I'm back!

It's been three months since my last post. How does so much time go by so quickly? But in the interim of no knitting and no blogging, I turned a big belly into a beautiful baby boy! Yeah!


So I don't know what to call all of my children on this blog. Everyone seems to have great nicknames to protect their children's identities. Valerie's Post explored her take on the phenomenon, and I've been deciding what to call my kids besides, "the three-year-old" or "my oldest". How do you approach this if it doesn't come naturally? Anyway, I'll call my new baby Hamlet, for now.


My knitting has suffered from never having two hands free, as has my typing! However, I have completed my first felting project! I got to turn this...



...into this!


It's so cool to actually experience the before and after.




I used my three-year-old (what will I call her? Portia?) as a model for scale.
The pattern is the Squatty Sidekick from Knitting Daily. Now my 9-year-old (Rosalind?) wants one too.

What Have I been up to?

A sigh for the untouched "Avast" sweater.

Well, the baby is due in less than three weeks. Could this possibly be true? I've just discovered the secret to making the end of the ninth month go quickly. If you put of ALL baby preparation, you will suddenly be hit by a sense of absolute panic, and you'll hope that time passes more slowly. Wow do I have a lot to do! Of course it doesn't help that a big event makes me think that I could accomplish what I can't otherwise: having everything in my home and life organized and clean all at the same time. Yeah, right. I've decided my biggest goals are making room for the bassinette in my bedroom and ordering a nursing bra. Of course today is my 2, no 3 year old's birthday, and Tuesday is my boy's birthday, and I'm helping my mom finish with finish work on her cabin this weekend, and, and, and.


This all leads to the fact that I haven't touched my knitting needles in a week. I have touched the crochet hook (a blanket for the baby), and I've carried my kintting bag around, but otherwise, nothing. *SIGH* I started these socks too, and I would so love to work on them.

Happy PI Day!

If y'all didn't know, today was PI day....you know, 3.14, March 14? This holiday must be celebrated by eating pie, of course! This was my second pi day, as I just learned about it last year. I just had a fantastic day of pie, intermingled with high stress of a science fair and minor crisis for my Mom.

On a low-fat diet and everything, I managed to love pie day! (OK, I cheated a little). For lunch, we had beef and chicken pot pies, chocolate pie, pecan pie, rhubarb pie, huckleberry pie, chess pie (wow!), and lowfat Blueberry Crumble pie. This all enjoyed with some fun and intelligent women that I don't get to see enough of. (OK, OK, of whom I don't see enough?)

If that wasn't enough, for dinner (late, after the science fair), I had an AMAZING low-fat beef pie with a crust that was made from potatoes+ that was made especially for me by another caring friend, then had a little blackberry and banana cream pie for dessert. What a day.

I've completely neglected the many knitting projects I have going, but the picture at the top is most of the stuff I have on the needles right now.

The Value of Friends

Valerie, what can I say but thanks? If anyone reads this who isn't Valerie, there's nothing like a friend you buys you yarn+ on a teary, tragic type of day. I had one of those days this Thursday, and while my husband and mother were sympathetic, they also tried to paint the bigger picture for me and suggest lessons to be learned. Sometimes you just need to grieve and overreact for a while before you get reasonable. Valerie gave me permission to do so.


And she also gave me some nice meditative knitting. I neglected many other duties and knit the beginnning of a sock. The picture was taken at night and isn't great. What you can't tell is that the sock is about the right size for a lumberjack. I could tell this 1/4 in into the ribbing, but I couldn't bring myself to stop. I just had to get to the lace pattern. What you also can't see is that something went horribly wrong with the lace pattern, and I still don't know exactly what I did wrong. To tell you the truth, I just didn't care when I was staying up to late knitting. I just wanted to watch the subtle change of color, and play with my needles. I'm going to figure out what to do before I rip it out.

I have so many more pictures to post...but they'll wait for another mood, I guess.

I finished something that's been hanging over me!! Yeah! I've decided that if a knitting project was hanging over me, maybe it's not the best thing for me to knit. I loved this pattern, and it turned out great, but I don't think I'm a lace knitter at heart (at least yet). It was too slow for me, and I had to read the pattern the whole time. Of course, I am suffering from pregnant brain! Anyway, it was great to finish this scarf, give it to my sister, and have her love it. As Marly said, you somehow don't believe compliments from relatives, because they have to be nice to you, but I'm still flattered.

I started my first sock ever last night. Yes it's true, I've never knitted socks. I can't help wanting to, however, when so many knitters/bloggers make so many and have so much fun doing it. Anyway, I cast on a chunky wool sock last night while hoping that my husband would get home from work, and got about half finished before I gave up and went to bed. Husband didn't get home until 1:45 am. Good thing we went to lunch for Valentine's day. I finished the sock today except for grafting the toe...with me luck!

Frogging

After reading knitting books and blogs, I have come to think of the word frogging for unravelling my work and starting again, but where does it come from? Actually, it's usually best not to know the answer to such questions.

I finally started on a crocheted baby afghan for my son. I crocheted one for my first child, and it was finished before she was born. The second one was finished a couple of months after my first son's birth. On the third, after an exhaustive search to find yarn I liked in the color I wanted, I found out that the last two skeins of my "no dye lot" yarn didn't match. I was so frustrated I quit for a long while. I finally (at least a year later) ordered a BUNCH of new yarn and started all over. It wasn't until I was finished that I realized that at least one of the skeins I used didn't quite match. Good thing I didn't notice earlier is all I can say. Third child's afghan was already a year and a half late.

So I finally found the colors my husband picked in a yarn I liked and started afghan number four, but I got this far and decided that I really had done the initial chain stiches too tight. I frogged it all, did it again, really loose...too loose. I'm on try number three now.

Palettes

Well, I finished two squares for the Square-a-long and got them mailed off. I'm really excited to see that finished product!

Valerie has offered to knit some squares for a blanket for my baby. Yeah! I think we'll do a trade. I've been thinking about color palettes. Valerie has some pretty orange shaded yarn, and my baby's bedroom-to-be is light blue. I'm crocheting him a deep red and gray apghan (tradition to crochet one for each child). How about something like this?



I've started making some progress on hubby's sweater. It was going very slowly with a cable needle. Since only one stitch went on the needle, the needle kept falling out. I finally searched the web for info on cabling without a needle. It's perfect for this application, and I've learned a new skill. Yeah! Thanks everyone for your generous tutorials.