Yikes and Things that are Red

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It’s been almost a week since I last blogged.  Ugh.  Had a batch of papers to grade, a test pattern mitten to finish, and then the Great Cowl Challenge to contend with.

Got the papers done.  yay.

Got the mitten done.  There was a slight mishap on the thumb.  It’s an afterthought thumb.  And unfortunately for me, it became an afterthought afterthought thumb.  I was supposed to put in waste yarn for the thumb.  When you finish the mitten, you take the waste yarn out, pick up the stitches and knit the thumb.  I must have just been knitting merrily along oblivious to the fact that I needed a thumb.  I was decreasing the top and was within a couple of rows of being finished when I think I tried my mitten on and realized my problem.

So I frogged all the way back to where the thumb needed to go. Set it up and knitted back up again.   I’m a dork.

Last night, I told David that the Great Cowl Challenge was over.  I was not going to be able to finish the cowl.  I went to bed consoling myself that it was ok.  This morning I woke up ready to try once more.  I realized that because I had used larger needles than the pattern called for and since I knit kinda loose, that I didn’t have to do as many repeats of the pattern as I thought I would.  So yay, it’s done.  I can’t wait to take some pictures of it tomorrow.  Here is an in process picture.  Gosh, I love that red.

Valentine’s Day and Koko’s birthday fall on the same day.  She turned 16.  We got her a cake and she was settling into a slice of it when we decided to take a picture of her.  The flash went off and off she went.  She hopped up the stairs and was gone.

So we have no pictures of her and her cake.  I did get some video though of us singing happy birthday to her.  Thank goodness!

Davey loved Valentine’s Day.  He loved his card, although in this picture he is holding up my card. He got a new Valentine’s pillow pet too which made him quite happy and then a package in the mail the next day which was icing on the Valentine’s cake!

And finally a picture by which to remember Valentine’s Day 2012:

 

New Shoes (that light up!) and Wollmeise

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Yesterday we took Davey to get some new shoes and clothes.  Almost every pair of pants that he had had almost overnight become high waters.  So we got him fixed up.  His ankles are now covered .

We also found him some new shoes.  He was hoping to find shoes that light up.   He wanted the “Jedi” shoes, but they didn’t have them in his size.  There were “Darth Vader” shoes that would light up, but he said, “those will scare my girlfriend Olivia.”  There were some other ones with Darth Vader only on the back of the heel.  Nope.  “Olivia walks behind me sometimes, and if she sees those, it will scare her.”

So then we found some that are supposed to look like a car.  They light up like Christmas lights.  He loved them.  He wanted to put them on first thing when he got up this morning.  (This picture is not actually of him putting them on first thing.  He was still in his pajamas at that point.)

Then we decided to take a picture of the lights.  We didn’t have much luck, but it was fun trying.

“Mommy, I’ll have to stomp for you to get them to light up.”  He didn’t mind jumping up and down for me at all (believe it or not, he’d had that shirt on for less than an hour).

We got a kinda blurry shot where you can kind of see them.  Davey would say that this does not do his awesome shoes justice at all!

He’s had some cute shoes, but I’m pretty sure that these are his all time faves.

I am very happy seeing him happy with his shoes, but I am also very happy about something else.

Awhile back, I was able to get a skein of the apparently elusive – hard to obtain German yarn called Wollmeise.    The Loopy Ewe sometimes has it.  I watch for posts on facebook as they announce when they have it in stock.  It goes very quickly.  Part of the appeal, I think, is the beautiful colors and their richness.  It might be easier to obtain in Germany.  I might need to make a trip.

I was saving it to knit some socks, but I kinda didn’t want these colors to be hidden on my feet.  I was getting ready to start my second cowl in the “The Great Cowl Challenge”, and it occurred to me to try out this yarn.  I think I am going to like this cowl, and that I will want to wear it.  I think I especially will want to wear it seeing how this is knitting up.  Pictures don’t really do it justice, and it is just so nice to knit with. I love it.

 

Tuesday snow and Pinterest success stories

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It started snowing last night again and is just now starting to let up.  It was not a real heavy snow, but it was enough to make it a pain for David to get to work this morning.

And it is cold!  Davey and I are hanging around the house staying warm!

I have mentioned that I am a fan of pinterest, and I want to share two recipes that I found there that I thought turned out great!

For Super Bowl Sunday, I made a cinnamon roll cake.  This turned out really good.  The dough almost had the consistency of yeast dough, but it wasn’t.  Then the cinnamon roll cake tasted very similar to cinnamon rolls.  Too good!  So that was a pinterest success.

Then the other day I found a recipe for a homemade Starbucks frappucino.  And a healthier version of it as well.  I made one this morning.  It was really good.  If you put a Starbucks frappucino in front of me and then the one I made – I’m not sure I could have identified them correctly.  I like mocha frappucinos so I added chocolate syrup to the mixture before I froze it.  I don’t have these very often, but every once in awhile I have a craving.  I don’t like to spend at least $4.00 on them either.  I don’t have to anymore!

Had to share some Pinterest success.  Think I’ll go find a recipe for dinner now.

The Great Cowl KAL

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Today I finished my first cowl for “The Great Cowl Kal“.  The designer Liz Abinante has designed the cowls for this KAL and is leading it. I could not resist joining this knit-along.  I am going to try to knit 5 cowls in 50 days.  You have 10 days to knit the first pattern which is what I just finished.  If you finish in time and post photos of the finished object to her website, then you get the next pattern for free.  This is a challenge that sounded very fun to me.  So on Wednesday or Thursday, whenever she releases the 2nd cowl, I will have 10 days to complete it so that I can receive the next pattern for free.  I am also going to try to knit each cowl from yarn that I already own.

So here’s the first finished cowl.  This is Plymouth baby alpaca and I bought this yarn several years ago back in Arkadelphia!

I’d never knitted brioche stitch before, and I loved it.  It’s really fun to knit, and I love how pretty it is.

I’m not thrilled with the bind off that I used.  With this kind of yarn – which has little elasticity, I should have made sure that I used a really stretchy loose cast off method.  As a result, it kind of curls under at the edge, which makes it difficult to get it to lie flat.

Of course, regardless, I think Davey’s pretty cute in it!

Snowy Saturday

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The sun has returned!  It’s been a really snowy last day and a half.  I think this was a big storm even in a city which is used to snow.  It’s kind of interesting driving around.  There are huge piles of snow everywhere.  It’s the most that we’ve ever seen outside of when we’ve gone skiing.  It’s fun.  Fortunately, they clear the roads quickly here, and with the return of the sun, it just doesn’t feel too terribly cold out.

View from our house:

Davey wanted to help David shovel this morning.  The timing of the snowfall required that the driveway and sidewalk be shoveled yesterday morning and again this morning.

Koko had to “swim” through the snow.  David cleared out a path for her.  I was afraid the effort of her trying to get through snow might be too hard on her old heart (of course given her rather stubborn nature, she had to venture off the cleared path anyway).

David demonstrated how deep the snow was.  Almost to his knees!

It’s time for some playtime with the Wee Tot.  Maybe some knitting too!

 

Tuesday Mish Mash: A little knitting and a little cleaning and Pinterest

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Tuesday morning.  Davey is watching Sesame Street.  We just finished breakfast.

It is a “loki” morning.

I am working on my test knit mittens.  I am on mitten number two.  They involve this Latvian loopy fringe.  When I started mitten number two, I had no memory of how I did the fringe on mitten number one.  I had had to restart it about 8 times too.  That must have been good for me because as I began, it all started coming back to me, and I was able to do a decent loopy fringe in one try. *Knock on wood* that I won’t find a big ole problem when I get the mitten back out.

I am also starting some Podster gloves.  These are fingerless gloves with a flap that comes over like a mitten.  I am making these with the some beautiful yarn.  It is a superwash merino by Shibui.  It has the nicest feel to it, and the color is really rich.

I’ve not gotten too far because I am trying to finish the mittens and then I am also working on Hulda Holly.  I have a long ways to go on Hulda Holly, so I am going to have to find other things to say about it besides the fact that the laceweight makes for beautiful small stitches, but it is slow going.  That’s the last time I am going to say that (no one believes that for a second. not even me).

I also keep posting pictures of Hulda which look exactly the same.

So that’s knitting.

I’m trying a new recipe for dinner compliments of Pinterest.  It looks pretty healthy and hopefully will be good.  It’s orzo with chicken and lemon.  I love lemon in everything.

I have a bit of a pinterest problem.  One of the most valuable things though to come out of pinterest so far is that I’m learning about making my own cleaning products.  I learned that a  combination of Dawn and hydrogen peroxide is supposed to be a great cleaner.  Pinterest also inspired me the other day to learn how awesome baking soda is for cleaning.

An entire container of blackberry freezer jam had tumped over in the back of the refrigerator, and it had trickled all the way down the back wall of the fridge.  It was a mess.  Reading about all the non-toxic cleaning possibilities on Pinterest inspired me to come up with a natural solution as this was the fridge and I didn’t want a bunch of chemicals in there.

So I made a baking soda and water paste.  It was incredible.  Prior to application of the paste, I had scrubbed and scrubbed with warm soapy water and it was not budging.  I was thinking I was going to have to somehow contort myself into the fridge to scrape the jelly off.  Instead, I put the paste on jelly, and I let it sit for a few minutes.  I then scrubbed it off.  It came off really easily.  Amazing.

 

A Cowl, Bracelets and Wee Tot

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I finished my second Gap-Tastic Cowl.  It was a fun knit.  I’d like to make a dozen of them so I could stack them and take a picture.  I guess that’s kind of strange.  They’re not towels.

I love these long cowls.  I want to make another one soon, but with a different pattern.

I got some new bracelets!

I love them.  Bangly and one is green.  The other looks nice with the green, so I love them.

Guess what they are made from.

They are made from recycled knitting needles!  I bought them on etsy.com from Sassafras Creations.  She has a great shop.

Just the neatest thing.  I love the idea of recycling old things into new cool stuff.

I hadn’t had my camera out in a week or two.  So I took some pictures of Wee Tot too.  This one was my favorite.

 

Saturday, a cowl, Mega Bloks, colds.

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Here we are in the house of colds.  Actually David is quite a bit better.  Davey is on antibiotics for an ear infection, but he still has a cough.  I’m starting to cough.  So we are taking it easy today.

Davey has been hanging out with me teaching me the games he makes up with those big Legos.  I looked it up and remembered they are actually Mega Bloks.

He brings me a stack of them and makes up these most complex games in which the rules are everchanging.

I invariably get the rules wrong.  He laughs at me and says things like, “No Mommy, you can’t put a leaf on top of lava!”

(ugh kinda blurry picture, but I wanted to get him in action and there was no time to grab my real camera)

I’m making another “Gap-tastic” Cowl.  It’s in that Heavyweight Knit Picks Gloss again.  That wool/silk blend is just so darn nice to knit with.  I’m getting close to being done with this.

I’m test knitting some Latvian mittens too.  Very fun.  I just learned how to do this loopy fringe for the cuff of the mitten.  I’ve never tried it before.  When I can put up an image, I’ll share how I did this.  There doesn’t seem to be a lot of guidance on the internet that I could find.  The mittens are in beautiful colorwork using 6 colors of yarn. I’ve not done any colorwork in awhile, so that’s fun to get back to as well.

The cowl is the kind of knitting in which I can knit and read at the same time.  So I am reading a book by Tess Gerritsen called The Silent Girl.  The tv show Rizzoli and Isles is based on these books by Gerritsen.  I love a good mystery, and I am enjoying Gerritsen a lot.

And that’s about it for a Saturday in January.

 

Our Favorite Preschool Books

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Davey loves to read with us.  I have always been a bookworm, and I converted David to “bookwormism” when we started dating about 25 years ago.  So Davey sees books around him all the time.  We started reading to him the day he was born I think.

Anyway, I used to go to the library and pick out a random bunch of books for him.  I’d look at them briefly, but I never knew for sure if we’d enjoy them, until I got them home and we tried them out. We found some great ones and some not so great ones (overall though – the quality of the children’s books is really pretty good.  I don’t think I’d have had the same success randomly picking adult books.  Of course- they are much different.  Anyway!)

Lately I decide to start looking for the “award-winning” books.  So I started going through the Caldecott winners.  Next I started looking  at the “Best Picture Books” lists on Amazon.  Each year (each month even  I think) they put out a list of “Best Picture Books”.  They put out best of lists for all types of books, but we are focusing on the best picture books for now.

I’ve been through 2011 pretty thoroughly and 2010.  This morning I jumped to 2007.  I got quite a good list going.  Our library has most of them, although several were checked out, so I’ve placed holds.  Davey LOVES to go to the hold shelf and pick up a book that is for HIM!

This researching books takes some time, so I thought I would keep an ongoing list of our very favorites here.  I’ll update this post when I find books that we really love.  These are the books that Davey insists on reading several times. This doesn’t happen all that often, so I feel like these are the really “good” ones, at least in our minds.

SO the list begins:

1.  Press Here  by Herve Tullet.  (This book is one of our favorite books of all time.  Davey gets to participate in the reading.  It is an incredible book.  I may buy it.)

2.  Let’s Do Nothing by Tony Fucile.  Davey found this book to be really funny.

3.  Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems.  Mo Willems is great.  He is hilarious.  I recommend Mo Willems in general.  His Knuffle Bunny books are great too.  We read another book by him the other night called Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed.  Davey loved it as well.  We are In a Book  is a lot of fun too.

4.  Of course the David books by David Shannon are hilarious.  We started Davey on the board book versions of them.  We still quote one of them.  At the end, the mommy says, “Oh David, I love you.”  We try to say it in the way we imagine she says it in the book.  (slightly exasperated, but she loves him so much anyway!)

5.  I have to mention Margaret Wise Brown and Goodnight Moon.  We practically have it memorized.  As a matter of fact, we got it back out last night for the first time in a long time.  Davey enjoyed it.  He also has always loved Big Red Barn.  I almost like it better. Goodnight Moon  has a knitter in it though so of course that’s a plus.

6.  We also recently discovered Baby Brains. There are several books written about the adventures of this brainy baby.  They are a lot of fun.

7.  Blackout – we just recently read this.  It’s a beautiful book.  It’s about a family.  There is a blackout and they realize how fun it is to slow down and spend time together.  We enjoyed it a lot as well.

8. Mary and the Mouse, the Mouse and Mary  This is a beautiful book by Beverly Donofrio.  The illustrations are so pretty, and it is just a nice book about a little girl and a mouse.  It’s a definite read again and again on the Davey scale.

9.  Stuck by Oliver Jeffers.  This is a hilarious book.  Talk about hyperbole and all the things that get stuck in a tree in the process of a little boy trying to rescue his kite.

Ok, I’m off to the library this morning with another list of books.  I’ll update if we find some more treasures out of this batch!

Habitat

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Finished the coolest hat today.  I was so happy to finish it that I wanted everyone to try it on.

Big David:

Little Davey:

and me:

I didn’t get the greatest of pictures so I went for creative cropping.

Even styrofoam head lady:

I even got one that almost looks like the hat is floating in the air.

The cables almost have a medusa thing going.  I am not going to dwell on this idea.

I started this hat back in August.  I finally got it done.  It was pretty slow going with all the cables, but I enjoyed it.

Yesterday, I was nearing the end when suddenly – I was tugging (I thought just a little) on a stitch which was a little tight from a previous cable or something.  All of a sudden my yarn broke.  Not the yarn coming from the skein.  The actual loop over the needle.  All of a sudden I had two less than 1/2 inch little ends looking at me.  It was kinda terrifying.  I thought for a minute, and then I ripped it back a couple of rows.  I put all the stitches back on the needles, and then I put the project in timeout for the rest of the day.  (I learned about knitting project timeouts from TheKnitGirllls.  I’ve been watching their videocast for the last couple of months.  I love to watch and knit with them.)  Anyway, I got it back out today and everything was ok.  No stitches disappeared – well except for that broken one – I’m not sure what happened to it or how I compensated for it.

Great hat.  Great pattern.  Great rustic yarn too.