• My little sister got ENGAGED over the weekend! Don’t know when the wedding is going to be yet, but we’re all very excited.

• My right arm is sore from playing Wii golf.

• It’s going to be 76º here today but Wednesday it should only get up to 50º. If I knit really fast I can have my Tree Jacket done by then.

• I bought Honor some juice popsicles at the health food store – the kind in the plastic tube – and we’re waiting for them to freeze. He has been asking me every 5 minutes for the last hour if they are ready yet.

• I admitted defeat with my homemade dish detergent. But I have been mixing it half and half with the 7th generation detergent and it’s working out great. I guess that’s better than nothing…

• Hopefully we will never have to use the self-clean function on the oven again as the house is going to be smelly for quite some time. Next oven-related project: re-seasoning my 2 cast iron skillets.

• The dog is about back to his usual self after his little surgery on Thursday. I think I’m going to have to go get one of those plastic collars from the vet, though, because he keeps licking his incision. dumb dog.

• I’m in the process of updating a few things on this site. I wish I had the time to give it a complete overhaul, but until then… You’ll notice I added my twitter feed, updated my links and I’m working on re-doing the knitting page.

• I started knitting Zephyr’s Tree Jacket. I think I’m going to really like it and wish I had it done today as it’s been pouring all day long. I chose magenta, do you think it’s my color? I’m trying to push myself out of my comfort zone.

• I’m trying to figure out what my summer “uniform” will be. I think the reason I hate summer the most is that I never feel cute in the summer time. What are you loving for summer clothing?

(I guess there is just a lot of randomness going on in my life these days!)

• I dropped Tucky puppy off at the vet today to get castrated. Poor puppy. We’re hoping this will help mellow him out a bit.

• I just committed to writing 3,500 words on knitting methods for an upcoming book. So I may be picking your brains here soon.

• Speaking of upcoming books, Pure Knits is available for pre-order on Amazon. This book will feature two patterns by yours truly. (So exciting!) The money I made from these patterns is going towards something very exciting for me that will be happening later this month.

• I am officially painting the dining room chairs. I purchased the paint for them today. I’m pretty excited about my plan to finish off the dining room. Could it possibly be because my plan includes the need to purchase more dishes? Because, anyone who has been to my house can tell you, I certainly need more dishes.

• Jim’s grandmother passed away on Monday. The service is in Wyoming so we aren’t able to make it.

• On a happier note: My good friend Carrington surprised me with a great pair of Keens last weekend.

• Having just sent an email to Subway complaining about their excessive use of the plastic bag, I realize I’ve been on an emailing rampage lately. Not sure if this is good or bad, but I do make sure to email companies when I like what they’re doing too. So I think it’s OK.

• I’ve tried just about everything with my dish detergent recipe to no avail and I’m starting to consider admitting defeat. This makes me quite sad.

• Honor and Eden have both gone through a growth spurt, so I’m going to spend the rest of my afternoon going through their clothes so I can see what they need. (Problem with these children is that they are so skinny that if the pants are long enough, they are huge on the waist – even with an adjustable waistband. And I think that everyone is getting tired of seeing Honor’s butt crack – just a guess.)

• Spring is in full force here. Why don’t people knit as much when it becomes spring? I do, there are so many wonderful yarns for spring. I know this because we carry every single one.

• Sometimes your heart has to break a little before it can soften up. I learned that this weekend.

• The post office lost a very important package for Tangle, full of hand-sewn Misocrafty bags and a Martha Stewart garlic peeler from Macys. I will mourn this loss for a very long time.

• This weekend our friend, Jim’s lone employee, moved over the mountains to the big city. We will miss her but I’m interested to see how Jim enjoys being a one-man-show again. I think this will be a good change.

• If you haven’t seen Dan in Real Life, you should.

• PS: if you want to click on my google ads, that would be great, I’m only $4.53 away from getting my second, ever, check from Google. :)

• A few days ago apartment therapy kids featured our bathroom with a small interview with me on how we did it.

• I took Honor to visit the preschool at Eden’s school to see if he’d want to go there next year. When I asked him to tell Jim about it later that night he said, “I don’t want to go there, it was just a bunch of girls.”

• I scored this clutch on clearance at Old Navy last night. I really love clearance.

• And I started swatching that great Rebecca sweater that I posted about a few days back! I’m excited. Plus, I love the yarn, it’s SO light weight.

• PS: Tangle now has it’s very own blog!

• Sunday, I traveled with some friends to the San Juans to soak in the clothing-optional hot springs. We all remained in our suits, but I saw more naked old men than I ever cared to. Afterwards, we sat outside on the picnic benches, reveling in the gorgeous light of dusk while we ate antipasto salad and snacked on veggies and hummus. I should have taken a picture, but I don’t think it would have captured how beautiful the snow-covered San Juans were.

• Eden’s on spring break, so I had both kids with me yesterday while I grocery shopped and ran errands for Tangle. I had to ship a package to Norway and left them in the car while I ran into the post office. When I came out, there were a couple people leaning up against the building, eyeing my car. When I got in, Eden reported that Honor had climbed out of his carseat and honked the horn a couple dozen times. What she failed to mention is that he can’t get unbuckled without her help. They both spent the afternoon in trouble.

• We just got the Spring issue of Rebecca in the store and I really, really, REALLY have to knit this cowl neck sweater. Immediately. Good thing we ordered the yarn too!

•Make your own finger paint. Do I dare?

•The new stove should finally be here today. Now that the weather is starting to hint of spring (after more snow than I’ve ever seen here in Western Colorado), I’ve finally started enjoying preparing meals at the grill.

•I whipped out this hat yesterday. Wow, how I love bamboo yarn! This one is Rowan Bamboo Tape, I can’t wait to use it more.

•I got a new phone a couple weeks ago and it does this really cool thing. I can hold it up to a song playing on the radio and it will ID the song. Such great nerdness…

•Today I’m working – I have lots of new yarn to photograph for Tangle’s website. And did you know that we now carry Amy Butler fabric? I’m having a hard time containing my excitement.

• The hard drive on my ibook went out. Jim worked very hard on getting it back up and running – thanks Jim! Now I’m running mac os 10.5 and it’s pretty dern nice. How long do you think it will take me to fill up a 130 gig hard drive? And it’s good to have my internet back, I was having major withdrawals.

• The other day I walked into the dining room to find Honor struggling to remove a large ziploc from his HEAD. I nearly had a heart attack and I think that I scared the pee out of him by telling him that he could die if he ever, ever did that again.

• Just cast on this hoodie last night. I’m using a single strand of BSA cotton on 9’s rather than a double strand of DK weight yarn on 6’s (which makes no sense to me at all anyway.) I’m not sure if it will look good on me, but I guess we’ll find out. It’s cute anyway.

• Things have been sort of slow with my knitting. I finished up Cropped Cardigans for my mom and sister and have been knitting a KPS tunic for Eden. But I ran out of yarn so I’m stuck on that one until more comes in.
We got the new Son of a Stitch n Bitch book in at the store and it’s really good. I think I’d like to start the double knit argyle scarf. I’m also making a double sided scarf out of all of my alpaca scraps, because alpaca is just too good to waste!

• Winter break is almost over and Eden will go back to school on Tuesday. It will be nice to be back to some sort of schedule as it was crazy around here with my nephews visiting for 10 days plus we were missing the structure that school provides.

• I’m increasingly thankful for our friends who are always there for us, especially when our family is not. A friend let us borrow her brand new car so Jim could take the nephews back over the mountains to their dad.

• Years ago when we were in Germany, we had our first taste of Ikea. We loaded up on stuff there including 2 twin size down comforters. They keep the kids very warm, but they’re a boring white. So I took two twin action hero sheets and sewed Honor a duvet cover. Eden’s is next in 100% pink hello kitty.