Category Archives: random

July 25, 2011 · 9:53 pm

Popping in to say….

Have you seen THIS???

Oh my, Brooklyn Tweed…nothing makes me want to lock myself in a room full of wool quite like you. And now I am officially done with summer. The heat, the humidity and now the temptation of a wool cardigan makes me wish for fall now.

I’m hoping to be back soon with something, anything. I have been getting things made but my lack of camera batteries that last longer than a minute, or say… having a free minute to take a photo seems beyond me these days. Let’s just say summer is fun but busy, and I’m ridding myself of blog guilt and will surely be feeling it more come the cooler weather.

In the meantime, what are you making this summer?

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June 22, 2011 · 10:39 pm

Post A Week?

So obviously I forgot about my Post-A-Week goal. I have been sidelined by:

1. The end of the school year kicking my butt.

2. No one going to bed until 10pm.

3. An odd revulsion to my computer. (I think I’m just on information overload, I can’t read it all therefore I will not read anything).

4. A renewed obsession with reading actual books rather than lots of random internet crafty stuff.

5. My extreme tiredness and feeling like I ran a marathon at the end of each day, so much that even clicking on things or holding a knitting needle is too hard. All I can do is drag myself into bed with a book until I fall asleep. (My favorite rant these days: “Have you seen me sit down today? Have you? Have you? NO. So, don’t complain to me that your life is miserable and I’m a big poop head meany because I asked you to put down whatever is so important and take out the stinky compost pail. Am I knitting? Am I reading? Am I relaxing? Noooooo! Because I am working to make you food and supply clean underwear and keep your Pokemon cards away from your little brother!” This rant usually happens on my not-so-great days. Amazingly, it usually works.

6. My obesssion with Dr. Who Season Six. Did you see the last episode? Did you? Because oh my, I nearly fell off my chair. It’s even more fun this year because Math Boy is old enough to watch some of them with me. But not the Silence. They scare ME.

7. Gardening. Lots and lots of gardening.

OK, enough excuses for now. I do have knitting to share, but no pictures yet. And I bought YARN!! New yarn. It’s been ages since I did that but I sold off the piles of size 2T clothing we had and got a handful of cash for it. So, yarn for me. We’ll see if I can get to the camera to share…..

Hope your summer is off to a fab start. Despite my rant and tiredness, we’re having a blast!

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Tagged as postaweek2011

May 13, 2011 · 11:22 am

Red

So I’m sitting in the coffeeshop today, knitting. (Herbivore, if you must know, and no, I still have no picture). And I can’t help but be completely taken in by the conversation at the table next to me. There was a man and woman, and the woman was frantically taking notes and saying “yeah” in a way that meant she either thought he was super smart and was completely taken in by him, or in a way that an employee agrees when they just need to make their employer feel smart.

The man was very loud, and animated and excited. He was talking about how people go up to the cabin, and then they work because they have to maintain the cabin. He was very upset by this and brought it up at least three times. His book by Wayne Dyer sat on the table, and he kept on about his “product” which I think was either yoga classes, or maybe something of the type. I kept wondering why he was so worked up about the cabin thing. Did he buy a cabin once? Does he get dragged up there with the in-laws all the time and get stuck painting the boathouse? I really just wanted to pull up to the table and just ask.

He went back and forth from being a bit too much to sounding very smart. For a while he was going on about about Americans and drama, and how much we love drama and how bad it is for our health. Which I thought was clever and true. My household is all drama all the time (myself and Math Boy being the biggest culprits) and it does wear you down. So maybe the Skeptic’s chilled out attitude is smarter than I give him credit for.

The eavesdropping made me miss the days when the Skeptic and I would spend hours at the same coffee shop, reading the paper and listening in around us, trying to piece together the stories of the people we shared a cuppa with on a regular basis. People we never knew, but people we had nicknames for, people we made up imaginary stories up about because they seemed so darn interesting. This guy was like that. I just wanted to know his story, despite the odd cabin fixation.

Coffee knitting nosiness aside, it is Project Spectrum and I don’t want to drivel on like I did last post (that was a read, huh?) Hence the reds. Any guesses as to what I’ll make of it all?

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Tagged as Project Spectrum, red

April 28, 2011 · 10:51 pm

Spring in Minnesota makes me feel all rambly…..

Edited to add: Boy, did I ramble. Anyone who actually reads through this entire post truly deserves some sort of prize, like having your favorite incredibly gorgeous actor/ress showing up on your doorstep with a case of wine and extra large box of chocolates. And yarn and fabric.

There is something about the springs rains in Minnesota. The sky is still the same gray you’ve been looking at all winter but suddenly there is green everywhere. Looking at all that green makes me realize what is just around the corner, if only I can make it through the mud, muck and cold wet jackets. It makes me unfocused and wandering around from task to task, a little of this, a little of that. So that’s the sort of blog post you’ll be getting from me today. A summary of sorts, since I haven’t done that in awhile anyway. I’ll even do bullets, just for kicks.

My screen free week was not as productive as I’d hoped. The combination of extreme sleepiness along with my discovery of Patrick Rothfuss meant that I was either reading, falling asleep while reading, (terrible when all you want to do is read the book!), falling asleep while putting the boys to bed, or sleeping. Very little crafting happened, if any.
Speaking of Patrick Rothufss, I started his second book yesterday, and while looking at his blog today figured out that we both went to UWSP (where he now teaches and lives) at the same time. Not only that, but we studied some of the same subjects and more than likely crossed paths quite often, maybe even had a class together, as it’s a small school. This made me feel like I was about thirteen and had temptations to go to his Facebook page and say something dorky and stupid about going to school together. I resisted. However it’s driving me nuts because I can’t remember if I knew him for sure. In fact, I realized that although I majored in history I can’t remember the name of one friend in the history department (despite being treasurer of the History Club and attending many pizza nights) and the names of only two professors. Do we really start to forget this stuff this young? Sheesh, I’m only thirty-seven!
Speaking of crafting, I do have pictures to share. I managed to squeak out four quilt blocks for Annik’s Log Cabin’s for Japan project. I pieced together one quilt and although I tried, fell asleep with the boys both nights that I had planned on quilting and binding it. Luckily Annik is a quilting maniac and finished it up. Be sure to look at the Flickr group to see them. How amazing to have all these beautiful squares from all over the country put together like this! Annik did a wonderful job organizing; I’m lucky to have her as a friend.
Because every blog post deserves pictures, we’ll have an interlude with my blocks….

Making log cabin blocks is very, very addicting. I had to make myself stop at 1:30am.
So here’s more random…..I had a very nice and interestingcomment from a new reader. She said she’d really like to follow my blog, but wished I allowed the full post in my RSS feed. Now I also agree how annoying it is when you subscribe to everything in a reader but still have to click on the blogs to go and read the full post, so I understand how she feels. But, I know when I changed it to a short feed a few years ago it was because someone told me my blog was being reprinted in some sort of other feed, without my name/consent and that a shortened feed was the only was to stop it. Honestly, I can barely even remember the details. It seems half the bloggers out there these days have shortened feeds and half do not. Anyone know the latest these days? Anyone have a preference? I’m considering making it a full feed again but don’t want to if it means all my work is ripped off….
Onto more crafting, Project Spectrum starts this weekend!! And this year, I am determined to do the whole darn thing.
Lolly’s suggestions made me sign up for Tumblr although I’m not quite sure that I need more sites to clog my brain. Maybe I don’t quite get the draw yet. Anyway, if you’re on there come and find me. I’m Knittymama, as usual!
Speaking of technology, I broke my Nook. And no, I didn’t buy the extended warranty even though I have three small people in my house. Because my brain is on such massive overload I seriously can’t keep anything else in it, like remembering to buy a warranty. Let’s hope the Skeptic’s extreme tech skills will allow him to replace the screen successfully.
Speaking of my small people, I have to report that Spinner is finally talking away. I can’t remember how much I blogged about this, but last November, when he was about 26 months, he had a vocabulary of about 10 words, all which pretty much sounded the same. After a few months of speech therapy he’s talking all the time, which is a joy to hear. He’s got a lot of work left yet, as his articulation is pretty bad, but just the fact that he’s talking now is awesome; he’s come a log way already. Sentences are hard for him, and he says them in a very cute way that makes it sound like he puts a period after each word. So today when I brought home a giant bag of cat food (which I guess was exciting for some reason) he said, “Big. Cat. Food. Mama?” So sweet, and so nice to hear.
And although I could probably do ten more bullets (spinning! red stuff! my newly finished vest! pants for boys! food allergies! kids and mud and worms! Dr. Who!) I’ll spare you the rest, for today, and save it for a later date.

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Filed under friends, giving, Project Spectrum, Quilting, random

Tagged as log cabin blocks, Log Cabins for Japan, postaweek2011

October 19, 2010 · 9:53 pm

Well, well….

I actually had a post planned, pictures ready, and something at least halfway interesting to say. However, the one person who apparently knows where is camera cord is is upstairs asleep, so much for that idea! So just to show that I’m still here let’s just play a little linkity-link tonight:

Sorry for the Feedly confusion a couple of posts ago. I haven’t moved, I just discovered Feedly when Bloglines closed and I’m in love. It’s a reader service that is hooked up to Google Reader, it just organizes everything you read into a very usable format. You get nice little digests of the blogs you read, and it’s easier to skim through them to find the good stuff. It’s especially helpful for me on the more professional blogs that are busier and have a lot of posts.
I just got some of this in the mail. Colorway Black Onyx.
I’m going to use it to knit this shawl to wear in my brother’s wedding in December.
I just noticed there are a lot of versions of this on Ravelry, many thanks to Barbara Walker I’d say.
I think I might be crazy to think that I will have it done by December 18th.
I also have to do something with a pile of fabric from Fabricworm by December as well.
I”m dying to show you but certain people might read this and ruin all my fun, so you’ll have to wait.
I’ll give you a hint, it’s from this issue.
I’d better stop with the bullets for now, or this could go on all night!

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March 6, 2009 · 9:49 am

Favorite Room Friday

So Funny Magic is spearheading the idea of Favorite Room Friday, and I had to make sure I posted on this one. I’m sure she’d love it if you played along too!

I had two decisions to make: which room, and do I clean it?

Which room was tough as I love both the sun room and my workroom. But I’ve shared my workroom with you before, and the sun room lately has been a much favorite spot for the whole family, so the sun room it is.

To clean it? Well, I decided to do all moms out there a service and show it in it’s reality as it is this morning. Complete with an untidy nature table, box of old books that need to be sorted, and general untidiness. The floor is dirty, the Valentine’s decoration still hanging, and it’s under the light of a gray Minnesota morning.

This was the room that sold me on this house. This was also the room that Spinner was born in. (Imagine a birth tub right there in the middle of the room, just when the sun is coming up. Pure birthing heaven!)

The boys have their corner….

And I have mine….

(That’s a blurry one, isn’t it?)

I can sit in this room with the boys while they work in my vintage recliner, the one my grandfather always sat in when he visited, with the sun shining and maybe a bit of knitting with a cup of tea. In the warm months, I can sit hear and see the boys playing outside while I listen to their chatter. I usually choose to just be one with mess that is, and save the cleaning for later.

So what’s your favorite room??

I can’t leave this post without also giving a huge thanks to Emicat! (I’m so behind this week!) She was my Knitters’ Coffeeswap IV partner and boy did she pull off a great package!!!

She was a perfect partner since we both love organic, local and fair trade! I got some amazing Seattle coffee from Cafe Ladro along with some phenomenal local chocolates! She sent me some sweet knitter socks and some felt sheep coasters that my coffee has been resting on all week. (At least when Knittykid hasn’t stolen them, he loves them too). There was also a hand knit coffee cozy in my one of my favorite colors these days! And of course, she read my mind and realized the Duet sock yarn was one of the yarns I keep looking at and coveting;, she sent some in a beautiful green colorway. (She knows the dyer, how lucky is that???)I wish I’d taken a close up, but I had to take my picture quickly before the boys came down and saw there was chocolate in the box.

Thank you so much Emicat!!! This was a totally awesome box and everything fits me to a T. You make me want to visit Seattle right now!

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Filed under home, kids, packages, random, swaps

Tagged as Coffeeswap, sunroom

February 25, 2009 · 10:16 am

Nice

I love winter. But I hate the thawing season, the season where a perfectly dry set of steps suddenly becomes the stoop of death as you walk to your car. At 7am in the morning, when you know it’s glare ice and you need to be really careful, but you’re carrying your lunch, breast pump, tote bag, computer, two boxes to get shipped at the PO, and your coffee, it seriously sucks. It sucks even more so when you then fall, pull a muscle so badly that it leaves you in tears on the back steps for a few minutes until you finally realize that no one in the house can hear you, so you drag yourself to the door get helped inside and assess the damage.

The damage seems to be that I’ve pulled or torn the muscle on top of my thigh (what’s that called?) so badly that I can barely walk. Ibuprofen and ice have dampened the pain enough that now I can sit here, bored and hurting, being tweaked that I’ve got to miss a day of work and trying the get the boys to not touch Mommy.

This is what sucks about teaching. I could sit here and type all day long but no way can I teach. And when I only work two and a half days a week, a day out means I’m even more behind on fixing the broken violins, making copies, planning curriculum and the other million things I need to do that I can’t do from home since I don’t have my stuff. Plus my kids now miss music this week, which they already basically missed for nearly four months since the sub I had was not a musician. Needless to say, I am not a happy mama this morning. Because not only is the work issue a pain, but not being able to walk when you have three young boys is not easy. Thank goodness the Skeptic is home on my work days, but still. Not easy.

So anyway, as I sit here bored and hurting I will at least show off a few FO’s in the knitting department. I’ve got lots to update including WIP’s and some cool spinning, but then this post would be a book. So we’ll keep it to FO’s today.

First up:

This is Spinner modeling the handspun hat I gave to my friend Rebecca a few weeks go at her shower. This was some merino, dyed in fours separate rovings that I plied together. The pattern is simply a basic hat with a purl row before I did the decreases. Sadly it was not blocked since I finished it ten minutes before I had to leave, but she’s a knitter so she understood.

Next up, Little Man’s John Deere mittens. He picked the colors himself, because John Deere tractors rule and since he is a farm deprived city kid, he’s got to get his farm fix somehow. So he wears a green uniform most of the time, mittens included.

This pattern was from Kristin Nichols’ book, Kristin Knits and is called Checks and Dots. If you’ve never tried fair isle before this pattern would be a great first project. I used good old Lamb’s Pride for this one. And yes, that is a mistake.

My Ubernatural is done, but awaits buttons, so you’ll have to wait too!

In the meantime I’ll be sitting in this rocker, knitting my newest project and hoping I’ll be on my feet again soon. If anyone has suggestions on healing up, let me know. I’ve never had an injury like this and still can’t get over how much this hurts. Yikes!

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Filed under finished objects, handspun, hats, random

January 7, 2009 · 10:31 pm

2009

All I can say is thank goodness, although 2008 did give our family a lot of happiness, including our newest little guy. Lots of love in 2008, that’s for certain and I expect even more in 2009!

The felt ball?? Well, I’ve yet to take finished pictures of the Skeptic’s Christmas socks, or the new soaker I’ve cast on for (man, this baby is growing!), or the mittens I’ve finished up for Little Man. But I do have this picture of the felt ball Knittykid helped to make, and he was very insistent I take a picture, so there you go! (This would be a great pic if it weren’t for the potholders on the floor.)

Now I’m not a big resolution person. But I do like to take some quiet time in the new new just to think a bit, about what I’m happy about and what I might like to be more mindful about. And I do like to set some fun goals, especially for something I’d like to learn or get done.

Let’s look at 2008:

1. Try to get back to my one night a week spinning idea. I sew enough now that I don’t think I need to stick with a specific night for that. Did pretty good on the spinning.

2. Speaking of sewing, I’ve got 13 (13!!) windows that need new curtains. Think I’d better get to it. I sewed 8 curtains for the sunroom, gave up and bought the rest for the bedroom when I realized I was 2 yards short and had a baby due in two weeks.

3. Knitting? I’m got plans for the first few months:

January: the month of small things. Kind of. I did get a few small projects done, not as many as I thought.

February: Sweater for me and one boy. Not even close

March: Sweater for another boy and the Skeptic. Ha! Definitely not even close. Who was I kidding? I couldn’t even stay awake. I my defense, I didn’t know I was pregnant yet when I wrote these!

April: Finish up the Skeptic and hit the lace Nope!

I also want to keep plowing through my sock yarn stash. Barely. I was distracted by soakers!

Let’s just say I was a bit overly optimistic. I do spin quite a bit more than before, so let’s just say I did reach that goal. And I DID have a baby! 🙂

Okay, so here goes for 2009. Honestly, tell me the truth if my head is not on quite right with these….

1. Expand my spinning techniques. I’d like to expand beyond my typical bulky/worsted weight and try cabled, three ply and sock yarn. Maybe a couple more…beaded??

2. Dye some yarn. Even if it’s just one skein.

3. Mindful stashing. (Thank you Clara!) I like this idea, and I’ve already dug through the closet and listed around 40 balls of yarn that I like but don’t LOVE. I just don’t see myself getting use out of them anytime soon. I’ve put them up on my local swap group and I’ll be listing the stuff that doesn’t sell on Ravelry as a sell or trade item in my stash.

4. Sweaters. I really, really want to knit sweaters. I’ve spent a lot of time knitting socks, soakers, hats, mittens. I want a sweater. I want my boys to have sweaters. The Skeptic says “just knit me socks.” So I don’t have to worry about him yet. But sweaters, yeah, sweaters….

5. Sew pants and shorts for my boys.

Realistic??? I look forward to reading what you hope to accomplish in the new year!!!

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Filed under crafting with kids, random, Uncategorized

Tagged as felt, goals

November 24, 2008 · 2:33 pm

A Story and a Soaker

So ages ago I repaired some gorgeous fair-isle mittens for a friend. I was completely in love with them, and even more so when I found out who made them.

See this loveliness? Her great-grandpa knit these for her grandmother (born 1916) when she was a young woman. Her name is even knit into these.

I guess the story goes that he injured himself in an electrocution accident while at work. His doctor prescribed knitting as a way to get the agility back in his hands. Obviously he took to it because these are absolutely beautiful!!

Now this same friend has a son a few months older than Spinner. Continuing on with my soakermania I just finished a pair of Picky Pants for him. Now when he and Spinner are hanging out they can both be super cute together in all their wooly goodness.

He’s obviously pleased with them and knows he looks quite smart. The yarn is more Blackberry Ridge Kaleidoscope. Love that stuff, it hardly pills at all.

And now to sum it all up, despite a horrific experience with dishcloth cotton a couple of years ago, this friend has succumbed to the wool. Not only is she now knitting, but she is the proud owner of a skein of Koigu, a skein of Malabrigo, and she got her Ravelry invite this morning. There’s no going back for her now!

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Filed under finished objects, knitting, mittens, random, soakers

Tagged as antique knitting, friends, picky pants, soaker

July 27, 2008 · 4:46 pm

No motivation

Just a quick pop in to say I’m still around. Thanks for all the words of support about my crazy week. The Skeptic is back and thankfully taking no more road trips for work. We are back to normal every day craziness now, thankfully!

However, my blogging motivation has been stripped down to zero this past week or so. I’ve got a ton of soakers knit, but no photos to show. Maybe later in the week I’ll get the energy up to take a few pictures and get some knitting on this blog. In the meantime I’m stressing about getting curtains made, but humidity and I don’t mix well, especially while I’m pregnant, so we’ll see what comes of it.

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