Nutrition and Lying to your Children

I have figured out how to get my extremely stubborn and hard headed four year old to eat what's put in front of him.  I have to lie to him.

For example:

He loves grits (he is Southern after all) so at Thanksgiving when he wouldn't touch the Turkey Dressing, I told him it was "Thanksgiving Grits".  He ate every bite without argument.

At a restaurant one time, he demanded Coke.  He is never allowed Coke or any other caffeinated beverage.  He loves invisible koolaid though, so I asked him if he would like to drink some Invisible Coke?  The waitress walked away laughing and brought him back a Sprite and he was thrilled.

The latest incident was last night.  I had made a "from scratch" lasagna, down to the last pasta noodle.  It was fantastic, but guess who wouldn't touch it?  Until, that is, I told him it was Melted Pizza.  The boy dove in and ate it like it was good!

Makes me feel so clever.  Yep, clever in deed to have outsmarted a four year old.   There comes a point in life that you take what triumphs you can, especially with a kid who knows everything.

Tank Progress

I'm catching up on my Green Apple Tank Sweater.  It's slow going, but less slow than it was when it was all ribbing.  At least now there's a good mix of ribbing and stockinette to keep me from getting too bored. 

Here's how it looks at this moment:

There's about 7 more inches to go on this.  Then I have to figure out what edge to put on it to keep it from curling.  Or maybe I'll just let it curl, not sure what I'll do yet.  I do know that around the neckline I'm going to have to put some type of finish on it.  My cast on ended up being very sloppy and it's really bugging me.  I also do not know how I'm going to correct that as of yet.

It's all a learning process and I'm learning quite a lot.  I love the way knitting keeps you humble.   Just when you think you know so much, something jumps up and bites you on the behind.  I now know not to use that cast on in the future (sort of a back loop hybrid) when starting a project.  I also now know what not to knit for a ahem 39 (plus one) year old in the too sexy sweater department.  Every sweater teaches me so much.  Maybe more than I really wanted to know. 

Beginner Geek

I spent my day wrapping my head around learning some new skillz.  The Eldest's teacher asked me to come up with  a sign for their school's glass and plastic recycle bins.  The school is being a guinea pig for the school system with this project and it's super important that the whole program works.  If it fails here at the school, then it won't be used by the school system.  So, I wanted to come up with something a little nicer than just plain text in a word document.  I think I've nailed it, but we'll see if the teacher likes or not.  If not, it's back to the drawing board for me.   I am getting mad crazy with my GIMP skillz!
 
I've spent my entire day doing this.  Geeks around the world are laughing at me right this minute for spending so long on what probably should have been a 20 minute job.  An entire day of not doing housework that desperately needed to be done.  An entire day of not knitting, crafting, reading or anything else that I would rather have been doing.  Go ahead and picture me pulling out my hair.

Don't know what GIMP is?  It's a free, open source program that is very similar to Photoshop.  Did I mention it was free?  Yep, I love that word, "free".  My second favorite word is "sale".  You can download it here. 

But how to you use it?  Well, like I said, I'm still wrapping my head around it.  I've also been using my google-fu to get lots of Gimp tutorials today.  My Google-Fu is strong.

The Silly Mommy and the Circus Clown Hats

Once upon a time, it was determined that there would be a Circus Day at preschool.  A very silly Mommy raised her hand and volunteered to make Clown hats for all the children to wear.

The hats began their life as stiff sheets of 11 x 17" felt.  Their transformation began as they were folded carefully, cut, then glued together to form a cone and a giant PomPom was glued on top:

More PomPoms miraculously migrated to the bottom of the hats while the silly Mommy sat sucking on the thumb that had hot glue migrate to it.

Little shapes of sticky felt appeared and stuck themselves to the sides of the hat along with more PomPoms and a few sticky backed gems until the hats were completed.  Then, they were fruitful and multiplied and tried to take over the silly Mom's kitchen:

There they still sit.  Waiting for the big preschool Circus Day.  The silly Mommy has had to build a big barricade around them for their own protection.  The cat really likes PomPoms.

The Scream of the Green Apple Sweater

Sometimes the knitting gods work with you and then on the other days...

I've been working on my Perfect Green Apple Sweater aka the Perfect Periwinkle Turtleneck Tube Vest by Stephanie Japel.  However, it's turned into the Less Than Perfect Green Apple Sweater now.

Why?  It's sexy isn't it?  Yes, yes it is.  A little too sexy perhaps.  I got to the point where I needed to try it on again to see where it hit at the waist to determine if I needed to add an inch or two.  So, on it went and then I took a really good look into the mirror. The ribbing begins right underneath the breasts and the stockinette might as well be lit up in blinking neon for all to see.  This sweater screams, "HERE COMES MY BOOBS!"  That would be great if I was A) in my early twenties or B) on the lookout for another man or C) a prostitute on the corner, but I'm not in my twenties (I wish) or on the lookout for another man nor am I a prostitute on the corner asking the gents if the wanna date! 

This is not the first time that I've tried it on to make sure it was fitting.  Why, oh why, was I in such denial then?  I could have saved myself a lot of work and tedium by cutting out all that damned ribbing!  I knew something wasn't quite right but I kept telling myself that it was just because it wasn't finished yet.  Yeah, it'll look better when it's finished.  Right.  Maybe it's just a case of being a blond knitter. 

There are three solutions to this problem.    Take a look at what it looks like now:

1.  I  can either frog the whole thing and call it quits.
2.  Keep it and hope that I one day miraculously get my "twenties pre-babies body" back and will look smoking hot in the tank top and all men will swoon over me.  Do men swoon?
3.  I'm leaning towards number two, but don't think that will happen and so will most likely take door number three.  This is where I frog it back to just before the bottom ribbing begins and then continue the stockinette all the way down while leaving the ribbing on the sides and adding a little bit of waste shaping to make it fit better. This way I can ignore my craving for a "twenties pre-babies body" and will look smoking hot in the tank top and the men will still swoon over me.  Yep, that sounds like just the thing. 

Now to go rip out several hours worth of work.  Sigh.