It's Good to Have a Reason to Get Up in the Morning

Even if that reason ain't the weather.


Okay, I got a lot to catch you up on today, so try to stay focused.

Seriously, it seemed like stuff kept happening all weekend long and I actually started a list of stuff to tell you today, lest I forget, which is likely.

First off, let me just say that I’m ready for spot of sun. I don’t need it to be 80 degrees out there, and I know that the rain is good for the garden and the lawn and plants and all. But just a bit of sun would be nice. Perhaps between showers? I’ll settle for a sliver of blue sky.

Robin, in her Blogaversary Question, wonders “Exactly how cold does it get in New Hampshire? (Asked from a person who has only crossed the Mason-Dixon line twice in 30 years.)”

Well Robin, I live in Central NH, in the Lakes Region. It gets colder here than it does at the seacoast, but not so cold as it does in the North Country, up in the White Mountains. Our average winter temperatures are usually anywhere between 0 and 30 degrees F for much of December through February. It gets colder, and when they say an Alberta Clipper is heading our way, it means there’s a mass of cold air coming down from Canada that’s going to make it drop below zero and stay there for days on end. Some winters it seems to happen a lot, and some years we’ll get maybe one or two “cold snaps” as we call them.

So while we get some bitter cold days, for the most part we hover just below freezing.

And the one thing they say about New Hampshire weather is that if you don’t like it, wait a minute. And right this minute I’m ready for some sun.

Robin also wants to know “How do you always know the right answer for everything (especially on the Knittyboard)? Are you an evil genius or just a superhero? Cause it’s freaking me out…”

I like to think of myself as half evil genius, half superhero—the love child of Lex Luthor and Superman. Now that’s an episode of Smallville I’d tune in for.

So this rainy Monday morning is Bug’s first day back after April vacation. It is high time to get back to our regular daily routines. By Friday she was so bored she could barely stand herself. She has taken to doing math, just randomly. She’ll sit in the backseat of the car and think of two 2-digit numbers and add them together. By Friday she had mastered adding them and carrying the one over when necessary, so I decided to print off some worksheets from the internet for her to work on.

I looked up “first grade math worksheets” and all I got was simple adding and subtracting. We’re talking one digit numbers. Huh?

I had to go to third grade math to get her worksheets so that she could add two 3-digit numbers together! And since she got the idea of carrying the one to the next place, I explained borrowing the one when subtracting. So I printed some worksheets for that too. The good news is that math should be a breeze for the next couple of years. She wants me to teach her fractions and how to multiply. I don’t know if I’m qualified. I have trouble with that myself from time to time. I’m lucky I have enough math skills to knit, most days.

I certainly had issues with it this weekend. I decided to make my first pattern from Knitty. Ironically, while I spend half my waking life at the Knitty Coffeeshop, I’ve never made a pattern from there. But in the Spring issue there’s a pattern called “Monica” that’s a ruffled tank top for girls that just called to me. And Saturday, Sister and I headed up to Patternworks.

I wanted to get a bit more yarn to top off my Spring Fling Secret Pal package, and see if I could find yarn for the tank tops and for that little Chinese sweater I want to make. I did find some cotton yarn for the tanks. I got Tahki Cotton Classic in a tweedy multi-color and some solids for the ruffles. Bug gets the blue, I think, and Bobo the pink this time. I didn’t find anything I liked for the Chinese set, but I have NH Sheep and Wool coming up in a couple of weeks, and the Webs Tent Sale the following weekend, so there’s no rush.

And the SP package is wrapped and ready for mailing this afternoon. Whee!

Anyway, I cast on for Bobo’s sweater, after recalculating a bit to knit it in the round. (Why would you knit that flat and seam it? I still can’t figure that out.) I had to frog it three times because the hem wouldn’t lay flat. Third time’s a charm and I got halfway up the body yesterday. If only the sun would come out! I have to use my work light aimed right at my knitting, and it gets hot under there. I should buy one of those florescent bulbs for it. They don’t put off much heat, do they?

I still have a bag on the needles that I’m almost at the top of. A couple more rows and I could bind it off, I just haven’t. The tanks called to me. Plus I wanted to make it a backpack and can’t decide on what kind of straps I want on it. Excuses, excuses. But I should get on it, since Rainforest Rita sold from my etsy shop this weekend. And I did finally get the little bowls and the two other bags I made listed.

I got quite a lot accomplished this weekend.

Oh, and I went ahead and submitted my paper to be a CCD teacher. I requested a Confirmation class and I got a hug from the Religious Ed director for it. I guess she really needs teachers if she’s that happy that I’m volunteering.

And also on Sunday I cornered Janet in the sacristy after 8:00 mass. She gave me the poop on the A&R hiatus. She says that the handful of people that were there are the handful of people that are always there and do all the stuff, and they were tired of it. And she said that Ruby (not her real name) doesn’t want to be President any more.

Really…this coup could be easier than we thought.

First of all, the reason those six people are always pooped is because they just see what needs doing and they do it themselves. The leadership is woefully lacking in delegating skills, and apparently the solution of bringing in new members is just too exhausting.

Janet thinks, and I think she's right, that we need to find a way to make A&R more appealing to younger women. I'm sure that there are other women like Sister and me who are sitting there in mass week after week, being told that we need to help and serve others, but have no idea where to start. Sister and I thought it might be A&R, but perhaps God has other plans.

Who are we to argue?

Well, we told her that we were disappointed that we just joined up and now there’s nothing for us to do, and we were especially going to miss the Old Home Day craft fair. She suggested that we have it anyway. And that if we wanted to take the reins she was sure it would be fine, but we’d have to find people to help out with it. Though she was also quite sure that the A&R members would participate if asked.

So that’s our focus right now. Sister and I are going to plan the OHD fair and pull a committee together to run it. Hopefully we’ll bring some people in to help and they’ll be interested in joining A&R because of it. We’ve already decided that there will be food, more crafters than in previous years, and a penny raffle. And we’d like to tie in the OHD aspect of it by finding old pictures of our parish through the years and make them into either a photo gallery or slide show of some sort.

One of the things that the A&R does on an ongoing basis is make and distribute prayer shawls and lap blankets to people who need them. The knitters work from home and just give the shawls to A&R members to distribute, but we thought it would be nice to have a charity knitting group that actually gets together to knit and crochet. I’ve been looking about online for organizations that accept knitted items and I think it could be a good thing. Plus, while I love to knit and crochet, I'm not into making shawls and afghans. *yawn* But I'm all over making baby hats and such.

My hope in getting these two things going is that we’ll attract people of all ages who want to help the church by giving them something specific to do. And since it won’t be run by the A&R, it also won’t have the stigma of the “Old Ladies’ Guild” attached to it.

I love getting up in the morning and having a purpose. I mean, besides updating my blog and keeping Bobo alive until DH gets home.