The Heathen Housewife

By now, we all hopefully know who I’m talking about when I mention Jo-Anne and her bears. You know, the nice lady up in Canada who knits teddy bears for kids around the world who need them and does it with amazing speed and generosity. I sent her some of the extra sock yarn bits y’all sent to me over the summer and she knit them up lickety-split and asked for more. I’m happy to say J0-Anne has gotten boxes from me and several of you, and really appreciates it. I’ve got one more box to send out soon, and I feel confident that she’ll be knitting it into more bears for kids whip-snap. Just as a reminder, if you want to send her some yarn, you can e-mail her at fourgump at sympatico dot ca.

Let’s take another look at those cute little guys, shall we?

Several of my readers have asked if there is a pattern available for the bears, and before Christmas, Jo-Anne e-mailed one to me with permission to share it with you. I’d like to ask that if you use this pattern, you consider knitting at least one bear for charity. There are many organizations that can use these, from local hospitals and shelters and law enforcement agencies to aid organizations around the world. Also, print out as many copies of the pattern as you need for yourself or your friends, but please keep Jo-Anne’s name and the request that a bear be knitted for charity attached to any copies you distribute, and no copies may be sold. Okay, then. Here’s the pattern.

I’ve mentioned a couple of times before that I didn’t have a need for a feed-reader service. I’ve just been using the live bookmarks in Firefox and have been happy enough with that. It just seemed like too much trouble to set up the many blog feeds in another service, and I wasn’t sure I would like it for various reasons.

Well, in transferring all my stuff to the new computer (and I have to say, I’m almost done, and the transition went much more smoothly than I anticipated ) I got a bug up my butt and decided to go ahead and give Google Reader a try. I was surprised how quickly I was able to get all the feeds loaded on there, how easy it was to indicate blog entries had been read, and how well it works with Firefox to open a new tab when I click on a blog I want to read. One of the factors holding me back was that I wanted to read the blog on its own page – not in a window within the reader. No problem here.

The especially nice thing is that it totally satisfies my OCD tendencies to check “just one more time” to see if there is a new entry somewhere. I can find out with a glance at one page instead of scrolling through all the menu line items and trying to remember whether or not I’d read the title in question. I’ve only been using it for a couple of days now, but so far so great!

In other news, the girls and I are trying to get back into our normal weekday routine now that Joe is back at work. It’s not entirely back to normal yet since Julie doesn’t go back to school till next week, but this morning we went to our knitting group and it was nice to get out of the house and see everyone. It was a bit of a debacle, though, as Julie had a giant pee “accident” right in the middle of the coffee shop, and there was pee ev-ry-where. The lovely knitting ladies stepped up and helped take care of Sophie while I rushed out to the car and grabbed some clean clothes, changed Julie and got the mess all cleaned up. It’s pretty embarrassing to have to go tell the coffee shop employees that not only are they going to have to clean up a puddle caused by your child, but that it is a puddle of warm, stinking urine.

As soon as I sat back down at the table, Sophie decided it was her turn to melt down, and we had to call the outing over early. Another walk of shame as I quickly got them in their coats and walked them out to the car with Sophie screaming bloody murder.

Really, it wasn’t that bad of a day. I even managed to make Rice Krispie Treats with Julie this afternoon while Sophie napped.

Now excuse me – I’m done with the computer for the night and it’s time to get cozy with the blankie for a bit.

We’ve had a nice, quiet New Year at our house. Joe and I stayed home and put the kids to bed early, then dinked around in our normal evening routines. I watched a DVD and knit on the blankie, he putzed around in his office room, and some time around 12:30 or so I said “Happy New Year” and he grunted. We had planned to go to his aunt and uncle’s house for Tduck Gook at lunch, but Sophie woke up with a fever this morning and we didn’t want to expose the other children and relatives to whatever she might have. Poor little Sophie was listless and sad this morning, but after a dose of Motrin, she was much better – I think I still may take her to the doctor tomorrow to check for another ear infection. In the mean time, Joe drove up to his parents’ house and picked up some ingredients so that I could make Tduck Gook for us here at home. I was sorry to have missed out on the party with the family (especially one at which I am not hosting), but we ended up having a nice little dinner at home.

I’ve been thinking about my plans and hopes for 2007 as the old year ended and I’ve been reading everyone else’s thoughts on the matter. When Wendy brought up her “Knit From Your Stash 2007″ plan, I was tempted to join in on it – and still am on some levels. I do, after all, have quite the large stash of yarn. A whole closet full. And I do fully intend to knit up projects from the yarn I have this year – I have more than enough sock yarn to keep me going all year, more than enough scraps to finish the blankie, yarn begging to be knit into a couple of sweaters for myself and some for the girls, beautiful laceweight yarn for that scarf I want to start on…and a bunch more that calls out to be loved and fondled. The thing is, promises like that one are meant to be broken. I have no plans to buy more yarn this year, but I’m sure it will happen, and in moderate amounts. All this thinking really has made me consider a flash-your-stash style post, partly in the interest in yarn pron for my dear readers and partly for my own organizational purposes.

There are a few other resolution-type reflections I’ve been pondering, most of them around living in the moment, letting go of the past, loving myself and my family as much as we all deserve. So I thought I’d share with you a few pictures of things that made me smile in the last few days.

I was folding laundry the other night, and found myself smiling at my neatly-stacked pile of socks fresh and ready for another week in the sock drawer. It always makes me happy to look at and wear my socks. These are but a portion of what lives in my sock drawer, what I just happened to have in the laundry this week.

My little dinosaur-eater.

I caught Joe wearing the reindeer antlers while entertaining the girls the other day. He was having fun until I insisted on taking his picture in them.

Snow angel lessons. We finally got a few inches of snow last night, and Joe took Julie out to play in it this morning. This was such a sweet moment as Sophie and I watched it out the front window.

Yesterday we picked up a shiny new toy for me. I’ve been wanting a new laptop for a while now, and after a little consideration and shopping, we found this little model. I’m typing on it right this moment. It’s nice to be sitting in my spot on the couch typing this up.

Finally, I don’t have a picture to show you, but I do have to brag. Joe’s been on vacation from work all this week, and instead of sloughing off doing purely fun things, he has been working hard – harder, he says, than he normally does when he’s at his office. When we bought our house a year and a half ago, we painted almost every room in it right away. The only two rooms that were left were the bathrooms, and Joe has finally painted the main floor one. It is not – well, it’s not lovely. It was a very ugly bathroom in the first place and really needs to be gutted and remodeled entirely. But it sure looks a million times better without the peeling wallpaper, and it took a lot of work on Joe’s part to get all the cleaning and patching and prepping and painting done.

Oh, and one more thing – I think I’m going to try to be a little more organized on the blog for 2007. For starters, let’s call Fridays blankie-update days. Every week, I’ll report in on my progress and show off a pretty picture.