It’s in the exact same place it was when I photographed it on Monday. Only now, it has some books on it because no horizontal surface in this house is safe from the kids and their accompanying “stuff” that just accumulates.

Everywhere.

I’m trying to re-claim my clean house. My children are trying just as hard to destroy it. Since there are significantly more of them than there are of me, I’m losing and it makes me cranky.

That’s pretty much what’s going on around here. Oh, and
-Abby’s home sick
-Max won’t let me put him down unless he’s sleeping
-I have two little boys coming over this afternoon so their moms can work at the school
-I’m trying yet again to get some batts made for my etsy shop and have encountered setbacks. But I’m persisting
-I want to go to sleep

Yup, that’s it.

On Friday, I received an unexpected envelope in the mail from my friend, Katie. She sent a hat for Max made from yarn she spun, and it fits him perfectly!

It covers his ears and makes his face look chubby, and I love it. Thank you, Katie!

That night, I hosted a shower for my sister-in-law expecting her fifth baby.

She wants a rocker-recliner, so we took contributions for that

and she and I will hopefully pick one up tomorrow.

It’s quite convenient at times, having a graphic designer for a husband. He made a fantastic poster for me that coordinated with the plates and napkins and looked great.

It was a very fun evening and everything turned out well. I had a lot of help with the food, which is great because I was sick last week.

I’m still not at 100%. I’m quite tired and still stuffed up. But today should be a stress-free day. Nate, my knight-in-shining-armor not only made neat visuals for my party on Friday, but he also did the laundry over the weekend and cooked a fantastic dinner last night.

I’m feeling a bit spoiled.

Monday is my get-everyone-off-to-work-and-school-so-I-can-clean-up-from-the-weekend-and-do-laundry-day, but it’s mostly done. So, I’m going to (indulgently rest while I feel like crap) play with the boys and work on the shawl today! (And maybe start on my room, which is a total mess).

The shawl is almost to the second round of increases, which is where I was planning to add the rows of yarnovers.

I’d like to block what I have so I can get a feel for its actual size. It seems so small.

Here’s the last hat I’d planned to make for my mother-in-law.

It’s brioche stitch. Aside from the color variation, it’s the pattern from Weekend Knits. I’m loving me some brioche stitch. It feels amazing. It’s so pretty. It totally has me wanting this book.

So, once I finish shortening the Esther Williams hat I showed you yesterday, (I must have dozed off during the knitting of it, because while I knew I had to lengthen it, I didn’t have to lengthen it 3 inches!), the only other hat I have in mind to knit for her, if I get that far, would be a Tweedy Batt beanie. I wouldn’t have thought my Tweedy Batts would spin into a yarn soft enough, but my wristlets are softer than a hat she got from the hospital that she wears, so I’m interested to see how it’d work.

But, finishing the shawl may be a higher priority right now. I don’t know. I’m fighting a sinus infection and my brain’s all fuzzy.

I was getting ready to take pictures of the progress on my shawl and a hat for my mother-in-law. Unfortunately, I had already turned the camera on before setting it down, and it fell off the table and bounced on the lens.

Now the housing is buckled around the lens and the lens cover doesn’t open all the way without help. Crap.

But it does still work. I need to be grateful for that because I totally can’t run out and buy another one.

Stupid recession.

So, here are my pictures. I hardly have the heart to talk about them anymore.

(Clark wanted his Racer X car in the photo).

I finished this hat for her in January, but we decided later in the month that it was a smidge too short to adequately cover her lack of hair, so I took it back to lengthen it. It’s finally done. Same with the white and gold handspun hat you saw a bit ago on Liv, but I gave that back to her last week.

I have now learned that her very small head is small in circumference, not in height. I have one more hat (I keep thinking of new ones, though) to make for her.

I am halfway through the pattern, and the thing is tiny. BUT, I have enough yarn to keep going, so I’m going to mess with it a bit. I like the lacy bit right at the top center, with the rows of holes, so I’m thinking about adding a section of just those holes. I’m not sure where. We’ll see how it develops.

Dangit, I’m upset about my camera!

Busy week this week. I’m hosting preschool again tomorrow and I’m throwing a baby shower on Friday.

And my camera’s busted.

Sniff.

I started a fan stitch, half circle shawl from Traditional Knitted Lace Shawls. I’m using my handspun camel/silk yarn. It’s looking real pretty, so I’m not sure if we’ll end up dyeing it when it’s done like I’d originally planned.

It’s very, very soft.

So, I’m having a crazy busy week. So much to do at home. So much work. I’m going and going non-stop, and my brain is tired. I want to stare at the wall for awhile to decompress, but don’t really have that option.

I’m still not feeling particularly talkative, but we’re back to sleeping well. Yay!

I’m really excited because I put in 30 minutes on the elliptical five days last week. I only did my strengthening and stretching exercises once though. I keep forgetting that part.

And I exercised again this morning already. For some reason, the goal of fitting better into my current jeans size is more exciting and seemingly obtainable of a goal than losing 80 pounds.

I hope it works.

I still have three knitting projects lined up that I really want to start. And I still haven’t started them. With the current busy-ness of baby, preschooler, girls in school, exercising, and being really good about budgeting our groceries and planning/cooking dinner every night…. it’s easier to grab the guitar real quick for a bit of recreation than it is to commit to a stitch count and start a knitting project that might not work or fit, so I’m procrastinating.

But I miss it.

We’re all seemingly healthy. Max is slowly working towards his pre-sick sleeping habits. We’re still struggling to get Clark to eat, but he’s doing ok right now. It’s helpful knowing he’s not allergic to cheese. The kids are on Mid Winter Break this week, so I’m making them help with the Monday-morning-reclaim-the-house-from-being-trashed-over-the-weekend chores.

I’m torn trying to decide how to spend my free time, what little I have of it. I’m on a roll with the songwriting, but I also really want to card some batts and knit a Pi shawl, not to mention the other little shawls I wanted to get done this spring.

And I think I’m going to start exercising regularly again. (Oh please, oh please). I’ve done pretty good at cutting down bad snacking and sweets over the last few weeks and I feel a lot better about myself for it. I really want to fit into my clothes better.

I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to post this week with the kids being home and all. I haven’t felt very talkative the past couple of weeks, but if I have anything interesting to say, I’ll be here.

So, I found out on Saturday night that a friend of mine just got a job as the new Editorial Director of Interweave Press, books division.

How cool is that?

I’m totally geeking out, and very excited for her! If anyone has an idea for books they’d like to see, tell me, and I’ll tell her.

I know I’ve been scarce around the blog recently. Max is mostly better, I think, but he’s still not sleeping. I can’t decide if I’m actually sick myself, or if I’m just so sleep deprived that I might as well be. When Max was sick, he couldn’t sleep longer than 2 hours at a time without waking up choking.

Now that he’s better, he thinks he’s starving to death and can’t sleep for more than 40 minutes to an hour without eating.

I’m going to die.

To add to our family fun, Clark has a fever and threw up last night.

Seriously, does mothering get any better than this?

I have one final complaint before sinking back down into my reclusive hole. Yesterday, Clark broke from his tradition of being careful around my musical equipment and knocked my Gibson (my gorgeous, gorgeous guitar) off the stand and flat onto its face on the hardwood floor. I keep this particular guitar cased. All the time. Just to be safe. And Clark has never knocked a guitar onto the floor before. But I had set the Gibson on a stand for 30 seconds while listening to a recording, and I was standing right next to it. But I couldn’t save it, and now it has a small dent in the front (which is really ok) and an ugly gash in the side of the headstock. (Not ok).

Dangit.

I think it’s fixable. At some point, I’ll take it in to my luthier to see what it’ll cost me.

Last night, I dreamt that chunks of wood kept falling off the front of the guitar, and every time I looked at it, I saw more damage. Which means that the little bit of interrupted sleep I actually got last night, was stressful.

How’s that for a “Happy Tuesday” post? Sorry. I’m going to slink back into oblivion now.

Well, almost. My songwriting is really coming along. I’ve got a lot of positive feedback and my sister thinks I should get my songs registered and find someone to promote them for me, trying to get an artist to record them.

I don’t really know where to start, and from what I’ve read, it’s nearly impossible to get anyone to listen to your stuff unless you “know somebody.”

My throat hurts. I’m not sure if it’s perpetual lack of sleep, or if I’m getting sick. I hope I’m not getting sick, but if I do, I hope I don’t get sick ’til tomorrow, because I’m planning to go to the Songwriter’s Guild mtg tonight. I’ve only been one other time, and it was a year ago, which also happened to be the first night I felt pregnant-sick with Max. It was a rough night and they probably all thought I was mental, if they even noticed, squirming around in my chair the whole time. It was a bunch of men I didn’t know, though, so I couldn’t really say anything without it getting awkward.

I’m so tired. We slept ok last night, outside of the hour between 2 and 3 am, when Max threw up three times. Poor thing. We went to the doctor today, for what was supposed to be his 4 month well-check. He’s dealing with the illness fine, doesn’t have an infection and his lungs are clear.

Thank goodness for that! ‘Cause he sounds awful!

Here he is, watching me make dinner last night

We had margherita pizza, our first attempt, and it was fabulous!

My youngest brother-in-law spent 2 years on a mission in Italy, and we had him over to teach us how to make pizza a few weeks ago. His method is “throw it all in a bowl ’til it looks right” so we did our best to extract measurements of ingredients. This is what I got-

3 cups flour
1 egg
1T or so olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp yeast
about 1 cup warm water

You throw it all in a bowl and poke at it with a rubber spatula ’til it’s more or less mixed. Then you punch it around ’til it’s a dough. (I cheated last night and did some light kneading instead of the punching). Cool thing is, if it’s too wet, you can add a lot more flour and it still comes out. Ask me how I know :-).

Then I washed out the bowl, sprayed it with cooking spray put the ball of dough back in and covered it with a damp towel.

There’s no sugar in the dough, how weird is that? I thought yeast needed sugar, but apparently not.

So that’s it. It rises for an hour or so. I pinch off a handful and shape/stretch it into a circle (if you need help with that, email me or comment), I even tried my hand at tossing it in the air with moderate success. It got paper thin. We put thin slices of roma tomatoes on the dough, and a medium amount of mozzarella cheese. Baked it on a hot pizza stone for 7 minutes (500 degrees), pulled it out, put fresh basil on the top, some coarse salt (french gray this time) and drizzled it with olive oil. It made two large pizzas, plus the one small one in the picture.

Mmmmmm.

They’re not remotely filling, unfortunately. It’s a very light pizza. But the same crust works great with sauce and sausages and such, that’s what we did last week and it’s quite filling that way.

He has a great sauce recipe, too if you’re interested.

1 can tomato sauce (Safeway’s organic is my favorite. It’s sweet and less acidic tasting than the S&W)
1T dry basil
1/4 cup olive oil (you could probably get by with 3 T)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp + minced garlic (or 1 clove)

let it sit for awhile for the flavors to blend. It’s really good on pasta, too.

So there you go, easy pizza recipe. I like the fact that it only uses a mixing bowl, so cleanup is really easy and I don’t have to haul out my mixer and wash attachments.

I’m so tired. I had three hours of sleep last night, and 4 or so interrupted hours the night before. My throat hurts and I can’t walk in a straight line. I hope I can nap this morning.

Max is sick and I’ve been up with him. He had a very croup-y cough on Saturday, so we started boiling a stockpot of water on the stove for 12 hours a day, putting several gallons of water into the air and now he just has a phlegm-y cough. And a fever. Poor guy. He’s been throwing up, too. Fortunately, he can still breath out of his nose, so he can still eat. And while it’s obvious at times that he doesn’t feel good, he’s still trying to smile.

I have a lot going on this week. Not much that is critical, but some running of the girls here and there, a dr appt, parent luncheon, etc. Oh, and I’m hosting preschool tomorrow. It’ll be interesting to see how it all plays out.