Take me out to the ball game….. July 31, 2007

OK, it is Tuesday, and a very Tuesdayish Tuesday at that, not NEARLY as overwhelming as Monday, but just crazy enough so that you know it is still a workday 🙂

Saturday Hubby and I went to the Stitch and Pitch at Coors Field.  The Rockies won 🙂 and this

is what a whole section of Knitters and their buddies looks like.  If the seats were two inches wider I would have been a little happier….as it was there was NO ROOM in our seats, so we skedaddled after the fifth inning to walk the stadium.  Fortunately all the action came while we were in our seats, and we didn’t miss any big plays. 

It just so happens the dear sister has been reading the blog and picked up on the subtle hint about pictures…..   This little guy is partially from an old issue of Workbasket magazine, and partially from my imagination.  He is SUPPOSED to be a dinosaur.  I guess he might also bear an uncanny resemblance to a wingless dragon, or even a lizard.  Anyway, while at Grandma’s on vacation I found a bunch of old craft magazines.  I ADORE old craft magazines.  Anyhoo, once I saw this guy, I dropped everything else and started him up.  I made the body, and the tail, and then…..the pattern stopped.  There was no pattern for legs, or for his spiny thing, both of which are CLEARLY shown in the picture in the magazine.  So I did a little improvising and finished the dinosaur my way, with stubby legs and an offset shell spine 🙂   (Dinosaur, that’s my story and I am sticking to it….unless I find a really cool wing pattern 🙂

I have been knitting away at the shrug of doom.  I really wish there was a way to make long boring projects more interesting.  My luck I will finish this thing and the weather will be hotter than hades this fall and I will not get to wear it for MONTHS.  I am beginning to peruse afghan patterns with thoughts of attempting to churn one out by Christmas, but I really have craft ADD, I have to supplement any big project with two or three instant gratification projects.  Right now my mind is wandering towards crochet kitchen stuff, but also a little bit here…..

  Since this is a WIP that is from about X-mas time, and I still love it, but I never finished it. 

Ohhh Thursday. July 27, 2007

So Thursday was crazy… Um yeah, really crazy, work was INSANE… at the moment my stacks are so out of control that they may actually breach the cubicle walls.  Ordinarily this would be OK, it would just mean that I have to file, or clean or whatnot, but yesterday it meant I had work coming out my ears.  Still one can only beat their head against so many walls before one must throw in the towel, given the nature of the day I threw it in 10 minutes early and decided to head to a family gathering….. Less than 5 minutes from the office I got the call…… DD had broken her tooth off.  While husband exercised his panic button, I was able to be the calm one.  Turns out he didn’t realize that she had only busted off her previously fixed tooth from the debacle in October where her brother broke her tooth off with a key chain.  Anyhoo, we have a lovely dentist who fixed it again, and she was back in the pool in an hour.

The pool was exhausting for the swimmers, I just played the role of photographer…..

  Niece and BIL… she is an adventurous one!!!

DH and DS, not so adventurous 🙂

DH demonstrates the art of the cannonball as the kids wear him out egging him on to do more…..

Just when I thought the day was done, Rufus the Dufus escaped again, since he will only come back to DD, she and DH ventured out at about 9:30 at night to find him.  He was found, but had rolled in, well, crap.  Really.  Bathing commenced and he is now fluffy rather than sleek because I let him dry naturally.  I rather hope it is a strike against his dignity, since he felt the need to roll in… well…crap.

And knitting???  None, zip, nada.  I have however come to the conclusion that the yarn requirements for the shrug were a fabrication, as it appears it will take me two ENTIRE extra balls to complete, being smart, I bought ONE extra….but now it looks as if I must shop for another 🙂

Progress…… July 25, 2007

Ok, so I would like to have a huge FO post, but no such luck.  Actually I am making quite good progress on my shrug, but it is just progress.  When you start at one sleeve and knit to the other sleeve, 66" long of knitting stockinette, you come to realize just how little progress 10" actually represents.   I swear it is hopeless, I know that when I measure it, it is longer, but knitting on it seems like a futile exercise.  I am beginning to see shy people like complex patterns and what not, at least you would have some idea of progress, as in "look, I finished another pattern repeat" or what ever… I get "look, there’s another inch" or "Oohh, look at those extra two rows of knitting….." In one sense it is mindless, and I can finally knit without staring at my hands, although I do tend to still stare at my hands, on the other hand, I think for my next project I will need to go looking for a bit more of a challenge.  

Next in line is actually an EZ baby surprise jacket for a co-worker…. no idea what yarn yet or any of that, but I know I want to try one of these…….but see, this is where Ravelry becomes VERY Important…..I can look up the baby surprise jacket and see A BUNCH of FO’s ALLLLLLL in ONE place, made out of a TON of different yarns…..I am TOTALLY loving the Ravelry.

The kids are as always, kids, I find it hard not to remind them that school is less than one month away.    I usually really want them to go to school, but I find myself reluctant this year…. DD is getting so…. older.  More teen like, less tween like every day. It is pretty strange, since she has always been.. well, herself.. to see her voyage out this way.  She is still has more strings to childhood than other girls her age, thankfully, but I watch her cut more and more of them every day.  Seems that the school year is just too close.  I can’t help but wonder about this next phase.  All those things about not getting it till you experience it?  Not so true in early years, I find you pretty much get it, you don’t feel as if you are hanging out there, clueless, and maybe even worthless, but now, I get it.  I feel it with every fiber of my being, and I do not like it.  I want to know, and to be able to seamlessly handle all of the issues she has, but I can’t, because I just do not know.  I hate second guessing myself, and I do that a lot these days.  I am thankful though, because DD has a heart of gold and rather feisty independence, plus she is really quite a good kid.  All I can do is hope I do enough things right to end up with a decent adult who still comes to visit.

Meanwhile I will continue to exercise all my willpower, and not cast on for 20 different things, but continue to work on the never ending shrug.  Maybe someday there will be a photo.

Ravelry….. July 22, 2007

Yup Knitting related content.  Actually not much that you can see, but for anyone on Ravelry, I ACTUALLY FILLED IN MY STASH SECTION@!!!!!! Yes it is totally worth shouting about.  And for the record it was a much needed exercise for me.  I have 1. an embarrassingly cheap stash.  2. A lot of single skeins.

sigh. 

Still, I have a MUCH better idea about what I am harboring and more project ideas than I know what to do with.

OH, and the new Harry Potter is great.  I loved it. That’s all.

Knitting, Gears of War and other nonsense. July 16, 2007

OK, so I have real actual knitting progress to show! I have been tirelessly knitting on the shrug of doom and actually have a picture to show for it.  I wish I had been smart enough to knit the sleeves in the round, but since I wasn’t I am just slogging through….

Oddly enough I managed to take a picture that looks like random flat knitting, but I promise this is the sleeve and about 5 inches of back of the shrug…..

And here is a new one for me…….

See the red stripe on the left?? See the more or less plain green on the right??  The right was my working yarn the left is where they decided to put a knot and tie on a WHOLE DIFFERENT IN THE WRONG PLACE COLOR!!!   I spent half an hour just getting past this as it was near the end of a skein, so I wound the end of the skein and then had to find another with a close starting place to the stripe pattern.  Great fun. I now have two teeny balls of seaming yarn 🙂

Since my knitting had been going so well, I allowed myself to be enlisted by DH into a game of Gears of War…. People I am way too wimpy to be playing this game.  We made it through the first chapter, but not cause of my crazy gaming skills.  I am more of a Viva Pinata type girl… but it was fun playing. When else is my husband gonna get to rescue me from an otherworldly berserker who hunts by sound and smell…. creepy y’all.  Especially when the controllers shake when something bad is about to happen.  I can see the allure of gaming, especially horror and war theme games, like movies only interactive.

Anyhoo… figured yesterday it might be time to shake the tween up a little, so we shopped for school supplies 🙂 She is so bored that she is not shaken up at all, she is actually looking forward to having SOMETHING to do – even if it is school.   So now I must resort to nagging her about summer reading and the project associated with it, at the pace she is going her summer reading won’t be done until her kids do it for her.  DS has a slight sunburn from a hike I took him on.  I totally underestimated his resistance to certain activities.  This was one of those certain activities.  He has informed me he would rather eat dog food than hike.  The nuggets of "what he would rather do" came at random times throughout the entire weekend.  These things included drinking bad milk, never eating cookies, being nice to his sister, playing alone in the basement, and various other means of attempting to bribe me into never hiking again. I am still pondering how to deal with this as DH’s feeling regarding hiking are highly similar.  It seems I must hike only on Sundays when DH and DS can sit in the comfort of the swamp cooler and cable.   

Vacation…. Over….. July 10, 2007

You know, Kansas was absolutely lovely this year.  Everything was green and beautiful and green. Things actually went well, and my children were quite good little travelers.  The biggest glitch was in going to an area of the country that was flooding.  It is quite a drive from Denver to Wichita, and when we got to Wichita, the highway we needed to travel on was closed.  After and adventurous little detour that almost landed us in a shelter for the evening, we did make it to Grandma’s house OK, a bit tired, a bit damp, but happy to be there 🙂

Grandma’s farm is utterly ideal to me.  The whole place is just beautiful, the house is quaint and charming… (actually I think it is Grandma that makes it charming… but it is charming) and as far as vacation goes, how can one not feel completely satisfied after walking on a hilltop field full of flowers 🙂

Grandma lives in a different era, even today, her ideas about waste are totally different than those of today.  Grandma does not throw away a single bag.  They get reused.  All of them.  Even the ones from inside the cereal box 🙂 I think it is odd what we think of as recycling today, and how Grandma knows more about recycling than anyone I ever met.  Odd that progression has taken us backwards…. If you think it hasn’t ask anyone old enough to remember about flour sacks. 

Grandma has been trying very hard lately to get people to take things they want.  Not the things she needs, but other stuff. This time I brought home aprons, two that belonged to my great grandmother.  The thing is I still remember the aprons.  Memory of my youth is spotty at best.  It often takes something to jar my memory.  The aprons did just that.  The pink one I brought home took me right back to Great Grandma’s house, Great Grandma was wearing it and headed down the stairs to bring us up some apple butter to take home.  Great Grandma ALWAYS had apple butter.  Grandma ALWAYS had strawberries and tomatoes canned up and ready for us 🙂 Only now do I realize how spoiled we were 🙂

Grandma made this quilt, and I think it is a great idea for anyone with a hat collection. 

She took the soft patch front off of each hat and put it on a hat applique.  I am just not sure it gets any more clever than this 🙂 Plus like the aprons for me, I know dad remembered Grandpa’s hats the same way. 

Anyway, we did a little of everything… a little walking, a little cooking, a little crafting, a LOT of talking, perhaps more eating than one in my shape should do, and well, just a little relaxing. 

I made an amugurimi dinosaur that has been adopted pre-photo, I will bug the sister for pictures though. 

I made and tore out a front panel of an intricate stag bag.  I really need to practice this color stuff.  Floats are not easy.  Really.  Not easy.  But I really want an intricate stag bag, so we shall be trying again soon, maybe in a sport weight 🙂 I was set to have a rather LARGE bag.

I could go on forever but I won’t instead I will just leave you in pics.

Happy 4th! July 4, 2007

It is the fourth! This year we are in Kansas, home of the all legal fireworks show.  Unlike Colorado where everything is banned, here everything is legal, so the kids are blowing up things with abandon.  Last night they managedtoknock over one and it blew a golfball sized shell into my dad’s lip. Thankfully he isn’t hurt too badly. 

We picked the wrong corner  of Kansas to visit this year,  as virtually everything around us has been flooded.  Anyhoo,moreon all that later, as I am actually working on a dial up connection. DD is convinced I will cave and bring home a kitten, but they are the wildkind,and I am allergic, so no cats anytime in her near future. 🙂