Stuff

Here's what I'm looking forward to this week: that it won't be last week. Not that last week was bad, but I'd rather cover some fresh ground, know what I mean?

Last week featured Vacation Bible School for Annabeth. I didn't help out with it, except that I did get her there early every day and then turned around almost immediately and picked her back up.

It also featured a trip for MrV which involved dropping him off and picking him up at various local airports since his travel plans are quirky that way. Not Scott AFB, though, in reference to Julie's comment.

The black linen blend capris are done. They are successful, other than the fact that I decided I hated all of the buttons I own and just sort of slapped a couple of dark ones on that don't particularly match the fabric. I think I've figured out how to stabilize the waistband on linen-blend enough that it doesn't stretch out hideously by the end of the day. Not that it matters, since the rest of the pants stretch out to Queen Baggy Bottom proportions by the end of the day (linen relaxes and streeeeeeetches as you wear it, if you have't worked with or worn it before, so even if the item fits like a glove at 7am it will be a totally different size, notably in the butt region, by 9pm).

Well, actually I don't know if they are truly successful. They fit nicely by the end of last week. I had spent several days not really eating last week, so I think I probably lost some weight. At the beginning of the week I had some stomach thing going -- I thought it was mild food poisoning (calling it "mild" since I didn't die from it, although I emptied out everything I'd consumed, if you know what I mean) but maybe it was a virus. And followed that with a gawdawful sore throat that made it painful to swallow (by Wednesday night after dance class when Thalia complained her feet hurt I replied, "I can't even FEEL my feet -- my head, throat and ears hurt so much I don't know if my feet even still exist." Then I went and put several blankets on the bed since I was FREEZING, crawled in, and just wallowed in pain until the fever broke and the headache went away. Although the sore throat still comes and goes.).

When not driving family members thither and yon, nor moaning in self-pity about my various ailments, I got back to work on Aleita shell:



I was zipping through this thing earlier in the month, then reached the point where I was supposed to divide for the armholes and Just. Didn't. Want. To. So I didn't -- I just let it sit for a week or so. This week I picked it up again and started working on the fronts. I think I've got about 3-5 rows to go, then I'll do the back, block, and be done. It's an easy knit, and fairly fun (except for binding off the armhole stitches, apparently). But mostly I want it done so I can enter the Ravelympics with a clear conscious and no UFO languishing in the corner.

And I didn't even try to knit during the An Samhra Feis this weekend. I've learned that I don't get much good knitting done at feiseanna. MrV, though, took his laptop and got tons of work done. We were there at 7am to start getting the girls ready. Thalia danced in an 8 hand, 4 hand, and 3 hand; Annabeth was in an 8 hand and a 3 hand. Figure dances started at 8am, and Thalia dearly wanted to review the 4 hand with her team, hence the early start.

Both Thalia and Annabeth danced 7 solo dances. Thalia had already placed in everything except Single Jig; she once again placed in everything except Single Jig. Sigh. Her Single Jig competition was a merged competition -- in other words, they put 2 age groups together. This was done because there weren't enough entrants; you need 5 dancers to compete in order to have results worth considering. Annabeth placed in Reel. She didn't melt down about not placing in anything else, thankfully. She has now placed in Reel, Treble Jig and Slip Jig in various feiseanna. Also, her 3 hand got a second place, beating other 3 hands with more experienced dancers, so that was an ego boost.

As for me, I helped out some with the Preliminary Champion stage. This was a whole new world for me, as I've never been in PC-land before. For the record, Preliminary Champions (PC) are competing to enter Open Champion (OC), which is the top of the heap. The stage is large, the musicians really good, they have 3 judges analyzing all of their moves. They dance 2 at a time. Each girl is dancing different choreography -- they are not synchronized in any way, each is simply dancing her school's dance. Each girl has her arms held down straight to her sides, her shoulders squared, her head and eyes always pointing straight ahead, her expression not wavering. They're zipping around the stage, zig zagging, kicking HARD (these kids have incredibly powerful legs since they can't use their arms for balance or propulsion), often nearly knocking into each other, but never acknowledging those near-misses with so much as a blink of an eye. It looked like a giant game of chicken! Except in sparkly outfits.

Overall it was an okay feis. There were a couple of places where we had to changes stages rather than just stay on the same stage for the entire day. The stage managers were nice about re-shuffling the order of the dances so competitors could make it from stage to stage. At one point an entire stage was moved in an attempt to speed things up; the stage managers were very diligent about trying to find a little girl who seemed to have gotten lost in the shuffle.

And this week? NO DANCE CLASSES! Can you believe it? It's almost like having a normal life.