Look, stitching!

My friend Christina sent me the chart and threadpack for this piece as a housewarming gift right after our move. She said this little piece would be something I could finish fast and give me a sense of accomplishment amidst the chaos of moving. Smart woman! It was really fun to stitch and turned out very cute. I always love stitching with Crescent Colours floss. It is so smooth and shiny and the colors are beautiful.


Speaking of moving, here are a couple of pictures of the new pad. I probably could have gotten a picture of the whole front in one if I had crossed the street, but I didn't. My side of the garage is nearly empty. I should be able to park in there in two weeks after we take the rest of the empty boxes to the recycling truck. (It only comes around once every two weeks, and we were out of town this weekend when it came.)


This is my first porch that is big enough to hold a chair, much less two and a little table. :) I've enjoyed sitting out there in the evenings with my knitting and a citronella candle.

You can see with the landscaping, I keep having surprises popping up. I have never been a gardener, but I keep looking things up to see what I can do not to kill them. My dad says I should go to the local nursery and get a book about plants to help me identify things. I sometimes have problems telling if something is supposed to be there or not. My policy so far is to leave it if I'm unsure and pull it later if I don't like it or it's getting invasive.

We love it here. I made a list this morning of all the house projects there are to be done. It's not too long, really. I didn't get any of those things done today, but I did get the van cleaned out after our weekend trek to Branson. That's a pretty big accomplishment, really. ;)

Rainbow herring

I finished these socks a long time ago, sometime in May.



They are the Red Herring pattern from Knitty, made with Noro Kureyon Sock and gray Knitpicks Palette.



They really are both the same length. I must have been holding my legs funny or something. :p

The Kureyon Sock is very interesting. I didn't mind working with it, having worked with Noro before, I knew what to expect. We'll see if the socks soften up as much as the other Noro I've used has.

I did a short-row heel rather than the afterthought heel the pattern called for.

I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the colorwork. I haven't done a lot of it in the past, but I can see myself doing much more in the future.

I love them! So cheerful.

I am a Sunflower What Flower Are You?

"When your friends think smile, they think of you. There is not a day that goes by that you can't find something good about the world and your fellow human."

I hope that's true. :)

Speaking of sunny, here is the little yellow hoodie. I am very happy with how it turned out. It had way too many little pieces to sew together, though. It's very soft. Knit from Bernat Cottontots.



This picture is courtesy of M, my 11 year old daughter. I need to tell her about taking pictures of FOs straight on. :) She's having fun with the camerra now that it holds over 1000 pictures instead of 3. She was taking pictures of any of my knitting she could find.

Off with me! We're going to go visit some friends who used to live around the block from us. Lunch and fun! A couple years ago, they moved to the next state, but now they're back. Unfortunately, I couldn't convince them to move to our new small town. They chose one on the other side of our metropolitan area, 35 minutes away. But, we'll drive this time and see their new house. They'll drive next time and see our new house. Maybe we can meet in the middle sometimes and do something in town. Hopefully we can get together once a month or so.

I saw this on V's blog. Fun!

Make yours @ BigHugeLabs.com

Looks like I've got a big gap in the northwest. I think it would be fun to eventually visit all the states. (And perhaps go back to some of these I only saw as a young child.)

Here are a couple pictures of a finished pair of magic booties and the baby pants. The hoodie is now seamed up, all I have to do is the buttons and loops.






These photos are courtesy of my oldest daughter, E. She has more patience for taking 3 photos at a time and uploading them than I do. She took them on our front porch. For the first time, we have a porch big enough to allow sitting, so we got some things to sit upon. It's very nice to sit out there in the evening if it isn't too hot, or raining sideways. If it's raining straight down, we're fine. But there's been a lot of sideways rain, and also lightening, lately. It's been a stormy spring and summer so far!

So far, so good on the yellow baby sweater. It seems to be doing just fine. I've been knitting the Magic Baby Booties in free moments. They are brain-free knitting and fast and cute. I knitted a pair on Wednesday that accidentally matched the new pants and in-progress sweater. You just knit them from sock yarn leftovers, which I have plenty of.

I am planning to buy a pair of little pants to match the pink and cream kimono. That seems to be the best solution. I don't know that I'll have a lot of luck finding a good color to go with it. It's a funny pink and a heathered, natural cream.

I have a baby surprise jacket, also, that would look good with a lot of different colors of pants. I finally sewed buttons on that today. It's been sitting buttonless for a very long time, because my buttons were packed, and since there were no babies in need of it, it waited. Now it's ready.

I finally ordered a memory card for my camera. It should get here this week, I hope. I had been looking in local stores, but no one stocks them anymore. Must be a format that is going out of style. So, you may get photos yet! I'm itching to update my ravelry projects.

You may get to see my house eventually. :p

Ahhhhh, summer.

Summertime . . . and the knitting's easy.

Or not.

I'm trying to knit a baby sweater. It's giving me fits.

OK, it started with a baby kimono I knitted a long while ago, simply because I wanted to. I thought,"Oh, that kimono and socks would be a great gift for one of the many babies that will be coming along in the next 2-8 months. I think I will knit some little pants to go with it."

I started out with some baby bell bottoms. I knitted one leg and it was wide and stumpy and weird. No go. Rippit.

Then I went for a pair of the baby pants from "Last Minute Knitted Gifts." I've knitted them before. No problem, right? I decided to add a little ruffle to the bottom of the legs. Things were going along swimmingly until I got 3" from the top of the pants and ran out of yarn. A couple emergency stripes later, they are adorable.

And too big. There is no way they will go with that tiny kimono.

OK, another sweater now to go with the pants. (Try to forget that the whole point was to gift the surplus kimono.) I started a girly hoodie in a deep blue. Lovely! And tiny, I noticed, after knitting a hood, a yoke, and two sleeves. Rippit. Also ripped up the pattern, because the tininess was only one of its many problems. (Suffice it to say that I had to rewrite the stitch pattern to make sense, and none of their stitch counts at the end of the row were correct, either for their try at the stitch pattern or mine.)

I'm getting ready to start my next try. Different yarn, a pale yellow. Different hoodie.

Wish me luck! If this doesn't work, every baby is getting a storebought pack of burpcloths.

Feeling unfinished

I've been reading blogs today, between prodding children, and I've found a lot of people feeling restless, unfinished. We're all antsy. Things to be done, faced, finished and we don't know how, don't have the means, or don't want to do it.

I'm there with ya.

We are racing to finish the school year, but neither the kids nor I really feel like sitting down and doing it. We've been doing marathons of work to get to that completion percentage, but no one kid is completely finished with anything yet.

All the schoolwork is getting in the way of me finishing anything else. The house is a mess. (Believe me, with four kids and a non-neatnik husband, the house is rarely up to snuff.) I want to organize, I want to paint things. I want to GET THINGS DONE!

It's not happening. I have to just plod along on what we're doing and remember that the summer fun will come soon enough.

(Please don't tell me I'm a freak for thinking summer fun includes organizing and painting. I like it. And I particularly like it when it's done and looking lovely.)

I also want to have people over and drink icy, fruity drinks and grill things and hang out in the sun.

I want to get the school books out of my dining room and gear the kids up for the fall when they will be attending new schools.

There is so much I want, and so little is happening.

That song from Santa Claus is Coming to Town keeps popping into my head. "Put one foot in front of the other."



Put one foot in front of the other
And soon you’ll be walking cross the floor
Put one foot in front of the other
And soon you’ll be walking out the door

You never will get where you’re going
If you never get up on your feet
Come on, there’s a good tail wind blowing
A fast walking man is hard to beat

Put one foot in front of the other
And soon you’ll be walking cross the floor
Put one foot in front of the other
And soon you’ll be walking out the door

If you want to change your direction
If your time of life is at hand
Well don’t be the rule be the exception
A good way to start is to stand

Put one foot in front of the other
And soon you’ll be walking cross the floor
Put one foot in front of the other
And soon you’ll be walking out the door

If I want to change the reflection
I see in the mirror each morn
You mean that it's just my election
To vote for a chance to be reborn

(repeat chorus twice)


See how it says "repeat chorus twice"? Yes, I know it's the construction of the song, but I think it's a good reminder that we have to just keep going. We'll get past it and soon we'll look back and see what we accomplished.

Keep on going, everyone!