The Heathen Housewife

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.

It’s that time again – time to face the music on the blankie progress. I swear, I’m in the black hole for this project. It is obvious that new squares are being completed, but I’ve also been right around the 2/3 complete mark for what feels like forever. At least I can tell there is more than there was because there is a desperate need for the weaving in of ends. I’m sorry, but I refuse to count the squares this week. I don’t know exactly how it averaged out, and I don’t want to know. I know that I put all the time into it that I had.

I know that the thing is beautiful and that I can’t take my eyes off of it when it is in the room. I know that it is constantly tumbling out of its basket because it it too big, and I know that I am still in love with this project, as neverending as it seems. I know that it’s impossible to see all this from the simple picture of it laid flat on the floor. I also know that it makes me laugh when I go back and look at the pictures in the tutorial. They are like blankie baby pictures. Now it’s just an unruly teenager.

Okay, and now here is the source of my underlying guilty pleasure:

It’s the cuff for my new sample hat. The ribbing is simple enough, pretty much mindless knitting. There are some subtle bits of beauty here, above and beyond that of the gorgeous wool. I love tubular cast-ons, and every time I work one, especially over 2X2 ribbing, it feels like a bit of magic. Also, there is a round of plain knit halfway down the cuff meant to provide a clean line for turning it. I love inserting tiny details like this in my work, and I love including their explanations in my patterns for added value. It is nice to be doing something more than my zillionth mitered square.

I’ve moved on past the cuff and into the main body of the hat. It is gorgeous, the color combination. It looks almost edible, like spicy chocolate. You will have to wait at least till tomorrow to catch a glimpse.

I’ll leave you with two cute-kid pictures. Sophie fell asleep in the stroller on the way to the park. There really is nothing more beautiful than a resting baby.

Julie was wide awake, and walking balance beam on the railroad tie borders, among many other things.

Okay, before we get to Blankie Friday, I have to say I really hope you all are still out there. I think the blog is mostly back to normal now. I think the RSS feed should be working again – it’s at http://www.shellykang.com/atom.xml now, so yes you will have to change your bloglines or other reader subscription. The easiest way to do that is usually to just delete the old copy out of your reader, then add the subscription back on. I know, I’m testing your blog-love. It’s all for the sake of faster loads and fewer whiney husband moments (when the server got bogged down, it wasn’t pleasant.) Let me know if you continue to notice other problems. I know I need to fix my profile picture and there are probably some pictures in older posts that have gone missing.

Enough with that business, though! I know you want the low-down on the blankie. It’s a little pitiful, but remember I was away from home for a week and the luggage was huge enough as it was – there was no way I could take it with me. I have only one of the bigger squares to report:

Remember this sock yarn? I think every sock knitter in the universe has knit a sock with this yarn at some point in their career. It’s one of the early Regia self-striping colorways, and I think I received chunks of it from at least 10 different people. Some of the larger chunks went to my friend Connie, who knit them into socks for CIC. There have also been one or two smaller squares out of this yarn in the blankie already, but I couldn’t complete the thing without including a larger square out of this yarn. This coming week will be a Week of the Blankie. At least three squares per day. Really.

In the mean time, when I came home from vacation the Creative Activities Rules and Premiums booklet for the Minnesota State Fair was in my mailbox (well, actually in the giant pile in my foyer, where our house sitter had left it.) I love poring over the knitting categories and considering what I’ve knit so far in the year or may yet knit that will fit in the various sections. The blankie is my only big hope this year, although I may yet make a pair or two of leggings for the girls that might be fun to enter. Looking at the three afghan-type categories, it looks like mine will have to go into either “318 Afghan, made in strips or modules” or “319 Bedspread, min size 3801 sq. in.” The categories can be a bit confusing sometimes. My blankie can’t go in the other two categories because it is going to be around 4400 square inches blocked, and while it certainly is modular, I wonder whether lot 318 is meant for modules that are sewn together rather than knit one off the others. When I think of the bedspread category, I think of those giant lace things that win the Sweepstakes prizes, and I certainly don’t want to go up against those. Luckily, I have months and months to consider.

Let’s look at some cute kid pictures:

I took the girls to Eden Prairie Center to get their hair cut the other day, and for once we had a decent experience in the play area there. Sophie has really decided that she’s into this whole walking thing, and she toddled and climbed all over the place. Here she is looking down from the top of the play structure through one of the slides.

Today we took a trip to the Mall of America with Joe’s cousin and her kids. They all had fun playing in Legoland – that’s Julie and Katelyn in the foreground, and Sarah and Joe’s other cousin Natalie on the yellow bench in the background. Natalie just graduated from college and is a real-life ballerina, a fact that impresses Julie to no end as she claims she’s going to be a ballerina when she grows up.

Sophie got in on the Lego action a bit, and I was watching her like a hawk as she grabbed all those tiny pieces. Only a couple got slobbered on.

She was more interested in toddling off towards the amusement park. She kept walking over towards the ride with the swings hanging down from the tree, and pointing like crazing as she gasped with excitement. This is such a fun age. She is really exploring her personality, learning to communicate and express her own desires and interests. She is such a happy kid most of the time and is constantly making me smile and laugh.

Bad picture, but this is Julie holding hands with Auntie Natalie as we walked through the food court to get some lunch. I just loved the way Julie glommed right on to Natalie and grabbed her hand even though we haven’t gotten to see much of her while she was away at college.

And that’s the end! I still have a little knitting time left tonight, I think I have another square or two left in me before bed.

Twelve and a half. Considering that we’re only talking about six days since last week’s blankie post was a day late…that calculates out to about two squares a day. That’s not so bad, I guess.

I don’t have much other blankie news. It’s been pretty much a week of cranking away at it when I can. So let’s switch gears and catch up on the other pictures I pulled off my camera tonight.

Sophie has become quite the stair-climber. It’s so cute to watch her climbing up determinedly, giggling as I catch up behind her.

This is another of Julie’s creations. She likes to rearrange the chairs and pretend it’s a train. Chugga chugga choo choo.

The first of Julie’s new socks…the cuff is awfully short, but it’s all I could get out of half the available yarn. She didn’t seem to mind.

Here are the girls at knitting on Wednesday. They’re playing with stickers. I usually let them play with a sheet or two of stickers to help keep them occupied while I chat with my friends and maybe knit a round or two. By the time we leave, they’re usually covered in them.

Here’s Sophie taking a little nap yesterday while Julie was in pre-school. So sweet, so serene.

This morning we had a playdate with our Canadian friends. It turns out that each of us chanced to buy the same pair of matching dresses for each of our girls, and when we discovered this, we hatched a plan to dress them all the same and get together for a photo shoot.

Sophie and H. look almost like twins from the back. Sophie’s on the right. Actually, when J. and I are out with the girls in public, we often get people asking how they’re all related.

Getting four little girls to sit still and pose for a photo is like herding cats.

We are a little sad, as today was the last time we will see our Canadian friends till after mid-summer. It’s not my story to tell, but they are traveling to see family for a couple of months. Totally understandable, and I am happy for them. Very sad for us, as we will desperately miss our time together.

J. had planned a sweet little art project for our big girls to do today – a photo frame collage for us to look at till they come back.

We will use this separation as a good opportunity to let the girls try out the postal system, and I will be counting down the days till our friends come back to what we call home, and hopefully they will grow to believe in as well.

And finally, I couldn’t resist. I had to wind up these two skeins of yarn. I really want to start a sock from each of them just to see how the colors pattern up. And, you know, there’s no such thing as too many socks on the needles.

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!

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!

Since yesterday morning, we have gotten another foot or more of snow on the ground here. That’s good and bad news in several ways. Most notably bad is that Joe had a lot of work to do, and the poor guy is exhausted. And our crummy old snowblower finally gave up the ghost, which although bad for our bank account as we’ll have to buy a new one, is good for poor Joe who has been fighting with it for something like five years now. Oh, and my class at the store was canceled last night, which was disappointing because I was all prepared and excited to go.

There is plenty of good to balance off those small negatives, though. Joe’s office closed early yesterday and stayed closed today, so he gets an unexpected long weekend. Today felt a lot like Saturday, only we were all home together instead of me off teaching classes. I got to spend some time outside one-on-one with Julie making snow castles. We tried for snowmen, but the snow still wasn’t sticky enough. It was perfect snow for filling up buckets and making bricks out of, though. It’s hard to get a good picture of all the white-on-white, but as a girl who grew up in the relative south, it is amazing to me to have this much snow stacked up all over the place. We only have about two feet on the ground on average, but when you clear the streets and the driveways and the walks, it creates these giant piles that are like mountains for little kids to climb on.

I remain thoroughly impressed with the St. Louis Park snow removal crew. They had our streets clear before I even woke up this morning! Also, big snows like this make me really appreciate having a garage. It was so nice not to have to dig our cars out of the mess the way we used to when we lived in an apartment and parked on the street.

I had to share this random cute kid pic. Julie made this headband in school. I’m not sure what it’s all about, but it made me laugh like crazy. I remember being a little kid not much bigger than her and making construction-paper headbands as art projects at school. I loved it.

I attempted to make wheat-free chocolate chip cookies yesterday, and ended up with this:

They tasted pretty good, but were butt ugly. I ended up throwing them out because although you can’t see it here, they were leaving pools of butter where they sat, and that was just grossing me out. We’ll be trying another recipe soon! Suggestions welcome. Remember, though, we can’t do wheat or soy.

Finally, what you’ve all been waiting for, the blankie update. I do have one little administrative admonition first. I think it’s awesome when people want to talk about my blanket on their blogs. In fact, I love to see that other people are excited about my little project or to hear that they enjoy reading my blog. So thanks to anyone and everyone who’s done that. What I really don’t want to see is people putting pictures of my blankie on their blogs. It’s not okay to hotlink to my pictures (using an IMG HTML tag). There are two reasons for that. One is that you’re then stealing my bandwidth because your readers are downloading pictures from my site. The other is that I’d rather you send your readers over here to take a look at the blankie in the context of my blog. Who knows – some of them might want to learn more about it or stick around and read about all the other blather that goes on here. My pictures are copyrighted. They are mine. I have given permission in the past for people to use them as desktop images on their computers, and I stand by that. I know that people make honest mistakes, and if you’ve done what I just described, I know that it was with only good intentions. No harm, no foul, just let’s try not to let it happen again. Mwa!

This week’s total is fourteen squares. It’s still way behind my goal, but not all that bad considering how much time I’ve wasted on knitting and ripping sweater backs.

That’s a cat butt at the bottom of the picture. I was trying to honor the requests for visual scale items in the pictures. I’m not putting up a full-res picture tonight because I’m tired and don’t want to waste the brain power. You’ll have to go back to last week and savor the old ones if you’re that desperate. Hey, Erika! Look at the top row there – see the big square and the smaller squares on either side of it? That’s all you, baby! Thanks again!

Here’s the elusive Harry Cat taking a little stroll across the blankie.

Tomorrow is going to be a busy day. I’m teaching two back-to-back classes at the store. I’m subbing in the morning for one of the other teachers and then teaching my own class in the afternoon. I’m looking forward to it, but I feel a little sorry for Joe, who will be home with the girls for hours and hours by himself. I’m sure they’ll survive.

Oh! and one last thing! I just watched Little Miss Sunshine the other night. Hilarious! Whoever commented about the tiger hat and the scene with the grandfather – I thought of you when I watched it and laughed myself silly. Thanks. Creepy, but thanks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is just a gratuitous cute kid picture.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sheesh. It is 11:52 and I just put Sophie down in the crib. Baby better not wake up is all I have to say. She’s been staying up late lately, and it’s getting on my last nerve. I want some peace! Okay, it’s incredibly cute to watch her roll around on the floor and look up at me with a big goofy drool-dripping grin. I just wish she’d do it at 11 a.m. instead of 11 p.m. Mama needs some time to herself! She’s been doing a couple of new things that are incredibly cute (which is why I keep her, of course). 1) She grabs and holds her toes. Doesn’t sound all that impressive, but it’s like all of a sudden she realizes there are feet there, and they are great for grabbing. Built-in toys. 2) She sticks out her tongue. A lot. Sometimes much further than I thought it could possibly go. For your entertainment value, here she is doing both at the same time.

It’s even cuter when she’s grabbing both feet and sticking the tongue out all the way, but I didn’t quite catch that moment.

It’s been a couple weeks, so it’s time for a knitting update. I like doing these, because it is fun for me to compare where I was to where I am and see that I have made a bit of real progress in all my various projects. It feels like I rarely get more than 5 minutes at a time to knit, so it’s nice to see that those 5 minutes are adding up to something after all.

The Fortissima Socks are almost finished. One just needs a sewn bind-off and the other is just a few rows behind. This pair really knit up quickly – it’s fun yarn to work with because the colors are so bright, and it’s leftovers from this sweater that I knit for Julie a couple years ago.

I’m not sure how this Mitred Sock Blankie got started, but it’s incredibly fun to work on and I can’t seem to stop. The idea popped into my head one night as I was laying in bed drifting off to sleep, and before I knew it I was sorting sock yarn from my stash of leftovers. I decided to use only wool/nylon blends in fingering weight, and I still had about 15 or so yarns to work with. I have no deadline or really intended recipient for this one, but it’s calling me to knit it, and maybe if it turns out okay I could put it on my couch or maybe save it for one of my girls or something. I’m gearing up to beg some of my knitting friends for their sock leftovers too, otherwise I will be knitting it gradually over the next 20 years as I finish up pairs of socks and accumulate leftovers. My friend E asked me today how many pairs of socks I’ve knit, and I really don’t know the answer to that question. I’d say on average at least 6 or 7 pairs per year for the last 5 years, so at least 30 or so, more if you count baby socks.

Julie’s Bavarian Twist Sweater is going very slowly. I’m only almost finished with the first ball of yarn. I really need to pick up the pace on this one, but that blankie keeps distracting me, and there just hasn’t been that much quality knitting time. I need good concentration, or at least a DVD and both kids in bed to work on this piece since it’s got the charts and all. It’s coming out pretty, though.

I cast on for this Lemon Hat on Thursday and finished it last night. I’m going to send it to a woman who works for the WIC program and it giving them away to promote breastfeeding, as per Stephanie’s post over at Yarn Harlot last week. What an easy way to get behind a good cause!

Pants! Pants for Julie. Since I’m finishing up my last socks-in-progress, I needed another sock-like garment on the needles for on-the-go mindless knitting. I wanted to make some leggings for Julie, who loves comfortable pants and really loves stripes. These will be part of her birthday present. I just did enough so they’re started and ready to grab and go. I made a picot edging and followed it up with a row of purl stitches to define the cuffs at the bottom.

The Most Expensive Socks I’ve Ever Knit are finally done. You can’t see it very well in the photo, but I kept the ribbing going all the way down from the top of the cuff to the tippy-toes. The picture does not do the colors justice. They are subtle and beautiful – a discontinued Cherry Tree Hill Super Sport yarn.

Here’s Daisy checking out a new addition to the stash. A friend of mine went to visit family in Canada for a couple of weeks, and she came back with a pile of Canadia yarn for me. The variegated looks like it could be self-striping and I think there is enough here to make a little sweater for Sophie next year (because it’s not likely to happen this year – too many projects in the line-up, and yarn has to age properly you know). This picture doesn’t do the colors justice, either, but they’re really nice.

When I mentioned to Jen that I thought the yarn would stripe, she was surprised and I had to show her the self-striping socks on the needles to make her understand. She knits a bit, and her eyes lit up at the idea of fancy socks. Before she could object, I dug up some stripey yarn and a set of needles from the stash and got her started on her first pair. I was so excited to get someone started on socks, and I think she’s enjoying it so far. She hasn’t hit the heel yet, but I’ll be there when she does. Let’s all send some positive thoughts and/or whatever brand of prayer you do to Jen and her family this week. Jen’s baby Hafsa is a month younger than Sophie and is having surgery tomorrow. They have lots of family support, and I know everything will be fine, but I can’t begin to feel the stress she must be going through right now. Happy thoughts, happy thoughts…

I couldn’t leave Harry cat out since Daisy got in on the blogging action. Most people who visit our house never see Harry because he is very shy around anyone but me and Joe. I’ve been accused of having an imaginary cat more than once. He loves sitting in that spot, curling up in the afghan my grandmother crocheted for me or sitting on the blanket I knit for Julie. That’s the basket of sock yarn for my blankie project next to him.

Here is the Magic Yarn Ball I received as part of the swap I participated in last month. Actually, what you see is the yarn re-wrapped into a center pull ball and all the stuff that was hiding inside. The idea is supposed to be that you knit something out of the ball as you unwrap it, savoring each little gift as it appears. Sorry, I didn’t have the patience for that, especially since I have so many enticing things on the needles at the moment and so little time to knit. At least I used the nostepinne that Joe gave me for our anniversary instead of the much-quicker ball winder. Magni from Norway did a great job picking out prizes for me. My favorite is the tiny sample-sized ball of Opal sock yarn that was in the very middle, but she also included some beautiful glass beads, some buttons, a pair of folding scissors, some beaded stitch markers, some pretty striped ribbon, and a crochet hook and pattern for slippers to use with my yarn. Thanks, Magni! I think I’ve got the courage to try another fun exchange when one comes along.

Okay, I’m finishing this up at 11 PM on the 4th, almost 24 hours after I started typing, and I can hear Sophie screaming bloody murder in the living room with Joe. I guess I’d better wrap things up and go help out. Poor kid is having a bad week. I drank some milk yesterday for the first time in a month or two, and I think maybe that’s what’s bothering her. That, or the cold she, Julie and I all seem to be sharing.