Duh / No Duh

A piece knit with large diameter needles and worsted weight yarn in an easily memorized pattern gets larger much quicker than a piece knit with skinny needles and fine lace weight yarn with a pattern that changes every row.

I started this piece on Tuesday morning:

A baby blanket for my brother's upcoming baby (number 3), approximately 25" along the long side of the triangle.

and I started this piece several weeks ago (on July 14th):

The Mystery Stole 3, approximately 6" along the long side.

The blanket pattern is Eyelet Squares Blanket, from Vogue Knitting on the Go, Baby Blankets Two. The yarn is Cascade 220 Superwash, the needles are size 8 Addi Turbos.
This is actually the second blanket I have made for this baby. I actually made a blanket that I had completed in February (working ahead of the deadline - unbelievable!) This blanket was also Cascade 220 Superwash. I have worked with this yarn before - I knit a blanket for Buddy in this yarn that he uses everyday. I have washed this blanket many, many times (cold machine wash, lay flat to dry) and it has a nice hand - very soft, drapable, very snuggly.

When I finished the blanket I made for the baby in February I washed it one time and it felted. Not a lot, but enough to make the hand kind of crunchy and dry feeling. It's usable, but not at all the kind of blanket that you want to wrap a newborn baby. I am irritated and frustrated and plan to contact Cascade and see what they have to say.

So I decided to make another blanket, still hoping to get it done before September.

The lace pattern is the Mystery Stole 3, and I'm still only partway through clue #1 (I think there are four clues posted already). The yarn is Skacel's Merino Lace (I think also known as Merino D'Oro), a very fine 100% merino wool lace weight, almost cobwebw weight yarn. The needles are Addi Turbo lace needles in size 3. The beads are size 8 hexagonal seed beeds in a shiny/metallic grey.

I signed up for this KAL on a lark and I'm enjoying it. I have given up on trying to keep up with the emails on the Yahoo group - very chatty, huge volume of messages (I'm over 4,000 message behind) but it's an interesting exercise to work on a project when you don't know what it is going to look like.

Very different projects, each very satisfying.

And to clos,e a random photo:


I was pouring milk into a Thermos for one of the kids the other day and a little bit splashed on the top and the partly open door of the dishwasher. I grabbed the sponge to wipe up the milk and stopped when I realized the milk had splashed in a beautiful way. It's nice to catch these little moments of beauty in the course of the day!

First Tooth!

My Punkin has lost her first tooth, and she is so excited! (truth be told, so am I!)

It's been loose for a couple of days and tonight it was just barely hanging on. First she tried to pull it out, then her dad tried to pull it out, with no luck. I grabbed a little piece of paper towel and used it to grasp the tooth and pulled it on out!

Now my girl is finally asleep - she's very anxious to know if the Tooth Fairy will come and it took her a while to wind down!

Working the phones

This

is what I spent most of my day yesterday doing.

My son's family daycare is closing and I am in search of a new place for him to be while I am at work 20 hours a week. He has been at his current daycare since he was 4 months old and he loves it there. It is such a great place that I have always felt that he benefits from being there, that it's not just a place to park him and keep him safe while I am busy. It helps me to be comfortable with working to know that he and I both benefit from the time that I'm at work.

Finding a new place is not an easy process. Lots of phone calls, lots of site visits (I've done three already and have four more lined up this week). I have an odd work schedule and not all daycares can accomodate it. I'm looking for a family daycare, not a daycare center, which also limits the pool.

All that said we have a couple of good options and I'm hopeful about the places I will visit later this week. Wish me luck!

Actual Knitting Content

Today, folks, I'm aiming high. I'm shooting for having actual knitting content on my knitting blog (who'd have thunk it!)

I have been knitting, blog reports notwithstanding. Last year I participated in Sockapalooza and enjoyed it, so I signed up again this year (not that I have the KAL icon on my blog, but oh well).

I haven't really been that connected with it. The KAL mom (Alison of The Blue Blog had set up a Blogger account that everybody could post to, but there were so many people signed up that Blogger couldn't handle it. So she created something else, a Pligg???, and I never mustered the energy or the interest to check it out.

Nevertheless, I enjoy the secret swap aspect of it. I've gotten and email from my mystery pal, and I even created a gmail account so I could email my recipient anonymously. She also has her own blog and I've had fun lurking on her blog and getting to know her a little bit.

As always, I wavered on what I wanted to make. I thought about making something completely different from the kind of socks she has made for herself in the past, but in the end I just decided to make what I felt like knitting.

Like a lot of knitters I have admired Cookie's socks patterns for some time. I decided the monkey pattern looked like fun, so that's what I chose.


The first of my sockpal socks. The yarn is Cherry Tree Hill Supersock, color Life's a Beach. The needles are size 1 bamboo.

My sockpal likes green, and I love the way the yellow just makes everything pop. The backdrop for the photo is one of several child sized picnic tables in our backyard - it really brings out the yellow!

One of the women who comes to knitting at the library loved these so much she offered to give me a different pair of sock for me to give to my sockpal so she could keep these! I told her no way these were made with my sockpal in mind (but I was pleased that she liked them, hopefully my sockpal will too!)

I'm making these as per the instructions, top down with a gusset heel. I really prefer toe-up, but I felt short on time and didn't want to tackle figuring out how to invert this pattern.

Next time I'm not going to be so lazy. I'm going to have leftover yarn, and I don't like having leftover sock yarn (maybe I'll make another pair of socks for Punkin).

However, this is a great pattern. It goes surprisingly quickly, and is easy to memorize. I'm not surprised that so many people have made socks from this pattern, it's a lot of fun. I'm halfway through the second sock and expect to be finished in the next week, well in time for the deadline of August 2.

Other knitting that I'm working on - Mystery Shawl 3. I am only halfway through the first clue, and I'm making no effort to keep up with the email (way too much, way too chatty, I just don't have time for it) but I'm enjoying the project in any case. Photos will follow once I have enough to photograph!

There are lots of other projects in bags around the house. I was in a boring meeting at work the other day so I started writing a list of projects that are underway and was surprised at how many there are. I have a few that I'd really like to get completed, but the intertia is enormous! Plus I don't often feel I have enough functioning brain cells at the end of the day to deal with installing zippers, doing steeks, and more complicated things like that.

One bit of children news in this otherwise knitting post - Punkin has her first loose tooth! It's a bottom front one, and she discovered it yesterday. She can't stop wiggling it with her finger and she's so excited. Wow, they grow up so fast!

This, too, shall pass

It's good to know that the human body can cope with a lot of what we throw at it (or put into it).

The dime has passed safely through my son's digestive system and out the other end.

This is a good thing, one less thing to worry about (somebody asked me today what the doctor would do if it didn't come out? I said I don't know, I haven't wanted to ask).

I dozed off while sitting in the dark waiting for him to fall asleep (don't ask, long story) and never really recovered from the groggy stupid feeling I had upon waking, so no knitting tonight.

Hopefully tomorrow will be less exciting.

Adventures in Parenting, part ???

Some of you may remember when my son shoved a piece of walnut up his nose (I know I will never forget it).

We had another chapter in the "orifices are fun" part of his life this morning. I was getting the kids ready to go to swim lessons. Buddy had a dime in his hand because lately he has enjoyed carrying money around. I picked him up and carried him into the bedroom to put him on the changing table.

The next thing I new he was making that dreadful "ACK, ACK" noise that all parents dread. I flipped him over and whacked him on his back, at which point he stopped coughing. I put .05 and .05 together and got .10 - where was the dime?

I checked his hands and his mouth - nothing. I stuck my finger down his throat - plenty of blackberries, but no dime. I tried that a couple more times (and can I tell you how much he enjoyed that? Not at all) and still no dime.

I sat him down and asked him "Buddy, where's the money?" He looked at me with wide eyes, opened his mouth and pointed with one finger into his open mouth.

So now we wait for this to pass (literally). And what was the first thing the advice nurse said when I called for advice? "At least it wasn't a quarter!"

This on top of finding out last week that Buddy's wonderful daycare is going to close at the end of the summer, has made for an anxious week.

Back in the saddle

Back in the sneakers, actually.

I have a fickle relationship with exercise. Once I've got a routine where I get myself out the door on a regular basis my body feels better, I have more energy, and my clothes fit better. All good things that I love.

If I happen to get out of the routine for whatever reason, I have a terrible time trying to get back to it. My lifelong aversion to exercise rears it's ugly head and I just can't make myself do it (or find the time, that's the real problem these days).

I was going really well for a number of months. Then came house guests for a week, followed immediately by a trip for a week. Once we came back our daily routine was different because of summer activities, and I have struggled to find the time in/around everybody's schedule to get back on the road.

Yesterday was the breaking point: the boy had a terrible night (up three times) and I was so bleary eyed in the morning and he was so fussy the only solution was to get us both out of the house before we woke everybody else up. So I put in about three miles and felt tired but good. I'm taking a break today (too far too fast and I get shin splints) and hopefully back on the road tomorrow. I'm counting on feeling better and having more energy, because these days my a$$ is dragging.

Honk your horn if you want to abolish summer vacation!

Thc children are screaming. Pause, repeat - the chidlren are screaming. Pause, repeat - the children are screaming.

Yes teacher, that's what I did on my summer "vacation".

Feh.

I'm back

Not that you knew that I went anywhere...

Yes, folks, the family chez moi actually piled ourselves onto an airplane for a trip. We went East, to the motherland, aka Massachusetts. Both the Hubby and I grew up in the greater Boston area, and we were overdue for a trip to take the kids to visit their grandparents and it was my 20th high school reunion. It was fun, and a lot of work, and now we are home.

Knitting continues to plod along - mostly socks. I wish I had the energy to finish any of the half-dozen almost complete projects, but these days by the time I get the kids to bed I just don't have much oomph left.

Which is how I feel now. So off to bed, hopefully more tomorrow.