That damn monkey

There are a few of my daughter's toys which have become permanent fixtures in the car. Two favourites are 'Lady' and 'Monkey'. Lady is an equestrian rider figurine from the Mega Bloks My Pony Stable set, and Monkey is a rubber monkey from a set of bath toys (I'm not sure how he came to make the journey from the bathtub to the car, but far be it from me to question these sorts of things).

It used to be that DD was content to play with Monkey and Lady together by herself, making them interact and giving them dialog and all that kind of fun stuff. However, recently the trend has been that I have to be the voice and 'puppeteer', if you will, for Monkey. Moreover, Monkey has now apparently become Lady's devoted slave, as DD insists that he run around the car to do all manner of things for her, like make her sandwiches, burgers, apples, etc., change her diaper ad infinitum, give her hugs...the list goes on.

Unfortunately, I have not yet evolved that third arm that I've been wanting for so long, which means that if I am going to accede to DD's (and Lady's) wishes and play this little game, I can't knit in the car.

This does kind of suck, especially with Christmas and deadlines looming. But I have to admit that my life priority to enjoy time with my charming girlie ranks higher than my life priority to knit. (Rest assured, however, that knitting still ranks higher than many, many things.) However, after Lady has downed the fourth burger in a row which Monkey has made for her, without ever having had a chance to make any burgers for himself, I have to admit that it gets a little old. :)

Fafner blanket for baby Muth

This is kind of becoming The Project That Ate My Soul. I keep rejigging The Schedule to make it possible to finish this sucker, and every week it continues to kick my @$$ and not meet my imposed deadlines. Last week's goal was to finish the edging and sew it to the main body. As I posted on the weekend, as of early Sunday this was not remotely accomplished. However, I had hoped that a drive to and from Barrie for a birthday party would start putting me ahead.

No dice.

I haven't measured yet, but I suspect from eyeballing it that I've only managed to knit up one lousy foot across one lousy side.

Stupid blanket. I wish this gestating baby's mother no ill will at all, but I'm really starting to hope in earnest that it stays in there for a while yet.

Cape Cod sweater for MIL

It grows:


I'm just six rows away from starting the neck shaping, which means sometime tomorrow. I'm pretty excited about this. Because the neckline scoops lower in the front than in the back, the front yoke will not take nearly as long as the back yoke. And that means that I should be able to finish not only the front yoke by the end of the week, but also the joining of the shoulder seams and the neckband. I live in hope.