A Year and a Week...and a contest!

First: Happy Mother's Day. (A week late, I know.) If you ARE a mother, chances are it went by so fast you hardly noticed. I remember the Mother's Days of my children's youth - there hangs in my memory a chain of breakfast trays holding burnt toast, rubbery eggs and cold tea. These are descriptors and not commentary. I loved every charred crumb. But the day can be lost in the swirl of diapers, field trip permission slips, pediatrician's offices and puke. (Why is it that when our infants spit up a little bit we croon "Oh, sweetie, does we feel better now?" with no foreshadowing of the same thing happening when he's nine and the 32 hotdogs he ate to outdo his buddy reappear - and always on the carpet, NEVER on the linoleum of the kitchen?) Sorry - that mental image came to ME unbidden, I couldn't help myself.

NOTE: The picture is my Mother's Day present from Mr Dearling. She's tiny, less than 3" tall, this Mother Bear. Her cub is a separate figure, and although it fits in against her, when you set the little cub aside you see that the Mother is the nurturer; all of you mothers of little ones know the incredible depth to which that is true. Children are fed with nourishment in such a myriad of ways, from the milk from breast or gently-warmed bottle to the cheering from the stands - in a pouring rain - for the soccer game, when the little tyke never gets within ten yards of the ball and you're jumping up and down and shouting "GOOD ONE!" So even though I'm writing a week after the actual Mother's Day, I know (and you do too) that every day is Mother's Day.

Here's another kind of Mother's Day - our nephew Dan graduates with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Skidmore College (our reason for being in NY). I admit it, I got tears in my eyes. Mr Dearling pointed out that we should be saying "Congratulations!" to all those parents who made it possible for all those graduates to do so. Congratulations, Geri & Steve! I'd say that's a good job, very well-done.

NOTE: I know, I said I'd be "blogging on the road"...and I - erh...uhm...haven't been very good about it. Something about a large group of friends and family in a lovely house on a beautiful lake in a gorgeous part of New York; suffice it to say, my next post will be photo-heavy (yeah, that new camera works GOOD!) and "detail-y". This is NOT an excuse, but is an explanation. Now back to your regular local programming.

Now to the MEAT of this post! Today my blog is ONE YEAR AND ONE WEEK OLD!! Yep, I've been blogging (sometimes less than more) for a solid year! I can hardly believe it myself, but I started on our 21st anniversary, and here we are. Yes, I hear you, back there at the back: "Dale-Harriet, for petessakes, it's been a whole year and you're still not up to snuff on this picture-posting thing." Guilty as charged - does Intention to Improve count? (Lawsy but I hope so, my whole life runs that way!) I have to say that I really enjoy this whole blogging thing. It's a very good exercise in writing, although I've noticed that when I am, I am often ignoring my cats, my kniting and my reading. Another area for improvement, non?

That being said, I've noticed among the GOOD bloggers (and I read a lot of them with delight and admiration) it's fairly customary to offer, on the blogiversary, a Contest of some sort - and I'm here to tell you, I'm going to follow suit. Because it seems to me (after looking back and rereading some of my own posts) that my life is generally very much like a circus, so the prizes will be related to that.

So here's the contest: Guess how many toques I have knitted? I have e-mailed the answer to Lovely Daughter (who will therefore not be entering, and yes, I do recognize her various aliases and noms de plume) - and the winner will be whoever guesses the closest without going over. The number is between one (raucous laughter) and 100 (hysterical laughter). I will also add that I do NOT currently have a toque on the needles. There IS one I'll need to start up sometime soon, but that one won't count because it's not even cast on yet. NOTE: I am taking a toque-sabbatical; there's no rush for the next and I'm wildly enjoying content to work on other things for a while.

The deadline for entries is one week from today, that being (she shuffles through her ever-present datebook, the loss of which would mean she wouldn't know when to go to the bif) and says " Sunday, May 25 " is the deadline for the contest.

I leave you today with photographic proof that I DID knit in the car on the way here to New York: I finished it in time to be of use and we've used it to do dishes every day. You may recognize it as The Easiest Knitting One Can Do; i.e., a perfect project for mindless driving which results in Something Useful. I've made a lot of Idiot Dishrags on trips (the truth is, I really enjoy knitting them...as I've said, I'm a Process Knitter, always pleasantly surprised when I bind off and discover that I have something !) Also, I'm a Happy Idiot.



And because I'm honest -- or perhaps to prove what I said about being a "process knitter" -- this is a piece I began in the My So-Called Scarf pattern, which I LOVE! I think it's so much fun to knit, even *I* found it easy to memorize, but interesting enough to keep my attention. However... because I'm not so smart -- that is, because I'm a Process Knitter -- I got pretty far, then made a mistake and wound up binding off and throwing it away THREE TIMES more than once. It was not exotic or costly yarn, and while that's wasteful, it really IS just plain fun to knit! Now, if I do that again I'll felt 'em and use them as...as....uhm - anyone got any ideas for thick useless little Knitted Square Things? But I recommend the pattern for all of you good knitters out there. Perhaps with the admonition to pay attention or be less lazy patient enough to tink if necessary. Just sayin'.