June 23, 2009 · 11:15 pm

My Brain Is Officially Full

We drove down to my parents this weekend to visit and to take the whole family, grandparents and all, to our CSA’s annual strawberry picking potluck. The farm is outside Virouqa, WI, about 45 minutes from my parents. Despite dragging my family to Virouqa before the potluck to go fiber shopping and visit their public market, we arrived at the farm exactly on time for the potluck. Kind of, until…..

I bounded out of the car, waving to Andrea (a farm assistant) who was coming across the lawn to us.

Andrea: Hi Are you guys here to camp??

Me: Nope. We’re just here for the potluck and to pick strawberries. Where should I put the food?

Andrea: Potluck? Well, see…the potluck is tomorrow…

Me: Tomorrow? That’s right, tomorrow, because I read that yesterday, it’s Sunday, Father’s Day, which is tomorrow, and today is Saturday, and I knew it was on Sunday so why on earth did I drag my entire family here today? (Continue with nervous babbling…)

Andrea: That’s okay…you can still have a picnic and pick strawberries today… seriously, it’s okay. Our farm is your farm!

Me: Are you sure you don’t mind? I can’t believe I came here on the wrong day. Really, I knew it was Sunday, I just don’t know why I came on Saturday, we were here last time on a Saturday, so maybe I just… and I’ve got to much to keep track of, I think, and….(okay, just shut up now or she will totally think you’re a crazy lady, crap, here comes Dad and I’ve got to tell him, and the Skeptic is getting out of the car with the boys and now they don’t get a tractor ride and, dang, every worker on this farm is staring at me, the lady who reads Sunday but thinks Saturday!)

The good news was despite feeling like a dumbass, we did have a nice picnic and picked a ton of berries. I’ve got about ten pounds to freeze. The farm and the farmers are wonderful! The problem was that this was really the icing on the cake, since I also got my family home an hour and a half late Friday night since I can’t seem to keep track on miles on a map. We stopped on Pepin to check out the Laura Ingalls museum and cabin and I got a little distracted. As Caroline Ingalls would say, “for shame, keeping your parents waiting until 8:30 for dinner.”

Tidbits from the weekend:

-If you stop at the musuem in Pepin and an old lady with orange lipstick is working, don’t bother trying to get her to like you. She won’t, and she won’t like your kids either now matter how polite and cute they are. But the museum is cool.

-When we drove up to the cabin outside Pepin and got out with out three kids, me putting Spinner in his sling, another family with three kids was also getting out and putting their baby in a sling. In the middle of nowhere, my almost doppleganger family. They were nice and we chatted too long.

–Ewetopia in Virouqa has an awesome, awesome assortment of fiber. Did I saw awesome?

–Trempealeau Hotel. Grandma and Grandpa babysitting. Yum. If you are a cyclist, this is a place to put on your radar.

-When my kids are grown and I want to live the quiet, fiber filled life, I want to move here.

-Lastly, in honor of Father’s Day, I’m going to show off what the Skeptic does in his workshop:
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What is it? A panel. I have no idea what it does, just that he builds them from scratch, takes them to work and hooks them up to a lot of other stuff that I still can’t wrap my brain around. Not only is the Skeptic the best Dad, but I think he’s quite clever too. If he reads this he’s going to be totally embarrassed and tell me it’s no big deal, but I think it is. He even manages to make this stuff with little boys underfoot. And I have to say I’m pleased to know that our boys will grow up to be able to knit, sew, and make electrical devices!

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June 15, 2009 · 8:39 am

Can’t stop

All I want to do these days is spin. Not knit, now sew, spin. This is a bit of a problem, since I really need to do massive amounts of sewing. Spinner’s baptism is coming up in a month and I’m hoping to make two sets of curtains, a dress for me, and outfits for the boys. Yeah, I’m delirious. No matter what, I am determined that I will not be dressing Spinner in a goofy all white outfit this time. I did with Little Man and Knittykid, mostly because I didn’t know what else to put them in. I remember finding a couple baptism outfits that were nice, but they were at Macy’s and a small fortune. This time I am being a rebel and dressing Spinner in linen and japanese fabric. I also have my brother’s sweet baptism outfit form the 80’s that I might incorporate as well. Take that, stodgy old Lutherans!!*

As for the spinning, I finally finished up the fiber I spun for my doula and very dear friend:
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It’s from Crown Mountain, and I think I’m obsessed with them as well. It’s Superwash in the San Franciso colorway. I spun up 8 ounces of it. I need more of this stuff. Although I’m not a huge fan of superwash, so I’ll be trying their BFL next.

I have some other stuff almost ready to show off the wheel, in the meantime I’ll be trying to maintain my focus.

*I actually adore stodgy old Lutherans, just so you all know….

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June 9, 2009 · 10:11 pm

Sock update

I added my Copycat socks (hereby known as my SIL Copycat Socks) to Ravelry today:

Feel free to queue them up for an easy summer sock project!!

We celebrated Little Man’s last day of kindergarten tonight. I am absolutely floored that I now have a son who will be in first grade. Wow. My first baby is all, 100% boy.

My second baby is working hard to be all boy, but luckily Knittykid’sĀ  got a lot of baby in him yet. Any my third, well…. let’s just say that despite the fact that Spinner thinks he’s a big boy like his brothers (climbing the stairs already and all that, yikes!) I’ve told him that under no circumstances may he get any bigger. Nope, not even a bit.

We were sitting in Pizza Luce tonight, celebrating the beginning of summer. The Skeptic was talking about how he hopes that when the boys are all bigger, big enough that they don’t need anyone to cut up their pizza, or remind them to get out from under the table, or to take them to bathroom since it’sĀ  their first foray out in public without a diaper on (I decided today would be a milestone for Knittykid, too)…he hoped that even though it will be a lot of fun to be out for dinner with three teenage boys, we will remember how very, very sweet these times are.

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June 8, 2009 · 7:53 am

Smart Stuff

This is an excellent idea. I need to save some cash and in reality I have a ton of food around the house. Having our CSA box each week, which includes cheese, will make it easier. And I’ll still buy milk too.

Report to come…

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June 4, 2009 · 10:34 pm

I Love My Dumb Socks (The Copycat Socks)

I can tell this will be the new game this summer. I’ve gone full throttle with the whole dumb thing, much to Little Man’s delight and confusion.

Here are the dumb socks. I have also knit another pair of even dumber socks, which I’ll show you in another post.
Copycat

These are actually my Copycat socks. I copied the pattern off a pair of store bought knee-highs my sister-in-law was wearing. These are a few years in the making since I
lost the second ball of yarn for quite some time.
Copycat

The pattern:

Size one needles, about 8 stitches per inch gives you a medium sock.

I used a Double Start cast on for 70 stitches. (Nancy Bush, Knitting on the Road. See a tutorial here.)

The basic stitch pattern is:
Round one: k8, k2tog, yo.
Round two: knit.

Knit a basic heel flap, continue the stitch pattern across the top and pick your favorite toe. I used the standard k2tog, ssk.

The sock yarn is from Sandy’s Palette.
Copycat

Personally, I love them.

As for the whole “dumb” thing, I’m going to try the humor route with this one. Words like dumb, stupid and shut up have been favorites of Little Man’s lately. Some of it is from school, obviously, and it’s every kindergartner’s job to see how far he can go with certain words. (Believe me, he’s tried them all. Dumb is tame compared to what he let loose the other day).

Aside from what he picks up on the bus, a lot of it has surprisingly come from books we’ve read…. Superfudge? It was a favorite of mine as a kid so I grabbed it from the library, but wow, the put downs really fly! We love to read here, and Little Man will sit and listen for ages to just about anything. I still love Fudge, but it is a bit of a bummer when it seems that every book written is full of name calling.

Now, I’m not naive. Kids have been calling each other names for as long as there have been kids*. And I do believe that dumb, stupid and the like have their purpose. It just seems that when I compare The Secret Garden to Spiderwick (both of which are great stories) it’s a small handful of putdowns vs. dozens of them….

Not sure where I’m even going with this now. It’s late, I want to go knit. My point? I’m tired of shut up and stupid and dumb and all that jazz, but I’m going to play the game and try to have a bit of fun with my kids to get my point across. Which is why Little Man was totally confused today when I asked him if my new socks were more dumb, less dumb, or equally as dumb as my Copycat socks. And then I went upstairs and laughed like a crazy lady.

*Just yesterday, Laura Ingalls told Nellie Oleson to shut up in
“On the Banks of Plum Creek.” šŸ™‚

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May 24, 2009 · 9:29 pm

My Six Year Old Critic

-Or- “Why I Don’t Have Pictures of My New Socks”

Knittymama: Hey, did you delete my sock pictures off the camera?

Little Man: Yeah. I needed space to make a movie.

KM: But I hadn’t put them on the computer yet. I needed them for my blog post tonight. You’re not supposed to use that camera, anyway.

LM: You can take more.

KM: But it’s dark out now, they won’t look as nice.

LM: Mom, they are dumb looking socks anyway.

KM: You think my socks look dumb? Why do they look dumb?

LM: I don’t know… they’re just dumb. The colors are dumb.

KM: Brown and turquoise are not dumb. And you’re not supposed to use that camera.

LM: We’ll those are dumb looking socks and you shouldn’t put them on your blog. And I want my own camera.

KM: Yeah, like I’m going to buy a camera for a kid who tells me my socks are dumb. And I’m not buying you a camera anyway.

LM: But mom, they ARE dumb.

KM: I think I just need to leave the room now.

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May 15, 2009 · 7:34 am

Mom?

Can I take two of your knitting needles and weld them together?

Ummm….no.

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May 11, 2009 · 8:20 am

This kind of cuteness

…should be illegal. Seriously.
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We went to Shepherd’s Harvest yesterday, my annual Mother’s Day splurge. I may have overdone it on Spinner a wee bit with the knits, but seriously, how could I not?

Debbie Bliss garter stitch sweater, Picky Pants, Norwegian Baby hat, and Pebble vest. He was very much adored as we walked around the festival.
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When we got home, I did another photo shoot in his vest and that tam he was meant to be wearing, which was vetoed by the Skeptic since “it doesn’t cover his ears” and it was windy.

The sweater, the vest and tam are all recent additions to the collection, finished up this spring. I’ll get my details up in Ravelry later, but my thoughts for now….

Debbie Bliss garter stitch sweater: I think I’m pretty much close to gauge (I should check) but it is HUGE. I knit the 3-6 month size, took six stitches off the length of the sleeve and and the sleeves are still way too long. They are designed to be rolled up but still….
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The Pebble vest? Knit one now, that’s all I need to say about that. I used Mission Falls cotton.
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The tam was from a ball of Rowan Calmer I’ve had sitting around. I used Ann Budd’s pattern book to figure it out. Could e a bit longer and I should block it, although I do like how it’s sort of puffy right now.
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Oh, and the purchases? Since we now have a gajillion $$$ in medical bills, I kept it to a minimum.

Susan Hensel had some killer batts, and she had a build your own batt station set up. I bought the black one, the blue one I put together myself. What an awesome idea!
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From Winterwind and Crosby Hill I bought 8 ounces of CMV roving, a bag of mohair locks (I’m determined to figure them out) and two CMN/mohair batts.
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Bottom line, a great Mother’s Day!

Oh, and readers? Lastly I just want to say thanks again for sticking around…your kind words have meant more than you know!

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May 7, 2009 · 10:34 pm

The Difference the Sun Can Make

We had the kind of afternoon today that you always wish for as a mother. Perfect, sunny weather, a blanket spread in the backyard. lunch, and three happy boys all playing, eating and laughing together. We needed that, badly.

We had one other incident last week that had me laughing in the emergency room last Thursday night at around one in the morning. The laughing? Because I honestly thought that nothing else could go wrong or be hard, that after dropping a boatload of money on Knittykid’s teeth and having to put him under general anesthesia, losing my father-in-law, having the Skeptic gone all the time either at the farm with his mom or at work, dealing with two constantly sick little ones and one very angry six year old, losing Gracie…what else could possibly go wrong? (And that list is just the big stuff. )

Little Man’s broken elbow*, that’s what. And when the doctor told me we would need to stay the night and he would most likely need to go into surgery to have pins put in his elbow in the morning, all I could do was sit there and laugh at the ridiculousness of life sometimes. That kind of tired, hurting laugh, the kind that comes up because you just can’t cry about anything anymore. So you sit there in the ER, watching Animal Planet with your son (who thinks it’s all very cool) and you just laugh, while you worry about surgery and if there is enough pumped milk stashed in the freezer for Spinner and wonder how in the heck you’ll pay for it all.

Blanket

So the sun and the blanket and the lunch outside today were so good. Good in a way that reminded me we will be alright, that the sun and the warmth does come back and so do the smiles and laughter. Because when you eat soup on a blanket in your sunny backyard, watching your baby try to stand up, your three year old try to hit a baseball and your six year old make fairy food out of dandelions, all is somehow right with the world again.

*Unfortunately, it’s not a very exciting story. He was running around the backyard and he tripped on his pants and landed funny. I thought of making up some funny stories we could tell people, like he was climbing on the roof of our house and tried to sky dive into the maple tree, but realized he might actually try it so I decided not to bring it up.

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April 28, 2009 · 9:52 pm

Just when I thought it might get easier…

…it didn’t.

Last night we had to say farewell to our beloved greyhound, Gracie.

Some of you might remember my ramblings about her chronic tummy troubles. This winter she started having some troubles again, and once again we began the usual bland-diet-meds-look-for-a-new-food routine that usually got her back on track. But this time it was not to be.

She had been rapidly losing weight this past month. We thought we’d figured it all out with a venison-potato combination, but last Thursday she ate her last real meal and Friday night we had her in the emergency room. We brought her home Saturday morning with the diagnosis of “probably cancer” and were told if she didn’t eat we’d need to be making a decision. The worst words you can ever hear about a pet…

We made a last ditch effort over the weekend, offering all her favorite foods of which she’d nibble a bit here and there but on Monday morning we knew she was ready to go. The boys and I said our goodbyes and the Skeptic took her in to the vet. The Skeptic and Little Man went out to the family farm tonight to bury her. She was nearly twelve years old, old forĀ  greyhound.

Gracie was a rescue hound, adopted after she was retired from racing. She obviously had a pretty traumatic life up until we got her and it took years for her to come out of her shell. But she did and we had so many good times with her. Long walks, romps around the farm, running around the backyard, scratches behind the ears. She was a shy, sweet, patient and loving dog with just a bit of “yes I know I’m beautiful” in her. People always stopped to comment on her when we went for walks. Gracious, she was.

We will miss her terribly and I’m really having a tough time with this latest blow. The Skeptic and I were saying last night how 2009 has not been good to us yet. We’re having high hopes that as Spring gets going that hopefully things will be looking up again soon.

Here’s Gracie napping with her friend Bailey (who now resides with my parents). As usual, she has her “would you please stop taking pictures of me” face on. She was a tough one to photograph. Either she was too speedy or annoyed so it was hard to catch her happy face.Gracie

If you are ever considering a dog, please consider a retired racer. They truly are lovely, sweet dogs. We adopted her from GPA-MN. I’m hoping that once the boys are older we can foster some hounds and hopefully have one join our family again. Until then we’ll have the memories of our sweet, sweet girl who is very dearly missed.

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