Little Knitter on the Prairie

2010-02-25T10:49:00.008-06:00

Finally some time to make a quick post. Haven't had much time to do as much knitting as I'd like but I have managed to work up a few quick items for an upcoming baby shower.

Beanie Hat in Berroco Vintage purchased at Twist.

Baby booties to match.

And I'm still working on the final baby hat.

2008-12-31T16:53:00.002-06:00

I finished these two items up last month but just finally got around to getting some quick pics taken today. The first picture is the modified helmet liner I made to fit my son. He *loves* it. He calls it his "Soldier Hat" and is thrilled that it keeps his ears warm. Poor little guy's ears even get cold in the refrigerated area of the grocery store so this hat is great for when he's out playing on the playground where it's really cold.

Of course he needed some mittens to go with it so I made a quick and easy pair to match. As luck would have it I ran out of yarn when I was 3/4 of the way through the second mitten. That required a quick trip to Twist to pick up another skein. Since they didn't require much at all I'm going to use the remainder of the skein to make another helmet liner to donate. Here are the mittens:

I better get back to cooking. I'm busy preparing some appetizers to take to our annual New Year's Eve party. The Tortilla Roll-ups are chilling in the refrigerator waiting to be sliced. The onions are almost done caramelizing for the onion dip. After I finish that it's time to make the famous No-Bake Cookies. Yum, yum, yum.

Happy New Year Everyone!!

Happy Thanksgiving

2008-11-27T09:28:00.000-06:00

2008-11-13T10:39:00.001-06:00

Came across this today on Ravelry. Love it...

“Les peaux de lièvres” by Tricot Machine

2008-11-02T18:20:00.004-06:00

My little guy was sick last week so I dropped by the store to pick up our necessary supplies: chicken soup, crackers, ginger ale, kleenex. As I came to the end of the soup aisle I spotted a display of mini saltine crackers.

I threw them in the cart and brought them home. These mini saltine crackers are great, especially for little kids. We could never seem to finish up an entire box of the regular size saltines and I would inevitably end up throwing some away after they went stale. These are great for kids--smaller size and WAY less messy. The crackers are about the same size as a Cheez-It cracker so they're much more manageable for them. We'll definitely be keeping these around, even when not sick. They'd be great with chili...

2008-10-24T11:19:00.009-05:00

Here are finally some pictures of the finished Hibiscus for Hope socks. Now I just need to wrap them up and give them to my friend.

Here's the completed Helmet Liner. My son likes it so much I think I'll work on re-sizing the pattern to fit his four year old head and make him one.

Yesterday I went to Twist and purchased all the yarn to make another pumpkin basket. The pattern is 12:01 by Nathania Apple. Last year I made one for my best friend as a birthday gift but I still want one of my own. Cast on last night and am quickly making progress. Of course it helps that it's knit up on size 13s.

2008-10-22T17:17:00.002-05:00

Dear Programming Geniuses,

Please, please, please develop a grocery shopping app like SplashShopper or Handyshopper for Android. I love my G1 but I desperately need a grocery list program for it.

Love,
Amy

2008-10-22T13:16:00.002-05:00

Things are super busy with the business right now. This is the time of year when everyone wants to have outdoor portraits for the fall color. Unfortunately it always seems to be that there is a two week window of time when everyone wants in. The same thing happens in the spring too, usually the third week of May or so.

I'm trying to catch up with everything. I have managed to fall behind in absolutely everything. Scrambling to get work finished and delivered and keep the family clean and fed. Exhausting.

I'm about 1/3-1/2 way done with Christmas shopping which is a plus. I'm hoping to finish all of that before Christmas and just have a nice relaxing holiday season. We'll see, that's always the plan but somehow it never quite works out that well.

In knitting news I don't have anything on the needles at all right now. I finished up the Hibiscus for Hope socks but have been so busy I haven't even managed to get any pictures of them let alone deliver them to the person I made them for. After the socks I knit up a helmet liner to donate to the troops. I am very pleased with how it turned out and am thinking of re-sizing the pattern to fit my little guy. He's quite taken with the project and I think he would enjoy having one of his very own. It would also keep him very warm this winter while he's playing outside at preschool.

That's all for now. I'll be posting pictures from our family trip to an apple orchard soon.

2008-10-07T19:44:00.000-05:00

Ugh. I think I'm getting arthritis in my hands.

2008-09-24T10:02:00.002-05:00

Random things bumping around my brain this morning...

Kelly Ripa is now so thin her breasts have disappeared.

There are no groceries left in my house. Also, no time to do any grocery shopping.

There is a two hour special tonight to watch an idiot magician hang upside down. Ooohhh! Wonder how it will end? I'm guessing by standing back up. Two hours? Really?

Realized I had forgot to put Lipstick Jungle on season pass and then tried to remember the name of the other similar show I tivo-ed last year. Still have no idea what it's called and have decided it must have been cancelled as I haven't heard anything about it. Also must figure out the correct past tense verb form of Tivo. Shut up, it's totally a word.

Finally was able to watch Heroes last night. Wow. Loved it, so glad it's back on. Also glad they ran an hour show to catch us back up as I'd forgotten the smaller subplot issues.

I keep dangling the promise of a day at home doing whatever I want (baking, knitting, etc.) in front of myself if I just get my urgent to-do list done. Then I cruelly add more items to the list. I'm mean to myself.

I would mention how well the second Hibiscus for Hope sock is going but that would only invite trouble and some tragic knitting mistake so I won't mention that at all.

Love going to Twist on Sundays! Yay!

Had a very nice birthday last week. Lunch with girlfriends and then a date night with hubby. Perfect.

Google phone is coming!!!!!!! I ordered mine last night and can't wait to get it in. My business and family calendars are all on Google and it's always a battle to find a phone that I can sync all the information into. Am hoping this phone lives up to the hype and can't wait to get it.

As an aside, I can't recommend Google calendar enough. Makes keeping track of appointments and life in general very easy. We have a calendar for the business and then other calendars for the family, etc. You can share the calendars with others, e-mail events to people. All very cool.

Now back to the cruel to-do list...

"Really?"

2008-09-18T09:21:00.004-05:00

Had to laugh when I saw this. It looks more like they're mocking anyone who doesn't have a cell phone rather than any sincere apology for lack of phone service. I immedately pictured someone standing there telling me that the phone didn't work and then making air-quotes with their hand while they said "Sorry."

2008-09-15T19:00:00.002-05:00

You know it's really rained a lot when the umbrella display at Wal-Mart has been pushed back for a new display of life jackets and inflatable boats. We came across this Friday late afternoon when the area was deluged with rain. Thankfully our home and businesses didn't suffer any flooding or water damage.

2008-09-10T21:26:00.000-05:00

Fall Knitty is up!

2008-09-10T17:06:00.002-05:00

Saturday morning we sat behind our friend at his mother's funeral. Saturday afternoon/evening I had a wedding shoot. It was a stressful, draining day of mourning, working and celebrating. Such contrasts. Both events were out of town so in addition to the emotional aspect of the day there was also the practical scheduling of traveling to and from events, child care, etc. Throw all of that together and throw in a birthday party one of the children had to attend and it was a hectic day to say the least.

I took some knitting with me for the car ride to/from the funeral but spent the time visiting with my husband instead. It was so nice to have a conversation without a child interupting. Of course there is also that minor issue of having made a mistake a few rows back in the sock to deal with but we won't mention that.

This is the first time anyone our age has had a parent pass away. Even today as I was putting dishes away I teared up thinking how incredibly heart breaking it must be to lose your mom, someone who loves you unconditionally like no one else can. The person who has always put herself second and cared for you physically, emotionally and spiritually. Takes the breath right out of me and makes me cry even now. This is definitely a stage of adulthood I'd rather leave out of reach.

Anyway, Sunday we did a bit of church/house hunting. We attended a new church to try out. So far we are very pleased with it and will keep attending and feeling things out to see if it's the one for us. House hunting wasn't as promising but we will keep trudging on. Eventually we're bound to find one that will work for us. Right?

Better get back to work, I'm still trying to catch back up from when we went on vacation. ::sigh::

2008-09-05T09:23:00.002-05:00

The cornbread experiment was remarkably bland. And dry. But, the kids loved it and we did have cornbread with the meal so I guess it was o.k. I'll keep looking for a better cornbread recipe and after I find a regular one I like I might try the ranch experiment again.

We've had a bit of a crazy week around here. One of my husband's best-friend's mother died last weekend so we've been spending time with the family at various gatherings. We've also had the obligatory school and work events so it's made for a lot of running around and serious calendar planning/scrutinizing to orchestrate who is where when with which kids.

In knitting news the end is in sight on my first Hibiscus for Hope sock but I made a mistake a couple rows back in the lace work and am having to rip back to find/fix it. There are literally just a handful of rows until the end so it's highly irritating. The mistake was discovered over Labor Day weekend but I was too tired to deal with it so I threw it back in the knitting basket and cast on a dishcloth. Or two. I've decided that kitchen cotton like the yarn equivalent of a candy bar display at checkout. They cheap, quick and easy. Every time I walk past the display I seem to throw one or two in the cart. I now have a little pile of all the remnants that I'm going to have to whip into something one of these days.

Well I better get back to work. The kids are all in school and I have a precious few hours to try to get the house back to some semblance of clean. Item one on agenda is to dig through the paperwork on my desk and see if there is still a wood surface somewhere below...

2008-09-03T19:24:00.002-05:00

Brilliant new recipe or tragic substitution mistake? It's in the oven baking so time will tell. I've had Ham & Beans simmering in the crockpot all day and had planned on having cornbread on the side with it. Sadly I discovered we were out of milk so I made an emergency substitution of ranch dressing and a little thinned mayo. Definitely not heart healthy but we'll see how it turns out...

2008-08-28T11:15:00.003-05:00

"What have you been eating?"

"Nothing."

2008-08-28T09:49:00.007-05:00

The weekend stretches out before me with nothing but possibilities. For the first time all summer I have a weekend that is completely mine and I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to it. My problem right now is narrowing down my list of possibilities into something a little more realistic.

I desperately need to paint my bedroom and a long weekend is a perfect time for this but I'm leaning towards putting this on the back burner as it it's a little more work than I'd like to do. I'm thinking more along the lines of relaxing and fun, not tired and messy. Not to mention I need to pick out paint colors which stresses me out just to think about.

Our pool will be closed for the season after Monday so I'm sure we'll go up there for the kids to fit in one (or two or three) last swims. Then we'll be helping with all the details that go along with closing for the season such as putting things in storage, taking things down, cleaning etc.

We've talked of going to the farmer's market and maybe even hitting the drive-in too. I'm sure there will be a barbecue thrown in somewhere as well.

Knitting will definitely be on the agenda as the Hibiscus for Hope socks are coming along rather nicely. The end is in sight for the first sock and then I'll be back to square one on the second.

I think I'll start on a little quilt too. My youngest daughter has a beloved quilt that she can't part with. I made it (as well as a matching dust ruffle, diaper stacker and bumper pads) for her before she was born. She slept under it every night and quickly become positively attached to it. It even has a name, Night-Night. Sadly, Night-Night resembles little of what it originally looked like. After six years of love it is practically in shreds. The binding has torn off, one of the borders has come off and it is rapidly deteriorating. We've had many discussions of needing to put Night-Night in a special box to keep since it's reached such a poor state. I was really worried about taking it with us on our recent vacation for fear that it would either become lost or accidentally thrown in with the laundry at the hotel. Thankfully neither happened.

Compromise has been reached and we will not put Night-Night away until I have made a replacement. My sweet girl and I went to several quilt stores until we settled on the perfect new fabrics.

She chose the pink fabric and then we added the stripes to bring in more color. From there we accessorized with fabrics until we had the perfect combination.

I now need to pre-wash and start cutting to make sure I don't need to go purchase more. Then I'll be on to the piecing and quilting. I used to do much more sewing and quilting when the kids were younger so it will be fun to dust off the old sewing machine.

Her Night-Night was a rather simple quilt, just blocks with a couple of borders and I'm sure she'll want something as similar to that as possible which should make for some quick and easy work. We'll see how much I can get done this weekend.

And as an update the two-at-a-time socks are fini! Done, over, finished, the end. Tried them on and they feel wonderful. Wish I would have done something a little more fun with them but they were a good learning project and will look great for the fall with jeans.

2008-08-27T09:43:00.005-05:00

Back in February or March when I was suffering through the illness that would not end my glasses were accidentally stepped on by my husband. I had taken them off to lay/sleep on the couch and had put them under the couch several inches back. You may wonder why on earth I would put my glasses there. I chose the under the couch location after years of experience with my loving children. I cannot tell you how many times I've taken my glasses off while not feeling well or napping only to reach for them when I'm ready to get up and they're gone. Seeing (ha ha!) as I need the glasses to see, it makes it especially difficult to look for them. The children (each and every one of them but especially the darling boy) seem to be fascinated with my glasses and love to try them on, wear them around the house and then take them off when they're bored. And by taking them off I mean removing them from their face and putting them anywhere--their room, the floor, the kitchen, in a toy, etc.

During one bout of morning sickness with one of my pregnancies I realized I could put the glasses under the couch directly below my head. They didn't think to look there and I would hear them if they tried to get them and could stop them. Unfortunately my husband wasn't aware of this plan and has bigger feet than I had taken into account. He walked over to check on me and squished the old glasses. One lens popped out and one eye piece fell off. He managed to fix the lens but they eye piece was a goner. I was sick but I didn't care, they still kind of worked and I could see.

Months went by and I didn't get new glasses because they seemed like a low priority compared to other financial demands. The husband and kids teased me about my goofy glasses but I only wore them at home after/before contacts were taken out/put in so it wasn't a big deal. OK, I did wear them a few times to Sam's really early in the morning but I walked fast and didn't talk to anyone. I'm sure no one noticed. Yeah right.

Anyway, the other night I knocked them off of my nightstand while reaching for my glass of water. I carefully felt around under the night stand trying to find them (all the while convinced I would instead grab an enormous spider since it was the middle of the night and the lights weren't on). Thankfully I didn't grab any creepy-crawlies but did find a lonely eye-piece instead. The glasses were officially D.O.A. and necessitated a trip to the eye doctor yesterday to order new ones.

Thankfully the final tab was about half of what I expected so although it was still a chunk of change it could have been much worse.

Despite the glasses fiasco I have managed to continue working on the Hibiscus for Hope socks. The heel has been turned and I'm working my way up the ankle. I somehow managed to mess up a row which required ripping/re-knitting about three times but I finally located the error and am again making forward progress.

The actual color is a bit more subdued than the photograph above but I was too lazy to try to fix it in Photoshop.

You can see that my son didn't let my knitting picture taking to interfere with his important race car driving.

2008-08-24T14:48:00.004-05:00

School has started at our house and returned us to our much needed normal routine. During the summer break we go through the busiest, craziest time of the year at our house. Between all of the kids summer activities (swim team, synchronized swimming, gymnastics, t-ball, annoying each other and destroying the house) and the increased business load we go from being a well-oiled machine to a sputtering mess. We manage to keep up the basics of clean clothes and dishes but regular meal planning always seems to slip through the cracks. Now that summer is over I'm thrilled to be getting back into the old routine.

We actually did start to work on our meal planning before school started as we noticed just how much we were relying on fast food (sadly way too much). Not only is it obviously not good for you it adds up really quickly. In our never-ending quest to save money we decided to get back to eating at home.

Planning ahead is the key to the entire operation. I plan a "Menu" for 8-10 dinner meals. I have tried and true recipes that I incorporate as well as a few new ones for each Menu. I utilize my crock-pot on days when I'm working so I won't come home exhausted and bail on dinner for convenient drive-thru junk.

The other appliance I love that saves time is my steamer. I buy lots of frozen veggies and can put those in the steamer and 20 minutes later have perfect, healthy side dishes. Surprisingly the kids love it too so we're all happy about it (I suspect this is because I've done it their whole little lives). It also does a great job steaming rice as well. I'm on my second steamer as I used my first one so much it eventually died. Although not identical this is very similar and the same brand as my steamer.

Lunches are either leftovers or regular standbys like sandwiches. Sadly the kiddos are doing nothing but increasing their dinner consumption rate which radically depletes any leftover reserves (I'm sure this part of the algebraic equation which ultimately equals the fact that they are outgrowing all of their clothes. ::sigh::). When we're out of leftovers we fall back on good old standbys like sandwiches, salads and pantry raids. We've invented some interesting meals out of the pantry in the past. And there's always a feeling of triumph when we buck up and eat lunch at home instead of forking over $5-$20 on lunch at McDriveThru. During the school year the kids take a packed lunch to school most days.

Breakfasts need to be quick because I'm NOT a morning person. Frozen waffles, cereal, fruit, oatmeal, banana bread, muffins, scrambled eggs are all morning options. I will bake the banana bread and muffins the night before so they'll be ready to go the next morning (again, NOT a morning person. Did I mention I pack their lunches before bed too?).

I rarely buy convenience foods and make every attempt to cook as much as possible from scratch. Not only does it tastes better it is also way cheaper. That being said I confess there are certain items that I do fall back on regularly like pie crust, pre-trimmed chicken breasts and frozen waffles. Some of these things are either cheaper to buy pre-made like the waffles. Others don't cost much more than making them from scratch and save me time so that's a no-brainer. And finally some of them I buy purely to make my life easier and because I'm prone to bouts of self-indulgence.

I'm happy to say that this weekend we ate every single meal at home. Don't get me wrong, I love going out to restaurants as much as the next person but it's a small victory to stay ahead of the game financially by not having to spend a dime all weekend. Friday night I made one of my husbands favorite dinners, Garlic Beef Enchiladas (go ahead, click it it's a link. Make it with some Spanish rice on the side and make your house smell yummy with garlicky goodness). Yesterday morning we had a brunch of scrambled eggs, toast & bacon. Last night we had barbecued burgers, dogs, potato salad. We've munched on leftovers for breakfast and lunch today and will be grilling chicken for dinner tonight.

All of the planning and prep is worth it though. We routinely feed a family of five for $75-$100 a week (and that usually even includes cleaning supplies and toiletries as I do the shopping for everything all at once). It also helps that I have several meals that are very inexpensive to prepare that I rotate through the menu in addition to the more expensive meals.

So there you have it. I challenge everyone to eat at home more. It makes your home smell yummy, saves you money, let's you flex some creative muscle in the kitchen, let's you bond with the kiddos while nourishing their little bodies and also thumb your nose at Big McDriveThru. What's not to like?

2008-08-22T09:19:00.002-05:00

Ugh, I'm dragging today. Started feeling a tad icky yesterday and woke up this morning with a lovely sore throat and head cold. Am so tired but have a lot of work I need to finish up. Thankfully it's the home stretch on two orders so I'm hoping I can finish them up today and get them out of my life. Love putting a completely finished file into the file cabinet. It's like permanently crossing it off of a to do list.

Last night I ventured out to Stitch & Bitch at the knit store. I've wanted to go all summer long but have had something come up every single Thursday. Finally had a free night last night so I jumped on it. I was really surprised there were so many people there. I incorrectly assumed that the KIP group was a pretty fair representation of how many knitters would be there. Way off on my part. But it was a really nice night. It was nice to actually meet people in person (Hi Becca!) that I've followed on the net. Important lesson learned, arrive early to get a good seat, they nearly ran out of chairs.

It was nice to take everything all in and listen to all the different discussions. I like to hang back and gauge the personalities and crowds and figure out where I fit in (also, am a bit shy and worried I'll blurt our something completely idiotic). It was interesting to see/hear the wide variety of knitting skill, personalities and opinions. Lots of fun, hope I'll be able to make it back for more.

Last night after getting home I did a little browsing on the 'net and came across a blog that really opened my eyes. I couldn't believe how solitary and alone the writer is. She certainly isn't trying to communicate that in her brief posts but from the outside looking in it was painfully obvious to me. It really made me appreciate my little family. I may get completely overwhelmed by all the people in my life that need things from me (family, friends, customers, etc.) but I wouldn't trade it for the world. I am truly rich in love and completely grateful for my crazy little life.

Hyrup!

2008-08-19T09:35:00.001-05:00

Hee hee! Came across this and it made me laugh. I'll be singing it in my head every time I make pancakes...

2008-08-19T09:06:00.008-05:00

I felt bad for the poor two-at-a-time socks which have been a bit neglected over my excitement for the Hibiscus for Hope socks. I haven't posted any photos of their current state so I thought I should. I need to get out my tape measure and check because I'm awfully close to the decreases for the toes. The end is in sight! It drives me crazy to have more than one project at a time going on so I might have to finish these up real quick and then get back to the Hibiscus. We'll see...

2008-08-17T14:56:00.007-05:00

There is a commercial that we quote more than any other movie line in our house (and let me tell you, we quote movies A LOT). My husband and I ask this when we see the other one surfing the web/goofing off online:

"A zillion dollars worth of technology and what are you doing?"

To which the other always replies:

"Browsing."

Love Dennis Leary, here's the original commercial here.

In my defense I can't do any other major computer work as I'm burning several DVDs so I thought I'd do a quick update (with pictures!) of my Hibiscus for Hope socks.

Getting ready to start working on the heel, the pattern is going great!

2008-08-17T11:18:00.002-05:00

Am obsessed with this, want to knit it soooo bad....

http://theraineysisters.com/?p=762

::sigh:: beautiful.

2008-08-15T21:32:00.012-05:00

I took some pictures of the yarn I chose for my Hibiscus for Hope socks before I left for vacation but didn't have time to upload the images to the blog. Here they are...

This is Panda Silk yarn which is great to work with, very soft! I picked it up at Twist. Not sure of the exact colorway but it is obviously in lovely shades of pinks. I'm planning on giving these socks to a breast cancer survivor and felt that pink was perhaps the obvious choice but I'm going with it anyway.

Here is the beginning of the first sock. I took these photos on Friday, August 8th and am happy to say that I made quite a bit of progress over vacation. I'll have to take more photos to update the current stage of the sock.

Here are some photos of my first "design." I took copious notes but need to make another one up to make sure that everything is correct. I'm still toying with names for the hat. I made it out of a cheap acrylic to try out but will buy some pretty yarn to make a proper hat after I make sure the pattern has all the kinks out of it.

As you can see it has a ruffled brim which leads into a vine lace pattern and then finishes in stockinette decreases.

And finally some pictures of my little boy. He went to the barber with his dad and walked in rockin' a new 'do while I was finishing up my little knitting photo shoot. The barber sprayed in some color streaks which the little man thought was awesome. Of course I had to get a few pics since I already had the camera in hand.

He "took mom's picture" with his toy while I was taking his.

I'm sure he'd love it if I'd fix his hair this way every day...

2008-08-14T10:03:00.000-05:00

2008-08-13T10:12:00.001-05:00

2008-08-12T11:10:00.000-05:00

2008-08-08T10:28:00.002-05:00

I have decided that making knitting decisions while drinking a rum and coke may not always be the best decision. I am such a weenie that even a small rum and coke (seriously, just one and it was small) relaxes my brain to such a state that the thoughts just don't run all the way down their respective paths.

[edited to clarify the adult beverage was consumed in the evening while choosing the pattern not before/while driving around town the next day to purchase knitting needles and yarn. Evidently I really am an honorary blond as the following failure to think played out over the next day as well...]

I decided to make the lovely Hibiscus socks and noticed that the pattern is written so that they are knit on two circular needles. Which I've never done. Never fear! March on! I saw the sock on Yarn Harlot's site and thought they would be great vacation knitting. Cute, not too bulky and a perfect little gift for a friend who is battling breast cancer. If I start them now I may even finish them to give to her in October. Perfect. I worry a bit that I've never knitted on two circulars but troop on. I sigh over the fact that I seem to constantly be buying new needles but buck up and buy them. I go home and diligently watch the magic cast on (and succeed! Love the magic!!) and the special increases (God bless Cat Bordhi and her YouTube videos). Everything goes well and I get all the way through the cast-on and increases to the regular stockinette. I wanted to be at that point while I still had computer access to hold my hand through everything.

Then I glance back at Yarn Harlot's site. And notice. Hers are on DPNs. I sigh and think, "Wish I were smart enough to convert the pattern to DPNs." Then this morning after I wake up in bed I realize just how easy this would have been to make on DPNs. It's not advanced trigonometry, just a little division of the number of stitches on Needle 1 & 2 to spread out of three or four DPNs. D'oh.

Anyway! The first sock is on it's way and I'm enjoying working with the two circulars, which are just as easy to deal with as the DPNs and a little more preferable to the magic loop for me I think.

Back to vacation preparations....

2008-08-07T17:59:00.002-05:00

I saw the new issue of Interweave Knits at Twist this afternoon and was bummed I hadn't received mine yet. Was thrilled it was waiting in the mail when I got home after errands. Yay!

I picked up some yarn for the Hibiscus socks as well as the necessary needles. (As an aside, how is it that out of my enormous collection of knitting needles I never have the right size/length? I mean really, I have a complete set of interchangeable needles as well as a huge assortment of straights and DPNs and still end up always buying needles...)

Pictures to come eventually, now I'm off to my fresh Interweave Knits...

2008-08-07T08:17:00.003-05:00

Grrrr.....

Just saw a Macy's commercial with at least two different things I would have gone straight to the store to buy except for that pesky little detail--we don't have a Macy's here anymore.

I still remember going to the Macy's store downtown with my mother. I was just a little, little girl but I remember how exciting it was to go down the short little escalators and park in the winding parking garage.

If only it was still there I'd have a new stock pot and luggage today....

2008-08-06T21:27:00.002-05:00

Whew! What a weekend. Multiple weddings and a trip out of state for a training seminar. Feels like there really wasn't a weekend at all. I have another couple of weddings this weekend and then we fly out of town bright and early Sunday morning for a much, much needed family vacation. Truth be told I think I've already slowly begun to check out of things and mentally go on vacation. Instead of doing more drudgery work at the studio today I instead found new fonts, designed some business cards and played around with our logo. I'm really not behind at work but I had hoped to get even farther ahead of things before we left.

I'm going to run by Twist tomorrow to look for some yarn for vacation knitting. I'm hoping I receive my Hibiscus pattern in time to take with me on the trip. If it doesn't arrive in time I'm sure I can find something else. I was a little apprehensive when I read that it was a toe up sock until I realized that I've done a toe up item with the Mary Jane slippers I made earlier this year.

I tried looking around a little bit online to see if I could find any fun yarn stores to hit on our trip but didn't find much of anything. I'm now wishing I had bookmarked the website that had all of the yarn shops nationwide on it. Oh well, think I'll pop over to Ravelry and see what I can find there.

Also wondering about the entire Twitter thing. I love reading the little blurbs from people but I don't know if it's for me. Might have to try it out though as it seems whenever I have a thought for a blog entry I'm not near my computer. Might be the best way to actually get a little fresh content on this blog. What's holding me back now is trying to figure out what the heck my Twitter name should be. Most other clever blog writers have short cute blog names, not so with me. Obviously should have rethought that one...

Should be fun running a bajillion errands to prepare for the trip tomorrow.

Am now trying to convince husband to run someplace for a late night snack. Must have chocolate.

Squee!! My Hibiscus pattern just popped up on my e-mail!! Off for sock yarn tomorrow!!!!!

2008-07-21T13:27:00.002-05:00

Lately I've noticed that this blog has become a bit of an emotional dumping ground for me. That's not what I set out when I started the blog so I've come to the realization that I need to make some changes. Perhaps I need to invest in a nice little paper journal or start another "anonymous" blog to write things down in. I don't like the tone I've set lately so I'm going to work on that.

One of the best pieces of advice I've ever been given was from my pastor when my husband and I were going through our pre-marital counseling. He told us when we were having trouble in our relationship it would often be from a critical standpoint of what the other person was doing wrong. You can stand there and tick off item after item of exactly what they're doing wrong and exactly what they need to do to change. His advice was that if you ever found yourself in that mindset it usually was best to stop and look inward and try to work on yourself. Now short of the obviously exclusions (drinking/abuse/etc.) I think he pretty much hit the nail on the head.

To that end I'm going to make a conscious effort to work on myself. I often find myself frustrated with others (and who doesn't?) but I need to stop and quit worrying about everyone else and worry about myself. I need to focus on the areas I want to change/improve/grow in and get to work. I certainly can't change anyone else but I absolutely can strive to live the best life possible. I know from previous experience when I do this it absolutely works for me.

Time after time God has shown me that my plans are certainly not always His plans (thank heavens!). I guess I'm still not very comfortable with change and uncertainty but I'm going to quit worrying and start working. (My new mantra: Your will not mine, Your will not mine, Your will not mine)

So, will we have sugar-coated, cheery posts every day? I *don't* think so. So not me. I definitely have a darker sense of humor that may not always convey itself properly in the written word, but I'll never be bubble-gum.

Although this is a knitting blog I don't foresee much in the way of knitting anytime soon. I'm working on existing projects (the baby hat I'm "designing" and the never-ending two at a time socks) as I can and trying to stay on top of everything else in life. I have no idea how all the other knitters in the world can manage to work full-time and still crank out the phenomenal amount of knitting that they do. (Do they not do laundry, cook or clean? I'm trying cover the basics and I still don't have time to knit like they do. Seriously? I'm not judging, just a little jealous.)

And now looking back over yet another wordy post I realize that I should have entitled this blog "Verbose Knitter on the Prairie". Much more appropriate.

2008-07-08T10:42:00.002-05:00

I think the only person who knows this blog exists that I know personally is my husband. And that's fine by me. I enjoy having a place where I can write out some of my feelings and not feel completely raw and exposed to friends and family.

I've noticed over the last six months or so some shifts and changes in some of my relationships with friends. One could surmise that the tides of life are just naturally pulling us apart but I feel like I'm standing on the beach in the same place I've always been and everyone is swimming away from me as fast as they can. It's a hard place to be in when you feel like people are changing and don't have the time to fit you into their life anymore. Worse when they don't seem to notice. Sad when even the kids notice.

I'm not one to really open myself up to others, I like keeping things close to the vest but I'm realizing that I need to open up a bit more and broaden my circle of friends. We've been looking for a new church as well so this just adds to the feeling of isolation. Part of the problem with opening up to others is that I find myself to be such a mish-mash and don't really feel like I belong with any one group of people. I'm politically conservative but artistic and love the arts. I'm a born-again Christian who struggles not to swear in front of the kids. I'm a business-owner but have kids who have never been in day-care and are always cared for by parents who juggle their schedules to make it happen. I'm middle-class with friends above and below me socio-economically. I don't feel like I wholly belong to any one particular group as I violate part of what makes them them.

Perhaps a person more mature than myself would rip the band-aid off and address the situation face-on. I wish that I could but honestly am so hurt I just don't want to even deal with it for fear of more hurt.

For the last year I've felt a bit like a butterfly looking around to find someone else with similar colors and spots because the ones who matched me have all flown away.

It's time to fly a little farther and step outside my comfort zone. Who knows, perhaps I'll find some amazing flowers and butterflies I never knew existed before...

One can hope.

2008-06-27T12:54:00.002-05:00

So busy! Words just can't convey it. I'm treading water with everything going on but the important thing is I haven't sunk below the water. yet. There is just so much to do with the business and family activities that it is hard not to feel completely overwhelmed all of the time.

For my own sanity I have been doing a little bit of knitting. On Tuesdays I can sneak in a little while I'm waiting on children in gymnastics or swimming. There is no knitting at t-ball as it is a full time job just to keep my little boy in the correct location on the field and tell him what to do.

I've been plugging away on the two-at-a-time socks and they're coming along very nicely. Since I've become completely compulsive about counting the stitches each time I finish a row on each sock and I double check that my yarn isn't twisted things are going well. I've been tempted to stop by Twist several times and pick up more yarn but I want to get these finished and then finish/work on other projects I already have ready to go. I'm such a downer, huh?

>>cue Debbie Downer music, "Wah, Wah, Wahhhhh"<<

In addition to the socks I've also been designing a baby hat. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would "design" a pattern. And by design a pattern I mean that I had a picture in my head and went and found similar elements and cut/pasted/adjusted math and made my own pattern.

I wanted a ruffled brim so I found a pattern with a cute ruffle and noted how they decreased to make that happen and did the same thing in my pattern with different weight yarn and a different number of stitches. I then looked and looked for a lace pattern that I liked and finally settled on one that I liked. I'm working my way up the hat and will soon be decreasing. I'm anxious to see it finished and hope that it will actually fit on a real baby's head. Time shall tell.

In completely unrelated news I'm sitting on a secret that is killing me! It's a surprise for tonight and I can't hardly contain my excitement. Wheee!!!

Now I better get back to actual work so that my next post isn't all about how I started sobbing in the middle of the grocery store because I'm too overwhelmed by everything...

2008-06-25T10:14:00.003-05:00

Can't. move. my. neck.

My pillows are conspiring against me. For many, many months now I've slept with two pillows at night very comfortably. Until Monday morning. I woke up very sore and figured I must have slept funny that night. Yesterday morning I woke up and was even more uncomfortable. I decided it was my pillows so I swapped mine for my husband's (he didn't know. it was a scientific analysis. totally was.) This morning I can't turn my head from side to side and am oh so sore. Of course this is also the day I have several photo shoots and will have my heavy camera around my neck as well. ::sigh:: We're going to flip the mattress and try new pillows. Hopefully that will work.

Until then I'm popping ibuprofen and counting down the hours until I'm home tonight and can have a martini...

Hee Hee

2008-06-20T14:36:00.002-05:00

The other day my oldest daughter was putting some fish fillets in the oven for lunch for her, her brother and sister. My little four year old boy ran over and asked her what she was cooking. "Fish Fillets," she said. He then ran to the living room and said, "Daddy! We're having Fish Legs for lunch!"

The new name has caught on and we now only refer to them as Fish Legs...

2008-06-19T10:47:00.002-05:00

This morning I was working on my computer and decided to play some music. I scrolled through all the cds in the cd player and decided to listen to one I hadn't played in years. I was happily working away and humming along when I was completely caught off guard. One of the last songs to play was a song we had at our wedding 13 years ago.

Hearing the lyrics today brought tears to my eyes as I look back over all we've been through since that day in May when we stood before our friends, family and God and promised to love each other for better or worse. We've held each other while we've grieved over the death of dear grandparents. We've cried with joy over the birth of our three children. We've slammed doors and yelled at each other and we've laughed until we've cried. I couldn't have predicted all we've been through or where we have yet to go but I'm so glad to have that wonderful man hold my hand as we walk through life.

The song isn't well known but I loved the lyrics then and I still do now...

There's No Remedy for Love
Susan Ashton

There's no remedy for love
Nothing can change the way I feel
I'm hopelessly head over heels
For worse or for better
There's no remedy for love
But I'd have it no other way
The symptoms are clear, I'm yours
For now and forever
There's no remedy for love

Caught up in the concept of your kisses
Of the Mr. and the Mrs.
Of the steps our love is taking here

I'm lost in the magic and the mystery
In our own small part of history
Our hearts have started making here

And I know there'll be no cure for me
But what sweet malady

There's no remedy for love
Nothing can change the way I feel
I'm hopelessly head over heels
For worse or for better
There's no remedy for love
But I'd have it no other way
The symptoms are clear, I'm yours
For now and forever
There's no remedy for love
There's no remedy for love

2008-06-18T08:48:00.003-05:00

Wow. It is BUSY around here!

Can't remember the last time I posted and right now I only have 12 minutes to get this post done before I have to leave the house to pick up a kid at the pool. Summer is keeping us really busy. Due to various swimming activities the kids are involved with I have to leave my house SIX times each morning going to and from to drop off/pick up kids. Then each kid is involved in a summer sport. Couple that with regular summer busy days (Father's day, Memorial Day, family birthdays, etc.) and my busiest time of the business year and it's verging on completely over scheduled and overwhelmed.

I am surviving and things aren't going too badly. I was ahead of my work and I'm just starting to slip and fall a tad behind so I see some late nights in my future to get caught back up.

Knitting hasn't been getting much attention so far I'm managing to have one brief knitting session each Tuesday while I'm at kid's sporting events. Usually about the time that I'm in a knitting rhythm family members arrive and I spend the time visiting with them. I'm not ashamed of my knitting, if it were a different knitting project I'd definitely keep it going while I visited. However, these are the socks of doom that I seem to screw up when I'm concentrating on them. I can't imagine how badly I'd mess them up if I tried to work on them and carry on a conversation. I think the reason I keep messing up is that I get going too fast on them. I'm finally making good forward progress on them and ::crossing fingers:: hope to have them finished up by the end of the summer. Normally this wouldn't take so long but with my limited knitting time it's really stretching out how long it will take.

Other cool things I've come across lately:

Birthdays Without Pressure
Several years ago we decided the birthday parties were really much more of a pain than they were enjoyable. We changed our plans and now have family only birthday parties with immediate family and grandparents. Before the family party we always go out to eat at Red Robin (per the kids request) which has become a tradition. Then we go back home for the family party. The focus is family oriented and we have presents, cake & ice-cream and much more relaxed and enjoyable. Each child also gets a little "mini-party". They choose 1 or 2 friends and I take them out for a meal at a restaurant and one fun activity. It's much more enjoyable for everyone involved. I spend slightly less than a regular birthday party but that's not the goal. The kids can actually enjoy the parties because they aren't overwhelmed with too many kids, too many presents, too much noise, etc. This has been a great change for our family and I was surprised to see an entire website devoted to the same subject.

Smugmug
I LOVE Smugmug! I've been wanting a way to share pictures with friends and family that would allow them to easily see the photos (not having to wade through my business website by using passwords to keep my family pics private from my customers), order photos if they wanted but one that also looked beautiful. Smugmug does it all. They have a great set up which is free and you can go in and with some extra work and coding make a beautiful site. I spent a few days making it just like I wanted and I love it now. Unlimited storage, complete customization, it's the best! Check it out.

I better run, time to go back to the pool to pick up a kid!

Happy Summer!

2008-05-20T14:51:00.002-05:00

I've been writing posts in my head for quite some time but I never seem to be able to find the time to actually tap the keys and get them up here in the blog. Business is getting super busy again with wedding season so I'm doing my best to stay on top of things and hopefully even get a little head of the game (a girl can always hope!).

Anyway, a new (probably excessively long) post will be coming soon. Possible subject matter:

-my kids' birthdays
-storm chasers
-ridiculously extravagant kids birthday parties
-personal finance
-the bleeding of my finances from taxes (just kidding government!! :-) <--- see the smiley face?! It's a joke already!)
-knitting (hello, this is a knitting blog, right?)

I'm sure there's more but I'm now in the midst of a hair crisis with my daughter. What to do with her hair for gymnastics? Ponytail, braid or a free-flowing ratty mess? Decisions, decisions...

Phrase #8,643 I never thought I'd say as a parent:

2008-05-06T09:56:00.001-05:00

Your Hot Wheels cars do NOT go in the peanut butter jar!

Peeking In...

2008-05-02T10:20:00.002-05:00

April ended up being an up and down month on the stress roller coaster. I don't have time to post much but wanted to peek back in. I'll be posting some pictures of my little man's big fourth birthday celebration soon. Things have been busy with a little bit of painting around the house, tax junk, book keeping, photo shoots, hungry growing kids and ample time of stewing and fretting over stress and life in general. Thankfully things seem to be slowly improving.

There's no new knitting to show as I had reached a new level of stress that precluded even knitting. I'm trying to play catch-up with everything else and get back into at least a teeny bit of knitting soon. The two-at-a-time socks are still on the needles making sloth-like progress.

Much more to post soon...

Fiesta Chili Beef Update

2008-04-17T10:37:00.003-05:00

I received an e-mail from Campbell's in response to my inquiry on what had happened to the Fiesta Chili Beef.

"Enough! We get it! We made a mistake, OK? Sometimes we just have this inexplicable need to mess with our product line up. We need to be busy so we won't lose our jobs and sometimes that means we have to find things to do. As you can imagine we can only come up with so many combinations of Chicken and Noodle soup and we've exhausted everything with that d@m! soup. We clearly can't redesign our packaging so that's out. A couple of months ago our bosses had a meeting pointing out that we weren't "doing" anything and we had to justify our employment here. We immediately began research studies on the most innocuous thing we could come up with, Fiesta Chili Beef. We spent months doing "research" and then a few more months preparing an elaborate report on why Fiesta Chili Beef was actually costing our company too much to make and how we could save millions of dollars by discontinuing this product from our line. We all got bonuses and went out for beers and high fives over our brilliant strategy to not only stay employed but also receive accolades and bonuses.

Imagine our surprise when we began to be inundated with e-mails from people like you wondering where their precious little Fiesta Chili Beef went. At first we thought we could hide it from our supervisors and no one would know. But the e-mails kept coming--more and more. Server traffic was up and we were finally found out. The outcry from the public was too great and we've had to confess our ill-fated scheme to our supervisors.

I've managed to save my job by personally over seeing the re-introduction of the Fiesta Chili Beef back into our product line and personally apologizing to each and every e-mail that comes in. Bob wasn't so lucky. Shortly after the Fiesta Chili Beef scandal came to light he was over taken by a mob in the Campbell's parking lot. Frank survived but is still undergoing therapy and hopes to be walking with crutches soon. Mark, Neil and Joe were all fired and I'm left to clean up this mess. I've had to take a cut in pay and my car's been repossessed. Christy kicked me out but Mom and Dad said I could stay in their basement until I'm back on my feet again. But only if I bring a case of Fiesta Chili Beef with me.

Happy?! You have your stinking soup back!!!!!!!!!!"

::sigh::

OK, that's not really the e-mail I received but a girl can wish. I received the same tired e-mail that everyone else has received when they write to find out what happened:

Ms, we received your message and appreciate your taking the
time to contact Campbell Soup Company to inquire about our Campbell's
Condensed Fiesta Chili Beef Soup.  Unfortunately, this product is not
currently available.

Tastes and preferences constantly change and there is only so much space
on a supermarket shelf.  Periodically, we look at the sales for our
various products and are forced to make the difficult decision as to which
products stay and which must be replaced.

Inquiries such as yours remind us that sales figures aren't the only
measure of a product's value.  Perhaps one day Campbell's Condensed Fiesta
Chili Beef Soup will make its way back to your grocer's shelf.

Please accept the coupon we have sent to you via the mail with my
apologies for any inconvenience you may have experienced. The coupon can
be redeemed for any product in the Campbell family of brands including V8,
Prego, Pace, and Pepperidge Farm.

Thank you for visiting the Campbell Soup website.

Campbell Soup Web Team
kjm

So that's that. Funny, I don't recall my taste and preference changing. I did come across a recipe that someone claimed tasted just like the Fiesta Chili Beef so I'll give it a try and report back.

Until then, good-bye Fiesta Chili Beef....

Misery loves company

2008-04-16T15:12:00.002-05:00

I've discovered that I'm not the only vendor having problems with these clients. At current count there are at least four other vendors in the same predicament. At least I have someone to commiserate with.

Last night I drowned my sorrows in a chocolate martini and watched the Desperate Housewives of New York. I love that show, what a train wreck. It's fascinating how out of touch some of the people are. I especially love the blond rich-wannabe who made it clear that she would *never* move back to Kansas. Let me make this clear, we *never* want to invite you back. I love how the coasts love to run down the "fly-over" part of this country never noticing that if it wasn't for the hard-working folks here their lives wouldn't be the same. We're the farmers who feed them, the people who build the planes that carry them and the ones who watch them make complete asses of themselves on t.v. If it weren't for us, the viewing audience, you wouldn't be on t.v.

Anyway, didn't mean to turn that into a mini-rant. I do like the show as entertainment. They've done a pretty good job of showing the difference in personality from coast to coast which is interesting. I love how the New York women will just throw down the gauntlet and talk about what's bothering them, confront who has offended them, etc.

The other show I haven't been able to find for a while that I love is "Flip This House." I know they currently have some bastardized version with some non-personality random people but I want to watch the Trademark Properties people. They had another show we found for a while that had a different title since they were in a court battle with A&E tv but that seems to have disappeared too. They were some interesting people and I loved when they'd talk to the owner Richard. He's a very savvy business man and it was always insightful to hear what he was talking about. I love being around business men like him. You can learn more from them and their business experience in a dinner than you could in a semester of a college class. And how can you not like a guy who loves the phrase, "Winner, winner, chicken dinner!"

I better get back to work, I'm turning procrastination into an Olympic sport here. Even the poor knitting is suffering. I worked briefly on the two-at-a-time socks yesterday waiting for kids after school but that's been about it. There was no way I was going to even look at them last night. Given my record of monumental mistakes I've made with them when I'm sober the last thing I was going to do was tempt fate with a chocolate martini. That sounds like the title of an awesome book, "Tempting fate with a Chocolate Martini." Perhaps that will be my autobiography someday. I probably should have named my blog that (I think I secretly want to have the longest blog name ever, hee hee).

Speaking of chocolate I made my husband record this snippet from Saturday Night Live the other day and I now watch it over and over again. Makes me laugh every, single time. Tell me Ashton Kutcher shouldn't have his own show once a week...

Stress

2008-04-15T11:53:00.003-05:00

Stress. Stress. Stress. No other word for it.

This past month hasn't been fun. I keep getting bad news here and there and every time I think it can't get much worse and things should start looking up I get new bad news that drags me down a little more.

I remind myself daily that none of this is health related and thank heavens everyone is healthy and doing fine.

Unfortunately though I am beginning to wonder about just how rotten the economy really is. I've known it has been taking a down turn for quite some time but it has now jumped up and slapped me in the face. In the last two weeks I've had customers simply not pay and violate their contracts with me. I don't want to get into specifics but let me tell you this is intensely frustrating. It would be the equivalent of your boss one day telling you on a whim he decided he wasn't going to pay you for the month. Yes, the whole month. Imagine the financial impact...

I am really frustrated and angry that people have so little regard for others that they are leaving me in a terrible situation. I've had people who have approached me as soon as there is a problem, early on, and I've let them out of their contracts. I'm not heartless and I understand that sometimes life throws you a curve ball. If given enough time I can re-book the event. When folks only give me less than a week notice it is impossible to re-book a date that I have already turned down other business for because I have a contract with them.

Frustration and anger are high, stomach is in knots and I've developed a permanent headache.

Here's to hoping this is the bottom of the bad luck and things can only go up from here. There's some light at the end of the tunnel so I'm going to focus on that until all this passes.

2008-04-12T15:29:00.003-05:00

Just when my pear tree thought it was safe to unfurl her buds for spring we have a freeze warning for tonight. ::sigh::

Another one bites the dust...

2008-04-11T19:08:00.004-05:00

Man. What a rotten week.

All in all it's been a pretty crappy week. Various issues at work and life in general have resulted in an escalating simmer of frustration. But the coup de grace, the final straw, the cherry on top, is my sad discovery that the geniuses at Campbell's have now taken my favorite soup off of the market. Amazing how you can tolerate that big junk that life throws at you but it's the little things that make you truly crazy.

Yes, my friends, the beloved Campbell's Fiesta Chili Beef is no more. For those of you unfamiliar with this soup, allow me to explain. From the time I was a little girl my mother would use this soup to make Chili dogs. This is the single best chili ever. It has a very unique flavor, completely different from a traditional stove-top chili you would make at home. It isn't as tomato-y as regular chili and would probably best be described as the freakishly awesome step child of chili and refried beans. This still doesn't quite capture the true essence, the je ne sais quoi that is Campbell's Fiesta Chili Beef but it is the best I can do. I would even go so far as to say that it has it's own special branch of the Chili family tree. It's related to Chili, but it's really completely unique.

I haven't been able to find it in the stores for several months now and finally had to resort to doing some basic internet sleuthing to figure out what was going on. Much to my dismay I discovered that Campbell's in their infinite wisdom decided that we really do need about thirty different variations of chicken and noodles (and rice! and stars! and wild rice! and noodles with vegetables! and Spongebob shaped noodles!). We evidently need every conceivable incarnation of chicken and starch based soup imaginable so they had to drop the Fiesta Chili Beef to make room for them all.

This is so irritating. Chili Dogs will never be the same. I think we need a letter writing campaign to bring back the Fiesta Chili Beef.

I'll keep checking the soup aisle in hopes that they will bring it back. Until then, R.I.P. Campbell's Fiesta Chili Beef.

2008-04-09T13:39:00.002-05:00

There's an uneasiness in the air. I'm worried about a friend and it's as though there is something askew in her life right now that I can actually feel. It's nothing I can put a finger on, no definitive word or action that points to anything specifically wrong, but it's there. It reminds of when a spring thunderstorm is rolling in and you can actually feel that it's coming in the air. It isn't the change in temperature or the clouds on the horizon but a barely noticeable change in the atmosphere. It is as though you can feel a slight charge of electricity.

That's how I'm feeling now. Something isn't right and I'm worried. She tends to back away from friends when things aren't going well. I've been trying to reach out to her casually without making a big deal about things but that hasn't worked as she's been "busy." I have mixed feelings about it. One one hand I want her to know that I love her and want to be there for her but I also don't want to rush in and invade her space if she just needs time to work things out on her own privately. On the other hand I'm a little hurt that she's backing away and doesn't want my shoulder to cry on. Which just makes me angry with myself for feeling that way, who am I to have hurt feelings because someone else is going through a rough patch in life? How selfish am I?

Is it woman's or mother's intuition? Is it someone so close to your heart that you can personally feel when their's is breaking? There are alarm bells ringing in my head, hurt in my heart and anxiety in my stomach.

The bottom line is I'm hoping I'm terribly wrong and really mis-interpreting things but it sure doesn't feel that way.

My dear friend, I love you and hope everything is ok.

2008-04-08T13:35:00.003-05:00

Two-at-a-time sock status: never-ending.

It is as though I enter some odd time warp every time I pick these things up. I knit on them and knit on them and yet they never seem to see any progress. I'm beginning to wonder if I will ever finish them. This is kind of hard on a monogamous knitter, you know one who just knits one project at a time. I admit it has driven me over the edge and straight into the arms of an easy little project.

I picked up a cute little kit by the Crafty Alien at Twist. My business partner's birthday is coming up and she is a cat fanatic so I think she'll enjoy it. The kit is the Calico Kitty kit and it's super easy and will hopefully be just as cute as the picture in the package when I get done with it. In what seemed like mere minutes compared to my never ending socks I knitted up all the pieces. I now just need to attach the calico spots to the body and do the felting/stuffing/finishing work. My girls love the kit and I'm trying to encourage my oldest to give one a try. I think it would do much to boost her knitting ability and confidence.

In addition to the little bit of knitting I've fit in I've been busy shooting weddings and trying to get my taxes finished. I hate procrastinating but I seem to punish myself by procrastinating on certain things. This time it's taxes. Thankfully I had a good 2/3rds of the work done already, now I'm just trying to wrap up the remaining bit. However, in an exciting twist, I have apparently lost a month and a half of expense receipts. And I hadn't managed to get them scanned before I lost them. I think I know where they are, now I just have to find the file I think they're in.

Back to work, pictures of the Calico Kitty after I get him/her finished up...

PS--Forgot to mention the dream I had the other night. On April fools someone posted that Julia Roberts had joined Ravelry. There is an actual member named JuliaR and it has her picture although you don't know if it is really her or if it is a PR move to promote an upcoming movie. It says that it she has requested a private membership so there isn't anything to see other than her name, picture and a plug for her upcoming knitting themed movie. This obviously found it's way into my subconscious because I had a dream that I actually met her. In the dream we meet at a dinner party somewhere (I know, me at a dinner party with Julia Roberts, ha ha ha ha ha because it's so very likely). Everyone else is asking her about working with George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and all matter of Hollywood drivel. I on the other hand ask her if she's really on Ravelry, what she likes to knit, how long she's been knitting, etc. The funny part was she was much more interested in talking to me about knitting than with everyone else about the Hollywood gossip. Everyone else kept interrupting us because they thought their Hollywood talk was so much more interesting and important than knitting. What a funny dream. It does make me wonder though how many "famous" people are members of Ravelry under ordinary screen names. My husband once told me that Dale Earnhardt Jr. was a member of an online racing video game forum under a different name. He would play against other people online and they never had any idea who he really was at the time. I think he said he eventually told people who he was and it just kind of ruined the fun of it all because then people weren't themselves anymore, they were move caught up in his celebrity.

2008-04-02T14:04:00.002-05:00

The weekend has come and gone. The kick-off to the wedding season was busy but not as overwhelming as I had worried. I can feel the slow progression from slow to busy but so far so good. I'm perhaps even a bit ahead of schedule (which is surely just asking for a monumental crisis that will bring everything to a grinding halt). Never mind, not ahead of schedule at all!

I would post pictures of the two-at-a-time socks but frankly I'm starting to become afraid of them. It's as though the yarn has become self-aware and does not want to be knit into socks. It clearly has a different idea of what item it should be knit into. Despite my intense care and meticulouslessness (ok, that's not really a word at all I'm just trying to show just how d@%! careful I'm being with them) things keep getting screwed up. Not just a little screwed up. Seriously screwed up.

I had made it past the heels and was cruising along in lovely stockinette. I stopped and checked them every single time I came to the separating point and pulled the two socks apart to make sure I hadn't accidentally connected them and make sure I had the correct yarn. I thought things were going well. Until I noticed a little hole. Huh? A hole? Oh yes. A hole. Wait. Two holes. Two holes a good two inches down from where I was. $*#@!!!! I immediately put the socks back into the project bag, zipped it shut and put it back in the knitting basket. Then I had a cocktail and tried to block it out of my mind for two days.

I tried to figure out if I could drop down and fix it but it appeared to be accidental yarn overs. After searching the Internet I didn't find any solution that looked like it would work for me. Perhaps there is one. At this point I don't think I want to know about it. I spent an obscene amount of time to tear back to those rotten stitches to fix it. Two nights ago I finally, FINALLY, got back to that last stitch and fixed it. I then proceeded (carefully!!) to start re-knitting it. Again. This is now the third time I have knit this section of the socks. I am now being super careful to watch how I'm knitting and make sure I'm not accidentally knitting between stitches, doing yarn overs or any other manner of stupid mistakes. I'm compulsively checking the socks to make sure they haven't been knit together, counting my stitches and making sure I'm always knitting with the correct yarn for each sock.

Despite this sock knitting neurosis I managed to drop a stitch last night. These ridiculous size 1 needle stockinette stitches are so freaking tiny I had to buy a new crochet hook today so I can fix them. This problem I can thankfully just drop down and fix without having to tear two socks back by two inches. It is still a little demoralizing. Ok, a lot demoralizing.

I know this two-at-a-time business is suppose to be more efficient and seem faster, I am clearly not there yet. I should probably just have kept going and figured no one would see the holes, but they bothered me too much and I knew it would bother me every time I saw them. The next pair of two-at-a-time socks I'll try on double-points and see if that method is a little easier for me. I don't really think these are hard to do, I just keep messing them up with dumb mistakes. And I don't want to start anything else until they're done. It's making me a bit grumpy.

I'm not sure what my problem is. Obviously this is all the fault of the yarn. It clearly would prefer to be something entirely different, perhaps wrist-warmers or knucks. Which is too bad. This is a battle of wills between the sock yarn and myself. I'm not giving up. They will become socks. I may have a Scarlett O'Hara moment in my front yard one evening vowing, "As God is my witness, this yarn will be knit into these two-at-a-time socks!" I will prevail. I will triumph!

Although I might start sleeping with my door locked. It's scary to think of what the yarn might be plotting for me at night while I'm sleeping...

2008-03-26T09:24:00.002-05:00

January, February and March are traditionally the slow season for the wedding industry. Brides generally prefer to be married when the landscape is full of color instead of dried brown grass and trees. Some brides prefer Spring when the temperatures are mild, the breezes still cool and the landscape is in bloom. Some brides prefer the summer months, especially June, for the grand, old tradition of being a "June Bride." Within the last decade or so it has even become very popular to have a fall wedding and incorporate the colors of the changing leaves into the wedding.

Yet January, February and March are still out of vogue for today's brides and I can't say that I blame them. Random ice and snow storms can wreak havoc on guests (and vendors) making it to the wedding. It's often too cold and dead-looking outside to do any outdoor pictures. The exception to this tends to be the Christmas wedding. These weddings are usually held in the weeks leading up to Christmas or the weekend immediately following Christmas. Churches have up all of their decorations and lights and the brides often wear beautiful fur-trimmed, hooded capes. Relatives and friends are often in town visiting for the holidays and everyone tends to be in a festive mood.

But excluding the Christmas-theme weddings it is a slow time for someone who's primary business is wedding related. This can be challenging financially but mentally is a much needed break. During the heat of wedding season I often shoot two weddings a weekend and have even done three in a weekend. I even once shot three weddings in 36 hours (which I'll never do again!). Most people don't understand why we work ourselves so hard and book so many weddings. The only people I've found who do understand this are my grandparents. You see, they are farmers. They understand that you have to harvest when the crop is ready and the weather is clear. You have to get up early and stay up late to get the harvest in because there could be a storm coming and you need the profit from the crop to carry you through until next season. Although a completely different industry the idea and urgency is the same.

Mentally the break has been wonderful. I am actually caught up with my business which I've never been able to say before. My turnaround time on work has been faster than ever and I've felt much more relaxed. I've managed to spend more time with family, cook more, knit more and blog more. Things that have been on the back burner because there were more pressing matters to deal with have finally received the attention they deserve. It's also allowed me some time for introspection and planning. I've been making connections and discovering solutions to problems. I'm not so tired. I wish I could say my house is sparkling and immaculate, but come on, I have three kids.

Over the last week I've been thinking about some personal issues I'd like to deal with. They've always been there and to be honest most of the time I feel hopeless about dealing with them. I tend to be an all or nothing kind of person so I feel like if I'm going to change a behavior I need to dive in and change everything, anything less was failure. Obviously this is nothing but a set-up for failure. I've been thinking about baby steps. Almost every program for helping yourself (weight, health, finances, cleaning, Bible study) touts the benefit of baby steps. The word has never appealed to me, it sounds as though they are talking down to me (ridiculous, huh?).

Lately though I've been looking at my knitting and connecting it to my everyday life. The day before me is like the start of a new row. If I work little by little, stitch by stitch on the decisions before me I can get through the day. Starting a knitting project would seem impossible if I told myself I had hundreds of thousands of stitches to do and couldn't make any mistakes. If I added a stitch or knitted the pattern incorrectly I'd have to throw the project away and berate myself for my stupidity. Nice, huh? The reality is that the project is big and long but there is reward at the end. I will make mistakes but I can fix them and keep going. Some mistakes will cost more time and frustration than others but they also teach me to be more careful next time and pay better attention. The most important realization for me is that although I don't see the end result of the sweater in the first row or as I'm knitting day by day, stitch by stitch, without the daily work there would be no sweater at the end. It takes the little bits of effort which seem to do nothing at the time but add up over time to a beautiful garment.

These realizations on the daily devotion it takes to do everything worthwhile has been a great connection for me to make. The struggle will be carrying through on it when life gets crazy. I've enjoyed my break and am starting to feel tense again about the approaching wedding season. It's starting to ramp back up again. After several relaxing weekends at home I will have two weddings this weekend and then will be back to working every weekend again. I've learned a lot over the last several years and hope I can continue to learn and grow and incorporate what I've learned into my daily life.

I need to knit the knits, purl the purls, check my gauge and watch the pattern. If I can keep with it the end result will be so worth it.

Goodbye January, February and March. I'll do my best to keep posting...

2008-03-22T19:05:00.010-05:00

Here is the current progress on the two-at-a-time socks. I had planned on making the top portion longer but became concerned about having enough yarn so I went with this length.

I turned the heel on both of them and am now working my way down the foot. It seems to be taking forever but I think a large part of that is because of all the time I spent ripping back and then re-knitting it when I accidentally knit them together.

I may try a slightly different version of the short row heel next time to see if I can eliminate the tiny eyelet holes I got this way. They look pretty and aren't really noticeable but it's always fun to try new techniques. I do wish I had remembered to pick up an extra stitch or two before I joined back in the round on the heel as it would have eliminated/minimized the lovely holes I have now. No biggie, this project is all about learning for me!

Isn't this yarn beautiful?! Last week we attended a funeral in Newton so afterwards I stopped into The Newton Beadery to look at their yarn. I was so excited to see that they carry the Lorna's Laces line of yarns. I've been looking at the Lion & Lamb online as I'd like to make a Clapotis one of these days from it. Since that's currently out of the budget I purchased two skeins of Shepherd Sock in Gold Hill. It's so pretty I can't wait to cast on with it.

I also made a visit to Twist yesterday. I had recently noticed that my current purse was dying a slow, painful death. The straps were tearing both against the body of the bag and also in the middle of the handle. I decided this was obviously the universe telling me that I needed to purchase a new bag big enough to hold basic purse stuff as well as a knitting project so I'd always have my knitting with me. This fits the bill:

I'm still adjusting to the new, bigger bag but so far I'm loving it. I was a little disappointed it didn't have a divider. When I first looked at it I thought it did have a divider but it turned out to be the piece that fits in the bottom of the bag that had slid up the side. In a fit of organization I had recently purchased some clear cosmetic bags and had everything from my purse organized into two of them (one for cosmetics one for pens/office type stuff). Changing purses was a snap. I just tossed the clear bags, my wallet and cell phone (and knitting project! squee!) into the new bag and I was set. Took it out for it's first outing last night at the drive-in and it worked great. Unfortunately won't be taking it out for Easter tomorrow as it clashes horribly with my dress.

Happy Easter!

2008-03-21T10:07:00.002-05:00

I had planned on taking some pictures of our Irish dinner the other night but the family devoured it before any pictures could be taken. I have a divine recipe for Irish Soda Bread that is soooo yummy (and easy, bonus!). This recipe makes two loaves of bread which is great, because then there is plenty left over for breakfast for the rest of the week. Well, I've been noticing how much more food the family seems to be going through lately (see: growing children) and this was no different. Before dinner was over one loaf was entirely gone and the second was cut into slices and they were working on it as well. There was a few tablespoons of corned beef left and a bowl of veggies but that was all. Good heavens can those kids eat! I've started doubling some entrees so that I'll have plenty for dinner and left overs for lunches. I really thought the kids would be older before I'd have to start doing that, but that time is already here. Looks like I'm going to have to start doubling on a more regular basis.

Speaking of cooking, the last time I was at the grocery store I went to buy flour and it was $1.98 for a 5 lb. bag of Wal-Mart brand flour. $1.98?! I know within the last year or two it was $0.77 for that same bag of flour (more on how I know that later). I fear that one day soon I will have a breakdown in a public place over the ridiculous skyrocketing prices of EVERYTHING. It is as though every other industry has noticed that fuel prices went through the roof and the consumers just had to take it and keep buying, keep living their lives. The other industries noticed and decided they would try it too. Now, perhaps this isn't the case with flour. To be perfectly honest I haven't researched the flour/wheat crisis at all, although I do recall overhearing one day on the news that there was a grain crisis of some kind. Maybe there is, I don't know. It just seems unlikely to me that there is some kind of "crisis" in almost every tangible good that we need to purchase. Fuel? Crisis! Wheat? Crisis! Natural gas? Crisis! Dairy? Crisis!

I'm wondering how much more the general public can take before people start to lose it. I'm a fairly mild-mannered gal from the Bible belt. If I'm getting fed up with it all than I'm sure everyone else is as well.

OK, I'll get off my soap box and calm down my crazy eyes here.

You may be wondering, "Why on earth would she remember that a 5 lb. bag of flour from Wal-Mart used to cost $0.77?" That is because of the awesome little program, Handy Shopper! (and also because I have a ridiculous memory that remembers dates and numbers for no apparent reason but I can't remember how many chest compressions to do for CPR. Useful, no?) Handy Shopper is this great little program for Palms that lets you create shopping lists. You can create your lists for different stores and for each item you can enter the price as well as aisle number. I LOVE this software. After I have compiled my list at home I have a pretty good idea of exactly how much money I'll be spending based on the prices from last time. Perhaps the most convenient aspect of Handy Shopper though is the ability to sort your grocery list by aisle. Eliminates forgetting something and having to run back across the store to get it. It also lets you keep track of when the store has raised the prices on products since you have the cost from your previous trip already in it. It keeps a running total of how much you've spent through the store for each time to click that you've picked up an item. So if you're slightly OCD like me this is a great program. You can note price increases and rant like a crazy person afterwards (see above).

2008-03-20T18:41:00.002-05:00

Does anyone else's husband talk (ok, and yell) to the tv as though the athletes playing can actually hear every precious bit of coaching he's giving them?

$%&@!!

2008-03-17T10:50:00.002-05:00

After a very frustrating two days I'm happy to report that my Siamese socks have been successfully separated. It seems that at some point on Saturday I made the horrible mistake of not switching yarn balls and managed to connect the socks. This horrible mistake was sadly not noticed until I had knit another two inches past it. If I were a clever knitter I'm sure I would have figured out a quick and easy way to fix this mistake. However, not being a clever knitter and terrified that I would make this mistake much worse I painstakingly unknit both socks back to the mistake two stitches at a time. This took many hours. I was not a happy mama during this time. I stayed up last night until my back and neck were aching from the concentration of trying to unknit and not drop a bajillion stitches. I finally worked my way back to the mistake this morning and have successfully separated them and even knitted a few new(? repeated?) rows past the mistake. They are happily divided and you better believe I'll be more compulsive about checking them frequently to make sure I don't do that again!

What is so frustrating is that I had been very vigilant about making sure I had the correct yarn at each switching point but it only took one time to make the mistake and it cost me hours of irritation. Oh well, I'm back on track again.

I do have to say that I'm loving the two-at-a-time knitting. I love seeing the progress and knowing that I'm close to actually being done with the entire project not just the first sock. I love efficiency! I spied some new sock yarn I'll be picking up soon. Some of the ladies in class were making their socks out of this adorable Panda Cotton which was so soft and knit up lovely.

Better run, the kids are all home on Spring Break and already making me a little nuts. It sounds as though one is practicing the piano, another the drums (we don't have any drums) and the other is rummaging in the kitchen. ::sigh::

I also have to start on dinner. Tonight is our traditional Corned Beef, Potatoes, Cabbage, Carrots & Irish Soda Bread dinner. It's every one's favorite and sooooooo good.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

2008-03-15T13:39:00.013-05:00

Today I took the kids to the St. Patrick's Day Parade. Wish it had been a little warmer!

"Mama! No more pictures!"

We had a great time, I was surprised at how long the parade was. It lasted for an hour. The kids scooped up plenty of candy and are all now ready for some afternoon naps. Here are a few snapshots of what we saw.

Bagpipers

A green dog

Elaborate balloon costumes

The new mascot for our semi-pro baseball team, the Wichita Wingnuts. (Yes, it's a squirrel. I'm not entirely sure what a squirrel has to do with a wingnut. I'm guessing that having a screw for a mascot would have just been an invitation for too much trouble. But a squirrel? I get that squirrels hide real nuts but it's a stretch to try to connect it with wingnuts. ::sigh::)

Irish Dancers

A quasi self-portrait in the shiny side of a Model T. Wished I had brought my professional camera when I saw the reflections...

Those wild & crazy Shriners

Now it's back to sock knitting in hopes I can get a little closer to where I need to be before class in a few hours...

2008-03-14T22:27:00.004-05:00

What was I thinking? Size 1 needles? Seriously? There is absolutely no way these will be done far enough down to actually do the heel flap tomorrow at class.

Of course it probably would have helped if I had worked on it more this week but that didn't happen. I won't mention the preemie hat I worked on. ::Ahem:: After looking over the progress of the socks I had a brief urge to dive into another easy, little preemie hat, but I resisted. Avoidance won't get these socks done, as I've proved all to well this week.

I'm not too sure about the yarn yet. I liked it in the hank, loved it when it was wound into balls but I'm a little iffy on it knit up in the socks. I better get off this computer and get back to work. We'll see how far I can get before class tomorrow...

2008-03-14T08:50:00.002-05:00

This morning on the way to school my oldest daughter told me the following joke that she made up.

M: "If April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring?"
Me: ?
M: "Pilgrims!"
Me: ??
M: "Get it? Like the Mayflower?"

I thought it was cute. Of course knowing kids she very well could have heard it somewhere else but I still thought it was funny.

2008-03-12T10:25:00.013-05:00

I have finally managed to sew the buttons onto the slippers. I've had everything in the knitting bag ready to go but I kept finding other knitting things I'd rather do than sew on buttons. I do love the buttons I've put on my slippers.

These were my favorite little buttons from the button tin. Love them! The detailing is so sweet I just couldn't part with them. My slippers are a tad small width wise so if I make them again for myself I'll make some adjustments to the pattern. The slippers I made for my sister, Jill, are much better width wise but are a tad bit too long. Here are her slippers all finished and ready for mailing.

I actually like Jill's slippers better than mine, the Noro worked up beautifully. The colors are great.

In between the last post and the sewing on of the buttons on the slippers I made a couple of preemie hats to donate to the local NICU. They were fun to do and very fast and cute. I've had a couple of migraines and it's put a bit of a damper on the knitting so when I've had headache-free time I've wanted to work on something easy. These preemie hats fit the bill.

The first hat is the Eyelet Preemie Hat. I made a mistake on the yarn purchase so it turned out a little bigger than I think it should have. But the yarn is so yummy and cute I'll just make some adjustments to the pattern and needle size and make some more that will hopefully be smaller.

This is the other little preemie hat I finished last night. It is the Preemie Spiral Hat. I (gasp) actually used the correct weight yarn so it turned out perfectly. And so tiny! I made the smallest size which is suppose to fit a 1-3 lb. baby.

Tonight I'll get back to work on my two-at-a-time socks. I've been putting it off because it's a bit intimidating still. And you know, that's how I deal with things that stress me out, I put them on the back burner. Very mature, huh? I had wanted to use a pretty pattern for the sock but I think I'm just going to need to buck up and make a plain stockinette sock and worry more about getting the hang of the technique than worrying about a pretty design on them. Must let go and move on.

And finally I have to share a picture of my assistant at the little blog photo shoot. He's so handsome and he's alllll mine ;-)
"Take my picture Mommy!"

2008-03-09T18:30:00.014-05:00

I've finished the crochet work on both sets of Mary Jane slippers and now they each only need buttons and they'll be complete. I was driving along thinking about how I needed to swing by a store that sold buttons to pick some up when I remembered the post the Yarn Harlot recently made about her button box. I have a Stetson tin that I inherited from my DH's grandmother that is full of vintage and antique buttons (probably more vintage than antique).

Although I never met her, I love this tin of buttons. She was obviously a very frugal woman as many if not most of these buttons were clipped from garments and kept. You can still see the threads on many of them. Most of them are rather plain and utilitarian but there are some gems in there as well. For this project I was only after some basic black buttons so I dumped the tin and began sorting through them all.

These are the finalist and will be placed on the slippers for sizing and then I'll make my final decision. Now tonight I can sit down and sew them on and they will be officially done! Can't wait to have them finished. The crochet edging wasn't as intimidating as I thought it would be. I found some great tutorials (and videos) at NexStitch. They were very helpful and cleared up any questions I had.

Yesterday I also had my first class at Twist for trying to learn Two-at-a-Time Socks. Wow. For a while I felt as though I was trying to decipher written Russian but by the end I think I was finally grasping it all. At least that's what Jackie, one of the teachers, told me and I'll take that as proof.

I love the yarn I picked out.

I picked it up at Twist on Friday. I had a hard time narrowing down my choice but finally settled on this. It actually looks prettier after Shelly wound it up. I haven't heard of the company before. It's made by Family Pendragon and so far knits up beautifully. While I heard several ladies complaining that their yarn was splitting I didn't have any problems with mine. I say so far because I haven't made much progress yet.

I really enjoyed the class and hope I can spend some time this week getting the hang of the two-at-a-time socks. It's a bit much for me to wrap my head around but I think if I just keep at it, it will all come together. I love my DPNs but I would really love to work on and finish two socks at once. I'm all about efficiency and time management :-) I'll have to be a quick knitter this week since we're learning the heel at our next class on Saturday. And since I'm such a Type A with all things sewing related I'm going to frog them and re-start them again since the ribbing is off on one sock. But first I think I'll make another preemie hat tonight....

You've heard of Typhoid Mary? Well just call me Influenza Amy...

2008-03-06T08:59:00.002-06:00

What's worse than having the flu? Having all three of your kids and your husband having it at the same time! Thank heavens we have more than one bathroom. I've managed to keep everyone in their own bedrooms and I'm busy running around washing copious amounts of laundry and spraying everything that doesn't move with Lysol. Although at this point we should probably just use a flamethrower and destroy everything that has been touched. I'm pretty sure fire is the only thing that could possibly kill this virus. It's obviously highly contagious as we're always super careful about keeping the sick person secluded to one room/bathroom and keep the rest of the family away. It usually works but not this time.

In knitting news I started on the crochet border on my Mary Jane slippers. I found some great online crochet instructions similar to knittinghelp.com which were helpful. I managed to get the first slipper's edging done when I noticed that I had picked up my stitches on the wrong portion of the edge at one point. It was more of an appearance issue and I couldn't stand how it looked so I ripped it back out to that point and started over last night on it. In between the ripping out and starting over I made a preemie hat. It's very cute but frankly looks a tad big to be a preemie hat. I hit gauge but I think the pattern may be a bit big. I think I'll see if I can tweak it a bit and make a few more. It's really cute.

Better run, there's much laundry and cleaning to do (and hopefully some knitting while they nap!).

Three Words:

2008-03-04T08:29:00.003-06:00

The Flu, Again.

Thank heavens God has given me a few days of feeling well sprinkled throughout these ongoing flu bugs. I've been sick (more on than off) since mid-January. Can't begin to tell you just how sick and tired I am of being sick. Thankfully the bulk of the illness have been the exhausting respiratory flu and not the stomach flu that I endured for the last go-around. I would rather do almost anything than have the stomach flu. It thankfully waited until Saturday evening before it kicked in so I was able to work Friday in between illnesses. I actually thought it was food poisoning until my poor boy came down sick last night. I'm hoping he doesn't get as sick as I did.

Sick of being sick.

My poor husband has been taking care of sick people for almost two months now. He told me I was taking this in sickness and in health thing a little far (he was teasing of course!) but I do feel awful for him. I'm definitely going to have to take him out for dinner at his favorite restaurant and a macho movie after everyone is all better. He deserves it!

Everybody's doing the Cocoamotion....

2008-02-28T09:20:00.004-06:00

It's time for another LKOTP Product Award. (ok, I totally made that up but it's my blog and I can do that. What? You wonder what it stands for? Hello?! Little Knitter on the Prairie Award. Highly Coveted. Well, they will be seeing as I just made them up. Anyway...)

Today's recipient of the LKOTP Product Award for improving my life in an indulgent and completely unnecessary manner is the Back to Basics Cocoa-Latte Hot Drink Maker.

This bad boy makes the single finest cup of cocoa I have ever had. Ever. Anywhere. And I make it myself at home (bonus! on the cheap!). I usually subscribe to the Alton Brown philosophy of kitchen products in that a single purpose gadget or appliance takes up valuable kitchen space and is wasteful, multi-purpose is the way to go. If this thing didn't make the best cocoa I'd ever had I'd agree, but it has earned it's place in the kitchen and isn't going anywhere. We received it as a gift (ok, technically it was a gift for the kids from their Great-Aunt & Uncle) two Christmases ago. I was skeptical at first since I knew this was one more thing I'd have to find a place to store. But, it was Christmas morning so we opened it up and decided to make some cocoa. We were blown away by the yummy cocoa and immediately taken with the little machine.

It looks like a modified blender that both blends and heats the ingredients to the perfect temperature. You can immediately drink it when it is finished in the machine and not incinerate your mouth. One of my big pet peeves about ordering hot drinks in restaurants is that you are then forced to wait at least 5-10 minutes before you can safely drink them.

The recipe I use came in the instruction booklet for the Cocoa maker. It's relatively inexpensive and extremely easy.

Hot Cocoa
2 C. milk
1/4 C. sugar
5 t. cocoa
1 t. vanilla

Add the above to the blender, put the lid on, plug in, turn on. It quits mixing automatically when it's done. It even has a feature that automatically turns it on to mix and heat the remaining liquid in the blender so that your re-fill will still be the perfect temperature. This cocoa is so good I made a thermos full of it for my parents when we had the big blizzard in December. The girls had gone to their house before the snow started to make Christmas cookies and by lunch we were in the middle of a blizzard. Mom and Dad drove them back home and I gave her the thermos so they'd have something warm to sip on for the drive home (or sustain them should they have been buried alive in snow). She later asked me if we had put alcohol in it because it was so good. No kidding, it's really that good. And no I didn't put any alcohol in but I think it would be perfect with the new Bailey's Mint. Oh the possibilities....

Is it good for you? Technically no although my chocolate endorphins would argue with you (shut up, there totally are chocolate endorphins). It may not be good for you but as an occasional treat on a chilly day it can't be beat. My wicked math skills estimate the above recipe yields 2 C. of cocoa for about .70 cents.

As always no financial contributions were made to this blog author for product consideration (Unfortunately. That would rock, what a cool gig...) I just like to share when I find something I love.

And now with the temperatures approaching near spring like levels I raise my mug of cocoa and tell the rotten winter of 2007-2008 good-bye and good riddance. The cocoa machine will be safely nestled in the back of the cabinet until next fall.

2008-02-26T13:34:00.018-06:00

Finally managed to fill up all of my sad empty boxes on Ravelry with actual knitting pictures! Yay me! So I thought I ought to put them on the old blog as well...

First up are pictures of the Sweet Mary Jane Cardigan before blocking. I literally don't have anywhere in my house where it can be safely blocked without a child (or husband) stepping on it. So, I'll take it over to my mom's and we can fit and block it there. Then we can go shopping for ribbon and buttons.

Here are the Mary Jane Slippers. The knitting is finished on both of them and I need to do the crochet edging and strap next. I bought two skeins of this yarn so I think I'll make a second pair for my sister out of the other skein. It didn't quite take one skein for the pair. I'm going to do the edging and strap in black. Love this yarn!!! Yay Noro!

Here is my little man in his Camo Hat (Joseph pattern I purchased to make in fun colors but haven't gotten to it yet). We bought him a new coat last Fall that is a camo print. I thought making him a hat out of camo colored yarn would be cute to go with it. Except I didn't have his coat with me when I bought the yarn so they don't even remotely match. His coat is in shades of brown and this yarn is in shades of green. Yuck. But it was an easy hat to make. And I don't care if he ruins it. The yarn was uber-cheap, Red Heart crap. I am becoming such a yarn snob. ::sigh::

Sweetheart Glovelets. These were fun to make although they could probably stand a proper blocking so they'd look a little nicer. I couldn't wait for that though and wore them out the other night. The yarn is Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino and the color is darker than it photographed here. The pattern was extremely well written and I even managed it while doped up on cough syrup.

Monkey Socks! I think I already have pictures somewhere on this blog of my Monkeys but I figured I'd throw these up here as well while I was putting up all the others.

PS--forgot to mention...

2008-02-25T15:03:00.005-06:00

Did anyone see the Martha Stewart knitting show today? I specifically sat and watched the entire show today since it was supposed to be entirely devoted to knitting. Everyone in the audience was knitting but that was about the closest they ever got to actually knitting anything on the show. I was disappointed that they didn't at least do a "Knitting 101" segment or something. It wouldn't have been to hard to show a simple cast on and how to do a knit stitch. I can't imagine how frustrated I would have been if I had wanted to learn how to knit and watched the whole show and was never shown what an actual knit stitch was.

They made stuffed animals out of gloves/mittens (that was presumable hand knit at one point or more likely store bought) so that wasn't actual knitting. In another segment they made marzipan decorated to look like knitting which was very cute and on theme but wasn't actually knitting either (not that they can really be faulted, I can't expect them to knit the food, duh). The other knitting segment was wrapping left over yarn around a plastic bangle to make a bracelet. In the very final last minute of the show they showed Martha and one of her producers knitting and giving a tip for making sure booties/socks/cuffs are the same size by knitting them both on the same needle at the same time so they would be the exact same size. But even at that there wasn't any further instructions on exactly how to do it.

I enjoyed the knitting theme and hope they do it again at some point. It just would have been nice to see more actual knitting content.

::sigh::

wordy, wordy, wordy

2008-02-25T14:21:00.003-06:00

Still no pictures. We had a busy weekend of early spring cleaning. This is my slow time of year work wise so I'm finally getting a chance to catch back up on the much neglected house work and organizing. We spent most of the weekend sorting, moving things, re-organizing, cleaning and hanging pictures on the walls. In December we moved our oldest girl into a room of her very own. But in order to do that we had to clean out all the stuff that was in there since the room was basically storage space. So all of that junk has been sitting in the hallway waiting for me to have the time to find permanent homes for it all. It took some work but we waded through about half of the stuff. I then went through the middle daughter's room and cleaned/organized it as well. It is soo nice to finally have things back in order. I can't stand clutter and we've been wading through it for about a year now. I'm finally, FINALLY, caught up with my business work and I'm soooo happy. I know I'm stressed when I'm in the middle of it all but I don't realize how stressed I am until I finally get a breather. I told my husband that for the first time in two years I feel like I'm standing on the ground instead of holding onto the out of control spinning carousel of life. I always feel like I'm just holding on by my fingertips with my body flying around parallel to the ground. There's still work to be done on the house to get it whipped back into shape and what I consider an acceptable state but we're steadily on the way. Thank Heavens!!

In knitting news I've been busy every evening working on knitting since I don't have to be strapped to my computer every waking moment. I've knit several dish cloths which have been fun to do. I love how quick and easy they are. And as an added bonus they really are pretty awesome in the kitchen. I made my first three from cotton dishcloth yarn I picked up at Twist. The next several ones I did I grabbed at Wal-Mart. The colors were pretty from Twist but on my last trip to Wal-Mart they had even more variety than they usually do and had some pretty good colors too. I've made several patterns so far. I enjoy knitting the Chinese Waves dish cloth since there is no purling but I don't think I like it as well for actual use in the kitchen. When it comes to using it in the kitchen though my favorite right now is the Lion Brand free dishcloth pattern. I had to try the obligatory Grandma's Dish Cloth Pattern which was super easy and works very well in the kitchen as well. I grabbed a ball of red cotton to make a Valentine's day dishcloth but I wasn't very happy with the results. It was easy to do but didn't look all that great. Here's the pattern for it. My review--eh.

In between the dishcloth knitting I finished my first Sweet Mary Jane slipper (minus the crochet edging, I'll do that last on both of them). Today I finally managed to get the second one started. I don't know what my problem is with these but I'm having the worst time casting on for them. I've done a provisional cast on in the past without any problems but these have been a huge pain to cast on. I spent a couple of hours this weekend trying to cast on for it and finally gave up and made a couple of dishcloths instead. Thankfully I managed it this morning and am through the toe portion and ready to bind off and begin working back and forth for the mid-foot portion of it. That being said I'm still going to have to do some creative weaving in of the beginning since no matter what I did I had a small hole there. Didn't have that problem with the first one although I bet it has to do with my increases. I knit into the front and back to increase on the first one and my stitch count was off so I winged it and it turned out ok. I actually followed the instructions on the second one and did a M1 and had nothing but grief. Go figure.

Should finish it up tonight and then I can start on the crochet edging. I do virtually no crochet at all so I'll have to have my mom help me with that. My grandmother was an expert with crochet and made the most beautiful doilies and afghans. I miss her so much. She passed away from lung cancer while I was pregnant with my oldest. She would get such a kick out of my knitting and would have loved to teach me anything I needed to know. She taught me to crochet as a child but all I ever really mastered where endless single chains and granny squares. Every time I try to read a crochet pattern it looks like trying to read German which is frustrating. Of course that's how knitting patterns used to look to me at one time and I managed to stick with it and decipher them.

I think after I finish up the slippers I'll work on a scarf. I bought the yarn and pattern several years ago on a trip I made out to Seattle to visit my sister. We took the ferry to the San Juan Islands for the day and drove all over the island exploring. At one point we came across an alpaca farm, Krystal Acres Alpaca Farm. We stopped in and they had beautiful, soft hand-dyed alpaca yarn. I picked up a skein (or 2?) to make a scarf. They had a pattern with tiny glass beads that matched so I purchased it as a little kit. I haven't looked at it in a while so I need to refresh my memory as to what it looks like and see if I need to get a tiny crochet hook to put the beads on the stitches. I do remember the yarn was super soft and beautifully colored. They even had skeins that had pictures of which alpaca it came from and their name. Very cute. I loved the San Juan Islands. I am a Kansas girl through and through, wouldn't want to live anywhere else--except for the San Juan Islands. I absolutely loved it and could absolutely live there. Which is saying quite a bit since I'm such a flatlander. I want to take the family on a vacation up there sometime. It's a bit of a pain/expense to get to but so worth it. Just stunning. Every type of terrain you can imagine--flat valleys, ocean coasts, woods, hills, ocean. Beautiful.

I don't keep a big "stash" of yarn at all but I'm glad I had a few projects purchased and set aside to go for now. It's great having a slow time of year business wise to get caught up on things but it definitely puts a damper on the old finances! I think after I finish my scarf I'll have to actually go purchase yarn for the next projects. I found a darling cabled purse on Ravelry that I've added to my to do list and I'd like to make some preemie and chemo caps for charity as well.

Hopefully tomorrow I can take some pictures. My Ravelry page is so plain jane, no pics at all. I've definitely got to take care of that! Can't stand seeing those empty boxes...

Geesh, I am perhaps the wordiest most sporadically posting blogger ever....

Back to work!!!

Comfortably Numb

2008-02-21T23:12:00.003-06:00

So I have now been sick for almost five weeks. Five weeks of coughing, sleeping and being in a general foul mood. I think my family is almost ready to sell me. I've given up trying to figure out what I'm sick with. So far I've been diagnosed with: sinus infection, bronchitis and flu. Who knows which it is, maybe all three. Maybe something new and mysterious! I have been on multiple prescriptions and frankly they don't really seem to do much. I'm a little better but still sick. The one medicine that definitely does something is the prescription cough syrup. I went through the first prescription bottle in a few days. It did help and didn't taste bad and was pretty relaxing, I believe codeine was the big drug in that one. After a trip to the emergency room though I was prescribed a bigger, badder cough syrup that as far as I can tell seems to be some kind of methadone deritivite. It is crazy stuff. I actually feel numb after I take it. It does stop the coughing but it also seems to short circuit part of my brain. It's very difficult to try to do normal things after I take it as part of my brain is tooling along like normal but the other part is stumbling around in the dark completely confused about simple things. It's extremely odd. It isn't like being tipsy at all. When you're tipsy all of your senses seem to take a gradual decline into fuzziness but with this cough syrup there's like there's a disconnect somewhere in the brain. It has really done a number on my knitting. I can't seem to make the pattern instructions work out in my head. I've done surprisingly well all things considered. I'm working on my Sweet Mary Jane slippers and I swear the instructions seem to be partly in German. I went ahead and worked on them tonight even though I figured I was probably screwing them up. I stopped after a while and it looks fairly normal so I must have been muddling through a little better than I thought. Of course the first night I started on them while doped up on the cough syrup and I couldn't figure out the dumb provisional cast on to save my life. Thankfully the next morning I got it on the first try--cough syrup free.

I've even managed to finish up some knitting while sick--the Sweet Mary Jane cardigan (what is it with me and patterns named Sweet Mary Jane?) and the Sweetheart Glovelets (maybe it's just the word sweet? I must have a compulsion to knit all patterns with the word sweet in it). I'm planning on getting some pictures taken for ravelry here in the next few day so hopefully I'll get some posted here too. It's a little embarrassing to look at my project page in Ravelry and see all the blank boxes instead of cute little pictures...

Winter bugs and NetiPots

2008-02-01T08:59:00.000-06:00

Every year after Christmas we seem to start the full-blown flu season and this year has been no exception. Almost everyone in the family has been sick. It seems to rotate on a person by person basis. I almost think it would be better to have everyone sick at once because at least it would cut down the overall suffering time. The worst of it seems to have struck with in the last week. I missed a week of work and the kids have each been taking turns missing school.

In other odd news I've found something that does seem to be helping my sinuses and overall illness. My mother told me about using a Neti Pot to help my sinuses. I've struggled with sinus and ear issues for my entire life. As a child I was taken from doctor to doctor, had tubes in my ear, adnoids removed, saw an ENT and went through numerous tests. I was taken off all dairy, given allergy testing and endured other yucky nose/sinus tests. Nothing really seemed to work. I live most of my life with a stuffy nose and always have tissues nearby. Breathing at night is nearly impossible unless through my mouth and I've snored since I was a child. My mom saw a segment on Oprah about the Neti Pot and how it helps folks with sinus issues. They had a woman demonstrate how it works and she seemed to have many of the same sinus problems I have and it was helping her quite a bit so my Mom told me about it.

The Neti Pot cleanses and flushes out the sinus with salt water. The pot itself looks like a small watering can which you fill with water, non-iodized salt and baking soda. The Neti Pot I purchased included some small packets with pre-mixed salt and baking soda which I just add to the pot with luke-warm water. You place the spout of the pot in your nostril, tip your other nostril down and gravity will draw the water into your nostril where it will circulate through your sinus cavity and drain out of your opposite nostril. After it is finished draining you remove the Neti Pot and gently exhale through your nose to expel the remaining water (I usually blow my nose a few times gently with a kleenex too). Then repeat on the other side. I'm currently doing this in the morning and at night. What a difference it makes! The first night I did it I woke up the next morning breathing through my nose with my mouth closed! That NEVER happens. It also makes a big difference throughout the day too. My nose isn't nearly as stuffy as before and breathing is easier. I'll be anxious to see how it will be when I'm completely over this horrible cold that I have now. Many people who use the Neti Pot report that they no longer suffer from colds or sinus infections when they use it. The water solution is suppose to flush out the viruses/bacteria and pollutants that get trapped in the sinus cavity. They have been used for centuries in other parts of the world and seem to be a very striaghtforward, natural way to maintain and improve the sinuses. I wish I would have started doing this a long, long time ago! I can't imagine how many forrests I've cleared in kleenex consumption over my life time. Yuck.

In knitting news (yes! actual knitting content!), I've been making huge progress on the Sweet Mary Jane cardigan. I'm actually almost done with it. I've knit the entire body, both sleeves, attached the sleeves, knit the yoke and am 1/3 of the way through the collar. I should finish the collar today and bind off. Then all I have to do is whip stitch the underarms closed, weave in the ends and block it. Well, I'll need to buy/sew on the buttons and buy/weave in the ribbon but I'm going to do that with Mom so she can pick them out since this is for her. I'm so excited to be almost done with this, it's been a learning experience and the most complicated pattern I've done yet so it's been really neat. Thankfully it's gone perfectly and the only mistakes have been dumb ones on my part that I've been able to undo and fix. I will post some pictures after I get it blocked!!

After that I think I'm going to knit some dish cloths. I think some quick, easy knits will be just the thing to do after this big project. I saw that Twist has some new cotton that I'd like to pick up and use for that. I might have to run by and pick that up today or tomorrow so I'll have something to knit for this weekend.

Better run, the school just called and now I've got another kid coming home from school sick.
Arghhh!

Sweet Mary Jane

2008-01-07T09:13:00.000-06:00

Although I have no photographic proof I have made tremendous progress on my Sweet Mary Jane cardigan for my mother. The entire bottom lace portion has been knitted and I finished both sleeves. Last night I attached the sleeves to the body and began work on the stockinette yoke. I'm so excited about this progress. The first time I saw the pattern several years ago it immediately reminded me of my mom and I wanted to make it for her. At the time I knew it was beyond my knitting ability but I was confident I could learn and reach a level of knitting competence to tackle the project. I ordered the pattern and yarn and set it aside until I felt ready to dive in. When the pattern first arrived I remember sitting and reading through the instructions and it felt like trying to read Greek. I really couldn't understand how to read through that format of pattern, what happened to all of the stitch markers, etc. Very confusing. Time passed and when I felt ready to give it a try I did a quick search online and discovered that there was an errata to the original pattern so I quickly printed it off and included it with the pattern. I cast on for Mary Jane originally in October. I must have cast on half a dozen times because I kept making dumb mistakes. At one point I was probably 1/4 through the lace portion of the jacket and realized I had several glaring errors that I could never live with. I ripped the entire thing out and started over again Thanksgiving weekend. The original plan had been to cross my fingers and hope for a Christmas finish to give it to Mom. Unfortunately that wasn't possible due to massive work getting my oldest daughter's new bedroom completed for a surprise Christmas gift for her. All of that work greatly cut into my knitting time. We managed to surprise her with her room but I didn't finish Mary Jane. Undeterred I showed my mom her work-in-progress gift. I didn't want to wait until her birthday in August to give it to her and this way she can help pick out the buttons and ribbon.

After the final cast-on Thanksgiving weekend things have gone very well. Reading and following the pattern haven't been a problem at all, testament I'm sure to my progress as a knitter. I'm very excited to have the end in sight and can't wait to have this baby blocked and finished! My next project after Mary Jane will be some dish cloths. I tend to only work on one project at a time so I'm looking forward to some easy, quick things before I tackle my next project. I'm definitely odd by sewing standards. I always hear about quilters, knitters, etc. who have huge stashes of material or yarn and tons of patterns too. I find that having too many things stowed away makes me anxious about a big "to do" list and frankly I don't have much interest in a big closet of yarn. I enjoy shopping for each project and then seeing it go to completion. Different I'm sure but it works for me!

That's really all of the knitting progress I've made. I can't remember if I posted that I finished the Monkey socks or not but they are done and have already been worn. I love them and think I'll definitely be making another pair in the summer. I already have a pattern book marked for that :-)

336

2007-10-09T13:01:00.000-05:00

I've been stalking my Ravelry invite. There's only 336 people in front of me so I should have my invite today or tomorrow. Yay!!

Shhhh! Don't tell the "boss"!

2007-10-03T14:58:00.000-05:00

Confession: I'm at work but I'm not working.

I have completely hit the wall today. The boss has a huge stack of things I ABSOLUTELY MUST GET DONE. I swear the stack grows when I look away. So what do I do about this? I read knitting blogs. I look at things I want to knit. I think about my second Monkey sock just started on my needles this morning and sigh wishing I was knitting them. I would love to skip out of work today and have some time off.

I mean, really! It's finally fall!!!! My favorite time of year. The air is cooler, the kids are in school, the days are getting shorter and there is finally starting to be the faintest hint of color or the leaves. It's time for casseroles and crock-pot meals for dinner. Apple cider and pumpkin bread. Yummmm, pumpkin bread.

My birthday was a few weeks ago but I've been so swamped with all of the work that it wasn't as relaxing as I would have preferred. There is just still soooooooooo much work to get done. August was insane with all of the shooting I did so I have absolutely got to get the post-processing work on everything done to get it out the door.

Really now, you'd think my boss would be a little more understanding wouldn't you? Especially since that slave driver is myself. Ahhh the peaks and valleys of being self-employed. The old saying is true, you absolutely do work harder than you ever have in your life when you're working for yourself as opposed to working for someone else.

I swear I'm going to have a little party all by myself when I get the last of these summer weddings finished up. Memo to self: do not work yourself to death next summer.

At least dinner is already finished and ready to go for tonight. I put a London broil in the crock pot and covered with a diced onion and two cans each of golden mushroom soup and cream of mushroom soup. I even made a batch of mashed potatoes to serve it on. I made this recipe a couple of weeks ago but didn't care for the combination of soups they used. And it was too salty with the onion soup mix. It was ok but I know this combination will be better. The meat however was amazing, super tender. Even the kids were asking for more! I threw it all in the crock pot at about 8:00 this morning so it should be perfect tonight before church. Love those crock-pot meals in the fall. Especially on days I'm "working." (or reading knitting blogs. whatever.)

Take 2

2007-09-28T17:41:00.000-05:00

::sniff::

No Grey's last night for me :-( My sitting ran late and by the time I got home it was time to scramble the kids through the bed time routine and get them to bed. Then I let dh watch his shows and it was time for bed.

The good news? DH is out of town for the next couple of days so I get complete and uninterrupted control of the remote and will enjoy several hours of tv/knitting time after the little ones are in bed for the next several nights.

I'm now on the bedtime countdown...

TGIT (Thank Goodness it's Thursday)

2007-09-27T12:05:00.000-05:00

So Excited!

Tonight should be a great knitting night. I have a sitting to shoot very early in the evening but then it should be nothin' but knittin' as soon as the kiddies are in bed. I feel I should take this time and say a special prayer of thanks for the amazing Tivo. God bless the person who invented Tivo. Love you Tivo!!! I remember attending an advertising luncheon in the late nineties and hearing the speaker tell us about a new device that would be like a vcr only enable you to watch any show whenever you wanted without vcr tapes. Sounded crazy futuristic and yet I've had one for many years now and can't imagine not having it.

I'll definitely be watching Grey's and probably ER. Usually wait to watch The Office when dh gets home.

Anyway, time to run but looking forward to knitting tonight!

Feast or Famine (a.k.a. Picture Paloooza!)

2007-09-23T19:05:00.000-05:00

Unbelievable though it may be, it's finally happened. I've managed to FINALLY take some pictures of my recent knitting. Whoa! Take a deep breath! Lean back in your chair! Don't fall over on me! I know it's hard to believe but below these next few lines will be ACTUAL PHOTOGRAPHS. Knitting in pixels!

First here are pictures of my Monkey socks:

And check out the needles--Sox Stix in size 2 that I picked up from Twist. Which is where incidentally I bought the yarn, the stitch marker and the bag that I carry it all in. Are you seeing a theme here? Love you Twist!

It may not be "The" Great Pumpkin, but I still think it's pretty great :-) This one is a birthday gift for a friend but I think I'll have to make another one for myself.
Pattern is 12:01 by Nathania Apple.

My blue-eyed beauty in her Drive-Thru sweater. Although I'm thinking of re-naming it Sunday School since she has been wearing it every Sunday to church.

And finally Twinkletoes slippers for my girls. I'm going to buy some suede slipper bottoms for them so they will hopefully last a little longer.

And now I'm signing off to go knit! It's been a super busy weekend, yesterday I had an 8 hour wedding shoot a couple of hours away which made for a 12 hour day. I had another wedding this afternoon although thankfully it was only two hours and was very close to home. However with all of the work it seems like the weekend positively slipped through my fingers. In order to remedy that to a small degree I'm going to go sit, knit and watch a movie with the husband.

So I hope you enjoyed the pictures, heaven knows when I'll manage to get more things photographed again :-)

::peeking back in::

2007-09-18T10:14:00.000-05:00

Yarn Harlot!! I went and saw the Yarn Harlot! To be completely honest I hadn't read anything more than a couple of her posts a day or two prior to her speaking engagement here in Wichita. Despite that I went and picked up a free ticket to attend her "lecture." It was another "stepping out of the box" activity for myself. For years, (ok, most of my life) I have felt the need to drag friends and/or family with me to activities I want to go to on my own. In last couple of years I have tried to grow up and be a big girl and just go by myself. Sounds completely ridiculous but it's been something I've had to work on. I don't know what I thought would happen if I attended an activity or event by myself. Maybe I thought everyone else would turn and stare at the poor girl with no friends. Or that I'd have no one to make small talk with. Truthfully I think it had more to do with the thought of having to talk to strangers out of politeness (is that even a word?). No, I'm not painfully shy I just can't be rude to other. Was raised better than that. Even if I think a person is creepy or scary I'm still polite. Sad but true. But in an effort to be a big girl I've been venturing out a little more on my own and I'm loving it. Turns out I'm pretty good company for myself. And I haven't been forced into conversations with weird people. Either everyone else is afraid of getting into conversations with strangers as I am or I'm really effective at giving off the DON'T TALK TO ME vibe. Either way, it works for me :-)

So I went to see the Yarn Harlot and had a great time. I had no idea there were that many knitters in Wichita! I'm sure quite a few traveled in for the event but it was still a surprisingly large number. She was a delightful speaker and her sense of humor was right up my alley. It was a lovely little event. And I didn't speak to a soul for two hours. Ahhh, bliss.

I do have much progress to report. I have about eight weddings that I need to photoshop so I don't have time for a picture taking session. Ironic, isn't it? I will get those done in the next few days so I can share all of my progress.

I have completely finished the Drive-Thru sweater for Sabrina. She's already worn it to church once and received quite a few compliments. Being my first sweater and that it's for a five year old I used ultra cheap acrylic yarn on it in hopes that laundering the inevitable dirt will be easier. If I had it to do again I'd use something a little nicer but it was perfect for the first sweater project. I think the yarn is Caron Simply Soft. Could be worse I suppose. Not much worse, but there you go. The body of the cardigan is Soft Yellow, the "fair isle" portion is Orchid, Sage Green and Soft Pink. I used lavender buttons that match the orchid color as well. Very bright and sunny just like our little Sabrina.

After finishing that I dove into 12:01. I've had the yarn and pattern for over a year but I just can't work on things out of order or before I've finished an existing project. So after the Drive-Thru sweater was complete I could finally start it. I had purchased the yarn last year so I could make it as a gift for my best friend. That obviously didn't happen so it will be this year's birthday gift instead. Of course I love it so much I think I'll have to go buy more yarn and make another one for myself. It was my first experience with that particular increase and felting. All in all it went very well. It's sitting on my dresser stuffed full of plastic Wal-Mart bags hoping to form it into a permanent pumpkin shape. I think I'll probably have to purchase something stiff to kind of line it with but that's ok. It's really cute! I was surprised at how long it took to felt it. Perhaps it's my washing machine but the felting process took at least 10 trips through my washing machine. I think next time I might try felting by hand, might work out better.

During the knitting of 12:01 I discovered that we have a new knitting store here in town!!!! I was soooo excited. Twist Yarn Shop recently opened in the same area as my own business. It was so exciting to go into a local store and see all the things I usually have to order off of the internet. I've been in several times and have even taken a class. She has great supplies and it's a darling little shop. I have gone to the other yarn store in town but her needle selection was limited and she just didn't carry many of the contemporary, modern knitting items that I've been eyeing. I feel bad for the old yarn store as it looks like Twist is really taking off. Of course I'm thrilled for Twist that it looks like it's going so well. Maybe I'll stop by the old yarn store and buy something to temper my guilt. The old yarn shop is just dated and she wouldn't help folks that came in for help with a project unless they had purchased the materials and supplies from her. She did have open classes that you could come to for help and it was inexpensive ($1-$2) as I recall but it just wasn't convenient for me. I think it all boils down to they each serve a completely different clientele. Unfortunately it looks like one is on the rise and one is on the decline and it makes me sad. I don't like to see anyone's business suffer.

Anyway! I love Twist! I decided I wanted to learn how to knit socks so I signed up for a sock knitting class. Imagine my surprise when looking over the pattern that I had basically made my first sock when I made the girls Twinkle-Toes slippers. I am, perhaps, not the sharpest crayon in the box. It was very worthwhile and re-assuring though as I felt like I finally had permission to tackle a real honest to goodness sock. I was a little behind everyone else in the class progress wise during the first class due to my own cluelessness. I thought I had the right size needles in my bag when I left the house but I didn't so I had to buy some at the shop which put my start time behind everyone else. They were all flying through the pattern and ahead of me. I kept working at it and just worked on it throughout the rest of the week as I had free time. We used a larger yarn and bigger needles so the socks worked up very quickly. Plus they had a very short ribbed section at the ankle so they were quick. I figured I would be the only loser in the class if I came with out having at least one if not both finished. I was a little embarrassed to show up for the second class as the only over-achieving geek who finished not one but both socks. Doh! Oh well, I bought supplies for my next two projects and started on my first pair of Monkey socks! I'm loving this pattern and having a great time with it. I'm not entirely sure about my yarn choice but we'll see how it works. It was a rainy dreary day that morning which I'm sure influenced my choice of a very mellow blue/green yarn. They aren't as bright and over the top as many of the Monkey socks I've seen but I think I'll actually wear these on a regular basis as they'll match more things in my wardrobe and will look great with jeans and loafers.

So, next time I'll see if I can get pictures in. It's been busy at work. I've redone out website, made a business blog and had my busiest month yet for shooting. Thank heaven school finally started!

Introspection and Gadget Admiration

2007-04-09T14:05:00.000-05:00

Goodness, time does fly when you're having fun--or you've lost your sanity :-) Just kidding! Thanks to everyone who posted kind words of encouragement after my last post. I think it's fair to say that I'm not the ideal blogger as I seem to vent everything out in the blog and then abandon it until the next time I feel that need to let some of the pent up issues and emotions out. Needless to say that although my last post was a bit gloomy and depressed I've been slugging through life and things have been fine. All of the typical ups and downs but I did have a much needed mini-vacation which helped the old mental stability out.

I had a photography seminar in March which was out of state that I attended all by myself! This was quite a step out of the box for me as I used to feel compelled to always have someone go someplace with me. Anytime I wanted to take a class or go to an event I'd always talk a friend into going with me. Don't get me wrong, we always had fun, but there are times in life when you have to be the big girl and go it alone. But this time I flew out by myself and went to a place where I didn't know a soul and everything was just fine. A little intimidating at first, but just fine. It was a break that was much needed from all the mommy and business responsibilities and although I didn't indulge in any pampering, it was great. Well come to think of it, not having to make my own bed, cook or do any laundry for six days was pampering in and of itself. I was so busy during the seminar that I didn't even have time to go sight-seeing or shopping but I had a great time. It was fun hanging out with other photo-geeks who get excited about new gear and lighting like me.

I'm still struggling with some things but I imagine there will always be struggles with some of these things. I'm usually pretty good about rolling with the punches and dealing with things but I think last month it was got to be too much. I was so overwhelmed with all of the mommy/wife responsibilities and the business responsibilities that I felt as though I was just drowning from it all. Thankfully I think we're at least on the road to getting things back under control. One huge aspect of the stress was the book keeping for my businesses. I had been doing everything (appointments, photography, book keeping, photoshopping, lab drop off/pick up, order delivery, etc.) and the book keeping end just fell by the way side as I tried to keep all the customers happy. At least there's light at the end of the tunnel for that since my husband will be helping me out now.

It was reassuring to read from other mom's who feel the same frustrations. I love my kids and I love my job, I just never realized how overwhelming everything could be. Then to throw in some other issues of my own I just needed a little place in the world where I could let it all out. Perhaps one of the better aspects of all the introspection I've been prone to lately is re-discovering all of the promise of each new day and the unwritten future. If I spent all of my time lamenting the mistakes I've made and what I should have done I wouldn't be able to appreciate what I've learned and how to use that experience to shape the direction I want my future to take.

I need to learn to cut myself some slack in some areas and be stricter with myself in others. It's been a crazy year but I'm so glad that God has blessed us with all of the craziness. It's led me to some discoveries about myself and realizations that I'm capable of more than I had thought. I've also learned that I'm not superwoman and no matter how capable I am, I can't do it all and I really can't do it all on my own.

I think I remember reading once that changing careers can be as stressful to a person as having a loved one pass away. And if there's one thing I know about myself is that I'm very good at stuffing all the stress down and trudging on. I obviously need to work on that as well and thankfully this blog seems to be playing a nice little role in that.

But hey, this started out as a knitting blog, right?! Well there has been some knitting, there just hasn't been any pictures taken of the knitting. You'd expect nothing less right? I'll just wait and get pictures after it's finished. I have no idea how people have the energy to stop their knitting and take pictures of what they're doing. I sure appreciate it when I'm reading their blogs, it's really interesting. But when I'm knitting the last thing I want to do is stop, find the camera, get a empty cf card out and take some pictures that I'll then have to download, fiddle with and resize to upload to the internet. No way, when I'm knitting I'm *relaxing*! And I compulsively want to finish that row so I can turn and go to the next line in the pattern.

What is it I'm knitting you ask? (Because really, if I did post what I started it was probably months ago and I'm sure I didn't take any pictures of it). I'm working on the Drive-Thru cardigan for my youngest daughter. I've actually made good progress on it and should finish it this week if things go well. I have the body done, the sleeves done and attached as well as all of the color changes at the top. I'm now finishing up the yoke and will do the button bands last. Yay!

I'm wanting to delve into sock knitting soon so I may check some books out of the library and read up on that. And now for a small techie review, here are my two latest, favorite gadgets:

Sennheiser Wireless Headphones
I received these for Christmas and love them! When I was a kid I had one of my eardrums rupture from an ear infection. Between that and the constant fluid that seems to be built up on it I have a hard time hearing all the mumbling that happens on tv. So, my sweet husband bought these for me for Christmas. I usually only wear them when the kids (or husband) is in bed and I can't listen to the tv loud enough to hear what the heck is going on. It's great because the volume on the tv can be completely off but the headphone volume can be adjusted as needed. And they're wireless! Although how I, Queen of Deep Sleep, ended up with a family of incredibly light sleepers is beyond me. At least now we're all happy with the tv volume :-)

Neat Receipts Scanalizer
This is so cool! Makes tracking my debit receipts enjoyable. As mentioned previously my book keeping had fallen behind in epic proportions. With this slick little device I can scan the receipt in and categorize it by tax expense. It keeps a scanned copy of the image and I can then throw the paper receipt away. Yay! No more faded receipts or piles and piles of ones I need to keep on until I balance my checkbook. I can categorize them according to business or personal use and print out some very nice expense reports for tax time next year. And yes, I am backing it up after every use to a Rev disc along with my quickbooks data so I don't lose it all in case of electronic disaster.

That's all for now!

where did i go?

2007-02-16T09:06:00.000-06:00

When I was pregnant with my first child I remember thinking that now was the time for the happily ever after to start. I would have the baby and life would cruise happily along and everything after that point was just the fun details of life. I don't know why I thought that exactly but that was my mind set. My mom stayed home with my sister and I and was a great stay at home mom. I was looking forward to doing all the same things and being the perfect mom. The first hint that things weren't going perfectly was the six weeks of colic we went through with her. Eventually that cleared up and things went fairly smoothly until we tried to get pregnant with a sibling for her. It took two years, some mild fertility medicine and one miscarriage before we finally became pregnant with her. She was an easy baby and things were going well. I was from a family with two children, both girls so I felt like I had everything under control. I knew what to expect, I was comfortable with this. Then we were surprised with our little boy, a surprise pregnancy. I love him dearly but my life has not been the same since the day I found out I was pregnant with him.

Everything has become more complicated. More busy. More crazy. More noisy. All of those details that I thought would work themselves out after we were in happily ever after mode have arrived. And they aren't working themselves out. Things aren't falling into place. There is a ton of work to do. No matter what I'm working on I feel like I'm neglecting someone or something because they aren't getting the attention they need while I'm doing this.

I'm frustrated and angry. I feel like I'm being swallowed up by life. I feel like a complete failure. I feel guilty. I feel like running away, not from my family but from all of the demands. No matter how hard I work the amount of work never seems to lighten or be finished. Not only that but I feel like I'm starting to become a little invisible. I'm disappearing but I don't know that anyone will notice until a bill isn't paid or everything else has ground to a halt. I'm living a life I never would have predicted. I feel lost without a map to navigate what to do or how to do it. I don't know what to do to be seen again. Maybe I do know but I'm too afraid to try it. It's always failed before, why would it work now? Do I have a choice? Are all of us broken somewhere and have a crutch that we lean on? If I give up that crutch will I just find a new one to replace it? Can I have a good crutch instead of a bad one?

I think I need to do some work. I need to learn to stand up with out the crutch. I need to do some rehab work on myself and learn to live without it. I'm scared of not having it, I'm scared of failing again. The failure seems inevitable. I'm not a fatalist except when it comes to this. I think it's something I'm going to battle every day for the rest of my life and that overwhelms me. I feel like not bothering with it since I'm doomed to fight it forever. But then I look at my life and where I'm at. I need to do this. Not for anyone else but for me. And maybe that's the first time I've finally reached that conclusion. Maybe that's what it will take.

I have a feeling this is going to be a year of change for me. And I don't know if I should feel scared, happy or even more overwhelmed than before because right now that's how I feel.

I have to make myself re-appear because I deserve better.

no more apologies

2007-01-28T18:37:00.000-06:00

Peer pressure. Blog pressure. Bleer Pressure?

I always feel guilty that I don't have tons of pictures to accompany my posts. Truth be told I love to take pictures but I don't have a little point and shoot to capture some of the day to day stuff. All of the blogs that I always visit have lots of pictures of the dinner they made, the latest knitting/craft project they're working on, kids, etc. I'd love to do the same but I'm just flat out exhausted, and the thought of having to do more photo related work stresses me out. I started the blog to write about what was going on in my life and knitting that I've done. But I feel guilty about not having pictures to post so I don't write. It's a vicious little circle.

Today we finally had the birthday party for my daughter. Poor thing was born in the middle of January which just isn't conducive to get-togethers. Inevitably someone is sick or there is a snow/ice storm and this year was no exception. We had planned to have her party last Sunday but we had about 8" of snow last weekend so we post-postponed it to today. She wanted to have a tea party (which she had last year too). The girl is nothing if not consistent :-) However it was a tea party with a Cinderella theme since my girl is positively obsessed with Cinderella. For the last two Halloweens she has gone as Cinderella. We have not one, not two, but three Cinderella costumes. And every single day she carefully brushes her hair and wears the exact same Cinderella headband which came with her first costume.

We invited five other little preschoolers over to the studio for the party. After everyone was there they had the option of changing into dress up clothes and then we proceeded with the glamour girl make-over. We painted fingernails, put on make-up and curled their hair. After a brief fashion show I then took pictures of each of the girls.

Then it was on to tea time. My wonderful husband had helped me prepare the tea sandwiches ahead of time. We made chicken salad sandwiches cut into little triangles, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches cut into heart shapes and cream cheese and jelly sandwiches cut into circles. We also served a veggie tray to get in something at least a little nutritious. The tea was actually Arnold Palmers (1 part lemonade 1 part iced tea), requested by the birthday girl herself.

While the girls munched on the goodies I quickly downloaded all the pictures and did a quick Photoshop job on them and then printed them out on our little Epson PhotoMate. Then I slipped each 4x6 into a little clear acrylic frame I got at Wal-Mart.

For cake I made a Cinderella cake of course! I have a special pan I bought a number of years ago to make all of the Barbie-style cakes that the girls always want. It's taller than the Wilton pan, and makes the perfect size cake. I did do something new this year though and used fondant for the skirt over the butter cream.

Sabrina had a great time at her party as did all of the other little princesses :-) It was a super busy day but fun. Now we're at home recovering from all the non-stop running of the weekend.

Last night I did manage to do my gauge swatch for the Drive-Thru sweater (I did finish the ballet slippers but I still need to buy the soles to sew on the bottom. But knitting-wise, they're done!). I had started to cast-on and then remembered I hadn't done the gauge swatch yet. So I reluctantly tore out the cast-on and then started the gauge swatch. Good thing I did, I ended up having to go up a needle size to get gauge. Can not imagine how frustrated I would have been if I had started working on it without having gauge!

Tonight I'm going to finally get down to work on it. I've decided to make the cardigan version and will be knitting it in her favorite color, sunshine (a.k.a. yellow). The contrasting stripes of the yoke will be lavender, light green and light pink. And since I've decided not to pressure myself any more I'm not going to promise photos. Knitting is suppose to be relaxing and enjoyable and I refuse to turn it into another obligation or job by giving myself one more thing to do on my to do list. If I feel like taking pictures I will but I'm not going to apologize about it any more.

I am so cold...

2007-01-14T18:46:00.000-06:00

Brrrr. I. Am. So. Cold. I haven't felt my toes for most of the day. We had a sleet storm set in on Friday and it settled in for the weekend accompanied by snow and wind. Good times! Normally I would have enjoyed the pretty look of everything blanketed by snow but we had a big bridal fair that our company participated in this weekend. This meant I was walking around in dress shoes in the snow and muck. Today I walked across the street to get some lunch and my shoes swallowed about a quart of snow each. My poor little toes still haven't recovered. Even with the terrible weather attendance wasn't too bad at the show.

It's been a busy week getting ready for the show but I did manage to get some knitting done. I finished the second yellow ballet slipper and started on a hot pink pair for my older daughter. I just have the two by two ribbing to do on it and it will be finished. Then I'll just have the second pink one to make and I'll be done with the ballet slippers. I think I've decided to knit some Sweet Mary Jane slippers for Christmas for some of my aunts. After whipping up several of the ballet slippers I think I'm in the swing of the knitted shoe thing. I'm even thinking of adding some beads to the slippers for a change of pace to glitz things up too. And like every good knitter my list of projects I want to knit seems to be getting longer and longer. I've also ordered the pattern for the Drive-Thru sweater. I'm looking forward to making one for one of my daughters.

And as usual, I haven't had a spare second to snap any pictures at all. I'll have to get some after I finish the second ballet slippers and they can model them together. Did I mention we got a dog? He is so cute but I fear he'll be full grown before I can manage to get some pictures of him as well.

Off to dish up dinner. My sweet husband made a batch of chili in the crock-pot while I was trudging through the snow around the bridal fair today. I'm going to curl up on the couch with a warm bowl...

Finally, a few pictures...

2007-01-02T12:15:00.000-06:00

I tried the finished ballerina slipper on Sabrina this morning. Although a little big it does fit and she's very excited about it. I think I'm going to look into getting some slipper bottoms to sew onto the bottom. Now it's on to the second slipper!

Happy New Year!

2007-01-01T23:24:00.000-06:00

Wow. Did I really last post in September? No wonder I have been banished from some if not all of the webrings I belong to. To say that things have been busy is an understatement. We moved the studio to a new location which needed lots of work. We pulled up the old carpet, painted the ceiling and walls, built a wall and put down new flooring (not necessarily all in that order). Between that, the kids, work, etc. there has been no time!

Now that we're pretty much settled in though things are getting a little less crazy. I did manage to get a little bit of knitting done but didn't get any pictures. I made a little hat and baby bootie set for my business partner. However, in my usual procastinating self I literally finished the booties minutes before I left the house for the baby shower. I'll try to get pictures of the items actually on the baby after he arrives :-)

In other knitting news, I made lots of progress today! I knitted the first half of a pair of the Twinkletoes ballet slippers for one of my daughters. It was a learning experience for me, I had never done short rows or the cable cast-on before. Felt good to learn a little something new and get a little more knitting experience under my belt. Tomorrow I'll cast on for the second half of the set and hopefully finish it up before this weekend. Then I'll be doing another pair in a different color for my oldest daughter. I'll try to get pictures as well. I find that I usually post to the blog (usual? Did I just say usual? Who am I kidding, I haven't posted since September?!) after my entire family is asleep and getting out all of the camera gear, etc. would wake everyone up. Going to have to try to do better on that....

Let's see, what else has happened since I posted last.... Oh! My darling husband built a big wooden barrier to the huge, dirt-filled planter that had been the source of much grief and vacuming. I'm happy to say that we no longer have a fine layer of dirt all of the front of the house now. My son has now moved on to much more interesting pursuits since his indoor dirt pit was taken away. He is now busy trying to reprogram the heat/ac control pad whenever we aren't watching. There's nothing like waking up to a house that is 68 degrees in December! Or noticing that instead of just turning the heat off he is now going the extra step and turning the AC on. Good times!! We may have to buy a little plastic lock box to go over the heat/ac controls. That should be a charming addition to the decor, always looks so delightful in every school or office I've ever been in. Maybe my husband and I could even leave each other notes taped to it like you see in every church, "Do NOT set below 71! (also please take out the trash)." I always read all of the hand written notes in the churches, they do amuse me so. I'm always hunting around for the electrical outlets and light switches to take the wedding photos and frequently run across the notes. It always strikes me as funny just how angry the notes can be in a House of God. I came across one on Saturday that was quite lengthy and detailed about not leaving the lights on after a week night event as the lights don't turn off automatically and "WILL STAY ON UNTIL I COME IN THE NEXT DAY AND TURN THEM OFF MYSELF." (the all caps were actually written over twice to make them that much more bold for the reader or the inconsiderate, irresponsible, electricity-wasting church member going to the panel to make a lighting adjustment)

In holiday news I'm trying to decide what to do for Christmas next year. This year I was so busy that I bailed on making some of the things I had planned and went with gift cards instead. I'm thinking of starting the holiday stuff right off the bat, working as quickly as I can and then moving on to more of the things I want to make. We'll see, knowing me I'll just meander through the year and then start getting anxious about Christmas in August...

Playing catch up

2006-09-20T09:22:00.000-05:00

Hello! Long time no post! I am finally starting to catch up with life. A little. I have been completely swamped with work, this summer was busy, busy. So, so, so many weddings. It's been great, the business is really growing but it's been an adjustment. Most nights I'm up until about 1 am trying to get work done while everyone is asleep. Needless to say there hasn't been much progress made on any knitting at all.

I do think I'm finally starting to get on top of things though. ::crossing fingers:: I'm pretty much caught back up on the photography end of things. Now I've just got to maintain that while I get the business/financial end caught back up. So much to do! I did manage to get all of my clients entered into a new accounting software so it's much easier to keep track of all the different account balances and all the details. We're also in the process of moving to a bigger business space which is exciting, although lots of work.

Perhaps one of the most exciting developments of the summer was the construction of a large wood device whose sole purpose is to permanently block access to the enormous planter of dirt in the house. Although my two year old boy is disappointed that he can no longer use his earth moving toys for actual earth moving inside the house, the parents are delighted.

I'm also making some progress in the organization of the entire home. Slowly, but it's being made. During the insanity of the summer wedding season everything pretty much ground to a halt while I was working on all the photography stuff so the house spiraled out of control. Which I can't stand. So, I'm trying to implement better routines so I can at the very least stay on top of things. This summer I barely kept my head above water by only keeping up with the laundry and dishes. So not my idea of a clean and tidy house. I do struggle with the kids rooms though. I want them spotless. Heck, I want the whole house spotless. But I struggle with knowing I should have them do it themselves so they learn how to clean their room and also the consequences of their actions. Unfortunately I find myself doing a quick pick up in the morning after they're at school which completely defeats the whole consequences thing. Oh but how I love walking through the whole house when everything has been put away. ::sigh:: I'm trying to work on this by helping them clean up at night so that they can learn what is expected/how to do it, while satisfying my need of getting it done how I want it.

Spiritually I am so far behind on my bible reading it is not even funny. Or possible to catch up. I read through the entire bible every year for four years in a row. I love it. However, with the start of this business I've fallen hopelessly behind and feel awful about it. I thought about taking a Bible Study class at church this fall but didn't sign up. It was being held on a morning when all three of my kids are in school. For the first time since before my oldest daughter was born (8 years ago) I have two mornings all to myself and I selfishly decided to keep it that way. I've got to do something though so I'm going to work on getting my quiet time back.

Which leads me to realize that virtually all my struggles in life go back to not being a morning person. I have all these things that I could get done and my day/life would go so much better if I just got up early and did them: quiet time, working out, cleaning. I am so so so not a morning person. Staying up to 1? Not a problem. Getting up at 6? Virtually impossible. I've got to work on it though.

I'm looking forward to getting to the point where I'll have some free time in the evenings back so I can relax and knit or do whatever. Instead of always working. Speaking of knitting, I have my next project ready to go, just need to find the time. I've ordered the yarn and pattern for the Sweet Mary Jane Cardigan to make for my mom for Christmas. With it being September already it's looking like this probably won't be done in time. Maybe for next Christmas...

Well, that's my little catch up for now. Hopefully now that things are a little less crazy and the kids are back in school I'll be able to post more frequently. And get some knitting done!

let's make a deal...

2006-04-21T21:14:00.000-05:00

Confession: right now I should be scrawling prices on pieces of masking tape and affixing them to mountains of junk that will be in my garage sale tomorrow. What am I doing instead? Sipping a berries & cream Dr. Pepper (note: it's brand new and pretty tasty) and cruising the internet. I have massive piles of stuff that need to leave my home forever so I had that moment of temporary insanity where I mentioned to my uber organized best friend that we should have another garage sale. She thought this was a great idea. So she did all of her spring cleaning, cleaned out every closet and room, sorted, priced and neatly stacked her garage sale items. I am still staring at the same boxes overflowing with toys and shoes from the night I first tossed the idea out. I am quite convinced that she doesn't sleep or is really a feminized Stepford-bot of some kind.

I think it might be almost more entertaining to not price any of the stuff, mix up some margaritas and just throw the crap in the middle of the drive-way. Watch people wrestle over my diaper genie and fisher-price piano. This is definitely the last garage sale for a while. It is so much easier to just haul it all to the Goodwill or DAV. I don't make any money that way but it takes way, way less time and effort.

Have I mentioned that I really don't want to do this? ::sigh:: Can't wait until the sale is over. You may wonder why I dread it so much. We live in the perfect garage sale location. I have never advertised or put up any signs or banners. All we ever do is haul things onto the driveway and people swarm. Our street becomes packed and there are nearly wrecks on the major street bordering my house because of the traffic to my place. And then there is the negotiating. Ugh.

I suppose I should be psyching myself up. But it's just more work. I'm so not looking forward to it. Better go find my masking tape and marker. And my happy face. I'm off to battle the garage sale beast.

Home, dirty home

2006-04-20T10:25:00.000-05:00

My family and I are fortunate to live in a very large if slightly eccentric home. This home belonged to my husband's grandfather and has seen almost every member of his family live here at one time or another. This home was built somewhere in the 40s or 50s and has some very unique design features. It has a very open floor plan with a large kitchen as well as a pretty darn big living room which are both wonderful features. Some of the more "unique" design features to this home are the geometric, wood trillis which divides the entryway from the dining room, the linoleum in the kitchen which features ships with sails and windmills (all in the ever stylish and current shade of harvest gold) and the bathroom which looks like something out of a high-end vegas suite from the 60s. This bathroom doesn't have sheetrocked walls. Instead it is covered in some kind of thick plastic like substance that comes in large sheets. The lower portion is black while the top portion is the same black but is flecked with pink, peach and white paint splatters. Except for the one wall which has green plastic sheeting. I guess they ran out of black for that one. Or maybe it's a "design feature." This bathroom has generated more comments than any other room of the house. My friend's little daughter saw it for the first time and was in awe. "Wow mommy, this is like a hotel bathroom!" I'm not sure where they have been staying while on vacation since I haven't seen a hotel bathroom like this except on early James Bond films.

The other rooms feature windows of non-standard sizes which are off of the ground in non-standard measurements. The walls are sheetrock with about 1/2" of plaster over it. When my husband was attempting to do some computer networking and needed to drop a cable down a wall through the attic (before wireless networks were readily available) our friend came over to help. They drilled the hole in the attic and tried to drop the cable down. Only it wouldn't go. It was stopped. Why? Because the builder but cross beams between each stud all the way down. And I can't forget to mention the mysterious Light Switch to Nowhere. We don't care when the kids play with that one. We let them flip it to their little hearts content. They could be turning lights on and off somewhere in China for all we know.

But perhaps the single most frustrating design feature of this house are the built in planters. These are large limestone planters filled with dirt, inside the house. Yes, inside the house. When I first laid eyes on these planters while dating my husband I thought they were quaint. After we were married and I moved in I even tried to use them. I went to the nursery and bought some cute little flowers, brought them home and planted them. They really did look cute--that day. Then the next day I went to check on them and the little flowers had all turned their pretty little heads straight to the window and the sunshine that steamed in. Which looked cute if you were outside of the house looking in at them. Which of course no one can do since there is a huge flowerbed on the other side of the window. So I had all these cute flowers that no one could really see. But that wasn't so bad. At least we had cute flowers growing in the house! How cute! How Martha Stewart!

Until the aphids came. I noticed these tiny little bugs all over the plants. Ewww. Sprays didn't work and just made the house stink. People would walk into our home and were instantly assaulted by the smell of insecticide. Then they would see the strange little anti-social flowers who wouldn't even dignify my hard work to keep them alive by even looking at me. After the aphids returned again, I caved. I pulled up the plants and tossed them. This left me with the dirt. It didn't look great but there wasn't much else to do with it. We joked about it but grew accustomed to it. Eventually we had children. Now the planters are no longer jokes. They are evil design features placed here by an obviously childless architect. Every child has each, at their own time, discovered the dirt planter and delighted in playing with it. They throw the dirt on the ground, they sprinkle it on the piano, they bury things in it. They eventually learn that playing in the dirt inside the house is not allowed. The first two children (both girls I might add) would occassionally make a mess but for the most part were very careful and tried to leave it alone.

Now we have our son. He is almost two. Living in a home with a large planter filled with dirt must be his equivelent to a college age boy at the playboy mansion. If there were a tiny milk and cookie pub for the male toddlers to frequent I'm sure he'd be there everyday bragging about his dirt playland.

And really, I can't blame him. I'm sure it's a huge temptation and great fun. I'm just getting completely worn out with all the dirt and the vacumming. We've racked our brain trying to figure out how to fix this problem. We've looked for tile to tile in the middle of the planter but nothing matches. Let me describe it. It is probably around eight feet long and about three feet tall. The front is limestone and each end meets up with a wall. It's about two and half (or so) feet wide and has windows that run the length of it. The top of the planter is marble and has an opening of somewhere around 6-10" by about 7 feet which is where the dirt is.

My best guess is that the marble needs to be removed with crowbars (some of it is in bad shape) and then the dirt would be removed, the surface prepared and then we could tile the whole thing over in something nice and put some throw pillows up there. Of course this all takes time and money, both of which are in short supply. At this point I think I'm going to get a really big, ugly piece of plywood and lay it over the hole to keep the munchkins out of it.

Until then it's just me and vacum.

A little adventure

2006-04-09T17:34:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I did something I don't think I've done since college. Or maybe ever. I went on a little adventure--by myself.

My in-laws took care of our three darling children while my husband and I went out of town. He had a tournament to go to in Topeka and I had, get this, NOTHING TO DO. Seriously. Nothing to do. Several hours of empty time stretched out ahead of me. Oh the possibilities! He asked me what I was going to do. Hmmmm. No idea. This is very unlike me. Amy of the "We Must Plan Everything" had no plan. Well, I take it back. I planned on not hanging out at the bowling alley with him and his team mates. That was definitely part of the non-plan.

I decided my nails were looking pretty sad and in need of a manicure so I grabbed the phone book and looked up a nail salon. Kissed the hubby good-bye and took off for the salon. Only there wasn't a salon. There was urban blight and bars on windows. Not my idea of a girly afternoon out. So I turned the truck around and headed back to the safe side of town. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm all for some adventure but blocks of bail bondsmen, pawn shops and seedy bars is more adventure than I'll ever be wanting.

So, back to square one. I go to gas station and buy a map and decide I'll drive into Topeka and find a shopping center. And then I remember, The Yarn Barn! I had heard about that little store and it was in Lawrence, not too far from where I was. So, I grabbed a Dr. Pepper and set off on my own little adventure to Lawrence and the rumored yarn heaven that is The Yarn Barn.

It was a beautiful afternoon, a rare Kansas day of a light breeze, vivid blue skies, perfect temperature and no humidity. The drive to Lawrence was scenic and lovely. It was marred only by my realization that I hadn't grabbed one of my cameras to take with me. In our rush to pack five bags for five different people and grab all of the necessities (Did we get her Night Night (translation: her special blankie), what about Carson's pillow? Did you pack enough diapers? etc.) I had not grabbed my camera bag. And I was so sad about this. Especially when I drove past the quaint cemetary on the hill with the tall, ornate headstones. I so wish I had remembered the camera. But I suppose if I had I would have made that into work and maybe not have completely relaxed to do nothing as I ended up doing.

I drove into Lawrence and stopped at the visitor center and asked for directions to the Yarn Barn. Drove over and was shocked at the amount of traffic and people out shopping. I hadn't been to Lawrence in years and had never been in that area of the town before. It was so cute! So many shops to visit and hundreds of people walking up and down the sidewalks shopping and socializing. Who knew? Took a while to find a parking space but I managed to find one a block away from the main drag and went back.

At this point I have to confess. I have never spent much time with just me. As a kid I always had my sister around. As a teenager and early adult I always had friends with me. I'm a bit social and always think anything I want to do will be more fun with friends. I admit, part of me has always been a little scared of doing things on my own. I felt like I needed friends with me. If I didn't know anyone who would I talk to? What if no one talked to me? What if I was all alone? Over the past year I've been doing more things on my own. And I like it. It's not scary like I thought it would be. It's peaceful and calming. Don't get me wrong, I love my family. I love my crazy kids and my sweet husband. But sometimes it's nice to be by myself and not have anyone need one single thing from me for an hour.

I browsed through the shops. Looked at toys for upcoming birthdays. Smiled at baby furnishings wistful that I would never need to shop for them again but relieved all at the same time. Admired hand made jewelry and artful blown glass sculptures. I went in the stores I wanted to see and stayed as long as I wanted to stay. I didn't feel rushed, I went at my own pace.

And then there was the Yarn Barn. How is it possible that such a small town can have such a fabulous yarn store? My own town is hundreds of thousands of people larger and our yarn store is a fraction of the size. I had the best time taking in all of the colors and textures. There was just so much to see. I spent a fair amount of time just looking at it all. I almost bought some yarn to make something for my sister. She now lives in Seattle and I was so tempted to by the beautiful hand-dyed $30 skein of red silk that was called "Ruby Red Slippers" but I resisted temptation and put it back. All told I think I spent under $4 for my afternoon shopping but the experience was worth far more than that.

On the way back I saw a sign for an apple orchard and stopped on a whim. They had fresh apple cider donuts and cold apple cider. I picked up the little treat and headed back to town. Normally I want to stop at those little places but my husband doesn't. And I can't say I blame him. If we stopped everywhere I wanted to we probably wouldn't get very far.

I drove back to my husband listening to jazz and realizing that I'm starting to discover more about myself this year--who I am, what makes me happy. I'm a bit more introspective now that I'm in my 30s. I'm surprised at how I feel about things that I thought would make me feel fulfilled. After all, I had planned it all out. The 30s feel like I'm finding the glove that fits and putting it on and getting comfortable. Not picking out the one that I want to fit and trying to squeeze it on.

I like jazz and chocolate and stretching my creative muscles. I enjoy driving to a new place and trying new things. I get frustrated when I get interrupted doing anything--I like to start and finish things all at once. I love my family with all my heart, but I'm a better wife and mother when I take a little time alone. And that was time well spent.

time flies...

2006-04-05T09:50:00.000-05:00

Wow! Can't believe it's been so long since I've posted. Time seems to just go a little faster every year.

Things have been busy as usual. My calf is doing ok. I've been off crutches for a while but it gets tired quickly and has been hurting a little more than usual since yesterday. My sister recently hurt her back and her chiropractor recommended pilates to help her strengthen her back. I thought I'd look into it for myself and ended up signing up to take classes here at the local pilates studio. I've only had one class so far and I am really enjoying it. I've also renewed my effort to lead a healthier lifestyle, lose weight and get in shape. It's going to be hard work but it's something I need to do.

On to knitting! I started knitting a teddy bear for my son's birthday and it has gone fairly well. I now have it all knitted and just need to assemble the knitted/stuffed parts. I had to set it aside temporarily though while I started a baby blanket for a friend's shower. I saw a post on another blog about the pinwheel baby blanket and wanted to give it a try. It is now going well and I'm making good progress on it. Unforunately I don't have time for pictures today but will get some up soon on these works in progress.

Oh, and I did get a fun new knitting tool! Went out and bought the Needlemaster set which I *love*! It's awesome and so fast to knit with. I used my 40% off coupon at Michael's to get it and am so glad I made the investment in it.

Things I've learned this week:

2006-03-04T23:57:00.000-06:00

How to use the OnStar phone in my SUV.

I will never be able to knit those $^@# mittens.

I can knit the matching scarf in two days.

When I'm confined to my living room chair.

The exact snap and feeling of ripping a muscle in your calf. While shooting a wedding. Two hours from home. Two hours from the end of the shoot.

That the emergency room has thankfully revamped itself and it no longer takes 4+ hours to receive emergency treatment (although it did take 5 hours to get there from the time of injury).

That there isn't much you can do to treat a torn calf muscle other than some anti-inflamatories, pain meds and rest.

That a one year old boy can figure out in a day that you can't chase him. So he laughs and runs away. Over and over.

That it is nearly impossible and certainly dangerous to try to drive with a torn calf muscle. Two hours from home.

Thank God for cruise control.

That I can try to get caught up on a little knitting and correspondence.

That my husband loves me and will take care of me, the kids, the house and my business in addition to his own job. What a man :-)

Ode to a fountain pen...

2006-02-18T15:47:00.000-06:00

Yay me! Finally figured out how to put some fancy buttons for my webrings and links. Check out the sidebar. Guess my miniscule bit of knowledge about html paid off a little. And I even managed to move the links to sidebar all on my very own. :-)

Had a college flashback today. My daughter attended a birthday party at the bowling alley at Wichita State University. It was neat to walk around and see all the changes and how some things are still exactly the same. I walked around the bookstore looking at all the sweatshirts, hats, keychains and stuffed WuShocks. While browsing through the children's WSU merchandise I found an extremely cute tiny little baseball hat for my extremely cute tiny son. He now looks like quite the little man.

And in other exciting news I nearly jumped up and down when I found my favorite pens. In college I always bought these disposable fountain pens at the bookstore on campus to take all of my notes in class. They write so smoothly, the ink just flows out. I can remember taking notes in class and watching the ink spread out on the paper feathering ever so slightly away from the penstroke I had just made. Believe me, at times watching the ink was much more interesting than paying attention to the lectures. I loved these pens but couldn't find them anywhere after I graduated from college. And then today, ten years later, I was reunited with my beloved fountain pen. Evidently that's the only place in Wichita that sells them, and believe me I've looked. Everywhere. Even when on vacation if I'm in a stationary aisle in a store I look. I've looked online for them but somehow never found them there either. So at least now I know where to get them. Yes, that's the exciting life ten years after graduating from college. You find fountain pens exciting.

I took my son's counted cross stitch Christmas stocking with me to work on but didn't end up being able to work on it. I'm going to try the cable cast-on tonight for the mittens. I'm feeling a little more in the knitting mood with the downright frigid weather that we're having. Time to get dinner in the oven: roasted chicken with red potatoes and steamed veggies. Yum...

A hat, a bunny and yarn, oh my!

2006-02-16T11:38:00.000-06:00

Here they are: real, color photos!

Yes, I've finally managed to take a few quick pics of my knitting projects. First I have a long overdue Thank You! to Amy. I won a little trivia contest on her blog and she graciously sent me a big box full of yarn.

Yay! Let's open the box and see what's inside!

Look at all the beautiful yarn! So excited! Thank you Amy! Most knitting blogs catch a cat in the background of their yarn, not mine. That's my son's feet speeding past in the corner of the picture. Some of you may be wondering who the cute little bunny is. On the front page of Amy's blog I noticed a cute little bunny in the picture. I recognized that bunny, my daughter had the same one. Then I read the very touching and sad Saga of Bunny. When the yarn came I thought I could pay homage to their Bunny with a little photoshoot featuring our Bunny. Amy & Emma, I hope you enjoy knowing that your yarn is now being watched over by another bunny :-)

I haven't been accomplishing as much knitting as I would like. Been busy with the business and kids. But, I do have some pictures! That itself is progress if you ask me. Here is the Sunshine Hat (really known as the Child's Bulky Knit Rolled Brim Hat):

Here are the little crocheted flowers that I need to sew on:

Now here's what's been holding me up:

My first mitten. It looks great. Except, when I went to seam up the side I realized that my daughter would never be able to squeeze her cute little hand into it. The cast-on edge is way too tight. So, now I'm going to have to frog the whole thing and start over. I'm going to try a cable cast-on and see if it will work better. So that's where I'm at. I was making some fabulous progress until I hit that snag. So I sat it aside for a while but I'm ready to jump back into it and complete it. Hopefully it will work!

House hunting....

2006-01-29T22:15:00.000-06:00

Again, I have no pictures. Well that's not true exactly. I have hundreds of pictures. Thousands of pictures. But they are pictures of brides and grooms, boquets and rings, flower girls and bestmen. They have nothing to do with knitting. I've been so busy with work that I haven't had a chance to take some knitting pictures. This busyness has guilted me into not posting because I keep promising to post pictures and haven't gotten it done. Not to mention the thank you notes. Oh the guilt.

Not only have I been busy with the business, I've been busy with house hunting. I always thought I'd be EXCITED! HAPPY! to go house hunting. Because when you dream of a new house it's always perfect. It has the perfect layout, the perfect number of bedrooms, the perfect neighbors, the perfect street name (yes I'm that much of a dork), the perfect trees, the perfect location. In reality (or realty ha! ha!)there's always a strike against it somewhere. And if I think it's perfect, or at least a possibility, I can guarantee you that my husband doesn't agree. We're looking for a house closer to my daughter's school with more room than what we've got now. Oh the stress. We can't seem to agree on anything.

We were looking at houses today when a real estate agent practically attacked me for taking pictures of a home we were in. And let me clarify this--there wasn't a stick of furniture in it. Just room after room of tacky wall-paper borders. And really that's a subject worthy of an entire blog entry of it's own--wall paper borders and their assault on home decorating. Anyway, I was shocked at how rude she was. She went on and on about how it wasn't proper or accepted to take photos of homes that are for sale. People could have expensive pieces of art or children there. Again, no furniture, no art, no kids in this house. She asked me how I would like it if I had an open house and people took pictures. I told her that would be great, because the object is to *sell the house*. If that necessitates pictures, go for it. Anyone with a few brain cells bumping around would *remove the valuables* before the open house. And likewise with the kids. I was astounded. She thought that was a way to attract buyers? Unbelieveable. Now she's e-mailing us trying to sell a house to us. I have half a mind to send her on a never-ending search for the perfect home for us. First time I've been treated like a criminal for taking pictures. Whatever...

And it's January so that means that we're on a rotation basis with the illness. Sabrina started first with it, then my son, then Sabrina again, then my older daughter, then my husband and now I think I'm getting a touch of it. We've rescheduled my daughter's fourth birthday party two times. I'm crossing my fingers I can get the family healthy by Saturday for the birthday party. Can't bear to think of rescheduling again.

And knitting? ha ha ha. I took it with me to sewing night with my two girlfriends but we just spent our sewing time racking up an embarassing large tab of appetizers and margaritas. But that was some money seriously well spent, we hadn't had a girls night in quite a while. And it's hard to think about knitting mittens when we're having 50 & 60 degree days. My pear trees have started to bud out already which just can't be a good thing. Maybe we can find that perfect house before the trees all get burned with a freeze...

Oh, someone had asked my opinion on the Sony N1. I tried to respond but the e-mail didn't go through. I've not personally looked at that model but I've had good luck with Sony digital cameras. I've had one and my parents have had two. They're good little cameras. I shoot with Canon digital SLRs now (which I *adore*) and have a Nikon for film. Have fun camera shopping!

no pictures yet, but I've made some progress...

2006-01-13T19:36:00.000-06:00

Wow has it been a busy couple of weeks. My refrierator is positively bare and I just haven't had enough time to even make it to the grocery story. Business at the photography studio is really picking up. It's so exciting! I'm completely booked with weddings for June and have many more booked throughout the year. Yesterday I even booked one for 2007! Yay! The growth of the studio has allowed me to finally give my notice at my part-time cake decorating job. I've enjoyed the work there but have just been stretched too thing with the family, photography and cake decorating. Whew, it'll be nice to just focus (ha ha) on the photography now.

On the knitting front it's been a bit of a challenge. I finished the sunshine hat, just need to crochet a few flowers for it. But, the instructions (crochet) are a teeny bit confusing so i'm going to have to sit down with my mom and work on them. The hat did turn out quite cute if I do say so myself. Again, pictures will be coming soon. Our DVD burner died so I can't delete the wedding pictures I took last week from my cf card until I have a back-up dvd burned. Ya'll probably think I've completely made up all this photography business with this blog being completely devoid of pictures. I'm hoping to get some up soon. Did I tell ya that my sweet husband helped me make my own double pointed needles for the hat? Couldn't find any the right size in town and the ones I could find online were going to be $9 plus shipping. So went to the hardware store and bought the right size dowel rod for $0.85. Sweet.

I have started my first mitten to match the sunshine hat. I made a guage swatch but it was too big, went down a needle size and it was still too big. After looking at my swatch I decided I was knitting too loosely and tried it again, finally got guage. Began the mitten and it is going well so far. I've been learning a new technique with each thing I knit and this time I'm learning how to make slanting increases. Really enjoying it and I'll post some pics soon. Seriously. Otherwise I'll be forced to break out my kids crayolas and scan my sad little drawings in. And really, who wants to see that? I can promise you, you really don't.

And BTW, what on earth is this Dancing with the Stars? This summer my sister was in town from Seattle and we had each thought this was a joke. I mean we seriously thought it was a spoof commercial when we saw it for the first time. I'm watching some of it now and it's interesting. I enjoy seeing the dancing but it seems kind of campy. I can already see them talking about this on VH1 in ten years when they do the "I love the 00s". Well thank heavens they just told Lisa Rinna she could stay, I thought she might start bawling any minute on camera.

Welcome to those of you who have taken the time to stop by my blog! I'm new to all of this and really enjoying it. Now that the holidays are over hopefully I'll be able to post more. Well, let me make that after my daughter's birthday is over. Her birthday is Monday, she'll be four. It's gone by so fast! We went through quite a bit to have her so at the time I thouht her birthday was a fine time of year. I quickly learned though that it's not such a hot time. At two weeks old she was sick with a winter bug. And every birthday since then has been a challenge planning her party. I get so caught up with Christmas it's hard to remember how quickly her birthday will be there afterwards. We finally got her party planned and the invitations out only for her to wake up with a stomach bug today :-( So, her party will be postponed until next week. Maybe I can have her hat ready for her by then.

Real color photos coming soon...

Frajjjeeelllayy, it must be Italian! No dear I think it says "Fragile."

2006-01-02T00:06:00.000-06:00

To quote my family's favorite Christmas movie:

"I won, I won, I won!"

No, no, it's not a major award but it is a fantabously cool prize. YARN! Many thanks to Amy for creating this contest. I had the closest guess to the number of items she finished this year. I guessed 30 and she completed 29. I think she should win some kind of reward for completing so many projects!

I wasn't as close on the number of skeins in her stash though, Susan won that one. Congrats Susan!

And hey, yay me again. I just figured out how to put links in my posts!

In other knitting news I made more progress on the sunshine hat today. I had happily knitted the first 20 rows per the instructions and decided to give my cute little hat a test fit on little daughter. It was too small. I go back and check in directions. I had bought the suggested size yarn and needles. Knitted my guage block and my size was off. Went back to the LYS bought smaller needles and knitted a new guage block which was spot on. Carefully followed the instructions and knit my 20 happy rows. I read the pattern again and see that it indicates this will yield a hat to fit an 18-19" head. Measured my girl's head and it's 20". Bummer.

I then frogged the entire thing did some knitting math (boo! hiss!) and now have a hat that looks cuter than hat 1.0. Currently said daughter is sleeping soundly in her bed so I must wait until tomorrow morning to test it on her cute little (or not so little as it is) mellon. Hopefully sunshine hat 2.0 will be a perfect fit.

And by this time I'm sure no one believes that I'm a photographer as I have the saddest text only blog out there. Honestly, I have a camera, I do! Not only that but people pay me to take pictures of themselves! Seriously! I promise that one day soon I will have happy little pictures on this page. This is just may way to build the excitement. Knitting drama. Yeah baby, knitting drama...

Happy New Year!

2006-01-01T12:45:00.000-06:00

2006! Wow does time fly. I was at the grocery store yesterday (yes, due to a busy schedule and poor planning I had the misfortune of being in Wal-Mart on New Year's Eve! Brilliant move, eh?) and as I was putting things in the cart I was remembering all the excitement and panic over Y2K. Hard to believe that was six years ago already.

We took the kids over to my parents last night and hung out a bit at their annual New Year's Eve party. They have a group of friends that they always get together with and rotate the party year to year to a different couple's house. Last night was my parents turn. We visited with them and snacked on some yummy food. The kids loved it because there were other kids to play and raise cain with. We're good friends with the son of one of the couples and he was there with three of his children. His children are older and more self-sufficient. Mine--not so much. They were pretty ramped up with the party atmosphere and so we spent most of our time watching them and keeping them from:

A. Breaking things
B. Hurting themselves
C. Hurting others
D. Ruining carpet, furniture, wallpaper, etc.

After a couple of hours of this we decided to throw in the towel and go home. Don't get me wrong, my children aren't little monsters. They're just 7, 3 & 1 with lots of excitement for the party, friends to play with and parents who can get distracted from time to time trying to carry on a conversation. They were pretty darn good for the most part it's just that we weren't able to really relax and enjoy things, plus the little one was getting sleepy.

So, off to home we went. We dodged the swerving cars and made it home in one piece. The girls celebrated the New Year early by popping the confetti champagne bottles on the porch and yelling "Happy New Year!" We let them stay up to watch the ball drop but neither one made it. We woke them up to watch the key moment and then they stumbled to their own bed. Of course that was only 11:00 our time so we flipped over and saw that Fox News was covering the ball dropping in Manhattan, Kansas (known around here as "The Little Apple")! My husband is a K-State alum so that was pretty cool to see.

While the girls were asleep on the couch I spent the time laughing until I was crying reading Crazy Aunt Purl's website. Love reading her entries, definitely my new favorite site. My husband thought I'd been swigging champagne behind his back. Do you ever read or see something funny and try to tell someone else about it? Except you completely ruin the story because you can't keep a straight face? And before you get to the punch like you start giggling and laughing? No? Just me? Well that was pretty much how every snippet of her site went that I shared with him. He just smiled and nodded his head like an adult does with a goofy kid who always tries to make up his own, better punch line to a joke. "Hey, hey, why did the chicken cross the road? Because he was a doody head! Ha! Ha! Ha!" Yeah, that was the same reaction I got. And since I can barely figure out how to post on my own blog let alone turn her name above into a magical link to her site I'll just type it out by hand since I'm just that lame:
http://www.crazyauntpurl.com Go, read, laugh, repeat.

After wiping the tears off my face, cleaning my glasses and blowing my nose a dozen times I actually did some knitting! Not only that I managed to do something New! And! Exciting! I began knitting in the round! For my first time! Although let me clarify that the only time last night my *husband* laughed until he cried was when he watched me trying to figure out how the hell I managed to turn the cast on row into a joined circular shape. I turned to my trusty lap top and did a quick search and found instructions! with pictures! Exactly what my non-engineering little brain needed. With the handy pictures I managed to join the knitting and get going on the sunshine hat. I now have 10 rows done and will be picking it back up after this entry. Only now I'm concerned about how I'm knitting it. I read something on Aunt Purl's site about if you don't hold your needles a certain way you actually end up knitting it inside out or some such thing. I'm just going to keep forging ahead though. It's going pretty quick and easy (which is usually a sign I've made a horrible mistake) so if I do screw it up I don't mind frogging and starting over.

Sorry no pictures of the progress. I let my photography/business partner borrow my CF card to shoot some weddings this weekend.

Have a great 2006!

A little about me...

2005-12-30T20:37:00.000-06:00

Welcome to my new blog! Time to introduce you to me, Amy, and tell you a little about me. December has been an even busier month than usual for me because I have opened a photography studio with another photographer! Photography has always been my first love and I'm now finally able to really enjoy it as both a creative process and a rewarding career.

Well now you know that I'm a professional photographer. What else... I also work part-time as a cake decorator, I have been married for 10 years and have three cute kids (2 girls and a boy). I've been accused of being crafty but would have to disagree with that. "Crafty" to me always brings to mind ugly, poorly made nic-nac stuff that I consider an enormous waste of time and money. Now needle-arts, that's something I can get behind. Needle art projects become heirlooms. I'm sure "crafty" people feel the same way about needle arts. C'est la vie. I enjoy quilting, counted-cross stitch, sewing and have recently discovered knitting!

Last year I vowed to not add any new projects to my long list of quilting and sewing. That wasn't a problem until I discovered knitting. Now I've not added any new quilting/sewing but I have added plenty of knitting :-) I'll add some pictures soon (kind of sad, a pro photographer can't get pics in her blog! It's like the cobbler's children and shoes...). Although I may not have the photo proof I have the finished object satisfaction of having completed: a one skein scarf for my best friend (Lion Brand Homespun--so soft, I love it), a ribbed scarf for DH's aunt, a Portrait scarf (name of the pattern, Artful yarns) for other DH's aunt, two watercolor cross quilts for in-laws and grandmother in-law and a yarn over scarf for my mom. Whew!

I'm currently working on a "sunshine" (my 3 year old's special name for yellow) hat. It's my first hat and first time with circs. After I finish that I'll be making matching mittens and a scarf for her.

Well, I think I've chatted on long enough. Guess I'm making up for my previous lack of posting. Pictures coming soon!