I bought this kit at Madrona last year and was hoping to have it knit by this year, so I could justify buying another one. Didn’t happen, BUT I bought the circular needle I need and I’ve balled my skeins.

I’m planning to make the Kilim Shawl (scroll all the way down, there’s a photo at the bottom of that page. If you like the Diamond Eyes shawl or the Trilium better, tell me. It’s not too late to change my mind. I’m fluctuating myself).

And I’d love to make a sweater for myself. I just can’t decide on a style, or colorway, or if I should make it a raglan, or if I should totally design my own and try to makes something that would be flattering on me with their yarn/kits. I LOVE Ann and Eugene, and think it’d be groovy to always have one of their kits in the stash to knit up.

I’m taking this one to the cabin this week. Have I mentioned how much I’m looking forward to this? I’m giddy. We’ve cleaned out the car (two 13 gallon trash bags. I find that horrifying. Fortunately, the kids were pretty disturbed, too. Maybe they’ll alter some habits? It’s not from lack of reminders on my part to bring in their stuff when we get out of the car). The laundry is well under way. The girls mopped for me today. We’re making lists of things to bring.

And it looks like we’re going to have respectable weather.

So, I was only able to exercise 2 days this past week. Tuesday was super busy, and I was at Madrona all of Thursday and Friday. Very much fun. I did plenty of walking and stair climbing those days, and I must say that with as much exercising as I’ve done the past month and a half, I was super annoyed to be winded after climbing them.

I ate pretty well. A few treats but not too much food overall. I packed lunches. This next week will be tough. Tomorrow I have a sister-in-law coming over to work out, but after my guitar lesson on Tuesday, the kids and I are going to Belfair for mid-winter break. I am SO very excited about that little vacation. I only hope my truck can hold everything we want to take with us. We have grand plans for grand play.

If you recall, there is a huge hill at the cabin in Belfair. Huge. I might climb it once a day for some exercise.

Maybe.

If it isn’t going to interfere with the vacation-ness of my vacation.

I’m up all of the 4 pounds I lost last week (I told you that was a freak event though) and have gained yet another. Whatever. I’m down a half inch in my hips, nowhere else.

All in all, I’d say I’m the same as I ever am. Another two weeks and I’ll go to the doctor for some blood work.

Probably.

Perhaps.

If I’m grumpy enough.

Have a great week. I’m not sure if you’ll hear from me again ’til we return.

But you might.

I wasn’t able to wander around to find the best light, so hopefully, these pictures show how incredibly cute she is.

And it’s all my own washed and dyed wool! She’s even wearing a Tweedy Batt!

She was extremely fun to make (aside from the green cloth for her dress, which took forever and was pretty boring), and I’m looking forward to doing more. I have some grand ideas.

Clark’s sock is done and he’s wearing them both. I’ll have opportunity to knit on the pink mitt tonight at 2 music concerts at the elementary school.

I am going to be running ’til 8:30 tonight without a break, starting in about 10 minutes. I’m tired just thinking about it.

I have a cute picture of Abby toe braiding with her friends on Friday night.

I blurred their faces ’cause I haven’t asked their parents if I can put them on the internet.

We were busy this weekend. It wasn’t the relaxing-knit-and-spin weekend I’d intended. There was too much work to be done on Saturday, but I got my room clean.

So exciting. It was a disaster, and it was driving me crazy.

That evening, I sample spun up a little bit of a Mystery Batt from Fantasy Fibers. Have any of you spun one? It felt a bit coarse to me, so I’m trying to figure out the best way to spin it. My little skien has gone missing, however. I can’t find it to show you. Basically, I tried a slub yarn, and a boucle.

Yesterday, the girls and I spent all afternoon needle felting gnomes.

Mine still needs arms, so I’m only going to show you a little bit of her.

But she’s SO much cooler than I anticipated. I’m planning to take the kids up to the cabin for mid-winter break again like I did last year. I can’t hope that the weather will be as nice as it was then, so we were thinking about bringing needle felting supplies up with us to give us something to do indoors, and I wanted to complete one beforehand to make sure we would know everything we’d need.

Like band-aids.

In other news, Clark ended up wearing his sock for three days. He loves it. It’s so sweet. I’m doing the toe decreases on the second.

And I did end up digging the pink and purple chevron sock out of it’s hiding place and committing it to fingerless mitts, probably for Abby.

Here’s a bad picture of the silks I dyed last week. They all turned out SO well! They’re dyed solid, all the way through, without light or white spots. That’s truly an accomplishment for me.

And while I really thought I’d card up some purple batts over the weekend, our felting party got in the way, so here’s a purple batt with some silk on top of it.

There are two different blues there, it’s kind of hard to tell. Nate doesn’t think he likes the lighter blue, but I think that in a very small amount, it’ll look neat.

I have a huge list to accomplish today. On that list is re-mopping the kitchen, since it’s already sticky and gross. I mopped the whole upstairs thoroughly on Friday, so I’m pretty grumpy about that. And all of this wonderful fibery-ness has distracted me from my guitar homework the past few days. I need to brush up before my lesson tomorrow or I’m toast.

I don’t know what’s going on. My appetite is crashing through the floor. I didn’t eat a lot this week AT ALL. I had a big lunch on Thursday, and that’s about all I ate for the day. Yesterday was the worst, I was over 1000 calories below my target. Monday thru Wednesday I was about 500 calories below target, meaning I netted around 1000 calories (and burned off the others through exercise). So while I’m down 4 pounds this morning from yesterday morning, it’s probably because I didn’t eat yesterday. Yesterday morning, I was the same weight as I ever am, and my measurements haven’t changed a bit. However my wedding ring is falling off, and that’s inconvenient. My fingers weren’t fat.

For some reason, the weight not changing doesn’t bother me. I expect that. My measurements not changing, my clothes not getting looser is REALLY TICKING ME OFF!!!

I did an hour on the elliptical on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. I’m going to try to make up Thursday’s hour today.

So I’m thinking that I need to eat more. My metabolism must be shutting down. That’s the only thing I can think of. I don’t really know how to do it, though, and it kind of scares me. It feels so counterintuitive. I’m trying to LOSE weight. Force feeding myself seems wrong. So I’ll be thinking about that today.

How was your week?

My silk dyeing went well. I’m excited to show you on Monday.

Mmmm, looks like a BLOCKING SWEATER to me!!!!!

And my sleeves are not the same shape. They’re pretty close, but I obviously increased at different rates. I so don’t get that. I’m certain I knit one right after the other. But they’re close enough, provided they fit into the armhole ok. If I’m going to have to re-knit one, I’ll have to re-knit both.

Please no.

I’m on a mission. I want to knit and spin all weekend, so I’m tearing through my house, trying to get it vacuumed, mopped, and picked up such that I can without feeling like I should be doing something else. It’s 10:30, and I’ve made good progress.

Tomorrow, I’ll have the kids clean the basement and their rooms, and I want Nate and I to clean out our room which has accumulated way too much “overrun”. Piles of everyone’s stuff everywhere. And It’d be great to get our bathroom deep cleaned. I’m hoping I can talk Nate into doing that. I’m pretty sure I did it last time.

Just one so far. And I might pull back a couple rows to make the toe a bit more blunt instead of pointy. Yeah, I’ll probably do that. The other is cast on and a few rounds knit. His sock weighs 17 grams, and I have 20 grams of yarn left, which should be just about perfect.

I also worked a little on Clark’s sleeve last night (one project is in the living room, the other is in the bedroom so I pick up whichever I’m close to). I am officially starting the cap shaping next row. For real this time!

Clark doesn’t like his sock. He keeps telling me he doesn’t want it, and he wants it off. He hasn’t taken it off yet, but that may be because he thinks I don’t want him to. I’m hoping that if it stays on his foot for awhile, he’ll get used to the feel of it.

The arm warmers are done and are cute, cute, cute!

Perfect for my kid who refuses to dress like it’s the middle of winter.

On a roll, I picked up Clark’s sweater last night, to discover that all stitches were on holders and there were no needles anywhere. I couldn’t remember what size I was using, 5 or 6. I guessed 6, and put the stitches on a needle.

I was wrong.

So I looked around for a 5. There were none in my basket or needle case. I complained and whined. I noticed a lone needle sitting on an end table in the living room under a prayer plant. It was a 5.

I began knitting, only to realize that I’d cabled the edge stitches on the working sleeve, and not on the finished sleeve. I figured it’d be right under the armpit, so it wasn’t worth ripping. Then I couldn’t remember if I was still supposed to be increasing so I counted stitches. There were too many. I counted stitches on the finished sleeve in the same row. There were less.

So I ripped out a few cable repeats and had just re-knit all of the frogged yarn when it came time to turn out the lights and go to sleep.

So lame.

BUT, I’m ready to go. A few more rows ’til I start the sleeve cap that I thought I’d already started. Very fortunate for me, I had planned on editing the sleeve cap on the first sleeve and ended up knitting it as per the directions I’m sort of following from the Handy Book of Sweater Patterns. And bless me, I happened to scrawl down exactly which row I started the cap shaping on, and left it in the knitting bag.

The same knitting bag that ate my wedding ring last November, if you recall.

I hope to have this one finished up soon. I measured Clark’s little feet yesterday. They’re 5 1/2 inches heel to toe, and 4 1/4 inches to the start of his toes. I don’t mind Clark’s socks being an ongoing project though. They’re small and easy and make a great travel project.

As for the “To Ponder” list… I still haven’t decided if I’m going to finish any of those. Since the mosaic arm warmers fit Liv better than Abby, I might end up trying to finish those ugly pink and purple socks, turning them into mitts for Abby.

My dye came. My silk is soaked. I might get to that today.

Maybe.

I have this sort of unwritten rule that I won’t have more than three “Works-In-Progress” at any given time. That would be WIP’s in knitting. If I counted music, spinning, dyeing, etc. I’d be in big trouble. But for knitting specifically, no more than three.

So, I was surprised the other night when I went to list my WIP’s and there were many. Now, some of them had fallen into the “have no intent to finish” category, and that’s ok. Those don’t count. But if that’s the case, I should get them off needles and rewind the yarn.

Here are the two lists-

To finish-

-Clark’s sweater. So close. Half a sleeve cap left.
-Clark’s tiny little socks. Half of one done, but how long can they take to finish? I really just started them so I’d have something easy to do at Nate’s Christmas party.
-the girls’ mosaic mitts. I have two rows of hem left, then I bind off, block, and weave in ends.

You can see that I’m really close here. What’s holding me up? It’s like there’s a brain-block or something.

The second list, entitled-

To Ponder-

-those stupid purple koigu fingerless mitts that I can’t remember how to make since I made them up and wrote pattern notes all over various scraps of paper that have vanished. One is finished, the other is about half done, and I’m an idiot.
-A red star hat with handspun that I made up. I didn’t like how it was turning out. I need to reclaim my needle and wind it back up. Why haven’t I done that yet? I think it’s because I love this little stitch and I want to find a use for it before I forget about it.
-those hideous pink chevron socks. I hate them. Abby loves them. I should just finish them up for her, or turn them into fingerless mitts which would be cute… But I feel no desire to pick them up again, and I’m not sure where that stitch pattern is anyway. I must reclaim that needle.
– Liv’s cable yoke sweater. Poor Liv. She wants my knits more than anybody, and she gets the least of them. But I have to frog all of what I’ve knit on her sweater so far because it’s turning out too small. And it’s cables, which aggravate my tennis elbows. I’ve thought about turning it into a long, cabled vest/jacket with a waist tie. Perhaps…
-Finally, there’s that horrible octagon shawl from Victorian Lace Today that I’ve wanted for-EVER. It’s only horrible because the yarn that I thought was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, isn’t. It was Colinette. It was expensive. I SO don’t splurge on stuff like that for myself. But this time I did, and it looks like I’m knitting lace fatigues.

$%^&*^%%$#%$#%^&*(***@@!!~!

Hopefully, I haven’t forgotten anything.

The reason I labeled that second list “To Ponder” is because when I wrote it out last night, I was thinking about just plowing through them all and making myself finish them. However now that I’ve posted it, and used words like “stupid”, “hideous”, and “horrible”…. I’m thinking that frogging it all will bring an inner peace that sounds very pleasant.

I have new things I want to work on that I cannot allow ’til those lists are cleaned up.

Tomorrow and Wednesday I’m hauling wool, batts, three spinning wheels, and possibly a carder into school to demonstrate and assist kids in spinning as a part of their medieval studies. This is the first set of three units in the next couple of months. Wish me well.

Oh, and I have a question…

I’ve been FREEZING cold. Uncharacteristically so. My fingers and toes will actually hurt from being cold. When we first get into bed at night, I’m always way warmer than Nate is, and he always puts his cold hands and feet on me to warm up. He calls me his space heater (Twilight reference). But not recently.

Additionally, I’ve had a solid week of vivid and extremely stressful dreams and wake up exhausted.

I’m exercising! This isn’t supposed to happen! I should have improved circulation and be getting more rest from my sleep! Those are the rules! Aside from the losing weight part, which isn’t happening, either.

And I don’t think I’m pregnant.

Any thoughts?