This is the start of the breakdown

The breakdown, however, has nothing to do with knitting. If you're only interested in knitting (and I don't blame you), skip to the next paragraph. Here's the problem: toilet training. I decided to train one boy at a time. The wrinkle is that all three boys want to toilet train and I can't say no to a boy who asks to use the potty. At 6:30 this morning, I started out in the bathroom. I emerged 40 minutes later. You get the picture. Add to that, the downstairs bathroom is probably 5' x 4', and I have a toilet, a sink, two potties, three boys and me in there all at the same time every 1-2 hours. Enough said. Exacerbating things is that although the sick boy is getting better, the other two are coming down with colds. And it's cold and rainy so we can't go out. And they're fighting. I've taken to throwing all participants in "time out" because I don't have it in me to play Solomon, and also my mom used to do it, and we turned out ok.

Fortunately for me, I had a mental health day yesterday. I had extra childcare help, so I was able to get on a treadmill (I have a workout about once every three months at my local gym, i.e., Mom's treadmill in her basement) and then we (Mom and I) went on a yarn crawl. First we hit Stix-n-Stitches, where I looked at lots of gorgeous yarn but exercised self-control and only bought Barbara Walker's A Treasury of Knitting Patterns and Yankee Knitter's Classic Socks pattern for three yarn weights (also a few notions not worth mentioning). I'm definitely thinking of designing my own socks, but not yet. I need a lot of preparation and thinking. Then we hit Modern Yarn down the road. There, I was unable to resist fingerless gloves knit in di.ve Automno--only one skein per pair! I bought enough for two pair:



Along the way, Mom got sucked into buying sock yarn--she's got the itch since I've been talking up socks.

Speaking of socks, I'm moving right along with my sock. I've turned the heel, picked up the gusset, and am now working the instep. This pattern is a lot of fun! I'm a little concerned that the heel is too narrow, but I can't really tell until I finish the sock. If it is, I guess I'll knit the second sock, modify the heel (I can't wait to figure out how to do that!), then frog the first sock down to the heel (ack!). Hopefully, you'll see pictures below:



Here's the questionably narrow heel:



(obviously too difficult to see, but I know it's there).

And here's my favorite new knitting accessory/bag:



This is my GoKnit Pouch. It attaches onto a belt loop or a purse strap (though I thought I was the last person who would walk around knitting out of a yarn pouch attached to my belt loop until I did it yesterday) and has a loop inside to run the working yarn through. I am in love!

My next accessory to buy: sock blockers. I never thought I would need them, but apparently I do. It's also obvious from the way the Monkey sock looks on the needles vs. the photos accompanying the pattern. Besides, between Socktopia and Rockin' Sock Club, I'm obviously knitting a lot of socks this year.

Since I got the photo thing working again, here's a photo of the LL Lion & Lamb in Iris Garden that I bought for "the Clap":



Here's the LL sock yarn in Valentine:



This is the Esperanza scarf; you can probably see my color pooling issue even though it's not a good picture:



Unfortunately, my photo skills are not up to snuff, so you can't see how fabulous the colors really are on the sock yarn and the Esperanza, and the photo doesn't do justice to the Lion & Lamb either. So be it--I'll just do the best I can, which is my approach to most things these days.