Thank you SP!

Score! Look what I got from my sweet Secret Pal!

Two Fiddlesticks shawl patterns - ones that I have been dying to get.
A cute sticky SABLE (stash acquisition beyond life expectency) sticky pad.
Pure Lanolin for my very rough hands (yum)
and some little flower shaped soaps.

Thank you Secret Pal, I love everything!

What I've been doing....

I've been in a knitting slump lately. I have a ton of projects laying around the house, waiting to be worked on, and all I can do is knit baby socks. For me, socks are comfort knitting- like mashed potatoes and gravy. They are easy to make and easy to finish. Socks are my choice whenever I feel like knitting something mindless but satisfying.

Why do I feel I need mindless knitting? Probably because I've ripped out no less than three projects in the last week. (Let's not mention the projects I ripped previously). My Diamond Fantasy Shawl is once again in the trash. I actually got up to the 3rd set of repeats when I realized that I'd made *another* mistake in the body of the shawl. The whole pattern was shifted very obviously sideways by at least two stitches. So I'm putting the DFS to rest for now; I have some Zephyr yarn (isn't it pretty?) on its way to me and maybe that'll get me going on it again on the shawl.

I won't mention the other projects I've scrapped lately; it's too depressing.

Part of my knitting ennui probably has to do with the fact that I have been working quite a bit lately. Lots of clients calling for Christmas card sessions means I have very little knitting time at night. The only time I can actually do my post processing is after the boys are in bed so that means time spent knitting is pretty slim. At least I managed to send some of Monkey Boy's photos to the printer (after 10 mos!). Here's a collage I put together for our hallway:



I also spent a little time spinning this week. Wanna see the finished product?

It's Blue Face Liecester- very soft and springy. I think I undertwisted the singles tho- they kept breaking when I was trying to ply them. There's about 320yds here.

Lookie what I got!

My Secret Pal sent me really cute, handmade card, check it out!

So I gleaned from the note inside that she's a mommy (like me) and will be attending the NY Sheep and Wool Festival. How fun!

BTW, this just made me realize that I *MUST* send my own SP6 her package this weekend. I have been so busy that it just keeps slipping to my "will do tomorrow" list. Sorry SP! I promise to get your package out to you ASAP, please be patient!

Kill me now

(Or "How I Spent My Thursday")

I came home from Knit Nite on Wednesday feeling kinda "ick". Well by 2am I was camped out on the bathroom floor because it was easier than getting out of bed every time I felt like I might barf. By the time Thursday morning rolled around I was pretty useless.

Luckily The Dearest was able to stay at home and watch the boys for me, because I was so sick all I did was lay on the bed or sofa all day. He ended up taking them out to the park and having a picnic. I'm sure that was more fun than watching me lay around, pale and wan and trying not to puke more. In fact I was so ill that I couldn't even knit! Just sitting up made me nauseous- ugh. By Thursday night I was feeling a lot better, tho I still hadn't eaten anything more substantial than a piece of buttered toast in more then 24 hours. Thank gawd for Otter Pops cuz those are what kept me hydrated.

I had a photo shoot scheduled for this morning with a one year old and his mom, so it's a good thing that I was feeling better. I guess that's the only advantage to the 24hr stomach flu- you generally feel pretty decent once it passes.


Before my run-in (no pun intended) with my flu bug, I managed to finish some fun socks for my lovely MIL:



I used some Henry's Attic Kona Superwash that I dyed ages ago. When I first dyed the yarn I wasn't very happy with the finished product so I added more color. After a while I realized that I probably added too much color. The finished yarn is pretty bright (as you can see!), but MIL likes bright colors and I think she'll enjoy these as house socks.

Better than an inkblot test...

Check it out-

Do you see what I see?





Ok, if you don't see it, turn it upside down.

NOW do you see it?


(BTW this is an actual stamp for sale. Maybe I should purchase one and make Christmas cards, whatcha think?)

Figures....

I was at Meg's blog and followed a survey link to find out that I'm

Aragorn

"Putting your appointed path ahead of any inner conflicts, you make your own rules for the benefit of all.

If my life or death I can protect you, I will.

Aragorn is a character in the Middle-Earth universe. There is a description of him at TheOneRing.net."

Hmmm....could be!

Some WIPs

I wanted Little Man to put my now-felted tote bag on his head again, but he wasn't having any of that. So this is the pic I'm posting, sorry you can't see the full size of the bag...blame it on onery 3 year olds.

It shrank about 1/2 the length & 1/3 the width so it's quite a bit wider than I thought it was going to be. I had some really cute handles I wanted to use, but they aren't nearly big enough to hold up a bag this size. Looks like I'll be making about 5 miles of I-cord for handles.
I was thinking of starting on the handles today, but it's about 95 degrees in the shade and much too hot to sit around with a skein of Lambs Pride Bulky in my lap. We are very lucky not to be near the fire area this time around.


The last time we had bad firestorms, they were close enough to drop ash on us for days. The sky was dark with smoke and ash. This photo was taken around noon in October of 2003. Check out that artificial sunset effect.

Fire season and the Santa Anas always freak me out. We live in a high fire risk area, near a natural brush canyon. Our home is about 2 miles from the parts of Laguna Beach that were totally destroyed by fire a decade ago. In fact, we can see the backyards of some of the rebuilt homes from our balcony.

The Dearest and I have talked about what we'd save in an emergency evacuation (besides the obvious kiddos and dog): he always tells me to remember to take the server. I worry about wedding photos and yarn. I *am* sick, aren't I?















And talking about sickness: here's another shot of my ever-a-work-in-progress @#$# Silk Corset. Remember how I was whingeing about the crappy I-cord cast on I did for the armpits? Well, no more worries- I frogged back to the armholes and re-knit the whole thing. After trying the corset on, I realized that the armholes were way tight. So I re-knit them, adding 6 extra sts to the armhole and using an e-loop cast on in place of the awkward I-cord caston.

Hopefully this will be the last ripping I'll have to do for a while on this piece. *Praying*

One good thing about the hot weather:


Monkey Boy got to play in the sprinklers for the first time.

Thumbs up

The very first ride we hit at Disneyland was the rockets. I seem to remember these same rockets (in a different color) being much higher and closer to Space Mountain. But it's been at least 15 yrs since I was at Disneyland so I'm sure they moved everything around.

Little Man had so much fun on the rockets. I think the park as a whole was a bit of sensory overload for him. He kept saying that everything was very loud. We only went on four rides: the rockets, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride (which I had forgotten was *very* loud and kinda freaked Little Man out), the merry go round (much better for Little Man) and finally we hit the Pirates of the Carribean. At first he kept asking "get me out of here" on the Pirates ride, but eventually he got into it and had more fun.

We had the annual passes and they are great; it's so nice to be able to go for only a few hours without the pressure of hitting every ride. I can't wait till winter hits in earnest and the tourists go home. I remember when we were kids, the best time to go was on a day when it was raining or threatened rain because no one would be there and you could just walk on to any ride you wanted.

Dland was a hit and we'll be back again pretty soon (maybe even this next week).

Here's Little Man trying to lift the sword from the stone.

Ghost or pre-felted bag?

It's true- we *do* have a haunted
house.

Haunted by huge (pre-felted) knitted bags. This particular ghost also eats large amounts of popcorn, raisins and fruit snacks. Oh, it seems to love Bob the Builder.

We just can't get rid of the darned thing, no matter how many exorcists we call in.











We had pretty intense thunderstorms this past Tuesday, which is rare for So. Cal.. Here's a view of the sky about an hour before sunset.

Around 1am Tuesday morning, a huge thunderstorm dropped tons of rain on us, complete with some crazy lightning. The thunder came right after the flash of lightning, so of course it woke Little Man up. I heard him crying and found him in the hall bathroom with his hands over his ears. He kept saying "it's too loud!". We calmed him down by showing him to count between the flash and the thunder.

Then Monkey Boy woke up and stayed up for another 2 hours. UGH Needless to say, I didn't get much sleep that night.






Here's the same sky, right before sunset. Little Man and I actually saw a double rainbow right after this. Unfortunately it was too dark for my camera to pick up.

BTW wish us luck; we're going to DLand today for the first time with Little Man and Monkey Boy. Hopefully all the tourists are gone!

Homemade fun...

We go thru a lot of playdough in this household. If Little Man isn't leaving it out so it dries up, Monkey Boy is attempting to eat it. I knew there were homemade playdough recipes available and I decided to try making some this afternoon. Of course Little Man was my lab assistant. We used this recipe and made two batches. One was pink (supposed to be red, but I didn't add enough food coloring), and the other was orange.

Here's Little Man showing off the finished product.

It was a lot of fun and quite messy, so I'm sure we'll be doing it again sometime soon.

The curse of being a photographer's child....

"Don't just take my photograph, HELP me!"

Rippit, just rippit!

I was going to take a photo of my Diamond Fantasy Shawl tonight, but as I was laying it out I spied a mistake on the edge. Somehow or another I managed to shift a whole row of the pattern off by at least a couple of stitches. The YO that ends up right before the garter stitch edging was pretty distorted, and you could very obviously see that the pattern wasn't right from that point on. I briefly considered leaving it, then came to my senses and decided that ripping would be the better part of valor.

After frogging about 3 inches, I was able to pick up a complete row of 81 sts. Now I just have to figure out where in my pattern I am. *sigh* Luckily, I am inspired by Cara's finished DFS to keep on knitting.

Also on the chopping block: the cover sweater from Fall Vogue 2005. I decided to try this design from Annie Modesitt, but instead of using her twisted garter stitch pattern I am using my Chocolate Cherry handspun, which gives a similar look without all the extra work. The sweater/swatch was about 8" in diameter before it hit me that I had increased one too many times and the whole project needed to frogged. I probably could have just tinked back to the part where I increased incorrectly, but I decided this morning that I wanted to add some brown Blue Sky Alpaca yarn into the pattern and it would just be easier to re-knit everything. Another thing bugging me was that there was a pretty big hole in the center of the sweater. Annie's instructions tell you to cast on some sts and start increasing, knitting between each increase. Unfortunately she doesn't tell you what kind of CO to use, and most circular COs leave a hole. It might have been tightened up after all was said and done, but I just wasn't happy with it. So the cover sweater took a trip to the frog pond tonight as well.

The plan is to start again tomorrow, using an I-cord cast on so eliminate the hole, while knitting randomly with my handspun and the Blue Sky alpaca yarn. Hopefully we'll have pics up by Monday-ish.

redwood lace

I finally got down to business on another lace shawl, the Diamond Fantasy Shawl. Here's a peek at it-

The colors are a bit washed out (trying to take photos with an 8mo old needing a nap and a 3yr old 'helping' is really hard). I like this pattern a lot and am knitting on it every night while I watch re-runs of The Amazing Race on GSN.

Freeking spammers

So due to all the spam comments I've been getting, I'm turning on word verification for comments. Sorry, but it had to be done!

Silk Corset in progress

Well, here is a photograph of my Silk Corset. This is what I have to show for 9+ hours of knitting. I shit you not.

As I've groused before, either I am a really stoopid knitter or this pattern isn't very well written (I tend to think it's the latter and not the former). After ripping this thing four times, I finally decided to skip the charts completely and re-write the pattern so I could actually understand it. It must be working cuz I am actually past the armholes now and into the 1x1 ribbing on the torso.

Here's one of the armholes. I'm not very happy with the way the i-cord cast on is so loose. Can you see how stretched out the stitches look?

I may have to go back and use some crocheting or something to tighten the armpits up. We'll see how visible it is when everything is said and done. Luckily this *is* the underarm part of the corset so it shouldn't be too obvious.

Another WIP: I'm knitting this bag based on Knitpicks' Farmer Market Tote, but using some Lamb's Pride Bulky instead of the called-for KP yarn.

Felting is always so much fun IMO. It's amazing to watch a huge knitted item turn into a much smaller felted item. This is probably going to be the size of a garbage bag pre-felting....we'll see how much it shrinks once we run it thru the washer.

I'm In! Secret Pal 6

Ok, here goes:
1. Are you a yarn snob: Kinda- I am not a fan of novelty yarns or most 100% acrylic yarns. I prefer natural fibers for the most part, but I've been known to buy my share of Lion Brand WoolEase.

2. Do you spin? Crochet? Oh yes, I'm totally hooked on spinning. My fiber stash is nowhere near as big as my yarn stash...but it's growing! As for crocheting: I can do it, but it's not something I enjoy.

3. Do you have any allergies? (smoke, pets, fibers, perfume, etc.): Very allergic to angora (just thinking about it makes me itch). Not too fond of strong scents (including smoke and perfume).

4. How long have you been knitting? About 2 1/2 years.

5. Do you have an Amazon or other online wish list? Nope.

6. What's your favorite scent? (for candles, bath products etc.): Anything fruity. I love Bath & Body Works' Vanilla Sugar and also the Ripe Raspberry. Yum. Not really into flowery scents, except for roses.

7. Do you have a sweet tooth? More than one. :)

8. What other crafts or Do-It-Yourself things do you like to do? Beading, scrapbooking, painting....

9. What kind of music do you like? Can your computer/stereo play MP3s? (if your buddy wants to make you a CD) I'm pretty out there with my musical tastes. I pretty much listen to everything except hip hop/rap and country.

10. What's your favorite color? Or--do you have a color family/season/palette you prefer? Any colors you just can't stand? My favorite colors would probably be purple and then pink. Probably the only color I can't stand would be yellow.

11. What is your family situation? Do you have any pets? Married, two little boys (3yrs and 8mos). One crazy ankle biter dog.

12. What are your life dreams? : Is this an interview or what? Hmmm....the answer to this would change depending upon when you ask me. I guess right now I want to raise two wonderful little boys into two self assured, kind, creative and confident men (and not lose my mind in the process). After that, it would be fun to 'retire' and travel with the Dearest. I've always wanted to visit Africa.

13. What is/are your favorite yarn/s to knit with? I love me them varigated yarns, no matter where they come from. Rowan makes some wonderful yarns, as does Koigu and Jaeger. Oh yah, gotta throw in Socks that Rock and Artyarns' Supermerino too.

14. What fibers do you absolutely *not* like? Angora cuz it makes me itch (see #3 above). Mohair is hard for me to knit, even tho I like the finished product.

15. What is/are your current knitting obsession/s? Lace (joined the Summer of Lace/Lace for All Seasons group). I have three lace-y projects going right now.

16. What is/are your favorite item/s to knit? Stuff for the kiddos because those projects go so quickly and they turn out so cute.

17. What are you knitting right now? OMG can I just rattle off a few of my many WIPs? The Diamond Fantasy Shawl in Knitpicks' Redwood sock yarn. The Little Lacey Top in Elizabeth Lavold's Silky Wool. A felted bag I'm making up using some Brown Sheep Bulky. Socks for the Dearest. I'm going to stop now, cuz I'm embarassing myself.

18. What do you think about ponchos? If I was 16, 5'10" and weighed 99lbs, maybe a good look. As I am now? Not so much.

19. Do you prefer straight or circular needles? I mostly use circs, but I have some lovely wood straights that I really like.

20. Bamboo, aluminum, plastic? My faves are Addi Naturas, but they are hard to find. Most of my circs are therefore the Addi Turbos. Almost all of my straight needles are wood (birch, maple and bamboo). All my DPNs are wood. I'm a bit of a needle snob LOL

21. Are you a sock knitter? Well, I have a huge stash of sock yarn, but I haven't knit that many socks. Socks are fun, tho!

22. How did you learn to knit? Lessons at the LYS.

23. How old is your oldest UFO? Probably about 1.5 yrs old. It's the Bed & Breakfast Sweater from an old IK.

24. What is your favorite animated character or a favorite animal/bird? Classic Winnie the Pooh's Piglet.

25. What is your favorite holiday? Christmas

26. Is there anything that you collect? Yarn! Ummm...and unique/old glass beads.

27. What knitting magazine subscriptions do you have? None. I usually buy IK or Vogue Knitting from the local bookstore.

28. Any books out there you are dying to get your hands on? Maybe the current Rowan mag. That's about it, cuz I am always buying knitting related books for myself.

29. Any patterns you have been coveting, but haven't bought for one reason or another?? I really want to try Fiddlesticks' Lotus Blossom or Peacock Shawl. I just don't know if I have the courage to really attempt a big lace project like that!

ETA: 30. What are your foot measurements, and what kind of socks do you like? I have long feet- they're 9.5 inches long and only 4 inches around. Love lacey looking socks, because they are so feminine.

Self-diagnosis...

It's true: I have knitting ADD. I discovered this not too long ago, when I was cleaning out some of my stash and found at least four projects in various unfinished stages. These particular projects were so old that I couldn't really remember what a couple of them were. That's bad, especially considering that I have at least six or seven other current projects laying around the house that I'm supposed to be working on.


So in an effort to catalogue my projects, I've compiled a list:

Projects that are on the way to the frog pond:
Kiri in Elann's Peruvian Collection Cashmere- I decided that it was taking way too much work for me to keep up with the charts in Kiri. For whatever reason, I kept messing the darned things up so my Kiri is going to be ripped. I may try again with some Kid Silk Haze that I recently added to the stash (see below).

Diamond Fantasy Shawl in KSH- Nope, not working. I like the KSH, and I love the pattern, but together? Not so much.


Projects that I actually might complete:
The Dearest's sock in Handpainted Yarn's merino worsted- I've knit this sock at least 4x now and poor Dearest still has nothing to show for all that knitting. Thank goodness the HPY merino is so wonderful or I would've thrown the whole project out the window by now. First, I knit sock#1 up to the heel and when Dearest tried it on, it was waaaaay too small. 2nd try: I knit toe up and got to the heel again. Found out that I dislike toe-up patterns. Also found out the sock was too small AGAIN. More ripping. 3rd try: cuff down pattern with some cabling thrown in. About 6 inches in, realized that cabling was making the sock too small. Plus Dearest said it was kinda girly. Another frog pond trip. Currently 5 inches in on the 4th try; just a simple ribbing this time. Please Lord, make this sock fit and look right.


*&(*&*&^%^&* Silk Corset in Classic Elite Premiere- I actually got past row 12 (after FOUR tries). I pretty much chucked the chart out the window and have been following the written instructions (after re-writing them for myself, since even the written instructions are pretty confusing). I am determined to finish this thing if it kills me. Look for further cursing regarding this project in the near future.

One Skein Wonder in my own handspun: on the back burner for now. I work on it here and there, but it's a low priority so not much gets done.

And what's this?
It's my version of Knitpicks' Farmer Market Bag.
I'm using some Lamb's Pride Bulky in brown, green and orange. I'm hoping that this will be my Fall tote this year.

BTW Christie commented about my desire for a felted laptop cozy: I'm going to throw this out...because I didn't think of it until it was brought up to me. Static electricity. Bad for computers. Will felted wool hold a static charge? I'm almost afraid to use the felted case that I've made.

Good point! So I asked the Dearest: would I have to worry about zapping my laptop into oblivion if I knit up a felted cozy for it? His reply: The worst static charges build up when you have two types of fabric rubbing together. So a cozy-covered laptop in another bag (like a backpack) would build up a ton of static. Not so good. But if I just carry my cozy-ed laptop around under my arm (as I'm wont to do around the house), it should be fine.

So there you have it, straight from the Computer Guru's mouth. I think I'll be making me one of those cozies after all.

No words

Just this:
Red Cross
Give a Little
Network for Good

Every little bit helps.

BTW....

I added an email link on my sidebar. In case anyone actually wants to email me directly....

This is the coolest thing ever:

The Dearest got me a laptop a few months ago so that I could stay connected anywhere in the house. It's really handy for blogging, checking emails or just plain chunking on the 'net while the kiddos are playing. But I am bad about being careful with my trusty little laptop, so I've been thinking about making some kind of computer cozy for a while now.

Then I found this at Eunny's blog. Gotta make one for me!

Look what I can do...

I spent 2 hrs last night plying and ended up with just over 410yds of this:

It's the Chocolate Cherry (20%silk/50%merino/30%alpaca) and some stash 50/50 alpaca/silk. Lovely stuff; good thing I like it so much cuz I need close to 1400 yds for the cover sweater from the Fall Vogue Knitting. Check out the lovely colors in Annemarie's version. I doubt I'm going to do the twisted floats though. I'm afraid that the extra patterning will be too much when using handspun. I think I'm going to start with just my handspun and see how it looks.

Pinwheel with edge crochet

Pinwheel with edge crochet

Ok, here's the finished edge treatment. I went with some light green DK wool I had in my stash. I just did a single crochet all around and added some little loops on the tips as I went. The loops are kinda wonky right now; maybe re-blocking will help but I think I'll just let Monkey Boy have at the blanket and do his own version of blocking (which will involve lots of drool and chewing, I'm sure).

Here's a closeup of my newbie crocheting...

Spammers must die

Ok, what *is* the deal with the spammers today? I've seen tons of spam comments on everyones' blogs and I've also been blessed with some spam of my own. Egh. Spammers and telemarketers must get together and find the most annoying ways to torture the rest of us.

Anyhew...

I added a crocheted edging to the pinwheel blankie (pics in the morning since it's dark now), along with some little loopy things for Monkey Boy to play with. I like the way it looks and hopefully my crocheting looks ok since I've only just learned how to do it. There are some great crochet mavens at the LYS and I was hoping to take the blanket there tonight, but DH had to work late which meant no knit nite for me. In a fit of self-pity, I cast on for the Deborah Newton twisted lace shawl in the Fall Vogue. The pattern calls for an obscene amount of even more obscenely expensive cashmere yarn. I'm a cheap bastard and am substituting some of my Elizabeth Lavold Silky Wool stash. The color I'm using is curry/07.

On the subject of casting on....the other day I cast on for the DSC (Damned Silk Corset) AGAIN and have gotten 4 rows in. Suffice it to say that I am already PISSED at this pattern and really wish that I could get my mind around it. I've already figured out where I got confused the first FOUR times I started out, so hopefully I"m on the right track.

And more casting on: Must. Knit. This. Especially after seeing Kate's gorgeous version. Or how about this one. I even have the yarn for it (more EL Silky Wool in a gorgeous purple).

But first I have to finish my Little Lacey Top. I'd post a pic but it doesn't look much different from the last one. The pattern calls for 8 inches of the lacework, and I'm at inch 4....so a ways to go!

In unrelated, non knitting news....
My stepsister is getting married this weekend, which means lots of famdamily coming from out of town. Most of her family is staying at my mom and stepdad's house, so my sister and her hubby are going to stay with us. I am desperately trying to clean and declutter before they arrive this Friday. It seems to take forever to do anything, especially since Little Man always wants to 'help' (tho his helping makes everything take twice as long). Luckily my cleaning lady will arrive tomorrow to take care of the really nasty bits of our house while I attempt to make the guest quarters- AKA our family room- liveable.

Pinwheel Blanket

Pinwheel Blanket

Well here it is, my Pinwheel Blanket Redux. This one was alot faster to knit since I cast on correctly this time and had 1/2 the stitches from my last try.

I used 3.5 skeins of Koigu Kersti and size 9 needles. The blanket is about 24 inches in diameter; it stretched a lot with blocking (pre blocking diameter was 18inches).

Here's a bird's eye view:

The color in this pic is a little too light. I'm glad I went up a needle size from the previous version of this blanket...it drapes a lot more nicely now. I have some green DK yarn that I'm thinking will make a good crocheted border. I think it would be cute if I put some little bobbles or loops on the points, whatcha think?

My Pinwheel is done!

I just finished my Pinwheel blankie tonight. No pics yet cuz it's currently pinned and blocking on the floor in my closet (the only place in the house I feel comfortable leaving pins out all night with a 3 yr old who roams). There's no way I'm taking a pic of my closet floor- it's scaaaary!

I'm debating on whether or not to crochet an edge around the blanket and maybe add some loops or something....

Well, I'll post pics in the AM and you all tell me what you think about a crocheted edge treatment.

The non-fibery Fiberfest (or, "Trekking in Santa Monica")

I'm almost embarassed to admit it, but after nearly 2 yrs of knitting and several (obsessed) months of spinning, I've never been to a fibery festival. I wanted to go to the Black Sheep Gathering with some friends, but Monkey Boy was(is) much too young and nursing too much to be left for three or four days while I gallivant around town buying yarn and rovings. I missed Stitches West for the same reason.

Someone recently told me about the Fabulous Fiberfest, which was going to be held at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium this weekend. I talked to Leigh and we decided that it might be fun to take a little trip out to LA and check it out. So this morning we met locally and carpooled down the lovely 405 freeway (parking lot) to Santa Monica with Freddy navigating from the back seat.

It took us all of about 20 minutes to walk around the whole Fiberfest. I wasn't expecting much and I wasn't disappointed. I'm not sure why the organizers called it a "fiber fest", because to me that implies that yarn and roving and other fibery things might be involved. But instead, there were about 20 quilting booths, 10 or so booths selling beads (not fibery at all!), buttons (also not fibery!) and some freakish looking "pin dolls". Not sure what that was all about.

I think we ferreted out all of the booths selling fiber in the form of yarns and rovings:

There were a couple of smaller vendors selling handpainted yarns and rovings, but nothing spectacular. One booth was filled to the brim with lots of scary novelty yarn creations. Another vendor had boxes and boxes of dyed Romney wool....cuz doesn't everyone want to make a hot pink and lime green rug from handspun?

Luckily Habu had a little booth selling such interesting things as linen yarn, some very pretty laceweight silk and super soft cottons. And Carolina Homespun had a good sized booth with several wheels out. Unfortunately they didn't have any of the Kromskis I wanted to try.

But they did have some really lovely hand dyed rovings, some Crosspatch Creations batts, and lots of other fun spinning stuff. I ended up buying some #3 Brittany DPNs, a bag of the Crosspatch Triple Play batts, 6 oz. of superwash merino/tencel roving, an ounce of camel/baby alpaca roving to play with, and 3 bobbins for my wheel. I was pretty excited to finally get my hands on some new bobbins; for some reason Lendrum bobbins are hard to find. Everyone carries them online, but they're never in stock when I try to order.

After blowing our wad at Carolina Homespun, we decided to drop the bags in the car and call it quits with the not-so-fibery Fiberfest (which we decided they should have called the QuiltingFest, or Crafting Show instead). We'd already paid for parking, so we figured we'd leave the car and walk down the street for lunch.

Leigh used to hang out in Santa Monica quite a bit when she lived in Pasadena, so we thought we'd try an Indian food restaurant nearby. Unfortunately, the restaurant was closed when we walked by....so off we went down the street since there were plenty of other restaurants. A yummy smelling bakery enticed us in and we sat down....only to be confronted with the confused waiter when the lights went out. Turns out the power was out in the whole building, so they couldn't serve lunch.

(Can you see a trend here?)

We walked back toward the Indian place (still closed- must only open for dinner), and headed toward 4th street. After putting in an emergency call to Leigh's DH to bail us out ("We're at 4th and Main, how do we get to Any Open Restaurant?"), we decided to stop at the next likely food source before we passed out in the street.

Then like a mirage on the horizon, we spied Cha Cha Chicken. Coconut Fried Chicken, plantains and fresh pink lemonade never tasted so good! Finally well fed, we hiked back to the car and called it day.

I had fun, but I'm looking forward to trying out a REAL fibery show, like next year's BSG or Stitches West.

A knitted snake named Rex

.

I just got the book "The World of Knitted Toys" the other day. When I showed it to Little Man, he immediately asked for the snake. Since I had some 100% acrylic in my stash (bought back when I didn't know any better), I decided to use it for the snake.

It was a super fast project- only took me about 4 hours to completely finish. I put it in bed with Little Man after he fell asleep and the next morning he came into our room hugging it. "I love my snake," he said. "I call him Rex!".

It's way cute, but I have to say (again) that 100% acrylic is the Devil's Work. I've used some nice microfiberish acrylics, but knitting with this cheap "pound of love" crap is like chewing on aluminium foil.
urrrrrgh

Never again. I'd burn this junk but I don't think plastic burns!

Sad mommy moment or fashion statement?

Pre-kiddos and mommyhood, I never understood it when a mom said "I'm lucky if I get to wash my hair every day." I mean, how hard can it be to take a shower and wash your hair? I'm pretty low maintenance so it usually only takes me 20 minutes to 1/2 an hour to get ready for a typical day. How can you not find 20 minutes to get showered and dressed?

Then Little Man came along, and I was blessed with a baby who not only needed to be held ALL THE TIME, but also had a lovely case of colic. He screamed pretty much 4-5 hours a day no matter what we did. Even when I held him, he was prone to screaming fits. It was No Fun At All, lemme tell ya.

I learned pretty quickly that I had to get up in the wee hours to have enough time to get into the shower. If The Dearest wasn't home, I wasn't likely to have more then 3 minutes to myself to take a pee, nevermind 20 minutes to shower and get dressed. You know that woman in the mall wearing a baby in a sling, dressed in spit -up stained jeans, an o-so fashionable nursing shirt and pushing an empty stroller? The same lady who looked like she hadn't slept more than 2 hrs straight in a year?

That was me.

Well, life has improved since then and I can usually manage to shower pretty much every day. I may not be the height of fashion, but I won't get mistaken for a homeless person. But fashion faux pas are pretty common in this household....

Yesterday I finished blow drying my hair, rounded up the boys and headed out the door for a playdate. On the way out, I saw my neighbor and stopped to talk to her about the new front door they were putting in. While we were chatting, I noticed that the contractor kept staring at me and I had to do a mental check-
Fly zipped? Check
Wearing a bra? Check
Boobs actually tucked into bra? Check

What could it be?

My neighbor's eyes kept wandering to the top of my head- what is she looking at??? Finally I realized that I was still wearing the hair scrunchy that I put in each morning to hold the hair on the crown of my head up while I blow dry the rest. In other words I looked like some what like this
So....sad mommy moment or fashion statement? You decide.

Spinning, stitch markers and a cutie

Not much spinning going on lately at Chez Shizknits- mainly because by the time I get the munchkins in bed, I don't have enough energy to sit down with Ellie.
Instead I've been going to La Petite Knittery on Saturday mornings and doing a couple of hours worth of spinning with some of the other spinners. Last weekend, I picked up some gorgeous 20%silk/50%merino/30%alpaca roving in reds, pinks and browns called Cherry Chocolate. Some seriously YUM stuff. It's so smooth that it practically spins itself.

After nearly filling a bobbin, I went looking thru my stash for something appropriate to ply it with and found some brown and white 50/50 alpaca/silk. I have 4 oz. of the Cherry Chocolate and 4 oz of the alpaca/silk, so I'm going to ply them together. Here's a swatch of the finished product, knit on size 5 needles and post-blocking. The bobbin is full of the Cherry Chocolate.

Eons ago, I was a huge beading chick. I loved making necklaces, bracelets and what not with beads. Going to the bead store involved hours of picking through hundreds of trays of beads, playing with different combinations and plenty of money being spent.

Obviously this was was pre-munchkins. (I shudder to think of my kiddos in a bead store now!) I haven't done any beading in probably 2 or 3 yrs. But I keep seeing such pretty stitch markers on everyone elses' blogs and thinking "I should make me some of those". So yesterday I dug out my old beading tools, some wire and some charms I had bought previously and made these:

I think they are pretty cute, despite my very rusty beading skills. I can see how they can become addicting and will have to make some more!

Proof that sticking your tongue out will make you look smarter and improve your crawling.

I'm working on the Little Lacey Top knit in Elizabeth Lavold's Silky Wool....

I saw this on Knit n Tonic's blog and really like the pattern. Plus I'm so damn frustrated with my Silk Corset that this top is making me feel better.

What the heck happened to this?

OK, I'll be the first to admit that a lot of my knitting is done purely by the seat of my pants. I'm forever changing patterns, using different yarns and gauges, and adding or subtracting elements of a particular design. I'm also infamous for plain 'just not following the directions'.

Usually it works out fine. Well, it works out fine about 90% of the time. The other 10% of the time, I end up with something like this:
What the hell is it, you ask?

It's *supposed* to be a Pinwheel Blankie. Except that I royally screwed up the cast on and so I ended up with WAAAAAY too many stitches. Like over 800 sts. on my 36inch circular. That took me almost 2 hours to cast off last night.

I was so excited- I laid the blanket down to block it....and suddenly realized (after all the damn casting off) that I was going for a trip to the frog pond with it. *sigh* It turns out that I had done too many stitches between the YOs in the very beginning. So instead of having only 5 quadrants to my pinwheel, I had something like TWENTY.

DOH

Well, I'm not that bummed because I think I'm going to re-knit it on slightly bigger needles to get a better drape. And if I'm only knitting on a couple of hundred stitches (instead of 800 OMG) , it should go a lot faster.

Wish me luck!

Monkey Boy is mobile

He's crawling! I guess my knitting time is going to be seriously cut for a while.

















Where do these stairs go?

Quick Q&A

When people leave questions in my comments, I always wonder if I should answer them there or create a post with the answers. I've had some questions recently and figured I'd better put out an entry rather than try to reply in the comments.

spaazlicious wanted to know what camera I use for my pics. It's a Canon 300D (better known as the digital Rebel), with a 50mm 1.8 Canon lense. It's the same camera I use for work. I *heart* my 50mm lense and pretty much use it exclusively. In fact I can't remember the last time I had another lense on the camera. The 50mm gives me really sharp photos and is pretty fast for the money, which is a must when shooting children. The only drawback is that it's fixed focus, so no zoom. I joke that it's 'manual zoom', meaning I have to run back and forth myself to do the 'zooming'.
Here's a pic with the 50mm lense:

*love* that tack-sharp focus.

cmknit asked if I'd tried Addi Natura circulars: Yup, and I really like them. They are perfect for really slippery yarns and they have that great Addi cord that never kinks.

arianie wanted to know what kind of wool I used for Little Man's socks. It's pure Blue Face Leicster that I had dyed myself. BFL is so soft and easy to spin. In my limited spinning experience, I prefer it to merino wool.

stephanie wanted to know where I got my Bryspuns- they came from Suzoo's Woolworks in Costa Mesa. I actually went back and got three more pairs in sizes 5, 6, and 10.5. I found the join was a little rough when working with really fine yarns like Alpaca Cloud, and taking an idea from the Summer of Lace group, I used some Crazy Glue to smooth out the join. Now they work *really* nicely and there's no snagging at all.

On the knitting front, I've decided to put my Silk Corset aside for a while and knit something a lot less frustrating:

I'm using some Silky Wool in place of the Allhemp called for in the pattern. Can I just say that I really really really like the Silky Wool? It's so nice to knit with, and the colors are to die for. I'm using "Lava", which is a deep garnet red. Yum. I'll try to post pics of the WIP soon.

Fun day

A at the fountain

Today we met some friends at the Turtle Fountain at the Spectrum. The weather was perfect- not too hot- and everyone had a lot of fun running thru the water.

Little Man got squirted but good right after I took this pic.

It's a rasta hat! It's a purse!

It's the Pinwheel Blankie! I'm finally on the home stretch with this thing- just doing the garter stitch edging and trying to decide what kind of bobbles to add on. No one seems to believe it's a blanket tho- I get a lot of comments that it must be a hat or some kind of purse.

My DH needs smaller feets

I found some worsted merino from Handpaintedyarn.com in my stash and started a pair of socks for DH. I'm doing them toe up because I'm not sure that I'll have enough yarn to do two socks if go from the cuff down. I weighed the ball of yarn and it's about 3oz, so I figure I'll stop the 1st sock at 1.5 oz. That should leave me enough to do the second sock. Unfortunatley DH has some monster feet so he'll probably end up with a pair of anklets, poor guy.

Beach day!

Yesterday was so beautiful that DH and I took the boys to the beach. We met some of our neighbors down there, so everyone had a grand ol' time burying each other in the sand, digging holes and playing in the surf. The water was *COLD* tho. Much more so than normal; Little Man wasn't very interested in going in further than his toes.

But look what happened when he was hanging out with DH and neither of them saw a rogue wave:
He got knocked down and rolled in the sand pretty good. He had sand *everywhere*!

And here's the best way to keep all the kiddos still on the beach:
Everyone had a lot of fun, including Monkey Boy: