Years ago at the county fair we decided to watch the animal competitions. One was for horses to show their strength by pulling a heavy load "the whole nine yards." Those that succeeded could move up in the contest with heavier loads. The emcee said these old-time contests were the origin of the saying. I've never bothered to check that; we didn't have internet back then. ðŸ˜

That is awesome! Thanks for sharing!

I don't know how familiar you are with Ravelry but it's a fabulous database of patterns. It includes patterns from many yarn companies, publications and independent designers. Learning how to use the search engine is really helpful. You can narrow down your search between cardigans or pullovers, then choose free (Availability), knitting (Craft), adult sizes (Gender/Age/Size/Fit) and get this list of free cardigan patterns or this list of free pullover patterns. That's still a lot of patterns. But then you can further narrow your search if you know you'd prefer to knit your cardigan in, for instance, a worsted weight yarn. Now your list has gone from 63 pages to 10. Or say you decide you want to knit a pullover turtleneck. You select Design Elements, then Neck, then Turtleneck and your 100+ pages of patterns is now down to 8. HTH!

benzocaine spray like Lanacane or Dermoplast

Plastic clamshell packaging. Impossible to open and always threatening to slice your hand apart.

Road construction that requires suddenly stopping all traffic on that road and thereby causing gridlock--because it's at the intersection of two major state highways--during rush hour. :glare: :glare: :glare:

I have one of these, too. :glare:

Itsy bitsy spider Circle for sun Hands open, palms up and slight spreading hands from center outward. Sort of like gesturing, See how the rain has all dried up? I dunno, that's the way I learned it and that's how I sang it to my dc. I didn't even know there were other gestures for that. The real question is, How does the Itsy Bitsy Spider go up the water spout? Thumb to pinky? Thumb to forefinger? Thumb to each finger, one at a time, in turn? 🤣

My mom used tiny dried shrimp in the mouse trap. The mice loved it.

This was one of ds1's favorites when he was little: Do You See a Mouse? by Bernard Waber

I think it's too big of a gap unless the b-day person is totally on-board with it. My late-Nov and mid-Dec b-day kids would not have liked "skipping" their b-days when the actual time came. We don't usually do b-day parties anyway, but just the idea of celebrating that far ahead I don't think would go over well here.

Hi! :seeya:

Argh--I had a longish reply and lost it! Trying again ... My artsy 12yo always loves getting new markers, gel pens, colored pencils and sketch pads. She, too, is happy to use composition books and regular pens/pencils but uses her special supplies to draw Warrior Cats (from the book series). That said, she would love to get any of the books she's lacking from that series. If your dd likes Harry Potter, the new illustrated editions are really nice. Maybe a book along the lines of Wreck This Journal that encourages creativity? And dd is always happy if someone wants to give her a pair of Converse in a color she doesn't have. Or a new hoodie--cuz you can't ever have enough of those, apparently.

Another vote for Tidy Cat. We use the one with the red lid which has a slight perfume-y scent straight out of the box. The blue lid is just as good with no scent--it just seems to be out of stock half the time around here.

When you say the coach screams, do you mean not just using a loud voice but rather harsh words/tone? We were really lucky with our boys that they ended up with good coaches through many seasons of soccer. But whenever they saw "screamer" coaches (as we called them) for opposing teams they always commented how glad they were that their own coaches weren't like that.

This is part of why we sent ds2 to (private) school in 8th--we just couldn't find friends. Ds1 went in 9th but he was a bit of a loner back then and wasn't interested in what his peers were doing. Not ds2--he needed more time with other people his own age. We tried scouting, homeschool groups, sports; there wasn't even a group of friends to be found at church. He was happier at school. The main difference for my sons--besides their personalities--was that their school gives credit for algebra 1 taken in 8th grade. So we had tons of paperwork to submit to get the credit for our homeschool course. Ds1 also had to take a math placement test; ds2 didn't.

The Bill Engvall Show

There was a podcast I tried that I couldn't figure out how to listen to. It turned out they had one website for the blog portion of the show and a separate website with the actual links to the podcast episodes. It wasn't obvious. This was a few years ago and I was trying to listen online via my phone. Now I use an app for my phone but at home I just use iTunes.

Thanks--I need to check this out. I'm in a similar place as Quill.

Your reference to minor things as manini reminds me of my mom and growing up in Hawaii. I don't think I've ever heard anyone outside HI use that term.

This is how I'd describe Ms P--Honors English 12 (I'm so old we didn't have AP English back in the day. lol). She wasn't my favorite teacher but by the end of the year we all realized how much we'd learned from her and how great a teacher she really was. My favorite was Mrs N, math. She led Math Club so a few of us got to know her well as we spent so much time together. She even made me a birthday cake one year because we had a math meet at a faraway school, so she had us stay over at her house and the next day was my b-day. Mr M, 10th grade English was also a favorite. His class was just fun and the reason The Phantom Tollbooth remains a favorite book after all these years. English wasn't my favorite subject at all, but I have the most fond memories of high school from all the stuff we did in English classes. Possibly because it's the only subject--Honors English--where we had pretty much the same core group of kids over the 4 years.

Someone else already typed it out, so I'm just linking: Corn Lover's Stew My version isn't vegan since I usually use chicken broth instead of veg broth.

Haven't read other replies. My vote is for new shoes. I've gone hiking with shoes that just fit. These were shoes that felt fine for running errands around town; no problems. But after hiking my feet--especially my big toe--really hurt. With long walks the toes will push into the front of the shoe more which will cause sore toes/feet at the end of the day.

:blink:

Even if it was legal to call that a bedroom I wouldn't do it. I gotta have windows!