Quidditch, anyone?

Gryffindor Quidditch sweater
Yarn: Elann's Highland Wool
Needles: 8
Pattern: Saddle shoulder crew from The Handy Book of Sweater Patterns

I thought I was making it a size too large, to allow for a little growth between now and October, but apparently I was making it two or three sizes too large. Oh well, cuff the sleeves and no one will know. He'll be able to wear it for a couple of years this way. I liked the saddle shoulder, a new-to-me technique; may use it again soon.

Play ball!

Hunter's summer baseball team is just getting started! They played a much more experienced team, with pretty predictable results -- final score was 15-2 -- but the boys are having fun & learning the game. Hunter has a pretty good swing and actually walloped the ball pretty well on his first at bat, but grounded out to first.

He played at center & catcher -- coach is still trying out various players at different positions. We'll see where he settles.

Toyota Yaris

With gas prices topping $3.00 a gallon even here in the heartland, and me with a seventy-mile daily commute, we crunched some numbers to figure out how much a new-car payment would be offset in fuel savings. Lo and behold, a new commuter car made way more sense than continuing to drive my old low-20-something-mpg van. We love our Toyotas -- we've owned four of them & have no intention of buying anywhere else -- so we zipped down to the local dealer today to look at the Yaris, Toyota's latest incarnation of the econo-box. Boy, is it cute! I haven't seen it advertised very heavily in this market, just a few TV spots last summer, but they are apparently selling like the proverbial hotcakes. According to our salesman, we bought the seventh one this week. At around 40 mpg, why wouldn't we? Add up the savings in gas & it'll break even in two years.

Disaster comic relief

I was chatting with a co-worker today about the crazy weather of late. Here in Missouri, of course, we're having severe flooding from the same storm system that caused all that trouble in Kansas. We're staying dry, but lots of folks in the river bottoms are in bad shape. Then she asked if I had any family being affected by the Griffith Park fire. I explained to her a little bit about Los Angeles geography, the thrust of the Santa Monica mountains into the heart of the city, and why there's so much wilderness in an otherwise crowded urban area. She told me next that her daughter in Tallahassee had just sent her an email complaining about the smoke from the Florida fires.

She sighed and shook her head. "The whole country is like my tuna casserole," she said. "Crispy on the edges, mushy in the middle."