Peanch

For the past two days I've been obsessed. Utterly obsessed with the new toy. I've been spinning like a mad woman.

I've come to the realization, which I could never do before since I didn't have a wheel, that the whole thing makes your legs hurt. Really. Of course that could be because I do a lot of sitting around all day and very little exercising. I'm allergic to exercise you see, kinda like I'm allergic to dpns if you get my meaning.

I decided that it's sorta like sitting in a recumbent exercise bike. You're sitting in a chair, leaning back and pumping your legs, except your legs go up and down, not around. When you do this for approx. 4.5 hours or so, you might get a little achy. I did take breaks (don't have a choice with rugrats around) but I finished the second set of singles and was determined to see them plied.

When I bought my wheel from Spunky Eclectic, she sent me some extra roving as a thank you. I neglected to take a pic of it and instead dove right into spinning it up. It was gorgeous, I promise. The name of the colorway was roving, but after seeing it all spun up, I'm renaming it to Peanch. Part peach/Part pink. I got a little over 200 yards from it. Its mostly balanced. There are a few little pieces that coil up on each other, but for the most part, it's balanced. You'll see in a second. What you'll see is the yarn before being blocked. The kinks should be all gone afterwards. I'll show you the finished skein tomorrow.

Ummm, pink spaghetti... Click to enlarge for better viewing

Progress has begun on the baby cardigan. I've finished the yoke section and have begun the lace work. I'll show you that tomorrow as well.

Terracotta baby cardigan

Well, we're finally getting a girl in the extended family. Yay! This family has been lousy with boys for way too long.

So, I opted to make a baby cardigan for the pending arrival. This was the project that I took on my trip to FL this past weekend. What progress did I make? NONE! I frogged the damn thing 3 times.

I was using one of Elizabeth Zimmerman's patterns (Baby Surprise Jacket) and for some reason just couldn't get the hang of it. I'm ditching that pattern and I'm going to try her February Sweater from the Knitter's Almanac instead. We'll see if I'm competent enough to do that one.

I'm not sure what happened. I looked on Ravelry and there have been thousands of these things made. So what's wrong with me?

I'm going to use Cotton Ease in Terracotta. This is perfect for this family. The mother is a real "back to nature" sort (nothing fru-fru about her) and the father loves orange.

I found these cute buttons to go with it. Aren't they cute?

Fish Bowl Buttons!

The yarn in the picture is way too bright. The actual color is really a pretty coral.

Cross your fingers that I don't screw this one up, 'kay?

New Edition to the Family!

After many long months of waiting, we have a new addition to the family!

Let me tell you a little about her.

I've been breathlessly awaiting her arrival to our home for months now. She was completely planned and she finally arrived yesterday a little before three p.m. Labor was only about an hour total. I hardly even broke out in a sweat. Easiest labor that I've had.

She's a lovely blond and quite petite. She's constantly, voraciously hungry and has/will require lots of feedings. Her brothers are so excited to have her home and have already spent quite a lot of time with her. I expect I'll be losing a lot of sleep because of her, but that's to be expected with newborns.

The Eldest's attitude toward her has been quite different than it was when we brought home his little brother. It's been much easier on him this time. He's already used to me spending a lot of time away from him and spending it on his baby brother, so this time around I don't think he'll mind at all when I spend my time with her. As a matter of fact, he's been pestering me to death to help feed her!


The Youngest just wants to play with her. I have to keep reminding him that she's just a baby and he has to be gentle with her, but he's too little to understand that. I think she's just adorable and I can hardly keep my hands off of her myself.




Would you like to see a picture of her?

Isn't she lovely?

The Shuttle Launch

The Shuttle Launch was fabulous!

We kept the Eldest in the dark about where we were taking him until breakfast on Saturday morning. It was absolutely eating him up that we wouldn't tell him where he was going. I had him almost convinced that we were traveling to Vermont though.

What was funny was that when we told him we were going to the shuttle launch he said, "And then what?" Aren't seven year olds great? You give them an awesome trip and they ask something like that. Of course, he was running on less than 4 hours sleep from the night before at that point. It didn't mean a lot to him until after he had seen it go up and after we had toured some of Kennedy Space Center.

Wait til I tell you where we watched the shuttle launch from! A rich friend of my brother's MIL let us view it from their condo. It was a SWEET condo. Like a couple of years ago cost $1 million dollar penthouse on the 12th floor kind of sweet .

Check out the inlaid mosaics on the floor of their foyer:Framed Textiles from India

Very Ornate Dining area from Korea

Their balcony

There was a whole lot more that was just as cool, but I'm running out of room here.

The view their pad was amazing too though.

We saw a mommy dolphin with her baby, manatees, ospreys, pelicans and stingrays from the balcony.

Awwww! You could also see the launch pad as well as tons of crowds.

Launch pad in the distance

An example of the packed crowds

My camera was not too great at the long distance pic of the shuttle launch, but the vapor trails it left came out great. By the way, this was as close as you could get to the launch pad unless you worked for NASA.

The Launch

Shuttle Vapor Trail

Here's a pic that I took from inside the car as we were leaving. You see, as a good devoted sister, I always try and take pictures of the hotties I see for my brother. Here's one of a hottie and her man (notice the matching arm tatoos):

If you enlarge the above pic, check out the front fender on the first bike to the left. This was the coolest paint job on a bike that I've ever seen. I was afraid to let them see me taking their pics. Of course, I might have watched a few too many movies in the past about bikers with bad tempers. :)

Last, but not least, my favorite pic of the weekend:

My parents and the Eldest pose as astronauts

It was a great weekend, hope you had one too!