Tiny Dancer

Charlotte had her first dance class tonight, and I'm happy to report that she loved it. (She's almost a month too young for this class. The two year old class was cancelled so she was enrolled with the three year olds. We've kept our fingers crossed that she'd be able to handle it.) Here she is before class in her ballet clothes.

The class also covers tap dancing, and Charlotte loves dancing in her tap shoes.

While she's in class, I get almost a full hour of knitting in the hallway. Tonight, I was able to finish the feet on two socks.

The left one is the second of my sockapal-2-za socks. The right one is what I used to practice the Easy Toe technique on before I started my sockapal-2-za socks. For this sock, I'm striping a skein of Lorna's Laces Mother Lode with a skein of Blackberry.

Greetings from Sleeve Island!

-One sleeve each for Spring Fling, Charles, and this cardigan

Here's the view poolside.

Enabling

Both of my local yarn shops are having their "make room for the fall yarn" sales this week. I'm on a little bit on a yarn diet currently, so I don't plan on taking advantage of these sales, but if you're interested you can check out their sites.
Yarn Expressions
The Knitting Zone
One of the items I'm making progress on (as I feverishly knit up my stash) is the Charles sweater. Here's the front.

If you're a little confused as to where the motif is, don't be. Instead of doing intarsia, you duplicate stitch it, so that won't be going on until the end.

You know you knit too much when...

...you get your son's 6 month baby pictures back, and after commenting on how cute he is, you start to admire how well the paired decreases around the neck of his handknit vest showed up.

...you read If You Take a Mouse to the Movies to your two year old and you start planning out a pattern for the little boy's sweater.

Hmmm, stripes.. argyle... corrugated ribbing... a roll neck... nothing too terribly hard. Besides, the kids would love having a sweater that matches their book. (Never mind that there isn't any pink in the sweater.)

Finally, a Finished V-neck Vest

This project originated from the tank top pattern in Debbie Bliss's The Baby Knits Book. I changed it by adding stripes, making it about an inch longer, and using a v-neck rather than a crew neck. The yarn used was Debbie Bliss baby cashmerino in Indigo, Pale Yellow, and Ecru.

Happy Anniversary, Michael!

3 states and 2 kids later- There is no one else I'd rather have spent the last 5 years with.

One Sock Finished

I finished my first Sockapal-2-za sock at the knitting meetup last night.

I also may have picked up some part-time work. Nothing will be definite for a few more weeks, so I don't want to say too much for now. I'm just keeping my fingers crossed.

And I promise I'm not neglecting the v-neck vest.

See... I've started the process for lengthening the back.

4 ply

The back of Charles is finished.

I'm enjoying the 4 ply and have started looking at some other small gauge projects. While I was checking online shops for yarn prices, I stumbled upon KnitPicks new fall yarns. They have 4 ply priced at only $1.79 a ball! That means I could make this sweater

or this one

for only $8.95!

Michael is home and caring for the kids, so I'm taking advantage of this time to get a quick entry in.

First of all, thank you for helping me try to find the yarn for the baby blanket. I haven't procured any yet, but I'll give it a little time before starting on an alternative plan.

Let me clarify about Charlotte's tactics to drive me insane. It's not just her phone. Her lack of respect for my opinion spans to bigger, more important things. ("Don't be daft Mom. I don't really need to wear clothes in public!") She must have inherited her stubborn streak from Michael (says the woman who gave up and dated him after turning him down for two years straight).
I have been knitting, and as proof, here is the foot of my first sockapal-2-za sock.

I'm using my favorite pattern because I'm more confident that it'll result in socks that actually fit my person. Thank goodness I was paired with someone who wasn't particular about what pattern was used.

And, because there haven't been new kid pics in a while, here they are at last week's Wiggles concert.

He's really just chewing on the straw, not drinking my pop.

"Wake up Jeff!"

The Quest for the Discontinued Yarn

Back about three years ago, a friend commissioned me to make her some baby blankets. She settled on a nice ripple pattern, and I settled on the very soft and lovely to work with Caron Dazzleaire yarn. I ended up completing two versions of the blanket. The first, for a girl, was white, pink, purple, yellow, and green. The second, a boy one, was white with two different shades of blue. Oh, how I loved that boy blanket! (It was three months pregnant with Charlotte at the time and found myself longing to have my baby be a boy just so I could make him this afghan.) Well of course, I had a girl, and by the time I was pregnant with Joshua, I'd forgotten about the blanket. Then last week I was making some WUA squares and came across this yarn again. In all of my yarn snobbiness, I'd forgotten how nice this particular yarn was to work with. I immediately decided that Joshua really must have this baby blanket and looked online to figure out the colors I needed. Lo and behold, the yarn has been discountinued and nearly all traces of it have vanished from the face of the earth. I have a partial afghan I can scavage for some of the yarn, but now I'm scurrying around trying to dig up the rest of it. I need 3 more skeins of white, 2 or 3 of Sky Blue, and 4 or 5 of Celestial Blue. The last time I bought this yarn was two years ago, and I have no clue how long it's been discontinued. Does anyone have a guess as to any stores which may still have it in their clearance racks? Or, does anyone have some that they are willing to trade for? I have some Dazzleaire in the banana, lt pink, and mint green colors as well as most colors of Cotton Ease. If you know where to find this yarn, or would like to set up a trade, drop me an email at crsattic(at)tiffman(dot)com.

V-neck sweater: Take 4

When we last left this project, the neck had been fixed (YAY!) but all was still not well with the vest. I made this project in the 9-12 month size so that Joshua could get more wear out of it. And I've mentioned before that my son is very tall and thin. Well, after I put in the armbands and seamed one of the sides, we had another fitting, and the fit was just not flattering. The vest is wide, which is good because he'll grow into it. However, the vest was also short enough that it was very close to being too short for him to wear now, never mind two or three months from now. It was time for another fix.
First I unseamed part of the side and put lifelines in the row just above the ribbing and the row 3 up from the ribbing.

Next, I cut the row in between and started unraveling...

until the ribbing was completely removed!

The next step was to knit 10 more rows onto the ribbing

and graft the two pieces together.

Now the body is about 1 1/4" longer.

We're getting close on this one, I just have to lengthen the back and seam the sides. It might take a couple of days, however. Mike is out of town until Friday, so there won't be many breaks from the full-time mommy gig. (Try spending 20 minutes convincing your two year old that the phone says "Operator" when she pushes the 0 button while she's sure it says "bye-bye for later". Then expand this into all day, all the time for the last four days. I've always suspected that my IQ has dropped with motherhood. Now I'm convinced that it must be the constant attacks on my sense of logic. By the way, everytime she plays with her phone now, she pushes the 0 and triumphantly tells me "bye-bye for later". She also has added "hello for later" when she opens it up. Charlotte 1, Mommy 0)

V-neck Vest: Take 3

I really am trying to finish something off of my WIP list. Most of my focus over the last week has been on Joshua's v-neck vest. I seamed one shoulder, put in the neckband, and tried it on him only to find two big problems.
#1- The neck was going to be too tight to go over his head. There are several things I could have done to fix this without too much frogging (ex. put in snaps, try bigger needle sizes for the neckband), but I didn't waste my time with any of these because they didn't solve problem number two.
#2- The v-neck was just too shallow.
So, I ripped out part of the front piece and dropped the v 10 more rows.
Here's the front blocking a couple of days ago.

Since then, I've attempted to finish the vest, and I'm pleased to say that there are no more neckband issues. That doesn't mean this project is ready to graduate to FO status. Oh no, that would be much too easy. But I can only handle one major problem per day without bursting into tears, so I'll continue this drama tomorrow.