if only....

I love this video.  I love the music, I love the concept and mostly I love the finished sweater.  I can only assume that I would love the book as well.  I wish Beastie would play contentedly while I knit a sweater in a day.  Oh well, I will have to live vicariously:

Product Description

This beautifully illustrated children's picture book tells the charming story of beloved Phoebe mouse, who becomes a big sister for the very first time. What is mother knitting while she waits for her new baby to arrive? A beautiful new sweater for Phoebe to wear! The book includes a lovely set of photographs and knitting patterns from the illustrated story, including Phoebe's sweater, a mouse doll in a sweet handknit dress, and a doll-sized sweater to match Phoebe's. This book is an heirloom gift for any child, especially one who is special in the life of a knitter.

About the Author

Joanna Johnson lives in Loveland, Colorado, with her illustrator husband and their three children, who provide constant inspiration for her stories. After earning a B.A. in Literature and working for a short time at an academic publishing house, she has enjoyed rediscovering a childhood interest in writing and knitting. She is (at least) a fifth generation knitter, and has had a wonderful time breathing life into the beautiful illustrations from this book through her knitting pattern designs.

Simply Ageless? Simply Easy!

The wonderful folks at Covergirl & Olay have teamed up to create the Simply Ageless Collection.  I was lucky enough to get a sample of this collection from BzzAgent and wanted to share my results with you.

Now I will admit, I'm not a big fan of having my picture taken, or worse yet, taking it myself.  So after about 100 images I managed to find three I'm not too embarrassed to share with you.


In the first photo you see me in my Sunday morning state.  I have dark circles under my eyes, I have blotchy red patches, I have dry, dry, dry spots.  In short, I am a mess!

Next photo shows an improved me, just four minutes later.  I used a bit of the corrector under my eyes, the concealer on the red patchy places and then the foundation over the whole shebang.  I very sparingly used the blush.  In truth I usually never use blush, my Welsh heritage insures that I have my own built in blush at a moments notice, but since it came with the collection I have been using just a touch of it.  It's a nice change to have blush under my cheekbones instead of just in my apples.

Final photo shows me another three minutes later with a bit of mascara, eyeliner and my never can live without it lipstick on my lips and voila! I look like me again!  So in under eight minutes I can go from frazzled mom to slightly less frazzled but at least pretty mom.  Hooray!!!

I've been using the Simply Ageless collection for about two weeks so far and I'm very happy with the amount of coverage and the length of wear. Even with these horribly humid days we've been having the makeup has held up beautifully.  

AND to make the deal even sweeter I've been given a batch of coupons to share!  Each coupon is for $2.00 off any product.  If you are interested just hit the comments and I'll pop some in the mail for you.  Enjoy!

Changing Gears

So life throws you curves.  We all know that.  But some of us have more balls hurled at them from unseen directions then others.  My life is like that.  As you may have guess by now, the Florida trip that I was so anxiously planning for did not happen.  Sad.  The why it didn't happen is *almost* funny now, in retrospect.  Almost.

I helped out my friends who own Uncommon Threads at their booth at Maryland Sheep and Wool over the first weekend in May.  Or maybe it was the first weekend of the beginning of the consumption of earth by the fires of hell.  Not sure, it's a toss up because it was ELEVEN BILLION DEGREES outside.  In a three sided tent.  In the sun.  In a field.  With a kajillion percent humidity.  In other words, it was hot.

I am a delicate flower.  I don't do hot.  By the third day of hot, after eating my lovingly prepared turkey sandwich (shout out to Daun, who makes killer lunches), my body decided I was done.  I won't go into scary details, but I will tell you that Howard County Maryland has cute EMTs and that Howard County General Hospital and Howard County Fairgrounds are entirely too far apart, even with the ambulance woo-woos blaring.



View Larger Map

There, see! I just checked -- over 14 miles.  Crazy!

So anyway, heat exhaustion and dehydration.  Then when I do get home (thanks to my cohorts for waiting for me so I had a ride home from the hospital) my family doctor sends me back to the hospital the following day. And forbids me from going to Florida.  Okay, forbid would be an overstatement.  Let's just say I was strongly discouraged from traveling to the land of sunshine & nephews for 10 days.  So I cried & cancelled our reservations, disappointed a boatload of people and now I'm sitting at home, freezing to death in the cold, damp, dreary Pennsylvania spring.  ugh.

But that was not the only life change that happened this week.  I also resigned from the board of directors of Autism York.  Not that anything bad or sad happened, but that I need to focus on my Grams and the Beastie for the next few months & I can't, in good faith, commit to running events like walks or festivals when they both could need me at any given moment.  So yeah, after four years I'm done.  I cried about that too.  A lot.  When I started we were a few moms with $50 in an envelope.  Now we are this incredibly amazing organization that helps hundreds of individuals on the spectrum, families and professionals every year.  We raised nearly $40,000 last year and every penny stayed in our community helping those impacted by autism. It was my baby for a long time and now it has grown up and is going to move forward without me.  That doesn't mean I won't be volunteering occasionally but I will be receiving services instead of helping to provide them.  I haven't quite adjusted yet.

Then last night my best friend, Leigh Ann, brought me lo mein noodles.  And a fortune cookie.  

And the cookie said this...

So, time to start some new goals.  And I have a good one.  Details to come tomorrow (or soon, in case tomorrow has other plans)

Pack your bags, we're taking a trip!!!

I haven't had a vacation in over a year.  At least not a real vacation. Last time we took off, we went to Jamaica for a week.  It was fantastic, but it's been much too long since I've had more then about 2 hours of face-time with my husband.  Well, we are going to remedy that.  We are preparing to drive to Orlando to spend some time with my brother and his family.  And the mouse, or if not the mouse, at least his watery friends.

We were going to go on a cruise, utilizing the services of Autism on the Seas to do our booking, but given my grams' terminal cancer I just can't take a cruise right now.  At least with this we will have a car and God forbid we have to return home we can do that at a moment's notice.

So far our plans have included renting a condo for a ridiculously cheap rate, hiring a mother's helper/vacation nanny to give me some respite and help to keep the Beastie safe and reading a ton of books about Orlando & Autism.

The most helpful one I've found so far is The Child With Autism Goes to Florida: Theme Park & Resort Guide, Tips and Rides Review.  It's a nice pocket size guide and has been packed with useful info on every page.  As someone who has been to Disney World 14 times already, but never with an autistic child, that is saying something.

The one I am slowly plowing my way through is PassPorter's Walt Disney World for Your Special Needs: The Take-Along Travel Guide and Planner! (Passporter Walt Disney World).  It's almost overwhelming but very, very thorough.  It covers about every 'special need' you can think of for pretty much every attraction in the greater Orlando area.  And a few needs I never even considered!

Both books will be making the trip with us.  I've also seriously considered buying The I-95 Exit Information Guide: 6Th Edition.  The bits I've looked at online seem like it would be perfect for us, since we aren't making any reservations for accommodations on our drive down or back, just playing it by ear, based on Beastie's needs & mood.

And, in a moment of weakness, I purchased The Ultimate Disney Savings Guide .pdf.  I am currently on page 34 of 137 and so far I haven't learned a single thing I didn't already know.  Now, to be fair, I do have a degree in travel & tourism and am the Queen of Google Research (yes, it's a title I own, along with "Queen of Random" -- you know you're jealous).  So I am reserving judgement till I save the $19.95 I spent on it.  So far, no savings.

So, did I mention we are leaving in TWO WEEKS??? Oh, and I have a 3 day trip to MD Sheep & Wool thrown in there for good measure?  And a trip to take Beastie to the Center for Autism & Related Disorders at Kennedy Kreiger (read: Johns Hopkins) the day before we leave for vacation?

Hang on friends, it's going to be a wild few weeks!

Pride, Prejudice & Argus

So I finally started reading "Pride & Prejudice" this weekend. It was the first book I downloaded on my kindle nearly a year ago. Not sure why I was suddenly motivated to read it, other then the utter shame I feel when all my knitterly friends start discussing and I just sit there mutely or pretend to be digging through my knitting bag.

What's that you ask? Do I actually still knit? Smartasses. Just because I don't ever remember to share my knitting doesn't mean it isn't happening.

I've done THREE shawls so far this year. I have pics of two of them and sorta pics of the third (it is awaiting blocking -- maybe I'll do that tonight).

The first one was Argus from Wendy Johnson of WendyKnits. I knitted it out of Yarntopia Treasures WoolSilk yarn. The silk was more of a raw silk, so it should wear forever.  Sorry the blocking photo is so dark.  It was at night & with my cell phone, so ya know, you get what you get with that sort of thing.  It was my first time using the blocking wires.  I guess I didn't completely screw it up, because it looks pretty good now.