Hey guess where I am.

Sitting in my "nursing" chair (formerly known simply as my chair) a ratty but comfortable green recliner, with a sleeping baby on my lap. Yeah, that's right, in my house!

Manimal decided that our internet dependence had reached a point where paying for in-home service was warranted, so we are auditioning "mobile broadband" for a month. So far I'm loving it, and I want to celebrate.

My first thought was to post one of the patterns that I'm always promising to publish, but then I remembered why I haven't done it before. Most of my projects involve charts and I don't have a good method of getting them on to the computer. Basically I need a way of generating a page of graph paper and putting little symbols in the squares. I know, I know, I'm basically a cave woman when it comes to computering, I know this isn't as hard as I'm making it. Any suggestions?

And my second thought was that I should make some more blog friends. So far I've added to my blogroll thusly: someone tells me they blog and I check them out, or I like what they have to say in comments on a blog I already read, or they are notorious (harlot, franklin et al). So how have you all acquired your blogfriends? Anyone out there want to recommend a "must read?"

Since no post lately is complete without a picture of my baby:

He seems to wave his left hand over his head a lot, I call it his "shout out" pose.

Ragnar...in house blogging, who knew?

Catch up post...

So much to say! It seems like it's harder and harder to get up to the hot spot to update the old bloggerino. Ragnarson sleeps less and less every day, so when I manage to get there I can only count on enough cooperation for a quick email to the grandparents, they of the insatiable need for baby pictures.

I dragged the computer along to work today and I'm going to catch up on blogging, dern it.

Ragnarson has made his media debut, check out the State News' profile of Woven Art. Note that the photographer managed to take the picture from an angle that obscured the boob...and for the record he is 10 weeks old, not 10 months.

Yes my baby is wearing legwarmers. This picture is a nice intro to another topic, which is that I can't knit anymore! For some reason my wrist has begun to hurt A LOT, and the pain subsides if I don't knit for awhile. Gee do you think it could be from holding my needles at this crazy angle? But check it out, since I am apparently incapable of doing only one thing at a time, this is my first attempt at toe up socks, and also my first attempt at knitting two socks at the same time. I don't know why I decided it would be a good idea to knit from both ends of the ball at once, but I guess I thought that that way I would be able to squeeze every last inch of yarn out of the ball (I'm sort of envisioning these as thigh highs). In practice though I spend most of my time untangling yarn and needles and trying to figure out what direction I supposed to be knitting in.

Before my wristy problem set in, I did manage to finish a hat for the Manimal. He was inspired by Ragnarson's Fibonacci legwarmers, and wanted a Fibonacci toque, and it was time for his annual winterhat.

Manimals are hard to photograph in the wild, so you'll have to pardon the blurry, someday we'll get one of those hotshot wildlife photographers in, and we'll get a good photo of him in his natural habitat. Anyway, that hat represents the sum total of knitting accomplished A.B.R. (that would be after the birth of Ragnarson). The red socks in the newspaper photo were started B.B.R. and have only grown by about half and inch, so they don't count.



In other news, my secret pal keeps giving up the goodies.
Although there was a postal tragedy, and I am sorry to announce the death of a really nice lavender scented candle. Judging from the size of the glass fragments (the world pulverized comes to mind) this was the winning package in the interdepartmental postal carriers football championship. You can't pulverize yarn though and this is beautiful stuff, Classic Elite's wool bamboo. I've sworn off lace and scarves, but I think this yarn might have a lacy scarf in it's future. Plus how did my pal know that I'm a sucker for things that come in little tin boxes?

And following my pal's good example, I finally posted to my own secret pal. This box now represents both September and October, but should be all the more fun since it now has more stuff in it, right? Plus I got to go to the drive-thru post office.

I'm sure I had more things to say, but Momma brain has set in...perhaps I'll bring the computer to the store tomorrow as well.

Ragnar...former knitter.

Subliminal Messages...

There are only so many things you can talk about with a baby. Once you’ve exhausted the topics of diapers and milk and “just hold on a minute so mama can eat, get dressed, brush her hair, use the toilet, etc,” there’s just not that much to talk about. We do a lot of bouncing though, which is a rhythmic activity and naturally progresses to singing, Ragnarson seems to like singing, sometimes he coos along, but mostly he doesn’t cry. The only problem is that my repertoire is skewed towards the whiskey and outlaws branch of folk music.

Here are some things that I am teaching my son when he is at his most impressionable:

It’s okay to get drunk, as long as you spend your own money.

If you’re lucky you’ll grow up to be a moonshiner, an outlaw or a hobo.

Church is where you go to meet women.

It’s okay to steal as long as you help the poor.

If your woman is slowing you down, shoot her.

If your wife is a nag, pitch her in the river.

Tu-rum tu-rum fiddley diddley diddy dum.

Landlords are the worst.

If it’s cold and snowy, find yourself a nice warm box car.

Loving a pretty woman almost always ends badly.

Ten shillings will get you a gallon of moonshine.

Never surrender.

Two pistols are always better than one.

You can fit ten million hogs, six million dogs and seven million barrels of porter in the hold of a ship.

There are A LOT of things you can do with a drunken sailor, (although if you slow the tempo and sing more softly, there are a lot of things that you can do with a sleepy baby.)

It’s better to go to the gallows than admit that you’re sleeping with your best friend’s woman.

Love burns, like a ring of fire.
If you don’t have enough money to cover your tab, then you better have friends to fight for you.

Whiskey will get you through times with no women, better than women will get you through times with no whiskey.

Never assume that the corpse at the wake is dead.

There are no policemen in heaven.

If you want to make friends, all you need is a well rosined bow.

If your mama tells you not to play with guns, don’t go off to Reno and shoot a man just to watch him die.

War isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, but the farmers’ daughters are okay.

If it wasn’t for the weavers we’d all be neekid.

When you die, a tombstone isn’t as good as a couple of jugs of whiskey.

Behind every outlaw there is a loving mother.

So, anyone know any good lull-a-byes, before I turn Ragnarson into a woman hating alcoholic, living on the wrong side of the law and sleeping in box cars?

Ragnar...hey it's post number 100...huzzah.