Please, not my stash!

Last Thursday started out like an normal day...well, almost normal. It was my daughter's last day of the school year and she was more excited than she is most school mornings. And I admit, I had already gotten it into my head that the year was over, so I was more scattered than I usually am. We were about to jump in the car with 5 minutes remaining for me to get her to school in time, with her swimsuit under her clothes, and she remembered at the last minute that she needed an extra shirt. Aaaargh.

So I finally get her to school, I drive home, make sure that husband has food to bring to work for lunch, and make the boy his breakfast. Kiss husband before he heads to work, got puppy and boy ready for morning walk. As I walked the stroller with leash in hand, I thought about all the errands I had to do that day: go to Costco and restock on some supplies and fill up on gas, make a grocery list and go to store for food, drop off clothes and toys at the Salvation Army, go to park, go to pet store, go to Post Office, and pick up my daughter early. I could some after the walk, and the rest after I pick up the girl. Not a problem.

Well, my son must have been cutting another tooth because I only got to make a grocery list and go to Costco. He was making a fuss, so I decided to do the rest of my errands after I picked up my daughter.

The time came to pick her up. I popped my son in his carseat and buckled him up. I threw Pippin in the car in my daughter's carseat. I buckled myself in, pushed the garage door opener and proceeded to back out....

...too early. I heard a crash....ooooh no.... I jumped out of my car. OH CR-RAP!!!!! The car backed into the garage door and pushed it out of its track. My first thought was, "My husband is going to kill me..." then it was, "oh no, how am I going to pick up my daughter? " and finally, "how much of my stash am I going to have to sell to make up the damage?"

I looked at the warped garage door, tried to punch it into place. It didn't budge. I called my husband. I said, "Honey, please don't get mad...but..." and I explained what happened. Miraculously, he said nothing about selling any of my stash...

I contacted the garage door company that had helped us before with our garage door (what can I say, the house was built in the 70s). I didn't even ask how much it may have to cost. The rep said that someone would be out to our house to look at the damage within the hour. I looked through my stash and briefly calculated what I could sell. Even with all of my Handmaiden, Fleece Artist, Hedgehog Fibres, Malabrigo, and (sniff) Wollmeise skeins, there was no way that I had $1000 worth of yarn. Goodbye new bed...Goodbye yarn store splurges...Goodbye summer fun. Mom goofed and there would be no more fun for a while.

My husband came home with my daughter. I heard a banging. Was he really trying to fix it? Then I heard the garage door...he managed to force it back onto its track. It opened but would not close. I apologized again profusely and told him that I would sell my yarn to pay for the damage. He didn't seem concerned...does the man not worry about anything? Perhaps it was because he knew that it wasn't his yarn on the line. So unfair...

So the garage door guy came and said that he could put a new metal frame on the bottom of the door to straighten it out. Unfortunately, he said, they don't make our garage door anymore, so he could not replace the plate. He said that he could do it that day....did I want an estimate.

I braced myself...numbers beat around my head. Please don't be more than $500...please please please don't make me sell all of my beautiful yarn!!!!

So he says to me, "There is the charge to come out and the labor cost...it will come out to $127.23.

God really does love me...

Katje's Frog

So I ripped out my Katje...all of it. And I am not sorry...

I was going to add more rows to both sleeves and the body. I had started ripping out the bind off in the body a few weeks ago and placing the stitches onto a circular needle. Gah! it was taking forever doing that in seed stitch. F O R E V E R

I threw it in the closet, with the sincere intention to finish it. However, it taunted me, there in the bottom of my clear knitting bag. I couldn't take it anymore and decided that it would be faster to frog the whole darn thing and reknit it.

I'm going to take up Chantel's suggestion and make it a short sleeve hoodie.

Space saver or...

a reason to buy more yarn? I bought a box of SpaceSavers from Costco yesterday. Those things are amazing!! The commercials did not lie and now I feel more in control of my space.

My husband joked that I should put my yarn in them... I am seriously considering it. For one thing, my stash bins are overflowing. Another, I can buy more yarn...

Blue Henna

My son hennaed his feet this morning with a blue pen.

My first impulse was to scrub it off. He didn't like that idea (Owww momma! No No No!!!). So I decided that it really wasn't a big deal...in fact, I was amused that he found it so entertaining to color his feet that way, and not the rest of his body. I also decided that better his feet, and not his little cheeks...His sister hennaed her face with yellow, green, and blue marker one day while in daycare a few years ago. She looked pretty scary, actually, and reminded me of Darth Maul from Star Wars...seriously! It took 2 days for the ink to wear off (washable my ***!)

I forgot to take a picture of his feet before his bath, so please excuse the faded pen on his cute little feet, and imagine the ink darker and more of it:

So there you have it - blue henna!

Thank you Fairy Godmother

These past few weeks have been crazy.

The puppy has been coming out of his shell. We've been making friends with dog owners and their dogs. Pippin is a very social dog and he loves to run around...and around...and around. I think if I let him play with his dog friends all day, he would, and would come home ready for more.

My daughter was getting restless, waiting for the end of school to arrive. She has been talking about going to the pool with her best friend everyday for the past month. In fact, she talks alot...about her stuffed animals, imaginary friend, Buggy, what she did at school, about everything that she is curious about (how many rings does Saturn have momma? Guess what - Jupiter is a gaseous planet; daddy told me so; what does gaseous mean?) And on and on...

My son was getting antsy in the house and I signed him up for gymnastics. He loves it but he is such a bundle of energy, I often have to take him out and let him run around with the puppy at the park. Otherwise, he and the puppy fight over toys...

So, like so many other mothers at this time of year, I often wished that I could have a little break for myself. Just a little tiny one....

This past weekend, I got my wish:

Thank you Fairy Godmother!

Last day of school 2009

My daughter's last day of school was today. She gave Mrs Brown her completed scarf today, along with some brownies to share with her class.

Mrs. Brown was very grateful for the scarf. She said that she loved that I made it with my own hands. She wrote in her thank you card that she was so happy to be acknowledged (!) I am happy to give her something to show how much I appreciated her work - with my daughter and her classmates.

I know that not everyone appreciates knitted gifts because they are so easily bought at a department store. At times, I know that the people I give some gifts to don't realize the time and care that I put into my knitted items, as well as the thoughtfulness that I put into choosing the right yarn: color, softness, fabric that it creates, fiber. Mrs. Brown knew, and I appreciated that.

It's been a good year for my daughter and I am thankful that she had the good fortune to have a teacher like Mrs. Brown.

Charted it!

I charted a pattern for the first time this week. I saw a scarf that someone on Ravelry had knit using the Candelight pattern from Barbara Walker's Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns and love the way the stitches undulate on the fabric. The description in the book claims that it is reversible (not in those words, but that is the way that I read it). I looked for a pattern that someone had already written out to no avail. Barbara Walker didn't chart it out either.

I was intimidated at first to chart it out myself. It is a 36 line chart, hardly any of the rows are repeated and many of the rows had different stitch counts in the final repeat. However, I decided that the end result would be worth it.

It took me a few hours to chart it out, proof it, and rewrite it in pen. I wasn't sure how I wanted to edges to be. I looked for the right edging in all of my stitch books and couldn't find one with the right stitch counts. I thought that it would be a good idea to improvise this too.

After knitting a few rows, I decided that a plain garter stitch edge would look best. I am about halfway through the first set and it is really looking good! I am using (finally!) the skeins of Karabella Breeze (cashmere and silk) that I bought from Babs a few months ago (last year, I think). I have 5 left, having given one to my swap partner and swapping one in the KYS board on Ravelry. I plan on making the stole as big as possible, before I get bored. I actually want to use up all of the yarn, but we'll see if that happens.

Overall, I am very proud of myself for taking the challenge and being able to chart such a long written pattern out correctly!