Knit-along Little Doggie!!

I've been trying to take care of a little business around here lately.  Today I got up and went to the dentist for what I think is the last of my big fillings.  It went pretty smoothly this time and the copay only ended up being $30.  Then since I finished up early, I went out to the Pawtucket DHS office and took in my papers that they needed to renew my medical assistance.  I still need to get them a copy of my husband's license but hopefully I'm done for another 6 months.  Then I went over to the social security office to try to finally get my name changed after 3 years of marriage, but I didn't have the original copy of my marriage license with me so I have to go back.  But at least I didn't really have to wait and it was air-conditioned inside. 
Yesterday I put the buttons on the sweater for baby Greene.  They were given to me by a co-worker who got them from her Grandmother.  They were her collection and they were inherited by Sue.  She brought them into work in the tin that her Grandmother stored them in, and told me to help myself.  It only took seconds to pull 3 matching small black buttons for the shoulder seam of the sweater.  It was really special for me because my mom has a button box just like hers, (it's a burgundy tin) and I used to love to dump it out on the floor and sort them into piles and play with all of the pretty, unique ones.  She still has it and I hope to put them to good use one day when they pass to me, letting my boys play in them like my mom used to let me.  So it's a special touch that this sweater for a new baby has heirloom buttons reaching back 3 generations, and I think it's important for me to make sure that the Greens know about the special gift.
After I finished the sweater, I cast on for a little blanket for a friend in church.  She's due in about a month and I wanted to make her something that would be special and wouldn't be grown out of in a matter of months.  I've realized how important a blanket can be for a child and I decided that it would be a good way to use up some spare cotton and cotton/angora I had laying around.  I used this cotton to knit a cardigan for Alex, that he is just now big enough to wear (as I really was off on the gauge) with a matching hat.  It's lime and turquoise and I have 2 balls of the lime and one of the blue left over so what else could I do with it?  I'm using them with the left over 2 balls of the cotton/angora in maroon left over from the cable, hooded sweater I knit for Alex.  I didn't like the finished drape of the yarn, or how it fuzzed up after washing, but I think it would do just fine in a blanket and would be a nice change of texture for little fingers.  I'm knitting mostly lime and maroon stripes with the occasional blue to catch the eye.  I'm just going to knit till I run out of yarn, and then I'm thinking about having a friend help me back it with fabric, or put a satin border along the edge.  I can't wait till it's done.  It's very different as far as baby colors go but I think it's just the thing and I hope that her little boy takes to it the way that mine did to his blanket.

word o'the day

We've decided that for our next diversion, we are bringing back a little "pewee's play house" with the word of the day.  We're going to pick a word every day and a new "target", and it's the teams job to try to get them to say the word without actually saying the word.  The "target" can never know what we're doing, and we can't ever choose someone from our team as the target, that way it stays fair. 
Todays word of the day was "crustacean" and our target was our manager.  He's so funny and clueless that it was really entertaining.  I've forgotten tomorrows word of the day, but it's a good one!

M&M's color randomness

This week, we were feeling a little down at work and needed something to lift us up a bit.  My cube-mate was eating a fun size bag of M&M's and said that he thought that the red and brown ones get the shaft.  I told him that I thought it was just his bag, and then I opened mine to prove it, sorted them all by color and found that mine too, had way more blue and way fewer red and brown.  I couldn't go with just 2 bags so we opened 2 more and tried again.  Then I started an excel spread sheet to track exactly how many of each color we had.  Well, then we asked other co-workers to open some bags and count theirs, and email me with the breakdown of colors.  That's about the time that I decided that we needed a control bag to really do the research because all of the fun sized bags came from the same package, so I asked another co-worker to pick up a bag of fun sized M&M's to test against these.  (I realize that I ran off the deep end here, but just hear me out the the end of the story.)
So he comes back and I rip open the new package, and toss bags to everyone within reach, tell them to eat as many bags as they want, but to email me with the exact number of each color per bag because I was tracking it.  I had the sheet detailed with each color, listing every back separately, and color coded so that we could easily see which color had been the highest and lowest color in that bag.  We were able to spot a trend that blue, followed by orange were the dominant colors and red and brown were least represented.  I even had one of my co-workers figure out the percentages for me.  We tested 21 bags of fun sized M&M's over 2 days and out of 503 M&M's, 171 were blue and 49 were red. 
Well, I decided to email the company about it and ask why this was.  I told them about what we had done and that we wanted to know if there was a reason behind it.  After 2 days, I received a response.  It was as follows:

In response to your email regarding M&M'S CHOCOLATE CANDIES.

Thank you for your email.

Our color blends were selected by conducting consumer preference tests,
which indicate the assortment of colors that pleased the greatest
 number
of people and created the most attractive overall effect.

On average, our new mix of colors for M&M'S CHOCOLATE CANDIES is:

M&M'S MILK CHOCOLATE: 24% cyan blue, 20% orange, 16% green, 14% bright
yellow, 13% red, 13% brown.

M&M'S PEANUT: 23% cyan blue, 23% orange, 15% green, 15% bright yellow,
12% red, 12% brown.

M&M'S KIDS MINIS: 25% cyan blue, 25% orange, 12% green, 13% bright
yellow, 12% red, 13% brown.

M&M'S DARK: 17% cyan blue, 16% orange, 16% green, 17% bright yellow,
 17%
red, 17% brown.

M&M'S PEANUT BUTTER and ALMOND: 20% cyan blue, 20% orange, 20% green,
20% bright yellow, 10% red, 10% brown.

Each large production batch is blended to those ratios and mixed
thoroughly. However, since the individual packages are filled by weight
on high-speed equipment, and not by count, it is possible to have an
unusual color distribution.

Have a great day!

Your Friends at Mars Snackfood US

Who knew?

The spare, she is done!

Today I finally finished up the spare blankie.  Alex sat in his high chair, loving up on the old one, watching me knit the new one.  He seemed a little confused by the whole thing but by the look on his face, I think he can't wait to get his hands on it.  Now I can take the big one and toss it in the washer, which it badly needs.
This blanket was knit on size 4.5mm and 5.0mm straight needles.  I cast on about 100 stitches this time, and knit till I finished off the left over yarn from the Redheart Pound of Love that I used to make the 1st one.  It's about the size of the average door mat so it's smaller than the 1st, but still large enough for him to have something to hold onto while the original is in the washer.  This pattern is the Hooded blanket from Debbie Bliss' "the Baby Knits Book", but as you can see, I left the hood off of this one.  I have to say that I love the look of the seed stitch.  I'm drawn to anything seed stitch, but I hate to knit it.  It's like watching the grass grow.
So now with that off my shoulders, I've picked up the Shetland Tea Shawl again and figure since I seem to be on a streak of Finish-itis, I'd pick it up and see if it continues enough to carry me through the 115 repeats of the 10 row leaf edge pattern that finished this shawl up.  I think I might be half way through it.  I only started this darn shawl about 2 weeks before Alex was born.  So if I can get it finished, it'll be yet another monumental project that I've finished up this year.
I look at my finished objects gallery for 2007 and it just looks so empty!  The year is nearing the end and I've got not a whole lot of anything in it.  But I can say with pride that I've been finishing off my larger projects...the ones that have been like an albatross around my neck.  So maybe 2008 can be all fun knits, all the time.

spare blankie

I'm almost done with the spare blanket.  It's no where as long as the original but I think it'll do the job just fine.  I cast on about 1/3 less stitches and figured I'd knit till I ran out of yarn.  And with the weather turning colder, I'm turning towards a full sized crib blanket.  And I also want to finish my sweater I started a little while back.  I think it would look good with my new hair.  And my grandfather-in-law is in a nursing home for a while to recover from some kidney issues he's having so I thought that he could use a throw blanket.  I'm thinking of using the sampler squares that I have laying around from when I started a sampler Afghan for my husband about 3 years ago.  I started it in acrylic, then not really knowing the wonders of wool and now I can hardly stand to touch it, it's so fake and coarse feeling.  Good ol' redheart!  But it would be just the thing for a hospital bed cause you can throw it in a washer and dryer and not worry about that gets all over it.  So maybe they'll be re-purposed.  Eddie also needs a new blanket.  His crocheted baby blanket is coming apart and I don't think it can be fixed so it's time for a brand new one.  He loves my crocheted blankets so I think I'll have to pull my hook out of it's hiding place, blow the dust off it, and start on something for him.  And I have just the stuff, deep red sparkly Redheart yarn that's been hanging around in my stash for about 3 years now.  I guess it finally has a home.

Return With Honor

I've decided that I wanted to start a second blog today, so I did.  I know what you're probably thinking... I hardly post often enough on this one to warrant having a second blog, but that's partly because I've decided I want to keep this one more about the kids and knitting, and separate my church stories to their own page.  You can read about the weeks lesson and what every else you may want to hear about on Return With Honor.  I hope you come visit!
So, Knitting right?  Well I'm trucking along with the spare blanket, which my husband tells me, Alex keeps trying to steal out of the basket and walk around with it so I guess it'll work out just fine.  It's good for tv knitting.  Mindless seed stitch knitting for miles and miles.  Miles to go before I sleep, and all that stuff.  I'm thinking about casting right on for my cotton vintage cardi as soon as I finish, but as the weather is getting crisper and I'm beating my hand knit socks to death, I should probably finish the Milicent's.  My socks that I made from Artyarn Supermerino didn't hold up very well.  It wasn't strong enough to stand up to the abuse and one pair was fixable but the green ones that show in my sidebar are toast.  My husband washed them in the washer and threw them in the dryer, and the already fragile threads just gave it up.  There is a break in the yarn right in the middle of the lace cuff and the heels are so thin that you can see through them, thus making it impossible to darn the holes that have started.  I love them as they were my first successful pair of socks and I learned alot from them, but it's time to let them go.  What do you all do with old worn out hand knit socks?  Do you try to recycle the yarn if possible?  Do you just chuck them in the trash?  Is there some sort of funeral rite that I'm not aware of for dead, once-loved socks?

This is for Baby Greene.  It came out really cute, but there were so many little ends to weave in that it took a little longer to finish that I thought.  I really need to take a class or something on finishing because i hate putting in all that work on something that doesn't look good at the seams.  This came out okay but it could have been a little cleaner.  The hat was also out of Natural Knits for Babies and Mom's.  Both of them were knit in Pattons Encore and worked up quickly, and right on gauge for the first time in my life!  I like this sweater enough to pick up some other colors and whip up another one of these for some of the other expectant mommies out there.
Now, I'm back on the Millicent sock and trying to stay away from my Vintage Knits cardigan.  But as I sit here, I'm starting to lose that battle.  I'm very tired lately and I have to go to work tomorrow for our "Town Meeting" where they'll hand out some recognition awards and I'm supposed to get one.  I don't know what it's for so I need to go in on my day off.  I also have several customers that I wasn't able to touch this last couple days and I also have a dentist appointment in the late morning.  So much for my day off!

1st day of school

Today was The Boy's first day of 5th grade, and it was a strange one.  Firstly, he didn't want me to go with him today, said he could handle it on his own.  This is the first time I didn't go with him on the first day of school to make sure he got into his classes and helped him find his teacher.  Secondly, he didn't get to stay for more than the first few hours today.  He had a med check, I had a med check, and the baby had a 15 month well baby visit, complete with 3 shots.  Everyone is doing well, but they both lost a little weight.  I think that Alex's weight loss is because he's running now. 
To continue the huge day that was today, we took Alex to the salon where my old co-workers from the Lincoln salon went to, for his 1st hair cut.  Now don't get excited, we only had her trim about an inch off, just to even it up and help keep it out of his eyes.  I love his hair and  plan to keep it longer for a bit...well, longer.
And as far as Sam's shawl goes, she came over to get it last night and it was received by about 4 hugs and many excited "thank yous" and lots of squeals of delight.  Now that's what I was hoping for, and way better than what I got from the boys.  So now what's on the needles now that the shawl is off them, you ask?  Well I pulled out my Natural Knitting for mom's and babies book and I'm making the striped pullover only I'm making it in a black and rainbow variegated colorway.  I'm keeping the yarn overs in this version but omitting the embroidered flowers because I don't know that my boss and his wife are going to have.  I forgot how fast a baby sweater can work up, especially in a worsted weight yarn.  And not to mention that I've been working with sock yarn for months now.  I cast on late last night and I finished the back by this afternoon.  I think this will be the perfect sweater to showcase this yarn that I got so many years ago with no real purpose.  And then it's baby socks and Alex's spare blanket and maybe I'll get to my vintage sweater while it's still this year!

It's all done!

In this box, my friends, is the Wedding Shawl!  Rona Lace shawl by Anna Marie Jensen, purchased from KnitPicks using size 4mm needles and Knit Picks Bare (75% superwash wool, 25% nylon), gauge 7-8 stitches per inch.  I used 3 of them at 462 yards a pop! 
I started this shawl in June and it hit the skids when Harry Potter come out.  But I picked it back up again and got it finished in the nick of time.  Sam is coming over tomorrow to pick it up and is leaving for NM on Friday so I really cut it close.  I thought I wasn't going to make it through those last few rounds!  I calculated it, and there were 1179 stitches per round at the end.  That's right.  I didn't stutter.  One-thousand, one-hundred and seventy-nine stitches per round, and about 10 rounds of it.  Thankfully, the crocheted border was really fast and actually fun.

This is the shawl when I first took it off the needles.  it was pretty but much better once I blocked it.  I made the mistake of asking my boys what they thought, and of course they gave me the traditional "I don't know... it looks....nice." speech.  Why. Do I. Bother.
I have to say, I've never actually finished a circular shawl, let alone blocked on.  It was in interesting process.  It required me to clear my mountain of laundry off of the floor, and lay down the foam letter mat that we were using for Alex, to pin the shawl into.  I put it down, and ran out of pins while pinning out the little points, so I had to improvise and I think it come out just fine.  I picked a good day for it too because it was cool and had hardly any humidity in the air so it only needed a little time under the fan and it was all done.  How many times did I stick myself while blocking?  None.  How many times did I poke myself while taking it off the mat?  Four. 

All these are pre-blocking.  There are two smallish mistakes that due to the lack of time, I had to leave them be.  But I have to say that after blocking, even I can hardly notice them, and that when this gets folded in half to be tossed around her shoulders, no one will see it anyway.

And here we have blockage (haha).  Let me just say that it didn't end up a perfect circle but I can live with that.  It turned out just fine after I took it back up anyway.  This took an entire package of straight pins and a whole box of T-pins, and 1 episode of Veggie Tales to get done, and I ran out of pins toward the end.

And now, we have it actual on.  Not bad.  Even the Boy was slightly impressed. These photos are courtesy of Dante.