It’th Out!
The tooth is out!
Finally after hanging on by a thread, Ella let me do the final pull of the tooth. She was amazed when the tooth was in my hand and no longer in her mouth. In a very proud voice she yelled, “I lost my very first tooth!” It’s in the pouch all ready for the tooth fairy. I think she’s leaving a little something special behind for the first tooth.
Here’s a picture from Ella & Liam’s first day of school on Wednesday. I think the photo says a lot about their attitudes that morning.
I’ve been busy working on the Sockapaltwoza socks trying to make the September 15th deadline. I’m not going for perfection, but completion. I made a lot of progress yesterday and today so I should make it. I think I’ll go work on them right now.
Back From The Beach
I didn’t get much knitting done this past week, but I did spend a lot of time at the beach.
And the kids had a great time at the Mystic Seaport in addition to the beach. Ella loved jumping over waves and Liam enjoyed the giant hole I dug. Who needs the gym when you have the beach?
I did get some reading done, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and At Knit’s End : Meditations for Women Who Knit Too Much, both of which I’m thoroughly enjoying. I’m now up to the heels on both of my Sockapaltwoza socks. But one night I temporarily lost one of my double points and had to start knitting the back of the Dino Sweater. I think I’ll wait to work on the front until I take the Multi-Color Techniques class at Webs this fall.
I did go to one yarn store while away last week, Knitwits in Westerly, RI. It was a nice store with some interesting stuff. I just had to get these purse handles, though I’m not sure what I’m going to do with them yet. Liam came with me to the yarn store and he picked out the blue sock yarn for himself, and I picked out the other one for Ella. I’m excited to see what develops as I knit with self-striping yarn.
And the other thing that I did at the beach was to continue obsessing about the name for my new professional organizer business. It’s tough coming up with something that’s original and interesting, but not too cute. The latest one I’m mulling over is Detangle with a descriptive tagline. What do you think about that? Anyone have any other suggestions? I’m working with my first client this week, so now I feel the push to get some of these details settled.
My Tooth Ith Loothe
Here’s a poem that Ella wanted me to read to her this morning by George Ulrich.
My toothe ith loothe! My toothe ith loothe!
I can’t go to thcool, that’th my excuthe.
I wath fine latht night when I went to bed,
But today it’th hanging by a thread!
My tooth ith loothe! My tooth ith loothe!
I’m telling you the honetht truth.
It maketh me want to jump and thout!
My tooth ith loothe….Oopth! Now it’th out!
She’s so excited about her first loose tooth. And it’s getting close to coming out now. So I quickly knit up a little tooth fairy pouch with some left over Cascade Fixation.
Sockapaltwoza Update
Since Alison does her Sockapaltwoza update on Tuesdays, I thought I’d update you on the progress of mine.
I’ve completed the first sock up to the start of the heel. I’ve begun the second sock, but unfortunately, I don’t remember how I did the first. I sort of winged the first, looking at several patterns and I forgot to take good notes. I’m a terrible note taker. But it’s not that complicated of a sock; I should be able to figure it out. I’ll just put the knitting down for the rest of the day. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do on the leg of the sock. We’ll see how much of the purple I have left after the heel.
I read somewhere today that the superchunky version of this yarn pills. Oops, maybe not so good for socks. But they are incredibly soft. Maybe they’ll be nice wear around the house socks.
And I want to mention that Bill and Ella did their first broadcast of their kid-friendly radio show, Spare the Rock, Spoil the Child. Check out their blog to see play lists and band links. It was a lot of fun to listen to and if you’re up next Saturday morning from 6 to 8 you can listen too.
Don’t Lick the Yarn
This is what happens when you let your 3 year old hold the yarn. (Mouseover the pict to see what happens.)
So I’ve decided that I just can’t knit socks right now on size US 1 needles. So now I have new yarn for the Sockapaltwoza socks, some Noro Silk Garden and some Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran. I’m still figuring out the pattern right now. Maybe the Silk Garden will go on top, and the Cashmerino will be on the foot. I’m not sure yet.
Can You Believe It, A Sleeve!
I’ve got a sleeve attached to my NBaT and it looks good, especially for a first sleeve.
Here it is and it’s a keeper. I went to the knitting drop-in at Webs last night and Melissa walked me through attaching my sleeve. She was great, very patient, and good tips. So now I need to do the other one and weave in the ends and I’m done. I can’t believe I’m so close to the end.
Those Yarn Store reviews from my vacation are still coming…I just can’t seem to get myself motivated to do them. And now my memory is fading and I didn’t take many notes.
By the way, the kids and I saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on Monday and Liam was terrified by the squirrels, screaming and pointing at the screen. This came as a bit of surprise to me. We’ve been reading the book and we all have been enjoying it quite a bit. Maybe he knew what was about to happen to Veruca Salt. There were things I really enjoyed about the movie, and other things that I did not like. But the big surprise was that Noah Taylor was in the movie as Charlie’s father. I’ve loved Noah Taylor ever since I saw The Year My Voice Broke and Flirting. Now I’ve got The Life Aquatic and Max coming from Netflix so I can catch up on his movies a bit.
Knitting Dreams
I’ve been having knitting dreams for a while, but now Liam is too.
This morning I woke up and this is the conversation Liam and I had.
Me: You were in my dream last night. You were at the gym with me. Did you have any dreams?
Liam: I had no dreams. (Surprising, since just about every morning since November, Liam says he had a bad dream about Harry Potter.)
Me: Am I ever in your dreams?
Liam: Yes.
Me: What am I doing in your dreams?
Liam: Knitting.
I wonder if I was finishing my NBaT? That would be nice.
The Beginning of the Dino Sweater
Shhh, don’t tell Liam. I’m knitting a dinosaur sweater for him.
When looking for a dinosaur image to knit on a sweater for Liam, I could only find a long neck dinosaur. But he loves T-rex dinosaurs. So I found an outline of a T-rex and printed it on top of a grid. I colored it in and this is the dinosaur he will now have on his sweater. I bought lots of superwash wool at the Webs Tent Sale last month. The colors I have to work with: light steel blue, light coral, oatmeal, medium steel blue (not the actual color names, I made these up). I have way more than I’ll need for his sweater (39 balls) but I plan to make Ella a jumper with this yarn too. The pattern I’m using is the Yankee Knitter Designs Roll Raglan in Crew.
Vacuuming an Enormous Potato
I can’t believe I would ever say this, but I hate vacuuming enormous potatoes.
Ella’s kindergarten class is putting on a production of The Enormous Potato this Thursday and Friday. They needed some help making the Enormous Potato. I volunteered to make the potato even though I’m not a good sewer and I really don’t like sewing. (Despite all the years of patient teaching from my mother.) You know the saying, “Measure twice, cut once?” Well I should have measured twice, bought once. When I sat down on Sunday to start the potato, I didn’t even have close to the amount of fabric I needed. What was I thinking? Back to the fabric store on Monday where I bought too much fabric this time, better than not enough.
Well it turns out the sewing was not the hardest part of this project, sewing actually went well. The time consuming part was the stuffing and vacuuming of the potato. I was given five bags of shredded poly foam. But this wasn’t enough for an “enormous” potato. So I supplemented with balloons and newspaper. But the really annoying part was that the evil shredded poly foam stuck to the fleece fabric like really strong Velcro. Tape worked a little and vacuuming worked all right. But the foam was stubborn and I probably spent over an hour trying to get it off of the fabric so that the potato didn’t look like it came from a snow hill, rather than a potato hill.
The potato does look enormous and mostly brown now. Off to school to drop off the potato
I Want to Felt
Now that I’ve taken care of those nasty piles on my desk, I want to finish my purse and start a big new project.
I didn’t pick up my knitting all day Monday. But I got to bring it to my Mothers & More Book Club meeting. By the end of the meeting, we finished discussing Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper and I had finished knitting my purse. The purse knitted fast, but there are a few funky things going on with it. I don’t think I connected the ends of the i-cords very neatly. They’re all knobby. I searched through my large stash of beads for something that I could fit the yarn through. I’m a little afraid about how much the big beads are pulling on the yarn. I’m hoping that after felting the purse, it will come together and look good. Now I just need to find a top loading washing machine and a time to felt.
After a fairly successful Daisy Girl Scout meeting, I felt like relaxing watching some brainless TV and trying something new knitwise. Since I wasn’t intimidated by cables any more after watching the video clips at KnittingHelp.com, I thought I’d try cables. I grabbed my copy of Stitch ‘N Bitch and tried a 6 x 6 front-crossed cable. After knitting a few cable twists, I was amazed at how easy it was and how real it looked. Now I just need to learn how to read a cable chart.
This morning I decided to finally clean up my craft cabinet. There were beads and yarn all over the pull-out table left there from the purse project. I turned on some SXSW tunes and got working. In no time it was cleaned up. I still had energy and decided to organize all of those knitting papers I have lying around. I created a binder with sections for my yarn stash, knitting tips, completed projects, and knitting patterns and ideas. I printed out a few patterns from Knitty.com that I want to try and added those to my new binder.
Now I just need to figure out what project I want to work on next. Am I ready for a sweater? Should I try socks? Ella wants a vest. I’ll go to Webs tonight before my organizing class and pick up some new yarn and needles. I’ve found simple knitting is a great way to stay awake for my late evening class.
