chicken feathers

shark attack

I caved.  I swore that I would not knit anything else for Grant for an indefinite period of time.  Historically he has been a very ungrateful recipient of handknits.  It didn't matter if he picked out the yarn AND the pattern...when it was all done he didn't like it and wouldn't wear it.  Humph.

Then winter weather hit and I realized he didn't have a hat.  My fingers started itching to knit...I went against my better judgement and sat him down at the computer to look at patterns.  Within 30 seconds he found his dream hat.  He kept asking about it's progress - a really good sign.

Upon it's completion he put it on with a big smile.  He wore it to school.  He puts it on when people come over.  I think he actually likes it!  Amazing!

Then again, what seven year old boy wouldn't like a shark attacking their head?

february lady, take two

It's done!  It's actually done!  After knitting the dang thing twice, it's finito!

And I love it!  Totally worth the effort (squared).  It's the perfect thing to wear on those days when I feel like I have nothing to show for the work I do.  When the dishes breed in dark corners and the dirty laundry magically reappears in the hamper and the children are perpetually hungry and the to-do list gets longer and longer...those are the days I can wear my sweater.  I can account for a bit of time.  See this sleeve?  That is how I made it through many unnaturally long showings of the Wiggles movie with my daughter curled at my side.  The garter edge?  I told Russell I was off-duty and locked myself in the bedroom for a couple hours.  The gull lace?  Hours of sitting outside, talking with Grant as he rode his bike or colored while his brother and sister slept.  It's a history of stolen moments, time carved out of a busy life.  Time when I sat still, only my fingers moving.  Time slowed by the clicking of needles.  Time spent listening - sometimes to silence, sometimes to chaos.  Sometimes to sweet conversations.  It's  something to show for those moments that are passing so quickly.  And it's beautiful to me.
 

frogged.

Rip-it.  Rip-it.  Rip-it.

I've been working on this sweater since ohhh...let's say APRIL and I was getting pretty close to finishing it when I decided to, what the heck, try it on.

Don't look at the smile...this isn't fun and games.  Can you see that nasty bulge around the armpits?

 

How about here.  All that extra baggage?  Ughhh.  I know it's pretty nit-picky (knit-picky - ha!) but after spending that much time on something I want to be really happy with it and wear it all the time.  So....I thought about it.  The sweater sat in my knitting basket for about two months while I worked up the guts to do this.

 

Rip-it.  Rip-it.  Rip-it.

It took me about 45 minutes to rip it back to the beginning of the sleeve where my troubles began.  I might have to start from scratch, though.  I need to go to the yarn shop and get the honest truth.  While this really sucks, I have enjoyed knitting the sweater to this point so on the bright side it's like two for one!  I'm also on deadline now.  I'd like to be wearing this bad boy this fall/winter so I need to boogie!  Time to go grease my needles...

holy shmoley!

It's been awhile!

...

Wow.  The above sentence is as far as I got this afternoon.  Now it's pushing midnight and I think that is where this post will have to end.  I have a bunch of pictures and stories to share but it may be awhile before I can get to them so in the meantime here is a picture that is mere hours old.

The hat is done and there is some good pirating going on around here. 

it fits!

After the green sweater fiasco, Grant finally has a sweater that fits him.  Well, it fits him today.  There are no guarantees for tomorrow.

It took me a month to knit this up but there were lots of days that I didn't work on it.  It actually knit up lickety-split thanks to some blazing fast needles.  This was my first time trying stripes and it went okay...except for here...

That red piece of yarn drives me nuts.  Well, the whole neck drives me nuts, but that little snippet of yarn is where I was working on the red (from the bottom up) and then switched to the white.  The pattern said to "carry the yarn up" which I assumed to mean you just left it alone until you needed it again to complete the next section of red.  That's what I did for the stripes on the body but you can't see those...you can see the carried yarn quite well as it sticks up over the edge of a neck like a worm wriggling to freedom.  I need to research carrying yarn because surely this isn't the desired effect.

I'm also not too crazy about the stripe around the neck.  I didn't realize it would be so ugly when the neck rolled.  Oh well.  At least it fits!

Grant has been trying it out this afternoon and so far it passes the funny faces test

as well as the bike hauling test.

Now he wants a hat to go with it.  We narrowed it down to a strawberry (the original choice) or skull and cross-bones (which he saw fly across the screen as I was searching for a strawberry pattern).  After a .5 second deliberation, the crossbones won.  Dang it.

he can't run for president

I finished the blankety-blank blue hat to go with the blankety-blank blue sweater.  It mostly fits.  The sweater, if you remember, was way too big.  In fact, I took another picture to illustrate this after I heard from a couple people that the sweater didn't look too bad in the pictures.

Yeah.  Just a hair big.

So, anyway, now he has a matching hat.  Which is a bit small.  Naturally.

Hmmm, I'm not sure about that row of holes in the top.  I wasn't about to rip it out again so the holes stayed. 

But I think he's pretty adorable.  Russell, however, said with these pictures in circulation poor Rhett will never be able to run for President.

Oh well. 

lessons learned -or- the blankety blank blue sweater

It's a good thing the proverbial hook as been well set because after this project, I might be tempted to wrap my knitting needles around the wheels of a moving train.

It started innocently enough.  I wanted to knit a hat for Rhett.  I found the most adorable pattern.

 (Image from http://www.minnowknits.com/index3.html)

Sooooo...I tried the hat.  Eight times I tried the hat.  I could not for the life of me figure it out.  I called the yarn shop where I got the pattern and she recommended I knit the sweater to "be able to understand the authors particular style of writing patterns."  I think she meant to "be able to mind read."

I took the advice and did the sweater. 

Here's what I learned.

• Don't judge a pattern by the cover.  Just because the pattern looks all slick and is printed on a cool square that folds out into a long rectangle and the picture on the front is all professional looking DOES NOT MEAN that that pattern is written in any sort of coherent way.  At least not for the uninitiated knitter.  Instructions like "start a new ball of yarn" might have been helpful at one key point...but who am I to judge these things?
• Don't rely on the gauge swatch you knit a few months ago.  Just because a size eight needle worked in December doesn't mean it will work in February.  In fact, that size eight might yield you a sweater that would fit a basketball, not a baby.  Or, when stretched out, as cotton apparently does, it might fit a young horse.
• When it doubt, rip it out.  If the knit project isn't looking right, it won't magically "fix itself," no matter what you tell yourself.  Ripping out a few inches of stitches is better than keeping on knitting a garment that won't fit.
• Buttons can fix some major problems.
• If said garment looks goofy, make sure the person it is knit for is too young to care.

Aside from the girth of the sweater being several inches too big, check out this monstrous neck hole!  Rhett has a large noggin but COME ON!  And the buttons on the side of neck?   Do we really need to unbutton this any further?  I can already put it on over a snowsuit...starting from his feet.

Lucky for me (and Rhett), a mysterious hole in my knitting appeared near the existing buttonholes allowing me to place a third button to cinch things up.  Of course, in order to get that giant neck hole into proper proportions I had to be a little unorthodox in the button placement.

But it works...

And the little ensemble matches his eyes which is a huge bonus.

As Russell diplomatically stated, "Well...it'll keep him nice and warm."  To that I'll add "and entertained."

So, now that the sweater is under my belt, it's on to the original project...the hat.  Wish me luck, and the ability to mind read.

little pinkish purplish riding hood

After having no success with the green sweater, this one fit Her Majesty's discerning taste.  Much to my delight she seems to love it - the day I finished it she wouldn't take her nap without it on.

Note the buttons.  Anna LOVES buttons (BUT' ins).  If she had to choose between a jacket with buttons or one with a zipper she'd choose the buttons every time.  She had definite opinions about what the buttons for her sweater had to look like - "pink with lellow!"  She nearly tripped over herself with excitement when we found these, the PERFECT buttons.

Sooooooo...I took the sweater off the needles on Thursday and today (that would be Saturday) Grant, Rhett and I trucked over to the candy yarn shop to pick out goodies for three more projects.   Hmmmm...finish one, start three...I never excelled at math but something tells me...
But oh the bliss!  The blue yarn on the right is to supplement a skein of the same I have on the needles right now which is taking shape as a cute little hat for Rhett.  The pattern also has an adorable sweater to match and I wasn't intending to do it but...aack! it's just too cute!  So, the sweater will follow the hat.  The red and white skeins in the middle are for a sweater for Grant.  He was very sure of the red and white combo.  No red and off white or red and tan...it was bright red and bright white.  Period.  I like a man who knows what he wants.  The blue yarn on the left is for me.  I'm actually making something for myself. It feels a little selfish and decadent but I'm getting over it. Fast.  Especially when I stroke the yarn against my cheek.  I actually get a little teary and I can't help making a mewing sound.  It's sinfully soft.  Russell's a little jealous of the attention it's getting.  It will get worked into a summery cardigan number.  So, that's the damage.  I will not buy anymore yarn until these projects are finished.  You can hold me to that.  Please. 

rock around the christmas tree

In uncharacteristic fashion, I actually made something for our own home.  Our house is mainly decorated with items I've had since college and cast off furniture from family who have taken pity on the sad state of our furnishings (or lack of).  So far the only furniture purchases we've made since we've been married have been dining room chairs (which the kids are CHEWING APART - i never dreamed that i'd have to select furniture based on chew-resistency), computer hutch, bunk bed, and our mattress.  It is nearly impossible for me to spend money on furnishings when we are renting.  I have no idea what our house will look like when we finally buy one so the perfect couch for this house may be totally wrong for the next.  My skin crawls just thinking about "the wrong couch" for our future house.  Why it's okay, then, to have a random mishmash of whatnot castoffs until then is beyond me.  That's just how it is.

Well, I digress.  The point of all this is that I made something brand spankin' new for our home!  The alluded to tree skirt from a previous post.  Here she is.

It was alot of fun to work on in all it's stages.  I have my mom to thank for pretty much all of it.  I picked out the fabric for it while had the kids at the coast for the weekend awhile back and I did the last half of construction and all the quilting when I was visiting before Christmas.  It's now packed away and will be ready to enjoy next Christmas...maybe at a new home?  Yeah, right.

And here's Grant who was playing outside when I was photographing the quilt.  He wanted documentation of him playing soccer.  I wanted documentation of an awfully cute kid.

Side note:  these pictures were taken this afternoon...it's hard to believe we had a foot and a half of snow out there just a couple of weeks ago!  It's currently 60 degrees!  What the?!?

k1, p1

Hooked!  Hooked, hooked, hooked!   I recently learned how to knit and I am fairly obsessed now.  First I knit a truckload of washcloths for the gajillion baby showers I've attended this year and then, wanting to move beyond the knit stitch, I learned how to purl on this project...

The sweater was the project.  The adorable hat is courtesy of my mom.  I was really pleased with how the sweater turned out.  As with any good project, you learn something new.  The lesson for this one was how important it is to check the gauge.  I had intended this sweater to be for Grant.  WAY too small.  And Anna is less than thrilled with it because "it's not pink."  Good thing Rhett is next in line.  With the rate he's growing he should fit into it in a few months.

So, about 24 hours after I took the sweater off the needles I was back at the yarn shop.  This time Anna picked out yarn for an appropriately colored sweater and Grant chose the yarn for Rhett's hat.  Poor Grant.  He's next in line.  I'm searching for a matching sweater vest pattern for him and Rhett.  He thinks that's the coolest idea ever.  I'll enjoy the enthusiasm for as long as it lasts!

yummy.