Sunday, July 29, 2007

Not much

Not much knitting going on. I picked up these again. The Latvian Socks from Nancy Bush’s Folk sock book.


It is taking me forever to finish these socks. The pattern and everything is easy enough to follow but I keep getting distracted and forget to k2tog or yo when I’m suppose to so I have to back track to fix my error.

To have something to knit that does not need me to pay attention to the pattern I started this shrug. The pattern is called evening shrug from fiber trends.


I’m kind of at a stand still on this one because I didn’t have size 8 circular needles. I had size 8 straight and casted on using them but now I need the circular needles. I have so many stitches on those needles that they are about to burst off of the needle and I have more increasing to do. I’ll have to wait till I get out to the store for more needles before going any further on this one so back to the socks.

I’m hoping to get the shrug done soon because I will need it at my now permanent job. The elementary school that I got a temporary job at as a media/library assistant offered it to me as a permanent job. Yeah! I noticed that whoever has control of the thermostat in the library keeps it freezing in there. The shrug will help take the chill out of my bones.

I almost forgot to mention that I got my invitation for Ravelry. I’ve been on it for a couple of weeks now. I haven’t been able to spend as much time on it as I’d like. Mostly I’ve been looking at everybody else’s projects but I haven’t been much of a contributor, yet. I go by kriskrafts.

For the relatives that like visiting the blog I leave you with a couple of pictures of the toads.

Here is Tyde at the pottery place painting his candle holder sorting hat. The lady in the picture with the big smile was a wealth of knowledge on painting pottery.


Here’s Dax with Sierra and Solly at the bookstore.


They have been staying in Orlando for the past month because Sierra was accepted at the Orlando ballet summer school, otherwise known as ballet bootcamp. It's been great to have them staying so close.

Friday, July 20, 2007

We're ready!

We’re finally ready for tonight’s activities. I finished the crochet wizard/witch hat. I tried to keep to the pattern but went astray near the end and did not increase as many times as it said to. Here is the final product.


Dax insisted that Rohan would make a good model so here he is showing what the inside looked like.

I wasn't sure how to do more then one color in crochet so I just carried it on the back like doing stranded knitting. I kind of like the inside better then the outside.

Dax was persistent; this is probably the best picture she got from Rohan.


He let us know that hats are not really him when he finally got the hat and ran off with it, LOL.

I also finished the Hogwarts cape. I used simplicity pattern 5840. I added the red color liner to it, which was not in the pattern.

As you can see it is a bit oversized. This one should fit her for a long time, unless she decides to sprout into something like the Jolly Green Giant.

I hope everybody has a great weekend. We will probably spend a good bit of it arguing over whose turn it is to read the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows. I guess I should have got more then one book but some things a family just has to learn to share :).

Thursday, July 12, 2007

All about the house

Here it is the CO (certificate of occupancy).


I’ve learned a lot while building the house.
Here’s just a few.

1. I learned I don’t like heights. When we got to working on the second floor and there where no walls up yet. It made me queasy. When it came to working on the roof, Rudy was on his own. I can stand on ladders fine but the roof was a different story.

2. Rudy is a perfectionist. I never realized the extent of this till building the house. I could care less if it’s a 16 of and inch off. It looks fine, go with it.

3. I love tools. I now know why a lot of men admire a nail gun, a miter saw, a table saw, a palm nailer. I’ll never forget the Valentine’s Day when my friend was telling me about the jewelry she got from her husband. I told her I got a palm nailer. She gave me a funny look. Little did she know I love that thing. At the time we were still in the framing stage. I was putting the hurricane straps on, trying to hammer them in and then Rudy gave me the palm nailer. It’s an air tool that is able to get into tight places and does the hammering for you. You just line the nozzle up push on it and it bangs the nail right in. Then there is this screw driver gun. It is worth its weight in gold. Ok, the list could go on and on but you get the idea. The right tool makes things so much easier.

4. My Dad is a wealth of knowledge. I already knew this but it was obvious when we were building the house. He’s also a lot of fun to be around. When we were putting up the floor trusses, we finally got to the last one. He looked at us and said, “there it is!” We looked at him like what, there’s what. We are always misplacing things, the tape measure, the nails, the screwdriver etc. There was always a hunt for something. He then said, “There’s that piece we have been looking for all day, the last floor truss.” LOL. When we got to the drywall stage I was so excited. This was the stuff that made the rooms look like rooms. After about a month it was no longer exciting. It was like the project that would never end. Think of when you are making a sweater and you get the body done and you feel so glad to have that done but then you realize you still have the sleeves to do. The drywall gave me the same feeling. I put up the last sheet when Rudy was at work. I had to tell somebody that I was done so I called my dad who was in a different state and told him, I finally found that piece I was looking for the past few months. He didn’t quite understand me and then I told him, I found the last piece of drywall. He got a chuckle out of it, and knew exactly how happy I was to have found that piece.

5. I learned it hurts a lot to have a hammer fall on your head. Always look on top of ladder for objects before moving it.

6. Tyde and Dax can only handle 30 minutes, 40 max of painting at a time.

7. Tyde likes power tools as much as I do, he also likes banging things and construction machines.


8.Rudy should get a trophy for jerry rigging things. If there was a problem he could make or find some way to fix it. One problem that I remember is that during the framing, we could not pick up a wall with just the two of us. He made some kind of concoction to do it for us. I just had to turn the handle and it went up. Only one of the many things he came up with.


9. Make sure the power is off before trying to wire a socket. Nothing like being bit by electricity.

10. Gloves are a girls best friend. Used them to avoid splinters when picking up wood, helped when hauling drywall upstairs, and saved my skin from being ripped off when doing the pavers.

11. The last thing I can think of for now is that through out all this I truly believe knitting saved my sanity.


I hope everybody has a great week and if you get a chance pop open a bottle of champagne to help us celebrate.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Wizard Hat

I finally decided to go to the book store to preorder the next Harry Potter book. I wasn’t planning on doing the book store party thing for the release, but Dax talked me into it. So, one of my craft projects is a wizard hat. I saw these hats and really liked them. They are crochet. Hmm, this might be a problem. I have very little experience with crochet. I had no idea how to make them. I started looking on the internet and found this pattern. Ok, I think I can do this. Since my confidence was low I picked some ugly. cheap yarn and started hooking. (Is that what it’s called?) And this is what I have so far.


I don’t really love this hat; it’s the color that I don’t like. I also don’t like the top part of it. Regardless I will try and finish it. The main reason is because I don’t have enough time to make another one before the book release. The fabric the hat is sitting on is for a cape. Dax told me she would like a cape to wear to the festivities. I told her she has a cape and she said it doesn’t fit. I was determined that she was wrong. I mean how much growth can a person do in one year. Well, she was right, maybe it’s been two years since the last time she wore the cape. We will be cutting the fabric today. Not only will she get to wear it to the book store party but she can where it to the Harry Potter paint your own pottery party to. Tyde on the other hand has no interest in wearing a cape.

On the house front. We got our last inspection approved. It wasn’t exactly that smooth. They came out and said you need to put a small hill here with some plants on it, so we did. They came and approved our new plants and hill. The neighbor then came out and said he didn’t like the plants. They were to close to the property line. So we left the little hill, moved the plants to the back and put some grass on the hill. Hopefully everybody is happy now. The inspector told me to give her a few days to process the paper work. I will be heading to Vierra tomorrow to pick up the CO (unless they have something else they want us to do). We can then officially move in.

We do still have the wall cabinets to put up in the kitchen and carpet to put down in the bedrooms. The cabinets are sitting in the hall way. See:


Rudy and I will get those up this week. Since we did about everything else on this house we decided to let somebody else do the carpet. We ordered the carpet from home depot and they are suppose to call Thursday to set up an installation time. Once that is done we will be furniture shopping. (Yeah)

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Lutea Lace

All that luck you guys sent my way must have worked. Thank you very much. Not only did the power guys make it here to hook up the power but we got our final inspection. Wahooo!! However, I was slightly disappointed to learn the final inspection is not the final inspection. Huh? The inspector told me we need one more inspection before we get the CO. It’s the landscape/drainage inspection. Oh phooey, so we have scheduled that one for Thursday.

I did do the final touches to the Lutea Lace Shoulder Shell. Unlike the county inspections, final touches means it’s finished.


Specifics:
Pattern: Lutea Lace Shoulder Shell from Interweave Knits Magazine, Summer 2007
Needles: Size 8 circular and Size 8 straight
Yarn: Nashua handknits cilantro, in the color turquoise. I think I used almost five balls.

This project was actually a very quick project. It just takes me a long time because I will jump from one project to another. If I would just focus on one I would finish quicker, but what fun would that be? The pattern used short rows. There are directions in the back of the magazine explaining this technique but if you need more help check out this web page from knitty.com.

Also there are corrections for this pattern that you can find here. You will need the corrections for the shoulder part.


For those of you who like to see what the finished object looks like when worn, here you go.


The first attempt at knitting this I did for the size 40. It seemed to big so I went to size 36. It's kind of snug, not really how I usually wear my clothes but I think I will wear it anyway.

I hope everybody has a great week. We are looking forward to having my sister’s family visit for a cook out tomorrow and then watching fireworks.

Sorry for the multiple posts. I kept trying to add a label to this post after it was posted and blogger didn't want me to :(.