Bad pictures!

My digital camera stinks. It's no good. It takes terrible pictures. I used to have a fairly good one, but my husband dropped it one too many times a year ago. Now we have this cruddy one which actually belongs to his mom, but she probably got it for free and we've been borrowing it indefinitely since she really doesn't know how to use it anyway.

It takes terrible pictures, see?






But, it was free, so we won't look a gift camera in the mouth. Or something like that. But, you'll just have to imagine how lovely and perfect my stitching is, because you can really only see the faintest impression of what it is. The first three are Twisted Threads monthly ginghams, again. The September one stayed up until the end of October. When I was sick on halloween, I finally stitched the October one and finished it that day. Hey, October wasn't over! I displayed it for one day while I stitched the November one. Now it's up, and I'm caught up until December. These really only take a couple hours to stitch, and they're so cute!

I took some pictures of myself wearing the knitted headband, and I looked terrible. I knew I didn't look super-great, being sick and all, but the camera made me look even more pasty and washed-out than I would have. So, you'll have to wait for new, prettier pictures of that.

I have an interview tomorrow morning with a manager at a branch of the bank I worked for. (I worked in one of the main offices before.) It's for a part-time mornings position. Fun money, here I come! (Hopefully.) I quit working there in May, so it would behoove them to re-hire me. They already have all my information. They would basically just have to re-activate me in the new position, and give me the position-specific training. I've already been indoctrinated. LOL. It's a good company. I just couldn't swing full-time. Childcare costs over the summer would have eaten up more than my income, and I would have gone over the edge. But with a part-time morning position, I can work while the kids are in school and still have time to get house stuff done and workout in the afternoon. Days that the kids aren't in school, my husband can work after I'm home and work late. That includes the summer.

The house we had a contingency offer on just got another offer they're willing to take. So, we're letting it go. If we wanted to keep it, we'd have to round up additional loans to cover the gap between buying that and selling this, and we're just not willing to go into extra debt. We're taking our house off the market until spring and I feel remarkably good about it. We'll reassess in February.

Yesterday, my mom and I went to my grandma's house and did some work. Grandma had a stroke in August, and she went from the hospital to the rehab hospital, and from there to assisted living. She has her own little apartment, and social opportunities. She's much less alone than she was in her big old victorian house. But her memory is very bad and she can't really speak. Speech therapy is helping, but it's slow. She likes her seasonal decorations, so mom and I went to the old house and pulled out about 10 boxes of halloween and thanksgiving to go through. Mom's taking the stuff grandma might want to her apartment and going through it with her. We got a lot done! Grandma is going to have to be ruthless in deciding what to keep. Her old house was about 3000+ square feet, I would guess and her apartment is about 750 (again, I would guess.) I expect this to be ongoing work, but I'm so glad to be able to help. The hardest part is that grandma doesn't necessarily remember that she doesn't get to move back to her old house, so she gets upset when she sees us moving her stuff into her apartment like she's staying there for good. But she's good about making decisions on what stays and what goes. And when we mention the old house, she is vehement that she doesn't want to go there. It's hard.

Oh, and on a happier note, I ordered some of the KnitPicks bare sockyarn. I guess I'm going to try dyeing it, although I've never had any interest. LOL. I ordered extra in case I goof it up. Maybe I could ask my SIL for tips. She's a professional dyer.