The comedy of the last two days.

The past two days have been far from fun at the house of Shea.

Wanna know why?

1. I went window shopping on Wed. for some Christmas toys for the Youngest. At the time they were $8. Since he was with me, I decided to come back on Thursday so he wouldn't see them come home. When I got there on Thursday, guess what? The price had been raised to $10. I lost 6 dollars on those toys in just one day.

2. I picked up the Youngest after school and he was running a fever of 100 degrees. He then proceeded to spend the rest of the evening throwing up and causing me to miss choir practice at the church we've just started going to. Not only did he throw up, but I lost count of how many times after the 7th time.

3. Got maybe 1 hour sleep last night.

4. I needed to pack today for my trip tomorrow. What did I do? 5 loads of laundry that consisted of sheets that he threw up on, two sets of my clothes, two of his father's, 5 of his, two of his "night-night" blankets and misc. others. I told his brother to stand next to him since it was his turn to be thrown up on, but he wasn't having any.

5. I went to blog earlier today. Blogger was down.

6. I went to blog later. The Youngest was screaming "Mummy!" at the top of his pitiful lungs and crying buckets.

7. I picked out a sweater vest to make on the trip. When I grabbed my alpaca yarn for it and did a swatch, you couldn't see a hint of the pattern. So, back to the drawing board. I'm already starting to get twitchy without a serious project going on and I just finished the last one yesterday.

8. I'm still trying to pack and sew a button on a sweater for the trip. I'm still doing laundry. I'm still dealing with a sick kid and another that would love just 5 minutes of attention.

I did get dinner made. That was a huge accomplishment in my book. Thank heaven for small favors.

I need a serious alcoholic beverage for the nerves, but sadly, I'm on sick call tonight. But tomorrow night on my trip? All bets are off!


See ya Monday!

Done! Tubey is Complete!

I have a Finished Object! I finished the Tubey Sweater that I've been working on for the past month. I love this pattern. The construction was fun and the stripes kept me from getting bored with all the k3,p1 ribbing.

I got it finished just in time for SAFF in Asheville, NC this upcoming weekend. It's also my birthday weekend, but more on that later.

I love the sweater, but not the jeans. Please forgive the incredibly out of date jeans. I do have the perfect necklace to go with this sweater, but I forgot it when me and The Eldest did the photo shoot. Didn't he do a great job? I'm thinking he needs his own digital camera for Christmas.


Details:

Yarn used: Cascade 220 in black - 3 skeins, 9461 (Yellow-green), 7830 (Coral red), 7816 (Turquoise Blue) I used less than one skein of the three colors.

Needles: Size 8 circs

Mods:

1. Used 3 colors and not always as directions indicated. Close, but not exact. I played around with the width of the stripes as I went along.

2. Sewed the neckline to the shrug section after completing the sweater for about 1 inch on either side. The neckline before was way too low and revealing. I much prefer the neckline now.

3. The rolling of the fabric was driving me nuts. I single crocheted around the sleeves and the entire neckline of the sweater including the shrug part in the back. I’m considering doing this at the bottom as well, but haven’t decided as of yet. I might do it just to add a bit more length as well.

Note: I used the jogless stripe technique as follows:

1. Join new yarn to old for one stitch.
2. Drop old and knit 1 round with the new color.
3. When you get back to the joining of the two colors, pick up the stitch below it and place it on the needles then ktog. Make sure to move your stitch marker and place it after this stitch. Your round will move one stitch each time.
4. Knit around as usual.

Almosta

I've almost got a sweater:


I've got about four inches or so left to go. I'm trying to hurry on this so I can wear it at SAFF this coming weekend. Hopefully it will be cool enough for it.

We had a great time at a family get together this weekend at the In-Law Great Grandparents' place. I was dreading going since some of that family can be a bit odd, but it turned out to be pretty fun. There were a bunch of children there and they turned out to be entertainment for everyone and kept the family members from squabbling, so it was all good.

This pic is pretty representative of the kids there. There's a few missing from it, but who can keep up with that many kids anyway? That's the Youngest in the orange. I don't know where the Eldest was at this time. See what I mean?