April 10, 2008
Poncho progress & photo
I finished a full repeat on the poncho & have gotten a couple more rounds into the second repeat... not a great photo, but it was nighttime & I wanted to get the thing uploaded & didn't want to take another... there's a problem with my camera screen (you can't see the photo) but the light from the screen still comes up so it makes it hard to use the viewfinder...need to go on the Kodak site & see what to do: I got the camera last August, so hopefully it's still under warranty, or is that 30, 60 or 90 days?? hmm...
Next time I take a photo, I'll get a better one, or I'll replace this one... so if the photo looks good, it'll be a replaced one...
Lotsa rain last night... had to turn the computer off because of thunder & lightning... wheee!
April 08, 2008
Food memories
I got to thinking about food earlier while I was preparing dinner...
It was triggered by reading someone's blog about how she just found out that her children have diabetes & she's trying to make changes & can't convince them to eat fresh fruit & veggies or even applesauce..
In our house, that stuff gets inhaled & on produce co-op days, my guys look for whatever extra fruits are available & often have a piece while we're talking to the folks there...
I got to thinking about why my kids like fresh food: I think it's because they started on it from the get-go... first on breast milk and then they started on solids when they were 6 months old... later for the other 2 since they weren't interested in solids... baby food was either the jar stuff (Earth's Best when we could afford it) or mushed up people food...
We had tacos for dinner (DINNER, not SUPPER, lol.. we war about that in our house for fun.. hehe) tonite & when I was going to sit down with mine I remembered the first time that I think I had tacos: I was a Freshman or Sophomore in college & my professor invited the class to his house & he had taco fixings set out for us.. I told the boys about that & Micah said that he can't REMEMBER when he had his first taco! Funny how that works. I think I had my first rice & bean dish when I was around 7 though when my babysitter who was Puerto Rican OR best friend Elizabeth who was Cuban (I think) had me over at their house & offered me some. Their mothers loved me because I loved their food... I was acting like it was gourmet food because I never had it...
That got me thinking about all different foods and how we think about them: a few days ago, one of the boys said he would have yogurt with his bananas and strawberries & I said "why not try sour cream with a bit of sugar" and he said he thought of sour cream as a savory food! Huh! I grew up with bananas and sour cream as either a snack or a cold lunch. Even today, I struggle to convince myself to eat yogurt with my fruit instead of sour cream... sometimes I mix them together so that I can have that wonderful sour cream flavor... and I think of sour cream as an accompaniment to a savory OR sweet food...
Luna Moth Poncho
3 or 4 more rounds & I'll have completed a full repeat of the poncho. I think it's going okay! Maybe I'll get Opus to model it, hehehe...
Just a cool typing test
That's typing in a hurry, which happens if I'm excited or something... my normal relaxed speed is probably around 50 or 60 words a minute, like right now. I took typing classes in junior high school & my mom got me a how-to-type booklet and I got to practice on an old Corona electric typewriter... I still remember practicing gibberish like:
juyj juyj frtf frtf
I also love playing typing terror on neopets... and have achieved a 3rd place avatar... and last night when we were in Pizza Hut, my son told me that he thought he overheard some kids talking about typing terror & neopets... since he wasn't sure, none of us went over to say hello... oh well!
Knitting
I think I finally figured out how to turn the Luna Moth shawl pattern into a poncho & have about 1/2 a repeat knitted plus a row or two from the first section... basically you figure out how many stitches you want your neck hole to be (I started with 66 stitches) and knit a round then purl a round & then start the knitting. I dropped the first 3 and last 3 (garter) stitches and also dropped the first & last yarn over & stitch & also changed the first & last decrease from a 3 (k3tog or ks2p) stitch decrease to a 2 stitch (k2tog and skp) decrease...so far it's working & is giving me an 8 stitch increase every other round. If I wanted to increase more slowly, I might need to drop one of the triple yarn overs in the middle in one half of the chart & add an extra decrease (possibly turn that k2 tog/skp into k3 tog/sk2p) except I found that I had to downgrade that decrease or the stitches wouldn't line up properly.
We'll see how it goes... I found another poncho pattern done in the round that increases 8 every other round and it looks nice, but it just seems like I'm generating an AWFUL lot of stitches. I think I have about 100 stitches on the needle so far and only in the middle of the 1st repeat... but that other pattern generates about 200 or 300 stitches so maybe it'll be okay... basically I'm making 2 luna moths this way... sort of!
I'll take a photo when the knitting looks more substantial!
more knitting patterns at Weaving Rainbow
I've added two more Patons patterns to the website... one is Chunky Knits and the other is Weekend Retreat as requested by a customer... they should be here in a few days...
Kittens
are getting bigger & more adventurous... they seem to really like Opus & I like cuddling with them. Only once or twice a day as I don't want to get too attached since we can't keep them. In 3-1/2 weeks I'll start letting folks know we have kittens & hopefully they will go to families who have children...
April 04, 2008
Gradually Catching Up
For the last few weeks, the Street Smart booklet has been out of stock and orders have been piling up. I finally got a batch of booklets last week and what just HAD to happen to complicate things? The printer threw a hissy fit & wouldn't print! SO I had to make 2 or 3 trips to the library to print shipping labels.
We weren't sure what the printer's issues were, but figured that the black ink cartridge needed replacing, so I ordered more & today they arrived.
I CAN PRINT AGAIN... at HOME! YIPPEE! The printer is an old HP 842C... it's wonderful, but doesn't communicate very well. It was the ink cartridge. and when the printer is not happy with the ink cartridge, it just refuses to print, the blinking orange light flickers & it won't do anything else... won't even print a FADED printout (which would be a definite clue that the ink was running low)... all or nothing & guessing with this one!
Patterns & Projects
Luna moth is finished. I've yet to block it, and I'm a bit leery of the neckline: it doesn't look like blocking it will help shape it (the yarn is 75% acrylic & 25% wool), but we'll see:
The batteries & remote are in the picture there because I thought maybe the camera battery was running down, so swiped out the batteries from the remote.
Now I've got some ideas for a couple of things I'd like to make next... I may try to use the Luna moth pattern in a poncho for a little girl or may use some other stitch pattern that I think would go well with the same yarn & send the shawl along as well so they'll have a sort of mother-daughter outfit...
The Luna Moth shawl is too long for Reuven (he's 6), so it'll be too long for the little girl, and I think a poncho might be better...
We'll see how the poncho project goes! Hopefully fast! It'll be easier to see how it's shaping up size-wise...
Kittens
The kittens are growing & their eyes opened on Wednesday & Thursday (yesterday) one kitten's eyes opened Wednesday & the eyes of the other two opened yesterday... so now they are going to start moving around more and in about a week, we may have our hands full and all the other animals will REALLY have to get used to having them around! Here's some pix... feel the cuteness!
April 01, 2008
middle of the night ramblings
Someone needs to tell me to get OFF the computer, and to bed... but I'm a bit wired right now from getting my Street Smart booklet orders sorted out so that tomorrow I can head over to the library & print out some more shipping labels so that I can get all caught up on my orders... 22 more.
I'll also be ordering some Shetland Chunky yarn in 4 colors: white, black, stone ragg & red... these can either be used as sock monkey hats or for the Urban Aran pattern in the Street Smart booklet. Although my Shetland Chunky page doesn't show all available colors, I CAN special order them in bags of 10. I WILL be adding the colors to the page, tried to do that on Monday morning, but was making a mess so I decided to take the easy route until I can get some help with the HTML. I also need to go through the colors since it's a revamped old page and some of the colors may be discontinued.
Another good yarn for the Urban Aran might be Briggs & Little Atlantic 3 ply. My only concern about that yarn for sweaters might be that it is a pretty dense (almost hard) yarn. I'll swatch & wash & then we'll see how it looks!
Kittens
The kittens are getting bigger. One of them (who we nicknamed "Mexico" because the pattern on his/her back reminds me of central America...) had his eyes open earlier when my oldest (and tallest!) son took the kittens out for a cuddle. "central America" doesn't roll off the tongue as easily as Mexico does... we nicknamed another kitten "Supo"... anyone know where we got that name from?
Callie is a very good little mama!
We are planning to find homes for the kittens. That is going to be SO hard... we couldn't give any of Nikki's kittens away, but at the time we didn't need to, we lived where it was safer for cats to go outside... she had 4: TreeCutter & Yoda (who are now playing & frolicking at Rainbow Bridge) & LoveSlug & LittleFace... we still have Slug & Face & still miss the other 2 quite a bit.
Sad news: we had another sweet kitty who told me her name was Melody...she'd been hanging out on our porch with Callie, following us around outside etc... she died on Saturday night/Sunday morning. Not sure what happened (attack or accident? not sure...): last week we noticed she was having some trouble getting around so we brought her inside. She was quiet for a few days & then on Friday she seemed a lot better, was moving around a little more... that was the "if she's not better by" day that we were going to take her to the vet, but since she was doing better, we decided not to. Saturday: nosedive... we'll miss her & I'm still kicking myself for not taking her to the vet Friday...
Knitting
Luna Moth is almost done... I'm working on the edging row & then I'll do the cast off row & then I'll analyze it to see if it'll be too big for what I have in mind. Photos another time, it doesn't look MUCH different from the last photo, except more scrunched since it's on one needle.
I'm still waiting for Yarn Smackdown group to get going again. We're just waiting on 2 more people before addresses will be sent & the new pattern section released. I'm doing my hat in more than one color again, using some other Peace Fleece yarn that I found because I'm not 100% sure that the yarn that my 1st opponent sent will be enough to make the hat in solid. I'm using Lucas numbers & doing the main color in one direction from 18 to 2 and the companion colors in the reverse order from the main color as thus (going from the middle of the hat down to the end of brim):
green 7
plum 3
green 11
plum 1
green 18
plum 2
I'm still not 100% sure how I'm going to do the top part, we'll see what the pattern section looks like & will go from there!
Bedtime (and maybe a bit of the Luna Moth edging....)