Erica’s Blog

She grows!  Now, dontcha just love how every time I post pictures of Olympia, she looks like a different color?  I actually went outside with the intention of getting some nice “natural light” pictures of her, but since winter has actually returned this week (rain, some frost-inducing temperatures, wind, etc.), the light was pretty bad, and I didn’t have any dry surfaces to use.

YES, the second picture is fuzzy.  I don’t care.  The entire purpose of that picture is to show the mistake I referenced the other day.  I was probably very foolish to have answered the phone while knitting in the car the other day.  I can’t pay attention to Olympia and Bobcat at the same time!

Knit on, you Olympic knitters!  (BTW, I’ve discovered a new sport — snowboard cross.  It’s crazy!  Thing Two and I were watching it last night as Thing Two and hubby snuggled and snoozed.  Well, we watched until Thing Two said, “I’m going to stay up all the way until I fall asleep!”  Of course, she was asleep less than five minutes later.)

 Houston, we have flowers.  As you can see, it’s time to put out snail bait b/c the snails are getting to the purty yaller ones before they can even be photographed.  The weird orange flowers are up, too.  They bloomed later than last time, probably b/c 2005 was “the hottest year in a century”.  My paperwhites came up, but they don’t have buds on them.  Last time, they bloomed in December. 

Anybody know how to resurrect roses?   I forgot to cut back my rose bushes in the fall and didn’t take care of them, and now they look horrible.  Should I just cut them all back and fertilize them?

Olympia, she grows!  OK, not at the rate I’d anticipated, but she’s growing.  Unfortunately, however, my hubris got to me (look it up, kids; it’s a good SAT word).  For a couple of days, I was having fate-tempting thoughts of “Wow, I can’t believe I’ve gotten this far in the lace pattern without any mistakes!”

Yeah.  Right.  Stupid.  So, today those mistakes came.  Not many and not heinous, but mistakes.  And in the simplest of the lace patterns.  D’oh!  Guess I shouldn’t have been quite so determined to get to the bottom of the page of my pattern today, eh?  Anyhow, I’ve reprinted the pattern for tomorrow, all set for the second repeat of 48 rows of lace pattern.  Wheee! 

I’ll never get this stupid thing done by the end of the closing ceremonies, but at this point, I really don’t care.  Heck, even the Yarn Harlot is wondering if she’ll be able to finish her project, and she started this whole business!

Oh, and those pictures?  If the background looks wonky, it’s b/c I took them in the car.  I was knitting in there while Thing Two was in class and decided to make the most of the daylight and stretch her out on my voluminous lap to take a picture.  Yes, the color looks radically different from the previous pictures.  These pictures are closer to true.  It’s hard to see, but it’s not really a solid purple; there are hints of green here & there — hence color name “Vineyard” (think grapes, all you sleep-deprived knitting folk out there).

[NOTE TO LEAH:  Thanks for the e-card.  I can't tell if the girl looks calm or dazed...]

The rest of the pictures are here, but these are the highlights of Valentine’s Day (NO, there are no pictures of hubby & me.  I went to get dressed and found I was too fat for my dress, so I wasn’t in the mood for pictures, thank you very much!):

 Thing One enjoying her VDay candy from Mom & Dad. Can you see the Starbucks card?

 Thing Two eating pizza at her class party.

 Thing One and her loot at her party.

 See how nice I made it for the babysitters?  A menu, a mug, bubbles, and Valentine cards to take home.  I made them roast pork loin w/veggies, salad, brown rice medley, with sparkling apple-cranberry cider, lemonade, and “almond red velvet heart-shaped cakelettes with vanilla frosting and raspberry sauce”.  Hey, if you’re 35+, single, and spending your Valentine’s Day evening babysitting for friends for free, they oughta treat you nice, yes?!

We interrupt the regularly scheduled Olympic knitting to bring you…wristwarmers!  My easy, take-along project came to the forefront b/c of Valentine’s Day. 

 These are Brandi’s FAR overdue wristwarmers from Last-Minute Knitted Gifts.  Unfortunately, I seem to have lost track of my rows on the second one, so it ended up three or four rows longer than the first one.  Uh, Brandi, you don’t happen to have one arm longer than the other, do you?  (Models:  Erica, Jenna the Dog; Photographer:  Thing One)

 I know she lurks on my blog, but I’ll risk posting this picture tonight anyhow.  These are for Mrs. R, Thing One’s teacher.  They’re adapted from the previous pattern.  To make them an even faster knit, instead of doing an all-over spiral rib, I just ribbed the top & bottom and did the rest in plain stockinette.  If I were really ambitious, I could have put purple hearts or something on them, but I was pressed for time, to put it mildly.  (Model:  Erica, Perimenopause book; Photographer:  Hubby)

PATTERN NOTES:  If you’re considering making this pattern, and you’re hesitating b/c you’re put off by the idea of having to buy and use two 8″ circ’s, don’t be.  Also, don’t do it!  Just use some dpn’s instead; I did, and it work just fine, thank you very much.  This is also a good one-skein project, if you have little bit of something.  I used ONE 110-yard skein of KnitPicks Wool of the Andes for each pair, and I had some leftover from each one!  This would be good for using up your bits of yarn.  When I have more time, some day, I’d love to alter this pattern to be lacy or scale it to make it kid-sized.

It’s too late now for lace knitting, and I only got seven rows done on Olympia today while Thing Two was in class.  Tomorrow being Valentine’s Day, it’s doubtful that I’ll get any knitting done.  I’ll have to crank on Wednesday while Thing Two is in class….

   Some people compete in the snow and wind.  Some compete in an ice arena.  Me, I compete here.  See, I even moved the “next to the desk” lamp over this evening so I could continue to knit w/o having to torque my back by twisting to hold my work under the light.  I think I’ll actually swap it with the “next to that futon” lamp b/c that one has a three-way bulb in it that goes up to 150 watts - much better.  Anybody wanna buy me an Ott-Lite?

So, ya wanna see her?  Do ya?  Reeeeeaaaaally?  Well, OK, but I’m gonna make you work for it. Click on the little purple “Read More” box.

   Hubby was playing with the camera settings to try to get it to focus right, etc.  Color’s off, but we’ll work on that.  Here are just a few of the stitch sections, in no particular order.  She’s going pretty well.  I’m thinking that tomorrow I should finish the first big 48-row pattern repeat.  I’m not confident about my ability to finish her in time, but I’m learning a lot, for sure.  I should have trained more — she definitely should be narrower.  I seem to have this problem with making stoles/rectangular shawls too wide.  Seems like I think I’m making them for Andrei the Giant or something (yes, we watched The Princess Bride today).

More updates to come, but I’m tired.  Until then, have fun storming the castle!

P.S.  Say a little prayer/cross your fingers/whatever for Zib and everyone else in Italy, where the dead bird-flu swans are falling out of the sky.  NOT a good thing!

Miss Claudia gave the girls a gingerbread house kit, and we finally got around to doing it the other day.  As you can see, they loved it!

 So, we have begun.  I couldn’t begin on the button of 2:00 yesterday, or I wouldn’t have picked up Thing One from school (“Hi, can you drive Thing One home from school today for me so I can start my Knitting Olympics project?”  Um, not a good idea.).  I did, however, start later in the afternoon.  With all the various restrictions on when I can’t knit lace (after 9:30 or 10 p.m., etc.), I did 13 rows on Friday.  Today, only 9, but I also had to find a couple of mistakes in what I’d written, fix the pattern, print it out again, and re-mark which I’d done, etc.  I’m hoping for more good daylight time tomorrow since we had company tonight, hence no lace knitting.

WE HAVE WINNERS, folks!  In our random blog contest, I wrote down all the names of those who sent in “happy blogiversary” comments (spelling errors not counted against you).  Hubby was only going to pull two winners’ names, but b/c the first one was a non-knitter, I had him pull an extra.  Sooooo, here are the winners.  Really. Truly.

• Penny
• Dani
• Grandma Ruthie

Penny, I’ll email you to get your address.  Dani’s I have.  Hopefully, THIS package won’t get lost in the ether.  And what kind of DIL would I be if I didn’t have Grandma Ruthie’s.  (Don’t worry, Grandma; I won’t send you yarn!)

Today’s my blogiversary!  Woot!  Blogiversary, beginning of the Knitting Olympics, and what some would call my “spiritual birthday” all in one day. 

Maybe I should have a contest like other people — If you comment with blogiversary wishes, I’ll enter you in a random drawing and send the winner some stuff from my stash.  Hmmmm.  That could be a good idea.  That’s ONE way to reduce my stash! 

OK, gang, comment away!

  ‘Tis the night before ‘lympics, and all through the house, I can’t think of a good rhyme to continue this….

OK, I still have a couple of things I have to do before cast-on time of 2:00 tomorrow:

1. Get  some legal-sized paper so I can actually print out the pattern for Olympia.
2. Get some largish sticky notes so I can actually work the pattern without losing my place (ah, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!).
3. Do one last test to see if my needles are long enough or if I need to zip up to the LYS (walking distance from my house, half-way between home and Thing One’s school) to get some longer ones.  Size 2’s.  2’s.  Oy.

I’m still rather afraid that I’m going to run out of yarn.  Then again, I’m probably not going to get it done in time, considering that I can’t knit lace after 9:30 p.m. or so, and I can’t knit lace with “Mom!  Mom!” every five minutes.

For you 3,649 knitting athletes (knithletes?) about to embark on the insanity that is the Knitting Olympics, here is a good article about preventing knitting-related injuries when “speed knitting”.  Yes, you read that right.  3,649 knithletes.  We are a fanatical bunch, we knitters!

Oh, and in case you’re wondering what I’ll be knitting during the great sections of the day wherein I can’t knit lace, IF I’m knitting at all (and not saving myself for Olympia), ’twill most likely be XXX (gift for Mrs. R), Brandi’s wristwarmers, or something for our Valentine’s Day babysitter Shannon (most likely the same thing as XXX, the gift for Mrs. R).

Lastly, I shall leave you with this as I head off for some mindless stuff, putting the Things to bed, etc.  Back in 1964 when I was born (do the math; I don’t care), my parents named me Erica Ann.  They would have just named me Erica, eliminating the middle name b/c they assumed I’d just “lose” my middle name when I got married and my maiden name became my middle name (sorry, Poppa and Nana!), but they thought that to be christened Catholic, one had to have a saint’s name somewhere in one’s name.  Hence the addition of “Ann”.  Erica was b/c they liked it and b/c they…(here comes the punch line)…had never heard it and thought they were making it up.  Yupp.  Thought they were making it up.  So, here’s how unusual the name Erica is:

• 5 Erica’s in Knitting Olympics
• 4 Erika’s in Knitting Olympics (+ 1 ErikaJo)
• 21,200 results if you Google “Erica’s Blog”
• 1,730,000 results if you Google Erica [my last name]
• 3 women named Erica [my last name] are patients of my OB/Gyn