BOO!

Halloween is tomorrow, but TPTB decided we would trick or treat tonight.

Here are the Glees.



Gilbert is the Tenth Doctor, Bede is Scrat, Faith is a gas mask "Muuuummy" zombie, Trixie and Gloria are both Dorothy Gale, and Abaigeal is Queen Elizabeth.

This was the first time out for both Bede and Gloria and they both did smashingly well. Bede attempted to go in the first house we hit, then gradually got the drift and by the last house was scripting the whole thing like a pro! Gloria's adorable "Happy HalloWEEN!" thrown over her shoulder as we walked off each time was awesome.



Gil and Faith



Dorothy #1, telling me "I don't know how to make a Dorfy face."



Scrat shows us his squirrel tail.



Queen Elizabeth



Dorothy #2

list

1. Last night I made chili and cornbread. It was delicious, and is now all gone. I'm kind of surprised by that, because I made something like ten pounds of chili. That happens with bananas too: however many we buy is how many we eat, immediately. It helped that Josh and Sophia came over and ate some too.

2. Speaking of Josh and Sophia, they went and got married, those crazy kids! Aren't they lovely?





3. Today I must, simply must clean the living room and dining room floors. They are both covered with little pieces of paper from small children with scissors.

4. And make bread.

Lay on!

We went to fighter practice tonight for our SCA barony, Wiesenfeuer. I went with Faith, Abby and Gilbert.

There was no heavy combat (that's the armor-and-swords-and-shields) but there was youth combat!

Here are some pictures I stole because I didn't want to steal bandwidth. They are from http://www.housetaivassalama.com/youthCbt.html and are not from today, but from a tournament.





Faith LOVED IT. She didn't hit any people (she will need more practice before she can be authorized) but she spent an hour learning stance and hitting the pell (a large block of wood, covered with carpet) with a padded rattan sword. She ate it up and only stopped because she couldn't see in the dark. Also, her arms were so tired by then she was pretty wild with her blows. She was doing drills with the edge and the point, since her age group allows thrusts as well as edge blows.

Abby took a few shots too but she didn't adore it like Faith did. She does like it enough to make a sword, however! And Gilbert liked it too. Truth be told they both had more fun running around with the other children than they did with the swords.

But Faith now. I tell you. On the way home, she summed it up thusly:

"Mama, it's like I was born to hold a sword."

Just One More Thing

So we finished Rome, which was great. That tipped us back into the world of Netflix Watch Instantly, and we decided to continue working our way through Columbo.

I love Columbo. The disheveled coat and messy hair! The ancient, sputtering Peugeot convertible! The dog! Sigh.

Everyone underestimates Columbo, of course, which is part of the fun; watching the killer as he goes from magnanimous and self-assured to agitated and hostile, peppered incessantly by Columbo's absentminded but penetrating questions, is one of the best things about the show.

Last night Sean and I watched "Mind Over Mayhem" from Season Three. It was fun. It has

A clunky chess-playing Robbie the Robot
A child genius
Charlie X of classic Star Trek fame
Jose Ferrer
Beep boop beep cybernetic supercomputers
Dog

While not the best Columbo ever, it was tight, and watching the robot type! on some sort of teletype machine! was awesome. The entire series is on Netflix Watch Instantly. I especially liked:

"A Stitch in Crime" with Leonard Nimoy
"The Bye Bye Sky High I.Q. Murder Case" about a Mensa-esque group
"The Most Crucial Game" with Robert Culp and Dean Stockwell
And, probably my favorite of all, "Fade In To Murder", with William Shatner, playing a television detective in a delightful bit of meta.

That's all for now, ma'am. Oh, wait, just one more thing...

late night

I was up for a large part of the night because Trixie had a coughing fit and needed the nebulizer (she had fallen asleep before taking her nightly antihistamine, and woke at around 3:30 wracked with spasmodic coughing) and also because Sean and I stayed up too late to watch the series finale of Rome.

That was a pretty good show.

So I slept late, and as a result I'm useless today. The girls are ready to learn some new concepts in arithmetic and I don't think I have it in me. Later in the week. We'll do our read-aloud and perhaps a smidgen of some other subjects. I think I'll reteach one or both of them how to knit.

I need to make bread. Best get that going. Yawn.

Rome: The Complete Series

Waiting for Godot, or maybe Bede

Bede typed this, printed it out and gave it to me and my niece, Sophia. She read it aloud, which pleased him greatly.

The following is word for word, by Bede Gleeson, autist, age 7.

So, you have a best very quick you been everything you like that now think about.

With a reason for a different one get do at see us.

Just have like thought be so that. You would think so, oh.

I had so just ever got someone was me did as with us.

trick or treat!

The Halloween costume decision-making has begun! Here are the current top runners for each kid, by order of age.

Faith: an Empty Child. "Are you my mummy?"


Abby: Queen Elizabeth the First.


Bede: The Flying Dutchman's Ghost, as portrayed by Sponge Bob.


Gilbert: The Tenth Doctor!


Trixie: Dorothy Gale


Gloria: The Wicked Witch of the West

a bookstore and a comic shop later...

Who's on first

Today in homeschool we read "Take Me Out to Pronoun Game" in our splendid and beloved grammar text, Grammar Town. It is, as the title implies, an homage to the famous vaudeville routine performed by Abbot and Costello.



Sean mentioned the Carson Reagan impression which is also hilarious:



Funny stuff!

Bugger Wars Take Two

I just ordered some Tick Tubes. They're cardboard tubes full of permethrin-infused cotton. Mice use the cotton for nesting material and it kills their ticks, which means it kills MY ticks.

Because we have scads of the little bloodsucking bastards.

Faith was wandering around outside, reading a Harry Potter book, and mentioned to me a few hours later that there were lots of little black bugs on her.

"What kind of bugs? How little?" I asked.

"Tiny," she replied.

I pointed to a crumb from a sandwich. "Like that tiny?"

"Yeah, that's about right."

To make a long story short, fifteen minutes later I had removed 27 (TWENTY SEVEN!) deer ticks from the body of my oldest child. The poor kid! She was so brave.

So since then Sean has sprayed the yard and I've ordered Tick Tubes. I also got some permethrin spray for clothing and I'll be using it on a few outfits, hereafter to be referred to as "The Trousers of Death."

The enemy's gate is down!

the mismeasure of Gloria

I finished Gloria's leine but it's too difficult to get it on her.

Sigh.

It happened because I used French seams. They take up approximately twice as much fabric as normal seams when you are a novice like myself, which means they ate up a good inch and a half to inch and three quarters of fabric. I likely didn't allow enough ease to begin with either.

Lesson learned. It sure looks cute.

gleeson is denied

What follows is some long navelgazing about my inability to regulate my internet usage.

I changed my Facebook password a while back. I used a different password schema than I usually use and I traded some letters for numbers, and then I didn't use it for a month.

I've since forgotten it.

I tried to log in last night and I couldn't. Now, I know I could request it - and I might - but I don't think I will. I had been checking in on a few folks and looking at my wall, to see if anyone Liked my most recent blog entries. I'm notified by email if anyone actually comments, and I don't have to log in to read it. So the story is now, if you Like me I won't know it unless you also comment. Just so you know.

Facebook eats my time. I tried to go back a little bit but the neophilla takes over. I don't know if that's actually a word, but what I mean by it is the way Facebook rewards my brain with new drips of information. No good. I am unable to regulate it. I'm also getting rid of friends-only blogs and subbing to everyone in Google Reader. I used GTweet to put Twitter into Google Reader as well. Maybe with only one site to visit I'll be less likely to get distracted.

I'm interested in so much outside the Internet. I'm attempting to sew (Gloria the Guinea Pig's leine is almost finished, pictures to follow,) and the fall knitting season is upon me, and we're high-tide homeschooling daily, and I have so many books to read.

There's so many wonderful things I don't want to waste a moment.

saturday pictures

Hey look!



It's Abby!



You're going to clean up all that cut paper, right?



Sigh. Ah, here's Gilbert!



And Trixie!



Oh, I got all the fabric! That's red wool twill, white linen, unbleached cotton muslin, light blue check wool flannel, purple check wool twill, and black/grey coating underneath it all.



Faith approves.



The end.

holding pattern

I got some of the fabric for our garb yesterday, and three penannular brooches to hold our brats. Brats being the cloaks we'll wear, not the children themselves. It's said "braht", I'm told.



The ones I got for the girls are similar, just a little smaller.

I'd show you the pins in our cloaks, but the fabric that came yesterday is the linen and cotton I purchased for our leinte. I'm supposed to get the wool on Monday.

This is meshing so well with our homeschool studies. Faith has already picked an SCA name and Abby is pretty excited about making our garb. Now to get that machine threaded... I think I'll make a little test leine for a teddy bear this weekend.

British Museum on penannular brooches

just a wee reminder

Talk Like A Pirate Day is next Sunday, September 19th! Yarr!

Sean, below, showing his pirattitude in 2008 in the tricorn I knitted:

Random Shoes, or It Begins

How exciting! I got the first piece of Official SCA Garb today - shoes!

Not authentic in the least! But they Look Okay, and they're cheap.



Kung Fu shoes. Got a pair for me, for Faith and for Abby. I bought them from Natasha's Cafe, in hypocritical fashion because we try* not to buy from China. As soon as I know we're in this for a long haul I'll make our own shoes or purchase some made domestically. Ahem.

Getting this first burst of garb is an expensive endeavor. The great thing about medieval clothing, however, is that it was made to utilize fabric as efficiently as possible. I've found several schematics (not quite patterns) that describe a T tunic by the numbers approach. I have a pretty extensive background in knitting clothing from body measurements, so I'm not afraid to do the same thing with sewn clothes.

I am a little afraid of my sewing machine, which I have never used. It's a Janome Sew Mini, which I'm told is a nice machine to start with. I hope so! I like how tiny and easy to store it is. I'll have to put it away every time I'm done sewing, as leaving it out with the kids around is not an option. Insert mental image of Bede sewing Warner Brothers logos into our clothing.

*for certain values of 'try', apparently.

Natasha's Cafe

T-tunic the period way

Janome Sew Mini

accomplishments

Today I baked bread. Here is the dough, first rise.



Here is Gloria, looking at the dough.



It pleases her!



Here is Bede, in the new "blue yarn shirt" I knit for him.



And the sweater itself.



Time to start the yearly mittens!

the kinks

Not the band.

I went ahead and imported my old posts to this blog. The problem with that is my old posts used SmartyPants markup, which doesn't translate to Blogger. So old links may be gibberish-y. The URLs are there though, just in a heap of markup. I guess it's another plus to trying to avoid in-text hyperlinks.

So, anyway, sorry about the mess.

Testing the twitterfeed

I'm using twitterfeed to post to (duh) Twitter and Facebook. Hope it works...

Also testing an Amazon widget.

Link

Mouse Guard Volume 2: Winter 1152 (Mouse Guard Graphic Novels)

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