Dead dinosaurs and the radio-active fur of mutant sheep

We'll, I was testing the browser with some knitting but it's taking the day off again, so no dice...

Yesterday I had a lovely moment. I was taking the older kids to the orthodontist...(the discovery of how both of them needed enough orthodontia to wire together Lilliput is a blog entry for another time--but it's got everything: terror, humor, cave troll tantrums, decimal points, my boobs on display. Lot's of entertainment value for your dime....) Anyway, yesterday the older kids were in the ortho office, getting their teeth scoped and the cave troll had fallen asleep inside the car and tiny sister had woken up. It was a bizarre and unprecedented 82 degrees in my neck of the woods (yes. armageddon comenceth when it's 82 degrees in Sacramento in summer.) and I lay down a baby quilt (made for the cave troll--I haven't sewed since he was born) and put tiny sister on it under the trees and on the grass, and she rolled around and chewed on her fist and my keys and looked cute and I...you're gonna plotz, really...I KNIT!!! I mean, I have the word 'knitting' up on the blog under interests, right? And I've shown the ocassional knitted item on this blog and was even going to show two others (a hat and a pair of Jaywalker socks) that I've finished this summer, but really, how much talking have I actually done about knitting? You wouldn't know it's my favorite hobby next to writing but it is...it really is...I have the stash to prove it.

Actually, I have the stash to prove how little time I actually spend knitting. When I go into my LYS (Babetta's, my new second home I love it I love it I love it) you can tell how stressed I feel by how much yarn I buy. When I have no kids and lots of time to sit down and knit with other knitters that's what I do. I don't even buy yarn. Now ask Babetta how often that actually happens. I will walk in and walk out with sock yarn just because holding a new skein of it slows my blood pressure and I don't have time to knit, which does the same thing. And since I've got four kids, a full time job and a need to vent my brain-chatter in print, I end up buying more than I knit because I have just enough time to buy the yarn but not enough to use it up. When I die, I'm going to find the world's best yarn charity and make them the happiest people on the planet, because I've got twenty-seven boxes of Red-Heart and Lion Brand (you heard me. Twenty-Seven cedar plastic boxes of Red-Heart and Lion Brand--Homespun, four ply worsted, Wool-Ease, Jiffy...) and three plastic boxes of wool sock yarn and fabulous sweater yarn. I've got officially more yarn than I will ever use--W.H.A.C.O. at it's worst. The Yarn Harlot just wrote about what she did when she was temporarily childless--I'll tell you what I do. I open my boxes and touch my yarn. I run it through my fingers sadly, because I'm not going to get a chance to use it for at least another five years, and it makes me sad. I'm like that king in THE QUILTMAKER'S GIFT. Except if a knitter, or a wannabe knitter even so much as ventures up my drive I pounce on then and force yarn in their pockets until they beg for mercy and run away screaming from the crazy woman trailing fiber from her hands like the sleeves of a straitjacket because if I don't have time to knit, by the three headed One somebody will knit my yarn for me.

It's really very tragic.

That being said, I will tell you that I actually had more than twenty-seven cases of yarn to begin with. Yes. The original figure was closer to thirty-five, but I had a lot of it in bigger boxes. I took those boxes to school.

I teach English most of the time, but on my lunch hours, I teach yarn. Knitting. Crochet. Anything I can get them to do, I teach it. I donate the yarn for free. Usually there's a caveat--knit a square for a blanket for Project Linus. (That didn't really work though, because they're high school students and they like the easy way out and Guage is a four letter word to that animal.) Last year it was "If you knit a baby blanket, I will give you yarn for the rest of the year." Of course I was out for the last 1/3d of the year, so I don't know how well that would have worked, but I'm trying... but it's hard, because although I have addicted some of my beloved students with a true love of the art, to some others I know I'm still the crazy but harmless yarn teacher and there's nothing I can do about that.

But today, when I'm making plans to go back, I can look forward to converting some more masses, to English, to Writing, to Yarning...last year I got three thank you notes thanking me for teaching them English--and for teaching them yarn. I keep all my thank you notes but I'll treasure these--because I've always said that I teach students, not just my subject, and the idea that I've given someone a lifelove of something so productive and simple means I've done more than my job.

Nope...still not looking forward to going back. But I am planning to donate some more yarn to my classroom, and that's a start.