7 Quick Takes, 1/23

-1-

I've been awfully weepy this past week. Probably just a combination of hormones and the season, but still tough.

-2-

One of my comforts in this cold spell has been to wear my flannel nightgown with a pair of handknit socks and this wrap I knit. It's so Louisa May Alcott/Laura Ingalls Wilder that I want to bake bread or something. Oh wait, I did!

-3-

Today I will treat myself to a massage after I play the school Mass. It's something I like to do every other month or so. I'm so grateful I have the time and the extra money to do it.

-4-

What is it with cats and paper? Nuala has never been a lap-sitting kitty, but put a piece of paper down and that's where she wants to be. Even if it's on a lap.

-5-

Since I read The Green Beauty Guide and learned how the terrible stuff we put on our skin gets into our bodies and into our environment, I've been slowly replacing the old stuff I use up with greener options, and trying some of the easier "recipes" from the book. The first thing I replaced was the kids' shampoo and soap. Then I bought cleanser and moisturizer for myself from Aubrey Organics. Because I'm a cheapskate at heart, I really wanted to finish up my old cleanser and moisturizer. So I used the old stuff in the evening and the new stuff in the morning. Well, the difference in how the Aubrey products smell, and feel going on, and make my face feel throughout the day compared to how the other products do got clearer and clearer over the last couple of weeks, until last night I couldn't take it anymore and I just tossed the old product. The miserly part of me was groaning, but the rest of me is very glad.

-6-

James has graduated to Rose's old car seat. And as much of a pain as getting Jamie in a snowsuit and putting him in a regular car seat is, I'm so very happy that Rose has moved up to her booster. It's so much easier than buckling her into a harness, and she loves being a big girl who can use the car's seat belt.

-7-

Real Simple magazine's question of the month was "How do you alleviate stress?" and not one, but two of the readers' answers included knitting! There was even a lovely photograph of a basket of red yarn. Nice.

More 7 Quick Takes can be found at Jen's place!

Some quick Cozy pics

Just a quick post as I am supposed to be on my way to my mom's house right this minute.

I took these on Saturday. It was gloriously sunny and warm here in southeast Michigan, so I finally took some outdoor shots. I only wish the ground had been dry -- we have some ivy under our evergreen tree (pine? spruce? I'll have to find out) but I had no intention of laying this creamy beauty on the sodden leaves. Maybe when it's finished the yard will be dryer, and I'll do it then.

A close up of the stitch pattern.

More soon,

Kim

The bright side...

... of knitting two baby blankets at once is that once you return to projects with less than 200 stitches per row, they just fly off the needles!

I knitted up one whole hank of yarn into the Cozy project in the past three days. This is compared to the span from August to December, when it took (let's see, divide 5 months by 3 hanks) an average of 40 days to knit each hank. I swear I'm really not that slow a knitter, just distractable!

Peg, it took me a long time to get into Cozy. I actually started it at least a year ago, but I was using a very soft alpaca yarn. It was impossible to see any stitch definition or the stitch pattern itself, and I kept making mistakes because of it. In fact, I frogged it back to the beginning three times before giving up on marrying that yarn to that pattern. Now that I'm using a sturdier yarn (the recommended yarn, hmm...), it's going like clockwork. I still have the alpaca, and am looking forward to using it in a simple stockinette project where I can just admire its buttery softness.

I'll post Cozy pics soon, I promise!

Love,

Kim

What a weekend...

Dear Rachel,

I'm so glad it's Monday. As I went to bed last night, I thought to myself, "I can't remember the last time I was this tired." This from a person who has a 20-month old daughter. We had our Wyandotte Heritage Days this weekend, and I wore myself out with working, festivities, and rehearsals. This was Saturday: the man who is playing Sky came over at 9am to practice our duets and run lines. He left around 11:30, we ate, put Rose down for her nap, and changed into our historical costumes. Lauren came over to watch Rose, and we went to the park to sing old songs from 1 to 4. I actually left a little early so I could get changed back into normal clothes before going to church to play Mass. Then it was back to the park to play guitar for a special outdoor Mass (Fr. Ray looks great in a cassock! I should have brought my camera!). I got home for the last time around 7:30, starved but too tired to do anything about it. Andy came down from putting Rose to bed and volunteered to get Chinese. Kung Pao chicken, yum!

Okay, Sunday: church all morning, more singing in the park in costume all afternoon, Guys And Dolls rehearsal from 4 to 8:30, Chinese leftovers, and bed. It was a fun weekend, it's just that it was so non-stop. I just ached from weariness. Today I feel much better.

And here's the nearly-current status of log cabin (I picked up another color right after I took this picture):

Like I said on the phone, it's 16 inches wide now (17 inches long), and I think a 32 inch wide blanket will be a good size. Of course, I could run out of yarn, or I could get tired of it before then, but we'll see.

Here's Cozy, just in case you were wondering about it. As you can see, we're getting ready to have some Fall in the house. Today is turning out to be a gorgeous day. When Rose wakes up, we're going to have a walk with the wagon, which she insists on calling "doo-doo." She used to call it "wagon," but now it's "go in doo-doo." And when we say, "Honey, it's called a wagon," she says, "go in wagon doo-doo." You gotta wonder what goes on in those baby brains.

Love,

Kim

Knitter Triumphant

Dear Rachel,

I have done the amazing, the unthinkable. I have averted tragedy. I have... tinked lace!

It was Friday night. The Tigers were losing. I was knitting Cozy. The game was going downhill. I looked down at my hands, and *gasp*!

Do you see how the pattern basically consists of staggered stacks of two pairs of yarnovers? This is possibly the simplest lace pattern that exists. Please don't get me wrong. I love this pattern, I love the way it looks, otherwise I wouldn't be knitting it. But it's simple. Yet I managed to screw it up -- and not for the first or even third time.

Rachel, remember when I was trying to knit this pattern in the purple alpaca and it just wasn't coming together? That yarn just did not agree with this pattern, and the mistake kept happening. Instead of two stacked pairs, I came up with three stacked pairs. When it happened in the alpaca, it happened early on, and I just frogged the whole thing. Because I didn't know how to fix it otherwise. After I did this three (yes, three) times, I decided to use the alpaca for something else.

I didn't give up on the alpaca just because of my ineptitude, though. I saw how it came out in stockinette for Lena's sweater, and loved how it looked and felt. But for the lace, even though it was soft, it was hard to see the pattern of the yarnovers and the leaning decreases, and I wasn't "reading" the lace to see the logic of how one row builds on another. I was just blindly following the chart, and using my feeble brain to remember which row I was on, and thus ending up with three stacked pairs.

Now in this new yarn, I had repeated the mistake. The Tigers had lost the game. I was angry, tired, and I just wanted to go to bed. When I woke up the next morning, I was fresh, and I had the smallest idea in my head to try to salvage the situation. I figured, if I mess up, the worst that can happen is I'll have to frog the whole thing, and if I don't even try, I'll have to frog the whole thing anyway.

I carefully pulled the needle out, slowly ripped back the offending rows, then re-inserted the needle one loop at a time as I pulled the final row out. I made sure it was a purl row; no psso or k2tog to complicate things. I wasn't positive that I got all the loops oriented the right way, but at least they were all on the needle again. Then, after I counted and re-checked the chart, I carefully put the thing down, stood up, and did a little dance. The dance of triumph! The dance of successful lace tinking! Andy was so -- well, I like to think he was feeling supportive, although he was probably feeling more relief that he wouldn't have to deal with crazy mad yarn lady frogging out this project and starting all over again.

The yarn I'm using now makes the lace much easier to read than the fuzzy alpaca. I can actually look at the fabric and say: knit, yarnover, knit, yarnover, knit, double decrease; oh, that was row 7 and I purled back, so I'm back on row 1. Makes me feel like I actually kinda know what I'm doing. Weird.

Love,

Kim

What's happening to the time?

Dear Rachel,

Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care?

I swear to you, since we've started this blog, I've spent much more time playing around with it and reading other people's blogs than knitting. This was supposed to encourage my progress, not halt it. Now, I grant you, I have been having fun, but I can't tell you how many times I've said to myself while sitting at the computer, "Why am I not knitting?" and "I really should be knitting," and then continued to stare at the freaking monitor. Argh. Not to mention the lines I need to be memorizing for Guys and Dolls.

Here's our much improved Dermot modeling Cozy:

My camera won't let me take extreme closeups. I wanted to show the stitches themselves, but all I got each time I tried was an off-white blur with some holes in it.

Really, the project I'm working on the most is the Log Cabin. It's 15" across and I'm using a 16" circular needle. I think I can make it work for a couple more strips, but when it gets too bunched up, can I borrow your #5 Options tips with the longest cable? :)

In baby news, Rose had her first violin "lesson" yesterday. I thought I'd die of cuteness.

Love,

Kim