Sheesh! Where does the time go?

Subtitle: Where I have been and what I have been doing for the last week or so?

Well, there was Julie's birthay party at the in-laws. A very nice affair with the family and their friends. Joe, Julie and I dressed up in our traditional Han-boks for cute pictures Joe's mom reamed me out a bit for forgetting the top that goes with my han-bok but luckily was able to loan me one that went okay. I made a fruit salad, a wheat-free carrot cake, and a devils food cake. Plus, a miniature carrot cake for Julie to eat all by herself. We ate awesome korean food prepared by MIL, and a good time was had by all.

Then, there was the planning and execution of Julie's birthday party at our house. I just finished writing the thank you notes for both parties. My hand is tired. I also put together a super-cute little video of Julie from her birthday before the party.

After making six cakes in seven days, I have vowed to do only one birthday cake next year.

Joe and I have been eating more of the Let's Dish meals from last month's party. This week we had roast pork with apricot sauce. It was goooood, and there were leftovers galore, and tonight I even made pork fried rice with what was left. Yummy! It was good enough to make up for the not-so-great Asian Beef Stew and the Spicy Thai Peanut Shrimp dish. I wanna go back.

I just finished putting together and blocking my new Noro Silk Garden sweater. It's drying on the guest bedroom bed right now. Hopefully, it'll be dry enough to take with me to the store tomorrow night so I can pick out some buttons.

Speaking of which, I start teaching the first of my fall classes at the Yarnery tomorrow night. I wish I had a link to put with that, but they STILL don't have a website. D'oh! I wish they would get at least something, anything up there. I'm looking forward to getting over there and teaching a couple times a week, and I'm really looking forward to the paychecks. I've got Beginning and Advanced Beginning classes starting this week.

Oh! And I went on a bit of an e-bay buying frenzy. I bought two new knitting machines. I'm a nut. One is a Studio 700, which is worth almost $1000 and I got it for under $100. Only because the guy who was listing it was a freak and didn't know how to write a product description very well. The 700 is a standard-bed punch-card machine, and very fancy by my standards. I'm still waiting for it to come in the mail. I already have my Studio LK-150, and it's exceeding my expectations already. Too bad I haven't had much time to play with it yet. I've been busy with all the birthday hurrah.

One last thing...Today I just ordered a new Sidekick 2. I have the original Sidekick, a mobile phone/PDA/hiptop computer and love it. Around here, you get them through T-Mobil. The new one is smaller, even more cool looking, has an integrated camera, and will synch up properly with my Outlook on the desktop computer. I can't wait to get my grimy little paws on it! And I feel oh-so-naughty for getting such a cool new toy when Joe is stuck with his plain old Nokia through work.

State Fair Revisited

Today we got up and decided to go to the State Fair again. I wanted to go back and get pictures of my knit items on display, plus show Julie the animals in the barns and (I'll admit it) eat some more fried food. In a moment of temporary insanity, Joe agreed to go with us. I was pleasantly surprised by the lack of crowding. It must have been the overcast skies and threat of rain.

Here's Joe and Julie in the Creative Activities Building. There should be a thought bubble over his head saying "Crap! Why am I here?" I had the flash off on the camera to avoid glare when taking pictures of the knit items through the glass, and since Julie was squirming in the stroller, she's a little blurry.


Here's my first-place hat:


And the socks that won fourth place and Best Original Sock Design:


The second-place child's sweater:


The first-place baby sweater:


And, finally, Joe enjoying his first caffeine of the day. For all his talk about how much he loves mini-donuts, he wasn't interested in scoring some. Instead, he helped me eat the fried green tomatoes and corn fritters that I wanted. Julie got to eat a Rye Crisp cracker. She didn't seem to mind missing out on the grease.


Thanks, Joe, for taking us to the fair!

Blurred Vision

This week has been a bit of a blur for me. Julie is working on teeth again, and has been crabby and avoiding naps. It makes for some long days. And we haven't seen our little playgroup buddies much this week for various reasons. Which makes the days even longer. Even a bad week as a stay at home mom is still a pretty great week, though. I got to watch her get better and better at walking all week long. She stands up and walks without thinking about it now. And it is so freaking cute!

I've been spending my evenings knitting up a new sweater for myself out of Noro Silk Garden, this wonderfully hand dyed silk/mohair/wool yarn from Japan. I'm using my very simple knitting machine, and this is my first time knitting a sweater on it. I was shocked by how fast the pieces knit up. The downside is that it's all knit flat and seamed together, which means lots of seam-sewing and a slightly less elegant finish than a garment knit in the round. Plus, my machine doesn't do ribbing, so I have to knit all the cuffs by hand. Still, I'll be wearing my new sweater in another week or two versus spending three months or more knitting the whole thing.

Tomorrow is the first of Julie's two birthday parties. Her birthday isn't till next week, but MIL wanted to have her party early so that MIL and FIL could head off to Korea to see BIL. I spent all day today making three cakes. One is a tiny wheat-free carrot cake just for Julie. The rest of that batter got nuts and coconut added and is the second cake. The other is a chocolate cake because I love chocolate. And there are going to be around 20 people there. I'm making a big fruit salad too and had to cut up and de-seed a watermelon and a pineapple.

I'm actually really excited about it. We're going to wear our han-boks for the first time since our wedding day, and Julie has a super-cute little han-bok that Dave sent from Seoul for her. I'm a photo nut, and this is going to be a great photo op.

Here's a picture of Joe and I at our wedding in the han-boks we'll be wearing:




And here's a picture with me in a han-bok very similar to the one Julie will be wearing:


Can you just imagine the cuteness of this little kid running around in a dress like that? She won't have the stickers on her face, and the head-dress is much less fancy and kid-friendly, and no big white scarf for her to carry - that's for weddings only. And I think all the other korean women - at least Joe's mom - will have theirs on too. I love getting to be a part of these traditions!