This weekend we finished unpacking.

Yes, I know we moved into the house more than a year ago. Shut up.

We also cleaned out the garage.

I've decided to paint the living room red, and it shall be fabulous.

Four of my tomato plants have blossoms.

Yes, I know I was supposed to plant them in April, not July. I get it.

The dog ate:

A ballet shoe

A stuffed animal

Some base board

A mauve colored pencil

Several paper napkins

Part of a rug

I finished knitting my first-ever knit hat.

I wore it in public.

I wore a knit hat out to walk the dog around the block in July.

Boy, was I sassy.

How is this for fun?

You throw your knitting into a bag, grab your eager, nine-year-old daughter, and head over to the new coffee place that's agreed to host a weekly knitting meet-up.

Oldest settled into her seat, content with a cookie, while her mother and friends envied each other's yarn and proficiency. I know every parent hopes their children will learn more than they have, reach higher, achieve more, etc. But Oldest impresses me. "Do you want to learn to crochet?" asked one of the needlecrafters. Oldest nodded and watched her weave a crochet hook in and out of a knot.

"Okay, I get it," said Oldest, taking the yarn and instantly mastering the technique.

When we stood up to leave an hour later, her chain of green yarn spilled down into a coil at her feet. "You are amazing," I told her. She grinned.

I'm really trying very hard to concentrate on work things during work hours, and to avoid spending all day looking at knitting blogs. Particularly, these:

Carrieokie
Crafty Snargle
Chicknits
Frecklegirl
Knit & Run
Cat's Corner
Xtreme Knitting
Green Girl

and others!

And Knitty!

Someday I will feel worthy of calling myself a knitter. Maybe I'll even have a knitting blog. Maybe I'll post pictures of my cool projects and say clever things that only knitters understand, like "Gauge is 16sts/20 rows over 4" on #8s."

As of today, I've finished my Long Thing. Of course, I'm not going to post pictures of it, because I keep holding it up at different angles and asking family members if it looks like I meant it to turn out this way. When you have to ask, the answer is no.

But it's soft and long, and I love it.

Next I'm going to make this for our babysitter's new baby girl. I'll have to buy circular needles and learn how to decrease. Luckily, I've purchased this book for Oldest, which is fabulously colorful and inspiring, and simple enough for even me to understand.

It taught us a little knitting rhyme that we love:

Through the gate
Catch the sheep
Back we go
Off we leap!

In fact, it moved me to invent one of my own that more accurately describes my knitting efforts:

What's that loop?
Must be a glitch.
F@&*$ing hell
I dropped a stitch!

On behalf of my entire female household, I would like to thank FP for showing us the proper procedure for “casting on.”

By this I mean knitting.

Our house has been completely taken over by knitting. I’m knitting. Oldest is knitting. Youngest is pretending she’s knitting with her own pair of “knitting noodles.” The three of us sit on the couch after dinner like a church group, wiggling our needles and unwinding yarn while Husband shakes his head at us.

We knit in front of the TV. We knit in the car. I knit on my lunch hour.

When I’m not knitting, I’m thinking about knitting.

When I’m working, I think about how much I’d rather be knitting.

We’ve got it bad over here.

So I've been knitting the same three-inch wide piece of fabric for a while now. It's getting long. I can't tell you how satisfying that is. Husband finally broke down and asked me what exactly I was trying to make.

"A long thing," I said.

Oldest has decided to knit a long thing also.

We have dubbed them our snuffleupaguses.