Another Granny Square

Thank you all for the well wishes. My back/pinched nerve is feeling better but I'm still on muscle relaxers, can't stand for more than a moment and I'm still not walking well.  It's getting better though.  I've gotten the use of my leg back although I'm still completely numb from my mid thigh to mid calf.  That's an improvement though.  

Have you ever had a pinched nerve or back issues that caused numbness?  It's such a strange sensation.  My knee feels like it's about four feet in diameter, and even though the skin is completely numb, my thigh is sore to the touch and keeps itching.  It hurts to touch yet I can't feel it when I scratch.  It's very strange.  But I'll take numb over the massive muscle spasms I was having.

I'm still on the muscle relaxers so I haven't been knitting but I did finish another granny square baby blanket.  It's not traditional baby colors but I thought it would be perfect for a boy.  Actually, I'd like to have an adult size one for me.  I'm absolutely in love with the color combo.  Sunflower yellow, gray, sage green and dark blue.  It's very "me."

And so this post contains something else besides me whining about my back issues...

And because that is horribly pixilated...

Another horribly pixilated photo just to make sure your eyes are hurting and you have a headache.  😁

I can't get over how much Hayden has grown.  She's gotten a bunch of molars, her hair is growing into baby ringlets and she's saying more and more actual words.  She's so funny.  She's terrified of the train (remember that the train tracks are right beside our house?)  She hears the horn blow off in the distance and goes running to comforting arms.  But as long as you hold her, she likes to watch the train go by.  She gets so excited and shouts "choo choo" and giggles.  

Well, it's time for another round of pills so....

On the Needles

Yes, the baby blanket is still on the needles.  

baby blanket knit with Knit Picks Sock Labs Stroll

But I have finally added the second color.  The blanket is not going to be anywhere near as large as I'd hoped it would be, or as I feel it should be based on knitting time, but it will be okay.  Rather than a crib blanket, it will be more receiving blanket sized. 

I'm telling myself it's okay if the blanket is small.  It will be fine for covering a newborn and as baby grows, perhaps this one can become the Linus type 'blankie' that they hold and snuggle with rather than the one that keeps them warm.

And look how the blanket matches my project bag.  Have you noticed everything in my life seems to be that aqua color?   Sitting here at my desk, without even turning my head, I can see so much aqua!  There's my knitting, my project bag, my yarn bowl, my project chart keeper thing, an ashtray that I keep paper clips in, a bottle make that two bottles of nail polish, my yarn scale, my calendar cover,  some file folders, Post-It-Notes, a book I'm reading and believe it or not, duct tape.  Yes, I even have aqua colored duct tape!  Good grief!  I'd have said it was green, but do you think aqua might be my favorite color?

Oh, and if you're local and will be at the Montpelier Fiber Festival tomorrow, look for me.  I'll be there - shopping, not selling.  So if some crazed woman shoves you out of the way, my apologies, but you were standing between me and the yarn.

On its way

Great White (remember the great white thing?) is finally on its way to its new owner.  I hope she enjoys using it.

The Great White Baby Blanket

I'm also really happy that the humidity finally dropped enough to be ale step outside without instantly fogging up my glasses and camera lens.  It's been a long, humid summer.

If you're interested in how I knit the Great White baby blanket (yes, it was a baby blanket) I'm putting a quick and dirty version of the pattern below.  The blanket is basically stockinette & reverse stockinette squares surrounded by a garter stitch border.  You could easily change the number of stitches and rows to accommodate any yarn weight.

Simple Checkerboard Baby Blanket:

Aran Weight yarn and #8 needles or size needed to obtain gauge

Gauge:  4 stitches per inch or 16 stitches per 4 inches

K = knit

P = purl

pm = place marker

sm - slip marker

BO = bind off

Cast on 180 stitches

Row 1:  Knit 10 stitches, place marker, knit 160 stitches, place marker, knit 10 stitches.

Row 2 - 18:  Knit across all stitches

Row 19:  K 10 stitches, sm, *K 10, P 10* to marker, sm, K 10

Row 20: K10, sm, knit the knits & purl the purls to marker, sm, K10

Row 21 - 34:  Repeat Row 20

Row 35:  K10, sm, *P 10, K10* to marker, sm, K10

Row 36 - 48: Repeat Row 20

Continue working Rows 19 - 48 until blanket is 2 inches short of desired length.  

Knit across for18 rows.

Bind off.

Please note:  I typed this pattern up based on the notes I scribbled while knitting the blanket.  I have not tested these written instructions.  If you decide to test them, please let me know if you find errors.  I'd love to hear from you.

July in review

Wow.  I can't believe today is July 31st.  Where has the month/summer gone??

Between work and the weather, July was definitely a month of non-accomplishments.

Modified Reyna

I finished a modified Reyna shawl but it's still laying in a heap on the corner of my desk waiting to be blocked.  And if I'm honest, it's also waiting to have it's loose ends woven in.

I started another pair of Outlander inspired gloves but I haven't taken a single photo of them, nor knit a single stitch on them since the first week of July.

Great White

I did start and finish the Great White Thing.  I haven't photographed the final 'thing' yet because it's been too humid.  It's so humid that the interior of our house is dark and dreary like a super rainy day and the outside is just too damp.  I tried, for all of five minutes, to take outdoor photos recently but due to the heat and humidity, my sweat was dripping on the camera lens.  Eew!  One day soon I'll get photos taken and I'll also get Great White put into the mail (it's a gift) then I can give you some details.

Twisted

I've started Twisted three times.  Hopefully, as they say, the third time's the charm.  It started out on Knit Pick's Options needles but look how close the yarn color is to the needle color.  Even though Twisted is all stockinette, I couldn't deal with the lack of contrast between yarn & needle.  I also realized that, although I'd done a gauge swatch (for once!) I wasn't getting close to gauge.  I frogged it and started over on larger needles.  Four inches of re-knit Twisted and....  Yep, you guessed it.  Still not getting gauge.  I had to go up 4 needle sizes from the needles I'd swatched with.  This is why I rarely bother with swatching.  

Anyway, Twisted is back on track and I'm five or six inches into it.  But still no photos.  Have I mentioned the heat and humidity and sweat on the camera lens issues?

#SheepWithAView, borrowed from www.thesun.co.uk

So that I don't leave you hanging with thoughts of my sweat, here's a #SheepWithAView photo.  I'm in love with #SheepWithAView.

OTN 12/17/14

Slight progress has been made on the gray & white spiral blanket.  I started the ruffle very late last night, or very early this morning, depending on how you look at it.  Only a few rows have been knit so you can't really tell.  I sure hope that once a few more rows are knit, the contrast between the two yarns will show up more.  I also hope that one skein of the gray will be enough to finish the ruffle because it's all I have.

Notice the poinsettia?  It's my version of Elf on a Shelf.  That poor plant gets moved around from place to place on an hourly basis it seems.  It was supposed to sit on my desk but remember this fiasco?  Yeah, well, the fiasco is on-going and the poor plant is constantly in the way.  I also keep forgetting to water it so it's having a hard life.  I hope it forgives me.

Alley Cat

It's an Alley Cat hat.

Its ears are crooked & one is a row taller than the other but I'm beyond caring about this project.  And being a rough alley cat hat suits.  It's got character.  It's recipient is Alli, who we all call Alli Cat.  At the great age of two, Miss Alli Cat is a wild woman and will most likely not notice the crooked ears.

In a moment of Christmas knitting panic and still floating on waves of relief from finishing the cat hat, I couldn't decide what to knit next.  I picked up the gray & white surprise that I'd been saving for travel knitting.

After a day spent watching bad Christmas movies on Netflix while, it's no longer a surprise.  Or travel knitting.  Its pretty obviously a spiral blanket.  A spiral blanket that has reached the pain in the arse stage.  It's now on three lengths of connected cable which refuse to lay in a circle.  The cables are determined to twist in weird places and won't allow the stitches to easily slide around & around.  And, since adding the third cable, one needle tip keeps coming unscrewed from the cable.  I would like to make the blanket much wider but my patience level is wearing thin.

By the way, if you are looking for a new bad Christmas movie to watch....  I loved Danger in the Manger.  It was stupid & had a lot of potty humor, but it also made me laugh.  It was the perfect movie for my post cat hat knitting mentality.  Besides, it's got a few of my favorite features.  Funny trials & tribulations along the journey,  the underdog wins without actually winning, and funny little kids speaking in British accents.  What's not to love about that?

Knitters ADD

I'm suffering from Knitters ADD.  I have way too many projects OTN.   Too many projects that I want to finish.  Projects that I want badly to finish.  So of course, I can't decide which one to work on.  I've spent the past few days rotating through them, knitting a row or two on one, putting it down & picking up the next.  I'm making no progress.  I need to just pick one & finish it.  But instead of doing that, I'm sitting here immobile, unable to choose.  I'm also sitting on my hands trying to ignore the impulse to go browse Ravelry instead.

One of those OTN projects is the mitered square "thing."

It turned out to be a lap robe.  It could easily have been an afghan - I had plenty of scrap yarn & I was enjoying working on it.  Wasn't getting bored in the least.  But I was super excited about the Dr. Who shawl & wanted to be done with the miters so I'd be free to start the Tardis's (Tardi?)  The miters are almost done, I just have to finish the border.  I'm struggling though because I know when I finish the border, I'll have to deal with all those loose ends on the back.

Oddly, the loose ends don't look all that dramatic in the photo.  Maybe I'll have to make that picture my screen saver until it's done.  Just a little something to remind me that weaving in the ends may not be as bad as I imagine.  Obviously, I'm not a big fan of weaving in ends.  Thus, the project languishes.

Next up is the Bigger on the Inside Dr. Who shawl for my daughter.  The yarn arrived on Friday & I promptly got busy knitting.

Wow!  Have you ever seen a dirtier computer screen?

Not a lot of progress has been made on this shawl but I keep reminding myself, it's bigger on the inside.

I also want to knit a Color Affection shawl but I can't decide on the colorway.  I may have to knit five or six of them.  I keep rearranging yarn & coming up with new colorways.

On Saturday, this appeared in my mailbox.  And it's so much prettier in real life!  Not sure exactly what it will end up being, obviously a lace shawl of some sort, but I don't have a specific pattern in mind.  Yet.

There's a pair (or two or three) of socks OTN, as well as five or six other projects I have absolutely no interest in finishing.  Maybe one day...

Luckily, I did finish the twin baby blanket set.

For a closer view of the detail...

I very much enjoyed knitting these baby blankets & I understand the twins' momma was happy to receive them.

Meanwhile, it's homeschool bowling league day.  I better log off Ravelry & go get dressed.

Twins & a Doctor

Just a quick update...  The twin set of baby blankets is finally finished.  No photos yet but as soon as they've been blocked I'll take some.  I'm quite happy with the way both blankets turned out and hope the customer will be as well.

Meanwhile, I've returned to the mitered square item.  I'm still calling it an item because I can't decide if it's going to turn out to be the intended afghan, a lap robe, or a table runner.  I'd really like it to be an afghan, but an afghan knit in fingering weight yarn on size 2 needles really will take a lifetime.  It will most likely end up being a lap robe because I think it's past table runner size.  Maybe a small table cloth or table topper.  We'll see how the patience level holds out.  So far, it hasn't gotten the least bit boring because I change colors so often.  If it wasn't for patterns I keep seeing on other blogs that I want to knit, I think I could probably be happy working on this one item for the rest of my life.

One such pattern that's recently caught my attention is a Dr. Who shawlette.  Actually, it's called the Bigger on the Inside Tardis shawl.   Sadly, I have to admit, I'm not a big Dr. Who fan.  I've only watched one episode & I was so confused I couldn't get into it at all.  One of these days I may try again.  But my daughter, my daughter is a HUGE fan.  And she's been asking me to knit her a shawl.  I am SO excited to have found this Tardis pattern.  Sarah will absolutely love the pattern & knitting it for her may even make me likeable to her teenaged brain.  I just hope I can contain my excitement and keep the knitting a secret.  Luckily, a knitting blog is the very last thing she would ever read so I don't have to worry about her finding out here.  It will be interesting to see if she notices that I'm knitting something in Tardis blue.  Meanwhile, I await delivery of the yarn.

For now, I'm off to bowling.  Counting today, only three more weeks of homeschool league bowling left.  Zack's Saturday morning youth league ended last week.  Which means I now have Saturday mornings free!!   Of course, summer leagues start up the day the homeschool league ends.  But that's okay.  The summer leagues Zack will be bowling in are all at night so I won't have to get up early.  Not getting up early is always a good thing.

Oooh!  The mail is here.  I wonder if the Tardis blue yarn magically arrived in one business day instead of the expected five to fourteen.  I better go check.

Gators!

So, I'm used to the blue tailed skinks that crawl all over our house and occasionally visit with me when I sit out on the porch, but I draw the line at sharing my house with a baby alligator.

Ok, so it's not really an alligator, but it sure looked like one when it confronted me.

The twin baby blanket project continues.  I finally finished the body of the first blanket this morning & have started on the contrasting border.  I'm pretty excited because I'm still a day & a half ahead of schedule.  If I can continue to knit 23 out of every 24 hours, I may actually finish the pair when I said I would.

Meanwhile, Max continues to guard against intruding bumble bees.

And gators.

Baby Blanket Progress

I'm making progress on the set of twin baby blankets.  Well, okay, I'm making progress on the first of the blankets.

I've got 10 pattern repeats completed which puts me slightly ahead of schedule.  Which I probably should never have mentioned.  Something disastrous is bound to happen to it now.  Not to mention, I said it on a Friday the 13th.

A few things I'll point out just to stretch this post out a bit....  Yes, that blue, green & purple pile of knitting there behind the baby blanket is the same pile that was there for the last photo session.  It's a scarf.  A scarf that's been awaiting having it's ends woven in for a few weeks now.  It will probably still be sitting there in a few more weeks.  Weaving in ends is not exactly my favorite thing to do.

See that yarn bowl?  I LOVE my yarn bowl.  My mother-in-law gave it to me for Christmas this past year & I've blogged about it before, here.  I still love it and use it daily.  Sometimes it holds paper clips & Post-It's instead of yarn, but most days it's full of yarn.  I like it so much I'm thinking about buying another one.  A bigger one.  One that will hold a great big skein of yarn.  I wonder if anyone makes them in a hotdog shape so that it would hold a long skein - like Lambs Pride comes in.  Google, here I come.

And there's my coffee cup.  I LOVE that coffee cup even more than my yarn bowl.  It's huge.  It holds a little over two cups of coffee, the handle fits my hand perfectly and the cup itself is thick & substantial without being too thick to drink from comfortably.  I worry about my cup though - it's got a crack on one side from where some horrible, disrespectful family member put it in the microwave.  It doesn't leak though so I continue to use it and guard it with my life.

And of course, there's a bottle of wine and a box of crackers.  Doesn't everyone keep wine & crackers on their desk?

Operating Heavy Machinery

Please pardon my insanity today.  I started a new antibiotic for my rosacea last night and all I can say is, phew!  Last night, I took the first pill in the middle of drinking a pot of coffee (fully caffeinated of course) and within 5 minutes felt like I was stoned out of my mind.  I read the warning label & all it said was that I shouldn't operate heavy machinery until I knew how I'd react to the medication.   I couldn't imagine trying to operate heavy machinery - I wasn't even sure I knew my own name!  About 20 minutes after finishing the full pot of coffee and about 3 hours before my regular bedtime, I decided that I was not sleepy, but too stoned to function & I went to bed.  Fell asleep instantly & slept through the night.  In fact, I slept better than I have in years!

This morning, I took my pill and immediately felt like I'd had a shot or two of morphine.  Every sense is dulled & I'm not positive I can feel my fingers.  And then the manic thoughts kicked in.  Good Lord!  My brain is in manic overload with thoughts of what I should do, what I can do, what I'd like to do... whirring through my head while my body refuses to budge and doesn't even realize I have a brain.  I'm starting to worry that I may spontaneously combust due to the friction of the two.

So that's my condition today.  Please pardon me while I ramble madly and make thousands of typos with my non-working fingers and a brain that's struggling to read.

Yesterday's trip to the dermatologist was .... interesting, I guess you'd say.  The doctor has been hoping to get me off the antibiotics for quite awhile but the topical medications just don't work for me.  I wish my rosacea was just the red face people associate with rosacea, but it's not.  Nope, I'm special.  A few rosacea suffers get, on top of the redness, giant sized zit type things and their face swells and their eyelids swell closed and it's quite painful.  It stings/burns like a bee sting and you get the sensation of bugs crawling across your skin (always pleasant!) and your skin feels like there's ground glass imbedded in it when you touch it.  So, each time you try to swipe away one of those imaginary bugs....  Ouch!

So, I walked into the dermatologist's office yesterday after being off the antibiotics & on the topical for two weeks with my face exploding.  All I could think was that I was going to have the opportunity to show her a big, gigantic, "Told you so!"  But I didn't even have to say it.  She walked into the examining room, took one look at me & said, "Honey, you look awful.  Does that hurt?"  Then she proceeded to give me a prescription for a new antibiotic (they stopped making the old one I'd been taking,) a second prescription for another topical lotion and a coupon.  A coupon for $50 off the topical.  $50!  Fifty dollars off, not five.  Yeah, that was a fun trip to the pharmacy.

Meanwhile....

I started a mitered square blanket or table runner (depending on my patience level) last week.  I'm not sure what I was thinking but I'd decided it was time to use up some of the scrap & stashed sock yarn that was lurking all over the house.  So, sure.  A mitered blanket made out of fingering weight yarn on size US2 needles.  No problem!  I should be able to whip that out in a week, maybe two if I'm a slacker about working on it.  Right?  Sure.  No problem.  So far, after a week and a half of obsessively knitting without taking time out to even wash dishes, I have this:

It's looking much more like a table topper than a blanket.

I set the mitered square monstrosity aside yesterday to start on a new project.  Two baby blankets for twins. Twins that have already been born so the pressure is on to knit fast.  So far, all I've accomplished is

I'm blaming the lack of fabric on that new antibiotic.  Sure hope my body adjusts quickly & I can soon return to operating heavy machinery!

We're having a baby!

No, that wasn't an earthquake.  It was me jumping up & down with excitement.  We're having a baby!

Well, okay, not "we" as in Hubby & I, but the family.  I'm not naming names because I understand bosses haven't been told yet, but there's going to be a baby in the family!!   I'm so excited!  My daughter, who is now 15, is the current "baby" in the family.  In other words, it's been a long, long time since we've had a baby to hug & snuggle & love on.  And other people's babies are even more exciting because you can give them back when they smell funny, won't stop crying or you just want to knit instead of hugging & snuggling the baby.

And the knitting....  Ooooh!  The baby knitting possibilities.....  There's socks & booties to be knit.  Sweaters and blankets.  Maybe a dress or a dolly.  Knitted blocks & balls.  Stuffed animals. More hats & booties & blankets and sweaters.  And of course by the time one project is finished, the baby has grown & needs a larger one so you get to start all over again.

Oh, the excitement!

A Very Late Hurricane Post

Boy am I late posting this!  The next hurricane is swirling around out there in the Atlantic and I haven't even blathered on about the last one.  Sheesh.  But hey - better late than never, right?

As Hurricanes go, Irene was actually a bit disappointing.  At least from my point of view.  Personally, I love a good natural disaster.  I love watching a storm's ferocity, from the safety of my home of course.  I'm not a total moron.  And I love dealing with the storm's aftermath.  I'll admit, I get a kick out of survival and facing up to what ever challenge the storm presents.   Irene didn't present that many challenges for us.  Granted, a week later and a few miles down the road, they are still without power and we know two families who've had to abandon their homes due to the damage they sustained.  But for us personally, it was a pretty low key storm.

We'd gotten all of our storm preparations done on Friday and woke up Saturday morning to heavy clouds and thankfully, a bit less humidity than the day before.  By 9:00 a.m., there was a decent breeze blowing, and the clouds were turning a weird brown color, probably due to the wild fires burning in the Dismal Swamp, way to the south of us.

By 10:00 a.m., it had started to rain.  I broke out my redneck version of a rain gauge.

Ok, yes.  I should have my homeschooler's license revoked for that.  Sheesh.

I also realized that the one storm preparation I'd failed to make was doing the laundry.  Hey, give me a break.  Homeschoolers are notorious for not having their laundry done.  I frantically started throwing dirty clothes into the washer & praying the lights would stay on long enough to get the soap rinsed out.

By 11:00 a.m., the power was flickering steadily but not bad enough to affect the washer or the clocks.  I kept on cramming clothes into the washer & dryer.

At 1:00 p.m., we had our first tree come down.  Hubby started getting nervous and I started getting excited.  Boy, this is gonna be good!  The bad stuff isn't even supposed to get here until tonight.

Around 1:30, hubby got an emergency call to go fix a bank roof that had blown off.  I have no idea what they thought he was going to do about it in the middle of a hurricane, but he took off to check it out.  Turned out it was only the gutters that had come loose, but they were blowing around wildly & could have smashed windows or done some serious damage if they'd come completely loose and blown into a passing vehicle or a human.

At 5:02 p.m., just seconds after I'd bragged on Facebook about still having power, the lights went out for good.  Hubby returned home around 5:30 and we had sandwiches & ice cream for dinner.

After dinner, Hubby got the generator going and we watched the storm coverage on TV and I knit by candle light.  Luckily, I have a simple garter stitch baby blanket on the needles and boy, that snow white acrylic yarn seems to glow in the dark.  I was having no trouble at all seeing my stitches.  The news reported that a child had been killed in his home by a fallen tree.  Hubby started dragging the kids' mattresses down the stairs.   Meanwhile, the rain continued and the wind blew.

The wind didn't seem to be all that bad until we opened the windows.  I never realized how much sound our windows keep out.  But still, it wasn't That bad.  There were strong gusts of wind that would make you pause & hold your breath, but I never got that "is this ever going to stop" sensation from the wind.

We played Monopoly by candle light which is a lot more difficult than you'd expect.  At least for old, blind people.  The kids weren't having any trouble, but I couldn't read the board to tell what I'd landed on and I couldn't read my Deeds so I never knew if someone had landed on a place I owned.  I have the feeling there was quite a bit of good natured cheating going on.

We ate more sandwiches and polished off the ice cream and I lay down on my "bed" to read.  Ugh!  What a bed.  I'd planned to sleep on the couch but the family were camped out there so I lay down on a sleeping bag and a folded quilt on the hardwood floor.  And let me stress HARD wood floor.  All I can say is that my hips must be a lot skinnier than I think they are because, ouch!  Every time I rolled onto my side, I felt like I was laying on a bed of nails.

I finally fell asleep and was awakened at some point by my husband & son chatting excitedly.  The storm was "over" although we were still getting some fairly strong gusts of wind.  Their excitement was due to another earthquake aftershock.  Boy, those aftershocks just keep coming!

The next morning, I woke up bright and early with the sun gleaming through the windows.   I looked out and saw...   Not much really.

There were several other downed trees, but none of them were overly exciting or particularly photo worthy.  Our rain gauge had a bit of water in it and we were the proud owners of the only tree to fall and block our road.  Hubby broke out the chain saw.

Then I promptly tripped over a stick and face planted into the road.  Actually, I knee, hand, elbow, shoulder and back planted.  I saved my face, but every other single part of me ended up scraped and bruised and I have a huge, disgusting blood blister in the palm of one hand.  I look like I've got Jack Sparrow's Black Spot.  I also have a nice puncture wound in my right arm pit.  Eew!   All I can say is Thank God!  The neighbors hadn't ventured outside yet.  I don't think anyone saw me flopping around on the road.

After we got the tree cleaned up,  Mike cut a few more up/down that were infringing on the roadway and we chatted with the neighbors who'd come out to help.  We all chatted a while then I went back home in search of coffee.  Once the coffee was brewing, I went into redneck survival mode.

Electricity:

and hot water:

See those pots sitting on the tool chest?  They are full of water and after a couple of hours in the sun, you have hot water.  Hot enough to feel relatively comfortable about using it for washing dishes, even bathing if you have enough pots.

By 5:30 or so, the power was back on and we were cooking steak on the grill.

The next morning, I was happy to see (said sarcastically) that my "pet" spider hadn't suffered any.  He was even out of his tunnel enjoying the post-hurricane cool down & low humidity.

Sadly, I still have a looooooong way to go on that acrylic baby blanket.