"You knit it!"
"It has holes!"
"I need to take it off now."



I can't say that I disagree with the little guy's evaluation of Presto Chango. Except for part about the holes. There are no holes that aren't supposed to be there. But if you stretch the knitting hard enough, you can sure make it look like there are holes.

Maybe it'll grow on us. I could improve it by making the front panel longer, but I'm not that motivated. I'm not even motivated enough to go out and buy a set of buttons. This neckline just isn't going to work for Quinn, who insists on tugging the sweater down as far as it'll go.

Now that I've got the front of my Knitting Needle Knitting Bag done, I'm more desperate than ever to find those old wooden needles. This bag is going to need a great looking set of needles. I love the way the yarn looks in seed stitch, and it's coming out bigger than I'd expected.

There's a set of size 15 Clovers at Joann's that I could get with a 40% off coupon. And that'd be the perfect solution, if I wasn't halfway sure I had two better sets already. But they're not in the drawers of the steamer trunk, or on the fireplace mantel, or in the box with the zillion pairs of old aluminum needles Mom picked up dirt cheap at an estate sale...

I'm about out of places to look. So do I buy a new set, or stick the bag on a pair of aluminum needles and wait?

Falling leaves are "eeewww!"

I like watching leaves fall past the big picture windows, but this afternoon Leif was pointing at them and saying "eeeewww!" That's one of his favorite words, right up there with "ow!" and "bite?"

Bill's theory is that since the leaves have fallen onto the ground, Leif thinks they're garbage. I don't know what's going through his little head, but it's sure cute.

Today's been a good day. We drove to the feed store and bought huge pumpkins, then stopped at Costco to pick up a pumpkin pie on the way home. The little guys didn't nap, so it's almost bedtime and I rented a couple of movies to watch while I knit. Maybe I can make some more progress on Presto Chango.

Now that Cobblestone is done, the Knitting Needle Knitting Bag is going to take its place as my mindless TV knitting. At least until I cast on something new.

Cobblestone Pullover

Cobblestone Pullover from Interweave Knits Fall 2007

It took three skeins of Sierra Pacific Accord, which I picked up for $1 a skein at Craft Warehouse last Christmas. Cheaper than Red Heart Super Saver, and about as much fun to work with. Not saying that's a bad thing, just that the two yarns are in about the same league.

I like this sweater. It could've been better if I'd used nicer yarn and actually adjusted the numbers instead of just working at a tighter gauge, but I'm not starting over at this point. And Heath loves this sweater, which is what matters.

The pattern is easy and was fun to knit, but it did convince me that I'm not a huge fan of knitting garter stitch in the round. I'll do it if I like the pattern enough, which in this case, I did.



It's also occurred to me that with the same amount of energy I'm spending to make Heath these over sized sweaters, I could just about make one for myself.

I actually got out of the house by myself last night to go scrapbooking with my mom and a couple of friends. Quinn's birthday is coming up, so I left home at 2pm to do some shopping first, and didn't get back here until almost 1am. I should've been back around midnight, but we dawdled and talked on the way out to the cars, then there was a line at the drive thru when I stopped to get my diet Coke, then the onramp to I-5 that had been open earlier was shut down for construction so I had to double back through town to use one farther North....luckily Bill was already in bed and not waiting up for me!

I found a couple of presents for Quinn (how am I going to Christmas shop for two toddlers, 15 months apart?!) and stopped at the LYS to see if she still had copies of the Summer IK. Those are all long gone, but I got the Holiday issue. And I stopped at Costco for a couple of Christmas presents I'd been meaning to buy if I could get there without kids before they sold out -- and the Knitting Pattern a Day Calendar is finally in -- yippee! I've spent the past couple of weeks darting into Costco at every possible opportunity to see if they had it yet.

And I stopped in one of the antique shops in Lebanon to see if they still had the crochet booklets I spotted when Bill and the kids and I were there last week. I couldn't really look at them with a baby in my arms and I hadn't been able to get them out of my mind. I was going to pick out one or two, but then I got sucked in by all of that pretty lace and they all had to come live with me.



No, I still haven't made a serious attempt at learning to crochet, but at a dollar a piece, I spent the same on the whole stack than I did on the Holiday IK issue. Even if it turns out that I can't crochet to save my life, they're wonderful eye candy.

And, despite all of this wonderful stuff that I haven't even really looked through yet, I've spent a good chunk of my morning on Ravelry printing and queueing patterns for cabled hats. I don't wear hats.

Smariek Knits has some great hats and scarves, which I'd seen before but forgotten. And Knititude is making me absolutely drool. I want the Sorelle Lace Edged Pullover. And the Chinese Lace Pullover. This is the same designer who did that Wisteria dress I was considering for Alex a while back, then forgot about.

I love this whole Ravelry queue/favorites thing!

While I've been fantasizing about lace and cheap pretty acrylic, I've been slogging along on Heath's Cobblestone Pullover.



Last night, I finished the second sleeve and got the pieces knit together on one circular so I could start the yoke. So now I guess I'm on the home stretch. Those alternating knit and purl rounds, with short rows thrown in to keep it from being too easy and mindless, are looking kind of ominous. I know I need to make the yoke shorter, but I'm not sure how to do it and still get the short rows and decrease rows to work out right.

My enthusiasm for the Sierra Pacific Accord is fading fast, especially after I've been knitting with it for a while and then switch to something softer like the Wool-Ease I'm using for Presto Chango. But I'm this close to having the sweater done, Heath is really excited about it, and I'm just happy to be knitting.

Why I'm happy knitting this and not something nicer, I'll probably never figure out.

It seems like we always wind up taking Bill's vacation time in October. We get home in time for the kids to trick or treat on Halloween, but I miss most of the scary movies on television and never quite manage to get my act together enough to decorate the house or carve pumpkins or any of the rest of it.

But we're home this year, with no plans to go anywhere, and no vacation time left if the urge did strike. I've got cheap paper mache tombstones in my kitchen window, and drippy red blood that won't quite stick to the window.



And while we were at Walmart looking for costumes and cheesecloth to use, I took my first trip down the yarn aisle in months and my heart sank a bit because the shelves were so empty. There's an ugly rumor that they're going to close the whole section, and the manager tells me it's true, they just don't know when.

But the end must not be here quite yet. They've got new colors of Bernat Softee Chunky and a new-to-me yarn, Caron Simply Soft Heathers. The colors are gorgeous and it's almost as cheap as the regular Simply Soft -- $2.07 for a 250 yard skein.

I'll be buying enough for a Mommy-size sweater on the way to scrapbooking Friday night, when there aren't any little witnesses.

It's cold in here. I'm bundled up in flannel pajama pants and an old sweat shirt I bought at a thrift shop while I was pregnant with Alex ten years ago, fantasizing about this and that.

I found great-grandma's hairpin lace loom while Bill was tearing off the roof and I was moving boxes from one end of the attic to the other, trying to get the whole thing done before I ran out of daylight or it started to rain. And I printed out the tutorial from the Stitch Diva Studios site. Now I apparently need to find a crochet hook.

Assuming I can figure out how to actually do hairpin lace, I'll order the pattern and some yarn. Drapy dk weight, according to the pattern description. Sounds like Callista to me!

The Driftwood Victorian Shoulder Shawl is even more tempting. I already know how to knit lace, I've got the perfect yarn, and the pattern isn't too expensive (assuming I can find a place that won't charge $4.95 to ship it.

I'm resisting that temptation because I have plenty of other shawl patterns I'm not knitting and I know darn well I wouldn't cast on for this one as soon as the pattern got here. It could happen, like it did with the Callista shawl, but it's not very likely.

Ravelry and my dial up connection are playing nicely today, so I stumbled across this. I've been meaning to knit a squid hat since I stumbled across the pattern on Knitttingpatterncentral. But the felted squid is much cuter. And then I found this one. The big kids are just a tiny bit fixated on giant squids. And any stuffed animal that will eat someone's head is guaranteed to be a huge hit around our house.

I'm having a bad night

My Hemlock Ring Blanket is all scrunchy. The receipt I need for a stupid rebate on the stupid washing machine isn't in the drawer where I know I put it. I can't get Ravelry to work, or get through to the library's website to renew our books...

Tonight has not been a whole lot of fun.

Hopefully the blanket will look better if I block it again. It looked almost great until I used it -- maybe it wasn't dry enough when I moved it? Hopefully Lowes can send me a copy of the receipt, but I won't be able to find out until morning.

I did get a couple more inches done on the Cobblestone Pullover while we watched a DVD this afternoon. And somehow I wound up knitting this on Sunday night --



I swear, I made it from casting on to binding off almost without it sinking in that I had a new WIP. Calorimetry, knit up with a partial skein of Encore Colorspun that I don't quite remember getting, so it must be more auction yarn from Grandma. I absolutely love the colors and wish I'd had more of it.

Oh, and I started Presto Chango.

Rumplestiltskin! Rumplestiltskin!

Knitter's Stash is the book that made me need to knit. I'd already made a garter stitch hat from a Learn to Knit Kit that I got at Craft Warehouse for 75% of the lowest marked price. I'd knit a couple of dishcloths with holes that weren't supposed to be there, and a huge rectangular garter stitch thing that must've had some intended purpose when I cast on for it. (Several years later, we realized that if you folded the thing in half it was just the right size to line the bottom of Quinn's cradle, so it did get more use than most of my projects.)

I was having fun, but the yarn and needles hadn't taken over my life.

Then I brought home Knitter's Stash from the library and found the patterns for Rumplestiltskin's Toddler's Jacket and the linen washcloths. It was late at night and I waited very impatiently for morning so I could haul the book and two kids down the street to the LYS and buy the yarn.

They didn't carry chenille (or the Euroflax for the washcloths) and the owner told me it was too expensive, that I didn't want to knit with it, and that I should substitute two strands of whatever worsted weight I liked. So I wound up going to Walmart and letting Heath pick out Red Heart Supersaver in an extremely vivid combination of purple and teal.

The sweater had horrible gauge problems and didn't fit. I wound up hiding it at my Mom's house because poor Heath wanted to wear the sweater his mommy'd made him and it just wasn't possible. I had enough leftover yarn to make a second sweater with problems of its own, but at least he did get to wear that one.

Fast forward to last week and I had these three skeins of pink chenille and no desire to use it for a hat, a scarf or a bag. Then I remembered this little jacket and decided to check out the book again and try it in the chenille.



This one's a little better, but I won't be trying it a third time.

This isn't meant to be a complaint about the pattern. I think it's been a mix of bad luck, yarn choice, gauge and maybe the alignment of the planets or something squirrely like that.

Daddy's not on the roof anymore

My babies seem confused and a little bit sad. After almost two weeks of vacation time, Daddy is done fixing the roof and has gone back at work. Even though there's no more thumping and banging and bits of exciting stuff falling down past the kitchen window, they keep pointing up at the ceiling, saying "Daddy?"

I've been celebrating the new roof section and our return to a normal life by knitting like crazy.

The Hemlock Ring Blanket has a couple dozen more stitches to bind off, then I get to try blocking it.

The little chenille sweater I was thinking of casting on is done except for the back and a whole scary lot of finishing.

Knittingparents is doing a KAL for the Knitting Needle Knitting Bag and somewhere I've got a pair of beautiful old wooden needles with impossibly blunt tips that would make the perfect handles. I did my lifetime quota of berry stitch on that pineapple baby hat for Leif a while back and the yarn I'm determined to use looks horrible in berry stitch, so I'm doing seed stitch which so far looks pretty darn good. If I can remember wher I put those needles, and handle that much seed stitch, this may be a wonderful bag someday.

I found some green Wool-Ease for Presto Chango, but the two skeins are different dye lots. I'm determined to make a green one, so I guess I'll alternate between both skeins to make sure any color difference blends. Or something like that.

There's a free Showtime preview this weekend, so I've got the sattelite receiver set to auto tune some movies I never got around to renting. And I'm going to play with my yarn.

What big teeth you have, Grandma!

When I was little, I couldn't sleep at night unless this doll was put away, with Grandma's bonnet covering the wolf's face, and Red Riding Hood's dress covering them both.



My Great-Grandma Walters made it. Red's and Grandma's faces are painted on, and the wolf's features are felt. I remember being nervous about those teeth and that red mouth, but didn't really think much about those dead, sharklike eyes until I was taking his picture yesterday.

No wonder the thing creeped me out as a kid!



And while I was looking for something else in the sewing room a while back, I stumbled upon a handwritten copy of the pattern, the same one that Grandma used.




Visit Kelli's House to find more great Show and Tell Friday posts.

This feels like fall knitting

I pulled out the Hemlock Ring Blanket last night and sat up with it for a little while, knitting just a few rounds. It's almost time to start binding off, but I made myself go to bed at eleven. There's no such thing as staying up just long enough to finish that last round and bind off a few stitches. It either would have been so much fun I'd have sat up and done the whole thing, or so miserable I'd have spent hours lying awake and dreading the rest of it.

So I went to bed and tossed and turned and thought about yarn and patterns and how I want to cast on for a new pair of socks from the Socken-Kreativ-Liste that both intrigues and terrifies me, and debated whether or not I want to use that chenille to make that toddler jacket now that I've confirmed it's possible and found a girl toddler who happens to be the right size and who I really should knit something for, and worried about the wooden needles with the blunt tips that I suddenly need but might've gotten rid of...

So I didn't get up before the kids and start binding off the blanket this morning like I'd hoped to.



The Cobblestone Pullover has been a happy knit so far, a good project to pick up and work on while I've got to keep my attention on other things. I've got about four more inches of mindless knitting before it'll be time to do some math and start the sleeves.

I'm sizing it down for Heath by kntting at a tighter gauge. Hopefully that means I can knit the yoke part as written and have it turn out okay. If not, I'll figure out how to fix the problems as they crop up. How bad can it get?

The Sierra Pacific Accord has been a bit of a mystery yarn. I've only found a couple of mentions of it online -- both of those knitters absolutely hated it. I don't think it's that horrible. It's cheap acrylic, along the lines of Red Heart Super Saver, but even cheaper. I bought a bunch on sale for $1 a skein last Christmas.

I did actually knit and wash a swatch, and it seemed to come out just the same as it went in. Okay, it was a baby hat, but that's as close to knitting and washing a swatch as I'm likely to get.

Quilting has taught me valuable skills!

Last night, Bill said it would save him a whole bunch of time if I cut the shingles for the top edge of the roof. After he's spent the past I don't know how many days up on the roof from the time he got out of bed until it got to dark to work, I wasn't going to complain that I didn't want to do it.

But I sure wasn't looking forward to the job. At the very least, I was afraid it'd be hard on my hands, which are already twinging a bit lately. I was very good last night and put down the Cobblestone Pullover at the first little ache.

Turns out, cutting shingles into thirds is an awful lot like cutting quilt squares. Except the shingles are already slit halfway, so there's no measuring. And the cuts don't have to be anywhere near as straight to be good enough. And I think it's faster, maybe because you don't have to iron anything first...

I was adding new yarn to my Ravelry stash earlier and having trouble with some of the links, so I went looking through the forums to see if it was my computer or a Ravelry thing and stumbled across a discussion about the massive yarn stash.

What is with some of these people? What makes them think they have the right to decide how big a complete stranger's stash should be? Why would they even care how much yarn a stranger has, let alone make public statements about what she should or shouldn't do with it?

That's why I was hesitant to put my stash information on Ravelry. I wasn't sure I dared to admit how much yarn I've got.

I've added a lot more this month. There was the Elann order and the cheap acrylic sale at Michaels. And then while my house was at its most chaotic yesterday, Dad called from his cell phone to tell me that Mom wanted to know if I knew about a yarn called "Paintbox" and if it was worth a dollar a skein. She was at a yard sale buying quilt fabric and the lady had some yarn. We had half a conversation, I hung up and got things settled, then called back to see if she'd bought me the yarn and what exactly it was.

Six skeins of Knit One Crochet Too Paintbox in different colors. And the lady had some other stuff, along with a bunch of Homespun. Dad turned the car around and drove back to get me two matching skeins of Homespun I've been after for a project. Have I mentioned what a wonderful enabler he is? The lady wound up selling them all of her yarn for fifty cents a skein, so along with the Paintbox, I wound up with four skeins of Berroco Suede in different colors, two skeins of Softwist, and five skeins of Homespun.

I have no clue what I'm going to make with it. And that doesn't bug me one bit.

Why haven't I had a knitting bag lately?

Once upon a time, my knitting projects were ready to go. I could pick up a bag on the way out the door. During that eternity in the hospital a couple of years ago, I could call home and tell my oldest exactly where to find the yarn and patterns I wanted her to bring me.

Then, somehow, the knitting got loose. It literally escaped. Projects -- big, half finished projects -- are missing. I have no stitch markers, even though I know I've bought at least three packs of jump rings so far this year. I even managed to lose track of the big three ring binder with my patterns in it. The past four month or so have been hectic, but not enough to explain that. How could I forget the whole concept of knitting bags?

Last night, it finally hit me that instead of carrying the Hemlock Ring into the dining room and hiding it on top of my sewing machine, I could put it in a bag, the one that even says "Knitting" on the front. Along with the Cobblestone Pullover. And their patterns. I'll still have to hide the bag, but at least things will be together.



As for other projects, we're still working on the roof. That means Bill works on the roof while I stay in the house with the kids and listen for him to bang for my attention, then find whatever it is that he needs and hand it through from the attic.

What kind of person uses flattened beer cans instead of flashing? (Probably the same jerk who "forgots" to load up the cat when they moved and then told us to just take her to the pound if she got in our way.) If he'd done the roof right, we wouldn't be losing the wonderful old tongue and groove boards that give the attic so much character.

We knew the house was a fixer-upper with hidden problems, but someone went way out of his way to hide a few of them.

And, just to put everyone's minds at ease, BooBoo still has the run of the place and although she seems older than dirt and I expect her to keel over any day, she's doing just fine. We're saving as much of the tongue and groove as we can in hopes of keeping the other half of the attic intact, and it's my new mission in life to make sure that nothing that could be of use to anyone goes on the burn pile.

Cheap acrylic!

I think I might've mentioned that cheap acrylic makes my heart go pitty-pat. I've developed some standards (at least when it comes to overpriced estate sale stuff), but Simply Soft for two bucks a skein? I've been dancing around the house with anticipation since I saw the Michaels flyer Sunday. And wishing there was one just a bit closer to home.

The new Michaels, which is even farther from home and less convenient than the one they closed down, but does have a lot more yarn, is next to the new Lowes...Bill's using a week of vacation to reroof the house...

So he sat in the van with the kids while I did some quick stash enhancement and then the whole family shopped for shingles and nails and roofing felt and I don't know what all else.

I got a bunch of the Simply Soft and some Bernat Satin Sport, which I hadn't seen before, and some wool to make myself cabled mittens. I'm sooo in the mood to knit sweaters right now, as soon as I finish the Hemlock Ring.

I'm in love with the Hemlock Ring Blanket

Friday night, more out of a sense of "you bought the yarn so now you're committed" than real desire, I cast on for the Hemlock Ring Blanket. Except for a rocky moment when I read the instructions for the fourteenth round and almost gave up then and there, this thing has been so much fun I can barely stand it!



I never, ever, thought I'd want to knit a wool blanket, but reading the post about it at Brooklyn Tweed convinced me that not only did I have to knit a Hemlock Ring for myself, I had to knit it in yarn I could actually block.

The wonders never cease...

I've been destroying perfectly good batik.

After that cute little paper pieced tree, I went on a hunt for more patterns. Didn't find the birdhouses I was looking for, which are in a magazine that's gone missing along with most of the other quilting magazines I'd collected before we moved here, but I did find some really nifty ones in a back issue of Miniature Quilts.

And yesterday, I picked up a couple of magazines at the library and found three more quilts I can't live without, two of them paper pieced.

So it seemed like a good time to actually do some more paper piecing. I'm glad the first attempt went so well, because if it was anything like yesterday, there wouldn't have been a second try.



I'm having problems here. But I'm going to keep muddling through, because maybe by the time I'm done I'll have figured out how to make this work.



Mom called a week or so ago to ask if I wanted the wooden scissors holder she'd painted years ago for my Grandma Marr. It was, she warned me, really ugly. I remembered how she used to have a wooden holder for her good fabric scissors hanging behind her sewing machine, thought how useful it would be to have one of my own, and asked if she'd mind if I decoupaged it or something.

We need to revise our definition of "ugly." The hot pink scissors are ugly. The green wooden scissors holder that blends so nicely into my dining room wallpaper is not.

Picovolis!

At six am this morning, I was binding off my Picovoli. I got up and out of bed at six to finish it. As opposed to staying up until six, which I'm much much more likely to do.

After weeks of knitting and knitting and getting nowhere and hoping that my modified shaping was going to work, it was suddenly three inches from done. Then two inches, then ready to cast off, and now I'm wearing it.

It fits much better than the first one -- yay for negative ease! And covers my bra better, probably because it's snugger and because I paid attention to the directions for casting on the underarm this time.

I never did post a picture of the first one...



I really did like it until I finished the second one. Now I'm not so sure. And I'm trying not to be irked because my fingers slipped and I lost the whole explanation of why I don't like it quite so much.

My whole train of thought has derailed, so I'll write about Mindy's dishcloths and my Mystery Stole tomorrow. And hopefully have some new yarn to gush about if that box from Elann gets here!

Cobblestones and Crocodiles

After saving the new issue of Interweave Knits for vacation reading, then not having time to look at more than two or three pages while we were actually gone, I finally got a chance to settle in and go through the whole thing while I was sitting on the back porch Saturday night waiting for an advice nurse to come on the line. We think I got bitten by a brown recluse, at least that's what the bite looks like. What is it with me and these creepy crawlies?! Snakes in my knitting, wasps in my t-shirt, and now things that aren't my children are biting me...

At least it got me time to read my magazine. I still don't like the new layout, mostly because it makes it hard to flip through it in the magazine aisle and decide if there are any patterns I can't live without. If I wasn't subscribing these days, I might not have bought this one. Which would be a shame, cause I would've missed the Cobblestone Pullover, which I'm trying to resize for Heath. And wouldn't have seen the ad for the Alligator Scarf.

We're home from the trip

We've spent the past week driving from Oregon to Salt Lake City, to Colorado, to Albuquerque, then up along the Extraterrestrial Highway in Nevada to get back home. I'm too exhausted to remember most of what we did, but I know there was a mine tour, hiking past petroglyphs, and a thrilling ten minute trip to Hobby Lobby.

The van's unloaded, the laundry is running, and I've got about a million things I want to start working on as soon as I get a few minutes to myself.

First, here's my Show and Tell Friday post while it's actually still Friday...




Trixie Belden's Mystery in Arizona introduced me to the idea of sugar skulls when I was younger than Alex is now. I don't think the book described them in great detail or really explained the Dia de los Muertos, but I remember wanting one of those skulls.




I grew up and forgot about them, and then I found Pandora's Button Box and saw her embroidered skull dollys and fell in love with the idea all over again. I found some great candy skull fabric on one of our trips up to Fabric Depot, which made my mom wonder whether I'd lost my mind.

And while we were wandering through the shops in Albuquerque earlier this week, I saw a trio of little skulls sparkling in a display case. I expected Bill to roll his eyes when I asked the lady if they were real sugar and how much they were. Just out of curiousity, because I don't have any real need for a sugar skull, and our howling pack of children make displaying fragile things a risky idea.

I wasn't really meaning to buy one, not until Bill told me to get one if I wanted it. So now I have a sparkly sugar skull on the high shelf in my sewing room, where no one but me will see it. That makes me happy.

And I'm freshly inspired to figure out where I put that fabric so I can make myself a tote bag.

The socks and bonnet are done, just in time to get them to someone who can get them to someone who will be seeing the parents soon. I don't love the bonnet as much as I'd hoped, but the socks are awfully cute.

As much as I love toe-up socks, I couldn't get these to work that way. I tried following the pattern as written, I tried doing it the way I usually do my toe-up socks, then I decided to make things easy on myself and just start at the cuffs. After that they worked up quickly, even though it's been a frighteningly long time since I did a short row heel and I couldn't quite remember how it's done. Right or wrong, they've got heels. I'm hoping to finish the second toe tonight.

I've got this skein of pink yarn that surfaced first while I was digging through my stash to list it all in Ravelry inventory, then again yesterday after I found this neat lace scarf pattern.

I owe my buddy a pink scarf. Because the pink scarf I didn't knit her for Christmas of 2005 may have saved my littlest baby's life. I'd planned to knit her a brown lace scarf. I had the pattern and yarn all picked out, then she showed up at karate all happy about a girly scarf she'd just bought.

It took me until the next day to decide that her Christmas scarf had to be pink, that I didn't have the right yarn, and that I couldn't justify driving 100 miles round trip to get the stuff I wanted. But I'd been feeling a little icky, it was Friday, and I could justify going to the OB just to make sure I was fine. And stop at Craft Warehouse on the way home.

I wasn't fine. I was in labor at 29 weeks and had dilated to three centimeters without feeling a single contraction. Go straight to the hospital, do not pass go, do not stop and buy the pink yarn that was the purpose of the whole trip...

It all turned out much much better than it would have if I hadn't gone to the doctor to justify a trip to buy yarn.

Then today at church I found out that a couple just had their first baby a month early. She's in the NICU, won't nurse, and although I'm not sure I've ever heard of anyone knitting a prayer bonnet and socks, I'm feeling an awfully strong urge to make something pink and lacy.

I've got a little feather and fan blanket that never made it to the baby it was knit for, and I want to make this set. And of course the only pink dk weight stuff in my stash is that same skein I was going to use for my buddy's scarf.

That's okay. I'll order some pink wool for Janet's scarf later. There's plenty of time before Christmas.

I paper pieced! Thursday, while the littlest guy was napping, I found the magazine with the article in it, moved all of the yarn I'd piled on the sewing machine, and experimented a bit. And it worked!

I've checked out a dozen or so books on paper piecing from the library. I actually sat down one night a couple of years ago and tried to do it, with disastrous results. Since then, I've stumbled across instructions that made sense, but I've never had the right book checked out from the library on the same day as I've had time to play around with it.

The pattern for the tree, and the instructions that made sense, are in the Spring 1993 issue of Quick and Easy Quilting. The whole block is supposed to be a dozen little trees surrounding a house, but I'm not anywhere near crazy about the tree to make eleven more of them.

I've got another magazine with a pattern for a paper pieced schoolhouse block...and one with patterns for a paper pieced village...and somewhere, there's one with bird houses...

I'm going up to the sewing room to see what else I can find.

The sun is shining, the kids are playing, Bill is out shopping for porch windows, and my Luna Moth Shawl is all spread out and pinned to the bed in the sewing room.

Life is pretty good!



Pattern - Luna Moth Shawl
Yarn - Elann Callista (copper, 4 1/2 skeins)
Needles - old nylon circular, size 8

I can't wait to see how the shawl looks once I unpin it. The yarn was gorgeous and the shawl had such a great texture and drape when I was knitting with it that I want to be wearing it right now.

And I want to order some more Callista to make a top with. But first I'm going to use my leftovers to knit up a swatch and wash it and all of that stuff that some people say knitters are supposed to do.

No Picovoli pictures today because it seems to be misisng. I'm sure that wherever it is, it's safe and sound and I'm not going to panic. Yet.

Oh, and --

Rachel at Yarn Over is having an anniversary contest and giving away some gorgeous stitch markers.

The Majestic Mountains Stole is making my heart go pitty pat. Now I'm on a yarn hunt...

I've always envied those knitters who have their entire stash entered into a spreadsheet and can tell exactly how many grams or yards they've got. I don't know WHY I want to know exactly how much yarn there is in the sewing room, but I do. Sometimes. And now I've got a list of almost every single skein of yarn I own.

I had doubts about entering all of it into Ravelry. This dial up connection is so painfully slow I didn't even think it would be possible. I wasn't sure I wanted to admit to the world just how much cheap acrylic I've accumulated.

But I started entering the "good" yarn and that went so painlessly, I decided to add all of the yarn I'd bought on purpose. And now I've entered absolutely everything that has a ball band, or that I can identify without one.

This is fun!

I didn't make it online to post my show and tell on Friday, but I can't wait another week to share these!



I love old children's books, especially the series. The Bobbsey Twins was never one of my favorites, but when you find two copies this old for a quarter each, you don't get picky because they're not Nancy Drew.

The inside cover of one says

Stevenson Hall
1930

Reading Room
Small Girls



I'd love to know how old those small girls were and what else they had in their reading room. Did the boys have their own room? Or were there no boys at Stevenson Hall?

We had playgroup in the woods on Monday and I took Picovoli since I always seem to wind up sitting somewhere away from the other moms so I can watch my littlest guys. They sat on the sandbar in the middle of the little stream, throwing rocks into the puddles of water and I was stretched out on a quilt in a patch of shade.

Then one of the older boys startled a snake, which raced across the quite and right under my knitting bag. I suppose I should be glad it didn't go into the bag, which was lying on its side.

What's a knitter supposed to do if a snake crawls in with her knitting? Has it ever happened?

My wonderful daughter caught the itty bitty snake and let it go on the other side of the stream. And I got Picovoli finished this morning, but can't wear it until it has a bath to get rid of the smoky smell that it picked up while I was knitting by the campfire.

And I've got almost all of my yarn stash entered into Ravelry -- yippee!

I'm getting more and more antsy! I was really really really hoping my Ravelry invite would be here when I got a chance to check email tonight. I even rented the kids a movie with a ton of bonus features and games. But it looks like I'll get to watch Ice Age The Meltdown with them -- there are still 29 people ahead of me.

Maybe tomorrow?

For now, I've printed a new-to-me pattern for a lace scarf and dug out some yarn to use. And I've got to put the new Picovoli on some longer needles to make sure that I really did get the math right before I get much more of it knit. I should finish the old Picovoli. And work on some dishcloths for Mindy's housewarming present.

Those Bernat Handicrafter Cotton colors that don't seem to exist would be great with her color scheme. but since I can't find those, I've found some stuff in my stash which will work well enough.




And I'm suddenly overcome with the urge to knit Neapolitan ice cream pink cloths for my own kitchen. There's a bit of logic here - I couldn't afford the pretty pink and brown quilt kit at Craft Warehouse and Michael's had Sugar N Cream on sale in similar colors.

But when we bought this house, I couldn't rest until we painted over the pink kitchen cabinets. And now I'm knitting pink stuff for it. And getting excited over cheap vintage dishtowels. I don't care how many calories are in each hard to identify shape, but it does go with my pink and brown yarn.

-- scroll down for my Show and Tell Friday post --

I've been having problems.

Tuesday night, I sat down to work on my mystery stole, planning to do just a few rows before I cast on for something else. I made a mistake. I recounted stitches five or six times, looking straight AT the huge glaring mistake the entire time, before deciding to cheat just a bit so things would line up. A row and a half later, I figured out what I'd done and had to tink back. But something went wrong with the tinking and I wound up taking the whole thing off of the needles and ripping back rows until I hit a point where I knew everything was okay. Then I had to figure out which row I'd landed on and do the next few rows to be sure that I really had fixed things and could safely go on from there.

I packed away the stole before anything else could happen to it and spent the next hour trying to start the Sonata Crest of the Wave top before finally figuring out that the pattern, although it doesn't exactly say so, must want me to do my increases in the lace pattern and that's one of the things I absolutely can not do. So that project is gone now.

Pulled out the Honeymoon Cami, which I've been avoiding because I'd taken off the needle tips for anther project and stopped in the middle of the increases. You won't believe it -- I actually wrote down which needles I'd been using and which row I stopped on! But I tried it on and decided that, at my current weight, I've got better plans for this yarn. Never mind that the thing was almost finished except for the neck and arm shaping....

It must've been about midnight by the time I pulled out the Denim Style and the Picovoli pattern and started my gauge swatch. It was definitely 1:30am by the time I threw up my hands and admitted defeat. And it was two days later by the time I finally got the adjusted numbers right and made it through the first few rows.

This is ridiculous! I should be able to convert a pattern from one gauge to another without quite this much drama, even if I can't find the calculator.

It's Show and Tell Friday!



Believe it or not, this fella isn't a thrift store find. As far back as I can remember, he hung over the massive wooden stereo in my grandparents' living room. I never thought much about him until the family was clearing out the house after they died. Now, though, I'd love to ask Grandma what the story behind this thing is. Did she like him? Was it just that he went so well with the blood red shag carpet?

I wonder if she'd have an answer. I don't know why I snagged him from the garage sale pile and have dragged him from house to house over the past decade. He's never hung on a wall, because my husband hates him.

But he's neat.

As much time as I saw this thing over the years, I never even noticed the shadowy figures in the background until I got him home.



It hit me while I was taking the pictures for this post that I really want to make a blue and gold applique tiki quilt. With embroidered figures in the background.

I'm linking up to Woman in Real Life 

I got bit

Sadly, it wasn't the kind of bug that makes you order Japanese knitting books or join an expensive sock yarn club -- not that I could really afford either of those, no matter how hard the bugs bite!

This was the kind of bug that left me in a miserable little lump on the couch, aching and wishing the chills would go away and the toddlers would stop hugging me quite to hard. And sent me up to the doctor's office to get some antibiotics.

I think I hate the antibiotics more than I hated being sick. And I just bet I could've bought one of those Japanese books for what I spent on the copayments.

How unfair is that?

Bill came home the other night and wanted to know what brand of frozen green beans I'd just bought. I don't know -- whatever kind that Costco had. I've got a few brand loyalties, but frozen veggies isn't one of them. So I dug through the chest freezer and came up with the bag and it turns out that I wasn't feeding the kids the brand that just got recalled for botulism. Which, as far as I'm concerned, is one of the scariest thing that could happen to a person.

Then he asked if I knew about the Mattel recalls for lead paint. Oh, crap. All I could think was that if they were recalling Hot Wheels I was in a world of hurt. My babies have soooo many little cars and if I had to get rid of them all, I would not be a happy mommy. Luckily, we've only got one of the toys on the list, it was made long before the ones they're recalling, and the boys never played with it anyway. So that's okay, but I'm afraid this is only going to be the first recall of many.

Ugh.

There is happy stuff going on, though -- the Mystery Stole has short rows! I love short rows and the magical things they can do, enough that I'm going to cast on with nicer yarn and try to catch up.

"Show and Tell Friday"

The first thing that jumped to mind when I stumbled across Show and Tell Friday last week was my great-grandma's sock monkey, which I've been wanting to post about for a while now.



Grandma Walters made everything. She covered bars of soap with straight pins and sequins and beads to make glittery swans. She made little baskets from safety pins and those three sided beads that nest together. She crocheted afghans and intricate little doll dresses. She dried apples into wrinkled brown doll heads that gave me the creeps.

And when sock monkeys were the big thing, she made a sock monkey. I don't know if she made more than one, or who she made this little guy for. He didn't make it into my custody until a few years ago, but I know he was around when I was a kid.

I got curious about when she might've made him and did some Googling -- Wikipedia answered most of my questions. I'd just bet that Grandma's monkey was inspired by the Pack O Fun leaflet. She made a lot of things from that magazine.

There's a pattern online, and, according to the manufacturer's website, they sell the red heel socks at the same place we buy our chicken feed.

5,000 Gram Update

The plan was not to buy any more yarn until I'd used up 5000 grams of my stash. It's been three months and I'm at about 2400 grams. That's almost halfway there!

I can't figure out how I made it through so much yarn last month. It didn't feel like I was knitting a lot, but somehow I guess I did.

I dunno...

My Rose Garden Shawl is done.



I was happy until I got it bound off and now I just can't figure out how I feel about this thing. I should have gone with my first instinct and made it a few repeats narrower, but there is no way I'm going to rip it out and knit the same exact thing over again. I 'd like it shorter and wider, but I don't want it anywhere near that bad.

And, now that I've started working on Picovoli again, I've got the nagging temptation to use the yarn to make myself a cute little top. Which would be foolish. I've got yarn in my stash for a second (and third and fourth) top. Or I could buy some Sonata in one of the other colors I'm tempted by or some Callista...

I'm leaving the forty-some ends unwoven until I figure this out.

There is something to be said for stumbling across a project, deciding I can't live without it, ordering the yarn, and getting it knit up within a short span of time. It won't haunt me like that Victorian Lace Poncho from Elann still does.

It's his fault. His pretty pictures set me off on on a quest for self-striping kitchen cotton and gorgeous brown shades of kitchen cotton. I've googled. I've been to the Bernat website, and the websites for every yarn vendor I can think of that might carry it and I'm this close to checking the three Walmarts up in Salem.

It's distracting me from my black eye, which is nice, but I really do wish I could find an online source for the stuff before the purple and black fade and I can't use my owie as justification to buy some.

Sometime in the dark hours between Thursday and Friday, I got up to use the bathroom and ran face first into the edge of our bedroom door. Which should've been open, or maybe closed, not at an angle across the doorway. It really really really hurt and I knew there was going to be a horrible bruise just in time for Leif's appointment with the new pediatrician a few hours later.

It didn't bruise at all. Until this morning, three days later. How does that work? And when is it going to stop hurting?

I had more to write about today, something to do with the Rose Garden Shawl and Picovoli, but after five or six or seven interruptions, it's all left my brain. Hopefully it'll come back.

Jealous of everyone else's pretty pictures, I finally cast on for my Mystery Stole with the same yarn and needles I was using for Mystery Stole #1 before I realized that I was in over my head and lost my nerve.

All last night, I had doubts about the yarn and needles. Which I ignored, because I absolutely always have doubts about my yarn and usually have doubts about my needles. This morning, I blocked what I had done and I've still got doubts. But I found better needles and I'm going to switch to them. Both sets are supposed to be the same size, so we'll see what happens.

As much as the yarn worries me, I'm in love with the pattern. So far (halfway through Clue #1) it's been easy knitting. I can see why so many people are knitting more than one.

I think this has become my Deathly Hallows Shawl. Its real name never stuck in my head, and I've been so immersed in the Harry Potter books for the past few days, trying to get done re-reading the last couple so I can read the new one, and the color is perfect.

Some projects got tangled up with whatever was going on when I knit them. Months after the fact, I know that I was working on the Endpaper Mitts while watching the movie Wickerman -- twice, because I had to see the commentary to figure out that I knew the story because I'd read the book it was based on. I've got a dishcloth that conjures up a neat old movie I sat up until until something like 3am because I wanted to see if they got the guy out of the cave. They didn't. But I wound up with a nice lacy dishcloth.

I'm feeling a lot happier about the shawl after sitting up with it for three hours last night. The stitch pattern is finally flowing for me, even if I can't look at it and tell if I'm doing the right thing in the right spot.

Now I don't know what to do with myself while the kids are playing - read, or knit on the shawl, or play with the new computer...

Pictures! And no whining about the electronics, at least not today.

The Rose Garden Shawl really does exist --



It hasn't been as much of a boring struggle as I expected it to be, but with only 300 more yards to go, I've got mixed feelings about this project. I still love the colors and I'm glad I bought the yarn and got it knitted up before realizing that I really don't care for feather and fan, or whatever realative of feather and fan this stitch pattern actually is.

And look at my kitties! I saw the pattern in Quilter's Newsletter and immediately thought "I could do that with the scraps!"

The new computer and I aren't loving each other. I've just about gotten over the terrifying moment when I thought the memory card reader didn't work and we'd have to haul the whole stupid thing back to the store... but now I don't trust this thing anymore. Not that I trusted it to begin with, but now it's given me a reason not to trust it.

And the camera's throwing fits of its own.

sigh



I did manage a picture of the Luna Moth Shawl. The camera and I both think there was a picture of the Rose Garden Shawl, but the computer says we're wrong and apparently it wins.

Hopefully I'll have good stuff to show you tomorrow!

I pick up the new computer tomorrow afternoon! Bill went out and bought it yesterday and they're removing all of the annoyng demo software and making restore disks and I don't know what else. He's going to take the old computer in so they can save all of the baby and vacation pictures we lost. And he finally fixed the kitchen sink. Yippee!

I'm so ready to have a real computer again. I want to print patterns nad upload pictures and type on a keyboard that doesn't make my hands hurt.

And, spreaking of printing patterns, Elann has another new shawl, The Voyager Lace Stole. I'm not even a little tempted by the yarn they used, but I just can't live without the stole itself. And I think I know exactly what yarn to use. It's not the gauge the pattern calls for, and I've only got about 700 yards, but I don't need it to be as long as the pattern calls for... Worst case scenario, I guess I order a bit more yarn!

I got neat new stuff yesterday.

Neat thing #1 was a new prescription for real, honest to God migraine medication. For the past few years, I've been limited to the stuff that frequently doesn't work but always makes me sick to my stomach or the stuff that sometimes works but makes the room spin and wears off quickly. Which meant I usually just suffered through the headaches.

After a string of nasty four and five day ones, I decided there had to be a better way and demanded an appointment with a doctor who knew about medications and breastfeeding and what can and can't be done -- turns out my theory was right and that as long as I wait long enough between taking the Caffergot and nursing the baby, we'll both be happy. Yippee!

It also turns out that occasionally having my arm and half of my face go numb and losing the ability to speak coherently is just a migraine aura. Guess that's reassuring. It's also the symptom that convinced him I really do have migraines and not just plain old headaches.

Trust me, this is really exciting!

Nifty thing #2 was the yarn I'd ordered from Knitpicks six days earlier. I never get stuff from them that fast and almost didn't bother checking the post office box while I was in town. The new colors of Palette (at least the four different ones I ordered) are gorgeous! More shawls will soon be on my needles, I guess.

I'm still happily playing with my newest shawls. Rose Garden has become my TV knitting, and I'm almost halfway done with it already. The Luna Moth is giving me just enough trouble that I'm afraid to work on it when there's much danger of anyone jumping on me or asking a question, but it's starting to look like something.

And if there was ANY way for me to post a picture, I'd show you the absolutely enormous snake that was spread out behind the van when I walked around it to unload the groceries last week. I don't know how we pulled into the driveway without squishing him, but all four feet of him were stretched out in the gravel and I didn't see him there until I almost stepped on him -- then I jumped and screamed and said some words the kids probably didn't need to hear.

He's at the other end of the yard now, hopefully eating mice or something. And hopefully he's the same fella that left the big skin Bill found in the barn last year.

This way lies insanity

I did cast on for the new shawl -- all 541 stitches of it. I think I've finally figured out the long tail cast on, so it was a lot less painful than I expected. And I made it through two of the nine yarn skeins before realizing that it was going to make me nuts if I kept pushing myself to keep up the same pace. That's too much purling and too much wrestling the stitches along the cable, and the clues for the new mystery stole are out.

Not that I can print anything here at the house. So we went to the library to do it there. They used to have computers on the main level that you could use for a couple of minutes, but I got directed to an eerily quiet room downstairs where they won't let you go with babies. Can't use those. Can't use the computers in the children's section, not even if I had a kid in my lap.

I did get a reference librarian to help me out, and I've got the first two clues, but by the time we got home from karate and hours of errands, it was too late to hunt through the sewing room for Mystery Stole yarn, so I wound up casting on for the Luna Moth Shawl.

How many shawls/stoles/wraps can I have on the needles at once?

5,000 Gram Update

In just over two months, I've managed to knit up 1500 grams of yarn -- yippee! I got a lot done in May, but I was so convinced I wouldn't be able to do much knitting in June that even though our plans changed and I had time to knit, I didn't get anything done.

Now, I feel like knitting. I finished Askew last night and did mange to get the circumference right, which doesn't matter because the straps hit in an impossible place. It's my fault because I didn't make sense of the schematic and pictures until it was too late. So that's in my sewing room, completely done except for the straps. Maybe I'll have a flash of brillance and figure out how to salvage it one of these days. Or maybe I won't.

Immediately after that was done, I cast on for the second Horcrux sock and stayed up working on the leg until I was too tired to see straight. I finished it about an hour ago and I'm a lot more excited about these socks than I expected to be.

A friend commented that she expected something more spectacular to live up to their name. I didn't even remember what a Horcrux was, just liked the idea of socks that would knit up fast. But I didn't have wool, didn't think one skein of Wool-Ease would be enough, didn't want to use a tiny bit of a second skein... And somehow I wound up with a solid reddish brown color and a bit of varigated stuff that looked like it would be enough for heels and toes.

I didn't realize until I was halfway through the first sock that the varigated stuff was the last of the yarn I used to knit premie hats for Quinn while we were in the NICU. Those hats were too ugly to save, hopefully because I was recovering from surgery, stressed out of my mind, didn't have a pattern and the stupid nurse kept forgetting to give me my pain meds even though I kept asking for some. And after typing that, I'm not sure why I want a souvenier of that stage in our lives, but while I was knitting the sock, I thought it was kind of neat to be using that same yarn in socks for me.

Tonight's plan was to cast on for the Rose Garden Shawl, but after rummaging through three rooms to find the yarn and pattern, casing on 541 stitches may be too much for me.

Oh, and Knitpicks has the last few Memories colors I've been coveting on clearance and yummy new colors of Palette and Telemark and a couple of new sock yarns. So I happily spent the last of my birthday money. Now there's really no more yarn until I get 3500 more grams of my stash knitted up.

A little over a week and quite a few hours of computer shopping later, and I'm still stuck with the ergonomic keyboard and Windows98. There are signs of a new computer on the horizon, I'm just not sure when.

So it's time for another round of knitting in isolation -- hopefully not as long as the last one. I can't look at blogs, can't print patterns, haven't tried reserving library books online, but I'm guessing that'll go about as well as looking at blogs...and it's been a loooong time since I could type faster than the computer displayed the letters.

I did get out to the Black Sheep Gathering this morning and met up with a friend from one of my knittings lists. Had a lot of fun, found some Addi lace needles, bought 3 skeins of yarn -- which does technically break the rules of knitting from my stash and knitting up 5000 grams before buying more yarn, but it's the first time I've cheated in almost two months, ir was only ten bucks and it's prety golden laceweight that isn't anything like the colors available in Knitpicks or Elann's laceweight. And Ranee said I deserved it!

I bought it thinking of the Icarus Shawl, but then I got to thinking about Gerda and I think I've changed my mind. That's one of the things I love about laceweight. It isn't quite as interchangable as sock yarn, but there are an awful lot of things any given amount can be.

I hadn't planned on going this year, but I'm very glad I did.

My computer broke. Literally -- there's a crack in the top of the tower. Nobody will admit that anything at all happened, but when I turn it on, only the fan comes on. So, for the moment, I'm typing this on an old computer that my dad passed onto the kids. I can't print or do anything with pictures, because this thing is too old to have a USB port, but it did let me get online and explain why I've fallen off the edge of the earth...

With all the other garbage I'm dealing with, I did not need this right now.

At least I'd already printed the patterns I want ot make from the new Knitty.

This time, the swatch didn't lie, which has me totally confused. I tried this thing on just before dividing the front and back and it seemed HUGE. Now that it's done, it fits just right. It measures what the schematic says it should. I like the neckline. I thought it would choke me, but it's even loose enough to easily pull on over my ponytail and glasses.

I think I'll try this pattern again with different stitch patterns for the panels.

Pattern: Icy Blue Shell from Creative Knitting July 2007
Yarn: 2 1/2 skeins Lion Brand Cotton-Ease
Needles: Denise 10 1/2 circulars

I didn't feel like knitting at all last night, but wound up ordering a couple of scary movies on pay-per-view and working until all of the ends were woven in. Then I really didn't feel like knitting anything else ever. Not a comfortable feeling, even though I knew it was just temporary.

I was still feeling that way tonight, but I should finish more of the summer tops I have planned so I went up to the sewing room to look for that Elann Sonata I ordered last summer, then googled so I could print out another copy of the pattern I bought it for -- Sonata Crest of the Wave Tank Top.

What was I thinking?! Why didn't I cast on for this months ago?! I want it now!

Utility quilts intrigue me. I want one of my very own. There actually should be a couple hidden away around here someplace, but they're not the kind I'm currently fantasizing about.

I want a quilt that'll use up a ton of ugly scraps and turn them into something that looks neat. I want one that I can spread out on the grass at the park because that's much more comfortable than trying to sit and knit on one of the concrete benches. I want one that won't require a whole lot of accuracy while I'm working on it.

I think I've got a good start --



I've been going through the bags of auction and thrift store fabric, pulling out oddly shaped pieces that I'm never going to use in a regular quilt, and cutting them into strips. There was a little plastic bag that turned out to be full of fabric already cut into strips, and I just hauled down one of the plastic tubs of Mom's scraps (which, for some reason live in my sewing room instead of hers) and found a bunch more strips.

And I figured out what was wrong with my rotary cutter, which hasn't worked right in ages. I had changed the blade a while back, but that didn't help matters at all. Then yesterday I read on one of the quilting lists that it works to take the blade out and flip it, so I decided to give that a try.

There were TWO blades in the dumb thing. They must've stuck together when I was being so careful to take the new one out of the package.

It works much better now. And my 10 year old still hasn't stopped laughing at me.

In the comment she left yesterday, Rachel said I was trying to put the best light on a down situation. I'm glad she saw it that way, because I felt awful whiney. Today's been better.

Alex did send her brother in screaming that she got bitten by a spider while she was collecting eggs this morning, but it doesn't seem to have been a

During some brief stretches while the little ones were napping or playing happily with the big kids, I got the chance to play with my fabric a little more. I'm trying to find online directions for curved piecing, but there don't seem to be any out there.

I did find some other good stuff --

About.com's quilting site has some neat looking patterns.

Quilter's Cache has patterns for a zillion blocks -- I'm drooling over Blazing Arrows.

And, come Hell or high water (or sick kids), I'm going to make a string quilt. I found an article about them in one of the magazines I was leafing through, then found a great tutorial here. Now I know what to do with those ugly novelty prints -- bury them under the strips instead of wasting my good muslin!

Yesterday, my babies were sick again and both insisted that the only place they could be content was in Mommy's lap. Alone. It didn't work out well at all.

I'm sure it's nothing serious, just watery eyes and sniffly noses and feeling miserable, but we're not having any fun here. They got a little friskier later in the day, so I tried to wash and iron the fat quarters.

I want to know what the story behind this fabric is. A lot of pieces were still folded in neat little squares with the ends tucked in, exactly the way they left the quilt shop. Those gave me a sad feeling -- why didn't our mystery quilter do anything with them? Others were cut at the strangest angle, but had been folded back to the size of fat quarters. Those made me feel better, because I'm imagining the weird cut was for a specific project.

That was the stuff in the top half of the bag. At the bottom were scraps of solid colors and ugliest novelty prints ever. I'm positive that the stuff on the top and the stuff on the bottom came from two different sources and was put together at the thrift store. The ugly stuff is back in the bag, waiting for its fate to be determined.

The good fabric tried to whisper to me while I was ironing it, but Alex was hanging over my shoulder and making too much noise for me to hear exactly what it wants to be. I know what she thinks it should be, and which pieces she wants for herself, and I've got a blister on the side of my hand where I brushed it against the iron because I was too busy keeping everyone else away from it to watch out for myself.

Despite all of that, I found exactly the right colors to make a little wall quilt from one of the magazines. It's one of the rare days when we stay home and I should be able to get some stuff done, but I spent the entire night cuddling Leif in exactly the right position so he could sleep and the day's gotten off to a rotten start.

Eeek!

It's been an absolutely wild day here. We went up to Mom's to pick up the first hundred of the quilt magazines (she's keeping half to read and then we're going to trade, and eventually they'll all wind up in my sewing room.) I haven't even sat down to look at them yet, and I've already found half a dozen things I've gotta make.

Grandma stopped by to see the kids and while we were talking about quilt magazines and my bedraggled monkey quilt and the fantastic one Mom just finished, I told her that if she finds any more cheap bags of cotton fabric at the auction we can definitely find something to use it for. That probably sounds tacky, but she doesn't get the whole "stash building" thing and might just decide we've got enough.

She took off, Mom and the kids and I went out to lunch and ran some errands, and a couple of hours later Grandma pulled into the parking space beside us at Joann's. With a bag of fabric she'd just picked up at the thrift store for $4 -- a bag that had seventy-five fat quarters and a bunch of scraps in it. I don't know how she found it, or even found us, since no one knew where we were headed. I swear that woman has a magic wand!

Then we went to Michaels to look at the new giant skeins of Sugar N Cream, and they've also got Simply Soft in the perfect shade of red. But I stuck to the stash knitting plan and didn't bring any home with me.

Oh, and the library has a copy of Unexpected Knitting, which is in my living room with all of the rest of the good stuff...and I picked up the copy of More Sensational Knitted Socks that I ordered along with the kids' schoolbooks...and I would probably have been able to finish that new summer top tonight if I wasn't in such a happy fabric induced daze.

Life is good.

The plan for June seems to be for me to knit cute little summer tops. Like most of my knitting plans, this one formed without much participation on my part.

I've already got the raglan portion of Picovoli done and, since a friend pointed out that it was an endless stretch of mostly plain stockinette, I decided to save the next few inches for late night and park knitting.

So now I'm working on the Icy Blue Shell from the July 2007 issue of Creative Knitting. If I didn't know better, I'd say someone else was working on it while my back is turned, because this thing is going to be done and ready to wear before I know it.

The only thing I've got doubts about at this point is the neckline, but since it's knit in the round from the bottom up, I'm telling myself I can always change it to something more scooped if it bugs me. I like the dragon skin panels -- there are narrower strips down the sides which don't show up in the magazine photo.

Quinn seems to like the dragon scales as much as I do.



There's been a lot of happy squealing at my house this week.

First, it was the sock patterns. I've mentioned how sock patterns make my heart go pitty pat and how I'm trying to resist the temption to order all of Cookie A's sock patterns right this second?

I found more sock patterns to love. It started with the cables here. I've never seen cables like these. You might not want to read down too far, because something bad -- worse than anything in those horror movies I've been staying up too late to watch -- happened to those cables.

The pattern is from the Socken-Kreativ-Liste. I was so head over heels in lust with those cables that not even the thought of trying to knit them from a German pattern was enough to scare me off. But no matter how much I Googled, I couldn't find the list.

Took me two days find the link on Grumperina's site, right in the post that led me to the gorgeous cables. I managed to get myself signed up and figure out which links to click on to get to the patterns -- and they've got English translations!

Alex and I spent most of the afternoon dancing through the house squealing about pretty lace socks.

Then I got the email about the quilt magazines. I'd responded to a Freecycle post last week, but someone else had beaten me to the fifty quilting magazines that the lady was offering. That someone didn't show up to get them, so she emailed me and asked me to call her that night.

I didn't get the message until the next day, and at that point both babies had just gotten over fevers -- they're fine now, but it probably wouldn't have been right to drag them out in the car, even if there were free quilting magazines involved. So I called Mom and Dad and begged. Then crossed my fingers and called the lady to see if she still had them or if she'd gone to the next name on her list.

Called Mom back with the address and had to hang up abruptly because Bill got bit by the snake he'd just found under the wading pool, which isn't a happy thing at all, but it did illustrate to the children why we keep telling them not to pick up snakes in the yard of the new house. Supposedly, there are rattlesnakes down here.

It was a few hours before I finally heard from her. There weren't fifty quilting magazines. There were TWO HUNDRED quilting magazines, all of them in pristine condition.

Eeek! I should get to pick them up tomorrow, if no one gets sick or snake bit.