EWWWWW!!!!

I can't believe that it was actually snowing this morning! What kind of bad joke was that?

Fortunately the short one had a new sweater to wear

She was quite pleased with it! (What? Kim finished something? Pass the smelling salts!) And as you can see, she chose blue for her cast. Irina doesn't even seem to notice that she has it on. Me? I'd have been gagged by now for complaining so much!

I'm beginning to like (sort of) this getting up to get the kid on the bus early thing. Not the 'getting up early' part, Heaven forbid! But the part after I put Irina on the bus, when I get to come back to the quiet apartment and have time to do whatever I want...Bliss!

Good knitting t.v.

I'd say that my knitting slump, and Nomar's hitting slump, ended at about the same time yesterday! Please, guys, please do it again today! (I am going to be among the very tired members of Red Sox Nation tomorrow. I just hope that we're going to be happy too!)

And, Chicago, accept my heatrfelt condolences! Trust me, we understand!

But yesterday (to keep the baseball theme going) I noticed my own error when I went to switch from straight to working back and forth on circular needles:


Yes, I will be doing the rest of the sweater like this! Silly me.

I swear...

I think that I've watched more sports in the past few days than I have in my life! Football and baseball both. I would really love to see a Red Sox/Cubs World Series, that would be a lot of fun! And while I didn't see it, as it was past my beddie-bye time, if I were a certain person at the Cubs game last night, I'd be in the process of moving to Siberia!

I haven't seen the Great-grandmother blanket yet! My coworker and I have been working alternate schedules the past few days and just havent connected.

But that's actually o.k. for now, because it's giving me time to work on the sweater I'm doing for another friend. I was originally going to do the snowflake sweater for her granddaughter, but absolutely could not wrap my brain around it! I'm not sure if it was because I didn't like the lack of contrast between the two colors, or if it was because we chose a different weight yarn, or if I was just rebelling against doing the same sweater twice! Whatever it was, it made me start, and frog, three times. I know when I'm beat!

So I grabbed my three ring binder of patterns, brought it to work, and we picked out another pattern. The really cool thing about the pattern we chose is that it doesn't have a set gauge. Pick your yarn, pick your needles, work a stitch gauge for each of the four(!) pattern stitches, and the pattern gives the formula for the number of stitches. Even more interesting to me, the sweater (a cardigan) is worked from each cuff to the center, and then joined in the back with a three needle bind off.

This is sleeve number 1 so far:

I don't know if you can tell, but the stitch I've used so far is making a wavy fabric. I wasn't sure about it at the beginning, but six inches into it I've decided I really like it. Now I get to switch to the next stitch pattern. And, oh yes, those are ends that I'm going to have to weave in! As soon as a new color is joined three stitches are slipped, making it impossible to weave in loose ends. So, happy me, I get to do it at the end! Don't you envy me? (Heavy sarcasm, there!)

Post about Knitting

(What? Kim's actually going to talk about knitting?? Is she feeling OK???)

I had a coworker call me yesterday. She had a friend who is expecting her first granddaughter any time now, and this baby's Great-grandmother was working on knitting a blanket for the new arrival. Unfortunately the Great-grandmother, who was in her 90's, died before she could finish the blanket.

From what I have been told, the family really, really wants the blanket finished, but no one knows how to knit. When my coworker heard this she said that the first person she thought of was me! So we talked and I said that I would take a look at it. I'll admit that blankets and afghans aren't my favorite things to, but I can't resist this!

Watch'em Go!

Got to love the marvels of modern technology! How else can I track my parents on their flight from Boston to Salt Lake City? (This link will only work for a few hours, I know).

This is turning into a semi-annual trip for them. My Mom's a geneologist, so she makes pilgrimages to the Family History Library for research and to take classes. Originally she went on her own, but has been so enthusiastic about SLC that Dad started going along too. She studies, he climbs mountains, and they're both happy.

Mom loves it out there. I think she'd gladly move, if she could convince Dad to go; but chances of that are so slim it's not even worth considering!

I can hear my own mountain beckoning me...A mountain of laundry, that is! And it's not that sly, seductive beckoning; it's the bellowing on the top of it's lungs that tells me that I need to get it to the washing machine, before it grows legs and walks itself down there! (Hmmm. That does have it's merits...)

Why rain when it can Pour?


Yup, that would indeed be a broken arm.

Irina took a tumble from the ladder going up to a tree house yesterday. Actually, she made it up the ladder just fine; it was coming back down that she lost her footing. Did a perfect five foot somersault she did, right down to the ground. I know, because I saw the whole thing happen from no more than 10 feet away. You know, that 10 feet of space that will never let you stop something bad from happening to your child, no matter how fast you run. (Can we say: "Mommy Guilt"?)

What she's wearing now is just a splint. On thursday she'll get the full fledged cast, which she'll wear for three or four weeks. Did you know that they do them in designer colors now? Irina's trying to decide between purple, blue and pink. My poor, sweet kiddo. :(

The Moral of Today's Story

If you drop the air conditioner when attempting to remove it from the window...DON'T TRY TO CATCH IT!!!

Yup, I did a dumb thing. But, heck, when you see the a.c. falling out of the window; and you are on the (ahem) second floor of a apartment building (!!!), avoiding the imminent disaster is the first thing that you try to do!

The good thing, if there is such a thing, is that the window I dropped the a.c. out of is the one with the fire escape under it, so it only fell about three feet. It ended up with some dents on the back, but seems to be working ok.

The bad thing was what I did to my back in the process! For two days I couldn't even stand upright without hunching over. So I spent lots of time sitting on the couch with a heating pad. I did try doing some knitting, but that just seemed to aggravate things. Instead I pulled out a quilt that I'd been working on for a while and finally finished the darn thing! All I had to do was sew the binding to the back, but it's such a tedious job that I'd been putting it off forever (like, a year). The thought of forcing myself to sit for the length of time it would take just turned me completely off of doing it.

But now it's done, and keeping my kid snuggly warm at night!

(No, it's not beautiful, but it does have a ton of fun fabrics in it!)