Week's End

The week got away from me, I guess! I had vague plans to post some pictures this week, but the week got busy, and it didn't happen. It's not happening today, either.

Cherie asked how court went. Hubby was granted a hearing to show his side of the story, which is this Tuesday. Hopefully, good things will happen.

Hubby's mom is an accountant and does our taxes, and she finished them this morning. Just let me say, good things are happening on the tax refund front.

I went to my KIP meeting Wednesday evening, and it was so FUN. Good things definitely happening there!

There are lots of things in life that are hard, stressful, worrying, tough, etc. But I'm going to keep trying to focus on the good things!

Like the fact that I don't have any obligations (except to my children here at home) for the rest of the day, and I think I may just put on some jammies and veg out. Have a relaxing weekend, everyone!

You think you know me?

Create your own Friend Quiz here

A couple of my pals made these quizzes. In the interest of avoiding the laundry once again, I made my own. Step right up and see how well you know me! Heh.

Random Saturday.

Random stuff and updates for today.

1. Hubby has to go back Monday to deal with the ID theft stuff. If we get this all sorted out the way it should be, it would mean about $2000 of our own money which was taken being returned to us. I just have no faith that the right thing will happen.

2. The kittens are back home and doing great. They are back to nearly normal activity levels today. Olive has stopped trying to pull her stitches out. I bought them the cutest little catnip mouse to play with when they are feeling 100%, but they have shown absolutely no interest in it. They'd rather play with pipe cleaners and 2-liter bottle caps. Yep, back to normal.

3. We had another showing yesterday. When we saw the agent's card, we laughed and laughed. It was the agent we had been working with at our previous agent's office. She's really nice and helpful, but just doesn't have the knowledge that our actual agent was supposed to be offering us. Wouldn't it be funny if she ended up having buyers for the house? We're still glad we changed agents.

4. I'm still angry at the schools. You know how sometimes you get really angry about something, and then after you cool off and think about it some more, you make some concessions to the other way of thinking or at least find a way to work it out? Not happening. Still. Very. Angry. Last summer when I was mad at the school district, I had chosen what school district I wanted to move to. After looking at houses a little, it seemed that it could be financially out of reach. Now, with the latest round of school district idiocy, I am more determined than ever to get my kids into that district. I have done more research into more districts, looked at ratings, test scores, parent reviews, spoken to family and friends with experience in different districts, the whole gamut. My original choice is still the best. I also discovered that E's middle school is rated the highest of any in our current district. If they are making me this angry with the first kid the first year, can you just imagine how I would feel about the others? I will find a way to make this happen.

5. My husband is determined to make me unable to post pictures. He broke my good digital camera a year and a half ago when I was on vacation. Now, he has stolen the memory card from the crappy digital camera to use in his mini-DV camera. I may sneakily save up some money and buy a good digital camera and not let him touch it. That is if I don't spend the money on yarn first.

6. My clicky finger slipped last week. I have yarn coming. That makes me so happy. :)

7. I knitted my nephew-to-be some pants. They are so cute. They are being added to the blanket I crocheted and the kimono and hat I knitted. If this kid isn't born soon, he will be absolutely covered in yarn. His mom is a crocheter. Heaven only knows what all she has made for him. (In addition to the things she and I made for his older brother, which will be passed down.) There is no excuse for this baby ever getting cold. If he's not born this week, I can't be held liable for the booties which may hop from my needles.

8. I love pilates. I need to remember when I'm feeling stressed that 20 minutes of pilates will make me a new woman.

OK, that's it for now. Maybe next week I can manage to post more pictures for you.

Quiet Day

It's quiet here today. I can tell you why. The kittens are at the vet, getting fixed. We have a boy kitten and a girl kitten and we want no more kittens! It's so quiet without their little thunderpaws chasing each other around!

The kids are out of school tomorrow and Monday so I better enjoy the quiet while it lasts!

Think good thoughts for the hubby tomorrow. He's going to court to try to resolve an identity theft issue that has been hanging over our heads for far too long. I don't think it will be resolved tomorrow, but it will be the next step.

Sweater Day!

OK, I give up on remembering to have someone take pictures of me wearing my sweaters. These are three sweaters I have knitted in the last 9 months or so.


This is a bolero made of Lion Brand Homespun. I mostly wear it around the house. It's made of the remnants of another sweater I knitted a couple years ago which was big enough to be a bathrobe. But it was all acrylic and not at all bathrobe-appropriate. Then I lost 20 pounds, and it was something I could camp under. I unraveled it and I have since knitted a shawl, a long man's scarf, and this sweater. The yarn is not quite gone.


This is my starburst wrap sweater from Knitpicks. This pattern had a ton of problems, but I fixed them all with much trial and tribulation and I now have a lovely, wearable sweater. It's made of Knitpicks Merino Style. So soft and warm! Some of the problems included a completely wonky collar which I knitted three times to get it the way I like it. (It is not the same as the collar on the pattern.) The star was not properly oriented on the back. I tried to fix it one way and that didn't work, so I ended up removing the fronts (which are knitted down from the top of the completed back), and the sleeves (picked up and knit down from the shoulder) ripping back the back to a point where I could fix it (up to the star itself), re-knitting, then grafting all the pieces back together (including grafting the sleeves back on in the rib.) Painful. Thankfully, they no longer sell this pattern. It has soured me a bit on ever buying another Knitpicks pattern, though.


Here is my Mariah sweater, from Knitty. I wear this all the time! I love it. It's made of Knitpicks Wool of the Andes. I wore this to the Art Museum for Family Artventure a few weeks ago and ran into the organizer of my KIP group, who recognized me from my sweater before she saw my face.


This is the sleeve cable in greyscale to bring out a little more contrast and detail.


Those are the sweaters for now. There is also a pink Bob sweater I knitted as a knit-along with some gals from my KIP group, but I don't like it at all. It fits weird, and it's too big. It will be unraveled and the yarn reused for something else.

I'm currently knitting a cabled pullover. I just love cables! I have the front and back done, and I've just started a sleeve. After that will probably be Bristow. I already have the yarn for it. Any other sweater I would have to buy yarn for.

I guess I've stalled long enough. Gotta go tackle the laundry I let pile up all weekend, so I wouldn't have to leave things half-folded during the 5 house showings we had. Have a great week!

Zoom, zoom, zoom!

Our new agent is keeping us hopping! We had a showing yesterday, 2 today and one tomorrow. Plus, yesterday morning , they took the pictures for the online listing. It was much earlier than expected because we had that showing and he wanted to come and put on the lockbox before that, so he took the pictures at the same time. Good thing, because at the time he was supposed to come, I was picking my youngest up from school and taking her to the doctor to look at her pinkeye. Her eye looks much better after a couple doses of the eye drops from the teeny tiny bottle. The bottle is so tiny, I have to keep it in the little box it came in so it doesn't get misplaced.

Yesterday was crazy in all kinds of other ways, too, but just suffice it to say we are zooming around here!

Above are some car pegs I got on clearance at Michaels for 25 cents each! Each of the kids painted one for Q to put up in his new bedroom. They're packed up now. :p Unpacking will really be like Christmas!

Book Meme

Instructions:

1. Grab the nearest book.

2. Open the book to page 123.

3. Find the fifth sentence.

4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.

5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.

6. Tag 5 people

I don't usually do memes. But I thought this one I saw on J.'s blog sounded fun.

OK, I didn't grab the first book. Here at my computer desk, I have only reference books, and I didn't think you wanted the definition of "bebop" or whatever I would find on page 123 of Webster's New World Dictionary. So I stepped over to the craft corner (next nearest books) and grabbed the first non-reference I saw.

So, from Yarn Harlot: The Secret Life of a Knitter by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee:

"The next time I saw Sinead, I noticed that she was wearing the scarf rather guiltily on the outside of her coat, where it lay quite elegantly but did not touch her skin. It was at this point that I started to wonder if she were running a scam. A huge cosmic 'getting knitted stuff' scam, since it had occured to me that the more things she found itchy the more things I was going to be compelled to knit for her."

TAG! If you want to . . . I'm not into forcibly tagging unless you wanted in on the game.

Baudelaire

Baudelaire Socks from Knitty. The lace pattern shows up better in person. The colors kind of take over this picture, huh? The yarn: Sockotta, which is a cotton/wool/nylon blend.

These are so comfy and a nice burst of color to combat the winter doldrums.

Amazingly, I finished these Sunday evening and I have not cast on another pair of socks yet. I pretty much constantly have a pair of socks on the needles. But, there is a skein of yarn with some needles poked in it and a pattern behind me on the table. Now, how did those get there? *whistling innocently*

I know many kntters suffer from Second Sock Syndrome (SSS). Luckily, I do not have this problem. In fact, the second sock usually goes very quickly. I want to get those babies on my feet! I love the feeling of finishing something and seeing what a job well-done looks like. The first sock in this pair took about a week or week-and-a-half. The second sock was cast-on Friday evening (moments after the first sock was done) and completed Sunday evening. And I wasn't working on it constantly. I hosted a little Super Bowl party (and did not knit during it) in the meantime. That's two days, people! Ooh, I love the feeling of hand-knit socks on my feet.

A little real-estate update. We have chosen a new agent. We are optimistic. He seems really good, hands-on, involved and down-to-earth. He is going to be putting up a much more comprehensive listing for us and seems like a good communicator, willing to work hard to make the sale. So, I'm cleaning even deeper the next few days so that the pictures he's taking Friday for the web listing will sparkle. When we told our old agent (OK, his staff . . . if I hadn't seen him in person once I would doubt he exists) that we were not renewing our listing with them. They said, "OK, we'll come pick up our sign in the next couple days." They seemed utterly unconcerned. We made the right choice.

Keep your mitts off my shawl!

Which is the unofficial name of the shawl I knitted for E. The official name, from Victorian Lace Today, is "Shoulder Shawl in the Syrian Pattern". Yarn: 3 skeins of Douceur et Soie by Knit One, Crochet Too. A baby mohair and silk blend.



E was always stealing my Birch shawl, so last summer, when we were at a good yarn shop on vacation, I let her choose yarn to make her a shawl of her own. She wanted a Birch, just like mine, but in this light blue, which is her current favorite color. I didn't want to knit another Birch, so I stalled. I casually showed her other shawl patterns. She was onto me. She was recalcitrant.



Then, for Christmas, my mom got me the book Victorian Lace Today. E flipped through it. E fell in love with this shawl. I might note that the center pattern is one of the simplest lace patterns ever and in no way resembles the leaves that she loved on Birch so much. But, it is a triangle, which was one of her major requirements.



The edging felt like it took forever, but it didn't really. Exactly a week of intermittent knitting time. I even knitted on other things during that week. I've discovered my knitting ADD can occur on any project at any time. I apparently get bored easily. Even by lace shawls. (Or cabled sweaters, or lace and cabled socks.)




She likes it! So, now she can keep her mitts off my shawl!