Time for pictures!

The Mimi turned three this month. (Although she seems to have gotten her units of measurement muddled and keeps telling people "I'm three pounds!")

She's also decided that she's a superhero and "borrows" her father's sweatshirt for a costume. "I'm SuperMimi!"
"So what do you do?"
"I'm SuperMimi!" Saving the world from evil one stuffed animal tea party at a time.

You know you're from a small town when...

One of my friends from St. John is heavily pregnant. She asked for suggestions on how to trigger labor. Another friend had this suggestion : "When my mom was pregnant with me the men in at the St. John Hardware told her to try a big chew of Copenhagan, mow the lawn, and if all else fails tell my dad to start harvest. I was born on the first day of harvest that year. Mom swears she never tried the chew though."

How I spent my weekend

On Saturday, Cat, the Mimi and I went to the spin-in in Newport. In spite of trying on (and discarding) four different outfits that morning, the Mimi still managed to be clad in nothing other than training pants when Cat arrived so we could car-pool. (And then decided to wear the first outfit of the day.)
The Mimi was amazingly well-behaved for the spin-in. She held my hand (and hissed "no touching, Mama!" every time I visited a fiber booth) and was polite to people. My father-in-law was kind enough to keep an eye on her for an hour or so, letting me sit and spin with people. When I told him I didn't want him to think I was dumping the kid on him so I could goof off, he said, "No, you're going to sit and spin. In our family, that's perfectly fine work." Love the in-laws!
The best part was seeing the expression on his face when someone asked the Mimi "what are you going to do after lunch?" and she said "gonna take over the world!"
I made out like a bandit, if I do say so myself. I picked up a pound of miscelaneous longwool for ten bucks, got some silk hankies (I felt inspired by the Yarn Harlot and I've already dyed them up) and even found some silk/camel fiber at an insanely good price. I'm out of mad money until March, but find it hard to care.
Because the Mimi is prone to crawling in my lap while I'm using the drop spindle and saying "me help make yarn?" and "helping" me spin, she now has a very pink starter spindle and some equally pink wool roving that's for her. Baby's first fiber stash!

Anxiety disorder du jour

I've been knitting lots of hats lately. I've no idea where the camera is, and no motivation to take pictures of them, but at last count I have completed three hats in as many weeks. I have six more in progress at varying stages of completion.
While I still despise knitting scarves, I'm finding that hats are a good way of using up all my sample skeins and remnant balls of handspun yarn that I keep for sentimental value. Not only are stripes colorful and fashionable on hats, but my CDO (like OCD, but the letters are in alphabetical order, like they are supposed to be) doesn't kick in quite so bad when I'm knitting hats.
As I see it, a scarf should be fashionable, or warm, or soft, or at least pleasant-looking enough that you're not ashamed to take it out in public. All a hat needs to do is fit on someone's head. The fact that there's only a half row of fuzzy pink yarn on a hat project seems an appropriate way to use the yarn and add color--but if it were on a scarf I'd feel the need to rip it out if I didn't have enough yarn to repeat the stripe at the other end for "symmetry."

Found a new pet project

I try to keep my political leanings to myself on this blog. Sometimes I even succeed. But I feel no such qualms when it comes to sex education and STD prevention. Sharing knowledge about contraception and how to avoid preventable diseases ranks right up there with "Women are people!" on my list of things I want to share with the world. ("Jesus loves you!" is first on the list, but I think that working on the other two as well helps get across the message that Jesus cares about your life as well as your soul.)

Ever since I dealt with an ill-informed minister who declared (in 2005, mind you)  "HIV is God's judgement against homosexuality," I've felt extremely passionate about HIV prevention. Especially in over-looked populations, like older women. I realize that no one wants to talk to Nanna about her sex life now that she's dating again, but it's a lot better to have an embarassing conversation with her now than to later look back regretfully and wish you had. If you care enough to remind her to get a flu shot, you should be willing to mention that there's a lot of nasty STIs out there and how to prevent them. 

And then I found this site, which seems to link this quite handily with my yarn obsession. Knit A Condom Amulet!  What a wonderful way to raise awareness of this problem. (and use up scrap yarn.)

And the antonym of "pot-head" is...

Holidays always bring out the crazy in everyone. There's something about lots of people in a small house, large amounts of fattening food, and uptight Martha Stewart wannabes who "just want everything to be perfect"--combined with strictures against making any offensive political or religious statements (At Christmas 2008 I wound up in the doghouse for suggesting that Jesus would come back whenever Jesus felt like it, regardless of who got elected president.) and reminders not to bring up awkward family politics that just brings out the collective squirrelyness (not dysfunction, because that implies that you have a plan, and we're way too disorganized for that) that lurks just beneath the surface of even the most WASPy middle-American suburban family.

And since extended holiday dinners with relatives, non-relatives, and screaming children always make me (a lifelong teetotaler) want to pick up binge drinking as a new hobby, I've spent the last two weeks asking patients (most of whom are either in recovery, or avoiding alcohol as part of their probation) very specific questions on what they're planning to do to stay sober over the holidays.

And the responses have been very illuminating. They've ranged from "go to extra meetings," to "my wife won't let me buy beer, and it's too far to walk to the store."

One slightly offended gentleman told me, "I don't have a problem with alcohol."

"That's good sir, but your parole officer does have a problem with you using it. So what are you going to do to keep him happy this holiday?"

"I'm spending Christmas with my in-laws, and they're the most uptight stone-cold sober-heads you're going to find. I couldn't drink even if I wanted to!"

World's cutest photobomb

 The Mimi loves to be the center of attention, especially if there's a camera around.