Some cute kiddos pics....the boys and their toys:
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:
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!
Ok, trying out the movie setting on my Powershot, and Dropshots at the same time. HOpefully this works!
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:
Yah, I know the today is practically the last day of Color Week, but I couldn't resist joining. Today's color is BLUE:
Does this look familiar?
I finished another pair of kid socks:
Project Specs:
Rainbow-ish Socks (named by Little Man)
Yarn: Knitpicks Simple Stripes in Sweet Tarts, less than 1 ball
Pattern: My own
I like this yarn a lot. It's superwash so it's perfect to for kids' socks. Believe it or not, this is the first time I've knit with self striping yarn, and I had a lot of fun watching the stripes appear. The socks fit Little Man perfectly.
He hasn't taken them off since we put them on this morning. Witness the socks in action, worn with LM's new Crocs:
These pics were taken with my new camera, a Canon Powershot 540. The DSLR I use for work is too big to lug around in my purse so I've been researching compact digicams for a while and the 540 fit the bill. It's not too big and not too small, pretty lightweight and has full manual features (which is important to me as I hardly ever shoot on Auto). Plus at 6MP, it's a vast improvement over our last compact digicam. Here's a closeup of Monkey Boy:
Tech info:
Natural light
ISO 200
AV, 3.5, unknown shutter
No post processing
I think that's pretty good for a pocket camera! No sharpening or Photoshop work here, and it still looks great. In fact I zoomed in on MB's eyes and you can see me there! I'm quite happy with the overall feel of the camera, too. Since I'm planning on carrying it around in my purse, I'm going to knit a camera cozy for it to protect the body and LCD.
The camera arrived yesterday, along with all of this:
I hit this ebay seller and went a little crazy with the magazine subscriptions. She sells so many cool mags at such a good price that I couldn't resist. My mailman is going to hate me- there are at least four or five more magazines coming!
Not much knitting has been going on around here; I've been sick for the past week and today was the first day that I could actually hear out of both ears. Woot! How sick was I? Last Sunday I was supposed to get together with some friends to knit, but I had such a bad sinus headache from all the congestion that I went to bed at 8pm (my normal bedtime being around midnight). Thank goodness I'm starting to feel better.
Instead of knitting I've been doing this:
These are play silks that I handdyed for the boys. Little Man has been using one of my old, ugly satin scarves as a 'cape'- he asks me to tie it around his neck so he can jump off the bed like a superhero. A few weeks ago, I saw this and thought immediately of making the boys some play silks of their own. I got the raw silk scarves from Dharma Trading Company and soaked them in a bit of water/vinegar overnight. Yesterday I dyed them by loosely pressing each scarf into a small container, barely covering the scarf with water and then apply diluted dyes. After a brief zapping in the microwave, I let them cool and then rinsed them out. I think they turned out quite nicely!
Monkey Boy really enjoys pulling the scarves over his head and face. He laughs and laughs! This afternoon Little Man, Monkey Boy and I spent nearly half an hour chasing each other around the upstairs hall with the scarves tucked into our pants like tails. I think the play silks are a hit in our house. There are four more silks to dye and LM has suggsted "red, cuz that's my favorite color" and "orange because that's little brother's favorite color".
Last night I sat down with my wheel and started spinning some 50/50 merino/tussah silk. It's the first time I've spun with this particular blend and I have to say that I'm not very comfortable with it. Between the super crunchiness of the silk and the short staple of the merino, it's not very fun to spin. Some spinners spin to produce a certain yarn (project spinners) and some spin because they like the act of spinning (process spinners). I've found that I'm a process spinner and if I'm not having fun while spinning, it's hard for me to stay motivated. It's disappointing that I'm not enjoying this roving since I've been looking forward to spinning it for quite a while. :(
I spent a couple of hours over the weekend dyeing yarn for my DyeORama secret pal and came up with these:
I ask because for some reason I "lost" April. This morning I woke up and was surprised to realize that it's already May 20th. What happened to April and the first 20 days of May???
Anyhew....My Project Spectrum spinning for April is finally done:
Nearly 400 yards of handdyed BFL I got from ebay (can't remember the seller). Light worsted weight and probably destined for socks (for me!).
And I was finally able to take pics of my Mother's Day present from the Dearest:
Isn't it cute? The lining can be extended upward and it has a drawstring so the Dearest thought it would make a good small project bag for knitting. I've actually been using it as a purse since it's so Spring-y.
Last night I spent about 2 hours working on my Green Gable sweater. Some of the ladies on the GG KAL said that their sweaters grew a lot during blocking, so despite my having a 39 inch bust, I'm making the 38inch size sweater. But now I'm worried that the sweater will be too tight over the girls. After trying my sweater on, I decided to attempt some short rows to make the bust less tight. An hour (and much ripping) later, the short rows were out and I just threw in three sets of increases around the bust. I'm going to decrease them away and hopefully that will do. If not, my Sis would love a Green Gable!
Yes, I know it's been *awhile* since I posted. I could give the usual blogger excuses ("too busy" "lost my camera" "nothing interesting going on"), but honestly I just didn't feel like blogging. But the blog bug has bitten again, so here I am with much randomness:
Mother's Day: Mine was great! DH washed my car for me, then we went to lunch with my mom and stepdad, where yummy Chinese food was had by all. I got to take a relaxing afternoon nap while DH & Little Man went to the hardware store. Later that night DH presented me with the cutest little basketweave purse full of yummy Bath and Body Works stuff. Very sweet, especially since he said that he picked the basket/purse because he thought I could use it for a knitting carryall.
WIP Roll Call:
Step Socks for Sis: One down, the second is about 1/2 the way down the cuff.
DH's Sandy Socks: I thought I had a pic of this, but it turns out I don't. Anyways, I'm done with one sock and am starting the instep of the second sock.
Project Spectrum Socks: First one done, 2 inches into the cuff of the second one.
(does anyone sense a sock theme? I didn't realize that I had so many socks going right now!)
I just finished these cuties for Monkey Boy out of my own handspun:
I'm still knitting on the Tshirt Sweater from Ella Rae. The back is about 10 rows from being finished. I had a scare when I realized that I didn't have enough yarn to finish the front. I'd bought four skeins of Malabrigo "Red Pearl", which should have been more than enough- I had over 800yds of worsted and the pattern calls for only 650yds of a DK weight yarn. Luckily one of the ladies at LPK (where I'd bought the original skeins) was willing to part with one of her skeins so I'll actually be able to finish the sweater.
As for Veste Evereste, I had to spin this up before I could start on the back.
All of my stalled sweater projects meant that I had to start something I could actually finish. Plus I didn't have a project in mind for May's Project Spectrum color of green. So I decided to try Green Gable:
I'm using Cotton Fleece in "Rue". I've tried it on and so far it fits pretty well. The neckline doesn't flop over when I'm wearing it, thank goodness. GG is just flying along (good TV sweeps knitting)- maybe I'll actually finish it sometime soon!
One of the Dearest's clients has a little avocado farm near San Diego, and every time the Dearest has to go down there to do work, the client says "You should bring your family down and play on the farm."
Today we did just that. The boys were wowed by all the avocados (Monkey Boy kept trying to pick up green ones and eat them). There was a whole henhouse full of beautiful chickens, a mini vinyard, 40+ acres of avocado trees, bee hives and (the biggest hit of all with the boys) a golf-cart/atv to ride around in. The caretaker, Juan, has four kids of his own so he was great with Little Man. LM was super excited to actually get the chance to "drive" the "jeep"- Juan let LM sit in his lap and help him steer. Best of all was Abraham, Juan's 5yr old son, who led LM all over the place and told him the names of all the chickens, and where to watch for snakes (!), and which oranges were the best to pick.
We came home with two huge boxes of lemons, avocados, oranges and pummelos. They also had some macadamia nut trees. LM and Abraham crawled all under the trees and came out with their hands and pockets full of nuts. Later Juan showed us to how crack them open using a hammer. I don't actually like macadamia nuts, but they taste very different when they're raw. It's a coconut-y taste and texture that agrees with me.
Unfortunately I didn't take my camera with me around the farm because I already had my hands full with Monkey Boy. So here are some pics of the stuff we brought home:
My poor poor poor children. They are doomed to be geeks. It's in their DNA, after all. The Dearest is a computer consultant who grew up around 'puters and loves to work on them. My own exposure to computers started when my mom's boyfriend brought home a Texas Insturments/TI99. It was a little keyboard that didn't even come with its own monitor; you had to hook it up to a TV. I spent a whole, hot summer between fourth and fifth grades learning how to make a white ball bounce up and down on the tv screen using Basic.
The Dearest and I met through the precursor to the Internet: a local BBS (Bulletin Board System). There were *so* few women online at that time that the SysOp who owned the board would call to make sure you were actually a live person (cuz lots of guys would log on, pretending to be female just to play jokes on the other users). The BBS was all text and ran at 1200bps over a regular phone line. Looking back, it was sooooo slow and clunky compared to the 'net!
Anyhew, I think with all the backstory, you can see how doomed the boys are to be geeks. And if their background isn't enough, I'm doing my best to geek them out. Like so:
Little Man loves to draw and recently he's been really fascinated with robots. I love his drawings, they are so sweet. The robots always have happy faces with big eyes, and LM usually has a story to tell me about each one.
I wanted to make a bag or Tshirt with one of his drawings on it, and yesterday I finally did it. I used freezer paper, traced one of his drawings onto it and used that as a stencil. Here's the original drawing (sorry for the darkness of the photo- it was *dark* today):
And here's the new shirt, a Little Man Original:
Freezer paper stenciling is sooo easy and fun, I'm getting hooked. I spent over an hour today looking at different images for more stencils. Monkey Boy is getting a new shirt tomorrow and I want to stencil on a couple of my old T-shirts (hopefully covering some stains! LOL).
