odds and ends

• I made four (rather oddly-shaped) napkins out of scraps from a pair of Silver's pajama pants a week or so ago. They're clumsy, but it's good to be able to add more napkins into the rotation. I find we're using our napkins much more frequently now that Ezra is eating solid food, and napkins --fast! -- are very necessary to keep her from putting her yogurt-covered face on say, or clothes, the couch, the DVD I borrowed from the library...

• I've completed one of two mittens -- the Midnight Ocean Mittens on my Ravelry page -- and just began the second one today. I'm very excited, as these might be among the most practical things I've ever knit. Might be -- right now it's 55 degrees out and mittens are not so necessary. But it's only March 9th, so we're not out of the woods yet -- and as we recently bought a bike trailer, I hope to be riding my bike a lot more, and will definitely need mittens for that.

• And we bought a bike trailer! Some friends of ours found a Craigslist posting for a two-seater baby bike trailer for thirty dollars. To emphasize just how cheap this is, a new bike trailer is about $99 -- from Walmart, and I think you'll only find a single-seater for that. The downside is that we needed to get a bike safety flag for it, and need to figure out how to attach that before I can ride around alone with baby (the flag doesn't have a bracket).

• Silver and I scored a bunch, a BUNCH of books at the library book sale. Including, but not limited to:
• Cooking from Quilt Country
• Representative Plays of J.M. Barrie
• A couple of little Beatrix Potter books to give as gifts
• Turn of the Century
• The Elements of Style

• I've gone mad for chipotles lately. I've lined up a bunch of recipes to make with the two cans I bought at Esh's. Last night I dreamed that Silver used them both -- that is how much I am thinking about chipotle.

• Silver and I framed a bunch more pictures last night, since Aaron Brothers is having a one week BOGO sale. We framed two pictures that Sarah gave us (a very pretty, colorful one of Saint Francis, and one of a little girl with trees for arms), my Alice in Wonderland print, a picture of Snow White we cut out of a book, and two little pictures of Silver's great-grandparents. I didn't realize until we started framing our pictures just how much frames do -- they all look so neat and clean. It really does so much for the presentation (obviously).

• I want to put some lyrics from this wonderful song ("The Tree Song") that we heard a few years ago at Bethany Birches somehow next to the picture of the girl with tree limbs for arms, but I haven't figured out how I want to do it. Any ideas? If we owned the place, I'd stencil some of the words (maybe the last two lines of the chorus) right on the wall, but as we're renting, well, that's not going to happen. The picture itself (I don't know the artist's name) is in an 11"x14" brown wood frame with a red matte, if that helps any. Any ideas?