To err is human, to mend is divine

My dear brother Grumpy brought back to me a few months ago the fingerless gloves I had made for him for Christmas 2009.  He brought them back because some evil moths had gotten to them and eaten holes in them.  If you didn't guess where this is going, now I get to learn some new skills, namely mending holes in knitting.  The more observant readers out there probably  caught the timing in the first sentence, he brought them to me several months ago and I am only now getting to them, yes I am a bit intimidated by having to fix the moth larvae damage.  And no, I really don't want to do it I would much rather knit something new.  However Grumpy really loves the gloves and wants to be able to wear them again so mend I must.

now that's some moth damage!

First of all, right after he brought the holey things back to me my mind went bananas, screaming moths, motHS, MOTHS! over and over in an endless loop.  I mean, how dare Grumpy introduce moth larvae into my sterile yarn loving house?!  So I ran into the kitchen to find a ziploc of the appropriate size and crammed those suckers in as fast as I could.  Then I perused the interwebz looking for assistance as to what to do with the defiled gloves sitting in my kitchen.  First off I put them into the freezer for a few weeks, than I put them on the counter to bring up to room temperature before re-freezing again to kill any newly hatched bugs.  Then I forgot about them for awhile again before defrosting them again and then putting them in the microwave for 3 minutes on high.  Then they went back in the ziploc (can't take any chances with my stash or finished knits you know!) inside my knitting bag awaiting their turn with my undivided attention.

can barely see the mend on the side of the pinky finger, yea me!

One of the gloves had rather minor holes, the other was significantly worse so of course I decided to start with the easier one.  I used these articles from Knitty to help me figure out what to do.  Thankfully Grumpy wasn't particular about the gloves looking as they had when brand new so it didn't need to look perfect when finished.  And let me tell you, after I had some time with them to do my best to fix the holes, they do not look like new.  Thankfully I still had some of the yarn I used originally left in my stash so at least the mended holes aren't glaringly obvious.  However, they are quite visible.  Now that the first glove is fixed I need to suck it up and go after the second ones, they are just much worse (and thus are still languishing in my knitting bag as I write this!).

how the heck do you mend ribbing?!

My mini-me, aka Lil' Miss

It was clear to us as soon as we saw her in profile during an ultrasound, Lil' Miss is a tiny little version of me.  Some days it is truly frightening to see a miniature version of yourself running around, all the good is just fine it's the bad stuff that's not so terrific.  Grumpy has stated that not only did the apple not fall far from the tree, it simply fell straight down, thud, no rolling away, nothing.  This isn't just the striking physical resemblance between us either, it's that she often acts just like me, the same turns of phrase, the same gestures and mannerisms, yikes!

To give you an idea of just how much she looks like me, one day Mister Vonkysmeed was looking at old pictures on the computer (don't ask me why) he came across one of me when I was the same age as Lil' Miss, about 4 years old.  He was immediately struck by the strong resemblance between us, exacerbated by the fact it was a black and white picture.  When she came into the room and was asked who was in the photo she immediately replied that it was her.  Then she realized that she didn't know the other two people in the picture and had never owned that dress, hmm, does not compute!  We explained that it was actually Mommy in the picture and she still looked a little confused than just accepted it and went on with her day. Which goes to show she is definitely her own person in spite of looking like me, I would never just accept something so cavalierly, I must have full disclosure to be truly happy!

Desert wildflowers: a photographers road trip

Anza Borrego Desert State Park

Here in lovely Southern California we have the amazing miracle of wildflowers blooming in the middle of the desert every year for a  few short weeks.  Due to our recent rains this year is even better than usual (or worse if you have allergies!).  Up until now I have never had the opportunity to go see them, but my brother Grumpy invited me to go along with he and his wife, Chatty-Cathy, on a visit to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park to take some pictures of them.

So after getting up early (for me) on a Saturday morning and driving for a couple hours to get out there I was suddenly confronted with a hike, uh, hike?  No one said anything about a stinking hike!  Oh well, here we go anyway!  Good thing I was smart enough to wear jeans and sneakers.  None of us got exactly what we expected.  We all were assuming we would observe flowers as far as the eye could see, not so, this is the desert after all.  What we did get was the normally brown and dry desert plants awash with color.  Mostly yellows and greens with some reds and purples, it really was quite lovely.  The sounds of the bees was amazing, I don't know where they all came from but the buzzing was non-stop around the plants.

Huntin' Easter eggs

It never changes, every Easter that dang rabbit comes hopping around leaving eggs everywhere.  Why couldn't he just leave the basket of goodies next to my bed but no, he had to leave an egg with a hint leading to another egg, which would lead to another and so on.  Oh, I guess it wouldn't have been nearly as much fun without the hunting part would it?  Oh all right, it would have been kind of boring to not have to hunt around for it.

The Momster (yes, I now know it was her and not some demented furry creature) would spend hours working out clues for me and older brother Grumpy to track down Easter morning.  After our 5 minutes of racing around the house from egg to egg she would complain about how quickly we went through the egg-clues and got to our baskets.  Granted, we worked it out pretty quickly, but do you think maybe there are more hiding places for an Easter basket than the dishwasher, the clothes dryer, or the tv cabinet?  We cottoned onto that ploy pretty quickly so there were several times we actually discovered the basket before we were supposed to by 'mis-interpreting' a clue.