Please tell me about any stores you love (online or a physical location) that sells either handmade goods or something like a mom and pop bookstore. It can be anywhere in the world.

I’m helping a friend do some research for a book she has coming out in the fall.

THANKS!

As I said on Friday, I re-organized my yarn stash. Wow, do I have a lot of yarn. Click on the photos below to see the detailed notes about what each yarn is, and that isn’t even everything I have.

And for your enjoyment, here are some photos from our afternoon at the park on Saturday. Most of them are by Jim.

•Today Tucky Puppy went to the vet for his last round of shots. He’s gained 5 lbs. in one month. I’m going to have a BIG beagle.

•Starbucks emailed me Friday afternoon. They confirmed what Carole told me, their policy is “Just say yes.” The lady who emailed me told me that she was going to make sure that the store knew there was no anti-blended latte policy. AND she’s sending me coupons.

•I’m blogging in the car, waiting for Jim to come down from the office. Ahhh, wireless internet, how I love thee.

Today is Stash Re-organization day, so I’ll leave you with a few photos.

By the way, still no response from Starbucks. response came, I’ll write about it Monday.

I finished my second edition of “Picovoli.” It really has nothing to do at all with Picovoli except that I re-used the yarn from my first attempt.

I’m really proud of this one. I took some guidelines from some pattern software the store has, and made this totally my own. It has everything I wanted, open raglan shaping, folded hem sleeves and hem, minimal waist shaping, crew neck. I think the only thing I would really change about this would to be make it have a little more open neck and the color. This color is fine, but definitely not what I would pick were I given a rainbow of choices. But overall, I’m thrilled.

Yarn: All Seasons Cotton color #186, discontinued
Pattern: my own
Needles: Addi turbos #8 32″
Time frame: Cast on 5/27/06, finished 6/1/06

I can never take good pictures of myself with this camera.

To whom it may concern:

I love Starbucks Coffee. So you can imagine my delight when a free standing one finally opened up in [my town], Colorado. That was, until one of the Starbucks employees refused to make my drink, a decaf, skim, iced latte, blended. Apparently it’s against Starbucks policy’s to blend a latte. (Although, I know it’s possible because my first trip through the drive through at this new Starbucks location got me a decaf, skim, iced latte, blended. Apparently the girl was “new” and didn’t know she was breaking company policy. There was even a free add-on on my receipt that said, “double blended.”)

What I’m writing today is to ask that you reverse those policies. In my consumer mind, I see no reason why an iced latte cannot be dumped in the blender and blended? I also wonder why Starbucks would refuse to make my drink? Doesn’t the customer come first? What options are there for blended drinks for those who don’t like or can’t have sweet drinks? Doesn’t Starbucks want all it’s patrons to be happy with their coffee? I hope so.

I sincerely hope that you take my plea into consideration. It’s getting hot here in the desert and I plan on drinking a lot of iced, blended lattes this summer. I just hope that they can be from Starbucks.

Sincerely,
Allison Blevins

———————-

Emailed to Starbucks this morning at 8:45 am.

Jim’s movie review: the DaVinci Code.

Friday Jim took the day off and we had a nice leisurely day of shopping at Target and drinking coffee. We came home and put the kids down for a nap and I walked over to get a pattern from the yarn store while Jim took a little nap of his own. Little did we know that when we thought Honor was sleeping, he was instead finger painting with the contents of his diaper. All over the carpet. Again. I guess he got bored with it, because he decided to go ahead and take his nap, commando.

And that’s how I found him. Sleeping peacefully with poop smeared EVERYWHERE. I just turned right around and walked away… for his own safety. So I decided that I didn’t want to scrub any more poop off the carpet. I think that this is the fourth? time he did this? And I decided that I was done. So I convinced Jim that we needed to rip out the carpet. RIGHT THAT MINUTE. And that’s what we did. I had peeled up a tiny bit of the carpet around the heating duct and saw what I thought was a pretty decently finished hardwood floor. But, yeah, not so much. What I actually found was this:

(Sorry, no photos of the room with carpet, I’m trying real hard to keep from posting pictures of feces on the internet.)

By this point, Jim was quite unhappy. So I dug through the paint closet and found some leftover paint from the kids walls. He helped me get all the carpet tack up and I got the floor all cleaned up and the first coat of paint on it. We ran to Home Depot to wait in line for 45 minutes for more paint and then got more coffee and came back home to finish the floor.

It was seriously the easiest project I’ve ever done. (Thankfully.) And it’s left me with a renewed desire for home improvement. I’ve got plans for all the walls in my house now. I’m just afraid any other project will tarnish the memory of this perfect project. If only Honor would poop on the floor more often. Yeah. Not really.

Tuesday I decided that I could no longer take Honors hair looking about as long as Edens. We have to keep that distinction between the two, because I was starting to get asked a lot, “Are they twins? Both boys?” Yeah. So I bribed him with a popsicle and got him to let me buzz his hair. Sort of.

Really it went more like this: 20 minutes trying to talk him into getting his hair buzzed, followed by setting him on my lap and just going for it. Surprisingly he wasn’t too freaked out about it and let me get about half-way done. That was until he wiggled and the clipper attachment jabbed him in the head a little. It was nothing major at all, but then he decided that I had lied to him and getting his hair buzzed did, in fact, hurt.

By that point we were at the point of no return. There was no way I could let him go out in public with his hair half buzzed, so we had to push on. Eden went and got the popsicle out of the freezer for Honor to see while I tortured him. It’s always good to see what you’re suffering for.

The popsicle held him off for awhile, but it didn’t last long and I just had to hold him down and finish. He was screaming and wiggling and hair was getting everywhere. Eden was even covered with hair. But it was done. And we ate our popsicles in the bathtub.

I went to the dentist today. I had another effing root canal.

I don’t want to talk about it.