Friday, October 16, 2009

Rampant Sticky Fingers

I worked at my son's school book fair this morning.  While I was there, we found that the popular book, Diary of a Wimpy Kid - Dog Days, had over 14 copies missing.  The librarian was so upset.  The school has to eat the costs of the missing stuff.

It turns out that 10 of those copies had been "stashed" by some of the kids behind other books, displays and carts so that they could come back and buy them later.  Whew.  But, that meant that four others walked off in some kid's sticky fingers.   Another item, worth about $14 dollars had also been stolen.  If this kind of stuff continues, the school will end up paying to have a book fair.  These are supposed to be fund raisers!

Two books were stolen off of some kids' desks as well.  Small thieves seem to be running rampant in the school.  And this is not some low income inner city school either, it's one of the top in the nation. How sad that these kids feel like they have to steal it. 

Maybe it was the "buzz" about the book that has caused all the problems, I'm not sure.  Every single one of the children want a copy of it though, including my kid. 

I have never seen this kind of thing happen to this degree though.  One or two things missing, yes, this kind of stuff though?   It's very sad.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

New Knitting Project

I started a new knitting project.  This one is the Cotton Classic Boatneck Pullover.  You can see it and some other free patterns: Here.




Except, it's not going to be in cotton, it'll be in wool. A lovely yarn from Hobby Lobby that is in Seal Brown.  It's the most gorgeous cross between deep brown and plum.  It sounds odd, but it will be very elegant when it's all worked up.

This is the project that I've been meaning to tell you about for several days, but other stuff just kept coming up.  I'm not sure if I will need to put in some waste shaping yet or not.  I haven't gotten far enough into the pattern to see.  I'm not one to really read ahead in a pattern the way I should, so we'll see in a week or so.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Harry Potter Quidditch Sweater

I finally finished the Harry Potter Quidditch Sweater! 

Wanna know the fantastic thing about this sweater?  It fits both the Eldest and me!  When he outgrows it, I'll have me a sweater.  It's at least one thing to look forward to when he gets "all growned up".  It's quite depressing to see your baby wearing the same clothes as you and having the same shoe size and he's only 9 years old and it's not like I'm small or anything, I'm average sized.


 

Here's how it will appear on me (forgive me for not modeling it personally, but I really didn't feel like fighting with the camera and mirror this morning to get a pic of it on me):



Neat huh?  I'm still amazed that we can both wear the same sweater.

I have to compliment the Cozy Ewe yarn store out in Utah, they went above and beyond to help me get this sweater completed.  For some reason, my order caused a glitch in their software, the butternut color did not show up in the completed order form, on two different orders.  They never could get the problem to show up on their side, no clue why I'm the only one to have the problem.  I'm starting to think I'm cursed.  But, they have fantastic customer service and everything was fixed nicely and they even gave me a partial refund on shipping.  Yeah Cozy Ewe!

Monday, October 12, 2009

Medusa Halloween Costume

The Eldest had a big school Halloween party last friday evening.  The parents were encouraged to dress up as well, but I wasn't real enthused about it.  I couldn't come up with a clever costume on my own on such short notice, or so  I thought.  The Eldest has been studying mythology in school and suggested Medusa.  I said that I would think about it and sent him off to the bus stop.

It bugged the heck out of me the entire day.  I did nothing but plan that stupid costume.  Obviously I have nothing better to do with my time.  Forget cleaning, laundry, cooking and *gasp* even knitting!

I had been challenged.

So here's what I did:

1.  Made a crown of snakes from pipe cleaners and aluminum foil.  The pipe cleaners were bent in two and foil was wrapped around them.  Then the snake was wrapped around the crown that I had made.  Once all my snakes were on there, I wrapped the base of the crown with foil as well.  The snakes were made in different sizes.  I was trying to avoid the Statue of Liberty look.  I also added felt tongues to the snakes.  Once they were cut out, I just taped them on with scotch tape.  I also made a snake armband as well.

2.  Toga - I wrapped miles and miles of a king sheet around me.  At the shoulder, I pulled it through a silver bangle for ornamentation.

3.  Makeup - I used silver cream makeup purchased at party city and put several coats of it on my face.  I also put a much thinner layer on my arms and shoulders.  I also used black liquid eyeliner on the top lids of my eyes and black lipstick on the lips.

4.  Hair - I piled it on top of my head and pinned it in place.  Then I sprayed silver hair spray all over it.  Many, many times.  There is a permanent silver haze in my bathroom now.  It's gonna take forever to get rid of it all.  The crown was placed on after this part was done.

Wanna See?  (Click to Enlarge)





All in all, it was very successful, but I felt like a real fruit-loop while driving to the party.  I put the crown on after I got there, so at least I was spared the humiliation of that!  Thank God there were other parents dressed up as well.  It could have been a real (though pretty creative) social disaster.  The kids liked it and that's all that really counts though, isn't it?