What a Life!

Generally I’m not one for photography assignments, but this one actually sounds like fun. The America at Home photo project is going on this week and has daily assignments from taking pictures of your family having dinner to capturing images of the early morning rush to get out the door. I may not get anything done in time to submit it, but I am thinking I’ll do something on a similar theme and post it over on Flickr.

[And yes, I hate it when people write blog posts about other things going on around the web. But this is an exception rather than a rule. I’m just too busy finishing up all sorts of projects to blog about anything of significance today. I should have some really good pictures of finished knitted items soon. Really.]

I wrote 9/16 as the date all day until this evening when I glanced at a calendar and saw it was actually the 17th and oh my goodness! It’s my mom’s birthday today! Ach! But by the time I finished with my evening activities, it was too late to call. So I really didn’t forget – I just didn’t remember in time.

Happy birthday, Mom! I know it’s not the greatest picture, but I guess you and I are the ones who are busy doing things rather than sitting around waiting to be photographed. It was one of the best pictures I have that caught the spirit of who you are. I hope you had a great day (hopefully Dad didn’t forget), and I promise I will send you a card. You’ll just have to pretend it’s on time, right?

This week’s official theme is going to be cleaning out. As in, decluttering.

I still haven’t done anything with our old desktop computer, including the monitor which still works. I had thought I might try to strip it and sell the individual parts like memory and such, but I really don’t know what I’m doing so that probably wouldn’t be a good idea. I did find out this weekend that my favorite local charity – People’s City Mission – accepts old computers, both working and not working. So we will again have space under our second desk, where all of that stuff is being stored.

I sold some stuff on ebay, sold some stuff (and still have stuff for sale) over on the diapering board. Hopefully that diapering stuff will move this week and I can get that cleared out.

As for toys…I think we have way too many toys. To make things even worse, we recently inherited the toys Steve’s mom had over at her house and have given to Steve’s brother. Some are duplicates, and some that we already had are similar (like shaped blocks that fit in holes – stars, squares, triangles, and such – only need one of those, thank you).

I’m going to start by taking Ben downstairs while Joey is asleep and asking him which toys he might give to someone else who doesn’t have any toys. We’ll see what he comes up with. I think he needs to learn to give to others who are less fortunate than him, and it also may help if he notices some are missing and wants to know where they are (not that he’ll notice or anything – we have so many). Then after the boys are in bed one evening, Steve and I will go through them and make some decisions of what stays and what goes.

Really, it we don’t have as many toys as anyone else I know, sad to say. But I still think we have too many. We have more than Steve or I ever had as a kid. We have way more than my mom ever had when she was a kid. Mom had her sister’s old doll and a doll to call her own. She shared a bike with three siblings, including two boys. And their “sandbox” was little blocks of wood they used as “bulldozers” to make roads out in the driveway on the farm. Granted, they lived on a farm so they could go roam the pasture and play with the new kittens and all. But still…

Neat Repeatz is coming up and I’ll take the toys there first. Then I’ll retrieve anything that doesn’t sell and take it to my favorite local charity. They are so gracious when you bring them things. Some charities I’ve donated to have been so rude, such as our local Goodwill up on 27th Street. Never again will I donate anything to them. My favorite charity even takes unusable clothing – as in, t-shirts with holes in them and such – and sells them as rags. They gave away 43,000 clothing items in August, according to my knitting friend who works there and was at our Knitting Guild meeting this weekend.

I’ll be finishing up a number of knitting projects as well this week. I have a few that just need a little bit of finishing work done, and one that almost off the needles. But more about that later…when I have pictures.

Until then, happy Monday to all!

Ah! The story of a little sweater.

I started making it, well, way back at the beginning of this year. It was a little pullover for my cousin Heidi’s little boy who is a couple weeks younger than Joey.

The yarn was from Knitpicks – Swish Superwash – color: Deep Ocean.

The design was essentially my own – a simple raglan using Elizabeth Zimmerman’s percentage method. The stitch pattern was from something I saw in Vogue Knitting – a little baby jacket in an issue last winter, perhaps?

I knit it flat from the bottom up. [I hate knitting in the round.] Here it is, right after I joined the sleeves with the body.

In order to continue working flat rather than in the round, I made a split for the neckline and started it when I joined everything together. The neckline, including the slit, is lined with a continuous attached I-cord. Here is a picture of the i-cord in progress.

Here it is with the neckline done, ready for seaming.

I did provisional cast ons at the bottom edges of the body and sleeves and then went back and added an attached I-cord there after everything was seamed so the edge would be continuous. (The rust yarn in the picture above is the provisional cast-on).

I had it all completed – i-cords around the lower edge and sleeves and everything – way back in April when my parents came to visit. All completed except for some what to fasten the neckline together along the slit.

I wanted to use a zipper. A zipper with metal teeth. But who would sell a zipper exactly as long as I needed it – 5″? And even if I found one, this yarn is known to shrink lengthwise when the garment is washed unless it is cared for properly. Not everyone is willing to give a little sweater, with so much time put into it, the proper care required. Would it be used once, washed, and then ruined?

I tried buttons. They were ugly. I could have purchased buttons, but I didn’t like the loops any more than I liked the yarn buttons. Yuck!

They didn’t stay on right anyway, so I took all of that back off.

And the little sweater sat in a closet and waited.

Then this week, the weather turned cooler. It was time to deliver the little sweater so it could be worn by the little boy I made it for.

I went to Hancock fabrics, and they had a jean zipper – with metal teeth – exactly the length that I needed. And I decided that what happened to the sweater after I gave it to the recipient (as a general rule) was none of my concern (though I will include care instructions).

And so this afternoon, I sewed on the zipper.

I must confess, I kind of like how it looks. In fact, it looks almost exactly as I imagined it when I went to buy the yarn.

Sometimes it just takes the pressure of a deadline to make something come out right, eh?

There are too many crazy things going on right now – including a $1225 dental bill for me. Today’s weather is crisp and sunny, reminding me of fall, so I shall talk about knitting (and try to forget everything else).

This is the little sweater I’m working on for my niece, Susan Elizabeth, who is set to arrive around October 26th (same due date I had with Joey a year ago). It’s blocked and seamed and ready for a crocheted edge which I will do using the dark pink yarn.

This is the stripey sweater for Joey I talked about here. I have the first half of the front finished (shown here) and have started the second half.

I’m working on sweaters for the boys for this fall. I cast on my version of IK Fall 2007’s Cobblestone Pullover for Ben using the yarn from the Charcoal Slogalong. This project interrupted the stripey sweater above for practical reasons – I needed something simple to take with me on our trip to Oklahoma for Grandma’s funeral. This was a very good choice, both then and now, considering all the craziness at the moment. The downside, blogwise, is that it is simply too boring to photograph, so no pictures.

Finally, this is a picture of Joey’s fall/winter wardrobe. I dug through Ben’s old clothes and found some long-sleeve 2T shirts which are the same size as the 18-month long tee-shirts a la no graffiti that I found the other day at Target (oddly enough, somehow everything seems to shrink with washing so one-size down for used clothing seems to be the rule rather than the exception).

I bought six shirts but will be returning four of them. They happen to be navy, dark red, grey and white. I seem to be tired of those colors as they are about the only colors I am usually able to find in plain shirts so Ben wears them a lot. Ironically, the yarn I bought on sale earlier this summer coordinates very well with these shirts, further proving my fatigue with those colors. [For details about the yarn, click on the picture.]

The yarn will be knit into Longies which are wool pants which double as clothing and diaper covers for cloth diapered children. The yarn is grouped with the shirts the pants will be worn with. Ah! Nice browns and earth tones for this season. No red, navy, grey or white (oh? did I already mention that? I must be really tired of those colors).

Not to worry – the sweaters I’m making Joey including the Stripe Sweater and Cobblestone Pullover knock-off (both discussed above) will be worn either with jeans or corduroy pants. Something about a knitted sweater being paired with knit pants just doesn’t work for me unless they’re part of a complete outfit. The yarn I’m using is the wrong color anyway. The longies and shirts above will just be everyday clothes. The other sweaters will be when we want to dress up and make people think we’re normal. Just saying is all.

This is my dear grandma who passed away Saturday night. This particular picture shows where with a quilt I made for her and gave her when we saw her over Thanksgiving in 2005. It is the most recent picture I have of her.

We were busy with weekend festivities, though we were thinking in the back of our minds about the funeral and everything that goes with that.

Today I went shopping for clothes as I have nothing suitable to wear to the funeral with a nursing baby. Ben also needs nice clothes – he’s outgrown the ones he wore to my other grandmother’s funeral in December. And Joey? I need to dig through the hand-me-downs once more to see if there is something of Ben’s that might fit him and look nice. Otherwise I’ll be heading back out to do some more shopping once Steve gets home this evening.

I hate shopping for clothes. That and our simple lifestyle explain why we have nothing to wear. Why can’t they make simple, nice-looking clothes for little boys? Everything has to be covered with graffiti – trucks, tractors, sports figures, Spiderman. I found a pair of corduroy pants for Joey that I absolutely love, but no shirt to go with them. If it was only winter – then the boys would have nice little hand-knit sweaters to wear. But alas! it is still summer.

Joey is crying, and I need to wash the clothes we do own so we can wear them.

May you rest in peace, dear Grandma.