PRODUCT REVIEW: Knifty Knitters

A few years back, one of the moms in our homeschool group opened up a little summertime class at her home to teach girls in grades 4-6 how to use a Knifty Knitter. Aisling and a number of her little friends bought a skein of yarn and a set of the Knitters and they were off to the races, churning out some very nice items with great ease.

A Knifty Knitter, you ask? What is such a thing, and what can you make with it? How do you use it? Is it expensive? Can you make a scarf, some mittens, a knee length wrap sweater dress à la Diane von Furstenberg?

Wait, wait, whoooaaaaa....Don't ask so many questions so fast. You know I don't sleep much, and therefore am in a constant state of grumpy befuddlement. Okay, here you go.

1. Yes, a Knifty Knitter. There are a whole line of Knifty Knitter products, in fact.

2. Knifty Knitters are looms upon which one can produce knitted items.

3. Oh, gracious...you can make scarves and hats and afghans and dishcloths and all sorts of cute things. Probably not a sweater dress, unless you were very, very clever and patient.

If you'd like to see these knitting looms of different shapes and sizes, click here and here and here.

The Knifty Knitters are manufactured by ProvoCraft and they're very inexpensive. And if you are a non-crafty kind of person (which would be like me) or a semi-crafty person (like Meelyn and Aisling), you can really get a lot of pleasure out of making cute stuff with these things. Aisling bought some chunky yarn in sherbet colors and knitted up a sweet little toboggan hat for Kiersi, which she presented to her yesterday; Kiersi, not quite three, looked like a darling little pixie in it and Aisling was very pleased.

If you'd like to see some things created by Knifty Knitters that weren't created by us (well, I say "us," but truth be told, I've yet to produce a simple scarf...), you can click here for a pet sweater worn by an embarrassed Maltese, here for some sweet little Halloween treats (black cat, ghostie and wee Jack-'o-lantern), here for a precious Easter bunny posing with a daffodil, here for some really nice hats....

There's so much more, it's impossible to list links for them all, but when I did my Google search, I found amazing things like sweaters for adults and children, baby bootees (so cute!), Christmas stockings and ornaments and all sorts of things. And none of them looked like the kind of thing produced for Gifte Shoppes, the kind of places where you can buy toilet roll covers that look like a knitted hoop skirt with half of a generic, cheap plastic "Barbie" sticking out of the top and ribbon candy in unappealing flavors and pine bread boxes with bloated strawberries done in tole painting on the lids, nothing like that.

If, in these uncertain economic times, you'd like to (quickly) make a few little gifts for people, the Knifty Knitters are a great way to start. Aisling and Meelyn can make nice hats in one evening, a scarf in an afternoon. There are so many beautiful, cozy yarns out there just demanding to be done up in a simple gift that will please, surely, any girl or woman on your Christmas list.

Happy Thanksgiving (a little late)

I couldn't post on the actual day of Thanksgiving because yesterday morning, I indulged in a little late sleeping, which meant that I had to frantically plunge into the kitchen with a frantic look in my eye, sending celery, onions, butter, bread crumbs, chicken stock, eggs and the like whirling through the air like a Looney Tunes feature. I assembled my dressing in a very large buttered baking dish and slid it into the oven with precious little time to spare.

The dressing, made from my own recipe cobbled together from what everyone could remember of my grandmother's recipe (which was sadly never written down) and my mother-in-law's (which was), tasted so much better than Martha Stewart's recipe did, I just can't tell you. Mine was somewhat marred by the fact that, in my rush, I shorted it two eggs, which led to a more crumbly texture. My family prefers dressing that comes out in slabs.

Here's what was on the buffet at Pat and Angie's house yesterday:

1. turkey
2. ham
3. mashed potatoes
4. dressing
5. green-bean casserole
6. candied sweet potatoes
7. gravy
8. deviled eggs
9. vegetable tray (celery, cauliflower, broccoli, cucumbers, etc. with dip)
10. cranberry relish
11. dinner rolls
12. cheeseball with crackers

For dessert:

1. Pecan pie
2. Pumpkin pie
3. Pumpkin cheesecake
4. A creamy-looking mousse-type dessert that looked wonderful
5. Orange Jell-O with a cream cheese layer, garished with mandarin oranges

There were a lot of us there, a very nice mixture of my brother's family and Angie's family, whom we all like very much, although Angie's uncle Steve, who turns out to be a mere eighteen months younger than I am, twitted me unmercifully about my age, the little whippersnapper. One retort that I never thought of until just now is that I could have told him that it doesn't matter if he's younger than I am because men have a shorter life expectancy than women do ANYWAY, but of course I never think of witty rejoinders like that the next day. Humph.

The humor highlight of the entire day, though, was provided by eight-year-old Dayden, who went through the buffet line with a plate that was just as empty at the end of the line as it was at the beginning. He went away to the kids' table and we saw him no more until he crept back to whisper in his mother's ear that he didn't like any of this dumb food and was wondering if she'd want to make him a cheese taco.

I thought that was hilarious. A cheese taco!

Meelyn and Aisling went home with Nanny and Poppy to spend the night, so my husband and I were left alone to fend for ourselves. We drove to the nursing home and visited with Grandad for about half an hour and I was gratified by the fact that I was able to make him laugh out loud about three times; he professed himself to be just too tired to get up from his bed, get dressed and ready and driven out to Pat and Angie's house to spend the day, and I was worried about him.

My parents have been very comforting about this, explaining that at nearly ninety years old, he gets tired and it would probably take him three days to recover from spending one afternoon out of town with the family, and I understand that. Intellectually, I understand it. Emotionally, though, is another story: This is my Grandad, after all, who read endless books and told endless stories and bounced me on his knee like a trotting horse all the way to Boston and back and bought me a pretty little pearl ring for my eighteenth birthday.

This was my second Thanksgiving in a row where I was able to stay away from the sugary pies....so HARD, but I just had a doctor's appointment regarding my blood sugar and she expressed satisfaction at the fact that I am still in a condition known as pre-diabetes instead of the real thing. She told me to keep up the good work, so I tried valiantly, serving myself a plate of dinner with proteins and carbs nicely balanced and turning my head sadly away from my mother's delicious homemade pecan pie. Ouch!

Big surprise

Meelyn is sitting in here doing a biology experiment while I type and she remarked that the set of prepared slides is so much better than the slides we tried to prepare ourselves, on which we could see nothing of biological interest except perhaps for a piece of hair we accidentally trapped between the slide and the cover.

She is viewing slides from the Algae kingdom and has decided that she actually likes Biology class now that she's not helplessly twiddling dials and crossly saying, "I thought I actually HAD something for a minute, there, but it turns out that it was just one of your AIR BUBBLES."

Nothing in my life either before or since college prepared me for the fact that, someday in my future, I was going to have to be able to assemble biology slides like a professional slide-assembler-type person. If only I'd known, I would never have been without a microscope and a little case of glass slides for these past twenty years.

I've just been eagerly asked to come see some spirogyra. Must go!

Best husband

I was very sad a few months ago when I turned on the television to watch EWTN and found that Comcat's channel sixty, where I've prayed the international rosary so many times, enjoyed the stories of fellow converts on The Journey Home, listened to Father Mitch Pacwa and Mother Angelica, Jeff Cavins and Scott Hahn on EWTN Live and watched one beloved pope slip away and another greatly admired one take his place, was gone. Just gone. I was desolate, really.

But the other day I came home from our trip to the museum and my husband said, "I've got something to show you."

I said, "I beg you, please no sports highlights. I don't know what I'm looking at even when I'm not tired and haven't been lost for forty-five minutes in downtown Indianapolis"

"No, really. Watch!"

And the he turned the channel to 275 and there was EWTN as I live and breathe, in HIGH DEF!

You will never again hear me say that it drives me crazy when my husband flicks maniacally through the channels at each commercial break. Because if he didn't do that, I would still be EWTN-less. Amen.

Experimenting

I thought of a fun experiment to do yesterday morning involving my face, my bulging makeup bag and my cell phone camera.

I took a picture of my face before makeup, smiling brightly as I snapped my own picture. When I looked at the image on my phone, I couldn't prevent a full-body shudder from wracking my ample frame, or maybe it was a dry heave.

Anyhoo, I quickly applied my makeup, evening out my blotchy, age-spotted complexion (because I was one of those smart girls who tanned with baby oil and iodine and then with Hawaiian Tropics, which in those days was completely innocent of any sun protection factor; you could have fried tomatoes on my back), highlighted my eyes with plenty of shading since I wear glasses, and delicately tinted my lips and cheeks. Then it was time for Photo #2.

Side by side, Photo #1 and Photo #2 appear to be of two different people, the first one being pale with indeterminate eyebrows, with a drinky sort of look about her. The second was the one that I would actually be willing to acknowledge was a picture of myself, although it stil wasn't great, truth be told. I'd like to blame it on my cheapo GoPhone, but I'm afraid it's just my face.

At any rate, the conclusion I drew from my experiment is that the general public, going about their business with no knowledge of my un-made-up face assaulting them as they do their grocery shopping, go to the bank, et cetera, is very lucky that my mother taught me to never so much as step out on the front porch to pick up the morning paper without mascara. Because, yeeeeesh. fcr

Silver linings

My husband and I were watching the financial news last night with white lips and wide eyes and he looked at me and said, "Boy, it's a good thing we had to cash out our (401)k a few years ago to buy food and pay the electric bill or we would really be frikkin' screwed about right now."

Hostage crisis

I have been held hostage by the city of Indianapolis twice in the past two weeks and God and all the holy angels and saints have turned a deaf ear to the sinister demands for ransom.

I got lost with Meelyn and Aisling and their friend Theresa on foot in downtown Indianapolis while looking for the Indiana Repertory Theater where we were supposed to see Macbeth, which I could not find even though we walked eleven blocks and were never more than three blocks away from the theater at any given time. The problem wasn't the driving -- I got there just fine, having used a series of index cards to make complicated instructions to myself; also pencil-drawn pictures of the city's grid of streets.

I should have known that this would fail me somehow, because what else can you expect from a city where the street named East goes north/south?

No, the problem with finding the theater is that we turned right instead of left when we left the parking structure and we were then off with a brave tantivvy to go around and around and around and around and around and....excuse me...until we finally wound up on Monument Circle where I sat on a bench, gazed for a bewildered moment at the pigeons doing their funny, jerky walk on the pavement, and then proceeded to have an anxiety attack which featured:

1. snuffling sobs

2. an inability to draw a deep breath

3. a crashing feeling of impending doom

4. a certain feeling that I was going to faint

I told Katie later that I did have the presence of mind when I started seeing those weird electric gnats that signify a fainting spell to lean back; we recently had to cancel our dental insurance and with my luck, I felt that it was all too possible that I might pitch forward and break out my two front teeth. Meelyn called Katie's house and Katie's daughter Mary called Katie at the theater and Katie asked the group of concerned friends and students who were apparently gathered around wondering WHERE THE HECK I WAS if any of them had my cell phone number. Jane did. So Katie called me on Jane's phone and when I answered, gasping, she said worriedly: "Are you laughing or crying?"

".....cry.....ing....."

"Oh, dear.....Are you going to be all right?"

".....can't....breathe....."

"WHERE ARE YOU?"

"....Circle...."

"Are you in your van?"

"....no....."

"Do you know where you parked?"

"....no.....can't....breathe....."

"SHELLEY, GIVE THE PHONE TO MEELYN!"

Katie asked Meelyn if she needed to dial 911, but Meelyn told her I was okay (she's never seen me having a panic attack before, and truthfully, I don't have them often anyway, so in her way of looking at things, I was just tired and stressed out and worried and frustrated, which pretty much describes the reason why people have panic attacks in the first place.)

Katie and Melanie left the theater and came and got me; I managed to force myself to breathe deeply and suck my tears back into my eyes (thankfully, it was a sunny day, so I was wearing my great big sunglasses) but I was so glad to see them, I started crying all over again. Katie and Beck walked us back to the parking garage after the play and every time I tried to thank Katie, I kept bursting into tears all over again and the parking cost $14.50 and Theresa probably went home and told her mother that Mrs. McKinney is a lunatic.

So today, Virginia invited us to go to the Indiana State Museum with her and her kids. She told me it was easy to get there and I was very excited to go, so I voluntarily turned myself loose on Indianapolis once again, as if I hadn't learned my lesson the first time.

Everything was fine on the way there, since I was following Virginia. We had a great time walking around the museum and we had a fabulous lunch (best pastrami we've ever had). Virginia and her kids are lots of fun to spend time with, so everything was rosy until it was time to leave. Virginia and her three little ones were headed for home in Greenwood and Meelyn, Ailsing and I plus Virginia's two older kids were going to go north to the Indianapolis Museum of Art where we were going on a tour at 2:00.

Keep in mind that the trip from downtown Indianapolis to the museum of art should have taken roughly ten minutes, even with traffic lights. But I somehow goofed up Virginia's directions and wound up heading south on Meridian Street, winding up in a neighborhood that even discerning meth cookers and crack dealers would eschew. They would eschew it, but I was schewing it all over the place, trying to find somewhere to turn the van around where it seemed the least likely that we would make the evening news for being shot.

"Well!!!!" I said brightly to the children, "look at all the pretty colors that gang tagger has painted on that house! That certainly looks bright and cheerful!" I gulped and stepped on the gas, heading back north at a smart pace, trying to make my head look as much unlike a target as possible.

When we got back inside the confines of the city, I instructed the children to look out for Monument Circle, because if I knew where Monument Circle was, it would be a lot easier to know my way out. Monument Circle is pretty hard to miss, mostly because of the big honkin' MONUMENT in the middle of the CIRCLE, but do you think any of us could see it? No, we could not. So we went on our merry way of criss-crossing the entire metro area with no hope of getting out, passing the same landmarks first from the south and then from the west and then from the east and then from the north until I finally tossed Meelyn my phone and begged her to dial Katie.

Katie, thank heaven, was at home. She got out her city map and presumably spread it across her kitchen table, where she talked me out of the city. It grudgingly let me out of its clutches and we arrived at the art museum a mere forty-five minutes late. Since we'd only been driving in circles instead of walking, I had no need for an anxiety attack, even though I am the world's biggest hypochondriac. I had already done my share of walking for the day at the museum, however, so my cane and I limped into the cafe where I spend a few moments looking at the menu, trying to figure out if there was any way to order two Tylenol and a shot of Jack.

I am SO getting a Garmin for Christmas.

Laughing

I am sitting here in the house alone, listening to talk radio on my city's admittedly podunk attempts at broadcast journalism. The guy who comes on at the top and bottom of the hour to read the news ("Several cows escaped from a farm enclosure on county road three-hundred north early this morning, blocking the passage of a school bus...") and every time I hear him, I wonder where on earth they found him. He has cultivated the ability to unaccountably emphasize random words and pause in extraordinary places in any given sentence, rendering his speech patterns to resemble nothing remotely close to modern English.

For instance, he just read: "Light snow OVERnight caused.....bridges, interstate onRAMPS....and other roads TO freeze. Causing......TRAFFIC mishaps during THIS morning's rush...... HOUR commute."

I like to play a game, a sort of solitaire, when I listen to the news, counting both pauses and oddly overemphasized syllables in each news bits he reads. It makes it even more fun that he has a pompous and nasally speaking voice. You just can't get this kind of premium entertainment on the bigger Indianapolis radio stations. They're all professional and never seem to feel the need to hit the cough button multiple times in one five minute segment to emit slight burps, courtesy of the onions and peppers on their lunch sandwich from Mancino's.

Perfect November

It's Monday, which is usually a sucktastic kind of day, but this particular Monday is perfect: temps in the high thirties, lowering gray skies, flakes of snow dancing through the air...time to break into that holiday classic, you know the one, called "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Thanksgiving."

Our family has Thanksgiving dinner at Pat and Angie's house. They have an open floor plan that makes it easy for members of his family and her family to all mingle together - we're in the same basic room, even if we don't all fit at the same table.

Everybody pitches in to bring a couple of dishes. I am Dressing Girl, as always, although this year, I plan to go back to the old tried-and-true recipe. Those three of you who have been reading at this blog since last Thanksgiving may remember that I made Martha Stewart's dressing recipe and it was so bad, even the dogs wouldn't eat the (massive amounts of) leftovers. It was....wet. The mouth-feel was mushy. And as much as I like to eat, a fact which no one who has ever seen me in person will dare to argue against, I couldn't even eat that crap. It was too bad, too, because you know how frikkin' Martha is about things: Those two 9x13 casserole dishes of wet, mushy dressing cost about $20 to prepare.

I'm also supposed to bring some caramel corn. You know, just in case anyone gets faint from hunger and needs a snack to sustain them.

First quarter grades at Our Lady of Good Counsel

A week ago Friday was the final day of the first quarter grading period here at Our Lady of Good Counsel Junior-Senior Hight School, just as it was with many of the other schools in the area.

There is both good news and bad news, but I'll leave you to ascertain which is which by posting the girls' grades below:

Meelyn

Spanish 94% A-
Biology 83% C
Pre-Algebra 88% B
Grammar 87% B
Vocabulary 9 82% C
British Literature 97% A
Composition 94% A-
Phys Ed 99% A
Religion 97% A

Aisling

Spanish 90% B
Pre-Algebra 86% B
Grammar 85% B
Vocabulary 8 87% B
British Literature 90% B
Composition 93% B+
Phys Ed 93% B+
Religion 73% C-

Several of my friends (and a couple of my daughters) have chided me for using such a hard grading scale, but I like to hedge my bets. Different colleges use different grading scales, so my feeling is that, when it comes to admissions and grades issued later on, we might as well start out really tough and that way, we'll all be pleased if it turns out that college grading scales are less stringent. But I'm thinking that most universities, both state and private, would be much more likely to use the harder scale.

I'm really pleased with MOST of their grades: there's one in particular that makes me flinch, I'm sure you'll know which one it is if you look for it. Aaaaaggghhhh!!!! This marks the first year that this particular daughter has done this particular subject all by herself, so I'm sure that's part of the reason for the low score. I'm hoping for better things by semester's end.

The only subject Meelyn is behind in is Biology, but she's ahead in Vocabulary and Spanish and exactly on course in all the rest, so I feel content. The high school thing is overwhelming, but I'm happy to report that it is much less overwhelming than it was in September. I hope that we'll feel that it's all old hat by the time January rolls around.

Nine days....

GAAAAAAHHHH!!!! It's now been NINE DAYS since my last post and there have been some loyal readers telling me that unless I get crack-a-lackin' with some recipes or stories about awkward situations that we have found ourselves in or some snarky comments about banks or Democrats, they are done with me.

Here's one reason I haven't been posting: We're busy. (Omigosh, that was so funny just then...I typed the word "busy" but my untalented finger accidentally came down on the "t" and "y" keys at the same time, leading to a declaration that the reason I haven't been posting is because we are BUSTY. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA....!!!!)

*ahem*

Anyway, another reason why I haven't been posting: It's cold. The weather has finally changed and now when I wake up at night (and I'm on a cycle where I've been up for a couple of hours every night for about the past five nights, stupid PMS) I throw a scarf over my bedside light so that the brightness is muted and stay snuggled under the blankets, reading while my husband snores energetically. The computer is downstairs next to the really big dining room window, which happens to be a window that is not particularly well insulated and it only takes a few minutes to get freezing cold, even bundled up in jammies, robe and slipper boots, when the furnace is set on its nighttime temperature.

So. I am still here and we are all fine. Don't give up. Be thankful that I'm so dedicated to making sure that Meelyn is on track with her freshman year studies, I don't have time to post much now.

Have you voted yet?

My husband and I went out early this morning to vote. There was one time, when the girls were very small, that I didn't go out early to the polling place, and ended up not being able to vote because the day got crazier as it progressed with a sick kid and various other contingencies popping up like daisies in a field. Thank goodness that was just a primary election; I've never voted past 8:00 a.m. since then.

Today we're due at the church at 3:00 for an hour of Adoration - Father's having parish-wide prayer from 6:30 a.m. until 6:30 p.m., which are the hours that the polls are open in Indiana.

Should be an interesting day!