My van...

I used to drive the coolest car a mom could drive - a Jetta TDI wagon in reflex silver. It was dreamy. Since DD2's birth, DS (11) and DD1 (8.5 - and we were somehow assigned the 'extra obnoxious version of little sister 1.0 - but I digress) were crammed in the backseat of this little car, and God only knows where the dog (Jury, our loyal-not-to-mention-severely-ADHD-chocolate lab) would have gone on trips to the lake. We'd have needed a trailer.

So I decided it was time for a van. I'd known this since before Christmas, when I was still pregnant. So I did the research and got the least gas-guzzling version out there, the Toyota Sienna. I'm pretty happy about it. What makes me happiest is how far away the kids are from the driver's seat now. Just kidding. Ok I'm actually really not kidding, it's great how the screaming is kind of muffled now. Plus there's about 300 cup holders, and the middle row is too far back from the front for DD1 to kick the back of Dan's seat, reducing the disputes on the average car ride to under 50, which I can live with.

Here's Jury the wonder-dog (as we call him). My mom has a cottage in the Interlake, and Jury lives for the water. He loves to swim, and in true lab fashion, will chase a ball into the water until your arm wears out from throwing it. He's a machine. One day he went for 5 swims, and was begging for more. Freaking lunatic dog.






Anyway, back to the van - I dropped off my Jetta at the dealeship and kissed my cheap as borscht car days goodbye - while the payment was steep, the insurance was next to nothing, and I was literally spending $80/month on diesel.

Imagine my surprise when a few days ago I filler-up'd the van and the total was $78. SEVENTY-EIGHT FREAKING DOLLARS to fill up a vehicle that (a) I didn't want anyway; and (b) drinks gas the way Britney Spears drinks cosmopolitans. *SOB*

Speaking of vans, here's a great link to another blog - it's an ad for "mom my ride"

Heh.

http://www.thecowgoddess.com/?p=574

knitting redux

Oh right...the other knitting disaster...I'm making a poncho for Meredith, and I couldn't find any good free patterns online (not knowing at the time about the HUGE variety of free patterns at www.lionbrand.com), so I picked up a Patons pattern. Finished the knitting, and blocked it and one side came out different from the other. I think my knitting loosened up as I got faster at it. I've only been knitting for about 9 months and am self-taught so God only knows...

After blocking, I seamed up the front and back, and it looks great, then onto the hood. The directions for the hood are I swear the worst I've ever seen. I've stitched it once, it looked like crap, so I ripped it apart. I re-did it, and it still looked wrong, so now I've taken it apart again, except in doing so I started pulling apart the wrong stitches, and now I have a big gaping hole in the hood that needs to be repaired. Sob.

So this project is sitting in time-out for a day or two. I promised Meredith it would be done by Friday so I guess I'll pull it out on Wednesday and give it another chance. In the meantime, I've found some fun cotton patterns online to try for summer, so it's off to the wool store tomorrow to pick colours, my favourite thing!

knitting

In other news, the knitting projects hit a bit of a hiccup (ok brick wall) this week. I made a LTK soaker, checked my gauge, it ended up about the right size for a pretty big two year old. I couldn't believe it when I held it up....and why can't I seem to see this coming? I even felted it before realizing it was a lost cause, good thing it was pretty cheap wool, and only took half a skien. Here's a pic of the second version, which I had to rip out halfway through because I messed up splitting for the leg holes (argh).

It actually turned out nice, and was a very quick knit. I'll definitely make more with this one.

Oh, and we've discovered babylegs. Katja is wearing a pair of babylegs I made - these are about 20 bucks a pair online, and they're really just cut off and hemmed knee socks, as far as I can tell. One of the women from the Pin (www.diaperpin.com) said you just take knee socks and cut them off, don't even bother hemming them, and voila - babylegs.

Being inherently lazy (and cheap) I tried it, and they turned out great. K wore a dress later in the day with her "babylegs" and they were perfect.

It occurs to me that 90% of my decisions these days come from being cheap (cloth diapers, breastfeeding, knitting my own soakers/longies) or lazy (breastfeeding, cosleeping).

Winnipeg sucks for natural parenting

.....there's only one store in this city selling cloth diapers, and they are charging $3.25CAD per prefold. Only one size available. No fitteds, all-in-ones, nothing.

Oh, and don't get me started on toys. The only place I've found non-plastic, non-talking, beeping, music playing, light flashing toys is at Chapters, of all places. And their selection sucked. So unless I want Katja playing with stuffed animals her entire life, I have to go online to find some wooden SIMPLE toys.

I'm seriously considering opening up a natural baby store in this godforsaken city. I wonder if any of the suburbanite SUV driving starbucks drinking trophy mommies would consider cloth diapers?