It's been that kind of a day.

I told the kids that if they got their schoolwork done and their messes picked up, I'd take them to McDonald's to play in the tubes. Which they sort of did, so I packed the Candleflame Skirt into my knitting bag and realized halfway there that I'd forgotten the pattern. We did have library books in the car, though, so I sat and leafed through The Quilts of Tennessee Images of Domestic Life Prior to 1930 by Bets Ramsey and Merikay Waldvogel and came across this on page 4 --

"The thought and planning required to produce a quilt provides the mind with healthy activity."

Do you think it also applies to knitting? Do you think it matters if I actually make the quilts I'm thinking about, or does it keep my brain healthy to occupy it with colors and shapes that I may never actually cut out and stitch together? Or is it the math part that's healthy, and not the lusting after yarn?

We stopped at the grocery store on the way home to pick up lettuce for the tacos I wound up not making for tonight's dinner, and I managed to find everything we had coupons for and got to the check out line and none of them were ringing up. I'd feel worse if it hadn't taken the cashier so long to figure out that the coupons didn't start until tomorrow. So we've got to go back then. They were good coupons, and it would have cost twice as much to get the stuff today, so I'll wait and endure the grocery store a second time.

It feels like I haven't accomplished much today. I've turned the eggs in the incubator, and pulled together the books that need to go back to the library tomorrow, and called to see when an eye appointment was, and mailed a bill, and thawed the roast, and struggled with fractions, washed dishes and laundry, and turned the eggs again, cleaned red ink from a broken pen out of the carpet... I don't know what should have gotten done that didn't, but I don't feel at all productive.

Maybe I should've sewn together the Knitting Needle Bag, or redone the embroidery on the firefighter hat.