My Cherie Amour: A Knitting Project and some Stevie Wonder

It's a sweater. I got carried away, but if you want to sing along, click on the post title for the first 1:30. Ah, Stevie...

Once upon a time, when I was pregnant (why I thought it would be good idea to knit a sweater, while pregnant, for my non-pregnant self, I'll never know), I knit this sweater. Ugh! It has sat undisturbed in my closet for almost three years. It's about $100 worth of really high quality Japanese handpainted yarn. Quel waste!

So onto the needles with this sassy little number.

Here's hoping it's a better use of the yarn!

photo is from knitty.com, saved to my drive
credit: Monty Moncrief

Hello! say the Woodins

Hello! say the Woodins
Originally uploaded by fallingdownhouse

I was so busy knitting these guys the two weeks before Christmas that I never got around to blogging them. They were one on Felix's Christmas gifts. Three little stuffed guys and a hollow tree for them to play in. How can you not love them?

Finished!

Finished!
Originally uploaded by fallingdownhouse

About a year ago, I got in touch with a couple of other knitters who are friends with my friends, the Corrdins, who were, at the time, expecting their first child. Said child was expected in July, and I figured that would leave plenty of time for us to each knit a third of a blanket, and for to collect them and knit them together.

I am as delusional about time frames as my husband, apparently.

Ruben was born in June (all good), the other girls got their thirds to me in July, I finished mine in August (still ok, right?). I finished the blanket on the 17th. Of January. 2009. (eek)

I am slow and I suck.

But I think they liked their blankie.

Gallery of Finished Objects

I've finally hit some kind of stride with my various knitting projects. The whole having a baby thing distracted me right in the middle of a long, and probably over ambitious, list of WIPs. I was bogged down, and the projects loomed over me, casting a pall over my knitting. And who wants a pall over the very hobby that quiets your mind, busies your hands, and fuels your creativity?

So, I chucked them all for a few days, knit up a scarf in a yummy yarn I'd been dying to play with for a friend's birthday, and kick started the rest of my finishing projects. And voila! suddenly things started coming together:

Fibby's Birthday/Graduation/You're the coolest Scarfy GoodnessDashing Fingerless Gloves
Malabrigo Baby Hat for Ayden
Dishcloth Cotton Bib for Elias
Jamie's Christmas Scarf - Yay, Christmas in June!
Dishcloth Mitered Square for Learning Purposes

Now I'm getting back to some long awaiting WIPs, most of which will reveal themselves in good time.

Book Borrowing

One of the things I love about our library is that it's part of a huge inter library loan network with online catalogs, renewals, and requests. It's perfect for the lazy time crunched mother. So, last night I went and picked up my most recent stash.

Knitting books much?

Of Swifts and Nostepinnes

This weekend, I tried a few new tricks in the knitting department.

I've been reading about how to make a yarn swift out of Tinkertoys, and I picked up a used set of Tinkertoys on Ebay a while back. This weekend I finally had a need for my new swift. I deviated a little from the original design, but the concept is the same. Now, with skein at the ready, I thought, "wouldn't it be nice to have one of those nice yummy yarn cakes that don't move around while you're knitting from them..."

So, I pottered around the internets until I found a guy who gave instructions for using a paper towel roll as a nostepinne.

After a little fiddling, I used the pictured swift and "nostepinne" to make that cute little yarn cake from which I've cast on a new project. Hooray, no more tanlged skeins.

To Wear or Not To Wear: Something On One's Bottom Half

By the time I'm done with the 2007 holiday knitting, it will be time to start on 2008.

It's an absolute truth, people. I just cast on for yet another belated gift. This one I hope to have on its way to Maine by Valentine's Day. Merry Valentinmas?

I've still got a scarf, two pairs of fingerless gloves, and a golf club cover to do after this. There's also Felix's baby blanket on needles, and three other projects from last summer that I abandoned in favor of holiday knitting. Hmmmm... When will I get to knit all the socks I want to try?

Yesterday, while I finished Miss E's hat, she spent the day in a t-shirt and undies, complaining of the cold, and hoarding blankets on the couch. When I, ever so foolishly, suggested pants, she looked at me like I was a single-cell life form, and said, "I don't have to wear pants in the house."

While this is, technically, true, I was irritated by her tone, and reminded her that pants, while not strictly required, would keep her warm, and away from the confines of the couch. No luck. Pantless, she continued to complain, and I continued to be unsympathetic.

Did I mention that the house is heated to a balmy 72 degrees? Bet she'd wear pants at my house... we keep it at 62 degrees.

She had opted to stay home with O, Felix, and I while their Dad took Big Brother J skiing at Mount Sunapee for the day. I think she somehow thought a day home would be nonstop excitement. I had been looking forward to a quiet day with the little boys, largely occupied by playing trains and trucks, knitting, and napping, so needless to say, she was mildly disappointed. Miss E is a great one for needing entertainment. Recently, she's started reading chapter books, which helps, but heaven help a nanny if she hasn't got a bagful of suggestions when the reading no longer cuts it. At 6, *my* Mom sent me to play with my toys until I was called for lunch, and made me take an hour's rest after lunch before being sent off to play again until supper. She also asked that we wear something on our bottom half, and I feel I had quite a nice upbringing.

Show & Tell: Hats

I know you all read this blog for the witty observations (ahem...), but today's a little show and tell. I've been knitting like a fiend over the holidays, even since I've been back to work, and I have a few things to show for it! The funny thing is, many, many of these things were hats. And here they are:


Me, modeling Big Brother J's hat, first in a coordinating series of hats for the kids.


Me, modeling O's hat, second in the coordinating hat series.


Miss E modeling her hat. Third in the series.


Me, again, in my new hat, a luscious cashmere and merino Brioche stitch hat.

So, those were the hats. Enjoy your MLK day.

Hallowe'en

My littlest ghoulie here at work tried on his Hedwig (the snowy owl, not the cross-dressing rocker) costume last night, and charmed everyone on the neighborhood. This, while I was scooping and carving the kids' Jack-O-Lanterns. They started out enthusiastically enough, but somehow, in the end, I am the one who finished cleaning them out, and carving two out of three. Some days I really feel like I earn my paycheck!

So, apparently, despite my efforts to explain to the contrary, people felt that I didn't love the Red Sox, simply because I don't love the idea of an expensive, dirty, chaotic rolling rally for them when they win the Series. Au contraire, and my kids are not destined to be Yankees fans, for the simple fact that I'm not a huge fan of New York City itself, never mind Steinbrenner's Evil, obnoxious, cocky baseball franchise. And chances are, I will bitch equally loudly if there is another victory rally in Boston, come the beginning of February. But I'm not looking that far ahead in the football season, because to do that would be toxic for the Pats rather impressive streak thus far, and I don't want that kind of responsibility.

In knitting news, I've finished a few projects, including another Christmas gift, the Clapotis, and a stuffed Bear for my friend's baby shower, which I hope to attend this Saturday, barring a trip to the hospital myself that day.

One Hobby at a Time...

It's quiet here at work this morning. I think O's still asleep. He's still adjusting to the loss of his afternoon nap the three days he goes to preschool. I had one of those sleepy drives in where you feel like you maybe shouldn't be driving?

I was craving coffee and donuts all the way in, so I decided to go to the 7-11 and get hot chocolate and donuts, so I'm not totally pumping the baby up with caffeine (only a little bit....). Yummy. Donuts.

Torn between whipping out one of the three Christmas gifts I'm working on at present, and updating this here blog, I decided not to neglect the blog, but I'm not exactly sure what I have to say. I've been knitting, and pregnant, and somehow, blogging has gotten lost by the wayside, which is sad, because I'm sure there've been some good little tidbits to share... Or is no news good news?

Even the kids have mostly been themselves. Obviously, that means they're nutjobs, but this is nothing out of the ordinary.

I did read a fabulous article this morning, at the recommendation of a friend, about snoring remedies, since apparently I've started snoring, and in a comical (perhaps ironical?) turn of events, it's disturbing my partner's rest. (For those of you out of the loop, Mark snores like a fighter jet engine, sometimes even when he's wearing his CPAP mask.)

Enough, I suppose with the senseless blogging, and onto the knitting... or maybe waking up the O for his speech therapy session... Sleepy kiddo.

Flotsam

Julie has a blog now!

I totally forgot a doctor's appointment today, and now will have to schedule another date for my group B strep test. Oooh, fun.

I slept through the night last night! No three AM potty trip for this pregnant lady...

I am an ADD knitter. I couldn't stop myself from casting on for yet another project. I now have five projects on needles, though two of them are technically snoozing until I have the holiday knitting done.

I ran into a friend I haven't seen or even heard from in almost three years. It seems that he is still married to his man, still living where I last left him, and now getting a degree in interior design. I fell like I kind of shocked him with the whole married-house-in-the-suburbs-two-dogs-baby-on-the-way-ness of me, but then again, three years is a long time...

Wet, Hot, and Agitated

A Felting Story

**For those of you who don't give a crap about my knitting adventures, please come back later for a non-fiber related post**

One of the projects on my needles this past week has been the Booga Bag, an adventure for me, since I have never felted anything before. I got the bag and the i-cord all knitted up, and this morning, decided to go ahead a felt the sonofabitch. Now, I have read a lot about the felting, and how it can't be done properly in a front loading washer, but that's all I have available to me. There's either my Maytag at home, or the Asko here at work. Turns out, the Asko has tons of heat settings, and a no-spin option, so I figured I'd try that one first.

I bundled my bag pieces up in an old pillow case, and cinched it closed with a hair elastic (to keep the fuzz out of the washer's pump - no sense in wrecking the bosses' new European washer before it's even a year old...), added some heavy pieces of clothing for agitation, set it to 205 degrees and no-spin cycle, and let 'er rip. One hour later, perfectly felted bag! It's now sitting on a Cheez-It box covered in a DeLuca's market bag to dry out before I can assemble it fully, but I'm psyched, especially as it's going into the Christmas Gifty Bag. I love it when a gift comes together!

Oh, happy felting! Happy, happy felting!

Whingeing About Languishing Knitting UFOs

Have you ever had a project start with great enthusiasm and intentions, and then find that, for one reason or another, it fizzles? (I'm sure the answer is yes...)

I have two afghans that I've started in the last year that are meant for people I love dearly, two very different patterns in very different yarns... and I just can't get excited to finish them...

Especially, when I have holiday gift knitting projects waiting in line behind these dinosaur-sized projects...

I am despondent.

OK, and my baby-brain is like mush, so maybe I shouldn't be trying to finish longterm tasks?

Anyone care to chime in with motivation?

Traffic Patterns and Seasonal Shifts, also, The Weekend

My 35-40 minute commute took an hour this morning, must mean Labor Day has come and gone...

It was quite the weekend, here at MoMP. I kicked off the holiday with an errand run that took me to Fabric Place in Framingham, in search of T pins for my sweater blocking project. I left with two skeins of Noro Kochoran in different colorways that I got for %30 off. Whoops. No more yarn!!!!

Saturday afternoon I spent at the Spencer Fair with Rylee, who tore a swath through the midway and the carnival rides, before devouring a soft serve cone, and checking out the agricultural elements of the fair. She was most impressed by the variety of poultry and barnyard animals, and by the first prize winning 696 pound pumpkin in the Cattle Barn.

Sunday, I drove up to Brattleboro, VT, to visit with my dear friend, Judy, who was in town visiting from DC (a much shorter drive to VT than DC for me, after all). We went with her sister, brother-in-law, and nephew to the Annual Labor Day Festival at the Friends of Music at Guilford, where we ate, relaxed (I started a scarf with my new discount yarn!), and listened to some fairly good festival orchestra renditions of Gershwin, Schubert, and others. It was a lovely afternoon, and oh-so-Vermonty.

Monday was, in fact, a Labor Day. I cleaned the kitchen, cabinet doors and all, did about a month's worth of shopping, and made the first of two blocking boards, in order to kick off the holiday knitting season in good speed.

During all of this, Mark switched the electrical service to an upgraded 200 amps, framed in the bathroom/office wall, installed a bunch of ducting and venting for the bathroom and office, and adjusted for the crooked ceiling (ie: the crooked floors on the second floor) in the bathroom, to accommodate said ducting and venting. Pictures soon!

I hope everyone else had a lovely weekend, and that summer is only nominally over. I, for one, would like to hold on until the 21st!

We're Having A Baby... and It's Eaten My Brain

Duh, right?

I honestly think that pregnancy has sucked all my blogging ability away from me, since I have eleventy billion things to do in preparation for the little man (who, by the way, is tickling my internal organs with exceptional frequency these last few days - busy guy).

Yesterday, for instance, I sat down to blog, and ended up registering us for a childbirth class, a tour of the maternity ward, and then calling a potential pediatrician.

I had already been to the vet yesterday, with O, Maurice, & Amelie, to get some meds for her nasty ear infection. And I'm sure I had great plans for a rant about $90 bills for someone to tell me what I mostly already knew, and give me an anti-inflammatory/anti-bacterial/anti-fungal ointment. ::sigh::

During the last two weeks, I've had my tooth mostly fixed, a very successful second ultrasound (which confirmed that Babypants is not, I repeat, NOT, suffering from a kidney problem - hooray!), married off my brother, and replaced the clutch on my VW. Ouch. Life is pricey sometimes.

Oh, and O started speech therapy sessions three weeks ago, at a fabulous new private practice here in Beacon Hill, called Chatterboxes. I love his therapist, she's terrific, and I think he's starting to show some improvement!

I also just ordered a small fortune in yarn in order to complete my Christmas knitting. Christmas knitting? you say.... Yes, since come early November (or Dasein668's birthday, whichever) I'm going to be wicked distracted, I drew up a list of recipients and projects, and figured out yarns, etc... Now all I need is for the giant Knit Picks box to arrive...

The wedding, for those of you who might be curious, was everything I had expected, but all in all successful. The ceremony was very nice, and it was spectacular to have 4 out of 5 of my Mom's siblings in one place, some even with spice and offspring, and their spice and offspring. I love family reunions.

Coming up in the next few weeks: I'm taking Rylee to the Spencer Fair on Saturday, we're having a wedding party for Jamie & Dy in two weeks, and then it's all baby, all the time until the critter shows up, and then it's really all baby, all the time.

Oh, My Yarn!

I got an Ebay package full of yarnaliciousness tonight.

Twelve skeins of Knit Picks "Panache," a 40% baby alpaca 20% cashmere, 20% silk, and 20% superfine merino blend that is, perhaps, the fiber equivalent of my buttercream recipe. In a word, luscious.

Because it's from Knit Picks, it's very reasonably priced at $4.99/50g ball, but I'm feeling supa-smug, since I got the whole shebang for $37 on Ebay, including shipping, which would have cost me $59.88 plus shipping, direct from the company. I love when other knitters sell off their stash.

One colorway will be devoted to Christmas knitting. One is going to be a charity project, and the third may just me for me. Cause Mama wants a new hat and mittens for the winter!

A Long Awaited FO!

I finally finished one of the projects I've been stalled on: a stuffed bunny I designed. I've named him Glenn, in memory of my late, beloved friend, who, like this bunny was goofy, lanky, and easily hugged.

This one is missing facial features, and I'm going to knit him up a quick scarf, but as a design prototype, he's a success. In the future, there are things I will tweak to perfect the design, but I feel really good about getting him together and having O really love him. I had originally intended him for my own little boy, but O may have laid a claim.

Still Here

It's official, Ravelry has taken over my life. And the worst part is, though I gave you a link, you can't even peruse the sight if you're interested (which I realize approximately zero of you are), because they're technically still testing, and you have to be invited to log in...

::sigh::

The online organization and public display of my knitting life has kicked my tush into high gear on some projects I've left languishing this spring and early summer. Such as the "mystery gifty project" and the stuffed toy project.

It has proven difficult, though, to tear myself away even long enough to put together a decent blog post...

Suffice it to say, I'm still here, and still hanging with O, still chauffeuring Miss E to camp, still envisioning a finished house for the new little one to live in... And I'm still reading most of you, unless you lurk, and then I don't know you.

Ravelry

OK, so anyone who knows me understands that I am, at the core, a colossal dork.

A few months ago I signed up for the waiting list to beta-test a new website called Ravelry. Today, I got my invitation, and I have pretty much spent every non-O-watching moment of my day today fiddling with my new account.

Basically, it's a knitting and crocheting community site with places for fiberholics to post their projects, patters, yarn stash, etc. There are photos, groups, forums, all the good stuff. And you can peek at what other people are up to! Ooooh! Yum.

Of course, all this fiddling led to a Flickr account to support the photo end of the account, and finally a feed reader (I know, I've been blogging in the stone age). I feel very competent, somehow. And maybe a little caught up?

February 13th, Part Deux. Oh, and It's a Snow Day!

For the kids, anyway. For me, it's just a day home with all three kids. Meh. As you can see, the roads were a mess this morning. It's hardly Oswego County, NY, here, but even on a bad traffic day, it doesn't take an hour and twenty minutes to travel the 23.2 miles from my driveway to the parking garage. It was slushy and wet and ... it snowed out the flight on which our puppy was supposed fly!

(OK, that was just me catching the whining bug from the kids...)

Both in the windshield and in the rearview mirror, note the lack of any other cars on the road. This was a deceivingly quiet moment, occurring about a mile after I passed the plows on the Pike. They slowed all the rest of the traffic after them, leaving those of us ahead of them to gain a few miles of road. It all caught up a few minutes later.

The kids have been rattling around all day, bored senseless because they can't go outside in the sleet and freezing rain. The best work they've done all day was to build a fort with their Cranium fort building set. It's a pretty awesome toy, should you have the kind of house that lacks pillows, kitchen chairs, and old sheets from your parents' bed. That was how my bro and I rolled. Yo.

It is also Valentine's Day, for those of you who observe it. Mark and I skip it in favor of acknowledging that we love each other the rest of the days of the year. He may not bring me flowers, but he does bring me the odd Vosges Haut Chocolat Naga Bar from Whole Foods just cause he saw them and remembers they're my favorite!

The kids got a visit from one grandmother, and a balloon delivery from the other. My Mom used to make Red Dinner. Steak, salad with catalina dressing, beets... Pasta with red sauce... There were many versions of Red Dinner over the years.

I did cast on for the front panel of the sweater. I finished the first sleeve yesterday. Just shy of half done... I might even get it done before the weather gets warm again.