Just Sit Back & Knit

It's My Life...

"If you get me a girl pit bull, I will just be PISSED OUT!"
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Kissing Nana's neck.
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"I've got a little monkey in my pocket."
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A ring bearer in Uncle Jeff's wedding.
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"My dad and me just got separated at the tattoo show, he got lost."

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Fixing brakes with dad.

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"Mom, is today a daddy day?  Mom days are stupid."
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Dad soothing a wee one with his wee pinky.
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"I have a great idea for our journals Mom!  Let's give each other memories."
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Hiking near Nana's house.
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I gave notice at my job.  I realized working there was draining all the energy I want to put into the things that are important to me:

Homeschooling Fletcher
Feeding my family healthy, home-cooked meals
Exercising
Helping Jim maintain his health
Having another baby
Keeping a comfortably clean and orderly home
Making time for the creative things I love to do: knit, sew, paint, garden

I have about 3-1/2 more weeks to go at The Porch, then I plan to focus on creating a schedule so that I can fit all the important things into my life and do work for my dad from home!  I am in love with the possibility of making my life exactly what I want it to be.  I am lucky, so lucky to be married to Jim, who wants the same things I do and supports me in working towards those things.  Life really is good.

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My Secret Knitting Project!!!!!:

Any Ideas????

Sweet Man Socks

There are several posts I keep meaning to write, including one I've actually started about Junah's Easter outfit, but in honor of my sweet husband (who said to me just a few hours ago, "I don't see enough yarn around here. Need to get more yarn!") and in keeping, somewhat, with Sara's most recent post, I'm going to post here about Jason. And his socks.

My favorite wedding picture (oh, it's so hard to pick) is actually a pair of pictures (that, strangely, I don't have framed) taken while we were dancing:

Big smiles and lots of laughter. That's what we had then and have even more of now.

And I love this one, too. Jason's dad took it right after the ceremony.

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Jason turned thirty-one last week. We've now known each other, been friends with each other, (except for a a few gaps when we weren't speaking to each other, of course) for more than half our lives.

Last year I made Jason a pair of socks (my first ever pair of knitted socks) out of Cascade Fixation, at a horrendously small gauge, that took me forever to finish. This year I wanted to be sure that I had his present ready for his birthday. So I spent the week and a half before his birthday working on a new pair of socks (and cursing the size of his foot!) whenever I had the chance. Hard to do when most of my day is taken up with nursing (I can knit and nurse, sometimes) and changing diapers and playing with a beautiful babe. And I had high hopes of completing a matching pair for Junah.

This sock pattern is what I'll call my basic sock pattern, even though I haven't made it very many times. But I've only strayed from it twice. It is loosely based on the Knitting Fiend's Sockulator II (toe-up pattern) since that is the pattern I made Jason's first pair from. Ease isn't included in it so I usually just use it for the length of foot and foot circumference, but of a size smaller than I'm actually making. I've abandoned the backward loop method of casting on (mostly because I can never find the last loop when knitting down the second side of the needle, if you know what I mean) in favor of the figure-8 cast on as demonstrated at Hello Yarn. I cast-on using US #1 size dpns to make the figure-8 loops then switched to the US #3 needles I used to make the sock. In this way I avoid having to tighten the loops on the second needle and am assured a tight, nearly invisible cast on row. Since I'm lazy and was trying to save time I decided to do all of the increases using a kfb instead of the invisible lifted increases the Sockulator uses. And I knew before I even started that I would have an uneven looking toe as a result but I told myself that Jason wouldn't care, would never even notice in fact, and it would all be fine.

Right. The right side of the toe looked fine, but the left looked poopy. Bumpy and uneven and yucky and...I just couldn't live with it. I had to start all over. My problem was that I had been working the kfb on the second stitch and the second to last stitch on each side of the sock. The fix, which looks fine and maybe even neat, was to work the kfb on the second stitch and the third to the last stitch on each side of the foot.

Things went fine. For awhile. Then I realized that I was knitting an even bigger sock than required.

So I ripped back again until I only had fifty-two stitches instead of sixty.

Which was nice because fifty-two stitches is a lot faster to knit than sixty. If I was mathy I might figure out how many stitches I saved myself over two socks...

20" of sock x 10 rows per inch x 60 stitches x 2 socks = 24000 stitches
20" of sock x 10 rows per inch x 52 stitches x 2 socks = 20800 stitches
24,000 stitches - 20,800 stitches = 3200 stitches

Okay, so I'm a little mathy. Here's a little more. I timed myself (when I was trying to decide late that Friday afternoon if i had any hope of finishing the socks before Jason got home from work) and one round took me two minutes (at the speed I was knitting in 2x1 ribbing -- holding a sleeping babe and watching Heroes online) which means I saved myself...

[52 stitches / (2 minutes x 60 seconds)] x 3200 stitches = 1386.666 seconds or 23 minutes

Which I lost tonight doing useless math.

And I nearly finished (finished but for the finishing) the socks before giving them to my Raiders loving husband. The ends were woven two days later. And he loves them.

Oh, and for the record:

Mission Falls 1824 Wool in Raven (about three balls) and Charcoal (one ball) on 3.25mm Addi Turbo Circulars using the magic loop method.

What a Wonderful World

My favorite song.  At dinner last night Fletch and I discusses our "favorite's"  My song was What a Wonderful World.  Jim picked it out for our first dance at our wedding - only dance as it turned out!  My SIL Briana had a mat made for a 11x16" frame made with part of the lyrics from the song made for us for our wedding and it holds one of my favorite wedding pics in it:

For those of you saying, "wait a minute!  the song actually goes: "I THINK to myself, what a wonderful world."!"  I know that, so does Briana, but she said she had the frame shop redo the calligraphy so many times, she finally just went with it.  It remains one of my most cherished wedding gifts.

Fletch and I have been sick, which seems to be a theme whenever I get around to blogging.  This is a picture of one tired and sick boy sitting up sleeping on the couch.  Too cute.

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Easter brought something interesting this year:
the easter bunny worked very hard on these little felt gnomes and their very own felted basket to go along with this great book the easter bunny had when she was little bunny.  All of this was placed lovingly and with anticipation of much joy by receiving child into said child's basket.  To which the child replied, "Oh Crud."
The easter bunny was not quite crushed.  She does admit they are sort of creepy with, "no heads or bodies" (this is the reason that little ungrateful child gave for not liking the wee felt folks. 

He is a bit more interested in the book, though the easter bunny forgot all about the really scary trolls who torture the gnomes in a most gruesome fashion towards the back of the book.  She realizes that as soon as the little boy finds these pages he will probably denounce the book as even more creepy that the felt gnomes!

This particular easter bunny feels confident, though, that as this little boys grows more interested in life and bodies and all that comes with exploration he will find this book a fascinating read:

as she did while perusing all the pages like these!

This is what came in his basket that he loves and plays with constantly.

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On to knitting matters:

this is the sock yarn Kathy gave me when she came to visit this past weekend which I am determined to turn into a pair or socks for myself.

Here is the yarn I bought for a new sweater for Fletch - he picked the colors as you can see, light green and dark green.  I am trying figure out from various patterns I have and a particular blogger's (pickin' and throwin')  work how to make childHood - from Knitty as a pullover with a front pocket and a hood.  Any thoughts, barb, would be appreciated!
       the red yarn is a skein Kathy bought for me at the new and wonderful LYS we found - out of this I think I will make a shawl or wrap.  Also showcased in this stunningly set up picture is the much needed ball winder I got for my birthday with a Knit Picks gift certificate from Kathy.

Som time ago (I think at least two years) I bought the blossom yarn you see on the right for  the purse from Simply Noro.   I never made it.  I did make a hat and start a scarf but didn't love it and took it all apart.  This Christmas Kathy gave me the blossom you see on the left, she remebered I wanted to make the purse, but forgot I had the yarn.  So I have started the purse but am not convinced I will carry it.  I am thinking about make a wrap or lap blanket for myself out of all this lovely yarn.  HMMMMMM......

Jim's January Birthday Slippers, lonely and waiting for me:

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And just to show off, we take a picture of Fletch in a tree each Easter.  Here are the last three (the first two I don't have on my computer).: