The Movies

Has this ever happened to you? You are watching a movie that you are really not interested in for whatever reason then you notice that someone in knitting in the move and suddenly the movie is a whole lot more interesting? That happened to me this weekend. In honor of Memorial Day my hubby decided that on Friday we would watch movie. I was really tired when we started to watch and was working on the second everlasting sock when I noticed that the mother was spinning. It caught my attention a little, but then when I noticed someone else knitting in the movie it grabbed me a little more. That is until I fell asleep. Now I have to go and rent the movie just so I could see what they were working on.

I am sure there are plenty more movies where characters are knitting, but these are the only other two I can think of off the top of my head.

• Chicken Run

cast of chicken run

• Wallace and Gromit
• Hoodwinked there is a scene where grammy looks like she is knitting...that is close enough for me.

Did you notice the children's theme here. Unless it is geared towards children, I have not seen it lately.

Two, Four, Six, Eight

I finished the wash clothes for my son's teacher. This project was just the thing I needed to get over the whole second sock thing.






In fact after finishing the wash clothes I have been knitting away on the second sock, whenever I am not in the house. It is now my portable project. I finally am comfortable enough with the pattern that I don't have to work on it at home. I'd show you a new picture of it, but I think that it is only a little more than two or three inches past the last time I showed you.

I'll put up the details of the wash clothes in my finished projects. If you want the details click on the link in the sidebar.

Who's the Big Dog?

I found this over at Knit Kitty Knit.

Your Ideal Pet is a Big Dog

You're both energetic, affectionate, and a bit goofy. And neither of you seem to mind very slobbery kisses!

What's Your Ideal Pet?

Pretty accurate if you ask me. With the exception of the slobbery kisses part (at least not from her).

So Fresh, So Clean

I am almost done with the wash clothes for my son's teachers.

Do you want to know the thing I love about these little squares o' cotton? They are a great opportunity to try out new stitch patterns. Though I admit, out of the seven (almost eight) that I have made, three were done in stitch patterns that I was already familiar with.

Initially I was going to make two of each stitch pattern. One for each teacher, but I quickly grew tired of that. That is why there are two in the basket-weave pattern. The other stitch pattern that I already am familiar with was the broken rib. I don't know if you remember these.




Do you remember the ball of white that I was going to try and dye myself. Well it is the ball of pink that was on top of the first picture up there. It was so not supposed to be pink. When I pulled it out of the dye, it was this very deep deep purple. When I was rinsing it out it bled like there was no tomorrow and this is what I ended up with.


Not bad if this was the color I was trying to make. If you look at the top left of the ball of yarn, you can see a smidge of purple.

Second Sock?

I so get it now. The whole SSS (second sock syndrome) thing. I have kind of lost my knack for knitting lately. I now know that it is not me, it is the SSS.


These had been my only project for at least three weeks and this is all I have to show for it.


I so need something else. And so I introduce you to this:


Let me start by telling you who they are for. They are end of the school year gifts for my son's teachers. These two women are amazing and I really wanted to give them something personal without getting too personal. Last year I was thumbing through a magazine and one of the projects was face clothes given with some nice soap. So when I was trying to think of something to do for the teachers, I remembered this. The funny thing is now that I am working on them, I started to notice that a lot of blogs are referring to some dish/face clothes from Mason Dixon Knitting. I now HAVE to get the book.


Each of the skeins is going to be a face cloth for the teachers, with the exception of the white. I think I am going to try to dye it myself to see the effect. But who knows when that will happen. This is a great project to break the monotony of the sock thing.

Where it all Started

I remember when I was little I would watch as my grandmother would knit or crochet and each and everytime I would ask if she could teach me. Each time she was knitting I would try and would end up just winding the yarn around the right needle thinking that I was “knitting”. When I would finally realize that I did not have a knitted piece but just one long piece of yarn my grandmother would kindly pull out a crochet hook and let me at it. I was always so proud of my long 39825072739 inch of crochet chain. Eventually I could make little crocheted squares, but that was pretty much it.

My grandmother was never able to successfully teach me to knit. It wasn’t until I was pregnant with my second son in January of 2003 when I got this magazine in the mail.


When I was going through the magazine, I came across this article here.



After all these years, I finally decided it was time for me to learn how to knit. Now the cast on method in the magazine was for some reason not clicking in my brain so I went to a local craft store and purchased this to help me with the parts that I was not understanding from the magazine


From those two sources I learned enough to make a couple of scarves. At that point, knitting was just something that I would do occasionally. Afterall, I had a moss stitch scarf that took me a good year or so to make because I would only work on it occasionally.

The next “big” knitting project that I gave myself was when I found out that my best friend was pregnant. I decided that I would knit her little one a baby blanket. I found out that she was pregnant in January of 2004 and she was not due until September. I went and purchased the yarn and a pattern book and started right away. I think I finished the blanket while she was in labor at the hospital. It is not that I was not working on it, I just wasn’t one who knit everyday. I would knit when I was in the mood and I was a very slow knitter. In fact when I went to the hospital and gave her the blanket I was in such a rush that I forgot to weave in the ends.

Later that month I was at the market and I saw this magazine.


After looking in it I decided that it was going to be a handknit Christmas from me. That is when the whole felted bag disater happened. I made two other sweaters from that mag. As it turned out I did not give out any handmade gifts that year. It was way too embarrassing. Though I did make socks for my grandparents (they were knit flat and seamed up the back).
Anyway, it was during this time that I transformed from the person who just knew how to knit to the person who loves to knit.

These are the remains from one of the sweaters from that Christmas.

Happy Mom's Day!

Happy mom's day to all!

This morning I woke up to my hubby telling my sons to shhhhhh, your supposed to let mom sleep in today. Then he made me a wonderful breakfast omelet and coffee. Then he did the unthinkable for him.

Yes, those are his hands washing dishes. Not mine. I think this only happens once, maybe twice a year. He was the one who even told me to take a picture for prosperity.

I do have to thank hubby though. Without him I would not be what I am today, a Mommy. Thanks Hubby!

please excuse the self portrait

My mom's day actually started on Friday when my son's school had a Mother's Day Tea. The first thing that I opened was a card that his teacher had transcribed for each of her students. It brought a tear to my eye when I first read it.

I will let you know this, there is one slight inaccuracy on it (like I am not 21 years old, but I once heard someone's once say that after you hit 30, it just stops, so maybe I am still 21, after all these years). But did you see the nice things that he said about me? That is what really brought the tears on. He thinks I look pretty everyday and he thinks I do wonderful stuff for him. There are no words that could describe how good reading this made me feel.

I had a very good time at the tea and received this for a gift:

Can you tell what it is? Besides a plate that is. If you are familiar with the whole Star Wars thing then you would know that it is an Imperial Walker. Yes, my son, who is five, is obsessed with anything Star Wars. On Friday, his teacher, who happens to also be a Michelle, watched and then laughed with me when I opened this. You see, every week they have a letter of the week and the children are supposed to try and bring a share toy that correlates with the letter of the week if they can. And let me tell you, B sure can. Let's see. For C he brought a Clone Trooper, for E he brought in someone from the Empire, for G he brought in General Grevious, for R he brought in a Rebel Troop, you get the idea. It has been that way since the beginning of the school year.

For back to school night a couple of months back he even made this for his display:

All I could do is giggle when I see it. If you look and use your imagination like he did you could see the legs. I am so glad that he made me this plate. I am going to cherish this forever. And I do sincerely mean that.

I know that some of the things that kids come across in life are going to just be fads and this may be one of them. But now I know that I will always have something to remember this phase (or not) of his life to remember.

Everlasting Socks

It has been a little crazy in casa de Michelle lately. Though I have been knitting, it seems as though it is the season where anything and everything other than knitting has been coming up and unfortunately been a priority. Who knew that clothes had to be washed, houses had to be cleaned, & children had to be fed on a regular basis?

I have been knitting, though not as much time has been spent doing it as I would like. My latest project is another pair of socks. ** But they have not been very fun for me to knit. There may be a couple of factors that may be influencing this. The first being that I can not see the stitch pattern very well in the socks and the second reason is this is the first project that I have ever worked on size US 0/2mm needles, they seem like they are taking forever. I have been working on them for a little over a week and this is all I have.

Another 1.5 inches and I can finally do the heel. Hopefully when I get to the ankle things will speed up like there is no tomorrow. I think I now understand that whole second sock syndrome.

Spring seems like it is finally here and I am itching to make some sort of tank. I have some yarn that I got from Elann during my stash replenishment. ** It is Lana Grossa Toccata. I think it will be perfect for some sort of tank or halter or something like that. As soon as I finish the everlasting socks, I will play with the yarn and figure out what I think it wants to be. Though I have know to not understand the whole yarn language very well.

** Pictures were supposed to be here, but blogger is acting up and I can't seem to upload any. I am just lucky I was able to get even one in this post.

Shhhhhh

Have you ever had a day when everything seemed to be going right and then you go and just mess it up? I had just that kind of day yesterday. Yesterday when hubby was getting ready for work before the crack o' dawn, I woke up. Since I couldn't fall back asleep, I went downstairs, knit, and caught up on my TV. It seemed that I was by myself for an eternity because I literally have no more shows recorded on the TiVo.

About 7:30 the kiddos woke up and so then we went about our day. It was nice & peaceful. I was doing some stuff around the house, they did not fight (all that much). It was a good day. I had to meet someone in the evening to straighten some stuff out. It was about 6 dinner was ready, but I just had to take care of this thing, so I packed the kids off in the car, we went took care of what I had to, then realized that I needed gas (&%^*%$%^&!!!!!). We were out of the house for no more than 25 minutes. As I am pulling up to the house I look to the back of the car and realize that both boys are out. That is right, it was 6:20PM and both my boys were asleep. I tried to wake them because they had not had dinner yet, to no avail (darn). I put the boys in bed and I did not know what to do with myself. Afterall, it was just such an unusual event that both the kids were in bed.

So I opened a bottle of wine and was relaxing. Then like a dumb*##, I called hubby to let him know. No sooner than I put the phone down, B was standing right behind me. Which wasn't so bad, he and I had a nice romantic dinner. Or as he put it, "Can't we just call it a date or something, mom."

So, B and I had a nice date. I drank wine, he drank juice from a wine glass, "Just like when you and daddy go and eat dinner out?"

Then after dinner, K starts screaming bloody murder because he was left in his room all by himself. This went on for a good long while.

The moral of the story is this. When things are going right, don't call anyone to tell them, it will just F#@^ the whole thing up. Like the "felted" bag that I made right here.


It was the first time I was trying to felt and before we had anything other than the craft stores out here. I went in and asked the lady what to use and she took me over to the Lion Brand Wool-Ease. This stuff is made not to felt, I was a new knitter, this was among my first projects. Who knew? And yes, both my boys could fit in the "felted" bag.

Epitome of Laziness

Here is a picture of the epitome of me being lazy.

Yeah, that's right, rather than frog the previous project into nice little balls of yarn. I am going straight from one project to another. It reminds me of my younger son learning to crawl. When he was first learning to crawl we would put his toys a few feet away from him in order to get him to crawl to them. Which he did, sort of. He would do the commando crawl until he was just within an arms length of the toy, then he would extend his arms as far as he could possibly reach to get to the toy. He would choose to do this each and every time. And each and every time we would joke about how lazy he was being. We really don't know where he could have gotten any of that from though. It is not as though he has a mom who knits straight from one disastrous project to the next without winding the yarn back into balls or anything.

This history of this project goes a little something like this. Some time last year I had made a long black rectangular wrap/scarf for my mom. During a one-week period a couple of months back I saw no fewer than three different family members wearing it. I had made a comment to my mom that the wrap had come in very handy. She had agreed and then mentioned how my grandmother had really liked it and how I should make one for her, but that it should be blah, blah, blah, triangular, blah, blah, blah. All I heard was triangular so initially I was trying to make a triangular wrap for my grandmother. It didn't work and so now it is going to be a long rectangular wrap in a nice little basket weave pattern.

PS It took me way too long to upload the images from blogger. I had to retry a gazillion times over the course of a couple of hours.

Under the Sea

It was a very busy weekend. Fortunately, I was not so busy as I could not finish these.

They are Pomatomus from Knitty. It was funny because as I was knitting these I was stressed the entire time. Actually I was stressed the entire time I was knitting the second sock because I was afraid I was going to run out of yarn, which I did. I hate when that happens, so close yet so far.

Now it is time for the test. Can you tell where I ran out of yarn and went to my plan B? (Plan B is where I ran out of yarn for such a small portion of the sock that rather than going to the LYS where said yarn was purchased I used the reinforcement yarn that came with the yarn and fudged it. I never said it was a brilliant plan, but it worked).

I will give you a hint. Here is a close up of approximately where plan B went into effect.


Can you tell now? And on which sock?

By just glancing at the socks I can't tell, but that is not saying much. I am sure you have a much better eye for detail than I do. Here I switched the socks around. Can you tell now?

Ok, I will tell you. On the toe of the sock on my left foot. So in the picture immediately above, it is the sock on the right (the one without the bubbles coming out of the toe).

I also got to try the Twisted German Cast On for these puppies. As for casting on, I have to say that these are the best I have tried so far for socks. I had no problem getting them on over my heel.

And finally here is a picture of Tommy attacking the toe that has used plan B.

By the way, I used the fish tank as the background after all the name of the socks have to do with fish, just not the friendly ones we have in our tank.