Eat Your Heart Out, Eddie Bauer!

This photo just looks like a catalog cover to me! Little Boy is wearing a handsome handknit sweater from my friend Brooke. The colors are just perfect, and the sweater has enough growing room to last all winter! He's posing on a handknit blanket made for him by Elli's home health aide, Julie.

By the way, isn't it amazing that he can have such a beautiful smile just 10 days after open-heart surgery? He's been giggling at us too. It's very healing to us to see him doing so well so quickly.

Lighter Note

Getting outside, getting dirty, planting flowers, knitting... these are a few things that really bring me out of a funk.

The weather finally broke so we can all bear to be outside doing something other than run in the sprinkler! And finding a few spare minutes to work on pair of baby socks, plant some cheery chrysanthemums, and take the kids to the park with a friend appears to be just what the doctor ordered.

Sam, Anna, and Peter discover together the simple joy

of throwing rocks into a river.

Who can find the biggest rock?
Anna, Quentin, and Sam pursue the impossible dream

One of my few remaining Knock-out Roses

Check it out! I actually started the second baby sock!
A child's swimming lesson is great knitting time.

Baby Knitting

Aren't these the cutest? One of the people I work with at the hospital brought them to my office yesterday! It always amazes me who turns out to be a knitter. At least, I'm guessing she made them herself.


While Elli was in the hospital, I did get some knitting done on Luke's little "all-in-one." I've learned that having a 7-year-old in the hospital is a very different experience than having an infant in the hospital. You spend a lot more time trying to entertain an older child, and they tend to get a bit upset with an adult who dares to find something to do other than entertain them!


This is the back, and I'm almost ready to start the straps that come up over the shoulders and fasten to the front.

We had a third fetal echo today, and learned that Luke's heart is looking much better than originally thought. It looks like, if the cardiac catheterization they do after he's born verifies the echo findings, he may only stay in the hospital for a couple of days! He'll still need corrective surgery/ies down the road, but things are looking up.

This also means it's a darn good thing I started his outfit early. If I want him to actually wear it, I do need to finish it before he's born since I won't have those days and days of doing nothing but sit at his bedside in the CICU. What a great problem to have!

Three Cheers for Summer Knitting

I've been itching to start something new, something for the baby, something that would be a tangible demonstration of optimism about his condition. I got a gift certificate to my favorite yarn store for my birthday this year.

I took a quilting class with part of it (and finished Sam's birthday quilt - his birthday was in September and mine in February). I used more of it to buy some really summery, boyish mercerized cotton yarn that I just love. It has been calling to me from my knitting bag for weeks now.

I have forced myself to ignore those calls. Instead, I made myself finish the Christmas stocking I have been making for my niece Millie.

(Yes, this 5-6 months late thing is becoming a pattern. Let's not even mention the baby gift I still haven't finished because I totally screwed up the armpits for a sweet little girl who is 7 months old this month.)

I finally finished the knitting last week. It was May.

I still need to do some light blocking to keep the edge from rolling up. I also need to add the essential bell to the toe -- all Christmas stockings in my family have to have at least one jingle bell.

(Any bets as to how long it will take me to actually get this to a mailable state?)

The second, and I do mean the second, that I finished weaving in my yarn ends on the stocking, I began my swatch. (Brooke, aren't you impressed? That's an actual swatch! I'm determined to make this fit.)

Friday, I cast on for my baby all-in-one for Luke, the little boy we're expecting mid-July this year. I've been knitting every chance I get, so my progress is stunning... for me.

(This is just a few days of dedicated knitting. I can't hardly believe it. But stockinette does move quickly, even when striping.)

I actually considered saving this to work on in the hospital (we're expecting at least a 1-week stay in the cardiac care unit after he's born -- longer if he needs surgery right away), but the folly of that thinking quickly smacked me across the mouth. He might outgrow it before I completed it if I waited that long! Wisdom dictated that I cast on months in advance so that he will have a chance of still fitting it when I actually finish.

I love the way the colors are working together. I love the blues and greens after working with Christmas red. I love the feel of mercerized cotton and the smooth textured fabric this is creating. Variety is a beautiful thing!

Missing: One Size 6 Needle

I have heard some nasty rumors around the Internet about the pattern I'm using for my birthday socks (scroll to the bottom for a photo). I even witnessed a knitting pro Brooke get beaten by this sock and have to frog it.

Despite the naysayers and bad experiences, I listened to Brooke's ever-optimistic advice and started the pattern anyway. I have been knitting away without a care in the world, reaching the heel flap last week. Thursday and Friday I turned the heel and began the heel gussets.

Suddenly the thought struck like a bolt of lightning.

"These socks aren't very stretchy and lots of people have trouble getting them fit right. Even Brooke. Maybe I should try it on to make sure."

So I did.

All seemed great as I gently pulled the sock over my toes and towards my heel. Ahhh... it went over the heel! My pulse quickened as I imagined wearing my own hand-knit socks in just a few short days. Until the last few rows of the leg got stuck going over my heel.

Those were the rows I knit while at the Yarn Harlot's book tour. The excitement must have caused me to pull the yarn tighter than normal.

So I took the sock to Brooke's sock club Saturday morning. Sam tagged along (and reminded me again of how much he loves the red and black fire-truck fabric - I think I will have to create something for him out of that for his birthday) to see "our friend Brooke." (Used to be that he called her "your friend" -- congrats on the promotion, Brooke!)

She agreed that if I actually wanted to wear these socks myself, I needed to frog it and re-knit the leg looser. Sam enjoyed pulling the yarn -- I just hope he knows not to do that unless I've told him to! Then Brooke spent a good 15 minutes fixing my poor attempt at picking the stitches back up. Thanks - you rock!

I've reknit the leg and am working on the heel flap again. I realized just tonight that I had also botched the heel flap the first time through -- I knit 15 rows instead of 15 pairs of rows. No wonder that heel seemed so short!

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I've made more progress on the baby cardigan. This is the back, and is almost one entire repeat. I'm not sure when I'll get back to it though -- one of the kids has run off with a needle. I found my stitch counter under the couch, but removing all the cushions and pulling the couch away from the wall did not reveal the needle's hiding place.

If anyone has any clues as the whereabouts of my size 6 needle, please call 1-800-LostNeedle. You won't be asked to give your name and you may receive cash for your clues.

Knitting With Babies

You read that right. I actually did it. I brought my Jaywalker sock today while watching 4 children aged 13 months and younger.

I may just be crazy. Size 1 knitting needles with two children who just learned to walk and therefore stagger and fall constantly... (the other two were 6 months old and not very impressed by the shiny metalic sticks).

The day went rather well, considering who I was dealing with. One child has been getting eye teeth and has never really enjoyed being separated from her mother. But today she managed to only cry every 5-10 minutes and settled down whenever I picked her up. The other child is mine and she only had a couple episodes of "But that's MY mommy" jealousy. These two entertained themselves for a good 40 minutes eating Cheerios from tiny cups, dumping them on the floor, and then eating them off the floor. Who knew that you could attain nirvana from a cupful of little o-shaped edibles?

The little babies had their moments, but I was so proud of myself for getting the one into a quiet bed before he was too upset to sleep. He stayed contently in there as long as his music-maker played the right song. I think he was overwhelmed by the lights and noise - he is the first child in his family and is completely unused to all the action!

The yarn and the crinkly bag I packed the sock in were very interesting to the girls. My daughter took off with my pattern, which made knitting the heel flap slow going. The other girl sat on my lap and enjoyed fingering the yarn and needles... and I was pleasantly surprised that she didn't pull a needle out! I didn't knit much -- despite the utopian society we established, I still had to stop every several stitches to roll someone over, pick someone up, or rescue a baby from being rocked out of his punkin seat.

I am now ready to turn the heel. Perhaps tonight I'll get that done and start on the foot of the sock.

What's that you say? My niece is already 6 months? The sweater I'm supposedly knitting for her is sized for 6 months? I've only got two fronts done and 2 inches of the back? Louder please. I can't hear you!

Knitting Road Trip

My friend Brooke invited me and a coworker, Kimmie, to join her on a pilgrimage to see Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, aka the Yarn Harlot, at a book fair in Lexington on Saturday. She just had a third book published and is currently doing a book tour.

In honor of Stephanie's Canadian citizenship (and as a tribute to my Canadian heritage), I wore my Hard Rock Cafe - Toronto t-shirt. I've had it for ten years now, and it's getting a bit worn. But it was actually clean and in my shirt drawer, and I thought perhaps seeing that someone else in the crowd had been to her hometown might settle her nerves. Stephanie says that she is actually quite a shy person.

Except that I quickly spilled large amounts of Chipotle chicken burrito juice all over it. We had been on the road less than an hour. I had even placed a napkin on my lap to preserve the integrity of the clothes. The stains eluded capture and settled in too high to be hidden by tucking the shirt into my jeans. I begged Brooke to find me a store - perhaps one of those Tide Stain Sticks would restore the shirt to presentable.

Then we got lost. Well. Not exactly lost. We just didn't follow the most direct, quick path to the Lexington Convention Center.

Brooke had written directions down, but then left them in her work bag at home. So we were going on her memory and without a map. We not-so-quickly discovered that I-75 has two Paris exits. After spending about 10 minutes exploring the first one and debating if we should proceed further south into Lexington and hope we could find someone who could help us, we finally got back on I-75.

Lo and behold, about ten miles later we found another Paris exit! This one was actually in the city, and everything matched the directions that Brooke remembered. We all celebrated our amazing senses of direction and that we would still get there on time.

Until we tried to park. Suddenly everything in Lexington was on the opposite side of the street with about 20 other vehicles in the way. We had to make two large loops after missing turns before finally being granted entrance to the convention lot.

Stephanie was going to be at a booth signing books two different times during the day and then speak at 4pm. We had hoped to get there at 3 so we could talk to her at the booth and still get good seats for her talk. (Brooke is a true-blue super-fan and has flagellated herself for a full year for not sitting in the front row when she went to last year's book tour!) Unfortunately, we arrived at 3:40 and readily agreed that our best bet was to go straight to the room where she was speaking.

This also meant we had no time to find an instant stain remover for my shirt. I resolved to hold my knitting bag across my body to cover the stain. But this would also cover the logo. Kimmie came to my rescue with a jacket. I tied it around my waist with the knot strategically placed over the stain.

We got good seats in the second row, which was fine for me. I got settled in, pulled out my sock, and began getting really comfortable. Ok, as comfortable as possible in tiny little plastic chairs.

Then the people who had been in the room for the 4pm session cleared out and Brooke whispered urgently, "Look! The front row on that side is open! Should we go?" Kimmie and I knew how badly Brooke wanted those seats and how manic knitters might get for those seats and how dangerous it might be to get into a confrontation with someone with pointy metal sticks, so up we stood. In the mad scramble I got tangled up in sock yarn and dropped my bag and my binder full of patterns. (I'm really quite amazed that Brooke, having known me for 12 years (boy do I feel old!) continues to associate with such a hopeless clutz.)

Finally seated in the front row and untangled, I look up. We are smack-dab in front of the table with the microphone. Look at this photo.

See that table? I could reach it easily with my feet.

We thoroughly enjoyed Stephanie's talk. It's hard to explain, and in fact, she advised us not to attempt it. But she is a knitting humorist. I know. It's like being a mechanic humorist. Only a very narrow slice of the population would understand how funny she really is. The funniest moments all came at the expense of the handful of men brave enough to attend. I'm not sure how many of them were husbands or boyfriends and how many of them were knitters themselves.

I think the best part of the whole experience for me came after the scheduled part of the day ended. Stephanie told those of us who were still hanging around that she was going to run up to her room for "Knitters without Borders" pins and then get a coffee at the shop downstairs if we wanted to meet her there. About 15 of us hung around, pulled some tables and chairs into a big circle, and chatted for about 2 more hours!

(Notice the strategically-placed jacket?)

I enjoyed this conversation so much. Here sat a wildly-diverse group of people having a lively discussion of knitting, yes (you've seen such interest in self-patterning sock yarn in your life!), but also politics, world cultures, area attractions, and the differences between those from the States (you can't say "Americans" because Canada and Mexico are also in North America -- and they will tell you so!) and Canadians.

For example, Stephanie told us that Canadians would not have moved the tables and chairs into a circle like we did. They are very... um... obedient? I'm not sure the word I want here. They do not change things unless they have permission.

I also learned how little we know about cultures and systems apart from our own. In Canada, they can call a new election at any time. If people begin to dislike their leaders, they can hold a vote of no confidence, and if the leaders don't get enough votes, the country holds a new national election. Stephanie said no Canadian president would last in office long enough to get the approval rating our president has now.

She also said that vast numbers of US servicemen are going AWOL and fleeing to Canada in protest of the war in Iraq. Canada has declared the war to be illegal, so they now have to figure out what to do with these people. Technically, they are refugees and probably should be granted political assylum.

I wonder why our media isn't reporting this? For all the complaints about how liberal and biased they are, they certainly still seem to be somewhat cowed by something to ignore this. Is it a fear of being seen as judging the armed forces or the servicemen who either flee or fight?

Anyway, it was a very enjoyable, intellectually-stimulating (yes, knitters are amazingly intelligent and astute people) trip and I look forward to the next one!

Mr. Rogers on Crocheted "Covers"

All three of my children rose quite early this morning. My oldest woke me up at 5:20am. The other two were up by 6:30am. (Rather than go back to bed, like I really wanted to, I realized that, once I knew everything was fine with the oldest, I was wide awake. So I actually did a pilates video. No strain to the knees or ankles, but my oh my. It's tough!)

Since they were up early enough, I let all three kids watch Mr. Rogers at 7am.

Imagine my shock when we arrived in the Neighborhood of Make Believe and discovered everyone making "covers." Trolley had a quilted cover that made it look like a race car. Queen Sara and Niece Aberlin were crocheting a balcony cover. Cornflake S. Pecially was making a rocking-chair cover.

The episode was about creativity and making things. It was very cute and the kids loved it.

But I couldn't help but giggle at the subtle dig, noticeable only to adults sensitive to such things, at crochet-ers who make covers for everything from tissue boxes to toasters.

Or perhaps I'm reading too much into it.

Knitting Update

I cast on the back of the Trellis cardigan. I've decided to knit it up and then figure out what I need to do to make it all fit together. I've got five rows done, so I have nothing worth photographing yet.

Despite my proclamation, I have not actually done any more on my Jaywalker sock. Time is rather rare these days, and I've found that double-pointed -- well, any kind of knitting needle -- are unsafe to get out with 1-year-olds in the vicinity. Sparkly, semi-pointed, clinky metal objects seem to hold a super-powerful magnetism for 1-year-olds! So my knitting time is rather sparse right at the moment.

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My garden seedlings have progressed rather well, despite my soggy beginning. I transplanted the tomatoes into larger peat pots and they seem to be growing, though I'm not sure how healthy they are yet. The morning glories desperately need to be transplated as well - their roots have expanded beyond the confines of their tiny little starter pots.

The seeds I planted directly outdoors have also begun to sprout. Looks like I'll have a nice little bit of garden peas, anyway. I'm not sure about the lettuce, spinach, and chard yet. Their seedlings are so small that I can't find many yet.

It's all very exciting. Spring is here!

First Pair of Socks!

I had to post this photo of my first completed pair of socks. They are a tad large for Elli's feet, even though I measured. But that's ok - they'll probably shrink a little when I wash them. They seem to be doing the trick though - every time I feel Elli's feet after she's had them on, her feet are warm!

I have enough yarn left over to do another pair of baby-sized ones. But I'm ready for a new color scheme. The pink and orange is pretty blinding after awhile!

Today was Pajama Day at Elli's school. It was also their celebration of Dr. Seuss's birthday. So she wore her pjs and brought her favorite Dr. Seuss book to school, Green Eggs and Ham. She seems to have enjoyed herself.

Elli totally cracked me up today. As soon as she got home, she started grumping in the way she does when she wants to tell me something specific. When I got her Dynavox out, she immediately went to her "snacks" page. But then her fingers slipped and the computer went back a page instead of to the snack she wanted. She let out this sound of frustration, like she was saying, "Dang it!!!" I've never heard her do that before - shows me that she's definitely got a place in mind that she wants to get to and knew that she hadn't succeeded. (Her 2nd trimester report card came home today and one thing they said was they can't tell if her comments with the Dynavox are intentional or not.) Anyway, I helped her get back to the page, and she immediately hit "Cheetos!" and looked at me with a huge grin. Cheetos are her new favorite snack, and I love it because it gives her such good practice chewing. Looks like I need to stock up on snack-packs of Cheetos for her. Costco, here we come!

Then there's Sam. Every time he found her little bag of Cheetos over the last couple of days, he would inspect it carefully and then say, "Mommy! I smell something!" He would grin this goofy, "Let me taste that yummy snack I smell because I'm SOOO cute" grin. The boy is learning to sweet-talk young.

OK, time to get back to the house-cleaning and laundry. I got all the dishes washed, finally. Now I need to get all the laundry put away and start cleaning for the party tomorrow. Scott really wants to have the party here, so we're going to see if we can get the house spic and span tonight. He's such a sweetie - he said he'd even stay up late if needed to help me get everything done.

Olympic Knitting Update

I made good progress on the sweater last night, but I will not complete the sweater by tonight's closing ceremonies. The left front is done and the right front is about half done. I like to think of myself as a Lindsay Kildow-style Olympian. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I have been unable to compete to the level at which I had expected. But I'm still making an effort in a spirit of sportmanship. :)

I still have to finish the birthday socks for Elli, which has also taken away from a single-minded pursuit of Olympic gold. Ultimately, that's more important anyway.

I did get a chance to get out yesterday. I ran a bunch of errands and spent some of my birthday money. I splurged and got this ball of "Supersock" yarn for myself. I should have enough left over to make some socks for Sam too, since it's blue and green. I'm very excited about my new project. It's nice to vary the knitting a bit -- sometimes I'm just not in the mood for cables or for tiny needles. Variety is nice!

We Have A Winner!

Congratulations to Brooke, who correctly identified a mistake in the seed stitch down the left side of my knitting (highlighted area). So Brooke - what kind of cookies do you want?

I would like to fix this now that everyone knows about it. I'm trying to decide if I'm brave enough to try dropping the stitches down to the mistake, fixing it, and trying to pull them back up to the needles. I'm not exactly sure how that would work, but it's starting to bug me enough to make an attempt.

But that will have to wait. I have two kids who are adamantly refusing to nap, and have continued to do so for the past 2 hours. Seriously. Anna has alternately laughed at Sam, thusly keeping them both awake, and screamed bloody murder when I moved her into a pack'n'play in another room, thusly soaking the fitted sheet, and back again. Sam has alternately made Anna laugh, snuck out of his room to see what we're doing, bawled his eyes out when sent back to his room to sleep, and played with toys instead of sleeping. My bag of tricks is empty and I'm at my wits end. I actually went out to the front of my house and sat in the freezing cold just to get away from the screaming for a few minutes. Because of course Elli had to join in the chorus when her Veggie Tales video ended and she knew she was at the end of her video time for the day.

This is all made worse because I have felt motion-sick all day. No idea why that is, but it gives me a queasy stomach and a weird head/eye ache. Nothing sounds good to eat.... though I did manage to enjoy some of the yummy chocolates my Valentine left for me this morning. Those were quite tasty. But coming up with something appetizing for dinner is proving to be a challenge! Especially since I had great plans for a romantic Valentine's Day dinner and some special dessert for Scott. The whole nap fiasco torched those ideas.

A Mixed Bag

Today has been a mixed bag. And it's only half done! I guess that means I still have time to do better and make it a mostly good day.

Elli's progress has been slow but steady. She has gradually started eating more, though she's really picky about what she eats right now. She doesn't want to drink much, yet she doesn't want me to use her feeding tube (more on that later). She was really excited to get out of the house Saturday evening and then complained the whole time we were gone. (The church does a Parents' Night Out once a year around Valentine's Day. People volunteer to watch kids there for 3 hours so parents have an evening together.) I think she was just too tired to enjoy all the chaos and commotion involved with entertaining and feeding 12 kids aged 10 months to 12 years! So we kept her home from church yesterday, thinking we'd better give her one more quiet day to rest before trying school today.

This morning I actually managed to get all four of us dressed, fed, and out the door to a doctor's appointment at 9am! We were a few minutes late, but we made it. Elli's doctor was very happy with how she looked. He could still hear crackles in her left lung, but he said that was actually a sign of progress. Apparently, early on in pneumonia, people tend to get dehydrated. Their bodies can't generate much pus at this time, so the mucus in the lungs is really sticky and thick. As the medicine starts to work and they start feeling well enough to take in more fluids, the body has fluids to work with and the mucus gets much thinner and more runny. Even though the quantity goes up, this thinner stuff is easier to cough up and expel. He cleared her to go back to school.

Since we were already out and in the car, I decided to drive down to Children's and finally get Elli's new eyeglass lenses. They've been in for weeks, but then everyone got sick and I haven't had a chance to pick them up. The kids did great for this, and we even had a few minutes to go to the Family Resource Center and visit the staff there. They LOVE Sam since we spent 3 days a week there when he was a baby and Elli was in the Perlman Center's preschool program. They were so amazed at how tall he is and how well he's talking. They also couldn't believe how big Anna is, how into the doctor's kit she was, and how much like Sam she appears. Elli was unimpressed by the whole thing because I forgot to pack her milk and she was thirsty.

We got home just in time to get Elli some lunch. She wanted yogurt, so in between bites, I worked on her Valentines for school. We were supposed to send them in last week, no later than Wednesday. I hope the teacher and/or assistant find them and still have time to pass them out tomorrow at the party! I went to a lot of trouble to get them ready!

Sam decided that he wanted yogurt too, but I only got enough for Elli so I told him no. He burst into tears (highly unusual for Sam). A few minutes later, I heard him say he needed a spoon. The little stinker had managed to open the foil lid on a yogurt and was using his thumb to dip bites for himself! He got disciplined for that, precipitating more tears and begging to be held. Anna started bawling because I left her line of sight. I told Sam we would have to cuddle after I got Elli on the bus.

I had been doing well on time until the whole yogurt thing. Then the bus arrived 5 minutes early! The driver called to see if Elli was coming, and I told her I had a bit of a catastrophe on my hands, but yes. She said not to rush.

That was good, because as soon as I got the feeding tube out to give Elli some milk really quick, she started whining and complaining too! Now I had all three going at once and I was really feeling the burn. Elli was upset because she had eaten too slowly to have time to drink her milk. I knew she needed a drink, so I did the tube, which she did NOT want. I got 2 ounces into her (it went SLOWLY because she was crying the whole time) before she got her finger hooked on the tube and pulled the thing out. Milk poured everywhere.

That was the last straw. I have to admit - I lost control. I pounded my leg in frustration and berated Elli for making a huge mess of her clothes when the bus driver was outside at that very moment waiting on us. I had to finish getting the milk into her, take her out of her chair, take off her shoes so I could get her pants off, change her pants and shirt, put her shoes back on, and get her back in her chair. Then I had to do all the usual stuff - coat, backpack, Dynavox. She was upset about the whole thing, but I tried to calm down and explain to her that sometimes she can't do things the way she wants to! I'm not sure how she is going to do at school today, but they haven't called me to pick her up early.

When I got back in, Sam said, "Mommy what's wrong?" I told him that he had disobeyed me and then Elli had made a mess. But I also had to humble myself and talk to him about how mommy was wrong to yell like she did. Even though it was horribly stressful for me, getting angry and upset was the wrong reaction.

I hope that seeing me fail at things doesn't give the kids excuses to sin the same way. I hope that if I keep going back to them, explaining what I did wrong, and asking them for forgiveness that they will see that not only am I a sinner too, but I know I am. I don't want to be a Pharisee and a hypocrite to them. They will see right through that. I hope they will see that we all need Jesus to pay the penalty for our sins so that we can be right with God. And I hope that by going back to them and talking about it, it will help me to think before I fly off the handle in the future so that it happens less and less.

Olympic Knitting Update

This weekend I got to kick off the Olympics with two friends from college. They are sort of knitting role models for me. Brenda came up from Tennessee for the weekend, and the three of us had dinner and knitted on Friday evening. In fact, it was sort of a combined birthday celebration/Olympic knitting/reunion party. (Brenda and I have birthdays about a month apart.)

Sam came with me to meet them Saturday at the store where Brooke teaches knitting. He had fun playing with "mommy's friends" and looking at all the cool fabrics (it's a yarn and fabric store). He also helped wind one of Brenda's yarn hanks into a ball. He had so much fun with this that he wanted mommy to buy him some "Thomas the Train blue" yarn so we could wind it into a ball for him to have at home! Then we had lunch at Sam's favorite restaurant - McDonalds - which was made better because mommy's friends came too. Then they braved the germs at our house to meet the kids and do some more knitting. It was a great weekend, even though I was hopped up on Claritin-D and coffee. I couldn't go anywhere without a wad of tissues in my pocket, purse, and diaper/knitting bag.

I chose to do Trellis. This is the front left side of the sweater, and is about half of the way done. I'm half-way through the second repeat, and once I finish that, I start shaping the arm-hole and neck. The band on the left side is the center, where the buttons will go. I'm pretty happy with how this is turning out, and with how fast it is going. I have five pieces to knit altogether - this front left, the front right side, the back, and two sleeves. Then I have to put it together.

I did find one small mistake already. I have decided to leave it, mostly because by the time I found it, I had knitted past it a ways and didn't want to rip back. The cables take awhile to do! Plus I don't think it's easy to see.

Hmmm. This could be a good contest.

My First Contest

See if you can find the mistake in the above half of a sweater. Post your response in comments.

The first person wins.... hmmm....

How about a batch of freshly-baked cookies? I'll even mail them if you happen to live beyond a 20-mile radius of me! Your choice - chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, or cherry cordial.

Here's hoping there's only one mistake on this piece!

The Great Debate

Which Sweater To Knit?

I'm having a tough time deciding which baby sweater to make. I know who I'm making this for -- an almost-4-month-old girl. I want to take on a challenge, but I don't want this to be impossible to complete during the Olympics, either. That's the whole point of this Knitting Olympic Challenge, after all!

So here are a couple links to patterns I like. They are all free patterns found online. The first two are my favorite.

Cutie Patootie
I know I could do this one within the time constraints - well, reasonably sure anyway, having never knit a sweater before! This pattern says it's intermediate. Another perk is that this one has sizes and measurements for babies the size of the one I'm knitting for. The body is plain stockinette stitch with crocheted-on edging. Not so sure about that - perhaps it doesn't qualify for a Knitting Olympic event? I like the edging - it looks a bit lacy. I'd love to try a lacy-ish pattern.

Trellis
I'm itching to try cabling. This too is considered intermediate (I think - this website has goofy names for their difficulty levels). It has a 6-month size, which would work. I believe it will be more difficult, or slower at least, than the above pattern because it has cables and seed-stitch borders throughout - back, front, sleeves... But it wouldn't be boring and would definitely be a challenge. Perhaps too much of one?

Baby Ensemble
This one is really hard to visualize because the photo is crummy. The model is a rather scary doll. But the idea of mock cabling is attractive - sounds easier than real cabling and might be a better starting point. However, reading the directions I'm totally lost. Partly because I have no idea what "psso" means. Oh wait. I just found this website's list of abbreviations and told it to print - holy cow. It's 9 pages long! Yikes! This might be a good challenge too. I think the sweater has squares of pattern divided by little edges. Might be really cool, especially color-blocked in different colors.

Hmmm....

When To Take Elli to the Doctor/ER?

Ok, so this is a debate on a much higher level. However, having now spoken with Elli's pediatrician, I'm feeling reassured in my decisions so far.

We currently have a lovely virus swirling about the halls of this house. Anna is about done with hers - she ended up with a double ear-infection and is still draining quite a bit. We left her antibiotic at my in-laws' house over the weekend and had to pay full-price to replace the meds - about $40. Ouch. Unfortunately, insurance wouldn't pay to replace her "lost" meds.

Anyway, Elli is now deep in the throes of this virus as well. She is congested and plagued by a persistent cough. We have just about everything we could possibly need to care of her here... except oxygen. We have a nebulizer which delivers medicine in a mist for her to breathe into her lungs. We have two kinds to give her, each doing a different thing. We have just about every kind of pediatric cold medicine known to man in every combination. We have a pulse oximeter, which measures the percentage of oxygen in a person's blood.

Fortunately, Elli hasn't been sick enough to need the pulse oximeter in over a year. Until early this morning, that is. I woke up about 3:15am to hear her coughing really badly. I got up and started a breathing treatment through the nebulizer. She immediately calmed down and the cough got much better. The treatment takes about 20 minutes, so while that was going, I got more night-time sleepy medicine. That way it would be fully on-board by the time the breathing treatment was done and she'd hopefully get back to sleep quickly. She seemed especially bad to me, so I dug out the pulse oximeter and tried to get a reading.

To get an accurate reading on a pulse oximeter, the patient needs to be really still. This is very difficult for Elli due to her brain injury. So I had a really difficult time getting a reading -- got numbers everywhere from 84% to 92%. None of these numbers is good. A healthy, average person is between 98-100%. Based on the way it was not able to get a good pulse rate on her for more than a second or two, I didn't believe the really low numbers. Plus, the color of her skin didn't bear out a really low reading -- she was still pink.

So I decided to leave the sensor on her foot and come back after she fell asleep to try to get a reading when she was still. But I stood there at her bedside, watching her and debating a phone call to the hospital for quite a while. I didn't want to take her to the ER if all they would do is what I could do more easily and comfortably here at home (and way more cheaply). I prefer to go to that extreme only when I'm reasonably certain she's going to be admitted. My gut said that while she was definitely sick, the breathing treatments were doing what they were supposed to, she wasn't struggling for breath, her color was still good, and a night of sleep would do both of us more good than a vain trip to the ER.

So, I went back to bed.

This morning her levels were definitely lower than they should have been -- 89-92%. A breathing treatment brought it up slowly to between 94 and 96%, which made me feel MUCH better. I couldn't remember exactly where her doctors get nervous though. I searched all over for this sheet containing the "rule of two" from her pulmonary doctors and the phone number to call if we met that rule. I could NOT find it, which was a real bummer because I had a feeling it had a direct-line number to a nurse who could answer my questions. I tried the general number around 8:45am, and as of noon today, I still haven't heard back from them!

So after waiting for an hour, I decided to call the pediatrician. I knew the doctor himself, not a nurse or a physician's assistant, would call me back since it was about Elli and he knows us pretty well. Sure enough, about 10 minutes later he was on the phone. I explained what I was seeing and he said that as long as she stays above 92% and isn't wheezing when she breathes, she's ok to stay home. He wants to see her and x-ray her lungs if she doesn't improve with the treatments, starts labored breathing, or her level drops below 92%. He also thinks that today will be the key day for her -- she'll either start improving or she'll get progressively worse. Either way, she'll not stay on the borderline for long.

Meanwhile, Sam is still not doing too bad. He has a fever, a barking cough (which is his trademark cough), and a bit of a runny nose. He's well enough to race around the house, yet he's not great - he really wants some mommy cuddle time. I'm still symptom-free. And I'm feeling fine with all this so far.

It probably helps that Scott and I got to have dinner out last night! He got a really nice gift card from work a couple weeks ago -- it's one of those credit cards with cash on it so you can use it anywhere. We went to one of our new favorite restaurants -- Rafferty's -- and I have leftovers for lunch! I'm so excited - Black'n'bleu Steak with garlic mashed potatoes.

PLUS we'll be going out again Saturday - our church is having a Parents' Night Out and providing free babysitting.

PLUS the next weekend is my birthday weekend and we're going to visit my parents and we're leaving the kids with them overnight so we can have a night at our favorite bed & breakfast and dinner at our favorite restaurant there. The Brick House has THE BEST French onion soup I've ever had. So February is turning out to be quite a great month for us, in spite of the viral invasion!

Birthday Wish List

Scott asked me last night what I want for my birthday. It's coming up in the next few weeks. All I could come up with at the time was exercise DVDs, including yoga, pilates, and aerobics. I also need a step of my own - I'm borrowing a friend's right now.

So I've been thinking and have come up with a few more things. However, I need some advice, particularly from my knitting friends. I'd like to get some books of patterns, but am not sure the best options for a beginning knitter who still wants to do more than basic stockinette stitch. So if you have seen any of these books, or if you have some favorites that you can recommend to me, please comment! Thanks. :)

Here's a couple books that caught my eye on Amazon.


The Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns: Basic Designs in Multiple Sizes & Gauges (Spiral-bound) by Ann Budd. The description of the book makes it sound like a great basic book to have. "One could knit hundreds of different mittens, gloves, socks, sweaters, vests, hats, and scarves from just the patterns found here. The patterns allow the knitter to create garments in any size from toddler to extra-large adult in any weight of yarn, from fingering to bulky. The knitter has only to knit a generous swatch with yarn and needles of her/his choice and plug the resulting gauge information into the charted instructions and schematics provided."

The Knitter's Handy Book of Sweater Patterns : Basic Designs in Multiple Sizes & Gauges (Spiral-bound) by Ann Budd. This is the sister book to the first one listed. One of the reviewers says, "You can take a raglan, a cardigan, a drop sleeve pullover or many other traditional styles like yoke-sweaters and knit either the basic pattern shown, or embellish it with your own texture, color or lace stitches. Ideas are given how to do the modifications. The book is spiral bound with hard board covers, and an elastic band to mark your place." Sounds like a great resource, and it has lots of full-color photos.

Then 1000 Sweaters: Mix and Match Patterns for the Perfect, Personalized Sweater (Spiral-bound) caught my eye. Especially when one reviewer said this book is "way more hip than Ann Budd's book."

She went on to say, "The 1000 sweaters book is a true find: it reads very easily and the designs are mostly distinctive and modern. I love the idea of choosing a body, a neckline, and sleeves. A mix and match sweater! Brilliant! There are 4 sweaters that I'd like to knit *now*. (There are a few misses though: what's up with the oversized 80s sweaters?!). I understand that Ann Budd's "the knitter's handy book of sweater patterns" has a broader range. Yes, it calculates everything at every gauge. But it has 3 major drawbacks: it reads like an excel spreadsheet, the women's sizes are very large (I'd have to knit one of the children's sizes to fit me and I'm a medium, how would that affect the fit?) and the designs are very plain, conservative and generally... blah. Perhaps a good starting point for a budding designer?" So I wonder if this might be a better sweater book because I don't prefer huge sweaters, especially for myself, and I really like the mix-and-match idea. (Though since the 70s look came back in the last couple of years, perhaps the 80s and HUGE sweaters are on the horizon! Scary.)

Gift cards to local yarn and/or fabric stores (like Hancock or Yarns and Fabrications) would be great so I can afford the supplies needed for all the great projects in the above books, but I think Scott likes to give tangible things. I personally love gift cards. It's like a mini-shopping spree! I love getting to pick out my own stuff. I try not to do that much on a normal basis. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I'd rather have a bigger house than _____ (fill in the blank) when I get the urge for instant gratification. Plus, we really need to start an orthodontics savings account to go with multiple college accounts! :) Saving will get much easier once all our college loans are gone - less than a year to go on that! Hurray!

I digress. Just a little pep talk for the days when I am feeling selfish and deprived. :)

Other ideas include gift cards to Burpee and Gear's Nursery or Sharon Nursery so I can buy all the flowers and veggies and seed-starting goodies my little heart desires this year. I'm definitely getting in the gardening spirit since this January has been so warm and I can see some of my bulbs starting to sprout!

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Yesterday I had to wake Anna up from her morning nap early for a doctor's appointment. She did great, and then took a whopping 3 1/2 hour nap in the afternoon! It was great. But today she is fighting her morning nap tooth and nail. She is cutting a second tooth, which may be part of the trouble. But I'm bummed - I thought I had finally figured her out! At this rate, even with an abbreviated morning nap she still won't be ready for her afternoon nap until at least 3.

And that means that I have no chance of a nap myself today. I decided to stay up past midnight last night knitting Elli's sock. Not wise... No, it was foolish. Hmm, yeah, and selfish too. I wanted to stay up and do what I wanted instead of get the sleep I needed to be a good mom and wife today. Therefore I cannot allow myself to be cranky today because it's my own poor choices that resulted in my lack of sleep. Hmmm. So I should NOT complain about being tired and not getting a nap either! If I had gone to bed at a reasonable hour, it wouldn't matter if I got a nap today.

OK, I'm done complaining. And I'm done flagellating myself. On to better things. And a BIG cup of coffee.

(I wonder what my spell-checker will do with the word "flagellate?")

My Neck Hurts

For some reason, every year on the 3-day weekend we get for Martin Luther King Day, we get the urge to do something to the house. Maybe it's cabin fever. Maybe it's the desire for something stimulating after the holidays are over. Maybe it's insanity from lack of sunlight. Whatever the case may be, we always do something.

So this year, Scott took two extra days off this week and decided to put Pergo down in our bedroom. But he didn't start until Tuesday. We also decided that as long as the room was empty, we should paint it, seeing as it's the only room in the house we haven't painted yet. So I went to Home Depot and checked out their "mistake paint." They always have a cart somewhere in the store with all the cans of paint and stain that got mixed wrong. You can get quarts and gallons for $5 each! We've painted most of our house with mistake paint. I found a nice green that went with our comforter, and on Tuesday night I stayed up until almost midnight working.

That meant that Tuesday and Wednesday nights we slept on the sofa bed in our family room. You'd think that we'd be fine sleeping in our own house. We've both slept out there with sick or newborn children before. But we haven't slept on the sofa bed - we always just slept on the sofa part. Now I know why most of our guests choose to have us blow up the air mattress to put on top of the sofa bed mattress. It slopes slightly downhill at the head, and then dips down again at your hips. So it puts your spine in all sorts of awful positions. Neither of us slept well either night, and I gave up yesterday. Even though the painting isn't done in our room and we have a leak from outside in one corner that we have to deal with before paint will dry over there, I reassembled our bed. It's the only thing in there, but at least last night we slept on our own bed.

I'm still groggy and tired from the whole thing. So I'm going to try to take a nap before Elli gets home. I need the energy for tonight - my dear friend Brooke is coming over tonight! I can show her my socks and check out the progress she's made on Anthony's sweater (wink, wink, nudge, nudge - keep working on it!).

Speaking of Brooke and knitting, I have joined the Knitting Olympics. I'm going to attempt something new - a sweater. You have to cast on during the open ceremony (or as early as 2pm since they start at 2pm local time) and cast off by the end of the closing ceremony. You're supposed to pick something that will be a challenge for you. I haven't done a sweater before, so I'm going to make a child-size one (actually, a baby-sized one) and see if I can get it done during that time. I'm excited!

Drat. Anna is awake. There goes my hope of a nap. Maybe she will go back to sleep. Probably not - when I put Sam to bed I detected the odor of stinky diaper in there. If she's dirty, she won't go back to sleep. Drat drat drat drat drat. Maybe I should try to get a power nap before she gets really ticked off...

All By Myself!

Oh yah! Oh yah! Oh yah yah yah! I turned the heel on my VERY FIRST SOCK without any help at all! Isn't it beautiful? I am sooooo excited - this actually looks like a sock!

Now, I am not sure this sock is going to actually fit Elli. It seems a little wide, but that's better than being too small. I still need to measure her foot to figure out where to start the toe on this thing. And I have to knit the second sock to match this one.

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Saturday morning I walked into the kitchen with Anna. Sam was eating breakfast at the table. Anna had done something goofy, so I told him that Anna was a silly as.... and I stopped, trying to think of a good comparison.

"YOU!" he enthusiastically completed my sentence.

"ME? I'm silly?" I asked, incredulous.

"YES!" Even more enthusiastically.

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Sunday morning I asked Sam what he learned about in Sunday School.

"The ark and the aminals."

"Who was on the ark with the animals?" I asked.

"Jesus and Mary," he replied.

Where Christmas Trees Go

We took our Christmas tree down on Saturday. (I say "we" but it was really all Scott. I was busy making a dessert to take to a friend's house that night.) We almost got it done before Sam woke up, but not quite. He was very distressed, but we told him it was time. Scott carried the tree outside, and Sam asked, "Are you taking it back to Home Depot?"

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I have one more set of pictures. I'm once again on Scott's laptop because mine is currently frozen. I attempted to copy photos from it to a flash drive so I could transfer them to this one. One of these days I'll have time to completely reformat my hard drive. Until then, this will be the story of my life.

Here is the completed hat for Allison, as modeled by Sam. It's definitely a girl's hat.



I had to rip it... er, I mean frog it all when I finished it (see? I'm learning the knitting lingo!). It was WAY too big for her, plus I had run out of purple yarn and the stuff I finished it with looked, as Scott likes to say, "jakey." So I re-knit it at 15 inches in circumference, instead of 18. I hope that isn't too much smaller. It just barely fit Sam, but I'm hoping that's because he has a big head.

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Speaking of frogging, I had to frog my sock too. I finished the ribbing section, only to discover that on half the sock, I had gotten the pattern completely messed up. One side was ribbed, one side was a jumbled mess. So I ripped all the way back to my first loop. I cast on again a couple nights ago, and I think I've knit one or two rounds, so there's nothing to show right now. This time I'm being extra careful, which means extra slow. I'll get the hang of it eventually and speed up I hope.

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Today I'm headed into my second day of exercise in a week! Yay me! I have had ankle trouble and then could NOT figure out how to work in 45 minutes between naps and nursing and everything else. So finally I tried doing it last week when both kids were down for naps and Elli was still at school, and it worked out well. I finished up right before the bus pulled up. So I'm going to try to do it 4-5 times a week. I currently have only one step video with a stability ball workout for abs, but I'm going to pick up some more hopefully for my birthday. I have some prenatal ones, but I don't need that anymore! If anyone has any recommendations for aerobic, step, pilates, or yoga DVDs, I'd appreciate it!

"Free" Translation? Nonsense!

I have a friend, an older lady in our church, who emigrated here from Cuba when she was about 18. She doesn't read English, though she speaks and understands fairly well. She really wants to learn how to knit, but when she signed up for a class at Michael's, they wouldn't let her skip buying the book even though she couldn't use it. I've taught her a little bit, but you really need some basic stuff written down, at least at first.

She wants to make baby booties for a grandchild, so for Christmas, I got her a set of needles and some yarn. I typed out the directions and then pasted them into this free translation tool. Knowing a teeny bit about translation, I emailed the results to a Spanish-speaking friend for a reality check. She translates English into Spanish for Children's Hospital.

She wrote me back and said the translation I got back was incomprehensible. Just for grins, I pasted the free translation back into the tool and had it translate the Spanish back into English. She was right. Here are the best gems...

Fot "Next row: Purl 9 (11:13) stitches, turn. " I got "Next row: Dagger 9 (11:13) the puntadas, the return."
For "Cast off" I got "Throw far away." (I laughed out loud at that one!)
For this paragraph,
"To Make Up:
Weave in all ends along the work, not up the side as this will cause a lumpy edge. Lay work out and gently steam. Join the heal and the foot with a flat seam. Roll over the top edge and stitch down at the back seam with a single stitch to keep the roll edge in position.
I got:
"To Compose: Weaves in all finishes for the work, not up the side as this will cause a lumpy edge. The work layman was and smoothly vapor. A the priest and the foot with a flat dressmaking. Roll on the edge and the puntada first downward in the dressmaking of back with A single puntada to maintain the edge of the roll in the position."

Isn't that weird that it took "heal" as in body part and turned it into "priest?" And "purl" became "dagger." Languages are very complex and interesting things. I wish I knew more than just English!

Take 3

I have started posts twice already this week and lost them before I could save as a draft or post them. Oh well. It's probably just as well. We haven't had a stellar week this week, so I didn't have much good to say.

I guess I should say I haven't had a stellar week. I haven't slept well, partly because I have been fighting off a mild sinus infection with only decongestants, and partly because my monthly cycle has finally resumed. After a year and a half, I am a little rusty on reading the signs, so I wasn't sure until today. At least I know why I've been feeling half-crazy for a week!

Big Boy hasn't been doing well either. I'm not sure what's going on with him, but he's been complaining a lot about being tired and almost every time I ask or tell him to do something, he whines back, "I can't do it!." I've started flicking him on the mouth when he says that. I'm willing to help someone who genuinely needs help, but if you won't even try, forget it! So he's cried bitter tears all week. Today I took him out by himself because Julie was here to work with Big Girl and was fine with me leaving Little Girl to nap while I ran errands. I think that time with just him really helped. He's been better today. Of course, I've been better too, so maybe he was just feeding off my bad mood! Yet another reason for this mommy to learn to hide her emotions and control herself better...

I finished Big Girl's hat last night! I'm really excited about it. Now that it's off the needles, I think it will fit after all, and I am thrilled to have completed another project! The pattern says to top it off with a pom-pom or a tassle, but since I used this lumpy yarn, I think anything else would be too much.

I cast-on for the hat I'm making for my other niece last night. I'm trying a new method for the furry brim. I'm knitting 2 inches of fur and then working with the wool. When it's all done, I'm going to tack the fur up over the wool, instead of knitting the two yarns together and dropping the fur. I'll let you know how it goes.

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And now for some hilarious candids of the kids.

What's wrong with this picture? I'm not sure if Big Boy was trying to show Little Girl how to get in herself, or if he was craving the attention Little Girl gets and therefore acting like a baby, or if he was just being silly and trying to get a laugh. I suspect it may be a bit of all three. I actually had to help him out, but only after I took a few pictures. I've got quite a collection of blackmail material on him!

The kids got to meet Clifford the Big Red Dog at Big Girl's kindergarten Scholastic book fair. Big Boy was SO excited and really surprised us by going right up and giving Clifford a hug!





Scott can't believe I actually took a photo of this, but it was too hilarious to pass up. Before Julie left today, Big Boy discovered the pile of clean laundry I had partially folded on my bed. He came out with this little Charmin bear wrapped up in this clothing item. We all laughed until we cried, which only encouraged him. Yes, it is my underwear. He wore it like a neck wrap, and then decided it would make a great "Snugli" for his bear. Have I mentioned blackmail material yet? Of course, this could be blackmail for me, I suppose!