We interrupt this Knitting Crime to bring you….

the party going on in our basement!

Craig’s friend, Jason, decided that he wants to learn how to drum.  So he came over after dinner and brought his son, who is Cole’s age.  Craig hooked up the computer and the party has begun!

Cole and Jason are practicing drums via “Rock Band”:

See the concentration!  Rock stars in the making!  “Mississippi Queen”! Weezer! Radiohead! Nirvana! Stone Temple Pilots! Ramones!

Meanwhile, Craig and Jason’s son are chasing each other with Cole’s guns: (disclaimer:  I don’t like ’em, but who listens to mom? rhetorical question, sorry)

Lainie is riding her bike around the basement, making faces at me:

And what’s Archie doing during all of this?

Barking his head off, of course.  It’s just his way of “joining in”.

Progress Report…

My crafty buddy, Kristin, and I got together tonight to hang out (after the kids went to bed, of course).  I just finished sleeve #1 on Lainie’s cardigan and was convinced  it was 9 feet long & wouldn’t work with the rest of the cardigan.  So, she put all of my pieces together….

What do you know?  It looks okay!  Hooray!!!  Visualization is the key sometimes with knitting…must remember to do this during a project for a reality check!

I made more stitch markers tonight, too:

Kristin’s trying to convince me to sell these on etsy.  I’m not sure – would anyone pay money for these?

This is my newest favorite:

It’s a hefty stitch marker on a large split ring.  Perfect for a bulky project!

Kristin, thanks for coming over….I had a great time!

My Little Lainie bug….

is becoming famous!!!

“Lainie washes at the lake” towel  from Cornflower Creations.

Lainie’s Tote  from Craft Leftovers.

Thanks, you guys!!!   

A new living room

We recently got some new furniture…..more like an entire living room and kitchen.  Our previous couches were 10 years old, the coffee tables were 14 years old and we had no lamps.  New furniture equals painting the living room…..twice. (Craig has worked in the paint industry since college, so we always seem to be trying to find “the right color”).  Now we just need to get some art up on the walls and hang some drapes and we may actually have a decorated living room!  Here are pictures, what do you guys think of the color combination?

All of the walls were a neutral shade of taupe before.  Craig picked out this bluish color. (And please ignore the wicker chair with the yellow cushion.  It went with the old living room and needs to be replaced with a brown wicker chair from our bedroom)   In non-related knitting news, I sewed the handles onto the bon voyage tote today:

It appears I spaced the handles too far apart.  Sigh.

Stitch marker mania

For Joan from the lys.  Must work on making those clasps tighter.

Love me some millefiori glass!

I call these “baby teeth” (gross, huh?)

I’ve made more stitch markers, but I am still learning how to take an up-close in focus picture.

From Lainie’s room today:

Picnic, anyone?

How Low Can You Go?

Two Days Ago:  “I can tell Spring is on its way.  The red winged blackbirds are back” – Craig

Yesterday:  45 degrees and sunny.  First day of Spring. Life feels optimistic.

Today:

Slushy snow with a very brisk wind.  Seriously, how low can you go?  I suppose I should just chalk this up to “another day in the life.”

Must you take a picture while the wind is blowing my ears back?

But inside the treehouse, playthings carpeted the carpet and the bedtime battle was about to begin:

(not really.  That’s just some of the lines out of a Berenstain Bears book.  Funny how these things stay with you).  The kids dyed easter eggs:

Dad’s egg.

After dinner:

On the wii.

I’ve asked her a million times to chew with her mouth s-h-u-t.  They never listen.

Still working on the first sleeve on Lainie’s cardigan.  Will hopefully post pictures tomorrow! 

Oh, Happy Day

The sun is shining.  It’s wonderful!!!!

Craig, the kids and I went to the grocery store this morning.  It was a relaxed trip (so unlike how my time is usually spent with them).  We spent an enormous sum of money but we are stocked up with lots of fruits, veggies and other good things.

My crafty buddy, Kristin, came over on Friday night and helped me organize my stash a bit differently.  I now have projects in gallon size ziploc bags.  I got rid of a bunch of yarn that I bought on impulse.  It’s going to a prison somewhere in North Dakota (a lady from my lys gave me the address):

Goodbye garage sale Jaime baby yarn.  Goodbye 3 bags of red mill ends that I bought because I felt sorry for the lady at Aunt Mary’s (who ended up going out of business anyways).  Goodbye all the leftover skeins of yarn from previous projects.  I hope you find yourself in a good project.  Let’s see another shot of that humongus box!

That feels like a huge load off of my shoulders.  Guilt be gone!  I don’t have to knit with yarn I don’t really like!

And finally….I made some stitch markers this weekend!  Hooray!  I love stitch markers.  I wanted to experiment and give them to my friends.  Here are my first attempts:

These are for my crafty buddy, Kristin, who likes “fun and absurb” stitchmarkers.  They’re just cheap plastic things, but they’re cheerful!

I made two sets of these.  They’re also just cheapie plastic things.  I’m giving them to Joan, from my lys, who teaches kids how to knit at the elementary school where she is the librarian.  I want her to pass these along to her budding knitters!

And my last pair:

I’m having so much fun experimenting!!!

The Ugly Scarf

What do you do when you’re feeling sorry for yourself because your husband decides to spend his birthday playing basketball and then going to band practice?  Why, you put your children to bed and knit on The Ugly Scarf, of course!

I’m not sure if I did this scarf justice with these pictures.  It’s a melding of 2 different yarns:  a dark gray chenille off the cone and a clearance frou frou eyelash olive green yarn.  Makes for a sort of horrifying-ly ugly mixture in a boring sort of way. 

Do any of you find that you repeatedly think about knitting things that you know will turn out ugly?  That the possibility of “butt ugly” still does not deter you?

Back to the Land of the Living….Slowly

Remember the “bad cold” I told you all about in my last post?  On Thursday it turned into “the flu”.  I left work at 3:00 p.m. with a fever and slept.  I worked 1/2 of the day on Friday, still with a fever.  By Friday night, it was 102.4 and I felt terrible.  I slept pretty much all the way from Friday night through Sunday night, waking only to watch children when Craig was at baseball practice.  I stayed home today because I still felt pretty weak but also because my oldest now has a fever and croup.  Poor guy.  He isn’t eating anything because it makes him feel sick.  There’s nothing that worries me more than having a sick child.

So, in order to try and psych myself up that I’m better (I am, I am, I am!), I’m admitting defeat with a book I’ve been trying to slog through for book club:  Eat, Pray, Love.  I tried to give it a chance, (really) I did.  But I can’t get through the second part (India) and her meditation efforts and being called “groceries”.  Bleeeeeeach.  So off it goes, along with a pile of other books I’ve never going to read, to my grandmother-in-law’s nursing home…..or as I like to think, out with the old, the tired, the dreary!:

I take that back.  I attempted to read the Human Stain for book club (hated it),  I read Hank and Chloe years ago (don’t remember what it was about), just finished Roseborough (just so-so, though Bea, you will be interested to note that this book was written by a Dallas author and takes place in a Dallas suburb and also spends a little bit of time in Weatherford, Tx, a town I onced lived in).  But I digress…..this is a knitting blog, folks!  And knitting is not what I’ve been doing a whole lot of here lately.  Here’s another shot of Lainie’s cardigan:

 

That’s the right front, can you see the button holes?  And what’s that blue peeking out from behind?  A little mindless knitting I worked on today while subjecting Cole to ”Top Chef” on Bravo.

I just found out someone who had a baby boy (named Jake, don’t you love it?  Think “16 Candles”) — I just had to order these from Cornflower Creations for little Jake:

 

2 burp cloths and a little crosstitched onesie.  Isn’t that Frog Prince cute?????  Look closer at the fire engine:

Folks, do you know how hard it is to stitch on a stretchy cotton fabric and make it look nice?  It even came with a cute padded hanger.  I am always amazed at what an accomplished stitcher Jacklyn is!

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that tomorrow will be a better day for the oldest.

City of Potholes

The town I live in has experienced bitterly cold temperatures this winter.  And snow.  And slightly warmer temperatures.  Then more bitter cold.  More snow.  This lovely combo has created nightmare potholes all over town.  Which landed me at Lovell’s Discount Tires this morning, politely asking the somewhat foxy dude behind the counter if he could take a look at my front left tire because there was a bulge in it.

The verdict?  I hit some pothole so hard that my car now needs a new tire, a new tie rod, a new wheel and a second tire because of uneven tread wear (use this as a lesson to get your tires rotated regularly!).  The cost?  Well, ladies and gentlemen, about $1,000.00.

SIGH.

I’ve been battling a bad cold since last Thursday and so my knitting has been on the back burner.  I finished the left front of Lainie’s cardigan and am now on the right side, making buttonholes as I go.  I have also put quite a bit of stash (among other goodies) onto ravelry in an effort to make myself keenly aware of how much yarn I really own.  And need to use up!

Until then, I’ll leave you with another picture.

A picture from my yearbook circa 1985, where I defined myself as “new wave” instead of “punk” because I liked “dance music” and wasn’t “making any political statements”.  You will note that those are depeche mode lyrics and a picture of Robert Smith.  Rock on!!!!