I'm back!

After months of not blogging,I'm back!We have internet access at home now. Here's a short rundown of what happened. We got back to the states in February, stayed with my mother in law for 5 months while Jason job hunted and looked for a place for us to live. We now reside in an apartment in Houston. It was nice to not have to worry about lodging when he didn't have a job, and I am glad for the hospitality extended to us, but my husband and I don't get along very well with his mom so it was better for us to move out as soon as possible.

Oh jeez, and I know I said this would be short but now I have to vent about something that happened there.

We had a huge argument the week before we moved.The kids were misbehaving and she tried taking me aside to tell me how I could handle them better and I snapped. Of course, this meant crying a lot and then she layed into me. She went on about how dirty our apartment in Denver was. And, it was. I was depressed, and mostly alone with a new baby, worried about moving, so I let everything except the baby go to hell. I wasn't able to take the dog out as often as I should have and so she peed on the carpet in some places. I'm so ashamed of it now. She went on about how dirty our car was, and how we shouldn't ever let the kids eat in there, and talked about how I shouldn't still be nursing Malcolm, and how I let the kids walk all over me (I don't, but she always takes over and I try to keep ugliness to a minimum in front of the kids). About how I was a spoiled brat because I took flying lessons as part of Civil Air Patrol, and that's why my parents don't have any money, and why didn't I have a Driver's license already, and how I needed to be more active and how I was too heavy. Then, the icing on the cake was when she said "All you ever do is sit there and knit". I told her I have depression and anxiety problems, and living out in the country with only her as a companion didn't help, and knitting was my outlet. "Oh, I thought it was a nervous tic, you always having to have your hands moving" she said with a sniff.

Needless to say, I'm still hurting over it. My ire isn't so bad I'll prevent her from seeing the kids, but I see a lot of biting my tongue and drinking when I get back home in my future.

I'm glad to be able to articulate my thoughts here. Thank you to anyone who took the time to read my rant. I promise there will be more knitting/crafting content soon.

No knitting related content today. I have a couple of projects I'm working on, the main one being the Monkey socks by Cookie A. from Knitty. Jude, if you're reading this, I really am working on your mitts, I'm just being a perfectionist about it. The yarn is not behaving and needs a few more stern talkings to.

So, here are a few pictures of the boys on Christmas day opening their presents. I hope we didn't go too overboard. I think if the stack of presents is higher than the kid then that's too much.

Here's the first thing we opened. We decided Mal got to open the first thing, and that's the Little Mermaid dvd my mother in law sent. Mal needed a little help getting started, but once he got the hang of it he started ripping paper like a pro.

Normally, I don't buy the BX brand toys because they're very obviously cheaply made but this was too adorable to pass up, especially for 4.99. I love how they have just about everything you need for a sushi platter, complete with a dab of wasabi paste and some pickled ginger.

We saw these at the local German toy store, and figured we'd better buy each of the boys one now before we got back to the States and couldn't find them. They are genuine metal capguns, with working parts that can be oiled,and a holster. Jason had these growing up and can attest that they last forever. You can't really find cap guns like this at Toys R Us anymore. I wasn't so sure about getting them because I don't want to encourage violence, but then they always seem to find creative ways to smack each other with their nonviolent toys, so I gave Jason the go ahead. I think he had more fun playing with them than the boys did.

The rest of the day we just lazed about, noshing on the sausage basket my mother in law sent, and watching movies. I saw Christmas Story for the first time and it was so great. That one is definitely going to become a tradition in our house.

I hope everyone else's holiday was as nice, and have a Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas

Normally, I get really stressed out over the holidays. I seem to pick up on everyone's nervous energy, and it also distresses me to see how badly some people get the "Gimmes". Presents are nice, but even if you're not religious, there should be more to Christmas than who got the biggest box.

However, this year I'm looking forward to it. Wyatt seems to really get things this year, and has been reall yexcited about the Christmas preparations. We put up a tree and lights, and have been present shopping. He got a real kick out of visiting Santa once he realized he was the one who delivered presents.

I have everything wrapped and sitting in my closet waiting for bows and ribbon. Growing up, my parents waited to put presents under the tree until Christmas Eve, so it was a lot of fun waking up and seeing presents there. I'm not doing stockings because I ran out of time to knit some but I am going to leave some candy in their shoes and tell them it's from Santa.

We aren't doing anything terribly fancy on Christmas, since all our friends have moved away. We're just planning on lying about, watching movies, and eating Mexican food. I have lots of new sock yarn to play with :) .

Today, I'm taking Wyatt to the local indoor pool since admission is free from 10 am to 3 pm. Jason's not keen on swimming and there's no way I could watch both of them by myself so he's keeping Mal. It'll be nice to have some alone time with Wyatt. I try to make sure I have time with him each day but it's hard to fit it in sometimes because Mal gets so jealous. I think I'm doing ok at sharing my time with the kids considering I grew up as an only child. I suppose it's a learning process.

Well, I'm off to do some straightening up, Merry Christmas, or whatever holiday you celebrate. :)

Drink, Feck, Arse

Right after I finished the last post, I realized "Crap, I have a knitting deadline". I agreed to knit a little pair of socks for another crafter's little girl (I'll post the link to her Etsy shop at the end, I don't know how to change the hyperlink to say her name instead of the whole address). I thought I had a lot more time, so didn't start the socks until the last minute. I managed to finish a pair with no problems a day and a half before I wanted to deliver them.

I'm a perfectionist, and even though we were trading, I treated this like it was a job someone was paying me for. Katie isn't a knitter, so I'm sure she wouldn't have spotted tiny mistakes, but I wanted these socks to be perfect.

I looked them over, and saw some little holes by the heels where I picked up stitches after I did the short row heel. I thought it wouldn't be a problem, that I could just tighten them up, but I didn't want the socks to look patchy inside so I decided I'd thread in a lifeline, and cut the heel out and carefully unravel it and do an afterthought heel instead. I was a little nervous about this but I took a deep breath after I put in the lifeline and snipped. Here's what it looked like pre-snip:

What a dumb thing for me to do! I must have snipped it in a wrong place beause I was having a lot of problems picking out the yarn without yanking stitches I wanted to stay intact, despite the lifeline. Not having a lot of time left, I accepted defeat and just started a new pair of socks outright because I didn't write anything down for the other socks so couldn't remember how many stitches I'd cast on, or where I made my increases and decreases.

Here's where I work in the post title: I arsed up the heel, so I said "Feck!" and felt like drinking. Instead, I busted ass and knit both the socks at the same time. I'm not clever enough to do both socks on two circulars, so I did them each on one circular doing the magic loop method. I'd work a few rows on one sock, then a few on the other. This of course made it feel like the sock would never end, but it ensured they would look the same and I wouldn't have to cast on for another sock and possibly not finish it. I did these with an afterthought heel.


Here they are knit up, toe grafted, and with the waste yarn cut with the live stitches waiting to be placed on the needles. To do this I worked the cuffs as long as I wanted them, then knit across half the stitches with the waste yarn, turned my work to purl back over them, then picked up my working yarn and kept knitting the sock down to the toe. I grafted the stitches together after I decreased to the number I wanted. Some hate grafting toes closed and will do anything to avoid it, but I actually look forward to it because it means I'm at or very close to the end point of the sock.

Katie loved the socks, and her reaction was worth scrapping the bad socks and starting over. I really enjoy making things for people who value hand made gifts. And, I got two lovely customized sweatshirts for the boys out of it, which I totally forgot to take pictures of them wearing.

Here's some yarny goodness drying on my radiator. The colors are courtesy of lemonade and orange flavored kool-aid, the yarn is white Regia 4 ply.

I'm off to knit more socks. Happy Holidays everyone! :)

An update

While I was knitting the other day, I started thinking about this blog. When I opened my account again, I was so surprised it'd been a full 4 months since I'd written! Ever since I had Mal, it seems like time goes by so much quicker than it should.

While I've dabbled in other crafts, knitting has always been in the background. I have scads of yard because I absolutely can't resist the yarn fumes. As mentioned in the comment by the blog title, I will hunt out yarn no matter where I am. I took a lovely trip to Edinburgh recently, and despite not knowing where I was, and being terrified of getting lost, I started asking around about where I could find yarn since I hadn't been able to find a dedicated yarn shop near the hostel I stayed at. As soon as I walked into the yarn department at Jenners, I felt at home. When I visited Sweden in 2004, I found a yarn shop by accident. I saw the display and couldn't resist going in. And, of course, within a week or two of moving here I knew where both the local yarn shop and the yarn department at Hela were located.

So, since I haven't quilted in a while, and won't for the forseeable future ( I'll be away from my machine for a couple of months when they pack the household goods) , I've decided to turn this into primarily a knitting blog, with my other craftiness and personal opinions thrown in.

I have a monster cold courtesy of Jason, so I'm off to reward myself with the sweet bliss of a Nyquil induced stupor. Cheers !

Long time, no blog

I haven't been doing so much quilting lately, and may not do any more for a while. I started sewing together some circles for the denim quilt today, and now my machine doesn't want to pick up the bobbin thread. I can't figure out how to fix this because this machine is different in that it has a drop in bobbin. Grrrr.





I have, however, been getting back into knitting. It's always been something I enjoyed, and I found it to be a little more portable than quilting while I was chasing around the boys when Jason was in Mississippi. I knew how to knit before I knew how to quilt, so I don't have to concentrate quite as hard on it.





I'm making a scarf out of Gedifra Chandra yarn. I can't remember the color number, but I saw the ball out on display and had to buy it right then. It's very soft, the label says it's a wool,polyamide and acrylic blend.





I had a hard time deciding how best to play up the colors in it, so I stuck to a simple design. I hate it when only one side of a scarf is pretty, so I decided to knit it as a tube, and I have one side plain stockinette, and a simple cable running the length of it on the other side. I wanted it to be easy enough I could find my place again in case the boys took my attention, but not so boring as to be mind numbing.






This was my progress after a couple of hours working on it. The colors are a bit washed out because of the flash, and I don't think a camera could do them justice anyhow. I went back to the shop and there was a whole bag of this yarn, so I bought two more balls just to be sure I'd have enough to make the scarf nice and long.






I've been trying to figure out how to knit socks. You can get high quality sock yarn anywhere here, including the toom (a super K Mart type store) and Hela ( think of a Home depot, PetSmart, Michaels, and Wal-Mart all in one store). I think I'll stock up before we move from here so even if we're on a tight budget when Jason gets out, I'll still have some crafty things to play with. So far, I haven't had much luck, but I think I just need to keep at it and eventually I'll get the hang of it. I need to teach some people around here to knit so I have someone to commiserate with in person! When the boys are old enough, I plan on handing them some needles and yarn since they're always wanting to get into my stash anyhow. They may not think it's cool, but I think at least having knowledge of knitting, crochet, sewing, and cooking will fall under the "Can't hurt to know it" category.

This one's for you Miss Kitty

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