This is in one of the small Vogue On The Go books - Baby Gifts 2, maybe? I fell in love with this pattern and had to go out and make it even though I had absolutely no one in mind for it. It is about 90% done, fronts and back, need s d to be seamed and the decorative border knit on. It’s been pinned on the blocking board for 6 months (?!?!)

When it was almost done (last September), I found out that the recently-married receptionist’s wife was just barely pregnant. He didn’t even tell us he was getting married; he just came back from vacation with a ring on his finger. Anyway, it was in a personal email on the computer screen down at the Front Desk ; I shouldn’t have looked, but I did. He’s a martial arts teacher and has his own business, as well as his day job, so the baby jacket would be perfect. Plus, he’s taken several trips to the Far East and is fascinated with Asian culture. I didn’t know about the baby or who the jacket would be for, when I started it, I just loved the pattern. I waited for him to make an announcement but he never did. I figured since it was so early, she might have miscarried, and I didn’t want to ask if he and his new wife were planning on children, if they had, in fact, just lost a baby.

Well, Mr. Surprise is now out for 2 weeks . He called in on Monday because his wife WAS IN LABOR!! I haven’t heard the details, other than they knew beforehand it is a boy.

So, I guess I better finish that jacket . DD found the book, because she’s making something else out of it. That cheeky b*****d, keeping that news from a bunch of working moms who usually go all nutso over babies. Yeah, no surprise he kept it a surprise, eh?

WHEEEEEE! !!!!! Baby!!!

House – sale closes the 24th. It is being purchased by a Contractor who will rehab the house, use it as a promotional vehicle, and then sell it.

Mom is finally back in her apartment, after 10 weeks of rehab for her broken leg and wrist. She is using a walker, and can’t drive yet, but is otherwise mostly independent. She gets herself down to the Dining Room for meals and is doing well. Her spirits are good – she was SO READY to leave the rehab/SNF unit.

OKC – I’m back to working on the Dogs Paw Lace, but it is embarassingly slow going. I gave up on the smoky brown color; I couldn’t get the hang of it and I knew I would not want to be staring at this color for weeks on end. It doesn’t have to be the color of my friend’s dog to be a tribute to him. So, I’ve restarted with a vivid, dark pink Lorna’s Laces sock yarn. I still probably frog 10-15% of what I do, just because I’m not paying attention and occasionally a dropped yarnover that can’t be recovered. I keep a lifeline at the end of each repeat and I have two in at any given time. I actually needed to frog past the first lifeline once, but thankfully only a row or two back. I am FINALLY getting the hang of the pattern. I’d like to get two repeats done a day (24 rows of 49 stitches). It doesn’t sound like much but I’ve been working on it as I can for several weeks and I’m doing very well if I can get one repeat in and not have to frog most of it. There are 29 repeats, plus a small border on each end. I have one border and 8 repeats so far. I need a really good pix from digital camera but cellphone cam is all I can manage so far. There are battery issues with the “main” camera.

It can be hard to keep up, when you have your own Penelope, undoing your work.

Later, the culprit is caught red-handed.

He’s lost a couple of his nine lives this way. He needs to be especially careful if I lose all sense of decency and start doing REAL lace knitting.

I’m trying to be serially monogamous because I’ve started so many things lately. I might switch off to the Lillehammer Hat for a while, but as right now that involves an afternoon of serious frogging and much gnashing of teeth, I simply can’t touch it at the moment. Also, I’m trying to contain myself from fits of *ess*eee*ecks by only working from stash. Since I’ve probably spent $200 in the last couple of months on yarn (still cheaper than compulsive shoe or purse shopping), I should be able to restrain myself.

Finally, DH was mildly interested in this house, just down the street from us. He thought the curbfront garage would be a great place for his home business/office. There was a moving van in front of the house a month ago, but you could still see a table lamp in one of the front windows. I got fairly panicky, figuring we’d just spent months cleaning out Mom’s house and knowing that there would be more of the same before we could get out of this one. Plus it appears that all the Living space is on the second floor, (admittedly I think you can get to it from the back without stairs). DH is 66 with arthritis. I’m 51 with a bad ankle and fat to boot. I did not enjoy the prospect of schlepping everything we own up those stairs, plus go through all that to move to a house that’s probably 300 yards south of us. Yards as in “3 feet to a”, not “house with a”. DH rightly told me to chill out. We don’t even know if the house is remaining vacant. Last week, there was a dumpster and the garage doors were open. The dumpster appeared to be full of landscaping material. Well. Now, it IS for sale. For $341K.

I really can’t see us doing this.  The RMLS listing photos show a huge Living Room with MILES of panelling. Miles of it. There IS a fireplace, though.  The Kitchen appears to be tiny with those Marshall Dillon saloon doors. And, in 8 photos, there is not ONE photo of a bedroom in a 3 BR, 2 BA house.  How weird is that?  Since we’ve just been dealing with Mom’s house, admittedly a fixer-upper, I know that the rooms needing the most work were not posted on the Net. Duh.  However, since it is like a 2-minute walk from here, if they do an Open House, we will go look at it.  If the stars were in alignment, we sold this one, bought that one, we’d have about $100,000 mortgage.  I don’t know how anxious I am to sign my life away for another 15-30 years.  We paid off this house, then and now a fixer, in 11 instead of 15 years.  For that kind of money, we could move out of this one for a couple months, rehab this one, and move back in.  There is a vacant lot next to us that prospective homeowners are fairly salivating over.  This is an older neighborhood and there isn’t much land available.  There was a nice, normal-sized lot down the street with a tiny (less than 1000 feet) bungalow set way back from the street.  A builder bought that, tore down the little house and put a McMansion in with virtually no yard.  It’s a monstrosity, 2o feet higher than anything else in the neighborhood. Now he wants to sell it (he didn’t have a buyer in hand first?) and it’s been on the market for a couple of months.  There are also some of those very narrow infill houss going up.  The kind where you can nearly touch the windows of each side of the house with outstretched arms. It’s like living in a corridor.

We saw Shrek III yesterday.  Now, I love Shrek. I love the idea of “beautiful at any size”. I was prepared to love the movie.  It was, eh.  And it was short, maybe 90 minutes?  Not even any “outtakes” to speak of during the closing credits. My grade would be an unenthusiastic B- or C+.

OK, enough ranting for today.  I need to get to chores and perhaps a nice quiet movie to knit by this afternoon.

I use the Philosopher’s Wool method of catching the float on the back side. Each yarn is either worked or “caught” every 2 stitches. It gives you no real floats on the back (above), except for the 2-stitch float at the edge which is my repeat edge. Now I understand why to do it and I really enjoy doing it this way. However I am REALLY disappointed in the way the RIGHT side looks. Stitches all misshapen and wonky because of the other color (usually blue carried behind white) either showing through or distorting the stitch. I don’t know if this is something that would shake itself out in laundry or not. I’ve manually readjusted some of the stitches but I don’t think it would work longterm. Any honest opinions out there? Will this even out, or should I frog before I put any more time into it? The yarn is Frog Tree alpaca, so it does have a bit of a halo. Maybe it’s the color choice – not enough contrast between the ivory and the blue?

I also picked up some Universal Yarn “Pace” – 75% wool, 25% polyamide. My friend does not wear loud or garish colors, but seems to like pastels and neutrals. I considered getting something to match Jackson (the dog) in color. However, I understand he is pretty dark brown, nearly black, and I know that could become difficult to knit with.

I finally settled on a midrange grayish brown. It’s still a bit of a challenge; I need really good light, but it’s doable. I haven’t done much lace ever, and certainly not recently, but I’m definitely going to need to pull the dental floss out for lifelines. I’ve had to do minor tinking 3 times, and I’m only on row 15 (I did make it up to Row 17, for about 20 minutes). I keep losing stitches, probably just losing a couple yarnovers on the “plain” row back.

Now, I know they’re referencing a tree on the color, but I just noticed the color name: Bark

This is the Lillehammer Hat from Cider Moon. Lovely, no?

I have three shades of Frog Tree alpaca, a brand I’d never heard of before. The colors appeared to be ivory, pastel blue, and dark coral. Inside, that is. Outside, even though the day was overcast, the blue becomes more lavendar-y. I think it might be periwinkle. Either one looks fine, I just think it’s interesting what a subtle color shift that is. This pix is useful, because it is an equally bad representation of all the colors.

This is ivory, not white white. This is palest blue or perhaps periwinkle. And this is not coral, but more like rose or subdued raspberry. Anyway, I think it will still look like a big snowflake.

I started the brim and had the corrugated ribbing problem. That is, the curl. How could I have forgotten. The better part of me says to frog it – there’s only about 60-90 minutes and the curling is driving me nuts. I got that on my first Fair Isle, the Oregon Vest by Starmore, because I didn’t know any better. This time, I think I will put one or even two rounds of purls down before I start the ribbing.

Now I need to frog this to bits and start over before I put any more good work or spare (ha!) time into it.

I couldn’t remember quite how the top worked on the original pattern (Knitters Magazine, Winter 2001, I think), so I improvised, and I quite like it.

I need to post more often, so I can get small bits of information done quickly. I tell myself there’s no time to blog so I end up doing it slapdash before work when I have even less time to spare. So, for now, this is it. I want to get more up later this evening.

This is going to be way long, but I will try to be better in the future.

First, I *hate* memes in general, but I kind of like these Blogthings. I’m not sure how to put them in my sidebar (I’m an official WordPress weenie), so it’s going here:

Your Vocabulary Score: A-

Congratulations on your multifarious vocabulary!You must be quite an erudite person.

How’s Your Vocabulary?

Most of them are complete foolishness, but at least YOU decide to do them. Being tagged for a meme is the electronic version of a d*** chain letter. No thanks!

News on Mom

She has had the cast removed off her wrist, and is allowed to move her knee after 6 weeks of absolute immobilization to heal the surgical reattachment to her knee cap. She has a removable brace on the wrist, much like a bowling splint on steroids, and she can take it off for eating and bathing. The arm is weak and she can’t make a fist but the fingers are warm and moving. She wondered aloud today when she’d be able to start back knitting, because we all think it would be good therapy (as well as some well-needed distraction and FUN!) I just happened to have some knitting with me, I gave it to her and she started right up. I offered to bring some stuff in, and she asked for some basic needles and cotton for washcloths. I found some Sugar & Cream in my stash in a buttery yellow, also found some angora in my stash in pink/purple, always a safe bet for her. I went down to LYS for a few skeins of Elsepeth Lavold (?sp) Cotton Patine’ in a smoky raspberry and subdued purple, a couple circular needles so she needn’t worry about dropping a needle on the floor, a yarn needle, a folding scissors and one of those “yarntainers” to keep it all in. She was quite groggy when I went back, she had been sleeping, so I started a washcloth for her and she can pick it up when next she’s ready.

News on House

Wow. House had 18 showings and 3 offers in 3 days. One of them sounds pretty good. They accepted the counteroffer, pending the house inspection. They know the house is a fixer, but they understandably want to know if there’s something big that they can’t see. We should know by Wednesday at the latest.

News on Katie

Katie struggles to manage here while Mom is in rehab. We try our best to keep her comfortable.

This is DH’s chair and nobody’s butt is supposed to be in it but his. You can see she did not read the new hire manual.

News on OKC

Well. I’ve started or swatched several things. Right now, the big project is the felted backpack, but I’m playing around with making another Diamondhead Hat from a Knitters Mag several years ago, 2001, but I don’t remember which issue. This one is in Patons SWS, a 70 wool / 30 soy blend, in the color Geranium, a mostly tone-on-tone of pinks, reds and some brown/taupe. It has longish color transitions, but not as long as Noro. It’s almost like a pencil roving, in that it is very loosely spun, and it’s single ply. The Patons webpage says it will felt and I’m not surprised, given how splitty it is. I’m making the hat deliberately large (24 inches, 8 diamonds around), just to see what would happen. I mean, if it felts, it will still fit SOMEBODY, right?

News on the Kid

Her latest fascination appears to be Sea Scouts, and I’m beginning to think it’s not because of her sometime boyfriend’s long association. OK, not TOTALLY that. Tonight, her crew (all-female) is having a sleepover on the vessel after a regular Saturday of training, etc. It’s potluck, you’re supposed to bring one lunch thing and one dinner thing. Now, given that a lot of kids would buy two large bags of chips, or a couple cans of olives, I’m quite impressed with what this kid decided to do.

Bacon/onion/olive/basil quiche, and tuna casserole from scratch (well, the pie crust was frozen). She used whatever what was in the house, including some leftover grilled (marinated) tuna steaks instead of opening a can. She started before we got up, and had everything in the oven and the kitchen cleaned up by 7:30AM. I just got a call from her, and she said “everyone likes what I make!” with a big question mark in her voice (!!) One person brought ramen noodles, so yes, I guess they would like this. I guess the quiche is gone and we might be able to get a dinner out of the remaining casserole.

Since it’s a busy household with three young girls, it will need to be easy-care. I picked up a couple one-skein wonders at Michael’s, and even (gulp) a skein of Red Heart in a muted purple. I will do some swatching and see what I come up with. The smallest size for this is a 34-inch, I believe, so I will probably take it down one needle size; recipient will be 11 next month. And big is OK, she’ll be wearing it over stuff anyway.

The felted backpack consists of modular shells knit together. This pix is from DH’s new very $$$ camera. Isn’t the color amazing?

Even though they are shaped, they are basically stockinette. So the top layer (tier) of shells curl. Badly. Or it seems badly enough to me.

Can anyone tell me if this is enough to be concerned with? Will it disappear with felting? The curling is so pronounced, I’m worried it won’t straighten out unless I actually pin it during the drying cycle. I’ve tried a single crochet edge (sc 1, ch1, repeat) which doesn’t seem to have helped much.

This one was crocheted with right side facing. I did another one with wrong side facing, and I think it works a little better. The garter edge makes it much worse.

Anyone with some magic suggestions?

I’ve started the gusset, but I haven’t found a good strap yet, so I’m holding off for now.

The felted backpack is back in my knitting bag. In spite of all the colors, it’s not a bad commute project because you’re only using 2 at any given time.

I’m a little frustrated at how the top units curl, even though I’m sure that will probably go away in felting. I’m considering a round or two of loosy-goosy single crochet across the top of these to flatten them out a bit.

In other news, the realtor was supposed to get the key last night. We are finally done with Mom’s house. She can now relax, once the sale clears, and this huge milestone is completed.