Sock Class

I had my sock class tonight, and it went really well. This was the second session in a three-session class, and a bunch of people missed the first one (it is summer, after all, and schedules are busy). All my students are super-nice, and they all seem to be pretty good knitters, so I don't think anyone's going to have any problems.

As an added bonus, they are all sock yarn junkies just like me, and we spent two and a half hours talking about various knitterly goodness. Looking around the table was like an o*r*g*a*s*m of yarn pron. Two people were knitting with Fleece Artist Seawool, and it totally made me want to cast on a pair in the skein I bought a few weeks ago.

At the end of the evening, everyone agreed to lay down their socks and let me take a quick picture. Hopefully we'll have an updated picture in a couple weeks. Just look at that orange Pomatomus. Isn't it beautiful?



Speaking of Pomatomus, I did manage to get the heel flap mostly knit before class today, which turned out to be a good thing because it allowed me to demonstrate purl-through-the-back-loop right where it belonged in the pattern.

Because everyone in the class seemed to have their act together, I was able to sit and knit pretty constantly too. There's good news and bad news to that - the good news is that I came within an inch of finishing the stockinette portion of the second pink sock. The bad news is that I now have no more mindless stockinette cast on. Danger! Danger! Warning!



In the back of my mind I've been thinking all day about getting those pants started. For those of you who weren't around last year when I was knitting these up, here are the pants that Julie wore all last winter. They're size 4-5T. The ruler is there for scale.



I brought down a pair of pants in size 2T that I think Sophie will fit into this Fall/Winter. I want to make her a pair that starts off a little big in late September/early October, and hopefully will fit through the end of the year at least, maybe through Spring.



I think it's really do-able. Comparing these two pairs of pants, the pink ones are a looser fit - the leggings are meant to be close-fitting and the pink ones are more yoga-pant fit. Still, the waist size between a 2T and a 5T doesn't really change that much, especially when there is a big fat cloth diaper involved. The biggest issue is length, and it's easy to knit a pair of pants an inch or two longer then roll them up a bit while she grows into them.

I dug around a little bit looking for my notes - I know I took good notes last year while knitting these up - but they aren't in any of the places I would have expected them. I've given up - I have the pants themselves to refer to - an easy read - and it's a simple knit anyway I'll consult with a couple of size charts, take a few measurements on Sophie herself tomorrow, and then do a little voodoo averaging the numbers and putting together a game plan. Hopefully I'll have some sweet, sweet mindless stockinette going by bedtime tomorrow.

Oh, and I was all excited this afternoon when a box came for me in the mail. I thought it was going to be my new niddy-noddy. Instead, whomever packed the box at the online retailer who shall be unnamed in this post at least, packed up a nostepinne and sent it my way. A very lovely wooden nostepinne, which I don't need and won't serve the same purpose as a niddy-noddy. An e-mail has been sent, and hopefully the matter will be cleared up soon. I like this retailer, I've met them in person at festivals and camps. They're the real thing. I think it was an honest little mistake and will be put right quickly...I just hope it's before I want to wind back yarn again!

Pictures - Yeah!

I was looking at the last few posts on the blog, and it has really been way too long since we had gratuitous cute-kid pictures. Let's see if I can scrounge some up....

Julie made a couple of very long pom-pom necklaces from a kit I bought on clearance somewhere a while back, and Sophie had some fun wearing one the other day.


Corn!


Sophie LOVES our neighbor Jason. He's a great kid, and really good with her.


Noodles at the swim lessons. Julie insisted she didn't want to use one, then talked about wanting to use a noodle again non-stop for the rest of the day.


In the tub.


Sophie continues to explore the locker room. A game of peek-a-boo climbing in and out of the locker can last a good ten minutes.


It was so stinking hot yesterday afternoon that I took the girls to the mall to play. Sophie's finally big enough to enjoy the interactive light show thingie.


We ventured back into the soft play area, and this time there were no incidents.




Back at swim lessons.


Today was much cooler and drier, but I went ahead and set up the pool anyway.


Our little friend Radley from across the street came over to play too.


Our sandbox is just barely big enough for three.


Now on to the knitting...

I finally got the yarn untangled and wound up. Now I just need to take a few measurements and cast on for the first pair of pants. It took a little getting used to, but I think I can live with this colorway after all.



Here's an overview of the current crop of socks...



The pink one of the left is done. The one on the right is all that remains of my supply of mindless stockinette. This makes me very nervous, and the solution to the problem is to hurry up and cast on those pants. The striped socks are ready for the ribbing at the top and I could finish them up in an hour or two uninterrupted, but they are low on the priority list. I'll probably find time for them after the Pomatomus and Baudelaire and before I cast on for my second Sockapalooza sock.

Pomatomus is creeping along. I really want to have the heel flap at least started by class tomorrow night. It could happen if the stars align tomorrow.


Baudelaire is halfway through the gusset, and I would have liked to make it to the heel shaping on this one before class as well, but it just didn't happen this week.


Today has been such a very long day. Julie talked non-stop all day, and it was all imaginary stuff that makes sense to a three-year-old and kind of to me because I'm with her all the time and I know from where she's drawing all her mental images. But good lord it's tiresome! And Sophie is working on those canines, or maybe she still has sand up her b*tt ch**ks from sitting in the sandbox after being in the pool today, but the kid didn't fall asleep till well after 10, which meant that she spent from 7:30 to well after 10 alternately nursing, standing up in her crib screaming at me and/or Joe, and being laid back down in her crib ten bazillion times by me and Joe. It's after 11 - I need some quality time with the couch and Pomatomus.

Apologies

Argh! I had a great post planned for tonight, and a giant ball of tangled yarn got me sidetracked. I was trying to wind up those three skeins of rainbow yarn that I dyed for the girls' leggings, and I'm not even going to tell you how it ended up as a big tangled wad. I've got it mostly sorted, but it's time for bed and there are no pictures yet again today. I hate it when there are no pictures! Sorry.

More importantly, I owe an apology to blackbird, I'm afraid. I think I was too tired last night, and my reference to her post was confusing. Let me just start off by saying that blackbird is awesome - she is one of the best bloggers I have encountered. She's nice (as far as I can tell), she writes wonderfully, takes great pictures, has awesome taste in just about everything, and I could go on and on. She leads what seems to me a very interesting, rich life as well.

I was in no way complaining about what blackbird had suggested or blaming her or the board shorts for my sunburn. They're totally unrelated. I am actually very thankful for her post leading me down the path away from swimsuits with skirts to attempt to hide the unsightly butt/thigh area and towards the much more sensible shorts. Go read her post. I'll wait. Okay, see? She's cool, right? Now add her to your blogroll and I promise she'll amuse you to no end. You're going to want to go back and read her archives.

And for those of you who were wondering where to shop for board shorts, she had some great suggestions. The problem with board shorts for me (at least, as far as I can tell from the pictures) is that most of them are too short to look good on my fat upper thighs or they're cut too straight. I need loose-thigh pants or trust me, it's even less pretty than we want to think about. Don't argue with me, just please take my word for it that that's how I feel about it.

Allright, I have to go to bed now, but let me just share the other thing I did tonight - I got involved! Our neighborhood has almost no stop signs, and we really need some because of cut-through traffic. I went to the planning meeting to put my voice in to get it happen. I know, not that big a deal. In fact, it was an excuse to sit and knit for an hour instead of feeding the kids dinner and giving them their bath. But it feels good to be doing something - something small - that will improve our neighborhood for our family as well as everyone else.

Tomorrow - sock pictures. Really.

Sunburned and Mending

It seems to me a bit late in the season to be sunburned. I have, after all, spent a good portion of nearly every day for the last couple months out of doors, weather mostly permitting. It has been quite dry here in Minnesota, and our lawns are all turning brown despite some watering. But that's another, even more boring, story.

Today the girls and I joined some neighbors and rode bikes and bike trailers over to the splash pad again. This time, I went ahead and put on the tankini top half of my swim suit, along with a pair of semi-matching men's swim trunks that I bought a week or two ago. Blackbird had a post about how board shorts were her new preferred swimming attire, and I thought to myself "That's what I need." But then when I actually did the shopping I realized that the shape of the board shorts would not work with the shape of my body. So I went shopping for just water shorts and ended up returning the $24 Lands' End pair that I had to mail order for two pairs of $7.50 men's swim trunks from the sporting goods store next door to the Lands' End outlet. Okay, this is getting really boring.

The point is, that normally I wear crewneck t-shirts or polo shirts as my daily uniform, and today there was a lot more exposed skin than usual, and despite a half-hearted attempt at getting sunscreen on my back (Julie and Sophie were drifting off toward the sprinklers without me) I ended up with a nice crispy burn on my upper back. It's funny - we were there for more than two hours and it felt like no time at all because everyone was having fun and playing and keeping busy.

Joe laughed himself silly when he saw my back this evening. In a day or so, it will be better, and next time I will do a better job of getting sunscreen on before we leave the house.

The unfortunate thing about spending the entire afternoon splashing in the water is that it's not at all conducive to knitting. Only when we arrived back home and Sophie was asleep in the trailer did I have a few minutes to sit and knit while Julie messed around in the sand box. Pomatomus #2 is coming along, and I'm getting close to heel flap time. I'd like to get the heel flap complete before Thursday's class.

But instead of spending the whole evening knitting fish scale lace, I had to spend a good hour mending clothes. Buttons have been popping off of shirts and pants left and right all week - mine and everyone else's. The clincher that got me attacking the pile was a hole in the seam of Julie's Hello Kitty under*wear. She was quite upset, so I had to promise her I'd fix them by morning. I still managed to squeeze in a few minutes of good sock knitting after all the mending and folding of clothes.

I can tell I need to go to bed. I'm simply rambling here. Tomorrow there will be pictures. Kid pictures and sock pictures.

Gone Done It

Uh-oh. I've got a giant pile of Superwash Merino/Nylon sock yarn coming my way from Pennsylvania as of this morning during breakfast. The nice lady who took my order was a little shocked (I think) when I told her I just wanted the one kind. I wanted to say "Hey, I'm a little shocked too."

Also, I ordered a niddy-noddy from Mielke's Farm, which should be here in plenty of time to help with the re-winding of the long repeat yarns.

Now I need to go check my supply of dyes...I think the month of July is going to be all about the yarn dyeing.

Must go get the girls' breakfast wrapped up and all of us out the door for swimming lessons.

I don't know what to say!

I can not believe what y'all did to my etsy store today. I mean, I woke up this morning and there were only four skeins left in there. And then, by the end of dinner there was one lonely skein in there...and then I came down after putting the kids to bed and the store was EMPTY!

I know, there wasn't all that much to start with, but I can't believe you really bought ALL of the yarn. You've really made my decision about what to do next that much harder. I really want to place that wholesale order on the yarn that I really want to be working with instead of waiting more than a month for more of the yarn that I can settle for working with. Gulp. And knowing that someone might actually buy some of this stuff makes it all the more tempting to possible invest the $500 in the minimum order from the manufacturer....oh, the decisions.

So anyway, back to today! Look! I made cute little labels to go on the skeins of yarn:



And Sophie and I ran to the post office - literally we ran or I did with her in the sling - while Julie was in her half-hour swim lesson - to pick up boxes in which to ship out all that yarn. And then I spent every other free moment I had during the day winding yarn and wrapping things up and printing things out and sticking labels and generally trying not to screw up any orders.



And I loved every minute of it. I will run all those boxes to the post office in the morning, and hopefully ya'll will be getting your yarn in a few days. One special person got a surprise bonus skein in her box.

As promised, I found time to show you the yarn I just dyed for the girls' leggings. It was raining here today, or I might have tried to find time to wind it back into smaller skeins this afternoon.



I'm not sure what to think about this mess yet. This is three skeins worth of yarn, and it's going to be pants for the girls that I will have to look at at least once a week all fall and winter. I think it's generally okay, but the yellow is a little bright amongst the other colors. This might still be okay because they are meant to be wild crazy stripy pants. But I haven't re-wound the yarn yet, and I could do a little overdye job but I can't decide on that front either.

Anyway, thanks for all the well-wishes today.

Hey Ruth - ask me that question in an e-mail!

Hey Erin - you know what? I was already listed on your blogroll - now I'm on there twice - once as Shelly Kang and once as Heathen Housewife! Go ahead and keep it that way if you like - makes me giggle! By the way, I love The Yellow Dog in Eau Claire. Super nice store.

And if you didn't get to see all the yarn in the Etsy shop before it sold, you can go to this page and look at it - but it will just make you sad because someone else owns it now. But don't worry - there will probably be more soon.

Oh! And someone asked if I plan to ever do custom orders. Heck, yeah! If someone has a colorway in their head that they want me to interpret, I'd be up for trying it. I don't have any more blank yarn at the moment, but I have a feeling that I'll be swimming in it pretty soon. Must talk to husband about wooly investments...

Sorry about the no-blankie Friday, all you blankie lovers out there. I've been busy this week with the socks and the sock yarn and the Etsy and the Amy Singer and the Yarnery class...I'll have to force myself to sit in front of the TV and commune with the blankie more over the weekend. The horrors!

Off to bed!

Look! Another Little Etsy Shop!

Oh, my but it's been a busy day here. All good stuff today - I have no complaints although there were some funny foibles, including the dropping of a laundry basket of freshly folded diapers down a flight of stairs; a brief shortage of clean underwear; and wicked-witch green hands right before the first session of a knitting class. But it all worked out in the end, and there was oh so much more and it worked out especially well considering how much we got done today.

But it's getting late, and I need to get to bed. I just wanted to pop by and share my excitement at my tiny little etsy shop that I just finished updating. I was incredibly surprised that just before I finished the last listing, I got an e-mail telling me that two skeins had just been purchased! So my little business has made its first sale. There's only one more skein of the self-striping up there now.

Oh! and go check out Jaci's blog! She's already knit up one sock out of the electric stripes she bought last week. The woman knits fast!

I just finished dyeing up the last three skeins of blank yarn in the house this morning - they're self-striping and are earmarked for leggings for the girls for fall. I'll post pictures soon! Now I have to decide whether to order more blank yarn and how much.

Right after I get a little sleep...

It's all good.

So, thanks everyone for offering your support and commiseration today, and especially for refraining from unwanted assvice. Really, I'm fine with who I am and where I am in my body. Yes, I would love to have my pre-pregnancy body back. Yes, I'm going to keep moving in the right direction. There's a lot more to the picture than what I'm telling you, but it's all good.

I got a bunch of good feedback from the right people about the sock class pattern thing. First, two people from the store let me know that my manager talked to Cookie and Amy at TNNA and got thier approval for the class. Second, I got a very nice e-mail back from Cookie herself saying that there was no problem. So it's all good. No worries.

Cute pictures always make me feel better...

Sophie and I hung out in the locker room while Julie was swimming this morning. She loved opening the lockers then banging on the bottom of them to make lots of noise. Also, it meant that I got to sit in the corner and knit on Baudelaire for a bit. I'm up to the gusset, and I'm holding off on it till after the first class.



This afternoon we spent some time in the back yard as usual. I turned the hose on for Julie and let her go to town. A trickle of water from the hose is good for at least an hours' worth of entertainment.



Sophie got in on the action too. We were all wet and covered in sand by the time Joe got home, but at least we had some fun.



Answering some mail...

SwissKnits wants to know about the stockinette sock I was knitting last night. Yep, that's some that I dyed up myself. It's one of the skeins that I did during the class I took at Yarnover, so it's professional dyes that are toxic, but I can achieve the same effect with the food dyes at home. It is a short-row heel - just your basic toe-up wrap-and-turn version. I use my own pattern, although at this point it's long-memorized so I never actually look at a pattern.

Damn! Sophie's awake. Goin' to bed. More tomorrow.

Awkwardness, Social and Otherwise

So I did indeed make it to the Guild meeting tonight and I saw several nice people that I was glad to run into again. It's been so long since I've been a regular at the Guild, though, that I feel like a bit of a stranger walking into the room. And then there are the familiar old faces that come and talk to me and I strain to remember names - sometimes grabbing the correct one out of the ether and sometimes not. I am the world's worst when it comes to remembering names, and it is not for lack of trying, honest!

Sometimes, and in some ways, I can be really good with social stuff. I can appear to be outgoing and extroverted, but really it doesn't come naturally for me. It's something that I've worked hard on my whole life and have developed what skill I do have. I have always had a knack for saying awkward things, though.

Anyway, I took along my stockinette sock that was just past the heel turning and ready for some good, mindless public-situation knitting, and I at least accomplished several new inches of that during the evening.



Amy spoke, and she was great - she was funny and smart and I learned a few new things. I am such a wool lover, and my experience with plant fibers in the past has been painful as cotton and linen fibers don't usually have much give and therefore aggravate my repetitive-stress injuries in my hands. But Amy mentioned Rowan Calmer as a good blend with stretch, and now I am tempted to try some. Also, I took another look at her book and went ahead and bought one. Even if I never knit one of the designs in the original yarn, they are all classy and beautiful, and great inspiration for wool projects since I have such a hard time stepping away from the animal fiber. And it was pretty cute how she kept pointing at the Powerpoint slides on her laptop screen instead of on the projector screen - something she was aware of and pointed out that Yarn Harlot Stephanie had made fun of her for.

So then the speech was over and there was a line for the signing and instead of standing in line right away I sat around and chatted with some people and it was good for a while. And then, not long before I was going to go up and stand in line, someone came up and asked me when I'm expecting my third baby. Gah! That's the third time in less than two months that someone has assumed that I'm pregnant. I have to admit, I do look a little pregnant with my pot belly. I've always had relatively weak abdominal muscles, and being pregnant, a c-section and being pregnant a second time haven't done anything for them. The extra 30 pounds that I'm still carrying around don't help the situation any either.

I'm kind of working on it, but not all that seriously. I mean, I love my dark chocolate, and I indulge in treats on a regular basis. I'm not looking for advice on how to lose weight (so PLEASE keep the advice to yourself! REALLY!) I know what I need to do if I want to get into shape. But to be honest, food treats are a coping mechanism that I'm not sure I'm ready to give up at the moment. There are stressful things about my life that I don't share with you. Things that are somewhat ameliorated by a few strategically-timed bites of dark chocolate or a bowl of Cocoa Puffs at the end of the day. Yes, there are other ways I could be coping, but for now I'm consciously choosing my poison.

Argh! I'm okay with looking a little bit ambiguously pregnant for now. Hell, I even empathize with the people who stumble over themselves asking me when the baby's due. They're obviously embarrassed. And that's the thing - I'm not embarrassed for me, I'm embarrassed for them, but I'm still embarrassed and it takes up emotional energy. And that's the key right there.

So moving on, I got in line and asked Amy to sign my book and she recognized me from the blog (Hi, Amy!) and told me that I have cute kids (Thanks!) and then she signed my book really cute, see?



I love it when authors do little drawings with their signatures. And then - I'm not sure what happened then, but I know that it ended with a random fangirl verbal diarrhea on my part and something about how she's one of my knitting idols or some weird crap like that. See - now THAT's the kind of thing I can get embarrassed about so much more than the tubby tummy thing.

Oh, and I mentioned to Amy, all excited-like, that I'm going to teach a class on the two patterns from her magazine, both designed by the marvelous Cookie A. and Amy looked up and asked if I had checked with Cookie about this. And that was the moment when I realized that no, I did not check with the designer of these two marvelous socks whether it was okay for me to have people pay me (via the store) to help them knit them up. It simply hadn't occurred to me that I needed to - they're published patterns, and the students will be obtaining copies of the pattern legally by downloading and printing them from the magazine. But maybe it's not okay for me to use them this way without permission. I'm still freaked out about it, but I've sent an apologetic e-mail off to Cookie, and I will totally respect her wishes on the matter.

In the mean time, here's where I am with that second Baudelaire sock.



This pattern knits up really quickly, and is very easy to memorize, especially the second time around. It's beautiful, and I only wish I had picked a slightly more solid color to show off the lace better.

Now, I think I need to go spend a little quality time with the blankie and gather my nerves a bit before bed.

Two Quick Things

Hi, a rare daytime post to mention two things happening this evening.

1. The ebay auction on my basic knitting machine is ending late this evening - around 10:30 or so CDT. So far, the price is pretty low, and if you have been wanting to try machine knitting, now is your chance. If you're local, I'll waive the shipping charges as long as we can arrange a meetup/dropoff within a reasonable amount of time.

2. The blankie and I will be attending the Minnesota Knitter's Guild meeting tonight. I'm a member, but I haven't been an active one for a few years now. It always comes down to being here for bedtime - a very special, warm, loving time of day in our house - or going to the meeting, and usually bedtime wins out. Tonight Amy Singer is going to be there speaking, and even though this means I will miss bedtime twice this week, I've decided to go. I hope to see some of you there!

Swim, Socky Socks, Beer!

Today was Julie's first swim lesson. It went well, and there were many more positives than negatives. To be honest, I was a little bit afraid that Julie would just balk and refuse to get in the water or something. But luckily that didn't happen. Instead, she stripped off her cover-up dress and hopped into the water the moment she was allowed. It's a small group - only three kids - and the teacher seems super nice and good with kids.



She was very patient - almost too patient as Julie was busy with her own agenda and testing the limits of how much she could get away with. Julie does have a tendency to ignore instructions and find her own imaginary things to do. Case in point - Julie was not supposed to be climbing up on the side of the pool at this point.



I was a little relieved when teacher Krista finally set a boundary and told Julie that if she didn't listen she was going to get to sit on the side of the pool and watch while everyone else played in the water.

I had a few moments to work on Pomatomus today, as well as a few moments last night, and that means I've gotten far enough....



...that I can set it aside for a while - long enough for my students to catch up at least - and work on...



...Baudelaire. Isn't it cute, all barely started?

Oh, and I was heading into the kitchen to take these pictures and I found this scene...



Joe was doing something to his beer mid-brew. I didn't really ask exactly what was going on, but I'll tell you this - that giant bottle on the stool? It had some really nasty looking brown foam in it. I find this amusing, though, because I know the end product is going to be yummy!

Oh, and hey Cece - TMI stands for Too Much Information.

Six Years (and counting)

Today was our sixth wedding anniversary. The traditional gift for year six is iron, and it was perfect since Joe had asked if he could buy himself a new set of golf clubs as a combination anniversary/Father's Day gift. I'm counting my new bike as anniversary gift as well as Mother's Day gift, and we were both very happy on that front.

Actually, we had a very nice day overall...St. Louis Park had its Parktacular Parade this afternoon, and our favorite librarian Joanie had asked me and the girls if we'd like to walk in their group in the parade. I thought "Why not?" and the three of us showed up with the stroller and a couple of signs that I'd quickly printed out saying "We Love our Library" and "Librarian Joanie Rocks!" (She really does rock. She is so nice to my kids, and all the other kids that come to the library. She learns all their names and gets down on their level and talks to them like real people and suggests good books and is generally just a nice person.) It was hot, but not as hot as yesterday, and we walked the route, then got to see much of the rest of the parade as we walked back to our car.

I was thrilled with the people from Trader Joe's, who were handing out apples to people in the parade. I was not so thrilled with the lady from Cub Foods, who walked up to the stroller and tossed a couple of rolls of Smarties in at Julie. Julie still hasn't tasted most kinds of candy, and she was happy eating her apple, thankyouverymuch. That's right, people. I have an almost-four-year-old who has never had candy except for the odd chocolate chip when we're making cookies. And she's not in any way traumatized by it. She doesn't ask for candy, doesn't seem to miss it, and she is thrilled when she gets treats like breakfast bars and apple sauce. But there I go on a soapbox tirade.

So anyway, we came home and I cleaned house like it really needed it, because it really did need it and we were having a.....babysitter!!!! over this evening. Julie's pre-school teacher (or really one of the four different teachers who helped out in her classroom) agreed to babysit for us again, and we were so happy because both Julie and Sophie love her and she has a good vibe and Joe and I trust her.

And I put on my sexy brown dress with the plunging neckline and we went out and ate a wildly extravagant meal and we had adult conversation and had chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream for dessert. We came home and both girls were asleep (thankfully!) so we paid the babysitter and we did all the adult things that we were not able to do in the hotel room after the last time I wore the sexy brown dress because we were sharing it with the girls....sorry about the TMI...and life is really really good.

Sorry for the train-of-thought entry tonight. I don't even have any pictures for you. But I am going to run off and knit a little P. Fishy socky before bed.

Blankie Mojo Friday

It's Blankie Friday again, and I've got an honest update for you tonight...but first I want to talk about mojo a little bit. I think I may be getting my blankie mojo back just a tiny bit. Granted, I am going to be a little distracted by the lace socks for the next week or so. But I've given myself permission - to work on the blankie when I can, to stop beating myself about whether I'm going to finish before August. I will finish, but better to get the thing done properly in its own time and without driving myself entirely insane. I'm going to choose to enjoy this last third of blankie knitting.

Which, in its own way, ties in to a different kind of empowerment that I'm feeling. I rode my bicycle four miles today - four miles with the kids in a trailer behind. To a park playgroup and back. It sounds like nothing to many of you, I'm sure. To me, it was an accomplishment. I overcame the inertia of the cool air conditioning, the easy pop-in-the-car habits, the fear of getting sweaty and purple faced and are the kids going to get restless in the trailer and what if there is a flat tire or maybe I just can't do it. And I just did it. There's a lot more to this - the wanting to be healthy but being pretty darn out of shape and it's so hard to get started when there is no good time to exercise and it seems like such a chore...but the bike is pretty easy. It's a small thing, I enjoy doing it, and it fits into our little daily routine.

Yeah, and how does that fit into blankie Friday? Well, maybe not all that well...but I had to share.

21 new squares since the last official report two weeks ago. It's getting hard to get the whole thing into the frame even standing up on a chair as I normally do.









Oh, and to answer a couple of comments - yes, I think I did stick to the three needles on the Pomatomus all the way down the instep. I hate knitting a sock on three needles - four is oh-so-much better. But because of the way the lace pattern shifts around, it really does make sense to keep all the instep stitches together. Bleh.

And about that kiddie pool? I didn't blow it up with my lungs. I used a pump. I'm not that crazy, but even with the pump it was still a pain in the ass.

State of the Socks

So I've had a few more moments here and there to work on the Sockapalooza sock. When the girls are busy playing, I can sometimes sit back and knit a round before someone needs a nose wiped or something. Anyway, the sock looks alright, although the lace pattern is certainly hard to photograph effectively. I put it on my foot just before doing the toe decreases - my pal's foot is much shorter than my own, so I can't put it on once complete.



I finished that puppy up this evening, though. It's a fun knit - the lace pattern is super easy to memorize, and it became almost mindless knitting.



It totally freaks me out to have one sock done and the other not even started. As I was finishing this up, I was itching to start the second sock, but I had some other factors to consider. I've got that lace sock class starting next week, and it's been a few months since I knit up the two samples that are up in the store. Talk about two more socks without mates - totally out of character for me.

So I'm setting aside the Sockapaloozas. Just so I can work up the mates to the shop models along with my students. It's time to pick up the luscious blue Koigu and cast on another Pomatomus.



Oh, and because there is no such thing as too many socks on the needles, let's take a brief look at the bread-and-butter - the stockinette socks that I must always have available for totally, utterly autopilot knitting. Lately these have come in handy when I've been stuck in the nursery trying to get Sophie back to sleep. I can sit there and work them in the dark while Sophie fusses.





Okay, I'm off to start that fishy sock before bed.

Swimming

After the heat of the last few days, I assumed that today would be just as hot, so as planned I filled up the pool this morning. By early afternoon, it was barely in the 80s and the water in the pool was still pretty chilly. I had promised Julie she could play in the pool, though, so in they went.

For a good half hour they splashed around and giggled. I sat a few feet away knitting on my sock, but not the lace one because I wanted to keep an eagle eye on Sophie in case she slipped. Their little lips started to turn purple, and Sophie started trying to climb out. I asked her "are you all done?" She nodded her super-cute full-body nod. "Are you cold?" She nodded again. I helped her out and immediately she was shivering. I wrapped her in a big dry towel and dragged Julie out of the pool too.

Julie was less willing to come inside and warm up (to put it mildly), but I did get them both dressed and in the end they both went down for naps, leaving me to collect my thoughts for a few precious moments.

In house-keeping business, I'm still missing a bunch of readers from before the server switchover. I just tried hand-editing the old rss and atom files to see if I could point some of them to the right spot. If you're reading this because you got the message on the old feed, please leave me a comment! I really miss some of the voices that used to populate the comments, and I am sad to see my stat numbers so much lower than they were before. I wish I had thought through the repercussions of my file rearranging a little more clearly before I went nuts with it.

Bogged

The weather here is hot and humid (as far as Minnesota June weather goes, anyway). The girls and I are still spending the bulk of our days outside, which is great as far as burning up the day quickly goes. Today, I spent an hour pumping air into our wading pool, and tomorrow morning I will fill it up so that the water can warm in the sun while we are at knitting and the girls can splash around, I expect, all afternoon. It is nice not to have to clean up a giant mess of toys in the living room at the end of the day, and it is nice to have kids that are happily tired each evening too.

On the other hand, just being out in the heat wears me out a bit. Yes, I chase them around some. Yesterday there was a long walk, today I wound off three skeins of yarn for dyeing while they played with Playdough at the picnic table. Then I noticed Sophie sitting *on* the picnic table and panicked a bit. Bad mommy. No harm done in the end, though.

This evening was the annual open house at our local fire station. The fire station is just a few blocks away from our house, so I fed the kids dinner a little early and we walked over there to see the sights. It really is quite an event - they have rides in the fire engines, sirens blaring; the kids get a chance to spray a fire hose at a pretend-burning building, there are all kinds of demonstrations and things to do and explore. Sophie loved looking at the giant bulldozers the city had on display in the back yard. Julie, on the other hand, did the same as last year. She wanted nothing to do with the actual firehouse-related activities. She wanted one of the free popsicles, a balloon, and a plastic firefighter hat, and then she wanted to bounce around in the inflatable bouncy thingy, and then she wanted to play at the adjacent park. So that's what we let her do.



I ended up schlepping the baby and all the junk.



So anyway - why the title? Well, I'm feeling a bit bogged down. I feel like I'm not getting much done in the evenings, like there is a list of things I should be doing and that they've been sitting there for ever looking at me. There is a pile of things in my office that's been waiting to go up on ebay for months. There is a pile of reading material that needs going through. I need to sign Julie up for some summer activities before it is too late. Blah Blah blah. Oh, and I signed up for Ravelry, but who has time to actually fill all that stuff in? Last night I decided to hide from the computer entirely, and instead knit a bunch of squares on the blankie. Even after doing my best on that, it still felt like not enough.

So tonight I decided to start chipping away at the e-bay listings. I had wanted to get them all listed at the same time so that I could to one giant post-office run when they all sell. But I realized I was never going to get motivated that way. One thing at a time will eventually get them all sold, and right now I'm selling my first knitting machine. It is the most basic of knitting machines, perfect for a beginner, and I'm starting it off at a ridiculously dirt-cheap price. Hopefully someone will buy it, hopefully more than one person will bid on it and I will end up with more than $10 for the thing! I haven't used it in a couple of years now, and I have another machine that will do pretty much all the same things. Time to get rid of the clutter.

Okay, and we're all still winding up the cold that we had over the weekend. Sophie's upstairs coughing on phlem and I may have to go on up to bed. I'll try to have something more exciting tomorrow!

Sensory Overload Sunday

Sorry there was no blankie Friday this week. I'm going to come clean here - the girls and I have been on our own since Thursday night - Joe took a little trip up north with his college buddies, and as usual I don't like to talk about vacations till after they've happened for security reasons. He came home this afternoon and we were all very happy to see him.

I promptly went upstairs and took an hour long nap, which I desperately needed. Then Joe took Julie to pick up our dinner at Chipotle. Yay!

Although I am feeling a bit of sensory overload at the moment, it has not at all been a *bad* weekend with just me and the girls. We kept ourselves busy playing outside mostly, and I took them out to dinner the last two nights to avoid having to cook and clean. Still, by the time I got them down to bed and did the minor chores that must be done each evening, I simply did not have it in me to generate coherent thoughts.

I'm still not sure my thoughts are all that coherent, but I'll share a few with you anyway.

Yarn!

My first yarn shipment is all ready to go out in the mail tomorrow morning! One of my loyal readers has purchased two of the self-striping skeins, and I can't wait for her to start knitting them up! Or just get her hands on them and add them to her stash. Jaci, do you have a blog?



One service that I'm offering anyone who buys yarn from me is to wind it into center-pull cakes. I'll either wind it into a single cake, or as I did for Jaci, two center-pull cakes that start at about the same point in the color repeat and weigh about equal amounts. Perfect for a pair of matching socks! This is how I use my sock yarn, and it's really not much trouble to do before I send it out. Of course, if a buyer wants me to leave it in the twist-skein I'm happy to do that too. The yarn itself is a little more fun to look at that way, and if you're not planning to knit it right away that might make sense.

In any case, thanks, Jaci, for being my first cyber-customer!

Blankie!

I am still fighting to get back my blankie mojo. After all your input last week, I gave it some more thought and I realize that I really do want the blankie to end up in the bigger size I originally planned. I will enjoy it more in that size, and maybe I even owe it to all the people who sent me yarn to carry through on the original plan. I did get a lot of input, and I really appreciate it. I think I may have even gotten a comment from that Kay, the queen of all miters and one of my main sources of inspiration for the blankie. Thanks everyone!



Oh, and the idea of going ahead with the I-cord now and submitting the blankie to the fair in the square shape is somewhat tempting, but I know myself well enough to know that it would be very hard to go back and finish once I'd done the edging once. For now, I think I will just keep knitting away as many squares as I can motivate myself to do. We will see where we are when the fair approaches, but I am prepared to hold the blankie out till next year if she is not truly ready.

About the Blankie Knit-Along. Really, it's a bit of a lame knit-along. All I'm doing is putting links in the sidebar to the people who have said that they're making the blankie and want to be linked. If you want to join, just send me a comment or e-mail, make sure I have your URL (or I can't add you). There are a couple of people - especially Brit Knitter Dianne - who have been updating their blogs with their blankie progress regularly. If you don't have a blog and want to knit along, I'm happy to post photos here. Just e-mail me your updates. Those of you who have e-mailed or commented recently, either I have been too disorganized to get you added and/or I didn't have your URL. E-mail or comment again, please! Oh, and feel free to save a copy of the Knit-along button to your web space and put it up on your blog - maybe just link it back to me or something Idon'tknow.


Yarn Shops

Becky asked for some recommendations on local yarn stores in the comments. I wrote up a big long e-mail giving her the dish on my innermost thoughts about a bunch of different stores in town. Most of my thoughts were positive and excited, a few somewhat snotty and/or critical. Things that I wouldn't want to say in public. Of course, my top recommendation is the Yarnery in St. Paul - it's at Victoria and Grand. Lovely store, lovely neighborhood. I'm only slightly biased, but they certainly don't pay me for advertisement. If you want the rest of the dish, you'll have to send me your e-mail address Becky. I realized only after I typed up my thoughts that you didn't give it to me.

Socks!

I'm to the heel of the first Sockapalooza sock - the girls let me do a little knitting while they played in the yard the last couple of days. It's turning out well, and I'll give you more details on that later in the week.



In the mean time, Cece asked me to pretend that I'd never knit a sock before and tell her where to start. Well, just don't get carried away. I think the basic sock pattern in the book Folk Socks by Nancy Bush is a great place to start. It has very clear directions, and gives you the basic recipe for the classic handknit sock from the top down. Every knitter should know how to make the classic sock. From there, I would move on to socks from the toe-up using short rows. They are my favorite for various reasons, and I even sell a pattern for them. (By the way, Jaci, look for a little surprise bonus in your package!) For beginners, stick with simple stockinette and/or ribbing. I like double-pointed needles, and I think socks should be knit at a very tight gauge for longevity - at least the foot part of the sock. If you want to knit the cuffs a little looser, fine. I could talk about socks for hours, and I have taught sock classes at the store several times. If you're really nervous about knitting socks, by all means get yourself to a LYS and take a class.

Here's where we were this afternoon -

A Good Day

Today was a pretty good day, mostly. There was a very nice, long bike ride with the girls, there was some time out in the back yard involving the garden hose and a three-year-old pretending to be a firefighter. I had one of those epiphany moments and drew a bunch of flames on the sidewalk in chalk for her to "put out". She loved it.

Later this afternoon we picked up our first installment of CSA veggies. We're sharing a "share" with two other families, and I'm worried that it will still be more than we can handle each week. Today we got a giant pile of kale, spinach and lettuce. I really want to believe that we can keep up with it, but I'm a little worried that I may be the only person in our family who will eat many of the varieties willingly.

I don't have much to say about knitting tonight - except that there are a couple of projects on the blogosphere that are begging me to do them, and I am firmly stopping my ears and singing "Lalala I'm not listening." One is Nona's Sidewinders. The other is that Kauni Cardigan that Susan and her posse are getting started with. "Lalala I have too many projects in the lineup already"

So while we wait for Blankie Friday, here is a sweet little video of Sophie from dinner the other night.

Sockapalooza!

So I figure it's time to finally do a quick post on my Sockapalooza plans, now that I've actually started my socks and feel pretty confident that I'm going to stick with the current plan.

A week or two ago, I started thinking seriously about what to knit for my pal. The problem was that she's extremely un-picky. The only limitation that she gave me was that she doesn't usually go for pastels. Other than that, plain, fancy any fiber, you name it. And she doesn't have a blog, so it's not like I can go snooping around to get a feel for her. I'm not complaining - it's just that I'm all on my own here.

I picked out a hank of Anne by Schaeffer. It's red and black, with a bit of deep deep purple in between. The colors reminded me of smoldering flames almost. So, as I was flipping through the Favorite Socks book that my SP10 pal sent me, I thought "Perfect! I'll knit the Flame Wave socks by Ann Budd." I had to do a little fiddling with the numbers because the pattern is written for thicker yarn, but it was no big deal. I cast on and knit a couple repeats of the pattern. See?



Only with the yarn's swirly stripes, you could hardly see the stitch pattern. Why bother doing the extra work if it's not going to show up? I went back to the drawing board and flipped through my book again.

And in the mean time, I took a gratuitous kid picture - they both fell asleep on the way home from our park play date the other day. It gave me an opportunity to sit with them in the car for a good half hour and enjoy the silence while I started the sock again.




Notice the matching dresses? I love the matching dresses.

A little further back in the book, I encountered Evelyn Clark's Waving Lace Socks. They are just like the Flame Wave socks almost, except the increases are yarnovers instead of make ones. A little less subtle, and just what I needed.



I've knit a couple repeats, and although it looks better stretched out, you can tell that there is an actual pattern going on here. I'm keeping it. I've even done another inch or so since the picture was taken. I am wondering, though, when do I stop?

My pal says she likes crew-length socks. What the heck does that mean? Normally, when I knit socks for myself, I knit the cuff about the same length as the foot. It feels right to me and seems proportionate. I'm all about the proportions. Would that be considered "crew" length? Longer? Shorter? Oh, the indecision. Any advice would be welcome here. I really would like to make a pair of socks that my pal finds realistically wearable.

Okay, it's past my bed time again, I have to get up early in the morning, and I'd really like to figure out how to post this to the pligg or plog or whatever that thing is that we're using to share our socky goodness. Tomorrow night - more yarn, and probably a funny little video of Sophie.

Yarn!

So I know y'all want to see what I was up to with the yarn this weekend. The thing is, I'm going to show you a picture (of course I'm going to show you a picture - this whole blog is pictures!). The picture is going to be some beautiful yarn, if I do say so myself. But the most important part is that I had a LOT of fun dyeing it. At one point, Joe came through the kitchen and I just gushed "I'm so happy! Look at this yarn!" He, of course, gave me the look.

But let's look at some gratuitously cute kids first:



Jack is about six months older than Julie. Yesterday we took a walk to the park with Jack, his mom, and his little brother for a playdate. On the way back, Jack and Julie decided to hold hands. Awww.

So, uh, ya still want to see the yarn? Okay.



I made it through nine of the fifteen skeins I received in the mail last week. The ones at the top are my favorite. I love them because the color is a brown that fades into pale mauve, which is pretty, but also because the color was not what it said on the bottle of food color, and I was pleasantly surprised. These should make stripes in a sort of spiral swirl if I've figured it out right. The ones on the right are random orange-on-yellow splotchy. I made some like this a few weeks ago and two of my knitting friends both wanted to buy it. I sold that skein to one of them, and am going to give the other a choice of these two tomorrow. (Hi, Beth!) The three at the bottom are all the same colors - two striping and one random blobs. They are very electric/neon colors. Finally, the two on the left - just pretty pinks and greens, they are different shades from each other, and should also make swirly stripes.

These skeins are all destined for sale, and I can make more of any of them if the first ones sell. I think I'm going to open an Etsy site once I get the other six blank skeins I have dyed up, but in the mean time if someone is really hot to buy one send me an e-mail at shellyk at shellykang dot com and I could maybe work out a deal via Paypal - I'm thinking $18 apiece for all but the self-striping ones at the bottom, which would be $22 apiece, plus shipping. The self-striping ones take a LOT longer to make than the others, since I have to do a lot of winding and re-winding.

Everywhere I read about dyeing yarn, I see things that say "professional" dyes are more colorfast than food dyes, especially the Kool-Aid. I have my doubts about how true this is. I dyed and knit yarn into glittens for me and mittens for Julie last fall and we wore them all winter, and they're still pretty vibrant. Plus, I figure, this is sock yarn - they'll probably wear out and get thrown away long before the color will fade out. Still, I had some Rainbow Barf left over, and I whipped up a swatch on the knitting machine the other night. I think I'm going to throw that sucker in with the dirty diapers and wash and dry the hell out of it for the rest of the summer, then compare the swatch to the unwashed socks before I start wearing them in the fall. A knitting-related science experiment, if you will.



Oh, and here's a little yarn that is mine only because I bought it. I taught at the Yarnery tonight, and a few skeins followed me home.



That's the new Malabrigo lace weight. I have no plans for it yet - I just saw it on the Yarnery's blog a few days ago and knew that I had to have some in the stash. It is like two little kittens, it is so soft and cute.



That's the Fleece Artist Sea Wool. Because I don't have enough sock yarn, you know.

And that's it for tonight! Sophie's upstairs semi-awake, so I think it's going to be time for bed in a minute.

Blankie Friday Update

So some of you had some very valid questions and requests on the Blankie Friday post. I meant to answer them last night, but I was busy dyeing yarn. So here we go.

Non-gratuitous kid pic on the couch with the blankie:



Blankie all by herself on the couch - well, with the blankie my grandmother crocheted for me when I was a kid. Grandma's blankie is a bit longer, and I have to admit there have been times when I wished *that* blanket to be longer than it is. hm.



About the border in question - all along the plan has been to add a very small, subtle I-cord border all along the edges. This is non-negotiable, and it is in fact already implemented along the bottom and most of the right edge. It made me laugh hilariously that y'all got all hot and bothered (kinda) about what kind of border I was talking about when it's all right there in the tutorial! heh.

Additional thoughts and comments on whether to stop or keep going are welcome and encouraged!

Also, this week in the blog - a new project on the needles, and some crazy new hand dye to show off. My house smells like vinegar and wet sheep. I can't believe my family isn't complaining!

Oh! and Really, my husband loves me. This morning, I was headed upstairs to take a shower, a luxurious weekend shower in which I take my time and he watches the kids so that I can shave my legs in relative peace and have a tiny little break. I saw a look in Joe's eyes that was a bit - resigned. It said to me that he was putting up with my silly ritual of time to myself, but he wasn't enjoying it. So while I was showering, I was feeling kind of guilty (moms out there all know that we feel guilty at the drop of a hat, so it was nothing new).

Then, I stepped out of the shower and as I was drying off, I heard Joe talking to Julie. Julie wanted to come upstairs and see what I was doing. Joe was explaining to her that "Mommy works hard all week. She gives us almost all of her time. She needs a few minutes to herself once in a while, so let's stay down here." Ahh. So sweet, so unprompted, so perfectly what I needed to hear. Reason 5,971 why I love my husband.

Blankie Friday

I think I'm coming in just over the wire on Blankie Friday, but at least I'm here. First, let's have a gratuitous kid pic. Yesterday we were at Target, and Julie wanted a new big ball. I agreed because they were only $2.50, and because it brought us up to one ball per child. Of course, they were still fighting over the new one, but it'll all be good once the new wears off.



Now it's down to business. As we all know, I didn't make much progress on the blankie this week because I was busy working on that hat. I did spend the last couple of evenings weaving in ends, and I thought I'd share with you the results of one session of end-weaving.



Someone asked a while back why I don't just weave in ends as I go. One of the many reasons is the tiny sense of satisfaction I get out of looking at the pretty pile of ends that develops as I trim them off.

I think I did get a couple squares knit up this week, but I'm too tired to count at the moment.









I did take a bit of time to rework the remaining-squares math once more. Remember, my original plan was to make the thing 1.5 times as long as it is wide. That's a freakin' big couch throw. I've been rethinking it a bit as it gets bigger and bigger. At its current size, it seems fairly cozy. Still, I was holding on to my original plan out of fear that I was just getting lazy and wanting to finish.

Then, I did a little counting and math again tonight. Do you realize that I've now knit 527 squares? Holy freaking miters! Uh, and do you realize that if I stick to my original plan, I still have something like 240 squares left to knit? That's a lot more than I thought. I'm not sure where I made my mistake the last time I did the math, but that'd be 80 more nights at three squares a night.

Well, that's not going to happen if I want to make it to the State Fair. This recalculation has changed my feelings on the end game plan a bit. I'm not sure exactly how far I want to go, but I'm open to your thoughts. Should I wrap it up now with an almost perfectly square blanket? Should I keep going and just see how far I get with enough time remaining to do the border, but end up with a less proportionally-appealing end product? Ack! I can't think any more. I'm going to bed.