Trekking Under the Wire

As I may have told you, I joined the Trekking Along, which requires you to post your progress in June, July, and August. Well, here it is, the last day of June, and I haven't had a chance to go trekking anywhere! Ack!!!

So I got creative (we won't call it cheating. nope. not cheating. definitely not.) and the boy-child and I went for a little walk in the woodsy area next to the building where my daughter has occupational therapy.

We checked out the local wildlife.

We took the prerequisite sock(s)-on-the-tree picture (and yes, there was poison ivy on the other side of the tree stump, but we stayed far away from it.) Sock color- too light!

The boy-child decided he didn't like walking in the dead leaves, pinecones, and round sticky-balls (I have no idea what they're called), so we resumed our trek on the sidewalk.

Here you see my right foot (and yes, I do have a left foot, which is under the goknit pouch), my wonderful Birkenstock sandal that will be dead soon, I didn't get them resoled before the leather cracked, and now it will cost almost as much to resole and replace the footbed as it will to replace them. Unfortunately, I don't have money for either. So, I'm wearing them until they die. Oh, wait! There's my left hand too (I knit... Continental? I dunno. I'm a picker.), my goknit pouch, and my sock-in-progress. Btw, this is colorway seventy-something. Shades of purple- 76 or 78 I think. Ball-band has gone incognito. Sock color- accurate.
Edit: I looked up the colorway- it's Trekking 78.

The boy-child. About 50 feet ahead of me. Of course. Ok, wait, maybe not 50 feet at that moment. Don't mind me. (And yes, if you're suspecting something weird, he does swing his hips while he walks. Weird. The girl-child, btw, doesn't. Or at least it's not as pronounced.)

We see a humongo rock next to a picnic bench that I hadn't noticed before (the rock, not the picnic bench.

So the sock wanted to go be photographed on it, and I obliged. (The other sock, btw, is nestled safely in my go-knit pouch.) Sock color is pretty accurate.

Hopefully next month, I'll go on a real walk. Please cross your fingers for me.

Edit: Thanks to my sil Cheryl for bringing my misspellings and totally wrong words to my attention. :P

Feeling better

Sorry about all the crankiness last night. I am feeling lots better this morning. My darling hubby took care of the kiddos when they woke up (at 6 am) so I was able to sleep in to almost 8:00. How wonderful!

I'm alive. I think.

Well, here I am. No real post, yet again. Are you guys bored out of your gourds yet?

I got to the dentist around 10:10 (oops!) and they decided they wanted to clean my teeth while I was there. "How long will it take?" I ask. "About 40 minutes." "How long is the crown prep supposed to take?" "An hour and a half."

So... 40 minutes plus an hour and a half... 2 hours and 10 minutes. "Okay."

I left the dentist at 1:30. For all of you people that hate the maths, that's 3 hours and 20 minutes. I was supposed to drive home (30 minutes) and pick up the kids, buckle them in their seats (10-15 minutes) and drive to TEACCH (15 minutes). I was supposed to be at TEACCH by 2:00.

Again, those evil maths. I was late. I called the hubby on my way home, had him get the kiddos ready, and had him bring them out to the car as I pulled up to my house. We each buckled in a kid, and off we went. We were only (by some miracle) 10 minutes late.

TEACCH went just fine. The girl-child did her testing, and the boy-child played in another room while I knit. The TEACCH people and I chatted for a few minutes, then off we went to Speech Therapy.

Since I had the boy, I didn't get to observe speech. (For some reason, having a 3-year-old in the room is somewhat distracting to the girl-child.) We went to Wal-mart to look around, then back to pick up the girl-child.

So.... I guess the gist of the story, is that I never stopped to eat. I had a banana at about 9:30, on the way to the dentist (banana breath- poor dentist!) Sooo... My head hurts, my mouth hurts, and I'm cranky. We hit McD's on the way home. The poor kids had to live without happy meal toys, and I promised them we'd make chocolate milk at home. Luckily, the hubby was home to help serve my gourmet meal, and here we are.

So that was my day. Have I bored you all to tears? I am still tired and cranky, and my mouth and head still hurt.

No nice knitting pictures. Just cranky me.

Tomorrow's another day, eh?

What? I was going to blog today?

I promised myself yesterday that I was going to post today about the package my Dye-O-Rama buddy sent me. Here it is, 9:17 pm, and, well..... maybe tomorrow?

Wait... tomorrow I go to the dentist for crown-prep work. Oh, the joy. That starts at 10:00. Then at 2:00, I have to take the girl-child to TEACCH to help someone train on how to do testing (My daughter does very well testing, so she goes and acts like a 'model' testee for people that are learning to do the testing to evaluate autism, etc.). I love that we can do this to 'give back.' This should last for 2 hours, then at 4:30, it's time for the girl-child's speech therapy. Hopefully I'll get to do some blogging tomorrow.

Today I have taken a few car-loads of trash to the dumpster and I did some cleaning and re-arranging in the middle bedroom, which will shortly become my daughter's bedroom. She and her brother are sharing, but we will be getting some twin-size beds soon, and she's going to be 5 in september, so it's time to split them up! It's been quite a challenge getting this room ready- It was our office, also known as the 'stash and dash' room. You know, the one where you throw stuff that doesn't have any other home. The one that, when you have company, you shove stuff in and close the door. Yep. It's been reeeeal interesting. We are also doing a major patching job on the wall. We live in a manufactured home, and we are removing the strips that cover the joins in the wall panels, and puttying them so they look more like regular walls. Hopefully we will eventually do this in our entire home, to help it look a little bit nicer.

Anyways, it's off to bed for me pretty soon here, hopefully I'll give you a real post tomorrow evening or Wednesday.

The Three Boogas

Well, here is the baby booga bag that I was making. I finished it pretty soon after the last time I posted-- I already had to give it its first shave before taking this picture. I am amazed at how much it softened up with the felting. I had a bit of a hard time knitting with the Kureyon, especially the i-cord, because it is so scratchy. If I told someone that now, after touching the finished bag, they'd never believe me. (Unless, of course, they had knitted with Kureyon themselves.)
As you see it has gained two comrades. They are gifts for the girl-child's pre-k teachers. She had them as teachers for nearly two years, and I am so very pleased with the progress she has made while she was in their care. Thanks Mrs. Azevedo and Mrs. Greer!

I made their bags from Patons Classic Merino Wool in uh.... Purple and Burgundy. Those probably aren't the exact names, but I am too lazy to go look and see what they were. Oh, yeah, and Winter White. They felted excellently- almost too well. They are the full-sized booga bags. Yep. Chalk up one for how different yarns felt differently! They are both wider than the baby booga, though just a tad shorter. The biggest difference you can see is in the handles. I think I stopped knitting the baby booga's handle at about 5 1/2 feet, and I know I did 6 feet on the handles for both of the big boogas. Next time I'll adjust accordingly, adding length to the i-cord for the handle, and adding, oh, about 10 rows (at least) to the length of the bag. The white stripes on the purple bag are 10 rows wide.

Also, if I knit a booga for the girl-child's kindergarten teacher (which I am planning on doing), I will make sure it is done BEFORE school ends! Fortunately, I do have the teachers' contact information and will either drop the bags by their houses or send them (hopefully the former!) I was just thinking I would have to only make one, but I believe the kindergarten teachers all have assistants too. That's ok though, I really enjoy making these bags. Thanks so much Julie for making this pattern!

Edit: The colors of the two right boogas are Royal Purple and Burgundy. And, of course, the purple one is a lot more purple in person, kind of an eggplant-y purple (to me at least.)

A Whole Month?

Has it been a whole month since I last blogged? Oops! Major Knitter warned me that blogging was time consuming (and fun), and yes, she's right. I got into procrastinating a little too much, and here I am. I have plenty of stuff to blog about, but I guess I need to set a time to do it. So what do you do? Do you have a set time/day of the week to blog? Do you blog a little at a time? Any suggestions or ideas would be great!

Now that's better!

Here is my baby booga bag after ripping it out (yes, the whole thing!) and starting from the outside of the second skein. The color progression looks a lot more natural, and I am quite pleased with how it looks. I am now knitting the I-cord. I will wait and see how much yarn I need for the I-cord before I bind of the top of the bag. As it is, it is a few rows short. I would rather the bag be a little short than having too-short handles. I really like that the handles are felted separately then attached so I have more control over their length.

I finally got on the ball to make a present for my friend's daughter that just turned... I think it's 10. The sad thing is that K's birthday was a month ago! I'm sorry! I procrastinated and waited until I could get this book from the library so I could base this little purse off of the gift bag pattern inside. I also wanted to use two colors of yarn, do you recognize the purple stripe? Does it even look purple in the picture? Well, it's supposed to be. Sorry about that!! Here are before and after pictures, with a play scissors-thing from the kids' medical kit for reference.

Nearly every time I knit now, the girl-child always wants to play with my needles and yarn. She wants to wrap the yarn around the needle, or (most of the time) just stabs the yarn with the needle. I've tried several times to convince her the yarn and needles are mine! and that she really doesn't believe me either when I tell her that I really don't need help!

So... these are for her.

The cheapest pink acrylic yarn I could find (Caron's Simply Soft, which is my favorite acrylic), and some blue size 8 Red Heart Starters knitting needles. (Yay for AC Moore and 40% off coupons!!) Hopefully this will get her out of my way a little. Hubby wanted to know if I was going to teach her how to knit. Dear, she's only 4 1/2! I told him that when she started watching what my hands were doing rather than just playing with the yarn and needles, I would start trying to teach her. I am hoping this doesn't happen before she's 7.

Here is a present for meeeee!!! Two skeins of Lorna's Laces in the Happy Valley colorway, and a mini Kacha-Kacha. My LYS sells out of this yarn really fast, so I was hoping that there would still be some left, a week after the store owner called me to let me know it was in. (Isn't she nice??) I am still somewhere around the heels on my current socks (doing two at once on dpn's, toe up), so these will be stashed. I swore I wasn't going to stash yarn. Well... here it starts!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I really do knit

I must apologize for the lack of knitting content thus far. Here is one of my many current knitting projects:

A baby booga bag in Noro Kureyon colorway 170. I have heard a lot about Kureyon and it's little quirks of having knots in the middle of the skein joining two colors that are not, let's say, part of the natural color progression of the skein. Case in point. I started with the bottom of the bag. So, going from left to right, I found a single knot in my first skein where the second burgundy stripe starts. And that's all for that skein. Begin skein number two--I knew that skein two was different, I just hoped that skein one had hidden in its center the same colors as skein two. Do you see where skein two starts? Isn't it glaringly obvious? I was hoping it would look all right, but it looks like I started with a totally different colorway. As far as I can tell, it progressed from a rust color to orange to yellow, to a dark olive green, to navy, then to to the burgundy.

I am 4/5 of the way finished with the bag. It's time for some damage control. Yep. Rippit! I think I am going to start the bag over, going from the outside of skein two in. This should put the orange stripe somewhere closer to the middle of the bag so it won't stand out as much. Hopefully I will be able to get a little bit more of a natural looking progression. Unfortunately, I don't really know what's supposed to be on the other side of the orange since it only occurs once in my second skein. I will then add part of skein one on, and probably use the rest of skein one for the handles. I guess we'll all have to wait and see what happens!