An old knitting dog CAN learn new tricks

I taught myself to knit about 8 years ago. It was a slow, painful process. I'd cast on, knit a few uneven rows, then put it away for a couple of months. Every time I started again, I'd have to look up how to cast on, because it sure wasn't sticking in my mind.

After a while, though, it clicked. My stitches became nice and even and I could remember how to cast on. I started knitting regularly.

I'm kind of ashamed to say that I never learned the provisional cast on. If a pattern called for it, I'd find another pattern. My brain just couldn't handle trying another way to cast on. The long tail method was what I first learned, and by golly that's good enough for me.

But this past week I found a pattern for wristlets that is so perfect that I have to make them. And, of course, it calls for a provisional cast on. I sighed then googled, found a site, printed it, and sat down to knit.

I could not figure it out. It looked like a foreign language. So I did some more googling, found another non-video site, and tried it again today.

Still couldn't get it. So I sucked it up and went to Youtube. And I found the perfect explanation.

I don't know why I've avoided Youtube and videos this long. Yes, I do know, I'm lying. I hate computer noises. Startup, "you've got mail", that annoying bleep when I do something wrong. So, for years, I've kept the sound turned off. It pains me to even turn it on to listen to music, and I loves me some music. (Last Train Home, Eric Brace, Peter Cooper)

Anyway, I found this video, Crochet Provisional Cast-On, and watched it once. Suddenly it clicked. I picked up my yarn, crochet hook, and dpn and cast on provisionally. And it worked. The first time.


Wow. I feel empowered. I am Woman. Watch me cast on.

Not really. I'm not up to making a video right now. I'd have to turn the computer's sound back on.





My perfect wristlets: They'll have to be added later. IE froze on me.

And I didn't even have the stinking sound on.



P. S. Another reason I like this video so much--"crocheting" is misspelled. Or is it mispelled?

I stalked Don Henley

I did. With my sister.

But that was about 7 years ago, I think, and old news.

Just wanted to pass that on.

Good school cafeteria meal = oxymoron?

Yes, in my opinion, it almost always does. But not today.

Today was "Local Foods Menu Day", where all food served in one of the lines was produced within 15 miles of the city. (We have 5 lines at the high school; local foods, such as strawberries, bibb lettuce, hothouse cucumbers, etc. were served in the other lines as well.) Since the school food is usually decent, but not noteworthy, I've been looking forward to this meal since it was announced a couple of weeks ago.

Yes, I like to eat.

Our menu for today:

Sorry for the slanted view. I didn't have the energy to retake the photo. Usually I won't let one get by me like that, but today I have a UTI and am taking Cipro, which does a number on my stomach. Makes me feel like I have the flu or something. Of course, that didn't stop me from eating this meal.

And a view of the meal:

Those are real by God mashed potatoes, not the powdered kind we usually get. And the tomatoes taste like they're vine-ripened, and the strawberries actually are. This meal had flavor. Yes, a school cafeteria meal with real flavor.

You heard it here first, folks. School Cafeteria Cooks Real Food.

Yarny stuff

Claudia has asked me if I'd like to knit test garments for her. She'll pay me in yarn.

How long do you think I had to consider that? You're right.

First she has us knitting gauge samples. She's had some patterns written for some of her designs, which are incredible, and she gave two of us yarn (Heidi got chunky in Antique Jeans**drool** and I got worsted in Strawberry Latte) and told us to go at it. So far I've knit one on size 8s and one on size 7s. Here's the 8s (couldn't tell you the gauge; I was gone all last weekend and didn't have time to check it):




This one isn't striping as obviously as the one on smaller needles, but it's striping. I'm hoping that on a garment it'll work up better.

Test-knitting for Claudia? Hell, yeah!

Weekend 'o' knitting

February's over! It was 60 degrees yesterday! I finished those blasted I'm So Done Mother&Daughter Socks!



*ahem* See what a little sunshine and warm(er) weather do for me? *note to self and Tom: we have to buy a house in South Florida. Soon.*

Last night, just before bedtime, I finished the blasted M&D socks, and if I do say so myself (and I do), they're lovely. I immediately picked out some yarn for the Bremen Muster socks, some Claudia Santa Fe, a colorway that's been discontinued, the very first Claudia yarn I ever bought, a colorway that I snarfed right up when she was getting rid of it. This one is a little darker than most, but I still love it.



But I might get a wild hair and buy some Fingering 55 for these socks, merino/silk, which takes color in a different way, so the same colorway looks totally different and luminous. These socks just deserve something special.

Time to run downstairs to the attendance office and hand out detention notices to the kids who insist on being tardy every day.

Textured rib stitch

Okay, I'm so pleased with myself for actually trying a new stitch that I have to show it off in better (I hope) photos. I'm also tickled that it turned out so well, especially for this project. I've got to use it again. I don't think that I can give the pattern here (even though it's only a 4-row repeat, since it's published in a book, I guess it's a no-no to reprint it), but you can find it on page 64 of The Knitter's Handy Book of Sweater Patterns by Ann Budd, no doubt available at your friendly local and online bookstores).

Closeups of the stitch:

















I think I've found the pattern for my next scarf. It wasn't that hard to do while watching tv, I only cursed a little while knitting, and I love the look.

I tried something new and it worked, for once!

And she did it before her 8th birthday

You know, I thought, years ago, that I wouldn't care if I never had grandkids. They'd get in the way of my time. Yes, I'm selfish. Who'da thought?

But when my daughter told me that she was pregnant the first time, totally unexpected to me, showed me the test stick with the positive marker, scared to tell me because I'd been rather vocal about her waiting till she was more mature or something (she was 27!!!), unexpectedly my world shifted on its axis.

Suddenly, more than anything, I wanted--no, needed--a grandchild to fill the emptiness in my heart that I hadn't even realized was there, a newborn-sized space that ached to hold my grandchild. I needed a tiny girlchild, someone that I could hold, read to, play with, tell about her Nana (more later), pass on my love of knitting and crocheting.

J and M had been married for over 4 years by that time and had decided that if they had a child, fine, and if they didn't, they were okay with that, too. I think they'd sort of decided that they couldn't have kids, since none had shown up by that time.

Then my Nana died in February of 1999 at the age of almost 91. Nana was that perfect grandmother, loving, tolerant, wanting us kids to stay with her. We lived with her and Grandaddy till I was almost 3, I think; by that time I had a younger sister, Betty, and I can't remember life without her, as we are only 15 months apart. We spent as much time with Nana and Grandaddy as we could while we were growing up. Nana would dress us alike, and since we are so close in age, people would often stop her and ask if we were twins. Okay, that's another story in itself, how much I love and depend on Betty.

So when Nana's health failed that February, J really wanted to tell Nana that there was a great-great grandchild on the way, although there wasn't. Nana loved her grandkids and great-grandkids so much and would have been so happy to know that another little one was coming to the family.

J was pregnant about 3 months later. M has said that he thinks that Nana sent A to them.

J loves carnivals, fairs, and theme parks, and a carnival was in town. She rode the Twister or something, a ride that flung the riders around and around; two large women were in the seat with her (M doesn't do that kind of ride; neither do I, for that matter) and crushed her into the corner. She had so much pain for the next couple of weeks that she thought that her ribs were broken. Totally unaware that she might be pregnant, she went to the ER and was x-rayed (no one there asked her if she might be pregnant). No broken bones were found, narcotics were prescribed, and a week later she was back, still in incredible pain. More x-rays, still no question about possibility of pregnancy. No broken bones.

That night, she suddenly thought, oh my God, I missed my period last week or so, and she took a pregnancy test. It was positive, so she took another, thinking there had to be a mistake. Nope, positive. Still unbelieving, she sent M to the store for yet another test. Yep. Positive. (She should have been born in Missouri, don'tcha think?)

So she showed the stick to me. To her surprise, I was elated! Suddenly I was a grandmother-to-be and loved that child more than I though could be possible. BUT--there were those xrays a week apart, no lead apron, possible damage to the embryo. We were terrified at the thought of that damage.

J called her OB-GYN the next morning and was told to come in that morning for testing. Yep, she was pregnant all right, but the xrays could have killed the embryo. If it was still alive, there could be brain damage (as in only a brain stem left). She was told to come back in a couple of days to see if the pregnancy hormone (I'm too lazy to check what that is; I should remember it) was increasing. It was; the baby was still there.

Can you imagine going through the early months of your first pregnancy knowing that your child might be brain-damaged? I was optimistic that the baby would be okay; I loved it so much that it felt like I could will it to be okay.

I went with J and M to a nearby well-know university that has a teaching hospital for the first ultrasound (second-level ultrasound, whatever that is; again, too lazy to google) (on another note, I find myself amazed at the ease with which I began to use "google" as a verb). On the way (it's about an hour's drive), J told me the names they'd chosen. I loved the girl's name immediately. It's unusual enough that she won't hear it in her schoolroom as someone else's name, unlike J, which was a very popular name for her age group. I was still willing the child to be a girl; I'd have loved a boy, but I so wanted a little girl.

I was present when the monitor showed a perfectly-formed little head, a beautiful little head, its brain intact and the right size for the time of development. And I cried when the nurse said that it was a girl. From that moment on, we called the baby "A". She was real, and she was perfect.

I insisted on being present when A was born. I couldn't wait to see her and hold her. J wasn't happy; she's very modest and really didn't even want a doctor present. She had a wonderful midwife at her OB-GYN's office; she was somewhat comfortable with that. But I continued to insist, and J reluctantly relented, but "only if you stay behind my shoulders when A is born." M was similarly instructed.

J really wanted A to be born on New Year's day, but she would have been happy with any time before that. The last month of pregnancy is a bitch. For the last two weeks of December, she was having false labor, and she ate Mexican food, took long walks, did everything she'd heard could induce labor, but A wasn't going to be born until she was ready. First glimpse of her personality there.

A few days into January, J called me at work and said she felt funny, so I left work and went to her house. We talked for a while, then she said that she was going to call M and go to the hospital. Shortly after I left to go home to get ready for the big event, her water broke, and labor started in earnest.

I have to say that my mom, my two sisters and I had all had very short, easy labors and births; my first was 2.5 hours (induced, but still) and the second was only about 40 minutes. We lived 25 miles from the hospital; let me tell you, I was ready to deliver after only 4 miles. Anyway, J had heard all of our stories, and I expected her to have a similar easy time.

She later accused me of lying.

Her labor was only 8 hours from start to finish, but she has always felt pain more intensely and would spend three days in bed each month from cramps when she was in high school. After 6 hours her midwife told her she had to start pushing, and J wasn't ready for that. It hurt even more, and J wasn't going to have it. She'd had an epidural, but one "window" of her abdomen didn't numb, and she felt every contraction anyway. And her anethesiologist had been called to an emergency c -section and wasn't there to authorize more meds.

J begged for a c-section to end the pain, but A had already descended into the birth canal and it was too late for surgery, even if it had been an option. She was again told to push, and her wonderful midwife and nurses encouraged her. I don't know how she'd have gotten through it without their help. Her midwife was crying because she'd promised J beforehand that J wouldn't feel any pain, and she felt so bad for J.

Finally, finally that beautiful little head appeared, and I was the first family member to see A. Of course, I cried. She slipped out easily after that, and my Bunny Baby had arrived.

M and I watched the nurses quickly suction and wipe off and bundle A into a blanket and hat, then she was given to him. I'll never forget the look on his face. His little girl. He was already imagining her running to the door, yelling "Daddy's home!" Then he handed her to me. Finally, that empty spot in my heart was filled, and it's been filled ever since. I couldn't love that little girl any more if I'd given birth to her myself.
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So, anyway, the whole reason for this post is to announce that A learned to knit last week, while she was still 7. That was so fulfilling for me. Nana had taught me to crochet when I was 7, and while I never really used it till J told me she was pregnant that first time (immediately Nana whispered to me, "Start crocheting! You've got a baby on the way!"), it was something that I could pick up and play with and actually use later. I really wanted to be able to pass my love of crafts on to A, and the OCD part of me insisted that she learn to knit or crochet when she was 7. Keep the karma rolling, you know?

And she did. She'd tried knitting since she was 3, but it was more than she wanted to deal with and would quickly lose interest. Each visit, she'd ask to knit, and she'd try it, and she'd hand it back. But this visit, she picked up the needles with Zippy's sweater on them and she started knitting. It wasn't perfect, it was a slow, labor-intensive process, but dammit, she was knitting. She even wanted to take it with her when we got into the car to go anywhere, just like I do, and she knitted. (Or is it knit? I have problems with those troublesome past-tense verbs, like swim and hang. And knit.) She's left-handed (which, for some reason, has always delighted me, just like B2's big blue eyes), and I cannot knit left-handed, so she had to figure out for herself, but she did it.

And she did it before her 8th birthday.

This is the tummy part of Zippy's sweater (Penny). A's work:

She only did a few rows, but she worked really hard on them and it took a couple of days, working on it in the car mostly, to knit them.

I'm so proud of her!

Wooooohooooo!

I can't believe I did it.

Because I'm just so doggone good with computers, A and her mom are going to a now-sold-out Hannah Montana concert in January. It only took 35 minutes of inputting the number of tickets, typing in the secret code, and waiting to see if tickets were available. Thirty-five minutes, input, type, wait, rinse, repeat.

Hannah

But I did it. It was totally worth getting up at 9 a.m. on a Saturday.

Miley Cyrus

Tickets for these concerts are already selling on ebay (I guess the some of the sellers are "fan club members" who got tickets yesterday, but some are selling tickets "in good seats to be announced", which means they hadn't even bought the damn things before they listed them) (I hate people who make it hard for normal kids to get in to see their idols, but that's another rant for another day) for incredible prices. I mean, $3000 for 4 seats? And mommies and daddies will buy them for their precious babes. One person on ebay was selling the fan club passcode for presale for $750--no guarantee of getting tickets, just for the chance to try for fan club presale tickets. I think that the fan-club-presale thing needs to be rethought.

But my precious babe is going to see Hannah Montana, and no scalper was involved, just a little fancy fingerwork on the Ticketmaster site. Ha!


UPDATE, 12/17--I'm still finding it hard to believe that I actually was able to get these tickets through Ticketmaster. I have problems with Ticketmaster ($10 service charge per ticket, $1 facility charge; aren't they all getting a share of the money anyway? Extra charge for parking, etc.), but they're the only game in town, except for those scummy scalpers. Hannah's shows in the Northeast sold out almost before they went on sale, and scalpers on ebay were selling the tickets for thousands of dollars for 2 to 4 tickets, and people were buying them. I thought that ebay ruled a few years ago that tickets couldn't be sold for any more than the face value of the tickets, but it seems that's no longer true. Or maybe it was just for those states that had outlawed scalping, I don't remember.

Last night I checked ebay to see what they're going for for this particular city. I was pleased to see that many hadn't sold (I checked "completed auctions"), and those that had, for the most part, were more reasonable than the shows in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connecticutt, etc. There were still a few really unreasonably high sales (like $2500 for 2 tickets, not even front row), but most were in the $100-150 per ticket range (tickets were $25--nosebleed--to $65 through Ticketmaster, plus that $11-per-ticket charge), and I'm betting that people who only needed 2 tickets bought the maximum of 4 and wanted to sell the others. The higher prices were scalpers'.

If I could have gotten 2 extra tickets, I'd have been tempted to sell them for $300-400 and fly myself down to take A to the show. But I wouldn't have done that. I'd have sold them for face value. Plus the $11 charge per ticket. There are lots of little girls who really really want to see Hannah Montana in concert, and they deserve the chance to do it at a reasonable price.

Two days later, I'm still thinking: I scored tickets to the hottest show of the decade!!! And I did it with my own little fingers, a lot of patience, and without resorting to scalpers.

Update update: You do know who Hannah/Miley's father is, don't you? Here's a little hint:

Back to knitting and yarn

A couple of knitting-related items:

I'm knitting a hat for a co-worker's baby, his first. He's taught English here for the last couple of years, and it turned out that he taught my youngest niece in college, too. His baby shower is Monday, so I started the hat a couple of days ago and am almost finished.

I'm making it of Claudia's sport-weight yarn, Santa Fe colorway, and I am just thrilled with the yarn and the colors. It's tightly twisted and has such a nice feel to it. The colors are blending so beautifully that I want to make a top or sweater for myself of the same yarn.







Second, here's a photo of the last bag 'o' yarn from work, with Chester the Cat for size comparison. I'm up to over $6300 retail that's been given to me in just a few months.



I love that job.

(Except that I finished my dye-room clean up early yesterday and there was nothing else for me to do, so I ended up vacuuming the office, which contains a huge bird cage for a huge bird, and now I'm stuffy. I'm allergic to birds.)

More yarn

Ahhhh, the benefits of working for a yarn dyer! I think I've touched on this before.....

Yesterday, in the trash box, was more yarn that was being thrown away. Not just given away, but thrown away. Huh??? It'll take a more intense scrutiny for me to see any faults. Okay, I know why she threw away the linen; it's 4-ply but two of the plies are very thin. I guess that it wouldn't knit to gauge, but there are ways to get around that. I counted the skeins of linen and there were at least 10, but at 270 yards per skein, that's enough to make a couple of nice tops.

There were also 4 hanks of fingering yarn, dyed in shades of brown and green. There are close to 2000 yards in each hank! I haven't taken photos of these yet, or most of the rest of the yarn I've acquired free, but maybe sometime I'll get motivated.

I did take photos of two of the yarns I got last week, along with a scarf that I knit last week from free yarn.

The first two are large boucle; the scarf is small boucle. It's so soft and squishy!

Bags 'o' yarn

It sure is nice working for a woman who dyes tons of yarn. For the last month she's been giving away all of the yarn she, for one reason or another (and not known to me) didn't want to sell. So I've been taking home yarn.

Huge bags of yarn.

Like, over $5600 worth of yarn. Much more than I've earned working for her.

Remember, she who dies with the most yarn, wins.

A small portion of the yarn, on my desk, in a Longaberger basket.

Gotta brag!

My faithful blog reader, ~tonia~, has just started dyeing and selling her own line of fingering-weight yarn, in very generous yardage, too. Click on her name to go to her blog so you can see her gorgeous yarns! That woman can really keep a secret!

Most sock yarns are sold in balls of about 440 yards, or, in singles, at least 200 yards per ball (She-For-Whom-I-Work sells hers in hanks of only 175 yards, which at $12 a pop, or $24 for a pair of socks, is kind of chintzy, in my opinion). But ~tonia~ is selling hers with 500 yards per skein, and at only $1 more than the less-than-generous yardage supplied by S-F-W-I-W, it's a good deal for such beautiful hand-dyed yarn. I'm hoping that ~tonia~ will tell me just how on earth she's able to make her yarn reliably self-striping. Sometimes, often, that's the look that I want. Real stripes.

S-F-W-I-W calls her yarn "handpainted", which generally means it's not supposed to stripe when it's knit. It may pool a bit (which I like, but isn't always desirable, although I think it's really pretty), but it doesn't make real stripes. If one wanted her yarn to stripe, one would have to carefully chose a pattern that would make wider stripes than those that show up in the socks I knit waaaaaay below and posted in June, I think. It's sort of a spiral type of stripe, and while it's okay, it's not what I'm going for in striped yarns.

Well for heaven's sake, I thought I'd posted a photo of the socks I'm knitting for Joan for her birthday (which was Sept. 2, but who's counting, other than Joan?). Now those are self-striping. I think it's an incredible striping effect. Someday maybe the lady who dyed this yarn will tell me the secret of how she got this effect.

So here's that photo:

Okay, so I didn't rotate the photo before I uploaded it and now I can't figure out how to do it. Turn your monitor sideways.

This yarn came from The Painted Tiger at etsy.com. I found several great yarns there this summer, right before I started working for S-F-W-I-W. This one was $25, 460 yards, and very soft; it's 75% Superwash Kona wool. The photo at etsy really caught my eye:

So, anyway, my friend now has her own line of handpainted, self-striping yarns. Go buy some! (And send it to me.)

A fleeting moment of fame

http://blogs.herald.com/dave_barrys_blog/2007/06/an-american-tra.html#comments

Automobile ramblings

Hi, I'm Marie, and I'm a car snob.

On Wednesday our Camry went in to be repaired (approximately $3500, I think) and we were given a rental car. I figured we'd end up with a GM or Ford product, and I'm not crazy about those. I like Toyotas, especially Camrys. I rented a Buick last summer that was a nice enough car, even luxurious, but it was a Buick. I just don't like Buicks. UPDATE: It was a Dodge. A nice Dodge, but I really hate Dodges. It all goes back to my ex-husband.

I'd planned to rent a car when I went to Orlando for A's birthday in January, but all they had left (I'm so sure) was a PT Cruiser, and I hate those things. For some reason they're just plain offensive to me. It's like a personal afront or something. I don't understand it, but it's there. So I refused the car and called J to come and get me at the airport. I simply would not pay to drive that thing.

Anyway, back to our current rental. It's a dark gray Toyota Prius Hybrid, and I'm totally smitten. It's not really pretty, but the seats are very comfortable and it feels like a big car in a small car's body. Not as much leg room as we'd like, but more than most small cars I've been in, and it has a full back seat.





It's an odd car. I can't really put it in words so I'll show you pictures.

This is the "key".



It's like no key I've ever seen. It's like a key fob for newer cars with keyless entry, but there's no KEY on it. It fits into a slot on the dashboard.



And you don't turn it to start the car. There's a big button above the slot, and you touch that to start it. You don't push it, you touch it.



The gear shift (well, it's an automatic, but I don't know what else to call it) is totally alien.

I still haven't figured out what "B" means. R, reverse, and D, drive. You just put your foot on the break, move the lever to the direction you want, and it goes into gear. Without any noise or effort. It just does it. UPDATE: It's for "brake", like when you're going down the mountain. In other vehicles we downshift to D2, but not in this one.

Park? Not on the lever. Again, foot on brake, then

touch P. That's it. Totally alien.

What I'm not crazy about is the display screen, but it can be turned off. If there's a screen anywhere in sight, I'm staring at it. I'm a product of the first generation of kids to have television. I've always thought that it's a good idea for airplanes to have videos that show how to use the seatbelts, etc. because if a tv is turned on, I'm looking at it. It's a curse, I tell you.

This isn't a clear shot; I didn't take the time to do a decent job since I was on my way into work. It shows the radio display; instead of buttons to push, it has a touch screen. There's also a sound screen for adjusting sound properties; I didn't get into that this morning. It was hard enough to drive a new, alien car and take photos while pushing buttons.

Okay, I was in the parking lot while I did all this. The car was not moving.

This screen shows the climate control system. So far we haven't quite figured out how to turn on and off the a/c, but we can adjust the temperature. Wednesday afternoon it was hot outside, so the air coming into the car was cool (see that top row of the display? It shows both the outside and inside temperature. That may not be new for you people, but for me it's really exciting.), and this morning, when it was chilly outside, the inside air was nice and warm.


I haven't explored this screen. I'm guessing it has a tripometer and stuff like that. As for language, well, wouldn't it be a wonderful idea to have it display say, Spanish or French, and really forget to watch the road?

Thank goodness it can be turned off.

I think I'm going to do some research and see just how much a car like this costs.

UPDATE: The only thing that I don't like about the car? It doesn't have XM radio. I've gotten very spoiled by XM. It can be gotten on a new car, though, and mine will have XM.

But it does have a cd player, so I can make do.

Such gentle girls

(only one is my granddaughter; the other is a friend of hers)

Tiny Miss of America

B2's Moment in the Spotlight

(Daddy Longlegs contest)

My Quiet Life

Oh my gosh, I am so honored. Amy Boogie left a comment under the post about dogs in Belize (there are many more photos. I just haven't taken the time to upload them. Be forewarned.) She's a famous yarn goddess, and she took the time to come here and leave a comment after I commented about her shoes on her blog. Hear that, Tom? I'll have to buy some of her yarn some year; it's really gorgeous and not expensive when compared to mass-produced sock yarn. And the colors......

Yes, Jennifer, I know she's a person just like the rest of us. But she's a knitting goddess, not Justin Timberlake, for heaven's sake.

Florida princess

My little A has done it again. First in her age group in a pageant.

Yes, my baby is a pageant queen.

As a result of being in pageants, she's totally comfortable in adult social situations. She can get on the stage and strut her stuff, chat with the judges, model her outfits, and dazzle the judges with her talent. It doesn't hurt that she's gorgeous.

But these last two pageants are a different sort. They're more centered on the girls' conversational abilities, their ease in social settings. These pageants emphasize community service (no, not that kind); the girls will go to nursing homes, children's hospitals, that kind of thing. But for A, the best part is being in parades.

Especially a parade at Walt Disney World! Lunch with the governor and an invitation to the new governor's inauguration and ball is pretty cool, but come on, Disney World! She lives just a few minutes from WDW, gets to visit free since her mommy works there, but being in a parade in WDW is just the best thing.

I would have crawled under a table and refused to come out if I'd been told I was going to be in a parade when I was A's age. There's no way I would have stood on a stage and maintained eye contact with a bunch of grownups.

All this attention, practically her whole life, has not caused A to be vain or aloof. She's still just a little girl who likes to play dress-up with other girls. The prize packages that come with the titles are pretty exciting, but A likes the sashes and crowns--and toys--that are part of the rewards.

Her mommy makes most of her clothing for the pageants. Big money is spent on pageant clothes for these little girls; you wouldn't believe me if I told you how much just a swimsuit can cost. But my daughter, J, makes them herself, and they're often held together with safety pins and hot glue. If J wanted to, she could do a big business in making pageant clothing.

Paris Street Market and bakery, morning of July 15, which was my birthday. In Paris. Have I beaten that to death yet?

I don't think so.

This is my second attempt to show you the amazing street market. You know you want to see it. I know I want you to see it. Blogger disagrees. Let's see if I can get through this one without resorting to using htm. I know just enough about that to screw up anything I touch. (Thank you, ebay.)

*deep breath*

Okay.


So we got up fairly early on my birthday (told you). At least, it was early for me when I'm not working. During the school year I have to be dragged out of bed kicking and screaming at 5:40 a. stinkin' m. Actually, Tom wakes me very gently and quietly, usually calling me sweetheart and saying it's time to get up. He doesn't even attempt to wake me until he's showered and dressed, and while I'm stumbling into the clothes I laid out the night before and brushing my teeth, he's taking Zippy outside. Zippy's the dog. Chester is his best friend. Could I have ever found a better man? No way.







Anyway, that morning we were headed to the bakery a couple of streets over for breakfast when we saw a street market in the median strip of a side street.


This was an incredible market.








There were shoes, purses (Gucci, anyone?) (Yeah, right.), scarves, tablecloths, all kinds of veggies, fruits, breads, meats, cheeses, fresh eggs, thong panties, anything one could think of (and you know who you are). I'm not adding these photos in any particular order, since the last time I tried that I lost that stupid html tag somewhere.






Everything was displayed in such creative ways, not veggies piled on tables like at a produce stand here in the States.

There were cooked foods available. Some stalls only had olives--but about 50 kinds of olives. Some had fresh eggs and fresh butter. I was practically drooling by the time we left.




There were stalls devoted to gorgeous cut flowers, potted plants and herbs, fresh veggies, and just about every kind of cheese available.

The placement of these photos offends my sense of symmetry, but I can't figure out how to arrange them. I took hundreds of photos, but I've selected the best to share. Such as this one of a dog at the market.



Then we went back to "our" bakery and had breakfast. Their croissants with fresh butter, the pain au chocolat, and hot chocolate were all just incredibly tasty.












The hot chocolate was just that--cocoa and hot milk, with sugar cubes on the side. Oh my gosh, it was so good!!!

That morning was cool (70s), but even when it was in the 90s the following week, that was some kind of good and I had to have it for breakfast. The tiny bakery was air conditioned, so that helped.

We frequently went back to the bakery for snacks. I wish we could have brought it home with us!

Did I mention that it was my birthday?