Fall and the birth of mommy time

Hey there blogland. I am sitting here blogging with only ONE child up and conscious. The small one. The one who managed to go a full 10 hrs without eating last night! The one who DH and I put quietly in his bed last night, turned off the lights and hoped would go to sleep on his own. Amazingly enough, he did!

So, here I am well rested and happy because:

1. I got to spin some of my absolutely fabulous superwash merino yesterday. (Seriously guys, this is the most wonderful roving I've ever spun. It is SOOO creamy and soft, and it spins so beautifully!)
2. Ugly sock #1 is almost to the heel, which means that not only did I meet my 2 sweater quota for work yesterday, but I got to knit too!
   
3. The baby slept for 10 hrs! Come on, that's just an amazing thing. (Well he did start to moan and groan a bit at 2am but I ignored him and he went back to sleep without any mommy intervention).
4. DH and I got some alone adult time last night which is very rare.
   
5. I am sitting here blogging at 7am with no kids running and screaming!

I credit this amazing miracle on the Fall sun schedule. The sun is just now peaking out and has yet to fill the rooms with its bright morning light. My children (except the small one) seem to be very in tune with the movements of the earth and the rising and setting of the sun. On many occasions during he summer at a bright and early 5:30 am I've had kids jumping on me saying "Mommy! The sun's up!" Well, this morning, apparently, the sun is not up. I suppose I can add this to the reasons that I love Fall.

Since I don't have to get up and drive in the dark this winter, I can enjoy the fact that the sun gets up later. It means that I can eat my breakfast and read my email in peace (we'll ignore the carpet monster trying to eat my toes at the moment). Long live fall and the lazy morning!

Now I've sat around long enough. There are 3 baskets full of clean laundry calling me. I've been pretty good about washing the laundry ala Flylady lately, but I have to tell you, it's the folding that has always been my downfall. *sigh* Hey! I can fold laundry without kids wadding it up into balls and calling it folding too!

I love you fall!

Later postings hopefully to include eye candy yarn recycled for me, The self striping miter square project, and the merino fresh from the wheel.

Ugly Yarn

I've decided that knitting isn't nearly as much fun with ugly yarn.

My mom and I have a very nice agreement. She is the only family member who has "gotten" the whole knitted sock thing. She adores the socks that I have made her. Of course, she requested more socks, as well as a Rogue sweater, but let's face it, I'm going to be making about a dozen of that sweater anyway. Everyone absolutely adores it, and I've got LOTS of requests for one. A couple of weeks ago, Mom and I sat down and I introduced her to Knitpicks. She bought 6 balls of sock yarn and enough Wool of the Andes for a Rogue sweater. To pay for all the knitting time this is going to require of me, she has offered to give me massages. She's a massage therapy student. Isn't that awesome?! I get to knit socks AND get massages. The only problem is that I'm really not liking some of the sock yarn she picked out.


The orange in this yarn is like hunter orange. Very bright. There's another skein sitting in the box that uses lemon yellow instead of the goldish yellow. Yuck! When the box came, I thought it was so yucky that I took it over for my mom to see. I wasn't about to put all that work into a pair of socks (even if it's only ankle socks) if she didn't like the yarn. Of course, she loves it. *sigh*


The good news is that I'm knitting this pair of socks on my new Knitpicks options needle that I bought. Have I told you all that I finally ordered the options set?! Well, I did. This is my 36" size 1 classic circular needle. The cable is fantastic, and the needles feel just like my Audi's, except pointier. I'm not sure if that is a good thing for basic sock knitting. I keep wanting to push the tip with my finger and then regret it afterward. You'll seriously develop a bruise there if you do that too much.

Autumn!

Hello Fall! Yesterday was the first official day of Fall and I am in 7th heaven. I adore fall. It makes me all giddy and little girl like. I love the changing colors. I love the refreshing crispness to the air, I love the big billowy piles of crunchy leaves just asking to be stomped through! The whole thing makes me think of hot cider, and pumpkins. It makes me want to go out and buy school supplies just because! I can't wait for Halloween and all the decorations, and the kids all dressed up. I want to put on a nice cozy cardigan and walk through the leaves with the golden Autumn light shining down on us. And of course there's the wool.... and the knitting...

Here's wishing you all a wonderful Fall weekend!

The Salvation Army is good to me

I don't remember if I've mentioned it before, but here on Wednesdays, the Salvation Army has almost all of their clothes on sale for $.98! Please check it out in your area. They might do it there too!

Anyway, I go to the Salvation Army every Wednesday scouring the racks for sweaters for my business. I can usually find 1 cashmere sweater a week. There's usually lots of wool too, some really scratchy, yucky stuff, some very nice sleek Merino. This week I hit paydirt.

I found a cashmere sweater to sell, as well as 2 FABOULOUS Merino sweaters. Most that I find are very fine strands that are soft, but unless you are planning lace, need to be like quadrupled up in order to get a decent weight. A lot of times, I'll go ahead and wind it right off the bat as 2 strands together. These sweaters, though, look like they are already fingering or sport weight. They are bouncy, with fat, plump stitches and are SOOOO soft. One is a soft tan color, which will go to the business, but this one is for me!

Here's a closeup of the fabric
Those are such fabulous fall colors it makes my fingers itch to take it apart and make it yarn. It's only Thursday, though, and yarn for me needs to wait until the weekend. *sigh*

I also got this:

I don't normally buy striped sweaters. I looked at the seam and, yes, each of those stripes is a new piece of yarn. It isn't self striping yarn. It is 100% wool, however. I can make it all 1 big long piece of yarn, though if I do some felted joins in there. I REALLY love how these colors look together. I'm not normally an orange person, but I adore this. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with it yet, though. I'm thinking something felted. A purse? A kitty bed? Any suggestions?

I'm no Purl

I give up. How can you wonderful ladies out there in knitblog world be so darn funny? How can you come up with entertaining and new ideas of things to talk about each day? I will not be writing the next big knitting book like Wendy Knits or Mason Dixon knitting. I will not organize the Knitting Olympics to have more participants than the actual Olympics like the Harlot. I have given up on ever becoming like Purl and having 100+ comments a day, and an adoring stalker fan base. This is probably good, seeing as you all know my name and well, my kids names, and I suppose if you really cared enough could find out where I live. That would be bad if I had a virtual knit stalker. You all have pointy sticks and who knows what kinds of evil you could inflict. I trust you, though, because you know, knit bloggers seem to be the most warm, generous, giving people on the planet.... for the most part. After all, You all jump on the band wagon for all kinds of things. If it's a knit along, or a gift exchange, you all are there! It doesn't seem to matter if it is a knit along for charity, or for yourself, we are joiners. We are connected in our strange pointy stick, fiber sniffing ways.

We are a strange breed of people, we online knitters. Sometimes I really begin to think there are more of us than there are gamers, and we are definitely stranger. DH thinks I'm nuts, and my family just doesn't understand when I talk about my latest pattern, or about how I joined a knit along that is in Dutch and English. They don't get how I can actually MAKE money selling yarn on Ebay. Who in their right mind buys yarn?! Why on earth would ANYone buy yarn from me for $70 when they could buy good old Red Heart from Hobby Lobby for $2?! What's up with the sniffing?!

I am slowly corrupting my immediate family. On the way to work today, DH said to me "Now don't mess up on that baby blanket again. You wouldn't want to have to frog it" He said "FROG IT!" He is learning the lingo... You will be assimilated. The knit blogging world is out there. It is full of fluffy wool and warm socks. It will suck you into it's giving, charity knitting, fiber sniffing ways. Just wait.

Is it nap time yet?!

Wow, where has the day gone? I have once again been sucked into computer land. I have spent entirely too much time this morning sitting in this chair and staring at the screen. I can't seem to drag myself away to do other things. Just as soon as I convince myself that, yes, I really DO need to put in a load of laundry, the baby cries and needs to be held. He's convinced this morning that he should spend the entire day on my hip with me standing up. No, I may not sit down. No, I may not type on the keyboard. NO! I may NOT put him down. Go figure. I have put him down for a nap twice this morning, and it's only noon. Each time, he looked at and grabbed the blanket I wrap him up in with absolute relief. Poor little guy.

The older kids can't seem to get it through their heads that small toys ARE NOT allowed in the living room anymore. My poor baby likes to chew on everything and almost choked on a plastic bottle lid that someone left on the floor. That's much larger than most things I would consider a choking hazard, so I KNOW that other toys are not ok. And with Brendan's scary fall from the shopping cart at Costco the other day, I'm a little afraid to have them all in the same room together.

Oh, ya, I didn't tell you about Brendan's fall. Well, here goes. Brendan was strapped into his baby seat with the handle folded down up in the seat part of the cart. The bigger kids were in the basket. I thought this was great because they weren't running around like maniacs. They decided to lift up the little "gate" at the front of the cart in order to get out. This is, of course, attached to the child seat at he top of the cart. They lifted the gate, which dumped my poor baby face first onto the cement floor of the warehouse, with the car seat on top of him. We rushed to the hospital. He is fine. In fact, he had a smaller bruise on his head than Shaya used to get face planting into the floor from crawling. We can't quite figure how his head wasn't smashed in, but I suppose his head must have been turned towards me when he fell. God must have been watching out for this little angel that day.

So, anyway, the kids are running in circles (literally) right now. I think the only thing really keeping me sane is the fact that I got a full body massage yesterday. I haven't even managed to do any work, or knit a single stitch today!!

The massage was the first full body massage I have ever had. My mom is a massage student and offered to barter massages for knitting time. I knit her socks and a Rogue sweater, and she agrees to give me massages :D I like this deal, because both activities relax me. This is something I REALLY need some days.

Dishes - not unloaded
Laundry- not folded
One Skein project- not mailed

*sigh* and now the older ones managed to knock the baby over. Is it nap time yet?

Don't try this at home

Do you guys see anything wrong with this picture? Look closely....

Yep, that lady is knitting while riding on the motorcycle!! Now I know that we are a bit obsessive in the knitting world about knitting in public and not wasting a single second of precious knitting time, but this is seriously dangerous. Please don't try this at home.

This is particularly interesting to me seeing as DH just took his motorcycle class and learned all about all the things that are required in riding a motorcycle both for the driver and the passenger. Just having a passenger on the back makes the driver's job a whole lot harder and changes the balance and handling of the bike.


On a much brighter note, I received my very first full body massage ever! My mom gave me one today in exchange for my time in knitting her more socks and a Rogue sweater. She is taking massage classes, and I think she's pretty darn good :D We also ordered 6 balls of sock yarn from knitpicks and some Wool of the Andes for the sweater. I guess I'm going to be busy :D

Just in case you forgot

This is why we knit a gauge swatch.

From Babini Kuki

Now back to my knitting.

We have a hole!

Those who know me, know that we have been attempting to build a house for quite some time now. I finally have some pictures of ACTUAL progress towards this goal! We have a hole....and some cement...and a big dirt pile. Isn't that great?!














For some reason, the hole doesn't look big enough to me. Let's hope everything works out all right.

This is the Tree that will live next to our family room (ignore the porta potty):














And this is the view from our front porch (notice the really big driveway that the county made my Grandma put in):














And this is the great big bull dozer that helped dig our big hole:




























And in case you wondered, this is our floor plan:

Done!

It's been a little bit crazy around here lately, so I haven't had a chance to post. The blog is desperately in need of updating, and first on the list is the pinwheel sweater! It is Done!

Pattern: Pinwheel Sweater from Elann
Yarn: Caron's Simply Soft from the stash
Needles: Size 8 Bamboo dpn and 29" circular
Date Completed: 9-2-06
Modifications: I made a version exactly in between the adult and baby sizes so that it would fit a very special 5 yr old.

Here's the front. I chose black fabric covered shank buttons from my sewing machine and positioned it so that the sweater is almost double breasted. After trying it on Alex, I knew it would just fall off if I only used 1 button, so it has 1 button on the outside, and one on the inside.

Here's the back

And here's the birthday girl herself, Kathryn!

I really like this sweater, but the I-cord edging was a pain. I also like the yarn I chose. It is very soft, and I love the stitch definition. My only problem is that it is much heavier than it would have been if I had used wool. I hope it doesn't stretch it's self out.