Yesterday was busy. I did everything on my list and then some. I took Clark to the store and decided to let him walk everywhere. The grocery store is somewhat calm at 10 o’clock on a weekday, so it went pretty well and took a really long time. He only booked out the front door once, and I was ready for it.

I painted, made bread, and dinner, had the girls put away the load of laundry, I lifted weights and did some physical therapy exercises, knit a repeat on the Angel Shawl, and helped my internet shy friend get started on a new knitting project. I’ve also been sending 5,000 emails to my yahoo group trying to coordinate sweatshirts for Madrona. They’re going to be cool, but it’s taken a phenomenal amount of time.

Today, I need to exercise and help out in Veronica’s class, but this morning, I’m going to sit and knit on the shawl for a little bit. I need to relax.

Shawls on the needles don’t make for very good pictures, but it’s all I’ve got right now. And I’m going to get to it, or I’ll run out of knitting time.

So, last night, I asked the girls to help me clean up (as I frequently do). For some reason, last night it worked. I was able to wake up to a relatively tidy house. On these rare and wonderful occasions, I feel an enormous sense of freedom. The day is mine. I can do whatever I want with it. The house is already clean. (ish).

Of course, I’m going to do things like grocery shopping, finish painting the little corner of the basement that isn’t done yet, make bread, put away the last load of laundry, exercise, etc. But it FEELS SO GOOD to be able to be productive, as opposed to spending the first half of the day trying to catch up on the mess from yesterday.

I thanked the girls profusely last night for helping. Maybe they’ll do it again.

It’s not that they usually refuse, they get distracted and wander around with this dazed look on their face, like they have no idea what to clean. So I have to tell them every. little. thing. to. do. And if I give them a few things at a time, they’ll inevitably forget most of them, and I have to tell them again…

It’s exhausting. It’s frustrating. And I rarely ever win.

I didn’t get much knitting done yesterday. Just a few rounds of the too-much-pink-and-purple sock while waiting in the lobby for my guitar lesson.

My guitar teacher isn’t particularly dynamic. I don’t get the impression he’ll ever gush or tell me how fantastic I did with anything. Maybe I’m wrong. I liked him, and he does seem to know a lot about music. My homework this week is to try to memorize what chords are in what keys, and their relative minors and their chords. That should make my mom happy. She mentioned relative minors when talking to me about piano.

And I need to work on different strumming patterns, and memorize the weird chords in Possession. Oh, and mute strings in those weird chords… which is strange and uncomfortable. And strum Across the Universe differently, which I thought I did pretty good to begin with.

I guess not.

So I’m excited. I expect to learn a lot. He mentioned something about “getting me organized” in my playing. That sounds like a good thing. And I already have some decent callouses going, so it isn’t overly painful.

Clark is grumpy this morning, so I’m going to get dressed and get us both out of here. That’ll put him in a better mood…. until I strap him in a shopping cart.

Life with an (almost) two year old. Such a joy.

I’ve been busy. The kids were out of school yesterday and it was non stop craziness. Abby had a party. Liv went to one. The house and laundry were in need of attention.

And I knit.

So, to catch up… we’ll start with Saturday. I bummed a ride with Marian out to east of North Bend to Shiori’s house for a dye workshop. They were handpainting and steaming skeins and rovings. I dyed a little sample skein,

but didn’t have time to dye my yarn as it started snowing quite convincingly, and we wanted to makes sure we could get home. And really, I wanted to kettle dye my skeins anyway. BUT, I brought home some dye to mix and experiment with,

and hopefully, it’ll be dyed soon. I think I like the color of my sample skein, but I’d like it lighter if possible.

Also on Saturday, I started another pair of socks, since I finished my Koigu cable pair. (They’re in the laundry, no picture yet).

I’m not sure how I like them. I’ve never been a huge fan of chevron socks, even though I like chevron stitches. But I thought the colors needed to have some movement to them, which is why I chose it. Are they too pink-purple-chevron-y? Dish it to me straight. I can take it.

Finally, (well, not finally, but finally in the knitting department), I wound up a skein of silk/mohair and am well into the Angel Lace Shawl.

It’s extremely hard to photograph, being all bunched up on the needle and such. I’m halfway through the pattern, but not halfway through the knitting, as it gets bigger each row.

I have my first guitar lesson today at 2. I’m really excited.

I exercised once, and didn’t meet my calorie target at all this week. I don’t think I did bad, necessarily, but not great. I was extremely busy getting the spinning done and working at school and such, so I nibbled and snacked a lot as opposed to taking the time to eat good meals.

However, I can tell I’m building muscle again and I’m in better shape. I’m happy with that.

Now I’m off to dye the yarn I’ve spun for Clark’s sweater.

I think I’m going to make it.

As I intended, yesterday was spent spinning, for the most part. I’m sorry to say that it got a little sloppy in the afternoon, when the kids got home from school and my attention was divided between helping Veronica write a paper on Martin Luther King Jr. and my singles, but once it’s knit into Clark’s sweater, no one is going to know.

I carded the remaining two batts, spun 7 of them, plied and washed one skein,

and this morning, I plied half of a second.

(The half skein is on the right, remaining single on the left).

All that’s left is to spin two batts and ply them onto the partial skein.

Then I’m done.

Whew!

Clark and I watched two of his cousins for a couple hours yesterday afternoon, and they all played super sweetly in the living room while I spun.

I couldn’t believe it worked out that nice.

It’s so weird to see Clark play with boys. He’s always been the tagalong baby with my girls, so to have it just be him, and boys… I haven’t done boys yet. It’s always been girls and my baby. It’s taking some getting used to, but it’s incredibly cute.

Here’s a picture of the yarn I bought in Portland. If you’re as tired of seeing undyed brown around here as I am, it should be a treat.

I didn’t end up taking many pictures of Portland at all. Towards the end of the day, I thought about all the pictures I should have taken, like yarn shop signs, the garter stitch coat in one of the shops that was super cool, the entire wall of Koigu, the super cute store owner with the heavy, eastern european accent, etc. But I didn’t. Here’s what I’ve got-

Katie and I on the train on the way down to Portland from Seattle.

Although we walked all over downtown for hours and hours, we did hop on a streetcar for a few blocks.

After lunching at a psychedelic teahouse and hitting the three yarn shops on the “tour”, one of them twice, we went to the infamous Powell’s Book Store. I was going to link it but the website is pretty lame, and why exactly they have a naked chick on their home page is beyond me.

Supposedly, they’re the largest independent bookstore in the world. Or something. I don’t know. It was huge. I knit on a bench in the art gallery upstairs while Katie shopped for books, and I missed Nate terribly, knowing that he would have loved it. Then Katie found me and knit a little herself.

We ate chicken enchiladas at Cha Cha Cha (how cool is that?) before heading back to the train station for the ride home.

The tower says “GO BY TRAIN“.

And that was it. I bought some sock yarn and completely delicious silk mohair laceweight that isn’t too fuzzy. Something that I’ve found to be quite unusual.

It was a great time.

Clark got a much needed haircut this morning. He looked a little wary ’til I held the buzzing clippers to his head, then he grinned and was quite enthusiastic.

For awhile.

But I had to finish anyway, and by the end, he wouldn’t look at me.

Also this morning, I knit Liv’s watchband. Finally. I woke up at 4:30 and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I cleaned the kitchen and in the process, uncovered the watch parts and needles I’d set out to do it. I’d decided to keep it simple and make it stretch over her hand, as opposed to reincorporating the buckle.

I was going to do an interesting stitch pattern but there were so few stitches, it ended up looking better in plain ol’ garter stitch.

Last night, I nearly finished carding batts for Clark’s sweater. I carded 7, have one in process, and one more to do after that. I have one skein completed, at about 240 yards.

There’s a lot of single still on the bobbins, but I think I’m going to fill them up again before plying another skein. I hope to get much of it done today, because the rest of the week is going to be busy at the girls’ school.

Satuday, I went on a train with a bunch of knitters to Portland for the day to walk all over downtown and visit their yarn stores. I don’t have time to talk about it now, as the kids are out of school for Martin Luther King Day and we’re headed to my sister-in-law’s house, but here’s a picture of Liv’s sweater after 7 hours of knitting on the train.

It’s so pretty.

I’ll talk more about Saturday later.

Good morning! I had a great week last week. I met my calorie targets Tues, Wed, Th, and close on Friday. I exercised all of those days, plus Saturday, doing weights twice. I feel good.

How was your week?

I’ve got a decent start. I cast on last night, and I’m about 21 rows into it.

It’s even easier than I expected it to be, but the yolk will give me some headaches.

Based on how it’s working up, it looks like I’ll need to cut about 40 rows from the body to avoid being a dress on her. I’ve had a couple of good suggestions, and I feel pretty good about it.

And Clark can’t stay out of a picture for nuthin’. He swept the sweater onto the floor immediately after I took the above picture and climbed on the ottoman himself, where he looked at me expectantly.