Finally!

The computer is still not up to 100%, but most of the laundry list is cleared up. Did you know that Photoshop Elements 5.0 doesn't fully cooperate with Windows Vista Home Premium? Well, just don't try to use the organizer side of the thing and so far so good. At least I can use the editing part, which is what I want 90% of the time. Also, I seem to have lost pretty much every e-mail anyone has sent me in the last....forever. Yep. For now, at least, I can't recover my backup file. It sucks, but Outlook 2003 locks up every time I ask it to open the damned thing. I'm also going to have to figure out how to synch my Sidekick contacts back to Outlook without accidentally losing that whole mess. But anyway, if you sent me an e-mail recently and haven't heard back yet, best send it to me again, please! Barf. Enough of that boring stuff! The good news is that I have saved up all kinds of fun goodies to share with you, and here we go!

In the order that they came off the camera:

A finished object! My first pair of self-striping socks from my own hand dyed yarn. It's KnitPicks with Wilton food dyes, my own toe-up sock pattern. I am pleased.



Here's Julie being shy and reluctant when we first got to the bowling alley the other night. You should have seen her at the end - she was running down to the lane grabbing the ball - the pink one - the moment it was her turn.



Of course, one pair of socks finished, another pair of socks had to start. I cast on for a little pair for Julie out of the small skeins I dyed at class last week. I'm glad I'm doing toe-up, because it's going to be barely enough and the cuffs are either going to be very short or I am going to have to add some other yarn in at the top. Julie did a good job letting me try it on her foot, and of course Sophie wanted to be involved.



Julie was having a little party with her friends at home the other day. I have a fun little video of it to share with you, but I am so sick of looking at the computer it's going to have to wait for another night. I've been thinking of designating a certain day of the week home video day. I'm thinking maybe Sunday nights so those of you who go to bed early can get up on Monday morning and have a nice start to your work week. That's a homemade magic want Julie's holding. She made the star in school and the teachers had her put it on as a necklace, but the moment she got home she had us snip it off and asked me to help her make a wand for it to go on. More about that when I introduce the video.



Sophie was stuffing her face with strawberries the other day, and it was just so cute. I take way too many highchair photos, I know. But look at the happy face and the chipmunk cheeks!



Here's a picture of the computer. Look! A new mouse! It's a Microsoft wireless model, and so far I'm loving it. It works really well, and I don't have that giant wire to drag around when I move the computer. Also, one of the first things I did when I got the thing up and running again was change the desktop wallpaper. Toshiba has some butt-ugly default wallpaper.



I got a schweet little package in the mail today from Suzanne in Pennsylvania. Suzanne, I would link to you if I had your URL, but my stupidity ate all my e-mail history. Please comment with it and I will edit the post to reflect your lovely self. I'll have you know, it's not reflected in tonight's pictures, but I've already knit two of your yarns into the blankie, and may add the glittery one next, as soon as I look up whether it's superwash or not. The cotton ones are also beautiful, and I've added them to that stash. Thanks.



And speaking of the blankie, here are your long-awaited pictures! I am so sorry it's been so long. I'm counting 35 new squares in the two weeks since I posted a picture. That's 2.5 squares a day, and not too shabby considering that I have a busy life. I'm still within a reasonable schedule. I'm just another row or so away from having a square blankie, which will make me 2/3 done. Yay for milestones! Click on the picture for the full-res version.





Hey look! See the turquoise and blue square right between the two big ones? That's yarn that my dyeing teacher gave me!



Hey look! See the blue, burgundy and brown square second from the right in this picture? That's from those socks I just showed you.



Oh, and did I mention that I got my Sidekick 3 back in the mail? I am so happy! I missed my little buddy. I am so addicted to constant e-mail connection. It's sad, really. But I just realized that some of the recent e-mails are on there, and therefore I can respond to a few comments.

Emily, yes, I did try all kinds of software for the DVD player before resorting to wiping the hard drive. It was an issue with the DVD driver, and even after uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers it was still doing this thing. The Toshiba tech thought it had something to do with the version of Quicktime I had installed, and so I'm going to be very leery about installing Quicktime again any time soon. DVDs are working just fine right now. I've had Sesame Street A Musical Celebration! in there about 20 times over the last two days, checking to make sure that it still works after every new install, and I've been setting restore points out the wazoo in the hopes that if something I do does screw it up I'll be able to fix it this time. I'm also considering buying some imaging software for whole-system backups just to avoid these headaches again.

About those cookies - where did I get the idea for the cayenne? Well, cayenne and chocolate have always gone really well together since the ancient South Americans started using chocolate. Putting it in the cookies was not a very big leap. It goes really well in brownies, too. As for how much, that's up to you and your taste buds. If you like spicy, put in a bunch. If you don't like spicy, put in a tiny pinch. Just mix it in with the flour mixture before it goes into the dough mix. Use a wire whisk so it gets spread throughout. I just shake a little sprinkle in - maybe 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon - and it ends up making just a nice little afterburn of pleasure.

Oh, and Ruth - it's only the new Nestle DARK chocolate chips that are soy-free. Always check the ingredients list carefully, and save the package to show to your friend as well because sometimes allergen ingredients hide under confusing names. Also, I bet they're all made in the same facility, so if your friend is highly allergic to soy, she may still decline eating them. Enjoy Life brand of foods makes allergen-free chocolate chips, which I'm pretty sure are made in a separate facility because the whole company is aimed at allergic customers. I've tried them, and they are good too.

Oh, and about the yarn dyeing - I'm sorry, but the Rainbow barf yarn is a one-of-a kind skein. I'll never make that one up again! 40 colors - I'd have to charge $50 if I were going to make another skein of that!

Someone asked about Yarnover and how to get notice of the event and to sign up. It's open to the public, but you have to join the guild to sign up for classes. I'm a member of the guild, but I rarely make it to meetings any more because of my schedule with the kids and with teaching. I hate missing bed time. If you join the guild and pay dues by the end of a calendar year, you will get the Yarnover signup information and priority access to classes for the following calendar year (like if you paid your 2007 dues by 12/31/06, you were eligible for this year's Yarnover early signups). If you're not a member, you still have to pay membership dues before you can sign up for classes, I think. There is no fee to simply attend the marketplace, though. All the information is available on the guild website.

Meg asked why I don't weave in ends as I go on the blankie. I personally don't care for the technique where you weave the ends back and forth as you knit the next little bit on - I've tried it in this and several other projects, and it never looks as neat and lovely to me as I'd like. Also, I just don't think it's as secure as the method that I use (described ad nauseum in the tutorial for which you can find a link over there on the right somewhere). I do weave in ends every couple few weeks or so - when they start driving me crazy, or when I'm planning to take it somewhere. I don't do it square-by-square because I don't want to have to move off the couch to grab a needle and scissors, and I don't trust myself to keep needles or scissors with the blankie stuff because the kids might get ahold of them.

Alright, it's way past time for me to Back. Away. From. The. Computer.

Creeping Along

It is after 11 and Sophie is upstairs crying. I took my 20-minute turn and Joe is taking his now, so I have a limited amount of time. I'm really sorry. I was planning a real blankie Friday post today, and was actually excited about it. But I am in the throes of Windows Vista upgrading. The good news is that the DVD player on the laptop is working properly again. The bad news is that this whole process is hurry up and wait, like watching paint dry. Download something, install something, download some more somethings, reboot five hundred times, uninstall a bunch of crap that Toshiba thought I really needed pre-loaded on my computer - crap like AOL and games that connect to the internet and turn out to be shareware that they expect you to buy, and other advertisement crap.

So far I have gotten Vista and its updates installed, Office 2003 is installed and Outlook is configured, but I'm downloading updates right now. I realized late last night that I had made a critical error in my backup scheme. I had forgotten to get an up to date backup of all my Outlook crap. I have a backup from January, and I am going to lose all my new data since then. Which isn't the end of the world since my contacts haven't changed all that much and my Calendar is not *all* that full. Really, it's just the e-mail archives, and it's probably good for me that I'm not going to get to save four months of communication minutia. As long as Outlook decides to let me import the backup that I do have when it's done getting its updates.

Then, I need to install Money and Photoshop and Firefox and Stitchpainter and some drivers and I will be somewhat close to back in business again. I really thought I'd have Photoshop installed by now and was planning a nice picture post, but I'm not going to download the pictures off my camera till I can do my little dance with Photoshop the way I'm used to.

I promise you that there will be a blankie update as soon as I can make it happen without driving myself further into insanity. In the mean time, I need to go comfort a teething baby and get some sleep - I'm going to the craft fair tomorrow.

Quickie Thursday

Sorry, folks, but this one is just a quickie with no pictures. There are some great pictures on my camera, and even a finished object to report, but I have so much to do and I need to get some of the monkeys off my back.

I spent last night finally getting the patterns I had promised out the door, and as usual I had to print several of them out twice because I made mistakes in assembly. I swear, I am going to change the format on the booklet ones so I can slide 'em in to page protectors and call it a day.

Tonight, I am going to start tackling a problem with my laptop, and hopefully will have it resolved enough to post for Blankie Friday tomorrow. This is the new laptop that I just bought a few months ago, and it is still great except for one thing. The DVD player isn't working right, and every time I try to watch a movie on it the sound is all jaggedy sort of like static. I've tried all kinds of DVDs on it, and it's the machine, not the media. Toshiba gave me a work order number to send it in for repair, but I'm going to try wiping the hard drive and going back to factory settings to see if that fixes the problem first. Also, my Windows Vista upgrade came in the mail the other day, so if I get the DVD working properly, I may just try that while I'm at it, computer gods help me. Right now I'm backing up all my data in preparation for this business, and I've got about 20 more minutes to wait. Then comes the real fun!

I will share one little nugget with you. Julie got to go bowling for the first time last night. She was invited to a little friend's birthday party, and they had the bumper lanes set up with the ramp thingie that the kids just have to put the ball on top and push it down the lane. At first, she was really shy and didn't want to do it, but by the end of the night she was saying "I want to go play bowling some more!" If everything goes okay with the computer, I'll post a picture tomorrow.

Oh, also - everyone go look at page 24 of Craft magazine! The robot stained glass that I bought Joe for Christmas is in there! I was shocked when I saw it, and had to go check - it's a picture of the actual one we have hanging in our house. They're one of a kind works, and she even has a link to a picture of Joe holding it on her site. Joe's is the one at the bottom of the page. Joe was embarrassed when he saw the picture again - it's one that I'd posted here a while back - "You can see my laundry basket in the background!" In any case, the fact that the magazine wrote it up just confirms for me that it is indeed one of the coolest things ever and worth what I happily paid for it.

Self-Medication at its Finest

When you get only three or so hours of sleep because the baby (almost a toddler now, really) wakes up crying at midnight and does not go back to sleep till two or so, and then sleeps only fitfully till about 6, finally waking up for good with her feet stuck in your face (teething and snotty nose)....

When you have gotten through the day by breaking down and getting a grande skim half-caf mocha at the Starbucks drive through (gotta love the Starbucks drive through!) and then treated the girls to lunch out and done a little shoe shopping all to help make the day go a little faster...

When you give in to a little nap with the girls in the afternoon, but are still dead tired when half an hour later the preschooler announces that she is done making poopy and is ready to be wiped...

When the baby falls asleep during dinner, only to wake up on the way to bed and despite a nice warm bath and all the normal night-night routine, including the mandatory teaspoon of Motrin for the teething pain, refuses to go back to sleep and it is past her bedtime...

When the husband comes in and offers to take a turn...

Do you run downstairs and do the work that needs to be done, the work that should have been done last night? Hell, NO! If you are me, and it is today, you run down to the kitchen and mix up a batch of the best damn chocolate chip cookie dough on the planet* and you eat about five cookies' worth raw and you bake ten more cookies and while they are cooling you go back upstairs to relieve the husband.

And the baby is still crying, still agitated and still chewing on her fingers and snuffling the snot in her nose. So you leave her for a minute, you go fill a syringe with Tylenol, and you bring it back and let her suck it down (thank goodness she's decided she likes to drink the medicine these days). And now, even though you are still exhausted, you have a belly full of sugar and fat and you are calmer and have a bit more energy for a little while.

We relax together, and the baby drifts off to sleep. I lay her gently in the crib and cover her with her fuzzy blanket and creep off down the hall, down the stairs...

Down to the kitchen where my still-warm cookies are waiting for me, calling. And I went ahead and indulged in a plate of ooey gooey goodness, with a glass of cold-cold milk. And I read a few blogs and type up one of my own and I will watch a little TV and knit a little blankie and I will try to go to bed just a little bit early so that I can hope for at least a couple more hours of sleep tonight.

*My chocolate chip cookies really are to die for. When I crave chocolate chip cookies - all too often of course - no others will do at all. It's nothing special, reallly. I just follow the recipe on the back of the Nestle's chocolate chips package - and it's important because there are many other recipes out there, but they tend to use different proportions of sugar and flour. Make sure you use real, unsalted butter. Use real vanilla, and maybe splash a bit extra in there. Lately, I've been using the new Nestle dark chocolate chips which are awesome. Better yet, they don't have any soy lecithin in them like the other chocolate chips, which means that when I have them on hand I can either make cookies for Julie or just let her eat a couple out of the bag. Go ahead and throw in that cup of nuts, and make them pecans. Then, for the added extra-special super kick - mix a little cayenne pepper and cinnamon in with the flour mix. That's it. Can't buy it, most people don't use the high quality butter and vanilla and nuts, so even most homemade cookies disappoint me. And the spices mixed in - over the top! The kicker is, they're great the next day, but fresh out of the oven is the only true bliss. Uh-oh. They're calling.

Mired

I am suffering from creativity overload. Geez, I know. Poor me. There are so many things running around in my head that none of them seem to be able to find the teeny tiny window of available free time and squeeze through it. Instead, I sit down after getting the girls in bed and look at my incredibly messy office. Messy because there are so many half-finished projects loitering about. Messy because there is a constant stream of paperwork to file and process. I have to choose between trying to catch up on the most urgent family business, catching up on knitting pattern business; and fun new design thingies.

Instead, I sit here for an hour catching up on blogs and answering e-mails about playdates, then updating my Netflix queue. I must write up a to-do list and prioritize it, but I promise I won't subject you to it. Instead, I am going to subject you to random pictures from my day. You've been putting up with that for ages now anyway, so here comes a bit more!

Did I mention that the Yarnery had my baby hat pattern at their booth at Yarnover, and they sold out of all the copies they had, plus another store placed an order for some? Very exciting. Now I just have to print more out and get them shipped. Woot! And because I know some of you are going to ask, this is a picture of the baby hat, and no, I don't have an online store, but if you really want a copy and you're outside the Twin Cities, e-mail me at shellyk at shellykang dot com and we'll work something out.



The girls and I spent more time outside this afternoon. I spread out our ugly lawn blanket and tried to do a little knitting while they amused themselves in the sand box. My first hand-dyed self-striping socks are almost knit up. This is one of the many things I'm trying to ignore tonight. When a pair of socks gets this close to done, it is very hard for me to restrain myself from just working on them constantly to finish.



I've been thinking a lot about yarn-dyeing lately. More, even, than the blog would indicate. I want to do a lot more of it. Like, enough that maybe I could sell some. I know a few of you have expressed an interest in that, but I am so teetering on the brink. Am I good enough? Can I produce it quickly enough that I can make a decent return on my time? I still can't find a base yarn that I'm perfectly happy with. The Knitpicks is fine, and probably the best price for the quality I've found online without looking into wholesale prices. I still want a superwash wool/nylon fingering weight with the texture of Koigu, or at least with the texture of Regia or Opal. But even buying base yarn at the Knitpicks price, I would have to charge at least $20 a skein plus shipping to make it anywhere worth my while. Even then, we're talking less than minimum wage. If I'm going to bother dyeing yarn, I want to do multiple colors of self-striping - like at least 4 or 5 different colors of stripes. I'm just not very efficient yet, and the only way to get that way is to *do* it and figure out how to save time.

In the mean time, the girls were happily digging in the sand again. We got a good rain last night, and Julie found some earth worms in the sand box when we opened it up. I tossed them into the grass and hoped they'd recover.



Sophie is very excitedly practicing her walking skillz. She's getting better, and it is awesome to watch the look on her face as she stands up and takes teetering little steps. She is so proud of herself, so happy, so shocked to be actually doing it.



We came in when Sophie plunked herself down in my lap and continually made the sign for nursing. I put on a video tape for Julie (she is in love with a set of Disney song videos that our friends across the street loaned us. I'd be fine with that except now she is obsessed with Princesses. Help me.) This is what she looked like when I came downstairs after putting Sophie down for her nap. She was in a complete TV-induced zombie haze. It's really pretty scary to see, and the reason why I limit her TV-time to about an hour a day.



We remedied the situation by pulling out the finger paints. Every finger paint project ends up looking like the exact same thing - a brown mess entirely covering the page. But that's okay. It's the process that counts here.



Finally, a collection of some of our favorite little kid books. I borrowed them as inspiration for a little project I have brewing in my head, and Julie was very upset when she saw them in my office today. I told her I'd have them back to her when she woke up in the morning, so I just took a few pictures and they're stacked up ready to go back upstairs as promised.



You know, having too many ideas and not enough time is not always a bad thing. It does give me plenty of chance to let the good ideas ferment and bubble to the top and the less-good ideas sink back into the mire to pop up again later in a better version. If only there were a few more hours in the day!

Yarnover and Blankie

I am so utterly exhausted. I didn't end up getting to bed early last night like I planned. Instead, I stayed up late watching Borat, which is hilariously funny, and also very telling about American culture, in many cases quite unfortunate. One of the things I found most interesting was how the media handled one certain situation in the movie - the scene at the rodeo - in the news clip that was part of the extras. Anyway, I won't say more in case you haven't seen it yet.

I still managed to drag my hiney out of bed at 6:30 this morning and get out the door by 7:30. It would have been quicker, but everyone else woke up too and I wanted to help get breakfast ready for Joe to serve the girls before I left. I still managed to get over to St. Paul and into Arlington High School, where they've been holding the event these last several years, just before the keynote speech began.

What is Yarnover? Well, it's the annual event run by the Minnesota Knitter's Guild that involves all kinds of amazing knitting and fiber-y classes usually taught by the best in the field including big names from across the country. There is also a market place with vendors from all over the region - yarn shops and mills and other knitter-friendly people. It's pretty great, or at least I always have a good time. Annie Modesitt was our keynote speaker this year.

Anyway, I had signed up for an all-day class with Janette Ryan-Busch all about handpainting yarn. Let me just say that I had a great day. Janette is this awesome farm gal who does all kinds of amazing fiber stuff, along with running a farm in Iowa.



I learned a bunch of great tips on handling dyes and making pretty yarn, but even better, I had a great day just playing with the colors and watching what everyone else in the class came up with. As promised to my classmates, you can click through on the following two pictures for the full-resolution version. Then, if you want to save it to your hard drive, just click on File-Save Image As and choose a place on your computer where you want to save it.





Here are the skeins that I created today, hanging to dry at home



Janette also brought a big pile of her samples for us to see and buy, and I brought home this beautiful skein of hers. I love her dye style - very uninhibited and unstructured, and cool because she uses small bits of color seemingly randomly spread through the skein, which knits up with fewer big pools of color.



The day was also great because I got to see a lot of awesome knitting friends and acquaintances. I only wish I had more time to socialize.

A couple other quick things. I bought this really cool mug from Jennie Lanners at the marketplace today. I already have one of her bowls, and I love her work. Such cute little sheepies and yarn! I have no affiliation with Jennie, don't really know her other than having met her a couple times at fiber events in the last couple of years. I just like to give praise to awesome people where I think it is due. Go check her out!



Also, one of the things we got as gifts with our registration package were these lovely little stitch markers. They are so cute! I would seriously consider buying more to give as gifts, but it wasn't clear to me where they came from or who made them. If anyone reading here knows more about them, please give me a shout-out!



Okay, on to the Blankie update. And crap! I had a picture of the whole thing, but it somehow got deleted. You'll just have to look at the closeups for the week. Sorry to disappoint, but I will share that the blankie had a lot of fun today. Every time I pulled it out to show to a friend, it attracted a little crowd.







Now I'm going to go weave in some more ends.

Everything But Blankie Friday

Time is short tonight - I must get to bed relatively early so that I can be up and out the door at the crack of dawn for Yarnover. Woot! I get a whole day off from my family and I will be in a class on dyeing yarn, not to mention the chance to see a bunch of cool knitters and shop the marketplace.

Blankie is doing fine, no worries. I'm going to weave in a few ends tonight so I won't have as many dangling around when I show it off tomorrow (yes, I'm quite the show-off, but people to seem interested in the blankie as well.) We'll have an update tomorrow night perhaps.

Barfie sock is going to stay Rainbow Barf. Sorry, people. There's a thing about names and power. When my dear brother-in-law Dave used that phrase, it was meant as a joke, and at the time it was a sort of offhand insult that he didn't even realize he was making. My feelings were hurt at the time, but it was long ago and I've since realized that it wasn't meant hurtfully and he was just having fun. Dave is a super nice, funny guy who really means well. Over time, I see the joke and I laugh at it too. It's funny. Even though the object - then a baby blanket, now a sock - is beautiful in a certain way, it is still garish and wild and obnoxious. When you take a name that has negative power and embrace it, that power becomes positive and your own. Plus, I derive a childish pleasure from saying barf.

Now, I'm about to go off on a tangent a bit. The other day I showed you this picture:



And on that post, I got a comment from Sue, who has chosen to stay anonymous, and who has given me some unsolicited advice to the tune of "Mama, you really need to wear some eye-makeup!" Geez, Sue. Ya think? Thanks for sharing that astute observation with me and all my readers. Well, let me share my feelings with all y'all on makeup and a few other things.

1. While I'm pretty open and honest and friendly on this space, and you all know a lot about me, I keep finding myself receiving attention from readers acting as if we are old friends. The thing is, no we are not old friends. I don't know 99% of you for diddly. Yes, there are a few lovely people who comment on a regular basis, and I love you. But even those people, I wouldn't want them just dropping by the house unannounced or calling my home and asking my husband where I am or can they have my cell phone number. Think about some boundaries before you contact me, people. If I'm out in public and you see me, especially at a knitting event, by all means say hello. Feel free to send me an e-mail. And remember, you may feel like you know me, but really you know only the portion of me that I choose to share on this site and *I* don't know you at all.

2. That picture was taken in November 2004 when Julie was just over one year old. Back then, we hadn't figured out Julie's food allergies yet and she was up most nights screaming in pain for hours on end. During the days, she wanted me to hold her pretty much all the time. If I look a little tired in that picture, it's because I freakin' AM! Unlike some people, I think that if as a mom you're freakin' tired, maybe it's okay to look that way most of the time. Maybe the people around you should be able to glance over and think "DAMN! She looks tired. Maybe she needs a little help or at least commiseration." Also, when I look at that picture? I see a happy mommy and a happy baby, a very bright moment in what was often a dark time what with all the screaming and unhappy baby moments that there were back then.

3. Priorities. If I have to choose between putting on eye makeup and paying attention to my children who are tired of waiting for me to finish getting dressed and take them downstairs for breakfast, I'm probably going to go get everyone fed. On the other hand, I do insist on getting a shower pretty much every day. It helps wake me up and make me feel a bit more human.

4. I spent most of my 20s obsessed with being attractive. Working out constantly, starving myself to be thin, dyeing my hair. In those days, I didn't even go to the gym without makeup on. I looked great! People - strangers - would stop me in the street and tell me that I looked like a certain actress. I loved it. But I was also incredibly unhappy, full of self-hate that thankfully I've long since worked through and let go of. As part of that letting-go process, I kind of realized that maybe I didn't have to look beautiful on the surface at every moment. Maybe I should take off the makeup and just look like myself and see who sticks around. The people who like me for who I am will still like me, and the people who want to be with a beautiful face will drift off. For a couple of years there, I wore almost no makeup at all ever.

5. I do wear makeup sometimes. I keep it pretty minimal - I don't like looking made up, but I also do know how to apply a little so I look perkier, so my eyes are more defined, but so that most people don't even know I'm wearing any. This picture is a pretty good example.



You know? To each their own. I do my best not to walk up to strangers I see in the mall or on the street and tell them they have way too much goop on their face or for gawd's sake stop wearing so much stinky perfume. Give me a break, because I'm happy with myself. You make sure you're happy with yourself and we'll all be happy together.

Okay, and now that the mini-rant is over, I have a little something funny to admit. I dropped my mouse on the kitchen floor earlier, so now the right-click button isn't working. I just ordered a new mouse on Amazon, and it should be here early next week, but in the mean time, I'm using my right hand to scroll around with the mouse and my left hand to click the click button embedded next to my keyboard. Oy.

Also, yesterday I had to send my Sidekick 3 back to T-Mobile to get fixed. The earphone jack stopped working, and luckily it is still under warranty. It's going to be gone for at least a couple weeks, maybe more. Poor me! I love my little Sidekick, love being able to get e-mail and IMs all day every day, love being able to check my Google Reader during random moments of down time no matter where I am. The good news is that at least they gave me a loaner phone - it's just a bare-bones flip-phone, but at least I have it for emergencies and making on-the-go plans.

Okay, time to go weave in some ends. Just till this DVD is over, and then off to bed. I can hear the wool calling me. I need all the sleep I can get tonight so I can have my act together and control my credit card tomorrow.

Barfy Strikes Again!

I couldn't help myself. Last night I cast on for a Rainbow Barf sock. Somehow, I found myself halfway to the heel by noon today.



And it's fine, you know...because a girl can never have too many plain socks on the needles...



As long as the supply of size zero dpns holds out, that is. It's funny because too many projects on the needles at once generally makes me uneasy, but the more plain socks I have ready for a stream of plain old knit-knit-knit without looking - well, the more comfortable I am.

I am rather fond of my little barfy friend so far. The girls and I even took it on a little field trip to the Mall of America this afternoon. Don't ask me what we were doing at the mall on a lovely spring day. Julie asked, and as we were already out of our little Wednesday routine due to an appointment this morning, I figured what the heck.



Julie is still wearing her sunglasses whenever she can get away with it. This morning she also finally agreed to put on the awesome soccer jersey given her by "Uncle Dave" last year during the World Cup. I don't know why she hasn't wanted to wear it until now, but I do know that she wanted to take it off almost immediately, and I think it's because she doesn't care for the squooshy fabric. It was awfully cute while it lasted, though.



Tonight has been all about the blankie, and I'm going back to it in a moment. Must try to catch up for Blankie Friday.

Rainbow Barf Rewound

It turned out to be a nice, if a bit windy, afternoon here once more. The girls continue to amaze me at how well they can play in the yard together, and despite my trepidation I set up my lawn chairs and got to winding. Then, in we came and while Sophie napped and Julie watched her video I got my color card all sorted out and wound the rest up into two balls for some toe-up socks.



The colors look better than I expected, even though a few - like one of the yellows - got a tiny bit muddied from its darker neighbor in the rinse. I'm actually looking forward to seeing how the socks knit up - I think they'll be cute!

Speaking of cute, Sophie got a hair cut today. All that thick luxurious hair she had for her first year is finally falling out, and new puppy fuzz is growing in underneath. The topknot, while necessary to keep the long strands out of her face, looked like a combover because it was so thin. A nice little bob was in order, and it looks much healthier.



It's eerie, though. She looks *just* like Julie at that age now.



Okay, not exactly. Julie has rounder eyes and a smile more like mine. Still, it was like deja vu watching Sophie this afternoon.

Today was free cone day at Ben and Jerry's, so the girls and I went and had a treat after lunch. Julie doesn't get ice cream very often, so it was quite the treat. This was only Sophie's second taste of it, and she liked it but was not over the top.

Rainbow Barf

Years ago, back when I was new to the world of knitting and Joe and I were barely married, I knit a baby blanket for some friends of mine. I knit it with some Paton's Look at Me in the variegated rainbow colorway, and to say that it was a wild jumble of colors would be putting it mildly. When my brother-in-law Dave saw it, he said "It looks like a rainbow threw up." He didn't mean it in a bad way, he was just being his usual amusing self. But that phrase has stuck with me, and every time I see something in wild rainbow colors, that is what I think.

For better or for worse, my newly died yarn reminds me a bit of rainbow barf...



This picture shows it all laid out just after I pulled the last chunks out of the dye pot, so the strands toward the bottom are still wet. It's hanging up in the bath tub now and will hopefully be dry by tomorrow afternoon. Maybe I'll get my nerve up to try to wind it back into a manageable skein while the girls are playing. When I wound it out in the yard on Saturday, Joe was there to help corral the girls, and it is the kind of project that needs to be completed all in one go. We'll see.

Let me just say, I can't believe how quickly I managed to get this project done. There was a lot of work involved, lots of iterations of get the yarn wet, measure the dye, assemble the dye pot, cook the yarn, let it cool, rinse it out, hang to dry. The good news is that Julie enjoyed watching me do it the first few times, and I was able to fit in the various parts of the process in odd moments.

Just so you know, I wouldn't normally choose to dye up a skein of yarn with this many colors in one go. Remember, my main goal here was to make up a color card. Still, it's fun yarn. Maybe. We'll see how it looks knit up. Actually, I made a kind of big mistake. Somehow I counted wrong when I was measuring out the yardage, and when I got to the end of my line of colors I realized that I had to do the last several colors in longer stripes. I'm hoping it will look funky-cool.

Someone noticed that there is an already-dyed strand of yarn running along with my naked yarn. That's some commercially-dyed yarn that I used to sort of cheat on the measuring. And speaking of measuring, someone else mentioned a warping board. I'm familiar with the idea, and I've seen several do-it-yourself versions around the web. It looks appealing, but who has the time to pull all that stuff together? Not me! Also, I don't think I'll be needing such giant skeins again any time soon. The only reason I wound that skein so huge was so that I could fit all those colors into it. Normally, I'd need a skein at most only about a quarter the size. Still, if anyone has an old warping board laying around that they don't need any more....

In the mean time, Julie has been begging for a new pair of sunglasses for weeks now. I don't know what happened to the ones she had last year. Today we were at Target and I finally broke down and bought her a pair. She wore them all afternoon.



Sophie is still in love with the sand box, only of course after I bragged about her yesterday, she went ahead and took a taste of the stuff today. Bleh.

Baby Steps

There is news from the dye pot, and good news at that - 0ther than my hands being all sorts of colors because I keep forgetting to put the gloves on. But I'm going to make you wait till tomorrow for pretty pictures. More info and answers to questions then as well.

In the mean time, look what Sophie did today:



I knew she could do it!

Mad Scientist

Y'all have to realize something about this dyeing thing. I'm totally winging this. Playing it by ear. Experimenting. Having fun. Figuring it out. I don't know where I'm going with this exactly, but I do have a general set of plans and dreams. I have some ideas for colorways that I want to create. Actually, I have a really fun theme for a set of colorways that I'd like to create. But it's a secret for now. For now, I'm just having fun playing mad scientist, and you're welcome to come along for the ride.

Hey, Diva - I don't know about selling my hand dyed yarn yet. I'll tell you what - if the results turn out to be good enough, I just might. A few extra bucks in the bank account would be nice. I'm still trying to figure out if I can even do this competently yet.

Stacy - I checked out about eight books from the library on dyeing, and most of them discuss only the professional dyes. I think there may have been one or two that briefly mentioned the possibility of using Kool-Aid, but none of them mentioned Wilton as far as I can recall. The two that I've enjoyed the most are Yarns to Dye For : Creating Self-Patterning Yarns for Knitting by Kathleen Taylor and Dyeing to Knit by Elaine Eskesen. Most of the others were pretty much over my head, or at least more technical than I was interested in at the moment. I picked up a few hints here and there that I think I can apply to the Wilton dye process, but nothing significant. Really, if you're interested in reading up on this, start by doing a google search on yarn Wilton dye or something like that. There are tons of items out there, and that's where I learned most of what I'm doing now.

Oh, and about the word verification thingie. I've had a couple of people tell me they've had trouble with it. I may try turning it off again, although I originally turned it on after I got a bit of spam showing up. If you want to post a comment and can't, feel free to just e-mail me at shellyk at shellykang dot com. Actually, if you've tried to post a comment but had trouble because of that gizmo, please to e-mail me and let me know. If it's a big issue, I'll get rid of it. Thanks!

Now, on to the fun!

I spent a few minutes last night lining up all my dyes in the order that I want them to stripe on this sampler skein I'm working up. I typed them all up in a nice little list so I wouldn't get confused, then put them back in the box. It's more or less going to be a rainbow spectrum. You'll see.



This afternoon it was warm and sunny, so we all went outside to play for a bit. Julie was drawing a "picnic" on the driveway and Sophie was - well, helping.



Here's what it looked like when they were done.



They also spent some time in the sand box. I was pleasantly surprised by how well they played together, and also with how well Sophie played without putting things in her mouth. Julie was such an oral kid, and for the most part Sophie isn't. She played in the sand box for about half an hour without tasting the sand once!



While they were busy playing, I was busy walking back and forth across the yard, stringing my yarn around a couple of lawn chairs. The whole time I was doing it, I was thinking "the neighbors must think I'm totally insane." That, and trying to convince Julie that she really better leave my yarn alone. Really. Get away from the yarn. Right. Now! No, you may not run back and forth touching my yarn. Well, whatever.

Then, the neighbors across the street stopped by on their way home from a bike ride and D (the guy) started to ask what I was doing, the L (the woman - hi L!) said "Oh, are you getting ready to dye some yarn?" Which was cool because she had read the blog and knew that there was a somewhat-sane reason for me to be stringing yarn all across the lawn. And we all had a nice little conversation about how it's going to work instead of them going in their house and peeking out at the crazy woman and her yarn. Ha!



The whole point was to make a long loop about 40 yards in circumference, then tie it off at one yard intervals ending up with a pile that looked like this:



I don't have the capacity to dye all almost-40 colors in one night, so I soaked only a portion of the wool while we cleaned up the kitchen after dinner, and stuck the rest of it in a ziploc bag to keep it dry and under control.



And I spent some time prepping the dye itself - I measured out .5 ml of each color and mixed it in jars with a quarter cup of vinegar. I know mixing metric (good) and imperial (bad) measurements is going to bite me in the hiney, but it was easy and I wasn't thinking when I reached for that quarter cup. Don't ask me why I used those specific amounts - they were what felt right after my initial experiment months ago and after all the various reading I've done on the subject.



Once the dyes were well-mixed I filled the jars with more warm water and arranged it all in my canning pot thus:





I heated it up till it was almost at a boil, then turned the heat off and walked away so the whole mess can cool down enough to handle. You'll have to wait at least till tomorrow to see the results, which are as far as I can tell so far pretty good.

As I was walking into my office, I witnessed this:



That's Joe, in his office, wearing his new purple sneakers and using his Swiffer. Reason 1,573 why I love my husband. He is just so cute.

I'm off to play with wet yarn then cuddle with the blankie.

It's Blaannkieeee Fridaay!

I gave myself quite the silly little chuckle as I was daydreaming my way through dinner tonight. I was thinking about writing up tonight's blog post, and into my mind popped this image of myself in a top hat and carrying a cane, shimmying out onto a shiny black stage to up-tempo circus music to unveil this week's blankie pictures from behind a velvet curtain. Don't ask me where this image came from, but there it was. The results this week really aren't all that stellar, but compared to my blankie-knitting performance of late, they're not that shabby either. There are 21 new squares this week, and I have to say that I really did knit on the thing just about every single chance I got. At least I ended up right on target to finish in plenty of time. Must. Keep. Knitting!









I think I've finally assembled everything I need to get started with the yarn dyeing project again...



I'm not sure exactly when this is going to happen. I need to wind off some yarn, and I still have to decide exactly how I'm going to go about the first step, which is to sample a bit of each color. There are nearly 40 colors here. I'd like to do it in such a way that I end up with both a sample card and a skein of useable yarn. The cogs in my brain are cranking away, so never fear! Possibly I will even be re skeining a hank before bedtime tonight.

I have to share this piece of artwork that Julie brought home from school last week. I think it is hilarious. Do you know what it is?



It's a mud puddle! I got a very good laugh out of that one. Maybe I will take a picture of Julie's wall of art while I'm down in the basement winding yarn up later. I love the little projects her teachers think up.

It was a bit like a three-ring circus this morning at our house. We babysat our little friend H. while her Mama went and had some one-on-one time with big sister M. H. is a month younger than Sophie, and she has been walking for a few weeks now. She gave Sophie a little lesson in how to climb the stairs. Everybody made it up safely.



Finally, I want to respond to a little reader mail.

First, thanks to everyone who suggested various undyed yarns. I've been trolling around looking and I've come to the conclusion that I need to finish experimenting with what I've got before I bite the bullet and buy a bunch more. I think I may end up trying this one next. All of this stuff is kind of expensive when you're buying it giant cones at a time, and I don't have all that much room to be adding to my stash willy-nilly.

Second, I want to thank Shannon Okey for linking to me, and especially for using one of my photos the *right* way. Shannon e-mailed me and asked permission, then posted the picture along with a statement that she had permission, and a link to my site. Really, if you're going to post a picture from any site on the internet, even if you have copied it to your own web space, that is the proper way to do it. Also, thanks to whomever was reading Shannon's site and informed her that I'm picky about copyrights.

Hey, Loopy-Ewe Sheri - I wanted to respond to your comment via e-mail, but you didn't leave an e-mail address! Can you e-mail me at shellyk at shellykang dot com?

Someone wanted to know how long it takes me to knit up a square. I've never timed one exactly, but I think on a good day it takes me about 20 minutes to half an hour. I think I'm a moderately fast knitter. I knit a lot, and am very comfortable with the motions. I know I am not the fastest knitter around by any means, though. It's rare that I get through more than one or two in an uninterrupted sitting, though. Someone always needs something.

Alright, inspiration is striking. Must go fiddle with striping plans!

What's Wrong With This Picture?

Today was actually a better day. Even though we woke up and saw this out the window as we ate our breakfast.



On the bright side, Julie enjoys making patterns with her feet in the snow. I think that is so cool!



This, however, is just plain wrong. Those are my pitiful little tulips peeking out under the gloppy white.



Nothing wrong with this picture. Julie having fun with her little friend K.T. at knitting this morning.



Sophie was happily trying to tag along. The only thing wrong with this picture, which you can't actually see, is how filthy her hands and knees ended up after crawling all over the coffee shop. Walk, already!



Nothing wrong here. Sophie did a great job scooting around on the little play tractor in the basement yesterday.



Finally, some books from the library (these are just the two that were at hand - I've checked out five total) so I can hopefully have a better clue of what I'm doing when I start playing around with the dyes again sometime in the near future. More fancy food dyes arrived in the mail today, and my lovely neighbor across the street gave me her stash of oral syringes for measuring out the paste dyes more accurately. I'm just waiting for the blank yarn to show up. Anyone out there care to suggest a good source for blank sock yarn besides Knitpicks? What I'd really love is something in superwash fingering with the twist of Koigu, but with a bit of nylon in the mix for better wear. A skein of my finished product to the person who makes the suggestion that I end up going for!



Oh, and look over on the right. I signed up for Sockapalooza 4. As far as I know, the signups are still open, so now's your chance to get in on the swapping fun! I think I am just plain crazy for signing up for another swap right now. Like I need more knitting to do! But it will be fun, and I don't want to read about all the fun on everyone else's blog and not be in on it too. And the button has monkeys on it.

Speaking of swaps, I'm still trying to assemble my first package for my SP10 pal. It's about halfway done, and I'm hoping to get it out in the mail maybe this weekend.

Off to knit a square before bed.

Lame

It's been a lame-o day here. The best thing I can say about this day was that I finally got the kitchen floor scrubbed, and oh how it needed it.

In other news, Joe was home sick today, and I spent the morning feeling slightly annoyed by the fact that when he is sick, he gets to lay in bed and sleep all day and when I am sick I pretty much get to get up and tend to the kids anyway. Then, when I suggested he get up mid-afternoon so that he would be able to sleep tonight, I realized that he is truly feeling awful. All he ate today was plain rice! Um, sorry honey. You go right back to bed.

Sophie is teething hard again. On the one hand, I'm glad she's finally filling in the front of her mouth and will have a nice little row of pearly whites. On the other hand, my nipples are killing me because she wants to freakin' nurse all day long and her latch has gotten lazy so she's biting me. I spent the whole evening in the nursery trying to get her down in the crib (aside from the 20 minutes I spent on my hands and knees in the kitchen). Finally, at 10:30, I gave her a dose of Tylenol on top of the dose of Motrin she'd already taken, and she fell asleep in my arms a little after 11.

Our internet is still creeping along, thanks to the overload of traffic from the recent linkage. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad ya'll are here for the visit. We just really need to move my site back onto a commercial server somewhere not in our house. Our DSL is about the slowest possible DSL one can have as we're technically too far from the hub to even have DSL at our house. Normally this isn't too much of a problem, except when there are 20,000 people trying to read the blog in one day. If anyone has a suggestion of a web host they use and like, I'd love to hear it.

It's freakin' cold and we're getting a mix of snow and rain here this week. I am so over winter. I need me some spring!

Finally, I have placed orders for all kinds of fun stuff like a new t-shirt, some books, some dye, yarn to dye, and a replacement part for our dishwasher (which is still working but the top rack is loose). I was expecting some of it to come today, and none of it did.

Bleh.

Tomorrow I'll be back with a better attitude. Hopefully

Easter Fun and Following Up

First, I'd like to say hi to all the folks coming over from Stephanie's blog. Welcome! I'll be talking about blankie and Harlot related stuff in a minute. Just let me apologize for the slow loads on my blog today. We serve our web pages on an old PC right here in our house, and our DSL is not all that fast. We're seriously considering going back to a web hosting company after several incidents where our current setup just can't handle the traffic on a given day. More on that another time, maybe. Let's get to the fun stuff!

Yesterday was Easter, and although we are a bunch of heathens, Joe and I grew up Christian, and I have fond memories of dyeing eggs and visits from the Easter Bunny. As I pointed out at Christmas time when we were busy decorating our tree, these are really old pagan traditions absorbed by the Christians when the pagans were converted. Or something like that.

We didn't give the girls Easter baskets this year, other than the basket Julie got at the egg hunt we went to last week at the community center. Julie still has never had any candy, other than a few chocolate chips while helping me bake cookies. We want to keep it that way as long as it's not a big issue, and it hasn't been one yet. She can't have most chocolate anyway because it contains soy lecithin. I think next year we will invite the Easter Bunny legend into our home, and I will just assemble baskets with small gifts and non-candy treats like fruit leathers and apple sauce.

In the mean time, we did color some eggs. Half were hard-boiled and the other half were blown-out empty shells. After the eggs were done, I let Julie play with the dye bath and some paper towels for a bit just to stretch the fun out a bit longer.



Here's the end results: This was my first time trying the rubber band trick, and I really liked it. You just wrap a wide rubber band around the egg a couple times, and it leaves white bands underneath. Pretty slick! Julie loved using all the little bug and flower 3-D stickers that came in our kit.



Later, while Sophie was napping, Julie and Daddy played the Honey Bee Tree game. I like this picture because for once Julie is just smiling up at the camera like her normal self and not making the crazy for-the-camera smile she normally gives me.



Now, to follow up on some of the items from last week! That bag I ordered from Dan arrived today, and it is so cute! I couldn't believe how fast I got it - I placed the order on Friday, he got it in the mail on Saturday, and here it is today! Look how nicely packaged it was.



And here's the bag itself. I don't know why I love monkeys as much as I do, but there you have it. I kinda love my monkeys.



And here's the coordinating fabric inside. This bag is the perfect size to hold a medium-sized knitting project plus a wallet and a cell phone. Thanks for the great service, Dan!



Several people have asked about the blankie and the sock yarn for the blankie. First, I want to again thank everyone who contributed yarn to my little project so far. Here's a peek at the stash I have left.



Clockwise from bottom left: a box of wool/nylon bits that have been used in the blankie twice; a box and a bag of bits that have been used in the blankie once; a box of Koigu and other similar merino hand dyes that will not appear in this blanket, but will be in another project yet to be fully determined (I have plans, but refuse to allow myself to think too hard about them till blankie the first is complete); a box of solid-color sock yarns of various types for which there are also vague future plans.

Careful observers will notice Daisy cat sniffing the Koigu. I loaned that particular box of bits to a close friend so she could pick a few out for a project she is working on - a beautiful sweater - and she returned it to me all organized in these cute little mesh thingies that she got leftover from a flower shop. Also, my friend has a cat, so I think there was lots in there for Daisy to sniff at.

Many people have asked me if I will share some of my collection with them. When I was being buried, I did give away probably at least as much as I kept. There is a blankie knit-along with links in the column over on the right - many of those people got sock scrap care packages. Also, I received a lot of yarn that was not appropriate for this project, and that yarn went to people knitting for charities - specifically, a friend of mine who knits for Children in Common, and another very nice lady in Canada who knits teddy bears for various childrens' charities. They are very cute, and if you dig through my archives you can find several posts detailing that effort. There have been a few other good causes as well, plus just some random gifts to people who asked. At the moment, I have about what I need to finish the blanket, and will probably have some left over. I may be willing to part with it to someone desperate to knit a blankie at that point. I would never consider selling any of this yarn. It was given to me by generous knitters, and when I pass it on, it will go in the same way.

Some of you have written asking if I'm still looking for more scraps. That is so sweet! While I do have enough to complete the current blankie, the honest answer is that the more variety I get from more people, the better. If you have some that you want to send me, e-mail me at shellyk at shellykang dot com and I'll give you my mailing address. The current blankie will include only wool/nylon superwash fingering weight multicolor yarn. I'm collecting Koigu-type bits for what will probably be a sweater, and Oh! I forgot to pull it out and include in the picture, but I have a small box of wool/cotton/nylon bits that will probably be another blankie one day (I do have two girls after all, and we can't have them fighting over the heirloom knitting). Anyone who sends me yarn will be publicly thanked here, and even if it's yarn that doesn't fit into the current projects, I promise to find it a good home.

Now back to the dresses! Thanks for those of you who played along in my little guessing game.

Dress number one (J. Jill with flower embroidery) was very pretty, but was ultimately rejected for several reasons. Linen doesn't travel well. I'm not sure I want to spend my vacation to L.A. tracking down an iron and attempting to get wrinkles out of a dress that will be rumpled again before we can even get to the wedding. Also, as some of you noticed, I don't quite fill out the top of it in the right places. In the end, I just thought it looked a bit dumpy.

Dress number two I actually liked quite a bit. I just wasn't quite sure I could pull off the busy plaid patterning, and I do think it is the kind of dress that people either love or hate - I loved it, but I had a feeling some people that I love would hate it.

Dress number three was the winner! The all-over pattern is quite camouflaging, I liked the hem length just above the knee instead of just below as the other two hit, and the fabric just seemed to flatter me more. I felt almost sexy wearing the thing. I will have to find a different bra to wear under it, but I still have a few weeks.

Oh, and about the too-pale thing. Look, I appreciate you all saying what you said about pale being pretty and smart and all that. I wasn't fishing for complements about my skin or my figure. We all have a right to our own body issues. In general, I'm pretty comfortable with my body. Yes, I'd like to lose twenty pounds, but I also have two little kids and am still nursing and it will happen when it happens. I, personally, don't like the way my legs are so pale that they really do look purple, especially in the spots where there are broken capillaries that showed up when I was pregnant. I refuse to wear panty hose.

I have used the self-tanning lotion in the past, and last year I had really good success with the kind that is meant to be used every day in body lotion. It's very light, and you can control the streaks better than the intense stuff because if you make a mistake one day, you just scrub that area a bit more while you're in the shower to exfoliate, then don't put lotion on it the next day. You have to remember. I have just been through seven months of Minnesota winter with next to zero sun exposure. There is pale, and then there is truly blindingly white. Not to mention that I will be going to a Korean wedding. I will be surrounded by people with beautiful brown skin. I think it is perfectly acceptable for me to feel a bit self conscious, and to want to fit in as much as a big loud white girl can in that situation. Enough said!

Oh, it is late! I am tired. Thanks for coming by, everyone. Feel free to stick around.

Clotheshorse?

So there's this wedding coming up next month. The one for which I just bought Julie that expensive but very cute flower girl dress. As a stay-at-home mom, I don't wear all that many fancy clothes - I tend to stick mostly to blue jeans, chinos and t-shirts. All of my clothes from before the girls are too small, and I really want to look as much like a put-together grown-up at this family event as possible. Especially considering the giant fashion blunder I made the last time the whole Kang family got together. But let's not go there.

I'm not the best shopper in the world. I don't absolutely love trying on clothes, and even when I was twenty pounds lighter and in great shape, I didn't love looking at my body in the mirror. Still, the shopping had to be done, and I wanted some good honest advice along the way. I begged my friend Jen to come along to the mall with me, and along she came, gladly enough. We were both excited to have a morning away from our beloved families.

After a stop at the coffee shop, we got down to work. Warning! Pictures of me and my deathly purple-white skin to follow. I promise - I will be using some kind of tanning product before wearing any of these things in public!

We started at J.Jill, and I think I tried on about fifty million items of clothing there - everything from pants to skirts to tunics to blouses and god knows what else. The sales lady even made me try on a necklace! She was really very nice. The only thing that even came close there was this linen dress with embroidered flowers:



And I think it's really funny that this dress is one that I had been looking at last week when I had the kids with me and no time to try it on, and then Jen e-mailed a picture of it to me as an idea when I suggested that I needed to go shopping. She and I have very similar taste, only hers is a more refined version of the same. I'm just too lazy when I shop, I guess.

There were a few other stores and trips into dressing rooms in between, but we ended up finding final candidates at only one other store - Von Maur, which is a nice department store here.

All three of these are V-necks because I needed something with nursing access. I tried on some skirt/top combinations and some pants/top combinations as well, but none of them both flattered my current egg-shaped figure and qualified as dressy enough.



By the time we got to the end, I was feeling a little punch drunk and was making silly faces for the camera:



Jen apparently felt the same way - she had the camera out in the hall while I was changing back into my normal clothes, and produced these very funny shots.







That's the new hat she got while we were out. She was just trying some on to amuse herself while I was picking up a package of - well, maybe the whole Internet doesn't need to know exactly what else I was buying today, but it was something to help control that egg-shaped figure. Anyway, she had this little green number on, and it was very cute and I had my credit card out any way, and it wasn't very expensive. I mean, just think if I had hired a personal shopper for four hours! This was a tiny fraction of what that would have cost, and way more fun.

Finally, we settled on a dress. Can you guess which one?

I came home, ready to see what my family had been up to all day. Julie was having a little snack.




Sophie was ready to play a little game of behind-the-back peek-a-boo while I folded some diapers. She would peek out from behind one of my shoulders and give me a big wide-mouth toothy kiss, then cruise around my back and do the same on the other side. Over and over for ten minutes full of giggles and grins.



Off to go crank out some more blankie squares!

Blankie Friday - The Reckoning

The last time we had a real Blankie Friday, the last time I posted an updated number of squares with a nice clear picture of the blankie was on March 2. Sheesh. That's over a month! And there are only 17 new squares in that time. See, there were things. Things that got in the way. Things like that blue stripey sweater and the lace socks. But the lace socks are done for now - at least the two that need to be for samples - and the blue sweater is at a point where it can go on hold for a bit now that the pieces are all knitted. Especially considering that the weather is going to be warm before the sucker is finished.

I really do love the blankie, though, and I am ready to get down to work feeding it the sock yarn. Let's do a little reckoning and see just how far behind schedule I've gotten. Let's start with a little background on the plan. I want it to be about 1.5 times long as it is wide. It's 23 squares wide, so that would mean that it needs to be about 35 squares tall . Right now I'm at 27. So I need about eight more rows, or somewhere around 132 more squares. Ulp.

The goal was to try and finish before the State Fair entry deadline on August 14. That's about 125 more days to get this blanket done, and I need to allow time for knitting on the edging and blocking the thing out. Not to mention that I've got two out-of-town trips planned between now and then that will take a bit of time out of the equation. Still, at three squares a day, I could have the 132 squares knit up in 44 more days. That sounds like it's still within reason. My plan for the coming week or two at least, maybe more, is to crank away as many squares as I can each evening. Blankie wants to go to the fair, and I want to help it.

Without further ado, here it is in its current glory:







Oh, and because I know *someone* is going to ask. The blanket is my own design. I wrote a tutorial for the benefit of anyone who wants to knit it or something like it. Scroll down and look on the right hand column, you'll see the links.

Now for a little follow-up on yesterday's post.

Suze, the term "salad" is used quite loosely at Cafe Latte. The ones I ate included way too much rich dressing, noodles, cheese and meat. They were quite decadent and I ate them pretty much only to assuage my guilt at wanting to eat only dessert for dinner in the first place.

Wannietta, the sock yarn is intentionally self-striping. Shoot. I thought I had blogged about the process involved in this, but darned if I can find it. No worries - I'm going to be doing some experimenting again in the near future. It's been a while since I dyed this and set it aside, and I was a little disappointed in the results originally, but since I started knitting it up I have new hope of getting acceptable results the next time. I'll blog it, I promise.

Joe, your beer bottle is gone forever. So is your pint glass. We discussed this before I gave it away and you agreed to it. And I love you for sharing.

Dan! Thanks for commenting. Hey, everyone! Dan is the guy I was telling you about yesterday. He's the one who makes those super-cute bags I wanted to buy. Here's his Etsy shop, but sorry - I already bought the monkey bag. You'll have to wait till it comes in the mail to see it. Trust me, it was the cutest one.

Okay, must go knit blankie squares!

About Last Night

Yesterday was Harlot Day in St. Paul. I woke up with a feeling not at all unlike the feeling I had as a little kid waking up on - well, not Christmas. On the day of a big field trip at school or a birthday party whose invitation has been tacked to the fridge with a magnet for the last month. Excited, happy, enjoying the anticipation that was almost over.

The girls and I spent the morning with my knitting group, as we do most Wednesdays. Then, to help pass the few remaining hours till Joe was to arrive home early so that I could skip off to the fun, we went over to Knollwood Mall and did a little shopping and lunch. Julie got to climb around on the kiddie rides for a few minutes, and by chance she is wearing her handknit leggings. More about those later in the post, I think.



At home, I gathered up all my things and got myself ready to flee out the back door the moment Joe walked in and took over parenting duties. I ran over and picked up my friend Kelle and we were off to St. Paul by 4:00. I was floored with surprise to find an open parking spot in the tiny lot behind the store, but there were actually two! We stopped in to check out the scene inside the Yarnery, and there was a nice crowd milling around. We said a few hellos, then ran over to Cafe Latte to pig out on salads and deserts.



While we were there, we ran into several other knitters, and I had a nice little explanatory conversation with the lady at the cash register trying to help her understand that yes, there are a lot of knitters in the neighborhood today - there's an author coming for a book signing. I stopped when her eyes started to cross in confusion. As we were leaving, I ran into Susan Rainey and her (I think this is right, and please forgive me if I am wrong on this or any other name in this post. I am the world's worst memory when it comes to names even when I try my hardest) sister-in-law Kim. I love Susan and her work. See that sweater peeking through behind the beautifully knit jacket? It's a Bohus. A lovely Bohus that won ribbons at the State Fair a couple years ago. By the way, Susan, I really want to take your zipper class one of these days!



I went back over to the shop for a few minutes and was standing around schmoozing like an idiot when one of the managers spotted me and said "Aren't you supposed to be over at the auditorium helping to set up?!!!" And I said "Oops! I thought I had a few minutes, but I'm going right now." So I trotted right on over to William Mitchel and scooted past the line of people waiting to get in - see the line of people waiting to get in:



And then I got to hang around for a little while kind of helping to set up, mostly trying to stay somewhat out of the way, and failing somewhat as I practically drooled over the tote bags they had on display for sale. I came within a hair's breadth of buying one, but when I asked about it, the cash register wasn't ready to go yet, and I figured it was fate intervening on my wallet's behalf. I do, after all, have about a million bags around the house already. They were SO cool, though! There was one in particular with brown and pink color scheme and it had monkeys on it. Oh, but it didn't happen. And that is life.

So then it was time to open the doors, and my job was to hand out tickets to the book signing as people walked in - we were trying to stagger people in groups so they wouldn't have to wait in a gawdawful line, but it just didn't work out very well because everyone chose to be in the first group. Still, I had fun greeting everyone as they came in, and I had to keep reminding myself and my friends that I was supposed to be working and that I was holding up the line by chatting even for a moment. (Duh!) The auditorium filled up just about completely, but everyone who showed up managed to get in. Here's a picture of the crowd right before Stephanie came out.



You can see my friend and Yarnery coworker Jess on the stage in this one - she sang Oh, Canada! in both French and English to welcome Stephanie. In fact, someone videotaped her, and you can see it on YouTube if you like.



I got to meet and also re-visit lots of friends, acquaintances and readers during the event overall, but I was particularly happy to meet Flan and Kathleen. Flan reads here, and I read their blog. Kathleen flew in from wherever exactly it is that she lives somewhere in the deep south (Atlanta?) and it was very cute to see the two of them together. Anyway, nice ladies.



And we all sat down and listened to the Harlot and she was incredibly funny as we all expected and we all laughed and had a great time for an hour. It was great! Then, there was the neverending line for the signing and since I was still sort of staff, I hung around all over the place talking to various people and helping out a little bit when I could. I met the guy who makes the awesome bags I was telling you about a minute ago, and I begged him to come leave me a comment here so that I can find his etsy site and maybe even buy the remaining monkey bag that he says exists in his possession. Dude! I can't even remember your name, but you rock! Please, oh please e-mail me - shellyk at shellykang dot com! This guy also was knitting a beautiful knee sock out of his own handspun that I think he had dyed himself. And there were lots of other very nice people with interesting projects, and I am SO bad with names it is embarrassing.

And anyway, three hours later the line eventually slowed to a trickle and then finally we were down to the last handful of people waiting to get our book signed, say something nice to Stephanie, and take a photo or five. Having hung around all over the place, including just a few feet away from the signing table for much of the time, I was amazed at Stephanie's grace in dealing with So.Many.People. with such patience and wit. Even though she's been on an insane schedule with almost no sleep all week. She could easily be a poster child for caffeine. But then it was my turn, and I stepped up and put my book down and she looked up at me and said "You're Shelly and I helped get all those knitters to bury you with yarn for that blanket you're holding." and I started blathering about yes, and thank you and you don't know how much fun I had with that and blah blah blah thank you some more... and she signed my book and we took some pictures and boy I look good with my middle section hidden behind the blankie because that is where at least twenty pounds of the remaining baby weight is hidden.



And at that point it was very late, and although I was still jazzed up from the excitement of the event, I was also very tired and aware that I had to get up with the girls in the morning and get them through their day. So I came home and crashed pretty quickly. Except that I did stop over at CafePress and ordered a t-shirt just like the one Stephanie was wearing because I am a shameless copy-cat and I love the geeky inside-jokedness of it all.

I had lots of knitting time last night as I was walking around talking to people, and yes, I can knit while walking and talking without looking. But it has to be plain stockinette stitch, preferably in the round. I had cast on a new sock and knit up just the short-row toe in preparation for just this scenario, and over the course of the evening I finished the foot of the one sock. I started the heel today. This is that KnitPicks blank yarn that I dyed up with the Wilton food dyes a few months back. I'm a little surprised with how nicely it's turning out. Makes me want to experiment a little more, in fact. Actually, I'm thinking of dyeing up enough of the some stripes to make matching leggings for the girls for next fall. Julie has gotten so much wear out of her current pair, it makes more sense than knitting them sweaters, which will just get covered in food stains and/or taken off five minutes after I put them on.



I couldn't resist sharing this shot with you. Here is one of the many reasons why I love my husband forever and see him as one of the sexiest men on the planet.



Joe doesn't cook for beans, but he does clean up the kitchen after dinner more nights than not without complaint, even after a long hard day at work. That's what I call love!

Finally, here's Julie with her Duplo block creation from this morning. She had to fight Sophie off t get it built without the random chaos and destruction that only an almost-toddler can reap, and she had a fairly elaborate story to go with it about characters from various books and videos going to the hospital, riding on boats and trains, and living together in a city. This kind of shit is what makes it worth being a mommy for a living.



In case there were every any doubt, I love my little girl with a passion. It feels almost (and I hope I am not tempting fate here because I need this to be true) as if the gap that was rent in our relationship after Sophie was born, the one where I lost her complete trust and attachment by giving birth to another child who needed me even more than she did at the time, has been closing a bit in the last month or so. Julie has been more willing to cuddle with me again, has retaken the habit of crawling into my bed and cuddling in the mornings, and is more willing to come sit in my lap or just come over and lean on me in the way that she used to in the pre-Sophie era. Please, dear daughter, let's hold on to that closeness for as long as we can!

And now dear readers, I am off to go make up with the blankie. It's hungry for yarn, and I've got three new DVDs waiting. Barring unforeseen obstacles, there will be a Blankie Friday tomorrow.

Little Things

I have lots of little things to talk about - little things that are all good, and have been adding up over the last few days. I've been busy in my spare moments trying to crank away at Pomotomus - I really wanted to finish that sock in time to display at the shop before Wednesday's spectacle, but this little project demanded my full attention so picking it up and putting it down during the day with the girls wasn't working for me. The few times I tried that, I ended up spending more time ripping back my mistakes. I did finish it last night, though, so it will be at the store for the Harlot event. All that boils down to is that I had to make a choice between eating up an hour writing a blog post or having an extra hour to knit, and this week more often than not I've chosen the knitting.

Pomotomus is done, though, and now I can blog, and get back to the other projects that are waiting so patiently. In the mean time, let's bask in the joy of an FO for a moment. Pomotomus takes a break in the back yard, admiring the green sprouting up in the grass while it waits for me to find a darning needle and kitchener up the toe.



Pomotomus found some pitiful tulips by the back of the house - they are just under our dryer vent where it is warm.



Pomotomus complete and on the hoof. Woot!



It was chilly today, but at least not pouring rain. Sophie fell asleep in the car again on our way home from the morning's entertainment, so I let Julie play with bubbles for a few minutes while we waited for Sophie to wake up.



While we were eating lunch, the UPS truck showed up and dropped off my new camera. Yippee!



I don't think we'll see much difference in quality of pictures in blog posts - the real difference will be in print quality. That, and maybe I'll get a few better action shots since it does snap the photo much faster than the old one. I'm still fiddling around with the features, but most of the menus are similar to the older model, so it's a pretty easy learning curve.

Here's a picture of Sophie on the old camera:


Here she is on the new camera - almost identical!



My friend Elizabeth dropped by this afternoon with her new little girl. Baby A's birthday is just a few weeks after Sophie's, so she will be able to wear all of our hand-me-downs, and I had a couple of tubs waiting to get out of here. I'm glad I have someone to just give it all to instead of having to organize a garage sale. Some of those things are so cute, it would be very hard to watch strangers pawing through them to pick and choose.

Elizabeth makes beautiful bags out of old kimonos and sells them on Etsy, and she brought me one today as a thank-you gift. I love it! I was just wishing for a second knitting notions bag, and now I've got it!



Elizabeth got a kick out of Daisy's napping spot, and since I had my new camera in hand, I took a picture to entertain my readers. That's the base of a potted ficus tree. She sleeps there all the time.



Oh, dear readers, there are so many other things I've been meaning to share with you, but I am so tired and my brain is so addled! Let's see....we had a staff meeting at the store to prepare for the Harlot event. The managers and Maura have been working so hard to iron out the details, and it is going to be great! Every single person who comes is going to get a special gift, and I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say what it is yet, but it's really nice. I got to bring one home and I hope there are extras because I'd like one or two more just to have around. Even if you didn't get a reservation and are just on the waiting list, they have enough for everybody. We are very sad that not everyone can be accommodated...until New York last week, there had never been a Harlot event this big!

Oh, I know! I wanted to go back to the topic of that top I mentioned wanting to knit the other day. I got several suggestions from readers about adapting the pattern, or using a different pattern that is similar to knit something up with. First, let me just reiterate that I will not be knitting up any lacy tops for myself in the near future. There is a blue striped sweater awaiting finishing, and there is a poor neglected blankie that desperately needs some love. When those are done, I need to work up some projects for my girls for Fall, and there is a Bohus kit that has been ripening in my stash closet for about two years now. (I swear, it's been in there long before Wendy and Stephanie and Susan and Sally started theirs). I mentioned the top because I really like it, and I just wanted to vent about wanting to knit it because I knew that it's not going to be a reality any time soon.

That said, I got a giggle out of the idea that I should buy a pattern in order to rework it with different yarn in a different gauge, probably with long sleeves instead of the short. A huge part of what I love about knitting it the figuring-it-out part. It is not all that often that I knit a pattern written by someone else. No, I love to look at a picture in a magazine, or see something in my mind's eye, then try to create something of my own that is unique and special and more my own than someone else's. I will cut out the picture and tape it in the notebook I keep of design inspirations. There are several other wrap and faux-wrap sweaters in there, so I'm sure I'll get to that style element eventually. Some day when I have the time, or when my mind tells me that it's really time to do this project, I will look at the photo again. I will take my measurements, or more likely the measurements of a similar-fitting garment that I like to wear, and I will do a big gauge swatch in a lace pattern or two, and I will work up the numbers and make my own from scratch. I'm not saying that it's the easiest way or that it even makes sense, but that is how I like to knit.

And now, I am completely exhausted. I'm pretty sure everything I've just typed was incoherent. I must go get some sleep!