Sunday, January 28, 2007

no more apologies

Peer pressure. Blog pressure. Bleer Pressure?

I always feel guilty that I don't have tons of pictures to accompany my posts. Truth be told I love to take pictures but I don't have a little point and shoot to capture some of the day to day stuff. All of the blogs that I always visit have lots of pictures of the dinner they made, the latest knitting/craft project they're working on, kids, etc. I'd love to do the same but I'm just flat out exhausted, and the thought of having to do more photo related work stresses me out. I started the blog to write about what was going on in my life and knitting that I've done. But I feel guilty about not having pictures to post so I don't write. It's a vicious little circle.

Today we finally had the birthday party for my daughter. Poor thing was born in the middle of January which just isn't conducive to get-togethers. Inevitably someone is sick or there is a snow/ice storm and this year was no exception. We had planned to have her party last Sunday but we had about 8" of snow last weekend so we post-postponed it to today. She wanted to have a tea party (which she had last year too). The girl is nothing if not consistent :-) However it was a tea party with a Cinderella theme since my girl is positively obsessed with Cinderella. For the last two Halloweens she has gone as Cinderella. We have not one, not two, but three Cinderella costumes. And every single day she carefully brushes her hair and wears the exact same Cinderella headband which came with her first costume.

We invited five other little preschoolers over to the studio for the party. After everyone was there they had the option of changing into dress up clothes and then we proceeded with the glamour girl make-over. We painted fingernails, put on make-up and curled their hair. After a brief fashion show I then took pictures of each of the girls.

Then it was on to tea time. My wonderful husband had helped me prepare the tea sandwiches ahead of time. We made chicken salad sandwiches cut into little triangles, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches cut into heart shapes and cream cheese and jelly sandwiches cut into circles. We also served a veggie tray to get in something at least a little nutritious. The tea was actually Arnold Palmers (1 part lemonade 1 part iced tea), requested by the birthday girl herself.

While the girls munched on the goodies I quickly downloaded all the pictures and did a quick Photoshop job on them and then printed them out on our little Epson PhotoMate. Then I slipped each 4x6 into a little clear acrylic frame I got at Wal-Mart.

For cake I made a Cinderella cake of course! I have a special pan I bought a number of years ago to make all of the Barbie-style cakes that the girls always want. It's taller than the Wilton pan, and makes the perfect size cake. I did do something new this year though and used fondant for the skirt over the butter cream.

Sabrina had a great time at her party as did all of the other little princesses :-) It was a super busy day but fun. Now we're at home recovering from all the non-stop running of the weekend.

Last night I did manage to do my gauge swatch for the Drive-Thru sweater (I did finish the ballet slippers but I still need to buy the soles to sew on the bottom. But knitting-wise, they're done!). I had started to cast-on and then remembered I hadn't done the gauge swatch yet. So I reluctantly tore out the cast-on and then started the gauge swatch. Good thing I did, I ended up having to go up a needle size to get gauge. Can not imagine how frustrated I would have been if I had started working on it without having gauge!

Tonight I'm going to finally get down to work on it. I've decided to make the cardigan version and will be knitting it in her favorite color, sunshine (a.k.a. yellow). The contrasting stripes of the yoke will be lavender, light green and light pink. And since I've decided not to pressure myself any more I'm not going to promise photos. Knitting is suppose to be relaxing and enjoyable and I refuse to turn it into another obligation or job by giving myself one more thing to do on my to do list. If I feel like taking pictures I will but I'm not going to apologize about it any more.

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