It's a jungle out there

Today's song, straight from the  80's is Jungle Love by Morris Day & the Time.

The mitered square "thing" continues to grow, slightly.

Now, I'd like to take a short break from singing oh-ee oh-ee oh & knitting to congratulate my son & his team mates on their big win.  Their bowling team won first place for the season at Bowl America's Monday Night Adult League.  I'm so proud of Zack for being a part of the winning team.  Not only were they short a man most of the season, but it was also Zack's first full season bowling as an adult.  Way to go, Zack & teammates!

Maybe if I congratulate him enough, Zack will use his winnings to buy me more yarn.

A mom can always dream.

40,257

It may not look or feel like it, but I'm making progress.  I have already knit 40,257 stitches on the pi shawl.  For those of you wondering, that means I've finished the 4th pattern repeat on section 4.  Progress is slow going at this point, partly because of the 576 stitches per round & partly because this project doesn't travel well.  The yarn is on a cone which seems to grow approximately two feet in both diameter & height when I attempt to wrestle it into my knitting bag.  In hindsight, I should have balled the yarn off the cone but... it's an awful lot of yarn on that cone!  If I'd tried, I'd probably still be winding yarn instead of knitting with it.  40,257 stitches (and that's not counting the zillion projects I started with this yarn then threw away because they looked horrible) and you can barely tell I've used any yarn off the cone.  It really is a LOT of yarn!  I'm definitely getting my $4 worth out of this GoodWill yarn deal!

I've also made progress on my money soap.  Remember my money soap?  You can find that post here.  I finally got the money out.  It was $1.00.  But hey, a buck is a buck and the soap was nice & lasted forever.

I'm making progress on my to-do list as well.  I finally found the directions for how to set up my direct deposit for the local theme park paycheck (they'd been lost in the disaster zone I call a desk for a while now.)  Not only did I find the directions, I followed them!  I'm all set to receive money.  Receiving money is always a good thing.  And since yesterday was the first day of the new season, it was something I needed to do.  Quickly.  Having to go pick up an actual paper paycheck is a pain in the rear & takes longer than my pi shawl is taking to knit.

Another item on the to-do list is donating 40 bags of junk or large items to GoodWill in 40 days.  I'm up to 16 bags so far.  I'm running out of time though.  I really need to focus on purging my junk instead of counting stitches on the pi shawl.  Not to mention, I might need a valium just from knowing how many stitches that baby contains so far.

The other main goal on my to-do list has been to get the house ready for me to return to work.  In other words, it's clean.  Or at least as clean as it can be until I finish purging.  I learned from experience last year that not a whole lot of housework will get done over the summer.  Last year, I was classified as part time & averaged 55 - 66 hours per week.  This year, they have me classified as full time.  I'm a little scared.  If 55 - 66 hours per week is part time, what the heck is full time?  What ever it means, it will be okay.  I need the money.  I need a new car, a new computer & a new phone.  In other words, I need money!  And best of all, when things are slow at work, I'm allowed to knit.  It's not a bad gig at all!

The only thing wrong with work is that it's classified me as a working mother.  One day into the season & I've already missed a big life event for my child.  Zack bowled another 300 game yesterday & I wasn't there to see it.  For those of you wondering, a 300 is a perfect game, 12 strikes in a row.

Well, I'm off to, hopefully, raise my stitch count well above 40,257.  Happy Monday!

No ice here

That folks, is how you chemically treat a road to prevent ice.  There will be no ice in Caroline County, VDOT is making sure of it!

I can’t believe VDOT put down that much chemical for last week’s Storm That Wasn’t then took a hit from residents because of icy patches on the back roads.  Just goes to show that you can’t please everyone.  And hey, if you want to see icy patches, come to my neighborhood.  We can’t use chemicals because all of the drainage ditches drain back into our lake.  Here all that can be done is throw a little sand on top of the ice, plow if it’s deep enough & wait for the sun to shine.  

In knitting news, well, there really isn't any.  I've been fiddling with a custom order scarf & haven't made enough progress to make it photo worthy.  Hopefully tomorrow....

I do have some exciting non-knitting news though.  I am SO proud of my son.  He bowls, religiously.  This season, he left the youth league behind & moved into the adult world of bowling.  He could have waited until he turned 21 (a 20 years & 364 days old person is still considered "youth" in the bowling world) but he chose to make the switch when he turned 18 (the youngest you can be in adult bowling.)  Anyway... he bowled in a tournament yesterday and won!  He didn't just win one of the five games, he won the whole tournament!  Over the five games they bowled, he averaged 250.  The most exciting part is the prize money.  After taking out the entrance fees, his winnings were about what he makes in a week at his full time job.  He's pretty excited about that!  And I'm pretty excited about the idea of trying to talk him into buying me a new camera instead of buying more bowling balls.  I swear, that boy buys bowling balls like I buy yarn.

Champions!

Wow!  I've been horrible about blogging.  I blame many things; laziness, an obsession over my recent knitting projects, and my son's bowling & work schedules.  The boy child recently got his first job working as a mechanic at a bowling alley.  He's in Heaven!  The glitch is, he still doesn't have his driver's license & he doesn't get off work until 1 a.m.  And the bowling alley is an hour away from home.  Which means, I am surviving on about 3 hours of sleep at night since we don't get home  until 2:00 or 2:30 a.m. and that %$#@%^ loud, chirpy, morning-loving-bird starts making a racket at 6 a.m.  By 6:30 a.m., the woodpecker has joined in and any hope for additional sleep is lost.

I've also been spending a lot of time watching my son bowl recently.  The Youth YBA season was winding down & there have been lots of tournaments & end of the season hoop-la to attend.  Besides the regular schedule of bowling 4 days a week, there was the awards banquet for Zack's regular youth league.  Zack brought home several trophies, lots of patches (so many that for the first time, I'm thankful that he nails them to his bedroom wall instead of asking me to sew them onto something) and a ring.

Zack was presented with the ring for rolling an 820 set which was a youth record breaker.  It's a really nice ring, sterling silver & has his name, date & score engraved on the inside.  Sadly, he didn't get to hold his place as a record breaker for long.  Another local youth, Austin Washington (hope I have his name correct) rolled an 825 this past week.  I'm not positive  he rolled it during sanctioned league play though, so it may not count as an official score.

Zack's travel league also came to an end, with, wait for it.....  AMF Sunset becoming league CHAMPIONS!  AMF never wins, a Bowl America team always does, but not this year!  I'm so proud of the kids!  The last two games of the season were quite tense & the kids handled that stress much better than the parents!  Way to go kids!

It was a bit of a bitter sweet victory for us though.  It marked the end of Zack's youth bowling career.  He still has the State tournament in June & the Jr. Gold tournament in July, but this past weekend was the end of his youth team play.  My baby is growing up!

Meanwhile, amongst all the bowling, I've been getting a little knitting done.

I finished the mitered square afghan.

Pardon the messy desk.  After weaving in all those blasted little ends, I realized that I didn't have a decent place to photograph it.  I'm quite happy with the way it turned out and I used up lots of little scrap balls, although I probably still have enough to make another.  Shhh.....  don't let me have that thought for a while.  I have other projects I need to focus on instead of making another afghan.  Anyway, it was knit with fingering weight wool on #2 needles.  Fifteen rows of eight squares, and each square contains 440 stitches for a grand total of 52,800 stitches.  Hmm, sort of wish I hadn't done the math!

Yesterday I finished a chevron scarf.  It was knit with Patons Kroy Socks & a #4 needle.  I've said it before & I'll say it again, for "cheap" craft store yarn, it doesn't get much better than Patons Kroy.  I used 2 full skeins and I still need to weave in the ends & block it.  I have one skein left & I'm trying to decide if I should knit matching fingerless gloves or a hat.

And to prove that I have done something other than knit & hang out in bowling alleys,

The spinach is starting to come up although it still looks more like rows of weeds than spinach.

I also got a few tomato plants planted.

Liar, liar, pants on fire!

That rascally groundhog lied.  Phil promised an early spring.  Instead, we have this:

For the 4th or 5th time since he made his early spring prediction, we found ourselves driving to a bowling tournament in the snow yesterday.  Today, the snow continues.

Despite the weather, it’s been a busy week with lots of little accomplishments or experiences.  First & most exciting, I went to bread baking class last week.  For the life of me, I can not bake bread.  I end up with cinderblocks every single time.  Even with the bread machine, if I take the dough out & make rolls, I end up with hockey puck shaped cinderblocks.  My lack of ability makes me absolutely crazy.  So, I turned to a professional.

First, she taught me how to make & knead the dough.

Second, she was great about not making me wait for it to cool completely before cutting into a loaf.  Yum!

I haven’t had the opportunity to try making bread all by myself in my own kitchen yet, but I’m looking forward to the chance.  Maybe tomorrow if things go well.  

I finally blocked the Pond Water shawlette that I mentioned here.

A close up:

I absolutely love how it turned out and am going to have a hard time listing it for sale in my shop  but I promised myself I would, so....  If the sun ever shines again, I’ll get it properly photographed & listed.

Meanwhile, my fish tank of little, tiny balls of scrap yarn reached the over-flow stage so I started another mitered square afghan.  I really do love making them.  Even the ones knit in all garter never get boring because of the constant color changes, plus, I feel very self important by being all green & frugal while using up scrap yarn.

I had hoped to be a lot further along with it by now, but I found myself in the driver’s seat all weekend instead in the knitting seat.  Normally, my husband & I take turns driving my son to the bowling alley (he bowls Friday, Saturday & Sundays.)  But this weekend, my husband got called away for work.  It wasn’t even the good kind of called away where I get a few days vacation from cooking (the kids would just as well rather eat sandwiches or frozen pizza than a real meal.)  Instead, he got the call around 11 p.m. on Thursday that he needed to go to NY on Friday.  He left Virginia mid day on Friday, drove to upstate NY, did the requested repairs on Saturday morning, & drove home that evening.  By 2 a.m. on Sunday morning, he was home & wanting to know if there were any dinner left overs.  Argh!  I am glad he got home before the most recent snow storm hit though.  But the point of this was, I ended up having to drive to the bowling alley each day.   And to make life even more fun & less knitty, my son was bowling in Richmond while my daughter had places to be in Fredericksburg, 60 miles in the opposite direction, each day.  Basically, all I did all weekend was drive up & down 95.  And for once, I didn’t even hit any horrible traffic jams where I could pull out the knitting & get a few rows in before traffic moved again. 

But, if I stop rambling & wrap this post up, I can go knit for an hour or so.  

So......

March in Virginia

So far, it's proving to be a pretty typical March in Virginia.

We had a snow storm followed by several days of temperatures in the mid 60's.  The snow started Tuesday night & continued through Wednesday evening.  As is typical of Virginia weather, the storm couldn't make up it's mind what it wanted to be - rain or snow.  It would snow like crazy for an hour or so & the snow would accumulate to 5 to 7 inches, then it would rain like crazy for 30 minutes  & compact/melt the snow down to just a couple of inches, then it would change back to snow & start accumulating again.  Those periods of rain sure did a number on the travelers as it turned the roads into slushy, icy disaster zones, but it sure helped keep the total snow accumulation down.  If it hadn't been for the rain, we'd still be trying to dig out.

While it snowed, I knit.

It's a chevron scarf desperately in need of a good blocking.  I've also started another mitered square blanket.  I have several of them in the works, but I think I like this new one the best.  I'm not exactly happy with the square size of the other two, one's too large & one's squares are too small.  This new project is the Goldilocks of them & seems to be just right.  I've only gotten eight squares done so far so there wasn't much to photograph.

I also finally got around to blocking Sarah's scarf.

It looks much better in real life.  The light is horrible in that picture, plus the gray mannequin does nothing for the bright colors of the yarn.  Sarah seems to be happy with it and I think she'll be able to get a lot of wear out of it.  It's wool so it should be warm in the winter, but it's extremely light weight & lacy so I think she'll be able to wear it in the summer too.

For non-knitting news, I need to take a moment to say how proud I am of my son.  I've mentioned before that he bowls.  This past Saturday, he rolled an 820 set.  His coach thinks it's probably a state youth record, so that's pretty exciting!  A 900 would be three perfect games (36 strikes) in a row.  If Zack's information is correct only 17 people have rolled a 900.  Sixteen of them were adults & one is a youth with an unconfirmed score.   Also, with only three more weeks to go, his youth travel league remains in first place with quite a few points separating them from the second place team.  It's a little too early to start bragging, but ....  Go Sunsetters!

Well, I hear scrap yarn & mitered squares calling me.  And unfortunately, I think the laundry may be making some noise too.

Bowling Fumes

I'm pretty excited & still slightly high on bowling fumes.  My son is one of a team of three Virginia State High School Scratch Division bowling champions.  The tournament was last weekend & it was a Very intense day of bowling.  My son's team, the Richmond team, and the second place team from Tidewater fought each other for the lead all day.  The championship win came down to the last throw of the last ball of the last game.  Talk about tense!  I think I ground my teeth down to nubs.  The tension wasn't helped by the fact that the bowling alley's equipment kept malfunctioning which caused long pauses in the bowling.  All those pauses can really mess with a bowler's bowling mojo but the kids handled it well.  I was extremely proud of their professionalism and awesome sportsmanship attitude.  Congratulations Richmond, VA!

There's Zack receiving his Championship trophy and scholarship awards certificate.  I cropped his teammates out of the picture because I failed to get their permission to post their photos & I think it's rude to post names or pics of other people's kids without permission.

On to knitting news....

Even though I finished the shawl in early December, I'm still high on yarn fumes from the Starry Night project.

The photo is pretty lousy.  For one thing, I can not fathom what possessed me to recover my mannequin in that weird gray fabric.  Yes I can, it was on clearance & I was being cheap.  Stupid move!  Nothing shows up well against that gray.

But the shawl itself is Gorgeous!  The moment it was unpinned from the blocking mats, it became my favorite knitted piece.  Ever!  I've worn it so many times, I've already had to wash it!

Again, a really horrible photo, but it shows how I use it as a scarf instead of a shawl.  The colors aren't showing up very well, but the yarn is a tonal blue that ranges from favorite faded blue jeans to an almost black blue and it's got just the tiniest bit of silver sparkle added for interest.  And it's soft!  So cuddly soft!  The shawl's softness is partially why I've had to wash it already - I find myself stroking & petting it every time I wear it.  Honestly, I was a little surprised by the softness of the finished product.  The yarn itself, while not uncomfortable in the least to knit with, didn't have that "pet me" feel to it.  Maybe because it was lace weight which sort of never feels pettable.  Just not enough width to the yarn to pet I guess.  I was also a little worried that the Stellina (what makes it sparkle) would be scratchy, but it's not.  You can't even feel the Stellina.  But during blocking, the yarn bloomed just a teeny tiny bit and Poof!  A gorgeous, pettable shawl was born.

 The yarn is Night Sky and it came from a fellow Etsian, Swift Fiber Studio.  Tamsin, the shop owner was a delight to work with & quick to answer questions, so if you are in the market, please check out her shop.

Currently, I'm working on a chevron scarf using self striping sock yarn.

I really like the way the stripes are working out.  I'd be finished by now but I keep having to tink row repeats.  For the life of me, I can not remember to purl two together at the end of the purl rows.  This is definitely one item who's price will not be based on an actual hourly rate!

I may have to pause the chevron scarf today & go knit myself a new sweater, hat & mittens.  So far, it's been an extremely mild winter.  We've only had a few nights were the temperature has dipped below freezing but the cold arctic air is swooping down towards us and tomorrow we are supposed to see 13 degrees.  Brrr!  I think 13 degrees is definitely new sweater worthy!  Now, if I only had some yarn....

I do believe I need to grow my stash pile!

Off to find the yarn catalog....

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.

A busy week

This poor blog has been suffering from abandonment issues & I must apologize.  I’ve been busy though.  

I’ve spent some time at the bowling alley.  Check out Zack’s score:

Boy, that was hard to watch.  I get so nervous & excited for him when he starts racking up all those X’s.  The entire bowling alley gets involved, a quiet hush comes over the place and everyone gathers to watch.  Nothing like having to perform under pressure!

I also survived a typical week in February in Virginia.  On Sunday evening/Monday morning, we had snow:

And on Friday, the thermometer hit 85 degrees.  

Meanwhile, Hubby was working out of town all week and I’m proud to announce that I (A) lit the pilot light in the gas log fireplace all by myself (this winter has been so mild it was the first time we’ve needed it!) and (B) I killed a spider all by myself.  I’m full of self confidence these days!

I started a stealth project.  Can you guess what it is?

My baby boy turned 17.  I’m still not sure how that’s possible.  I like to think I’m 28 so the math is starting to get tricky.  Pretty soon, Zack will be older than me!  

As you can see, a birthday has not changed his feelings about having his photo taken.   And I was so happy to see that he dressed up for his birthday dinner out with the family.

And lastly, I’ve been busy knitting Easter eggs.

Blogging Woes

I've been trying to get a post typed all day & each time, I was either unable to log on or Blogger ate it.  It's now 12:50 a.m., I have to get up in less than 5 hours and it seems Blogger is finally going to let me create a post.  Grrr.  Oh well, at least I was finally able to log in & at least start a post.  Let's see if I can get it finished.

And while I'm complaining, let me just say a brief Grrrr! to the fact that all day long, I was too stupid to type the post on Pages then just copy it here once I was finally able to log in.  I really do think I may need Alzheimer's medication.

Earlier, I was going to chat about all the cowls I've been making lately.  I listed several in the shop today.  The yarn I used was Deborah Norville's Serenity Garden.  Can't say I particularly enjoyed knitting with it - it seemed to be very splitty, but I LOVE the finished effect.  I love the colorways and I love the knitted fabric.  I'm thinking about using it for a t-shirt or tank.  I think wearing either would feel like being naked because the fabric is so soft & light weight.

Now, I'm over the excitement of getting the cowls listed & have moved on to being excited about the REACH TRO donation shawl.  I started the beaded bind off this evening.  Actually, I guess I started it somewhere between 6 & 7 p.m.  I worked on it all evening & by 12:30 a.m., I was just slightly past the half way point.  Sheesh.  Beeded bind offs take forever!  I really like them though & think my choice of going with the GunMetal beads rather than the Oyster ones was the right way to go.  I'm very pleased with the way the shawl is turning out.

As for Zack & his weekend of bowling tournaments, Friday night was the scratch tournament.  It was 80 of the best of the best youth bowlers in the area.  Zack came in 4th place in both doubles & singles.  For the singles, he was only 31 pins from first place.  Today's tournament was singles & doubles for the City Championship.  Zack bowled his average of 220 for both, which means he didn't place, but I still think he did a great job when you take into consideration tournament nerves & being on unfamiliar lanes.  Tomorrow is the teams portion of the tournament.  He's on a good team & they should do well if they can all keep it together.

I just hope I get to go watch tomorrow's bowling action.  Sarah seems to be coming down with the flu.  I don't want to leave her home alone if she's sick.  Actually, I'm a bit tempted to label her as officially sick tonight so I don't have to set my alarm clock for 5:30 a.m.   And speaking of alarm clocks....  I'm down to less than 4.5 hours before I have to be getting up.  Guess I better sign off & hit the sack.

Nighty night.

Yum! Butter

I should probably apologize in advance for this post.  I can think of nothing, absolutely nothing, worth rambling on about, but, it's Day 5 of this 30 day adventure and I'm not quitting.  Yet.

There isn't a whole lot going on in my knitting life at the moment.  I spent yesterday frantically knitting mini Christmas stockings, then last night, I decided that my time would be better spent knitting more time consuming items.  I decided I'd be better off knowing that I had plenty of larger items ready for the holiday bazar.  I can always spend the last few days leading up to the bazar frantically knitting mini stockings.  But it would be silly to wait until the last minute to try to create the big stuff.

So, I pulled out about 40 different balls of yarn & almost as many needles.  I cast on about 38 different projects, then promptly frogged them all.  Apparently I wasn't feeling inspired & the yarn wasn't cooperating.  I finally gave in, ate a giant bowl of ice cream & went to bed.  This morning, I decided to make the second the yoga sock to match the one that's been hanging out in the UFO pile.   Huge progress was made while I chatted with the other moms at the bowling alley.

Speaking of bowling, it was a pretty good day for the youth league.  Zack's scores weren't anything to write home about, but they weren't shamefully bad either.  But his team mates....  One scored his first 700 series and another bowled his highest score to date.  Looks like those long, painful (for me) Friday night practices are working well.

Okay, lucky for you, I'm cutting this short.  The Darling Daughter is in the room watching Paula Deen cook something on TV.  I have no idea what she's cooking, but Paula's voice is making me hungry.