Woo!

I am making some progress on the soaker. I managed to make up for lost ground pretty quickly. It seems funny but every time I have to frog a project it seems like I go faster the second time around. Maybe it is because of practice. I have about an inch more before I have to start the leg shaping and other fun stuff. The constant stockinette is making my hands tired but I am plugging along.

I am coming down with a cold that my children decided to share with me. I am hoping that if I pretend that I am not sick the cold will decide to not take a firm hold in my body. Go away bad cold! No one wants you hanging around!

Knitting on the trip

During the trip I was very productive with my knitting. I ended up finishing a lace scarf, one sock and making great headway on a wool diaper soaker for Parker. It is amazing how productive you can be when you don't have kids constantly interrupting you. It is also amazing how calming knitting can be when you are crammed into an airplane.


The before blocking shot of the scarf. I love how different lace looks after blocking. It is a beautiful transformation.


Here it is after blocking. I think that I will invest in some blocking wires before too long so that I can get a more even strait edge. Pins are nice if you need points, but for a smooth strait edge they stink. You have to click on this picture to enlarge it, otherwise you miss the beautiful details.

Here is a close up of the pattern. This is my most complicated lace pattern to date. I am so glad that I got the chart keeper for my birthday as that made keeping track of where I was so much easier. The yarn is also heavenly. The picture does not capture the nice sheen that the wool silk blend has. This is the Oriel Lace pattern from 101 Designer One-Skein Wonders. I used size 5 needles on it as I wanted a narrower scarf and thought the 8s made the scarf too lacy. I wanted to be able to see the pattern better.



This pattern is the Adult and Child Socks from 101 One-skein Wonders book (can you tell that I adore these books?). I love this yarn so much. It is so soft and lovely. I also am loving all the different colors that are in the yarn. It is so fun to see what is coming next. This heel is also a different one for me. You use waste yarn and then later go back and add in the heel. It was a bit tricky at first, but I love how it turned out. I am not a huge fan of the heel flap.

Caution: Knitting talk ahead

I finally bought the last of my birthday yarn yesterday. I got two cards with some money in them and decided to blow the whole wad on yarn. Like any of you were surprised by that. This may be my last big trip to my beloved local yarn store so I wanted to make sure that I would enjoy it and that meant ditching the kids. Luckily my husband often gets off early on Fridays, which oddly enough are when my trips to the local yarn store usually happen. Any whoo, I ended up buying the first yarn I touched. I have a system when going to a yarn store, I start at one side and slowly make my way around the room until I have felt all the yarn that catches my fancy. Only then do I make decisions about what to buy. This helps cut down on the crazy yarn fume purchases. I had a hard time putting this down the first time.

I just could not resist this sock yarn. The colors and softness won me over. It is made by Misti Alpaca and is mostly alpaca (go figure!) with some wool, silk and nylon to give it structure, shine and strength.


I wish my photography skills were better, because this yarn has amazing colors. The bits with several different shades of purple that are not showing up very well and are looking gray. There is a nice chatty lady that works at the store (I wish we were going to be here longer because I totally want to be her friend). She saw I was buying two skeins and commented that I would only need one skien for a pair of socks. I laughed and told her that I loved this yarn so much that I had to have two skeins. She said I was a woman after her own heart.

Karen received her socks last Saturday(like a true blogger she documented it) and it has taken me this long to even show you all more pictures of them. I am a bad knitting blogger. Oh well, at least my cute kids make up for the lack of finished knitting projects.

First up, the leg of the sock. Finding a pattern for this sock was rather tricky. I had wanted to try a short row heel, but trying something new when you are also trying to be perfect in a new technique can really work out well or it can blow up in your face. The short row heel blew up in my face and I ended up with massive holes in my heel. So back to the drawing board I went.

I was browsing on my favorite knitting website Ravelry and found that someone had written a pattern for this very yarn and very colorway. I was thrilled! And then I was crushed when I realized that I did not have the needles that the pattern called for (which were tricky to find so there was no real good excuse to hunt for them). So I went up a size and cut out four stitches from the pattern. To compensate for the different number of stitches I used an entirely different pattern with the same number of stitches for the bottom part of the sock.

With the leg I did do an new technique, cabling. I had been wanting to try cables out after seeing them done on a knitting show that the kids sometimes allow me to watch. They make a neat patten of Xs and Os in the leg of this sock. I had been so intimidated by cables and confident that my short rows would turn out perfect. Who knew that it would turn out the opposite of what I would have thought. I know that more cables are in my future.

Hugs and kisses!

I love this heel, it kind of looks Fair Isleish.

An overview of the whole sock.

It certainly was different knitting something for someone else who had active input in the project. Most of the time I knit something that pleases me and then I decide who is the most deserving to recieve the item. I also enjoyed knitting up a yarn that I might not have otherwise tried. Lorna's Laces has some amazing colorways and the yarn really knits up nicely. It was hard to give these up.

Knitting goodness

Which looks better pompoms or no pompoms?





Here is a shot of the pattern. It was so much fun to have so many color changes and to not have to worry about weaving in ends.


Lookie what came in the mail today from my parents. Some hand spun from Tama! Mmmmm....

Yarrrrn!

Come on people I need more questions!

My husband is awesome. He got me exactly what I wanted me for my birthday.

I am on a lace weight kick. This is a lovely wool silk blend from Knit Picks called Gloss Lace in the Aegean color. Just look at it shimmer! I am planning on making it into a lacy scarf.


I got three skeins of this amazing alpaca lace weight also from Knit Picks. It is the stream color. I love how amazingly soft this is. I think that I am going to keep it to pet for awhile. Eventually I want to make a shawl out of it, but have not found the perfect pattern for it (suggestions are welcome, just remember I am still new to lace). Why a shawl? I don't know. I have been seeing other knitters make them and they look like they are fun to do.

My really great husband also got me a chart keeper so that I am a lot less likely to get lost when I am knitting a complex pattern. I love that this has snaps which will help keep little hands from moving my markers and the magnets make it easier to quickly put it away. Isn't my husband great? I have no idea how he knew exactly what to get me.

Good Mail

Lookie at what came in the mail yesterday! The wonderful Tama sent these to me as part of a Pay It Forward. The idea is that you get one thing and then make three things for other people. I will put up my post announcing the specifics at a later date, after we have moved and are settled in.

Look at these beauties!

A close up of the hearts.

I love this ribbing! It is a neat little twist (haha!) on the traditional ribbing.

I haven't taken them off all day. Don't worry, I do plan on taking them off... eventually.

Knitting and parenting

I have discovered that knitting and parenting have some similarities. Right now one of my projects is in time out for not behaving properly. My other projects are blossoming from the extra attention I am lavishing on them, so there is some good to be had in such a frustrating situation.

I have a 356 knitting stitches calender that I love looking at. It is fun seeing all the different things that you can do with knitting and purling. I am still trying to not be miffed that Evan's birthday pattern is Reverse Stockinette Stitch. I mean really how is that even a stitch? It is regular Stockinette just flipped over. I would have been happy with even Crossed Stockinette Stitch which was the pattern for yesterday. Oh well at least my birthday pattern is Lacy Checks, something fun and sassy.

I just can't not post

I know this is supposed to be my day off from posting, but I am so in the habit that I just have to post something.

I ended up going to play yesterday. It had been so long since my friends and I had gathered that I just could not resist. I did bring a toy that I was knitting for Evan's birthday to work on instead of scrapbooking. When we got home there was a message from another friend who wanted to get together and practice knitting (she was not going to be able to go to the activity that night) so she came over and helped me pick up the living room before we knit. It all worked out, the cleaning and fun.

I have been dying to show you these pictures. I made this for my mom so I did not want to ruin the surprise. Now that she is safely in the car on her way here I can post it. The color in the pictures is not the true color. It is a much deeper and darker red. It also has a nice sheep that my poor photography did not catch. The yarn is a wool silk blend that blocked so beautifully. I almost don't want to give this one away.

Knitting Meme

I have been tagged by the awesome Tama to do the seven things meme again. Since she is a knitter extrodinare and sells some beautiful yarn (Seriously you should go check it out! In a few days I will post pictures of something I knit using yarn I bought from her and it is dreamy) I am making this version a knitting version.

1. My living room is peppered with works in progress (WIPs to those who know the knitting lingo) and odd balls of partially used yarn. I usually have about three WIPs going at one time.
   
2. I keep selected skeins of yarn downstairs in a basket so that I can look at them and pet them from time to time.
   
3. I used to think that I learned to knit wrong. It turns out that I had stumbled upon what is called combination knitting. This technique while awesome for knitting in the flat had to go when I got up the courage to knit in the round as it produces a twisted stitch. I seriously had a complex about knitting in public because of this. The two times I knit in public in front of other knitters I had people coming over to gawk at my knitting technique.
4. I have knit while holding a clingy child. If there ever were a knitting Olympics I think I would get a gold medal for that.
5. I am a process knitter. I love to feel the yarn, see the colors, try new techniques and color patterns and enjoy watching the item come together. Wearing and using the object is not as huge of a thrill as making it is, which is why I knit so much for others.
6. I want to learn to spin my own yarn and hope to one day have some fiber animals of my own.
7. I bought some yarn in a color that I really liked to make a diaper cover for one of the boys. I forgot I bought the yarn and later on at a sale almost bought the same yarn again. The only thing that saved me from doing it again was that there was not the quantity I needed. I later found the yarn when I was cleaning out my coat closet.
   

Post 667

I just noticed that my last post was 666 which kind of reflected my mood for parts of the day.

Valentine's day was not too bad at the Awesome Mom house, but I did end the day with so much snot on me that I looked like I had been run over by a herd of slugs. Evan and Harry are quite content to scribble on anything that I put in front of them, so we made valentines for Evan's physical therapist who had an appointment with us yesterday. She is a very nice woman who loves to ruin lunch with all sorts of treats, so I thought that the boys should show some sort of appreciation.

We had heart shaped pizza and soda for dinner. My husband brought home clearance Christmas chocolate for me (it is dark chocolate 70% cacao Mom so :P on you) and I got yarn in the mail. All in all it was not too bad of a day even if my throat is rather sore and the boys are oozing in snot. I even get to look forward to some yarn that I bought as a gift to me from my husband that should be arriving in the mail any day now.


This is Eggplant Explosion. The sock will be a plane jane sock called The 56 stitch, 56 Row sock. I wanted something simple to show off the coolness of the yarn. There will be more than 56 rows in the foot part since that is for people will size 8 shoes and I have a delightful size 9 foot.

This beaut is called Ballooney, she arrived in my mail box on Wedensday. I won it from this contest. I was so excited to get her that I put it in a ball right away thinking that I would be able to cast on right away. She is fingering weight and I do not have needles small enough to make socks with her. *sob* I can assure that she will not be languishing in my stash for long, Momma needs a bright pair of socks and these will blind you.

Check it out!

Isobel is done. Sadly she is not blocking well due to the wool content of the yarn being very minimal. I am not too sad since the yarn did only cost me a dollar and I am sending it away to someone as a gift so the tendency of the scarf to roll will not be in my face to constantly annoy me. The zig zags are not exact either as I tended to forget what row I was on while knitting it but I think that adds a bit of charm to the scarf. I would make this easy lace pattern again but I would use only natural fiber yarns.

Bummed? Not me!

It seems that I struck out this time around at the Bloggy Giveaways. Not one person has contacted me about winning a fabulous prize. I am not crying because I won something super fabulous in another giveaway. I won yarn people and not just any yarn but hand dyed yummy yarn! Jeanne, who is a fabulous knitter and a very nice person (and I am not saying this because she is giving me yarn), randomly picked me to be the winner of a gift certificate to SeeJayneKnitYarns store. Go check it out, but hide your wallets before you go.

Can't blog, knitting lace

It is every bit as addictive as I have heard it was.

Knitting Class #2

Only one person showed up last night but I was cool with that. She had attended the previous class and only needed a bit of hand holding to get started. It was nice to be able to sit down and do some knitting myself while we chatted. Her and her husband recently adopted two little boys less than a month ago so I passed down some of my motherly wisdom to her (Motrin is great for teething pain because it lasts longer and helps with the inflammation). We also commiserated about nap schedules and wanting to get out of the house to get a break from the kids. Fun times. When both of our kids are healthy we are planning a playdate.

This picture was taken the morning after the first one that I posted. You would think that Evan would have learned his lesson the first time. Harry had no problem getting in and out on his own. Evan is more fearful about things that throw him off balance most likely because of his stroke.

"Mommy can you just put down the camera and help me out here?"

"I just can't see what all the fuss is about."

I beat second sock syndrome!

I finally finished my socks! I bought the amazing yarn for these socks at a price that I will not mention, but it was much higher than I normally pay for one skien of yarn. I blame yarn fumes and an antsy three year old for this slip. The colors were just too amazing to pass up. Then I did my red practice pair of socks. There was no way I wanted to mess up my amazing yarn. By the time I got my first sock in the pair done I had already knit the same pattern three times. I was just not feeling the socky love any more. But I pushed past it and finished last night. I even had enough left over that I am going to make an iPod Nano cozy. I have already cast on for a super fun pair of really stripey longies. I am also in a knit along for a felted bag, so stay tuned for some more exciting finished objects.

The flash took out a lot of the more subtle color tones there are some really amazing deep emerald greens in this colorway. I will have to take some more pictures in sunlight, if it will ever stop raining.

A full view of the socks. Good thing I recently shaved my legs lol

I am a total Knitting Knerd

Last night I found out that my red hiking socks are going to be featured on the informational page on Ravelry of the pattern that I used to knit them. I am quite tickled. The pattern name is Hiking Socks if you are so inclined to have a peek.

Here are some pictures of one of my latest finished objects. I was no so to quick to display it because I did not make the legs the same length. I was holding the legs wonky when I was knitting the second one and did not realize that one was shorter than the other. It took me awhile to debate the relative merits of frogging vs. leaving them be. I left them be because I used a sewn bind off which would have been a (insert bad word here) to undo. Blocking did not really help much either so Harry is just going to have to deal. These are the longies that are going to have a matching sweater if I can just stop starting new projects and finish already.

I was going to duplicate stitch a heart on the bum but since I did not actually really know how to do that it turned out horrible. I am now a lot more confident of my skilz having looked up several tutorials.

Harry chillin on my bed. Note that I forgot to weave in the ends of the cuff.

A full shot. It was hard to get Harry to stand still long enough to get this picture.

Gotta have a thumb break.

Knitting Class

I taught my first of two knitting classes tonight. It was exhausting but mostly fun. Six women showed up which is about all I could have handled. One ended up giving up pretty quickly. I was not too surprised about her since she asked me if this was a quilting class when she first came in. She had to borrow knitting stuff from people that brought extras.

We were supposed to be making cotton dish cloths but apparently my handout did not get passed out to everyone. Some of the women brought acrylic yarn and the wrong sized needles. I almost choked when one woman pulled out her honking size 13 needles and asked if they would work for this project. I lent her a pair of mine so that she did not end up with huge loops that looked nothing like knitting.

I think that I managed to keep them from getting too discouraged that they did not feel natural with all the motions. I kept reminding them that they would get better with practice. I wish I had saved some of my practice swatches to show them my awful start at knitting.

Don't hate me because I am beautiful and really good at knitting

I spent a lot of Monday thinking that today was going to be Wednesday. Which was odd since I was doing all our normal Monday stuff like going grocery shopping.

I had a very strange interaction with a lady in the grocery store. She came up to me and asked me if I knit the hat Evan was wearing. I had not and she said she was glad that I had not or she would have had to hate me. I was a bit taken aback and also glad that Harry was not wearing a pair of his longies. She may have committed assault had she seen them. I never thought I would have to fear for my life when I took up knitting.

The hat is actually very cute (so I can't blame the woman for admiring it) and I have been trying to think up a way to reverse engineer it and make one for Harry. I won a gift certificate to the store that it was purchased from, but am too cheap to buy another. Besides, if I figure out how to make it I can keep on making them as the boys get bigger. The design is quite cunning and keeps the neck quite warm when tied on the head.

Here is a shot of Evan in the hat. We braved the cold and damp to play at the park. Evan is pushing Rabbit in the swing. I could not find Evan's real winter coat so I put a thick sweater on under that flimsy hoodie (don't worry mom, he was plenty warm).


A gratuitous cute Harry shot. He is pushing Dog on the swing. Dog and Bunny also got to go down the slides. Cat got left in the car by a mean Evan. Evan then co-opted Rabbit for his own use.

fluffy bunny

Here is one of my latest finished objects. I got the pattern for signing up for a knitting related email mailing list. They were so cute that I could not resist. Evan and Harry both were fascinated by my knitting once I told them that I was making a bunny. Evan kept asking where the bunny's eyes were. I did make some mistakes in the pattern, the most notable being that I put the head where the bum should be. For the bunny that did not matter all that much, but had I been making a bear or a cat it would have made a huge difference. The ears are formed out of the flatter bottom (what should have been the top) in those versions. I am also not thrilled with the light gray color, but I used what I had on hand.

Oh and for a little bit of follow up on my vow to not set foot into a craft store for three months. Well I did not even make it a month. Christmas gifts kind of blew that out of the water and once I started up again there was no going back. I have not been too bad but I have added a bit to my yarn stash. In fact I need to make a yarn run to get some more gray for the sweater I am making for Harry. It was very badly planned yarn wise and I am running out. I am planning on getting some brown so that I can make a nicer looking bunny. If you are nice to me I may even make a few to give away. I have a huge bag of filling that I want to use up before we move and this would be a fun way to do it.

Things I want to knit (NOT!)

I thought that I would share with you some of the knitting gems that I have dug up from the pattern books in my local library. Enjoy!

I can't help but respect all the work that would go into something like this. However any kid that wears something like this is asking to get beat up at recess. It screams nerd.

This sweater is making me dizzy just by looking at it. I think I am starting to get queasy. Plus is it not a very flattering shape even for a kid.

This is just awful, it is a sweater travesty. Could you imagine putting this monstrosity on your child? My husband would have me committed if I even tried to knit something like this.