Pirates and PJ's

I meant to update the blog at least once a week and I kind of fell behind. I did finish the pirate socks, yah. They actually turned out nice. Dax has already worn them to school. Lucky for her we have about the same size feet or else she wouldn’t have as nice of a selection of socks ;). I knitted these for the We Call them Pirates Knitalong but can't seem to make a post to the knitalong, which is fine. I'll just be content with my new pair of socks.


Pattern: Modified basic sock pattern using Hello Yarn chart
Needles: size 1
Yarn: The black is Knit picks, the white is Regia.

I also finished Dax’s pjs. This one is also getting a lot of use. The pattern was pretty simple to follow. I thought the top was a bit long, but Dax didn’t agree with me so I left it alone.

Pattern: Simplicity 5468

It hasn’t taken long for things to get back into full swing. Dax’s soccer practices have started. She also has a performance this weekend. They did an audition at the school for the “Elementary Music Festival Intermediate String Orchestra,” and she made the cut. It’s just a one time performance that is suppose to get the younger kids more familiar with playing in an Orchestra. She is very excited about it and is starting to ask me if she can audition for the Brevard Youth Orchestra. I’m thinking, isn’t your schedule already kind of packed? She replies with the audition isn’t till May. So we will see.

As for Tyde he went south last weekend and participated in a surf contest. No trophy but he did come home with some extra t-shirts and stickers, oh and sunburned face.

I’ve managed to get a job. It’s only part time/temporary and I don’t start till Monday. I’ll be working as an assistant in the library at an elementary school. Even though it’s only for a few months I’m pretty excited about it.

Well hopefully I will post more frequently.

No crafting

Not any crafting in this post. I haven’t had as much time this week to craft. We did have some visitors last weekend, a birthday and a long awaited delivery.

The visitors were Sam and Sierra. Sam was here on business and Sierra came to do an audition in Orlando. They were only here for a few days but it was great to see them. On one of the days we walked to the beach to feed the birds. The birds seem to be starving in the winter. They will practically land on you to take bread out of your hand. If you do this in the summer, they will not even notice you.


The birthday was Tyde’s. He is now fourteen. Can you guess what we got him for his birthday?

No not the boat, the basketball goal.

Finally we got the call that more of the kitchen cabinets are done. We are still waiting on the breakfast bar and the wall cabinets. I hope it doesn’t take another nine months for those.

Rohan wouldn’t get out of the picture. The kids said he likes to sit in front of the cabinets because he is camouflaged.

Arrrr

Arrr, mateys there be socks fit for a pirate in the making. Here’s the progress on the Pirate knitalong project.

Thanks for all the comments and suggestions. I wish I had saw the one from Katydid Knits about alternating the skulls. I think I would have tried that but I had already frogged it. I did change it a little bit. I added more stitches and kept to a size 1 needle.

Another project in the making, a quilt. This is a year long project, maybe more. A quilt store is doing this block of the month thing. I get a new block each month and supposedly by the end of the year I have a quilt. I’ve done this before but have yet completed the quilt. Here is the first block. I was showing it to Rudy and asked him if it looked kind of like a swastika and he said yeah. Then asked me what kind of quilt I was making.

It is suppose to look like this when it is done. I think I will do like my sister and omit the pineapple design in the middle and put some blocks there instead.

Dax is also really getting into crocheting. She made another project from the Klutz book. I don’t really crochet very much. So I’m not very wise to the crochet ways but I noticed that this little bag she made is very sturdy and well, for lack of a better word, tight. If it was anymore tighter it could probably hold water.

And now for the news everybody has been waiting for.

Phil Says Spring is Right Around the Corner!

Yes you heard it right, the groundhog did not see his shadow.

Swatch

Let's just call this a swatch for my pirate socks. I did get started on the socks but as you can notice I made a mistake.


Have you noticed it yet. Maybe you are quicker then I was. Yep, it’s upside down. I noticed this when I got around the mouth but decided to do more rows so I could see how the skeleton would come out. The white yarn I’m using is slightly smaller then the black. I also switch to one size up needles for the main sock. I was worried about it being to small with the fair isle pattern.

I put it on to ck the stretch and it fit fine but the skeletons got a little distorted to me. I think I will add more stitches and not go up a size on the needles. Maybe this will give me a sock that fits without to much distortion?


Thank you for all the nice comments :). So far, I have no projects in mind for the green yarn. I hope everybody has a great weekend.

Stuff

I finally finished spinning the green stuff. I think this has been sitting beside the wheel since, gasp June. Ok, so I’m not a fast spinner. There is 568 yards of Navajo plied that is around 13 wpi. It’s wool but I don’t have any other specifics on it. The tag that came with it said spectrum. Now I’m putting it in the stash pile. Just wanted to make note here what it is so I don’t forget.


My next spinning project is the blue stuff. I got this from the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. I don’t have much of a local source for this kind of habit so I get almost everything at the MSWF. I’m going to double check my receipts to see who I got this from because if you look real close you will notice there is little pieces of grass all through this roving. I’ve been spending a lot of time picking it out. I do love the color though.


I’m currently waiting on the yarn to do the pirate socks. I have to admit it feels really weird to not have some kind of sock project going on.

On the family front we made some Wookie Cookies. Dax was the helper on this adventure. I’m not really sure if we are suppose to post the recipe from the book because of copyright stuff but I did see that on this web page the recipe is published. I don’t think we got the exact same cookies as the recipe calls for. Dax mixes all the stuff up in bowl and asks me if I will stir it up because she is tired of stirring. So I start stirring and stirring and stirring. There is constantly a bit of flour in the bowl I can’t seem to get to mix in. I ask her if she is sure she put the right amount of flour in and she says yes, 2 ½ cups. I’m looking at the recipe and I let her know it says 2 1/4. Her comment to this is what’s a ¼ of a cup. I also noticed she had cinnamon all over the counter. I think it got a larger dose of cinnamon to but that’s fine because the cookies turned out pretty good.


Last but not least here is a snap shot of the shower Rudy was working on. He is done with this one. I noticed it is kind of hard to take a picture of a shower. There is not a lot of room in it.

Leaf Socks

Finished the leaf lace socks.



Pattern: Leaf Lace socks from Fiber Trends
Needles: US 1 or 2.25 mm
Yarn: Spun from roving I got at the sheep and wool festival.

Other projects: Dax wants some new pajamas and picked this fabric out for it.


I also went ahead and joined the We call them Pirates Knitalong. I want to make socks using the chart they have but I looked in my stash and didn’t have the color I wanted, black. I have some un-dyed sock yarn in the stash but didn’t want to use it to dye it just black. Money is tight right now so I ordered some black Essential yarn from Knit picks. I have no complaints with the other yarn I’ve gotten from them so I will give their sock yarn a try. Now I’m just waiting for the mail to come.

We seem to be getting back into a schedule, finally. I would really like to finish spinning the green stuff. There is some blue stuff in my closet that I would like to spin next. I’ve also been trying to de-lurk myself by leaving comments on the blogs I like to read.

On the house building project, Rudy has been working on the master bathroom’s shower. Being back on schedule does not leave much time at the end of the day to work on the landscaping.

constant vigilance

Trying to get back on schedule but it just isn’t working out, yet. One child came down with the flu this week. This makes me cringe. Almost everything that the kids come home with, I catch. But just maybe I can side step this one. I’ve been running around with a can of Lysol in one hand and spraying everything.

That’s not all that has come home. The other child brought some little unwanted guests with her, head lice. I think we have the little buggers under control but I have to go through this child’s hair every night to make sure. This has drastically dipped into my crafting time. This child’s hair is long, I actually measured it and it is 27” long. My motto right now is constant vigilance. If it’s not spraying Lysol on everything then its laundering bed sheets, pillow cases and boiling combs and brushes to kill the lice.

This is our second battle with head lice; we had a battle with them a couple of years ago. I wonder, is this a warmer climate issue? I don’t ever recall having to deal with this when I was younger and I don’t recall knowing anybody else having to these unwanted guests. Oh well, constant vigilance!

Do you know what this is?

It’s a knot and one of the smaller ones I had to deal with today. I did get some time to myself and decided to try and ply more of the green stuff. I’m almost done with the lace leaf socks but ran out of yarn and had to spin some more. As I was trying to ply it I kept knotting the stuff up. Arrrrr! I did get it done but what a pain. It was boggling my mind as to what I was doing to get it in knots. Maybe I was just to much in a hurry because I didn’t have much time to get it done.

Hey Marcy, you asked for more details on the vest. The pattern is from Folk Vests by Cheryl Oberle. The pattern is called Clock Vest. The yarn used is galway yarn, which is worsted weight, 100% wool.

And now I leave you with a picture that you may or may not have seen. I thought it was rather cute and seems to fit my day today. I have to be like Leonard and show some optimism ;).

Lucky

I’m back, well I’ve been back but had to catch up on a lot of stuff before I could sit down and play with the computer. The Disney trip was great and we will refer to it as our lucky trip. I picked Cyndi up from the airport and look what she had on.

Front

Back

It’s a vest that she knitted. I believe she said she got the pattern from Folk Vests. When we got in our room I insisted on her showing me the Aran sweater she has been working on. The camera does not really catch the color very well but you can still see the details.


Very nice Cyndi, did I mention she taught me how to knit.

We did a lot of relaxing. Later we went to the expo and I got new shoes. I really needed a new pair. Not getting a new pair sooner may be one of the reasons why I hurt my foot (plantar fasciitis). Sometimes when you don’t get to the expo early enough they run out of stuff but it was my lucky weekend.

There were several vendors at the expo. One had t-shirts with really cute sayings on them. Things like “run like a girl.” Another one said, “running is my therapy,” or was it “running is cheaper then therapy.” Maybe somebody needs to come up with a shirt that says “knitting is my therapy.” I bet it would sale pretty good.

Since we had to get up early on Saturday, 3am, I placed everything out that I needed for the next day. Got up Saturday, got dressed dragged myself down the stairs and into the lobby to catch the bus going to Epcot. There was a line and as I was standing there Cyndi notices my new shoes and says, “where is your chip?” Uhhh, in the hotel room, duh. Got out of line went back and got the chip, then back in line which was now double the length. But it was my lucky day because Cyndi did notice I didn’t put my chip on. Anybody wondering the chip is what shows that you exist in a big organized run. If I hadn’t put it on then it would have been as if I wasn’t there, mise well stayed at home. That didn’t happen though because it was my lucky day.

It was hot, saw some people get sick because of the heat but not bad. Loved the t-shirt that the lady had on that said, dead last finish is better then did not finish, which trumps did not start, wish gave me the courage to start, been there done every one of these. Got my picture made with Peter Pan, Donald Duck, Woody and Jessie, and the seven dwarfs, and didn’t have to wait in a line. Saw a rainbow as we approached the Magic Kingdom, now if that’s not a lucky sign, I don’t know what is. At the end we had a bus waiting on us when we finished with no line to get on.



At the end of the day we sat on the balcony and watched the fireworks from both Epcot and Magic Kingdom. I didn’t bring a tripod so the picture is blurry but you get the idea. The next day we packed our bags and started to head out after vowing that next year we would be back to do the full marathon.

Off to Disney World

First here’s something I kind of finished awhile back. I have to go back and redo the zipper. The zipper was to long so I stretched it to put it on, resulting in a pucker look down the front. I need to shorten the zipper to get it to lay better. This is a pattern from Knit Picks called snowflakes and arrows. I looked on knit picks for the pattern but could not find it. Maybe they no longer offer the pattern. It did have mistakes in the pattern and I saw some people who did a KAL on it complain. Anyway it was my first project using steeks. I also used knit picks yarn called palette. I had heard all the good reviews of knit picks yarn, inexpensive, nice quality. The yarn was nice to work with and I would use it again.


Dax got a Klutz book on crochet for Christmas and has already made a bath bag from it. I thought it came out really nice.


Got my Minnie skirt out and ready to go. Tomorrow I leave to pick up my sister from the airport to stay at one of the budget Disney resorts. The main reason for the trip is to torture ourselves by doing the Disney half marathon. I’ve done marathons before but feel nervous about this half marathon. I’m going into it with a foot problem and I’m also the heaviest I’ve ever been. If nothing else we should get in a lot of knitting time. It will be the first trip we’ve been on with out the kids in about two years.

My turn

Getting to the computer is getting hard with everybody being off for the holiday break and having one computer to share. But it’s my turn and here I am.

I always have to rethink what I’m going to post about because one of the first things I want to say is, there isn’t much going on. There is always something going on it’s just that I’m not sure how bored you want to be with oh what we are doing right now, which is cleaning up. We must have made 8 or more trips to the dump in the last two weeks. Maybe I should take pictures of us cleaning out the shed, us tearing down the shed, us filling up trash bags, uh no I don’t think so. However, I am determined to take the camera to the trash place. It is actually a really neat place to visit. They are very organized with recycling wood, metals etc.

Well let’s move on it’s getting close to the New Year and that time to get that feeling of a new beginning. I figure the two top resolutions on most peoples list are to get organized and to get healthier. If you noticed on the right I have a list of blogs I like to visit. There are actually a lot more that I like to visit then what’s here. I started to use a blog reader to keep up with them. I use google reader. I know there are others out there, like bloglines but I chose to use google. You basically put in the webpage/blog you like to visit and then when you come back to the google reader it will tell you which web pages have been updated. This way it allows me to see who has updated their blogs without having to visit each blog to see if they have updated, saves time. I figure most of you who read several blogs already use something like this but for those who don’t I recommend it.

Speaking of blogs have you seen this one? Lets Knit2gether it’s a video podcast about knitting. I get tickled every time I go to it. It’s just seems like the media/information world has came along way from oh say the first broadcast on the radio.

Another blog that might interest people that are trying to meet that second resolution of a healthier lifestyle is CalorieLab Calorie Counter News. It has a lot of information on health news and highlights blogs of people who are trying to lose weight.

Hmm, something is missing here, oh yeah the pictures. I really like pictures on blogs. What do they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Here’s a picture taken later on Christmas day.


Here’s one I just took. My knitting gifts from family.

Hurry hurry hurry

Well I haven’t written in awhile so thought I should give a quick update. It seems like it has been hurry hurry hurry lately and I'm really looking forward to slowing down. Let’s see Dax had another performance at school (good), Rudy dropped a refrigerator on my tomato plant killing it (bad), I smashed my right index finger in the truck (bad), and Dax celebrated her 12th birthday (good). Hmm, two bads two goods, let’s say Dax’s birthday counts as a double good that way the goods out way the bads :).

We’ve decided to start on the landscaping on the yard. The first part of this is to clean everything out of the yard. Rudy wanted to clean out the barn to use as storage area. So we took the old refrigerator and freezer to the dump along with a good bit of other stuff. We had to throw out more than I would have liked because we found out we have a rat issue in the barn. It’s amazing the things they can chew through and the smell they leave behind is wonderful, not. Now that we disturbed their nest, I am wondering where they are moving to. Rohan did manage to catch one, which was amazing because well he is slow and not really a hunter. I kept taking the rat away from him and Rudy kept giving it back to him. Rudy thought the dog earned his catch and to let him have it. I kept thinking it might have some kind of disease that will infect the dog. I won out in the end and the rat was disposed of.
This is what's left of the tomato plant. It was looking like it was going to have a nice batch of tomatos. Maybe Santa will bring me a new one ;).

Yep, my finger got caught in the door of the bat (big ass truck). I don’t know what I was thinking and I noticed Rudy had to bite his tongue when he found out who shut the door on my finger. It was me. When I told him what had happened he had to ask twice “who shut the door on your finger.” It swelled up and turned black and blue (expected) but the weirdest part is that it got a nasty cut on it. I looked at the door, there really isn’t anything in there to slice, oh well. It makes for awkward typing and knitting but on the up side I can type and I can still knit.

I was still rushing to get prepared for Christmas festivities on Dax’s birthday. She kept looking at me as I was packing boxes that needed to be shipped out. I finally said enough, we put Christmas stuff aside and started baking her cake. She wanted to decorate it herself using a cool whip icing. The whipped icing doesn’t hold it’s shape very well but she insisted that she liked the taste of the cool whip icing better and she would rather have it taste good then look good. So I stood back and prepared the icing and let her do the decorating. Here are the results.

Basically the icing is cool whip with powder sugar added. Afterwards we went to see the movie Eragon and went out to the restaurant of her choice, which was Outback. The next day I took her to the water park Typhon lagoon. It was a great day, cloudy and slightly breezy but warm enough to not feel chilled while sitting in a wet bathing suit and best of all, no crowds. The Christmas packages are still in the truck. We are just going to start calling them New Year packages. I’ll get them out as soon as the post office opens back up.


I put a few of these in one of the Christmas, I mean New Year packages.



They are wash cloths from this flower power pattern done in cotton. The only thing I didn’t like about the pattern is that it had a lot of ends to tuck in. Each petal has two ends to tuck. I also used cotton which I found was not as easy to tuck in as wool or animal fiber. I hope everybody has a Merry Christmas or at least a nice sloooow holiday break.

It's late

It's late but I wanted to do a quick update. I finally finished something. The peace fleece sweater is done. I do need to block it.


We walked to the beach to watch the shuttle take off. I didn't get a good picture of it. There wasn't much light at the beach and I couldn't see the settings on the camera but this is what I got. The building was blocking the view but it was obviously behind it. Once it got past the building we could see it just fine. Dax kept saying it looked like a shooting star, a very bright shooting star.

It’s not cold anymore.

The last week has been in the 80’s. Rudy and I finished putting the pavers down. We still have to do the borders and fill in the gaps with sand. This is what it looks like so far. We put sand in half so that’s why it looks different.


When we had the cooler weather I was thinking about how nice it would have been to wear that sweater I didn’t get to finish because I ran out of yarn, so I went ahead and made an order. Since I was paying the shipping anyway I ordered a pattern to. I made the order from kpixie.com. They did a good job and I would use them again. I was a little worried the yarn I ordered might be a little off of the original yarn because of a different dye lot but it looks fine. Maybe when we get 40 degree weather again I’ll have the sweater done. The pattern I got is called simple knitted bodice by stitch diva. I saw on the internet that there is a blog called the sexyknitters club that used this pattern in a KAL. It looks interesting. Maybe one day I'll actually knit it.


The leaf sock is moving along.



We also got our Christmas tree this week. Tyde, Dax and I are making some ornaments to help decorate it. I’ll post more about that later.

Dax had a violin recital at the place she takes lessons from. They did a good job and she sounded wonderful. She played Little April Showers from Disney’s Bambi movie, now everybody in the house hmmms the tune, even Tyde.



On a humorous side Dax and I saw something kind of funny yesterday. We went to Publix and you know how at this time of year they have somebody from the Salvation Army outside ringing a bell for donations. They are usually sitting in a chair or just standing there. Well we saw the dancing bell ringer. She was bouncing around kicking up her heels dancing crazy with that bell. I thought wow, she’s got a lot of energy. When I mentioned it to Rudy he said yeah, she was there when he went to the store and she was dancing around. You just can’t resist donating money to somebody that is working so hard. Dax decided the dancing bell ringer would give that energizer bunny some heavy competition.

Pavers are here

I thought it was cold the other day but it got a little colder so I started the day with some hot chocolate.

Both the kids had school off today. Tyde spent it surfing in his new wet suit. Dax spent it sleeping in and going to the library.

As for me and Rudy we started the pavers. All the blocks arrived yesterday. It took two truck loads to deliver it.


Now we just have to lay them out. I can honestly say I will have no problem getting to sleep tonight. The combination of colder weather and physical activity should prevent any problems in that area, not that I ever really have any problems getting to sleep. This is how far we got yesterday.


I decided to start the sock from the yarn I spun. Here it is. It is a little more bulky than what I prefer but I will finish it anyway. It seems like I haven’t finished a project in a while so maybe the socks will make me feel like I’m making some progress.

Burr, it’s cold outside today.

Well it’s nothing like what DancesWithWool is going through but it’s cold to me. I think the high is suppose to be around 70 today, which is nice but the low last night was in the 50s, brrr.

Dax’s soccer team is doing the end of the season tournament this weekend. So the weather should be perfect for them. I’m getting kind of antsy for the season to end.

Speaking of Dax she got the blue ribbon for her science project (1st place) at school. I was impressed and it probably helped that one of her judges was a knitter. She was originally going to see if vinegar works as a mordant. She used some natural dyes to dye wool yarn. Oh she also did a batch using wilton icing food coloring stuff. One batch she just dyed, the second batch she soaked in vinegar before dyeing and the third batch she soaked in alum before dying. After they dyed she divided each group and washed the heck out of one group. Surprise none of them faded except the wilton dye. It faded a lot. She didn’t like her question because of her results so she changed her question to does adding alum or vinegar affect wool yarn when dying. She did this because it did affect the color she got. To me it seemed a little to much going on in her project. I kept having to bight my tongue and not tell her what I think she should do. I guess it turned out fine because the judges seemed to like it and better yet her teacher liked it because she got an “A”.


Moving on to the house project, Dad came down a couple of weeks ago and helped things move along. They managed to move a huge pile of dirt into the back yard. The kids think it is great. We do live in Florida and there really isn’t much as far as hills go here so with the pile of dirt in the back the kids like to play on it. They take the skim board and stand or sit on it and slide down. Who needs snow when you got dirt. Although I have to admit snow would be a lot cleaner. The dirt pile was created to make room for the pavers. They are supposed to be here on Tuesday.

While Dad was here Rudy also spent some time and finished the bathroom. It’s all done. He even put the towel rack up.