The family and I just returned from a fantastic vacation to Orlando. Himself's family is there, a few friends and relatives of mine are there, and, of course, The Mouse is there.

We managed to squeeze in some of each, though I'm convinced vacations are either too short or too long. Has anyone had exactly the right amount of time for everything? No? Yes? Maybe it is just me.

More photos may come, but there's 600+ for me to sort through (just the ones I took), and, well, I'm just not up for that yet. Anyway, here's a few just to prove we were there.

I had hours and hours on the plane to knit, but it was hard to concentrate on it for long. I had no trouble getting my knitting needles through security (I used my bamboo needles) and I didn't even try to take scissors. I'm working on a scarf in sock yarn, though, so it is taking forever to reach the end. Sort of like one of those things where you knit and knit and never get closer to the end, I think. I did get a good deal of knitting on the plane, and a little at the in-law's house, but not as much as I thought I'd do.

Himself was inspired to book the trip because his high school had a band alum reunion (all years) for the school's 70th anniversary. The alums were able to sit next to the band at the homecoming game on Friday and play along. I think the band director may have gotten an ulcer over his lack of control over the alums. They played whenever, and whatever, the wanted fairly often. The current school band had to stick to a more rigid plan. I suspect his mantra was "alums give money" or something like that. LOL Still, I sometimes caught this look on his face...

We went to the Magic Kingdom on Tuesday, and attended Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party later that night. You must buy special tickets for that, of course, but they close the park to non-ticket holders and there's trick-or-treating, fireworks and a parade. The kids brought their costumes and we took a break in the evening to head back to the hotel and change. It was so much fun! It was such an incredibly long day! 11 am - midnight. Exhausting! I don't think we waited more than 15-20 minutes for any ride, and for most of them, the wait was the length of time it took to walk from the entrance to the loading area. October is the month to go!

Wednesday we went to the Animal Kingdom. It was also pretty awesome with minimal wait times. I met up with a buddy from college (Austin College) and her mom for a few hours. They are living out that way now and so, when I do make it back to Texas, I never get to see her. The park is terrific, though much smaller and with fewer rides. We went to see several shows, including Nemo, The Musical, and rode several things twice. I made it on Expedition Everest, but only once. No one else would ride it with me and I felt bad making them all wait for me, even if the wait was short.

I will share one funny thing that happened at Animal Kingdom. While having lunch with everyone, I kept feeling this poking on my rear end. I thought it was my youngest child being obnoxious. It wasn't. It was a rather cheeky duck, pardon the pun. He was looking for a bit of my lunch and had the most remarkable expression on his face. Well, it looked that way from my point of view. Sadly, no one had a camera sitting out (safely tucked away from the food), so I can't share a photo of the fellow. He was rather bold, though. Just sitting there looking at me with an expression that said "Well?!"

We spent lovely time with family, mine and his, but it was all too short. Well, most of it was. Some folks are best in teeny, tiny doses, but I'll not dwell on that bit. LOL October is the best month for Florida, I think. Not too hot, but plenty warm for the kids. Himself and I were glad to return to Washington and real Fall weather.

The last day or so of the trip, the youngest developed a bladder infection. Sleep-deprived mom didn't really notice, or more correctly, connect the dots on that one until the night before we left. Seriously, I could not adjust to the 3-hour time difference the whole trip! Who knew those three hours could make my brain FAIL so much all week? It didn't help that the youngest was in total denial of all symptoms, for some unkown reason. So, the first day back, we were at the clinic for antibiotics for her. On the second leg of the flight home, the eldest got a sore throat. So, today we were at the doctor's office for her. She's got strep throat, and so they are both an antibiotics now. I hope that at the least, the meds will help the youngest recover from one and avoid getting the other. The adults will have to take their chances, I guess. Oh well, no one was sick while there and so far, no nasty swine flu symptoms.

I still say this was the best vacation ever, and I do hope we can go again in a couple of years. I miss my family, but visiting them is never relaxing, really. Visiting the in-laws provides innumerable amusement parks to visit, plus the beaches, and NASA, and goodness knows what else! But it also allows me to actually just enjoy the trip in a way that I just can't when visiting my family. So, the next trip will certainly be to see my folks, but probably not for a while. Which is good. I have all these photos to work through first...

How are we doing?

Well, we've been at the homeschool thing for about 2.5 weeks and we're all still alive. Week 2 was better, this week has been up and down (and it is only Tuesday!). We are still trying new stuff, new schedules, etc. and I don't expect everything to go smoothly while we are fiddling around. I have signed up to add Latin I class to our schedule. I think it is an awesome foundation for understanding English, and many other languages as well. I had two years in high school and quite liked it.

Yes. I'm a geek. lol

I'm still waiting for all the pass codes to get into that one, but it looks like a nice online class. I'm hoping the youngest can be part of the class so that she can benefit from it too.

On the knitting/fiber side of life, I finished my Jason Stackhouse Cat's Face Lace socks. These were a fun knit, and went pretty quickly, for me. They got interrupted for another cross stitch quilt square, which slowed me down, but no biggie. The pattern is from Ravelry but is heavily, heavily modified. The modifications were to suit my artistic muse, not because the pattern is in need of modification.

The original pattern is alternating rows of cat paws and cat faces. I decided I only wanted the faces. Then I decided I wanted to readjust the spacing on them, again, my muse was feeling uppity. These are toe-up socks, so the faces on the feet are in slightly different alignment than the ones on the leg, but I'm not even sure I could tell now. I did have some trouble at the top. Since I had a very generous amount of yarn, I repeated the pattern more than called for in the original (you may be wondering if anything is like the original pattern, right?). I thought the sock was a bit loose, so I went down a needle size for the ribbing, did the bind off and started weaving ends. Then I tried on the sock and it was too tight. I pondered my options for a silly hour or so, then I ripped out the weaving, the cast off and the ribbing on both socks, went, back up to the original needle size and did it all again. And now they fit. The stripes are interesting as they mirror one another, but the back of one sock matches the front of the other. I think it is cool.

I then cast on the Love Bites scarf (Ravelry, again) with the Fangtasia yarn in the same vamp club. The colors are really nice and I love they way they blend. The pattern is easy to memorize and goes pretty quickly. BUT, this will take forever to knit up the 400+ yds! At the end of the scarf, you drop three stitches and let 'em rip all the way down. This will be my first project like this, so we'll see how I do.

I bought a jumbo flyer for my wheel. I spent the week before school staining the thing and getting it all put together. I've managed to squeeze in a little time during school to spin a little practice fiber to get used to it. I really seem to NEED to spin thin yarn. I would really like to loosen up a bit. lol I bought a bunch of lovely stuff, but I won't touch it until I can make it do what I want.

I'm not sure how the colors will show up, but there some lovely shades of green, medium blue, white and a medium brown. The colorway is Atlantis, and the artist is frabjous fibers in Vermont. It is Merino Top and I picked it up from the LYS in Snohomish.

I've joined the Super Sock Scarefest again this year, and I nearly missed it! I've just been so busy I wasn't checking the group. I missed the first pattern release, and decided I'd wait for the next one. Since I have so much spare time on my hands, ahem, I'm thinking maybe I'll go with #3 pattern. We'll see how it works out.

I've got other fiber photos, but I think I'll save them. Maybe I can use them to motivate myself to post more often.

Homeschool

Sort of. This is what has been taking up my time. My eldest has been agitating for homeschool for about two years. I promised her we'd talk about it this summer and make a decision. So, we did. I was trying to help a friend with zero homeschool contacts find some info about programs / curriculum that people liked. In the process, I stumbled upon WAVA (Washington Virtual Academy) and it sounded like a really good way to get started. If you know it and it isn't, don't tell me now.

This program is technically NOT homeschool because it is part of the public school system and I do not pay anything additional (to my regular taxes) for the materials. What it is is a home-based education program and I work with a state certified teacher on a regular basis, to make sure we are meeting our goals & requirements (state requirements). The teacher will also help me work out strategies for more successful work with my child. The lesson plans are already built, but I can mix them up a bit if I want (I can't drop any subjects, but I can add things if I want).

We're into day 3 today, and I want out! I expected to feel this way, so I'm not panicked. I also will not be quitting today, so don't worry. As with many new things in life, this is more time-consuming and much, much more tiring than I thought it would be. I have never worked so hard in my life, I don't think. Oh, sure, maybe shoveling snow or painting a room or rearranging furniture is harder in the short term, but this won't end until June 16, 2010.

My self-pep talk today was all about staying adaptable every day, learning new strategies from one day to the next, and just hanging in there! It sort of worked. I'm hoping we will see some real progress in our attitudes/habits after a month. That will really go a long way towards giving me some much needed energy.

I think.

Right now, we spend more than double the time expected on Math alone (today, nearly 3 hours!). Not because we like it. No. Because the child has to change seating arrangements 50 times, get more ice (she's addicted to ice, but at least it is fluids) and make drum sounds. sigh I've already learned that I cannot, CANNOT, do any other thing while she is working on math. That includes knitting. That may change, but not any time soon, I'm sure. I can almost read email, but usually only one or two. If the reply is more than five sentences long, I'd better not try it. After completing (successfully) 19 problems, the 20th problem will warrant a long questions, stony silence and borderline tears even though it is exactly like the other 19 (successfully) completed problems. She can read directions, but if they are for math, it is like she is reading a foreign language phonetically. It has no meaning to her at all. Mind you, she is breezing through all the language and reading materials at light speed, so she does comprehend words. Just not words in a Math Book.

Well, to put a positive spin on the situation, I am learning a lot about my eldest child. She is probably learning a lot about me. Maybe we can both improve over the next year.

The youngest, you say? Ah. She would rather eat worms than be home with me for school. At least, that's where she is this year. We'll see how she (and I) feel about it next year. This is a trial program, Eldest and I both have the option to say No More! for next year. The youngest has the option to join if she wants, but I will not force the issue unless some unforeseen event moves me to change my mind.

Himself is very excited we are doing this. He is (currently) very supportive of this change. We'll see how he feels a month from now. lol When all those things I've been doing regularly start piling up again.

Photos

So, yesterday I thought I would take the kids to play with their friends and then I would be free to spend a little time on chores. After the chores, I was going to enjoy a long afternoon of knitting. You know, because it was too stinking hot to touch wool last week.

Well, as I pulled back into the garage, I looked at all the boxes sitting around in there. Himself and I have decided we are going to spend time working through those boxes and either re-pack the things we're keeping or, here's a novel idea, use the stuff, or give it to charity. So, yesterday, in a fit of strange energy, I decided to sort through a few boxes.

After browsing through some boxes full of spiders, spiders and books, I decided to sort through photos & old personal memorabilia instead. Hmmm. I have a lot of photos, old photos, and now I'm thinking those spiders look pretty nice. lol On the other hand, I managed to get the other stuff sorted out by era nicely labeled in sealable boxes, and some stuff sorted into the recycle bin, so it will be easier to go back and look at it all for fun when I want to. In some small way, mission accomplished.

I was surprised by some of the stuff I found in those boxes. I'm not talking about the spiders here. I found lots of old notes my friends and I wrote to each other back in school. You know the stuff all about that cute boy you followed around the halls, or what you were planning to do over the weekend, etc. The notes you write instead of the class work you should have been doing. I think I kept them by accident, really. My mom had a bad habit (still has, most likely if given the chance) of going through my room and sorting through all my stuff when I was out of the house, spending the night with friends, driving around, etc. Anything in the room was open for full inspection, or reading as the case may be, because (at the time) it was her house. Furniture was rearranged, things were thrown away, whatever struck her fancy when I was out of the house for the evening. Of course, she never had any interest in reading my school papers, but the notes from my friends were fair game in her mind. I took to keeping those notes in folders so that they looked like school work, not chatter with my friends. I think it worked out, but it took me until my senior year to figure that one out.

Of course, a few years later I worked out that my mom's behavior was an inappropriate invasion of my privacy. The reading of private papters is just the tip of the iceberg, but there's no need for going there now (or here). We all have our issues. It would have been entirely different if I'd been a troublesome teen up to no good, etc., but I wasn't. I was a model child. Until college, anyway. But, that's a whole different kettle of fish and one thing leads to another, and so on.

I also found some old love letters from beaux long gone. Is it kosher to keep those? I really hate the thought of tossing them. While they don't come from the man I married, they were very important at the time, and helped me become the person I am. I just don't know what to do with those.

So. Here I sit with hundreds of photos that I hope to scan, and some that will be thrown out due to really terrible picture taking skills, Polaroids that are almost entirely black (I have almost no idea what the subject was it is so dark), and dozens and dozens of landscape photos that simply have no meaning anymore. Look! A tree! Somewhere. Could be anywhere, really. Oh! And here's another tree. Again, I have no idea where. But it is green! Woo-Hoo! Yeah. I probably don't need a gazillion of those. Do I? I mean, I know I took the picture in 1976, or 1978, on one of my trips to Oregon to visit family. The above mentioned trees were photographed somewhere on the road between Texas and Oregon. Could be anywhere, really. The trees in question might not even be standing anymore. But, then, should I keep the picture in memory of a tree that may no longer be? Even if I can't know for sure? Um, no. I think photos lacking any identifiers (people or signs) may all be fair game for the trash bin. They are faded and, really, unremarkable.

The question is: Will I get to work on this right away? Or will I need to find another box...

August

I have no idea where July went. Perhaps the extreme heat in the last week of July burned the memory of July out of my head.

Whatever the reason, here it is, August. Half the summer break is gone and I haven't accomplished most of the things on my to-do list. I think that is the way it is supposed to go. Right? So, we're having a successful summer.

The kids are spending huge amounts of time playng with their friends from their former daycare. There is a shortage of older kids to play with the provider's grandkids. They've all grown up together and are very close, so my girls are visiting them and getting lots of play time. It is a nice break for everyone. Kids get tired of only playing with their siblings. Swimming at the beach, at the lake and at the public pool, ice skating, Slip 'N Slide and sleepovers. Oh, and spinning. I spent one day teaching the girls to spin. Sort of. They peddled, I managed the fiber. It worked out well and they were very happy with their yarn. We had planned to go pick out new fiber for them, but havent done it yet. Too many other things going on.

I was making some really nice progress on some socks with my Jason yarn. They are toe-up and a modified version of the Cat's Face Lace sock pattern (found on Ravelry). Werecat character inspired yarn, cat lace sock. Seems like a fun match to me. I like the way it is knitting up so far, I'm just a pattern repeat away from the heel. Or that's my best guess.

But I got distracted.

Yep. I picked up the Pi Shawl again, and I've been knitting with great enthusiasm. I've knit up about 40 rows, and I've done the last increase. I've got 576 sts on the needles and I'm on the last K row before starting the final lace pattern. I hope I can keep up some momentum, but I just don't know. I'd post pictures, but it is just a red blob. I refuse to take it off the needles because, even with lifelines, I know I will drop sts getting it back on. I mean, there are FIVE HUNDRED SEVENTY-SIX STITCHES IN TINY, TINY YARN. Not worth it. I'll take a picture of the blob before blocking, and that will have to do.


I also participated in the Tour de Fleece again this year. I had modest goals, and more or less met them. I am plying the last of the fiber now, so I didn't finish everything on time for the Tour, but I'm still finishing it all up. You know, so I can buy more fiber. lol Once this last bit is plied, I'll wash and set it all. Then I need to figure out how much I have and what I can do with it.

This bit on the left is DragonFibers' Bluebells & Buttercups. It is a Merino / Bamboo blend, and was a dream to spin. I just spent a crazy amount of time doing it. (As in, I got half of it done last year for the tour, and did the other half this year.) Pathetic.


This is also DragonFibers, but it is a Merino / Sea Cell blend in a pencil roving. This is the first time I've spun a pencil roving, and I have to say I love it. I normally pre-draft my fiber, and not doing saves a crazy amount of time! This colorway is Masquerade, and is a lovely mix of blue-ish grey and a purpley/burgundy sort of color. It is spinning up into a lovely yarn.


This lovely DragonFibers colorway is Mermaid's Jewelbox. This was Merino/Bamboo, and turned into a very lovely yarn. My theme for the Tour this year was DragonFibers, in case you couldn't tell. I'd picked up a number of braids, and really wanted to get them spun so I could move on to knitting them up.
Aaaaand, here are the singles for this one. Oddly, it looks dark/deep as singles. The yarn plied a bit lighter than I was expecting. But, since I have so little experience with this whole thing, really, I wasn't disappointed. Just surprised.

All the rest of my fiber stash is random bits of fiber I picked up to practice on. I have no real plan for using the random bits, and there really isn't much of any one thing to make into a project, really. I'll likely need to buy more random bits, or blend it with other stuff, or something else creative that I haven't thought of yet. Still, it is a nice collection for the kids to sample if they want to continue playing with the spinning.

Lastly, I realized that I never posted photos of my July installment of my yarn club. So now that I've got the shipping receipt for the August yarn, I'll get July up.


Here is Fangtasia, so named after the nightclub owned by Eric the Northman (vampire). This is on a silver sock base and is just yummy gorgeous yarn. It is posing on the vampire dress I made for the eldest last Halloween. I mean, I've got to get maximum use from the dress. It was really stunning, if I do say so myself, and will get very little wear.

This lovely yarn is Claudine, Sookie's Fairy Godmother. Claudine is also on a silver sock base, and the colors just really pop. Oddly enough, the youngest had these wings from her costume last Halloween when she was a flower fairy. They match the green & purple colors perfectly.

A fellow yarn club member had to destash some of her yarn and I was able to score a second skein of Claudine, so now I've got about 880 yards to play with. I'm sorry that she had to let yarn go, but I'm very excited to have gotten a second skein now (instead of having to wait for January when the colors are available again). I'm thinking: shawl. But not a round one! I think this is why I got so inspired to finish the Pi. I'm NOT casting on another shawl until the Pi is done. I'm serious. Really.

Brews, Blues and BBQ

Well, we made it back! It was a fun, but exhausting trip. Maybe we are just wimps and need to travel more (I'm actually sure this is true), but man! I did most of the driving (habit, I guess), about 800 miles, but my poor DH got stuck with the last part of the return when we got stuck in crappy traffic. Yay I-5!

The event was held in a pretty small town, on a small site with a not-so-small number of people. There were about 10-12 breweries, so rather small. I was slightly disappointed that there weren't more, but also that several of them were from the Seattle area, so not new to us. However, the rest were new and more local to the event. They made some nice beer, too. The BBQ side of things was also pretty small and not all local to the event, but still tasty!

I took some knitting, but in the end, I only worked on it in the hotel room. It was just too crowded at the Brew event. And hot. Somehow, I did not want to touch the wool yarn sitting in the bright sunshine. lol

We didn't fully plan the whole trip before leaving. I mean that I found some interesting things to do on the trip, but we had no idea what we would try to do, or what order we'd try to hit everything. So, the first stop turned out to be Ape Cave. Turns out DD2 does not like caves. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. In the end, we rented a lantern and went in for about 15-20 minutes, then left. I hope she was just being a squirrel and isn't really claustrophobic. The rest of us like caves and I'd like to visit more sometime. Still, an interesting little adventure. It was amazing the temperature difference between the topside and just going down the stairs, at least 20 degrees.

We rolled into the hotel around 7 or so in the evening. We checked in, then headed out to a local brewery for dinner. Yummy pizza and a nice view of the Columbia river. The hotel (well, it is billed as a resort, but cost significantly less than most of the hotels I looked at) had no TV or phones, so we played some games and went to bed to rest up for the next day. Sadly, no one really slept much.
The next day we got up and drove East to Maryhill. Our intended destination was the Maryhill Stonehenge site, but we also went to the Maryhill Museum of Art. The museum was a delightful find. They had an exhibition from the Hudson River School, though they did not have my favorite (Frederic Church) in the lot. There's also a collection of sculpture and sketches from Aguste Rodin permanently on display here.

The same fellow responsible for the museum, Sam Hill, also built the Stonehenge monument. My apologies to everyone who've seen the real Stonehenge (not me, sadly). This monument is a testament, in many ways, to why research (ahem, librarians!) is useful. You see, he built the monument to honor the young men in that area who lost their lives in WWI (13 of them, I think). He built it in the mistaken belief that Stonehenge was a sacrifical site, thus the sacrifice of the young lives in the war. He also failed to understand that there is a particular orientation of the stones in Stonehenge, so did not even factor that into his considerations when building this site. Lastly, it isn't to scale and nothing there indicates the difference.

Okay, that sounds horribly critical doesn't it? It was in a lovely location, a high bluff overlooking the Columbia River and some vineyards. (This area of WA state is big on wineries.) I think it is really cool that he was so moved by the loss of life and the war that he built such a lovely memorial for these young men. But, as I am increasingly sceptical that I'll ever get to England, I'm a bit bummed that it was so poorly researched before being built. That said, construction was started in the 1920s, so not sure what information was available at that time anyway.

At this point, please let me mention that it was hot. For my friend in TX, it was probably a lovely day at 86F, but for me, TOO HOT. There was little shade. So, after a long morning spent out driving in the sunny warm weather, we then headed off to the brew event itself. We stayed a few hours, the left to rest at the hotel. I "took the waters" and had a mineral bath & wrap. As I sat there in a tub full of rather warm water piped in from the hot mineral springs I did take some time to ponder the question of my sanity. Hot day in a hot tub. In water that smelled quite a bit of eggs. But, you know, it was all about the experience. Right? Later that afternoon, we went back the Brews event and had another round of tastes and BBQ. It was late enough that the temperature was cooling a bit and we sat and watched a bunch of folk kite boarding on the river. It looked like loads of fun.

The next day we were heading home, so we crossed the river at the Bridge of the Gods, because who can resist that name? Then we drove up the Oregon side of the river and visited numerous waterfalls along the way. This one is Multnomah Falls. Perhaps not my best picture, but I took so many I finally just had to grab one. We got out and walked around (or hiked) most of the falls we came to, so we spent quite a while on the trail.


At Multnomah, there was some event going on, so the kids did some crafts and we browsed the tourist center stuff. While there I found this little gem.


Yes, folks, it looks like maybe El Chupacabra has migrated up to Oregon. Then again, it turns out that Skamania County (where the brews event was taking place) is officially a Bigfoot Refuge and it is illegal to hunt/kill Bigfoot in Skamania County. See, for all of my research into what to see on the trip, I failed to discover that this area is big on Bigfoot sightings, or that there are ordinances declaring the safety and heavy penalties for harming Bigfoot. Back to this little notice, though, I was curious if El Chupacabra could coexist with Bigfoot, or if, perhaps, the locals were misidentifying the creature. Maybe the Oregonians, who are essentially just across the river, mind you, want all the crazy critters they can collect. I mean, Bigfoot can probably swim or something, right?

Having had my little X-Phile moment of squeeing, and after enjoying the falls, we made our way back to WA state and headed up to the Johnson Observatory for a lovely view of Mt. St. Helens. I got behind every. single. slow. tourist. on the way up the mountian. DH had a clear shot down, but then got caught in the STOP and go traffic for 2.5 hours on the highway. The girls enjoyed the view, and we watched the (new to me) movie about the eruption and wandered around a bit. I haven't been there in about 15 years. It is astounding how much the plants/trees have grown up in that time! It is beautiful and amazing to see nature going about its business reparing all the damage.

Finally, after over 12 hours in the car, we made it home, unpacked, and collapsed. A great trip, but it took two days at home to recover from the fun.

Now to prep for the Tour de Fleece!

Lots of brews and knitting, too!

Last weekend was the Washington Beer Festival, the annual event for Father's Day at our house. As you can see, I lost a child, but gained a puppy. lol

This year, I just parked a chair in the full sun (because who needs shade while sitting around watching the kids play?) and let the kids play on all the bouncy equipment as long as they wanted. I figured it would be less annoying to just sit and let them go than it would be to trek back and forth from where the rest of the group was sitting (in the shade!). I was right, but I got burned for the pleasure. Not too bad, but I can't believe I forgot the sunscreen. I mean, so what if it was raining on the drive down? I should have packed it anyway, I just forgot.

I will say that my favorite beer(s), I didn't try as many as I intended, was from Northern Light Brewing (Spokane, WA) and was called Black and Blue. I'd put in a link, but they don't seem to have one. Anyway, they mix their Chocolate Dunkel and their Blueberry Cream Ale as they pour (like a black & tan, but without the seperating). Both are excellent on their own, and the blending is sublime! They had the longest line I saw all day Saturday. It never seemed to get any shorter, though it did move pretty quickly. In fact, I'm not sure I saw a line anything approaching the length of this one for any other brewer. Nice job, folks.

It looks like there were a number of Friday Only beers that were pretty outstanding, according to folks I talked to around the event, but we didn't go on Friday (no kids allowed for Fri night). We're thinking about maybe going on Friday next year, just to try it, but I don't know. It is sort of a family thing for us. Although, this year we split up and that was not quite so "family". We'll see.

On the knitting side of life, I've been a busy little, erm, knitter. Yay, me!
First up are the two fish hats I knit for the Cafeteria Lady at the girls' school. She requested red, white & blue, so I pulled this mix out of the stash and (eventually) got knitting. I wanted them to be obviously different so that if one of them dropped their hat in the river, or on the catch of the day, it would be easy to know which one needed to be washed. I could just see them sniffing the hats trying to find the least smelly and then fighting over ownership or something. lol These folks are serious fishers, so you just don't know.

I increased the number of stitches cast on and then pretty much followed the pattern. I had more stitches on the needle when I got to the tail, though I did extra decreases, and I made the fins a little bit bigger. I thought they fit the scale of the hat a bit better. I added some increases in the last row of the dorsal and pectoral fins for a bit of a curve in the fins, just for the heck of it. I used Cascade 220 Superwash, so they can be easily washed. Cafeteria Lady was delighted with the hats and was very excited to take them home and show her DH. So, it was worth it. Any time a knitted item is received with that much enthusiasm, it makes it all worth it, doesn't it?

I really struggled getting them done, though. In addition to the usual boredom of knitting two items from the same pattern back-to-back, there were other fun adventures. I ran out of red yarn with ONE red fin left to go. Yep. Only needed enough for, oh, say, 300 stitches. Oh well, now I have red for something else. Also, the end of the year is very busy for volunteers at school. There were field trips, Field Day, and just the usual helping. We were really busy with extra events after school, as well. Still, I'm glad I knit them, she really loves them. It also seems to have been very important to DD1 that: someone else asked me to knit something; I did knit it; the very nice lady was so very excited about it. I'm not sure what is in her head, but I'm glad it made her happy too.

My second knitting triumph is that I finally finished the Bellatrix socks. I cast these puppies on April 18, 2008. I tried knitting them while talking and drinking beer. That was not a good idea and I really, really struggled with this pattern. I put them in hibernation. When I picked them up a month or so ago, they were so easy! I can't believe all the struggle I had with these! Okay, I can. I think I know what happened in the past year to change my relationship with Bellatrix.


First off, I cast on the Pi Shawl. While that one has been a struggle, I have learned a bit about dropping stitches, effective YOs and so forth, and that helped out with tricksy Bellatrix. While I am far from finishing the Pi, it has less to do with understanding lace and more to do with how stinking long it takes to do a single row and the fact that I cannot be distracted while knitting it. That means it doesn't get as much of my knit time as I would like. Though, I'm even getting better with the Pi knitting.

Secondly, I did that Scarefest KAL last Fall. While I didn't complete every pair, I did knock out, what, three pairs of socks? So, I gained some valuable sock experience and confidence. These two things worked together to make Bellatrix fly on the needles this time around. You know, when I got done with fish hats.

I'm really glad she's done, though, so I can wear these socks for movie #5 next month. Not that anyone will likely see them, and I'm rooting for the "other team" (not the Death Eaters), but I'll know they are on my feet and I'll be pleased at my fan geekness.

These socks, since it has been a while, were knit using Scout's Swag in the Death Eaters colorway on US size #2 circs (Knit Picks Options), 2 socks on 2 circs. The yarn was very yummy and squishy and the socks feel great on my feet. If you look closely, you can see that the way the color flowed in the socks is sort of a weird mirror. The color pattern on the front of one sock matches the pattern on the back of the other sock. I kind of like it that way, but it is interesting how that worked out.

I've find myself in a staring contest with the Pi Shawl now. I need another project, though. The Pi takes too much of my undivided attention, so I need something a little less demanding to go with it. I've been looking at UFOs. I found one (so far) that I had totally forgotten about. I mean, I remembered the yarn, just not that it was actually on my needles. It is a fingering alpaca in a denim blue sort of color. I was going to make a scarf, but couldn't come up with anything I liked all that well. I think I spent weeks fiddling around with it. I finally came up with something do-able, but put it away for some other project and poof. Out of sight, out of mind.

Yeah. I ripped that out.

I also found an illusion scarf I started, got through one repeat. I also found that the place I had marked on the chart as my starting point did not match the number of rows I was able to count. We're talking a 12 row difference. Hmmm. What to do, what to do. Oh, I know! Riiiiiiiiiiip.

I love the yarn, but this scarf is not going to happen either. So. That leaves me with an unfinished Harry Potter scarf and the Blue Sweater that has been done for a while. I'm really surprised, but that is the extent of my UFOs. I mean, there are yarns purchased for specific projects, but nothing else actually on the needles. Wow! The Blue Sweater that didn't fit the way I liked. The one I was going to Learn to Modify so that it would fit. Or lose weight. Yep. So. I haven't ripped it out yet. But I might. In the meantime, I think I'll play with the HP scarf. It fits a theme, finishing my HP UFOs. Though, I'm not wearing the scarf to the movie. In July. Even if I finish it by then. My inner geek will just have to deal with it.