30 Days until Christmas (minus two weeks, and a few days)

How long does it take me to write a blog post? well, today is 25 days until Christmas, and I started on 30 days 'til...

I keep telling myself that I'll be able to finish my knitting projects in time for Christmas, but when I look at a calender I feel nervous and nervouser.

I knit a little on the voodoo last night (while Big J was driving us to Lion King!). Meant to take a picture of them, to show y'all the colors, but I woke up and it's all cloudy and raining. If the sun comes out in the next week, I'll snap a quick pic.

About the other projects...clapotis probably has one more inch to it. That's going slow even considering that I don't have much time for knitting. However...I found my knitting needles! The number 10's that I need for the Big Grey Blob sweater, so I can start to work on that. This morning, me and the little kids all went into the craft room, and I took everything out of every yarn related container (mostly plastic bags. what can i say, my stash containers are waaayy cheap) until I found them! found them in the knitting bag that I had already looked thru, hiding in the knitpicks catalogs and sock books. Naughty needles! I need to finish off the blob, because there is no way it's coming to Thailand with us. It's too big, and too heavy. I would have to bring along a suitcase just for it, and with what airlines are charging these days, I don't think so.

It was a fun weekend, even though I wasn't knitting ;). On Saturday, we did some shopping, and went into downtown Indy to Mass Ave Toys. That place is fantastic! They are the only store with this toy *** in the area. It's going to be Little J's Christmas present; sshh, don't tell!

Sunday we all went to church, and in the evening, we went to see The Lion King. After a farce of directions, and missing out on supper at _anyplace_, we were all enthralled. Even my darling husband, who complained about the "Can you feel the love tonight" scene,(geez, you would think he had never watched the cartoon) really liked it overall. I loved it! And Little Sister thinks that she will get extra credit in Band for going to see it.

Okay, I've mostly finished the post. The lastest update on our vacation plans is, we aren't sure if we will be flying to Thailand. With the protests at the Bangkok airport, the airlines aren't flying into EITHER Bangkok airport. We weren't supposed to arrive until the 5th, so, we'll see how that goes.

NOT working on the Big Grey Blob

This is terrible! I _finally_ brought the Big Grey Blob out from it's hiding place, and, when I took it out of the bag, I don't have needles for it! Eek! I had taken the needles out to try it on, and where they have gone, I haven't a clue.

Well, a small clue. I think that I used the needles for my fuzzy pi shawl, but they aren't in the bag I kept the fuzzy pi in, and I can't find them anywhere. This is causing my incipient OCD to rear it's ugly head...any psychics who could tell me where my 2 number 10 circular needles and a set of double points are? Or a hypnotist, maybe?

Captain Hook in French...

The little boy was looking thru a toy catalog, and ran across a pirate with a hook. Guess what the pirate's name was? "Captain Croche(t)"! yes, I started giggling uncontrollable. Imagine Captain Hook relaxing at night, crocheting on a frilly project for his significant other...

Regarding christmas presents, I cast on for the second of the pair of VooDoo today. I had both little kids in the car, and when we reached home, they had both fallen asleep. So, rather than wake anybody up, I sat in the car, listened to the radio, and knit a good two inches before Little Sister pulled up in the school bus, and could help me carry the littles inside.

I'm looking for other Christmas presents now...must go shopping if we're going to be traveling...one good thing about all this traveling is that I won't have to do much cooking for the holidays, i suppose. (actually, I like cooking, but it is a chore when I am wrangling two little ones too.)

45 days until Christmas

I've been working on Clapotis (when I'm not sick) and the yarn is gorgeous, but it's a pain to work with! It splits, it has little threads that try to come off, and when Little G grabs a handful off my ball of yarn, it tangles dreadfully. I spent half an hour, detangling the half-a-dozen strands that had wound themselves around my _circular_needle_cord_! Actually, clapotis may go back in the bag for a bit to become traveling knitting.

Tonight, I'm going to put in my knitpicks order for my remaining projects.

Let's see, what else should I tell y'all...if you're not into kids, skip this part. Little J is doing better at using the potty! He is now willing to use his potty chair by himself! This is very helpful, especially when he needs to pee, and I have to change Little G's poopy diaper...He's very responsible about it, emptying his potty in the toilet each time, and wiping out the potty. Now, if he would just use the potty to poop in, that would be perfect.

Little G is growing by leaps and bounds. She's at the stage that my uncles would have called "couch cruiser". (They had a whole list of cute names, that they made up when they were in college (i think) and I was really small. I don't remember them all...carpet crawler, rugrat, curtain climber, couch cruiser (lots of them seemed to start with 'c's. I wonder if they would remember the rest?) Anyway, Little G walks around the furniture, holding on, sometimes with only one hand. She likes feeding herself, which makes for fun and messy mealtimes. And it was so cute this evening, when she sat down and was looking "Pat the Bunny" for 15 minutes all by herself. And she didn't try to eat the book! :D

i hate being sick. can't knit, can't read. And can't sleep, because I'm watching the kiddos. photoey.

51 days until Christmas

Yesterday, I didn't get any knitting done. none, zip, nada. I didn't even go to Panera's, for the normal Monday knitting night. I had been planning to, i really wanted to, but then I remembered Little Sister's band concert. It had been on the calender for weeks, but I mentally blanked it out...once I was there, it was really nice. Little G and I liked the highschool marching band, very entertaining. Little Sister's (8th grade) band has really improved a lot since the started middle school, too. You might think listening to a band concert would be great knitting time (Yarn Harlot has a post about that, in fact) but holding a squirming baby makes it almost impossible to knit. I don't even try anymore. There will be more concerts, I'm almost sure, for me to knit at.

Today, I cast on for Clapotis. It's about 5-6 inches along an edge. I don't think it's going to be as wide as the pattern calls for it to be - I'm already getting bored with the amount of purl stitches on the wrong side rows.

Looking at the one of Voodoo from Sunday, I decided that I'm not in love with my crochet edging. It's just a little too frilly. Back to the drawing board. When I get a chance I'm going to tink back the edging (can I use "tink" when talking about crochet? "tehcorc"?) and redo it a little less...irritatingly. (I don't like bobbly stuff on my palms. very irritating).

53 days until Christmas

Hey, I've a pair of Voodoo half-way done already! Kewl! I cast on 44 stitches originally, and changed the thumb opening to 8 st, instead of the 6 in the pattern. It was a little too tight with only 6. I finished the top with a crochet picot edging. Tomorrow, I cast on for the second of the pair. These are my easy knitting...I take them along in the car.

Things I need to do:

• Bring the big grey blob down from the craft room
• Put all the knitting bags from the bedroom INTO the craft room
• order yarn from knitpicks.
• Start clapotis

The Me meme (tagged from Cami):

4 Things I Did Today:

- Went out for breakfast with the family
- Spent time at the playground with Little J
- Listened to Big J reading his homework
- Wrote an actual blog post

4 Things on My To-Do List:

- Clothes shopping. Me, Little Sister, Little G. I hate shopping
- Take a nap. Please God!
- Grocery shopping. Just as soon as I think about what to make for supper
- Clean the clutter off my hotspots. I'm not going to tell you how many there are.

4 of My Guiltiest Pleasures:

- Trashy historical romance novels
- Sleeping in. With a baby and a three year old, it just dosen't happen these days.
- Going to the library/bookstore BY MYSELF.
- laying in the sunshine (yes, i'm really a lazy person)

4 Random Facts About Me:

- My eyes used to be blue. Now they're blue with brown around the irises. I have no idea when they changed.
- I can read paperback books and knit at the same time.
- I used to be able to name every bone in a dog's body.
- When I see books by C.S. Friedman, and Julie Czerneda (sp?) I'm compelled to read them. Seriously.


I'm not tagging anyone, so, don't worry about it :) If you would like to play, feel free to copy it from here.

Holiday Knitting

I've learned my lesson - no more planning to make knitted gifts for everybody. Really! I just have a few things to make, only a couple...

I've also decided that I will update the blog daily with my knitting progress (as well as interesting children happenings) to ensure I will knit daily, and also, (duh) I'll blog more often.

I've already started on a few projects, but today's post will outline my plans.

1. Finish Big Grey Blob sweater. (yes, this was supposed to be finished for last Christmas...no, I haven't worked on it much. I really hate this project.)
2. Christmas Stocking for Little G (need to order yarn from knitpicks)
3. Clapotis (I bought the actual Lorna's Laces Lion & Lamb yarn for this. It was way more than I really should have paid for any yarn, but Clementine's sold it to me for a really good price for Lion & Lamb. (no Cami, I'm not blaming you, it's simply my lack of willpower when faced with lucious yarn))
4. Voodoo (at least one pair. Maybe more)

See, that's not too bad. Only 4. And I already have yarn and/or projects started for 3 out of 4. I can do this by Christmas, right? (Looking at it, I have some doubts. We have some serious holiday traveling to do, and Mommy dosen't get much knitting time when we're traveling by plane)