Christmas Knitting

I finally finished the only true Christmas present that I'm knitting this year. I can't post pictures of it yet, because the intended recipient might happen to peek in on this blog. But I can post pictures of Sarah with her blankie, taken at my house last Wednesday while her mommy too HESI at school (we all kicked butt on that test btw). Here she is being so cute it practically makes your ovaries cramp. These were taken during the 5 minute period I was able to put her down without her waking up and screaming.
Kiddo was with me for almost 4 whole hours on Wednesday and did nothing but scream and cry unless I was holding her. The hazard of babysitting at my house, no swing, no bouncy seats, thank goodness for the rocking chair from bfs grandmas house. It was a real wake up call, really helped push the snooze button on my biological clock. But she's still sweet, and she's still always welcome at my place, along with her two older brothers.
Just ruined my first batch of cookies. I've been baking cookies for years and years and have never ever screwed them up this badly! They look like dark brown lace with a tan blob in the middle. Its gross, needless to say I'm a bit ticked off. Oh well, I'm done trying, I'll give them another shot tomorrow.

Announcing

We have wonderful news here, the arrival of Sarah Elizabeth. She decided that today was a great day for a birthday and all 6lb6ozs of her arrived at 7:06 pm. Approximately 10 minutes after her second log cabin blanket was finished (sorry Dina). I kid you not, this kid knew what she wanted, even though this blanket was supposed to be for another kiddo...but Sarah wanted it so bad that I thought it only fair to give it to her. After all, she waited for it to be finished before she would arrive. Guess the Yarn Harlot was right, babies don't arrive until their knitting is finished.

Here she is looking so cute it hurts, wrapped up in her newest blankie (we may have cheated and wrapped over the hospital blankets, but oh well). I thought her mommy was going to throttle me when i told her that she probably could've had the baby earlier if i had only finished the blanket...but I thought the baby/knitting theory only worked if the knitting was for the baby in question. If anything I was trying to make her jealous that I was knitting for another baby. Didn't work. But she's here now and we're all thrilled, and mommy and daddy are exhausted.

Here I am holding little miss, she fell asleep on me for the picture. Babies seem to find me boring on a cellular level, they always crash when i'm holding them. My own children in the future won't have the decency to do it, I can feel it. It's Murphey's Law, every child but my own fall asleep the minute i pick them up...Oh well. Anyway, off to bed!

9 whole days

I have 9 whole days without the bf in the house, I don't know what I'm going to do with my new found freedom, but I bet that knitting will occupy plenty of my time. The beaded MS is crawling along, we had a quick little visit to the frog pond, and I'm trying new beads that like to jump out of the container. But I'm almost to where I was before I ripped the thing apart, pictures to come. I'm also trying to puzzle out the best way to do felted Christmas stockings for us to use. Since neither of us has stockings of our own that coordinate. I have a beautiful cross stitched one that my grandma made me, but I want to keep that with my mom and dad for a while. His will still be needed at his parents house too, so either we buy some, or I make them. And I would much rather have cute, handmade Christmas stockings than something 200,000 other people can pick up at a store.

Anyway, we went to Universals Island of Adventure and had a blast! It was so different from Disney that I think we were in culture shock. Maybe we'll have to get season passes for this park next year, the question is with Disney, or instead of?

Here we are with Thing 1 and Thing 2 from Cat in the Hat. I'm not normally a Thing 1 or Thing 2 fan, but they were so cute in person that I couldn't resist getting a picture with them.

All in all it was a pretty fun day, even if it did rain for a few minutes that evening. We were originally going to go for another day, but rain possibility was ridiculously high and sure enough it started pouring early and didn't stop. Good thing we decided to go shopping instead...

Finished!

I finished the MS10 while riding home from Orlando yesterday. The bind off took forever, but is very pretty, and it was so exciting to dump it into the bathtub. The pinning was less exciting, but I know it's nessecary, that took about 45 minutes, and I hope it will be ok. I chose not to pin out every single loop of the bind off, it would have taken me 2 hours and more pins than i posess.

This is the shawl unblocked lounging on the floor in the living room.

Here it is taking a good long soak in the bath tub. I follow the wisdom of the yarn harlot on this, its her favorite method and it seems to work well for me too. It looks kind of disgusting in this picture, but it's worth it.

Here it is all pinned out. It took about 45 minutes to pin it out and its still not perfect. But it's close enough for me, I think its beautiful. Renee outdid herself with this, it's gorgeous. And here's a close up of the blocking shawl. I'll get a modeled shot when I unpin it. In the meantime, back to the Halloween shawl

Lace

Though a relative newbie to the world of lace knitting, I find myself hypnotized. The skinny yarn, the impressive results, the relative economy of it. What other project can take one ball of yarn and make a beautiful garment that makes people wonder? Ok...so it sounds like knitting socks too, a little bit. But with lace you get ooohhhs and aaaahhhhs, and with socks you tend to get a lot of people asking why you bother. Or the patronizing nods as you explain the positives of hand knit socks (until you finish a cute pair that the person just has to have).

I find myself particularly drawn to the mystery shawl concept. A person designs a shawl pattern, and delivers it to the knitter in installments. This keeps my interest, and doesn't present me with a huge pattern that I tend to feel lost inside.

This is Mystery Shawl 10 (the desginer's 10th, not mine). So far it's gorgeous in sock weight yarn. I can't wait to be finished and get this blocked so I can wear it. I envision myself wearing this in the evenings when we go on our caribbean cruise in Feb. I can't believe I may actually get to wear something I've knit in public...other than socks that is.

And here is the Halloween Mystery Shawl of 2008. It's been a blast to knit so far, and I'm going to be sad when it's finished. It is my very first beaded project ever, and a great one to learn the technique with. It's like the Yarn Harlot says about color work, each row seems to take longer, but they pile up so fast. The same thing has been happening with the beading, it feels like it takes me so long to knit a row, but it's growing really fast.

And here's a closeup:

I really need to borrow my mothers camera for these closeups, its so hard with a point and shoot to get good clarity. And on this particular section the beading isn't very obvious, but they're there. The second clue kicks the beading up several notches and it begins to get more obvious.

Several lessons have been learned during this project so far:

1. Size 12 steel crochet hooks can be really hard to find, and are the only size that works with size 8/0 beads.

2. Cats in the lap and beading do not go well together

3. The cat seems to know this and only wants to sit in my lap when I'm knitting this shawl.

4. Magnetic chart keepers usually used by cross stitchers are invaluable while knitting lace, much better than 20 post its.

3 Years

Today bf and I have been together for 3 whole years! Its amazing how it seems like forever, but not possibly as long as 3 years all at once.

This is the very first professional picture we had taken. I'm pretty sure this was the picture on our very first Christmas card as a couple.

And here's a picture of us from last January. I like this picture, but my strap hanging down my shoulder really, really bugs me. And it bugged me even more at the time, because the photographer really should've noticed that it was hanging and fixed it... But we won't dwell, because she is quite nice. Its funny to see how much we've changed even in 3 years. People always say how much we change while we grow from babies to children to adults...but we change a lot once we hit adulthood too.

Still waiting for my yarn from Knit Picks, which is unusual. Usually it arrives very quickly, but I'm starting to think it got caught up in mail forwarding by accident. I'm wondering if I remembered to fix the shipping address. I did get my beads for my Halloween mystery shawl, they're Gorgeous! But I'm really afraid of beading, this is my first beaded project. But I think I can find enough info online to get me thru it. Everyone always seems to be afraid at first, but find it simple once they get the hang. So fingers crossed thats the way it really is.

In the meantime, since my yarn is being pokey getting here I started an Adamas in Helen's Lace. I figure maybe mom would like it for Christmas.

Here it is being stubbornly hard to photograph. I have no clue how close I am to being finished,
I'm just kind of knitting until I feel like stopping. Anyway, back to studying.

Found

Good thing I didn't order a new set of DPN's. As it turned out the missing one had only gotten sucked into the vortex that is my purse (bf calls it the black hole). It was wedged in the cash holding area of my wallet...found it today. I have started another pair of socks, blue and white ToFutsies yarn. They're turning out cute so far, I'm past the heel and moving faster than I usually do with DPN's. Very strange.