Mess-O-Rama

Since we live in a city that is know for training Olympic athelets, I thought that it may behoove us to continue the mess-o-rama training in case there is a chance that they might change the games, my kids will have an advantage. Forget swimming and ice skating. We've got Team Mess.Representing the team is nine year old B. His main event is the Lego Let-Go, though currently the committee is working on changing the name of this event to the "Choking-Hazard Relay". Skills require leaving small items around the house, dropping legos in strategic locations where they will be stepped on or mouthed by toddlers and infants. Extra points are earned if the items can clog the vacuum hose or lodge in the moter rendering the Hoover useless. He also competes in the Back-Pack Cast-Off and the Horizontal Surface Stack-A-Thon. He is quite good in all three events and has competed internationally (well, at least in Virginia) and has metaled in the Lego Let Go in our house frequently. Lets hear it for our oldest member of Team Mess!



Meet two year Jack.




His main event is the The Table-Top-Tornado. This event is characterized by the sticky type food that is all over the floor after "eating". To earn gold in this event, the food that is eaten by hand should land from one end of the kitchen to the other end of the dining room. The food must be impossible to sweep up and must dry a bit in order not to cake in the broom. While the said food is drying, and in order to maximize points, an unannounced visitor must show up. Extra points can be given if we can map his rout through the house by rice and spaghetti ground into the carpet. Jack is also training for the Pick and Flick Booger event and the Most Damage to an Upholstered Surface. Should be a nail biter finish!

Last to represent Team Mess is Mimi, who just celebrated her first birthday.

Don't let her small size fool you, she is a formidable opponent earning a medal in the Double- Fisted-Pull and Toss. This event is new to the Olympics and when Mimi plays, we ALL win. The name of the game is "chaos". She seeks out any semblance of organization (movies stacked neatly, toys put away properly, laundry folded in baskets). She then tosses items over her shoulder in rapid fire undoing any work that has been done before her. She earns extra points when she arranges small sharp items, say Thomas the Tank Engines or Matchbox cars in a seemingly random pattern and you walk across the floor only to find that it is completely unnavigable. The items are each a step apart. She has developed such a efficient technique that we think she may actually go professional after the mess-o-rama ends in our house. She also shows real talent in the Kleenex Shredding event and the High Chair Tray Wipe-Off. All exciting events.

Team mess will be training in my house, but they are a traveling team and they can easily train at any location. If you are interested in hosting them, arrangements can be made.

Sole Searching

Anyone know what these are?

I gave you a hint in the title...

They are the soles of the Fiber Trends felted slippers that I am making for my grandmother. They are going to be a surprise for her, even though they conveniently fall in the same month that she was born. I am making them in Cascade 220, and so far they are a breeze. They are knit on size 13's, which is a bit like knitting with ski-poles after Mimi's sweater on 4's. As long as we are on a winter theme here, don't you think that they look like snow shoes? It has been a while since I felted anything, I made J's aunt a hat a few years ago, but I forgot how much I enjoy the hugeness of the knitting. I made these soles in about two hours. We had an unexpected trip to urgent care (when has anyone known that they would be going to urgent care anyway??) and I didn't want to get to the toe shaping on the foot and have to put it up and risk losing my place. So, I finished the first one and went ahead and cast on for the second one while we were there getting Jack's ear infection taken care of. I left the scissors at home, so I had to make J gnaw through the ends for me. What a sport! He likes my grandmother, other wise he probably would have made me wait till I got home, or ask the receptionist for her scissors. Speaking of scissors, he has the most spectacular pair of razor scissors for fly-tying. If they weren't so lethal, I might get a pair for my knitting bag. They slice through all types of yarn like budd-ah. I love them, but I really am disinclined to buy a pair for two reasons: 1 The cost; at $25.00 a pair, I am almost certain to lose, break or otherwise misuse them. 2. They are so sharp (hence the name razor) that I can't be digging around in my knitting bag and not expect to be stabbed at least a third of the time. I hate bleeding, so I will just continue to raid J's fly-tying desk until I feel that I can trust myself with a pair.

We had such a busy weekend that things are really coming undone around here. We had visitors, my mother-in-law and our wonderful friends, the Carvers from Los Alamos and then there was the trip to urgent care after a full two hour screaming jag the night before. I am exhausted!

The highlight of the weekend was when J and I went to dinner at Biaggi's and my mother-in-law kept the kids. It was so great, we had to really think about the last time that we had gone out as a couple without at least one kid. It was when I was pregnant with Mimi, so well over a year ago. The food was so delicious and we really enjoyed the whole evening. Biaggi's has a gluten-free menu, but we both agreed that we wouldn't ever take our kids to such a fine restaurant. I loved getting up and not having to clean under high chairs and not having to pack a bunch of snacks and toys before we left the house. We really need to get out more.

I started my Pilate's class after a week long hiatus while J adjusted his schedule and I have to say that I really missed it. I am back to where I started five weeks ago, having to relearn a lot of the stuff that I was finally getting a handle on, but it sure is good to be back! I also got my stroller wheels and I can go walking when the weather is nice. Like today...see ya.

Seedy business...over and done with.

*Finally* Presenting the Seed Stitch Jacket. Go ahead, click on it, it gets bigger...



It took long enough, I know, but when I say it is done, I mean done blocking, done sewing, done weaving in ends, done putting on buttons. Done. (And not a minute too soon, either, the book was due back at the library next week.)



I don't know if the word "hate" properly conveys the way I feel about the ribbon that I bought to embroidery the collar and sleeves. It is perhaps the worst idea that I've had since I decided to knit the jacket without adjusting the gauge. Remember? It snags on my fingers, it disappears into the knitting, it is ugly and I will not use it. I am going to wait to embroidery until I find something that I really do like. In the mean time, I don;t think that it looks undone with out it. I may even leave it as it is.



I had a bit of a problem fitting the collar to the neck, somehow I had several stitches more than I needed even though I had done the math. So I fudged a little. It is kind of ironic that the collar was the only part of the whole sweater that I didn't have any technical difficulty knitting. Anyway, I was supposed to line it up three stitches from the edges, but I managed to get right to the edge while I was sewing it one bar on the body, two on the collar. Plus I had to re-sew it about four times to make it work. It was ugly. I went to bed last night thinking that I may have to re-knit the sleeves and the collar. Luckily, I was wrong, and it all worked out ok. By the way, the sleeves fit perfectly, as if they were made for this sweater (hee hee).



Mimi looks lovely in her jacket, she actually has plenty of room to grow in it. She look a little like a linebacker, but I don't care. I love it, and love is blind. Here is some eye-candy.

Particulars of this sweater (if anyone reads this stuff):

Seed Stitch Jacket from Knits for Babies and Toddlers by Fiona McTague

Knit on size 4's in Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece

I am particularly proud of this sweater because it is my very first sweater (besides the hula girl sweater that I made a while back. It looks a lot better when it isn't stretched over a ukulele.) I learned a lot of new things about knitting whilst I made it, including how to make button holes, sew on a collar and how to seam seed stitch. Woo hoo. next on the needles? I want to make my grandma's felted slippers. I am going to go get materials and pattern tomorrow.

Blockin' the Suburbs

This is what you think it is...

I gave myself permission to not clean up the downstairs until I was completely done knitting this morning. I finished the collar and wove in most of the ends this morning (making me officially done knitting the sweater *FINALLY*), then decided that I would just go ahead and get the blocking started so that I will be able to concentrate on cleaning all day, then by this evening it should be done and ready to be sewn. Blocking is sort of new to me, I usually get my warshrags wet and set a book on them to block them. I usually don't do it because I make small stuff and I never thought that I needed to. Then I read this post on See Eunny Knit. She convinced me that I should be doing this. Plus, this sweater is my biggest project (besides the big bad baby blanket) and it needs to fit, so it should be blocked. I need to finish cleaning and folding laundry and all the little things before I get company or another kid gets sick. Ta ta.

Laundry Fairy: ON STRIKE

I do not love doing laundry. I do it because I don't like the alternative, which is nudity. So I do it, and I do it often. Daily in fact. I am not a person who can spend one day a week on laundry, every day is laundry day around here. The men in my life seem to think that there is some kind of laundry fairy who flutters from room to room at night whisking away dirty laundry and replacing it with fresh folded laundry. In my attempt to squash the laundry fairy fallacy, I have done everything short of making everyone walk around naked to get the point. No one seems to get it. (Although J has gotten better about it, mostly...) So today, after taking a few days off of the laundry to care for the sick baby and now her sick brother, I decided to throw a load or two in and catch up. I noticed that most of the baskets in the house were full, and I was surprised. I mean, I know there are five of us, but it seemed that we had hit some kind of laundry vortex where clothes were dirty and I could not remember wearing them. It didn't hit me until I got to the bottom of my first laundry basket that we hadn't hit a laundry vortex. We had a hit a pass the buck vortex. See, someone, some person in this house who knows better simply threw dirty clothes on top of the clean and folded clothes. This person was assigned a chore years ago. I would sort, wash, dry and fold and he would put away. Who could have done such a thing? Well, I'll give you a hint, he is the only one in the house who can grow a beard...

*as a post script to the above post (can you post script a post??) I talked to J on the phone tonight and got after him about the dirty laundry on top of the clean laundry and he insisted that it couldn't be him. When I asked why, he said we both know he doesn't use the laundry basket, he just lets his dirty clothes pile up on his side of the bed. I am stumped...perhaps there is a dirty laundry fairy...

Birthday Frog

Here is Mimi opening her first birthday presents.

Here is Mimi eating her first birthday cake.
Here is Mimi looking really cute and adorable on her first birthday.
Here is Mimi wearing her first birthday sweater. Oops, notice that there is no picture of the birthday sweater? See how the "blue paradise" does not compliment her lovely olive complexion or set off the sparkle in her eyes? Note that she is wearing nothing hand made because her mom is a big loser who let her first birthday deadline blow by like so much breath on her birthday candle? Bad mommy.

My only defense is that she has been sick all week and extremely needy making it dang near impossible to get any knitting done. Seriously people, I can manage about one row an hour, if it doesn't let up soon, she'll probably outgrow it before I get it done. The other bad news is that I was doing both sleeves at the same time...I dutifully pinned them together so that I would know which direction I was knitting and things were going swimmingly...were is the nominative word here. At some point I decided I would count stitches to see how close I was to decreasing and I found that I had 48 stitches on one sleeve and 57 on the other. Huh. Then I counted rows, 21 rows on one sleeve and 25 on the other. Something was most definitely wrong. Any guesses? I must have knit one side at least four rows and four increases with out touching the other one. And all that pinning was supposed to stop that from happening. So, I frogged back to where I thought that I messed up and took one off. I also had some mishap where I shaped the neck on the shoulder side (rip rip rip), and I decided that I could space my buttons 1 1/2 inches instead of the 1 that the pattern called for and ended up messing up and having to rip back there too. Now I am mere inches from finishing the second sleeve and there should be collaring and sewing tomorrow...of course the sky could open up and a gigantic anvil could fall from the sky right on top of this sweater and I won't even be surprised. In fact, I will actually be somewhat surprised if this doesn't happen...could it be unsafe to dress my daughter in such an unlucky sweater?

I do believe that watching 24 may be hazardous to my health. (I can't say it does a lot for my knitting either.) I am compelled to watch. It is like a sickness. The only cure it to watch each week. I am watching against my will. What will I do when the season ends? I have the first season on hold at the library, I will systematically secure and view all episodes for each season until all the holes are filled and I know exactly has happened. I'll do Jack Bauer proud. There are six seasons, twenty four hours per season, so I should be caught up in...well, about three and a half work weeks. 144 hours. It is a huge undertaking, but it must be done. I am willing to undergo the pain and suffering that will most certainly plague this house during those long hours, but if I don't know what happens I WILL EXPLODE!!

Knitting is a mere diversion to occupy myself during the long days between episodes, but I have been making some progress. I am nearly done with the second half of the front, and I know that I predicted that I would be done by this evening (relax, I only have about five inches to go, and I have already decreased by a good amount) but Mimi has been extremely needy these last few days, which makes it hard to knit. It is really her fault that her birthday present won't be done, she has no one to blame but herself...I will start sleeves tomorrow. I also predicted that I would make a surprise birthday present, but in the interest of getting her bigger present done, it ain't gonna happen. I wanted to, but didn't get the book that I needed in time. Oh well. She'll get more use out of her jacket anyway.

One other thing, here is a good reason not to let Jack put his fingers in your mouth:

the good life

All shopping, all laundry.
No knitting...well, not much anyway.

Mimi has been sick for three days. I thought that she was feeling better, but she had another episode this afternoon. With out turning stomachs, I'll just say that we have been going through a lot of towels and sheets and changes of clothing. Plus I am getting a better arm work out than I do in my Pilates class since she won't allow me to put her down.

Having a sick baby has been slowing down my knitting a bit, that and driving all over the city trying to get my husband dressed properly for a "business-casual" job. What the spank is business casual, you ask. Dockers, Polo shirts, more Dockers, a few button-down shirts, under- shirts, the works. Seeing how he was working with a bunch of scientists at a national lab, you can imagine how high up on the list fashion was. Who has time to dress up when we they are busy saving the world through the miracle of cold-fusion? Never mind dressing up, who has time to match their socks in that environment? So now poor J has to re-wardrobe himself, no easy feat. We have spent two days in and out of stores while he tries on tons of clothes. For me, shopping is a dream come true. For him, it is living a nightmare. But he has been a sport, even buying a very cool pair of corduroy pants, because I insisted that they were sexy. They are, too. Now, normally, I would be knitting all the while that I am in the car, but the other day at the knitting shop one of the ladies said that she heard that if you knit in the car, you really should sit in the back seat, because of the danger of the air-bag deploying and causing you to impale yourself with one of your needles. Yikes. So, until I decide to throw caution to the wind or I am knitting with rubber needles, I may stop knitting in the car, because I can't very well sit in the back with out getting serious car-sickness.

I will be done with the right front of the jacket (barring some unforeseen tragedy) by this afternoon, and my hope is to finish the other side by Sunday afternoon. Then the sleeves (which are only about 10 inches long) and the collar will be done by Tuesday (God willing) and then blocking Tuesday night, sewing on Wednesday at the free-stitch at the knitting shop. Anyone want to wager that I won't be done? I hate to plan ahead too much seeing how things are going. I am not going to be too disappointed if it isn't finished because I am ahead of where I thought I would be by now. It helps to read or listen to books on CD, but I have also picked a very mindless repeating stitch that knits up pretty quickly. There is also another project that I may have to put the sweater down to work on. It simply MUST be done for her birthday, it won't do for any other time. But I'm not going to tell you what it is just yet. You'll have to tune in next week to find out.

Back off Me...

Or back handed compliment

or back to the future

or back in the high life

or back in time

Any one of those will do...is anyone getting the theme here??

I finished the back of the baby jacket today. Yipee. I can only be the slightest bit bitter that I would have been done with both fronts by now if I hadn't had to frog the whole thing. But as I suspected, I am much much happier with the better version. Mimi is going to be looking dandy in no time. The fronts knit up much quicker, though there are two of them. Then the sleeves will probably be done at the same time to save me from "second sleeve syndrome". I am praying that the whole thing will be ready to be blocked and sewed by next week. I also picked out buttons today that are just so cute. I went with flowers because I figured that I might harvest them for something else when she outgrows the jacket. There were the sweetest baby faces inside of flowers, but I felt that they were a little too much. So, what do you think?? The pattern only calls for five buttons, so I will have one left over. Maybe I'll make a little hat and put it on it or something cute like that.

J went shopping for new shoes today, a couple of trips to Goodwill and he should be ready for work. I think the shoes are down right dapper. He is putting his best foot forward, ha ha . That's punny.

Ok, I must go knit. By the way, is it appropriate to post pictures of my children on a blog? I think that it may be, so look for Mimi's birthday portrait in the future, wearing a nice blue sweater...

10

To distract you from my lack of knitting progress (I've only knit about six inches, I have six more to go on the back! Waaa) , I will give you ten reasons that knitting is better than fishing:

1. Knitting can be done anywhere, at any time, not just on boats and shores
2. You don't have to leave your family at home to knit
3. Knitting is cheaper, most everything can be done on ten different sized needles, and it is only as expensive as you want it to be
4. Knitting takes up much less space than fishing, and fly tying, and fly rods
5. You can create items that everyone can appreciate most anyone can use when you knit, not so when you fish
6. Knitters are nicer to non-knitters than anglers are to non-anglers
7. You can carry on a conversation, read, parent, be a somewhat involved spouse when you are knitting
8. Knitting doesn't spread things like New Zealand Mud Snails and Whirling disease
9. No one ever loses when they are knitting, it is not a competition, everyone shares their ideas and their secrets in knitting. Fishing is totally exclusive, and secretive
1o. No one ever drowned while knitting

In the frog pond or Bad parent award

It took fifteen hours to create this:

(In case anyone cares, that is the entire back of a sweater, an entire 14 inches, right up to the shoulder shaping...)

It took five minutes to do this:

'nuff said.



We got B's hair cut today, and he was unhappy because I told them to take off the sideburns. After they were gone, he admitted that he liked the way they look on Andre the Giant, and that he felt like he looked like him with his sideburns on. Gotta love the nine year old self-image. I mean, the guy was like fifteen feet tall and wore lamb chops, but whatever. I felt bad, even though the hair cut was great and he looks so much less like an orphan...and speaking of orphans, two-year-olds do not mix well with nearly any public setting, least of all Goodwill. So I walked about twenty paces in front of the tear-mobile, otherwise known as the stroller while Jack and Mimi both screamed through the entire store. It was not lost on me that the dirty looks that I would have gotten for not being able to control my kids were looks of sympathy for my poor husband and his poor children. Why is that? It is so unfair. It was as if they were feeling like he was a widower or something, while I would have been labeled as a bad mom who had bratty kids. So irritating. I like to make people really uncomfortable when they give me dirty looks by saying in a very loud voice "Please quite crying, you're making that lady over there give me dirty looks. She won't stop staring at us until you are quiet, we don't want her to look at us any more, so stop crying so that she can mind her own business." That usually does the trick.

I am about to go and cast on an mere 92 stitches, which will remove a whopping four inches off the back of my sweater...don't look for me till Monday unless I can make some serious progress before then...

*By the way, I am not angry at the clerk form holly berry house. It is not her fault that I am an idiot and I certainly did have some idea that knitting involved math, she probably thought that I would have done it...Isn't it ironic that I chose a hobby that includes so much math, when I spent every year since kindergarten right up through college trying to avoid it. The universe always wins.

Ok, so, uh, ummmmmmm...

I cannot even begin to relate the pain to you. It is that harsh and that depressing. Let's just say that we will never again tempt the wrath of the gauge gods. After knitting for about fifteen hours, I have discovered that 1. Swatches are wrong, 2. I should have went with my original calculations, and 3. The sweater that I have worked nearly a third of is going to be too big. Well, too big might be an understatement. It is gargantuan...ginormous. It may fit me...if it were long enough. But seeing how the row gauge matched up, well, it might fit Gimli the dwarf better. I am so bummed, I will have to frog the entire thing and it most certainly won't be done for her birthday, but on the bright side, she can probably wear it before she turns five...or before she grows as wide as she is tall. Excuse me while I go stab myself in the eye with a size four adi turbo knit...