Yeah, right.

So, last night there was no post because I was busy having fun at a knitting night thing that I've done for several years now with some women that I used to work with back at the software company back when I was an overworked, but well-paid software designer. We have never been much good at getting much knitting done - we spend the entire time gossiping and talking about our kids and husbands and stuff - but we still call it knitting night, and I bring along my knitting and pretend that that's what we're doing. Come to think of it, there was quite a bit of knitting content last night.

In any case, I don't have much for you tonight. I'm exhausted. Sophie hasn't slept well the last two nights, and she had a bad couple of days in a row. Warning - poop content ahead!


The thing is, Sophie has been waking up crying and acting super-clingy all day for the last few days because she's stopped up. Ever since she got more interested in solids, pooping has become more of a chore for her, and I almost dragged her into urgent care this evening when - well - let's just say it was really bad. I actually took a picture of her trying to poop this afternoon, and it is cute in a very sad, embarrassing kind of way. But looking at that picture made me realize that there is a line and I'm right at the edge of crossing it, so I'll protect her little privacy just this once.

Back to me. It's been miserable. Trying to comfort her, wishing there were something more that I could do besides all the right things I am already doing - limiting cereal and other stop-it-up foods, feeding her fruits that start with a P at pretty much every meal, giving her a bit of juice, even, rubbing her tummy, bicycling her legs, giving her a warm bath, and mostly just holding her and telling her it's going to be okay as she strains. Ugh!

Well, she finally got some relief tonight, and hopefully she will sleep and I will be a happy mama again tomorrow. I can only hope. In the mean time, I got almost all of the prizes packaged up and will probably make a trip to the post office while Julie is at school on Thursday. Now I'm off to watch a DVD, fold some laundry, and do a bunch of chores before I can play with the blankie.

Eff to the Oh!

For my non-knitting-blogger readers, I'm talking about a finished object, a.k.a. FO, or in my upper midwestern white-girl interpretation of gansta speak - Eff to the Oh. Trust me, it sounded much funnier last night while I was thinking up this post as I tried to get Sophie back to sleep. But I do indeed have a finished object to show off, and it is so cute and fun I can't believe it took me over a month to get around to finishing what amounted to only about five hours of work total.

I am pretty happy with these little mittens that I knit up with the left over Malabrigo from Julie's tiger hat. I knit them on size three dpns, using my own pattern that I then felted. My friends who warned me about how well Malabrigo felts weren't kidding. Usually, felting takes forever in my washer, but they felted nicely after one run-through.

Julie was just a little excited to put them on. She's wearing them still wet from the washer, and didn't want to take them off. And of course she's still wearing the purple tutu.



"Show me how you roar like a tiger!"



A note on the technique I used here. It's sort of a hybrid between intarsia and fair isle. It's done in the round, with no duplicate stitching, and involves slipping stitches and knitting back backwards on the rows with patterning where the yarn is on the wrong edge of the motif. I've seen this technique referred to as "motif knitting" and "festive knitting". I have a sock pattern in print that explains it all, and I'm thinking about whether I should type this one up or not.



Moving on, here's what came in the mail the other day. I'm so excited. I've been meaning to order some Socks that Rock for ever, and while I had my credit card out the other day ordering some Vesper yarn, I went ahead and did it. For some reason, the checkout on their website didn't work properly, so the nice lady at Blue Moon called me the next day to clear it up. Very nice lady, I can't remember her name. Anyway, while I was chatting with her I asked if they had a colorway with some brown and pink in it, and it turns out they do - it's new enough that it's not on their website, though. I said "Send me some!" So she did. Yum!

I don't know exactly when I will be knitting this, but it will be socks for me, so I ordered the medium weight because I like thick socks in the winter. I was pleasantly surprised with how yummy this yarn feels, as well as with the extra bonus bumper sticker and postcard included in the package. Luckily, I drive an old beater car, and I have no qualms about putting stickers on the bumper at this point. As soon as it warms up a bit out there, I'll be cleaning off my bumper and adding a little more decoration. Maybe I'll take a picture and show you the other two stickers I have on already.



Watch out, here come some kid pictures. We haven't had enough kid pictures lately. I haven't caught it on camera yet, but Sophie has learned to climb the stairs, and she is thisclose to walking. She loves nothing better than Joe or me grabbing her hands and helping her walk around the room. She also loves putting things in containers and taking them out. Here, she's putting some blocks in the bag and taking them back out.



Joe and Julie yesterday playing with a laptop toy she got for Christmas.



Julie and me goofing around with the camera. She loves it when I take her picture, then show her the screen. To a fault. It's difficult to get a normal picture of her, and using the video camera is nigh on impossible.



I spent most of last night and this evening so far preparing prize package stuff. I started printing out note cards using one method, then decided I didn't like it at all and printed out the rest another way. Everyone who gets note cards will get three of each kind and can give me feedback on which way is better.



I also took some time to wind some yarn that will be two of the prizes for the main contest. In the foreground, some of the self-striping sock yarn I dyed several months ago. It's brown, blue, green and white stripes. In the background, a skein of the Knitpicks blanks that I've rewound and pre-measured for some lucky person who wants to dye their own sock yarn. The winding part really is the least fun of the whole process.



I've also got the chocolates ready, and I think I'm about ready to distribute some prizes.

I'm changing the way I'm awarding the prizes just a bit, so let's review what the available prizes are first.

One skein of Euroflax linen in cream color - perfect for wash cloths if your hands can handle knitting with it.

The two sock yarns pictured above - each is a separate prize.

Five balls of Fantasi by Marks & Kattens - I described this in the post about the second contest, but none of the winners wanted it because they don't like knitting with bumpy yarn either. It's still super-cute yarn, once you get it knit up.



There are also three sets of note cards left - only six per set, I'm afraid. There is some chocolate as well, but I'm not going to say much about the chocolate this post. It's sort of a fun surprise that I will mention after the prize packages have been sent out.

I'm going to start off with four winners announced tonight. E-mail me with your address at shelly at shellykang dot com and your first, second and third choices of prize - if you don't see some yarn in the prizes that you want, say so and I'll send you note cards. I don't want to send you something you won't use. That's a waste of good yarn and postage too. I can always find a good home for yarn! First to respond gets first choice. If after this round the yarn is not all gone, I'll open the prizes up to all who responded to the original Contest post. Comments are closed there now, so no cheating!

And the winners are - oh, this is strange. I was going to give a prize to the person who referred me to my favorite of the new blogs, but when I went to look her up, she is one of the winners from the other contest. Jen - if you fancy one of the yarns listed above, e-mail me and it's yours! I absolutely adore your suggestion of Somewhere on the Masthead. It's not a knitting blog at all, but I love the way this guy writes, the way he tells stories, and best of all the way he calls his wife Her Lovely Self. Thanks for sharing.

The rest I'm drawing at random - Melanie, Gretchen, and Flan.

Okay, I think that's it. Running one of these contests is more work than I imagined. Fun, but it takes a little organizational skill. I hope I haven't messed things up.

From the comments, Debi asked why I don't use the "embiggen" function to do my pictures. Well, because I'm a big dork and I don't. I do use blogger for writing my posts, but we host our own server - it's sitting about 20 feet away from me in Joe's office - and I find it easier to resize the photos in Photoshop, FTP them to the server, then hard code the links while I'm typing in Blogger. All the photos are hosted on the same server as the blog. We got tired of dealing with the crappy hosting provider we had, and a year or two ago Joe set up an old machine we had sitting around to serve as a Linux box. It works, unless someone like Stephanie links to me, and then we're screwed. I can set it up so that clicking on a photo will lead you to a bigger version of the photo, but it takes a bit more effort and it uses up a bit more hard drive space. For the most part, I imagine most people are happy with the lower-res photos. In the cases where people have asked for higher-res photos (it's only happened once so far) I've obliged.

Country Mouse wanted to know how the egg slicer works with mushrooms. We had beef stroganoff for dinner tonight, and I was all excited to try it out. For about the first three mushrooms, it worked great. Then, it sucked. Little bits of mushroom got all smooshed in there and caught in the wires. Chopping with a knife was much quicker and neater. But I have pretty good knife skills. Well, for a very-amateur home cook.

By the way, thanks everyone for the awesome birthday wishes! It really made my day to watch the comments from y'all trickling in. My readers rock!

Now it's late and I have to go get some sleep.

Blankie Friday - urp!

Shoot. I was all set to come here bragging about how not only is Blankie Friday happening on Friday night, or perhaps the very early hours of Saturday morning by the time I actually hit Publish, but more importantly about how very much work I got done on the blanket this week. Then I had to go and count the squares I finished this week, and the number is pretty sad. Only fourteen squares this week. But it was my birthday week, and the whole family was sick. Shit. At this rate, the thing is not going to be done by the State Fair. Not the end of the world, I know, and I will keep plugging away at it and maybe I will surprise myself.

Now for some good news. One reason why there were fewer squares knit this week is because I decided it was time to knit some more of the edging. I can really only work the edging on the right hand side as you're looking at it face on, because that's where I left off before and I want it to go in one continuous stream around to the starting corner, where I will graft it together at the end. Still, I was tired of all those strings - both yarn ends and provisional cast-on ends - hanging there, and I wanted something a little different to keep me interested. It took a full evening's worth of work, plus a bit, partly because getting those live stitches back on even a size zero needle was a bit of a bitch. But I did it and now I am happy. Now I'm really going to have to have an end-weaving session this week, I imagine.

Other happy blankie news is that I am only three squares away from having used all of the yarn bits at least once. I'm only counting the yarn bits that are eligible - the cotton blends, the Koigus, the solid-colors, and the ones that were not fingering or other blends besides wool/nylon do not count. Still, this means that I can allow myself to start re-using bits of yarn, and that means I can start gleefully picking my favorite colors out of the lot and knitting them with abandon. I'm pretty sure I'm more than halfway done with the blankie, barely, so I'll have to decide whether I must reuse every ball a second time before using any a third. I have a feeling the anal-retentive side of me will insist on that. And, of course, if I get any more scraps in the mail, they will be used before any others.

Here's the current picture.



Also in knitting news, but not my knitting news, on Wednesday I saw my friend Meleah at knitting group. She just finished knitting a pair of socks using a pattern that I wrote a couple of years ago. It was originally published in Dawn Brocco's now-defunct Heels and Toes Gazette, and I sell it in pamphlet form through a few local yarn shops now. It's a lacy pattern knit with Cascade Fixation, and I liked it quite a bit when I knit it up way back when. This was my first time seeing someone else knit this pattern up in person, and it was fun in a kind of surreal way. I really like Meleah's color choices.



Here's a picture of my original ones:



So anyway, part of the reason this post is so late tonight - well, my posts are late most nights, I know, but tonight Joe and I were out to dinner BY OURSELVES! Joe's company has a party every year in January instead of trying to do it during the stressful holiday season. Last year we didn't go because I was super-pregnant and we didn't want to deal with finding a babysitter for Julie - I think we've had babysitters maybe four times since Julie was born, and they've always been either Joe's parents or a very close family friend. Tonight, I arranged for one of Julie's pre-school teachers to come over, and Julie was elated to see her at the door. Everything went off without a hitch, and perhaps we will get another night or two out this year if our budget can swing it. Between paying the babysitter and paying for an actual activity out of the house, it's not something we'll be able to do even once a month! But it was good time tonight. I even got to eat chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream again. Wahoo!

Upcoming topics: The yarn that showed up in the mail today (oh my!), the yarn I expect to show up in the mail next week (whoo wee!), a conclusion to the contests, the objects that I finished in the car today while the girls were napping, and that damned blue stripey sweater and what the hell am I going to do about it.

34

No, not 34 blankie squares. We'll talk about that tomorrow night, hopefully. 34 years. I'm getting old, and every year just goes faster. It hardly even felt like a birthday today, and we had a fairly blah day me and the girls and our colds.

But Joe came home, and he took us out to dinner at the Edina Grill, an upscale diner that we love. I had sweet potato french fries, which I shared with the girls, and seafood macaroni and cheese, which when I asked the waitress about it, she described as "love in a bowl". I'm always a bit leery about creamy pasta dishes since the one time many years ago Joe and I were at a fancy resort on the north shore of Lake Superior, and the alfredo dish I ordered was so gloppy I couldn't eat it. The evil waitress that evening refused to bring me anything else, and I went to bed that night hungry. That time sucked, but tonight did not. Tonight, I agreed with the waitress that my dinner was "love in a bowl" - it was that good, and the pint of Summit EPA tasted just fine with it too.

So, it wasn't a bad birthday after all. Eating out with the girls is always fun and "fun". Fun because we the girls get lots of admiring looks from our fellow guests. It's nice to go out in public as a family because when Joe is there, I don't feel all bristly wondering whether the next person giving us a warm smile is going to ask me what country they came from. "Fun" because it involves training them in appropriate table manners for restaurants, which along with being slightly more stringent than those at home, are all the harder to obey because there are so many interesting things on the table to tempt them, and such a big audience of people to notice when they make a scene. Tonight we did just fine, although Sophie was in and out of the high chair several times.

I was very full after eating most of my dinner, and wasn't going to order dessert, but I kept thinking about the fabulous brownie sundae they serve there, so I ended up ordering one to go at the last minute, which meant that we had to wait a little longer with the girls than was best...but the nice manager lady gave it to us for free! So when I'm done writing this, I'm going to go pig out on brownie sundae, watch the last episode of 24 on that DVD, and cuddle with the blankie. I have a bit of a blankie surprise for tomorrow - something slightly different than X more squares. I know you just can't wait, but you'll have to.

Runny Noses

The whole family is sick with a cold. I thought it was just runny noses, but it hit me for real tonight. I'm pooped. I'm sitting here watching episodes from season 5 of 24 on DVD and knitting away on the blankie. I'll be going to bed in a little while.

Hopefully I'll have more to say tomorrow.

Two Winners!

Reason #1,437 why I love my readers. You all came through for me on the photo wall thingie that I did a horrible job describing. We have two winners.

Winner Number one is Candy in California. Candy did not give me the link to the site I had originally described, but she gave me something better - the Ikea version of what I want to make, which is probably about the same price only pre-packaged and with instructions for my husband, who will eventually be installing it if I am very very lucky. We went to Ikea today and picked it up, but I'll get to that in a minute. Candy, e-mail me with your choice of the prizes listed below, and your address, and then you can start waiting by the mailbox.

Winner Number two is "Not Supergirl". She sent me back to the actual site that gave me the idea. Any idea how I got there in the first place? I'm kind of curious now, because this guy is in the Twin Cities area, so it could have been a local site that pointed me his way. Anyway, please send me an e-mail with your real name and address and which of the following prizes you prefer. Maybe both of you should give me a first and second choice, and whomever e-mails first gets their first choice if there is a conflict.

Here are the prizes. Everybody gets some yummy chocolate, unless you indicate that you don't want it. I have two lots of yarn that came from the estate of my friend Julie who died in July of 2005. She was my best friend in the world, and I want this yarn to go to a good home where someone will use it. If you don't really want this yarn, don't take it - I'll give you a different prize.

Choice #1 is five balls of Fantasi by Marks & Kattens. This is really bobbly textured yarn, 47% Wool, 47% Acrylic, 6% Polyester. Ball band says 2 sts/inch, and 25 meters per ball. There is enough here to make a baby sweater, which would be very cute, or a scarf (I think that's what Julie intended for it) or to trim some other garment. I made a swatch with it, and it is very cute knit up. Now that I think about it, there may be a sixth ball around here somewhere - I'll have to dig around. My only problem with it is that I like knitting with smooth wools, and I've made a vow to myself to only knit with things that really make me happy from now on. Too much yarn and too little time and all.



Choice #2 is four balls of Jelli Beenz by Plymouth Yarn. I think you could get a small baby sweater out of this, or you could use it for some other child's project like a hat and mittens, or a scarf. This would have worked nicely for that Red Scarf project everyone was doing for charity. It's 75% Acrylic and 25% Wool, and washable. 4.5 sts/inch. 107 yards per ball. There is nothing at all wrong with this yarn either, just not my favorite kind of colors.



If neither of those appeal to you, I'd be happy to send half a dozen of my blankie closeup note cards, or if you have a project that you would like to take a closeup picture of and send to me, I'll print up some note cards special for you.

Yay! Speaking of contests, I have yet to announce the rest of the prizes for the birthday-month contest that's still open. There is some more yarn in the stash begging to be given away to a good home. If you haven't commented on the Contest entry yet, it's going to be open till my birthday on Thursday.

Okay, back to the Ikea trip. I love Ikea. I love eating lunch in their cafeteria - those meat balls are awful, but so tasty with the nasty fake gravy and the lingonberry preserves. Julie saw the childcare area with the ball pit and wanted to go play in there, and since it was a quiet Monday afternoon and there were only a few kids in there I let her. She had a blast, and I only wish I had had my camera with me. She didn't want to leave when I came back to pick her up 45 minutes later. I promised her I'd take her back and let her play another day.

Here's what I scored:

A package of Deka wire curtain rod and clips - shorter and lighter weight than the other package that I bought. But a lot cheaper, too, so if this one works where I want it, I'll be taking the other ones back.

A package of Dignitet wire curtain rod and ends, and a couple of packages of the clips that go with it. I thought I might need the extra length available with this one, but the hardware for the ends is a lot bigger and might be unsightly, and might put the wire too far away from the wall. The Deka hardware looks a bit better suited to this purpose.

Of course, there is no way I can go into Ikea, especially with an hour of time with only one child attached to me, without finding some other crap junk important necessary stuff to bring home.

I can't find the item page on their web site, but it is pictured at the top of this page, but I got a french press big enough for when I have guests over during the day. My french press that Joe gave me for Christmas a few years ago holds only one cup, which is great for me in the morning, but this new one was only $12, and can serve probably three or four.

I got a 6-pack of the Kalas plastic cups for only $1.49 - I've been meaning to pick these up for months now. I've also been meaning to pick up some of the Kalas plastic plates, but they never seem to have them in stock when I'm there. Julie is ready to practice using regular cups more - actually long overdue - I'm still making her use sippy cups most of the time at home, and she can't really go to Kindergarten still drinking from a sippy cup with a valve all the time, can she?

Go ahead and laugh at me - I bought an egg slicer because it was only $1.50 or something, and we do eat hard boiled eggs sometimes. I thought Julie would get a kick out of it because she loves watching me use the apple slicer.

Gah - I can't find a picture of this other thing, but it's one of those round mesh things that hangs from the ceiling with shelves to stick you stuffed animals in. It's either going in the nursery or the basement to help control the overflow of stuffed animals our kids own. People, please stop giving my kids stuffies. They are cute, they are cuddly, and they end up all over my freakin' house!

There may have been a couple of other items as well. At least I managed to avoid the chocolate in the grocery section. Only because I already have awesome chocolate here at home and I know I will be eating chocolate cake in a couple of days.

Now, it's blankie time. For those who have asked lately, there is a whole tutorial on the blankie in the archives of my blog. If you scroll down far enough, there are links to it over on the right hand side of the main page.

Can I get some help here?

Some time within the last month, I read on some blog somewhere about an idea that I really liked, but dismissed at the time. Now, I want to implement the idea, and of course, I can't find it anywhere.

There was a tutorial. It was a tutorial on how to make a rig to hold things on the walls. It involved wires, and on those wires were clips that slid along and could hold pictures or photos or other flat type items. I thought maybe it was referenced in Craft magazine. I thought maybe I had seen it via Not Martha or Whipup. I have an odd feeling that it was one of these places, only not directly, but after following a link to some other site or trail of sites therein.

Google has been of no help so far.

Does this ring any bells? First person to give me a link to the site I had in mind gets a special prize.

Thanks in advance!

Party's Over

Tonight we ate dinner at the in-law's house with Uncle Dave and Jinnie, and tomorrow they fly back out to New York. What a week of socializing and general busy-ness. I didn't mention that I had my car in the shop this week (to the tune of $1600 - but that's another story), which contributed to the general craziness I've been referring to all week. Just having people in from out of town, while wonderful and something I'd beg for again as soon as possible, even though they weren't staying with us, can be a little stressful. Having the house generally presentable for the most part, being available for dinner or an outing at their leisure, enjoying their presence as much as possible while we have them here. As much as I seem like an extrovert to the casual observer, I'm really an introvert at heart.

Julie and Sophie modeled their new dresses that Dave and Jinnie brought for them - Julie refused to sit with D&J for the picture Idonotknowwhy, but I didn't push it and at least they got to see the girls in them.



Sophie had no problem hanging out on their side of the table - she was actually busy circling the table trying to reach all the things we didn't want her to have.



Sophie and Dave playing trade-the-snack-bowl. Dave is SO good with the kids, and is going to be a great dad himself one of these days.



As usual, my MIL made awesome korean food - tonight's meal was bibimbap, which was yummy as expected. I told her a few years ago that I'd much rather have a meal cooked by her than one at the most expensive restaurant, and so she has us out to her house for my birthday and I am grateful. She sent us home with a grocery bag brimming with leftovers, which we will eat tomorrow night, and I'm grateful for that too.



After the meal, they served tangerines and asian pears for dessert, and I'm always surprised by how enjoyable simple fruit is for dessert. Julie couldn't get enough of the pears, and Sophie couldn't either for that matter. She kept taking bites off of my chunks, and did a fine job of chewing them up. I was pleased to see that Joe's dad had put three of the giant fruits into our take-home bag.

I had a birthday present to open - Joe got me a lap desk for my computer to rest on when I'm out on the couch. I was surprised to get a present at all, since I just got a fabulous new computer, and I'm pleased with what he picked. Totally surprised me. Sophie had fun sitting in the box.



The girls were asleep by the time we got home, and we had already put them in their jammies before we left. I've just finished the glass of wine that was left over from last night, and now it is time for me to go sit on the couch, try out the new lap desk and commune with the blankie for a while too. I can't believe tomorrow is Monday already!

Sixteen

Okay, another crazy-busy day. I'm not even going to go there, but it was pretty much all good. I'm just getting that blankie post in quick and then I'm going to go back to paying attention to our guests a bit. Only sixteen squares this week, and that's counting the one on the needles right now. This coming week will have to be all blankie all the time, and maybe I can catch up.

Just to clarify, when I said that my resolution for Blankie Fridays was down the toilet, I didn't mean I was giving up - I just meant that it didn't go unbroken very long, and that I wouldn't be surprised if Blankie Friday ended up being Blankie Saturday more often than not. And I certainly didn't mean I was giving up on the blankie. Never fear, blankie fans!



In other knitting news, Julia restocked Knitterly Things with her beautiful Vesper sock yarn this evening, and although it is pretty much sold out already now, I managed to score a few skeins while it was available. I've been lusting after this yarn for months! Happy Birthday a little early to me! I'll post pictures when it comes. mmmm...sock yarn!

No-Blankie Friday

So far my resolution for Fridays being all about blankies this year is in the toilet. Which is exactly how most of my other New Year's resolutions have panned out over the years. Maybe we'll have a blankie update tomorrow, or maybe it will just have to wait till next week. Progress this week has been dismal, and I blame it on my frazzled self. You don't really want to see how little I've accomplished - give me one more day to knit a couple more squares.

In the mean time, I'm going to do another picture post that really doesn't involve knitting at all, but if the YouTube thing works out - it's uploading now - there may be a video at the end. This is my first time trying it so let's cross all the bits!

We had a somewhat more laid-back morning today, since we weren't scheduled to be anywhere right away. Julie woke up all crabby-pants, I think in retrospect because she was extra hungry. After slogging through getting everyone ready and fed, life seemed a lot better and we headed over to the library.

Julie behaved herself so well at the library, and then at Target when we stopped for a couple things that when she asked to go to "Old MacDonald's" and get some french fries for lunch I agreed. After all, we skipped the grease the other day when we were at the Mall of America, and we've had a very busy week. A little Friday treat was in order. She can't eat the sandwiches there, so we just got fries for her and I supplemented it with carrots and cucumbers, and hummus and crackers. I know I'm going to bring on some bad karma by mentioning this, but my kid at everything else first before the fries.



Later in the afternoon, Uncle Dave and Jinnie came over to play for a little while. Isn't this cute - she obviously hasn't been around kids all that much because she is letting a drooling infant play with her fancy little digital camera. No, really, we love Jinnie so far. She is sweet with the girls, she eats my cooking without complaint, she seems down-to-earth and decent and kind. I am so happy for Dave that he has found such a nice one, and I hope it works out with them.



Then we went down to the basement and Julie and Dave started building with the big blocks...Uncle Dave can be quite creative.



Sophie showed off some of her standing-up skillz and chewed on a finger - she's working hard on teeth numbers 6 and 7 - there was very little sleep for me last night, in fact.



Finally, Dave built a race track with the blocks while Julie and I were on a potty break upstairs. Julie loved it, and they had a little race around it.



Remember that chocolate-chip cookie craving? Well, the muffins didn't quench it. I threw some cookies together this evening, and while I was at it, I had my friend M from across the street over for a drink and some company in the kitchen. I had to go digging in the basement for the liquor, but it's always fun chatting with her for an hour. Or more. Joe just shakes his head and laughs when we get together because we can't talk for less than 20 minutes at a time, even if I'm just "running something over there".




Ooh, and here's the video, I hope! Dave is so good with Julie, and watching them go around the track was such a hoot. I hope you can watch it too.




I'm off to commune with the blanket for a few minutes before bed.

Just call me June

um, yeah right. I had a funny moment this afternoon when I thought to myself "I'm just like June Cleaver." It's funny because this moment was preceded by many scatter-brained slovenly mom moments and followed up by more of the same all day long. Let's start at the beginning, or somewhere near there.

We all know it's been a busy week around here. The house started out fairly clean on Monday - or about as clean as we normally get. On a good day, right after my husband and I have cleaned up with all the enthusiasm we can muster just in case his brother and his brother's girlfriend who we've never met before but understand is very important to him may stay with us during their visit - on a good day like that, our house is pretty clean - not perfect, but not so gross that most visitors would be disgusted by our slovenliness. But the busy week has happened, I've been feeling frayed, and have not done as much maintenance as I try to do in a normal week.

This morning Julie had school first thing, and I had to run an errand while she was at school, so the breakfast dishes were still scattered around and filthy, the dishwasher still full of clean dishes, the tray from Sophie's high chair still covered in sticky clumps of drying pear and Oatios when we came home, and shortly after that a friend who had never before been to our house was scheduled to arrive. I had to help Julie use the potty*, then change and nurse Sophie, and before we were even fully done Julie announced "They're here!" and the doorbell rang.

In came the lovely R and her two boys, close in age to Julie and Sophie. She was ever-so-graceful about it and pretended the mess was all okay, but I very nearly melted down when I noticed that I was standing in something sticky on the floor of my kitchen. If there's one thing about a nasty house that really makes my stomach turn when I see it, it's a filthy kitchen floor and suddenly there was mine not only covered in dried muck tracked in on snow-covered shoes all this week, but also all the crumbs and detritus from breakfast. Oh, and about a million bags and parcels and bibs and various bits of crappe covered my counter tops, which I do strive to keep somewhat clear. What a way to make a first impression. Indeed, I almost fell in a whimpering heap on the floor, but instead I kind of laughed hysterically and made us all some thrown-together lunch. R was very polite about the whole thing.

We had a nice play date, the kids played fairly well, but everyone was a bit tired from having been to pre-school all morning, and I was really relieved when it wasn't my kid that melted down first this time. Little O was clearly ready for a nap, and I managed to sneak a few bits of chocolate and a trashy magazine into R's bag on her way out the door as good luck charms for a fall-asleep-in-the-car naptime break for her.

After they left, Sophie fell right to sleep, and here comes that June Cleaver moment. Instead of going to town really cleaning up the kitchen mess, I cleared it up just enough so that Julie and I could make banana muffins with chocolate chips for snack. I had to do something to quell the chocolate-chip cookie jones I've been experiencing for the last few days, and I was about to just make some damned cookies when I realized there were about a million overripe bananas in my freezer waiting to be muffins, so I had a compromise. I'm loving this flour mix that we use instead of wheat flour - you really can't tell that these muffins are gluten-free.

But back to the story - just as I was putting the batter in the muffin pan, right before Sophie started to cry in her crib - that's when I had that "I'm a great mom" moment. It only lasted a moment, I swear, and then it turned into a "I'm still a pretty darn good mom" moment when I realized that no, I don't wear high heels and panty hose every day, my hair is not pouffed, and nobody would want to eat off my floors even on their cleanest days - except maybe Sophie when she finds a rice puff left from the last meal (yick!). But I love my kids and I'm here with them, and I put them as close to first as I can while remaining sane.

I don't know where I was going with this. It's a ramble. Here's the muffins:



They're not even all that impressive looking, but boy are they tasty - this is a mini-muffin pan that I bought 75% off after Christmas, and I love mini muffins especially.

Here's a random picture of Julie today, wearing the pink sparkly tutu because the purple one is in the wash because there was an accident yesterday involving a child too intent on whatever she was playing to go to the bathroom and tinkle.**



Now I have to go pay some bills. Oh, the joy.

*Oh, and I have to brag - finally, FINALLY, finally the lightbulb has switched on in Julie's head and she has figured out that it is more pleasant to poop in the potty than in her pants. Halle-freakin'-lujah! It's only taken six months.

**Two steps forward, one step back.

Project Round-Up

It's been a while since I showed off a couple of the projects that are on the needles, and in the interest of openness, I thought I'd post a couple of pictures. First, on clearing out the memory card of the camera, I found a few kiddie pictures I wanted to share. Julie made herself and her stuffies a little nest the other day. Of course she was wearing the purple play dress.



Julie and Uncle Dave on a balloon ride at the Maul of America yesterday. Julie loves Uncle Dave so much, and he is terrific with her. I only wish we got to see him more often - maybe now that he's living on the other side of the country instead of the other side of the planet.



Julie on the carousel with Dave's girlfriend Jinnie (not sure that I've got the spelling right on that one) - she is a sweetie, and Julie took to her immediately as well. She's a keeper!



Dave and Julie on the Camp Bus ride. I had so much fun watching these two together!



Here's an update on the lace scarf - I had about an hour to work on it yesterday afternoon because the girls fell asleep in the car on the way home from the mall. I feel awful about wasting gas and polluting the air just sitting in the car with it idling to keep warm, but my girls will. not. nap. otherwise, and I need a moment's peace! Not to mention, they are much happier kids with the extra sleep. I swear, I have tried and tried to make them nap at home and it ends in two-hour screaming fits. Not pretty. But the lace isn't bad.



Here is my other on-the-go project. These socks are going to be for Joe. He says these are subtle enough for him, and unlike the two other pairs I've knit for him, he'll actually wear them. I work on these when Joe is driving the car, or when I'm out at knitting groups and want to knit without looking and/or be able to pick it up and put it down on a whim.



This is the first in the pair of mittens I'm making for Julie to match that tiger hat. If only I would actually work on them, they'd be done in a couple of nights. Except I'm feeling too guilty about the blankie and so they sit. Hm.



I really want some chocolate chip cookies, but the trouble is I want *my* chocolate chip cookies. Store bought, or even others' homemade will not do. But I am not making a batch of cookies this week - I would eat them all myself. I'll just have to suffer!

Having Fun is Hard Work

Joe's brother is in town. We have been busy between that and many other fun things. I don't have time or energy for a real post tonight (again!).

I just spent the last hour looking at the last of the blogs recommended on my Contest post from a couple weeks ago. I have definitely crossed the threshold between possibly not enough and probably too many blogs on my Google reader - but I'm still in love with Google reader and want to marry it. I love that I can use it on my Sidekick and make my spare moments even more productive.

Speaking of the contest, I have picked out a few more things to add to the prize drawing. One of them will be a skein of Knitpicks blank sock yarn pre-measured for self-striping dyeing, along with instructions. More on that hopefully tomorrow night. It's still not too late to enter!

Oh, and responding to Flan, who asked a couple of questions on the Contest post and I'm just getting around to reading all those comments (d'oh!) - um, Flan, if you saw me at the Yarnery and I wasn't actually in the middle of teaching a class (which you would recognize by me sitting or standing in the front sun room at a table full of people knitting) you definitely should have said hello. I'm disappointed!

But yes, I'm a member of the Minnesota Knitter's Guild, and I'm planning to attend Yarnover. I just sent in my registration the other day. My first choice for classes that day is Painted Skeins with Janette Ryan-Busch. I think it would be great to get some hands-on experience with dyeing like the professionals without having to invest in the pots and equipment. My second choice is the Beth Brown-Reinsel classes - I've heard great things about her. My third choice is the Meg Swansen classes. I love Meg and would definitely advise anyone who has not taken a class with her before to put her first on your list. She is a genius, and a great teacher to listen to. She tells awesome stories! So if you run into me at Yarnover, you better damned well come up to me and say hi and tell me how much you love my blog!

Oh, and a couple of people are asking me again about how to make the blankie. There's a set of links to the tutorial over on the right hand side if you scroll down far enough. You can read the whole saga of the blankie and how I got all the yarn starting here.

Hopefully I'll have more energy to be a good blogger tomorrow night. See ya!

Seventeen

I sure hope nobody was waiting with bated breath last night for Blankie Friday to happen, and if so I apologize for making you wait. I was too tired, too busy watching a movie with my husband (A Scanner Darkly - good movie, but it had a complicated plot and required my full attention to follow it); and too busy trying to knit up a few more squares to attribute to this week. Unfortunately, I only made it to 17 this week, which means I'm four squares short. I can live with that since I was more than that ahead last week. Still, must get back on track.



The other thing I was doing instead of blogging last night was blocking the sweater back. I am so glad I decided to do this before moving forward on the knitting. Here it is all pinned out nicely on my blocking surface - the guest bedroom bed covered in a vinyl tablecloth. I soaked it in lukewarm water and rolled it in a towel first. The brown yarn you see at the top is waste yarn holding live stitches for dealing with during finishing.

It looks innocent enough in this picture. Except maybe for that one very-thin blue stripe right in the middle of the thing. Normally, I like to match up the stripes when I'm doing self-striping anything, but as far as I can tell, the color repeat is much longer than a single ball of the yarn, and it would be too difficult to get them to match properly - still, that single-row line of blue is bothersome.



Here we have a closeup of the stitches - mostly because I want you to see that ribbing that I worked so hard to make while hunched over the damned machine. It is nice ribbing.



And this picture demonstrates the very big problem here. I have laid a sweater that fits me well on top of the new back. This is the sweater from which I took measurements in order to get a new sweater that fits me well. Despite all my giant swatching (I used an entire ball of yarn for the original swatch) and careful blocking and measuring and re-measuring of that swatch, my gauge was off enough to give me an extra two or so inches. Maybe I could live with this if I weren't planning on losing some more weight this summer - it has GOT to happen! But that is not the only problem. The length from the bottom to the underarms is good, but from the underarm to the shoulders, in case you hadn't noticed, is ridiculously long.



Now, I have already put away the knitting machine. My brother in law is coming to town in a couple of days, and there is a good chance that we will be using the guest bedroom as an actual guest bedroom rather than my personal office and depot of junk. I have at least a week to think about how I want to handle this.

Joe saw it last night and asked "Were you planning to do that cutting thing with this?" I hadn't thought of that before he asked, but it may be an option - I am planning to knit the front all in one piece and steek it down the middle for a cardigan - why not just lop a little off the sides of the back while I'm at it? This yarn is lovely and soft and nice to work with, but it is very lightly spun - barely more than roving in some places - and I'm worried about what pulling it all apart and re-knitting it through the machine will do to the fiber. I also need to just plain wait and see what happens to the size and shape after the stitches have had more chance to relax on their own - my experience with the swatch tells me that they are likely to settle out even after blocking.

I have a feeling the solution may involve ripping back to the underarms, narrowing the knitting from there up, and steeking below. But if I do that, I may as well rip back to that offensive blue stripe and correct that problem as well. And this is how I've been wasting the time I should have been spending on the blankie. Oy.

Here's some kitty cuteness for you. Harry cat is not the sharpest crayon in the box. He's laying on a wet sweater here, and I had to physically pick him up and carry him out of the room to get him off it.



Oh, and did you notice that bit of red lace in the corner? That's the scarf I was talking about last week. I finally got the bottom edging done and picked up stitches for the body. I am forcing myself to keep this project in the car and knit on it only when the girls fall asleep and I don't want to wake them up. If it were in the house all the time, I would never knit any blankie squares, I'm afraid. Here's a closeup of what I have so far. It's going to take a long time at this pace, but that's okay.



Time to go knit some squares!

On Taking One's Own Advice

Sheesh. One of the very first things I always tell the new knitters that I teach - hell - one of the gems of knitterly wisdom that I slip into pretty much every class that I teach goes something like this: Don't knit when you're overly tired. Especially, don't try to knit something complicated or new when you're overly tired or frustrated. And really, truly, pretty please - don't try to fix or rip out a mistake late at night. Always, always walk away from the knitting (it's not going to unravel or get any worse when you're not looking) and come back when you are relaxed and well rested, when there is good lighting and nobody is screaming at you to make them a snack. Did I follow my own advice last night? No. And I paid for it.

We had a much more bearable day today that I was expecting. At 4 a.m. when I drifted back off to sleep, I was expecting a day wrought with tears and whining on all parts. Instead, we had a relatively peaceful day at home. Much laundry was washed, and I'm still not completely caught up. One of the first loads dry was the quilt for Julie's bed - I had put it in the wash at 3 a.m. last night when the first round of puking happened. It smelled so bad, I couldn't imagine having to touch it more than once, so in it went. This morning, out it came and it was 95% dry, so I brought it up and hung it on the back of a dining room chair. Julie gravitated toward it immediately, and it became a part of the all-day discussion about how, when, and why Julie threw up last night. Trust me, I was not the party leading this discussion.

I did manage to spot an opportunity, though, and I helped Julie make a tent with her quilt and a couple of dining room chairs. She kept herself and Sophie busy playing camping for the next two hours.



Don't get me wrong - I was pretty tired all day, and still am, but somehow we muddled through, ordered pizza for dinner, and I got my second wind the moment the kids were asleep. Life is much better than expected.

So the knitting machine sat there taunting me. I went back to it and took a new tack from last night - one that I had plenty of time to think about today. It was a calm one, a reasonable one, one recommended by the machine manual, unlike the things I was doing last night in the fog of the wee hours. Guess what - 20 minutes later the sweater was back on the machine all happy-like and five minutes after that I had the back knit up to the underarms. That's the thing that makes all the frustration I went through last night worth the trouble. I now have a sweater back all done and waiting to be blocked.



I really do have to block the thing to make sure that it's the right size before I go and knit all the other pieces. After the scare I had with the gauge last night, I'm not taking any more risks. Not tonight, though. I'm exhausted.

No Sleep, Barf, No Sleep

So last night, I finally gave in to the monkey on my back screaming that I need to knit up that Wooly Stripes sweater on the machine before the winter (what we still have of it after global warming thus far) is over. I was really torn because I don't want to get behind on blankie any more than I already am, but I decided that if I was miserable about it, I'd better just go attack the thing.

Really, I guess I gave in to the impulse a couple of days ago, because I've had the machine set up and waiting since Tuesday. When I did a little math to figure out my plan of attack, I realized I needed about five more balls of yarn than I had so yesterday we drove out to Yarnzilla and picked them up. I had resigned myself to using a different dye lot, but the nice lady went back to their warehouse and dug some out for me in the exact same dye lot that I bought at a different store over a year ago. Nice.

I had several reasons for wanting to do this sweater on the machine -

1. I don't get nearly enough practice on my machines. There is lots of skill involved in using them, and mine is quite rusty. I have to open up the manual and follow the steps line by line every single time still. I really am a knitting machine novice, and the thought has crossed my mind more than once about how embarrassing it is for me to think that some expert machine knitter will come here and read about my clumsy dabbling, but we do have to start somewhere.

2. This yarn really needs to be knit flat versus in the round for the stripes to work out, and I loathe knitting back and forth in hand knitting. I don't have any problem doing the finishing - that's the fun part - but I can't stand row after row of boring stockinette stitch when half of the rows are purls.

3. When I mentioned the machines before Christmas while making Sophie's stocking, a couple people expressed interest in hearing more about the machines, so this will be a good opening for me to organize my thoughts and put them out there.

4. I want the freakin' sweater this winter, but I really need to be focusing on the blankie. To be really honest, even if I were to make handknitting a sweater my only priority right now, I might not finish it in time to wear it this year, and even if I did I would probably wait to wear it so it could go in the fair. The State Fair does have machine knitting categories, but I don't consider my machine knits to be fair-worthy. Not yet, anyway.

5. My hands are sore. I have a tendency toward repetitive-stress injury in my hands, and I think I'm still suffering the ill effects of knitting with that flax before Christmas. It doesn't help that I'm also typing on a laptop now and that I'm constantly carrying a 20-pound baby around and doing a million other tasks often one-handed during the day. Knitting on the machine is still working with my hands, but it's a different type of motion and will give them a break.

Anyway, last night was my night to dig in and get started on the sweater back. I was sure I could get the back at least whipped out in one evening. Only Sophie had taken a late nap, and it was almost 10 when she finally went to bed. No problem, I thought. I still have two hours before midnight - which is very late, but happens to be about my normal bed time.

I followed the steps in the manual for casting on a nice tubular-edge rib - thread the machine, push the appropriate number of needles into place, knit some waste yarn, knit a row of ravel cord, knit the appropriate number of rows of project yarn...all that took about half an hour or so. I'm slow at this. Then I remembered, I was going to measure my gauge swatch one more time and recheck the math before I committed to the numbers. The next step in the ribbing is very labor-intensive, so I paused to dig out the tape measure.

I knit this gauge swatch last month when I had the machine out for Sophie's stocking, and blocked and measured it then, so I felt pretty confident that I had good numbers, but you can never do too much to assuage the gods of the gauge. I couldn't believe my eyes - my gauge had changed from 5 sts/inch to 4.5 sts/inch, and my row gauge had changed similarly. I knew that with machine knitting, these changes could be drastic once the yarn relaxes, but WOW - good thing I checked.

I ripped everything back off the machine, sorted all the yarn, rethreaded, refigured some math, and repeated all the steps above. Only the stitches magically fell off the machine at one point, so I had to start over a third time. Now it was some time well after 11. I decided to give it one more try for the evening. I got everything cast on and the stitches for the ribbing knit - 15 rows worth, plus three rows for the tubular cast on part. I put in a book on tape and began hand-reforming stitches into ribbing. My very simple knitting machine can knit only in purl stitches, so to get ribbing I have to drop each stitch that I want to be a knit column down to the base, then use a latch-hook tool to pick them back up as knit stitches.

I had cast on 94 stitches the second time around, and reforming the stitches took me about an hour. Finally, I had the ribbing for the back done. I had finished it in no more time than it would have taken to do by hand, at least, maybe less. To celebrate, I decided to go ahead and knit a few rows in stockinette. That's the really fun part on the machine because it takes about two seconds to knit a row once you've got everything set up properly. Whisk Whisk - oh shit! The damned stitches dropped off again from about half the needles. I have no idea why, and this is the frustrating part of machine knitting. I am still at the level of experience where sometimes things happen that I just can't explain, and it sucks. I really need to go to some lessons - there are some machine knitting retreats that I could go to if I a)had the money and b)were willing to leave my kids behind for a couple of days. Maybe in a few years.

So now it's well after midnight. I should be in bed. Joe sticks his head in the office and kisses me goodnight, tells me not to stay up too late. I say "Uh, yeah. I'll be up in a few minutes." I spent the next hour cursing under my breathe and struggling to get the stitches back on the machine cleanly. Argh! you can see from this picture that the stitches are still not right this morning.



Or, maybe you can't. The resolution isn't all that great here, I guess. You'll have to trust me, it's still a mess. When I checked my watch and it was after 1:30, I realized that I'd better get myself to bed if I wanted to get any sleep. Miraculously, Sophie didn't wake up as I climbed the stairs and changed into pajamas. I laid in bed and tried to relax, tried to stop thinking about the mess on the knitting machine downstairs.

At what turned out to be 3, Julie woke up crying. Normally, we'd lay in bed and call out something to reassure her and she'd go back to sleep, but last night I heard her say something about "I'm all sticky!" uh-oh. I stumbled over there in the dark and try to pat her to comfort her, and sure enough, there are chunks all over her and the bed. I got her changed and into our bed with Joe, then cleaned up the mess. I'm not going to describe the depth of nastiness except to say that I'd take a whole pail of poopy diapers over a pukey bed any day.

Back to bed. 4:30, and I wake up as Julie's barfing again - almost completely missing the bowl I had brought up just in case. We all get up and change the bed, the jammies, etc. This time, Sophie woke up too. Once the bed was made, Joe and Julie climbed back in and I took Sophie downstairs so I could nurse her back to sleep without the risk of her getting barfed on by her big sister. Luckily, that was the end of the barf for the evening.

Julie is doing pretty well this morning - she's running around playing like nothing ever happened, although she didn't eat much of her breakfast and of course I had to keep her home from school. I'm hoping it was just a little virus and that nobody else gets it, at least till after I get the mountain of chunky laundry cleared out of the basement.

In the mean time, I'm soooo tired and I have myself in large part to blame. I'm just hoping I have the energy to tackle that knitting project again tonight after the girls go to bed. Also, I'm well aware that tomorrow is Blankie Friday, and I'm going to have to come to reckoning on exactly how far behind I am now and how much time I can afford to spend on this sweater project without getting too deep in the blankie hole.

Pictures

Here are the pictures I should have included in tonight's earlier post, but didn't because I was in a hurry to get to the knitting. Now that I have completed my minimum of three blocks for the evening, I will throw these up before continuing on one more block before bed.

At the Science Museum. I was taking a picture of Joe with the girls, and some nice lady offered to take this picture for us. I do this for other people whenever I get the chance - quite a bit when we go to the Mall of America - it's fun to know that you're helping someone preserve a memory with the whole family in the picture, and I am grateful to this woman for doing the same for us.


Last night at the party. We had seven kids in the house, and this is just a little taste of the baby action.


Julie and two of our little friends, Anders and Tia, disappeared up the stairs for a few minutes, and when we went to check on them we discovered this little scene. It was getting pretty late by this time, and it was so cute to see them snuggled together "reading" books.


Here I am tonight on the couch. Joe rolled his eyes as he snapped this picture capturing me in all my nerdly glory. I'm listening to a book on CD transferred to my MP3 player on my Sidekick while knitting and glancing at blogs on the computer. He's right - I am a major knerd.

Yummy Escarole and Why?

We had a busy weekend here, in a good way. Julie has been somewhat interested in dinosaurs the last few weeks, and we like to encourage things like that so the whole family went to the Science Museum on Saturday to check out some bones. They actually have a nice little collection - there was a nice Triceratops and a Diplodocus that was quite large indeed, among several others. As we walked through, I kept thinking about the people of some religions who claim that dinosaur bones were buried in the ground by the devil, trying to confuse people about God and evolution and part of me was laughing at them but part of me could see how a person of a certain kind of faith might believe it - dinosaurs are -uh, were - pretty awesome creatures, and it's amazing that we still have evidence of them.

We also had a little party here last night - it was a semi-potluck dinner for Joe's friends from college and their families. The guys still get together often, but the wives end up at home with the kids usually, so I wanted to get the whole gang together. Unfortunately, a couple of families had sick kids, so it didn't quite work out, but we still had a great time. I made a giant pot of chili and some corn bread, and the kids had fun strewing every toy we own around the living room floor. I was proud of Julie for sharing her things as well as she did.

I'm telling you all this partly to explain my lack of posting and partly to forewarn that Friday's blankie update may be a little on the light side. I didn't get nearly as much blankie knitting done as I would have liked this weekend, and I'm not sure if I'll be able to fully catch up - but I'll try. I keep thinking about that sweater I want to whip up on the knitting machine, but if I stop to do that, I will get hopelessly behind on the blankie knitting, which is not so acceptable - and next week is going to be even busier.

Joe's brother has lived in Korea for something like six years now, and he just moved back to the States after Christmas. He and his girlfriend are going to live in New York City, but next week they are coming back to Minnesota for a visit. I want to make sure I do everything I can to make them feel welcome (especially her - I think they're pretty serious, and I want to make her feel comfortable in our house even though we have such different backgrounds.) So anyway, there will be cleaning and cooking to do again. Julie worships Dave, so I'm looking forward to seeing them playing together as well.

Now on to the title of this entry. I tried a new recipe for dinner tonight, and we really liked it. Joe is not especially fond of vegetables in general, but he even gobbled his serving down. It was a head of escarole lettuce washed and torn up, sauteed in olive oil with garlic till tender with a sprinkling of salt. So simple, but really tasty. Although I didn't do formal resolutions this year, one of the things I really want to get back in the habit of doing is eating more dark green leafies. We were really good about it over the summer, and somehow got out of the habit this fall. They're so good for you, and can really be quite tasty as well. Not to mention that we must train the girls to appreciate this stuff while they're impressionable so that they won't have to think too hard about it when they're making their own food decisions later.

Finally, let's talk about "Why?" - It's such a simple little word. It's a good word. Until your three year old decides to use it 20 bajillion times a day. Let me tell you, we've been hearing it a lot for the last couple of weeks, and on the one hand, I keep reminding myself that she is just trying to engage us in conversation, to figure out how things work, to understand her world. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure she's just trying to drive me freakin' crazy. 'Cause it's working! I've been good about answering her "why"s as best I can, but after a while - especially after I have already explained the same thing to her several times in one session, I have to just tell her that I'm done answering questions for a while. If we're in the car, I put on some music and turn the volume up a bit to hopefully distract her.

Thank the powers of the universe, she's finally back in pre-school this week, but even that may not be enough to save us - it is only three mornings a week after all, and even Joe is tiring of it with his limited exposure. We are really looking forward to our Canadian friends coming back from Ottowa tomorrow. If it were still allowed, I think we would be standing at their gate waiting for them with little flags and confetti or something when their plane lands. Instead, we will settle for waiting till their ready for a play date. It just better be soon, is all.

Blankie Friday

It's Blankie Friday! Wahoo...time for an update on the blankie, and I think I did well this week. I haven't done the math yet, but we'll get to it in a minute. First, let's look at some pictures.

How cute is this? Julie and Sophie playing kitchen together. Sophie has been following Julie around constantly the last week or so, and mostly Julie tolerates her. It so totally melts the icicle I call a heart. Notice that Julie is wearing her apron.


Yesterday afternoon, as we were approaching the witching hour when there is nothing left to do in the house because all of the toys have been played with and Joe is not yet home to take over so I can cook dinner and it is not yet time to put in a video and the girls are running out of steam. This combination of variables can lead to a nasty situation and has more than once. Instead, yesterday,
Julie said, "Let's have a birthday party."
I casually said "What do we need for a birthday party?"
"Party hats."
"We can do that."

I dug out some construction paper and some alphabet stickers, and we spent the next 20 minutes making hats for the three of us with our names on them. Julie had fun. Sophie had fun. I even had fun. Score! I was amazed that we managed to come up with something so simple and easy that we could all do together and get through that dreadful part of the day. Aren't they cute?


This is just a gratuitous cute kid picture.


Here's Julie next to a little project she did while I wasn't looking the other day. Those are the new blocks that Sophie got for Christmas, and inside each one is a vintage Fisher Price Little People figure, laying down. Notice how the top few figures are color-coordinated with the boxes they are in. Julie had a whole story to go along with the scene - it was about Madeline in London, and the twelve little girls and Miss Clavel were sleeping in their hotel rooms or something. This kind of thing is not that unusual around here. The kid is so creative. Yes, I'm bragging.


This is a bit of an eye-rolling whine. I made beef Stroganoff for dinner tonight. We love the beef Stroganoff around here,but I don't make it all that often. The version I make takes a little time to put together, and worse, it uses just about every pot and pan I have in my kitchen. I hate doing dishes. I hate cleaning the kitchen. How pitiful am I? Very.


Alright, finally - it's blankie time. I counted, and since my last post about the blankie last Thursday I managed to knit 31 squares. That's 3.875 squares a day. Yay! I'm ahead of schedule, and I'd like to keep it that way. I think I need to weave in a few ends now.




Oh, and Erin asked to see a higher-resolution photo of the blankie. That seems reasonable enough - it is hard to get a clear understanding of the detail of the blankie from either the low-res overall pictures or the individual closeups. You can click on that picture above for the big version. Erin said she thought the blankie would make a good desktop picture. Great idea, Erin! Guess what I have on my desktop now?



Oh, and Dianne joined the knitalong - she's got a very nice blankie picture of her own up on her blog. Thanks for joining, Dianne!

All right, then. I'm off to weave in some ends and maybe surf some of the many links you all have posted on the contest entry.

A Contest!

I'm catching up on reader mail and other various computer business tonight. This new computer
makes it oh-so-much easier to get some of the stuff that I've been putting off done since I can do it while watching a DVD from the couch. I have to apologize if, after tonight I haven't responded to something you think I should have. I am a scatterbrained mama sometimes, and nowhere near perfect. Please contact me again with a reminder.

Anyway, the first thing I want to point out is the new link way down on the righthand side to my previous post - it's about Jo-Anne and her bears. She's given me permission to publish her pattern, so if you didn't read the last post and want the bear pattern, there you go.

Secondly, I want to share a picture from another reader/friend Cindy. Remember when I had several whole skeins of sock yarn that people had sent in when I was collecting scraps and wanted to give them away to be knit into socks? Cindy was one of the people to whom I sent it. Cindy's daughter Karly got a pair of Koigu socks in part thanks to all the generous people who sent me their sock yarn bits. Cindy, thanks for sharing the photo!



Now, I'd like to direct your attention back over to the right hand column. I've updated my blogroll. It's a little embarrassing, actually, how many blogs I read on a regular basis. To be totally honest, this isn't a complete list, but it is most of the blogs I think my readers might be interested in. And oops I just realize that I didn't include any of the blogs from my "local knitters" folder - will have to do that another night. There are a lot of awesome knitbloggers there, most of them ones that everyone and their dog has already been reading forever, but a few that might be new to you. If I've linked to you and/or you find a problem with one of the links, let me know.

After loading up all my blog listings to Google, I realized that suddenly I might have a slightly larger capacity for following knitblogs, and I've always felt like I must be missing out on some awesome ones that everyone else is reading, or just some really cool knitters. Which leads me to the contest. I wanted to do a contest this month since it is my birthday month, and it's just as fun to give as it is to receive. I've got a couple of prizes to offer, and the entry is easy. Post a link in the comments to a blog you think I'll like so much I want to read it every day and add it to my blogroll. This link can be your own blog or just one you really like. Try not to submit one that's already on the list. I like awesome knitters, especially if they are moms, are liberal, and like to cook. But I also subscribe to blogs that meet none of those criteria so go crazy with it.

Now, for the prizes. First, I've been making some note cards - I think I may have mentioned them once or twice before.



Prize number one will be a dozen of these notecards.

Prize number two will be a skein of Euroflax in a cream color. It's enough to make about three
wash cloths. The wash cloths are lovely, and if you can stand to knit with the linen, I will be happy to pass it along. If I happen to select someone for this prize who doesn't want the linen, I'll give them the choice of note cards instead and give the prize to a third person.

I'm going to come up with one or two more prizes, and at least one will involve some awesome chocolate.

The drawing and prize announcement will be held at the end of the month - you have till January 25 to submit entries. Please feel free to invite your friends to submit, and make sure you leave an e-mail address or some way I can contact you if you win. A comment with a link constitutes an entry - one entry per person. I'll draw prizes randomly from all the entries whether the link makes my blogroll in the end or not.

This is my first time doing this, so if you have any questions or I've missed something, be kind but feel free to ask.

Now, I'm off to knit one more square on the blankie before bed.

Bears

By now, we all hopefully know who I'm talking about when I mention Jo-Anne and her bears. You know, the nice lady up in Canada who knits teddy bears for kids around the world who need them and does it with amazing speed and generosity. I sent her some of the extra sock yarn bits y'all sent to me over the summer and she knit them up lickety-split and asked for more. I'm happy to say J0-Anne has gotten boxes from me and several of you, and really appreciates it. I've got one more box to send out soon, and I feel confident that she'll be knitting it into more bears for kids whip-snap. Just as a reminder, if you want to send her some yarn, you can e-mail her at fourgump at sympatico dot ca.

Let's take another look at those cute little guys, shall we?



Several of my readers have asked if there is a pattern available for the bears, and before Christmas, Jo-Anne e-mailed one to me with permission to share it with you. I'd like to ask that if you use this pattern, you consider knitting at least one bear for charity. There are many organizations that can use these, from local hospitals and shelters and law enforcement agencies to aid organizations around the world. Also, print out as many copies of the pattern as you need for yourself or your friends, but please keep Jo-Anne's name and the request that a bear be knitted for charity attached to any copies you distribute, and no copies may be sold. Okay, then. Here's the pattern.

Knitting Instructions: I'm going to be specific about needles and wool, but of course, I use all wools and varied sizes of needles. But this is the original pattern I started with.

Use double knitting (ie Patons Canadian) wool. Approx. 20 stitches to 4 inches.

Use size 10 needles (3.5 or 3.75 mm)

Cast on 10 stitches of the body colour. Knit 10 rows. Change to pant colour. Knit 30 rows. Break wool, leave on needle.

Knit another leg the same. (I sometimes don't put a paw on the legs, and just use the pants colour to the waist)

With both legs on same needle, knit across all 20 stitches for 16 rows. Then change to shirt colour, and knit 20 rows.

This brings you to the head. Use head colour. Knit for 5-6 inches. Then go back to shirt colour, knitting 20 rows. (if in doubt about how wide the head is, err on the wider side, rather than too skinny)

Then pants colour, knitting 20 rows. Then knit half the pants (ie leg) one at a time. Cast off.

To make arms and paws, pick up 8 stitches on the shirt colour (below head). Knit 20 rows. Change to body colour, and knit 10 rows. Cast off.

Repeat on other side.

Sew teddy with the wool and large, blunt darning needles, leaving hole to stuff. Stuff with qualofil or quilt batting (not foam) . Sew up.

For the face, make it happy. It can be tricky the first few times. Round eyes, cute nose, and a smile. Do not use buttons.

For the ears, use a couple of stitches of the body colour, and sew diagonally across each ear, pulling the thread to create ear. Don't worry, all ears look different.

If you want to make a scarf, cast on 75 stitches (using shirt colour, or something that you like). Knit 4 rows. Cast off. Tie around neck.

THAT's IT.

My suggestion would be to make a first bear out of one colour, for those who are nervous about changing the wool. All colours are great. The only comment I would make is that on a very dark brown bear face, the face doesn't show up well. I use all colours for my bears. Grey, browns, yellows, beiges, rusts. Even non-traditional colours look great. The kids who get them will love them whatever colour they are.

For the arms. Some people have trouble picking up the stitches. It would be just as easy to knit a small rectangle, and sew it to the body. Whatever works best for the particular child.

Enjoy. I love knitting them. In fact, I picked up some some variegated wool yesterday at a thrift store, with bears in mind!

Jo-Anne

Thanks so much, Jo-Anne. You do good work and I know some people will appreciate your writing out such a simple, fun pattern to share the knitterly love. I'm going to put a link to this post in my sidebar so people can find it for future use.

I was wrong.

I've mentioned a couple of times before that I didn't have a need for a feed-reader service. I've just been using the live bookmarks in Firefox and have been happy enough with that. It just seemed like too much trouble to set up the many blog feeds in another service, and I wasn't sure I would like it for various reasons.

Well, in transferring all my stuff to the new computer (and I have to say, I'm almost done, and the transition went much more smoothly than I anticipated ) I got a bug up my butt and decided to go ahead and give Google Reader a try. I was surprised how quickly I was able to get all the feeds loaded on there, how easy it was to indicate blog entries had been read, and how well it works with Firefox to open a new tab when I click on a blog I want to read. One of the factors holding me back was that I wanted to read the blog on its own page - not in a window within the reader. No problem here.

The especially nice thing is that it totally satisfies my OCD tendencies to check "just one more time" to see if there is a new entry somewhere. I can find out with a glance at one page instead of scrolling through all the menu line items and trying to remember whether or not I'd read the title in question. I've only been using it for a couple of days now, but so far so great!

In other news, the girls and I are trying to get back into our normal weekday routine now that Joe is back at work. It's not entirely back to normal yet since Julie doesn't go back to school till next week, but this morning we went to our knitting group and it was nice to get out of the house and see everyone. It was a bit of a debacle, though, as Julie had a giant pee "accident" right in the middle of the coffee shop, and there was pee ev-ry-where. The lovely knitting ladies stepped up and helped take care of Sophie while I rushed out to the car and grabbed some clean clothes, changed Julie and got the mess all cleaned up. It's pretty embarrassing to have to go tell the coffee shop employees that not only are they going to have to clean up a puddle caused by your child, but that it is a puddle of warm, stinking urine.

As soon as I sat back down at the table, Sophie decided it was her turn to melt down, and we had to call the outing over early. Another walk of shame as I quickly got them in their coats and walked them out to the car with Sophie screaming bloody murder.

Really, it wasn't that bad of a day. I even managed to make Rice Krispie Treats with Julie this afternoon while Sophie napped.

Now excuse me - I'm done with the computer for the night and it's time to get cozy with the blankie for a bit.

Things that make me smile

We've had a nice, quiet New Year at our house. Joe and I stayed home and put the kids to bed early, then dinked around in our normal evening routines. I watched a DVD and knit on the blankie, he putzed around in his office room, and some time around 12:30 or so I said "Happy New Year" and he grunted. We had planned to go to his aunt and uncle's house for Tduck Gook at lunch, but Sophie woke up with a fever this morning and we didn't want to expose the other children and relatives to whatever she might have. Poor little Sophie was listless and sad this morning, but after a dose of Motrin, she was much better - I think I still may take her to the doctor tomorrow to check for another ear infection. In the mean time, Joe drove up to his parents' house and picked up some ingredients so that I could make Tduck Gook for us here at home. I was sorry to have missed out on the party with the family (especially one at which I am not hosting), but we ended up having a nice little dinner at home.

I've been thinking about my plans and hopes for 2007 as the old year ended and I've been reading everyone else's thoughts on the matter. When Wendy brought up her "Knit From Your Stash 2007" plan, I was tempted to join in on it - and still am on some levels. I do, after all, have quite the large stash of yarn. A whole closet full. And I do fully intend to knit up projects from the yarn I have this year - I have more than enough sock yarn to keep me going all year, more than enough scraps to finish the blankie, yarn begging to be knit into a couple of sweaters for myself and some for the girls, beautiful laceweight yarn for that scarf I want to start on...and a bunch more that calls out to be loved and fondled. The thing is, promises like that one are meant to be broken. I have no plans to buy more yarn this year, but I'm sure it will happen, and in moderate amounts. All this thinking really has made me consider a flash-your-stash style post, partly in the interest in yarn pron for my dear readers and partly for my own organizational purposes.

There are a few other resolution-type reflections I've been pondering, most of them around living in the moment, letting go of the past, loving myself and my family as much as we all deserve. So I thought I'd share with you a few pictures of things that made me smile in the last few days.

I was folding laundry the other night, and found myself smiling at my neatly-stacked pile of socks fresh and ready for another week in the sock drawer. It always makes me happy to look at and wear my socks. These are but a portion of what lives in my sock drawer, what I just happened to have in the laundry this week.


My little dinosaur-eater.


I caught Joe wearing the reindeer antlers while entertaining the girls the other day. He was having fun until I insisted on taking his picture in them.


Snow angel lessons. We finally got a few inches of snow last night, and Joe took Julie out to play in it this morning. This was such a sweet moment as Sophie and I watched it out the front window.


Yesterday we picked up a shiny new toy for me. I've been wanting a new laptop for a while now, and after a little consideration and shopping, we found this little model. I'm typing on it right this moment. It's nice to be sitting in my spot on the couch typing this up.



Finally, I don't have a picture to show you, but I do have to brag. Joe's been on vacation from work all this week, and instead of sloughing off doing purely fun things, he has been working hard - harder, he says, than he normally does when he's at his office. When we bought our house a year and a half ago, we painted almost every room in it right away. The only two rooms that were left were the bathrooms, and Joe has finally painted the main floor one. It is not - well, it's not lovely. It was a very ugly bathroom in the first place and really needs to be gutted and remodeled entirely. But it sure looks a million times better without the peeling wallpaper, and it took a lot of work on Joe's part to get all the cleaning and patching and prepping and painting done.

Oh, and one more thing - I think I'm going to try to be a little more organized on the blog for 2007. For starters, let's call Fridays blankie-update days. Every week, I'll report in on my progress and show off a pretty picture.