Working on the Booga Bag

I'm using up scraps from my stash to make a sort of kitchen sink booga bag. We'l see how it turns out.

Hooray Helmet Liner!

I finally finished it! Bob was so kind as to model it for me. Actually I had to do it pretty quickly before J noticed. He's pretty attached to Bob when he first gets up from his nap. Anyway, I just wanted to thank Judy for donating the yarn! It's so nice and soft and very nice to work with! I used a cable cast on for the bottom ribbing and a knitted cast on for the hat portion. Now that I've got the hang of it, I think it's a pretty easy pattern. Everybody should make one and send it to Ruth!

Frak! I wonder if their name is Adama?

You may have a to take a few sentons to click on the picture to get the full effect, but I thought it was funny. Heh. I caught this one at the gas station. How does he turn that thing?

Today after a walk around Sloan's Lake (man that lake is big), my friend, my sister, and I took our kids over to Clare Gardens. What a lovely place! The kids had a ball playing with the equpiment. Since we live on a hill, it was nice to be in a place where the kids could ride trikes and big wheels without fear of road rash.

On the knitting front, I'm finishing up the helmet liner and getting ready to cast on the booga bag. I figure I should do at least one bag since I signed up for the Summer KAL/CAL Roundup and I think they look cool.

Hooray Crocheted Baby Blanket!

I finished the baby blanket! I'm actually very pleased with how it turned out. (Yeah, I know. I always say that.) This was actually going to be another Log Cabin, but after talking to my sister I decided it still might be too hot for Georgia, so the extra holes in the crochet will make it cooler I think. It didn't hurt that baby boy was born a bit early and I hadn't started it yet. And it's true what they say about crochet. It's heaps faster. I started this blanket Thursday night over at Marly's. (BTW, a big THANKS to the ladies of the virtual SnB who helped design the blanket!) I did find that I didn't chain enough in the beginning so it was too narrow, thus the wide cream colored border. I was planning on putting a border on it. Just not that wide.

So yesterday we packed the kids in the car and made a trip up Lookout Mountain to Buffalo Bill's grave. The view up there is pretty spectacular. I love that kids under 6 are free too. I like cheap family fun. L and J got to play cowboy and we had a nice picnic.

WIPs and chains...

Crochet chains, that is. Please laugh at my attempt to be clever.

So I realize I haven't posted for a bit. We've had a very busy week with swimming pools and playdates and I just haven't gotten around to it. L said the funniest thing the other day as we were making a Target run (June has at least 4 birthdays and we are very behind in gifting). The clouds were gray and ominous and the wind was blowing something fierce and she said, "Mama (I love it that she calls me Mama!), why does the wind always come with the rain?" I said I didn't know so she replied, "Maybe they're best friends and always have to come together." :)

So I have been knitting. AND crocheting! Marly invited me to be on her podcast for the virtual SnB which was heli-fun (to borrow one of her expressions, borrowed from Cartman I believe.) I'm still working on the helmet liner (there is a story about that on the podcast) and I'm almost finished crocheting a baby blanket. (The baby was born 3 weeks early!)

Pictures on next post.

Keens!

Not one to usually wax poetic about a shoe, I find that I will talk and talk and talk about my Keens. (I had a couple of inquiries about the new purple shoes!) I have a horrible time finding comfortable shoes that don't make my toes fall asleep. When I was pregnant with J, I saw a pair of bright red Mary Janes with a sporty sole that I fell in love with. (Link is not my pair, but similar.) They were Keens. And they were the most comfortable shoe I'd ever worn. Next I bought a pair of blue Portolas which I pretty much wore when I wasn't wearing my Mary Janes. Unfortunately, both pairs wore out this year and I had to replace them. I was happy to find a brown pair of Bronxes and my new purple Venice H2's on sale in the span of a week. SO HAPPY! Ok. Wild raving about shoes is now over.

Hooray Dream Swatch Headwrap!

It is really hard to take pictures of yourself by yourself! Anyway, I'm pleased with the way it turned out. It matches my new shoes! :)

Hooray Not-Bamboo Baby Franken-sweater!

I finished it! And it actually doesn't look half bad. It looks good enough for my sister to take to a baby shower at any rate. So here's the stats:

Bamboo Baby sweater from One Skein Wonder

Needle size: 6 US

Yarn: 3 balls of Scoubi Du 50 percent cotton 50 percent acrylic

Adaptations:

1) Added 5 garter rows on either side of the back panel using Log Cabin technique

2) Increased the picked up arm stitches from 24 to 28

3) I used a crochet seam for the shoulders and a modified mattress stitch for the sides. I say modified because I continued to use the mattress stitch even when the garter stitch edge was paired up with a bound of edge, just picking through the loops on the bound off edge as if it were garter. Since the pattern gave no instructions for seaming, this seemed to make the most sense.

I found the cute little duckie/chickie buttons at Knit Knack. I'm just glad it's done. I was so afraid it would be horrible. Hooray!

Yeah. I'm Hufflepuff.

Took the Sorting Quiz from Yarn Thing's page. I'm a Hufflepuff. Though I'm pretty close to being a Ravenclaw.

The sorting hat says that I belong in Hufflepuff!

Said Hufflepuff, "I'll teach the lot, and treat them just the same."

Hufflepuff students are friendly, fair-minded, modest, and hard-working. A well-known member was Cedric Digory, who represented Hogwarts in the most recent Triwizard Tournament.

 

Take the most scientific Harry Potter
Quiz ever created.

Get Sorted Now!

Man! I hate that when that happens.

In the midst of working on the Dream Swatch and the Not-Bamboo Baby Frankensweater, I thought I'd actually start the helmet liner for Ruth's contest. After knitting a few rows of 2 x 2 rib I realized that the gauge was not right. I took a second look at the ballband and found it was DK weight not worsted like I thought. So now I have to go back to the store and get some worsted weight yarn. The pattern calls for 100 percent washable wool. Question to ponder. Doesn't that mean that it can't be 100 percent wool?

Bamboo Baby!

Mine isn't made of bamboo so maybe I should call it Scoubi Du Baby. I like knitting with it; it makes a nice baby sweater without actually being a baby yarn. I took advantage of this project to try out my Boye Needlemaster set. I love my Knit Picks, but I picked this up for half price at Hobby Lobby and you just can't have too many needles. So far, I like it. I haven't had any unscrewing problems and I really like that now I have some shorter cables should I need them. (They have 12 in. cables where the Knit Picks only goes down to 24 I believe.) There is a slight angle on the cables that I thought would drive me crazy, but so far hasn't been a problem. I got this pattern out of One Skein Wonders (not the One Skein with the ball of yarn on the front. The OTHER one.) which I think is a really cute and handy book for those odd bits of yarn we all accumulate. My only issue so far was that the errata page was REALLY hard to find. And it's a BIG errata page. 17 pages big. The missing instructions for the Bamboo Baby sweater were enough to make me crazy until it occurred to me to look for a corrections page.

(Ok. Funny aside. J is running back and forth clapping his hands and giggling to the Disney's Hercules credits. Who knew the kid liked Michael Bolton?)

So I got sucked in to the Tonys

I haven't watched the Tonys in years but for some reason I tuned in this year. When I was younger and was going to be a Broadway star (hee hee) I would watch every year to see the different musical segments but after my life moved off in another direction, I quit watching. It seemed for a while that all of the musicals were revivals and nothing new was coming around. Well now I am very intrigued by Spring Awakening, the Tony winner this year. The story is from a play written in 1891 but the music is very modern. The energy in the little bit I got to see on the show was amazing! I may have to run out and get the soundtrack if it's available. Of course, I'll probably only get to listen to it on those rare occasions when I'm in the car without the kids. Heh. It's already disturbing enough that L knows many of the words to the songs from Rent (don't worry, I skip the inappropriate stuff!) Warning: There is cursing and suggestive content (It's about horny 19th century teenagers.)

There's gold in them thar hills!

Well. Not really. But we did have a great time at the Gold Strike Festival. L got to weave on a loom, pan for gold, and meet an Alpaca! J's favorite thing was to run up and down the ramps of the stores and dance to the brass band. Of course I had to stop by Knit Knack and pick up a couple things. And of course the kids were MELTING by the time I wanted to go there. Quickest trip to the yarn store ever. Anyway, I got some Scoubi Du in purple to make a baby sweater for my sister's friend. I'm impressed with how it knits up and it's SO soft. I'll post pictures soon.

Switzerland

It's been bugging me since yesterday and I finally had one of those moments where a bit of knowledge that had previously been tucked far back away in my brain popped forward. I wrote that Sojabama was probably Soy Bamboo in Swiss. It dawned on me that the Swiss speak primarily German and French (and some Italian I think). So it's probably German then. I had a friend in college who was a piano major whose ancestry was Sri Lankan/Swiss and I remembered that she spoke German and French (as well as some other languages I don't remember). I do have to admit I took a peek at Wikipedia to make sure I was right though.

I used to be smart once upon a time.

Speaking of smart, a good friend of mine wrote an article over on Helium and it's now one of the top articles at the site. Lindsey's article is in response to an article that said that there is no such thing as good or bad music. (I'm not sure I've ever written the word article so many times in just two sentences before.) I guess real magazine editors often read helium.com and people have gotten jobs from it before.

Dreamy Swatchy Goodness

I am working on Knit and Tonic's Dream Swatch Head Wrap. The pattern calls for a 100 percent bamboo yarn but I'm using a soy/bamboo blend called Sojabama (which I suspect means soy bamboo in Swiss though weirdly enough the yarn is made in France) by Schulana which I got over at Knit Knack. I had a little trouble with switching the elongated stitches but I seem to have the hang of it now. As usual, I tried to go too fast. :) Bamboo soy yarn is very slippery I'm finding but oh so soft! I can't wait to wear it!

Hooray Log Cabin Blanket!

Today was fun day as little Throws Like a Girls and little Yarn Things had a playdate over at the Apex Center. We then braved the Free Burrito with Can of Food deal over at our Chipotle. Well actually Yarn Thing braved most of the kids in her car watching a movie while I stood in line with a wailing J for 45 minutes for our food. We decided to come back to our house and eat. I'm so proud of myself for only eating half a burrito! It was hard I tell you. So anyway, the kids played as we sat down and got a little stiching done and voila! Blanket is finished! Hooray blanket!

J's Baptism

It was memorable to say the least. :) J hates hates staying the nursery but he has also discovered that the church echoes so rather than have him yell "GA!" at the top of his lungs through the first half of the service, we opted to have him play in the nursery. My in-laws also stayed with him to try and keep him calm which was nice. During the sermon I popped over to the nursery to put J in the baptismal gown. It's over 100 years old and had belonged to my grandfather. Of course J wouldn't let me take off his blue sneakers and I decided there were worse things. Besides, if it made him feel more normal in that frilly dress, then so be it. Putting on the dress wasn't too bad but the closer we got to the service, the more agitated he became. By the time we started the baptismal part of the service, he was in full melt down mode. Luckily the priest has a great sense of humor and just started saying the words louder. A mom in the front row ran up and gave him a butterscotch which I thought to myself might not be the best idea, but it stopped his crying and I figured I would get him to spit it out before the rector picked him up. Well, of course, he choked on it just as he was getting picked up for the water part. I turned him over and gave him a good whack on the back (which I have now been told is not how to do the Heimlich on toddlers) and we assumed he swallowed the candy for we couldn't find it anywhere. I assured the congregation that if he could cry he was OK, and they chuckled a bit. The rest of the service went beautifully. Luckily for us, J LOVES water and thought that part was great. We got him back to the pew and immediately took the dress off to try and save it for future generations. Of course, then he wouldn't let us put his clothes back on so he spent the rest of the service in blue tennies and a diaper. At least he was happy. :) It was his day after all.

Epilogue:

As we were going into the parish hall for cake I realized that something was very sticky in the front of my dress. At first I thought, "it is a new dress and maybe I washed the tag." As I tried to discreetly fish down the front of my dress, I found the offending butterscotch stuck firmly in the elastic of the empire waist. At least he didn't swallow it.

Another mom came up to me after the service and said that her daughter had exclaimed, "That was the most exciting baptism I've ever seen!" I replied that my family had been entertaining the congregation at the church for many years and it was now J's turn. :)

The End.

Heh.

You Are Kermit

Hi, ho! Lovable and friendly, you get along well with everyone you know. You're a big thinker, and sometimes you over think life's problems. Don't worry - everyone know's it's not easy being green. Just remember, time's fun when you're having flies!

The Muppet Personality Test

There will be real blog content soon, I promise!