It's a dilemma...

Do I inundate you with all my knitting projects at the same time, or do I spread it out as blog fodder for the next week...

Well, I guess we'll start at the beginning... I think this is the beginning.

 Heavy sigh. As in, this was a labor of love. As in, I love it so much that I would wear it everyday if I didn't 1. Live in Florida and 2. Get strange looks for being overdressed in the dropoff line at Preschool. Jerks.

Please, try to keep your eyes on the shawl. I understand that my breasts are well, busty. Shawl.
The pattern is called Haruni.  It's my first foray into knitting with laceweight yarn. Wow. It was stressful. But now I feel awesome. I mean, look what I made?!!? With my own two hands!

Also, not a great picture of the shawl, but I like the way I look...you know, kinda blurry.
A big thank you to my six year old daughter who took these and the next couple of entries' pictures. Isn't she awesome!?

Ahem... Where were we?

Oh yes. Blogging.

So, school started awhile ago for us. We've entered our third week and as a bonus, this year Miles is attending a five day a week half day preschool. So, between the hours of 12p and 3p (read: naptime for Lucas AND Libby), my house is silent.  Well, except for the sweet clicking of my knitting needles. Yes. I am liking this.

My husband is kind enough to do the early morning walk to the bus stop. I couldn't love him more for it. I am not to be seen in public before 9am. Trust me.

So, here they go. Off to First and Third Grade. 

They really love riding the bus. I love that they ride the bus. It's a win-win.

 And for the record, I already hate third grade. But I promise that you don't want to get me started. I could really complain all day long. It is making me take a long, hard look at my reasons for not homeschooling... we shall see.

 My girls each picked out skinny jeans to wear to school that first day. I've had to enforce the "please put your dirty clothes in the laundry hamper and not back in your drawer to be worn for 5 days in a row" rule.

 Heh. Skinny Jeans that sag on my children's tiny heinies. Bwahahaha.

 

Ah yes. Welcome back to freedom school.
And this is the part where I confess that Miles's first day picture got taken with my camera phone... stay tuned. 

Better School Pictures - Take 3!

A couple of years ago, I started a program which I received a great response from and which I totally enjoyed doing. Better School Pictures!  Since then, several of my photographer friends have started similar programs in their areas. It makes me so happy!!! If you're in the Austin, TX,  or the Tri Cities Washington Area quickly call those ladies!

So! Here are the details, which are only slightly different from last year.


The Better School Picture Day
Saturday, October 2, 2010
9am - 11am at a location TBA in the Longwood/Lake Mary Area.
$25 per child. I spend 5-10 minutes with each of your children. Just time enough to get 3-5 great shots of them. Your pictures will be fully edited and presented in an online gallery. The $25 pays for the sitting and ONE fully edited full-resolution file on a Data DVD with rights to print. If you decide you would like all 3-5 files, the cost is only $50 total (or an additional $25, make sense?)
Email Me now to reserve your spot! Or call! Whatever!

And for illustration purposes...
Here is the picture that was sent home from the ACTUAL SCHOOL PICTURES.

Oh Mah Gosh.

Seriously.

I think you've all seen my daughter.

You have, correct?

She's not usually so demonically possessed.

I promise.

No really.



Here is a picture I took of Abbie around the same time.

Honestly, I don't know how the school photography places manage to screw it up so badly, but there you have it.

And just to prove that I can get pictures like that of your kids too...

I don't know about you, but I'd much rather be sending out those pictures to my relatives...

ONE HALF

Good Gravy.

 I am one very lucky mama.

 I've had the lovely opportunity to have this precious little girl in my life everyday for the last 6 months.

 Her smile lights up my every moment.

 And despite those cheeks, she's a tiny peanut. A mere 12 pounds 9.5 ounces at 6 months. But since that's pretty standard fare for our family, we're not concerned.

 She crawls. Really. She eats solids. And despite what the above picture looks like, she does not yet have any teeth.

 But she's working on them. She absolutely adores her big sisters. And I believe the feeling is mutual.

 We really just can't get enough of her.

 It's okay to admit you want to steal her. So long as you don't ACTUALLY steal her.

Instead maybe just blow her some kisses.

Coming Soon to a Blog Near You

1. Better School Picture Day - Take 3 is coming!
2. Holy Crap my baby is 6 months old!
3. Holy Crap I have 3 kids in school!
3. Knitting Projects Galore!
4. PFMP Randomness!

And because no blog posts should go by without pictures.

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!

Congratulations to Jessica! Either you, or your daughter(s) has won yourself a sweet pair of fingerless mitts!

Meanwhile.

As I'm desperately trying to get all caught up over here, check out what you've been missing...

My baby thinks she can crawl. She can't... at least not today. Ask me again tomorrow.

And Finally:

The last project that I finished while on our 2700 mile trip (holy crap!) was this pair of socks.  FOR ME.

 Yes, it's a lovely blurry image.

And actually, I don't really like them. The yarn was too splitty. I've found a different method of construction for the toe that I enjoy more. I don't really care for the patterning on the foot.  But I love the ankle height. I love the colors. I love that I learned three new techniques. Learning new techniques is what keeps me knitting. There is always something new to learn, and more than one or two or even 10 ways to accomplish the same basic look.  It's a blast!

Knitting Giveaway!

CLOSED! Thanks everyone who entered!

(Sorry! I know many of you saw this earlier this week... Oops!)

Anna also feels the need to complain that I never knit for her.
She requested some hand warmers, you know in case her fingers got frozen in this Arctic Wasteland that is Florida. Don't ask, I have no idea.

 These were SO easy that I'm offering to make another pair!

If you'd like to win a sweet little pair of handwarmers (either adult or child), leave a comment below. I'll pull a name next Monday!

Tea Leaves

Not the leaves, the Sweater.

Abbie had previously been complaining that I never knit anything for her.
Fine!

 A short sleeved cardi it is! I'm sure it would look tons cuter if she wasn't wearing horribly awful clashing colors with it, but whatever.  I finished this right before our trip, so it's been waiting to be blogged about for quite some time!

 I adore the ruching!

One of these days, I'll work up the guts to knit myself a sweater. Maybe.

NYC Day 3

Fortunately for all of you, we only spent 3 days in NYC. I'm not sure I could have kept up our pace any longer anyway.

We started out the day at the Natural History Museum. Now THAT is a museum I could go back to over and over. The whole time we were there, I kept saying, "Oh man, the kids would LOVE this place!"

After we left there, we walked over to the best lunch ever. The Shake Shack.
We sat on a park bench, with a nice breeze blowing over us, chowing on the best hamburgers we'd had in a VERY long time. We sat on that bench for quite some time, just really enjoying each others' company and watching the people walking by. That would have to be my very favorite memory from NYC.

From there we walked down Broadway (didn't see any shows), got some more cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery (not as good as Crumbs, but lets be honest, neither can hold a candle to MY homemade cupcakes).

For a couple moments that afternoon, I felt like it wouldn't be so bad to live in NYC. Except for the rent.
We caught the Subway to Times Square. It wasn't actually on our list of things to do, but we'd basically accomplished everything else, so why the heck not?!

Once we got there, however, we realized that we were within walking distance of a very famous store. So we walked the uh... 10 blocks (farther than we originally estimated) to go to B&H Photo Video. It was awesome. They use a conveyor belt system so that you don't have to carry any of your purchases around with you (I'm sure it totally cuts out shoplifting - you don't touch anything you purchase until AFTER you've bought it). It was totally cool and Matt left with a new little toy. He's been having a blast ever since. We can't wait to get his first roll developed!

 It was really weird at times to be walking by these totally famous buildings and not point and laugh at what felt like the absurdity of it all.

And as I mentioned before, this is the closest we got to the Empire State Building. Shame on us. We took this picture and then immediately went and caught the Subway back to Chinatown one last time. We met up with our awesome friends, the Forbes, who came down from Albany to have a delicious Chinese dinner with us.
I have absolutely zero pictures of this event, so it may or may not have happened.

We were fairly well-spent after all of our walking and seeing and buying. So, it was definitely time to head back to get our kids (which we did the next day), but not before buying some delicious bagels. I'm still craving them.

Swift

I'm going to get to our NYC Day 3 post, but first I wanted to show you guys something totally cool.

Let me tell you a little about yarn.

 Yarn comes from the store wound up in a couple of different ways. Very frequently, it comes like above: in a hank. It looks beautiful but it's impossible to knit from. The yarn must first be wound into a ball or a skein or a cake. I know. Nonsensical words.

Well, in order to wind from a hank into a ball, etc you have to have a Yarn Swift, which typically looks something like this and costs between $50-80. I didn't want to spend $50-80 on a swift... and well, how hard could it be?

Except, I'm not at all adept at using tools. But you know who is? My dad. I gave him some basic instructions and within a couple of hours he'd churned this out:

 I know, it doesn't look like much. But the fact that it breaks down so that I can store it out of the way is perfection!

 Now, this is what I'm talking about. So, how does it work?

 Well, you just unwind your hank, and place it on your awesomely made yarn swift and with the use of one of these: (a ball winder).

In no time flat, you've got yourself a cake. Super easy to knit from and also, totally mesmerizing to look at.
Plus, you just saved yourself $50. Which allows you to buy more of this:

Yes, this would be all the yarn I brought back with me from my trip.
Okay, now for some nerdy yarn talk.
The green on the end is a Blue Sky Alpacas Alpaca/Silk Fingering Weight.
Next to it, is an Alpaca Tencel Mix I couldn't keep my hands off of.
The purple is a variegated Laceweight Wool. It's a gorgeous hand-dye... and it's 1300 yards.
The Noro Silk Garden  is next to it. I think this is destined to be a shawl.
The next yarn is so awesome I can almost not bring myself to talk about it. My totally awesome friend, Kami handspun this for me. (There are two other skeins, also). It took her 60 hours. After you spin the yarn, apparently, you have to boil the yarn briefly to "set the twist". When she went to do that, the colors all bled. Apparently, the person who dyed the yarn (it was a custom request) failed to take the proper steps to ensure it wouldn't bleed. Kami sent this one skein, unset, so I could see the beautiful dye job and her fabulous workmanship. Someday, if I want to knit with this yarn, I'll have to set the twist myself (and watch the color bleed.) But in the meantime, I love it.
Finally, on the end is an awesome Spud & Chloe superwash wool intended to make something for one of my children... dunno what yet.

Have I blathered about yarn long enough?
Thank you to my awesome Dad for indulging my requests and building me something so cool! Again!

NYC Day 2

 Day 2 in NYC turned out to be the busiest day EVER. Just keep in mind that we didn't take a cab anywhere... we walked EVERYWHERE except when it was faster to get on the Subway.

 We started the day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was a lot of art. There was a Picasso exhibit that was packed but interesting. There was a LOT we didn't get to see because of exhaustion and time constraints.

 Oh, and because of Libby (she wasn't real happy).

 Also, sculpture is kind of insane. How on earth do they do that?! (Julius Cesar).

 Matt would have liked to have spent more time there, but truthfully I think you'd have to spend weeks there to get the full idea of the massive amount of art they have in their collections.

From there, we left the Met and bought ourselves a sweet hot dog from a street vendor (classy!) and then we walked ACROSS Central Park. It's a really big park. Painfully so. We did all this to enjoy one of these:

What's that? We failed to take a picture before we devoured THREE huge cupcakes? Judge me.
We hopped on the Subway and ended up in Chinatown. Then we remembered that we didn't really want to be in Chinatown. So we got BACK on the Subway and rode it to Ground Zero.
I wish I could explain to you the feeling that exists there. It's as if the rest of NYC is bustling right along and it's loud and noisy and dirty... and when we walked by Ground Zero (which is really all you can do right now... there's not much to see. Hence, no pictures.) I felt a distinct calm. I was moved to tears.

From Ground Zero, it's just a couple quick blocks to the Brooklyn Bridge, which we decided to walk over (since we were staying in Brooklyn with Matt's cousin and her family).

 Really cool! Wonderful views of the city. Breezy.

That very well may have been my favorite part of the day. It was the closest we came to seeing The Statue of Liberty (shameful!). But it was fun. Highly recommend it!

 As always, Libby was a dreamboat.

And yes, those are my feet. They were FILTHY by the end of the day. And blistered. I'm really unsure how far we walked, but I have no doubt that I got my 10,000 steps. Time for a pedicure.