Monday Meanderings

1.  My family is home. They went to see Joel's parents over the weekend to help celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. (Isn't that awesome? We are so blessed to have them in our lives, and so happy to get to celebrate such a wonderful thing.)  I should have gone, but Roo got himself a fever Thursday night; and there was no way I could take him for a 6 to 8 hr drive in a car seat on Friday when he was sick.  We were sad, but we stayed home together.  It turned out well. For everyone.   The celebration went well, Joel and the kids had a good time; and Roo and I had a great weekend together. He woke up well on Sunday, and I got a lot of quiet time. That was a wonderful blessing.  Except for the poor sick baby, it was almost like having my own personal retreat at home. :)

2. This afternoon, I took Bear for his 2nd hearing test.  All I can say is that God is awesome- and thank you so much to all of you who have prayed for him!  His eardrums are moving, and he is hearing all the frequencies in a normal range.  He is borderline, but the Dr said that that is probably because there is still some fluid draining out.  But compared to the last test 6 weeks ago, he is doing wonderfully!!! We are so thankful.

3. I am 8 rows and a bind off away from finishing the "pink blob" and turning it into a shawl.  However, with 1192 sts per row- that's about 9 hrs. (yes, I am unfortunately a much slower knitter than I would like. I can knit at about 35sts/minute, but I think I've been doing closer to 20sts/min on this. I suppose I should stop reading while knitting- but if I do, I'll never get any reading in- and I kinda like to read....)  However, 9 hrs isn't too bad, and that means that if all goes well, I should be blocking the blob out this weekend. I am very excited to see what it really looks like.

4. I need to play chess with my son. Joel said today that he thinks Buddy is at least as good at chess as he is. I totally believe him. Buddy learned to play chess about a week ago, and it is all he has wanted to do since. He plays all day- as long as he can talk his brother and sister into playing with him!  I think it's my turn to get beat. :)

5. This is my 170th post since starting to blog in 2008. I think I should have something special for that....

Leave a comment on this post before 12pm Pacific Time Friday the 21st to be entered in a giveaway for an autographed copy of my book from The Unique Sheep- "More Socks Inspired By the Lord of the Rings".

8 patterns in this book- including the 2 new ones- Faramir and Eowyn that are available no where else at this point. :D  The others are One Ring, Undomiel, Mithril, Dunedain, Fangorn Forest, and Days of the King (my personal favorite).  Leave me a comment telling which sock you would knit first. :)

Birthday Boy

It is incredible to me that it has been two years already- and yet at the same time, I can't believe it's only been two years.

Happy Birthday to my sweet busy happy crazy Roo. 

I am so blessed by all wonderful kiddos. This guy is no exception. The only one who woke me up in the middle of the night before he was even born just because he was so very busy. He hasn't changed. I'm glad. :D

The Pink Blob

I think it will be beautiful when I am done.

I love The Unique Sheep yarns. This one is Marici in their Love Spoken Here Gradiance.

This is the largest project I have done to date with lace weight yarn. 2000yds. It has taken me 5 weeks to knit up 1000yds.  That seems a bit ridiculous to me when I remember that I have knit sweaters that take over 1200yds within 3wks. Granted, I had to do a lot of frogging. I got to a certain point; had a stitch pattern in mind, and for the life of me, I could not make it work! I finally scrapped it and found a new one.  Sometimes the yarn has most definite ideas of what it wants to be, and no amount of finagling on my part is going to make it work any other way.  I think I wasted a week on that one; but once we got past it, it has been going fairly smoothly.

I think it will be beautiful when I am done. I sure hope so.

This is a special project. A special project for someone very dear to me.

 I hope she likes it when it's done. Really likes it, not just says so likes it.

It's also meant to go in the book I'm working on. I figured a bit of a teaser would be okay. ;)

I think it will be beautiful when I am done. I hope you think so too.

Book Review

Wild at Heart by John Eldredge

I just finished this book this morning. It may seem a bit odd that I would read a book that is "for" men, but the subscript on the cover says "discovering the secret of a man's soul". It doesn't say that it's for men only. I got it thinking I'd rather like to know the secret of a man's soul so that I can maybe understand a little more about my husband.

Well, I got what I wanted, and then some. This may be written as a book for men, but I really and truly think it is a book for couples.  And the woman should read it first.

I am totally impressed with this book.  I admit when I first started it, I was very skeptical. It seemed a bit on the theatrical side; but as I got further into it, and the points were expanded on, the feeling of theatrics disappeared to a large extent. Not entirely, which is totally expected, as the author was in theatre for a while; but his points were so well supported that a touch of theatrics didn't matter.

Eldredge talks about the dreams that boys have- that turn into the heart desires of men.  How our world/culture creates boredom instead of fulfillment of those dreams and desires- and how men can recover their hearts.  Going beyond recovery, he talks about how a man's heart can be wounded when he is a boy- which pretty much is a fantastic parenting section on how to help your boy grow up not wounded, with his heart and dreams intact.

I loved this book. It gave me insight into my husband that I did not previously have- a greater appreciation for our differences as man and woman; as well as teaching me how to help my boys become strong men. I will be keeping this book around to reread as my boys get older- and I've already grabbed several of John Eldredge's other books from my local library.  If they are as good as this one, I'll be buying them to reread over the years as well.

Dormouse

This post should have been done in August when the pattern was actually released to the Wonderland Sock Club- but I've been busy, so it's happening now.
This is the Dormouse sock. Inspired by the Dormouse from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.

“There was a table set out under a tree in front of the house, and the March Hare and the Hatter were having tea at it: a Dormouse was sitting between them, fast asleep, and the other two were using it as a cushion, resting their elbows on it, and talking over its head.

“….Here the Dormouse shook itself, and began singing in its sleep, ‘Twinkle, twinkle, twinkle, twinkle-‘ and went on so long that they had to pinch it to make it stop.

“…the Dormouse fell asleep instantly, and neither of the others took the least notice of her going, though she looked back once or twice, half hoping that they would call after her: the last time she saw them, they were trying to put the Dormouse in the teapot.” Alice in Wonderland- L. Carroll

The sock is ankle height because mice are small. I love the jingle bells that "twinkle, twinkle" next to the star on the heel. It just seemed to fit so perfectly.

I also love the teapots around the ankle and toe.  This is a very fun, quick knit. Excellent for learning stranded knitting without being overwhelmed by it.
This is done with The Unique Sheep's Pashmi yarn, which is so perfect. It has cashmere for that extra softness.
Currently available only for club members, this pattern will be up for sale on Ravelry next year.

Buddy's Birthday

It has been so amazing to watch this baby:

Become this amazing eight year old.

Happy Birthday to my wonderful, athletic, considerate Buddy. It's been a great 8 years. I am so looking forward to the next 8- and then some.

WIP's or UFO's?

I hear a lot of knitters talking about their WIP's (work in progress) and UFO's (unfinished object).  Most of the time, they are talking in multiples.

There's this thing about knitting.  Some people call it startitis. It's the desire to start the next beautiful thing, whether you're done with the current one or not. It's a craving. There are so many gorgeous things to knit! Or, in my case, so many things trying to get out of my brain and into the yarn.

I know few knitters that don't have more than one project OTN (on the needles). I hear about some on Ravelry that can't get less than 20 OTN at one time.

I try to be good about it. I kinda have to be. As a designer, I have deadlines; and I have noticed in the past that when I get 3 or more projects going at once, it takes me 3 or more times longer to finish any one of them.  Being more of a product knitter than a process knitter (all about the finished product rather than the process to get there), that makes me crazy.  I need to see progress. And so does the yarn company or magazine I'm designing for.

I usually keep my WIP's to 2, maximum. I try to just have one, but there are times when I have a project that just can't travel. It's too big, too complicated, or just needs too much attention to go in the purse and be worked on when I'm waiting in line or sitting in a car. That is when I wind up with 2 WIP's. One for the purse (which these days means it languishes while I chase the toddler around wherever we are), and one for the serious designing at home. I do pretty good most of the time.  But I realized the other day that I actually have 3 projects going, not just the 2 I am consistently working on. Which brings up the question: When does a WIP become a UFO?

I'm pretty confident the 3rd project is in UFO status. It's been sitting in it's little (ok, not so little, it's a huge project) bag for at least a year now, and I haven't looked at it, much less knit on it. It is exactly halfway complete, no more, and no less. The reason it's sitting there is that it's not my design. If it was my design, it would probably have a deadline, and I wouldn't have been able to set it aside in the first place.  But it's another designer's pattern. One of the few which I have (at least tried to) knit more than once.

It's the World Map Afghan from Vogue Knitting. It's an old pattern, but I love it. The first time I did it, I taught myself intarsia knitting, and fell in love with colorwork. The second time, I wanted to knit it for a gift. I made a little modification- added some words in the ocean; but only made it through 2 of the 4 panels. Then I got some contracts, and with deadlines looming on my designs, the World Map got stuffed in a bag and put in a corner of the closet, where it has sat ever since.

Someday, I will pull it out and turn the UFO back into a WIP.  Someday. And then it will become the gift I wanted it to be. I just have to finish this book of designs, and those club designs, and the things my kids are begging for..... It might be another year or two. But the World Map doesn't seem to mind. It just sits quietly in the corner. Every once in a while it reminds me that I think it is beautiful and that a certain person would love it, but it's nice about it so far. Hopefully I can get back to it before it decides it's time to get tough....

When do your WIP's become UFO's? How many do you have?