So, today was sort of a day of rest. The fam has been going balls out, and seriously– a day to just chill was needed. But that didn’t stop us from entertaining ourselves…
* I woke up early this morning–but tired. Given that this was a day of chillaxing, I decided to go back to bed. Which was when my phone blew up with lots and lots of people wanting to text/IM and so I rolled out of bed, sucked it up, took a shower, and got the dogs ready to go walking.
When I went into the bedroom to tell Mate I was leaving, he was in bed, asleep in his clothes.
Apparently, I broke protocol.
* So, before I left to walk the dogs, I was in the bathroom in the back of the house, when my phone rings. It’s Chicken, calling as she waits to start work. The fanfic she was reading had gone hideously wrong, and she needed–NEEDED–a sympathetic ear. I listened, and then I frowned. “Hey, weren’t you supposed to drop your brother off before you went to work?”
“Yeah, Mom– he’s there.”
“Wait– Big T is here?”
And then Mate–who has heard the whole conversation– says, “Yeah, he’s here. You may want to get out of the bathroom and join the day.”
* When I got back from the walk–expecting Mate to be asleep and the kids to be playing video games–I was about 1/4 right.
ZoomBoy had gotten an invitation from one of the kids he plays Overwatch with on a regular basis. The kid wanted ZB to go play in his pool, and since Mate knew his parents from work, THEY were getting ready to go there. Big T was done with laundry and ready for me to take him home.
And Squish? Squish was sitting crosslegged on the couch, playing video games.
“Squish, how about you. Do you have anything you want to do today?”
She waved a hand around her general aura of contentment. “This.”
“Groovy. I’ll be back in a few.”
And I have to admit– she was pretty happy at the end of the day.
* On my way back from dropping Big T off, I stopped at my LYS. Unlike the LAST time I stopped at an LYS, in Medford, I had a specific thing I wanted–namely baby blanket yarn.
Anyway, I as I walked in, I saw stacks upon stacks of yarn for sale.
I said out loud–for Babetta the proprietess to hear me– “This, she said to herself as she entered, could be a tactical error.”
Babetta was tickled, and we had a conversation about yarn (what else?) and I showed her the above picture and asked if she still carried that fiber artist. She didn’t–but she was looking at ways to order from her, and she told me something interesting.
“That was made by dyeing a blank,” she said.
And then she explained. In order to get gradient yarn like that, one method is to use a knitting machine to knit a wide panel of plain stockinet stitch knitting– a blank– and then to dye the panel in stages, and rewind the yarn from the panel.
Now I know a few years ago, there was a company that made the blanks into a scarf-size, dyed them, and then sold them with the option of knitting right from the blank, and I have to tell you–
I think that’s amazing.
* So, I missed my morning nap, but I made it up after I got back from the yarn store. I had JUST closed my eyes when I got a text from Mate– “Ilene the soccer treasurer might stop by.”
“I’m napping.”
“Never mind.”
So, when he got back from the pool party, he told me he read the text and told his friend, “Oops, she’s napping. I’ll make other plans.”
“If she’s napping, how does she answer your text.”
“Man, I don’t know–but once she tells me she’s napping I give her at least an hour before I bother her again. Maybe an hour and a half.”
“Oh. So. Napping.”
“Oh yeah.”
* * *
So there you go–
A very odd little day.
But you have to admit… twas very chill.
