Happy Birthday Brodie!

Hard to believe that this cute little furball...

...Is now this handsome little man only 1 year later!


Yesterday was Baby Brodie's first birthday! And to herald his birthday, Mother Nature let loose one last hooray (hopefully) in a white out blizzard after lulling us all into thinking spring was here. I think we ended up with something like 6 inches of snow, which is nearly gone today. Brodie was in doggie heaven playing in the white stuff. He sure has a fondness for it. We celebrated his birthday with some stinky canned dog food and hours and hours of Frisbee fun. Truthfully, the boy never stops with that damn Frisbee.

I finally got around to weaving the ends today and taking a picture of the one and only placemat that I finished last week. Not blocked yet but I think it turned out ok. Another item to be packed away for the new place (if I ever find one).

Here is the specs:

Pattern- well, that was made up on the fly. Cast on 87 stitches, stockinette stitch, with a seed stitch border. 16x11 inches

Yarn : Knit Picks CotLin in Swan 1.5 skeins

Needles size 4

The size 4's made and nice tight fabric, but seemed forever on the needles.

Another only project here...that seems to be the theme this year.  Just a plain ribbed sock in Bamboo from SWTC. I love the bamboo for summer, and I love the mindless knitting, makes for a great sneak to work project. Now that things have settled down a bit at work, I have a little more time on  my hands and have been able to knit a wee bit on the low down. 

I guess technically it is not a true only- I did cast on number 2 today, but then again, I have had that second Tidal Wave on the needles for a long time and it is still not done. I did work on that today while I listened to yet another Jo Goodman tale, "Beyond a Wicked Kiss". It is a good sexy historical tale with quite a bit of intrigue.  It did get a little distracting a few times and I had to rip back a row a couple of times when I lost count. But I managed to make some headway.

Taking a break from all that knitting, I decided that I needed to make use of my table before I give it to the kids. I set up my swift and started winding balls. I had just gotten to the fifth hank of yarn when horrors of horrors...
A little itty bitty piece of wood came off my swift. Who woulda guessed that tiny piece of wood could bring my productivity to a stand still! Can you see it in the picture??? It is so freakin small it is barely there! And yet, it apparently played a major roll in holding the bolt in place when you adjust it. I kept trying to make the yarn taut, but the bolt just wouldn't stay. Luckily my Mr. Fix It friend came over and fixed it for me, maybe, I haven't actually tried it yet but the little wooden piece is back where it belongs. 

I did get some hopeful, sorta, news about my cousin. He is not taking the doctors diagnosis lying down. He got a call from some treatment place in Atlanta, and went for some holistic cleansing. He is planning on getting healthy no matter what it takes. My belief is that the will to live has to be strong before there can be any hope. He seems to have that in spades, so I will support him in any treatment he wants to try. 

Ravelympics 2008 Commenced!

Clearly I am belonging to Team TARDIS!! For those of you who are not Doctor Who Junkies (Which just seems crazy to me)... TARDIS stands for Time And Relative Dimension(s) In Space.

Here are some Team TARDIS stats for you:
Members:235

Projects: 602

Completed as of this post: 34

That is absolutely AMAZING!! Who would have ever guessed that so many people could fit into one little blue Police Box!!!  I believe we are the Largest Team in the Ravelympics!

If your on Ravelry- this is me during the Ravelympics!

I did rise early for the start of the even.. I was going to start on my biggest project the Vertigo Scarf. As per usual... Nothing I ever plan goes the way I think it will....

Here I sit in my comfy recliner with woman's best friend lying peacefully (for a change) and my feet. I can feel his sweet puppy fur on my bare feet as I concentrate on my never before tried slip stitch pattern... When all of a sudden my mommy radar kicked in!

I should have known better!!! My little man had somehow gotten a hold of my nicely wound ball of yarn and was trying to rip it to shreds right at my very feet!  WTF!!!

"What Mom.... I don't know what your talking about."  How innocent he tries to look.

Alright... As I Was!.. I don't have time for this today, go I grab a ball of cotton and start on my petal dishcloth. Since work demands and early (and very long) day. I was only able to get about half done before I had to hoof it.

Brodie set the precedence for the day. I was busy at work from start to well past finished. One cluster case after another. 10-50 (that is a vehicle accident for you laymen), suspicious auto, suspicious person, oh yes, and lets not forget the man with a gun call at Chase Bank! Boy That was an adrenaline pumper!! Thankfully that turned out to be a man with a silver cell phone.  Follow that up with  woman with five children ages 2 1/5 through 6 that were homeless. 

Needless to say I did not get home on time. Nor did I get to watch any part of the Beijing Opening Ceremonies.

I did sit down to watch several SG 1 episodes that I had recorded and finished one project, all but the binding off at 0300 hours (again- that is 3 am for you laymen  ;).

Whoot!!!! First project across the finish line!!

Now...off to work again I go.

How's that lace coming Dawn??

What a froggy week.

It has just been one of those froggy weeks for me. Never never try to knit a complicated pattern when your eyes are trying to close. 

I apparently have too many things going at once again- go figure. I was happily knitting away on my baby surprise jacket thinking I had a handle on it, when I realized something was rotten in Denmark. I was all the way to the neckline decreases and somewhere along the way I lost track of my increases. Now that I have a visual of how it is supposed to look, I realised that I had a stubby sleeve. WTF Chuck! 

So yesterday I ripped the whole damn thing out. Rather than try to figure out where I went wrong, I will just start over with a fresh mind. 

My poor Alien guy ended up with a lopsided face too, I lost track of where I was on my graph and skipped a couple of rows. Don't worry, I am not going to frog the whole thing. I am on motif #4 and I am only ripping back about 4 rows so it is not a tragedy. 

 

Since things were not going so well on those two projects, I worked on my bath mat. I  think I only need about 10 more inches and it should be a good size, I am trying to keep shrinkage in mind for this since it is 100% cotton.    The Rug is only 17 inches wide, I figured this way it will be about the width of floor space between the potty and the tub. Yes I know, not much space at all. I am planning the length for right around 37 inches. So yay- I am almost done with a project! I have found that commercial rugs are either ity bity or they are too wide for my bathroom. I think this one was an after thought in the house, because the other bathroom is much bigger.

 When we first moved in here I called dibs on the big bathroom, but that boy vetoed me. How does that happen? And since when do men need the biggest bathroom, I have way more junk than he does!

I finally gave up on Hobby Lobby getting my beads in. Whoever does the ordering for that department completely sucks!! I ran out to Michael's last night and picked up 5 more of those little flippin' tubes of beads. Paid more than twice what I paid for them at Hobby Lobby, but I am annoyed with them, so for now, they are on my boycott list. To top things off, the damn things, are just a little off in color and size. I am hoping that I am the only one that will notice there are actually 3 different beads in my scarf. But, even so, I happily sat watching the X-Files and stringing beads onto my yarn. Once the beads are strung, the knitting goes PDF ( pretty darn fast) so I should be finishing up the scarf in the next couple of days.  Not that I plan on being able to wearing it this year, I think we had our last freaky snow yesterday, but at least it will be done! 

Raine and I are going to see Horton Hears a Who today, so it will be good theater knitting ;) 

I am really going to work on finishing up some of these things here before I start yet another project. 

Peter Snow Tail

Friday we had another huge snow storm...gotta love the Midwest! The official recording was 10.5 inches but I  am thinking I should have stuck a ruler in my yard to see the actual.

Dawn, here is a big 'ole snow pile for ya after that boy finished cleaning the driveway two days later. Keep in mind we have several piles like this and a lot of it has melted already.  Apparently Saturday night the brothers decided to go 4-wheeling through it. The Goof Balls!

I hope everyone had a Happy Easter!! Mine was uneventful, which is as it should be.

Those folks in the Bluff are industrious. On my way into work yesterday I spied three mature adults building this right across from the station. Too Flippin' Cute! Peter here is taller than the average man, and I know that 3 people can stand behind him without barely being seen.

My co-workers tell me the trio had been out there on the Village Green for over two hours building him.  Since it was such a beautiful day everyone on the east side of town seemed to be out for a walk. And of course, they all stopped to take pictures of Peter Snow Tail with their camera phones.

Thank goodness for camera phones or I would have been pissed about missing a picture of this. 
It will be interesting to see how much of him is left when I go to work today.

Don't you hate it when someone moves your stuff???  Ok so maybe it wasn't the neatest looking conglomerate of things, and maybe I did over take the dining room table but, dammit, we never use that room! 

I think I have mentioned that the brothers play Wii on Saturday nights. I would not think this Saturday would be any different than any other right? Well - I guess it sucked to be me. Apparently the sisters were tired of not being included in the Saturday night ritual and when I came home from work, everyone was playing a dice game on the dining room table!!! 

Where were my projects you ask? Piled on the card table thats where!!!! Is nothing sacred? Men! He would have had a conniption fit if I moved his things!

Since I have ADD this month and am working on so many things at once, I really haven't made a lot of progress on any one thing. My bath mat is coming along, ( my standard mindless project for when I am too tired to concentrate). I am making pretty good progress on that one, so I must have been tired alot this week...LOL

I was seduced into starting the EZ Baby Surprise Jacket by a KAL group on Ravelry.  Yes, I have officially joined the ranks of EZ Knitter! I think it is coming along ok. It is kinda hard to tell. I am not real crazy about how the psso's are looking, but I keep going forward. I am blindly trying to follow Elizabeths pattern because I can't get the visual in my head yet. 

I haven't done squat on my alien piece, I haven't had a real clear mindset to work on it so it just sits for now.

Remember those toe up socks I was trying to work on? Well F@#%  those toe up socks! I realized if something is sitting in ZZZ land for too long, it is just not meant to be. If you hate the process, frog it! Because it will be a UFO forever!

So that is what I did, frog the damn sock that was going no- where, and started one I knew I would like. 

I love this yarn, and I think it was just crying out for a great pair of slouchy socks. :) Now I am a happy sock knitter and have a portable project again.

 Isn't it funny how, when you like what your working on, it goes pretty darn quick.