celticdragonfly

So I started knitting another sock t'other day, and first I thought eh, I'll just do a blueberry waffle pattern or something, and then as I was working down the cuff I had a different idea. So now I'm trying something different, and if it works out I'm going to write it up as a sock pattern. It's nothing fancy, nothing that some other knitter couldn't come up with just as easily. But I know that although I'm perfectly able to play buffet and just grab a stitch pattern for the leg, pick a heel treatment and a toe type, there are plenty of knitters out there for whom having the entire pattern written out in detail - and especially in several sizes - is super helpful. So I'm thinking I'd write it up and toss it up as a free sock pattern.

The upper arm damage I took from the Levaquin* means my endurance for knitting is way down from what it used to be. So I'd be interested in finding some test knitters rather than trying to do each prototype myself - plus that tests if my instructions make sense. I'm currently making a woman's large/man's size, because well, that's what I wear. I'd be interested in someone who would want to make a woman's medium size or a child's size, in fingering weight yarn. I do my socks knitting in the round on two circulars, but this could work fine on DPNs or magic loop too.

Anybody interested?



*If you are ever prescribed Levaquin, Levofloxacin, Tavanic, or any fluoroquinolone, ask the doctor what your alternatives are. If "you're gonna die" isn't on there, I strongly recommend you do NOT take them. Certainly LOOK UP the side effects and seriously read them before you do. Especially if you have ever in your life been prescribed any steroids.

I have free codes for the audiobook for Torchship Captain - anybody interested?

I am finally getting back to my Heroes of Yarnia MKAL / knitting roleplaying scarf. It had gotten set aside to make pussy hats, and then there was something else, and then well, it's not something I can do on the move, and it's sat in its bag.

Last night I finished the HoY crest in the middle. I'm ready to start the second half of the scarf - but that means first I need to FIND the 3 ring binder that holds my copies. I can get more copies of the charts and such, I have them on the computer, but I need my character sheet...

In a month we have two family birthdays coming up close together - Maggie's 7th and Alanna's 2nd.

I know there are going to be family members asking me what they would want, so I figured okay, I'll put a post up.

Maggie has become a little bookworm. It's amazing. She wants to read in bed every night, and spends a lot of her time with her nose deep in a book. The apple has not fallen far from the tree.

She's been particularly interested lately in the American Girl books. She has the the basic set of the Kirsten books, and she has the first book of the Kit series. She really wants more. I know she wants the rest of the Kit books, she's been asking for those. There are some ancillary Kirsten books she doesn't know about. Looking through the other series, I'd probably also pick Josefina (we gave those to a classmate for her birthday, so it'd be interesting for her too), Addy, and maybe Kaya. Heck, any of the historical characters would be interesting for her. She's just soaking it up*.

Sure, she'd be interested in the dolls, too, but I think the books are a higher priority. And less expensive. It seems the books are best priced on Amazon, but the dolls significantly better on the American Girls website, if anybody really wants to get her a dolls-and-books set - yeah, she'd probably go wild about that. I did put together a wishlist on Amazon for her for some of the books - it's here
http://www.amazon.com/wishlist/25HKV60Y4EXSK

Alanna is really enjoying Sesame Street, and particularly likes Big Bird. I'd love to get her more Sesame Street to watch. They have one season recorded on Miles' video box, and the Old School DVDs. I *wish* we could get more of the "old school" stuff - the kids AND the adults like that better than the newer stuff. But other Sesame Street videos could be nice for her. Please not Elmo stuff, that gets on the adults' nerves. She likes the musical stuff, too, likes to start singing with them. I made an Amazon list of some of what looked like she'd most enjoy it: http://www.amazon.com/wishlist/3N6BEY0A3NXJ6

I hope this is helpful for the relatives.

(*She was recently asking me about Fiddler on the Roof, was that a true story? I explained about how it wasn't exactly true, in that the people were made up, but it was about a place and time and people that were a lot like that. Like the Kirsten books. Then she wanted to watch it again, and was shushing Jamie and telling him how this was about history and she was really interested!)

Okay, now I have a Dreamwidth account.

Any of you on LJ who also have Dreamwidth - please come comment on this over at DW, please, so I can find you.

Also, I'd love more comments from those of you experienced with the DW site. Particularly - is there any way to scoop up all my previous LJ stuff and move it over there?

EDITING crossposted post - apparently it does not automatically link it back to the DW site, does it?

http://celticdragonfly.dreamwidth.org/

I'm beginning to think that I should just tell anybody who wants to give Jamie birthday presents this year to send him a ream of paper. The constant request "Can I have a piece of paper, please?" That boy just loves to draw and draw and draw.

Tonight there's a 90% chance of rain. Tomorrow rain likely, may be heavy in the morning.

The yard is going to be muddy and soggy.

So - needs must, we had our Easter Egg hunt this afternoon.

Alanna took part, but didn't really get it yet - no big surprise there. She ran around with her bucket some, and Maggie helped her, and hey, she found the chocolate bunny lollipop, and that was what she wanted. She opened it up and was saying "choc!" She knew what this was about.

Sadly, she dropped it down a water pipe before she'd eaten much of it.

Maggie and Jamie had a great time. fordprfct took video of it. We'll see if he can get the editing software installed and get it uploaded so we can share it.

Okay, this isn't going to mean anything to most of my flist, but some of you will know.

I have my black war bear! Eeee! And it was FUN!

The Gallagher-McDaniel household will be hosting a game day, Saturday 3/21/09, starting at 11 am and going until we fall down.

There will be food, of some sort. There will be games. There will be general hilarity and kids and cats running around. (Well, cat. The other will be hiding upstairs, from GASP visitors!) There will undoubtedly be singing at our Birthday Bear at some point, who decided that a houseful of people playing games was what he wanted most.

Board games, card games, we have quite a collection and would like to put it to good use. Have a game you'd like us to try? Okay!

Comment on one of our posts if you're coming, and let us know if you need directions or anything like that.

I got a call from Jamie's school this afternoon that he'd been wiggling on his chair during snack time and then had fallen over backwards into some shelving, and split open the back of his head. The nurse's judgment was it needed stitches, and I should come get him.

Oy. Got him at 3, picked up Maggie, took the three kids down to the ER in SW Fort Worth. (I'd called our doctor's office, they said take him to the ER.) He'd mostly stopped bleeding, and as usual with my boys' high pain thresholds, wasn't evincing any pain. Didn't want it touched or looked at though. So looooooong wait, particularly rough on Alanna who was cooped up in the strolled. Poor kiddos. Karl got there after work just after the doctor had checked Jamie out and declared it was about a centimeter long, fairly deep, and he wanted to put in two staples.

Staples, interesting. As Karl said, it used to be staples got you sent TO the ER. He took Alanna off for a change and a walkabout, and they did his staples. He was very good about staying STILL with his face in my hands as they did them. He'll have to go back in a week to 10 days to have them out.

He really really wanted to come home the whole time. On the way home he was singing an impromptu song about coming home. And I am SO glad we're home. Karl took the girls off while we were still waiting to get finished with paperwork, and is stopping to pick up dinner food, amazingly Jamie and I actually beat him home.

I'll be collapsing now.

Last Saturday Maggie was invited to a birthday party at the local Pump It Up party place. I took her there. Now, Maggie went to a party there sometime last year, and her daddy selenite took her to that one. She'd invited him to come play with her, in the big obstacle-course-then-climb-then-slide inflatable. selenite came to grief in the flexibility areas and hurt a rib, which affected him over the holidays pretty badly.

So I went with her this time, and was really expecting to just sit there and catch up online as fordprfct loaned me his fancy phone that's almost a mini laptop. But Maggie asked me to come in and play. And hey, I want to be the kind of mom that will occasionally come play with her kids in that sort of thing - and it was tickling memories of climbing all over the rope structure at Sesame Place as a teenager - and well, I know I'm lots more flexible than selenite, so it'd be fine, right? I peeled my shoes off as required - knowing that walking on the thin carpet over concrete without my shoes was going to add to the plantar fascitis pain but figuring what the heck - and climbed in.

Going through the flexibility parts in the obstacle course, no problem. Sure, I was getting more exercise than usual, that felt good. Climbing over things with Maggie, pulling her over one, laughing with her.

Then we turned the corner, got through some more, and got to the climbing up part before the big slide.

They have it set so that you have to climb straight up a wall. There's little blocks of padded material sticking out for footholds - sized for about the feet of a six year old. And alternating with those, there's strap handholds.

I gave it a valiant try. At first, climbing right up, the footholds are small but mostly no problem. And then I got up to the top part, and the handholds really needed to go up over the curve at the top - and they didn't. Maggie was up there no problem, I'd climbed what I guess was maybe 10 feet? I suck at estimating distances, but I think it had to be between 8 and 12 feet. And at the top I just could not get that last bit up and over. Maggie was trying to pull me up, and I was trying to convince her no, dear, you cannot possibly pull Mama up. Eventually had to fall back down. Tried again and again, even once with another Mom up at the top trying to help me up. I just could not do it, and each time eventually lost my grip and slid back down the wall to the bottom.

And annoyingly, I was then STUCK. I couldn't go all the way back the way we'd come, as there'd already been a smaller slide we'd come down that I couldn't get back up. Ended up speaking with one of the teenage staff girls - who just came swarming up the side, I remember being that young - asking if they could unlace the back join section to let me slip out. She said getting stuck was way more common than I might think, and wanted to get the kids off and deflate the thing - oh, it'd just take a few minutes, she said. I totally did not want to stop the kids' play and create a bad incident for their party, so I refused, and managed to go over the side where she'd come up and slide down - coming down on my feet on the carpet over concrete hurt, but I didn't think it was that bad.

So yeah, the parts that took flexibility, no problem. The part that took brute strength hadn't been enough of an issue for selenite to even mention, but totally beat me.

That night sure, I was exhausted and my feet hurt, but I thought I just had a day of soreness to pay for it. Fast forward a couple of days, to yesterday morning, and I'm having massive stabs of pain in my right ankle, it's intermittently unreliable and man stairs are really really difficult. I was thinking what the heck did I do to my ankle? I think it must have been Saturday at the party, even though it seems odd that it would take until Tuesday to really be a problem. I was discussing it last night with my mother-in-law Maggie, who's visiting with us. She says it happens like that, and thinks that the slides down into the inflated flooring might have disguised how much I hurt it in the falls.

So I took ibuprofen last night, will take some more this morning, am trying to stay off it, and spent some time with it iced last night. Ow.

I'm currently posting this from selenite's computer, as mine is ... unavailable. fordprfct has been doing surgery on Agatha, and is currently seeing if the patient can regain consciousness.

I remember back when he built it for me, looking at components with him in Frye's, and having him tell me pros and cons of various options. "Oh, it's not like I'm going to want a high-end gaming system," I said.

*headdesk* I have eaten those words repeatedly since then. Yeah, nowadays, I most definitely DO want a high-end gaming system. I have a level 80 fairly-well-geared frostfire mage who likes to raid, and I've been intensively working up my priest - she's up to 72 - to become a raid healer, because darn, we need more of those. Freezing up in Dalaran, sometimes crashing on loading into the zone, and intense lag on trying to fly up to Naxx? Unacceptable.

So we went out today and bought more RAM and a new and improved CPU. Hopefully it will help a lot.

Once it works again. The salesman suggested a new higher end CPU than the one fordprfct planned on after updating the motherboard's bios. fordprfct did confirm that the motherboard could handle that one. Allegedly it can. But it's not coming up yet. We'll see.

I thought I'd post about what Alanna's like these days. She's just about to be 20 months old. Her canine teeth are coming through, and giving her some trouble. She's inquisitive and loves to explore. She's learning to talk. The other day she was trying to get a sock off, and in frustration, held up her foot to her Daddy, who was standing next to me at the changing table, and said "help me Daddy!". Another time she stood up under Daddy's computer desk and bonked her head on the underside. As we soothed her, she put her hand on her head and looked at me, and said "I buh my head!"

I know I haven't put up any pictures of her for a while. I tried taking pictures of her yesterday. She was wearing a cute handmedown dress from Maggie, a green dress with red apples on it. She'd be cute and adorable and grinning, and I would go to get the camera, and she thought I was leaving her so she started crying. I came back and finally got her soothed down and smiling again, but then when I pulled out the camera she came running towards it and wanted to grab it and get up really close. When I wouldn't let her take it, she started crying again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I did get one picture that might be okay of her - but now I can't get my camera to talk to my computer. *headdesk*

She apparently is starting to have night terrors like her older brother occasionally does. She woke me up fussing around 2 am Sunday morning. She wasn't awake, just fussing in her sleep, and I couldn't soothe her for a bit. Nursing helped. But then she woke up and wanted to PLAY! I lost some sleep, but she was so sweet. She'd apparently just figured out OH, you can kiss with your mouth *closed*, and thought this was such fun, and wanted to do it again and AGAIN! Awww.

She's a very affectionate and loving baby. Shy with strangers, though. With the family, she loves to cuddle, play, tickle. She'll get into rolling tickle-cuddles with her siblings. She's emphatic with everything - when she doesn't get things she wants she's likely to dramatically wail and fling her self to the floor, or go bonk her head into the chair back.

This morning she decided she wanted to wear tights with her onesie. She pulled a pair out of the laundry basket and brought them downstairs with her, and when I changed her diaper she held them up and said "help me!" emphatically, and held out her feet for them. Cute.

She's been watching a little Muppet Show this morning. She likes to dance to the theme music at the beginning and the end. She comes over to me, holds out her hands, and says "hands? hands?" and when I hold her hands she dances and bounces up and down.

She *does* want to get into EVERYTHING. Sometimes even in the same room, you turn your back for a moment and she's into things. Leaving the *room*, that's a recipe for disaster. So I'm not getting much done here.

I am trying to use what little time away from her I can get to do Valentines' things done with the older kids. Maggie's doing up a fancy Valentine's box for her school party. I need to get Valentines addressed for both kids in the next couple of days.

Today's kid quote, from Jamie in the car as we took Maggie to piano lessons:

"Mama! It's raining!" me: "Yes, yes it is". Jamie: "Could you turn it off?"

No, sorry dear.

Maggie finally is back in school, not out sick anymore. And she has a pile of make up work.

One thing that came home is this Flat Stanley project. They read a book about a boy who was flattened by his bulletin board while he was asleep, and his family folded him up and mailed him to visit a friend.

So she has this flat paper doll person she's to send off. The letter with it says

"I chose to mail a flat version of myself to you. Please take "me" on an adventure with you and please write and tell me where I went. If you could please send pictures, postcards, or anything else that would help my friends and I learn more. You may send it back with a scrapbook, diary, maps or any kind of souvenirs. I will then take what you have sent back to my class and share this with my friends."

Hm. Her Nana and Granddad usually travel often, but aren't right now. So I'm not sure who to ask for this. Is there anyone she knows who would like to help her with this? Everything has to be back to school by March 2nd.

While I was out doing some groceries, fordprfct painstakingly took my cellphone apart into its component bits, made sure it was all dried out inside and no corroding would occur, and put it back together. It appears to work just fine. Yay!

Something is beeping downstairs. About once a minute. We haven't been able to place what it is. I expect to go stark raving mad later today.

There have been more requests for kid pictures. I have at least one on the camera. But... we can't find the cable that connects it to the computer. Alanna's in that stage where she wants to get into EVERYTHING and can reach way too much for our sanity - and she's been getting into stuff up on her parents' desks.

Alanna can occasionally drive me nuts - she is, after all, a toddler in the curious stage. But overall, my goodness she is a DELIGHTFUL child and I adore her.

Maggie continues to be a mix of wonderful and frustrating. Willful creature, and my GOD I wish she'd EAT things I cook. But still a great girl, and she's really developing into a very good reader. She's done enough of the reading to us and having it recorded to earn lunch with her teacher this Friday, and she's awfully excited about that.

Oh that beeping!

Okay, it's late enough that I can stop the Bus Missing Vigil now.

Yes, I voted in early voting back on Friday. Everyone eligible in my household has already voted.

I really would like to just hide my head under the metaphorical covers tomorrow and avoid all mention of it, and then just have someone come up and tell me bang when it's all over what happened. Which will probably be Wednesday.

This means I must not turn on the radio tomorrow, must not read email or LJ or pretty much any website. So I will not be in touch.

I wish it wasn't a Tuesday - WoW will be down most of the day. Otherwise I'd just dive in game, and turn OFF general channel (I keep Trade turned off anyway) so as not to hear anything, and enjoy it.

(I have a billion things to do today and am behind on them all, and yet I *had* to post this before we forgot them.)

I dunno, maybe it's because we heard the news recently that there's going to be Beatles stuff for Rock Band. (YAY!) On the way home today after voting fordprfct and I were chatting about World of Warcraft, and he assured me he's going to help me get a few more tries at the seasonal halloween boss for one of my characters who hasn't gotten everything she'd want, despite him having all he'd want. He said he was starting to hear it as a Beatles song:

TTTO All My Loving, for seasonal bosses

"All my summons, all my summons, all my summons,
I will save for you!"

From there, we just started RUNNING with it.

We really need to filk Eleanor Rigby to Ol' Emma.

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"Eight days a week, I'm raaaaaaiding.
Eight days a week, is not enough to get my lewts!"

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The song of the Vile Reef in STV
"I'd like to be
under the sea
in a Saltfin murloc's garden - with you!"

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for those who need a new video card
"You say you want some resolution, well, you know,
we all wanna see the world!"

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Maxwell is clearly a paladin
"Bang bang Maxwell's holy hammer came down upon his head!"

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The LFG channel song:

Help! I need somebody,
Help! not just anybody,
Help! I need some heals,
Help!

When I was just a noob, so much younger than today,
I never grouped at all, I soloed all the way.
But now those zones are gone and I'm not so OP.
Now I find I've changed my mind, who wants to group with me?

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Patch Day:

Yesterday,
I thought my talent build was here to stay,
But now it's gone, I don't know how to play,
Oh how I long for yesterday.

Suddenly,
I'm not half the tank I used to be,
There's a retadin that's killing me,
Leather armor's now agility.

Why they patched right now, I don't know,
it seems too soon.
Now my server's hosed, just can't cope
with echoes of doooooom.

Yesterday,
They said that dual-specs were on their way -
But now to change I have to pay,
Oh where's my gold from yesterday?

Why Salvation's gone I don't know,
I didn't fade.
Never read patch notes,
now I'm lost and wiped the raid.

Yesterday,
WoW was such an easy game to play.
Now every cookie-cutter's gone away,
Oh I will bitch for yesterday!

I really need to post more often about what the kids are up to.

Maggie's reading quite well, enjoying school and piano lessons, and getting teeth growing into that gap.

Jamie's making good progress. Also, he can write his name. He started this on his own a couple of weeks ago. He does tend to get the J backwards, but other than that, it's right. I'm impressed.

Alanna says Hi and Bye with waves, spontaneously. She wants to drink from straws and adult cups, not sippy cups. She has the 2nd molar partway through, and the pair on the bottom working on it. She needs a haircut, I think.

And the older two have gotten into tree-climbing.
( Pictures! )