I am participating in my first “swap” on Ravelry.  There are many groups to join on  ravelry, and often they will have swaps with fellow knitters and crocheters.  Some of these swaps result in a haul that looks like Christmas morning.  They go all out and do awesome exchanges.

For my first swap participation, I wanted to keep it simple.  I have been following the “itty bitty knits” group which is a group of knitters who follow and like the knitting designer Susan B. Anderson.  I made some patchwork socks not too long ago as part of a KAL with her group.  So this is an Ornament Swap.  You make one Christmas ornament and send it out to the person they tell you to send it out to.  Mine went out this morning.

I made a pretty simple little tree, but here’s what I liked a lot about it.  I used leftover Shelter from Jared Flood’s yarn line.  I love the kind of rustic “tree-ey” look of the yarn.  I also really liked the cable pattern on the tree.  It was easy and quick, and I have ambitious notions now of making a garland of little trees.  I could use up some leftover sock yarn that way (although what I would really like to use is more Shelter yarn.  That would involve buying more yarn though which is something I am trying to avoid!).  We shall see.

This was a really fun and quick knit.  You knit it from top to bottom and bottom to top all in one piece, and then sew up one side, stuff lightly, and sew up the other.  The trunk was also just a quick piece to make and attach.

So that’s knitting.  I’m working on a jillion things still and want to make a jillion more, but that is nothing new.

So Davey has become fascinated with sign language.  If he doesn’t know the sign (and that is for almost all words), he doesn’t mind making them up.  So we are learning a few signs a day.  You can look them up on youtube.  We’ve learned “Mother”, “Father”, and “Parents”.  He loves to say “I love you” with sign language.  Today we’ve learned “chicken” and “teacher”.  He tells me what word he wants to learn, and then I look it up.  So now he’s making up sentences about being a teacher of chickens.

He likes to tell people that he is 4 and 4 quarters.  I told him a little while back that he was older than 4 and 1/2 now, so somehow he got it in his head that he is 4 and 4 quarters.  He is not interested in my explanation about fractions.

Earlier I found him under our locust tree playing.  I tried to quietly get a few pictures.  I listened to him for a minute, and learned that he was having a cherry blossom festival.

I listened to him chatter a little more, and then let him be.  I don’t think he even noticed me.