Burning on Four

Last night I got about four hours' sleep. Sophie is teething to the tune of at least three or four new teeth coming in at once, and last night she woke up at ten and wouldn't go back to sleep till two. Of course, she was up again and bouncing around at six. Oy.

Anyway, I meant to post last night, but I got involved in a couple of frustrating projects involving balancing my checkbook and other similarly fascinating things that you really don't want to hear about. So here's my random chatter rewarmed.

Item #1 - Mac N Cheese. Believe it or not, until yesterday my kid had never eaten macaroni and cheese. The food allergies are the obvious reason, but I have to admit that I've been relieved more than once when I hear some parent discussing how their kid is addicted to the stuff in the blue box. It is addictive stuff, and I know I ate my share as a child, and okay even as a grownup. It's nasty, it's fake, but it's easy and it tastes kind of good.

Well, now she can eat dairy, and Annie's brand makes a wheat-free version, so when it was on sale at the co-op the other day I bought a couple boxes. Yesterday I cooked one up for lunch and threw in some steamed vegetables and some mixed beans from a can to round it out a bit. I figured it was best not to let her know that some people consider just the noodles and cheese to be a meal.



She liked it. Not over-the-top begging for more liked it, but she ate it and said it was good. Here she is, showing me how old she is.



The mail came, and I was pleasantly surprised with a package from Erika in Providence, RI. Look! Sock yarn scraps! Yay! It's been a while since I've received any more yarn for the blankie, and it felt very exciting. The best part is that I was just getting ready to pick up stitches for one of the bigger squares, so I got to use that big skein on the bottom with the jewel-colored stripes. Woot! Thanks, Erika!



Here's one of the other projects that I worked on last night - this one much more fun than the checkbook. Remember that little contest about the photo-hanging gizmoe? Joe installed the curtain wire I bought at Ikea a few weeks ago along the wall in my office room. I do plan to install at least one or two more and use for photos, but I couldn't resist doing a little yarn display. I may add some photos interspersed in there, or I may just add a little more yarn. This is all sock yarn, and it's not even the whole stash. It's just the stuff that's currently in twist-skeins.



Here's the rest of the sock yarn. At least, the sock yarn destined to one day become socks. The blankie yarn is stored separately in bins.



This is the current status of that sweater I'm trying to machine knit. That's enough yarn for two sweater backs - about four balls apiece - ripped out and awaiting another try. I think I've figured it out and am going to give it another shot at the earliest opportunity. I was busy tonight with laundry and finally figuring out what the hell I did wrong with the checking account. It was pretty embarrassing, and the most embarrassing part is that the errors started more than a month ago!



I thought I'd give a little update on that lace scarf I started a while back. I just finished the second repeat on the main lace pattern, and I'm pretty happy with how it's looking. It's pinned out here just for photographic purposes. This is not how I block things normally. You can see there's a pink post-it note on the left for scale. It's about 15 inches wide.



I had been pretty worried about the error I made in transcribing the chart to modern symbols, and how I left out a row on each side in the edging repeats. It turns out, I think I may have actually improved the pattern. I'm still getting nice points on the edges, and now the repeats work out so that the edging repeats coincide with the main pattern repeats, which they didn't before. Go figure.



Finally, some friends of ours welcomed their second child to the world last Thursday morning. She's a beautiful little girl named Anneka. I was perusing their pictures online, and came across this one. As I looked at it, I had the following train of thought: "Oh, look how cute Max is with his little sister. Hm, she's got that glow blanket on in this picture too. I hope her jaundice isn't too bad. She sure is cute. Oh - that blanket looks like it was hand knit. I wonder if Elizabeth (the mom) knit it, or if someone knit it for them. I should have knit them a blanket this time. Hey, that pattern looks kind of familiar. Oh! That's the blanket I knit for Max four years ago!"



It took me completely by surprise to see my blanket in action so long after the fact, and it's nice to see it being used in a random picture that wasn't explicitly intended for me to see. Elizabeth says they used the heck out of it for Max, and that when they pulled it out for Anneka it looked like it was brand new still. I knit it with Plymouth Encore, and although I'm not a big fan of acrylic, you can't go wrong with this stuff for a baby. It's totally washable, it doesn't pill, and it doesn't have that creepy-weird feel that so many man-made fibers come with.

Thanks for letting me share the picture, Elizabeth, and congratulations on your beautiful family. We can't wait to meet Anneka in person!

And that, my friends, is all I got. I'm going to bed. I can handle one night on no sleep, but I sure hope I get a few more hours tonight or I. am. screwed.

Almost Embarrassing...

That's right, the girl who has no problem discussing almost any bodily function with the entire world is going to share with you something she finds almost embarrassing. If you're a knitter, you'll understand. The rest of you can just prepare to be bored.

Remember that sweater I started on the machine and set aside because the back came out gigantic? That was back in the middle of January, and I finally forgave the project enough to dig it out and have a second go at it last night. On refreshing my memory, and reviewing the gauges on the swatch and the sweater back itself, I discovered that yes, it was still totally wrong. I was really hoping that letting it sit and relax for a while would somehow magically fix the gauge. No luck.

Instead, I realized that I was not at all happy with the drape of the fabric. It was too loose and stretchy, and I tend to like my sweaters a little closer to the bulletproof end of the spectrum. The strange thing was that the gauge on the swatch was different - a bit tighter - than the gauge on the sweater back. Even though I used the same yarn, same machine, same settings, and as far as I can remember same techniques. Was it a change in the weather? The fact that the back is a much bigger, wider piece than the swatch (this matters with machines as the farther you get away from the tension mast the more the thing has to stretch)? I couldn't say. I was too busy making new swatches and calculating gauge and multiplying out all the numbers for my new sweater back.

Now, knitting math isn't all that hard. You multiply the gauge (stitches per inch) by the number of inches wide you want the garment to determine the number of stitches to cast on. Similarly, you multiply the row gauge by the intended length to determine the number of rows to knit. When you're hand knitting, you can often get away with the row gauge bit and just measure as you go along, but with machine knitting there is a handy little counter on the machine that tells you the rows, and the gauge changes so significantly with blocking that calculating it out is a must. So basically, I had to figure out numbers relating to the width of the waist, the height to the armholes, the depth of the armholes, and some other things involving how the arms and neck are shaped. Not that big of a deal, especially if you have a giant collection of knitting reference books laying around.

Or so one would think. I spent most of last evening cranking away at the machine, reforming the stitches to make ribbing, cranking away some more until I had a sweater back completed. By that time it was very late and Joe had already gone to bed, so I set it aside and hit the hay.

This morning, I came into the office room to admire my work from last night. Damned thing is way too small! The fabric is beautiful - exactly the firm-handed drape I was looking for. But it's not nearly wide enough. Maybe it would fit my pre-mommy body, but that's not around right now for me to check. I need something to stick my current self into. ARGH! I did a little more measuring. I did a lot more measuring. Then I did some more math, and I still have a bit more math to do. I'm going to give it one more try.

In the mean time, one thing was clear. I'm going to have to re-use some of this unsuccessfully knit yarn if I'm going to have enough left to knit the sweater. Anyone remember the old Weezer song called, appropriately enough "The Sweater Song?" It's about ripping out a sweater and leaving a guy cold and naked on the floor. That's my new cell phone ring tone as of today.

Here's the first back after I ripped it out onto the swift. See how crinkly the yarn is? That's from being knit up and shaped as stitches, blocked, and left for a couple months.



Here it is getting a little bath in the sink to relax.



A little happier, hanging to try in the bathroom.



I just hope that treating the yarn this way isn't going to overly affect the way it appears in the end project, or (horrors!) how it knits up gauge-wise in the final piece.

I should have stuck to the blankie. Off I go.

As Promised

We did, in fact, make it outside to play in the snow this afternoon, and everyone had a good time. The snow was not sticky enough for snowmen, but there was still plenty to do out there. As promised, here are the pictures.

Sophie went for a ride in Julie's old sled


Julie got in on the sledding action for a bit.


Julie made some snow angels. It looks like she's in pain here, but she's having fun - her face is all scrunched up because she doesn't want to get snow in her eyes as she flails her arms around. I took a video of this, and it is mildly hilarious, but features my nasal voice directing her so we'll pass on the YouTube this time around.


Julie with a big chunk of snow. We couldn't really form snow balls, but there were chunks laying around where the snow plows had thrown slushy snow off the road. Notice Julie is not wearing her handknit hat. She's fickle about which hat she wants to wear which day. This one was a gift from Uncle Dave last year.


What do we do with those chunks of snow? We throw them into the street and watch them smash. We call this a snowball fight. Our lawn is pretty much flush with the road, but Julie is about two or three feet up from the road on the piles left by the plows as they went through. St. Louis Park has some of the most efficient plowing routines I have ever seen - they had already been through once when we woke up this morning and came through at least once more before noon.



Me and Sophie. I can't seem to find the hat that goes with my glittens, so I had to dig out this floppy old model that is huge on my head. I think this was my first attempt at hat design from maybe four years ago.


Sophie was getting cold, so we headed inside. I took this picture a while later from the back door. Joe and Julie were digging forts in the three-foot pile of snow by the driveway.


I finally had to insist that Julie come in after she'd been out there for an hour and a half - she was still having fun, but I didn't want her to get too cold. I even got to serve her a cup of hot chocolate, and we all got to experience the torment of waiting for it to cool enough to drink - a fact of three-year-old life that I had long forgotten.

In knitting news, I have pulled out the blue and white Wooly Stripes yarn and the knitting machine and am going to have a second attempt at that sweater. I did a bunch of re-measuring and some more swatching and blocking then more re-measuring and some calculations, so I think I may have it figured out this time. It is worrisome that the gauge changed so significantly the first time between swatch and garment. I wonder if it could be that the weather changed in the intervening month or so, and maybe that affected the springs in the machine or something? The only other thing I can consider is maybe I was handling the yarn differently - maybe I was more careful to pull the yarn free from the skein before knitting it in the actual garment than I had been in the swatch. Wish me luck as I have my second go!

Snowy Saturday

As expected, we're right in the middle of a nice, big winter storm. When I was a kid growing up in Missouri, it was rare that we'd get a really big snow storm, and when we did it always felt like a party to me. Sledding, snowmen, snow angels, running around till your cheeks turned pink and your nose started to run, and your mittens soaked through with the snow and your fingers turned into icicles. Then, if we were lucky, going inside and drinking hot chocolate. A rare pleasant memory from my childhood, and one that makes me feel excited when I know that snow is coming even now.

The snow is supposed to end by tomorrow, so I'm sure we'll have Julie outside. The thing is, I know Julie will want Joe to take her out, and I know I will want to be out there with them at least for a while, so it may turn out that I take both girls outside. I think Sophie would enjoy it, too. I'm glad it's happening on the weekend so Joe is here to help play with the girls. I'll take the camera!

In the mean time, I taught another class at the store today - this time beginning knitting. I swear this was the best group of students I've ever had. They were all really nice and picked it up super fast. Getting over to St. Paul and back was a bit of a chore. On the way home, the roads had gotten a couple inches deep in snow, and I had to use my hard-earned snow driving skillz to keep from skidding around. People were only going about 30 mph on the highway, so it took me a good hour to get home. Even that bit of hassle didn't deter me from my snow love. I think the only thing I really worry about is if it somehow caused the power to go out - that would bring down our server and generally be a pain in the butt.

Joe spent the day with the girls, and when I got home he showed me this picture on the camera:



I guess Sophie didn't nap all day today except when she fell asleep in the high chair during lunch. She took a little nap after I got home and fed her. At least I'm not the only one who sometimes struggles to get them to nap! Otherwise, it sounded like they had a good day.

Gotta go do some chores!

Blankie Friday and Random Catchup

I'm not sure where I've been this week. I mean, I know exactly where I've been this week, but it's been a while since I've gone so long without a post. I was out two nights in a row, and that counts for something.

Wednesday I was out with some girlfriends - the girlfriends who get together for what we call Knitting Night but is really a gabfest with a little knitting thrown in. Usually, we meet at each others' houses, but this time we decided to go to a coffee shop in order to stay out of the way of our husbands putting little ones to bed. There was another group of knitters there, and I was tempted to go over and say hi to them, ask to see their projects and stuff. I didn't, though, because I was there to see my friends and time was short. The blankie came along for the ride because I wanted to knit some squares and show it off to my friends, and I realized as I was holding it up for them to admire that I was making a bit of a scene in front of the other group of knitters, and then I realized that I looked like a total ass and it was completely too late to say hello to them without being an even bigger ass. I still managed to have a great time that night, and I was sorry when it was time to go home.

Thursday I taught a new class at the yarn store called Damage Control, and it was all about how to fix mistakes and problems in knitting, plus a bunch more assvice and blather on my part. Really, it went pretty well, but talking for two and a half hours straight takes a little out of a girl. Look what followed me home from the store:



That's Mountain Colors Bearfoot. I know, I know I already have way too much sock yarn, but I had that 50% off coupon from the Knit-Out, and because traffic was awful, I didn't get there in time to think about what I really wanted to get, and this just jumped into my hands. Not that I regret it or anything. Someday, when it has ripened long enough in the stash, I know I am going to thoroughly enjoy knitting this right up!

Alright, let's get to the goods. This week's progress is sixteen squares. As with last week, I took tons of pics, and you can click through to the bigger pictures if you feel the burning need.









There's not a whole lot more to say about the blankie this week.

Hey, before I forget! I keep meaning to mention this, but I'm pretty excited about it. I got invited to teach for a week this summer at Camp Unistar, which is this awesome camp up in northern Minnesota on an island in the middle of a lake. It's run by the Unitarian church and is, from everything I've heard, a great family vacation spot. I've been wanting to go to this camp since I first heard about it about eight years ago, and now I get to go with my entire family, spend a couple hours each day evangelizing knitting, and my work will pay for most of our trip. It is a win-win-win situation, and I'm thrilled!

Julie and I did a little craft project the other day. Really, we were rejuvenating a toy I made for her a few years ago that I discovered while we were reorganizing and putting away toys the other day. It's so simple, it's crazy, but she loved it when she was six months old, and she and Sophie spent the whole afternoon playing with it again that day, and all week since. It's a bunch of lids from juice concentrate cans, to which we added some stickers; and a cornmeal cannister with a hole cut in the lid and wrapped with a bit of colorful paper.





Sophie loves to put the "coins" in the slot one at a time. Julie loves to hoard the coins and pretend that they are cookies and various other things.

This is just a random cute Sophie picture. She's eating breakfast this morning, including rice puffs, kiwi fruit, pear, and oatmeal. Her little constipation problem has pretty much cleared up, but in the mean time she developed an ear infection. She's feeling much better now that she's on antibiotics, but I spent a few days there trying to figure out what was going on before I dragged her back in to the doctor's office. Still not walking yet, but she is doing a new trick - she's pointing at everything. When she sees something that she finds interesting or neat, she points at it and makes this little growly grunting noise that makes me call her "gila monster" and smiles a huge smile when I tell her what it is. She also points at my plate no matter what meal we are eating and says "ah! ah! ah!" like a little baby bird, making it painfully clear that she wants what I'm having, thankyouverymuch.



Okay, that's it! That's all I have to say tonight. We're in for up to 15 inches of snow this weekend. Call me crazy, but I'm pretty excited about it. I hope it's a big, wet snow so that we can go out and make a giant snowman family.

Clarifications and Calendars

This is just a quickie because I still have to go clean up the kitchen, then work on preparing some things for the new class I'm teaching starting this week. I just wanted to clarify that I didn't *hate* the Knit-Out yesterday, and on some levels I did enjoy it. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the kind of knitters the event was aiming for - they're just not me.

There were several comments lamenting the non-presence of smaller yarn companies. There was one booth at the Knit-Out staffed by eight of the local yarn shops who are members of the TNNA. They were handing out coupons good for 50% off any one item at any of the stores for this week only. I took one, and will be buying something at the Yarnery when I'm there for my class on Thursday - maybe a book, maybe one of the pretty bags I'm always eyeing and never ponying up the cash for. Probably not more yarn right now, as I'm feeling a bit flush at the moment.

Also, we have a couple of awesome events to look forward to this spring which will more than satisfy those local-vendor cravings. April 21 is the MN Knitters' Guild Yarnover event at Arlington High School in St. Paul, and even if you're not signed up for a class, I highly recommend that you go for the marketplace. As far as I know, it's free to go in just to see the market. There are tons of regional vendors - local yarn shops as well as yarn suppliers and designers. It's like our own miniature Stitches (although I've never been to Stitches, so I could be confused.) The best part is looking around at all the capital-K Knitters who will be wearing their beautiful garments and are happy to talk to you about them. This event is all about "my" kind of knitter. The classes are awesome, too, and it's not too late to sign up if you haven't already.

Don't forget Shepherd's Harvest, up at the Lake Elmo fairgrounds in May. There are lots of vendors there for knitting and spinning and all things fiber-y, plus you get to see the animals and eat kettle corn and sheep cheese. It's kind of like our much smaller version of Rhinebeck, at least as I imagine Rhinebeck. And it's a great place to run into awesome knitters. I'm really quite disappointed that I won't be making it to Shepherd's Harvest this year.

We've been invited to a wedding, and Julie is going to be a flower girl. Actually, if I have any readers in the L.A. area who would like to get together around Mother's Day weekend, it might be possible for me to get away for a couple of hours and do a little yarn crawling. I would love to have a shopping partner with whom to check out a store or two while I'm there.

Finally, this is going back a few days, but someone commented about how we took away Julie's toys admonishing me not to tell her she is a horrible kid. If you read my blog and pay attention to how I talk about my kids, I hope it should be clear by now that I would never say such a thing to one of my girls. That's just not how we operate around here. Also, I want to make it clear that she still has more toys available than she knows what to do with, and she still seems quite happy playing with what's out. I only cleared out the toys in the main floor living space - the upstairs is still full of toys, and the basement looks like a toy store exploded. When I'm down there, I look around and wonder how the hell we managed to acquire so much stuff for them. Julie really is all about imaginative play, and I think she could find a way to be happy with almost no toys because she will just re-appropriate whatever objects are around and pretend that they are whatever props she needs for the story she is telling that day.

Yes, I realize that she is still very small and that even teenagers don't always pick up after themselves. I remember what it was like myself. I'm just trying to set up some positive patterns now, break the cycle of frustration that I kept finding myself in, and make it easier to enforce the rules about picking up after ourselves until it becomes more of a habit.

Okay, it's getting late. Must go get to work!

Knit-Out!?!

The girls (Julie and Sophie) and I made it to the Knit-Out this afternoon. This is an event that I really would have preferred to attend on my own, but Joe had some work to do in our upstairs bathroom that had already been put off too long.

Both of our bathrooms are ugly, ugly rooms that deserve to be gutted and completely renovated, but since we don't have the extra 10 grand apiece and since they are mostly functional, we are waiting for a day when there is more disposable income to fix them. In the mean time, some of the tiles around the outside of the shower had come loose, and Sophie had developed an alarming habit of sitting outside the shower while I was in it, picking first at the loose grouting and then at the tiles themselves till they came off, exposing disgusting rotten adhesive material behind it and leaving little bits of debris falling on the floor. Alarming, indeed. I had been doing my best to keep her out of there altogether, but once one tile came off, several more were quick to follow and nothing happened last weekend because of the birthday party and my working. Oh, and the bathroom is sandwiched between the nursery and the room where Julie sleeps, so it's not like he could do this work on a week night.

In any case, a trip to the mall with the girls to check out the Knit-Out was more appealing to me than a day at home with the girls missing the Knit-Out and keeping them out of Joe's way. I don't like to be around when Joe is doing this kind of work anyway, because there is usually some cursing and angry stomping around involved. It took some coercing to get Julie out the door, and we finally arrived at the mall a little after noon.

I am of a couple of minds about this Knit-Out business. I am excited that there is a big knitting event in such a public venue - it was highly entertaining to eavesdrop on the muggles (as Stephanie calls them) trying to figure out what the hell was going on, pondering in amazement that there could be so many kinds of yarn and people crowding in line to look at and touch it. It was fun to glimpse and even briefly chat with a few knitting celebrities - I spoke with Annie Modesitt for a few minutes, welcoming her to town; and I saw Vickie Howell and Lily Chin hanging around, and could have approached them if I could have thought of anything particularly interesting to say to them. Both of them are interesting and admirable in their success - they are obviously both creative and energetic. From what I've seen, though, I don't think I would want to make any of their designs. They're just not, as far as I can tell, *my* kind of knitters.

On the positive side, I did run into a couple of local knitting friends that I admire greatly and had nice little chats with them, and I got to meet a couple of my lovely readers who said nice things to me that made me laugh - things about how well I seem to handle life and the girls and stuff. Oh, and it was all the more entertaining after the morning I had just had convincing Julie that we *were* going to the mall even though she desperately wanted to stay home with Daddy. Even more so because I was standing there alternately ignoring Sophie's whiny squirming and handing her crackers to appease her. I also got to show off the blankie a few times, both to people who knew me and to random strangers who caught glimpses of it and asked. There were a few knitters to seemed a bit blown away by it - I think the combination of size, tiny stitches, variety of yarns, and technique which they'd never seen before.

On the not-so-positive side, the whole thing had an overly commercial feeling to it. It was all booths from the giant yarn and publishing companies, with no involvement whatsoever from the local knitting community. The whole thing seemed to be about standing in long lines waiting to be handed free, and I hate to say this, but mostly junk. I did not stand in the lines because I didn't want the skein of acrylic yarn or the pattern leaflets or even the giant Lion Brand tote bag. I did pick up a few freebies - a couple copies of magazines that I don't subscribe to. But even those, on closer inspection, simply confirmed that I wouldn't want to subscribe. Most of the things I saw at the event seemed to be watered down for the masses. It sounds so harsh as I type it, but that was my experience.

I feel so elitist talking about this, but one example is the Kool-Aid dyeing demo I had been looking forward to. I was expecting to see a rainbow of colors and multiple projects knit up with the yarn. I was hoping to see something done in self-striping or perhaps even something I just hadn't thought of yet. What I saw instead were a few skeins in a couple of colors, and one very small project - a simple clutch bag. The presentation certainly covered the basics, and I'm sure introduced the concept to plenty of people who had never heard of it. There just wasn't anything present that I hadn't seen done many times around the blogosphere already.

In any case, we had a decent time. Julie likes eating in the food court, even if she gets mostly food packed from home. She also got to play at Legoland for a bit, even though it was weekend-crowded. The girls were tired when we made it back to the car, and both fell asleep on the way home. I pulled into the garage, and perhaps the nicest part of my day was sitting in the car with them as they slept, knitting on the lace scarf for a while before Julie woke up and we came inside. To my great pleasure, Joe had finished his patch-up job in the bathroom and it looked far better than it ever had since we've owned the place.

Blankie Friday

By popular demand (okay, three people asked for it) I'm posting a ton of pictures tonight. All of the following pictures can be clicked on to see the full-resolution version. If this doesn't satisfy your blankie craving, I don't know what will, short of me packing it up and mailing it on a world tour. That ain't gonna happen! I will try to get a picture of the blankie with one or both of the girls in/on/around it for next week. Hopefully I'll have more squares to show off by then.



It's been two weeks since I posted an updated square count, and it's very sad. Only 16 new squares. I've been busy with other small projects. And stuff. Lots of stuff.

Scattered

Scattered is how I feel today. A combination of factors has led me to this recurrence of a not-unfamiliar state of being.

I'm feeling physically much better after last week's mastitis, although I'm still taking the antibiotics and will be for a while more. I hate taking antibiotics if I can help it, but if you're going to start a regimen of 'em, you damned sure better finish 'em, I say! I do need to remember to pick up some kefir the next time I go to the grocery store, though. Must replenish the gut flora (or is it fauna?). Anyway, the actual being sick part feels like ancient history, although I am still a little angry at someone who let me down last week in an incident related to my being sick. I'm not going to say more - this person doesn't read the blog as far as I know, but I also don't want to stir it up.

At some point during the day today, our web server crashed or something, and Joe couldn't fix it till he got home from work. So, if you were looking for me earlier and couldn't get through, that's why. I felt especially bad when I realized this was going on because I hadn't blogged the last couple of nights. It was just that by the time I finished the bare minimum chores and landed on the couch, I was too exhausted to string a coherent thought together and I really wanted to do some knitting. But I'm here now!

Speaking of knitting, I'm going to do a separate blankie update post in a minute, but I will show you the FO I've been working on this week.



This is not the best picture in the world, and I actually took it a couple nights ago when the third clog was still not quite right. I had to knit three because somehow I managed to knit the second one in the wrong size - but at least realized that before I knit up the second sole for it. Then, I knit the third one and knit the outer sole on wrong so had to rip and redo that part. This would have been a super-quick project if I hadn't been so....scattered. As I was ripping and re-knitting, I sat there feeling grateful that it was me doing the extra knitting and spending one extra evening at it instead of my friend, the mom of the child who's getting them. It would have taken her at least an extra... week? month? Anyway, they're done, and I am going to gift them unfelted so that the mom and child can have the fun of shrinking them as a little project. I just need to run by the craft store and get some paint for the bottoms and then they will be all set to go to their new home. Hopefully, I'll get permission to show you a picture of the truly finished project when it's completed. Little M was here the other day and ran around wearing one of Julie's clogs, so I know she is excited to get her own. That's a happy thought.

So anyway, a couple of other things that had me all wound up today. Really, it's been building. Julie has been refusing to pick up her toys. I've tried all kinds of tactics to get her involved in picking up from singing songs, physically directing her to the problem areas, instructing her piece by piece, and finally threatening that either she start picking them up or I will pick them up and put them away where she can't have them for a while. Different tactics have worked with varying success over the last couple of years, as age and mood have dictated. But it's come to a head. The kid is three and a half years old and this is something we've been working on since she was under one. I'm tired of having a toy explosion throughout my entire house, and I'm tired of coming down the stairs after bed time every night and spending half an hour putting toys away, struggling to find all the pieces and keep them sorted out so that they're playable.

Julie has a habit of re-purposing toys and using them for very creative imaginative play that is really cool, but creates a huge mess. Anything with a collection of small parts (like a puzzle or a set of alphabet magnets) becomes some kind of food or just fodder for stuffing into a container and carrying around or sprinkling across the floor in some game she's invented. On the one hand, it's fun to watch and listen to. On the other hand, it's extremely frustrating when she moves on to the next game and doesn't want to pick up the mess. I'm sick of it! We have WAY too many toys anyway. I finally had enough today after I asked her to help me pick up and she flat-out refused, even when I said "Come pick up now or I will pick up for you and take the toys away for a week." ARGH!

After bed time tonight, Joe and I - mostly Joe because I was busy doing another chore - gathered up all the toys, organized them so the pieces of each were as together as possible (where does she hide the missing pieces?) and packed about 90% of them away. There are only a few toys left out in our living room - enough that the girls both have something to do, but few enough that keeping things neat will be more enforceable. I'm still thinking about how Julie is going to earn some of the other ones back. We may have to set up some kind of rotation where we put one away for everyone we bring back out. There are also still buttloads of additional toys upstairs and in the basement, so don't think the kids are in any way deprived. We talked about this with Julie before bedtime as well, so it's not going to be a total shock when she comes down in the morning.

All this week has been kind of a rough one for me and the girls. Sophie has been quite clingy and doesn't want me to put her down. I know she's working on teeth, and the constipation problem is still ongoing. It's hard to get her to eat the stool softener when she isn't consistently interested in drinking juice or eating pureed solids. When she takes it, life is better. When she doesn't, it is very sad. Carrying around a 20-pound baby non-stop is draining, and makes it all the harder to go around picking up toys strewn around by her sister.

Julie has also been a bit off - she didn't eat her dinner one night, so the next morning she melting down almost from the moment she woke up until I managed to get her dressed and down stairs to eat breakfast. That morning she sat and ate for 45 minutes straight: half a pear, an apple, sausage, corn flakes, peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a couple of clementines, milk and a vitamin and she was still asking for more. I had to cut her off because we were already half an hour late for school. Jebus!

I think that's all my whining done with. Now, here's a cut picture of the girls on Valentine's day:



It only took about 20 shots to get the one decent image. I loves my digital camera.

Speaking of Valentines' day, I really wanted to do an anti-Valentine's Day-hate post. I mean, I pretty much agree with Stephanie's take on V-Day, but I couldn't believe all the I-hate-Valentine's-Day posts out there in the blogosphere. Valentine's Day to me means cheap little cards that come in packets of 30 that you pass around to your friends at school. It means the chocolate covered strawberries my father used to buy us when we were kids (heaven!) It means cutting out heart shapes and maybe using a bit of glitter or string to put up decorations. Yes, there are plenty of bad things about the day, but what's wrong with spreading a little cheer with a frou-frou holiday in the middle of the coldest month of the year?

Of course, I have a nice, dependable Valentine who left me a nice prezzie on the counter before he left for work.



That's a bottle of Sweet Toofs from FlapFlapFly, and they're very cute. Joe loves buying little artsy collectibles, and I make a great excuse for it. That's one of the things I happen to love about him.

Anyway, tomorrow is the last class in my current Fair Isle series, so I baked up a pile of chocolate chip cookies for my students and self-medicated by eating several hot out of the oven with a nice cold glass of milk. Now if I can just get the blankie post written, I may even have a few minutes for knitting before bed.

Oh, and yes, the Harlot is coming to the Yarnery on April 4. She's going to speak at the William Mitchell College of Law auditorium at 7, then sign books at the store afterwards. There should be plenty of room for everyone - the managers at the store are planning how to manage the crowds and are even considering handing out tickets for timeslots at the signing so you won't have to stand in line for too long. Say, come back between 8 and 8:15 and then people who are in the next time slot can go have a treat at Cafe Latte or something while they wait. Squee!

In the mean time, I think the girls, the blankie and I will be at the Knit-Out at the Mall of America at some point in the afternoon on Sunday. I want to check out the presentation on dyeing with Kool-Aid, among other things. If you're going to be there and you want to meet up, or if you just happen to spot us, don't be shy! Say hello and I'll be happy to introduce you to both the girls and the blankie.

Belated Thanks and Birthday Pics

Mega thanks have been in order for several days now, and I've been remiss in ponying up. The whole mastitis-trying-to-plan-and-execute-birthday-party business has kept me from having the time and energy to do it properly. But now I have a night off, the girls are in bed, I am on the couch with my laptop. I have the box full of goodies at my feet and have been fondling them for the last ten minutes.

Here are the contents of my final gift package from my SP9 pal:



Most exciting for me was the card. I couldn't wait to find out who has been sending me awesome stuff for the last few months. The gifts I've received have so incredibly exceeded my expectations, even before I found out this final package was on its way. Now she's just gone too far. The lovely person responsible for all this is Kelle of KP Knits. Kelle, it's great to finally "meet" you. It sounds like you had a very busy fall with the moving and all the house-related stuff. I am indeed going to be knitting lace for the foreseeable future!

In this final gift package, Kelle included some awesome skin care products from Heal My Hands. How did you know that my hands have been cracked to the point of bleeding for the last month? I didn't think I whined about that particular affliction on the blog, but maybe you saw my ragged hands in one of the pictures. In any case, I'm wearing the hand cream now and it's lovely. I like the light, earthy scent with a touch of clove and cinnamon spice.

There is a kit from Artisan in New Zealand for a lace weight scarf in beautiful blue, green and purple merino - and three patterns from which to choose. With it is a pair of Bryspun needles in the right size. Oh, I love Bryspun needles with their funky concave curved points and their squishy texture! Damn you, Kelle! I so want to start this kit right now, but I've already started the scarf from the luscious yarn you sent me a couple months ago. But, um, I'll manage somehow. Thanks for the kit. Did you pick this up at Rhinebeck too?

Finally, there is an amazing skein of Cherry Tree Hill merino lace weight in the most gorgeous colorway. It's freakin' huge - eight ounces and 2400 yards! As I was standing there gobsmacked, staring at this giant skein of beautiful yarn, the thought crossed my mind that maybe I could make a sweater out of it. Yes, I think I may be a bit crazy. But wouldn't it be fun to come up with some beautiful lace pattern for a sweater that could be classic and dressy and elegant? Hm. I've plenty of time to think about it since with all the other lace I've got in my cue now (thanks, Kelle!). So I'll be dreaming for a while before I can implement.

Kelle, thanks so much for the fun. My great experience with gifts from you and buying for Rosie has convinced me to go ahead and sign up for Secret Pal 10. I'll have to do the questionnaire soon, and in the mean time, if you want in on the fun, it's open for sign-ups till the end of the month.

Now, here are the pictures from last night.

Before the party started, here's the "birthday cake". Cupcakes make for easy serving. My decorating skills leave a little something to be desired, but they were fun.



It's a korean tradition to dress babies up in han-boks on their first birthday with these things that are decorated to look like piles of candy. There's a ceremony of some sort that's supposed to go along with it, one that involves predicting the child's future depending on which of a set of objects they reach for. In our case, since the in-laws have been responsible for organizing this part of the fun, we've always ended up with just the photo op. Still, it's pretty cute. Joe's parents came up with a beautiful dress for Julie in her size, and Sophie is wearing the one that Julie wore on her first birthday.





Here's the little cake-eater. The one she had on Thursday didn't have any frosting on it, so I think she was a little confused at first with this one.



But she figured it out pretty quickly. God, it was cute. Thanks to Jen for taking a bazillion pictures.



Finally, here we are opening gifts. All the little girls were very excited and crowded around to "help."



I'm off to knit on the blankie for an hour before bed.

Marking My Calendar

Tonight we celebrated Sophie's birthday with our extended family and a family of friends that may as well be extended family they're so nice and enjoyed by all of us. It was a good time, but a lot of work all day to prepare and Joe is still just finishing up in the kitchen as I type. Sophie decimated another cupcake - the girl loves her chocolate! I'll post pictures when I get around to getting them off the camera. This post isn't really about the party. I wanted to post last night, because there is something I am *very* excited about, but was too busy and tired after doing all my busy.

So I was teaching my class yesterday at the store where I teach, and I am so loving this particular class because all my students are so nice and I had been away from teaching for more than a month, and it is very good to be out and with knitters and not responsible for my children for just a few hours. But I was at the store, and I heard some news about an upcoming event that made me jump up and down squealing with delight and excitement. This is very reliable news - it came directly from one of the people planning the event. She said that it should be really public news within the next few days, and I have been clicking refresh over and over on a certain website to see if the knitting celebrity involved has made her announcement. I just checked again - she still hasn't. I'm not going to say who it is because I promised I wouldn't. But if you know me very well, I'll give you one guess!

So mark your calendars. April 4 in St. Paul. It's very exciting.

And all this excitement got me thinking about the other fibery events coming up in my relatively near future.

First, next weekend is the Knit-Out at the Mall of America. Both Saturday and Sunday pretty much all day. There will be all kinds of knitting celebrities there (although not the one that I was just talking about above.) and it sounds like they'll have plenty of fun things to do and see. I don't think I'm going to make it over there on Saturday since my knitting class is smack in the middle of the afternoon, but maybe I can go on Sunday for a bit, even if it means dragging some or all of the family with me.

The Minnesota Knitters' Guild has an appealing topic for next month's meeting. It's on March 20, and the topic is how to dye your own self-striping sock yarn. Now, I've already figured out how to do this in my own rudimentary way, but I would love to hear someone else's take on it and see their results. I may have to find a way to make it to that one.

On April 21, it's Yarnover, which is another guild event. It's all-day lessons and marketplace at a local high school. The guild has been doing this event forever, and we attract some pretty awesome, nationally known teachers. Meg Swansen will be there, and Annie Modesitt is giving the keynote speech as well as teaching this year. I got my first choice in classes when I signed up - it's an all day class on hand painting yarn. I'm looking forward to the class, but also to just hanging out with guild people that I don't see very often any more since I rarely make it to a meeting these days, and of course shopping the market place.

Ah, shit! I literally just said that out loud. I was just looking at the web site for the Shepherd's Harvest Sheep and Wool Festival, which I go to every year and love. I was checking the dates (May 12 and 13) and realized that I have an event scheduled that weekend that so profoundly conflicts I won't be able to go this year. Bummer. But if you like knitting or spinning or other fibery goodness, you should totally go.

Anyway, lots of fun events to look forward to that don't involve me cooking and cleaning for large groups of people. I hope to see some of you there!

Tired and Crabby Blankie Friday

Just under the wire again...tonight involved dinner, bathtime for the girls, running off to the grocery store after working up a list, coming home and putting everything away including a dishwasher full of clean - well, you know, dishes. Then, I got to shift around some laundry, fold a couple of loads, and what do you know, suddenly it's 11:15 and I haven't written my blog entry yet. Welcome to my freakin' world and happy Friday night. I need to hurry this up, too, because I want to get to bed because I have to get up and be at the salon at 8 for a haircut. Yay! A haircut!

If I haven't bored you silly yet, let's talk about the blankie for a few minutes. Shall I answer a few questions, finally? Someone asked a while back what the measurements are in inches. It's about 54 inches wide and currently about 36 inches tall. It amuses me to no end that some of you really want to see high-resolution images of the blankie all the time, and I suppose if it makes you happy, it's no skin off my nose really. Only, I didn't take pictures tonight so you'll have to wait for new ones till next week. I didn't count new squares for the week either because the number is somewhere around four. In the mean time, here is the full-res version of last week's pic.

By the way, I still get the occasional comment asking me where I got the pattern for this thing. If you go to the main page of this here blog and scroll down far enough, you will see links to my tutorial on how to make your own blankie. I'm sure I'm forgetting someone's question and I'm sorry if I've ignored you. It's not on purpose, I'm just incredibly disorganized and tired.

I actually did have some very nice parts to my day - a playdate with some of our favorite friends, and an awesome package showed up in the mail to boot. But I'm tired. I'm ready for bed. I don't feel like messing with photos and links and stuff tonight. The good stuff will have to wait for tomorrow.

Happy Birthday, Baby

It's been a year already. My little one is a year old. Let's flash back to this day a year ago. It was cold and snowy outside, but not quite as cold as it has been this week. I woke up having contractions at 1:30 in the morning that day, and I spent all morning in labor at home. We finally headed out the door to the hospital around 11:50 - that's the time stamp on this photo. The Bradley childbirth classes taught us that if the mom can smile for one last picture on the way out the door, she's not ready to leave for the hospital. I remember actually thinking this thought as our doula took our picture, but I wasn't playing possum - I was very serious about getting through the contractions and making it to the hospital without losing my composure. It makes me laught that I insisted on leaving for the hospital wearing my purple pajamas and my big pink robe. I got a lot of stares as they wheeled me moaning through the ER that day.



Up in the room, this photo is time stamped 12:49. That hour between getting in the car and getting in the hospital bed was like a blink. I remember keeping my eyes closed for most of the time so that I could focus on relaxing and riding the waves of the contractions. I was SO relieved when they checked my cervix and I was already at 7 cm. You can't tell it, but I'm working really hard in this picture. Joe is so cute - so excited, maybe so relieved to be in the hospital with some of the responsibility off his shoulders. That is just about the happiest face I think I've ever seen on him. It's the same smile he smiled on our wedding day.



2:08 P.M. This is toward the end of the pushing - I know because I started out leaning over the back of the bed and they made me switch positions only for the last few pushes. Again, I look calm, but I was concentrating very hard on staying calm and relaxed, all but the muscles I needed to push.that.baby.OUT!



Sophie was born at 2:34 - that's the time stamp on the photo of her sliding out of my hoo-hoo. Nobody really needs to see that one - the quality of the photo is really bad anyway.

This one is at 2:46 PM - she is just over ten minutes old. God, what a rush - having that intensely scary and powerful experience over with, and in my arms a sweet, fresh, moist little human with a cute little nose that looked just like her father's. She had already nursed a bit at this point, and was very sleepy. Being born is hard work.



5:06 P.M. We spent the next couple hours snuggling with the baby while the midwife fixed a couple of tears, the nurses cleaned up the room and entered data in the charts. Joe had just called in an order to a sandwich place for some food - we were both starving! I stood there taking pictures while the nurse gave Sophie her first bath. Look how chubby she is in this picture! I don't think I've ever seen her look so angry since then, either.



I had to ask Joe to come take the camera so I could sit down because I was feeling lightheaded. That was when the nurses realized I was hemorrhaging and a few more hours of scary shit went down. I remember feeling pretty calm about the whole thing - not scared, just in a lot of pain as they started to work on me right there in the room. The drugs they were using to numb me weren't working, and I was so relieved when they finally decided to haul me down to the OR. Looking back, the overall recovery from that surgery was far more painful and difficult than that from my c-section with Julie. But each birth experience is different. Thankfully, Sophie slept the whole time I was gone, and I spent the rest of that night alternately dozing and holding her, nursing her and just staring at her, kissing that cute little nose. The detailed birth story is here.

Flashing back to today...It was a pretty normal Thursday with a few exceptions. I'm feeling a little better today, but still tired and sore. While Julie was in pre-school this morning, Sophie and I went to the party supply store and picked up her balloons. I had five from Julie's birthday that I refilled, plus I bought two more. The girls had a lot of fun playing with the balloons this afternoon, but I didn't really get any pictures of that I'm afraid. Maybe tomorrow.

When Joe came home from work, we took the girls down to the basement to see Sophie's gift. The birthday girl got the first ride.



Then Julie took a turn. We knew Julie would be very excited about this gift, and oh, yes, she was.



Sophie was just as happy to ride on the tractor for a while, and now she can actually push it with her feet and make it go. When did that happen?



They played down in the basement while I made dinner, and after dinner I brought out the cupcakes we baked this afternoon.



Sophie surprised me with how quickly she shredded hers and ate it. She really liked it, and probably would have eaten the whole thing if I had let her sit there long enough. That's my girl!



Happy Birthday, Baby. Mama loves you.

Human Milk Factory

It has not been a terribly wonderful day in the life of this human milk factory. I woke up feeling so achy that this time when Joe asked "Do I need to stay home?" I answered "Yes, please." And I struggled with the misplaced guilt of letting go my parenting duties all day long.

One half of me told myself I should be up helping out, that I should get up and tell Joe to go on in to work for the afternoon, that laying in bed is lazy and maybe I'm being overly dramatic. Then, after some Tylenol, a couple more hours of sleep and nursing the baby again because when Human Milk Factory is part of your job description you don't get to take the day off from that, I dragged myself downstairs for some breakfast and to try to help with the kids for a bit. Lo and behold, there really was a reason why Joe had stayed home. I still had the throbbing headache that boomed even louder when I leaned down to pick up a child or a toy. My whole body did still ache, and I was exhausted beyond comprehension.

Every time I put my left arm down at my side, it felt like I had something tucked under it - like maybe my wallet or a folded dish towel. Nope, just a swollen milk duct. I was really surprised, since I remember the other times I've had mastitis feeling almost immediately better after starting the antibiotics - the kind of immediately better where you start to wonder if you were really sick in the first place even though you know you so desperately were. Not today. I'm still feeling pretty crappy. I even went back to bed for a few more hours this afternoon, and laid there listening to a book on tape while drifting in and out of consciousness. It was the Time Traveller's Wife, and I've just started it so I have a feeling I will need to start at the beginning again.

There were many moments during the day today when I wondered if there is some other malady that presents as mastitis but is really some horribly incurable deadly disease. Like a fast spreading cancer or some crazy virus. I know I am not the only person who has a hidden hypochondriac that comes out when they are sick. But I think maybe I'm starting to mend, and I know that a big part of what I needed was some rest. It's very hard to take a day off work when you're a stay at home mom, but Joe did an awesome job of keeping the kids downstairs.

Tomorrow is Sophie's first birthday, and I have done next to nothing to prepare for it. The party's not till Sunday, but I feel we should mark the actual day with some small celebration. I sent Joe out this afternoon to buy her present, and in the morning maybe Sophie and I can pick up some balloons while Julie is in pre-school. The mylar kind, which last forever and are safer for little kids. I have a little video of Julie on her first birthday with one of her balloons - here it is on You Tube:



Sophie is nowhere near that kind of walking yet, and it's interesting comparing the two girls at this milestone. Julie was saying several words and full-on walking by the time she turned one - you can hear her saying "buh! buh!" in the video, which was her version of balloon for a long time, and Sophie is still happily cruising and has said Mama only a couple of times. The range of "normal" is so wide, and I am not at all worried. Sophie is such a happy baby, and obviously healthy and on her way to the same milestones. Perhaps I have been a little bit less in her face with reading books and singing songs and over-the-top parenting than I was with Julie, but then again, she is not screaming constantly as Julie was, she gets the benefits of playing with her big sister every day, and she *is* perfectly happy.

This has been quite the ramble of a post! I'll share with you a quick and dirty picture of the knitting I did last night:



This is the first in the pair of clogs for our little friend - it's waiting for me to knit on the outer sole. I took a little packet of yarn swatches to hand off to them in the school parking lot the other day - Julie and M go to school in the same building at the same time on Mondays, so I often run into them in the parking lot after dropping Julie off. Apparently, it took quite some time for M to choose the colors she wanted for her clogs. She picked the pink and the orange, and unfortunately I didn't have enough pink on hand to do the big parts, so I added the green for the soles.

Now I am going to sit on the couch for a while and will my body to mend so that Joe can go back to work tomorrow and I can begin to think about all the work that needs to be done between now and Sunday so that we can celebrate Sophie's birthday properly.

Mastitis

I don't have much of interest to say today. I'm sick again - this time with the fun, fun, flu-like symptoms of mastitis, along with of course the painful burning lump in my boobage. I've seen the doctor. I have a prescription. It will be better soon.

In the mean time, I have a headache. I am going to sit like a lump on the couch and watch a DVD while I start knitting those clogs for my little friend.

Instant Gratification FO!

Giant projects like the blankie are wonderful in their own way - they are very satisfying in the long term, that's for sure. In the mean time, I needed a little instant gratification, and I also needed to keep my hands warm. We live in an old house with some drafty windows, and normally it's not much of a problem, but the temperatures have been sub-zero F all week.

I started these fingerless mitts on Friday afternoon, took this picture of the first one on Saturday morning:



And Joe took this picture of the finished pair this morning. What a quick knit, and I'm wearing them right now.



Here are the stats.

Yarn is Aisha Celia Designs wool - somewhere between sport and worsted weight handspun. Size three needles. The pattern is by my friend Jean Christensen and is available at the Yarnery. This is a great little pattern - perfect for a quick gift, a great way to use a single small skein of yarn.

I do plan to get back on the blankie wagon tonight, but there is another small project on the horizon for this week. One of Julie's little friends, M, has had her eyes on Julie's felted clogs since I knit them, and asked her mother in the sweetest way to knit her a pair. M's mom does know how to knit, but still hasn't finished the socks I helped her start some time over the summer. Well, she hasn't made it to the heel on the first sock yet. I want M to have the clogs while she can still get some use out of them this winter (because M is a sweet child and deserves nice warm feet). I also don't want M's mom to be frustrated with the fiddly short-rows that comprise this pattern, along with all the weird picking up and knitting together involved. It's hard to have a knitting lesson while watching four kids at the same time. Mostly, it's wonderful to knit something for someone you care about and will appreciate it, and these will only take me a couple of evenings to whip up.

Here are some pictures of our quiet weekend at home. The girls love helping me fold the diapers.



The diapers are looking pretty ratty. These are the diapers that I bought before Julie was born, and we've washed them at least once a week since then, so it's no surprise that they're falling apart. They are still functional, though, and nobody sees them under the clothes.



The girls sometimes play together so well, it just makes my heart melt. Julie was helping Sophie open this box so she could play with some blocks. I don't even think the word "MINE!" was used once during this conversation.



I stuck my head around the corner this afternoon and saw this scene. This is so typical for weekends around here. So sweet.




And, of course, Julie says "Take my picture too!"



Now, excuse me while I sit and watch the Superbowl commercials. We videotaped it especially so I could skip through the boring parts and watch the good stuff. Oh, and there was the whole missing the second half because of dinner and bedtime. I can't believe I'm admitting this next part to the world, but we saw a Pizza Hut commercial with the cheezy pocket crust. We hate Pizza Hut, but right now we are waiting for our cheezy crust pizza to show up so we can eat it.

Oops - Can't Forget Blankie Friday!

I almost forgot to post an update on the blankie - probably because there's not much to show for the week (what's new?). The tally is eleven for the week. Remember, I'm supposed to be trying for about 21 squares a week. Oy. I don't even want to think about how far behind I am. I'm still going to aim for three a day as my goal, but it's looking a bit dismal for getting to the State Fair with it this year if I continue at my current rate.

That said, I am more than halfway done with the thing, and I did spend an evening plus a bit weaving in ends. Here's the picture.



Oh, and by the way - somehow this happened this afternoon. It really didn't take that long - these mitts knit up incredibly fast. It was really hard to take this picture, and this was the best I could do as far as showing off the stitch definition. The colors here aren't quite right. I still love this yarn, but I'm afraid it's one of those that looks better in the skein than it does knit up. Hopefully it will look a bit less muddy in the stockinette portion. These are meant for me to wear around the house, though, so I'm confident I'll be happy with them as they are either way.

Silent Poetry Day

I'm going to admit something here. Just putting it out there. I like to think of myself as somewhat of an intellectual. Someone who, despite being on the mommy track and living in the world of poopie diapers (sometimes unfortunately the lack thereof) and what's for dinner and how *do* I entertain these children for the next three hours till my husband comes home, does think a bit more than average about the world around her.

I do like to read. I love prose, fiction, nonfiction, all kinds of genres. I have just never been one to sit down and enjoy a nice book of poetry, though. There you have it. I am a member of the great unwashed. The shame.

Then I got to thinking about it a bit. Music lyrics count as poetry, right? Maybe I can just share the words to one of my favorite songs.

Here are the lyrics to Keep on the Sunny Side of Life as sung by June Carter Cash.

Well there's a dark and a troubled side of life.
There's a bright and a sunny side too.
But if you meet with the darkness and strife,
The sunny side we also may view.

Keep on the sunny side, always on the sunny side,
Keep on the sunny side of life.
It will help us every day, it will brighten all the way,
If we keep on the sunny side of life.

Oh, the storm and its fury broke today,
Crushing hopes that we cherish so dear.
Clouds and storms will in time pass away.
The sun again will shine bright and clear.

Keep on the sunny side, always on the sunny side,
Keep on the sunny side of life.
It will help us every day, it will brighten all the way,
If we'll keep on the sunny side of life.

Let us greet with a song of hope each day.
Though the moments be cloudy or fair.
Let us trust in our Saviour always,
To keep us, every one, in His care.

Keep on the sunny side, always on the sunny side,
Keep on the sunny side of life.
It will help us every day, it will brighten all the way,
If we'll keep on the sunny side of life.

If we'll keep on the sunny side of life.


I know, it's funny that a heathen such as myself would love a song so much that refers to putting ourselves in the hands of a Saviour. That particular line doesn't do much for me, but I don't care. The song as a whole means a lot to me - I love the words, the optimism, the catchiness of the tune. This was one of the songs we had in our wedding, too, which was perfect considering the weather that day - an awful storm involving heavy rain and hail up till about half an hour before the outdoor ceremony, which cleared off and left a beautiful afternoon for us just in time.

Catching up Randomly

It's been a busy couple of days, and I have all kinds of things swimming around in my head to blog, so here we go...

I mailed off a pile of packages this morning. It felt good to get them on their way to their new homes. One pile of yarn is still sitting in my office looking for a good home. It really wants someone to love it, knit it up into a baby sweater or a scarf or some other fun little project. If you participated in the recent contests and/or are someone who I either know in person or who has commented in the past and you want this yarn, send me an e-mail at shellyk at shellykang dot com with your address and first come first serve it's yours.



Speaking of mail, this came in the mail a couple of days ago. It's the Vesper sock yarn I ordered from Knitterly Things last week. Yum-yum-yum-yum-YUM! It's going to be good knitting. I want to wind it and start right now so badly, I had to force myself to stick it up on the top shelf of the cabinet where I keep my sock yarn stash. Lookie, no touchie for now. I accidentally ordered two skeins of the Love Stinks colorway. Maybe some lucky friend will get a special prezzie in the eventual future, or maybe I will knit something a little bigger than socks with it. Perhaps a sweater or pants for Sophie for the fall?



Speaking of Sophie, let's look at some cute kid pics. We've really been enjoying the basement play room. I'm only kicking myself for not having gotten it cleared out last winter, because it totally rocks to be able to say "Let's finish doing X and we can go down and play in the basement." We can easily kill a couple of hours down there, and the girls wear themselves out running (and crawling) around.

Sophie is getting closer and closer to walking, and she figured out how to push the tractor toy around. That's a happy face for a kid who's stopped up!



Julie was busy building a wall. We recently bought the book "The monster at the end of this Book" with Grover from Sesame street, and she was basically acting it out with herself as the "kid at the end of this book." God, I love this kid.



Part of the reason why I didn't post yesterday was because I wanted to write a huge rant at how poorly behaved the parents at the Eden Prairie Center play area are. Every single time we go there, I am surprised by what I see. It would be such a fun place for the kids to play if only the parents would obey the posted rules. I was so upset by what I saw there yesterday that we had to leave abruptly, and I wanted to do so without upsetting Julie. There is a kids' salon across the hall from the play area, so I decided it was a good time to go ahead and get Sophie her first haircut. I was going to wait till she turned one, but as that's only a week away, it was a good opportunity. Plus, it was a great diversionary tactic for Julie, who also got a haircut.

Sophie was pretty tired, which in this instance worked to our advantage as she sat there in a daze just taking everything in.



We didn't cut much off - just a teensy trim to even the ends up a bit. Her hair has been thinning out lately, but it's still more hair than any other one-year-old I've known. See that sweater? Yep. and Yep.



And Julie was a bit more animated. She loves getting her hair cut, and I was proud of her for letting the lady dry her hair with the blow dryer, which she is leery of. Her sweater is not hand knit - Target clearance special.



We got home today after pre-school and I started putting together lunch while the girls played. Then I heard a few suspect noises and discovered this scene.



Reminds me of this one from a couple years ago. At least Sophie didn't eat it.



Back to knitting for a moment. Remember that scarf I started? The lace one with the awesome alpaca/silk from my secret pal? Well, I had a few minutes to work on it this morning while Julie was in pre-school and Sophie was asleep in her car seat between errands. For once, I was looking at it in clear daylight and with a clear head. I knit a few rows and ran into an inconsistency I had noticed a couple of times before. I took a closer look at the charts and realized I had made a major mistake.

This pattern is one from an old issue of Piecework magazine, and the charts in the magazine were handwritten ones with weird symbols that I didn't care all that much for - see?



So I transcribed the charts to more standard symbols and a cleaner layout using Stitch Painter. Only, I guess I didn't notice the little bracket over on the right that shows you're only supposed to repeat rows 3- 13, so when I copied the repeats up the sides, I copied all the rows. I had creatively fudged the extra stitch when I came to it the first few times, so I don't think it's noticeable in the work I've done so far. Here's what I've got.



And a closeup of the edging - the problem is on both sides of the edging, but at least it's consistent and not immediately noticeable.



I suppose I could rip back. Rip back the results of maybe a month's worth of naptime knitting. But that's not really the point - if you're going to do it, you may as well do it right, and this is just the beginning of the project. If it's wrong, it would bother me for the rest of the hours I invest in it plus all the times I show it off to my knitting friends. Plus, really, the product of knitting is not just the finished item but also the enjoyment of the time spent doing it. Hm.

On the other hand, I think it looks pretty good so far. The only real problem is that the repeats won't work out to match exactly, but I'm not too worried about that. I think it could be fudged a bit at the other end - especially with the join into the trim at the end - one row plus or minus probably will not be noticeable. I don't really think this project is going to be State Fair material anyway because that category is highly competitive....but it might be....must think this through a bit.

In the mean time, it's been very cold here this week. Sitting in front of my living room window, my poor hands have been quite chilly. Suddenly, a pair of those fingerless gloves that I was poo-pooing last month sounds very attractive. And I have this yarn in my stash that's just burning to be knit.



It's handspun from Aisha Celia designs that I bought at the Craft-O-Rama in December. The pictures don't do it justice. It's luscious. It's just one skein of something like DK weight, perfect for these little mitts. I went ahead and wound it up. I'm SO tempted to cast on. Because you know I have so much extra free knitting time on my hands.



Oh, and I got a couple of pictures of my knitting group's Christmas gift exchange from a friend who was there. Lisa knit that little panda Sophie is holding!



In this picture, Sophie is wearing some reindeer antlers that I got in my prize package.



Thanks for all your concern about Sophie. For what it's worth, I took her in to the ped. today - she's going to be fine, and we got some good advice about what to do next and a prescription for something that should help.

Now I must go get some sleep!