A Cowl, Bracelets and Wee Tot

I finished my second Gap-Tastic Cowl.  It was a fun knit.  I’d like to make a dozen of them so I could stack them and take a picture.  I guess that’s kind of strange.  They’re not towels.

I love these long cowls.  I want to make another one soon, but with a different pattern.

I got some new bracelets!

I love them.  Bangly and one is green.  The other looks nice with the green, so I love them.

Guess what they are made from.

They are made from recycled knitting needles!  I bought them on etsy.com from Sassafras Creations.  She has a great shop.

Just the neatest thing.  I love the idea of recycling old things into new cool stuff.

I hadn’t had my camera out in a week or two.  So I took some pictures of Wee Tot too.  This one was my favorite.

 

Saturday, a cowl, Mega Bloks, colds.

Here we are in the house of colds.  Actually David is quite a bit better.  Davey is on antibiotics for an ear infection, but he still has a cough.  I’m starting to cough.  So we are taking it easy today.

Davey has been hanging out with me teaching me the games he makes up with those big Legos.  I looked it up and remembered they are actually Mega Bloks.

He brings me a stack of them and makes up these most complex games in which the rules are everchanging.

I invariably get the rules wrong.  He laughs at me and says things like, “No Mommy, you can’t put a leaf on top of lava!”

(ugh kinda blurry picture, but I wanted to get him in action and there was no time to grab my real camera)

I’m making another “Gap-tastic” Cowl.  It’s in that Heavyweight Knit Picks Gloss again.  That wool/silk blend is just so darn nice to knit with.  I’m getting close to being done with this.

I’m test knitting some Latvian mittens too.  Very fun.  I just learned how to do this loopy fringe for the cuff of the mitten.  I’ve never tried it before.  When I can put up an image, I’ll share how I did this.  There doesn’t seem to be a lot of guidance on the internet that I could find.  The mittens are in beautiful colorwork using 6 colors of yarn. I’ve not done any colorwork in awhile, so that’s fun to get back to as well.

The cowl is the kind of knitting in which I can knit and read at the same time.  So I am reading a book by Tess Gerritsen called The Silent Girl.  The tv show Rizzoli and Isles is based on these books by Gerritsen.  I love a good mystery, and I am enjoying Gerritsen a lot.

And that’s about it for a Saturday in January.

 

Our Favorite Preschool Books

Davey loves to read with us.  I have always been a bookworm, and I converted David to “bookwormism” when we started dating about 25 years ago.  So Davey sees books around him all the time.  We started reading to him the day he was born I think.

Anyway, I used to go to the library and pick out a random bunch of books for him.  I’d look at them briefly, but I never knew for sure if we’d enjoy them, until I got them home and we tried them out. We found some great ones and some not so great ones (overall though – the quality of the children’s books is really pretty good.  I don’t think I’d have had the same success randomly picking adult books.  Of course- they are much different.  Anyway!)

Lately I decide to start looking for the “award-winning” books.  So I started going through the Caldecott winners.  Next I started looking  at the “Best Picture Books” lists on Amazon.  Each year (each month even  I think) they put out a list of “Best Picture Books”.  They put out best of lists for all types of books, but we are focusing on the best picture books for now.

I’ve been through 2011 pretty thoroughly and 2010.  This morning I jumped to 2007.  I got quite a good list going.  Our library has most of them, although several were checked out, so I’ve placed holds.  Davey LOVES to go to the hold shelf and pick up a book that is for HIM!

This researching books takes some time, so I thought I would keep an ongoing list of our very favorites here.  I’ll update this post when I find books that we really love.  These are the books that Davey insists on reading several times. This doesn’t happen all that often, so I feel like these are the really “good” ones, at least in our minds.

SO the list begins:

1.  Press Here  by Herve Tullet.  (This book is one of our favorite books of all time.  Davey gets to participate in the reading.  It is an incredible book.  I may buy it.)

2.  Let’s Do Nothing by Tony Fucile.  Davey found this book to be really funny.

3.  Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems.  Mo Willems is great.  He is hilarious.  I recommend Mo Willems in general.  His Knuffle Bunny books are great too.  We read another book by him the other night called Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed.  Davey loved it as well.  We are In a Book  is a lot of fun too.

4.  Of course the David books by David Shannon are hilarious.  We started Davey on the board book versions of them.  We still quote one of them.  At the end, the mommy says, “Oh David, I love you.”  We try to say it in the way we imagine she says it in the book.  (slightly exasperated, but she loves him so much anyway!)

5.  I have to mention Margaret Wise Brown and Goodnight Moon.  We practically have it memorized.  As a matter of fact, we got it back out last night for the first time in a long time.  Davey enjoyed it.  He also has always loved Big Red Barn.  I almost like it better. Goodnight Moon  has a knitter in it though so of course that’s a plus.

6.  We also recently discovered Baby Brains. There are several books written about the adventures of this brainy baby.  They are a lot of fun.

7.  Blackout - we just recently read this.  It’s a beautiful book.  It’s about a family.  There is a blackout and they realize how fun it is to slow down and spend time together.  We enjoyed it a lot as well.

8. Mary and the Mouse, the Mouse and Mary  This is a beautiful book by Beverly Donofrio.  The illustrations are so pretty, and it is just a nice book about a little girl and a mouse.  It’s a definite read again and again on the Davey scale.

9.  Stuck by Oliver Jeffers.  This is a hilarious book.  Talk about hyperbole and all the things that get stuck in a tree in the process of a little boy trying to rescue his kite.

Ok, I’m off to the library this morning with another list of books.  I’ll update if we find some more treasures out of this batch!

Habitat

Finished the coolest hat today.  I was so happy to finish it that I wanted everyone to try it on.

Big David:

Little Davey:

and me:

I didn’t get the greatest of pictures so I went for creative cropping.

Even styrofoam head lady:

I even got one that almost looks like the hat is floating in the air.

The cables almost have a medusa thing going.  I am not going to dwell on this idea.

I started this hat back in August.  I finally got it done.  It was pretty slow going with all the cables, but I enjoyed it.

Yesterday, I was nearing the end when suddenly – I was tugging (I thought just a little) on a stitch which was a little tight from a previous cable or something.  All of a sudden my yarn broke.  Not the yarn coming from the skein.  The actual loop over the needle.  All of a sudden I had two less than 1/2 inch little ends looking at me.  It was kinda terrifying.  I thought for a minute, and then I ripped it back a couple of rows.  I put all the stitches back on the needles, and then I put the project in timeout for the rest of the day.  (I learned about knitting project timeouts from TheKnitGirllls.  I’ve been watching their videocast for the last couple of months.  I love to watch and knit with them.)  Anyway, I got it back out today and everything was ok.  No stitches disappeared – well except for that broken one – I’m not sure what happened to it or how I compensated for it.

Great hat.  Great pattern.  Great rustic yarn too.

 

Frost Generously

I am addicted to pinterest.com.  I find so much inspiration there.  Knitting inspiration.  Inspiring quotes.  And many recipes that I am inspired to make.  I’ve made a few now and they’ve been really good.  Actually there is nothing wrong with the latest recipe that I tried yesterday.  Red Quinoa, Apple and Cranberry Cake.  I love quinoa, and I am always looking for a new way to try it, so I thought this recipe would be perfect.  I mean, just look at this picture.  It looked really good to me.

And it is pretty tasty.  It is made with red quinoa (cooked) and whole wheat flour.  Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ve ever won the Davids over with a recipe made without any white flour.

I should have read the recipe more carefully.  As I was putting it in the oven, I read the recipe for the cream cheese icing.  It seemed to make a buttload of icing for not that much cake.  Typically, I have  read recipes which say, “ice with such and such icing, but this cake is so awesomely wonderful that you may just want to eat it by itself sans icing.”  I see that quite abit.  Well, this recipe ended with instructions to “Frost Generously”.

So I frosted generously.  I frosted generously and still had a ton of icing left over. I frosted graham crackers with the rest, and Davey gobbled these up.

After I frosted the cake, David and I tried a slice.  It was late afternoon, and we decided that the cake was so “hearty” that we would not need dinner for quite awhile.

I thought I might enjoy it more as a breakfast food, despite the cream cheese icing.  And I did.  It’s just not what we think of as cake.  As breakfast food – a pretty hearty filling breakfast.

Davey wanted another slice of it, but he was straightforward in announcing his intent to only eat the icing.  He had actually iced almost the entire cake, and he insisted on adding sprinkles.

Even David.  Here’s the slice he created.

Notice the relatively thin layer of cake.

If you like a hearty not so sweet very healthy tasting cake, then this is an awesome recipe.  You know, it might make for some nice muffins with a glaze.  I might try it that way.

So that’s the story of the quinoa, apple and cranberry cake.

 

If you have 4 wheel Drive use it and Gummies: Denied!

It’s been an interesting week.  I started back to school which was fun.  Except Wednesday morning.  That was not so fun.

We had snow forecasted for Wednesday.  But they didn’t forecast for much and they kept kind of changing when it was supposed to start.  I don’t think anyone anticipated rush hour to be the time it would begin.

So I had to be at school at 8am.  There was not much snow falling here when I left.  The Jeep is a real bear to get into four wheel drive.  I can not do it, and it takes David a little time.  So I was in a hurry, and we decided I’d be ok.

And I was – for awhile.  The snow wasn’t bad up where we lived, but the farther south I drove, the harder the snow began to fall.  It really started to come down and it was accumulating on the roads.

Traffic was terrible too.  Moving slow and so backed up.  I got to the part of the route where I climb some big ole hills.  The Jeep didn’t want to climb them.  It was terrible.  I was going forward very very very slowly because the Jeep couldn’t get traction.  At the same time, I was fishtailing around.  It’s a wonder that I didn’t hit anyone.  No one honked at me though!  However, they were probably thinking, “this person is in  a Jeep.  It clearly says 4×4 on the side.  What the heck?” (or possibly stronger language than heck.)

I was trying to stay calm.  I thought I would try to get the Jeep into four wheel drive.  At the same time, I was looking for the next opportunity to turn around and go back home.  I just was not going to make it.  There was a bigger hill coming.

I got the opportunity to turn into a neighborhood.  At the same time, I noticed that I’d gotten the Jeep into Part Time four wheel drive.  Now to me that has always sounded like “the Jeep adjusts as needed depending on conditions”.  I know that’s ridiculous, but that’s what I think of.  Wrong.  I called David and he told me that I could not go over 20 miles an hour or the “transmission would fall out of the Jeep onto the road”.  I guess that might have been an exaggeration, but I am very literal minded sometimes, and it’s an image I could not get out of my head.

However, now I could also, as David said, “Drive through a field”.  No more slipping and sliding and I made my way home – very slowly – on some bad roads.  But then as I approached home, the roads became merely wet.  However, I could not go over 20 miles an hour (there was no chance of me getting the Jeep back out of four wheel drive). So now I was the crazy driver in the right lane barely moving. People were passing me like crazy.  That was almost as bad as slipping and sliding.  No one honked, oh wait, I think one person did.  Oh well, they were entitled.

I finally made it home.  Jelly legs and all.  I recovered for a little while.  David put the Jeep into four wheel drive for me, and off I went.  This time it was much easier.  I had to cancel my first class, but I made it for the next two.

The moral to the story: If you have 4 wheel drive:  USE IT!

The other night we took Davey to a family night at his school.  Two people, who call themselves Playground Theatre, performed.  I wish I had video of Davey watching this.  They were really funny – with that humor that the little ones love.  Kind of slapstick and very silly.  Davey laughed and laughed and laughed.  He laughed from the top of his head to the tips of his toes.  He fell over laughing.  It was so fun to watch.

I’ve not been knitting too much this week.  I’m working on the hat that I want to finish.  I am going to get the opportunity to do another test knit for a book that will be coming out.  This project is going to be worsted weight mittens in stranded  colorwork or fair isle.  I am looking forward to starting those.

And finally.  I’ve had a cold for about a week.  It’s not been a horrible cold as far as colds go.  I thought it was going away, but then it came back with a vengeance.  Achy and a little fever.  Sometimes that means sinus infection but sometimes it’s just viral.  So anyway.  I’m ok.  David told Davey that I was a little sick and so he should help me today because David has class.  (That sounds funny.  He is a classy dude, but I meant that he had to go teach today!).

Davey is the best helper.  There are several rules he has told me that I should follow:

1.  Move slowly.  Take your time.

2.  Wash your hands a lot.

3.  Don’t touch rubber (I don’t understand this, but so far it has not been much of an issue.)

He just asked me if he could have some gummy bear fruit snack things.  He told me though that I can’t have any because, “Mommy, you are kind of sick.  You can’t have any gummies because you need to eat healthy things”.  He gave me one of his and said that was all I could have.

He brought me his bear Squeakie to keep me company.

He also brought me Smurfs.

I am in good hands.

 

Cables and Hulda Holly

Lots of times when Davey wakes up, he plays with his superheroes and animal toys which are lined up along the window in our bedroom.

He greeted me with this little bird yesterday morning. (a lot of times when I wake up, I start with getting caught up on my Words with Friends.  I love that game.  I justify my numerous games with the fact that they are very good for my brain.) So anyway, that’s why I happened to have a camera handy (to take this rather blurry picture).

I started this hat months ago.  I love the yarn.  It’s Shelter by Jared Flood.  The pattern is Habitat by Jared Flood.  I know I have written this before, but he writes the best patterns.

Knitting all those cables makes me feel like such the knitter.

I’m trying to get some of my many unfinished objects completed.  My goal is to finish Habitat this week.

I’m also working my Hulda Holly sweater.  It is slow going.  Laceweight.  Slow.  But it makes for such pretty little stitches.  I love it. It’s curling up like crazy right now, so it was kind of hard to get a decent picture.  I just wanted to photograph how the colors transition at the bottom of the sweater.  It was a little early to ask for the help of my photography assistant – Davey.

I’m working through about 100 shades of gray right now.  Actually I think there are five or six.  I forget at the moment, but that’s another thing I love about this – subtle transitions.

Ok time to get this day going!

“Loki” and More Embroidery

Awhile back, we somehow introduced the words low key to Davey.  I can’t quite remember the context, but it must have had something to do with having a quiet day at home.  Davey adopted that word, and now he loves to use it frequently.

“Davey, do you want to go to the grocery store with me?”

“No Mommy, I am feeling like staying home and being Loki today.”

He pronounces low key in the same way he pronounces the name of Thor’s brother.

So today we were pretty Loki.  David and Davey left home briefly to go participate in the monthly Home Depot craft – they built a barn piggy bank – or maybe a barn bank?

Davey also wore his new hat a bunch today.  At first, he liked to pretend that the fire from the embroidered rocket was too hot, and he’d have to take it off.  But then after awhile he left it on.  He wanted me to add some embroidery to the hat.

“Mommy, put on that ray gun design.”

“And a flower.  Mommy I want a flower on there!”

I tried one of those less flowery looking flowers from my page of “Fantasy Flowers” patterns.

He liked the spaceship very much (yikes just noticed how blurry this pic is).

I practiced my embroidery skills and Davey is very happy with his hat!

Embroidery + Knitting

I used to embroider quite abit, but it’s been a long time, and since I became obsessed with knitting, I’d not even thought about it for ages.  But then a friend showed me one of her really cool embroidery projects. I was inspired.  The pattern she was using came from Sublime Stitching.  Their webpage announces: “This ain’t your gramma’s knitting”.  I love it!  There are such fun patterns there ranging from space aliens and rockets (which I bought) to roller derby girls  and sexy librarians (which I did not buy – yet)!

So I thought – wouldn’t it be cool to embroider on my knitting!  I wasn’t quite sure what the best way to go about this was, so I started looking around on the web – and I found a great tutorial.

I got very excited and immediately knit Davey a hat.  The knitting wasn’t immediate, I guess, but it went really quickly as I used a bulky yarn.  I made it from the same yarn that I used to make my Gap-tastic Cowl – a wool silk blend from Knit Picks.  So anyway – great yarn, but maybe not a great first choice for embroidery.  Here’s what I did:

I followed the tutorial which explained that to embroider on a knitted object, you need some kind of stabilizer.  For one thing, it keeps the embroidery floss from disappearing into the knitting.  This was very simple though, as it consisted of basting the pattern to the hat.  I just used some embroidery floss. Like this:

(Make sure you cut the pattern large enough so that the basting doesn’t get near where you will make your embroidery stitches.  I was cutting it a little close.)

Next I started embroidering.

Embroidering on paper has a different feel to it then typical embroidery, but I got used to it. My embroidery skills were (are) a little rusty, so that coupled with embroidering on the paper made it a little more tricky for me.

After I finished the embroidery, the tutorial (which has some good pictures) explained that I needed to very carefully rip and pick the paper out.  If you don’t do it very carefully, the stitches will warp or get too loose.  This is a little tricky, but the important thing is to go slowly and be patient.

So the finished project was ok, but not great. Notice in the hat below, the little star thing that I’d embroidered in the rocket is gone.  Those lines of stitching got all loose and messed up when I worked the paper out.  So I took it out.

I am not overly happy with this.  The floss is not heavy enough against that bulky weight yarn and it doesn’t show up right.  I also realized that I went for too much detail and close stitching like you see at the bottom of the rocket.  It’s tricky to make it look nice. It was an ok first attempt, and Davey likes his new hat with earflaps, but I wanted to do better.

So I knitted some fingerless gloves using one of my favorite patterns the Jiffy Mitts.  I used a much lighter weight fingering yarn.  On both projects, I used all six strands of floss.  I think in the tutorial that I followed, she used 3 strands, but I preferred the look of 6.  I got a pattern from Sublime Stitching called “Fantasy Flowers” and I embroidered some flowers onto the gloves.  I experimented with the split stitch and the stem stitch, and I found the stem stitch to be a little easier for me.  I think I like the look of the stem stitch better, although I can’t tell that much difference, and I like the split as well.

Here are the finished gloves:

I kept them fairly simple, but I loved using different colors.  Here is a little more zoomed in shot.  Don’t look too closely at my embroidery.  It is a work in progress.

I’m looking forward to trying this again soon.  I want to make Davey another hat with lightweight yarn, so that I can do some better embroidery for him.

 

 

Preschool According to the Wee Tot

Last night as we were getting Davey to sleep, he told us more about his first day of preschool.

At snack time, they had a paper cup of cheerios and a carton of milk.  Apparently Davey added the milk to the cheerios.  That would make sense if he had ever eaten cereal with milk, but he hasn’t and will not.  He said that he saw the “kindergarteners” doing it when he had visited the prior week.

He loved talking about the playground.

They played chase.  The person chasing them was a vampire.  ”But it was not scary Mommy.  It was more of an exercise game.”

Then they chased a little boy.  (I am assuming (hoping) that this was a fun chase for the boy being chased.) He explained it in this way. “He runded and we runded, and he runded and we runded…it was a little awkward.”  Then he paused and grinned.

He broke his “stick”.  This is part of a flag system that they use to move from activity to activity.  He proceeded to flex his arms and show me how hard he’d “squeezed” it.  He said he didn’t know it would break that easily, but that they were going to make him a new one.  ”Mommy, I saw a big bin of them on the shelf.”

He liked the area where they read books.  ”There is a little sofa for kids.  We can sit by each other on the sofa and read books.”

He also explained that there were “red chairs and blue chairs.  The blue chairs were little for the kids.  The red chairs were big for the grown ups.  Even though red is not for girls, they still sat in them.”

I love getting his perspective.