Thursday, May 01, 2008

Cartoon influences

It can now be proven that the Youngest watches wayyyyyy too much Scooby Doo cartoons. He is now running around the house with his arms up in the air making a God awful noise. It took me a few times seeing him do this to figure out what the heck he was doing. He was pretending to be one of the scary bad guys. The first time it was a ghost. I know this, because he keeps saying "Ghost!" as he does it. The next time he was saying "WereWoo!" That would be Werewolf to you and me. Today while he was running with his hands in the air his word was "Muh-my" or Mummy. Sigh.

How can I ever take him to the church nursery when some of his first vocabulary words are ghost, werewolf and mummy? Not exactly what they want to hear coming out of a two year old's mouth.


But. It gets worse. Oh yes, it does. He has also been watching the old Johnny Quest cartoons. The bad guys in those are far worse than the Scooby Doo ones. In Scooby Doo, nobody gets really hurt or anything. In Johnny Quest, people are killed, although you never see it. You'd just see a ship blowing up or something. But, the bad guys go around yelling "kill them!"

So, yeah. Guess what my little guy was running around yelling? "kee-ill! kee-ill!"

If he wasn't so darn cute and funny while doing it, as a Christian mom, I'd be mortified. It's really difficult raising a parrot.

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Cub Scouts and knitting stuff

Sorry for the lapse in blogging. I usually blog in the evening when I get the children settled. But last night?

Last night was a big night in the Eldest's Cub Scout world. He got his Tiger badge finally. I'm super proud of him, he worked really hard to earn it. He also got a boatload of other patches/pins/belt loops/etc. When one of the important rank badges are earned, the scout's parents get roped into the ceremony. I felt like a complete dork up there. I'm involved, but only with helping him earn other things. I don't usually attend meetings or go camping and stuff. So I was really uncomfortable being pulled up there to do the ceremony, especially since I don't know many of the parents there. Here's a pic:


One cool thing happened there though. I was talking to one of the parents and felt someone tap me on the shoulder. I turned to see who it was and it turned out to be someone I had gone to high school with. His kid has joined up for scouts too. It really is a very small world huh?

On the knitting front, I started on the other sleeve of the cabled pullover. I can still only do about 10 or 12 rows before it makes my hands and wrists hurt. I'm not sure why or what I'm doing wrong. I'm still not sure what to do about the sleeve length, but right now I'm leaning towards hemming it later.

I got a pattern in the mail today. I'd show it to you, but it's for a super secret project. Hi MOM! :) I need to go pick out the yarn for it and get started on it. It's sitting on my desk in front of me as I type and teasing me. I want to start on it NOW!

I'm trying to be a good girl and not have too many projects started at once, but it's really hard... temptation is such a bad thing.

Monday, April 28, 2008

Knitting question

I finished one sleeve this weekend for the cabled pullover. While my stitch gauge was dead on, it turns out that my row gauge was not. It's a bit over. When totaled the full length, it's about an inch or inch and a half more than I'm needing.



The rings at the left of the photo will be at the hands the ones on the right will connect with the yoke near the shoulder. I don't really want to rip back because the end I left off at are on the right. If I rip too much, I risk messing up connecting to the yoke.

So what should I do?
  • I can go ahead and rip it anyway and take the risk of it not fitting to the yoke correctly, but then will also possibly have the problem of having the two sleeves not looking identical.
  • I could also leave the knitting as it is and do a hem at the very end of the sleeve once the sweater is pieced together.
It's possible that blocking will help some, but I doubt it.

Are there any other suggestions? How would you handle this?

New Toy

While I was away with the kids this weekend and my husband was supposed to be doing important stuff like, oh, say, taxes and legal business type crap, what did he do? He made me this:
Lazy Kate & Bobbins
It's a copy of something I found on etsy last week that I thought was incredibly clever and simple. Since it is a copy, I won't give you the specific measurements that the hubby used to make it. If you don't have a handy man around to whip you one up though, go to etsy and do a search for a lazy kate for drop spindlers. These are so handy and so worth having around for the drop spindler!

I can give you the basics though. He made me 4 bobbins made out of pvc pipe and end caps. He then made a base with 4 dowels placed into it. I love it. It's my early Mom's day gift from him. It has already made life much easier for storing singles and then plying them together.

I completed plying some of them this morning and I'm tickled with how it turned out:
Ready for blocking

All I need to do now with this is block it. I'm waiting to block all of the yarns in this colorway together at the same time, so it will be a while.

Don't you like my new toy?