It's taking me a while to get back into the whole swing of school, homework and chasing kids around. My kids can each have ONE activity plus scouts. I don't know how those uber-parents do it. I go insane with running around just one night a week. Elizabeth's singing in the KC children's choir again and Joey's playing soccer. I do a little running with Jeff's two boys as they're over scheduled beyond belief (not our idea). One good idea was putting my son on Jeff's son's soccer team, so we're cutting down on a little craziness by that combination. I used to make excuses for missing deadlines and forms and payments and all that crap. Now I just say, "I'm extremely disorganized but I mean well" and smile sweetly. So far, so good. I think I'm caught up for today anyway.
I finished Elizabeth's socks! She loves them. I'm very happy and love them too. I sure wish I had more of this colorway! It's from Andrea's Crafty in a Good Way sockyarn. Have I told you lately how much I love this yarn? OH it's pretty, feels good to knit with AND feels good to wear! Specs: sz 1 dpns, co 64, knit for 1 inch in 1X1 rib, knit cuff and top of foot in 3X1 rib, slip stitch heel flap, decrease down to 28 stitches, kitchener together, sigh lovingly, weave in ends, sigh again. purty.
I also cast on and frogged an almost completed mitten. I'm so very proud of myself for STOPPING before finishing the entire freaking item and then frogging as is my usual method. I do love this Mountain Colors Mountain Goat yarn, but have no freaking idea what to do with it. My first venture was to make Jeff socks. They were beautiful, but felted in his boots and then further with each additional wearing. I ended up lightly felting them all over on purpose (since mostly just the feet were felting which was looking funky) and now they're very thick and warm super socks for one of the kids to wear out in their snow boots. I've tried the mitten, but I'm just not a fan of mittens. You'd think I'd have realized that before BUYING a pattern and then knitting one, huh? I really wanted something to make with this yarn besides a scarf. Maybe a hat? It's soft and lovely looking but making me crazy. I've got one skein of dark brown (bark brown colorway) and one of black. I guess it's back into the stash for this stuff.
I also cast on and am turning the heel on a pair of Mountain Colors Bearfoot socks for Jeff. The last ones that were supposed to be for him turned out too small and are mine. (and I love them so) I'm using sz 2 needles on these and they seem to be working up larger. I'll wait till I get the first one done and have him try them out to see.
Can you tell we had a LONG weekend with all the kids? Due to the calendar working out with our weekend with the boys last weekend, and then we get them for Labor Day and then again next weekend, this jar may just be filling up soon. It's a dollar per infraction.
For the squeamish among you, please click away now...
TICK UPDATE:
Thanks to my dear friend Susie, I realized maybe I should take a closer look at the little critters I got myself into last weekend. I had a few bumps that weren't quite like regular bug bites. I did some searching on the internet, and let me tell you, I found many ways of AVOIDING the seed ticks, many many things I'd rather not know about them, for instance, they mate, then burrow into your skin, then lay 3000-6000 babies. EACH momma seed tick is possible of laying THOUSANDS of babies. I wasn't able to determine if they lay them in your skin or not, I'm thinking they drop out and lay them nearby like on your bed or leave them to crawl around on the "host" aka "ME" or something equally as lovely. They also carry both lyme disease and rocky mountain spotted fever. After talking with three different nurse lines and getting three different stories I called our vet. He suggested I buy some flea and tick shampoo for big dogs and wash my whole body in it a few times in the week, soak in almost scalding hot tubs and to not worry too much about the whole thing. yeah. ok. I also did my own version of hack surgery and got rid of the bumps with tweezers and cursing. I pulled one little critter out of a bump on my neck. nice, huh? And let me tell you, I smelled LOVELY for the whole week. I guess part of the magic of the shampoo is it leaves you smelling so chemically horrid that critters die just by breathing the fumes of me. I think I'm over most of the freakout now. I also learned that should anyone find themselves in my position of seeing the critters crawling over ones legs, you should use the sticky side of tape to remove them. I figured a sharp rock and newspaper, fingernails and a shower helped, but didn't do the trick. Next time I'm bringing duct tape to the great outdoors.
We've sent in our bid to the realtor. The place really does have potential, but there's a buttload of work that'll be done before I go hiking off anywhere.
Finally, a much better image to close with. A circle of friends. Tuesday night knitters. We'll sure miss you Gwen!
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