I am not sure how it happened, but we convinced Great Gran to go to Build-a-Bear with us to celebrate her birthday. After weeks of hedging (if you want Great Gran to go out in public, you either have to start harassing her early or catch her by surprise), she finally came around.

I made a monkey and Great Gran made a little Valentine bear!

I think she had a really good time! We spent at least an hour picking out animals and clothes. My choices were easy: there was a new monkey for my collection, and as soon as I saw the shoes I knew he was a hard core treehugger. Which works well since it is Common Knowledge that monkeys love trees and even have tree names for last names. This is Lee Redwood. My others are Emma Appletree and Lucinda Pecan – my Mom has the infamous Katie Magnolia. Even though I realized that I hadn’t made my two CounterPain Squares for January, I spent all afternoon working on a poncho (adapted from this pattern) for Lee.

All that’s left is to tie-dye his shirt and fix him up a hacky sack.

I’ve also made a few pairs of baby socks,

The next pair will be a little larger. I hear that babies grow.

attached the flower to pacifier clip pieces,

I just noticed that I attached those completely backward. Sigh.

and made a single Magic Slipper.

I think it needs bells on the toes.

For SuperBowl knitting, I am going to make January’s CounterPain squares. It’s the only pro football game I pay any kind of attention to each year (primarily because of the commercials). College football is a different story.

Energy Saver light bulbs really give a room that nice parking lot ambiance.

Those really belong to the MiniMiracle. Buzz is from my sister and Albert attended homecoming with my Aunt Patti and Uncle Bruce this year. Stuffed guys don’t even need a ticket if you acquire them inside the stadium.

PS Michael installed Leopard for me at the beginning of the week. This caused some trouble. Mostly because CS2 no longer worked, and I had to upgrade which I really wasn’t ready to do yet. Fortunately, Adobe now offers their software as downloads. Unfortunately, they haven’t ironed all the kinks out of the process yet and it took more than 24 hours to just get “approved.” Not to mention how long it took to get the whole disaster working properly. Out of spite, I haven’t bothered to read the documentation to see what’s so great about CS3. I also had to install the new version of iPhoto which I dislike for so many many many reasons. What was so wrong with drag and crop I’d like to know? And it’s not like they used the dragging for any kind of new feature. Gah. I am going to write them an email.