Jay-walking

It's been a productive weekend! First, and most importantly, my first Jaywalker sock is done!! I was initially attracted to the pattern because my maiden name was Jay...but the sock is great! I am absolutely loving this Lornas Laces yarn. It's so soft, and works up really beautifully. And the green/purple doesn't hurt! I am so in love with this sock, and this pattern, that I will definitely do it again. NO SSS for me!!



The other productivity comes with cleaning. The island in the kitchen was completely full of miscellaneous things. Things we hadn't found a place for, junk mail, random things. Now it's clean!! And our cars, which haven't been cleaned in a very long time, are now clean too! There were still french fries from our last car trip (January!), and now they are all gone! The sucky thing is that in the process, we broke the vacuum. Don't try to suck animal crackers up with a regular vacuum appholstery attachment. That will teach me not to buy a shop-vac!

Then today, I went over to Woolwinders for their Sunday in the Salon lesson. Today was on knitting "continental". It was especially cool because Jody met me there. It was fun to meet and knit with a knitblogger I've been chatting with online. She's so awesome! If you haven't visited her blog yet, go check it out! I think we'll be getting together to knit once and a while, and I'm going to help her finish her quilt! And I learned how to knit with my right hand as well (I've always thrown with my left hand) which was great! Now maybe I won't be so terrified to try fair isle.

That is all! I'm tired from washing my car...must cast-on for Jaywalker #2.

gotta love 2 year olds!

The other day when I was ordering my STR, my 2 and a half year old was watching over my shoulder. She squeels, and says "I LIKE THIS YARN!!". I think I'm creating a monster! And I love it. Now I'll have more excuse to have a bigger stash once she's a little older and can learn to knit. ;)

On the destashing front, I had friends up this past weekend. One of the girls (my friends SIL) wanted to learn to knit, so I taught her in less than 5 minutes. She picked it up very quickly, and was THRILLED when I handed over two balls of baby acrylic yarn that I bought a few years ago for gifts that I never used (unfortunately the baby I was going to make the blanket for didn't make it). I knew I'd never touch it, so I handed it over to her. She loved it!

And I finished fingerless glove #1 for my SIL's christmas present! And I'm working on the gussett of Jaywalker #1.

This weekend I"m looking forward to! Sunday, I"m meeting up with Javajem over at Woolwinders for their sit and knit. This week is on learning continental or english style knitting, depending on what you want to learn! I'm so excuted! It will be awesome to meet a fellow local knitblogger!

STR

I finally ordered some Socks That Rock! I picked 3 colorways, one is for my Yarn Abroad pal, and the other two are for me! I saw that chipping was $5 whether you buy 1 or 3, so I did 3! I can't wait for it to come in so I can cast on for yet another pair of socks. ;)

SP8 and Dyeing!!

Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!!! My Secret Pal 8 is the most awesome person! She has outdone herself again!

Here are the contents of my second package, the BLUE package! (First package was the purple package)!


Here are the contents:

Two bags in a cool blue pattern, they are perfect for crafting on the go!
A cool blue beaded cell phone charm (and yes, I do have a cell phone, it is on it right now!!)


blue leaves
really pretty smelling soap
OPAL sock yarn!! I've been wanting to try this for ever, and have never actually seen it. It's SO soft, and really will make myself an awesome pair of socks!
Addi bamboo needles, very long, perfect for magic loop!
A cool knitting magazine, Simply Knitting. I've already found a few patterns to add to my to-do list. I'm so excited!
and orange chocolate!! It's sitting in my fridge resolidifying (darn sun!), and will enjoy that tonight when I get back from my card-making meet up.

I have also uploaded pictures of my dyeing excapade from last friday, but blogger is misbahaving and not letting me add any photos! Bad blogger!

This is my attempt with reds and browns. I used some black cherry kool aid, but the rest are from my Ateco food coloring set.




And here is my blue/purple attempt. The dark blue is much more what i wanted in the previous attempt, I just added more dye to the water/vinegar. The purple however, is violet...which doesn't really look very violet. It didn't resuspend very well, but it isn't too bad either. Kind of looks like I meant for it to turn out that way!

This is my last attempt, supposed to be purples and pinks, but the pink or fushia weren't resuspending at all so I tossed them. I substituted some black cherry kool aid again, and some grape as well. kind of funky, but I think it might just work for some mittens or a hat or something.

long weekend

This weekend was good and bad.

The Good:
Friday night on my way home from work, I stopped off at Michaels to pick up some more cake dyes, and some cotton yarn for dishcloths. I got some Sugar N Cream, and some wilton dyes.
I did some more dyeing friday night, and while I had some technical difficulties (certain colors wouldn't dissolve), I also had some great success. I'll post pics tonight if I remember!

Saturday afternoon (after a very successful trip to Costco), my friend Rachel and her sister-in-law came up from VA for some scrapbooking/cardmaking. They left when our sitter got there, and Nathan and I went out for the most amazing meal I've had in a long time, at Jaleo, a Tapas bar in Bethesda. The food was unbelievable, and the sangria was yummy too!

Sunday I went to the mall with my lovely daughter, where she got a haircut, and got to run around a little. We picked up McDonalds on the way home (of course she fell asleep in the car). And yes, I have seen "Super Size-Me", and I feel that it's got a great point, but as long as we eat the stuff in moderation, that it won't kill me or my kid, and if it helps keep me sane to run through the drivethru once in a while, I will.


The Bad:
Friday when I got to my daughter's daycare, she had a little fever. I had thought I noticed the same thing earlier that morning, but she always wakes up warm so I figured it was nothing.

Saturday she slept til about 7, and was really warm now. I checked her temp, and it was 102. SHe kept saying that her mouth hurt, and pointed at her molar taht was coming in. I figured she was teething, gave her motrin and we went about our day.

Costco was good, but she melted down halfway through. Just kept crying, and crying, and asking for chocolate milk.

She took a fantastic nap! And then played with playdoh while we scrapbooked. Then she played with the babysitter, ate, and went to bed.

Sunday, she was completely hysterical any time we put anything into her mouth. Would make a bad face, and pull it out (she didn't even spit it out) crying. Again, we still thought it was teething, but I was now getting a little skeptical on that. By the afternoon, she had been compeltely miserable, and couldn't eat bananas or yogurt. At this point, I knew something wasn't right. Her fever was gone by now too.

Monday morning we went to the doctor, who said that she had Hand, Foot and Mouth disease. Very different from Foot and mouth disease, don't worry! HF&M is caused by a virus (coxsackie virus) and causes a fever, and nasty sores/ulcers on the mouth/throat, hands and feet (thus hand, foot and mouth). All we could do was give her motrin, and lots of TLC.

I took her home and gave her lots of TLC. We watched lots of Sesame Street, she napped, and we both rested.

More good:
She's feeling much better today, and is back at Day Care.

I got LOTS of knitting done. Switched between 4 different projects (shrug from IK spring, Jaywalker socks, fingerless gloves, and another pair of socks), and while I didn't finish any of them, I got some good progress done.

here's mine too.

Ok, since I asked my participants to post this questionnaire, I thought it would be nice to post it so they can learn a little about me too! I have to say that having a smaller group of participants is so much more fun, I'm actually able to read their blogs semi-regularly, and see all the cool things that they are up to!


1) What is your favorite season of the year? Spring! The flowers are so beautiful, and you can just smell the new life everywhere. I feel like a kid again every spring.

2) Where is your favorite vacation spot? Niagara on the Lake in Ontario, Canada. I went on my honeymoon there, tasted hundreds of yummy wines, and love going back every chance I get.

3) If you could visit any place in the world, where would it be? I'd love to go to Austrailia!

4) If you could pick any job, and be paid well, what would it be? A stay at home mom. I hate that I have to work and miss so much time with my baby girl!

5) If you were going on vacation for 1 week, and had to take ONLY one project with you, what would it be? Probably socks, but it would have to be in a hand=dyed yarn, to help make them more special.

6) If you won a shopping spree to your favorite Yarn shop, what would you get?? I'd definitely have to go for some of the Schaefer yarns, I love them, and love to pet them but can't really afford them. The colors are out of this world, and the yarn is just so soft!

knitting away!

So on Saturday I received some yarn for a super secret project I'm working on for Chrissy, and I have to say I'm having a blast with it! I finished the knitting last night, and will seam it and block it tonight! It is really pretty, I think I'll definitely be making this pattern again!!

On another topic, I started a garden yesterday! A vegetable garden! I planted two squash plants, a horseradish and rhubarb! I can't wait to see if they grow. Next year I plan to expand it to include peppers, beans, tomoatoes, lettuce and a few other things.

dying, part 2!

So I finally got around to dying one hank today. Since it was my first time, I decided to take it easy and do just one hank, following the microwavable directions found here. I chose 5 colors from the Ateco set I have, a green, blue, yellow, teal and aqua.


First, I soaked the yarn for about 30 min in water with vinegar. Then I squeezed the water/vinegar out and put it in a pyrex dish. I mixed the dye, about 5 big drops (it's kind of thick so it was more like globs) in about 1/2 cup of water. I started out with the yellow, and sort of went on either side of the yellow with the next color, and so on until I got to the last color at the end. I really saturated the yarn, made sure it was soaked through, but not so wet that the colors would bleed too much. I covered it with plastic wrap and microwaved it for 2 and a half minutes, let it rest for two minutes, and nuked it again for 2 and a half minutes. I let it sit until I could touch the pyrex dish, and picked up the yarn to dry over my kitchen sink. I was so excited when I picked up the yarn, because TONS of water was coming from the yarn and it was CLEAR! After it dried mostly, I rinsed it again until the water was completely clear, and hung it up outside to dry.


It's still not dry, so I don't have a pic. of the newly dyed/wound yarn, but I will get to that tomorrow! Here are the pics I took this morning.



All in all, I'm pleased! The colors are prettty good, not too dark but not too pastel, and I think I'm definitely going to try this again! Just with a little less water to dye ratio for a little richer colors.

dying!

I am finally going to try dying the Color Your Own yarn I got from Knit Picks. I was speaking with a co-worker yesterday about it, and she said something about possibly using cake dyes (food coloring). So I was online early this morning (thanks to my lovely daughter who woke up at 3:30, crawled in bed for a few hours and was fully up by 6) looking for info on using food coloring. Thankfully it looks like it should be the same as using Kool Aid. AND, I have a set of 16 dyes for making icing. So I'm going to give this a shot today, and will post pics when I have a finished product!

For those of you who don't read my LJ, we had a fun week. Last friday I picked up a dog from the lady we bought our house from. She was such a sweetie! Or at least until we brought my daughter in the room. She was fine most of the time, but decided to see what Celia tasted like. She nipped her 6-7 times throughout the week, and was mostly going for Celia's face. So thursday night, I had my husband call the woman we got the dog from, and she made arrangements to have the dog picked up. It was SO hard too let Sadie go, she was so adorable, and really sweet most of the time. I just couldn't have a dog in the house that wanted to bite my daughter's face. If anything ever happened, I'd never forgive myself. And the nipping was making her afraid of the dog to, which wasn't good either. I'm really sad about it, but I guess when Celia is older (at least 6) we can re-visit getting another dog (unless we have more kids, in which case the youngest would have to be 6.

more sp8

My pal also sent a card in that package to be opened on my birthday. I opened it last sunday and was amazed! It was such a pretty card, with a light green handknit sweater on the card- on the needles- which were toothpicks! I thought the idea was so inventive! I actually asked her if she had knit it on the needles, or on the actual toothpicks, and she did use the toothpicks! She's just amazing!

Belated THANKS!!

Ok, so I have been a total jerk! I did thank my wonderful secret pal, but didn't get around to posting the pictures of the amazing package she sent me! Of course my battery died in my camera and I couldn't find my charger, and then I couldn't find my cable to plug it into my laptop. But finally, I have gotten the mystery solved, and have all cables/chargers necessary! Here are a few pics of what my amazing SP8 sent me a few weeks back!!

Here you can see:
fantastic knitting magazine, a beautiful handknit purse, a card, some embellishments for cards/scrapbooking, and some cool yarn!












Here is a close-up of the bag, some lavendar soap which I LOVE, a key chain, and a satchel with lavendar...Did I mention that I love lavendar?? It's my favorite!













And here's the yarn, and roving! I can't wait to spin it up, the colors are just perfect! And a pretty glass jar, and I think I didn't take a photo of the chocolate, because it was eaten immediately...and so yummy!



Thank you SO much sp8!! I love it all!!

So good!

Well, the Adagio tea is absolutely worth it!! SO GOOD!! I had some of the Assam melody this morning, and was in absolute heaven! If you like tea at all, definitely give it a try. It was funny yesterday too, because I was at Whole Foods, and they carry Adagio teas as well, only they are much more expensive. I'm definitely going to be ordering from them in the future. I want to try some of the teas I never see- like white teas, and rooibos teas. And as a promotion, they let you send friends a 5$ gift certificate to try some teas (the sample sizes are 1-2$ for most). If you want a gc, let me know and I'll set you up!

On the yarn front, I've been very bad. I'm part of the Summer of Stash which is to help use up your stash, and refrain from yarn buying. My two exceptions were a KnitPicks order for some things for my SP (which I did last month, and added in some of the Color your own yarn to make it to $40 for free shipping). The other exception was birthday related. I went to Woolwinders, the LYS closest to me, to pick up some size 10 dpns to make something special for my SP (but I"m not telling what!). I was walking around and the manager told me that Manos is going to be increased by $1 per skein when the owner came in and priced the new arrival of manos. I thought about it, walked around the store, and figured that if I could find a pattern for it, and buy only what is needed for the pattern, that it would be ok. Especially since my dad said he was sending me money for my birthday, and it was, in fact, my 30th birthday a few days before! So I saw this great Oat Coutoure pattern that I decided I just had to make, and figured that if I could find a color that had enough skeins, that it would be all mine! I found this fantastic green verigated, with all shades of greens, and some golds and browns thrown in. It's unlike ANYTHING I have at the moment, so I went for it. On my way to the check out, I mentioned that it was OK to misbehave since it was just my birthday. She asked me when it was, and how old I was, and she then said that they have a birthday discount! So I got 15% off everything! Nice!!

Tea time!

Ok, so I read over on Kerry's blog about an online Tea company called Adagio Teas. She sent me a promotional gift certificate to check it out, and boy am I now really excited to get my shipment in! She raved about the cream tea, so I got a sample of that, a sample of almond, cinnamon, vanilla, and chamomile too. I love tea, probably more than coffee (I bet that's a surprise to many of you!), and have been enjoying it since I was about 5, with cream and sugar, and I still like it the same way. It's funny, because my 2 year old also likes it. I will give her a little taste when I'm having some and she always wants more- though she does that with wine too, she's got sophisticated taste! Anyway, I'm really excited to try this tea. I even got a little something for my SP8, since I know she likes tea too! Two birds with one stone!

Thanks Kerry!!

it's over!

Well, my 30th birthday has come and gone! For some odd reason, I feel really great about it, like it's only uphill from here.

AND I had an amazing weekend! My husband threw me a party on saturday, and many friends came to celebrate with me! I had an absolute blast, and lots of red wine- YUM. Yesterday was much quieter, and consisted of a breakfast out, and a 2 hour nap in the afternoon. I even cast on for a christmas present for my SIL (wristwarmers from knitty.com). Other than that, we had dinner at Carrabbas for dinner, and went to bed early. All I can say is that it was the PERFECT birthday weekend! And to top it off, my hubby also gave me a really nice gift- a gift certificate for a massage! YES!

update!

Oh, I nearly forgot to mention, I updated my etsy shop with more stitch markers. Over the next few days, several more will be added, along with more cards!!

Guess what?

It looks like I might get to go to Rhinebeck!!! My friend is going with her mom, and she offered me a ride! I am so going to take her up on it. Now I have to save my pennies for more fiber. YES!

getting older

With my 30th coming in a few days (the 25th), I've been asked by several people what I'd like. So I finally got my butt in gear and added my Amazon.com Wishlist to the side bar.

my weekend.

Friday, I got an AWESOME package from my SP8! It had all sorts of goodies, including a beautiful handknit purse, some fun yarn, a lavendar sachel and soap, an awesome knitting magazine, and a few other awesome things! I'll post a picture as soon as I find my camera cord.

Friday my father-in-law came for a visit. We had mexican for dinner- YUM, followed by a trip to Home Depot. Started priming the walls.
Saturday I made french toast for breakfast, Celia and I did some shopping and went to a birthday party. We went home, and painted a bit, then played out back in the little plastic pool we have. Grilled out for dinner, and relaxed in the evening.
Sunday, we went out for breakfast (IHOP was SO good!), and another home depot trip, and the boys did more work. We ordered chineese for dinner, and painted all day.

Sunday Celia was a bit out of sorts, and I was thinking she had a sore throat. I was right! I took her to the doctor this morning (to have her cough looked at, and her throat at the same time) and the strep test was postive. She has it AGAIN. Which means that by tomorrow I'll have it, as well as a raging sore throat. So it was overall a good weekend, though it has ups and downs. We now have a light in our bedroom, and freshly painted walls (though another coat is needed).

more unpacking

We've been so busy unpacking that I haven't had time to knit at all, until last night! I did some work on my Jaywalker sock, and I love how it's coming out. LOVE IT!

We've also been catching up on the last season of Alias, which I love! It's getting really interesting now. I can't wait to see what happens! Unfortunately since it's so exciting, I can't knit well while watching it.

Not much else oging on...just unpacking and organizing. More later!

package!

Friday afternoon when I was cleaning the NEW house, the doorbell rang. I ran down to see who it was, and there was a package waiting for me! I looked at the return address and knew right away that it was from a lady that I met through Secret Pal. She was going to Scotland, and brought me back a skein of this really beautiful Cranberry colored yarn! I am looking for a great pattern to use it on, probably a scarf, or a hat. I have to say that through Secret Pal, I've met some pretty incredible people who I wouldn't have normally met. Thanks Jody for thinking of me while you were away!! I look forward to joining you at your knitting group some time this summer. Once we're settled into the new house!