Today my little baby is a year old! We all sang to her as we got her out of her crib, and at breakfast the boys sang to her. She had a great time and loved all the music. Rich had to hold her hands down away from her face so she would let him put the pear in her mouth, because she saw the pear pieces and thought they were apple, which she does not like and kept hitting him away. When she realized he was trying to feed her pear pieces, she started eating them herself and then got mad when she ran out! The rest of her breakfast was pretty basic: cereal and milk.

As I said, we won't be doing anything out of the ordinary tonight. Dinner will be chicken stuffed with spinach and cheese, a bulgur pilaf with celery, scallions and pine nuts and a salad with dijon mustard vinaigrette. I made the vinaigrette a little too salty this time, trying to make it taste more of the mustard. I am going to add some more garlic, olive oil and thyme to it to balance out the flavor. I'm trying to decide between spiced pork chops and lasagne for dinner on Sunday when we will have her cake.

No knit gifts for her for this birthday, in fact the only gift she has that we know of is a red dress that she managed to get pee all over yesterday (she was playing in the potty seat after Elijah left the bathroom), which Marthie gave her. I have some red shoes that I gave her for Christmas, but they didn't fit her then, are still a little too big (she has tiny feet!) and the red is a blue red as opposed to the orangey red of the dress.

My red sweater: I have finished sewing the saddles to the body of the sweater. I really wish I had just bound off the sleeves on the inside of the body, so I wouldn't have to deal with sewing them now. I thought the saddles might complicate that, but now I see they wouldn't have. Anyway, I'm hoping I'll get to wear it at least once before it gets too warm for a long sleeved, high necked, cabled, wool gansey. Rich asked me about the neck last night, and I said something about knitting the turtle neck. He said "But you're going to stop before it's a turtle neck, right?" I said I would see what the neck looked like on before I decided. He muttered something about hating turtle necks. Since I have about five hanks of the Candide left, I could make myself a matching hat, some mittens, and a small sweater that will fit Amira to match. The yardage on this pattern was way off. I bought almost double the yarn I already had so I could make it, and really needed only part of one other skein.

I'm on the fifth ball of Follies for Lara. It looks like I will have about a ball extra when I finish. I should make something to match, but I don't think I will have enough for a hat. Maybe a muff or something, or fingerless mitts. I think the fingerless mitts is the right answer. I could make them simple like the jacket with the deep ribbing.

I have a surprise to post about, but until I get the pictures and fiddle with them, I don't really want to say anything about it. It's been hard not to talk about it, though.

Oh, something that has been annoying me lately: Surveys and forms that do not have a space for homemaker/housewife. I have noticed a change, it used to be that most forms included a spot for my job, now most forms do not consider my work to be work. The most recent form had:

Employed:

Full Time
Part Time
Retired
Not Employed
Prefer Not To Answer

No longer is homemaking seen as employment. Somehow, my not receiving a paycheck makes me unemployed, rather than not working for money. Before anyone starts talking about how employment really means that you have a boss/company, may I remind them of people who work for themselves are still seen as employed (self employed), the heads of companies are seen as employed and especially those of us who are crafters employ ourselves and our hands with our work. There is a cultural shift that has said that if something doesn't make money it isn't work, and if it isn't work it isn't valuable. I had to choose between Not Employed and Prefer Not To Answer, because these people, like so many others, do not recognize my work. It makes it easier to talk about the high unemployment rate in our country when we automatically discount anyone who chooses to employ his or herself in homemaking or volunteer work. This is part of why I don't buy all the of the noise about our unemployment rates, the government counts me as unemployed. I'd be willling to bet I work harder than most of the people who make those policies and statements about the high number of unemployed people in America.

Labels: Birthday