NaBloPoMo Day 23: ants vanquished? turned heel

I checked the wall this morning and did not see any ants. Yay! It’s going to be frosty over the next couple of days, though, so Erik brought our worm box inside and I’m wondering if some ants, or worse, are going to come out of that. It will go right back out when there stops being a frost warning!

In knitting news, I turned the heel on my wedge socks.

My wedges are not symmetrical to each other. I don’t know if that is wrong or not. Clearly, I can not be trusted with this knitting pattern. Hopefully I will still end up with a sock! Or even two.

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NaBloPoMo Day 21: fizz fest

Cookie invited a bunch of the BobaKnitters over today for Fizz Fest: a bath bomb making party. I took the opportunity to bring the Costco sized bottle of tequila that I bought when I went with a group of the knitters to Tahoe in May. They didn’t drink as much of it as I had hoped and I keep trying to use it up and failing. I also brought my blender, because I don’t know how else to make the delicious Whole Fruit Margaritas that we all love without it. So…

first things first

Once that was taken care of, we could get down to business. Cookie taught us all how to make fizzy bath bombs and even provided a whole host of essential or fragrant oils with which to “flavor” them. The mixing included a step where you had to listen for the ingredients fizzing together.

cookie and jill demonstrate the listening step

I brought my cutesie Japanese egg molds to mold my bath bombs because I am hoping to give them to my kids. Because my molds snap together Cookie said to leave them like that until they are dry. I only had enough stuff left to make one small bomb, which refused to stay together, so I don’t have high hopes for the others coming out of the cutesie molds intact. You can’t tell from the picture but they are creamsicle flavor: clementine and vanilla. Cookie said someone did that last time she had one of these parties and it sounded good to me.

at least they’ll still fizz

Afterwards there was hanging around and snacking and chatting. Oh, and knitting.

rachel and jen

cookie and jill

lisa and her guava mimosa

While we were there, I finished the heel turn on my Wedge sock. You would have thought I’d take a picture of that but I didn’t. Oops.

NaBloPoMo Day 19: more books, progress photos

This morning, Cookie and I did this:

I think she said she had 240 books signed and padded and I put them in envelopes, she and I taped them and I labeled a few before I had to go off to pick up the kids. I think she said she could use my help for one more day of this kind of packing up and her preorders would be done. I have to say that I see the value in having someone else to do all of that for you! Although I think her having complete creative control over her book was a good thing. Have I mentioned that the book is gorgeous? I know I have.

As promised, I took progress photos. First of wedge.

I’m pretty close to the heel, I think. This yarn is turning out to go farther than I expected. Thanks to Jen C, I can whip out my cool tiny scale and weigh the ball at intervals to check how far into I am. I assume I’ll need slightly more than half of the ball for the foot. I guess I’ll find out the hard way if that is wrong assumption.

Next up is my younger nieces cardigan.

I cast on that sleeve this afternoon and knit most of it while watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire with my older son. I had to stop knitting to comfort him at one point. Even though he read the book he was still sad! He’s such a sweetie.

Today my younger son asked me to knit him a baby doll friend for his other doll. We have a gorgeous Waldorf doll that I bought for my older son when his brother was born but no one loves that one. Poor ignored doll. Anyway, I’m thinking of making this baby doll for him. i don’t know what yarn to use, though. I love the Lion organic cotton for the hair though. So cute! I’m thinking this should be a birthday gift because I don’t want him to think that I can just whip up a babydoll at a moments notice. That gives me until mid-January. We’ll see how that goes!

NaBloPoMo Day 18: whew

Today was a long one. It started with our fourth day of Arts Focus. The kids came in and immediately started embroidering, which I thought was awesome. They were all really enthusiastic about it. Later they did fabric collage and some of them made more tassel and pompom animals and dolls, of their own choice. Awesome. This group of kids is really getting most of the stuff we’re doing. They were less enthusiastic about the quilt squares so I have a lot of them to put together still. I need to remember to set aside time when they are supposed to be working on those so I don’t end up sewing them together as much.

I started to write out in great detail what the kids and I did after school but I don’t feel like that’s necessary. Let’s just sum up: lunch and playdate the park, library, dinner and homework, science night. There. Then I went knitting. I am still working on my wedge sock, making progress. I have no photos. I should take another one now that I’m past where I was before I realized what an idiot I was being. I am looking forward to wearing this sock. It’s gotten cold here recently!

Now I’m really scraping the bottom of the blog barrel, talking about the weather. I think that’s a sign that it’s time to stop. I will take some photos tomorrow. I promise.

NaBloPoMo Day 12: let’s not talk about the sock

I wasn’t sure what size needles I used to cast on for the wedge sock, but they “seemed” right.

Lesson 1: don’t go by how things “seem” in knitting.

They were not right. They are 2.5mm, or US size 1.5. Sounds small, right? Not small enough. I was getting 7 sts/in when I needed to be getting 8. Plus, the stitches were big and open, which is not good for a sock that is supposed to hug your foot. I ripped back and cast-on again with size 2.25 mm, or US size 1. Let’s hope that works better.

Now let’s not talk about the sock anymore.

N, my older son, had a day off from school for a Staff Development Day and it wasn’t my work day at S’s preschool so I decided to take them on a field trip to the California Academy of the Sciences. We bought a membership there in April and I feel like it’s not worth buying unless we use it. It was a fun day, in spite of it being more crowded there than I expected.

We saw Moon Jellies.

And, of course, visited the living roof.

You certainly can’t argue with the view up there.

NaBloPoMo Day 11: fixed sock

My sock is all fixed now.

I also wanted to take a new picture because Jen mentioned at knitting that the yarn looked like a totally different color in person than it did in the previous picture I posted. I took this one under my Ott Lite lamp, so it should be closer to true color.

As I suspected, I have no problems with the wraps in the decrease section of the sock if I do the pattern correctly instead of assuming too many things and messing up completely. So there you go: if you read the pattern right, your sock will turn out much better. Who knew.

NaBloPoMo Day 10: dumb sock mistake

I almost forgot to make my post today!

I helped Cookie a bit more today. That book shipping thing is a lot of work! The books are going out, so hopefully some of you who are waiting will get yours soon.

I also realized after my post yesterday that I Messed Up. Darnit. I somehow convinced myself that I need a stockinette band between the increase and decrease wedges of Wedge. I don’t know why I convinced myself of that. It doesn’t say that anywhere in the pattern. Then I started to be convinced that the whole pattern was wrong. If the whole pattern is wrong perhaps maybe it’s time to step back and look at how you are interpreting the whole pattern, eh? I ripped back and my sock is now shorter than it was in the picture from yesterday. I didn’t get much knitting done today because of kid stuff and my own homework. Hopefully I will get some knitting time tomorrow since the kids have no school and we don’t have to get up and rush places the next two days. Gotta love that.

NaBloPoMo Day 9: even more knit. sock. love.

I really lied a couple of days ago, because here’s what I did this morning.

I helped Cookie pack her pre-ordered books for shipping. I happened to have a day off from working in S’s preschool, so I was able to give her a hand. She has a lot of signing, packaging and shipping ahead of her!

I’ve finished two of the wedges of my wedge sock. I like the way it’s turning out. The only challenge is how the stitches get stretched out when they’re wrapped for shortrows in the cotton yarn. It only seems to happen on one side, so maybe the problem is how I’m doing it. I had to fiddle with the first set to hide them and I’ll have to keep trying as I go to make them even with the other knitting.

I think I’m making good progress. This means, of course, that my other knitting is being ignored. Oops.

NaBloPoMo Day 8: wedge socks

I guess I lied in my previous post. I’m still talking about Cookie because I was gripped with the urge to knit her Wedge socks from the new book. I decided to knit them out of my Blue Moon FIber Arts mill-dyed Sock Candy. I was very excited to see that they were making mill-dyed Sock Candy since I had some bad fading experiences with the hand-dyed version. I love the yarn and am hoping that the mill-dyed one holds the color better. So far, though, I’m irritated by the yarn because of how it is put up. Look at the diameter of this hank!

That’s my swift opened as wide as will go, and it wasn’t wide enough because at the end of the hank the yarn slipped down and something somewhat tragic happened.

It was worse than it looks there. The yarn had wrapped around the bottom of the swift because it slipped down only partially and the swift kept spinning, wrapping the yarn around the post of the swift. Luckily, I was able to untangle it and was more careful with the second hank. Ugh. I feel like I am cursed when it comes to Sock Candy. We’ll see if these at least hold up better! They still warn about dark colors fading on the label. Well, still is the wrong word because there was no warning on the previous labels but they certainly did fade!

In any case, the yarn is all wound and is becoming the Wedge sock.

So far, so good!