Today’s been a fun day with Davey.  David had an all day meeting.  So Davey and I went shopping and exploring.

First, I finished my sock.  I have been mildly irritated with this sock.  I wasn’t sure how I was going to like it.  Now that I finished it though, and put it on, I like it very much!  I am still not a big fan of twining, and there will be less twining on the second one.  I also made one other change.  I didn’t decrease the toe down as far as the pattern called for.  The pattern called for pulling the yarn through the stitches to draw the toe together at the end.  I really prefer kitchener stitch and not such a pointy toe, so I decreased to 28 stitches and grafted.

It’s such a crazy combination of colors and patterns, but I like it.  I took a picture with Davey too.  His feet look just about the same size as mine here:

One down, one to go!

So Davey and I went to Kohl’s today.  We went to Hobby Lobby.  We went to Chick Fil A where he ate great, and he saw the big Chick Fil A cow guy.  The guy was very large in his costume, so Davey didn’t want to get too close.  He waved from afar.  He also asked me how the cow guy was able to drive because his feet would be too big to drive a car.

Then we went to Target.  After that, I thought I’d figure out where the nearest yarn shop was.  Because I have not joined the 21st century with some kind of web access on my phone, I borrowed some yellow pages at the Target service desk. I had not used yellow pages in quite some time.  The nearest shop was in downtown Littleton, so Davey and I headed there.  It was a beautiful shop.  They have lots of great yarn, but the entire time we were there, Davey was saying mournfully,  “I miss Ms. Claire.  I miss Ms. Claire”.  (the owner and our friend from the Arkadelphia knit shop.)  I told him I miss her too!

He was really patient with me though.  We strolled around there for abit and then went to a little bakery/tea shop a few doors down.  It was the cutest little shop.  Davey and I sat down and he had a cookie and apple juice, and I had a blackberry scone (really good) and a chai tea latte.  While I was enjoying my tea, Davey was blowing bubbles in his apple juice.  He insisted that he was making music.  So he serenaded me while I had my scone and tea.  It was a nice time having tea with Davey.

I am making progress on my sock.  I am well on my way down the foot now.   Here you can see the two birds slowly emerging.

The birds are on the top of the foot, and underneath the foot is more twining.   The twining looks different in the round then when done back and forth on the heel flap.  When I knit in the round, I was able to do a more normal looking stockinette.   Maybe if I practiced more, I’d get a more normal look on the back and forth twined knitting. That is, if I practiced more.  I love the way twining looks.  I love how it is stretchy.  I am not particularly liking the process though.  It’s ok, the twisted yarn just makes me nuts.  I am glad to have learned how to do it, but I don’t really want to do it again.  Unless, however, another pattern in this book calls for it.

Here’s how it looks on the underside.  And I do like this look!

Here’s a rough look at how the sock is coming along:

I really hope to finish sock #1 this weekend.  Then I will start sock #2.  Holy Twining.  Yikes.

Yesterday we went on a short hike on Triceratops Trail in Golden.

It was just about 1/2 mile long which was perfect for Davey.  Actually the 1/2 mile was perfect, but the trail was out and back so in total it was 1 mile.  Here was Davey on the “walk” back:

He settled in and got quite comfortable.  (Davey that is.)

But at first he walked along great.  We walked down into a ravine to look at some T-rex tracks:

He was very interested in all the fossils.  See?

Or maybe he was just looking at this:

Davey acquired minor injuries as a result of being so close to the fence.  Here David is removing splinters.  I really like this picture despite the reason for its being taken.

And here’s our usual family shot as taken by David!

We drove up Lookout Mountain Road after that.  We only did part of the drive.   It was a good road, but it was very curvy and switchbacky and steep.  Davey started saying that he wanted to turn around.  “Now Daddy!”

We stopped for a moment and I took a few pictures.  Davey and I said we could see all the way to Oklahoma!  He saw Nanny and Pa’s house and Oma and Opa’s too!

See?

The other day Davey and I met a new friend.

Here’s how it came about.  When I started blogging regularly, I began reading more blogs.  Knitting blogs are my favorite to find.  I am not sure how I found Susan’s blog.  I think it was one of those times when I sat down and wandered from blog to blog.  I’d read a blog, see what blogs they read, go to one of those and so on.  Somehow I ran into her blog.  So then maybe I commented on her blog, and then she came to check my blog out and we started chatting between blogs.

So then we recently moved to Colorado.  Well it turns out that Susan lives in Colorado.  I thought, “that’s neat.  Maybe we’ll meet sometime.”  But the other day, I posted about the cinnamon ice cream and she wanted to know where I’d gotten it.  Turns out she was also very close to this grocery store where I got it.  So she lives about 3 miles from us.  Isn’t that nutty?  I met her out of the blue in blog world.

She met us at Chick Fil A the other day, and we had a nice lunch.  She knits a lot too, so we are going to knit together soon.  I forgot to tell her that I want her to teach me how to knit 2 socks at a time.

She’d also mentioned that she has a friend whose daughter goes to the school where I teach.  Turns out the friend’s daughter is in one of my classes.  Isn’t that crazy!

So that is the story of how I met my blogging friend.

Ok well no real dining here, but it was one of those titles that I couldn’t resist.  Although, we did dine at Johnny’s Pizza tonight.  It’s a New York style pizza place.  We really like it.  Davey eats their cheese pizza really well.  He ate almost a whole piece tonight.  His appetite is starting to return as he recovers from this nasty cold.  At Johnny’s, (and he always wants to associate the place with his Uncle Johnny) they give the kids a coloring sheet.  Once the sheet is colored, they hang the sheet on the wall or the front of the counter area where they make the pizzas.

Davey loves this.  He colors his sheet as quickly as possible and then starts asking, “Is she coming back?  Where’s the lady?”  Then he silently and bashfully (he’s been extra shy lately) hands over the sheet and then watches very intently to see where she tapes up his coloring sheet.  He LOVES it!

So I guess I did talk about dining.  Now about twining.  I am working on the heel of my sock.  It has a “twined” heel.  What you do is knit with two colors and alternate colors every stitch.  As you alternate, you drop the yarn straight down and bring the other yarn across so that it gets this woven look on the back.  It also twists the heck out of the two strands.  There is no avoiding it.  To do this right, you really need to hold them both in the right hand, so that makes it kind of slow going.  Every row, I have a twisted up mess.  There are even videos on youtube to show how to more easily untwist your yarn after twining.  I had something better than a video though.  I had a Davey solution.   First, though I want to put up some photos to show how nice the twining looks.  It makes for a stretchy more durable heel.  It’s really pretty neat.

So this is what the back looks like.  It has a braided look to it:

Now the right side looks kind of like regular stockinette, but because of the twist you get going with the yarns, one side of the knit “v” tends to stick out more, making it have a little different look to it.  At first, I thought I was not doing it right, but I think I am.  Others have had this result, and then I read in another place how people use or spin the yarn so that it has a certain kind of twist that works well with twining I think?  I get kind of glazed over when I start reading about the z twist or whatever the heck the different twists are called.  I am not ready for that amount of detail yet.  Maybe one day.  Kind of like you might not be ready for the amount of twining detail I am providing.  Anyway, here’s the right side.  It almost has a zig-zag look to it:

So I was talking to Davey about my twisting dilemma.  He watched me untwist my 2 strands of yarn, and he decided he had a solution for me.  So off he went to get his tools.  Here’s what he came back with.

A drumstick through each skein. He was so proud.  And rightly so.  They didn’t work, but that didn’t matter abit.  I loved his invention.

So the twining is slow going, but really pretty darn neat.  Maybe I can finish the heel tonight.  I am not quite ready for tomorrow’s classes yet though so maybe not.  I’ll get there.

It’s not cold here yet.  I am talking about the other kind of cold.  The common one.  Davey has had his for about a week, and his cough is starting to subside finally. He’s had the hoarsest little voice.  Now mine has kicked in.  I slept with Davey last night to make sure he stayed propped up on his pillow.  It seemed to help with his cough to be more propped up.  As David says, “it’s like we slept on top of the bed all night instead of in the bed.”  Davey and I ranged all over the bed.  I also determined that his new sheets are scratchy.  There were too many pillows, the sheets were scratchy, my throat was incredibly scratchy, Davey was coughing.  Fairly miserable.  Meanwhile David slumbered in peace in the other room.  (To be fair, he’d had the night of a wanderer the night before.  A coughing miserable 2 year old is like having a newborn again!)

So Davey and I went and bought new sheets today.  On sale at Kohl’s!  They are washing now.

We don’t really have a pantry in this apt, so we bought some shelves at Lowes for our groceries. Oh Davey enjoys this thoroughly.  He just got out the Nilla wafers.  I watched him dole them out – one for Timber, one for Davey.  Don’t know where Koko disappeared to.  Timber is patiently waiting for Davey to give him another one.

You know the produce has really been good in Colorado.  I bought red and orange bell peppers today.  They were on sale for $1.00 each.  They are usually so expensive.  They had the nice skinny asparagus too.  So tonight I am sauteeing asparagus, peppers, onions then mixing in some petite diced tomatoes and fresh parmesan to have over pasta.  In the world where I could take a decent food shot, I might try to take a picture of it, but unfortunately I don’ t live in that world.

Another wonderful thing about Colorado?  I found cinnamon ice cream in the King Sooper’s (same as Kroger just a different name.)  I have looked for a long time in grocery stores for cinnamon ice cream.  It’s better that I couldn’t find it as I shouldn’t eat it, but it sure is good.

On the knitting front:  I am almost done with the leg and should be starting the heel tonight.  (As I watch the season premieres of Castle and House!)  I will take a picture tomorrow.  No photos today.  I had classes most of the day, and then Davey and I went looking for sheets.

Ok the Nilla wafers are quickly disappearing.  I better go rescue them before Davey’s dinner is completely spoiled! Actually he’s now feeding them all to Timber.   (No chance of Timber ever spoiling his supper.)

Davey has also just informed me that he is taking good care of Koko and Timber and that it is time to take them out.  He tells me that they need to Poop!

Ok first of all.  I need to learn how to spell Breckenridge.  Not Breckinridge.   But we did not end up making it to Breckenridge.  Instead we stopped in Frisco.  Frisco’s just about 10 minutes away from Breckenridge, but we decided to just have lunch there and stroll around that town.  We’d realized that we were not going to have as much time as we thought before we had to get back to Denver.  (We’ve had an offer on our house and had to fax papers back.  Yay for that – we are hoping everything goes through smoothly, but you never know.  I am cautiously optimistic.)

So we stopped for lunch at a place called Silverheels.

We wanted to eat there because David’s brother had worked as a chef there a few years ago.   It was really good.  David had this salad with smoked trout, and I had fish tacos.  We’ve given up ordering food for Davey at restaurants for now.  It’s like throwing money out the window when we do! He ate pretty well from our plates.  He’s not had much appetite with that cold.  We came up with a new game while we waited for our food.  We couldn’t have played this when I was a kid.  He told me to take a picture of something, and then he’d want to see the picture.   He’d point and say, “Mommy take a picture of this!”

So when I went to download my pictures this morning, I found lots of photos like this:

“Mommy, take a picture of the exit sign!”

“Mommy, take a picture of your watch!”

The food was a little slow in coming,  so it was a great way to pass the time.

Davey also colored.  Not with one crayon, not two, but he wanted to have at least three going at one time:

After lunch, we went strolling.

Frisco is beautiful.  Just beautiful.  There are patches of gold in the mountains already.

We strolled downtown and looked at all the shops.  One thing I always love about mountain towns are all the dogs.  Relaxed, healthy, happy dogs lounging outside their respective shops.

We found a good soft serve ice cream place:

Frisco also has my top main requirement:  a yarn shop.  I didn’t take photo of it, but it was called “What’s Needling U?”  Cute.  They had a nice selection.  I wanted to buy some sock yarn for one of my Joy of Sox patterns, but I didn’t see anything that I just had to have.

We had fun “strollin'”.  Davey didn’t want to stop.  We all liked this statue:

Fun Saturday.  It was a beautiful drive out to Frisco too.  I am not a fan of the Eisenhower/Johnson tunnels though.  (I put in a wiki link.  It’s actually very fascinating reading about these tunnels.  They are at around 11,000 feet and about 1.6 miles long.  I got a little claustrophobic feeling in there.   It was already easier on me though on the way back through.  It’s a little overwhelming to think about going through that massive mountain at that high elevation.  One of those engineering marvels.)

Anyway, I got some more done on my sock last night while we watched a fairly lousy movie  (Prince of Persia). There were a bunch of gross snakes and stuff, so I kept my eyes on my fair isle.

Ok time for a trip to Walmart.  We may get some pizza too.  Something that Davey will eat when we eat out!