I left work an hour early yesterday and took my car to the dealership. I sat around for a while - long enough to have read fully half my owner's manual - when the guy finally came back and told me that the problem was an over-sensitive sensor somewhere. They're going to install a new one, but they have to wait for the part to come in, and the car is perfectly safe to drive in the meantime, even if the light comes back on.

So I think I'll be taking a half-day off sometime next week. I'll go to the dealership and get that fixed, and then I'll go down to the DMV and get the car registered and tagged. And then I'll go down to the county offices (all the way on the other side of the county, of course) and get my county sticker.

Whether I do all that on Monday or Tuesday depends on when things are open. I seem to remember the local DMV is closed one weekday, but I can't remember which one. But that's all right; I'll call both the DMV and county offices today and find out when they're open and what I'll need to bring with me and how much everything costs. (Good thing I get paid next week.)

The number of garments that can be made from yarn and still look vaguely respectable is pretty limited. Most of it is cold-weather gear.

Sweaters. Scarves. Hats. Mittens.

But the crocheting sites I keep bookmarked have patterns for things like dresses.

A crocheted yarn dress. Ew. Ew. Ew. Even the pictures on the sites - which invariably look far better than the finished item - are kind of awful.

But recently I've done some poking around and have found a few acceptable patterns.

A sweater. A poncho. Booties.

I made the booties last night. They were quick and simple, and turned out to be kind of cute, actually. You wouldn't want the kid to try to walk while wearing them, but booties aren't really for walking anyway. They're for keeping baby feet warm while they wave around in the air.

This morning I started looking at the instructions for the poncho. The first thing I noticed is that it calls for a much bigger hook than I actually have. Oops.

But I will not give up! Here's the thing. It's a poncho. A more-or-less rectangular shape with a hole for the head. This does not require precise fitting. So: I'll wing it, and everything will be fine, and then I'll have made a matching poncho-and-bootie set. (Since I'm using the same color yarn for both.)

And then I'm going to have to go to a craft store and get some more yarn. All the yarn I currently have on hand is either too coarse to put on a baby, or brown, which I just don't see as an attractive baby color.

(But I'm getting ahead of myself, a bit. Tonight's job is to pack up all the yarn and other craft crap that I'm not going to use in the near future so it can get put up in the attic. Letting the baby stab itself with my knitting needles would be bad.)

--Liz