Now I've gone and done it...

I've sold my soul.

Witness my new ride:


It's not as sexy as an SUV, but my cheap-ass-ness won out over any self-esteem issues. Our new van was about $10k less than the comparable SUV, safer, and more fuel efficient. Plus Little Man proclaimed the self closing side doors "Too cool!".

I said the same thing when we returned to the parking structure after dinner tonight. The moron next to me on the driver's side was parked thisclose to the van. Even with sliding doors, it was an effort to get Monkey Boy into his carseat. I couldn't open my driver door- I had to climb in thru the passenger side and slide into the driver's seat. Much easier to do in the van than it would have been in my old car.

And there's so. much. room! The interior is cavernous....I'm almost afraid that the boys will get lost in there. I still haven't figured out how to store everything due to all the cubbyholes and storage lockers. Just give me some time, tho and I'm sure I'll be able to fill it up with junk.

I do miss my old PT....she had the most gorgeous paint. This is the best image I could find of the paint job (look at the background, not the cute kiddos in the front). Little Man almost started crying when I explained that we would be leaving the 'cwuiser' at the dealership today. He insisted on saying goodbye to the car, which made the sales guys grin. He cheered up considerably when he realized that the windows on the van rolled almost all the way down, and he could get in and out all by himself ("like big people!"). But tonight he did tell me that we need to paint the new car purple to match the old one.

On the knitting front, I've *finished* my Krista sweater!!! After publishing this post, I'm going to weave in the rest of the ends and press the sweater lightly. If it's not 10000 degrees tomorrow, I'll put it on and get a pic for a FO report.

acquisition

Buying stuff on the Internet is too easy.
Yarn, books, toys, etc..

Look what I have coming to my house any day now:















Aren't they cute? I found a pair at Journeys and had to have them.

I also got my new Mommy Tags in the mail (finally!). I'll try to post a pic shortly.

a day at the beach

Sometimes it's cool to have a hubby who is self-employed. The Dearest took the whole day off so we had a lovely day at the beach, as evidenced by the photos above. Monkey Boy was obsessed with the water and kept signing for "more" whenever the Dearest took him out of the ocean. MB's teeth were chattering and he was practically turning blue, but he cried when we wouldn't let him back into the water.

Everyone had a little rest when we got home except for Little Man. He probably should have taken a nap, though, as this happened:

on the way home from dinner tonight.

my little helper

This is why nothing stays tidy at our house

I was cleaning in the kitchen today and turned around to see this:

Sailing, sailing, over the open sea....

Be forewared:
Lots of pictures of cake, cutie pie kids and a video. No knitting content herein.

So, wanna see my version of the Pirate Ship cake? I baked two 9x13 inch yellow cakes last night and let them cool overnight on the counter. This morning I got busy cutting and icing....
Step 1: cut 2.5 inches out of one of the 9x13 layers and stack it on top


Step 2: cut the remaining cake in half, stack 1/2 on top:


Step 3: cut into the shape of a boat


Step 4: spread on icing


The finished product- I used licorice for the cannon and scored the icing with a fork to make it look like wood.


And LM blowing out the candles:

Video Hosting - Upload Video - Video Sharing
(note the use of a serving platter as a shield, since a breeze started up AS SOON AS we tried to light the candles. Of course.)

The party went great. Every self-respecting pirate needs a sword, so I gave out inflatable swords, bandanas, eye patches and self-stick moustaches to every party goer. The inflatable swords turned out to be the right choice (as opposed to hard plastic swords); the kids had a ball using them to whack slow moving adults as well as each other. I didn't get a chance to catch any of the kids in the whole get-up, except for LM....hopefully one of the neighbors will have a pic to share.

My to-do list from last night included making a pair of shorts for Monkey Boy that matched LM's pirate pants. I was actually able to finish the shorts and here they are:


I also have pictures galore from the party. See them here if you're interested.

The next post should have some knitting content, I promise!

Happy Birthday, Little Man!

Today is LM's birthday. It's hard to believe that my 'baby' is now four years old! We are planning a Pirate Party for him tomorrow, at the local park. He's so excited that he could barely go to sleep tonight.

I'm probably not going to get much sleep tonight either, as I still have to finish the following before his party starts at 10:00am:
-prepare cold cut platters
-slice all the rolls and croissants for sandwiches
-fill the treasure chest pinata
-finish making his pirate ship cake (hopefully it will look something like the pic above)
-make a freezer paper T shirt with a skull and crossbones on it to match his pirate pants.
-finish matching pirate pants for Monkey Boy
What else am I forgetting? Probably alot, but I really should get back to work and finish up this post!

Since I'm addicted to the mosaic maker at FD toys, here's a little mosaic of LM's first few weeks.

(from top left: 20minutes old; 5 days; 1 week; bottom left- 4 weeks, 6 weeks, 5 mos)

We Celebrate the 4th

(the set is here)

New Uses for Lipgloss

Video Hosting - Upload Video - Video Sharing

More stenciled Tees

I got out the freezer paper and some fabric paint again. Little Man has been wanting another stenciled shirt and I found a cute praying mantis to put on it. To continue the bug theme, I made myself a little dragonfly shirt. The flower shirt was a 'save'- I painted the flower on over a stain that I couldn't get out. It covers the stain perfectly and I have a 'new' wearable shirt.

On the knitting front, I have decided to put away my Tshirt Sweater till Fall. It's just too hot to be sitting around with a lap full of wool, even if it *is* Malabrigo merino. I cast on for the Krista Tee from White Lies Designs instead. The pattern calls for an aran weight cotton yarn, and I had enough All Seasons Cotton in the stash to make it work so here's where I am so far:

The ASC was purchased from Cucumberpatch on Ebay; it's a discontinued color (Orkney) so it was 1/2 the price of current ASC. I've never knit with ASC before and I'm really enjoying it. Cotton is not one of my favorite fibers to knit with in general- especially mercerized cotton. But the ASC has some acrylic in it and gives a lot more than most cotton yarns I've tried.

The pattern is really easy to memorize and it's knitting up really fast. I may just have this sweater done in time to wear it for late summer/early fall.

Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's pants for Little Man!

Look at the yummy stuff I got from Lesbonribbon:
Missing is some brown ribbon with pink polka dots, and some black ribbon with skulls embroidered on it.

LM's birthday is coming up in a few weeks and we are having a Pirate Party for him. I bought the black skull ribbon to make him some pirate pants. I used some 99 cents/yard clearance fabric for the pants and sewed the ribbon onto the cuffs:

There's a little less than a yard left of the ribbon and I'm hoping that it'll be enough to go around the cuffs of a pair of shorts for Monkey Boy. That way they'll have matching pirate pants for the party!

summer

Popsicles and a new inflateable pool- what more can you ask for?

'no puttin' sand in yer mouth!'

Video Hosting - Upload Video - Video Sharing

The Magic Donkey

Ok, remember my comment about my Green Gable pic? It's this one: . Anyways, I was surprised at how many views it's gotten (over 1200 at this point).

Then this morning I was uploading pics to Flickr and discovered that the image had been moved to the Explore/Top20 page! Whoa! These are images that the Magic Donkey picks as the most interesting for the day.

I'm cracking up because compared to the other photos on the Explore/Top20 page for today, mine is definately not interesting, well composed, or artsy. It's just a pic of my b00bs in my recently completed Green Gable.

Amazing, the power of the b00bs!

Little Knights

Some cute kiddos pics....the boys and their toys:

I was looking thru my most popular Flickr images and noticed that this shot of my Green Gable has gotten over 1000 views! I'm highly doubtful that a thousand knitters are gawking at my sweater....more likely that I got on some b00b image list or something, what do you think?

This, that, n t'other

A few months ago, I found a big box of old baby clothes in Monkey Boy's closet. The box included Little Man's 'going home' outfit, some tiny little onesies and his first pair of socks. I didn't want to give the clothes away because they are so precious to me- they remind me of LM as a baby. Each little outfit brought back some memories of LM's first year with us and how much our lives changed. But I didn't want to keep them in a box, either.

For a while I toyed with the idea of putting one or two outfits in a shadowbox frame and hanging it up. Then I saw this:

It's a quilt that Hillary made from her son Oscar's baby clothes. I knew immediately that I wanted to make a quilt out of the LM's baby clothes, too. The only problem? I didn't really know how to make a quilt. Luckily I live very close to Material Possessions, a quilt shop with some great classes. I signed up for a Beginning Log Cabin Quilt class and attended the first session last night.

We chose our fabric and thank goodness for the teacher's help because I was pretty overwhelmed with all the choices! Originally I thought I'd make the quilt out of the baby clothes but then decided that it would be better to make a practice quilt from other fabric first. Here are the fabrics I choose:

The pinks are the "dark" log cabin strips, the yellow is the center square and the greens are the "light" strips. The floral is going to be the outside border. I love the colors- they are sooooo girly and fresh. Wish me luck on cutting & sewing the strips all straight!

Yesterday afternoon, while I was perusing the goodies at Les Bon Ribbon, Little Man asked to go play in the backyard. I let him out and got about 15minutes of peace and quiet before I got suspicious. As any mother knows, the quieter your kids are, the more likely they are getting into something they shouldn't, playing with something dangerous, or making a mess. This is what I found when I looked outside:

He claims that he was making a 'river' and planting some seeds. I think he was just having a grand old time making a muddy mess of himself. LOL I'm not sure the mud stains are going to come out of his shirt, but it's currently soaking in some Oxyclean so we'll see.

Happy Father's Day!

For Father's Day, the boys 'helped' me make a chocolate cake for the Dearest.

RED Friday

Last day....RED



Little Man loves cherries. I like to watch him eat them; he will take a tiny bite out of one side, then nibble, nibble, nibble all the way round the seed. It's a very messy way to eat cherries!

Dancing Fools

Ok, trying out the movie setting on my Powershot, and Dropshots at the same time. HOpefully this works!

Video Hosting - Upload Video - Video Sharing

A trip to the frogpond

Remember my "TShirt Sweater" from Ella Rae? The sweater that gave me hissy fits because of the nasty color pooling? Well I had two sleeves and the back done, and last night I had just cast on for the front when I realized that I didn't like the way it was knitting up. The fabric was just too heavy, probably due to the fact that I used a US8 needle. A couple of swatches later I'd decided that the yarn draped much better with a US10.5. That meant a trip to the frogpond was in order:

I've decided to reknit the TShirt Sweater on US10.5 needles. Too bad I had to wait till I was practically done before changing my mind!

Latecomer

Yah, I know the today is practically the last day of Color Week, but I couldn't resist joining. Today's color is BLUE:

blueberries x2

FO!

Does this look familiar?

How about this?

Yup, that's right, it's my completed Green Gable. I think it turned out quite nicely-this is the truest image of the color (green). The sweater has a funny looking fold in the arm in this pic, but it's just way I'm standing. LOL

Some more closeups:

The increases and decreases I used for bust shaping (my modification).

For the sleeves I was able to avoid the problem of a hole in the armpit by picking up extra stitches and then decreasing them away in later rows. I think the armpit looks nice and tight with no gaping.

Project Specs:
Pattern: Green Gable by Zephyrstyle
Size Medium (36in bust)
Yarn: Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece in "Rue", approx. 3.5 balls
I knit the pattern pretty much as it's written. My bust is 39inches and I knit the medium/36inch size because I had heard that lots of people had problems with the Cotton Fleece growing ALOT when blocked. The medium would have been too small in the bust so I added four sets of increases, which I later decreased away. For length I used the Large- 13.5inches instead of 11inches. I also added two increases at the waist for some extra shaping.
Instead of just picking up the live sts at the sleeve, I added three rows of stockinette for a little extra coverage before knitting the 1x1 ribbing. This allowed me to pick up extra sts so there would be no grafting or hole at the armpit. The extra sts were later decreased away.

The sweater was soaked in water and Eucelan, then spun partially dry in the washer. I blocked it by hand on a towel overnight. It grew quite a bit as I was arranging it on the towel, so I ended up whacking and slapping it a bit to make it behave. I estimate that it has grown by about an inch in width, and 1.5 and inch in length.

I had fun knitting this pattern and I'm very pleased with the finished product. The Dearest thinks this is the nicest, most wearable sweater I've knitted so far and I have to agree with him.

An Apple a Day