I was taking a few pictures of my current knitting projects.  When I went to download the photos, I found this picture as well.

David is not here, so I asked Davey what was going on here. Apparently he was making a spider with those wiki sticks.  Those are such fun.  Not any spider either.  This is the itsy bitsy spider.  And that’s all he had to say about that.

I have ordered a book which has a pattern that should work for David’s sweater.  We are going to then have a serious discussion about color choices.  David only wears blue or gray.  That might be a slight exaggeration, but if you look through his closet that’s about all you see.  So I am having big doubts about this light gray almost off-white hue for the background.

I am not knitting much.  Here’s what I have done on my next Joy of Sox sock.  I have done 1 ten round repeat.  At this rate, it’s going to be awhile.  It’s just a sock that needs my concentration, and in the evenings I have trouble locating my concentration.

This pattern is so neat though.  I thought I was going to be making bobbles, but this is different.  You increase 1 stitch to 5 stitches and then you knit those 5 stitches as you do the next 2 rows.  Then you do the slip slip pass over slipped stitch thing and take it back to 1.  Really neat.  I hadn’t done that before.

I’ve mostly just been working on David’s socks in the evenings lately as they are easy to knit.  I am in straight stockinette stitch now to the end of the sock.  It’s a gray sock and not incredibly exciting.  I am hoping they will fit David.

That’s about it.  I have another stack of papers staring at me and waiting to be graded.  Tomorrow I will take them on!

Yesterday we decided it was time for us to go to the snow since the snow has not come to us much yet.  When we told Davey, he kept running around the apartment yelling, “I’m so excited!  I’m so excited!”  We checked the roads and everything looked ok, so off we went to Breckenridge.  It’s something to leave a dry Denver with temperatures in the 40s and then an hour later to be at the top of a pass with snow and ice and temperatures in the low 20s.  The Eisenhower/Johnson tunnels were a little weathery, but the roads were not too bad.

Breckenridge was great.  It’s just about our favorite place right now.  I guess we ought to give some of the other resorts a try, but we just keep going back there.  There was quite abit of snow.  It was very cold, but we bundled up.  Davey is very bundled up here.

He wanted to play in the little park.  We have learned that slides seem to be extra fast in the cold!

He was so happy and excited to really play in the snow for his first time, that he was hugging the snow.

He rolled in the snow like a little happy puppy.

Like a little bitty puppy, I am telling you.  He rolled and picked up snow and rolled some more.  He made snow angels, but mostly he just rolled around.

One snowy kid.

Davey likes to watch tv while sitting on our recliner; however, he often watches it like this:

He loves to stand on his head, and he often tells me that he is “practicin'”.  “Mommy, I keep falling over!”

I’ve never voluntarily stood on my head in my life.  (The involuntary time occurred in middle school P.E.)

I guess it makes for some good blood flow to the brain?

I am going to need some good blood flow to the brain to figure out my next project.  (That was a rather forced transition.)  Here it is.  I am thrilled if David or Davey request that I knit them something.  I just finished a beautiful brown/grayish hat for David.  He didn’t request it though and at first he didn’t like it.  He likes it a lot now though.  I am also knitting him some socks.  Again, he didn’t request them, but I assured them that he will be happy to wear them under his waders when he is fishing.  But now he wants me to knit him a sweater.  Here is a picture of THE SWEATER.  It’s a cool sweater.  He even wants the colorwork.  (I’d thought maybe he’d just want it in a solid color.)

So here’s the dilemma.  I need to find a pattern.  I think that I can figure out the colorwork if I have to.  It will be more good exercise for my brain.  But I am not yet capable of designing an entire sweater.  So I’ve got to figure something out.  I am thinking that I may want to try a steek.  It just occurred to me that I may have to use a steek for easier completion of the colorwork.

And David is not little.  It’s going to be an XL undertaking.  One more reason to do it in the round.  He has requested it by January.  I laughed as I typed that sentence.

I have been looking through ravelry, but I haven’t found anything quite right yet.  We are going to a yarn shop today and I will check out some books.

I am preparing a waiver that I am going to need David to sign before I begin.  It requires that he wear said sweater even if it turns out slightly wonky.  It’s the wonky clause.

I finished my last pair of “Joy of Sox” socks last weekend.  I delayed longer than I would have liked to start the next socks.  First of all, I’ve been a little scared.  This pair of socks requires the use of 2 circular needles, and it is a toe-up pattern.  I’ve never tried this before.  I finally decided it was time to take a look at the pattern.  I’d hoped to get a lesson on socks on 2 circulars from my friend Susan, but I hadn’t been able to do it yet.  My fault since David and I have alternating teaching schedules and that doesn’t leave much free time.  I had begun to contemplate bringing Davey along with me for my knitting help, but I just didn’t see that going well. (Also, I did get the opportunity to build some new brain pathways figuring it out myself.  I try to help my brain out as much as I can.)

So!  Today I looked up a youtube video on Figure 8 cast on.  Not hard!  Very fun!  Then I started on the toe.  I have to say that I may be a convert to circulars for socks.  It has been so much fun so far.  I’d tried this technique, believe it or not, on the very first pair of socks I knitted.  Well, they didn’t actually get knitted, because I could not figure out how to do the heel with the circulars.  I had never knit a heel before though, so I could not use any kind of sock intuition to help me through it.

Now though, I’ve knitted enough socks to be able to, so far anyway, figure out where I need to go.  I can see why people like this technique.  The two circulars are really a lot easier to manage at the beginning of the sock when I haven’t knitted many rows, and it’s all kind of flopping around on me. I can definitely see myself always using 2 circulars for toe up socks rather than dpns.  It was much easier for me to get a nicer looking toe than it would have been with the double pointed needles.

This pattern is called “Make up Sox”.  It’s got this climbing vine pattern on it that may eat my lunch.  It involves some kind of bobble like things, cables and following a chart.  If it is not a color chart, then I tend to have difficulties.   And when I do get to that heel, I may be in trouble.

So Davey and I hung around here all day today.  He likes to say, “Mommy, will you come in here (his room) and knit while I pack for ‘school’?”  Of course I never refuse an invitation to knit.  So I watch as he empties enormous bins of toys in preparation for school.  I ask him how in the world he plans to get all that stuff to school.  “I have a truck, Mommy.”  ahhhh.

So I got a chance to knit the toe, to realize that there was errata in the pattern, to rip out the toe, and to knit it again.  (My second cast on was much better, so this was actually a good thing.)  Here’s the toe:

Here’s how it kinda looks on circular needles rather than dpns.  So far so fun!

This morning there was snow on the ground.  It wasn’t much.  It didn’t even quite cover the ground, but we were excited anyway.   You know, for a 3 year old who has never really seen much snow at all, any snow is something different from the way the ground looks sans snow.  Right?  It’s all in the perspective.

We got all dressed (even though there wasn’t a lot of snow, it was still pretty darn cold.) and headed outside.   Davey spent some time just checking things out.

He was pretty excited.

So much so that he could not wait to make a snow angel.  I realize this may seem just a little pitiful to those who are accustomed to lots of snow, but again we are snow newbies.

He wanted to walk to the playground, and once we got there, he wanted to climb all over and then go down the slide.  I was a little nervous because it was a kind of slippery, and he had his bulky boots on.  I followed him closely.

The slide was fast!

Joyful kid.  It was time for another snow angel.

We managed to scrape together some snowballs by robbing snow from cars.  Davey is getting ready to bean me here.

He found this pretty hilarious.

Family picture:

Oh and I almost forgot the ice scraper.  Davey was very excited to scrape snow off the car.

He scraped not only the windows, but he then moved to scraping the car.

Serious fun.

Kinda Snow = pretty darn fun.

Well we did have some snow yesterday.  The front blew through and we had a huge rain/sleet downpour.  It then changed to snow, and it snowed (I just had an incredible urge to write snew) all afternoon.  Nothing stuck though as it was not quite freezing, and the ground is still really warm.  I think we have more coming tonight and tomorrow.  It was fun to watch it fall.  We Snow Newbies were excited.

This snow/cold newbie was  on her way to class this morning and allowed no time for defrosting.  We had nary an ice scraper either.  I frantically ran back inside to get help from David.  He suggested using our recently removed Arkansas license tag.  You’ve gotta make sure and not slice a finger off because tags are sharp on the edges, but it worked like a charm.  David and Davey made it their mission to buy ice scrapers today.

Davey is also pretty much set now as well.  We took him to REI  yesterday and equipped him with boots, bib, and mittens.   So here’s the thing about mittens.  I do not understand how you are supposed to put mittens on a toddler.  First of all, it’s hard to wiggle his hand into there.  During this process, we rarely get any cooperation from the wiggle worm.  I’d say that we even get resistance as we try to get the thumb in its proper place.

I think this should be something that we should have been taught before we left the hospital with Davey.  When he was born, David and I were clueless.   The nurse showed us how to give him a bottle.  She showed us how to burp him.  She carefully explained to us how to change a diaper.  So I think that at that time we should have been taught mitten donning as well.

So we were in REI struggling with the mittens.  And then – I found them.  Mittens with a velcro opening.  It is a vertical velcro opening extending from wrist more than halfway up to the fingers.  David and I may be the last people on the planet to know about these, but I would have paid a jillion dollars for them.  Mitten success!  They slipped right on and then we velcroed them closed.  Of course, let’s hope the velcro holds and all that.   I am hoping for the best.

So today while I was at school, David and Davey went and got us ice scrapers.  When I got home they were very intent on Davey’s new birthday track from his Aunt Holly and Uncle Michael.

I like Timber peeking in the background as well.  He’s always been a Curious George.

Davey has multiple uses for all of his toys.  After David left for his class, Davey removed a long section of track.  He climbed up onto our bed and used this long section of track to hoist his friend Lucy up onto the bed.  (Lucy is his imaginary dog.)

That’s our Tuesday!

Tuesday morning and we are waiting for snow.   By the end of the winter, we may have grown thoroughly tired of snow and cold, but at this time, early in the season, we can not wait!

Davey has been sitting outside, curled up in a blanket, just waiting and waiting.

Ok that’s not true.  I took this a couple of days ago.  What I would like to point out though is the balcony railing behind Davey.  See where it is all brown without a trace of paint?  That’s the handiwork of Koko the chow.  We used to put her and Timber out there to get a little air occasionally.  This infuriated Koko.  She’d put her head between the railings and walk back and forth.  Her collar and tag scraped the paint off.  She also chewed absolutely flat about a 12 inch section of gutter which hangs beside the balcony.

Koko won that battle, and we don’t try to get them to spend any time outside anymore.  She won the battle, and we’ve likely lost our deposit.  She also chewed up and ruined the screen door.  You’d think we left her out there on days on end wouldn’t you.  Nope, she works quickly.  There is no more stubborn dog on the planet than Koko.  Age has not mellowed her at all.  When she was a puppy, she chewed our sapling trees in half just for spite.  (Likely again because she was outside.)  Now that she is approaching 15, she’s maintained her queen of the world attitude.

Anyway,  we are waiting for snow.  Weather channel.com says just showers today and maybe some snow showers late tonight.  National Weather Service online says that we might get a 1/2 inch today and 1 inch tonight.  We are going with the National Weather Service’s prediction today.

In preparation we are off to get snow pants and boots for Davey today so that he can play in all that snow that we are probably not going to get today!

Happy Tuesday!

p.s.  We still love and treasure Koko.  I secretly admire her stubborn spirit and queen of the world attitude.