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A Knitting Tale

Posted on September 6, 2008 9:36 pm by TheAngelForever

Ooops! I am late blogging again. Not to worry, I have not been sitting around on my head, no I leave that to my kids!

Please note, no toddler was hurt in the taking of that photo. JSL is strange and actually asks us to flip him upside down. If we do not understand this he will bend over and put his head down and bark at us to grant his wish.

Silly me, I decided to work on a hobby that I have been putting on the back burner recently. Of course I am talking about knitting. With both boys home for almost three weeks before kindergarten started, birthday party preparations (including building Mount Dinocake), time with family, a newly walking 15 month old, and of course reading Breaking Dawn – knitting was put on hiatus.

That is not to say that no knitting has been going on. After my summer bloggy giveaway I immediately set to work to make two M&M cloths for my winner. Since she had two children I made one for each in their favorite color to include in my package. This is what I sent to her (along with some pens that were not in the photo):

I have also been making DW Cloths here and there. Tonight I took out the collection of them that I have on hand that have not been given as gifts (whether for birthdays, just because, weddings, bridal showers, baby gifts. . . ) or used by us. I have thirteen of them in a wide variety of colors.

Here is another view of the thirteen DW cloths that remain.

Right now I am going to take a break from the DW cloths to knit a scarf for my niece who turns one in a few short weeks. Something I learned last winter was that they do not make scarves for little toddlers and in our neck of the woods, kids need them! I called my sister-in-law up today to find out what colors would be best. After several conference calls from the yarn store we came up with a lilac color.

Slowly I will play catch up on things that have been going on here, but I wanted to update on my knitty goodness.

Categories:
family jsl knitting me moments photos

Knitting up a washcloth storm

Posted on June 26, 2008 10:55 pm by TheAngelForever

For some reason I am ~~obsessed~~ really into making knitted washcloths out of cotton yarn. Over the last week I have made at least eight of them for several different reasons.

You may wonder why I keep making the same thing. Well, they are mindless and I can stock pile them for gifts, to use here, and well who knows. Another reason is I am stuck waiting to try a new project that I am quite excited about (log cabin) I tried to teach myself, but that did not work out too well. So I am being a good girl and patiently waiting for my teacher to come over and help me with that (HINT).

Here are a few of the items that I made. I made the following for my grandmother since she uses cloths to wash dishes.

After this my friend asked me if I could help her to made some for part of a bridal shower gift. I whipped these two out in less than two days. I absolutely fell in love with these colors.

Once those were done I wanted to make some in pastels for a baby gift. As I started the second matching washcloth from the same skein of yarn I notice there was a break in the yarn. Typically this is not an issue. Unfortunately, this was not the case this time. As you can see there is a marked difference in the colors. At the top of the second (on the right) it was bright at the top for the first 15 or so rows, then it gets very muted. When you look at the two cloths together you would think they were not only different colors, but certainly from different skeins of yarn. Not true, they were made from the same Sugar N’ Cream skein of yarn. I was quite upset and did not have time to fix this by making more. I called the company and was less than impressed with them. I still have to e-mail them the photos later on.

You can see the difference on the back too

Upset at yarn variation within same skein

Hopefully this was just a fluke with the yarn. I know I have a used a lot of their cotton in the past (along with Peachs & Cream) and never had a problem before. Here is the baby gift all set.

On that note I feel the need to knit some before bed! If you ever need/want any hand made knitted wash or dish cloths just let me know.

Categories:
knitting me moments

Knitted cupcakes

Posted on May 6, 2008 10:21 pm by TheAngelForever

Oh wait, please pay no attention to the title of this blog post for today. My brain and life have just been inundated by all things cupcake! Thanks to so many test runs of giant cupcakes/birthday party preparations, reading (finally finished New Moon a while back), boys that will not nap/sleep, Twitter, and Mario Kart for the Wii – knitting had a back seat. I was still knitting a little here and there, but nothing like I had been doing.

JL asked me to make something for him. He wanted a back scrubber that he could really hold onto and use in the shower. He liked the DW cloth texture. I am quite addicted to making DW washcloths because it is mindless knitting (quite nice for late night Mommy brain drain sessions). It took me a little over a week to make with all of the other distractions going on. In the end this is what it looked like.

Yes, it looks like a giant scarf of a washcloth, but it should work perfectly. The cotton yarn does an amazing job holding onto water and soap and lathering up. Now for a close up

After finishing this I quickly whipped off a DW cloth for my little niece S who will be here this weekend to celebrate JSL’s first birthday. It has been so strange making cloths in girl colors. Yes, you read that right, I am now on the second one in yet another girl color scheme. I will post photos of them later after they have been given to S, I do not want to ruin the surprise for her Mommy and Daddy that read this (Hi I and M!).

Now I am off to check out where I have seen a pattern for a cupcake cloth. It is only fitting given my new role as cupcake queen.

Categories:
knitting me moments

Early morning doorbells, X-ray boy and a LONG night

Posted on April 15, 2008 1:49 pm by TheAngelForever

Yesterday officially started April break for NHL. He has the entire week off, plus next Monday since it is the start of Passover. The morning began with the doorbell ringing before 8:00. JL looked outside and saw a man with a bright orange helmet on and neon yellow vest. He went to the door. They were a tree service working for the power company taking care of the lines. They wanted permission to go in our yard and possibly use our driveway for their truck with the bucket to reach the trees. I granted them permission to use the yard and told them to let me know if I need to move my car later.

Just after getting JSL down for a nap I hear the truck pull into our neighbors driveway. This sucker was loud and parked right outside my window. I went to the yard to watch and remind them to let me know if they needed me to move my car. A little while later they asked me to move my car so they could haul all of the tree branches up to the front without a problem. I moved the car. Then they told me that they had to come back and climb our trees since they were unable to reach the main problems with the truck. I decided this was a photo opportunity. I went into the attic and took these photos. They are not the best, but were what I was able to get through the window with my zoom.

Just watching made me nervous

Another man in a different tree

At 11:00 we left the house since they were finally up at the other end of the block. They really took a lot off the trees, so hopefully we will not have any problems with the lines as we had feared before this.

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I packed the boys into the car and went to where JL works for NHL to have his adenoid x-ray done. JL met up with us and we told NHL that they were going to take a photo of inside his body. He was very intrigued with this. JSL and I stayed in the hallway while it was done.

Afterward the x-ray technician showed NHL the films (they are all digital now). He was able to see his spinal cord, his skull and most exciting to him – his new big boy teeth. They are underneath his current teeth and ready to come in soon. NHL was beyond thrilled to be shown the films. We then had to wait in the hall to make sure the films were good enough for the radiologist. While we were waiting I took a photo of my three boys.

What you can not see in the photo is that JL is wearing a Sesame Street tie and NHL has on an Elmo sweatshirt. Everyone there thought we had planned it, but we did not. Right after we had the clear we went to visit people in JL’s department and then went to the cafeteria for lunch.

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After we went shopping for a few things the boys and I went home. When we arrived I saw a package on the porch. Inside the package was the malabrigo yarn (Kettle Dyed Pure Merino Wool for those that do not know) from Pony Knit. Oh my goodness this is the most amazing yarn that I have ever felt. Now I just need to figure out a project that is worthy of this fabulous fiber. Thank you so much!

The most amazing yarn I have ever felt

Once inside things started to fall apart some. From this point on JSL was a mess. He would not stop crying, clinging to me and would not eat any solid foods. He only wanted to nurse. Not something you would expect from a baby who was 11 months old yesterday (I can not believe my baby is going to be 1 in less than a month). I chalked it up to major teething pain, being constipated, and possibly an earache. I gave him teething tablets, they did nothing. Finally I decided it was time to do Tylenol per the dentist’s instruction. It hardly helped. JSL nursed a few more times before bed and woke up early on. He was all congested and was a mess. He eventually fell back to sleep in our bed for the night.

The poor little guy was not comfortable. He kept waking up at least every hour and would cry for his binky. There were other times that he wanted to be rocked. Finally at about 4:00 we felt he was overly congested so I used the saline and bulb syringe to clean him out. Let me just say – ICK! That helped him to nurse some and fall back to sleep breathing a lot better.

Today is pretty much the same. He has solved the one problem thanks to drinking lots of milk. At least I know his stomach is better. Now he is just congested, clingy, screaming, crying and all around miserable – please note the sarcasm here. I have a feeling it is teething (3 molars moving in and another tooth about to cut can do that), but worry that it is his ear. If his temperature goes up more and we have another bad night I will have to call the doctor tomorrow. Slight conflict since NHL has his allergy testing tomorrow in the late morning. The mucinex is helping JSL to be less congested and the tylenol seems to be allowing him to nap for the time being in his crib. Hopefully he will be fine and those pesky teeth will move along quickly.

Tonight I have to be to the airport at about midnight to pick up my parents. They were in California for my Cousin M’s wedding. I was so bummed about missing this.

Mazel Tov again M and B on your special day and have a wonderful honeymoon.

Categories:
allergies house jl jsl knitting nhl photos sleep teething

Weekend of baby walking, knitting and Passover preparations

Posted on April 6, 2008 11:15 pm by TheAngelForever

This weekend was very busy for all of us in Angel Land. We had a 50th birthday party for our neighbor Saturday. The party was very nice. We were able to see many of the people who had become strangers over the winter months. NHL went with us, but we brought JSL to stay with Nana and Papa. He went there a sweet baby who could crawl and get into mischief. He was returned to us a determined child who wanted to walk holding on to anything and everything. He learned to walk with a ride on toy. Nana and Papa actually gave him his birthday present early and he is in LOVE with it. Photos to come later (no time to edit now). The nice thing we just keep him up and walking and he gets lots of energy out easily. Unfortunately it means his hands are higher and able to get into more.

I changed my mind, here is a sneak peek. . .

*ACK* – My baby is growing up way too quickly!

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Before the weekend I finished a washcloth that I had promised NHL when he was sick. He asked me to make him something new and selected one that looked like Snoopy (free pattern found here). This is what it looked like when I was finished.

This morning the last rows of another knitting group were revealed. Once again ten rows were given daily and at the end everyone has the same great cloth. This one was from Shirley’s Knitting Knook Group on Yahoo and designed by Melanie of Lil Knit of This & That. This was the first KAL of the new group and is adorable. I believe I saw that Shirley called it Showers in Spring, but not sure what the official name is.

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NHL went out for the morning/afternoon with Nana and Papa. While they did this we went to purchase Passover groceries since it is just around the corner. We spent an obscene amount of money on kosher for Passover products. Although our receipt showed that we saved $30 – I did not smile. The only part I was happy about was our deal on diapers. The store had a deal on big boxes of Pampers for $19.99. I had a P&G $2.00 coupon and the grocery store was doubling P&G coupons today. Thanks to this I was able to get JSL 72 diapers for $16 – not too shabby!

After putting away groceries and eating lunch, we went to pick up NHL and set up my parents new wireless printer. When we came back home I was set to dry the load of laundry that I put in this morning. Little did I know that I would take on another project. While putting things away I noticed that JSL barely has any clothing that actually fits. I hauled out all of the containers of 0-12 month items, put things away and took some out. Then I went and brought the 18-24 month things up. I decided to put all of those things into the wash. Then I made sure that everything that was 24 month and 2T was ready to grab easily for later in the summer. I certainly got a work out going up and down the stairs to the basement more times than I can remember.

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Randoms thoughts:

My baby is going to be one in just over a month – WAHHHHHHH!
Plans need to be made and set for the 1st birthday party that we will be having on Mother’s Day.
Passover is coming way too quickly. . . I am NOT ready for this.
I want to knit tonight, but I think I am too tired. I am working on a back scrubber for JL (he actually requested this).
New Moon is sitting and gathering dust waiting for me to read.
Wednesday I am going to NHL’s Seder at school – it should be so cute!
Thursday JSL goes to the dentist. Although he has been before they are counting this as his first official visit.
NHL is having problems breathing again (he is winded just talking). He will likely need to go to a specialist to figure out the cause and to help us treat it successfully.
Who Needs Sleep by Barenaked Ladies is my theme song – really it is!