I’m in the home stretch; just a wee, teensy bit of seaming to do and some ends to weave in, and it’s done. Hubby says the band of ribbing on the bottom is a bit too wide. Perhaps next time I’ll make the body another inch longer and take an inch off the ribbing and see how it looks.
Can’t…go…on…Must…frog…Yarn…not…worthy…of…pattern…
Ahhhh, the joys of owning a home…You know you’re an old fart when you get all excited about a $50 programmable thermostat — so excited that you simply must take a picture of it for your blog.
Actually, after our $180 PG&E (Pacific Gas & Electric, for those of you non-locals) bill last month, this is reason to celebrate. We have it all programmed out for M-F, Sa, and Sun with different temps for different times. Now I don’t have to remember to turn the heat down before I go to bed, and I don’t have to ask Hubby to do it, risking his turning it down too low (b/c of Thing Two’s asthma and b/c her room is the coldest in the house, we can only safely turn it down so far).
Should be interesting to see how this affects our energy bill, if at all…
Because I really, truly have not knit enough multi-directional scarves in my lifetime, a belated birthday gift for my friend Joyce:
Yarn: Araucania Nature Wool (one hank, minus about a yard, which will be used in the wrapping)
Needles: US size 10 circ’s
Mom, I need help getting Mother Goose started.
Gee, Kid, I can’t help you right now because I’m taking a shower, but I’d be happy to help you when I’m done.
[dejected voice] Ooooookay.
So. Valentine’s Day. Normally, Hubby’s waaay on top of things and has reservations at a restaurant we really like or someplace new we want to try way in advance b/c he’s learned the hard way how hard it is to get in on Valentine’s Day. This year, he just couldn’t decide, so we took our chances, and, for once, I wasn’t worried about it. (In my card to him, I told him that whether we went to The Top of The Mark or Denny’s, I was glad to be out with him.) We tried to get into this interesting little Italian restaurant Miss Claudia had suggested, but the wait was too long, so we went down the street to a sushi place we hadn’t tried. (We’ll try that Italian place soon, though!) Because we were willing to sit at the bar instead of waiting for a table, we got seated quickly. Wow. They had some great sushi! Amazingly, considering how much we ate, we somehow managed to get out for under $80, which is a rarity for us. Granted, with the tip, it wasn’t much under $80, but it was under. Afterwards, we went to a funky old-style ice cream and candy shop and ate some ice cream while we wandered around looking at all the tchotchkes and candies. The teenaged football player behind the counter offered to call the cops when Hubby asked him if he knew the guy outside smoking pot (we had walked through a big cloud of it to get in), but didn’t when I told him the guy had been getting in his truck and driving away, so there was no point. We were SO grateful to our friend Patricia for babysitting for us that night. It helped us out a lot, and I think it was good for her not to have to spend her first divorced Valentine’s Day sitting at home, feeling sad & lonely. Muchisimas gracias, Chiquitita!
Next thing to plan for? Thing Two’s birthday coming in just over a month! Click to see what she wants.
Yupp. These are the only two things she requested for her birthday. She was really cool about it, and said one was something she needed, and one was something she just wanted (and she had them prioritized correctly). She actually asked Santa for the cat for Christmas, but I, of course, didn’t find out till December 22nd. They’re both on her wish list.
Well, I frogged Thing One’s barely-begun Breeze that I gave her for Christmas. I knew I’d lose my mind if I did all that back-and-forth stockinette and seaming, and I just didn’t feel like altering the pattern. It’s REALLY cute, and I’ll probably make it in the future, but not right now. Soooo, as soon as I finish what’s currently on my needles, I’ll probably make her a Quicko-Cheapo, a Cheapo-Quicko, a Quickie-Cheapie, NO, a Drive-Thru. Wendy would shudder to know what yarn I’ll probably be using, but I need to use yarn from stash, and since I already bought the burgundy Peaches & Creme to make the Breeze (which wouldn’t work for this one), I can’t spend more on this particular sweater. Then again, maybe I could do the School Spirit Sweater all in one color with a cable down the middle of the front and one down each sleeve. Then I could still use the cotton instead of the petrobarf. Hmmmm…..
Let’s go, Oakland! [clap, clap, clap clap clap] This is Baby Michael’s birthday sweater. I figured that I’d start now so that I could knit one, then do some other stuff, then knit the other one. Matthew’s will be in Raiders colors. This is a size 2, but the sizes on this pattern run large (I had to make Thing Two a size 4, not a 6), and this looks really big to me. I made it anyhow b/c I figure that toddlers grow fast, so better that the sweaters be a bit large, rather than too small.
I made some very minor mods to the pattern: I added an extra inch in the body b/c I find sweaters often too short, and I put two stripes, not three, on the right sleeve b/c the twins will be turning two.
It still needs a bath, but if I had to, I could give it in its current state. This is supposed to be a size 1 - 2 years, but it looks awfully big to me. Oh, well. Better too big than too small. This is for baby-to-be Emme. They live in Pacifica, so a hat like this will come in handy, eh what? Emme’s mom is someone who would appreciate that it’s handspun, hand-painted natural fibers — their home looks like a Pottery Barn catalog b/c Ginger works for the Pottery Barn catalog, and Elle’s clothes are always really cute. Yes, you read that right. They’re going to have two daughters named Elle and Emme. She joked that if they had a boy later, they’d call him Opie, so they’d have Elle, Emme ‘n Opie. Oh, dear….
I don’t know why Hubby’s eyes look so weird. He looks like he’s drunk or been crying, and he hadn’t even had a drink at that point. Whatever. It’s a good picture of Grandma Ruthie & him.
Thanks to Adri & Auntie, the rest of the pictures can be found here.
OK, enough people asked that I thought I should answer the Valentine heart questions in a post instead of a comment. Here goes:
They were VERY easy. I used a single strand of Galway leftover from the poinsettias for Nana’s wreath and US size 9 needles. I knit the heart applique from page 13 of Nicky Epstein’s Knitted Embellishments BUT I knit it in garter stitch, NOT stockinette. Instead of pulling the yarn through the last stitch and breaking the yarn, I then picked up stitches all the way around. Next, I purled one row as a “turning row”. Then I just knit 10 or 12 rows in the round (stockinette), then bound off. I ran them through the washer twice on 14-minute cycles, hot wash, cold rinse, heavy duty, low water level, with some blankets. Shaped ‘em when they came out, then set them on a chair in front of the lame-o wall heater overnight. Et voila!
OK, I’m not surprised I got that one from my mom, but I was really surprised to get that kind of card from my dad.
Felted heart bowls filled with espresso-flavored Hershey’s Kisses for the Things’ teachers. Yummy! (The pins I was going to make didn’t turn out. I’ll save the felted hearts to needle-felt or applique onto something else later.)
Today, if you have the people you love around you, please give a thought to or a prayer for people like my friend Angie, who started her Valentine’s Day by visiting her husband Sid’s grave. Today would have been his 32nd birthday. Under “reason for tardiness” on her daughter’s tardy slip at school, Angie wrote Visiting Daddy. Ouch.
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