lady cordelia

I could measure.

It is raining today for the first time since last Spring.
I'm happy to be home, getting ready to clean the bathrooms.  Then laundry.   Then knit.   I do hope I get to the knitting part. 
Had a knitting accident yesterday, speaking of.
Asked The Brad if he thought the bottom of the blouse I'm knitting for O looked like it was 11 inches yet.
He said: Looks like it to me.
He said: Sure.
Sure.  So I started in with shaping the armholes.  And all that.  You know, the binding off and stuff.  Then, a few rows into that, I decided to measure the part that was supposed to be 11 inches.   A few rows into shaping the armholes, I decided to measure the bottom of the blouse. 

A friend of mine once said to me when I was dating a man who was both a cheater and liar: people change but not that much.

I'm not a cheater.  And I'm not a liar. But I'm not much for measuring. And according to my friend's quote- I may never be.  It took me about an hour to pull out the armhole shaping, stitch by stitch, which is the only way I know how to do it on circular needles.  As I pulled it out, I thought to myself, might as well enjoy it.  So I did. Sort of.  Knowing I could pull it out. Appreciating that I had the ability to go back and fix it. Knowing next time, I could measure.  If I wanted.  The choice would be there, hovering above me like a tangible little light.  The choice will always be there.  If I want to, you know, save some time.

Right now I am thumbing through this book and seeing if I feel brave enough to take anything on for next project. 

Joining Yarn Along this Wednesday. 

that which I must keep doing

The knitting.  I was so connected to it.  And then, things seemed to get in the way.  Namely: spring gardening, ducks, and everything else.  Alas, I want to knit, so I am pulling out a project I satrted some months ago: a knitted "patchwork" blanket for the girls.  I have so much lovely yarn that I collected last Winter that would be so sweet to add to this.  I plan to do all different yarns and all different stiches.  It will be funky, colorful and cute.  Just like me. 

As far as what I'm reading these days: sometimes all I have the energy for when I crawl into bed at night is perusing through The New Yorker. Tina Fey has been a recent contributor- which has made me very happy.  I am proud of myself that I even delve into some of the more political articles (sometimes.)  It's just, politics are not my personal choice for a bedtime story. Mostly, I like to try and come up with a caption for the cartoon contest on the last page. I always think the captions I come up with are hilarious.  (Unfortunately, I am always the only one who thinks this.) 

Reading is highly important to me, my dad is in the book business so I have had exceptionally good exposure to literature (I am not saying that I am highly well-read, but I am a good and happy reader.)  However, novels have seemed to fall by the way-side since I've had kids.  Sad, that. 

And another thing I am working to keep in my life as much as possible admist the busy-ness of days: green smoothies.  It seems, like knitting and novel-reading, preparing a really worthy smoothie seems to fall to the wayside.  In other words, I forget their goodness, how wonderful they are for the whole family, how much taking just a little time to make one makes such a big difference in how we all feel.  And yes, my 5 year-old loves these smoothies.  (The three year old, notsomuch....)

This morning I used my beautiful and wonderful Vita-mix (which I got on craigslist!) I threw in:

1/4 fresh cantalope
handful frozen pineapple
handful frozen mango halves
1/2 banana
5 big leaves raw kale
1 heaping tablespoon chia seeds
1 heaping tablespoon green powder
the contents of three probiotic capsules
enough water to make it a good consistency

(This post has me tagging along here this Wednesday with Ginny.)