It doesn’t matter how early they get up, or how much I keep on top of it and nag the heck out of them, the girls are still scrambling to get out the door in time for school. It’s so irritating. I tried to get them ready a few minutes early so we could get pictures of mitts before they left. I got a few quick, slightly out of focus, mediocre pictures while Nate was waiting for them in the car.

There’s more color in the Liv’s mitts than you can see in the pictures, but they’re still nice and subtle. The pictures of Veronica’s mitts are quite accurate.

I’ve made batts with the rest of the fiber dyed Veronica’s colors, with half the noil that was in her mitts. We’ll spin that up and see how it looks.

I made up the pattern. It’s handspun semi-woolen 3 ply. Size 3 needles. I used a 32 inch circular and knit the body using the magic loop method, and used double points on the thumbs.

Cast on 35 stitches. Work 3×2 ribbing for 40 rounds, set 7 stitches aside on a holder (I used safety pins) for the thumb, co 7 stitches and continue in the round for another 22 rounds. Bind Off. Retrieve 7 stitches for thumb, picking up an additional 9 stitches around the hole (the cast on for the new 7 stitches). Work one round in 3×2 ribbing, with an extra knit stitch in there somewhere. On second round, knit that extra stitch together with another knit stitch, and continue thumb of 15 stitches for 10 total rounds. Bind off. Weave in ends.

For Veronica, I decreased the number of rounds in each part. Something like, 30 round to the thumb, 16 rounds on the hand before binding off, 6 rounds of thumb. ‘Cause she’s a shrimp.

I have a brief break between helping in Veronica’s class at school, eating lunch, and going to my guitar lesson. And I really need to practice my scales or I’m toast. All my guitar time has been spent recreationally this week, and I haven’t practiced.

BUT, I have a couple of pictures.

Liv’s mitts are on her hands at school and are therefore unavailable for photos right now. Veronica is at school, so her mitt (which still needs a thumb) is having to stretch over my oversized hand.

This is the first mitt that has the random blobs of silk top in it (the areas of dark mahogany). What do you think? I really like the variation. If you recall, I did the same thing with the orange silk in the darker green swatch from some time ago. It needed more orange, I think.

I need to get a picture of all three modeled mitts together so you can see the differences in the yarn.

Here’s the front of Clark’s sweater. Can you even stand the cuteness?

I know, I know. I need to go back and count out the weeks to figure out what stupid week we’re on. But I haven’t.

So, how was your week? I did ok. Like I said Thursday night (I’m cheating. It’s still Thursday night for me. I’m really in Portland with girlfriends today), I exercised twice, which is what I’d committed to do. And I ate relatively good.

Next week, hmmm, how ’bout cardio twice and calisthenics twice? And eating good.

Sounds good to me.

… get up and do something else for awhile. It’s supposed to break the cycle of trying to get to sleep. It usually works for me.

I can’t sleep. I’m really tired. My alarm is set for 6:45 tomorrow morning, and that’s currently 7 hours from now. Not horrible, but I really do need 8 hours to be a fully functional human being.

It’s been a busy week. I think part of the reason I can’t sleep is that I’m excited about and therefore can’t stop thinking about some of the things I’m doing.

I’ve finished Liv’s mitts.

Carded and spun up yarn for Veronica’s mitts. (I over agitated the wool and alpaca whilst dyeing. They’re a little felted. Plus, there’s too much silk in the yarn, the pink of the silk dulled the green tremendously, but I’m still interested to see how it knits up. Nate thinks it’s pretty. I have more of the dyed fiber to card and spin for a hat for myself at some point. I’m hoping there’s enough).

I dyed mohair, with much fuss, for more wolf yarn.

Carded up and spun a test batt for a sweater with one of the gorgeous gray lamb fleeces I have. It’s so silky. I want to knit with it.

Knit half the neck of Clark’s sweater. I’m going to have to rip and reknit it, because the row gauge is off and the neck doesn’t decrease fast enough.

Read the first Chrestomanci book. It was disturbing and Gwendolen should die a hundred deaths. But I’ll still read the next one.

Met my Health Group goal for the week by exercising twice. I can hardly walk, which means that wretched illness of September had to have eaten me alive. I was in great shape in August, and that wasn’t THAT long ago.

All this in addition to helping out at school Monday and Tuesday as usual. (Ooh, ooh! I saw the bat lady Monday morning. How cool is that? She had live bats. I came face to face within inches of them. They’re SO cute). And two evening school events, and the district Cross Country finals.

But I think what I’m the most excited about is that I’ve started recording music again. It’s soooo much fun. And takes soooo much time. And is soooo hard. I spent a couple hours on it today, and don’t have a keepable track yet. But I’m close. I can’t work on it more ’til next week because I’m going to Portland with some friends for an overnighter tomorrow (Friday). But I can’t stop thinking about it. Hearing instrumentation and harmonies in my head.

There are many pictures I should take and post, but I haven’t had the time, and right now, aside from being very tired and hopefully about to go to sleep… there’s no light.

I hate flash pictures (my own, that is) a smidge more than I hate posts without pictures. (Again, I’m speaking of my own. You all can do whatever you want with your blogs. No criticism from me. But as for me and my blog… I like pictures).

Aaand I need to go to bed. I’m driveling. Have a great weekend! I’ll set up a post to show up Saturday for Health Group in case someone wants to check in.

I still haven’t looked up what week we’re on. And I haven’t done much of anything healthy. But I’m planning and making dinners better. I hope to start exercising soon. I feel ready, but distracted. There are so many other things I want to do with my time right now. I have books I want to read. I’m dyeing, spinning, and knitting stuff. I have packaging to think about, and a website to get built. A house to keep up and a family to keep fed and clothed. I have guitar scales to practice.

My guitar teacher is still kicking my butt. I feel like I get more and more behind every lesson. He gives me SO MUCH, and I can’t possibly master it in one week. And he doesn’t expect me to, but I do. When I get frustrated, I need to look back on how far I’ve come and it gets better. Roger never gives me time to revel in accomplishment. It’s always “on to the next step” so I always feel like I’m floundering. But really, I’ve learned so much. I have to keep telling myself that. For example, I can now do the Major scale, which spans 5 frets!!! I’ve been working on it for about a month. It was literally painful. And I was clumsy. But I can make the reach now with very little discomfort. Woohoo!

Then last week he gave me some wretched Diminished Arpeggio thing that has me feeling all thumbs again. Go figure.

So, Health Group…. I’m going to try to exercise twice this week, and eat respectably. That’s my goal.

I’m pretty sure I’ve talked about The Sweater here before. It’s a sweater that my mom some how came in possession of, and passed off to me at least 20 years ago. I loved The Sweater, despite the fact that in addition to one sleeve being significantly longer than the other, the stripes not matching up at the button band (it was a cardigan), and being kind of itchy… it looked horrible on me. I kept trying to wear it. I kept it for many, many years. I’d take it out of the back of the closet every 6 months or so, try it on, look in the mirror, and stick it back in the closet. I now know that the reason it looked so horrible on me is because its main color was entirely wrong for me. It was light, heathery gray. I can’t think of a color that makes me look more frumpy than light, heathery gray. Dark gray is fantastic. Light gray must be avoided, at least by me, at all possible costs.

At some point, I got rid of The Sweater. It was a sad day. There was something so romantic about that sweater. It had a homemade look to it. Not handmade, homemade. But it was charming. Delightful. The kind of thing you’d want to wear around the house on a weekend. You’d want to curl up in a chair and read in it. You’d have your hair up in one of those messy topknots with stragglers falling out here and there. You’d be drinking something warm. You’d feel pretty and cozy and I dare say even sexy despite being, essentially, in the knitting equivalent of sweats.

I want another The Sweater. One that actually looks good on me. When I swatched the wolf spun mohair some months ago, I thought that it would make a fantastic replacement for The Sweater. Not that it would make a sweater at all similar to the original, but I thought it could fill the void well.

The original Sweater was, as I mentioned, light heather gray. It had some stripes of metallic pink ribbon-y something or other in it, as well as a large stripe of dark wine colored yarn in yet another texture. That’s about all I remember.

I’m finished spinning the pound of mohair I bought at Black Sheep.

I have about 600 yards of yarn, and I need 900 +. I have plenty of the coincidentally coordinating roving I used to ply with the mohair to make some sort of yarn that will go with it, but I think it’s too similar in color without being the same texture. I think it’d look off. After talking with Shiori last night and having her examine my swatches, we both concluded that the best thing would be to dye more mohair in harmonious colors and make more wolf yarn.

So, I dug out the lovely first clip kid mohair fleece I bought a year + ago from a delightful lady in Monroe. This fleece is so special, I haven’t dared to use it for anything. I’m nervous. But I’m taking the plunge, and I’m going to dye about 12 ounces of it, to be sure I have enough. 8 ounces are soaking right now in preparation to be dyed.

The Sweater was, as I mentioned, multi textured. That was my initial plan for this new sweater, but I can’t picture it in any way going well. I think all mohair is the way to go, but I’m having trouble picturing how I’ll incorporate the two different colors. And should I spin some of the mohair smooth? And what design?

I really have no idea what to do. I’d hoped that by the time I finished spinning the Black Sheep mohair, that I would have come up with something.

Did something turn out the EXACT color it was supposed to?

YES!!!

This one looks pretty good, too.

I’m dyeing stuff for Veronica’s mitts. The green is wool and alpaca. The salmon color is silk. I have some silk top soaking right now that I’m going to dye mahogany to go both in the green mitts, and to use with my remaining blue fiber to be carded.

Other things making me happy today… my teacups.

As I was emptying and reloading the dishwasher this morning, I noticed the massive movement of teacups. The ones from the hot drinks last night replaced in the cupboard the ones we used for herbal tea this morning. I love it when the weather turns colder. We haven’t turned on the heat yet, so we’re wearing more layers and drinking warm things. It’s very fun. I could continue on like this for some time, but Nate won’t. He’ll be cleaning out the filter in the furnace this weekend, I’m sure, then the heater will come on. He hates being cold.

Last year, I think it was fog that got me waxing poetic and all cozy feeling, excited for winter. This year, it’s the emerging of teacups.

It was chilly enough at the cross country meet last night to put Clark in a hat. I have one cold weather hat that fits him well.

I made it in my early knitting days, when I was ambitious to design my own patterns. This one was for Abigail, and has a fun, swirly decrease pattern in dark blue on the top. It’s cute, but I need to make him his own hat. One without purple in it.

Real quick, because Clark is watching a movie on the computer, and is very upset that I paused it to post….

Here are Abby’s mitts on her paws

and here is the first 30 rounds of Liv’s first mitt. I think the it would look good with dark brown flecks of silk in it for a little more contrast, in addition to the mahogany. I don’t know about the lighter, yellow-tan color.

I’ll start off with the knitting. This was General Conference weekend for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which is a two day satellite broadcast that happens every 6 months. The twelve apostles and the prophet and other general authorities give talks over 5, 2 hour sessions. It’s fantastic and I love it. So uplifting and inspiring. Additionally, I get a LOT of knitting done.

On Saturday, I got up to the armholes on the front of Clark’s sweater but had to stop because I’m about to start the V neck.

That would require too much counting to pay attention to Conference, so on Sunday, I knit one and a half of Abby’s fingerless mitts. (Rotten picture).

It really does look nice on her hand, when it’s not all shriveled up with the ribbing. I’ll finish up the second one quick and then knit the brown ones so you all can tell me which amount of silk you like.

Now, on to fish.

Remember back in February of ’07, when I bought my ryukin?

Well, Cecily died recently. I’m not upset. She was kind of boring. I didn’t really like her, and the reason I bought the two of them anyway was to establish my nitrogen cycle with cheap pet store fish so I could eventually buy some really nice ones online. Well, not surprisingly, I’m too sentimental to get rid of my fish. Plus, I really like Zuko. So I’m looking online, and was trying to remember how long I’ve had Zuko when I looked back on the blog and found the post.

He’s grown a LOT, and he’s beautiful.

He’s 4 1/2 inches now. He should be bigger, but there have been long periods of time when I wasn’t taking as good care of them as I should. Not cleaning the tank out often enough, and when I ran out of the good fish food I buy online quite awhile ago, I bought some pet store food to get me through ’til I ordered more and… never quite got around to it. I think that was Cecily’s problem. She wasn’t getting the nourishment she needed. I feel bad.

BUT, I just bought some new plants and food, moved the rocks around a bit, bought an enormous contraption that sterilizes the water like an ozonator which means that I can have the light on as much as I want and the water will still be clear. I’m so excited! And I’m looking online at fish.

What I REALLY want is a nice, big, fat orange ranchu to call Calcifer*. But there’s this ryukin that I think is stunning. Wouldn’t he look GREAT with Zuko?

Aaaand, there’s a really expensive black ranchu that is so stinking cute, I can’t stand it.

I want to pinch his cheeks!

Aside from the fact that I can’t go dropping several hundred dollars on Goldfish right now, or potentially ever, I think the maximum amount of fish I can keep in my tank is 3. I already have Zuko, mixing ryukin and ranchu isn’t the best idea, tho’ depending on the personalities you end up with, it could be fine. I think Zuko is gentle enough to be with a Ranchu. He’s so sweet. I don’t know about that other ryukin though. They can be scrappers. I could just get the ryukin, which is the cheapest, and be done. But I’ve ALWAYS wanted a big ol’ ranchu. They’re so cool. And I think the big orange one would look nice with the two ryukin, if they all get along.

What to do, what to do.

I realize it’s completely trivial to be fretting about fish, but Zuko is all alone now. And honestly, I love my fish. They make me happy. It’s therapeutic, you know, to watch fish. That’s why they’re in hospitals. And tropical fish bore me to death. I like these big, individual water animals with character and personality. Except for the jerky ones, like Frank from my old post, or that blue lionhead I had to get rid of a few years ago. Stinkers.

* Then I’d have both a fire bender and a fire demon in my tank. Of water. Can’t hardly resist that. :-).