Look what I made! Look what I made!

The rag layer has all the prints and patters. The bottom layer has the plain side. It makes it soft and smooth. There's a layer of fleece sandwiched between all of them. I bought fleece remnants from a mill once, and I hadn't done much with them. This full size quilt? Hardly a dent. Anyway, it's very heavy and very warm. And yay, finally a use for worn out shirts.

Yup. I'm pretty stunned by this myself.

Happy Anniversary, my love - it's been 15 years today.

Fell twenty years ago. I was in Germany as an exchange student. And now I feel old.

I've been seeing (and hearing) a lot about a cheerleader who claims to have developed dystonia 10 days after getting a seasonal flu shot. I doubt the followup story will make the news rounds (doesn't make such good press to say that flu shots don't cause distrubing and rare symptoms), so here it is. Most neurological experts seem to think that she has a psychogentic motor disorder.

That doesn't mean she doesn't have a problem and doesn't need help or that anyone is being cold and saying, "It's all in your head." It's a serious problem. That wasn't caused by a vaccine. And putting her in a media spotlight does her more harm than good when it comes to getting treatment.

The kids got their H1N1 mist today.verminiusrex picked Pari up a little early. He wasn't the only one picking their kid up early, and there was already a long line when he got there. It started at 2, and apparently some people had been in line since 9 am. Yowza. 

Yeah, I'm a nerd. But if you had a chance to see the NYT newsroom, wouldn't you?

Also involved shot rods. Crap.

And at this point, if they'd said repairs would run us 2k for a new engine, I'd take them up on it. Nope. Stupid expensive engines.  We'll weigh our options and see how much car we can afford. Would have been much more convenient if this had happened during Cash for Clunkers. Just sayin'.

Things you do not want to hear upon first waking up:

"Uh, Mommy, don't come in here! Go back to sleep!"
And
"I'll clean up the kitchen floor from breakfast when I'm done with my shower." 

See, usually she reheats a waffle, makes herself a bagel, or gets herself some cereal. Today, she decided she'd microwave bacon. And then clean up the grease spills with dishwashing soap.

It was a free download, and it means I can run Windows on my mac for a year, so win-win for me. Anyway, I mostly like it. It comes with a bunch of rotating desktop pictures along themes. I picked "characters" because it sounded the most interesting. And it was fine. Until this one:( Read more... )

Two quilts. I had some worn out jeans and T-shirts that needed a new use. Here's the front and backs. Or the backs and fronts, depending on your rag direction philosophy, heh. ( Read more... )

Not having Internet until Tuesday. I'll be hanging out in some Internet cafes this week. Meanwhile, this really sucks.

So the cable modem charges us for bandwidth, and we've had to pay overages several times. Overages I'm still a bit skeptical we incurred. Anyway, they've introduced a new service that has unlimited bandwidth "optimized for video." Score. Video is 90% of our high bandwidth usage, and if they've clamped down on P2P sharing, it doesn't affect us. They require a more modern modem than the one we have, but they sell them for $80 and then waive the first month of fee.. which means we get a new modem for $30.  Yay. I'm going to watch every single video in the history of videos now.

Wow.

We picked Pari's quilt up from the fair on Sunday, and she got to sleep under it last night for the first time. Meanwhile, she spontaneously decided to clean her room, and we ended up finding three or four dolls that have been hiding under her bed. After nurse Pari presented me with my triplets, Kiyan adopted them all. There's a picture somewhere of him sleeping with all his children. It's adorable.

We've been talking about doing more family quilting time, since Pari's thinking of ideas for her next quilt. I finally got to my bin of recycle clothing, and made a quick rag-quilt from old jeans and T-shirts. I think it came out well. I still have to finish snipping and then give it a fraying wash.

I don't know where to start: http://kenyanbirthcertificategenerator.com/
And if you're going out to the county fair today, looks like there's a booth next to the onion blossom stand where they'd believe you if you printed one.

I think it's gorgeous. I love the fabric choices she made. And being the proud mama, I snapped bunches of photos of her working on it.



Perhaps too many, as the "Moooom! You're annoying me!" look seems to say.

Some bragging on my kids

So, I bought Pari a "jelly roll" for quilting. For those that don't quilt, it's a bunch of pre-cut 2.5 inch strips of fabric on the same colorway. She's been sewing the strips together, and I think it will be quite lovely, though it will be a challenge to persuade her to make anything other than a quilt of long strips, heh.  She's pretty talented with the sewing machine, though she gets super frustrated when she makes mistakes (It's not perfect anymore, Mommy!)  and has to be assured that yes, all of us sew something the wrong way every once in a while and this whole picking out stitches and resewing is really no big deal.

She's also still interested in piano, though mostly it's to play "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," the only song she has memorized. However, she plays it with ten fingers and doesn't need to even look at the keys. I'm seeing what her music therapist saw. Piano lessons start up again in the fall, and I no longer have concerns that they'd be a waste of money.  

Kiyan is gaining words in leaps and bounds. He's started dressing himself in PJs, though the shirt ends up backwards as often as not. He realizes the difference though and often tries to fix it. We need to make sure he knows where the rest of his clothes are, heh.

He suprised me by knowing the days of the week. This probably shouldn't be a surprise, since they go over this sort of thing in preschool. I'd just never heard him say it clearly before.

He's started building lego letters and numbers. He'll go around with the same piece and say h! h! and then turn it upside down and say 4! 4!  One of the researchers we talked to yesterday thought this was an unusually advanced skill, but he can also sign them all and recognize them in different fonts, so I think that's an area of special talent. Plus he's my child and therefore a genius ;-)

Kiyan's device arrived yesterday. It's pretty spiffy. It's a durable touchscreen computer with speakers to say things. And it's purple, which I kinda dig. But there are no things for it to say right now, and we're not really sure what it should say. If it were a matter of just figuring out software, that would be no biggie.

Hopefully they can get back to us on that one before the school year starts.