slipper-sliding away

Do these shoes make my feet look big??

For perspective, check out my toes in the edge of the photo...

And here they are all felted and ready to go, except that they're wet.

I am mostly happy with the slippers (not clogs) other than I used my super energy efficient front loader washing machine and it took me a long, long time to felt them. Like over an hour. That is a long time compared to the 20-30 minutes that it used to take me in a top loader. They feel big still, but I don't think they are too big. Maybe they need some nice warm wool socks to wear inside them...

Stats: Fiber Trends Felted Slippers, knit on 13's in 3 skeins of Cascade 220

B was so impressed that he asked me to make him a pair, so today I ran to the yarn shop to get soles for the ones I just finished (and they were out, waaa) and picked out some lovely green and black Cascade 220, I'll start those this evening. I also got a little loose with the plastic and picked up three balls of Cascade Fixation. I can't wait to make a pair of socks with it. It is pretty cool stuff, and should make some great socks. I just need to decide who is deserving of a new pair. Me, maybe...

Guess Who's Back?

Look who I found creeping around the coat closet this morning. The Alien Illusion Scarf from Stitch N' Bitch that I knit for B a few years ago. I made it before I realized how poorly children treat their woolens. The very day that he wore it the first time, it came home fairly dripping in Elmer's glue. I re-washed and re-blocked it and the very next night he lost it. When I asked him what he did with it, he said it was lost and that he guessed that I would have to knit a new one....you non-knitters take heed, those words are like poison darts shooting into a knitter's ears. We found it and he wore it the rest of the winter and it pilled and rolled in on itself and the fringe dread-locked and the alien was all but invisible, and that is the state that I found him in this morning. I decided that I would see what blocking could do for him, though I wasn't hopeful. I should have taken a picture pre-blocking, but the thing was in such bad shape that I was afraid of incriminating myself, and that I would find out the hard way that the Yarn Harlot is wrong and there really are knitting police....It really was a crime, the way the poor thing was treated. Anyway, he is happily blocking on the guest bed (if you stay at my house and you smell wet sheep, now you know why) and he should be wearable by tomorrow.

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...