Kitchener rhymes with Bitchener.

The pants are finished!  I successfully tackled circular needles, DPNs, and I totally blew the Kitchener grafting on the crotch, but yeah.  It's the baby's CROTCH, and nobody's going to see it, so bite me.

Now that the pants are finished, though, I guess I'm coming down off of my crafting high.  I feel a little letdown, like they're not as great as I thought they would be.  I suppose if I'm looking for a sustained high I should be doing street drugs, instead, but they're really expensive nowadays.

*sigh*

Wahoo!

I FINALLY got my circular needles that I ordered online, so I started a pair of knit longies for Charlie.  I decided to make them with acrylic yarn because a) this is a test pair to see if I really know what I'm doing, b) acrylic yarn is cheap and c) I have A LOT of it on hand.

Working the waist and the gusset (the crotch part) was simple.  Splitting the legs and switching to DPNs has been very tricky, and I'm scared to go back and work the other leg.  I'm afraid I'll totally blow it, but that's why I'm using the acrylic yarn, right?  Right.

This picture makes it look all tricky and complicated (even though it's not) but that's okay because I want you all to be impressed with me, 'n shit.  Shallow, innit?

Resolution.

A long time ago, in Bryan's old, dead blog, he wrote some tongue-in-cheek nasty remarks about his family.  His sister started poking her nose around, found his blog entries, and all hell broke loose.  Since this incident Bryan hasn't spoken to any of his family members, except his brother.  This was almost a year ago.  No phone calls on birthdays, no e-mails, and no well wishes on the birth of our baby.  Nada. 

All of this stuff happened after our wedding last March.  Bryan's grandpa had sent us money when we got married, and when we mailed out our thank you card to him we also included pictures of Phoebe and Marissa.  This Christmas, his grandpa sent a gift card to the girls, so I once again sent him a thank you card.  I thought it was incredibly decent of Bryan's grandpa that even if he was mad at Bryan he was still thinking of the girls.

I was out running errands with the kids for most of the day, and after I came home Bryan checked the mail.  There was a big manila envelope that had our address on it, and it looked like Bryan's grandpa's handwriting on it.  Funny thing is, grandpa put OUR address as the return address on the envelope.

Bryan:  "Why would he do that?  That's weird."

Me:  "Because he's sending us something nasty and he doesn't want us to return to sender."

Bryan opens up the envelope.  Inside is the thank you card we sent to him after our wedding.  Bryan's grandpa also put the pictures we had sent him back in the card.  The stupid, old, mean, son-of-a-bitch actually waited almost a FRICKIN' YEAR to send the thank you card BACK to us, and he added insult to injury by sending pictures of my kids back to us.

I'm at a total loss.  He did a nice thing, so we thanked him for it.  Why the hell would someone save the thank you card just to mail it back after all this time?  What a sad and angry little man.  The thing of it is, it really got to me.  I actually cried.  I feel like he slapped me in the face, only it's worse, because he disrespected my children as well.

I typed up an appropriately appalled response, and put it in an envelope with the Christmas card he sent to us, with the intention of sending it back to him, but then I got to thinking about it.  I realized that my anger won't get through to him.  He won't understand that he hurt MY KIDS, and that makes me want to kill him.  He didn't see the look on Marissa's face when she realized what he had done, so it won't matter to him one bit.  Bryan is so sorry for the ridiculous blog incident, but he doesn't deserve to be punished like this.

I'm not going to give in to my anger and my rage.  I'm not going to let this man hurt us.  So, I'm going to let it go.  It's okay for me to cry about this.  It's okay for me to feel sad for Bryan, and feel sad for my kids.  It's okay for me to be hurt.  BUT.  I have *got* to let it go.  I can't hold on to this anger and resentment.  I'm not going to mail the envelope; I threw it in the trash.

Bye, grandpa.  I'm letting you go.

Buying and selling.

I have a thing for kitchen towels.  Bryan calls it a sick obsession, and has banned me from buying any more kitchen towels, since we have two kitchen drawers dedicated to towels, and they're stuffed so full with towels that sometimes it's hard to get them closed.  HOWEVER.  I found the kitchen towel to end all kitchen towels.  This kitchen towel will kick all other kitchen towel's ASSES.  Check it out (and don't give me none of that jibber-jabber).  Not only does this towel have Mr. T's head on it, it has Mr. T's head on it.... IN HOT PINK!  Nothing rocks more than that.

So I was on my Etsy site last night trying to fix some stuff on my shop, and I came across this chick's store.  I find her stuff to be absolutely gorgeous, so I ordered myself this ring, and I can't WAIT for it to get here.  Is it here yet?  Is it here yet?  IS IT??

In 24 hours I've bought something from someone in Singapore, and I've also purchased something from the U.K.  I feel so.... INTERNATIONAL.

Speaking of buying crap and spending money.  Um, yeah.  I've sold two things out of my Etsy store in the past couple of days, one being Sadie, and the other being a mesh water sling.  Thing is, I've contacted both buyers, and neither one has responded to me, and they haven't paid yet.  It's especially unusual for the sling, because people will normally contact me and discuss sizes and measurements with me before purchase.  I'm going to keep my fingers crossed that these are both legit sales, because otherwise I'm going to have to try to figure out how to relist both those items without incurring additional fees or having to pay the final value fee.  Dammit.

I was thinking of adding more items to my Etsy shop, like these hats.  I wonder if the market for crocheted goods is too saturated, though.  I've been selling these newsboys on a mama board that I go to, and I've had great responses, but I wonder how well they would do on Etsy.

Now I'm going to go obsessively check my e-mail, and hit "Send/Receive" a bajillion times in a row to see if I get responses from those two buyers.  Because the more I hit "Send/Receive", the higher the chances that the e-mail gods will respond to my call.   

New stuff rocks.

Bryan and I received some Target gift cards for Christmas, so what better way to compromise our sanity than by dragging the kids shopping?  There really should be laws about people like us.

1.  We should be able to park as close to the store as possible.  That way we can conserve our energy and be better able to corral our kids (read: demons) while we're inside the store (read: where the demons can inflict the most damage).

2.  When you see one of the kids (read: speed demons) running around maniacally, DON'T STOP AND SPEAK TO IT.  That will just provoke the kid, and it will probably follow you down the aisle.  Believe me, you don't want that.

3.  If all of our kids are crying and screaming and picking up packages of band-aids and begging for Sharpie markers (because they're strategically placed down low right by the checkout) we should IMMEDIATELY be shoved to the front of the line.  I know I want us out of your store, don't you want us out of there, too?  DON'T YOU???

Anyway, I didn't realize how reasonably priced Target's clothes are.  I got 2 shirts, a pair of jeans (on SALE!) and a cute pair of shoes.  And, of course, being a mother, I feel incredibly guilty about spending all that money on myself.  If it's crafting stuff I don't feel selfish at all, because those supplies are usually used for creating something for Bryan or one of the kids.  Either that, or I make something and sell it, so it pays for itself.

For instance, I just bought the Picky Pants pattern from LTK for longies for the girls, and I also bought this pattern for a thermal bunting, and of course needles to go with both projects.  I don't feel guilty, though, because I'm using the money I earned from selling stuff online, and both patterns are for useful (and cute!) items for the girls.  But whatever.  I keep telling myself that I deserve new clothes, and considering that I've pushed two children out of my vagina in the past two years, I think I've earned a pair of jeans and some new shoes.  Yes?