What a Life!

I am going to do a day-in-the-life series on what a school day looks like at our house. We have a routine we follow. Rather than describing our routine in general terms or trying to cover an entire day in a single post, I’m going to do a series of snapshots that pick up from where I left off in our routine in the previous post. Here begins the first post.

This morning Caroline was the first to get up. Usually it’s Joey. We don’t wake our kids up at a certain time – since there is nowhere they need to be by a certain time, we let them get up whenever they’re finished sleeping. But Caroline just moved from her crib to a toddler bed (I finally let go of any hope that she would ever nap again) so Joey may have competition now. Sometimes Joey is up when Steve is downstairs getting dressed, but he is almost always up by the time Steve comes upstairs and starts making breakfast.

Most of the time the kids are up by the time Steve leaves for work. In the summer they tend to get up earlier (even before us), in the winter they sleep in (oh, the luxury – I love those quiet moments!). Ben is always last to get up and last to want to eat breakfast. Breakfast is a requirement at our house, though, so if the kids haven’t eaten breakfast by the time Steve leaves for work, I bring them to the table as soon as he leaves.

I always ask the kids what they want. That doesn’t mean they can have anything. They know that I don’t cook bacon and eggs for them like Daddy does on the weekends, but I am happy to make them toast or cereal or something along those lines. Currently Joey and Caroline like a peanut-butter honey sandwich (on homemade whole wheat bread). Ben likes two slices of toast with peanutbutter. {We go through a lot of peanut butter at our house.} Then they eat bananas and maybe some prunes or a pear or whatever fresh fruit is in season. Joey always likes a glass of milk. Sometimes we get out cheese and summer sausage. But they always have a banana. {We go through a lot of bananas at our house, too.}

As soon as they are all at the table eating, I turn on a Bible story from Your Story Hour. My sister and I listened to our Uncle Dan and Aunt Sue stories over an over again when we were kids. When we came home from school, the first thing we would do would be to turn the story on, wherever we had left off, and the stories ran constantly (we didn’t have a tv). Dad had recorded the stories from the records onto cassette tapes, and as soon as one tape finished, we’d put in the next one.

I know there is all sorts of Bible curriculum out there, starting with preschool. My personal opinion is that children need to know their Bible stories. Once they get into high school you can talk about doctrine and how we know God loves us and everything, but until then, they get all they need to know from Bible stories. In fact, as I listen to the stories with them, I am often amazed at how the stories mirror my own life and my own faith is strengthened. Jacob crossing the river on his way back to Canaan and God shows him the angels before and behind his camp protecting him – God is there helping us even when we don’t realize it. We are never too old for Bible stories.

So our school day begins with a Bible story. Or two. When we were going through the stories of Joseph, the kids were so quiet and intent on the story I often let them listen to more than one (anything for peace and quiet!). But usually everyone is done eating after just one story, and we stop there. It’s time to sing.

When I was a kid, children had Bible lessons they learned each week for church along with a memory verse. I believe it was a three-year cycle, beginning with creation and going through Paul being shipwrecked. There were memory verses that went along with these stories, and Wayne Hooper set them to music. There are three volumes, and we are currently working through the first. We learn a new song every week, and every day we sing our current song and the four previous songs. Sometimes for fun we sing them all.

Then we’re learning various children’s songs I remember from church when I was a kid. I pick one for each child from what I remember singing at their age. Our current selections are Wonderful, Wonderful for Caroline, Jesus Loves Me for Joey, and Oh, How He Loves You and Me for Ben. Previous selections have included favorites like The Wise Man and the Foolish Man and Happy All the Time (in-right, out-right, down-right, up-right). We do a new set of songs every three weeks or so.

Finally, we are learning folk songs (one of the parts of the curriculum we are following – AmblesideOnline). We are working through American Folk Songs for Children by Mike and Peggy Seeger. The tunes are catchy, and they play them with historically authentic instruments on their CD. We have lots of fun substituting our own words in the songs. Today our song was Such a Getting Upstairs which is about not wanting to go to bed, and I sang a verse about Joey not wanting to stop playing with his new combine to do school.

Singing is a great way to begin our day. I started that when I began doing kindergarten with Joey in August. When I was just doing school with Ben, we started with a Bible story from Uncle Arthur. Ben and I just finished the last volume of the series, and Joey – my little action figure vs Ben the contemplater – does much better listening to Uncle Dan and Aunt Sue while he eats breakfast. School with Ben has always been filled with lots of stories – with Joey, I’m happy if I can get him to sit for just one.

So we have our Bible story first, and then singing gets the blood moving. Next I do school with Joey while Ben cleans up the kitchen. But that’s a blog entry for another day.

We live where it gets cold in the winter. As in, we get snow. So hats and mittens and scarves are staples around here.

My knitting career – in terms of mittens and hats for my kids – is rather abbreviated. I’ve knit two or three hats and a pair of mittens for them. They’ve been, shall we say, well loved. As in, they haul them outside and wear them in all types of weather. The mittens I found in the sand box one day. In wet sand. Wet sand ground into the wool. Oh my! I didn’t faint, but I did swear off knitting my children such accessories.

Apparently the pain of that sordid discovery has worn off because this year, I decided to knit each of them a hat and a pair of mittens. I picked the pattern – the Braided Cap from Little Turtle Knits. I picked the yarn – Peace Fleece Worsted. It would be warm and holds up well under duress.

I began my knitting career knitting soakers and longies for my children, so I’ve knit with almost every color of yarn they have. When I visited their site to purchase the yarn, I selected three new-to-me colors: Kalinka Malinka Blue (for Joey), Anna’s Grass Hopper (for Ben, who loves green), and Mourning Dove (an earthy tone with hues of pink for Caroline).

The thing about ordering yarn online, though, is that you never know what the colors really look like until you see them in person.

The yarn arrived today, and I almost fainted.

The colors are gorgeous! I am at a loss for words. Wow!

Here is another thing about knitting: I rarely work with more than one color in a project, mostly because I have a hard time finding colors that go well together. There are only a few multi-color projects I’ve faved on Ravelry, and only one I’ve actually knit because I can never find the right colors.

These three colors from Peace Fleece were meant to be worked together.

I still haven’t decided exactly what I am going to do with them. I have six skeins, which is enough to knit a sweater for myself. Once upon a time I started a Tulips Cardigan for myself (ironically, with Peace Fleece) but stopped when I decided the colors were pretty together but nothing I personally would ever wear, so they became a mitered blanket instead. I am not sure if I want to knit a Tulip Cardigan with these colors, though. Maybe.

I’m thinking wide stripes. A circular yoke. Definitely stockinette stitch. Bottom line – it has to show off the colors. Those beautiful, gorgeous colors. They’re nice individually (and I would still love them knit up for their original purpose), but together, they are phenomenal.

Hallett’s Ledge is history. May it rest in peace.

I stretched it out to see what it might look like when blocked and then measured it…let’s just say, it didn’t make the grade. I might have made it the size I wanted, but it would have been stretched to oblivion. So yesterday I frogged it.

The same evening, I was busy plotting. My new plan? #12 Cabled Cardigan by Kathy Zimmerman from Vogue Knitting Winter 2005/2006.

I made this sweater once. Long, long ago (circa 2008). I made it with worsted weight yarn instead of bulky and thought I was adjusting the pattern sufficiently. But alas, I did not. I ended giving it to my sister – it fit her perfectly.

{Do you notice a pattern here? I don’t see one at all.}

Last night I decided to do a trial run  the sleeve. I worked about 4 inches and measured. The cables pull in a bit before blocking, but when I stretched the fabric to what I thought looked appropriate (opening up the cables without stretching the fabric to death), the measurement is right on. I think the yarn lends itself very well to the design.

I am restyling the design a bit. The original design is oversized with drop sleeves. I want something more fitted with set-in sleeves. I made a similar change the first time I knit this.

The only question that remains is whether I have sufficient yardage. Once I finish the first sleeve, I will estimate the yardage based on that. If I don’t have enough, we’ll be onto Plan C. I am using fresh yarn (vs. frogged and soaked to get out the kinks) on the sleeve. If I have to frog it, the yarn will be in the same shape as that of the rest of the sweater. Otherwise, the sleeves will be knit with fresh yarn (albeit two different dye lots) while everything else is knit with re-purposed yarn, so if there is a difference, it shouldn’t be as noticable.

My fingers are so cold and numb I can hardly knit. I have donned one of my wool hats and am hoping to get some knitting done this afternoon while doing school with Ben. I am also making tea and thinking warm thoughts. Warm optimistic thoughts.

See this? This is a swatch. You knit a swatch. A small piece of fabric using the yarn and stitch pattern you’re going to use. You knit it. You block it. You measure it. You count how many sts and rows per inch. Then you use those numbers along with the measurements of the finished project and you decide how many sts and rows you need.

This swatch is 6 x 6 inches. It has 14 sts and 20 rows over 4 inches, measured in the middle of the swatch. I calculated accordingly.

See this? This is Ben’s sweater. Knit with the same yarn, needles and stitch pattern as that swatch above. Before I blocked it, its measurements were smaller than the ones I wanted for Joey’s sweater. Joey is three years younger than Ben and wears four sizes smaller than what Ben wears.

I blocked the sweater to Ben’s measurements, but was stretched tight like the skin on a drum. I reblocked it, allowing it to relax and now it fits Joey. Sort of. The sleeves are rather constricting, and the body is a little long. The yoke is about 3 inches deep and it should be more like 4 or 5.

See this? This is Ben’s sweater. I gave up on the stitch pattern. I decided that perhaps the garter rib pattern had contracted because, well, it’s garter and rib. So I went with St st. I had also done a swatch with St st, and I recently knit myself a sweater using this same yarn in a different color and it fits perfectly.

Today I was 4 inches short of finishing the first sleeve for Ben’s sweater. His arm measures 5″ at the wrist and 7″ at the upper arm. I took my gauge and calculated enough sts to have 2″ of ease at the wrist and the upper arm. I tried it on him to see how much further I needed to go. It was skin tight. Like leggings. Or pantyhose (if you know what pantyhose are). I measured him two days ago so you can’t say, Oh, well, he’s grown.

The biggest knitting mantra you will hear over and over again is, Knit a swatch. Swatches tell you all sorts of things. They tell you what the fabric will look like in the finished garment. They tell you what your gauge is with that yarn and those needles. They tell you how the fabric acts after it’s been washed.

You wanna know what I say? Swatches lie. They lie, lie, lie. If you want to know how your fabric will change with blocking, knit a swatch, measure it, block it without pinning, and measure it again. That will tell you how your fabric will change with blocking. Other than that, measure as you go. Measure, measure, measure.

Swatches are nothing more than a knitter’s attempt to make science out of what is actually an art. We write patterns based on gauge, and we calculate all sorts of measurements and tell you all sorts of things about what the finished project will look like. But in the end, knitting is an art. Nothing more, nothing less.

P.S. I’ve known all this for some time. The truth about swatches. I still swatch.

Which one doesn’t match?

I’ve put these three balls in all sorts of different light at different times of the day and tried to pick which one doesn’t match. I have a 100% failure rate – every time I pick, it’s never the one that’s from a different dye lot.

Obviously the UPS man and the package he brought did not release me to frog that sweater. Now I have to decide if I really want to frog it or if I should just finish it up.

This sweater may be going into hibernation. That’s all I’m sayin’…

I’m sitting on the couch, knitting a pair of socks blogging while I wait for the UPS man.

Two years ago, Twist Collective published the pattern for a sweater I immediately fell in love with Hallett’s Ledge. I ordered the yarn the pattern called for – Rowan Felted Tweed Aran, colorway Heather – and got the pattern. I was head over heels over the design, but I didn’t cast on until last March. I quickly finished the back, then the two fronts, and then the sweater got buried by other knitting projects. I had four balls of yarn left.

A couple weeks ago, I got out the sweater again and began knitting the sleeves. When I finished the first sleeve, I had two balls of yarn left. Yes, that’s right, 2 balls. Meaning I’d used up half the remaining yarn and would not have enough yarn to do the ribbing for the buttonband and neckband once the sweater was seamed. After a quick review of other Hallett’s Ledge projects on Ravelry, I saw I was not alone.

So I ordered more yarn. Odds were pretty high that the yarn would be from a different dye lot, but since the ribbing was a different texture and a different angle, I thought that I might be able to get away with it. The yarn was on closeout at Webs so the price was right. {I ordered a couple other things, too.}

In the mean time, I’ve been thinking about this sweater.

I’m pleased with how the sleeve came out. I used a larger needle for the ribbing so it doesn’t pull in so tight, and I used a smaller needle for the garter section between the rib and cables so it wouldn’t ripple. That was mostly why I got hung up on it when I finished the body last spring. I was afraid the ribbing would pull in too much and the garter would never block even because it was too loose. When I began knitting the sleeves, I decided I would frog the body pieces from the garter down and re-knit that portion in the other direction with the change in needle sizes as for the sleeves.

But then I ran out of yarn.

And I began to think that this really isn’t going to be a flattering design on me. The last thing I need is a sweater with a bunch of ribbing that clings to my midsection. Even if I re-knit the garter and rib in the body pieces, they would be shorter than they are now as re-knitting them on larger needles would use more yarn. Being shorter is not necessarily going to mean more flattering.

So I started thinking of what I might do instead. What else might I do with this yarn? I did a search on Ravelry for projects designed with this yarn and I came across this {Ravelry link} – a top down v-neck pullover in simple St st. It starts at the top, so I could knit the yoke, then the sleeves, and then the body until I ran out of yarn. A plan. Yes, a plan.

Then I began hoping that the extra yarn wouldn’t match. The dye lots would be too different and it just wouldn’t work. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about whether Hallett’s Ledge would be flattering on me or not. It simply wouldn’t work. I could frog and re-knit without regret.

And so I sit on the ledge…waiting for the UPS man to bring my yarn. Should I frog or shall I finish?