FOs!

Yes, I have Finished Objects! While Baby Girl's red vest is still on Mom's blocking board, I've got others to show.

Here's Baby Girl's Loop-d-Loop Ballet T-Shirt, knit in Farmhouse Yarns' I Am Allergic to Wool:



It should be just about warm enough for her to wear it, once her two-year molars come in. She's been working on them for about a month (what a trooper!) and is quite drooly, so I'd like to give the knits a break!

One of this month's Socktopia themes is "April Showers." Since I've been under the gun to finish baby gifts for a girlfriend who is due at the end of May (but is likely to deliver early), I decided to knit booties: fast, easy, and we could kind of make it a "shower" gift, even though it's baby no. 2 and there is no shower. Then, SheepsPyjamas beat me to it. Oh well--I'm still jumping on that bandwagon! I have two pairs of booties.

First, here are the fabulousyarn.com Artyarns Regal Silk baby booties in Dawn :




First, they're not really lopsided, I just didn't have enough time to fiddle with the tissue paper stuffing (with children leaning on the screen door calling, "Mommy! Mommy! What are you doing, Mommy?"). The fabulousyarn.com site shows the booties with a ribbon tie, but I skipped the eyelet row for the tie; I wasn't in the mood. The booties are pretty, but I don't really like the color. I love the sheen of the silk, but didn't like working with it. It doesn't have enough give; in fact, it doesn't have any give. I also made the booties out of Artyarns Supermerino in Sea Greens, with the eyelet row. I haven't made the I-cord ties because I tried to make the hat and ran out of yarn. I'll post a picture when they're done. The Supermerino was a lot of fun to work with, and the booties look great. The color is even better in person, too! I'm not under pressure to finish, though, because my girlfriend is having a girl, and Sea Greens is a boy color (not that I wouldn't put it on Baby Girl).

The other set of booties are the Lorna's Laces I-Cord Boogie booties, in Shepherd Sport Tickled Pink:




Again, lopsided due to tissue paper stuffing under pressure. These were a lot of fun to make, and I think I like this pattern better. Tickled Pink turned out to be a fabulous color, too! I didn't make the I-cord to keep the booties from getting lost--I just couldn't see taking the trouble to thread it through a baby's pants, have the baby lie on it, or even worse, have a diaper accident!

The final baby gift (so far, we'll see if I finish the One Skein baby bolero) is the Tilli Tomas Flurries baby hat:



It's really cute, although the decreases did not give me the number of post-decrease stitches called for in the pattern and I had to do some creative sewing to close the opening the size of a quarter at the top of the hat. Plus, I had to push all those beads to the front! But it's beautiful, and my friend is a practical person who would never buy anything like this for a baby (it's dry clean only!), and she deserves something like this. The silk booties are dry clean only, too, but the Lorna's Laces are superwash.

Ok, the One Skein Baby Bolero. I'm hitting a few snags. First, I may not have enough yarn to do the ribbed border. In order to conserve yarn, I'm unraveling my gauge swatch to use to seam the shoulders and sleeves. Instead of sewing the shoulders, I used the three-needle bind-off. Always looks good, and is always easy--thanks to my sister for the tip! My challenge is seaming--never a favorite job. Here, the bolero body is knit in one piece, and the sleeves are knit separately. Then you sew (or three-needle bind off) the shoulders. Then you sew in the sleeves. So I had to sew flat sleeves into a round opening. I used backstitch and that worked pretty well. I'm having trouble sewing the shoulders closed; not only is there a hole at the base of the sleeve, where the sleeve meets the body, that I have to creatively and invisibly close, my sleeve seaming is not pretty. Which is ok, because no one ever sees it, mostly, but I think it's ugly enough to not be right. So, I have to wait for Mom, seamer extraordinaire, to come back from vacation to help.

Oh, and last but not least, I shipped my Knitters Treat Exchange package to my treatee, who can be found at The adventures of SanFaerieAnne. It should be arriving any day now--hope she enjoys it! I certainly had a good time putting it together. So much so, I've joined the Knitting Gnome Swap. I know Norm (or any of his friends) will have a great week with us this summer!

Busy, busy, busy!

Lots going on. I'm all over the place in knitting. And I got my Knitters Treat Exchange Pal: SanFaerieAnne. I'm working on her treat, but in the meantime, found this cool book thing on her blog. Here it goes:

In the list of books below, bold the ones you’ve read, italicize the ones you want to read, cross out the ones you won’t touch with a ten-foot pole, put a cross (+) in front of the ones on your book shelf, and asterisk (*) the ones you’ve never heard of.

1. The DaVinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. +Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L. M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. *A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. *Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban(Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J. D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. *The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. *The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. +The Time Traveler’s Wife (Andrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview with the Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. *Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
9. *The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. *Not Wanted On the Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down (Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. *The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. *Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. *In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum
96. The Outsiders (S. E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

Of course, being me, my formatting has gone wacky. Oh well. When I have more time (ha!), I'll break down the percentage that I've read. With an ear infection and possible strep throat, I'm not up to the challenge right now. But at least the kids are ok, so far! And the 3-4 inches water is mostly gone from the basement, or down to 1-2 inches in areas.

But I will get knitting photos up, I promise. I have the loop-d-loop ballet top, knitted in less bulky yarn and on smaller needles for Baby Girl (who has been cutting her two-year molars for over two weeks and is still working on them); baby booties in Artyarns Regal Silk (not so fun) and Artyarns Supermerino (fun!) in a kit from fabulousyarn.com; and Knitting Pure and Simple's vest (which is being blocked at my mother's house, so maybe no pictures yet). Oh, also Lorna's Laces I-Cord Boogie booties in Tickled Pink which are totally awesome! My friend's baby is due soon, and since I had blanket trouble, I'm working on small things, i.e. hats and booties. Which reminds me, I will post photos of the Tilli Tomas Flurries hat once I'm done seaming. Plus, the One Skein Baby Bolero is in progress.

My socks for Socktopia are still suffering (I'm not in the mood to pick up gusset stitches), so I am hoping my booties qualify.

Knitters Treat Exchange

Because I don't get sidetracked enough. Because it sounds like fun. Because it's a one-time exchange, and that's a commitment I think I can make. Because the Enablers spell "favorite" the British way, with that slightly exotic "u". It's the Knitters Treat Exchange! Here I go!

Knitters Treat Exchange Questionnaire

1. What's your favourite type of yarn? Wool, the softer the better. I'm currently loving hand-painted/hand-dyed.

2. What's your least favourite type of yarn? Novelty yarn, synthetics.

3. What's the first thing you do when you visit a new yarn shop? I cruise the new yarn.

4. What other crafts do you do / would like to do? I needlepoint when I find the time (read: not much lately), and crochet on occasion.

5. What magazines do you currently subscribe to? National Geographic, US Weekly (guilty pleasure!), Everyday Food, Everyday with Rachel Ray, Cook's Country, Vogue Knitting.

6. Put this type of magazine in order of preference:
Knitting / Crochet / Other Craft / Food / Home / Fashion / Celebrity Gossip / Garden

Celebrity Gossip, Food/Knitting, Crochet, Fashion (just can't keep up), Home, Garden/Other Craft

7. What items do you like to knit / crochet? Lately, I'm into socks, but I've been simultaneously working on sweaters for my toddlers, hats (infant, toddler and adult), gloves (adult), mittens (toddler/adult), and baby blankets.

8. Are you allergic to anything? Well, since we're talking about treats outside of knitting treats, I'm allergic to nuts, melon (I don't expect anyone to send melons, but extracts of allergens used in things like lotions can make trouble for me)

9. What do you like to* smell of?
(*This is not a typo. The question is: What do you like to smell of) Lavender

10. What's your favourite way to relax? Go to a quiet place without children and knit and catch up on movies.

11. You're stood in front of a Victorian style sweetshop, an Italian cafe, an old fashioned bakery and a dainty tea room. Where do you go first? The old-fashioned bakery.

12. What do you come out with? Butter cookies and those spritz sandwich cookies with the rasperry jam filling and partial chocolate dip.

13. Where do you go next? Probably the tea room--going for tea in London was so delightful, I wouldn't mind recreating it.

14. Any other words of wisdom for your pal? Just looking forward to some fun and the excitement of receiving a mystery package!

March is a wash

Ok, that's it. I am obviously not going to finish my March socks. I am just about to turn the heel on the first sock, and it's not going well. I've had to "un-knit" it twice; the pattern calls for a garter stitch heel with wraps (short rows), and I've miscounted several times. It's the Timberline sock from Lucy Neatby's Cool Socks Warm Feet. It looks like a short sock in the picture, with a garter stitch heel and toe that I thought would be fun and different, and a quick knit. I even blew off the tubular cast on and used the regular long tail cast on instead. I don't feel like ripping it out--the Scarlet Fleece is wonderful and so pretty, but I'm not making fast enough progress--obviously, since March ends Saturday and I'm not past the heel yet.

Honestly, I thought I'd get some knitting time yesterday evening (meaning before 10 p.m.) and I'd be fresh enough to not make the same mistakes on the heel wraps yet again. But as I was walking out the door at 6:20 p.m. last night, the babysitter said, "Do you smell something burning?" And I did. And it smelled electrical. I loaded the children into the minivan ("Who wants to have an adventure? Let's put on our shoes and watch a video in the car!"), put my nanny and babysitter in there with them. Then I called the police because I was too embarrassed to roust the volunteer fire department for something silly.

Long story short, I had the entire fire department (4 trucks) and 2 police officers at the house. It turned out to be related to my ceiling fan, and they told me it would have become a fire. Yikes! Nobody ever thinks they could have a fire in their home, certainly not me. One of the firefighters was someone I went to school with, too--that's what happens when you move back to the small town you grew up in. But here's the key point: the fire chief told me that the two mistakes people make with fires is (1) not calling the fire department because they're too embarrassed (yep, that's me), and (2) trying to fight the fire themselves (now that, I wouldn't do).

So an hour later, with the house cleared for occupancy by us, I got everyone back in, but only had time for a quick dinner with my folks before I met my girlfriend for ice cream, which was part of the original evening plan. I got home around 9:30, reviewed events with my husband (who was working at the time of the event), and got into bed around 10:30, and then, being exhausted yet all nerved up, proceeded to screw up that heel once again. So basically, for the past few nights, I spent the nighttime knitting time screwing up the heel, and nap time knitting time un-knitting it.

I think it's become a Sisyphean task, so I'm giving up the ghost: no March socks. Besides, the April Socktopia newsletter just came out. Here are the themes:

...Orange you glad I didn't say bananna?

Let's get Physical.

Bumblebees and Butterflys.

Sunshine on my shoulders.

April Showers

What am I going to do with these themes?! I don't even know where to start.

Where was I?

Well, it's March 27. I've just started turning the heel of my first sock for March. By the way, it's not even the Stillwater sock; that's been abandoned. I'm making a more basic sock with the Scarlet Fleece, but my thinking is that I'm not going to finish them in March.

Here's the good news: the third round of antibiotics is finally working on the horrible sinus infection I've had for the last month. The headache and jaw-ache have finally abated. The kids are better so I can finally attend to myself (a little bit). Knock on wood, we're out of the woods.

We had fabulous weather, so I kept the kids outside after preschool. One would think they'd be exhausted, but today was "Give all our pacifiers to our friend's baby sister because we're not babies anymore" Day. Suffice it to say, the two boys who used pacis are not happy. Oh, they were at the time we bagged them up and gave them to the baby's mommy (who made a big deal about it, so fabulous!), but not at naptime when they were rooting around for them, and not at bedtime. They're still awake, but not complaining about the pacis--big shout out to Grandma who bought them these ages ago but never gave them to the boys. I broke them out at naptime and they've helped a lot.

So back to knitting. I've nearly finished the KPS Hooded Vest for Baby Girl; I just have to kitchener the hood, weave in ends, and buy and sew in the zipper(!), which I think I may have the tailor do. The last time I sewed anything (other than for some knitting finishing) was in 8th grade Home Ec. It's really cute, and Boy M actually keeps saying, "I want one" every time he sees me pull it out. I may actually get around to ordering the yarn.

I'm also making this adorable baby hat, the Tilli Tomas Flurries Baby Beanie. It's pretty mindless and fast--perfect for watching "Dancing With the Stars"--such a guilty pleasure! Fortunately, it's knitting up fast (a little slower than expected because of the beads, but nothing major). My girlfriend is due at the end of May, and I've made negative progress on my other knitted objects for her.

Again, no pictures, but can you blame me? I'm ever hopeful I'll get to it!

I thought I was stalled out before...

I'm so tired I can hardly see. The kids have been so sick. Those of you who are interested in knitting, skip the next paragraph.

I've had at least one child at the doctor every day since Thursday (that was an all-clear ear check visit for Baby Girl, who had an ear infection two weeks ago, developed one over the weekend, and now has a double ear infection with a ruptured membrane), and spoke with doctors on Friday night and on Sunday when the office was closed. I've been giving four fever baths a day, on average, several with two children in the tub. Sometimes, they wake up from sleep and have to go straight from bed to the tub. And everyone cries in the tub. They've been spiking fevers between 104 and 105F and break through the Tylenol and/or Motrin. I've had two separate and isolated (thank goodness) incidents of vomiting. We've been up in the night dosing them with Motrin to keep the fevers down. Boy E's fever broke today and he's in fine; of course, that may have to do with the antibiotics he was put on yesterday when he was diagnosed with an ear infection. Boy J was still spiking a high fever this morning, and was up a lot in the night. At the doctor this morning, he was diagnosed with an ear infection. When I got home with Boy J, Baby Girl had yellow fluid coming out of her ear, so right back to the pediatrician we went for that double ear infection diagnosis. Then, this afternoon, Boy M went back to the doctor because of his high fever, but his ears are clear. And it goes without saying that we're nebulizing the boys three times daily. Poor boys: their third birthday was yesterday, and I think they enjoyed it as much as they could when their fevers were down, but it's not anything anyone would want for his or her birthday. And my husband and nanny both have bronchitis. My dad has something awful, and my mom is getting sick as well (although it didn't stop her from making dinner and dropping it off for me--she's the best). Our babysitter is also sick. But fortunately for us, one of our old babysitters is home on spring break, and she's helping out. I'm not sure if my sinus infection is returning, but I don't have time to find out.

Suffice it to say, my knitting has suffered. I've cast on the Scarlet Fleece to make the Wildhorse Farm Stillwater socks, but I've only knit 1.5 rows of ribbing. And I have to knit on US 1 to get gauge. I'm not optimistic about finishing, but I am starting to find my groove with the yarn.

I'm also progressing slowly on the KPS Bulky vest. It's stockinette with garter stitch over the first and last three stitches, but remarkably, I've been too tired to focus on that, too. Although when Boy M sees me pull it out, he tells me he wants one, so I guess I'd better get cracking!

I also got some good yarn, and some more coming, but I'll have to write about it later. Photos are a long shot.

Stalled out

I'm stuck. It's March 10. I have yet to cast on a sock for this month's Socktopia. I haven't been feeling it with anything in my stash (most of which has been acquired in the past few months). I finally bought fabulous yarn hand-dyed yarn that I was feeling--I LOVED the colorway and I got gauge first time out for Jaywalkers--except the dye came off on my hands, so I have to send it back for fixative treatment. So now my default is the Regia Bamboo with a pattern from a book I bought in February (I don't remember the name and it's not in front of me now) or this really cool Scarlet Fleece yarn in a pink/green colorway--it's gorgeous, I got in in the last Loopy Ewe update, it's great to knit with--but I got a weird gauge and am going to re-swatch on different needles.

While I was struggling with the socks, I decided to make something for Baby Girl: Knitting Pure and Simple's Bulky Hooded Vest for Children. Totally cute, and I bought the Lorna's Laces Shepherd Bulky in Bright Red, and it's gorgeous! If it's fun and easy, I may make three more for the boys. And ordering from Angelika is always a treat--fast shipping, beautifully packaged, great brochures to leaf through! Of course, I ran into trouble swatching: the swatch got wider as I knit! I guess swatching at 11:30 p.m. when I can hardly keep my eyes open is not the best idea. When I knit during the children's naptime, I got a consistent gauge (yay!) but then discovered my KnitPicks Options cable was separating from the join. Ack! KnitPicks is sending a new one out, no problem. Oh, and when I was winding the yarn, my new ball winder, on its third use, fell apart. KnitPicks took care of that, no problem, as well. It's a delight to deal with vendors who make things easy for you.

One the plus side, I'm making progress on the secret project I mentioned earlier. And I organized my dpns in this really cool Offhand Designs clutch I bought at the beginning of the year, and organized my crochet hooks in a really cool hook roll from Po-Ka-Dot.comthat I received as a holiday gift.

And, in the middle of this, I've had a nasty sinus infection for about two weeks that is not cured, and I finish antibiotics tomorrow. Looks like I'm back at the doctor on Monday. I've been to the pediatrician three times this week: two boys are sick. They're spiking fevers around 104-105F. It's unpleasant for all. I'm giving lots of lukewarm baths, forcing fluids, and letting almost all rules go out the window (fortunately/unfortunately, they're still moderately interested in the potty, although Boy J uses it to get out of the bath he so desperately needs for his fever). Their normal selves mostly reappear when the fever goes down. Unfortunately, my husband is sick, so he's out of commission. And I have to wake boys in the night for Motrin; I was so tired last night, I was nauseous. And I had a wake-up call at 6 a.m. from Boy J and had to take him straight from bed into the bath. Thank goodness for ear thermometers! And we're waiting for the other two to get it. The doctor says this bug lasts for 5-7 days. We just finished Day 2 for Boy E, and Day 1 for Boy J. And their third birthdays are Tuesday--poor guys!