good enough to eat

another slow day at work today, so since I can't knit at my desk, I had some fun at becomeanmm.com. Click there and you can make your own personal M&M, choose from a plain, peanut or almond body in whatever color you want, then add expressive eyes and mouths, accessories and shoes, then place your M&M in the background of your choosing! Soooo ridiculous and fun. Here are the M&M people I made for Wes and I ... can you tell I am anxious for our vacation to come?? can't wait to get by the pool with a tiki drink in my hand! for now I'll have to live vicariously through my M&M creation!


UPDATED THURSDAY, MARCH 29, 2007 at 4:45PM TO ADD:
finished my work early today so had some fun with more M&M friends ... can you identify these four of my nearest and dearest? there seems to be a trend in footwear as well ...

reprieve

took a little break from knitting the last couple weeks because Wes switched to day shift and he's been home every night. yay! also, Tia and I have ramped up our running program in preparation for the Santa Ynez Wine Country half-marathon on May 12 and by the time I get home from running most nights I just want to eat and then pass out. Blogging has also been on hold because work has been totally insane ... However, I have a couple of projects still going and this weekend when Wes and I flew to Arizona for Taylor's adoption party I got back on track and work today is slow, so I'm playing catch-up on lots of things!
Mom came up to visit a couple weeks ago after we went to see Wicked at the Pantages Theatre in LA. She'd been talking about wanting a shawl for a while, so I took her with me to AFY to pick out the yarn herself. I am glad I did because I never would have picked out what she picked (Louisa Harding: Impressions. click here to see Mom's color choice - it's #1), but it has been really fun to work with and I think it will be gorgeous and go with lots of items she already has in her closet. No real pattern for a shawl (sort of patterned after this one but with different yarn, larger needles and no buttons); I did a swatch to figure out how many stitches I would get per inch and figured out the cast-on from there. Now I just have to knit (in moss stitch on 10.5 needles) until it is long enough. Hopefully we have enough yarn already - it was kind of pricey!
I am also working on finishing up my first two pairs of socks. I got some more navy yarn to finish up Wes' socks when Mom and I made our AFY trek and in the interim I have been working on the great bittersweet socks for Grandma, although I've only been getting in a few rows at a time on lunch breaks lately. Hope to finish them soon because it's starting to warm up around here and the need for socks to wear to bed won't be as urgent.
On Friday I joined a KAL (knit-a-long) with the Sexy Knitters Club to motivate me to cast on for Sahara. I've had the yarn for this since the Super Bowl Sunday sale at AFY, but I am a little intimidated by the crochet cast-on and mostly haven't had the time. the KAL officially starts April 1, so I'm going to try and finish up the socks before then, but no promises since we're packing packing packing to move to a more affordable apartment next week (yay for saving money for a real house!). Knitting has always been more of a leisurely, relaxing project for me, so I am not going to kill myself trying to get projects finished instead of packing, but I do need a break from boxes and sorting every once in a while.
p.s. after the party on Saturday I had my first attempt at teaching when Renee asked me to help her get started on a scarf. Her girls came to her asking if they could all knit together, which is awesome, except first Renee has to learn how! She was a fast learner, I just had to help with the cast-on mostly! I love new knitters :)

married to bigfoot

i sat down to do some knitting last night in between baking and cleaning and getting ready to move, but I didn't get too far on Wes' blue socks because I ran out of yarn! I guess for Wes and his big feet I need to buy more yarn or not make them so high at the top because with his giant instep, I can't get both socks out of one ball of yarn ... this was a big 100g/200yd ball too, but maybe next time I will try larger needles. The recommended needle size for this is 8, but I was using 4 as the pattern recommended (though the pattern also recommended worsted weight). Maybe a compromise of size 6 needles will stretch the yarn farther.

a hat for me!

stayed up way too late last night finishing up this hat ... the pattern is the Adults-Only Kittyville hat from the first Stitch-N-Bitch, but I left off the ears and braided the cords instead of making an i-cord. I know how to make i-cords (did it on Mom's neckwarmer), but at 11:30 last night, I didn't really have the energy ... zzzzzzzz ...
Stephanie Pearl-McPhee is of the impression that a hat is a better first project than a scarf because scarfs are just long and boring while hats are over quicker, plus allow you to learn new skills. Although I learned on scarves and completed three before I couldn't take it any more, I am way more enjoying my new foray into hats, socks and half-gloves for smallish quick projects. So far in my knitting life, I have not started a project just to put it away when I get distracted by something else for a long period of time (yes, my brown sweater is taking forever, but so far, I do keep going back to it!) but I must confess that there are two half-finished scarves sitting in my yarn bin that I can't bring myself to complete.
p.s. as I mentioned yesterday, the hat yarn is Lorna's Laces bittersweet worsted weight and I am making socks out of it too!!

my own personal "one with the jam"

Saturday Wes and I drove down to the Staples Center with a buy-one-get-one-free coupon in hand for the Kings game vs. the Nashville Predators. The coupon (and a low-attendance due to an afternoon game the same weekend as the LA Marathon and the Kings general suckyness) enabled us to get ice-level tickets behind the Kings home goal. From this vantage point we had a great view of seven of the nine goals scored in the game (6 from Nashville, yeah!) including two awesome goals from Paul Kariya to make my stalker trip complete and happy. I also realized that Peter Forsberg is one scary Swede when he's skating full speed towards his opponents goal. He already scared me, but seeing him from that angle brought new levels of terror.
I brought along Wes' second navy sock to work on during the 65 mile trip and made significant progress, I also knit on the way home and my 130 miles of knitting produced a too-tall top of sock. oops. When I sat down yesterday to do the heel and gusset, I realized I had knit an extra half-inch on the top of the sock. I have some more heel decreases left to do before I knit a jillion rounds for his huge foot, but I was anxious to move on to another project last night. I couldn't take any more of the plain blue on tiny (size 4) needles so I cast on Lorna's Laces Shepherd Worsted weight (color bittersweet) on two size 8 circulars to knit myself a hat with seed stitch edging and ear flaps ... soo cute. the color is the same I am making my second pair of socks out of too. I am almost to the decreases on the hat, so hopefully with a couple good nights of knitting tonight and tomorrow while Wes is at work (only FOUR more night shifts left!) I can get his socks and my hat done this week and get on to finish that second pair of socks too. I have half decided to shelve my brown sweater until after summer as it is getting warmer here and I have two other spring/summer sweaters I want to make. I checked out Wendy Bernard's blog this morning and I swear she lives here in town. I already thought she lived somewhere in the county due to comments about local places (Ronald Regan Library in Simi, Santa Barbara Zoo, pictures of the Ventura pier, etc) but in yesterday's post there was a picture of an AFY shopping bag full of yarn! I feel like a bit of a stalker realizing this (too much stalking for one weekend!), but mostly I am soo anxious to knit up my Sahara now. She had pictures of more finished Saharas from other knitters and I want mine! I already decided I am going to do the sleeveless style and have bought (more than) enough yarn to complete it. Now I just need to cast on and get started once I finish the socks and hats and more socks I have planned ... better do it soon or I will be shelving Sahara to go back to the brown hoodie in September!

it's true, I hate being bored!

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You appear to be a Knitting Adventurer. You are through those knitting growing pains and feeling more adventurous. You can follow a standard pattern if it's not too complicated and know where to go to get help. Maybe you've started to experiment with different fibers and you might be eyeing a book with a cool technique you've never tried. Perhaps you prefer to stick to other people's patterns but you are trying to challenge yourself more. Regardless of your preference, you are continually trying to grow as a knitter, and as well you should since your non-knitting friends are probably dropping some serious hints, these days.http://marniemaclean.com Take this quiz! Quizilla | Join | Make A Quiz | More Quizzes | Grab Code

no TV for kitchener stitch

last night I finished up the first one of my second pair of socks (pink and orange!), I can do toe decreases with the TV on, but had to pause it (yay TiVo!) do do the kitchener stitch to close the toe. but it looked great - the first kitchener stitch I did that turned out right (the navy blue on Wes' sock makes it very hard to see the stitches so I messed up a little bit on that one). I absolutely love this yarn I am using (I keep forgetting to take a picture!) but I think I might go get another skein today at lunch and make a hat out of it. I still want to make myself a hat like the pink one I made for Marge before it gets hot again. anyway, since I keep forgetting to take pictures of my new socks, here is a picture of Reese Witherspoon at the Oscars on Sunday (I watched the Oscars with Stine while knitting the pink and orange sock, does that count?) and I totally want her hair cut ... what do you think?? my side-swept bangs aren't really working for me anymore so I am ready for something different! but if it doesn't look cute, then I will definitely need that new hat!