April WIPocalypse, Etc.

Well, I completely lost March. I had good intentions, took pictures, but I could never settle my butt into the office chair for long enough to post. So here I am two months later ... sheesh ... what's new?


Life has been busy, as always. Sweet Keagan turned two, and yummy little Blake is soon to be eight months. Here's a braggy grandma picture, because I just can't help myself. 

I actually have a stitchy finish to show you. Here's the Napa Valley Sampler from Ewe & Eye & Friends.

It was kitted with Anchor floss and Gentle Art Sampler Threads, but I switched out the Anchor for DMC. The Anchor greens were just too close to each other. I also changed the fabric from 40-count Sandstone to a little piece of 36-count R & R of unknown color. It's darker and blotchier than the Sandstone was, and I wanted the piece to be a little larger. Instead of doing Kam's coils in the trees (my most dreaded stitch ... ugh), I used two strands of floss and did some Smyrna crosses. Finally, I added our friends' initials and ours. It looks much better in real life.


Adding to my WIP list, I've begun a small sampler from E&E&F. There's so little progress that I didn't take a pic yet, so maybe I can show you a finished version next month (more positive thinking).


Knitting has been big lately, and I finished a new pair of socks for my sister.

The tag on the yarn says that "every sock is unique", which I think I proved. I was knitting a pair for myself at the same time (also unique), but I rushed ahead to finish her second sock before finishing mine. 


A new man came to live with me since I saw y'all last. He's very cute and will look perfect when sitting with his buddies on my mantle later this year.

He's the Ewe & Eye & Friends Limited Edition Santa from 1994 that I showed you here. He turned out so nice and fat!


OK, that's enough for today. Next time it'll be a finish to the giveaways, and I'll try to get on it sooner rather than later. Until then, make some fun.

January WIPocalypse

Hopefully, this will be a pretty fast post, because it's happening during my free time at school. I've been spending my time at home getting a couple of things accomplished. Of course, in my life, there are always a great number of things on my to-do list, but I've been able to scratch off a couple of items.


As my first WIP finish for the year (hooray!), here are a few looks at Jeffrey's Stocking by Shepherd's Bush.

So sorry about the kooky lighting in this picture. I rushed to get home to catch some natural light, and I could only get direct sun right before it dropped behind the mountains.

Isn't this a great green glass leaf?

And look at the little snowman button! How do they do that face? OK, I know you're saying, "She spends way too much time with little kids." In my defense, their enthusiasm for wondering is contagious. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.  Anyway, as soon as I get this back from the finisher (no way am I sewing it together myself, incompetently), little Blake will have a stocking.


One more finish to add to my list, unofficially, was a pair of socks for a friend.

Tada! They're knitted from bamboo yarn, so they're very soft and they'll wear well. I'm thrilled with the brown and blue tones of the yarn.


I haven't decided which WIP will bite the dust next. I'm leaning toward something smaller, since I feel like I'm on a roll. I'm also suffering from a little stitchy ADD, and it's hard to stick to anything. We'll see what strikes me. 


That's it for now. Update completed. My long weekend starts at 3:30 ... woo hoo! Make some fun.

Places Being Seen, Things Being Done

Thank you for all of your kind and welcoming comments!  Returning to blogging after a long absence is kind of like going back to school after having been sick for several days.  It's scary in some weird way.  I appreciate your help in coming back.

How about some pictures of what I've been doing?  Below is The Yellow House Sampler from Sheepish Designs.  I love working on it and looking at it when I'm not working on it.

The fabric is 40-count Iced Cappuccino ... the lightest IC I've ever seen, in fact, and I'm using one DMC thread over two.  It's been such a long time since I've worked with regular old DMC that I'd forgotten how much I like it.  A little voice in my head is telling me to dunk it in come coffee when I finish.  We'll see.

Below is the new pair of socks I'm working on.  As you can see, hopefully, the second sock isn't gonna match up exactly with the first.  I know the idea is to make them look the same, but I couldn't help myself.  I wanted to see how it turns out.

I love the colors so far, but they aren't for me.  They're for a special birthday gift in September.  Someone gave me a pattern for toe-up socks, but it'll take me a little time on the internet to figure out how to start them.  The pattern makes beginning sound extremely complicated, so I'll be searching for a video (the internet is a wonderful thing) to help me.

I've been gone for several days.  We decided to take a little trip to South Dakota to see Mt. Rushmore (I love it there) again and play some golf.  We had some very exciting weather, so there wasn't much golf, but it was a great getaway.

Earlier this month we took a trip to Mesa Verde and the Grand Canyon.  Even though I've lived out west all my life, I'd never been to either place.  Finally, I've seen what "awesome" means.  The Grand Canyon is incredible.  You've seen a million pictures of it, I know, so I won't bore you with mine.  We took two days to visit the South and North Rims, and the drive between is worth your time.  On the way to the North Rim, you can stop at Navajo Bridge, which is 700 feet above the Colorado River.  Here are some rafters who waved and told us to jump (I'm sure they meant it in the nicest way).

First you see them close-up, and now here's a view as we saw them from the bridge.  Pretty cool, huh?  I'm pretty sure I need a raft ride.

  Mesa Verde was also amazing.  I loved it there, so I'm forcing you to look at one picture.

Thinking of how long these dwellings have been there makes looking at them even better.  We got to climb down into a kiva with the other kids (really, there were one or two other adults).  On our way home, we went on a crazy road called the Moki Dugway, which was a blast.  The pictures taken by other people are much better than mine, and you'll get a great idea of what it was like if you click on the link.  If you're ever in that area, do it!

I think that's about it for now.  I have one more full week and a day of summer vacation (gasp! sob!!), which has been reduced by almost three full days because of meetings (yawn) that my new principal and the big bosses think I need to attend.  Meetings aren't my thing, and I'll be doing my best to learn something, but I'll take my knitting just in case my brain needs some help.  I'm naughty, huh?  Make some fun.

Where, Oh, Where ...

... have I been for almost four months?  Well, life took me by the hand, sat me down and said, "Get organized."  So I did.  Chaos of work and real life was making me a crazy person, so I worked on changing a few things.

Regarding work, after making some big changes to our school, our principal resigned to return to a high school classroom.  Interesting, huh?  Then, because he and the IB program left (short version of a long story), the woman who got my job left.  With some help from a few supporters at my school and at the administrative level, I got my job back!  I know!  How exciting!  So, instead of being in a first grade classroom, I'll continue to work with kindergarten through second grade during mornings, and I'll be coaching (yes, you're reading it correctly) other teachers in the afternoons.  I'm not certain I'm mature enough to handle the afternoon part of my job, but other people think I am (golly, they've been fooled), so I'll do my best.  We have a new principal who seems to be level-headed and has a plan, so we'll see what happens next.  I'm hesitantly optimistic about school, which is such a change for me!

During our summer vacation, I've been spending loads of time with this little cutie.

Hasn't he become a tub?  Mother's milk has made Keagan a very big boy.  He'll be four months old tomorrow and he's weighing in at over 14 pounds.  All he wants to do is eat.  That's his job until crawling begins ... if he can lift himself.  Right now he's working on sitting up by himself.  Other than feeling like a milk truck, Nikki is doing well.  Her husband, Grady, has taken a better-paying job so she can stay home with Keags.  I can't get enough of his smiles and giggles.

On the therapeutic activities front, I finally finished stitching Sarah Esh, so here's her not-so-great picture.  How sad that my photography skills haven't improved during my absence.  Oh well.  She's not framed yet, but she's ready to join other A&E samplers when I get something else stitched.  Right now, thanks to a bloggy friend (you know who you are and I love you even though I've neglected you), I'm working on The Yellow House Sampler by Sheepish Designs.

A skill I have acquired while absent is sock knitting.  I know!  I knit socks!  Looky here ...

Shocking, isn't it?  Or should I say socking?  That's my first pair of socks, and I'm at work on a second pair.  In fact, the first sock is finished and I've started the second.  I'll show you a picture in another post.  This summer I've learned that knitting is much easier to manage than stitching is while traveling.  Well, for me it is.  So there's been more knitting than stitching going on.  I've also completed a felted bag for a friend in Maine and a felted bowl.  Wanna see?

As you can see, I haven't lost my obsession for felting.  Hey, it keeps me off the streets and out of the bars.  Sorry to say, I'm just as slow at knitting as I am at stitching!

So much has happened since I've spent more than a few moments in blogland.  Poor Merlin, my old man cat, had to be put down a day after my last post.  All of you pet lovers know how that is.  Dad's been doing ok, by the way.  He struggles, like we all do, but he's working at finding his way through the world without Mom.  During some of my chaos removal, I left the man I hung around with behind. That was hard, but it brought along an opportunity to meet a cool, calm, collected and extremely kind man. My mom always used to tell me that thing about one door closing and another one opening. I really hadn't believed it until now. So we'll see. It's nice to have someone to spend time with besides family.  And he puts up with my hideous golf game!

I hope that those of you who've read here before will start to read here again.  I'll be catching up with what you've been doing and I hope to comment here and there.  I've missed you all more than you know.  The Sisterhood of the Rose is alive and about to move on.  I'll explain where we are with that in my next post.  With any luck, four months won't pass before you hear from me again.

Whatever you do, make some fun!

WHOOSH!

That's the sound spring break made as it flew by. I tried to dig in my heels to slow time down, but no luck. There were even a couple of snowy days during which I could've sat at my computer to post, but I just couldn't do it. I was busy holding a baby and knitting a little and stitching a little and family stuff and ... well, I don't know!

Please forgive some more grandmotherly picture-bragging, but here's a little of my knitting with Keagan (yes, in my here's-my-new-grandson post, I didn't realize the actual spelling was different from my version ... bad, bad grandma). I knitted this Baby Pea Pod (available on Ravelry) in no time a couple of weeks ago. It was super easy and he loves it. Nikki took the pic with her cell phone, so it's awful, but you get the idea. He's just as cute as he was last time.

In other knitty news, I've been working on a pillow from the book One Skein, and when I checked out the photo I took on the monitor screen, it was incredibly out of focus. What I was thinking when I took the pic, I have no idea. Chalk it up to old-lady vision. Anyway, I branched out with the pattern, using different-than-called-for alpaca yarn (oooh, pretty and soft) and larger-than-called-for needles to make a larger pillow (yes, it seems I'm a knitting experimentalist), and it's turning out just the right size. I know! Who knew I could wing it? I know enough to realize that one day this knitty thrill-seeking will bite me right in the butt. Until then, look out. I also knitted a felted bowl from the same book (a great book), but I haven't felted it yet. Pictures of the pillow-in-progress and bowl will magically appear in the next post ... whenever that is. Oh, I almost forgot. I also finished a felted bag for Nikki and another one for me. No pictures because I figured you've got to be bored with the bags. So I really have been doing something with my time.

Then there's Miss Sarah Esh. I've been working on her, but work is a little slow. My goal is to finish this week. Uh huh, dream on. Goals are a good thing, right? So sorry for another awful photo.

That pretty much brings us up to date. I'm hustling through this post to get to my purple chair before my eyes close. Keagan and his mom and dad are doing great, school is as it is, and home is a nice place to be. Make some fun.

Knitty, Knit, Knit

So much time has passed! I had such good intentions of returning sooner to show you all the knitting that's been going on. It'll be my luck that what they say about good intentions and the road to hell is true. As you can see, Merlin is less than enthusiastic about my new-found habit. He thinks there isn't enough room on my lap for him and my knitting. Actually, for him and anything. He wants me to focus my entire being on holding and petting. Just so I'd really know how he feels, here's what I found after I laid out the bag and went to get my camera.

Merlin knows how to put those knitted items to good use! Below are said items without the furry beast on them. Do you see any long, black, old-man cat hairs?
The pics are especially crappy because I can't seem to get home before dark. After days of trying, I finally gave it up and took the ugly pics so I could get on with the felting. I couldn't wait!
The most interesting and confusing part of this whole adventure is trying to predict how big you have to knit the bag to get the felted bag the size you want. All of this experimentation is getting kind of expensive. Do you think that'll stop me? NFW!! I'll just have to foist my unwanted creations onto unsuspecting friends and family. That'll teach 'em.

The purple bag was 13 x 16 before felting and 10 x 13 after ... about the size of a small purse or a big lunch bag. I knitted so tightly that my knitty teacher was teasing me that I'd end up with a change purse. The teal, cream, taupe bag was 22 x 16 before and 19 x 11 after. I stepped up a needle size and used the teacher-written directions for a bigger bag. It would be pretty close to the size I want if it were a little taller, but it's a pretty great knitting bag. As you can probably guess, I'm going for it again (yes, I am a glutton for punishment). I'm gonna knit the larger bag and make it taller. And I'm gonna do it in the purple colors. I'm in love with those colors. Besides, I need the larger (than stitching) therapy. I'll keep you posted. You were afraid I'd say that, weren't you?

I've been stitching a little also, but there were so many pictures and so little time that I decided to save the stitchy stuff for next time. There's something else interesting going on here, and if the stars are aligned and I make my way to the keyboard for more than a few minutes, I'll fill you in soon. Until then, make some fun.

See Doris Knit, Etc.

In what seems like a past life, when I was married and had three young kids, I used to knit. I knitted tiny beaded bags out of perle cotton on size 0000 needles (no, that's not a typo). It was like knitting with large tapestry needles. Now that I'm thinking of that little bag, I'll add a pic if I ever dredge it up from the black hole that has consumed my long-ago-abandoned projects. My silly sister gave me (and went as far as signing me up, schedule unseen) a knitting class for Christmas, because I keep saying, "I wanna make one of those felted bags" and "I wanna knit socks." Get ready for my new knitty experience ...

I know! This is the bottom of a buttonhole bag, which you can see here. While you're over there, check out the Mason-Dixon Knitting blog. It's very fun. So, anyway, I intended to bail on my class and try to get into one next month, when life will hopefully look better. But the lady at the LKS told me it'd be good for me. She was right. I was so quickly hooked that, when I got as far as I could after Lesson #1, I went back and got more stuff to start a second bag (because Sharri's gonna cry 'til she gets one) so I wouldn't forget what I'd learned (great excuse, huh?). And looky here (note Merlin in the background checking out the psycho-woman's new habit) ...


Another bag bottom is ready to go. I'm beside myself in anticipation of the next class, so I'll be showing you more soon (she said confidently). How this new addiction will fit in with the old addiction, I'm not sure. We'll just go with it.


I took some days off last week to be away from people, and I figured I'd start something new to treat myself. I couldn't do it. So I cleaned and sat and watched a movie or two and read some blogs, and there it was. There, in Su's corner of blogland, was just the reminder I needed about a little project, hidden away in my I-wanna-do-this-soon drawer, that I could start and finish in a day. So I did.

It's My Pins, of course, from Shepherd's Bush, stitched as kitted, finished as directed, and stuffed with walnut shells. The ricrac was a little bright for me, so I treated it to a boiling coffee bath to tone it down a little. It didn't help much, but it's cute enough. I appreciate Su's inspiration at just the right moment to get me going.

Then I pulled out the Shepherd's Bush 2009 Fob that I stitched a while back. Anyway, I dragged it out of the WIP drawer and finished it up as a pin cushion. This one is stitched as kitted, finished sort-of as directed (I added knots in the silk ribbon at each corner), stuffed with walnut shells, and photographed (ugh, in artificial light this evening) on the backing fabric I chose (which matches so much better IRL).

I stitched another one over one, which will be making an appearance here as soon as another little button comes in. So another little project is finished and a third is waiting to be finish-finished. Finishing little projects is surprisingly therapeutic.

I'm gonna leave you with many thanks for the uplifting and extremely kind words you've all shared with me about Mom. I sat here last week and cried into my oatmeal more than once, and I probably needed to do that. I'm not gonna tell you how awful work is (except the kids who are lovely), but I'm gonna tell you something positive. I make fun of men a lot, largely because it's so easy (oops, that wasn't nice ... see what I mean?), but I have to tell you about the man I hang around with. He has been nothing but supportive and helpful and understanding during the last few months, and especially since our extremely emotional family Christmas. What a man ... truly. That's just one of the ways that I'm lucky. There are many others, and I'm working at remembering them. And now I'm gonna try to sleep. Make some fun.