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."

Grin & Bear It

The local rib joint, which we hit for dinner tonight, has the usual assortment of junk on the walls: antique-looking bits of farm equipment, cheesy oil paintings of John Wayne & Clint Eastwood, antler trophies, that kind of stuff. They also have, rather inexplicably, a stuffed bear in the entrance area. Hunter always wants to pose with it... tonight I remembered the camera. What a goof.

Just in case you were still wondering, we came out of the tax audit owing nothing... what a relief. The only really disconcerting part was when the guy from H&R showed up to represent us, he looked an awful lot like Dick Cheney. No fooling.

The Tax Man Cometh

Two words that strike fear into the heart of any American taxpayer: IRS AUDIT. Apparently our home sale & moving expenses deduction in 2005 was enough to throw up a red flag in some government computer. We have all our paperwork in order, so it's not a problem, but still -- what a hassle.

This year's taxes are done & filed; at least that's out of the way.

The one bit of good news in this annoyance-fest: While going through the file archives to pull out the tax paperwork, I stumbled across my long-lost copy of the pattern for the very lovely Angelina. I ordered it & the yarn, oh, at least three years ago. When the pattern went AWOL, I assumed it had been packed up with my craft-room stuff & I wouldn't see it again until we got the dome finished & all the boxes in the garage got unpacked. But here it was with some old bills! It's now next on the stash-buster project list.

My Life

This photo, originally snapped just for the cuteness factor, is actually a pretty decent representation of what's going on in my life just now.

1. Red and gold yarn: The Quidditch sweater is coming along nicely. I've finished the front & back & have just started on the sleeves, which I am knitting both at once. Speaking of Harry Potter, there's a whole bunch of new photos just released -- stills from the new movie this summer. Can you believe that they've changed the house sweaters yet again?!? Now it's a charcoal-grey cardigan with fairly large black or dark grey buttons, with house colors trimming the waist and cuff, but not the neckline. The shirt has gone from crisp white to creamy ivory. Hosts of knitting fan-costumers stamp their feet in frustration. Hunter's Quidditch uniform is firmly placed in SS/COS, in case you're wondering; I'm not going to rework it at this point. (That's Sorcerer's Stone and Chamber of Secrets for those of you who are not obsessive HP fans.)

2. Stark Bros catalog under yarn: The garden is getting ready to go, and there is much planting of sprouting trays (see previous post). We also put in two Stark apple trees out at the dome, a Lodi and a Braeburn. Hopefully they will thrive and become the start of our own little orchard.

3. Tax preparation software behind the yarn: Yes, I know I ought to get that done. It's almost finished, really.

4. And finally, nothing is ever finished in this house until it has picked up its share of cat hair.