pleasure is just that  – guilty. I will say that I did read pride prejudice and zombies – and I completely understand the hype.  Freakin’ awesomely crazy good and true to the original in some very bizarre ways.

And with that I leave you to wonder just how bad my taste truly is.  One thing I know is this – at least my hair isn’t blue

Ok, so there are lots of bloggers and some of them post pictures of all their gourmet cooking. Food in glorious photos that highlight the color, the texture, the beauty that the blogger has found deep within the food. Photos that highlight the blogger’s skill with foods, staged with lovely plates and table settings. I was pretty sure I would never be one of those people until I wandered into my kitchen and created this.

Note the reflection of the krispy wrap on the retro laminate table top,  the way the light plays on the subtle nutella waves, the sheen of a machined square krispy treat.

Foodies unite… just not in my kitchen.

Ok, so someone showed up at knit club with one of these bags, in an adorable sheep fabric.  The first thing out of my mouth was how I could make one of those….not only did I say it, but I meant it.  I loved that bag.  I suppose I could have ordered one, but let’s face it, I like my money a lot and I have a sewing room full of stuff that wants to be used!

So I hit the sewing room asap, and generated prototype number 1.

box bag attempt 1

So attempt one was wonky, but you have to remember I was working off of a 2-3 minute inspection of the bag and some dodgy ideas about how it might be constructed.  Still cute, tinier than I anticipated, but it will hold a sock in progress.

At this point in time I was pretty sure I was going to have to do some math, and for some reason most of the math was hitting me at about 4:00 am this morning. Eventually I gave up, wrote it all down and went back to sleep.

I thought I could live with this, but it turns out, I couldn’t.  I was compelled to go back to the sewing room… (the new awesome upstairs one that I haven;t told y’all about yet!)  There I decided to check my 4:00 am math – because if ANY math needs to be checked it is 4:00 am math – by sewing a cheesy muslin prototype.

Muslin version - attempt 2 and math check

This bad boy was more a way to check out my thought process and see if I could improve on my prior wonky version.  While making this one I got the genius idea to add a zipper pocket to the inside of the final version for notions.  It did at least confirm that my 4:00 am math was on track.

So, after all that, a final happy bag….

Final Happy Bag!

Inside zipper notion pocket!

An a sock in progress inside..

The sock in the bag (with heel!)

I actually don’t remember the last post I wrote.  If I were not such a completely incompetent blogger I would go check it out.  As it is I finally caught up with my feeds today,  over 250 blog posts to catch up on. FWIW I read ALL of them (except for all the details of the recalled stuff…the fact that I feel the need to subscribe to all sorts of feeds about recalls from the FDA is one of those things I normally don’t fess up to.  Having been absent for a significant period of time I figure I owe at least one confession…and NO there aren’t any meatier ones….)

As it is I will probably not improve on my posting habits in the new year.  But I do promise to check in if anything interesting happens.

Oddly enough I keep finding myself stepping out of my comfort zone.  At work, at home, even socially (<psst…I have been going to a knit group!!!!!!) I have never been one to take the safe path, so it is not particularly unusual to find myself a bit beyond my comfort zone, but ventures beyond the border used to result in “holy crap what the hell have I gotten myself into this time??? ” Often followed by “holy crap that worked??” These days something different is happening.  I find myself trusting my intuition, kind of thinking that maybe just maybe I haven’t really just been finding myself beyond my comfort zone all this time…maybe I have been untruthful about where my comfort zone is….That said, I think maybe some resolutions are in order.

I am likely to come home from work more often with dirty hands (in my life this is a good thing…perhaps someday that will merit an explanation).

I will make some new friends this year.  <also a good thing, after being a working mom for 6 years, someone new to talk to is just what the life ordered.

I will remember that for much of my life I have exceeded peoples expectations when I push the limits.  Often times making the biggest mistakes have led to some of the best things in my life.  Why the hell should I be afraid of screwing things up?

I will also not look for trouble.   There is a fine line you know

And Melissa:

what about…. this

If you like it, let me know and we will go yarn shopping

Very. Very. Very wrong.

(also very funny…until the therapy bills start rolling in)