Knitting and Gray Hair

The classic stereotype of knitters is that we are all grannies and that we must have gray hair in order to knit. Well, it's partially true. I am not a granny yet, but I am getting a huge amount of gray hair. Not caused by knitting, no. But by this Lil' Guy, the Youngest:

Can you see what he's doing? Right, reaching for stuff on the counter.
Now, picture a different day, different outfit on this deceptively adorable child. Got it in your mind? I cut up some peaches for him the other morning. The peeling and the knife were on a paper towel right where I left them, safe way up on the counter. Or, rather, where I thought they were safe.

So, I put him in front of Blues Clues (can you tell he likes Blues Clues? Properly pronouced "Bwues Cwues") and went to sit in my desk chair and proceeded to check out my favorite morning sites. I hear him behind me. I look over. And just about KEEL OVER. He had the steak knife (with a serrated edged no less). He wasn't just holding it, OHHHH no. The pointy end was in his mouth, serrated edge up and he was CHEWING on it!!!

You know how when you get so scared you can't move and your stomach drops down to somewhere below your knees? Yeah, that's what I felt. I couldn't yell or scream for fear of him cutting himself. I froze for a second before leaping out of the chair to grab the knife.

He's fine, not one little knick or cut. I, on the other hand, now have 50% more gray hair than I did.

Trust me, this pic is much cuter than the real thing. It's not running, climbing, yelling "no", trying to hit people, chewing knives or giving his mother gray hair.

I found time this morning to knit a small swatch of the yarn that I will be using to make my Dad some Hunting/Boot Socks. This will be part of his Christmas Present. It's a beautiful worsted Deep Olive Tweed from Patons Classic Wool Merino. It has some lovely bits of orange, yellow, pumpkin and bright orange in it.

When I make myself socks, I don't usually swatch since I do them toe up and try on as I go. But my Dad's feet are not here and I don't have exact measurements. So, I have to go on a formula and that means I need to swatch and measure. I've swatched, washed and blocked, but it's not dry enough for measuring yet.


I loved the way this looked on the yarn swift. Look at all those little bits of color!

Oh! my Colrain Yarn came in late yesterday. Yeah! I actually made my bed so that I would have a place to take a pic of it for you. Of course, I didn't make it the way my Mom or Hubby would. They spend way too much time making it perfect. In my opinion, the proper way to make a bed is to leave the sheets all wadded up, then take a thick comforter and cover the mess up. This won't really work with a thin comforter, you can see the lumps beneath it. Big, thick and fluffy is the way to go. Pull it up and Presto! Bed is made.

P.S. - Don't tell Mom! She really did try her best to teach me the "right" way to make a bed, bless her little heart.

A very stressful couple of days

I find that I must continue with my theme that there are some days that it just doesn't pay to pick up the knitting. I put down my current project, The Clementine Shawlette from IK Spring 2007, after I had to frog approx. 15 rows, for a few days. I was hoping that the break would be a good thing.

Well, I found the opportune time today to knit during the youngest's naptime. No go. I ended up frogging everything that I had done and then a few more rows. This has been exceedingly frustrating. Especially since I know this is an easy knit lace project.

What this has turned into though, is a great lesson on how to frog lace (not fun) and not drop any stitches (not easy) and still be able to find your place in your pattern project (very tricksy.) Notice the yarn barf all over my knitting bag and floor:

The current state of the project:

I have received several great compliments on my Hot Wheels Wreath from a couple of different forums and just wanted to say thank you to those who have been so nice!


Yesterday was a very stressful day.

1. We had a parent/teacher conference at school to discuss the Eldest's progress.
   
2. We then proceeded to the Boy Scout store to get the Eldest's brand spankin' new Cub Scout uniform. During the outing, trying to hold the Youngest was like trying to hold a hybrid Octopus/Wild Monkey. He decided to have a temper tantrum there as well. The people that worked there, instead of looking for little old ladies to help across the street, looked very ready to assist us out of the store due to the little hellion that I spawned.
3. Had to rush to grocery store for bare basics.
4. Had to more than rush to get dinner on the table.
5. Had a fight with the hubby (which led to getting zero knitting done since I don't knit well when angry).
6. Had to rush Eldest into his uniform and off to scouts.
7. I then, threw youngest in his bed, and proceeded to have a nice alcoholic beverage and felt very much better.
   

Here's the very proud product of the stressful day:

Hot Wheels Wreath

Last night was not my night to knit or try to change the contents of my Ipod Nano. Neither project went according to plan.

As I was working on the shawl, I looked down and realized that I had made a mistake. Just a small mistake. 15 ROWS BACK! So I frogged it and put the project down. Knitting while frustrated and ticked is not a Martha Stewart "Good Thing" moment.

So I wanted to add some podcasts to the Nano. Found out for some strange reason that I had run out of disk space. Gee, it could be that there were about 30 songs on there twice! Took forever to fix it too. Itunes is not the most intuitive program. Wish they'd at least emulate Windows Explorer or something for moving stuff around on the damn thing.

But today things turned around. Not with the above projects though.

When I became a room mom (read this as "got volunteered and still don't know how to say no to teachers") for my son's first grade class, who knew that my mad crafty skillz would be needed so often? There is a Fall Festival on Thursday and there is a themed wreath competition between all the classes. Guess who got to decorate and come up with a theme on just a couple of days notice?

So, this afternoon I got busy. I figured that this is after all a fundraiser and that parents try and win these things by buying more raffle tickets. I also kept in mind the pressure that little boys can exert on unsuspecting parents. I decided on a Hot Wheels theme cause every boy I ever met - young and old, goes crazy for cars.

I had one grapevine wreath to work with that the school provided. I bought 10 cars, 1 bandana with flames (for the background), 1 bag of stickers, 1 small monster truck, 1 hot wheels candy dispenser, 2 rolls of yellow satin ribbon, and two rolls of this shiny garland stuff with stars in red and blue. Oh, and one $10.00 gift card to Toys R' Us.

Here is the result of a couple of hours of labor on it (done during youngest's nap time of course and only burning myself once with the hot glue gun.): Click on photos to enlarge.

Here with too much light from flash that makes the cards too shiny to read.

Here with not enough flash so that it's a touch blurry.

I defy anyone to say that if they were a little boy they wouldn't be squealing for this! Personally, I know this to be true since Eldest already got himself into mucho trouble over this project. Whining about how he can't have even one car and kicking the carpet on the floor over it is not the way to win and influence mommies. Just sayin'.

Close up of the ribbon on the wreath.

Close up of the center of the wreath.

You can't see it, but there is the coolest bandana as the background in the center.

Close up of the baby who not 10 minutes ago was in full on temper tantrum "I'm damn mad cause I was told no and want the world to know it" mode and wasn't nearly so happy after he took a swat at Mommy and she swatted him back. I'm glad to say that while he wasn't smiling, Mommy was smiling just fine.