First, Rock-a-bye Baby Sock #1 is complete.  It’s one of my favorite socks that I have knitted so far.  The yarn is great, and it’s a great pattern.

My niece Mikayla modeled the sock for me.  It’s a little big on her since she is 10 and doesn’t have my giant feet.

Karen, Mikayla, and Jadyn got here yesterday evening.  Davey enjoyed helping me prepare for their visit by helping me make the M&M cookies.  He decorated one and called it a giraffe:

At first, it didn’t really occur to him to eat the M&Ms, but when it did finally occur to him, off he went:

And was quite happy about it:

I am teaching Karen to knit socks this weekend.  I cast on a pair to knit along with her.  We are both using Plymouth Happy Feet in the DK weight.  So far, so good!

David took a picture of us on the back porch.  Karen was knitting, and I’d just gotten home from my walk/run.  I was gross.  Thank goodness for the crop tool.

Davey loves loves loves having Mikayla and Jadyn here.  I have ceased to exist except for an occasional passing hello, or if I am lucky a hug.   I am happy that they are having such fun.

Here they were last night blowing bubbles.

Davey and I are getting ready for Aunt Karen and cousins Mikayla and Jadyn.  Davey is very excited about their visit, and together he and I have decided to make some M&M cookies for them.  “Mom do we have all the ingredients?  Flour?  Butter?  Vanilla?  Sugar?  Lately he starts to get silly at some point and gets all scatological on me – so one of the ingredients he suggests is likely to be “Poopy Diaper?”

(He also has a song he made up which involves a “Poopy Diaperosaurus”.)

Oh, and it looks like I am now only Mommy when he calls for me in the middle of the night.  I’ll take what I can get!

Anyway… he was busy this morning playing with  these “objects” (as he calls them.)

My dad made them.  Davey gets them out sometimes and has fun arranging them.  I love to take pictures of his little hands:

And the look of concentration (which makes him look just like his daddy – oops I mean Dad):

Lastly, Rock-a-Bye Baby sock #1 is coming right along.  I am finished with the heel and gusset and am making my way down the foot.  I’d like to finish it today if I can.

Here comes Davey ready to go get the ingredients!

I started the Rock-a-Bye sock yesterday.  It’s a diagonal rib so you just shift the knit and purls on each row by a stitch.  It creates a neat pattern.  The Rock-a-Bye sock that is photographed in The Joy of Sox is really pretty, but the photos don’t do the pattern justice.   Here is what it looks like – and I love the greens of this sock yarn:

So this is moving along nicely already.  I should be heel flapping in no time at all.

Davey is continuing to demonstrate that he just may not be a baby anymore.  He has started calling  us Mom and Dad, and I have to say I do not like it one bit.  Fortunately he mixes it with Mommy and Daddy still.  Silly of me I guess – but he sounds like such a big kid when he says it.

Ok and finally, here is our mailbox: (sorry about the bird poop on the front)

I went to check the mail the other day, and as soon as I opened the door, a red wasp came out and immediately stung me.  Red wasps do not waste any time.  Luckily, I moved fast enough so that somehow he didn’t fully sting me, but it still hurt.  David describes the pain as a shot of cold lava.  It’s an apt description.

After the wasp flew away and after I had Davey run about halfway back up the driveway to safety, I looked in the mailbox.  There was a little wasp hut hanging from the top of the inside.  I got a stick and removed it.  This involved a little bit of poke and run, poke and run, but I got it to the ground.  So I thought the mailbox was safe now that the wasp had been evicted.

The next day, I open the door and there he is again!  This time I somehow avoided a sting.  The booger is in there rebuilding!    I’d forgotten to buy wasp spray, so David has gone angry villager.  He described in detail how to put together a torch.  It involved a broomstick, rags and gasoline.

One of my main worries is the end of our mail delivery.  I have a feeling that a stung mailman won’t be too excited about returning to our mailbox.

Time for Mom and Dad to go to tackle the wasp problem.

We probably need to do something about the porch as our lovely backdrop for our sock photos.  I need to talk to my photographer and his assistant about that.  (the Davids.)   I do appreciate my assistant’s willingness to put his feet in my photos though:

Anyway, this was a fun pattern.  Very easy knit, but I did try something different on the second sock.  Whenever I changed colors, I wove in my ends along with my new yarn color for a short distance.  (Like you do in fair isle periodically so your strands don’t get too long and really mess with the tension.  That explanation may not make a bit of sense. ) Maybe this is something I should have known to do anyway.  I don’t know. It worked well though.  Then when I was finished, I took those ends and wove them in a little more before I trimmed them.  It made for a neater more secure finish.

Davey and I had a popsicle party to celebrate.  (we celebrate something almost daily.  If we don’t have anything in particular to celebrate then we call it a popsicle picnic.)

We went back to the front porch because our “popsicle chairs” (lawn chairs) were all wet.  It’s raining here.   In this photo Davey is explaining to me that his push-up is “Cool and Refreshin'”.

Then we practiced expressions:

Davey is scared!

Now Davey is sad:

Excited!!!!

And I am very excited myself to start Pattern #4 Rock-a-Bye.  I am using the Knit Picks Stroll yarn.  I used this for my little fishies yarn, and it was great to knit with, plus I love the variations in color.  I am using the color Canopy.  Time to cast on!

This morning I got up and started knitting.  I had hopes of finishing my 80s Dancing Socks.   I have renamed my socks as I realized that I love all 80s music, so it is no wonder that I have just loved these socks!  Anyway, I am going to finish today but not in time to blog about them.  Unless I put off blogging until about 10pm tonight, which I don’t want to do.

The main reason that I want to finish is because I need a new header photo with the new socks.  I love the current header picture, because I love seeing Davey’s little feet.  However, I am about done looking at my right boneless foot.  It’s driving me crazy.

I ordered some yarn last night.  There are two fair isle socks patterns in my near future that require 6 or 7 colors each.  That can get expensive in a hurry, and I am on a budget.  Knit Picks has a very inexpensive wool,  and so I was able to get all my colors without spending a ton.  Yay for that as I have been really happy with the quality of the Knit Picks yarn.

This morning Davey was helping me get some beans ready for the crockpot.  You know a 2 year old perspective is a great thing.  He is so happy doing something so simple as washing the beans and then pouring the broth over them into the crockpot.

And now I promised him we’d bake cookies.  Now if I can just stay away from the dough and cookies!

I read a really good book yesterday afternoon.  Maybe I am the last person to know about this book, but it is going down as one of my favorite books ever.   It’s by Mitch Albom and it’s called Have a Little Faith.  It was so interesting and inspiring that I read it yesterday just as fast as my eyes would take me.  So I am going to read it again – which is ideally what I would do with every good book I read.   Then maybe a year later I wouldn’t be draw such a blank when I tried to remember a single detail.  I am not even going to describe it as I can’t do it justice.  I think though that Mitch Albom is an incredible writer.   How’s that for a not very informative book recommendation.  Just read it if you haven’t!

I am working on “Takeout for Two” sock 2.  I am almost done with the foot.  Here’s a cool thing about these socks.  They don’t match.  The striping is different on each sock.  When I looked at the pictures of the socks at first, I didn’t even notice this.  I really like that they are different.   Cool idea.

Last week, I took some pictures of Davey where he was just really grinning for me.   I hoped they were going to be good ones.  However, for some absolutely unknown reason I’d turned on my macro setting which really messed up the light. Why in the world did I do that?   So I sent them to David for some photoshop work.  He did the best he could with what I’d sent.

Here’s just one.  I love his smile.

And finally, I found this video about handwork on the Mason Dixon knitting blog.  Inspiring for anyone who loves working with their hands.

Finished my first “Takeout for Two” Sock.  I wove in all the ends this morning.  I have found that it’s not so much that I mind weaving in the ends.  Instead, it’s just that I worry that I am not doing it well enough, and I will put on my sock and see large gaping holes.  It appears to have gone fine this time though.  (No large gaping holes.)

I don’t know why my toes are all scrunched in this photo.  Actually I do.  My toes are cringing from the scrutiny of the camera. I was already thinking that I might have to ask David to do some photoshop work on them.

Davey likes to get into my sock photos now.  That’s fine with me.  I love to see his little toes in my photos!

I never would have made these had I not committed to knitting every pattern in the book.  I would have thought, “nah, a long sock like this is just not really me”.  But I love them!  They are so comfy that I have a feeling I will wear them constantly in the winter.  I even wanted to leave this first one on today for awhile despite the humidity and heat here!

The Knit Picks Stroll Sport has been really nice to knit with as well.

Happy Friday – Davey is ready to play!

Davey loves for me to tell him our list of errands for the day.  Today we don’t have many but we need to make a short trip to Walmart.  Then we need to take some books back to the library and finally we will go by one of the local farmer vegetable stands.  I’ve been buying lots of cucumbers and tomatoes.  I still haven’t had the perfect homegrown tomato this summer, but they have been pretty good.

We eat the cucumber and tomatoes with vinegar and oil.   This is the best vinegar in the world to use on the cucumbers (thank you Jerry!)

I am on the homestretch on my lonnnngggg sock.  I love how the colors look together.  I hope to finish it tonight.

Ok off to do our “errands” before it starts raining!