The Heathen Housewife

Today Sophie is Four. Four! 4?!? My baby, my sweet child, my cuddly little puppy. (“Don’t Call Me Puppy!”)

I started calling Sophie “Puppy” sometimes when she gives me the sad, pouty hangdog look that she is so good at when she doesn’t get what she wants. She hates it, of course, but loves it when I call her “Baby”. Sophie loves hanging out in her fuzzy footie pajamas and being cuddled like a baby. Such is the fate of the last child – she has the luxury of clinging to babyhood a bit longer.

Of course, there have been some arguments lately about four-year-olds being big enough to walk on their own two feet as we head to the from pre-school after a tiring two hours. Sophie has ever been my mostly laid-back and smiling child, but she’s developed the other side of that coin over the last year as well, and can be a little stinker when she likes. She was much slower to talk than Julie, and still has the accent of  a toddler, gradually disappearing as she learns to combine consonants. I believe Sophie’s going to be a smart little cookie in her own right.

Sophie chose to have her birthday party at the bowling alley again this year, and it was a fine time. I made her pink strawberry cupcakes with pink frosting and sprinkles because that was exactly what she wanted. (Of course, I made a pile of yummy chocolate cakes as well, because I needed them!)

She seemed so happy and grown-up blowing out her four candles, eating her strawberry ice cream, and hardly touching her cupcake – she ate one bite of it when I offered to help her fork it up before clearing it away from the table after she’d had her fill and it was time for presents.

Watching small children bowl is always entertaining. I didn’t bowl at all because I was busy arranging things, welcoming guests, taking photos and playing hostess. Fine by me. Look at my two girls -

hanging out together. This hugging scene is not an uncommon one. They truly love each other, and play well together about 90% of the time. Sophie’s learning to assert herself, so of course there are disagreements, but that’s to be expected.

Julie seems to have outgrown the little-kid bowling ramp. See what I mean about small children bowling?

And she did this victorious hands-up gesture every time the ball went down the alley, whether it knocked a pin down or not. You can see Joe getting ready to bowl in the background here.

Most of the kids from Sophie’s pre-school class were at the party, plus our family and all the parents. It was a good-sized crowd. There were no tears, as far as I saw and lots of happy.

Sophie wanted one thing for her birthday, and she got it in full – her first Barbie doll so she could play on an even field with big sister.

Later that afternoon, Barbie loaded up her convertible with lots of her stuff and a dog, and they went for a ride around the living room.

I love you, my sweet girl. Every moment.

Whew! I just had a stressful day. Mostly self-imposed. Well, mostly because I decided to jump in with both feet and migrate my blog platform over to WordPress today. I think I did it, mostly. There are still a few loose ends to tie up – I need to put some links back up in the sidebar about the blankie and other stuff. It looks pretty nice and fresh over there at the moment.

I’d been using Blogger since I first started this ole thang back in 2004, and while I’m sure Blogger was neither the end-all nor the be-all, it was working pretty well for my simple needs. I had started off with my own domain name and hosting because I’m a control freak like that, and I had changed hosting services along the way once or twice as my audience grew and spiked. At one point we were hosting the site on a server in our own basement, which worked fine until I got linked by the Yarn Harlot and the poor thing shut down, curled up and died. (or maybe my husband just got tired of dealing with my internet shenanigans and made it clear he didn’t want to be in charge of the gear-grinding monkeys any more).

Seriously, though. I haven’t had to deal much with the background workings of the blog until Blogger announced recently that they’re not going to support FTP users any more – that’s people like me who don’t want their hosting or their .blogspot.com URLs. Gulp. Luckily, DreamHost, who hosts my site, supports WordPress, and it turned out that the migration was fairly easy. Once I got over my stage fright and fear that I would manage to lose every word and photo from the last six years, along with all of my readers and – well. I knew I had to bite the bullet and do the switch as soon as possible so that I could stop worrying.

Whew! Boooring, I know. I hope to finish cleaning up my mess this weekend, between baking cupcakes for Sophie’s birthday (my baby’s going to be four! Yikes!) and the party and regular family stuff.

Meanwhile, I’ll treat you to a couple of knitting photos to tide you over.

These are the socks I made for one of my lovely neighbors in November. I handed them off to her without taking a picture, and a few weeks ago I mentioned that I would love to run across the street and snap one the next time she had them on and it was convenient. Last weekend it worked out, and it made me happy to see that I am not the only one who hangs out in her comfy jammies till noon or later on the weekends. Megan’s favorite color is red, and she seems pretty happy with the socks.

Okay, and forgive me while I play around with photo size and settings – until now I’ve always used Photoshop to resize my pictures in a batch and then loaded them up on the server and type in the links myself…while I’m using this new platform, I may actually learn to let go of the control a bit and let the software do its job…

You’ve seen this sweater already, but I’d been unhappy with the neckline on it to the point of not wearing it much at all. It was too wide and just plain wonky. I finally realized how stupid it was to hide it in the back of my closet when it would only take a couple/few hours of ripping and re-knitting to make it right. I still wouldn’t call it perfect, but it is much better, and certainly wearable as it is now. That’s also a lovely shot of me with no makeup, having just changed out of my comfy jammies on Sunday afternoon in time to run the family over to the pool at the gym. Meh. Look at the sweater, not at my face, mmmkay?

Oh, and here’s what the sweater looked like before the new neckline.

There definitely needs to be more knitting going on around here. I was so focused on those spiral sweaters for so long, I’m at a bit of a loss now that I’m done with them for a while. I have been swatching and tossing ideas around in my head. Things have to percolate for a while before I can commit to a sweater-size project, you know. Meanwhile, I’ve been playing around with the pop tabs again, and I’ll show you the progress on that new project in a day or two.

I just jammed the second-smallest toe on my left foot doing a flip-turn while swimming today, and it is rapidly turning purple. Yuck.

I promise, this is not going to become a workout blog. Really. But hey, did you catch the part of that last sentence where I told you I did a flip-turn while swimming today? I’m getting to the point where I’m almost good at them. And when I nail one, it feels great. Half a third of the time, though, I chicken out and flip when I’m not quite close enough to the wall, and then I feel like a jackass. Today’s accident was one of those, and I pushed off the wall with just my toes and YOW!

But when I nail a flip-turn, I get to pretend that I’m one of those Olympic swimmers that you see flipping and turning with the underwater cameras and they look so cool. Please, gods, may no one ever film me doing a flip-turn with an underwater camera!

Meanwhile, I do have some knitting content to put up, as soon as I block the thingie in question and get a photo of me wearing it. This whole back-to-blogging thing is seriously cutting into my crafting time.

Our family seems to be overtaken by the swimming craze. The girls continue their once-a-week lessons, I swim laps for an hour twice a week with an awesome group of people at the gym, and most weekends the whole family ends up in the pool at the gym for some play time. It’s all pools, all the time around here.

This last weekend, the girls were in their first swim meet, of all things. The swim school was holding a “Fun Meet” and the girls were all over it. Unfortunately, I had a previous engagement, but Joe took them, and it sounds like they had a good time.

I love these looks before their heats. They look just like the Olympic athletes sitting there psyching themselves up before their show.

Is that a beach towel or a teddy bear?

Sophie’s turn was first. She had just one pool length to swim.

Julie swam in a later heat, with four lengths. Both of the girls are doing well in their lessons, and Julie really can actually swim. Sophie’s getting there.

I got home just in time to chat with them a bit before bed, and they were all pumped up to show off their ribbons. Sophie told the story this way…”First I won, and then Julie won.” They were so proud of themselves. Earlier, Joe had texted me to let me know that they’d enjoy themselves, and that they’d both come in last in their heats. By a lot. This is the kind of competition I want my kids in.

Moving on to me…

Remember that embarrassing photo I showed you back at the end of September? Don’t worry, I’ll refresh your memory.

That was kind of the before picture. I was so excited to be swimming with this awesome new group, feeling the swimmin’ super-hero vibe. I’m still feeling it. I love how strong I feel in the water. I love feeling like I belong there, like I’m doing the right thing for myself a couple times a week. It’s even better now that I finally kicked the cold that was dragging me down for about three months there.

So here’s the first update. I know you all probably can’t see much difference. I know I can barely see the difference, knowing where to look and everything. But it’s so there. My arm-flaps are pretty much gone. Now I’m all toned and can show off actual muscle. I can’t wait for tank top season! My core body strength actually exists now. Most importantly, I no longer constantly worry about getting fatter and fatter and more and more atrophied.

I know, I have a long way to go. Wanna see my dream-goal picture?

That’s me back in 1996 or 1997, back during the five minutes when I was in the best shape of my life. I love my life right now about a million times more, and I’m okay with my body right now too. But that photo? It’s pretty good motivation not to go stuff my face. Except I did have that chocolate cake last night, and it was awesome.

Today is, apparently, my Braftday. Julie has been writing more and more
lately, and she surprised me with this birthday message.

Julie is six and in Kindergarten, so her writing skills are actually
pretty impressive. I love sorting through her papers that she brings
home from school, especially when her teacher has her write a sentence
with the sight words the rest of the class is practicing. It is so much
fun deciphering her creative spelling to reveal her thoughts.

We will be heading out as a family for a casual dinner that I will not
have to cook, and some dessert that I will not have baked for myself,
hopefully chocolate cake!

Thanks to all the friends and family who have already sent e-mails,
texts and Facebook messages. Oh, the wonders of modern connectivity!

Hi, just popping in with the current socks in progress. I’ve always got a pair (or two…or three…) of plain socks on the needles. They are necessary on-the-go and emergency knitting. Every knitter should have some easy, plain knitting available to grab at an instant’s notice to take along for situations where they will be riding passenger in a car, waiting for more than a couple minutes, sitting in a meeting, or chatting casually with friends.

Socks for me, with no specific deadline, knitknitknitknitknit. The fact that I get to wear them when they are done is mostly a bonus.

This pair is sport-weight self-striping Opal. I love this yarn. It is warm, hard-wearing, and knits up fast. This particular colorway makes me pretty happy as well.

There is a small story behind this ball of yarn, and some of its friend that are currently sitting on the shelf in my office. A few months back, and nice lady from the distributar of Opalgarn in Sweden e-mailed to ask permission to translate the blankie pattern into Swedish. I said you bet, just please could you include my name and maybe a link to my website with whatever you publish, and thank you very much! She said, no problem, and would you like to pick out a kilogram of sock yarn as a thank you gift for the pattern.

I was like a kid in a candy store. It took me a few days of clicking through their website to decide what I wanted. That’s like 8-10 pairs of socks, depending on whether you want fingering or sport weight. Eventually, I decided, and before I knew it there was a box with a kilo of sock yarn on my doorstep. I could hardly believe it! So, thanks, Åsa! Thanks for sharing my blankie pattern with all your customers in Sweden, and thanks for your generous gift of sock yarn. I love every single skein of it.

Okay, so maybe yes, I just finished showing off my newly crocheted pop-top bags. Ahem. But really. I’m not a crocheter. No, really! I’m a *Knitter*. With a capital K. Yeah, because the last time I tried to explain the difference between people who occasionally dabble in knitting and capital-K Knitters, I managed to piss a bunch of people off. And the difference (in my mind at least) is the capital-K Knitters do it a heck of a lot more, and they think about what they are doing and want to continually do it better.

But back to not crocheting. I’ll admit, I knew how to crochet before I knew how to knit. Long, long before I knew how to knit. I took a little after-school class when I was about 8 and learned how to crochet from a teacher. My crochet career consisted of one hot-pink tote bag, then later – in my 20s – an ugly red scarf, and then a halfway decent afghan for my then-future in-laws right before I learned to knit. Whew!

But I’m a Knitter. Not a crocheter. suuuure. Except. I work with this really cool, smart, super-productive lady named Teresa at the yarn shop, and I see her around, and she’s pretty quiet in my limited experience but really nice, and knows a LOT. She not only knits, but also weaves and crochets. And she teaches and writes patterns for all these things. We’ve briefly chatted about knit versus crochet now and again over the years, and a while back I dragged in my pop-top tote bag and showed it to her, all proud of myself for implementing a crochet hook in another pursuit besides corralling runaway (knit) stitches. Yay, me!

And I mentioned that I thought granny squares were kinda cool, but had never tried one. So Teresa pointed out the lovely sample blanket hanging up on the wall, a giant granny square for which she’d written a pattern. It was cool looking, and she said it was easy. And then she did this awesome thing where she pulled out a copy of the pattern and GAVE it to me. She sent me off in the world with my very own copy. That was a pretty cool thing, and she acted like it was no big deal.

Well, I happened to have a pregnant friend (she’s not pregnant any more – this happened a while back, and now I have a new-mom friend with a super-cute new daughter). This friend is a long-time participant in a casual group of friends who get together for what we like to call Knitting Night, but is really just a chance for us to sit around gossiping, eating, and catching up, with the occasional knitting content. Most of the knitters in the group knit only when knitting night comes around every couple months. They are most definitely not capital-K knitters, and none of us has a problem with that.

Anyway, this particular friend needed a blanket for her new baby. Or, at least I assumed she would. I dug around in my stash, found some baby-colored merino I’d spun up, and sat down with Teresa’s pattern. Not very long later, this is what I produced…

Pretty cute, if I do say so myself! Except, I didn’t actually make the books. I just bought those to go with the present, because every new baby should have some board books around for when they are ready (and they are usually ready before you know it). I chose some of my favorites from the early days with Julie, and then Sophie – Good Dog Carl, The Snowy Day, Time for Bed, and Big Red Barn. I’ve always been picky about what I’ll read to my kids. There are so many good books available out there, but there are a lot of really crappy ones, too. These four are all a joy to read, even when you’re reading them for the hundredth time. Good Dog Carl doesn’t have many words – it’s mostly pictures, and you have to make up the words yourself (and it’s kind of creepy, too, but kids love it because the dog and the baby are getting away with a LOT and having fun), but the other three all have that wonderful rhythm and flow that only really good children’s books bring. And the pictures are nice, too.

So anyway, the blanket was finished in the blink of an eye between iterations of the spiral sweaters. One nice thing about a giant granny square is that you can just keep going until you run out of yarn, and that’s what I did. Somehow, I don’t think I’ve quite got granny squares out of my system.

I pulled out my stash of wool/cotton/nylon blend sock yarn and started making a pile of smaller squares. They are so easy to pick up and work on here and there – mostly when I’m finished eating my dinner and the girls are still picking and theirs. I have no plan with these, really. I am just picking up whatever ball strikes my fancy, and sometimes mixing in several yarns, sometimes sticking with just the one I started with. I don’t know how big this thing will be, and I’m trying very hard not to think about the issue of some day joining them all together (yikes!).

Much of the yarn in that little bin is left from the inundation from generous knitters everywhere at the beginning of the mitered square blankie project. I promised a good home to all that yarn, and that it would be put to use by someone. I’ve felt only a tiny bit guilty about holding on to this little stash of oddballs, because I’ve had more requests than I can count from other blankie knitters for bits and pieces. But this stuff has a different texture than the wool/nylon blends, and I knew that I would get around to using it.

Joe mentioned a while ago that he doesn’t like the throw blanket we have in the living room – it’s one that my maternal grandmother crocheted for me when I was a teenager, and it is made of cheap acrylic, so it’s got that squeaky plastic feeling to it. I keep it because of the sentimental value, of course. I know, you’re thinking “where’s THE Blankie then?” Well, it’s still on its world tour display at the yarn shop. It gets a lot of attention there, and is probably safer than it would be on the back of my couch. It will come home eventually. Who knows whether I’ll finish the crochet thingie before that happens, or whether Joe will be satisfied with either of them when they finally land on the back of the couch.

I guess maybe I do crochet, a little bit. Now and then…but I’m really a Knitter.

I came to the computer today to report on a fairly large pile of fingering-weight 4-ply that I just finished spinning last week, and as I flipped through my little notebook of spinning projects I realized that I’ve been keeping quite a few bits of business out of the spotlight. Oh, and as I typed that last sentence, I realized that I probably should post about my spinning notebook at some point, but since the photos are all uploaded and ready to go, that is not going to happen today.

Instead you may feast your eyes on some luscious handspun and be satisfied with that. First, I took a pile of BFL roving from Spunky Eclectic in the Zodiac Light colorway – sorry, no before pictures, I’m afraid. Will try to do better in the future. I’m not exactly sure how much I started with. It was really nice roving, very soft, fluffy and draftable, so don’t think that any waste I had was because of problems with that. Somehow, I’m pretty sure I had a pound of the stuff, but when I weighed all the finished skeins it came out to only around 13 ounces. There were some leftover singles, I know I found a few fluffs of roving here and there after the fact, and – well, somehow a good three ounces disappeared on me somewhere.

Still, I have a very nice pile of yarn, and this project was quite a long one – a good three months’ worth of spinning, as the singles were frog-hair thin. So thin that I struggled with getting the wheel to spin fast enough to satisfy my drafting speed. So thin, in fact, that I decided to go with a four-ply instead of three. I’m thinking of knitting a sweater with this yarn, because a large shawl wouldn’t really do me much good, at least not at the moment and not in this colorway. The original roving had some mauve-y pink, black, gray, and tawny undyed parts. I like the way it made a very subtle stripey variegation when done. With 1550 yards, it should be plenty of yarn for a sweater, and I have a design in mind for it – not my own, but an EZ one I’ve had my eye on for years.

Daisy Cat loves checking out my yarn, by the way. If she is anywhere nearby when I plop a pile of skeins down, she makes a bee-line for it, making it nearly impossible to get a picture without some part of her in it. Sweet old thing – I can’t begrudge her any attention now that her best friend Harry is gone.

Next up, some yarn I spun up right after the lace weight was finished. I bought the wool for this crazy stuff at SOAR, from Velma of Colorbomb Creations. She sells these grab-bags of fiber in Hot and Cold colorways, with all kinds of different bits and bobs of locks, roving, cloud, nebs, you name it. When I saw her stuff, I knew immediately that I needed some of it. Crap! I was sure I’d taken a better picture of the wool, but all I have is this blurry one from my phone at SOAR, with Velma, who is hilarious and fun. Go check out her etsy shop to see them more clearly.

I bought one of each colorway, and then I waited patiently till the other project was finished before starting this one. Unlike with knitting, I feel a need to be project-monogamous with the spinning. I have a hard enough time deciding which project to work on first as it is.

Anyway, there was a lot of staring over my shoulder at the Smorgasbombs on the shelf as I finished up that very long project. When I finally set aside the Rose wheel and pulled down my Earl Oman wheel to whip this up, it was only a few days’ worth of spinning. I had some mill ends laying around from Blackberry Ridge, so I spun those in while I was at it.

I spun chunkier, bumpier, messier singles this time, and plied them as two-ply for a funky thick-and thin yarn.

My plan is to knit something – probably a scarf/hat/mitten set – using stripes of the two colorways, sort of like what people have been doing with the Noro yarns of late. This pile totals about 600 yards, so I might even be able to do sets for both of the girls. Or something. It will be kooky and delicious.

Moving on, here is a little project from June and July. I started with four ounces of superwash merino batts from Spunky Eclectic – I’d gone a little crazy ordering from her back in March. This is the Baby Rainbows colorway of her Heathered Sock Batts. I came out with a pretty true 3-ply fingering weight yarn, and 477 yards of it. This will probably be my next sock project.

We’ve got a couple more to go. I really have been holding out on y’all. This yarn started as two tops from Cloudlover 69. I’d bought from her before, and was very excited to meet her at Shepherd’s Harvest last May. She dyes up some beautiful colorways, and her wool is always soft and draftable. I chose a Merino Wool top in her Sangria colorway, and a Falkland wool top in her Brass Petals colorway. I spun each top separately, then plied the singles together.

It is yummy-soft and squishable. I think I’d call this about sport or DK weight, and there are 1090 yards of yum here. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it just yet. Here’s a closer look…

I really love this next one. I started with two handdyed tops from Vines on etsy, a blend of superwash wool with 25% mohair and 15% nylon, 8 ounces total. She dyed them in a progressive rainbow along the length of the tops, so spinning them straight through and navajo-plying the singles gave me two skeins of long-repeat self-striping goodness.

I haven’t figured out exactly what to do with this batch either. There are a little over 600 yards here, and it’s somewhere between DK and worsted weight. I think it would be fun to do some kind of faux isle project with this – using this for the foreground and a solid color for the background. Maybe a yoke sweater.

And, finally. I bought a big 8-ounce top from Frabjous Fibers at Shepherd’s Harvest in May, and spun it in early September into a 3-ply, again somewhere around sport weight-ish. There’s almost 600 yards here, and I have *no* idea what to do with it. It’s lovely BFL, very soft and squishy. For now, it’s nice to just look at and pet till it speaks to me.

A closeup with flash – the top picture is more accurate for color, but the flash allows you to see the pretty barberpoling.

Lastly, a cute-kid picture that was on the camera with the yarn shots. Cousin K came over to play on Monday when they were all off school for Martin Luther King day. Sophie made a smile out of her sliced apple, and before I knew it they were all doing it. You can see Julie’s been wearing her sweater. She wore it again today, and still seems pretty happy with it.

Whew! It feels good to get all that off my chest. In the future, I really must remember to take pictures of the roving before I dive into it. By the way, most of these yarns would be available for sale if someone wants them badly enough. I charge twice what I paid for the wool, so if you’re seriously interested, e-mail me and I’ll give you a price. shellyk at shellykang dot com. Don’t ask in the comments, because I don’t get your e-mail address when you comment even if you’ve typed it into the form.

What a warm welcome back to blogging you all have given me! Thank you for your comments and questions. So far I’ve sent out around 20 copies of the spiral sweater pattern, and I think I’m caught up with the requests. I’ll continue giving it out for free for a couple more days, since I’ve posted on the Ravelry group to get it and hopefully all the KAL-ers have seen the heads up by then. After that, it will go up for sale on Ravelry downloads and at the store where I work. I can’t wait to see photos of your finished sweaters!

Boots – I’ve had a question or two about the boots I was wearing in my Christmas wrap-up post. I bought them right before Christmas because my old UGGs were about 10 years old, and no longer fit my feet. Before kids, I wore a size 10 1/2, now I need a size 12! I finally went through the house last summer and threw away all the too-small shoes, and my feet are much happier now.

Anyway, the new boots are Sorels, and so far I’m very happy with them. They are great for slipping on and off – I don’t actually have to untie and retie the laces to get them on and off, which is good when you’re trying to herd a couple of cats children out the door. The waterproof bottoms are also great when sloshing through filthy slush in parking lots on days when the temps rise to near-freezing. They are pretty warm and cozy on my feet, although not quite as luxurious as UGGs. You can order them at Zappos, although I think for some reason I ordered mine from the Nordstrom website.

Do you know how hard it is to find good shoes in size 12 womens?!? Most brands do not even go up that high. It can be very frustrating. I tried to buy boots locally at a store nearby that carries some larger sizes. The idiot salesguy actually tried to convince me that I would be okay in an 11. Um, no. If I wanted boots that hurt my feet, I would stick with my 10-year-old Uggs (which were actually in pretty good shape because I only wore them when I really needed to.)

Julie’s Haircut
I was surprised by the huge interest in Julie’s new haircut. It’s hardly new to us any more – she’s had it since maybe late September or early October. No, Sophie did not get at her with the scissors. We cut it short because Julie has a sensitive little scalp and brushing her hair was like sheer torture. Also, she was not willing to let me help her pull it back, so it was always in her face. Her longer hair was always a mess and I could never see her sweet smile.

So we decided to go for a little pixie cut. Actually, she wanted a haircut to look like the main character in My Neighbor Totoro.

We took the video with us to the salon, and the nice lady did a good job giving us what we wanted. The nice thing about this haircut is that even when it is incredibly messy, it still looks cute, and I can always see her beautiful little face. It also saves us from a lot of grief in the mornings.

And now, for another bag story, which is really from September. This is another one of those cases where I was busy doing, and not so much busy writing. I was cleaning out my closet a bit, getting ready for fall, and realized that I had a couple sweaters that I was never going to wear again. I came thisclose to shoving them in the bag for the local charity pickup, but then I realized I could put them to better use myself.

I’d been wanting to try the Shibouri techniques I’ve been reading about for the last few years, and this was my chance to do it without knitting something up special for the purpose. I looked around the house, and found the perfect materials just waiting for the purpose. The girls have a big jar of pop beads, and we had a bunch of those tiny hair binders left over from the baby days.

Using the pop beads worked really well both for the functional Shibouri resist factor, but also because it meant that the girls could hang out with me and play, so we all felt like we were doing it together.

Here’s my work early on – I’d cut up the sweater and was tying the beads into the orange stripe along the bottom, holding them in with the little rubber bands.

Sophie thought the ribbed collar of one of the other sweaters made a great headband.

Julie decided she wanted to do Shibouri too, so I gave her a piece from a dark gray sweater, and she tied in a bunch of beads sort of randomly. – and see? This is an example of how I could never see her face when she had longer hair. Only usually it was worse.

Here’s my piece once I had all the beads in place…

While I was at it, I dug through my stash and found this old, unfinished Christmas stocking, which I had started and then decided I hated. It went into the wash with everything else.

I also had a bunch of leftover shetland wool yarn, which was easily machine knit up into long, scarf-like swatches, and I put some beads into those as well. It’s nice that the pop beads come in different sizes and shapes.

I actually had three sweaters to cut up – this light gray one is from when I was about 13. It was oversized back then, and a little small for me now. Still a nice sweater, just a little dated with the colors. I cut all the seams away and threw it in the wash.

Here’s Julie’s piece pre-wash. Like I said – totally random beads. But she enjoyed participating in it.

Here’s the big picture pre-washing.

All along, I had told the girls that I was going to sew these pieces together to make a bag, so of course Julie wanted a bag of her own. I know that this is a sad, sad looking bag, but I let her pick out the ribbon to go on the handle, and she was proud of it.

Very, very proud of it…

Especially since I let her help with the sewing. Yeah, and of course Sophie needed a bag too at that point, even though she had not done any shibouri-ing. I didn’t really want to sacrifice any more of my felted pieces, so I dug out some cheap store-bought felt and threw this together for her.

I know I’ve mentioned that I have a tenuous relationship with my sewing machine, at best. I know the bag looks a little wonky. But I was definitely going for eclectic, which is wonky’s first cousin, so maybe it’s okay.

And hey! I always wanted the chance to sew some ric rac on something, and this project allowed me a chance to indulge. Here’s what it looks like with the wheel inside…

Yeah, I even figured out how to make little buckle straps. Whee! The backpack straps were a major pain since my sewing machine didn’t want to sew through that webbing Idonotknowwhy. I sewed them on by hand, which is functional if not exactly lovely, except that I also made them a bit shorter than they should be because I was afraid of making them too long. Sigh.

Once it was all whipped up, I bought a bunch of thick foam and cut sheets to fit between the lining and the outside layers to help pad the soft wood from bumps. I used some canvas for the lining because the felted knitting would have been to stretchy and weak. It’s the brick red color you see on some of the outside blocks – I didn’t have quite enough felt to do all the outside, and I was going for wonky eclectic anyway, right?

This bag did not get nearly as many impressed comments at SOAR as the pop-tab tote bag did, but it does put the fun in functional.

Hey, now that I’m hanging around typing in my blogger window again, guess what? I found this picture post I started right after Christmas and never finished because I was exhausted and tired of thinking about Christmas. Still, it’s all here. I might as well put it on out there for you all to see now that the post-holiday fatigue is over…

I totally owe y’all a giant picture-dump post, and what a better time to document some of the happy goings-on around here than right after the big bang of holiday madness is complete. I just finished cooking, serving, and cleaning up after a dinner party of 15, and am sitting here on the couch, exhausted, next to my husband and feeling fine. But we’ll have to back up a bit to deal with a tiny portion of the photo backlog just downloaded from my camera.

Let’s see…some time during Thanksgiving week, my friend Liz who I used to work with back when I was pregnant with Julie came over and hung out with us for a morning. She brought two undecorated gingerbread houses that she had made from scratch and a pile of candies and royal icing for the girls to decorate them with.

Liz is pretty cool that way. I hadn’t seen her for like a year or so, and we had a lot of fun hanging out with her. The houses are still sitting on top of my refrigerator, and I’ll have to sneak them out to the trash in a few more days, but we loved them while they lasted. I miss working with Liz – she’s crafty and fun and really laid back. Probably one of the best co-workers I’ve ever had. The girls were fiercely independent in their decorating. They didn’t want much advice, and they certainly did not want me touching their creations.

Okay, that scene happened on some random weekend morning. We love lounging around in our jammies, and the girls are constantly climbing all over me. We are a snuggly bunch, and yes, there’s the basket of knitting sitting where it almost always sits on the couch. That’s the sample sweater currently overdue at the store. It’s done now, just waiting for me to finalize the pattern so I can deliver the whole mess at once. I think I’m going to scrape out a few hours while Joe is on vacation in the next few days to git ‘er done. And that means I’ll be able to finally put out the last installment of the knit-along for all you patient souls out there waiting for it. (Note: yes, this part really was written while I was still working on that last part of the spiral sweater pattern!)

The day we decorated the tree, Sophie found this pair of reindeer antlers in one of the boxes of decorations. She spent the next week walking around on all fours in her reindeer persona. Hilarity ensued.

We made cut-out sugar cookies. Julie has finally figured out the concept of cutting out cookies as close to each other as possible, while Sophie still thinks it’s best to stick her cutter right in the middle of the remaining available space.

The next day we spent a couple hours decorating them with royal icing and about five kinds of sprinkles. I could not believe how well the girls did with this activity. I’d been dreading it a bit, to be honest. But they stuck with it. They listened to my instructions, they really focused on what they were doing. Julie made some awesome-looking cookies, and Sophie – well, she was nothing if not enthusiastic. I had to keep stopping her from flooding the cookies with giant blobs of icing, but she was good about spreading it out and dumping sugar crystals on them. We had fun, and they were quite proud of their creations.

Sophie’s favorite color is purple, and unfortunately our purple icing came out a little dark, but that didn’t stop her from making some awesome purple reindeer, snowmen, stars, and everything else. Julie’s favorite is pink, but she used all of the colors at one point or another.

Yeah, more tackling mommy. Sophie’s been hanging out in dance clothes a lot lately, when she’s not in her jammies or required to wear regular clothes.

Last week we took Joe’s brother and his fiance out for fondue at the Melting Pot. It was the girls’ first time there, and they did pretty well. Sophie didn’t eat much until we got to the dessert course, and I didn’t push it because she was otherwise on best behavior. We made a nice group…

Sophie was reeeeally tired at this point, but she hung in there. The kid is in between growth spurts at the moment, and she’s refusing to eat a lot of regular foods. When we’re at home and it’s not a holiday or party, I make it simple – either eat what I’m serving, or don’t eat. I think she’s just not all that hungry, because she’ll simply not eat sometimes. It’s a little frustrating, but I know she’s not starving, and it’s not exactly like I’m serving her weird or non-delicious stuff. One of the nice things about second kids is that it’s a lot easier to take these little glitches as they come.

Man, I look really happy in that picture. I was really happy in that moment. I love fondue, and especially the dessert part. Then again, I’ve been having lots of really happy moments lately. Knock on wood, ’cause life is pretty good right now.

We’ve had quite a bit of snow this week, and it’s still snowing right now as I type. Yesterday, I thought the snow was going to be sticky enough for a snowman, but it was just a little too dry. Instead, the girls made snow angels and played in the yard while Joe and I cleared the paths.

And then we went sledding! We only lasted through a few runs, as the hill was steep and the children have short little legs. But it was another one of those honestly fun simple moments.

Sophie had fun too, even though she kept ending up with a face full of snow at the end of each run.

We had a quiet Christmas Eve last night, and that was just fine. I had prep work to do for the party today, and I was tired from my morning workout at the gym, the shoveling and sledding, and the pre-Christmas cooking. The girls did their best to fall asleep quickly so Santa could come, and Sophie woke up once around 2 a.m. to ask whether Santa had come yet.

By 7:30, they were both awake and downstairs gazing at their stockings.

Alright, and this is the point at which I petered out from sheer exhaustion. I guess I was writing this on Christmas night. What was I thinking? But yeah, Julie’s favorite present was this set of PowerPuff girl dolls. She’s a bit obsessed with the old show, long story on how that happened, but it comes down to she came across some old Powerpuff girls stuff I had around from when the show was popular before she was even born, and now she makes up her own stories about Bubbles, Blossom and Buttercup and talks about them all the time. You can see Sophie playing in the background with the new Legos Santa brought. We’ve had that Lego table since Julie was a baby, and Santa thoughtfully switched out the top from Duplo-sized to the smaller Lego size when he brought the new bricks.

Sophie hammed it up for me while I snapped a photo of some of the other loot that came in her stocking.

Oh, yeah. Julie got her first Barbie dolls this year, too. We did our best to find ones that looked the most like our girls and the least – well, my brother-in-law bought one for her, and I’d told him what my conditions were, and the way he described it later was “not too ho’d out”. Yeah, most Barbies do look a little bit like street walkers. We found one that was wearing scuba gear and he found one that was wearing a three musketeers costume.

Joe got a copy of DJ Hero, which he was thrilled with. I got him the special-edition DJ Shadow one, which made him squee like a little girl.

I got a bunch of great stuff, including new lap-swimming gear that I basically picked out for myself, plus some cool little surprises from Joe. He got me a doo-hickey that lets me use my MP3 player with the mini-van’s car stereo. Yay!

We had the extended family over Christmas night for dinner and gifts and games. I feel like I’ve finally gotten the game down for feeding the big group and fitting in the kitchen duties with the Christmas fun. I had a great time, and I think everyone else did too.

We changed up our gift-giving game a bit, to involve silly stunts every time someone opened a present. My MIL got stuck with one of the silliest, which was to put Pocky in your mouth Walrus-style and let us take her picture.

Yeah, we had to explain that the Pocky was supposed to point down, but I liked the upward-pointing picture better. You can see the laughter on Joe’s and Sarah’s faces in the background, and MIL was a very good sport about it. I’m not sure if she knows the whole internet was watching…

And that is the holiday picture-post, less than a month late for you!