Forward Motion

October 31!

The birthday brownies are in the oven and ohhhh they smell so good.  I bought ice cream to top the warm brownies with.  Neapolitan for the boring people in the family and Chocolate Trinity for those that know how to party.  I opened my prezzies this morning and 37 is starting off quite well!  A new red digital crockpot, just what I requested.  My old crockpot has been around since before Grace was born and it's cracked and pathetic looking.  I suggested a small food processor and DH, confronted with a variety of motors, couldn't resist a Black & Decker, 10 cup, 400 watt motor model.  My kitchen is now officially awesome.

I also received EIGHT skeins of Louet Gems in assorted colors from The Loopy Ewe from my mom!  I suggested to her that I'd like some solid color Louet, but she really went overboard.  The kids got me gift certificates to KnitPicks and The Loopy Ewe.  They know what Momma likes.

We're going to have the brownie feast shortly because the kids have a pottery class this afternoon and we want to give ourselves time to digest before dinner.  Tonight, Carrabba's.  I've been looking forward to this feast all month, but I am starting to feel a little queasy just from the indulgence of licking the brownie bowl.  I'm going to have a brownie/pasta hangover tomorrow.  Valerie told me yesterday I am like an addict planning for a binge.  A fair, if somewhat disturbing, observation.  Also amusing, because this morning, the scale showed the lowest weight yet.  I don't imagine I will see that number again for a few days.  But you gotta feast every now and then!  Not all the time, but the rare occurrence is good for the soul.  I better go eat an apple so my body doesn't collapse from the shock of so much deliciousness.

Here's Alex's contribution to the season.  That's the fraction 22/7, if you can't tell.  Isn't that just like a home schooled kid?

Modification gone wrong

I wanted to make a hat for my friend Valerie's son.  But not a boring, plain hat with stripes. Something boyish, but cute.  This is definitely not what I was going for:

The blue and the gray are a bit too Civil War for a 3 year old, I think.  The odd stripes?  You see, I saw these hats in a book and did a little modifying and...

...well,

...no, it doesn't look any better standing up.  In fact...

Tiny Little Division

On the days when you are sitting in front of the computer thinking, "I need another blog to read.", then I have got just the thing.  Hallmark, you know, the greeting card people?  They've got a tiny little division of cards called Shoebox.  I've been sending Shoebox cards for years and years and they are some of my favorite cards.  The blog is very funny.  Trust me, go check it out.

Tiny Little Division

My favorite section is the "Funny, but No."  As they put it, "Only about 20% of what gets turned in gets accepted and becomes a Shoebox card.  Here, we feature the other 80%."  This is the one that made my day:

Mom, I don’t think I’ll ever be as good a mom as you.
Which might mean the state will be giving you my kids. Good luck!

Wait wait wait.  I thought I was done and then I saw this:

In the future, expect to see this blog featuring quite a few priceless gems from the warped minds over at Tiny Little Division.

The Battle of the Shrug

The shrug is actively kicking my rear.  While waiting for the size 15 needle tips to arrive from KnitPicks, I stuffed the massive thing into a tote bag.  Once I've stuffed something, it drops off my radar and it's hard to pull it back out and work on it again.  But last night, I put the needle tips onto the longest cable I could find and began picking up the collar stitches where I'd left off.  The pattern says to pick up 112 stitches or something like that and I will tell you, I did not count my stitches, but there are many more than 112.  I just picked up evenly and hopefully I won't have one of those Elizabethan neck ruffs when I'm done.

 

Just as I'm completing the large circumference with this bulky yarn, the cable broke, spilling a dozen stitches into the air.  As DH would say, "Son of a biscuit!"  This is the second KnitPicks cable that I've had break like this, with the cable coming out of the threaded metal top.  This morning, amidst much muttering, I retrieved all the stitches and worked around again with a new cable.  It's a good thing my expectations are very low for this shrug, because right now it looks like a bulky yarn tragedy.  If I can manage to tame it into something wearable, it will be, if nothing else, very warm.

On Mr. Greenjeans, I'm ready to begin the cable and rib section of the body.  Very exciting.  When I tried on the sweater, it seems like it's going to be rather roomy.  I made the large size, but perhaps I should have done the medium.  I really have no idea what size I am anymore, but I'd rather have it too big than too tight.  I must say, working on this sweater has reminded me why I love to knit socks.  It's so easy to see progress on socks and the rows are so much shorter.  With a sweater, you can knit for hours and barely notice any results.  I have given Slipped Stitch Rib sock some attention this week, but I've got several inches of cuff left to go, not to mention the second sock.  I have a feeling I'll be casting on a new sock before I finish the pair of these.

The penguin egg activities went splendidly yesterday.  The kids decided that penguins are definitely better built for toting eggs on their feet than humans.  It was amusing the see the gender differences emerge.  The girls worked out ways of carefully balancing the eggs on their feet or between their ankles and slowly moving forward.  The boys set the eggs on their feet and tried to make the biggest jump possible to advance forward.  They really would have preferred to drop kick them to their partner, but I vetoed that.

Oh, and my mom has confirmed that she and my step-dad will be visiting us for Christmas.  I got this joke in my email the other day:

During a phone conversation, my nephew mentioned that he was
taking a psychology course at the university.

"Oh, great," I said. "Now you'll be analyzing everyone in
the family."

"No, no," he replied. "I don't take abnormal psychology
until next semester."

 

Becca Lays an Egg

The co-op class, the one I'm teaching about the book Mr. Popper's Penguins, is turning out to be fun.  I'm always scared that I can't use up 60 minutes of time, so I let them get all digressive with the discussions until we end up talking about somebody's Grandma's dog that caught a snake that one time.  In tomorrow's class, however, we should have no problem killing an hour.  Tomorrow, we are playing with penguin eggs.

The idea is to have the kids balance the eggs on the top of their feet and try to transfer them to one another, like in "March of the Penguins". The study guide that I'm basing the class on suggests using oval styrofoam forms, but I thought they'd be too light and impossible to balance.  Somewhere on the internet I found the option of filling white balloons with rice.  That certainly sounded simple enough.  What could possibly go wrong?  My class is also learning about foreshadowing, which those previous sentences there are chock full of.

So this morning I was armed with balloons, rice, a funnel, and the assumption that this oughta be easy.

I poured the rice into the balloon.  I didn't get much in before the balloon wouldn't take any more.

My class has been very interested in factual penguin details, like how many feathers an Emperor penguin has (80 feathers per square inch and I'm supposed to do the math tonight to figure out roughly how many feathers total that would be), so I Googled the size of an Emperor penguin egg.  4.5-5 inches and about 500 grams.  Somehow more rice has got to go in this balloon.

Okay, no problem.  I'll blow up the balloon, pinch the middle of the balloon's neck, put a funnel in the top of the neck, fill the funnel with rice, then I'll unpinch and the rice will empty into the balloon as it deflates.  Sure, I probably won't get ALL the rice in, but I can do that a few times.

Here's the equation for that scene:  the weight of the rice moving downwards into the balloon is significantly less than the force of the air exiting the balloon.

In other words, a rice volcano.  When I unpinched the neck, the air rapidly whooooshed out of the balloon spewing the rice upwards out of the funnel and all over my kitchen.  If it hadn't been so annoying it would have been kind of awesome.

After a few more mini-volcanos and some mild cursing, I figured out a plan.  First, fill the balloon with as much rice as would fit, all the way up to the top.

Then carefully, blow up the balloon and allow the rice to descend.  (All the while I'm terrified that I'm going to inhale a rice grain and it will get into my lungs and expand and they'll find me blue and gasping on the kitchen floor and they'll only find the rice grain in the autopsy and I'll have died because of Mr. Popper's stupid Penguins.)

 

Repeat until you've got enough rice in there.  Roughly, about 20 times.  I then inflated them until they were about 5 inches and knotted the balloon.  I wasn't willing to spend the time or the rice making the "eggs" weigh 500 grams, so mine are only about 210 grams. 

DH came home from work about this time (at 10:30, so much for "work") and started chuckling, saying "You know what those look like?"  I said, "Don't tell me.  They are penguin eggs.  I don't want to know what you think they look like.  Also, you probably don't want to go barefoot in the kitchen for a few days, what with the rice grains everywhere."

So help me, one of these things had better not pop and erupt rice everywhere. 

Fruity

First of all, my birthday food dehydrator rocks!  I love dehydrated fruit!  This thing is fabulous.  You slice up the fruits, lay them on the trays, plug the machine in, and in a day or so, you have dried fruit.  It's delicious and has practically no calories!  It's so perfect.  It doesn't make any noise and you just rotate the trays a few times and then let the nibbling commence.  We've tried bananas, pears, peaches, kiwi, apples, and strawberries.  I think the peaches are my favorites. 

The only drawback is that you spend an hour slicing and prepping and filling 4 trays with fruit and you end up with about a cup and a half of dried fruit which you then eat in 20 minutes.  But it makes your house smell delightful, especially if you sprinkle a little cinnamon and nutmeg on the apples, peaches, & pears.  I went on a fruit buying spree at Publix today and I'm going to have that dehydrator running non-stop for the next few weeks.  I may never get around to making anything like jerky or trail mix because I'm obsessed with the fruit.

**Warning: Crappy photos ahead.  It's gloomy outside.**

Last year I was going to A.C. Moore all the dang time.  I had realized that the knitting kick was going to be long term and I needed more yarn.  I had all these ideas of what to knit and an endless appetite for yarn.  Sale yarn, in particular.  I bought a bunch of chunky cashmere and every time I went back, I'd dig around a bin and find another skein or two.  I think I had in mind to make a cabled shawl or something.  So now I have this:

I don't know how many skeins there are.  Probably 12-15.  50 grams, 76 yards each, thicker than worsted, but not really bulky weight.  It's pretty and it's soft and I have no idea what to make with it.  I'm really enjoying knitting Mr. Greenjeans and it is making me want to find a nice garment for this yarn to become.

This is the year that I try again to knit a hat that does not make me look deranged, homeless, or stylistically challenged.  No more slouchy hats, that takes a certain flair that I don't possess.  No more head hugging hats, I think you need curly hair for those.  This is the basic idea, probably minus the goofy buckle:

That is my very first Noro purchase.  This is Noro Iro, bought from Little Knits, and I think Noro is the kind of yarn you should buy in person.  As a Noro newbie, I just can't tell what it really looks like over a computer monitor.  But I kind of like it.  The colors on their own are kind of pukey, but they are interesting together.  This is an exceptionally poor photo, but there are browns, turquoise, and purple in this skein.  Hopefully it will not look like a dirty bucket on my head.

Flashback

When my dad visited last weekend, he dropped off another bag of yard sale knitting discoveries.  Mostly, it was acrylic yarn.  The squeaky kind that feels like spun fiberglass.  In one bag were some partially knitted slippers, still on the needles, so at least I got some more needles.  I also met a lady last week at our Panera Stitch & B*tch who crochets blankets for Project Linus.  She accepted my offer of free acrylic, so I'll have more room in my yarn drawers soon.

Along with the yarn were some knitting books/booklets.  One was a Debbie Bliss book of basic patterns and techniques.  I probably won't keep it after I browse through it, but I'm sure someone from our S & B will want it.  Then there was this:

Check out that squirrely guy in the bottom photo.  Dude, I am not buying anything he's selling.

I would have loved this sweater in 7th grade.

In fact, I had one exactly this shape, only it was black and white.  The front was black with white polka dots and the sleeves were black and white stripes.  It was 1982, we lived in Colorado, and it was my favorite sweater.  Then we moved to Florida and I didn't need sweaters anymore.  That hair she's got is so 80's, isn't it?  In fact....hello, 9th grade!

Stop laughing.  I worked hard on that hair.  Those glasses, though?  I am permanently traumatized by the photos of myself in these huge glasses.  This is why when I go to buy new frames, I find myself paralyzed in LensCrafters.  Obviously, I thought these were fabulous at one point in my life.  What if I still have that same lack of sense regarding eyewear?? 

**shudder**

Anyway.  There was also this booklet:

Awww...I should go call my mom.  She was the queen of kercheifs.  When I think of my mom in my younger days, I think of her with a triangle of cloth on her head.

This must be my week for acrylic because I found this in A.C. Moore:

I think Grace really needs a pair of stripey knee socks.  A.C. Moore has a whole mess of new yarns in stock, some neat stuff, too.  Bamboo blends, silk blends, organic cotton stuff, and more.  I wish I'd had time to peruse it all, but I'll go back this week, hopefully with a coupon.

I'm not knitting any socks right now.  I'm just not into them lately.  I do love my sock yarn stash, though.  Last night, I sorted all my solid color sock yarns into one drawer:

Yummy.  That means that the rest of my sock yarn can't even pretend to fit in the bins anymore:

Maybe next week I'll sort my sock yarn by color.  Enough sorting and I won't be able to resist the actual knitting of a sock once again.      

Empty Closet

At this time last year, I was wearing a size 18.  So really, I am completely starting over wardrobe wise.  I've bought a few pairs of jeans and pants, but I still feel like I have nothing to wear.  I wish the cold weather would come because I at least have some long sleeve stuff that Valerie gave me.  I'm quite sick of the few short sleeve shirts that I have and I want to wear something else.

Sometimes I feel so confused shopping and for someone who considers shopping one of her talents, it's a weird thing.  I still get all excited when I find a size 18 or 16 on the sale racks, because it seemed like I could never find them last year.  Then I remember I can't wear that size anymore and remind myself to look for 12s.  I have to try everything on.  I bought a size medium shirt the other day.  I never would have guessed I could wear a medium.  I stood in the dressing room the other day staring at the tag on the pants I was wearing just to be sure they really said 12.  Because they were baggy.

Yesterday there was a bit in the paper about one of the consignment shops in the area and I decided to go check it out.  Not only because I have a huge pile of clothes in excellent condition that are too big for me, but hopefully to find something for myself.  What with the current fashion scene driving me nutty, older clothes have GOT to be better.  I'm also in between sizes, which is frustrating.  12s are a bit loose, but the 10s are too snug.  I hate to buy too many 12s because I still have 10-15 more lbs. I'd like to drop.

I took in about 1/3 of my clothes pile and the store took all of it.  In 2 weeks or so I'll find out if things sold and I get half the sale price.  For myself, I only found a plain cotton shirt, a button down shirt that I'm not positive I like, and a skirt that's very cute, but kind of summery.  Hmmph.

I feel like I'm really now getting to the hard part of things.  Now I need to maintain and ideally, lose a bit more.  Sometimes I look in the mirror and think, "Wow, I'm so small!".  Then other times I see myself and can only think, "Look at that gut.  I've got a long way to go."  I would have waged money on the fact that I would never been in the 160s again, but I am hovering around 167 lately.  Frankly, I was skeptical that I'd ever get below 180.  I'm just amazed by it all.  Nothing could sound more insane to me than weighing in the 150s, but I do believe there is a chance I could get there.

*switching topics now*

That swatch that I was peacefully knitting the other night turned out to be the perfect gauge for this:

Mr. Greenjeans.  I cast on last night.  There's 88 people knitting it on Ravelry, so I've gotten to see several finished projects.  I like that it's knit from top down and requires very little finishing.  I've never knit a button band, so that'll be new.  Actually, I've never knitted an adult sweater, so the whole thing will be new.  I love the variegated colorway, but I'm using the deep red KnitPicks Decadence yarn that I'd intended for the Einstein coat.  It's alpaca and it's going to be very warm.  So c'mon, autumn!  I've had enough of this 85 degree weather.  I'm thinking I'm going to make those sleeves either a little shorter or full length.  That wrist length bugs me.

None of my socks in progress are appealing to me right now, but I'm working on another hat.  This one will be for Rachael's brother Joseph.  I can't send Rachael the Halley's Comet hat and not include a hat for her brother.

    

Picky picky

Okay, first the good:

Another Halley's Comet hat.  This one will hopefully fit the head of a 1 1/2 year old hell raiser cutie named Rachael.  I used smaller needles and thinner yarn, but she still may need to grow into it a bit.  The yarn is one of the odd sale skeins I bought from The Yarn Gallery in Dunedin, FL.  I think it's called Gedifra Florida and the content is 50% Baumwolle and 50% Polyacryl (Microfaser).  Whatever that means.  There's a symbol of a washtub with a 30 in it.  Does that mean machine wash cold?

Now for the not so good.  I'm not really liking anything I am knitting right now.  The shrug is on hold until my needle tips arrive, so I'm not counting that.  Nothing is turning out quite right.  I feel like lecturing my knitting about not working to its full potential.  Saturday night I did a bit more on the J Knits dropped cable socks while we watched Evan Almighty.  (In spite of bad reviews, we kind of liked it.)  I just love this yarn.  Then on Sunday I saw this:

Look really close at the part right below the needles.  Instead of the cables being staggered, I did them right on top of the previous ones.  Well, it's hard to see, but trust me, it's very wrong and I ripped back last night.  This afternoon, while Grace was being fitted with some sort of tortuous sublingual retainer and I sat freezing in the waiting room, I realized that these are crap.  They are ugly.  I hate the sloppy looking dropped cables.

(I stopped writing at this point and went to workout and now DH is back on the desktop, so that's it for the photos. He was home from "work" at 1:30 today.  Love means surviving cycle break.)

So, shivering (seriously, is this why braces are so expensive?  The air conditioning bill?), I yanked out the needles and ripped.  And it felt so very right.  I kept the toes and have a much simpler idea for this sock.

I realized that one of the reasons I'd been reluctant to rip the J Knits socks, why I kept knitting what was obviously a disgusting wreck, was because of the stupid Knit A Longs.   KALs are great motivation, great inspiration, but they shouldn't feel like a Forced Knit.  I belong to the Sock a Month 4 KAL, the Ravelry Sockdown, and the Fall Cable KAL.  These socks would have satisfied all of them.  The KALs were making me feel like I HAD to knit stuff that I wasn't in the mood to knit.  So I have given myself a KAL pardon.  There will be no KAL completions for me this month.  I won't win any prizes.  But I won't have wasted fabulous yarn on crappy socks, either.

The other sock I'm working on is my don't-need-to-concentrate Slipped Stitch Rib sock.  It's okay.  It doesn't make me feel brilliant and joyful when I look at it, but I don't hate it.  When I was turning the heel, I got the idea to use the rib pattern on the heel flap.  Not one of my better ideas.  I hate ripping out heels though, so it's staying and I have to make the other match.  I don't expect to have a finished pair of these any time soon.

Tonight, I just swatched.  Not even for any reason, really.  Just because I had some yarn in my stash and I wanted to see how it knit up.  It was relaxing and fulfilling, all the things that knitting is supposed to be.

Oh, the other not-so-good news.  The Woodland Shawl?  I have a lovely photo of it on the other computer.  It's almost a foot long now.  And it's not going to get any longer.  I'm never going to be happy with the width.  If I block it wide enough, the leaves are going to be fat looking and who needs chubby leaves?  I haven't ripped it yet, but it's been relegated to a basket.  The yarn will make great socks and I'm going to contact the Etsy seller I bought it from to see about a special order in a different colorway.  I'll be sure to buy more than enough yardage for a wide shawl with slender leaves.

I still have have over 2 weeks until my birthday and I have thought about my birthday dinner (mmmm...Carrabba's) and my non-cake every single day.  Often several times a day.  I love sweets, but I'm not so much into cake.  Just not my thing.  DH lives for cake and there was the time that he and a buddy ate my entire birthday cake before I ever even got a slice.  He was quite sorry, but he's got a cake problem.  Since it's my birthday, I don't have to have cake if I don't want.  I'm going to have brownies.  Brownie sundaes, I think.  The super fudgy rich brownies with ice cream, marachino cherries and whipped cream.  Just for one day.  I'll pay for it with veggies and punishing workouts in November, but I'm going to have a delicious birthday.

5 weeks down, 5 weeks to go

I've been waiting to create a blog post for a day or two now because I wanted to be sure to include some pictures.  Only, have I mentioned that my husband is on a 10 week cycle break?  That's right.  10 weeks of him being around.  Nearly all the time.  Last week he did go into work for one day.  This week, he has a class for 3 days, but he's home not long after lunch.  I'm being grateful for his presence even through gritted teeth.  I told him yesterday that I don't think I'm one of those people who can be around her spouse on a constant basis.  He said, "Ya think??"  I'm glad he's got 10 weeks off.  I really am.  I just have to remind myself frequently.

Also, he's on the desktop computer (which has the photo software) whenever I'm ready to blog.  So no photos for you.

The shrug is seamed and whatever this thing ends up to be, I must say, I did some pretty fine seaming.  Maybe because the yarn is so bulky & heathery that you can't see very well, but I'm happy with it.  It also did not take me half a dang day like the last project I tried to seam up.  Unfortunately, I'm stuck.  I should have ordered those stinkin' size 15 KnitPick Options tips the last time I thought of it.  I found a size 15 bamboo circular in my bag o' circs and did not realize it was only 29 inches.  No way is over 100 stitches of bulky yarn fitting on that thing.  So I'll have to order it tomorrow anyway and the shrug has to wait.

Last week I snagged a book I've been craving off of the Destash blog.  Knitting Nature by Norah Gaughn.  (Sorry, no links for now, it's getting late.)  I deeply and desperately want to knit at least 5 of the patterns and am considering about 10 more.  It's brilliance.  Luckily, it was published about 2 years ago, so there's lots of finished project to see on Ravelry and learn from.  I think the Turbulence sweater will be first, but the Ogee Tunic is a close second.

I've been shopping for clothes every chance I can get lately and mostly leaving empty handed.  Losing 65 lbs. means that I have almost nothing in my closet that fits.  I've bought a few pairs of jeans (one's a size 10....I had to call Valerie from the checkout and tell her that I was buying size 10.  I knew she would understand and squeal with me.) and some plain shirts, but nothing much else.  I thought losing weight would mean shopping paradise!  No more plus sizes only.  So many more stores to choose from!Turns out, I don't like any of the clothes in the smaller sizes.  Someone give me a call when the baby doll shirt with puffed sleeves trend is over.  I keep thinking I've wandered into a maternity store.  The stuff that isn't billowing out under the bust is really, really long.  I bought a cute t-shirt on sale at Target and it reached mid thigh.  Since it was only $3, I just chopped off the bottom of it and let the hem roll like it was meant to do that.

My dad stopped by yesterday on his way to Wyoming.  He's going to shoot elk or something.  He brought by my birthday present since he won't be back till November.  It's a food dehydrator.  He called last week and told me to tell him what I wanted so he could buy it and bring it with him.  Having no time to think and no non-yarn ideas in my head, I blurted out "food dehydrator".  It looks kind of fun, albeit complex.  It takes 2 days to dry fruit and you have rotate the trays several times a day.  But dried apples sounds like an excellent snacky.  I'll let you know.