My Virtual Sanity

Celebrating 500 sales on Etsy

2009-06-04T08:11:00.004-06:00

The beginning of June marks my 6th month in business on Etsy, and I have just celebrated my 500th sale on that venue. June also marks my 3rd year in business selling recycled yarn. In all that time, the last 6 months have BY FAR been the most profitable. I have learned a lot about business on Etsy and to mark this milestone in my shop, I thought I would share some advice with my fellow Etsy sellers.

1) Treat your shop as a business.
If you treat your shop as a hobby, you will get a hobby's worth of results. Be dedicated to creating new products, filling out your shop, taking excellent pictures, knowing how to work with the Etsy system, and promoting in as many ways as your are able. Search the internet for business topics, read the forums, learn as much as you can. It is not as simple as creating something and listing it.

2) Know your target market.
Knowing your target market and providing a product that they WANT is the foundation for a successful shop. You can make beautiful things, but let's face it, if you targeting the wrong people, or if your beautiful things do not fulfill a need or want in your market you are not going to sell anything.

Ask yourself a few questions and gear your descriptions, or even your products to speak to your market. BEING a member of your target market helps tremendously with putting yourself in their mindset.
-Why would my market be interested in my products?
-What aspects of my product would be the biggest selling point?
-Where does my target market hang out on the internet? (What is the best place to join in the community and quietly promote)

3) Search your key search on Etsy every day (or multiple times a day).
A large percentage of people are going to find you simply by searching on Etsy. It is important that you show up in this search, that you show up early, and that you show up often.
-Think of all the possible search words that you think of someone might type in to find your item and tag your items accordingly.
-Create new items or renew items frequently so that you remain present in the searches. The more times you show up, the more chances you have of someone falling in love with your products. If you drop down too far, it is time to renew, or list a new item.
-Get to know your competition through this search. Analyze their style, how prolific they are, how frequently they list, their success, etc. Use this information to make your shop stand out next to them.

4) Make the most of your tags.
Use ALL of them. Tag colors, your shop name, key selling points (free shipping, eco friendly, etc.), important materials (sterling silver, cashmere, etc.) and descriptive words (soft, shiny, classy, funky, retro, etc), common misspellings, and alternate phrasing.
-Look at your competition's listings for ideas on other tags that you could be using.

Your buyers find you through these tags, as do treasury makers. Treasuries help bring more exposure to you, thus increasing your views, and hopefully sales.

5) Visually stand out from the crowd.
Make your items stand out from your competition. This is about branding. You want your buyers to see your items in the search and know that it is yours.
-Have a unique style that shows up in your photographs. This may be the style of your products themselves, or simply the way you photograph them.

6) Continually improve your photography
Your photographs will make or break you. Your customers can't hold your items, so the photographs need to be clear, informative, and visually stunning all at once.
-Read the tutorials online, and in the forums to improve your shots.
-Use natural light, or a light box.
-Tweek your shots in photo editing software to make them the best they can be.
-Take LOTS of pictures of each item at many different angles. Choose only the best 5 to keep.
-Search around Etsy for another seller who's product photographs you admire. Emulate their style and adapt it to fit your items and your shop. DO NOT copy their style exactly. You want to stand out. Use their style as inspiration on how to pose items, or how something looks best.
-Use all 5 picture slots that Etsy gives you.
-Select 1 shot that is artsy, alluring, and visually stunning that will draw your customers in. Make them want to click on it to get a better look and to see more of that stunning piece. Make this your first shot.
-Give at least 1 shot of the full item. You may loose a sale if your customer has to piece together all your shots to figure out what the whole thing looks like.
-Show important details such as the clasp, patterning, etc.
-Have a shot showing your item in scale. It is difficult to tell in a picture how big, or small an item is. Dimensions in your description are important, but it is difficult to visualize dimensions. Show a necklace or purse on a model, your stuffed toy in a person's hand, or your artwork on the wall next to a piece of furniture.

7) List more
You can't sell it if it isn't in your shop.
-Creating and listing more means more choice for your customers
-More listings spaced out have your shop show up more frequently in the searches, bringing more people to your shop.
-More variety means more choice for your customers. The more items you ahve, the more likely someone is to fall in love with a piece and take it home.
-Shops that are filled out have a more professional appearance, like you are running a business rather than a hobby.

As you list more, use your shop sections, so that your buyers can easily find everything in your shop.

8) Diversify your product line
Variety is the spice of life. Additional product lines allow you to list in multiple catagories, which allows you to draw people to your shop from multiple searches. If your products are complimentary, it encourages people to find something in your shop they didn't realize they wanted when they typed in the original search. Consistently look at your products and ask yourself:
-Is there a complementary line of products I can also sell?
-Can I make this product in more sizes or colors or patterns?
-Can I offer more products in different price ranges?

9) Make a high quality product
If your customers are delighted with your products they will come back for more and refer more people to your shop. This is free advertising, and the more people they send your way, the fewer you have to find yourself.
-Pay attention to details
-Use materials you are proud of

10) Provide excellent customer service
Each customer that you take care of well and comes back, is one customer you don't have to find.
-Treat your customers as you would like to be treated.
-Check your email and convos at least once a day, if not more often
-Be professional, polite, and kind.
-Ship quickly
-Maintain communication. If something is taking a while, keep them updated. Let your customers know when their items have been shipped.

I hope that this helps you all in your shops and here's hoping for success for each of you!

Look mom, I'm a book

2009-05-14T09:35:00.003-06:00

I have been told that the enormous amount of climbing that my children do is genetic. My mother in law has no idea how she managed to survive raising my husband. When he was 9 months old she left the room for a minute only to return and find him at the top of a very large bookcase. When Alex was small we had a barricade blocking off the side ladder on his bunk bed because we didn't want our 1 yr old on the top bunk just yet...

The twins seem to have continued the proud tradition of little boys who know how to climb things far higher than is really safe. We have completely re-arranged the family room because I spent several exhausting days pulling one or the other of them off of the coffee table, off of the kitchen counter (which they reached from the coffee table) off of the back of the couch, off of Daddy's computer chair, off of Daddy's COMPUTER, and just about any other serface you can imagine. After re-aranging, the designated baby zone is almost completely free of all objects that are dangerous to climb on. They have discovered they can turn boxes upside down, or push their bike up to something to give themselves a nice handy step stool, but for the most part, there are no high places to fall from.

It appears, though, that climbing is a necessary part of the 1 yr old daily workout. Hyrum has claimed this small, empty (because they wouldn't leave anything in it!) bookshelf as his new hang out. I think maybe he thinks he's a book. Or maybe a monkey.

Spring Time Treasures

2009-05-04T16:50:00.006-06:00

Spring has officially arrived here in our little slice of the country despite the snow that we had last week. Each tiny reminder of new, flourishing life feels like treasures to me and begs to be cherished and documented.

Tiny little Robin's egg held in tiny little 3 yr old hands.

Pretty weed flowers that we will call "wild flowers" next to my rusty wire garden fence.

Bring on the Butterflies Mother Nature. We're ready.

Minor Emergency

2009-04-27T06:59:00.002-06:00

I opted this week to wash all of the laundry in one long marathon session on Friday and just piled it up on the living room couch until I could fold it all on Saturday morning, rather than do a load a day as Flylady suggests. I would have put it in baskets, but I simply don't own enough baskets to do this. I have deluded myself into thinking that if I don't have enough baskets, I will be forced to fold the clean laundry before I can wash more. In reality, it just means that the clean laundry remains in the basket and I don't wash more clothes because I don't have a place to put them. Folding laundry is one of my least favorite chores. I have absolutely no problem actually washing the clothes, but since I was a teenager and began doing my own laundry, the clothes have gone from the dryer to the basket and sat forever. I have tried to break this cycle, but I seem to keep coming back. I can have baskets of clean clothes, but no one can manage to find their socks. Of course, matching up all those socks is another matter.

The folding of the laundry went quite smoothly this week. I managed to get my 2 older children to do the bulk of the work which I think may have been one of the more brilliant ideas I have ever had. I went to get the last load of laundry from the dryer only to discover that it was still damp. "Hmm, I'm sure I started that" I thought. Of course, I've done that before; neglected to start the dryer when I moved laundry over. I twisted the knob to get it going and nothing happened. No sound, no click, nothing. My dryer was doing a wonderful impression of a large harmless metal box.

That's a problem.

There are 7 people in this house, not to mention that I cloth diaper 2 of those people. We do A LOT of laundry. True this was the last load from a weeks worth of clothes, but there were still the diapers to consider...

I checked the plug. Yep, it's plugged in. I am quite the mechanical genius there.

I checked the breaker. It was labeled clearly. I flipped it back and forth. Didn't make a bit of difference.

Well, that was it. That's all I've got.

I mentioned morosely to my Uncle who came over for dinner about the dryer, thinking that I would either have to pay a repair guy to come look at it or go buy a new one.

"Hmm" He said and disappeared out the front door. He came back a few minutes later with a bunch of tools and began industriously unscrewing things on the dryer.

"Wow, look at that! That wire is completely fried through" he showed me.

"Huh" I replied

"Well, we should be able to find out what did that" he replies calmly and keeps unscrewing things.

"So, we need a new plug?" I ask hopefully

"Nah, I can splice that, no need to buy a new one"

"Oh!" I say. My uncle is obviously an electrical genius. I'm glad he's over here so much.

I layed out the remains of the load of laundry and the load of diapers that I desperately needed to wash and settled in for a long haul. I didn't have to wait long. About 24 hours after I discovered the dryer's trechery, my uncle had managed to repair the plug and magically it was working again.

We never did find out what had caused the plug to burn out, but I'm not terribly concearned since the load of diapers is now soft and fluffy from tumbling in the newly repaired dryer!

Lasagna Garden

2009-04-22T12:29:00.002-06:00

It is a glorious 70 degrees outside this week. After last weeks huge rain storm (3 days of rain in Colorado, what's THAT about?!), I can almost watch all the tumble weed plants growing in my backyard. Now, they're not too bad looking, green and leafy with tiny purple flowers, but they certainly don't compare to a normal lawn, or the lush oasis at my Grandparent's house. They get so tall that I could loose children in them, and when you mow them down, they become hard spiky stumps. We also have the devious goat head vines. They LOVE our sandy soil. They are the only thing that I have ever seen actually growing in the soft dunes out in the field. They, too, are quite attractive in order to disguise their horrible nature. They are a creeping vine that covers the sand in a layer of tiny leaves, and pretty little yellow flowers. The true horror doesn't come for a few months when the flowers die back and the green seed pods start to form. Goat Heads (or sand burrs) are the bane of my country existence. Can you picture caltrops? They were a military weapon designed to stop cavalry. They are a small metal object with sharp points on all sides so that no matter how they fall to the ground there is always at least one of those sharp spikes sticking up. They were used to lame horses, and more recently to puncture the tires of cars. The goat heads that cover my yard are exactly like that, except they are about the size of a pea (so they are almost invisible as you walk around the house) and are organic. They stick to the soles of all shoes and to the tires of our cars. They are proportedly impossible to get rid of in the yard.

My plan is to choke them out.

Someday, I will fill my 1/4 acre backyard with other plants, or bricks, or something, so that there isn't any room for them to thrive. Someday...

That day is not today. Today I am building a new garden. In a corner of my yard about the size of my bedroom, I am building a garden. I have no intention of filling the whole thing just yet. I'll work up to that, but this small zone will be full of plants of my choosing. Vegitables, flowers, and fruit vines. Lush and lovely, and totally non-goat head. It is turning out to be MUCH larger and more time consuming than I had originally thought, though. At least I don't have to dig.

For the last several months, I have been collecting materials, 2 trash cans full of old news papers, 6 cans full of old moldy hay from the barn, 4 gigantic bales of peat moss, and a few bags of garden soil. I am bulding a Lasagna garden. The goal is to build up your garden like raised beds (except I don't have any retaining walls) in a kind of strip composting pattern. You cover the ground (weeds, sod and all) with thick pads of wet newspaper. On top of that you lay a thin layer of peat moss. Then you just begin building layers of anything that you would put in a compost pile, chopped leaves, grass clippings, manure, straw, etc. In between each layer of material, you lay another thin layer of peat moss. Top the whole thing off with a layer of mulch (I'm using hay). The newspaper keeps the weeds out, the layers feed the plants, and the mulch at the top helps keep all the moisture in the soil. Sounds fantastic in theory. We'll see how it works out since I can't seem to keep any plants alive for long...

This morning I finished up the newspapers, layed a layer of peat moss and a layer of manure. Next more peat moss, then hay. Looking at how quickly my gigantic piles of materials have diminished, I'm going to need to take another trip to the store for peat moss, and a few dozzen more trips to the feild for more manure...

Being a twin

2009-04-13T12:10:00.004-06:00

Being a twin does not seem to be a whole lot different from being a single baby. Hyrum and Quinn are still VERY active little boys who enjoy climbing on everything they can reach and generally exploring their world. They are hardly ever still and seem to entertain themselves quite well. The one major difference seems to be that you have competition your own size. I think that's what makes them so cute.

Hubby is so awesome

2009-04-09T20:03:00.003-06:00

Look at that, Hubby put my Shawn the Sheep on my birthday cake. Add that to the fact that he made breakfast and dinner for us all, and let me lay around reading all day and pretty much ignoring the world and I have to say he is so wonderful. I haven't had a birthday this wonderful in a long time :)

I think the designer knits English

2009-03-28T20:05:00.003-06:00

I will admit to the fact that I haven't done much knitting of late. I blame this on the number of children running around and on the fact that my Etsy shop just hit it's 300th sale since I opened it on Dec 4th. Yesterday, though, I spent the whole day knitting play food for a 5 yr old little girl's birthday party, which was today. I enjoyed just sitting and knitting something that was not lace, or business related, that I decided to cast on something else today. Since I have been out at the barn feeding horses every day for the last 2 weeks, I have realized that my gloves just aren't going to cut it. My fingers are quite long and thin which means they have almost zero cerculation. If I ball them up in the hand of the glove they keep from going numb, which makes me think I need MITTENS, not gloves.

It just so happens I have a lovely fair isle mitten kit by Sarah Annexstad with Misti Alpaca and Noro Silk Garden that my lovely swap partner from the Knitting Parent's Yahoo Group gave me in December.

So, while children were marrinating in the tub tonight, I cast on the first mitten. Knit the first row in main color in K1, P1 rib. Check. I can do that. Rows 2-16 are K1 in main color, P1 in Contrast color. This produces lovely vertical lines up the cuff. Ok, now, I haven't knit fair isle since I knit Alex's Spiderman gloves over a year ago. I am a continental knitter normally, so I put the main color in my left hand and put the Noro in my right just like I learned to do while doing stranded knitting. I knit a few stitches and realize that I have forgotten to put the Noro to the back while I knit with the Alpaca. This means that I now have lines of pretty blue in front of my creamy alpaca knit strips. That's not right. So, I tink back. I now very carefully move the Noro to the back after purling and find this incredibly slow, tedious and anoying. This is going to be a LONG cuff if I have to do this the whole way.

The babies are ready to get out of the tub by now, so I dry them off and put the second load of children in and then rethink the knitting. Oh, I think to myself. Back when I was new to this I used to carry both yarns in the left hand and just picked whichever one I wanted. Since I am only knitting 1 stitch with each yarn before I need the other, the tension won't get uneven, that'll be perfect. So, I switch so both yarns are in my left hand and breeze through a couple of rows of knitting happily swinging both yarns between the needles together for the K1, P1 rib.

I look down at my knitting and see that it is now a beautiful double knit cuff... Hmmm. That is not pretty verticle lines. That is flat alpaca on the outside and flat Noro on the inside. Yes, I remember thinking when looking at the pattern that if I knit 1 with 1 yarn and then purled with a different yarn I would get double knit. I have made quite a few things with double knit before, but I thought surely the designer knew what she was doing. There's got to be a trick here. I examine the knitting closely, then it hits me. In my beautiful double knitting, the running thread between stitches has the alpaca in the front, not the Noro. If I kept the alpaca in the back all the time and just pulled the Noro to the front for the purl stitches the running thread in between will be blue, not cream. Well, why didn't the designer say not to bring them both forward?! That's kind of important. True this pattern was made for a class where she would have shown the students how to do it, but I still think it needs mentioning.

Then it hits me. I bet the designer knits English. It makes perfect sense. She held the main color (the alpaca) in her RIGHT hand, which is her main knitting hand. It would have been more natural for her. With it in the right hand, it could stay in the back all the time without interfearing with the purl stitches. With the Noro in the LEFT hand it can swing easily between the needles back and forth with each stitch without all the cumbersome twisting of the entire right hand and the needles. It maks sense why she wouldn't say anything. It would have been awkward to move both yarns back and forth. It explains everything.

The designer knits English. I'll just pretend I do too. ~.^

The State of Oatmeal

2009-03-25T09:16:00.002-06:00

Breakfast is usually a fairly calm affair. This morning, though, I'm afraid that it quite distinctly showed the personalities and developmental stages of my 5 children.

The Twins:
The twins are 1. They do not understand that food takes time. They feel that if they scream loudly and insistently Mommy will appear with the food in hand. After all, for most of their lives, Mommy has always had food available in the form of milk. Waiting for breakfast instead of nursing as soon as they get up is a new experience. I can tell you, that 2 babies screaming at the gate are LOUD. Once the food is available, though, they are quite cute as they stand next to me and open their mouths like little birdies. It is required to push brother out of the way in the hopes that you may get 2 spoonfuls in a row as well as placing one's fingers in your mouth in order to feel the texture. If the magic bowl of food runs out before they are full, they do not understand and will scream more until it is replenished. I am grateful each day that I have enough food available to feed these hungry little birds unlike so many mothers in the world and that I do not have to hold them while they cry because they simply don't understand.

Brendan:
Brendan is 3. Oatmeal is an exercise in "No! I do it!". From stirring the butter in, to pulling the correct spoon out of the drawer. Breakfast can be a battle. Heaven forbid if anyone should leave any food unattended because rather than wait for someone to make him more, he will steal it. Which brings us to...

Shaya:
Shaya is 5. She is a girl and is TERRIBLY over sensitive. She will break into tears at the smallest thing (like Brendan stealing her oatmeal). I am unsure if this is sensitivity or manipulation. This can be as frustrating as throwing a "I do it" fit because once she has managed to calm down she has completely forgotten about the fact that she was hungry and blubbered for you to make her more oatmeal and abandons breakfast all together.

Alex:
Alex is 7. He was already gone, having quietly made himself oatmeal when he got up so that he wouldn't miss the bus. He takes great pride in being able to do it himself, but still appriciates when Mommy does special things for him (like making pancakes). Thank heaven that for the most part, Alex is beyond the "I do it" stage.

In the end, Alex was well fed. The twins ate a great breakfast (the dog got some too as they dropped it on the floor). Brendan got 1 1/2 bowls of oatmeal but didn't touch the second bowl I made him once Shaya broke down in tears, and Shaya only ate the 2 bites that were left of her oatmeal after Brendan had his way and completely ignored the new bowl of oatmeal I made her.

From the looks of things my kids are right on track developmentally. Aren't you so glad?

I need a nap.

Potato Soup

2009-03-20T11:25:00.003-06:00

I make several versions of this soup since it's so easy and tasty, but this is my favorite and the one that I seem to come back to.

Potato Soup
3-4 Large baking potatoes
1 stick butter
about 8 tbs flour
1/2 onion chopped
8 cups milk
1 package frozen peas
1/2 to 1 cup diced ham, or 1 small can Hormel canned ham (usually found near the tuna fish)
2 cups shredded cheese
About 3-4 tbs salt
About 1-2 tbs black pepper

Wash, cut up, and boil potatoes for about 30 minutes until tender. Drain and set aside.

Melt butter in the same pot. Add onion and saute until onion is clear.

Whisk flour into the butter 1 tbs at a time until it forms a paste. Gradually whisk milk into butter, flour and onion mixture. (whisking ensures there are no lumps).

Add potatoes, peas, and ham to the pot and let cook until it boils. Stir occasionally to prevent the potatoes from sticking to the bottom.

Stir in Cheese until melted. (If you add this too soon, your cheese will clump). Season with salt and pepper to taste. If your soup tastes kind of bland add more salt.

Makes aprox 6-8 adult servings

Super simple Chicken Nuggets

2009-03-13T11:41:00.003-06:00

I've decided that I want to share with you all in blog land some of my favorite recipes. These are all either things that were standard fare when I was growing up, or ones that I make a lot for my family.

Today's selection is Super Simple Chicken Nuggets.

I don't know if this really counts as a recipe since it is so simple, but it is quick and we make it about once a week. In fact, I made it today for lunch per the kid's request.

Ingredients:
2 Chicken Breasts
1 egg
1/2 cup flour
1 tbs Grill seasoning (I like McCormick's Broiled Steak Seasoning)
4 Cups Cooking Oil

Poor oil into a large, deep skillet or pot. It should be deep enough to completely cover your nuggets for frying. Heat on high while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.

Mix flour and grill seasoning in 1 bowl. Beat egg in a second bowl and set aside. Cut chicken into bite sized pieces. Dredge in egg until completely covered, then in flour mixture. Shake off excess flour and gently drop in hot oil. Fry until chickens are light golden brown. (I do my chickens in 2 batches so that I don't over crowd the pan).

Drain and enjoy!

Makes about 5 servings depending on the size of your chicken breasts.

The deep frying probably isn't the healthiest, but it makes the chickens crispy and tasty. The whole process takes about 15-20 minutes, which is about the same amount of time to oven cook frozen chicken nuggets, but these are preservative free and much cheaper. :D

Dear world, our Mama is mean

2009-03-06T08:23:00.004-07:00

Dear world, our mama is mean. We the twins (Hyrum and Quintin) have hijacked her blog to tell you just how mean she is.

She is trying to wean us. We have no idea why, but it is unacceptable. We LOVE that nursing thing. It's warm and nice there in mommy's lap. The food is warm, soothing, and good. There's that whole sucking thing which makes us happy. We don't know why. The binky isn't as good as mama. You all understand, we know. To top it all off, Mama has to pay attention to us and look into our eyes, and smile at us, and we feel loved and safe. Ya, that nursing thing is great.

But mama is taking that away. We are just now realizing what is happening. We only got to nurse 3 times yesterday, and there didn't seem to be enough milk. She keeps offering us a cup with cold milk in it, but we don't want that! We want our mama back. Now, we understand that mama has been nursing TWO of us for a little over a year now. She tells us that is pretty amazing. We don't get it. She tells daddy that she didn't nurse any of the other kids quite this long. That's sad. She should have nursed everyone longer. Did we mention how nice nursing is? We were so upset that we had to throw tantrums this morning. Quintin in particular did a great job. I think Mommy really got the picture. He was incolsolable for a good 15 minutes. He didn't want to be held, he didn't want the binky. He REALLY didn't want to be put down. True we had already nursed, but obviously it wasn't enough. Mama held out, though, and offered that stupid cup again. We took it. She held us close and looked into our eyes, and even though it was a cup of cold milk, it was still nice on mama's lap.

We plan to retaliate this afternoon, though, by not taking a nap AGAIN. We've discussed it, and we're pretty sure that will work. We hope you all understand and will tell mommy to stop this weaning thing.

Sincerely,
The Twins

Phat Fiber Samples

2009-03-03T13:40:00.004-07:00

Look for my Infinity Ring stitch marker samples in March's Phat Fiber Sampler box! I am sending in 45 samples, and if you don't happen to get a sample, I am also sending in 75 coupons for FREE SHIPPING, so be sure to look through your business card envelope.

The theme for March is "Celtic" so I am contributing samples of my glass and copper stitch markers tied to the card with green recycled wool yarn. These are some of my favorite stitch markers and it was really exciting to send them out.

This will be my second month contributing samples to the Phat Fiber Sampler box. It is a box full of small, bite sized samples of yarn, fiber, stitch markers, and pretty much anything fiber related. I am so honored to be a part of it, and have high hopes for it's ability to spread the word! Already I have fallen in love with several people's shops through the box, and have seen some interest in mine from it. Natchwoolie and I seem to have a joint adoration thing going on. She wrote the most amazing review of my shop on the phatfiber blog, and I have been saving my pennies so I can get some of her lovely fiber!

Check out all the shops contributing on the Phatfiber website.

The Wall of Fiber

2009-02-27T08:02:00.002-07:00

So, after the whole 2am mouse incident, my bedroom has been thouroughly cleaned and vacuumed. The living room looked like a tornado hit it with all of the clutter, but the bedroom was clean. The business invested in a set of wire mesh cubes to store all the sweaters that had previously been sitting on the floor in bags. It took an entire evening of 3 adults, a good wrench, a rubber hammer, and about a bazillion zip ties, but the large empty wall of my bedroom now looks like this:
Then all 12 gigantic bags of sweaters were neatly folded, sorted by fiber content and yarn weight and placed in the cubes. 12 bags only took up half of the space...
So, we added some bubble pack envelopes, the waiting to be sold yarn, and the entirety of my personal yarn stash. Y'all, that is a lot of fiber on that wall. It is glorious!
As a note on the personal stash, the upper right hand cube is all of the store bought wool yarn I own. 1 cube is full of spinning fiber. The bottom 2 right hand cubes are acrylic. The rest is all recycled yarn that I have kept for myself. Now if I could only find some time to knit...

As another note, I have been trying to blog about this for 2 days, but blogger didn't want to upload my pictures. Stupid blogger.

Clean, must clean!

2009-02-23T09:55:00.002-07:00

Today begins a major cleaning and organizing spree of my master bedroom. Last night I was attacked by a flying mouse. There is nothing like waking up at 2am to the shocking realization that some flying rodent has jumped onto the bed. I am totally creeped out and MUST CLEAN now!

I have no idea why this mouse has taken up residence in my room. There is no food in my room, and we aren't anywhere near as bad as most of the rooms that you see in Clean Sweep. Sure there's the pile of fiber against the wall, but that's normal right? I have heard him rummaging around for a few days now and the flying onto the bed was just the last nail in the coffin. He is being evicted. Every inch of the room will be vacuumed and cleaned. The bed will be moved, the furniture rearranged. That pile of bags of fiber will be neatly organized in my new cube system. (Being purchased by DH today).

We live in the country. We have had an ongoing mouse problem since we inadvertently brought one in with a big bag of rabbit food. We got a cat to help deal with the problem, but he proved a larger problem since he refused to poop in his cat box and pooped all over my house. He didn't last long. We have had various types of mouse traps around, but the mice have never completely gone away. When the rabbit died a few weeks ago, we bought those sonic mouse things that you plug in and are supposed to deter the mice from coming in. We set them up all over the kitchen. Unfortunately, it seems to have driven at least one mouse to my bedroom. The really horrible thing is that even with the massive cleaning, this mouse may still have found a good place to hide where I won't find him.

It may be time for professional help. Anyone know a good exterminator?

Finding Balance

2009-02-21T08:18:00.002-07:00

This has always been a struggle for me. I tend to throw all my energy into my current obsession and the other things in my life tend to slide. My Dad says that it is genetic that I am this way, but I'm not really sure that it is since this tendency has only emerged since I have had children. Pre-children I didn't have 90 million things to do each day, and didn't really care if I sat and watched TV all day. Now I do still enjoy sitting and watching a movie, or listening to talk radio or something, but it is almost like I have developed ADHD or something. I can't sit still. I feel as if I MUST be doing something in addition to relaxing and watching TV. My hands get restless and I think of all the 89 million things I haven't gotten to today. "Ooo, I can get in just a few rows on Brendan's dinosaur while I watch this!" or "Sigh, that basket of laundry hasn't folded it's self yet, I guess I'll do that while watching this" or "Well, I've got 5 minutes before dinner comes out of the oven and no one is screaming, I think I'll check my email". 20 minutes later, I am still on the computer and the house has degenerated into chaos because I wasn't paying attention.

The computer thing is really another issue. I need a 12 step program for the internet or something. I get twitchy. There's nothing in particular I want, I just want to be on. It's bad...

But back to balance. Since I feel that I must be accomplishing something, just sitting and watching the children, or being available to talk with them and be genuinely interested doesn't seem to fall high on that list of accomplishing things. It is more of a passive accomplishment and I have been so focused on active things lately. You know, the things that I can cross off on a list "Dishes done, Check!" "Orders filled, Check!" "Children bathed, Check!". I think that it is comming to the point where I need to schedule the children into my mental checklist. "Sat and played dinosaurs with Brendan, Check!" I had a moment yesterday when I sat down to lunch with Shaya and Brendan and instead of talking with them and being "present" my mind was wandering to the laptop and I had to pull myself back from bringing it to the table.

I need some boundries.

I feel like a 2 yr old or something, that I need to set rules for myself. If it works, though, that's what is important. This week I am going to impliment a schedule for myself, and rules on when I can be on the computer and when I need to be mentally present with the family.

1. Since DH is home in the mornings, I will feed the babies, then take a shower and read my scriptures (this has really helped this past week with the morning grouchiness).
2. I will not look at the computer until I have a load of laundry in the washer, and the dishwasher is unloaded.
3. I will spend no more than 1 hour on the computer checking email, renewing stitch markers, blogging, twittering, etc.
4. I will not check the computer again until the twins take their nap.
5. Between 5pm-8pm I will not get on the computer. I will not do any business stuff until the kids are in bed.
6. I will let the children help with dinner.
7. I will do the dishes directly after dinner.
8. I will fill orders and print labels after the children go to bed.
9. I will be off the computer and in bed by 10pm. No exceptions.

That sounds like a lot. Wish me luck.

The problem with twins

2009-02-17T07:19:00.002-07:00

There are innumerable joys in being the mother of twins. Watching them interact with each other is amazing and wonderful. They have loved each other since before they were born and you can tell. They are a team, a duo, a pair. When they were first born they were happiest when I squashed them both close together, side by side in the bassinet. They follow each other around the room like a school of fish and investigate when one is crying. It is true that they are still babies and are disposed to steal each other's toys or binkies, but all in all, you know that they belong together.

There is an inherent problem, though. There are 2 of them.

It sounds so simple. Intellectually you know that there are 2 of them. You change both diapers each day, feed both little mouths each day, but it doesn't hit home until you can't seem to make both happy at the same time. If you pick up one, the other continues to scream, or begins to scream because "How DARE you pick up brother and not me!" or "Wait! Don't forget me!" When this doesn't happen, one will be happily sitting in your lap, or playing elsewhere and the other will find some mischief to get into. I just know that once they are toddlers we are going to have duel animals of destruction around here. 3 if Brendan hasn't grown out of it yet.

The twins have a cold. I always feel so bad for the little guys who have a cold. They just don't understand why they can't breathe through their nose, or why that cough keep happening. What is worst is when their little noses are plugged and they have to stop sucking (on binky or nursing) in order to breathe. Most of the time, they would hold out as long as they possibly can and then cry because they don't feel good, and want to suck on their binky because it makes them feel better, but they can't because they can't breathe. It's a sad little circle. The whole cold thing is amplified by the fact that there are 2 of them. It is impossible to keep the germs seperate. Once one starts to get it, I know that it is only a matter of time before the other one does. Once both of them are sick, I have 2 sad little lumps who just want to sit in mommy's lap. The problem is that while one can still accomplish some things while holding a baby, it is impossible to do ANYTHING while holding 2.

Last night was a rough night. I am no longer used to waking up 2 and 3 times a night, so I don't plan ahead... like going to bed at 8:30. Poor Hyrum woke up twice last night. I think maybe he had a sore throat from the sinus drainage. When I heard a baby screaming for the 3rd time since I went to bed, I couldn't help but think "Oh, come on! I nursed you, changed your diaper, gave you medicine, and you're still not happy?! I don't know what else I can do." I stumble into their room blurry eyed and realized that Hyrum was sound asleep (guess the Tylanol helped) and it was Quinn screaming at me. It was, in fact 6am and time for breakfast and a diaper change. "Oh, it's you" I thought. Well, I guess I can't blame him for wanting breakfast. He, had, in fact slept all night even if his brother hadn't.

Therein lies the problem, and the joy... They are 2 different people.

Addictive bit of lace

2009-02-16T16:14:00.008-07:00

The February Phatfiber sampler box went on sale today! It is a sampler box full of stitch markers, mini-skeins of yarn, batts of spinning fiber, and all things lovely fiber. I was aproached 2 months ago to contribute to February's box with the theme of "Romance and Chocolate". I sent in my samples of 90yrds of my luscious Recycled Lace Weight Extra Fine Merino Wool, with a white freshwater pearl infinity ring stitch marker attached. Unfortunately, in my excitement to get them out I neglected to take a picture. I kept waiting for them to make an appearance on the phatfiber blog, but they never did. They made a brief appearance in the second video, though.

I got to thinking, though, 90yrds of laceweight looks like such a tiny little skein, but is really MUCH more than you think. So, what exactly can you make with just 90 yrds?

How about a Kerchief? A super quick, highly addictive, Ostrich Feather lace Kerchief to be exact!

Pattern to come shortly! Stay tuned!

We made it a whole year!

2009-02-10T09:16:00.004-07:00

Happy Birthday Baby Boys! Somehow we have all managed to survive an entire year. From what I can tell, we're all happy, and healthy too. I have gotten so used to them now that I forget that babies don't normally come in twos. It is just second nature to change 2 diapers, and dress 2 babies, and listen to 2 babies cry.

Having twins has been an amazing, joyful experience. Watching them together is unlike watching any of my other babies. Most babies don't really interact with other babies other than curiosity, or the occasional stealing of toys, but these 2 are a duo. We call them the carpet sharks and they move like a school of fish. Where one goes, the other is soon to follow. If one finds an interesting toy. the other is soon to come over and examine it too. I swear that they understand each other's cries. If one is in another room fussing, the other will go see what is wrong. If I am nursing one, the other will hear that pre-nursing fussing and come crawling in at full speed. They work in collusion. One will be screaming his head off in his crib, while the other is just chillin in his crib. It's almost like they are thinking "Hey, I don't need to scream. If brother is crying mom will come." Of course, once I pick up the screaming one, the other will let me kow that it is NOT acceptable to forget to pick him up too. If one gets tired of crying before I show up, they will trade off and the other one will scream for a bit.

We don't walk or talk yet, but we are REALLY close. I can't wait to see what the next year brings. Since these are my last little guys I am just lapping up every moment with them and enjoying every little quirk and milestone.

Complicated plan to get out of debt

2009-02-06T11:31:00.001-07:00

You all may know that I am on Dave Ramsey's plan to get out of debt. I have had to learn some very complicated rules, like the one shown here in a clip from SNL.

25 Random Things

2009-02-05T13:29:00.002-07:00

1. I don't really like breakfast foods, so I have a chocolate Carnation Instant Breakfast shake every morning.

2. I always wanted to be a stay at home mom, but saying that in school was frowned upon, especially in IB where we were all supposedly smart and were supposed to make things of ourselves, so I would talk about being a spy or a translator for a large company.

3. I have never been to another country

4. I studied Russian for 8 years and even majored in it in Collage but don't think I could even ask where the bathroom is anymore.

5. I participated in the 2006 Knitting Olympics where I knit a GIGANTIC man's sweater in 14 days. DH loves it.

6. I've knit that same sweater pattern 2 more times since then. Both times for women.

7. I have only had 1 "Real" job. I was applying at paper warehouse for a summer job the summer before my senior year and some random lady followed me out and asked if I wanted a job. I worked in that call center from then until just after Alex was born.

8. When asked what I do, I like to say "I am raising quality human beings"

9. I hit on DH in the parking lot of our church on the day we met, but I thought he was someone I had met a few days before. That is until he said "by the way my name is Grant"

10. I didn't tell him this until after we were married.

11. Our wedding photographer actually gave us a metal heart trivet as a prize because she said we were the most romantic couple she had ever met.

12. I credit our continued marital bliss largely in part to Dr. Laura

13. For 2 years I was severely addicted to FFXI. I thought of myself by my online name and had to stop myself from referring to Grant by his online name in real life. Since I broke the cycle I have pretty much avoided all computer games.

14. It took 2 more years to stop having dreams about the game.

15. It has been 10 years since High School and I think I finally stopped having dreams about it. I don't know how 4 years can have such a profound effect on the rest of your life.

16. I turned to knitting and the online knitting community as a way to break the video game addiction.

17. I am a combined knitter, which to non-knitters means I knit "wrong"

18. I am 1 of 5 siblings and I gave birth to 5 children.

19. When the twins were born I had 5 children ages 6 and under, although my pregnancies were all about 2 years apart.

20. One of my all time favorite books is Pride and Prejudice. I have read it twice, listened to the audio book twice, and watched both versions of the movie at least that many times.

21. I cloth diaper my 3 youngest children to save money, but actually really like the cloth better than disposables.

22. I briefly thought about making my own cloth diapers until I realized that while my knitting skills may be great, my sewing skills are not.

23. In High School my horse bowl team won the national competition.

24. When I was 10 I won 3rd place in the muttin bustin competition in the Junior Rodeo. I still have the belt buckle.

25. Until a year after I was married, I did not own a jacket that didn't have my name printed on it somewhere.

On the Chopping Block

2009-02-03T08:05:00.005-07:00

Happy Tuesday Morning everyone! I have a busy Recycling week planned. Keep an eye out for them in my shop this week, and as always if you are particularly interested in something, please let me know!

45% Wool, 45% Acrylic, 10% Nylon, 6.5st / inch, Fingering Weight.
I didn't get this done last week, but it is on the top of the list this week.

100% Wool, 11 wpi, Worsted Weight.
I got 9 skeins out of this gigantic sweater!!!! That's 1800 yrds available!

74% Polyester, 11% Mohair, 7% Acrylic, 8% Wool, 5st / inch, Worsted Weight.
This is REALLY soft.

100% Silk, Lace Weight.

26% Viscose, 25% Cotton, 24% Nylon, 17% Wool, 5% Angora
This has a deep purple blue twist in it that doesn't show up well in the picture. I have 3 identical sweaters, but due to washing, etc, they are now different dye lots.

100% Cashmere, Lace Weight.
This is very pale green, like new leaves.

100% Silk, Lace Weight

100% Extra Fine Merino, Lace Weight.

That's what big sisters are for

2009-01-30T12:22:00.002-07:00

Look 3 kids entertained by a single bowl of oatmeal at the same time!
It's nice when the "helping" is actually more help than hindrance.

I'm Twittering

2009-01-29T11:52:00.002-07:00

Have you all heard of Twitter? It seems to be a combination of a mini blog and a chat feature all rolled up into one. It is all the rage on Etsy so I signed up. I think I might be addicted, but am not quite sure since I don't have any friends to follow, and haven't figured out all the features yet. I do have the Harlot, though... can't get enough harlot. Now we can get updates throughout the day with her typical whit. Love that.

I feel a bit more profound when I am limited to the 200 words (or whatever it is). I have to boil it all down to just the facts. It's nice to be able to just put up that one sentence that sounded so great without feeling like I need an entire blog post with pictures. If you ever wondered what my crazy life is like with a yarn shop and 5 little kiddos, feel free to follow me.

<----- Or, you can read it on the side bar over there, right under my etsy shop pictures ^.^

The blanket that never ends

2009-01-27T09:18:00.004-07:00

A few weeks ago, Michaels had an insane sale on Patons SWS which was awesome because I REALLY needed some more for Shaya's blanket. You know, that great wool, twin sized blanket that I thought I might finish for Christmas and never did. Then I thought I might finish it for her birthday, and never did. It was on sale for 1.99 a ball, which I guess was because they were discountinuing it out, but it was a great score for me. I bought way more than I really should have, but now I have plenty on hand to finish the blanket! Yea!

This is the Mason Dixon Miter Square blanket from their first book. I have 7 different colorways in there and it promises to be truly eclectic. Lots of pink. Just perfect for a girly girl like Shaya.

I counted last night and I have 36 squares. That's enough for 3 big squares wide and 3 long. DH and I layed it out and I think we need 1 more row of big squares long. That means I need 12 more squares. . . Oh well, maybe it'll be done before next Christmas. Blocked and with a boarder and all!

That man's a keeper

2009-01-26T20:02:00.004-07:00

I will admit that I was in a bit of a funk yesterday. It seems that I get that way on Sundays. I'm not sure if it's the fact that I take the day off and supposedly relax or what. Unfortunately, there is never a day off from being a mom and everyone is home on Sundays. Combine that with the fact that I was dehydrated and I was definitely in a funk. I just wanted to sit under a blanket and snuggle, or knit, or something. Babies tend not to be cooperative with this kind of plan, though. They want to be held, or to be played with, or generally wreak havoc on the world if you're not paying attention. The funk continued until DH floored me with a single request.

"Would you teach me to knit?"

What? What was that? The man who has admired my knitting, but generally shown absolutely no interest in anything yarn related wants to learn to knit?!

"You like it so much that I think I should try it. Plus I love you and I should know more about the things you like"

Well, I can't think of a thing sexier than that. Not only does the man want to learn to knit, but he wants to learn so he can be closer to me. That man's a keeper. Forget the fact that he supports our family, or that he has worked 2 jobs, or that he tells me constantly that he adores me. That statement right there speaks love on a whole new level.

I spent the evening happily snuggled up next to him while he knit away with a pair of size 8 bamboo double pointed needles with rubber bands on the ends and a skein of Shetland Chunky.
Wouldn't you know, but DH is GOOD! Check out that swatch. That was his very first knitting ever. He even did the long tail cast on.

I'm so proud!

On the Docket

2009-01-22T16:30:00.004-07:00

I get so many emails asking what I have in the works and what day I relist yarns in my store, that I thought it might be a good idea to let you all know what I'm working on, so if you see something you might be interested in, you won't miss out! Look out for these yarns in the shop this week.

Needing Photographing:
Blood Orange Angora Blend Bulky Weight
Pearl White Silk Lace Weight

Drying:
Country Blue Lace Weight Extra Fine Merino Wool
Mint Lace Weight Cashmere
Goldilocks Lace Weight Extra Fine Merino Wool
Peachy Pink Fingering Weight Angora Blend
Chartreuse DK Weight Wool
Milk Chocolate Extra Fine Merino Worsted Weight

Waiting to be skeined:
Cranberry Red Lace Weight Extra Fine Merino Wool
Ice Blue Green Lace Weight Silk Cashmere
Brick Red Tweed Fingering Weight Wool Acrylic Blend

P.S That cute critter at the top is Angie the Angora Rabbit. She's a member of my Fiber Friends collection of illustrations.

Gratuitous Picture

2009-01-21T07:33:00.003-07:00

Raviolis are Tasty!

Nuff said.
Hyrum Quintin

Happy Birthday Baby Girl

2009-01-20T13:42:00.004-07:00

Happy Birthday Baby Girl even though this post is a few days old. You are now 5 yrs old. Oh how the time has flown by. You are our little princess in a sea of boys and bring joy to our lives in a way no one else can. The day is not complete without you prancing around the room on your toes or showing us your pirouettes. Alas, you are no longer a baby and each day that I look at you, I can see the beautiful, bright, young lady you are becoming. You and I together will fight off the overwhelming masculinity in our household and bring the joy of femininity with plenty of sparkles!

Everything Bread

2009-01-14T07:50:00.005-07:00

In order to go along with our new philosophy of cooking more from scratch and saving money, and I suppose because I didn't have enough craziness in my life. I have baked all of the bread in our house for about the last 4 or 5 months. When I first started off, my bread really sucked. I made at least a half a dozen bricks instead of bread. But gradually I have improved to the point that my family raves over my bread. I make dinner rolls, hamburger buns, hot dog buns, and bread all from the same recipe. This is why I call it my "everything" bread. I have yet to use it as pizza crust, but I have a feeling it might be pretty good as that too.

Dawn's Everything Bread:
(Makes 2 loaves)
1 Cup warm water (I nuke mine in the microwave for 1 minute)
1 egg
1 /4 cup oil
1 /2 cup sugar (or honey, or brown sugar, your choice)
3 tsp yeast (not rapid rise)
1 1/2 cup Wheat flour
1 1/2 cup White flour
3/4 tsp salt

I bought a used bead maker from my local thrift shop that has a dough cycle and use this to mix and knead my dough. I find that even though I am capable of doing this myself, the bread maker does it better, more consistantly, and saves me time because I can just throw everything in the breadmaker and do other things.

Put the ingredients in your bread maker in the order they are listed. It is very important that the liquids and yeast go in before the flour or your dough will not rise correctly. Tell your machine to make dough (not bake) and let it do it's thing. When the dough has risen to the top of the pan, your bread is ready to shape into loaves. This takes a little longer than my dough cycle thinks it should, but it may be different in yours.

If you are making your bread by hand, I'd suggest that you watch The magic of Making Bread on Youtube. Notice how most of the flour gets mixed in while she's kneading, not in the bowl? That keeps you from adding too much flour. The yeasties can't grow if the dough is too stiff. The dough should be nice and warm and softer than play dough.

Once your dough has reached the top of the pan (or doubled in size) take your fist and puch right down the center. Put some flour on the counter and knead it a few times until all the air bubbles are out of it. Now divide it in half. Now you have a few choices. Each half will make either a loaf of bread, a pan of dinner rolls, 6-8 hamburger buns, or 6-8 hot dog buns depending on what you do with it.

Grease your pans and form your bread into the shape you want. I learned the technique on tucking the dough into the bottom to form nice round shapes from this video. Once your bread is in it's new shape and safely in it's new pans, cover it with a little bit of oil and some saran wrap, or a damp dish towel. Let it rise until it reaches the top of the pan (or has doubled in size).

Turn the oven to 350 (that's about 176 for my Metric friends). Put your pans into the cold oven and bake for 20 to 25 minutes.

This bread has a very smooth, elastic texture and is quite sweet, much like the yummy Sara Lee breads :)

Depth of Field

2009-01-13T09:47:00.006-07:00

I belong to the Yarnographer's group on Ravelry. I have always had a strong fascination with photography. I have just never had the skills necessary to create those incredible shots. I look through knitting blog after knitting blog and drool over their incredible pictures of their projects, or of their newest yarn aquisitions and sigh whistfully because I would love to be able to compose a shot like that. Heck, I'd like to be able to get the color right!

Most of all, I want to take some of those artsy pictures where part of the item is in focus and the rest fades off into beautiful, lovely, fuzzyness. You know the ones. The ones that make you think "Wow! She must be some tallented knitter. That piece looks amazing!" or "I absolutely MUST have that yarn. It looks so soft. There is a "High class" element to these pictures. They make me swoon. But, alas, the ability to create them with anything other than photo editing software has aluded me... Until today.
I have tried and tried to do this, but it just magically happened yesterday when I was photographing a custom order. It was so easy. I was shocked. Why couldn't I do this before?! I was convinced that my camera was incapable of doing this, and yet, there it was. Perfect and lovely.

Try an experiment. Place your item on a white piece of card stock next to a window. Do not put the item in the direct path of the sunlight, just in the ambiant light that the window gives. Arange the item in a pleasing line leading away from you. Set the camera to the macro mode (it looks like a flower). Now set the camera right down on the table in front of the item. Don't hold the camera, don't put it on a tripod, just plunk it down on the table as close as the camera will let you get. Focus it on the very front of the item and click.

Did it work for you too?!

Next up, let's see if it works on my current WIP!

Obsessed

2009-01-10T08:25:00.009-07:00

This past year has been a series of jags and obsessions over one thing or another. Looking back on it, I begin to wonder if I am going manic that I can become so fixated on something to the exclusion of others, even things that I was desperately fixated on just a few weeks before. My Dad says that it is not obsession, it is passion and that I am genetically hardwired to be that way. I still worry. Then I look around the knitting blogesphere and I know that I am not alone. You all know how it is. You do it too. You become obsessed with a particular color, or pattern, etc and obsess about it over and over. In fact, I can remember the Yarn Harlot knitting 3 or 4 of a particular baby sweater before she was over her obsession.

This past year, I have obsessed about:

Ravelry - While I still love ravelry and use the pattern and yarn searches a lot, I do not find that I am on the forums, or looking at my profile 50 times a day anymore. In fact, it's kind of sad to say, but I think I have only logged on about once a week or less lately.

Dave Ramsey - I ran accross Dave in the Gonna Be Debt Free group on Ravelry. It was at a time when our household was desperately struggling to make the bills. I was gigantic pregnant with the twins and full of all those lovely hormones. I latched onto his plan like a life preserver. I still listen to Dave's show via streaming on his website most days while I work, and am following the Total Money Makeover plan religiously, but I no longer have to ravenously read everything I can find on it. I have read enough and learned enough that I am ok to coast now.

Diaperswappers - I have 3 children in diapers. Did I mention that? When I was working out the budget, I realized that with the Costco sized diapers we were buying, that we went through a box for each child a month. That added up to almost $100 a month JUST FOR DIAPERS! It felt like extortion. Now, I had never thought about using cloth diapers. They seemed disgusting and like WAY too much hastle, but when I could buy enough diapers to last me until we were done for the same amount as just 2 or 3 months worth of disposables, I was ready to give it a try. I found the diaperswappers website also through a forum group on Ravelry. I spent a lot of time reading on Diaperswappers and the internet at large about the types of diapers and how to take care of them, etc. In the end we went for the cheapest method. Prefolds and velcro PUL covers. We love them.

There was a brief shining moment when I thought that I could sew my own diapers and get fitted diapers for even less money, but then I realized that I'm pretty much a crappy seamstress. I may still do this, but I need some velcro and good elastic first. When I get around to that, this is the website I'm gonna use. I've got the old T-shirts etc already picked out...

There was also a brief shining moment when I thought I was going to knit wool soakers for the twins for all the time use and maybe even knit some to sell out of my recycled yarn. I got 2 pairs of pants done and then stalled out during the embellishing phase. I need to go pull those out and see if they will still fit the boys...

Hotcouponworld - I found Hotcouponworld through the forums on Diaperswappers. Since last spring I have become a coupon queen. It amazes me. I've managed to cut our grocery budget down to $60 a week (with occasional extra stock up money for the whole month) just by learning the complicated system of couponing and just generally paying attention to what I was doing. For a while there, I was organizing and trading coupons, obsessing about deals and getting free shampoo. In December I must have thought that I finally had the whole thing down enough have been in a holding pattern. I still watch the sales, and will scan the deals listed on Hotcouponworld, but I no longer visit 5 times a day. My coupons are generally in disaray and I've decided I simply DO NOT have time to trade. This decline in the coupon obsession was mostly because I felt that I was spending too much time on coupons and while it was saving us lots of money, I wasn't spending nearly enough time on my business and I was not making the amount I needed to fill my share of the budget. Which brings us to my current obsession...

Etsy - I had a customer on Ebay ask me why I didn't sell on Etsy. Really it came down to the fact that I didn't think that I could be profitable if I had to renew all the time in order to stay at the top of the searches, and that I was just plain scared to set my own price. I was comfortable and safe setting a minimum price on Ebay and letting the buyer determine the price. I didn't have to worry about the fact that I might be charging too much and no one would buy, or that I would be charging too little and not get what it was worth. Well, in the end, I really was charging too little and there was no way with the amount of time I have available that I could make what I needed. My production was obviously cut way down with the birth of the twins, and more and more sweaters were selling for the minimum price. Add to that the ever rising fees on Ebay and I took the plunge. I opened a shop on Etsy.

I started reading the forums there. I learned about taking good pictures, about promoting, about branding. Suddenly a whole new world was opened up. I have resisted standardizing my skein sizes because I wanted the buyer to get as long of a piece of unbroken yarn as possible, but this made setting a standard price very difficult. So, I bit the bullet and am standardizing the skein sizes and picking a price. I worked hard on creating beautiful, clear photographs worthy to be on Etsy. I expanded my stitch marker product line and added a new signature stitch marker style that I am working on promoting and branding. I am quite obsessed with the shape. It's called the Infinity Ring.
I can't seem to keep myself from staring at it. I love the simplicity of it, the elegance. I keep searching through beads and wondering how they will look in that shape. I want to make jewelry with it. I need more. Unfortunately I have restricted myself on the bead spending at the moment and so I have temperarily moved on to something else.

In the forums on Etsy, someone told me that my previous banner and logo looked like I had created them in Microsoft Paint, and that I could improve on them to make my shop more professional. Now, I have had Shawn as my logo almost since the beginning. I loved him. I thought he was perfect. This person obviously didn't know what they were talking about. Sure she was an actual professional graphics designer, but what did she know... Well, since I couldn't buy more beads, I pulled out some paper and a pen and began doodling Shawn. I drew dozens of sheep that first night. After a brief fight with the scanner that resulted in me totally reinstalling it, I had a new banner, a new avatar, and a whole new world of items to add to my shop.

Now in addition to the billions of possiblities for stitch markers I have running through my head, I have a whole line of Shawn and Fiber Friends notecards and Aceos, etc in the planning stages. I love them. They make me happy on a deep level that up until now only Extra Fine Merino ever has. I want to make more...

But now I have to go back to the store and retrieve my coupon notebook that also has all of my Dave Ramsey envelopes in it that I accidentally left at the checkout counter last night... I don't think the obsessions are helping my attention span here.

Happy New Year

2009-01-05T09:41:00.002-07:00

Happy New year cyberspace!

It has been quite the year for us and I am afraid that the dear blog has fallen to the bottom of the priority list. Now that the twins are almost a year old, though, I have high hopes that I might actually be able to carve out some time to keep updated. It's funny how 2 little carpet sharks can take over your life, especially since I thought I had this whole mommy thing down with the previous 3 kiddlets.

Since the sharks are happy eating their cereal and the bigger kids are entertained by Scooby Doo, I will take this brief moment to post my 2009 goals before returning to dishes, laundry and dreaming of yarn and stitch markers.

1. Post on the blog. Frequently. More than once every 6 months. (Ya, I think I can handle that)

2. Finish the blankets for the 3 big kids that in my insanity I thought I could finish for Christmas and then totally gave up on. (Maybe for birthdays this year? Since Shaya's Birthday is this month, not much time).

3. Read Scriptures every day.

4. Don't get burried under a mountain of laundry or dirty dishes (wow, that's not too specific...I think I need to revisit Flylady)

Business goals:
1. Build and promote the Twice Sheared Sheep to be a recognizable brand on Etsy.

2. Standardize skein sizes and prices

3. Take stunning photos

4. Double my income (That would be FANTASTIC!)

Expect to see the blog change a bit as I reformat and finally keep up with the posting. Now back to our regularly scheduled program.

They're growing

2008-04-01T11:46:00.003-06:00

After eating we do some snuggling. They always look so cute in my lap but I never have a camera handy, and when I did, I still couldn't capture how cute they really are.

Hyrum

Quintin

The twins also got their very first bottles of breast milk this month.

Shaya fed Hyrum

Alex fed Quintin

Brendan is cute, but is not to be trusted with a baby.

I'm adidcted!

2008-03-15T20:21:00.011-06:00

I dyed some lace weight yarn this week and I'm totally addicted now... I don't know if I can stop. I'm running out of things to dye, though, so I may have to. In the mean while. Look what I did :D

"Black Magic"

Wilton's Black

"Daffodil"

Wilton's Lemon Yellow and Kelly Green

"Magic on the Water"
Wilton's Royal Blue

"Seafoam"
Wilton's Teal

"Fruit Compote"

Wilton's Burgundy and Copper

The Twins Have Arrived!

2008-02-13T08:28:00.007-07:00

We would like proudly announce the newest members of our family!

Hyrum Michael

2-7-08

10:43am

6lb 1oz

19 in

Quintin Isaiah

2-7-08

10:51am

5lb 13oz

19 3/4 in

Mister

Adopted 2-12-07

Mister is a Valentine's present to me from DH and the kids.

He is VERY affectionate and probably the largest cat I have ever owned.

Because I am a knitter, I must show you the twin's baby blankets. I had an ambitious list of items that I wanted to knit them, but these are the only ones that got done in double.

They are log cabin knit blankets in recycled 50/50 wool acrylic yarn. They are very soft and squishy and warm. I think they turned out great.

Recycling Sweaters for Yarn

2008-01-17T10:54:00.000-07:00

I have been recycling yarn for resale now for over a year and a half. During that time, I have probably wound enough yarn to wrap the world and have handled almost every type of fiber and weight of yarn. I remember the first time that I unraveled a sweater. I swore I would never do it again because it was SOOOO time consuming and obnoxious. I find it a bit ironic, then, that I spend half of every day doing just that. I have gradually learned quite a few tricks and have gotten some new tools that make my life much easier. I have also been planning on doing a good tutorial for quite some time. There are some very good tutorials online, but they aren't as comprehensive as I would like, so I would like to attempt to give you all of the information in 1 place.

Finding the Right Sweater -

Look for fibers that you like the feel of and you like to knit with. I can find a million very nice cotton sweaters, but have learned that I don't like knitting with it. You may love cotton.

While you're walking through the racks at your local thrift store, feel everything, even if you don't think you'll buy that particular sweater. With time, you can begin to tell the difference between fibers simply by touch which helps to eliminate the need for looking at every single label. I like to play games with myself where I feel the sweater, guess at it's content and then look to see if I'm right. I can almost always peg cashmere, wool, cotton, and silk now. I can even usually tell if the silk is combined with nylon. Pick fibers that you like. For the most part, Acrylic isn't worth the trouble, simply because you can buy new acrylic for a small amount of money, but if you run across a super soft acrylic in a to die for color, go ahead. There are no yarn police.

Avoid silk sweaters with nylon! Usually this means that there was a strand of silk combined with a strand of elastic knit together to make the sweater stretchy. I never buy anything that says it has elastic in it, or says "stretch" on the label. Trust me, it's more pain than it's worth.

I also avoid Silk cotton blends in fine gauges. These sweaters tend to be knit with 1 strand of cotton and 1 strand of silk. They are tensioned so that the cotton is next to the skin and the silk is on the outside of the garment. This is fabulous in the sweater, but when you are trying to unravel it, this means that the 2 strands will not unravel at the same rate and you end up with a mess.

Avoid sweaters that look obviously worn or felted. If the yarn looks ratty in the first sweater, it's probably going to look ratty in whatever you made from it too. Felted sweaters can be great for making purses, etc, but are NOT going to come apart willingly and are not worth your time if you're after the yarn.

If the yarn doesn't feel nice in the current sweater, it is unlikely to soften up with washing. So, pick accordingly. If you plan to knit it as is, pick something that feels nice to you. If you plan to felt it, that scratchy wool will probably be perfect, even if you wouldn't wear it like it is now.

Take a second look at your sweaters before you buy!If you're anything like me, you've now gone up and down the isles and filled your arms, or your cart to the brim with potential sweaters. You like the fiber content, they look nice and you're already scheming in your head about what it can become. Before you check out, though, sit down and take a moment to reexamine your sweaters.

Does your sweater have good seams or bad seams? There are good seams and bad seams. Some can be unraveled and some can't.

Here is a good seam:

This is a bad seam: Notice how the threads come up and over the edge. Bad seams are serged. Bad seams happen when the manufacturer knit a gigantic piece of knitting and then simply cut out the shape of the sweater, instead of knitting the pieces to the shapes they needed to be. This means that if you take the time to pick out those seams you will be left with a whole series of strands of yarn that are only as long as the sweater is wide, rather than 1 long piece of yarn. It always makes me mad when I see these. It seems like such a waste of good yarn, but somehow I don't think the manufacturer had me wanting to reclaim the yarn in mind when they made the sweater.

Many good sweaters will have good seams along the sides and bad seams at the shoulders. This is OK. As long as the bad seams run along the top or bottom of a piece of knitting and not up the side, your are good to go. You can cut off these seams. Once you do, you will lose a little bit of yarn, but once you get past the part that you cut, you will have 1 long piece of yarn for the rest of that piece of the sweater.

Are you buying a cardigan? Take a good look at the button holes. On many cardigans, the button holes are simply cut into 1 side of the front and then have button hole stitching around them, just like you would with normal fabric. You will not be able to salvage this piece of the sweater. You may still have a back, 2 sleeves and the other front panel, but this piece is a goner. It's your choice whether the other 4 parts are worth it to you. It usually is to me.

Bad Button Hole

Now, take a good look at the button band. Is it seamed on with a good seam, or is it a button band that wraps over the edge of the front panel and completely obscures what the edge looks like? If it is seamed on, or appears to be picked up from the edge, you are good to go! If it wraps around the edge, you are gambling with this sweater. There is no way to tell what the edge of these front panels is going to look like once you take the button band off. Many cardigans with this type of button band are cut along this edge and the button band is used to keep it from unraveling. Others are just fine under there. If you are still ok with your sweater only having the back and 2 sleeves, then go ahead and buy it, if not, you may want to leave it in the store.

Are you buying a V-Neck? I generally don't have a problem with V-necks, but there are a few things you should know. Most sweaters have a neck binding that looks very similar to the bad button band. You won't know what's under there until you take it apart. Sometimes all is well, sometimes they have cut out the V-neck and that entire top section of the sweater will be lost. If your V-neck doesn't have a neck band, you may still have some loss. 1 side of that V-neck was knit with the same continuous yarn as the rest of the sweater, the other half was knit with a new yarn. I have yet to find a way to definitively tell which is which, it's always a craps shoot whether I unravel the right one first. You can wind the side that is not connected to the body into a separate small ball to use for seaming, etc, or you can just toss it.

Is your sweater a vest? Just like with V-necks, most vests will have a wrap around band that goes around the arm hole. You don't know what's under there and you may very well take it off just to find that the yarn from the neck to the arm pits is cut and completely unusable. Buy these with caution.

Are there stains or holes in your sweater? If there are just a few holes, or a small stain in an animal fiber sweater, I usually don't mind at all. You can unravel to that point, leave out the undesirable part, and then do a felted join to continue to have an uninterrupted piece of yarn. If it looks like some moths have had at the sweater, however, back away slowly. Not only could you possibly contaminate your stash, but there are likely MANY places that you don't see where the yarn has been weakened or broken. It is not worth it, even if the sweater is cashmere.

A quick note on gauge- It may be a good idea to take a ruler along with you to the store when looking for sweaters. You can check the gauge of the sweater and get some idea of what the weight of the yarn will be. I unravel sweaters in every gauge from super bulky to cobweb, but you may not be comfortable with that, or may want a specific weight of yarn when you're done. You can always double, triple, quadruple, or whatever your yarn in order to get the thickness that you want, but you will also be cutting your yardage in half each time you double the yarn. If you do not have a ball winder or a swift, I do not recommend a lace weight sweater! These sweaters can have between 1000 and 5000 yards in them and believe me, you will be hating yourself by the time you're done winding it.

Deconstructing your sweater
Now that you have purchased your sweaters, you are ready to unravel! This will be my example sweater:

This sweater is for my personal stash, and not for resale. It is a Cotton Acrylic blend similar in makeup and structure to Cottonease. 100% cotton has no give and hurts my hands, but I have found this blend to be very pleasant to knit with.
Since this sweater is obviously thicker than lace weight, the first thing I do is check the gauge. I keep this info so that I have a rough idea of what weight the yarn is, and have an idea of what patterns it might be suitable for.
It looks to be about 4 3/4 stitches to the inch to me. I'm going to call this worsted weight. This is a great chart that lists yarn weights and their average gauges.

Next we will remove the tag and turn the sweater inside out.
You'll notice that there's another tag on the side seam. Many sweaters have a tag there. It is good to know. If the label at the neck does not give fiber information, or washing information, you can usually find it here. We're going to use our seam ripper and take that one off too.

Next we'll begin deconstruction. MOST sweaters are knit in pieces, back, front, 2 sleeves. They are USUALLY seamed at the shoulders first, then around the neck, then the arms are sewn on, then the seam from wrist to waist is sewn. If we're going to take this apart easily, we want to take it apart in the opposite order that the manufacturer put it together.

That means we're going to start at the sleeve cuff and do the big long seam first.

MOST sweaters are also sewn together with a crochet seam. This makes taking them apart a piece of cake. A crochet seam looks like this: Notice how the crochet chain forms little arrows? Those arrows show you which way the seam will unravel. In this case, it is pointing away from the cuff and towards the armpit, just like I thought it would. I usually find the chain on the right hand side of the seam, but it can be on the left too. It can also be going in the opposite direction, so take the time to examine it and find out what it's doing.

At the cuff, the end of this chain is usually tucked back into the seam. Pull it out with the tip of your seam ripper and cut right smack through the middle of one of the links. Separate the seam a bit and pull the loose thread from the back of the seam. You can tug on this thread and it will unravel the chain from the wrist to the armpit and all the way down to the hem. It may get caught up a bit in some places, but take the time to gently get it going again. You may even need to snip another link in the chain with your seam ripper. If you don't want to cut the wrong thread, it is important to take your time to pay attention to what you're doing and work it out. If you do happen to cut the wrong thread, though, it's not the end of the world. On animal fibers, you can do a felted join and will probably never even notice you had a break.

I avoid using scissors if at all possible. It is possible to take a seam ripper or a pair of scissors and snip each and every seam thread without unzipping the chain. You do this by pulling the seam apart and carefully cutting the connecting threads. It is very easy, though, to pick the wrong thread and end up with lots of breaks in your new yarn. Sometimes it is necessary to do it this way, but most times not.

Occasionally I will see a sweater that has a good seam, but instead of a crochet chain, you will find what looks like a rope. Please excuse the photo. I usually find these seams on very fine gauge wool sweaters. Usually they are Merino, and usually they are men's. I LOVE Extra Fine Italian Merino, and love to get men's sweaters because they have so much yarn. I do not, however, love these seams.

It is possible to unzip these as you would a crochet chain. Instead of pulling 1 string on the back side of the seam, however, you will be pulling a string on each side of the seam. Sometimes this works out just fine (usually when they used actual thread to sew the seam). If, however, they used yarn, most of the time this type of seam doesn't usually want to come apart easily. Often I am forced to resort to snipping each individual connecting thread like I described above. It is very time consuming and annoying. Luckily, most manufacturers only do this on the long seams and the arm and shoulder seams will be crocheted.

So, now we've undone the long seams on each side and our sweater looks like this:
Next we want to take off the sleeves. I usually find the start of the crochet chain at the right side of the armpit, as indicated by the arrow. Remove the sleeves the same way you undid the long seam and your sweater now looks like this:
The arrows indicate where I am going to begin looking for my next seams. Generally at this point, I would remove the neck band. This sweater does not have a neck band, though. It has a double knit edging to the V-neck in the front, and a small seam at the back of the neck connecting it to the back piece of the sweater. I undid the shoulder seams and then that small neck seam. Now my sweater looks like this:
That little piece of double knitting at the back of the neck isn't enough yarn for me to try to salvage and is going to be broken up at the shoulders anyway, so I'm just to cut it off. Each piece of the sweater is going to either have a crochet bind off, or be surged at the top. If it is surged, just cut that part off and pick out all the short cut pieces until you have 1 long strand again. If it has a crochet bind off, you are going to undo it just like you did all of the other crochet seams. Snip 1 of the chains in the chain and unzip it.
You may have a few short strands of yarn at each end of the curved neck shape. That's ok. Just keep unraveling until you're sure that you have 1 long piece.

If you remember, this sweater is a V-neck. 1 side of this V-neck uses the same strand of continuous yarn as the rest of the sweater. The other side joined a new strand at the base of the V-neck. I like to try to unravel the side that is a seperate strand of yarn and ball it up before unraveling the other. The problem is that I have yet to figure out a reliable way to tell which side is which. I usually make my best guess and jump in. This time I got lucky.
Now my sweater pieces are all ready to be harvested for their yarn.
Harvesting Your Yarn:

First things first, figure out how many wraps per inch your yarn is. Do this by taking a ruler, a wpi tool, or a pencil or something with 1 inch marked on it. Wrap your yarn around and around the object as many times as you can in the 1 inch space. Do not wrap too tight, but make sure that there are no gaps. This wraps per inch measurement will give you a good estimate what weight to call your yarn. Use this chart for referance.

There are many ways to unravel and prepare your yarn. Some people simply wind it into traditional round balls directly from the sweater and call it good. This will leave the kinks, or waves still in the yarn. I find that I don't like to knit with wavy yarn. I think it looks sloppy and uneaven and can't wait to block it. I also think that my yarn gets much cleaner if I wash it in skeins than washing it as a whole sweater. The knitted fabric still provides places for dirt and other things to hide while it's still knitted up. Because of this, I prefer to wind my yarn into skeins.

I have wound skeins in many different ways. When I first started out, I wound them around my arm, my leg (from knee to foot) the top of a baby gate, the back of a chair, almost anything that would make a decent length loop. Since then I have gotten a Mama Bear swift that works as a great skein winder and because I completely trashed that one with the amount of yarn I wound, I just got a brand spanking new electric motorized Fricke skein winder. Fancy tools aren't necessary, though. I would measure how many inches around my current skeining method was and then count the wraps as I made them. I like to know the yardage of my yarn so I can plan projects without worrying.

Once your yarn is wound into skeins, tie it in at least 4 places with a figure 8 wrap. It should look like this: This keeps your yarn from tangling up while it's in the skein, and while it's being washed.

Once your yarn is securely tied, fill a sink with VERY hot water and some hair shampoo or wool wash. The hot water is necessary to relax the kinks. Your yarn will not felt if you do not agitate it. Gently push the yarn under the serface of the water until it is all submerged and wet. Let it sit for at least an hour. Gently squeeze the water out and refill the sink with water the same temperature in order to rinse the yarn. If you used wool wash, you can skip this step. Let the yarn soak for a minute or two and then squeeze the water out again. Place the yarn in your washing machine on the spin cycle and let it spin the rest of the water out. Hang the skeins to dry from a hanger. Mine are currently hanging high over a vent, which makes them dry really fast.

Additional Resources:

-Woolfestival.com has a fantastic wraps per inch guide. It lists generally what wpi equals what weight of yarn, how many stitches per inch, and aproximately how many yards of yarn you will need for a plain sweater. I don't completely agree with the numbers on the wpi chart, but everyone else seems to agree. Maybe I wrap my yarn too tight.

-Mysticspiral.com has some lovely printable yarn labels so you can keep your ever growing stash of recycled yarn organized!

-The Thrifty Knitters Group on Ravlery is a great place to ask questions and get support. You have to be a member of Ravelry.com in order to join, though.

If I have left something out, or you would like more information on a certain aspect, please let me know and I'll add it in!

Spiderman Mittens Free Pattern!

2007-12-12T19:31:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I searched the internet in vain for a good pattern for a pair of Spiderman mittens for my 6 yr old son. A friend found a great logo here which was too big for mittens in worsted weight, but was perfect for the hat I made to match. She also linked me to this Spiderman hat which I based my mittens on. That's some good work on there! Thank you for sharing it!

Spiderman Mittens

Size: Child

Finished Measurements: 7 1/4" tall, 2 3/4" wide

Materials: 1, 50g ball of worsted weight wool in Red

Small amounts of Black and Blue worsted weight wool

(I used Lambs pride in Red and Blue, and recycled merino in Black)

Knitting Needles: Size 5 double pointed or circular needles (I'm a magic loop girl myself)

Tapestry Needle

Stitch Holder or waste yarn

Gauge: 6 st and 7 rows / 1 inch

Pattern Notes:

You will need to twist your yarns together in order to avoid long floats in many places for these mittens, especially while working the thumb gusset. I typically twist my yarns together at least every 3 stitches.

For Right hand:

Cast on 30 stitches with Blue yarn.

Join in the round and knit in K1, P1 rib for 2 inches. Break Blue yarn.

Knit 1 round in Red yarn (this is row 1 of both charts)

Knit row 2 of Spider chart. M1, K1, M1 in red yarn (all thumb gusset stitches are knit in red yarn). Knit row 2 of Web chart, omitting first stitch.

Knit row 3 of Spider chart. K3. Knit row 3 of Web chart, omitting first stitch.

Knit row 4 of Spider chart. M1, K3, M1. Knit row 4 of Web chart, omitting first stitch.

Continue in this manner, increasing 1 stitch on each side of thumb gusset until row 12 has been completed (11 stitches in thumb gusset). Slip gusset stitches to a stitch holder or waste yarn.

Work row 13 of Spider chart. M1 with black yarn (this is now the first stitch of web chart). Knit row 12 of Web Chart.

Continue working Spider chart for back of hand and Web chart for palm of hand. Row 27 begins top decreases.

For decreases: SSK, work chart until last 2 stitches, K2tog for both the back of the hand and the palm.

When you reach the end of the chart, break red yarn. K2tog around with black yarn. Break yarn, pull through remaining stitches.

For Left Hand:

Knit ribbing and first row in Red yarn as for Right hand.

Knit row 2 of Spider Chart. Knit row 2 of Web chart, omitting last stitch. M1, K1, M1 in red yarn.

Continue knitting mitten as per right hand, with the thumb placed on the other side of the web chart.

Thumb:

Place gusset stitches back on needles. With Red yarn, pick up 3 stitches along thumb gap.

K9, SSK, K1, K2tog (12 stitches)

Knit 8 rounds on all 12 stitches.

K2tog around.

Break thread and pull yarn through remaining stitches.

Weave in all ends.

I always attach my mittens with a crochet chain mitten string. That way, the kids don't tend to loose the mittens. If your child is too cool for a mitten string, though, you can omit it.

Anyone know a kid with 2 right hands?

2007-11-29T10:40:00.000-07:00

I was quite proud of myself this morning when I finished this pair of mittens. It has been a bit of a trial for me. I think my son is going to love them, but I seem to be incapable of following my own charts and have had to rip out large sections of each mitten multiple times because I made a major mistake (like forgetting to start the thumb gusset). Plus my fair isle is lumpy since I apparently still haven't learned to keep the floats loose enough.

So, this morning, I knit the thumb, put down the second mitten and smiled to myself because now the mittens were done and I could move onto the hat. Wrong. Once I had grabbed my darning needle and found the other mitten, I took a good look at them. This just isn't going to work. They are both for the right hand. My son most definitely does not have 2 right hands, so I have 2 choices. I can rip one of the mittens and knit a left handed on this time, or I can just knit an entirely new mitten... and possibly make a 4th mitten so I now have 2 pairs instead of a screwed up pair. I think I need to stew on this for a while.

It's going to be one of those days

2007-11-24T12:38:00.000-07:00

I already know that it's going to be one of those days. One of those days where you count the minutes until your husband will be home from work.

It all started when I went to put a load of laundry in (which still needs to be moved over) and noticed that Odin, the male member of our bunny pair was laying dead, stiff as a board in his cage. Both bunnies had just been into the vet less than a month ago to be checked out. Odin had been neutered and all seemed to be going fine. I have no idea what happened. The poor thing is now laying on the snow covered back porch until I figure out what to do with him. It's so sad. He's still such a pretty bunny as he's laying there. *sigh*

While cleaning out and thoroughly scrubbing the cage the rest of my children proceeded to yell and scream and generally have a good time in the family room. Currently, the floor is covered in puzzle pieces and other toys. They are now yelling and screaming at the lunch table and trying to get up and run around when mommy isn't looking.

Alex is trying to "earn" money for his Santa's secret shop fund and has been doing little jobs around the house, which would be great if a 6 yr old's idea of sweeping the floor was the same as mine. Just because you can't see the sugar you spilled on the floor earlier, doesn't mean that it's not there for mommy to step in. *sigh*

I haven't gotten hardly any yarn work done this week because of the holiday and the fact that we had 2 different doctor appointments this week. Since I don't make any money if I don't wind yarn I've been feeling extremely guilty. Not too guilty to knit with my spare time, mind you, but guilty all the same. What I have managed to accomplish, though, is to knit a lot of small objects.

I met my new OB, who seems quite nice. My family practice doctor, who has delivered all 3 of my other children, can't handle delivering twins, so he referred me to his wife's OB. I'm now taking a whole battery of vitamins and such, including a DHA supplement. It's supposed to be good for baby brains and eyesight. That's wonderful, but I find it really obnoxious and totally wrong that the package strongly implies that if you don't take this supplement your child will be stupid and have horrible eyesight. Glad to know that's what they think of my current children, and almost everyone else on the planet.

Let's look at some knitting. That always makes me feel better.

Both hat and mitten sets are Christmas presents. The left set is for my niece Sam. It is my flower petal hat pattern and improvised mittens knit in Caron Simply Soft and Bernat Boa. The right set is for her brother Evan. It is a the Fiber Trends Ear Cozies hat and improvised mittens knit in Plymouth Encore and Caron Simply Soft. I prefer wool for mittens since it's so much warmer and dry so much quicker, but some how I don't think my sister is fond of hand washing.

This set is for Shaya. It is also an Ear cozies hat, but with a rounded top this time. It is knit in my own handspun yarn and Bernat Boa. The yarn is spun from Coper Moose roving in Colorful Rainforest. I split the roving lengthwise into thin strips and then spun it woolen into a mostly worsted weight single. The finished yarn had a really wonderful barber pole effect with the different bright colors on the dark teal background. It made a really neat self striping yarn when I knit it up since each strip of roving had a different color in it and I just spun the strips one after another. I had 2 skeins of this yarn and it was enough for the hat and mitten set, and a Calorimetry headband. I still have a little ball left, which will probably go in one of these as soon as I can find my clear balls.

This headband is an amazingly quick knit. I think I will be making a lot more of them. This one still needs a button, but I love how squishy, and pretty, and lovely it is.

Some Hats and almost finished objects

2007-11-14T08:20:00.001-07:00

This is the time of year when I do a lot of small, easy to finish projects. Add to that the fact that I'm pregnant and obviously nesting, I have had a serious urge to knit the garter stitch, or the smiple and quickly done. We won't even go into my urge to organize every closet in the house.

This is my first Ear Cozies hat from the Fiber Trends pattern. While organizing the stash the other day (see, there it is, me with the organizing closets) I found a lone ball of Berroco Keltic that I had bought to try it out. I love it. It is soft, easy to knit with, warm and just enough for a child's hat. I love how the hat graduates from green at the bottom to brown at the top. It makes me think of those little acorn hats that people wear in fairy tales.

This is a flower petal Hat to be part of a hat and mitten set for my niece Sam for Christmas. I knit it from my own pattern instructions, which apparently still need some work before they are ready for publication. The pattern actually got tested this time, since it's been so long since I wrote it I couldn't really remember what I was doing. It's knit in Caron Simply Soft acrylic against all urge to knit in wool because I know my sister would not appreciate hand washing the hats and mittens. I still think it's better in wool.

Elizabeth Zimmerman Baby Surprise Jacket needing buttons and destined for one of the twins.

Mason Dixon baby bib o love needing a button and a cute patch also destined for one of the twins. This was knit in a fit of desperation for "garter stitch therapy" after a particularly long, hard, day. You know you're pregnant when the school bus people calling and telling you the bus is outside and your child is waiting makes you want to cry. DH doesn't understand the power of garter stitch therapy... The muggles never do.

Mason Dixon 1 color log cabin blanket destined for one of the twins and it seems destined to not be all 1 color. I LOVE knitting this. It is addictive and relaxing. I recycled this 50/50 wool, acrylic yarn with a baby blanket in mind, but it's not enough for a garter stitch blanket. The garter stitch eats the wool. It is currently on hold until I can find a nice bulky yarn to do a nice boarder. Apparently it is still too small.

Now I need to decide if I want to fold a mountain of laundry, or unravel sweaters. Work never stops. I guess the fuzzy mittens I have planned will have to wait.

On The Farm at Sunset

2007-11-14T08:04:00.000-07:00

One Skein Snuggle Scarf

2007-10-14T15:11:00.000-06:00

There have been very few yarns in my life that I have adored so much that I simply MUST knit it NOW, but this spearmint handspun is one of them. It is so soft and lofty, and lovely that it just makes me itch to grab some needles. The only problem is that I only had 138 yrds of it. What does one do with a single skein of yummy yarn? Make a scarf :D

I present to you the One Skein Snuggle Scarf!

This scarf is is worked with a 4 stitch double knit edging. The edging is particularly snuggly and cozy next to the skin. It may curl during knitting, but lays quite flat after blocking. A pretty frog closure keeps the scarf securely in place without the need for a knot, and adds a touch of elegance. The very basic stitch pattern is designed to show off your lovely yarn, not distract from it.

Yarn: 1 skein of to die for, absolutely MUST knit now, worsted weight yarn.
Needles: Size 7 (or size needed to create a fabric you love)
1 pretty frog type closure

Cast on 30 stitches loosely.
Row 1: (K1, Sl1) twice, (K1, P1) 11 times, (K1, Sl1) twice.
Row 2: (K1, Sl1) twice, (P1, K1) 11 times, (K1, Sl1) twice.
Repeat rows 1 & 2, 4 more times. (10 rows of seed stitch boarder)

Body 1: (K1, Sl1) twice, K22, (K1, Sl1) twice.
Body 2: (K1, Sl1) twice, P22, (K1, Sl1) twice.
Repeat body rows until piece measures about 36" or until you are afraid you won't have enough yarn left for the other seed stitch boarder.

Repeat rows 1 & 2, 5 times more.
Bind off all stitches and weave in ends.

After blocking, drape scarf elegantly around your neck like you want to wear it and mark where the frog closure should hold it closed. Sew on Frog closure and snuggle up!

I can't stop casting on!

2007-10-11T17:39:00.000-06:00

I have really been trying to finish things before I start new projects. I really want to start another pair of slippers (the wool is staring at me from my desk right now) as well as some baby BSJ sweaters but I have resisted. I cold NOT ignore my luscious green Merino silk handspun yarn though. I spun it up during General Conference on Sunday and it is so soft and lofty and lovely that I am seriously reconsidering my preferance for combed top over carded bats. So, it somehow made it onto my needles...It is a very simple scarf and when I'm done if I like the results enough I'll post the pattern. Well, maybe even if I don't like it as much...lol At the moment, it is still rolling more than I had intended. Apparently double knit boarders don't keep it as straight as I had hoped.

I'm thinking of adding some clear seed beads to that seed stitch end, but I'll decide that when I'm done.Incidentally, if anyone has any suggestions where my size 7 Knitpicks options tips are, I'd greatly appreciate it....

We're expecting TWINS!

2007-10-08T12:30:00.000-06:00

I had my ultrasound today for the new pregnancy. I have been pretty complacent with this one. After all, after having 3 children, I should know what's going on, right?

Well, as the technician was measuring all of the body parts she moved over just slightly and went down along the spine. "See, here's a head" she said. I looked at the picture and said "But wasn't the baby's head up there?" I said pointing in the direction that she had just come down the spine. Sure enough, there were 2 heads there. And 2 spines, and 2 hearts, and 4 feet.... I can't believe it.

It's one of those fleeting thoughts that cross your mind as you go in. "I wonder if it's twins" but you never actually expect it to be!

I was feeling totally prepared before. I had done this 3 times before. I know how to handle a new baby, but I'm not sure how to handle 2 new babies... How exactly does one breastfeed 2 babies?

Both babies seem quite proud to be boys, since they flashed us a number of times and made it QUITE obvious that they are boys. This will bring our family from 3 kids to 5, with 4 boys and one girl. Poor Shaya is destined to be the only girl it appears.

I suppose on the bright side, DH really thought this should be the last one, but I had reservations. I felt that I might want 1 more and wasn't ready to take perminent action yet. I guess that the Lord can find compromise anywhere. We will end up with 5 kids and I won't have to worry about morning sickness again.. yea!

Look actual knitting!

2007-10-08T12:21:00.000-06:00

I've got 3 active projects going right now and keep itching to cast on more. I am being good, though, until I finish at least the 2 that are at least 50% done.

I am on the second sleeve of my cardigan Rogue. It is so close to being done that I can taste it, but can't seem to focus on it enough to ACTUALLY finish.

The second main project is the Knitting Needle bag from Knitting Daily. This is a KAL for the knitting parent's yahoo group. I only had 2 balls of lambs pride worsted that I wanted to use for the bag, so I plan to make some modifications. I'm using the worsted weight yarn doubled on size 9 needles. I plan to knit each side with 1 ball. Because the side I have already finished is only 7" tall instead of the 9" stated in the pattern, I plan to add a sturdy fabric bottom and then normal purse straps. I wasn't fond of the garter stitch straps anyway.

I joined the Yarnographers group on Ravelry and have been working on my photography. It is amazing what the photos can look like when you don't just throw it on the floor and call that a backdrop...lol

Tell me, which of these 3 pictures do you like best?I think at the moment I'm a bit partial to the top one. I like how the 2 needles run parallel to each other. I also like the contrast of the super shiny knitpicks needles in there.

Well, it's been a while hasn't it?

2007-10-04T08:19:00.000-06:00

I admit, I've been neglectful. I will not apologise. We found out this summer that we are expecting our 4th child, and what with being pregnant, trying not to be burried in mount washmore (laundry) The Twice Sheared Sheep, and maybe hoping to actually knit, the blog has taken a back seat. Well, there's that and the fact that my sidebar is hopelessly out of date and I just don't want to take the time to fix it. I got onto Ravelry a few weeks ago and spent A LOT of time uploading pics and project info. I must say that having the blog for specific details has been nice.

So, for today's post, which is in no way ment to catch everyone up, I have a cautionary picture:
Many of you know that I have a lot of yarn hanging around the house. Most of it is in hanks, and most of it won't stay here. It is destined for new homes through ebay. I wash every single hank after winding it, and then spin out the water in my washing machine before hanging it up to dry. Well, this is what happens when you accidentally set the washing machine to WASH the yarn instead of to spin. That lovely rug like object used to be 3 skeins of gray merino laceweight and 1 skein of my own 3ply handspun Merino Silk. *sigh* as far as I can tell it is un-salvageable. I'm thinking of sticking some eyes in there and calling it a pet.

10am is better than 5pm

2007-04-27T10:14:00.000-06:00

10am is much better than 5pm. This is probably closely related to the fact that the baby is asleep and the 2 bigger kids are playing outside. It is also related to this:
That is Rogue #3. MY Rogue. Isn't it lovely?! Check out how fabulous the stitch definition is! I think that it's related to the fact that I'm essentially knitting with 5 strands of lace weight yarn held together. Most store bought sweaters are made this way. These have partially felted together, so I'm not really having any problems with splitting. All of that is from 1 ball of yarn. I think that it was the back of the sweater I took apart. I have a bunch more too. See:
That's one of the fabulous things about knitting with recycled yarn. If you do it right, it's almost like having a giant cone of yarn. It goes on FOREVER.

Here are the problem Cookie A socks (also knit in recycled yarn):I had the yarn in my stash from when I was convinced that I was going to knit DH a pair of socks so he would understand what all the fuss is all about. He insisted that he didn't want them, so It has sat there. It was the only sock yarn I had enough of for a full sized pair of socks, so I nabbed it. See how the swoosh doesn't go all the way across. I still need to figure that one out, but not today.

5pm

2007-04-26T17:41:00.000-06:00

I don't know what it is about 5pm, but that seems to be my limit. At 4pm I'm still chipper and flowing along, but for some reason 5pm is it. I start to get a little depressed, and the kids begin to drive me nuts. Well, they've been anoying me for a while, but it all just seems worse after 5pm. At 5pm I need to start thinking about dinner. Brendan and Shaya are definitely up from their naps, and Alex is home from school and has exausted his hour of video game time. By 5pm all I want to do is hide away in my corner and knit..... or read.... or something that does not involve children. This seems a little strange to me after I have had at least 2 hours in the afternoon by myself. True, I usually spend this time working and maybe I resent the fact that my absolute free time has to be spent working.

It didn't used to be this bad, but DH no longer gets home by 2pm. It makes a huge difference when you know that shortly after noon you will no longer be alone. My uncle lives next door and has come over in the evenings quite a bit lately, which is nice, because this seems to fall right about 5pm. It really is a sanity saver.

On the bright side, today, I did get a good hour to knit uninterupted. I started my 3rd Rogue sweater. Yes, you heard that right. My third. I knit the first one for DH for my knitting Olympics project. I knit the second for my Mom about Christmas time (which I never got a picture of and which she managed to felt slightly the first wash out). This third one is finally for me. All me. I am making a cardigan version. I'm not really much of a pullover jacket kind of girl, but I would love a hooded cabled jacket. I have over 1500 yrds of beautiful green recycled wool. It has taken me over 6 months to find a wool sweater large enough for this project. Especially one that I liked the color and was soft enough. I love this color. It is stunning. The stitch definition is fabulous. The sweater is going to be perfect. I think the price is going to help make up for the $90 I spent on yarn for the Nantucket jacket. At $1 for one sweater and $90 for the other I think they even out. I laugh, though, because I know the zipper is going to cost more than the yarn for this sweater.

I started it on Tuesday evening and I just joined the pockets, which means that I'm most of the way up to the armpits. This pattern gets faster each time I knit it. I wonder who I'm going to knit the next one for. I think I'm in love.

I have already abandoned the pretty Cookie A. sock. I finished the first sock in a little over 24 hours, but the swoosh doesn't go all the way across the toe and it doesn't look right. I need to wrap my head around the math and try to figure out if I did something wrong, or if Cookie wrote the pattern so that only the largest, or smallest sPublishize swooshes right. If it's the latter, that means I need to do some recalculating. My brain just hasn't been up to that, so it just sits and languishes in it's zip lock bag.

And now it's almost 6pm and I need to cook some hamburger or dinner won't be on the table in time. Just 30 more minutes until DH gets home :D

Entrelac Socks

2007-04-21T08:19:00.000-06:00

Well, it took me a month and a half (mostly because I neglected them) the Entrelac socks are done. These are normal sized versions of the ones in the latest Interweave Knits. I'm pretty proud that I took this picture of myself using the timer on my new camera :D

Last year, my mom placed an order to Knitpicks and bought about 7 balls of sock yarn (as well as the yarn for her Rogue sweater, which I never did take a picture of). All in different colors, since I can make a pair of ankle socks from a single skein if i keep it simple. I have to admit that after knitting her 4 pairs of said ankle socks, I was getting a little sick of plain Jane socks. Since I didn't have enough of any one color for longer socks or intricate patterns, I thought the entrelac socks were perfect! I could use 2 different colors and get a full sized pair of socks.

These were a lot of fun to knit, but I think they took quite a bit longer than normal socks, what with the knitting and purling backwards and all. Now that they're off my needles, though, I have given myself permission to start a normal sized version of these. Isn't that toe fantastic?! I haven't been that fond of Cookie's patterns in Knitty (the disembodied leg unnerves me), but I Adore her knee sock sized socks. I already bought the German stocking pattern and am still eyeing Rhiannon.

Blanket Madness

2007-04-09T10:39:00.000-06:00

A very good friend of mine is getting married in September. Like the wonderful knitter friend that I am, I decided that he and his new family (he's getting a wife and a kid all in one :D) needed a hand knit blanket to warm their new home. When he was here Jay picked out this blanket from Big Needle Knit Afghans.
The pattern calls for 27 skeins of Lambs Pride Superwash Bulky. This is a little out of my budget. I know that this is going to cost a good chunk of change, but I don't think I can fork over that much. So, I began my search for an alternative yarn. I picked up a ball of Lion Brand Woolese Quick and Thick and really didn't like the result. It is a nice soft yarn, but it is fairly loosely spun and ends up fuzzy looking. I figured that if it was this fuzzy just after knitting, I didn't want to see what it would be after a year of use.

In searching online, I narrowed my choices down to Patons Shetland Chunky and Plymouth Encore Chunky. They have the same composition, cost about the same, but are spun slightly differently and have slightly different color selections. I called a few yarn shops around (all of them are at least 45 minutes away!) and finally decided I would bite the bullet and drive to Boulder to Shuttles, Spindles, and Skeins. They have a huge selection, and I KNEW that they at least had Encore. Amazingly enough, they had both yarns I was considering. They also had Lambs pride in the superwash bulky! I couldn't find it anywhere online and they had it. After feeling it and noticing it was over $9 a skein, I ruled it out. The Encore was yarn was a little fuzzier and more of a raspberry red, so I bought one skein of the Shetland Chunky. I plan to swatch, unravel and figure out my yardage. I am using the cable pattern from the book, but am going to do my blanket in strips so that it is more portable and I feel like I'm accomplishing something as I knit. I will knit a swatch with the yarn held singly and doubled so that I can determine if I really like it better that way (the pattern in the book has 2 strands together). Once I figure out my gauge, and my yardage for 1 or 2 repeats, I'll figure out how many strips I need and then order my yarn.

Anyone know how much yarn I'll need to allot for the fringe?

So.... While I was there, I also saw the Plymouth Oh My display again. I had felt this the last time I was in the store (Mother's day of last year) and managed to resist buying some. It is the softest yarn I have ever touched. Remember that I handle angora and cashmere all the time. This stuff is divine. Last time, I didn't have a purpose for the yarn, other than that I loved it, and $20 for 4 balls for a tiny blanket seemed like too much. This time, though, I had already found out my cousin is having a baby shower next month. I had a baby to knit for, so I splurged on the yarn.

I finished this little car seat blanket in 2 days using 2 balls of blue and 2 balls of red. I probably would have bought more, but they only had a few balls in each color and these were the only 2 colors that looked boyish. It's ok, though, because it's just about right to tuck around a little one in a car seat, or for a small lovey to rub your face on when you're sleepy.

It was a really simple pattern that I adapted slightly from the one the yarn came with.
2 balls main color, and 2 balls boarder color "Oh My"
Size 10.5 36" Circular Needle

With main color: Cast on 47 stitches and knit in stockingette until you run out of yarn. Do not bind of.

With Boarder color:
Knit across top. Place marker.
Pick up 1 stitch for every other row along the side of the square. Place marker.
Pick up 47 stitches along the bottom. Place marker.
Pick up 1 stitch for every other row along the other long side of the square. Place marker. Do not turn.

Joining in the round, Purl 1 round.
Knit to within 1 stitch of first marker. Kfb, slip marker, kfb.
Repeat, increasing 1 stitch before and after each marker every knit round, and purling even on every purl round.

After 17 rounds, bind off purlwise.

Yarn Harlot

2007-04-06T07:53:00.000-06:00

I know that the blog has been a bit neglected this past month. The fact is, though, that I had a little mini breakdown earlier in the month where I just got so overwhelmed with everything. This was quite nicely resolved by a hot stone massage by my mom, the institution of Friday night movie night with my husband and a night out to see the Yarn Harlot. It's amazing what a little personal time can do for a person.

So, anyway, I got to go see the Yarn Harlot last night. She was absolutely worth all the fussing and fretting and scheming it took to see her! I had told DH that I wanted to go several times, which apparently he took to mean "I kinda want to go to this knitting thing if you're off work" instead of what I really meant which was "I REALLY want to go to this knitting thing. Could you take off work, or something dramatic so that I can go?" So, being that we both took this differently, it inevitably lead to a close miss with tears when I realized that DH had no intention of taking the day off and really did not care that this was so important to me. I began to scheme. We only have 1 car in the family since DH sprained his knee and can't ride the motorcycle. This means that in order to go, I would need 1) a baby sitter and 2) a ride or access to another car. My mom kind of wanted to go, but she would be about an hour in the opposite direction of where I live, thus making it impossible to pick me up and get there on time. My Grandma offered to take me if my mom could bring me home (which mom eventually realized that she couldn't go at all) assuming that I could have someone watch the kids. I thought that maybe someone could pick DH up from work instead of driving me. Then I would have the car. The problem was, though, that no matter how I plotted it involved 2 very kind souls going out of there way to help me get to an event that they probably wouldn't understand.

Then it hit me. The perfect solution. My uncle lives next door. He's great with the kids. He was off that night. He was willing to watch the kids for the 1 1/2 hours until DH got home (which turned into 5 hours because DH got his schedule wrong, but I digress) AND he was willing to let me borrow his truck to go down to Denver! I was ecstatic! I already think that my uncle is a saint for doing this for me (I don't get sitters that often) and when I got home, my living room was immaculate (it was, of course, trashed when I left) and the dishes were done! He gets the babysitter of the year award. I'm really glad I filled up his gas tank all the way.

The Yarn Harlot was amazing. She is way more funny in person than she is reading her work. Even the workers at the Tattered Cover were laughing with the rest of us. I'm sure they thought we were all a little nuts, but heck, there were 200 knitters in the same room who had started waiting as early as 8:30 in the morning (The event was at 7:30pm)!! The line waiting for numbered tickets to get into the room wound through their book cases and all around. There were everywhere, sitting happily on the floor, knitting, and chatting happily with the complete strangers who were standing next to them. I walked into the bookstore at 6:15 and ended up # 116 in line! Never underestimate the desire of knitters to see the Harlot...lol

While I was # 116 in line, there were 2 seats RIGHT UP FRONT that the lady next to me in line and I snagged. How awesome! I guess just like in school, there are people who don't like to sit in the front row.

There were some really awesome people around us. There was the lady behind me who teaches spinning at Posh yarn shop in Denver. She was REALLY nice, and that alone made me want to go and visit the store.

There was the lady who ACTUALLY SPUN AND MADE the amazing socks on the cover of the newest Spin Off Magazine! I actually got to hold them! They were stunning and so very fine. I am in awe. Amazingly enough, the editor of Spin Off was there too! Who knew that we had such royalty in our midst in Denver. There were people spinning and knitting everywhere and chatting happily together since we're all really the same.

My neighbor took a picture of me in the crowd, and although, I look dorky, I am sitting next to a really awesome couple. This husband and wife BOTH knit. She was knitting a flip top mitten, and he was knitting a hat. They are from Alaska and just happened to be visiting their son in Boulder and saw that The Harlot was going to be here. How cool is that?!
(Please note that I have a new camera and after the first few yellowish pictures I decided I could adjust the white balance. I love that feature)

In this picture you can see the guys who were sitting behind me. One of the guys had several piercings and was happily knitting away on a sock. This sock to be exact. I found it very ironic that a guy happened to be knitting the phallic shaped Blue Moon sock. The lady who had been there since 8:30am was mostly through with the foot of an Entralac sock from Interweave knits, and there was a lady behind us who was working on a square for Lizard Ridge.

It was so awesome to see everyone knitting and to say "Hey! I know that pattern!"

Then the Harlot arrived! She looks a little nervous doesn't she? She's a lot smaller than she looks in pictures. Her personality is bigger though :D

The Sock Shot. Don't you just love reciprocal blogging?

And finally at about 10pm I got my book signed by the Harlot, and got to hold the sock. She held my handspun shrug, which I'm thinking of frogging for the 4th time. It needs to be perfect darn it!

I didn't get home until after 11 (which is WAY past my bed time) and DH was worried. He didn't think a knitting book signing could last that long. Silly Muggle.

PS. Knitters Without boarders has now raised over 1/2 a million dollars total for Doctors without boarders. The muggle shop keepers were astounded by that. Especially since 130k of that was in 72 hours. Fear us.

PPS. Did you know that knitters are the #1 users of bloglines?

I read about this once...

2007-03-09T08:04:00.000-07:00

I finally read the Yarn Harlot's first book last week and cried with her when she tried to block her friend's superwash wool sweater, only to have it come out of the water twice as wide.

Well..... This has just happened to me and I'm devastated. I have been working on the Nantucket Jacket for a month or so now and finally put the buttons on yesterday. I tried it on and it was lovely, but I thought it could use a good blocking. So, I threw it in the washing machine as per the ball band instructions, but when I pulled it out to lay it flat, it was GIGANTIC. It grew far more width wise than it did length wise. I remembered that people had suggested to the yarn harlot that she should put it in the dryer, so I did that. It still looks bad...

I'm going to try to block it again today and stretch it down, but I don't have high hopes. If that doesn't work, I think I may just have to frog it. I know that I won't wear it this way.

I suppose it's all my fault, since I did do a gauge swatch, but I didn't wash it. If I had washed it like they say to, I would have known that it would stretch. I wonder if the designer had bothered to wash their swatch either. I already went down a size in needles to get gauge, but in order to adjust for the growth, I'm going to have to go down a lot of sizes. I love this yarn, and it took a lot of courage to buy the yarn. This is the most I have ever spent on a project, ever. *sigh*

Any one else had this problem?!

Almost There

2007-03-05T07:41:00.000-07:00

4 1/2 of 5 pieces completed. Once I realized that I only had 1 more piece to go before this sweater would be done, you can barely tear me away from it! This last stretch just makes me itchy to get it done. At this point, I have the basic pattern stitch memorized. Once I do the setup row, my knitting tells me what to do, and I've got my handy dandy number chain counter to keep track of the repeats (cross the cable at 5).

I look forward to the seaming and the crochet and am seriously impatient that the second sleeve is taking so long. I know that some of you hate seaming and finishing. I actually don't mind it, as long as it's seaming. I'm not so fond of weaving in ends. Especially since they tend to worm their way out. Since this is a superwash merino, I think that I'm going to have to tack the few ends that I stupidly have in the middle of the piece with some matching thread. I have this unnatural aversion to wasting any yarn. It has taken me years to learn to leave more than a tiny tail when I start a new ball of yarn. This same aversion leads to obnoxious tails to be hidden in the middle of a piece of flat knitting. There is no knitterly logic for this shame, other than I can't really bring myself to leave a BIG long tail at the edge of the knitting where it belongs. "Maybe I'll make it across" I tell myself, even though I know I won't. Then when I inevitably don't, I don't want to tink back. Maybe it's because I think that if I don't use up every last bit of a ball that I won't have enough for the sweater. This doesn't make a whole lot of sense either since I DID buy a whole extra ball, and the next size up in the pattern calls for the same number of balls. I think by the end of this sweater I have finally convinced myself that my life would really be a whole lot easier if I leave the ends on the edge (where I can hide them in the seam) and that I WILL in fact have enough yarn.

I am a pretty good seamer, though. My pieces seem sturdy and the seams are pretty, so this part of the finishing has never worried me. I'm not fond of patterns that have lots of tiny lengths of things that need to be seamed (like darts). This breaks the rhythm and creates more ends to hide. I think, though, that after the bazillion sweaters I have taken apart by now that I have a feeling for how sweaters should be put together. Seam the shoulders. Sew the sleeve cap in. Seem the whole sweater from cuff to waistline. This is much easier than my random version of seam the shoulder and sides, then seam the sleeve, then try to fit one round object into another round hole.

I should have some finished object pictures soon! That is, assuming that DH will take more than one picture so that I have a CHANCE of getting a flattering one to post.

The way it is

2007-02-27T07:49:00.000-07:00

Well, the crud has been flying around our house for almost a month now. It is just a cold, but it has managed to fell every other member of the family, including the baby. It started with Alex. This makes sense since he goes to school and is surrounded by other kids. He had a fever and a cough and generally looked miserable. About half a week later, he gave it to his sister who had a higher fever and looked even more miserable. It turns out that she has an ear infection. Once the pink antibiotics started flowing she perked right up. Go figure. About 2 days later DH and the baby caught it with a vengeance. DH has been home from work since Thursday and the baby has not wanted to do anything except nurse, sleep, and be held. I was sure that he was going to wean himself in favor of the newly discovered sippy cup (What?! I can drink and look around and walk across the room all at the same time?! Who wants to nurse? Give me the cup!), but apparently that has to wait until the crud goes away because when he's sick ALL HE WANTS IS MOMMY!

I have been doing everything in my power to avoid this cold. I was the last hold out. I wasn't about to be sick too because I would still have to take care of the other 4 sick people in the house. There is nothing quite as miserable and makes you quite as resentful as not having someone to take care of you. It's no fun when you're healthy, but it's certainly not fun when you're sick too. So, I took the Airborne stuff that is an herbal immune booster. I even half heartedly used Zicam. I got the chewables and they taste like wax. Yuck. It seemed to be working. I made it about half a week before it began to overcome me yesterday. This morning, I admit that the cold has beaten me. My glands are definitely swollen and my sinuses are definitely stuffed. Now that the cold is inevitable, I don't know if being sick while all the kids are feeling better and running around is all that much better :(

At least DH is feeling better enough this morning to supervise the installation of the new hot water heater that is replacing the broken one that came with our house. You know our house is only about 3 months old right?! At least I'll be able to take a nice hot bath this evening after not having hot water since last Wednesday evening. That, and my Yarn Harlot book sound like bliss to me.

Memories

2007-02-25T08:13:00.000-07:00

I have always known that my memory is strongly tied to my sense of smell. A familiar scent (whether pleasant or otherwise) can bring back a flood of memories all at once. Some of my fondest memories as a child are tromping through horse pastures. Now, just a whiff of horse, or the various weedy plants that grew in those pastures can take me back. It's not necessarily something that I would choose to breath in deeply, but it always brings a smile to my face. I'm probably not a perfume, or scented candle person for this reason. I have a fairly sensitive nose and tend to see the world a bit through that sense.

I have a blanket that an old boyfriend had crocheted for me. Yes, he crocheted it. It is done in afghan stitch in probably every spare scrap piece of yarn that his mom had lying around. I can still remember the smell of the laundry soap that surrounded that blanket when he gave it to me. I remember that the very first time I snuggled under it, I was watching Joe Versus the Volcano. To this day, when I see that blanket, I think of him, shortly followed by Joe Versus the Volcano.

There is a scene in Coyote Ugly, where the main character Violet describes why she wants to become a song writer. She says that songs have the power to take you back. She remembers a specific song that every time she hears it she remembers exactly where she was the first time she heard it, exactly what her mom looked like, and exactly what her hair smelled like. I have always had this same association with smells, but I had no idea that my fingers had this same power. I picked up the second front piece of the Nantuckett Jacket last night (after ripping out 1 1/2 balls of work, but we won't go there) and as I was forming the stitches my mind was suddenly flooded with a warm feeling and the scenes from The Age of Innocence. I had just finished listening to this on my I-pod, with long stretches of it while working on this very sweater. Ironically this was recorded by Brenda Dayne, who does the knitting podcast Cast-on. It seems that in the same way that my sense of smell has the power to bring back fond memories, so does my sense of touch. It is fascinating to me to think that this story, and Brenda Dayne, are now woven into this sweater as deeply as if it were a part of the yarn it's self. It also makes me very happy to think that each time I pick up to knit, or eventually to wear, this sweater that I will be revisited by the familiar characters of this story.

Somehow I don't think that I'm the only one who's memories are affected this same way.

I can't tell you how much I love this!

2007-02-10T07:46:00.000-07:00

This is exactly 2 balls worth of back for the Nantucket Jacket in all it's springy, bouncy, lovely Merino goodness! All other projects were promptly kicked to the curb with the arrival of this yarn.

This may be the my favorite yarn that I have ever knit with. It feels and acts a bit like a really good sock yarn, but isn't as firm. It is squishy. The stitch definition is amazing. I have noticed, though, that for wool it is pretty heavy. I think that the finished sweater will have a very pleasing weight to it, and I know that i won't be able to keep myself from wearing it every day.

The pattern looks complicated, and is for the first row, but after that, you just pretty much get to count to 6 and then follow what the stitches tell you to do. Since I'm a combined knitter, my knit stitches and purl stitches sit differently on the needles, so it's a piece of cake to knit along and see when to knit or purl. I plan to finish at least another ball of yarn today. I just can't seem to put this down!

Screensavers should not be this much fun...

2007-02-09T07:46:00.000-07:00

Generally I have not been much of a screen saver girl. I'm more likely to just turn off the monitor, but recently I have found that a screen saver can be vital. This is because I have a 11 month old who thinks that my keyboard is the greatest thing in the world. Does he touch DH's keyboard?! NO, just mine. Apparently Mommy's is better. So, I've had a screen saver running with a password so that if he manages to grab the keyboard when I'm not looking he doesn't mess anything up. The screen savers that the computer came with are somewhat lacking in prettiness, so I went in search of a free aquarium screen saver. I discovered that most of them have a free demo mode, but it puts up a stupid screen half the time saying "Hit the space bar to get the full version". This is not only annoying, but seriously bad since the space bar is big and one little baby has been known to go on the Internet this way. DH suggested a website called Magentic.com I found this really cool aquarium screen saver that makes clear water and fish over whatever image you have as your desktop background. Ironically when it first came on, this is what I saw:
I giggled every time I saw it. It was so funny that the waterline fell just below his eyes. I like to think that he has his face plastered up against the back side of a fish tank. I don't want to drown my baby. So, anyway, I thought this was so humorous, that I got a whole bunch more pictures from the same website and started seeing if anything else looked quite as cool as my baby with his face plastered to the screen. This is what I got:

Yes, I know I'm a bit loony for taking so many pictures of my computer screen, but I'm a blogger.... what did you really expect?!

It's Here! It's finally here!

2007-02-07T09:04:00.000-07:00

My Pure Merino is FINALLY here for the long anticipated Nantucket Jacket!! You'll remember the jacket from the cover of the 2006 Winter Interweave Kni ts. I ordered it from Handknitting.com (which I've heard a lot of good things about) on Jan 9th and just FINALLY got it yesterday. Apparently there was a major hold up of the yarn at the border. Do you think the border cops thought there was drugs mixed in with the yarn or something?! Well, maybe there was some Kid Silk Crack (aka Kid Silk Haze) in the same shipment.

This is the most expensive project I have ever made, even at the reduced price of $6.70 a skein. I have to tell you, though, that this yarn is worth every penny of that! It is soft and squishy and WONDERFUL! But then again, I adore Merino wool, and this is absolutely top of the line. I went ahead and sprung for the yarn called for for a few reasons.

I LOVE merino, and I wanted this sweater to be something that I couldn't wait to put on.
I wanted the stitches and cables to be as crisp as in the picture. I think someone described it as like fondant.
Pure Merino is shrink resistant! That means that not only is it soft and incredible, I'm far less likely to ruin it :D
Bordeaux is such a luscious color.

So, last night I managed to swatch (I tried 9's 8's and 7's.) and settled on size 8 needles. I'm making the size 36" and got all of 1 row knitted...lol Now I need to get all my work done like a good girl and I can work on it some more :D I think all other projects will be on hold until this is done. I have never seen a pattern that I absolutely NEEDED to knit as much as this one.

And since I had the camera out, and I can, I present some shameless kid promotion.

I let Brendan feed himself his own mashed potatoes last night and he was amazingly clean! The spoon is mostly for decoration. he ate it all with his fingers.

And now some cute pics of the older kiddos, just because.

Miter Mania

2007-02-05T12:51:00.000-07:00

PublishI have this obsession with self striping yarn with a LOOOONG color change. You know, like that nice expensive Noro that I will probably never get a chance to try? Well a few months ago Patons came out with there SWS. There was a lot of talk about it, and being the follower that I am, I went down to Michaels and bought 1 skein of every color they had when it was on sale for $1 off. It just so happens that this coincided with my fascination with the Mason Dixon book, as well as Lizard Ridge. I absolutely adore all of the random looking mitered square blankets, but I don't like the thought of all the ends from changing yarns, so that naturally draws me to self patterning yarns.
So, here are my squares for my Mason Dixon blanket. I got 2 squares from each ball of yarn, and still have 1 ball left to knit. I don't know if I like all the pieces together, maybe this is really several blankets together. Who knows. For now it's just a big stack of squares.

Picot Edged Fingerless Mitts a Free Pattern

2007-01-26T13:04:00.000-07:00

Basic Picot Edged Fingerless Mitts
Yarn: Aprox 120 yrds of sport weight yarn.
Sample is knit with about 1/2 skein of Cherry Tree Hill Super Sport; 4oz, 250 yrds, Quarry Hill color way.
Needles: Size 3 please use your preferred circular knitting solution; ie: dpn or circular.

Gauge: 20 stitches and 8 rows to 4 inches

Make 2 identical mitts. They work equally well for either hand.

Using the backward loop method, Cast on 32 stitches.
Knit 5 rounds.
*Yo, K2tog* around.
Knit 5 rounds.
Fold the cast on edge up towards the inside of the tube. Pick up 1 stitch from the cast on edge and place on left hand needle. K2tog. Repeat this around until entire hem is knit up.
Picot edge created.

Knit until cuff measures 3 1/2 inches from the tip of picot edging.
Round 1: K2, PM, M1, K2, M1, PM, Knit to end of round.
Round 2: Knit 1 round.
Round 3: K2, Slip marker, M1, Knit to next marker, M1, Slip marker, Knit to end of round.
Round 4: Knit 1 round.
Repeat rounds 3 and 4 until there are 6 stitches between markers.
Knit 2, remove marker, K1, Bind off 14 stitches, K1, remove marker, Knit to the end of round.
Knit 1 round.
Knit 2, K2tog, Knit to end of round.
Continue knitting even until mitt measures 7 inches from picot edging, or 1 1/2 inches since binding off thumb stitches.
Knit 5 rounds.
*Yo, K2tog* around
Knit 5 rounds.
Break yarn, leaving a tail that is at least 10 inches long. Do not bind off.
Turn mitt inside out. Fold edge down and using a tapestry needle sew down top picot edging.

I finished these mitts last night and have worn them a lot today. I really like them, but am debating if maybe I shouldn't have bound off the thumb stitches, but instead left them live so that I could knit a longer thumb. I like how they look, but my thumb gets just a tad cold.

Starteritis

2007-01-25T14:22:00.000-07:00

Nope, the cashmere gloves still aren't done. In fact, I haven't even worked on them since last Monday. They just don't seem to motivate me.

A few weeks ago I was having a really bad day. That was the day that our water turned to mud and I needed a serious pick me up. I needed some color and happy yarn, so I pulled some Cherry Tree Hill sport yarn out of the stash and cast on. It is sock yarn so I cast on some socks. I realized as I was winding it, though, that it wasn't fingering weight and I decided after letting the socks "marinate" for a week or so that I didn't really want heavy weight socks. I wanted a pair of fingerless mitts like everyone in blog world seems to have. So, last night when I was particularly irritated at DH I ripped out the socks and cast on for the mitts.

At first I thought that I'd do a cool little pattern, after all, the socks had been in garter rib, but after a few inches of work, I realized that this yarn was far too wild for anything other than just plain old stockingette... *sigh* I didn't come to this conclusion before I had cast on and ripped out the mitts a few times with different patterns. Finally I settled on a picot edge (because I wasn't feeling quite in the mood for ribbing) and plain old plain old. I could have really used them today. My hands are freezing, but they should be done soon. Sport weight knits much faster than fingering.

On other starting news, I have managed to start up the yarn production for my recycled yarn shop. This has been on hold as long as my water has been pure crap, but it seems to be under control now, so I have begun production again. Just check out this fabulous periwinkle Cashmere!
On a completely un-fiber related note, but on a totally motherly pride one, This little one:
Has decided that he can now walk. He's been debating it for about a week, but has now screwed up the courage to let go of objects and walk around the living room. I say give him another week and he will have pretty much given up the whole crawling thing. In some ways it's wonderful, in others it truly means that he's no longer a little baby *sigh*

The most depressing day of the year

2007-01-23T08:20:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, we had to put our dear sweet fur baby to sleep. Our cat Socks got sick and decided to stop eating around Christmas time and never really ate again. She would drink a little water, but mostly just got skinnier and weaker, and more miserable. We took her to the Vet just after New years and paid $300 for the vet to say that her blood work was good, and that she looked fine other than her weight and a pretty bad urinary tract infection. This wouldn't explain why she had stopped eating, and that we could spend A LOT more money to do x-rays or ultrasounds and such to see if she had cancer or something. She was only about 10 yrs old. That's not really all that old for a cat. It about broke my heart that we couldn't afford the tests, or the subsequent treatments. We decided to go ahead and treat the infection and to give her some steroids that would help increase her appetite. It didn't seem to help at all. She still didn't eat. The other day I noticed that not only would she not come out from under the bed (where she had been hiding for the last month) but now one of her eyes was dilated, while the other was not. This is not a good sign. DH and I decided that we needed to have her put to sleep. We just couldn't bear to watch her suffer any longer.

It's funny how something as small as a cat can tear at your heart so much, and how life continues to go on even when they are gone. I have yet to empty out her food dish and her litter box, but I need to do that today since it's trash day. I guess what is really odd is that I teared up and cried when we took her in, and cried when I thought about it before hand, I'm really ok with it all right now. I think that it's good that I believe in an afterlife for all things, including animals. It also makes me feel better to know that she is no longer suffering. It was a really good opportunity to discuss death and what happened to our cat with our children. It sure means a lot more when the thing dying isn't some abstract critter or person on TV, but is a real life loved one.

All of this is incredibly ironic since yesterday Monday the 22nd according to Wiki was named "Blue Monday" the most depressing day of the year" by Dr. Cliff Arnall. This was based on the time since Christmas, the lack of following through with New Years resolutions, the inability to pay bills, etc. None of which included the loss of a dear family pet, but I think it's incredibly appropriate.

Some FO's

2007-01-22T07:51:00.000-07:00

The Cashmere gloves still aren't done, but I seem to be starting projects right and left. Amazingly enough, I have managed to actually finish a few of them!
First we have Steve and Sally.
Pattern: Hello Dollies a free pattern from Canadian Living
Yarn: Red Heart Luster Sheen from the stash
Needles: Size 3 dpn.

The pattern has you knitting the dollies flat, then sewing them up. I knit Sally this way and realized that size 3 dpn is really too large for me to be knitting this flat. I also despise toy patterns with lots of little pieces that then need to be sewn up. It feels like you spend as much time sewing up the doll as knitting it in the first place. So, I used the same directions, but knit Steve completely in the round and stuffed as I went. All I had to do was stitch up is crotch a bit. If you notice, he's a bit smaller than Sally. This is because my gauge is always much smaller when I knit in the round. I think this comes from me being a combined knitter and my loose purling. I think it took me about 3 hours of total knitting time to knit each of the dollies.

I found this pattern because my favorite knitting group The Knitting Parents group is doing a small knit along for these dollies and/or a ball band dish cloth. It just so happens that this week was Shaya's 3rd birthday, and she absolutely adored these little dolls for a day. Then she got all her other presents and they seem to have fallen by the way side. It's ok, though, because I will never forget her sitting not so patiently next to me as I sewed on Sally's hair, hat, and face. As soon as she was done, she didn't leave Shaya's hands for a full 24 hours. Now that's satisfaction :D

Next we have my new neck warmer!
Pattern: What pattern?! It's just a 2x2 ribbed tube knit over 62 stitches, and is about 5 or 6" long.
Yarn: My very own handspun, beaded novelty yarn. It generally fluctuated between sport and worsted weight.
Needles: Size 4 36" circular from my Options set (I love these needles, and really like Magic loop).

I knit almost everything in magic loop now. Isn't that funny? Once upon a time, before I had really tried it, I used to think that people knit using magic loop because they were somehow inferior to people who used dpn. That they weren't coordinated enough to use dpn, or that they were just too scared, so they made up a way not to have to use them. To tell you the truth, though, I really like magic loop. I think I might be quicker at it than with dpn. I'm not as afraid that my needles will slip out, and generally feel less awkward with it. Not that I can't whip around on dpn, but I think I just like the huge flexibility of magic loop.

The only spinning fiber that I have at the moment is a lot of really fabulous creamy natural white superwash merino. This is the same merino I used to spin the yarn for my nephew's baby sweater (Which I just realized I don't have a picture posted of, so I'll talk about it at the bottom). So, anyway, I ADORED this yarn so much that I bought a full pound more of it. It is so incredibly soft and bouncy and wonderful. Since this is all the fiber I have, I have been spinning a lot of it. I have about 150 yrds of sport/worsted 2ply and also made 2 skeins of novelty yarn with it. It is a boucle that is 1 ply of that wonderful wool and 1 ply of sparkly metallic gold thread that I threaded randomly with colored glass beads. I had no idea really how it would knit up, but I actually really like the random funkyness of the beads. I still have a skein of it that is quite a bit more lumpy, and is only 57 yrds. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with that, but I love my new neck warmer. It doesn't flop around like a scarf and definitely keeps the chill out while looking oh, so stylish :D

Here's the baby sweater I made for my sister's baby in December.
Pattern: Heartbrakingly Cute baby sweater from Mason Dixon Knitting (and simple top down hat)
Yarn: My own handspun superwash Merino. Mostly bulky to worsted weight
Needles: Size 8 Knitpicks Options
Buttons are from my stash of knitting supplies

The sweater is larger than I had planned. It is more of a 9 month old size than a newborn size...lol, but I suppose that's what you get with bulky yarn. It is snuggly soft and bouncy and I love it so much. I was a bit disappointed, though, because my sister barely looked at it when I gave it to her. Somehow I get the feeling that she doesn't really want/appreciate hand knit items. I think that she was probably just a bit overwhelmed with the whole new baby thing, and hope that when Evan is big enough to fit into it, that it will keep him nice and toasty. I guess that handspun/handknit items whether they are ever worn or not are simply an expression of deepest love and I know that I have knit all that love into it, and can only hope that the feeling transfers to that sweet little baby boy :D

Now I think that I need to search through my files and see if I managed to forget any other FO's. If you can't tell, my blog is a bit behind...lol

First FO of 2007 and a free pattern for you.

2007-01-11T20:14:00.001-07:00

Do you all remember this beautiful sweater?

I decided to felt the whole sweater and make it into a purse, but had never quite gotten around to it. It has sat in my stash for about 3 months now and I pulled it out yesterday for my first official FO of 2007.

I present to you "Braided" my felted, cabled needle case:

This is based on Kable, a free pattern by Berroco, with a few notable modifications.

I didn't actually bother to knit and felt the main body of the case. Instead I felted a whole wool sweater and cut off the back of it for this piece. This resulted in a really stunning striped fabric, without all the tediousness of all those colors.

My piece was quite a bit shorter than the suggested size, but actually accommodates 15 sets of needles instead of the 9 that are shown in the original.

In order to accomplish this, I abandoned their single twisted cable pattern in favor of my braided pattern. This allows for more crossovers in a shorter distance. I thought that the original had the needles a little too far apart anyway, so I like mine better.

Want to make one like it? Here's how!

Materials:
1 Beautiful 100% wool Thrift Store sweater
Worsted weight yarn in a coordinating shade (I used Paton's Classic 100% Merino Wool)
Size 6 needles
A crochet hook (any size)
Sewing needle and coordinating sewing thread
2 Pretty Buttons

Special abbreviations:
C6F (Cable 6 forward): Place 6 stitches on a cable needle and hold to the front. Knit the next 6 stitches. Knit the 6 stitches from the cable needle. A 12 stitch forward twist is created.
C6B (Cable 6 Back): Place 6 stitches on a cable needle and hold to the back. Knit the next 6 stitches. Knit the 6 stitches from the cable needle. A 12 stitch backward twist is created.

Throw the sweater in the washing machine and intentionally felt it until it is your desired thickness and fuzziness. Make sure that it does not felt down smaller than about 16" or 17" width wise so that it will accommodate your needles. Cut the back off of said sweater, and trim into a perfect rectangle.

Cable strips (make 2):
Cast on 22 stitches
Prep rows 1 & 3: Knit
Prep row 2 & 4: K2, P18, K2
Prep row 5: K2, C6F, K8

Row 1 (and all odd rows): K2, P18, K2
Row 2 & 4: Knit
Row 6: K8, C6B, K2
Row 8 & 10: Knit
Row 12: K2, C6F, K8
Repeat rows 1-12 until braid measures about an inch shorter than your rectangle. (Sample braid has 17 crosses or 8 pattern repeats, yours may have more or less).
Weave in ends

Lay strips on your rectangle so that they are evenly spaced from the edges. Sew them down onto the background fabric.

With your crochet hook, attach a chain to the end of your cable strip and make a chain that is large enough to fit around your button. Repeat for the other strip and weave in all ends.

Roll your case up to get the correct placement for your buttons and sew them on (It's probably a good idea to fill this baby up before you do this, so that it's at it's largest size.)

You're done! Fill that baby up with circular needles, straight needles, or whatever, by sticking your sticks through the gap created each time you cabled. Take your needles anywhere and show off that pretty case for the world to see!

Photo a day

2007-01-11T19:55:00.000-07:00

I had read on someone's blog about an idea. I don't know if I could ever live up to it, but it's still a cool idea. You are to take a photograph a day that represents your day. You would then have 365 pictures at the end of the year to look back at and really see who you are and what your life is like. I don't know if I could commit to taking a picture a day, or trying in any kind of a philosophical way to finding the perfect picture to represent that particular day. I figured that if I followed this plan, I would have a lot of pictures of my kids. After all, they are my life, or lack there of. I stare at their little faces all day long. Also, as a mother, I think that my children may just be the most beautiful beings on the planet... at least in pictures. You can't hear the whining or fighting through the picture, and rarely are they caught on film in the act.

Today, however, the choice for a picture was easy. I present to you my toilet
You may ask, "Why on earth would she take a picture of that disgusting toilet?!" and no, that is not what you think it is. That is dirt..... lots of nasty black dirt that came up from our well. You may remember that I mentioned yesterday that our water filter system was being installed today. Well it was, and after having the water running in the house and after him fiddling with the pipes, for some reason, the water came out looking like sludge. All is not well. Water is not supposed to look like this. Toilets are supposed to be clear, or blue, not nasty black brown. The water hasn't looked this bad since they first hooked up our pluming just after the well was dug. It is supposed to snow again tomorrow, however, the water guy is coming out again. Hopefully I will never again have to look at this sight again.

But since a toilet is hardly a happy sight, and since I am incapable of taking out the camera to take pictures of anything without also taking pictures of the little angels, here are some cuter pictures.

Babies

2007-01-10T19:35:00.000-07:00

Life with Brendan is unfair..... Flattering, but unfair. It is not fair that even though I have been with the kids ALL day and I could really use a break, and the baby has been fed, and changed, and wrapped warmly in his blanket, that apparently Daddy is not good enough. It is really flattering and heartwarming to see that little face peer up at me with tear filled eyes and uplifted arms. It is incredibly not fair that he will follow me to the baby gate and cry for me down the hall and not accept his father's consolation. The really sad thing, though, is that it is so incredibly hilarious.

Yes, the demands of motherhood are exhausting, but at least I know I'm loved.

On other news, the camera has popped out again. I had some really nice shots of Brendan's tongue today, and those cute 4 little teeth of his, but alas I think the memory card has decided to die. Or, maybe it is related to me forgetting about it while it was downloading pictures to the computer today. It was left on far too long.

Alex has started back to school this week, and the whole world is rejoicing. What?! You haven't heard the heavenly choirs sing on your side of the world? Well, they're singing here! It's amazing how those few hours in the afternoon of school can refresh him and I at the same time. He was looking decidedly bored before he went back, and now he's a much better behaved boy, and Mommy again has kid free knitting time!

The best news of all, is that the water filter people FINALLY came today to install our water system. The Reverse Osmosis system was installed for the drinking water, and the rest of the house will be hooked up tomorrow after the installer gets the correct pipes and connecters, etc. This is wonderful news, as we are expecting yet ANOTHER snow storm on Friday. This means that it has snowed every Friday since the week before Christmas. This is totally weird for Colorado. The snow actually stays on the ground for more than a day! The really funny thing is that I prefer the snow out there, because as soon as it melts it creates a giant mud pit capable of sucking your boots clean off. We do not have any grass yet in the front yard, and it appears that our soil is not inclined to nice rich loaminess, it is either seeping oozing mud, or it is blowing, billowing dust. That, however, is a problem for another day.

Here's wishing you all clean water, a baby who needs you, oh ya, and a nifty new knitting needle case (should be done tomorrow :D )

Entrelac and other Tom Foolery

2007-01-08T08:12:00.000-07:00

I've been on a bit of a knitting break of late. Nothing has seriously inspired me since the Roberta gloves, but I have to say that anything plain after fair isle is just seriously boring. The lack of knitting inspiration came at a bad time, combining with general restlessness and a bit of depression. My kitty is still not eating, although, she has now decided that she can come out and visit the rest of the house instead of hiding under the bed all the time.

Last night, however, I found a bit of inspiration. I pulled out my old afghan books and started flipping through. I found an Entrelac blanket in 2 different books and though "Hmm, well I've never tried that. I should learn" Out came my Size 8 Bamboo circular and the Paton's SWS in Natural Navy. What I got was this:
Entrelac is seriously addictive! It was like pulling teeth to get me to put the darn thing and make dinner last night! I like the SWS in this pattern, but I think I needed another triangle at the top because the colors tend to pool on one side. I think this would be a beautiful blanket, but DH and I looked last night and at $6.50 a skein, a full sized blanket would cost like $130! I bet I could buy skeins 1 or 2 at a time and dye lots wouldn't matter all that much.

On a completely unrelated note, and in celebration of the camera being fixed; some Tom Foolery.

Sorry, no pictures

2007-01-02T09:28:00.000-07:00

Well, there has been progress around here, and there have been pictures. Videos even! But alas, my camera is misbehaving so none of the above will be displayed today on my blog. DH thinks that there is something wrong with the memory card and promised to take it to work with him to stick it in one of the computers there to fix it. I think that the really cute video of Brendan eating bananas double fisted clogged it up and now I am pretty much cameraless. I can take pictures, but I'm afraid to because I don't know if I will ever see them again when said memory card is fixed.

Oh wait, the camera has an internal card... I wonder if it's working well enough for me to take pictures on that?

Anyway, so life is generally fabulous around here, with a few small exceptions. I'll get to those later. We had a massive slumber party at my house the past few days that included our closest friends, their 3 children, and their dog and cat. We all rung in the new year as best as 2 couples with 3 children each are capable of. This means that we put our kids to bed at 9pm instead of 8pm, our friends let their kids essentially crash where they may, and the adults stayed up far too late and drank sparkling cranberry grape juice. There were dice involved.... lots of dice. We are gamers, and our friends probably hang out with us so much because they are gamers too. Generally gamers are not so tolerant of all the little interruptions that are involved in taking care of children while trying to play with one's adult friends. Since we both have kids the same ages (it's freakish that our 2 oldest children were born within weeks of theirs) we all understand and have no issues when it is necessary to feed the baby, etc.

We tried out a new game system called Exalted. It is interesting, but so conducive to "geeking out". It is based on the premise that there are gods out there that bless certain people with superhuman powers. A normal human martial artist can do cool things like Jackie Chan, a cinematic martial artist can do things like you see in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. An exalted is just insane. He can do just about anything he wants. "Hmm, this guy is really starting to bug me... " "Ok, I pick him up and throw him into the wall" In reality, he would hit the wall and fall down. In movies, his head goes through the wall. An exalted does this, the guy goes through the wall, and MAYBE stops when he hits the brick wall across the street. So much fun to think of cool things to do.

I think the system was created by someone who just liked dice, though. Who else would create a system that requires you to roll 10 dice at once for a single action?!

So, we had all these people in our house, and it was fabulous. I enjoyed it so much. They brought their dog and cat with them, because otherwise they would have had to leave early in the morning in order to get home and let the dog out to go to the bathroom (they don't have a yard). I wanted them to stay most of New years day, so I said it was fine. In reality, their animals were wonderful house guests, however, we have a cat of our own. She ended up locked in our master suite with her cat box and food dish the entire time. This isn't really a problem, though, because she lives in there most of the time anyway. The problem was, though, that she spent the entire time under our bed. I don't think she ate or drank the entire time. I am wondering if she has been eating at all for the last week. She is SO skinny. I'm really worried about her. We're going to take her to the vet this afternoon, but If the bill is too much, we simply can't afford it. It makes me sad just thinking about it. Socks is my first child so to speak. Grant and I picked her out while we were on our honeymoon from the animal shelter. She is small for a cat, affectionate, sooo soft, and really wonderful. I feel horrible that I hadn't noticed that she wasn't eating. When I noticed that her food was still full after a few days, I figured that DH had filled it back up. Now looking back, she probably wasn't eating and I didn't notice! I'm such a horrible pet owner and I feel wretched.

Everyone send good thoughts my way that she is ok and that the vet will be able to help her. It appears that my blogging time is up. Brendan is crying at my knee and I'm incapable of typing and holding him at the same time.

Roberta Gloves

2006-12-31T09:56:00.000-07:00

I am proud to offer my very first Original pattern for sale!

I made these beautiful fair isle gloves for my Grandmother Roberta for Christmas. She is the most wonderful woman I have ever known, and as such, deserves a pair of stunning, original, hand made gloves.
The pattern is written for a woman's medium, with adaptation instructions for fingerless mitts.

Pattern Requirements:
Fingering weight wool yarn
215 yrds Off White (135yrds for Fingerless mitts)
50 yrds Brown
Size 1 circular or double pointed needles

I highly recommend that these gloves be knit on either magic loop, or 2 circ method because of the fair isle pattern. There is a separate chart for the back of the hand and for the palm. I find it much easier to keep track if these sections are on separate needles. If you prefer dpn, however, I recommend 5 dpn rather than 4 so that the palm half can be on 2 needles and the back of the hand can be on the other 2 needles.

Let it Snow

2006-12-26T10:06:00.000-07:00

We had the most fantastic blizzard blow through here this past week. The snow started Tuesday evening and didn't stop until mid day on Thursday. It is now almost a week later, and everything is still covered in snow. We didn't even manage to get any cars out until Saturday afternoon. DH and my 2 shoveled for over 4 hours on Sunday to dig out our enormous driveway far enough for 4 cars to park for Christmas Dinner yesterday afternoon. In all, I think it is fabulous and got to keep my husband home for a big 5 day weekend for Christmas :D

Without further adu, please enjoy pictures of our fantastic snow!

In areas without drifts, the snow is about knee deep, but with all the out buildings, etc, the snow piled up in beautiful flowing drifts all over the place. Our front door was swept clean by the wind because we face West.

Notice that the drift curves around our house? My uncle commented that it looked like a the wake that a ship creates as it's moving through the water. The funny thing is, though, it wasn't the house that was moving ^.~

My Grandma who lives next door, though, wasn't so lucky. Her house faces north.

One would think that since the wind was coming from the north, that the drifts would be at the north of the house, but they weren't. This is our shed at the south of our house.

The snow drifted up and hugged all the cars like a nice white blanket. This was beautiful for the camera, but not so nice for trying to get them out!

Alex absolutely adored the snow and the first day we went out (Thursday afternoon) he was jumping, sliding, climbing, and generally romping in the snow. By the end of our excursion, his mittens looked like this:

This is the North side of the barn.

This is the South side of the barn! Wouldn't that make a fantastic sledding drift?!

See that little opening there? I had to turn my head sideways to squeeze through to get in the barn. All of that snow came in through that tiny little opening!

At least the poor horses in my Grandma's barn have a nice warm stall to hide in, because check out that first step outside! The poor horses next door didn't appear to be as lucky :(

And of course, no snow storm is complete without a little game of "Plop" with Daddy!

Here's wishing all of you some beautiful snow of your own!

Here comes Santa Claus

2006-12-18T08:21:00.000-07:00

Friday night was our church Christmas party. DH was working, but the kids, my Grandma, and I all went and it was absolutely wonderful. Our ward is much smaller than our previous ward and I find that I really like it. It is large enough to have friends about and people to chat with, but small enough that there are actually enough chairs and tables for everyone to sit down, and that you don't just get lost in the crowd.

Santa came in when all of the children sang Jingle Bells as loud as they could.

I'm afraid that Alex and Shaya didn't quite know what to say to him, but they both agree that he was VERY nice!

I'm trying to actually put up the backlog of saved posts, so please bare with me :D

Same old Same old

2006-12-11T09:10:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling a bit sorry for myself this morning. DH now drives 50 minutes one way to and from work every day. I really don't feel like taking him to work and then spending a total of 4 hours in the car if I don't have to (2 hours round trip twice a day), so I've let him take the van and I've stayed home with the kids. This means that I do in fact get 1 hour less with him every day. I know, an hour really doesn't seem like much, but for some reason I'm feeling it this morning. Maybe I'm PMSing or something.

The kids have been playing nicely together for the most part, though, which is nice. Right now the big kids are playing with the train set in Alex's room while Brendan is trying to eat the play tools that are strewn all across my family room floor. It is a bit amazing that the baby isn't permanently stuck to my leg. He seems to be that way some times. After holding him wrapped up in a blanket for a while this morning, I am beginning to wonder if half of that is not so much that he's tired, but that he's cold. I know I was cold this morning. I had to put on socks and a sweater because my hands were so stiff that I couldn't type. I'm seriously considering some of those fingerless gloves that I've been seeing everywhere because I think for the first time I see a practical purpose. My sweater sleeves are pulled down to my knuckles and it does help a lot.

On the knitting front, it has been all Rogue all the time. This is the 1 project that I absolutely HAVE to finish by Christmas and it's looking like that shouldn't be a problem. I finished the body and hood on Friday, and finished the first sleeve last night. That means that I only have 1 more sleeve to go and then to seam them onto the body and it's done. Totally doable. I think it's really turning out beautiful. It's a little loose on me, but otherwise fits perfect, so I think it'll fit snugly on my mom. I did take it over to have her try it on when it was to the arm pits, just to make sure, so I think we're a go.

My biggest concern is not finishing, but being able to wash and block the darn thing since we have now been in our new house for 3 1/2 weeks now and THE WATER STILL ISN'T FILTERED! This means that I'm still hand washing every single dish (ok, so we've reverted to plastic cups, plates, and silverware when possible...) so that I don't ruin my brand new dish washer. We are able to take showers, although if I fill up a bath I can see that the water is mirky and yucky, I hope the soap takes care of most of it. My Grandma who lives next door has let me bring over laundry to do, which is nice, so that I haven't had to go to the laundry mat. We do have a washer, but I don't want all that dirty water ruining it, plus, how clean do you think clothes would really get in that?! Luckily we have finished the water tests and it appears that there are no bacteria in the water (thank you 2500 ft deep well), but it definitely has some stuff dissolved in it. We think it's going to cost over $1500 to get everything filtered which seriously sucks, but you've got to do what you've got to do.

There has been no work at all on the ebay front because of the same water considerations. I'm not about to try to wash yarn for other people with this water. That makes that $1500 all the more expensive. It has given me lots of time to knit, though, which is good. Once Rogue is done, that leaves me with a pair of fair isle gloves that I need to design and make for my Grandma as well as finish the scarf for DH, and hopefully knit a hat or something for my dad. The last few years I've made him some cabled hats, this year I was thinking a tighter knitted simple fair isle type thing. We'll see. Now the baby has decided that I'm neglecting him, so it's back to mommy world. With that I'll leave you with a pic of Shaya and her cousin Sam jumping on her bed.

Mitten Love

2006-12-02T07:51:00.000-07:00

Mittens, hanging and dripping snow in the new mudroom of our house.
Do you think that they feel loved by their child sized owners?
Do you think that the romp in the snow for the very first time filled their little fibery mitten hearts with joy?
Do you think that they see the ice crystals formed on their perfectly formed stitches as a badge of honor?
Congratulations brave little mittens. You have fought your first snow ball fight bravely and kept tiny hands warm and safe. Thank you.

We went outside today and romped in the snow for a bit. I remember as a child that I hated knitted mittens because they always got totally soaked within minutes, and they collected great balls of snow on the palms. Remembering this, I have no idea why I feel the need to knit my children mittens. Do I really think that because the mittens I made are made of wool that it will make these problems go away? I may have to make myself a pair just to see. One thing I can say, though, is that these little things dry FAST. After 2 hours of hanging on the rod in the mud room, Shaya's mittens were completely dry and Alex's were just a little damp. Alex's mittens are made of Paton's Classic Merino, while Shaya's were made of my own 100% handspun. It is not merino, although, I can't remember what kind of wool it is. I wonder if merino absorbs more water because it is so much softer...

Artwork on the Cheap

2006-12-01T08:26:00.000-07:00

Years ago DH and I visited his oldest sister and her family. I believe that I was pregnant with Alex at the time, but I'm not sure. Anyway, She, like me, is was a stay at home mom and living off of 1 income seriously limits your budget. She had some large, stunning, pictures up in her family room and in the kids' rooms. They were glued together puzzles. "What a great idea!" I exclaimed. That same day, we all went out and picked out about 4 puzzles and some huge bottles of plain old Elmer's glue. We even completed 2 of said puzzles while still on vacation. Each puzzle cost only a few dollars and then a poster frame was maybe $10 more. At the height of our puzzle making career, DH and I constantly had puzzles going. In fact, we even put together and framed puzzles for our friends for Christmas. This all stopped not long after our kids were seriously moving about. Little fingers and puzzle pieces don't mix very well. Several of our artwork on the cheap languished in the back of our closet because they lacked a frame, or space to hang it.

Enter the new house. We have finally reached the stage where we are hanging art on the walls. The long forgotten puzzles from the back of our closet got pulled out and added to the ones that had previously been hanging on the walls. We have 3 more rooms to decorate now! A few still need frames, but all of them will get to see the light of day hanging on a wall like they were meant to. Come take a tour of our art gallery!

This is a picture by one of my all time favorite artists Greg Olsen. He makes absolutely stunning paintings of Christ and children and other religious themes. In fact, we have a print about this size hanging in our living room that was given to us one year. I remember seeing it on the wall at the store for well over $100. This picture is called "Bon Voyage"

This one of my favorite puzzles that we have done. I love the happy warm yellow in it. It's going to hang in my kitchen so I can look at it every day.

This is my second favorite picture. I'm afraid that I don't even remember who painted it, but I have a feeling that it might be Greg Olsen as well. I have a strong fascination with trees, and if you look closely at this picture, you'll notice that there is a whole world of tiny houses and stair cases in this tree for tiny little people to live in.

This picture previously hung in the kids room and now resides right over Shaya's bed in what we refer to as the "girl room".

This wonderful picture is called "Lords of the Moon" by Lynn Lupetti. It hangs right next to the tree in Shaya's room. I love how the block castle turns into a real castle and how the whole court of characters comes out of the moonbeam as the little boy is sleeping. Can you see a theme? I really like these little whimsies.

On the opposite wall hangs this fantastic fairy. She is part of our "Glow in the dark" puzzle period. These puzzles have larger pieces and the whole glow in the dark thing is just too cool. My only complaint is that the printer must have been off just a touch and the glow in the dark part doesn't quite match up with the actual picture, so it all looks a little fuzzy.

Next, we have my favorite picture in the "Glow in the Dark" series. DH and I actually put together 2 of these wonderful wizards. 1 for our friends, and then one for us. I believe that this picture hangs in both our little boys' room as well as our friend's little boy's room. Isn't the combination of deep blues, purples and golden yellow stunning?!

This is the final piece in our "Glow in the Dark" collection. It also hangs in the boys' room. All of the glow in the dark puzzles had sat in the back of our closet and now get to see the light of day with expanded wall space. This hangs next to the wizard, and will some day be joined by our friendly dragon shown below.

This is the friendly Dragon, and neither DH or I actually put it together. One year for Christmas, we sent this puzzle to the SIL mentioned at the beginning of the post and she put it together for us and sent it back. Apparently she really didn't like the picture so it took her a while.

The friendly dragon needs to be repaired (1 corner broke off) and needs a custom frame job. It is too big for a standard poster frame. Someday, hopefully he'll join the others in the boys' room.

Which brings us to my latest insanity. You'd think that after putting together 7 different poster sized puzzles, DH and I would be done, but we realized that we still had puzzles in the closet and wall space to fill, so last night we pulled out a puzzle that we had previously started and then packed away. This will also go in Shaya's room when it's done.

It's another Lynn Lupetti picture, here's a close up.
Maybe sometime I'll show you all the wolf stuff that DH brought to the marriage. We have 2 large, stunning wolf pictures in our family room.

So now here's your challenge... What do you have hanging on your walls?

New toys

2006-11-29T08:19:00.000-07:00

Greetings from the new house! Good news, I have high speed internet and didn't have to pay $400 for equipment! Woohoo! Our water is still cloudy, though, and I REALLY need to do some laundry today. I don't want to use our washer because I've been told the dirt in the water will kill the machine. Great. Guess it's time to head over to Grandma's house next door and see if we can use her washer.

I got some new toys this week as well as a new house :D

I LOVE this book! I got it when Crafter's Choice was doing a 50% off day. Too bad they didn't have the other 2 books in the series because I would have nabbed them too. I think the best part of this book are the ideas for cuffs and button bands. Most of the necklines I couldn't really see using. It does provide a few patterns at the end as well as basic instructions on substituting any of the basic necklines provided in the book (scoop, V-neck, etc) in another sweater pattern. Very useful. I can't wait to design a cardigan now...lol All those button bands really have the old brain juices working.

I think I may be doing a lot of designing and knitting for the next week or so, though, since our water is not up to par for washing yarn for sale. I have been taking showers, but I don't want to be selling anything that I'm not sure is completely clean and fresh and fluffy.

My second new toy DH presented to me this morning. That man is wonderful, but I have to say he is COMPLETELY incapable of holding onto a Christmas present for more than 2 days. His excuse this year was that He got a smashing deal on 2 of them and that since he got one too that it shouldn't count as Christmas since it wasn't just for me....lol So, here it is, my new not quite Christmas toy:

It is charging plugged into my computer as I type. I have to admit that this is a REALLY cool new little toy. I have kinda wanted one, but they are seriously expensive. One of the perks of where DH works is that he always seems to acquire electronics for amazing deals. We have a tiny little Vio laptop that he got for $100 from a coworker because it had a few issues and was out of warranty (DH did a system restore and the problems were solved). He has a GIGANTIC 22" widescreen flat panel monitor for his computer that he just got for $50. My computer tower was the old office computer from his work that was going to be thrown out. We replaced the video card and the Ethernet. I got my fabulous LCD monitor for my birthday that was acquired in like fashion. It was really a mouse, keyboard and monitor. I suppose I should also mention the PSP that he eventually traded in for a PS2...lol Now that I write all this down, Most of the electronics in our house were acquired in this manner!

DH told me that the early ipod was really the Microsoft guy's fault since he delivered them to him yesterday and he knew he couldn't just hold onto them for a whole month! Apparently said Microsoft guy had been doing a contest with the people at DH's work and DH answered every question correctly. As his prize, he could have 1 ipod for free, or 2 for $50... You know that a single ipod is like $150 right?! So, now I'm waiting for the cute little black ipod to charge up :D

It snowed here in Colorado last night and because of the snow I took DH to work in the morning and picked him up in the evening. It is now a 45-50 min drive to his work now.. ugg. To compound this, apparently people seemed to forget how to drive in the 2 inches of snow that were on the streets last night, and the cities decided to wait until AFTER things started to freeze mid rush hour to send out the snow trucks. I was about 30 minutes late picking DH up and then it took us a whopping 3 hours to get home last night!! I suppose this wouldn't have been all that bad if I hadn't experienced the ultimate knitterly disaster. I pulled out the Rogue sweater to work on (which I had dutifully packed in the diaper bag) I knit a few rows and finished off the ball of yarn I was working on and then fished around in the bag for the second ball of yarn I knew was supposed to be in there. I dug everything out of the bag and THERE WASN'T ANOTHER BALL!! I was in the car for 3 hours without anything to knit *sigh* I probably could have finished the entire body of said sweater last night. I now believe that you can never pack too much yarn, and too many projects. You never know when you might unexpectedly be in the car 2 1/2 hours longer than normal!

I should be feeling more prepared

2006-11-20T12:05:00.000-07:00

You'd think with all the delays we have had in our house plans that I would be feeling more prepared. In actuality, we are planning on the final big move on Wednesday and 80% of my house is still unpacked! Have you ever noticed that when you are cleaning or packing that you get all distracted and start sorting things, or move from room to room packing a little here and a little there? In my case, I do have a little justification in the form of a knee high mommy leach. Brendan doesn't think that I should be allowed to do work without him clinging to my leg, or better yet in my arms. This makes packing incredibly difficult. This explains why I am sitting here blogging instead of packing. Brendan is currently wrapped up like a burrito and snuggling in my lap while watching The Incredibles.

On Saturday we cleaned out our storage unit, which we have been paying $50 a month for a while now. I am absolutely astounded at how many books we have! In fact, we went through the boxes and came up with 3 boxes of books to donate, with still like 10 boxes that we're keeping. We need more book cases. How is it possible that even though I have gone through the house and purged things that we still have so much crap crammed into this little apartment?!

I managed to pack up the bathroom this morning; cram all of my stash (well most of it) into it's giant tub; pack up all my knitting books (only 1 box wow!) cram all of my business sweaters and yarn and stuff into 1 large and 1 medium tub; purge all of the old bills and such that I have kept on file (why do I keep these on file again?!); and made a giant list of people I need to call, things I need to do etc. I still have yarn and such on my desk that needs to go into a box or something, but it about killed me to even pack up my stitch pattern books. What if I need them before Thursday?! What if among all the moving and unpacking and cleaning I find 2 seconds to knit?! What if I want to knit something other than the Rogue sweater?! What if...

Ok, so I'm a little paranoid. I know I can survive until Thursday or Friday without all my fibery goodness, but it just feels so final to put it in a box and cover it in tape.

Well, the baby is asleep and now it is time to pull all the crap out of my sewing machine cabinet and put that into a box too. Let's hope we all survive this move. I have been looking at internet and surprise surprise, we are going to be living out in the middle of nowhere and have 1 option for high speed internet.... Satellite. I suppose the $59 a month wouldn't be so terrible if they didn't also include like $400 for equipment and installation *sigh* The next time you read a post from me, it may be from crappy dial up because they said it would take like 2 weeks to set up the satellite.

Crazy for Cables

2006-11-17T09:24:00.000-07:00

Who would have ever thought that having 3 little kids who aren't really in school yet could be this busy?! It seriously took me 3 days to write a single e-mail to my sister. I simply haven't been home this whole week. I have been up to our new house 3 times this week and have gotten no work done! I have managed to save my sanity a little by doing some knitting. I don't know how much sanity I'll still have at Christmas when I may, or may not have managed to finish all of these cables, though. It amazes me how much more time it takes to knit something with cables than just plain old stockingette!

On the Needles:
Rogue #2

This one is for my Mom. As you can see, it's almost to the arm pits and should really be much farther along than this considering how long I've had it on the needles. I haven't touched it since Tuesday when I took the needles off and slipped it onto 2 36" Knitpicks options cables. Mom tried it on and it might have a little negative ease, but she liked it, and I think it will be beautiful.

It is knit in Knitpicks Wool of the Andes, which is nice wool, but is definitely not Merino. Merino is still my favorite. The one problem with this project, and the main reason that it is not progressing quickly, is the fact that my computer refuses to print the pattern again. I have to literally sit in front of the computer with the pattern pulled up on PDF in order to knit on this. Hopefully it will get done in time for Christmas.

That would be far more likely, if I would stop casting on for new projects.... Like this one:

Please welcome the insane cabled scarf.

DH noticed when he rode his scooter the other day that there is a decided gap between his helmet and the collar of his jacket. He says he needs a scarf. He doesn't want a tube like neck warmer, he wants a full fledged scarf. Knowing that DH loves this yarn (he picked it out for his Rogue after all) and that he loves cables, I pulled out my new Stictionary and told him to pick a pattern. This is the pattern that he picked:

In truth, this is crappy yarn for cables. The mottled nature of the yarn likes to hide cables rather than show them off. After 3 repeats of the pattern, I looked at it and said "Why on earth am I spending all this time on cables when you can barely see them?!" DH then kissed me and said "It looks beautiful" *sigh* the things we do for those we love.

The fabric is rather dense and not drapy at all. I think it will probably be too bulky to fit nicely under his jacket, so I'm thinking I'll do panels of cables at the ends of the scarf, that taper nicely somehow into nothingness, and then knit the center section of the scarf in plain old stockingette so that it isn't too bulky in the part that goes around his neck. The other advantage to this plan is that it will go quicker if only 1/4 of the scarf is cabled to all heck instead of the entire length... I'm devious and evil I know.

Now, I need to recycle the brown and cream yarn that I plan to use for my Grandmother's Christmas gloves. I want to do a simple 2 color fair isle pattern on them, but haven't picked it out yet. Cabled Scarf, Rogue sweater, Fair Isle fingering weight gloves, and some yet to be determined item for my Dad and Grandpa. I must be insane!

See..... I really am designing

2006-11-11T12:46:00.000-07:00

I have had this hat sitting on my desk for about a month now, and still hadn't really gotten any pictures of it, much less written down the pattern. Well, today I did both. I think I need some more professional type pictures for the final PDF pattern, but here's what I've got so far:

Flower Petal Hat

The hat is knit from the top down with 6 sections that swirl around, much like a pinwheel (only in reverse).

Half way down the hat, the stockingette is gradually replaced with reverse stockingette, forming the tips of the flower petals.

The flower petals hug the head all the way down to the brim. A normal ribbing is omitted, instead tiny picots are added at the point of each petal to finish it off.

Pattern to come after I have had some experienced knitters proofread and test knit it!

Playing Catch Up

2006-11-09T07:36:00.000-07:00

Please excuse me for my complete lack of blogging lately. For some reason I have been prioritizing things ahead of blogging... like dreaming about buying a spinning wheel on Ebay... but I digress. Please allow me to very quickly catch you up.

From the needles:
Mini Ball Band dish cloths... 6 of them to be exact.

I think we've discussed how I don't like normal sized dish cloths. I like mine smaller, just right to fit in the palm of my hand, so these are 5 pattern repeats across and 7 pattern repeats tall (that's 5 bricks wide, and 7 brick rows tall). The other advantage of my new and improved size is that you get a whole crap load of them for the same amount of yarn. All of these came from 2 balls of Sugar n' Cream (1 white, 1 colored). I have a bit left and I'm going to try my darndest to make 1 more, but I don't think it's going to quite happen. Think about this... There are 6 cloths here. That's almost a new, clean cloth almost every single day of the week! All for the bargain price of $4. They are cuter and more fun than normal scrubbies, plus they're washable. I feel better knowing that they aren't collecting germs like those sponges you leave under your sink.

Heartbrakingly Cute Baby kimono... and baby hat for my nephew due in December.

This is made from my very own handspun!!! Isn't it cute?! It's a little lumpy, but I think the garter stitch hides most of that. I think I'll thread a ribbon through the eyelets and I haven't decided if I'm using buttons or ribbons for a closure, but there it is.

Is it just me, or does the hat look a little on the small side and the sweater a little on the big side?

From the Wheel:
More of that Superwash Merino

I LOVE this stuff. I love it so much, in fact, that I bought a whole pound more of it! This is my 4th skein. It took a little over 2 skeins for the sweater, not even half a skein for the hat, and I think this bad boy is destined to be some socks to match the sweater and hat. This is the most beautiful and soft yarn. I just wish I was better so that it didn't end up so thick and thin, but I'm getting better. My mom says that it adds charm :D

What's not on my walls:
I have 2 very bare book cases in my living room. That is the extent of my packing so far and now that the move is approaching so quickly (have I told you that we are planning to close on our loan tomorrow?!) I'm starting to feel a bit panicky. I guess the next few days are going to be pretty busy.

Note to DH. I don't really think we're going to be moving stuff between houses on Saturday... That's only 2 days away!

Running around the house like hooligans:

Gotta go make some money now... I've got a new gigantic mortgage to support.

Discerning Food Critics agree...

2006-11-02T09:00:00.000-07:00

Multigrain Cherios are the best

Sometimes I have these delusions...

2006-10-21T08:33:00.000-06:00

Sometimes I have these delusions that I can actually become a designer and get paid for my designs. I joined the Crafter's Choice book club for the sole purpose of buying these books. They're not Barbara Walker, but I adore them! They are just bursting with ideas. I like the second 2 better than the first, only because I'm drawn to cables and texture. I thought the 3rd book would have lots of Fair Isle and Insartia charts, which it does, but then I saw this:
All I can say is WOW! That's so cool! It totally breathes new life into the cable book. It brings on a whole new set of possibilities.

I also love this:My picture is kind of crappy, but it's slipped stitches and bobbles in a darker color to create a lattice with roses. I have great visions of this on a beautiful cardigan for a little girl.

I actually have 2 original design patterns in the works at the moment. We'll see if anyone out there is as interested in them as I am.

Flash your knitting bag

2006-10-21T08:19:00.000-06:00

I am attempting to make some knitting bags to put in my store. These are made from intentionally felted wool sweaters with nice designs on them. I have been asking the Knittingparent's group what they like in a knitting bag so that I can try to make a really nice bag. It seems that the biggest things are that it is big enough to hold knitting, but not too cumbersome, and that it will stay closed.

Here is my first attempt.

I used the fabric from a pair of pretty colored polyester pants for the lining, and the belt from an ultrasuede trench coat for the strap. It is really floppy and I'm hoping that if I get a purse frame to close the top it will have a lot more body.

It is very sad to say that most of the time, I use a gallon sized zip lock bag and just throw it in the diaper bag, or my "Going outside basket"

Mittens

2006-10-16T17:08:00.000-06:00

It is that time of year. When the weather starts to turn cold, the leaves crunch under your feet, and you pull out the winter duds. It's time to replace last years ratty old acrylic mittens with new good wool ones.

Last winter, I made my vary first pairs of mittens. This was before I joined the knitting community, and before I had learned much about knitting other than how to much other than knit and purl. I did my first cables last winter, and used dpn for the first time. That was before I had discovered wool, and still believed that wool was always scratchy. Wow, how time has flown. I didn't know that I was a combination knitter back then. I didn't know that there were different ways of forming a knit stitch. I couldn't figure out why all my stitches looked twisted in the round.

Here are Shaya's new mittens next to her mittens from last year. Last years mittens were Red Heart acrylic in a tight twisted stitch pattern. The fabric was stiff and not very giving. This years mitten's are made from my very own homespun wool! There are no twisted stitches and they are soft and stretchy. No more problems with the cuff being too small and having to fight to get them on, or to get them to stay on. This year's mittens are warm, lovely wool, which even though it isn't merino is still softer than the Red Heart. Go figure. I even ripped these out a couple of times when I figured out that my handspun was really bulky rather than worsted and I was getting 4 stitches to the inch. That means that these cute purple mittens are knit on only 18 stitches. That makes these a VERY quick knit.

Shaya proudly wore the first mitten (and only the first mitten) around the house until the second one could join it.

Brendan attempted to help with the knitting by eating the yarn. This was fine until I reached the first wet spot in the wool. Note to self: Wet wool does not slide well over plastic needles. I was using my new Salvation Army flexible size 6 dpn needles.

It took me 2 days to make Shaya's mittens, it only took me 1 to make Alex's, even with ripping them out 3 times. They are knit in Paton's Classic Merino Wool. I love this yarn. It is very soft and bouncy. I started out casting on what I thought was 24 stitches ( it was really 18 because apparently 3 x 6 does not = 24....) which was way too small for a 5 yr old. I then cast on 30 stitches, because hey, that's only 6 more stitches right? Well, that was entirely too big. I then tried some number between what I thought was 24 and 30 when I realized that 3x6 is NOT 24 and ACTUALLY cast on 24 stitches.

Mittens for children are a double edged sword. They are incredibly satisfying because they can be completed so quickly, but they are also a major let down because they are done so quickly. I am sitting here with my yarn and needles contemplating a hat pattern because I absolutely NEED a take along knitting project, and the mittens are already done! The computer seems to refuse to print out the Rogue pattern again, so that option is out. Maybe I'll wind up my white handspun and start the baby sweater for my sister's baby (due in December).

Warm Fuzzies

2006-10-12T17:15:00.000-06:00

Doesn't this just warm your heart?!
DH shivered when he saw this. He says it gives him the heeby jeebies. It gives me all sorts of warm fuzzies (no, this is not a picture of me). I honestly think men miss out on a lot because they will never experience this.

I'm a finisher

2006-10-10T17:00:00.000-06:00

The Dish Cloth Baby Blanket Part II

This one's for Brendan

Pattern: Lion Brand's Diagonal Baby Blanket
Yarn: Lion Brand Homespun in Colonial
Needles: Size 10.5 Audi Turbo circular

I managed to finish not 1, but 2 WIP's! I adore this baby blanket. As you may remember, I made one for my friend's baby shower. I almost kept it because I loved it so much, but DH forcefully pointed out that it was in fact for Sebastian and that I DID in fact have a few more skeins of this yarn to make Brendan his own blanket. I've been working on this almost exclusively in the car as we drive back and forth places, so it's taken a bit, but is wonderful mindless knitting. I wove in the all the ends just in time to tuck Brendan into bed with it last night. Yea!Of course FO's for my kids require full scale photo shoots. Plus I haven't shown nearly enough cute baby pics lately, so here they are!
And then we were done. As you can see, Brendan is quite proficient at crawling at this point. In fact, he's proficient at pulling up and standing as well. He really thinks he should be able to cruise along furniture, but he usually only manages a few steps. Yikes! Kid slow down. I'm not ready for you to be walking!

I also finished the Ugly socks for my mom. Pattern: Generic toe up pattern using the heal from Sensational Knitted Socks. As you may remember, I used heel stitch on both the bottom of the heal and the back. Let's hope it feels ok to walk on, and wears well!
Yarn: Simple Stripes from Knitpicks in Sunset.

Tell me if the picture on their website doesn't lie on the color... Here's their picture:

Now that I have managed to finish both of my take along projects, I needed a new one. Since the weather dipped down into the 30's the last few days, I think it's time for new mittens for the kids! First up purple mittens for Shaya in my own handspun! I hope they turn out all right.

I don't even really like Shettland wool.....

2006-10-08T12:51:00.000-06:00

What kind of yarn are you?

You are Shetland Wool. You are a traditional sort who can sometimes be a little on the harsh side. Though you look delicate you are tough as nails and prone to intricacies. Despite your acerbic ways you are widely respected and even revered.
Take this quiz!

By the way..... DH is:

You are Mohair.You are a warm and fuzzy type who works well with others, doing your share without being too weighty. You can be stubborn and absolutely refuse to change your position once it is set, but that's okay since you are good at covering up your mistakes.
Take this quiz!

Interior Pictures

2006-10-07T07:46:00.000-06:00

As promised I have interior pictures of my house. I have only really included pictures of the kitchen and the bathrooms, because the bedrooms and the living room and family room really aren't all that exciting at the moment.

As you remember, this is my floor plan.

This is what you see when you walk in the front door. Please ignore the plastic strips hanging from the ceiling. Obviously the house is not completely put together along the seam line yet.

This is the kitchen. We picked laminate counter tops that I thought looked like granite. I really liked it, but I was afraid that it might be too dark. My fears were in vain, because I love it. The counter tops have matching ceramic tiles along the edges.

Turn just slightly in the kitchen doorway and you can see our family room. I think this will be an awesome place to be our play room. I can keep an eye on the kids and not have to have any toys in the front room.

There is this really pretty hutch built into the corner of the room that I really like. I've always wanted a china hutch. Now I suppose I should get some china.

This is the kitchen from the family room. There is a little bar top on the island as well as in the family room. I like this feature. This means that I can actually restrict all drinks and food to the kitchen and have plenty of room for munchkins to sit when they come to visit.

This is the kids bathroom just off of the family room. It is situated between their 2 bedrooms. It's going to be so nice to have 2 bathrooms!

This is the view of the living room from the kitchen. I love the curtains that came with the house. I'm amazed that it came with window treatments. I will probably be leaving the red ones here in my current house.

This is our master bath. It also has a stand up shower around the corner. Now I really can hide myself away in the bathroom for an hour and not be disturbed. Since we only have 1 bathroom right now, I can put the child lock on when I take a bath, but I have to leave the door unlocked just in case there's an emergency need to use the toilet. Ahh the things I won't have to deal with in a month!

Crane Operators are Amazing

2006-10-06T19:33:00.000-06:00

The construction crew cam eout and set our house on it's foundation today! It was truely fascinating. The crane operator was superb. It's amazing the amount of control they have over something so heavy swinging on a couple of cables.

There was a gap between the 2 pieces and one of the workers simply winched them together. It was really cool.

Interior pictures to come later

On Marriage and Family

2006-10-05T12:44:00.000-06:00

This is not called My Virtual Sanity for nothing. Sometimes I need a place to share and vent and stand on my soap box. The last week or so has been a scary and crazy time in the US. We have had 3 incidents of guns in schools and I have increasingly had the desire to grab my babies, curl up in a ball and shut the entire world out. I have finally reached a breaking point it appears. If you are easily offended, please stop here. Blogging has it's limits in that you, the reader, can not hear my tone of voice. I am not full of righteous indignation here. I am so saddened by the state of events that I am almost in tears. I feel so sorry for my parent's generation, my generation and my kids generation who are given faulty information that has led to our horrible state of society.

The yarn harlot Stephanie finally married her husband Joe this past weekend. Please hop on over to her wonderful blog and congratulate her. I have been reading her blog for quite a while and had no clue that they weren't married. She refers to Joe as her husband, they have teenage children, it all seemed normal. I knew she was a bit of a hippie, making her own granola and such, but I didn't know that she had previously actively avoided marriage. (I love Stephanie, please don't think I'm dogging her here).

What is so wrong with official marriage?

Stephanie included a link to the Alternatives to Marriage project. I read the title and my heart sank. There is an organization and a project out there that is dedicated to promoting alternatives to marriage? What's so evil and wrong with marriage that we need to promote alternatives? Marriage and the traditional family has been the foundation of societies since the dawn of time. What makes us think that the needs of human beings have changed in the last 40 years that we no longer need traditional marriage, or that it is not the preferable option?

I am not one of those people who immediately sees a line of text and goes into a rage. I did read the website. I find that it is presented in a very caring, accepting, and politically correct way. I appreciate that it encourages cohabiting couples to use birth control. It agrees with me that children benefit from being in a stable and loving home. It is a very nice website. I'm afraid that no matter how much I WANT to be politically correct, I simply can't agree with the premise that marriage should not be the preferred family dynamic.

I do not believe that websites like this, or the obviously caring individuals who wrote it are destroying marriage. We as a society are doing a pretty good job of that already. Marriage as it should be is not repressive to women. It is not a contract where a woman sells herself into slavery to a husband. It is a partnership. It is built on love, respect, and commitment. So many people now seem to think that marriage is simply a socially acceptable means to sleep with each other. It is an excuse for an elaborate and expensive party. It's just what you do. On the one hand we seem to have so many people who never want to make that commitment to each other. Why should they? They can sleep with as many partners as they want, be free to think about themselves all the time and generally have the world revolve around them. On the other hand, we have the people who give marriage a bad name. They're essentially the same people. They will get married as a form of socially acceptable shacking up. When things get tough, or their selfish needs are not being met at every moment, they simply get divorced. It doesn't matter how many children they dragged through this whole experience.

The world has changed. It is now completely socially acceptable to live together and not be married. It is a legitimate choice of a family dynamic. Why is it that we then need to adjust to how the world is changing instead of trying to shift the world back into it's previous alignment? If the earth moved several degrees in it's orbit it would be catastrophic. In the same light, I don't think our option should be to adjust our mental thinking to now accept things as they are. I think we should be trying to fix it.

Many people would say that my arguments for children have no bearing since marriage is not about child rearing any more. I am apparently an oddity anyway. Only 10% of the population in the US live in households of 5 or more people. Yep, that means if you are actually married and haven't ended up as one of the terribly sad single parent families, you have only 3 children. Apparently in our day in age, marriage and children are inconvenient. The limit your freedom and ability to express yourself. I admit that there are times when I see people jet setting across the world, or doing things on a whim that I wish I could do that too. Finances with 3 children do not generally promote jet setting. At least not when one of us is a Stay at home mom and the other is actually around instead of at the office or away on business most of the time. The fact is, however, that children every day are being born into unstable homes where people are just "trying each other out".

Why is it so necessary to try each other out? If you love each other and are BOTH dedicated to showing that love, compromising, and being dedicated to each other, what matter do all the little idiosyncrasies of living together matter? The act of getting married creates a real commitment to each other. It is truly unfortunate that some people never take that step because they are afraid that it will ruin their relationship. It is also unfortunate that people take that commitment lightly and dilute what marriage really is.

I wish that more people would take their relationships seriously. I wish that they could see that in giving a part of yourself away and giving up some of your selfishness for the sake of the one you love that you can achieve much greater happiness. Stephanie and Joe obviously already had that. They were committed to each other. They will continue to be so. I just don't understand what the big deal with the official title is. We should not be trying to rewrite laws and change society in order to allow for people who simply don't like the term "marriage". We should be trying to show society why marriage has been so important for so many centuries of human history. We should be encouraging people to strive for all the good things that it brings, not accept the cheap imitation that "shacking up" brings. The feminist revolution LIED to you! Marriage is not what oppresses you! Taking your husband's name does not make you his property. You are not a slave! This new world that it created makes you a slave, a slave to your wants and to the inevitable consequences that it brings.

Alternatives to marriage are not destroying our society. Many people who participate in this are obviously very loving, committed people. It's underlying principles, however, are a symptom to me of all the lies that we have been fed since infancy. It is all interrelated, the disintegration of our society I believe is ultimately linked to the failure of our families; marriages, children being raised by strangers, personal gratification over the over all good. I've ranted enough, but it just makes me sick. Maybe some day I'll rant about why I'm a stay at home mom.

I HAVE A HOUSE!!

2006-10-04T20:06:00.000-06:00

I have a house! My modular home was delivered on 2 great big trailers to our site last night at like 8pm, so today I had to go check it out while Alex was in school. It's beautiful!

This is what our foundation hole looks like now. It will remain looking like this until Friday when the 2 pieces of the house will be set on it permanently.

Here is the front of the house again. Look how pretty the windows and the door are!

Here is the back of the house. Even the back door has a pretty window.

All the windows have mini blinds and curtains already. I'm so excited for this to be set and for us to be able to walk through the rooms for the first time!

All the rage

2006-10-03T22:03:00.001-06:00

I assume you all have heard about Patons SWS because it seems to be all the rage. It is proported as a wonderful felting yarn and a new, cheaper alternative to Noro. I had to go to Michaels today to buy some beads for a custom row counter order and low and behold it was $1 off. This still means that it was $5 a ball, but heck, it was on sale right?! I bought 1 of each color because I REALLY wanted to try it out in some mitered squares like this blanket from Mason Dixon:
I ADORE this blanket! I love how it is random, and yet it all fits so beautifully together. I'm not really into the whole changing colors and weaving in a bazillion ends, though. I'm opting for self striping yarn instead. Thus the Paton's SWS. Here's my first miter swatch:
This is Natural earth. I had read someone say that this yarn didn't have a pattern repeat, but it certainly seems to to me. It goes from rust to olive, to tan, to mauve, to black, and then back again in reverse. I LOVE how it striped up in this mitered square pattern. My vote is still out on the yarn it's self, though.

The yarn is a very loosely spun single ply yarn. It is incredibly soft and slightly fuzzy. It is also shiny. It is slippery to work with, even on the 4mm bamboo needles I used and it does like to split, so you kind of have to keep tension on it and then keep an eye on it. It does create a very nice fabric, though, with nice fat stitches. It also has a nice feeling weight to it.

I would also like to do a swatch in the Lizard ridge pattern just to see if this would work. Wouldn't that be awesome?!

Ugly Sock #1

2006-10-03T08:30:00.000-06:00

Ugly Sock #1 is complete.

I have already knit 3 pairs of socks out of this self striping yarn, and since I hate the colors, I figured I needed to try something a little different. At first I tried a wavy, or chevron pattern, but then I had this fear that I'd run out of yarn. I only have 1 ball of yarn for 2 socks and there's no way I'm buying more. So, what's a girl to do?

I recently bought Sensational Knitted Socks by Charlene Schurch. I really love this book. It has a lot of different ribbed patterns to chose from and 3 or 4 different heels. It also breaks down the instructions for 4 dpn, 5dpn and 2 circs. No magic loop, which is my method of choice for toe up socks. I think she's biased. No matter, magic loop is a lot like 2 circs. One of the heels is a toe up heal flap, but it looks different from the one I had been using from the knitting friend. The heel I had been using has you work gusset increases, turn the heel, then work across the heel flap stitches, while knitting one of the gusset stitches together with the flap at each edge. This make a heel that looked EXACTLY as if it was worked cuff down. It requires a little bit of mental mathematical gymnastics, though.

The heel described in my new book, has you work the heel exactly the same as you would if you were doing it cuff down. You work a heel flap, turn the heel, then pick up stitches along the flap and do gusset decreases until you're back down to your correct number of stitches. This creates a little triangle on the heel and has the gusset stitches running vertically instead of horizontally. Get it? No? Ok, here's a comparison:

Notice how it stripes differently? That's because the ugly sock has a heel flap UNDER your heel.

The book says that this is good if you need to add reinforcing to the heel because you are only working that section instead of knitting in the round. "Oooo! I though. Good point!" I have noticed that my mom tends to wear big holes in this part of the sock, so I figured maybe this would be good for her. It suggests using smaller needles for added strength. I though "Hmm, well if heel stitch adds strength to the back of the heal, why not to the bottom?" So, I worked both the back of the heal and the bottom in heal stitch. I'm not sure how this will wear, or if it'll annoy my mom. It's an experiment, we'll find out. Let's just hope that it doesn't turn out bad and I have to knit the ugly socks twice!

Fall and the birth of mommy time

2006-09-29T07:02:00.000-06:00

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:

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!)
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!
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).
DH and I got some alone adult time last night which is very rare.
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

2006-09-28T10:55:00.000-06:00

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!

2006-09-23T09:16:00.000-06:00

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

2006-09-21T07:35:00.000-06:00

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

2006-09-19T11:07:00.000-06:00

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.