Thrift Thursday

I've been heavy into thrifting lately. More than usual, which means I've been thrifting a lot. For me thrifting fulfills so many of my addictions. I love a good bargain, I love vintage everything, I love shopping, and I love stuff. (I also hate stuff, but let's focus on the positive, okay?) See all those animals? $3 for all of them plus like 30 more and an ark. Because if you have that many animals, you definitely need an ark.

Winter thrifting in these parts means primarily thrift stores. The experience of thrift store shopping is not as delightful as garage sale or estate sale shopping, since it generally involves dingy basements, stinky stores, and pick-pockets. Still, I can't stay away. I'm longing for spring and garage sales, but slush, snow, Unique, and Village Discount Outlet will have to suffice in the meantime.

Yesterday, I stopped in at my local Village, located 2 blocks from my house, basically on my way to every single place I go. I've been searching for vintage needlepoint, lately. I found this amazing rainbow sunset one for NINETY CENTS a few weeks ago and I am completely hooked.
As is usually the case when you are looking for something specific, I didn't find it. But I did score this cute-as-pie sweater for a friend's new baby.
I showed it to E and he was all, "Me?" Too bad for him it's a shade too small! I also found this little wooden pig toy.
E is a big fan of it already. He's also a fan of jelly but not so much of hair-brushing.

And see Sarah's ripple blanket in the background? I managed to take some pics of my new one this morning.

It includes the 1/3 of a row that I completed while watching the DVR of the Ladies Short Program last night.
I was able to squeeze in the stitches between the tears while watching Joannie Rochette. Long program tonight. The only thing getting finished will be a bottle of wine.

So, now I've posted three days in a row. I feel like I deserve the gold.

Naps are for Babies

And obviously, my little guy is two, totally too old for naps. Today's got squandered in the car en route from a playdate to pick up my partner for post-surgical check-up. The good news is, she's healing nicely. The bad news is, the nap schedule went to--well, I'll just say we travelled in a hand-basket.

Before the nap fiasco, E and I had a superfun playdate with good friends, all girls plus E, who is all boy. He only hit like half of the girls, and of the ones he hit, only two cried. He ate his weight in pineapple, though, which both of us are already regretting. And he learned the word "solution". Genius.

In crafty news, I've got nothing. My craft today was cutting up the aforementioned pineapple. I also reheated some delicious polenta a good friend made for us to make my life easier. If you ask me, good friends are the best. I guess I did make the salad all by myself, complete with homemade balsamic vinaigrette. Olive oil, balsamic vinegar, chopped medium clove garlic, plus 1/4 tsp. mustard seeds. Yumsville. I prefer homemade salad dressing 100 to 1. And I prefer to dress the entire salad so the dressing gets evenly distributed. There is a school of thought that each person should put their own dressing on so they can control their levels. I think these people mostly are on diets. But their reasoning is flawed. I use way more dressing when I add it myself, plus I waste more. There's always a pool on my plate afterwards. And in these tough economic times, it's pound foolish to throw away perfectly good olive oil!

In other news, I totally got called out today as a Minnesotan when I said the word "bag." I'm learning to wear my accent as a badge of honor.

Oh, Look! I Have A Blog

Hey, what's up? It's been over three months, you say? Hmmm. Well, let's just pretend that didn't happen and move on.

Since last we spoke, there was Thanksgiving, I wrote a novel, there was Christmas, we all had the stomach flu, there was New Year's, we all had colds, the little man had an ear infection, we got cable, my partner had emergency abdominal surgery, the Olympics started, there was Valentine's Day, and the little man turned two. The holidays were okay, the illnesses sucked, cable is awesome and all-consuming, and my partner can't pick up anything heavier than a gallon of milk for six weeks. Guess what's heavier than a gallon of milk?

So, I'm a little tired.

My main craft lately has been thrifting. I have decided that thrifting qualifies as a craft because it creates something from nothing, or it creates things that are cool from things that were in a dirty, smelly store. It does this in much the same way that knitting creates a scarf from a pile of yarn. Or really, it's not the same at all, but I do think I use the same part of my brain for it. You know, the part I should be using for remembering to pay the bills and where the commas go and to feed the kid.

I'm also working on a ripple blanket for myself. After finishing my partner's, I had serious blanket envy and I needed a background project and crappy yarn was on sale. So, it was almost like I HAD to do it. The universe wanted me to do it. And you gotta do what the universe says. Unless it says to clean the bathroom. You do not have to clean the bathroom.

In addition to my blanket, which is about 1/3 finished, I'm trying to get my act together to finish 100 baby gifts. 100 may be an exaggeration. It may be more like 16. But frankly, that is still a lot. And also frankly, I am sucking at it. There's just been far too much going on. And now that I'm the main parent all the time and the Olympics are on, it's just getting worse. The Olympics are bad news for crafting. Normally, I get a lot done while watching tv, but during the Olympics, I have to actually watch the screen and not my stitches. Sometimes I hold my crochet or embroidery in my lap, but mostly, I just hold my wine glass. I really doubt all these babies are getting handmade gifts from me. Especially since 3 of them are already heading toward 4 months old. At this rate, I'm going to have to make them all school clothes.

That's the long and the short of it. I'll try to post more often going forward. Of course, twice a quarter would be more often.