Do-It-Yourself Minor Surgery

I'll bet that post title reminds you of the days when we told kids to tie a string from their loose tooth to the doorknob and slam the door. Do we still do that sort of thing, or is that politically incorrect these days? I'll be needing to know in the next couple of years. I guess it can't be any worse than my father-in-law always telling the kids that "we might as well chop it off" whenever they get a little booboo they scream a little too much about.

So, what kind of minor surgery could a pregnant mother of two small kids be performing in her own home with a limited tool selection? Okay, don't get scared, Mom. I swear I wasn't using my sewing/knitting skills to give one of the kids some stitches after a fall. In fact, I just spliced a video tape back together. Lambchop #1 has taken to removing all the VHS tapes from their home in a drawer. This has caused Lambchop #2 to take a sudden interest in these objects. Half of them are now without boxes (or with mangled ones), and Lambchop #2 has apparently moved on to the second phase of his plans. Destruction! Luckily, it seems he had trouble fully unwinding the tape, so only a small portion was chewed up when he pulled.

After almost fully stripping the miniature screws (we probably couldn't perform this surgery a second time) with the only Philips-head screw driver I had in the house, I was able to pull out enough tape to Scotch-tape (scotcher is the verb in French) things back together and give it a try in the machine. It appears that our efforts were not in vain. In fact, the results are actually superior to the original tape itself, because we sacrificed a portion of the previews shown before the film. So, once again, Casper the ghost is our friend, and all is right with the world. Or, at least Lambchop #1 is happy to be able to watch it. She just loves a good scary movie (can you remember back when that would have scared you?).

On the knitting front, if we can even refer to what I've been doing lately as knitting...

I will warn you in advance that I've got pregnancy-induced ADHD. I can't sit still with one project long enough to do anything picture-worthy. I have played around with some stitch patterns in the Barbara Walker books my mom gave me for Christmas. That has yielded one lovely swatch and another one less lovely. Let's see. What else? No, that's pretty much it. Oh wait! I did wind a couple of skeins into balls with my new ball-winder. Great fun, but I'm going to wait till the swift arrives to do any more. I did sit down and weave in all the ends on my cashmerey cardigan. I also washed it, and it's now blocking. I hope to have it dry and a zipper in before Wednesday, when a nasty cold front is due in from Russia. We'll see if it actually happens (the zipper, not the cold frong). If it does, you'll get a picture, I'm sure.

Oh, and in case you're wondering what I do instead of knitting in my spare time, I cook, eat or think of food. I spend my days thinking about my next meals. I even had trouble falling asleep last night, because, apparently, the glass of milk I drank a bit before tucking myself in wasn't enough to hold me off till morning. I lay there for over half an hour calculating today's meals. Pathetic, I know, but the result was a delicious fish soup that is common in this area of France (I morphed several recipes into one, and it was delicious).