Ravthlete Extrodinaire

The knitting of my Olympic Skew socks was completed last night (or really early this morning, depending on how you look at it). By 10am, all ends were woven in and the socks were officially finished! I think this is the fastest I've ever knit a pair of socks, which is especially impressive given that both BoyMonkey and I have been sick.

The fit is only OK. They are tight across my high instep and are tough to get over my heel. But overall I really like them. Knitting something with such interesting construction is always fun.


SweetiePetitie is another step closer to walking. She's been standing unassisted for the past week or so. It won't be much longer until she learns how to walk all on her own.

Progress!

My Olympic Skew socks are coming along. I'm starting up the leg of the first sock and they're turning out pretty well so far. They might be a little tight across my high instep, but I think they'll fit okay. I briefly considered ripping back and trying to make the instep a little looser, but decided that given the construction of these socks, it wasn't worth the hassle or the risk. Knowing me, I'd totally screw them up.There is still at least a vague chance I'll finish the socks on time (if I ever close the computer and get knitting, that is). One sock is coming close to being completed and we are less than halfway through the Olympics. I haven't knit this much or this obsessively since before SweetiePetitie was born!

There has been some other knitting recently. I made this cute pilot hat for my step-brother and his wife who are expecting a baby soon. It's a little small on SweetiePetitie, but it's good enough for documenting how it came out. I liked it so much that I started another out of leftover STR for her. It's rather sad that the baby of a knitter has no handknit hats that fit at the moment. It's a situation that must be remedied promptly! Well, in a week or so after I finish my Ravelympic socks!

In totally unrelated news, BoyMonkey lost his first tooth a few weeks ago. We haven't managed to take a picture of "the window in his mouth," as he says. He was the first in his class to have a loose tooth. He was so excited when it finally fell out and the tooth fairy left him a dollar. SweetiePetitie is pulling to a stand and cruising around the furniture. It won't be too long before she's walking, but I'd like to delay that for a bit, if possible. She's only 10 months old! Shall we end with a bit of brotherly love and sisterly rejection?

Proving My Insanitly, One Stitch at a Time

Today I decided to participate in the Knitting Olympics and Ravelympics. I've committed to knitting a pair of socks between the lighting of the Olympic flame and finishing before the flame is extinguished in 17 days. For those who don't realize how insane this is for me, consider that I have 2 kids who demand attention and occasional feeding. I've been working on a sweater for Boy Monkey for more than a year and it still needs a sleeve and a half. The last time I made socks it took me 5 months. So, yeah, I'm crazy.

The socks I am knitting are Skew (Rav link) from Knitty, Winter 2009. The pattern was just released this week. Never before have I knit a project so soon after it was published. And this one is going to be a viral knit for sure. The construction is unique. I can't wait to see how it actually works.

I chose my yarn after the kids went to bed tonight, no earlier than 9pm. Already I am so far behind. There was no swatching and I've never used this yarn (Unwind Yarns (a Canadian company, how appropriate) Shiraz in Wicked Raspberry) before; a recipe for disaster, as most knitters know. I only had to cast on twice before I got it right and have been happily knitting along for a couple of hours when I realize that I totally screwed up. I missed the instruction to repeat two rows 8 more times, increasing the toe to 48 stitches. I only had 16 stitches when I moved to the next section. So now I have to rip it back and start all over again. Here's what it looked like before frogging. Notice it's just about an inch high, but it represents a couple hours of knitting.









Here it is post frogging. What a sad little pile of yarn.

And now I start again. I'm having a hard time imagining I'll be able to finish these socks in little more than 2 weeks, but I'm going to do my best, even if that means SweetiePetitie cries in the Jumperoo for hours on end and BoyMonkey spends all day in front of the TV. (Just kidding, honey! Really!)

Happy New Year!

I thought I should have at least one post in 2009, so here it is! It's been a busy year with a new baby in the house. My first baby related knitting project was the Baby Bump sweater knit out of Jaeger Roma. This picture was taken 3 days before I gave birth to SweetiePetitie mid-April.


Here she is in the Baby Mine sweater, improvised Baby Mine hat, and Magic Slippers made out of STR Mediumweight in Rose Quartz. She's about a month old in this picture.
Another favorite sweater I made for her is a BSJ, knit out of Woobu in Jabberwocky. The best picture I could find is of the back. She's about 4 months old here.


I also made another sweater of of the same Woobu, but don't have a finished picture of it. I also don't have pictures of the Slip Stitch Cable Baby Hat or the matching booties knit out of Merino 5 Print in white, pink, and purple. But I did get a picture of the Petal Bib knit out of Corntastic. I love this shade of purple.


And just because I can, here is a fairly recent picture of her and one of her with BoyMonkey. She is 6 months old in the top picture and 7 months old in the bottom picture. BoyMonkey is so excited to be a brother, and I must say he's the best big brother we could ask for. He's so loving, attentive, and helpful.

SweetiePetitie is now 8 months old and is crawling all over, pulling up to standing, and wanting to cruise around using the furniture for balance. She's going to be walking before too long!

Hopefully I'll have a chance to post again before 2011! As I am finishing up this post, BoyMonkey is asleep on the couch next to me (he desperately wants to see the ball drop for 2010) and my dear husband is napping on the floor. SweetiePetitie is, of course, asleep in her bed, having no clue that today is any different than yesterday or tomorrow. Have a great new year!

I'm Back!

More than 2 months with no posts, but here I am again. My lack of posting started with family vacations. Then BoyMonkey was out of summer school and home all day with me. We kept ourselves busy, but I had almost no time to myself to even consider knitting, let alone blogging about it.

(To the right is BoyMonkey after eating blue cotton candy at a Giants game this summer)

Even though he's been back at school for 3 weeks, I haven't done any knitting or blogging because I feel like crap. All the time. Well, mostly in the evenings, but even if I felt good enough in the morning, BoyMonkey now goes to school in the afternoon and is home with me all morning. I've lost my mojo. My knitting mojo is non-existent. Actually, my mojo for everything beyond watching TV and sleeping is gone. Hopefully it will be back soon. But there is a good reason for feeling so horrible: I'm almost 11 weeks pregnant!

Baby2 is due April 12. I have a couple of ultrasound pictures, but they are not much more than a smudge in the middle of static. My morning sickness has been evening sickness this time. 5:00 hits and I'm nauseous and miserable for the rest of the night. I can also be nauseous and miserable at any other time of the day, especially if I don't eat almost constantly. But the last few days have been better. I actually knit a couple of rounds on my Kaw Kaw Monkey socks while waiting in the car for school to start today.

BoyMonkey is very excited about being a big brother. He talks every day about "our baby" and what he needs to teach the baby (how to eat, how to crawl, how to walk, etc.). We've read him a few books about being a big brother that included a page or two on how the baby grows. So he knows what an umbilical cord is and what it's for. When I eat something, he tells me that the baby is eating it too. "Does the baby like yogurt? Does it feel cold to the baby?" It's beyond adorable. He's going to be a fabulous big brother.

Wednesday was a very special day in our house. It was BoyMonkey's 4th birthday! I can't believe he's so old already. And so big. And so grown-up. We gave him a special day with waffles for breakfast, a couple of presents before Daddy went to work, cupcakes for his class at school, dinner anywhere he wanted (Boston Market, of all places. I tried to convince him to go somewhere else, but he wasn't having any of it.), and more presents before getting to bed way past bedtime. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures to share since we were so busy having fun that we didn't take any. His birthday party is this weekend. I plan on having an incredibly casual event. We're going to show up at the park to lay claim to the single large picnic table, have bagels and fruit, let the kids play, eat birthday cake, and go home. No goody bags. No elaborate food set up. No organized activities. Just a bunch of kids playing at the park while adults chat.

This post is already so long, totally link-less, and mostly pictures-less. Something more exciting next time, I promise. And it won't be another 2 months.

Whole Lot of Nothing Goin' On

There's been quite a bit going on here, but not a whole lot of knitting. I am further on my Kaw Kaw Monkey socks. But that's all the knitting I've done this week. Here's a poorly lit picture of my progress. Enjoy it; it's the only picture in a very wordy and mostly knitless post.

On Thursday and Friday, I subbed in my son's preschool classroom. This is the first time I've worked (paid work, that is) since I was about 6 months pregnant, 4 years ago. About 7 years ago I worked at his school as a Kindergarten Teacher. That's also how I managed to get him into such a great preschool. Honestly, getting your child into a good preschool here can be as hard as getting into college! It's absolutely dumbfounding. I have at least 2 friends who each applied to 10 different preschools and got into none of them. For our preschool, there were 200 applications (or so I've heard) for a class of 24 kids. But since a lot of those kids were legacy admissions or siblings, there were only about 4 open spots. I had a good time being in the classroom again. In fact, I'm going to continue subbing over the summer. I've even (briefly) considered going back to school to take the classes required to be a preschool teacher. The hours are good, the pay isn't bad, the kids are fun. But until BoyMonkey is in school full time, all day, it just isn't worth it for me.

Over the long weekend, we tried to get some stuff done around the house. We (okay, it was really Roger) cleared off the shelves in the office, tossed everything we don't need anymore, and put everything else back on the shelves in a much more organized manner. I was hoping to change a couple things in BoyMonkey's room, but we didn't get around to it. For the Fourth of July, we mostly stayed home and cleaned. We barbecued chicken and corn-on-the-cob for dinner, with watermelon and strawberries for dessert. The only fireworks we saw were some illegal ones being set off down the street, but we did watch fireworks on TV. Roger and I weren't very impressed, but BoyMonkey enjoyed it (and loved getting to stay up so far past his bedtime) and was glad we weren't too close to the noise. He didn't want to go see the fireworks in person because he was afraid they would be too loud and scary.

Yesterday we went swimming at the JCC. We had a great time. BoyMonkey and I especially love swimming. Since the pool was warm and indoors, the chilly weather outside didn't affect us. After swimming, we bought a couple toys at The Ark (awesome toy store, but nothing on their website yet) and then went for a lovely lunch at Ella's.

The past few days I've been noticing once again that BoyMonkey is a different kid. He's been so loving and affectionate lately. I hear "I love you Mommy, no matter what," many times a day. One of his favorite pre-nap and bedtime activities is to give me "so many kisses." There are normal kisses, eye kisses, ear kisses, cheek kisses, head kisses, hair kisses. The list can go on and on. He's so tall. When did that happen? All of the sudden, he can reach the doorbell without even having to reach. It seems like just last week he could barely touch it when he stood on his tip-toes. His vocabulary is constantly impressing me. His adorably incorrect pronunciations are still there (he is a boy, Mommy is a girler; he likes to play on the pinano). His ability to focus on one activity has greatly increased. He already knows our full address including city and state. I remember learning that in kindergarten. He's just growing up so fast! I have to write down all of this before it changes again. I wish I had kept better records when he was a baby. There is so much that I was sure I could never forget (he is my first and so far only child; how could I ever forget?!?). So many mannerisms and mispronunciations that he's grown out of (he used to say "aye" for yes). So much I know I've forgotten. I am especially loving this age and don't want to forget the magic that is 3 1/2.

11 Years Already?

Roger and I had a lovely anniversary weekend. We slept in, ate leisurely meals at distinctly not-kid-friendly restaurants, saw a play, and saw a movie. It was really nice. But we also missed Nathan and were excited to get back to him Sunday afternoon. Below are couple of pictures of our wedding day, June 28, 1997. We look so young. But I was just 22, so I guess I was pretty young. We were married at the Dolph Rempp, a drydocked boat close to where AT&T Park is now. It was moved/destroyed not long after the park was built. The ceremony was outside and the reception was inside the boat.





















While we didn't have a child to take care of this weekend, we apparently had too much fun to find time for knitting. I took 3 projects with me and never once picked up a knitting needle. I hardly even thought about knitting. I still have lots of yarn to photograph and post on Ravelry. I've been contemplating photographing my old, to-be-tossed stash an labeling it toss/trade. Maybe that will really convince me to not buy any more. Just mere days after saying no more yarn, I bought more. It was just 2 skeins from Knit Picks to take advantage of free shipping with the books I bought, but still. I need to stop buying yarn!