RIP problem children

several projects have been in and out of hibernation for longer than i like to admit. the last month i grabbed the bull by the horns and evaluated each of them, attempted solutions and made a final decision. sadly, many of them jumped in the frog pond.

sunshine socks

after several attempts at making a heel big enough for my feet that didn't stretch the cables beyond recognition, i reported success. that was what the knitting trolls were waiting for. the foot finally fit perfectly - and the leg is way too short. by inches, plural. more than 3.

here compared with a sock in the same yarn, a sock that i tug on all day because it's just a little too short. that pair had an accidental trip through the washer and dryer that i blamed for the shortage. turns out shibui doesn't have the most generous yardage. and it was on the way to being one of my favoritest sock yarns.

sigh.

the sunshine yarn will eventually grow up to be a very plain pair of socks, knit toe up to maximize every inch. and some day when the sting has faded, i'll dig in the stash for some other sock yarn with more yardage for that cabled pattern. because, unbelievably, i still like both of them. they just weren't meant to be together.

gryphon socks

these socks have also gone the way of the dodo. the pattern has an intriguing construction - and a nipple pucker on the heel.

the linen stitch on the sole uses more yarn than a stockinette sole, and despite buying the recommended yarn, there's not much yardage left for the leg......after several incarnations in which the heel never fit quite right, i still got a very short sock. this yarn is in the same boat as the sunshine yarn. it will grow up into a very plain, toe up sock, hopefully with a decent leg length. the pattern will be abandoned to the four winds to survive on its own.

tahoe sweater

this sweater was a fast knit, with a painfully slow finishing process. in the year (exactly! how did i do that?) since completion, i've worn it about 5 times around the house and that's it. it suffers from pattern and user issues, despite its innocent look.

the pattern has a loose and drapey gauge, with swingy sleeves. i measured the schematic against a cotton shirt of the same style, that i like and wear often. lesson: what works in cotton does not necessarily work in yarn. those sleeves were soooo annoying, and got folded over about 4 inches the few times i wore the sweater. i worked the button bands a few times to get the stitches evenly distributed. laying flat, they look fine but once on they pull up like an upside down V. while i like the lilac color of the yarn, it turns out to be a bit hard to match with shirts and would be happier as a pullover.

the yarn itself (elann incense) is wonderful and cozy to wear. it even tolerated ripping better than i expected. due to the gauge, the yardage is less than standard for pullovers in my size. enter the fall edition of interweave knits and the cover sweater, a brioche rib pullover in the exact same colors and matching yardage. once the yarn (and my ego) have rested for a few months, i should have a pullover to show off.

chuck, of course, thinks i'm crazy for ripping anything out, and even more for demolishing a completed sweater. it was a wonderful feeling to accept that those projects weren't working and stop them from smirking at me from the workbasket. now i have yarn for three new projects, free of charge. hopefully they we will be happier in their next incarnations.

flashback: hedgerow jacket

in 2007, chuck and i surprised his parents by showing up on their doorstep the day before thanksgiving. we were there about a week, and of course i knit while we relaxed and talked. my mother in law surprised me (almost as much as we had surprised them, i think) by asking me to make her a sweater. not a hat, or a scarf, but a sweater. i was too shocked and impressed with her daring to say no. she picked out a pattern (hedgerow coat) for a long cardigan and a charcoal color (we couldn't have done that without ravelry) and i warned her it would be a long time coming since my queue was a bit overfull.

in december of 08, yarn was bought and swatched. i started with the sleeves, 2 at a time, because i hate finishing the main part of a sweater and thinking, oh, there's only 2 little sleeves left - which then take forever to finish. the sleeves came along great, sharing time with some other projects, and were done by springtime. at least that's when i took a picture of them, although they look as if they'd been folded a while already.knowing how little i enjoy seaming, i knit the fronts and back as one piece to the armholes. then it was easy as pie to bind off the shoulders together and sew in the sleeves. the shawl collar didn't give me any problems, and i liked that the cables were repeated in the collar.
i found some engraved wood buttons that seemed to complement the sweater and brighten it up a bit.honestly, by the time i was done i was a bit jealous, and thought about keeping it for myself. that it was in my size didn't make it any easier.but i dutifully sent it off, along with some wool wash. chuck kept reassuring me that his mom would love it, to which i always replied, "she'd better," in a growly sort of voice. not having the person around to double-check fit worries me, so i was relieved when the sweater arrived and it fit perfectly! she sounded very pleased and happy, and since she's the sort of woman to speak her mind, i believe her even without photographic evidence.

and when chuck's sister said, "now you can knit me a sweater", i said, "i can teach you to knit."

mini-parade day 3: irish moss

(ok, so obviously this is a slow parade. the clowns must have tripped up the ROTC squad or something.)

pattern: irish moss in alice starmore's aran knitting. i redrew the cable charts so they'd scan easier, added selvedge stitches, and left the shoulder stitches live for a 3 needle bindoff with the saddles. otherwise the pattern was straightforward and error free.
in: knit picks wool of the andes, which is holding up well so far. no sagging, a little pilling.
made for chuck, mostly on sundays over the course of 10 months. kind of. i cast on sometime in august 2007, and finished knitting all the bits by may 2008. it could be called the month of sundays sweater, since that ends up being about 40 sundays of knitting. the last bits of it really dragged. suddenly i was sick to death of it (maybe because i wasn't switching between 5 other projects) in a "i can't believe this isn't done yet" kind of way. the last inches of the second sleeve and its saddle were done in a mental frenzy where i kept wishing my hands would knit faster so i could be Done.

i blocked it before seaming (which i don't always), and took it on our MA trip.that was largely futile. seaming is one of those things i like time and quiet to focus on, which was in rather short supply this summer. i tried doing the saddles first as recommended, but they came out not quite right. the pattern doesn't specify the saddle length, and all the stretchy cables in the body made it hard to figure out just how long i needed. so i ended up doing them last, and they fit perfectly.the corners look so square and neat. i realized that this is only my third sweater, which may be enough of a reason for the amazed it-looks-just-like-a-real-sweater glee i have when it all fits together.this sweater was intended for chuck to wear last winter, and finishing it in july was a bit disappointing. i wanted to see him wear it right now right now. as it was, he did wear it the week i finished it, thanks to the chilly, rainy summer. i haven't managed to get a shot of him modeling it yet, but it fits and looks very good on him. hugs are extra cozy when he's wearing it, because i can snuggle up to him and the yarn.

a very merry unbirthday to me, to me

those endless days are slipping by me so fast it'll be fall before i know it. but i pushed the pause button for a half hour to sneak in a post.

ages of endless days ago, my contest yarn got here. yarn in the mail always feel like a present, doesn't it? lucy has some pictures on her blog of the actual spinning, but here's what it looks like after its trip across the country.mmmm, blue angora. i've been eyeing it since it got here, and finally swatched it this weekend. i knit it up at 4.5 stitches per inch on US4s and i think i'd still go up a size. this is my first time knitting handspun (and angora), and it was so fun to roll it up and see the variations in thickness and color. according to ravelry it's only 170 yards, but looks like way more rolled up. it's 2 ply (i think) and silky and smooth. something visible and against the skin, not to mention lacy, would be perfect for it. and there the dreams and dithering decision making start.

any suggestions?

around the time lucy's yarn came in, another yarn present came in the mail (even though i paid for it, it still feels like a gift when it comes. maybe because of our still-kind-of-tight-budget, or because i forget about it, so it's a surprise by the time it gets here).this stuff's destined to become a tahoe, one of those nice 'throw it on as you go out the door cuz you're too lazy (crazy?) to wear a coat' sweaters. i been needing one of those. like all winter. it was almost irresistable, but i put off swatching and casting on until the FFF shawl was done, and one of chuck's sleeves. the yarn is lovely, soft but with an underlying feeling of substance (that would be the wool bit of it, i'm thinking). i did cast on and knit a few inches before the hem started bugging me.the pattern makes a sewn hem by casting on, knitting like nothing, making a purl flip row and just sewing it together when the sweater's done. sewing - yuck. this was not attractive. so i did a provisional cast on and knit the hem together, but i must have messed up my row count cuz it was flipping. we don't like that. so i frogged it back and i'll start it again sometime, with a smaller needle for the rows that end up on the inside. and pay better attention to the row count.

a bonus: a small project finished somewhere in there (i am still working on those stash-busting, project-finishing goals of mine - although we'd still better not talk about the striped turtleneck sweater. or the silk cami. anyway. the small project.) the building block slippers from socks, socks, socks. they were kinda fun to make, fast and origami-like. does it get any better than that? maybe if you don't use chunky yarn. they're a bit sloppy, and since i ran out of the red and blue yarn ends, one slipper has (oh, horrors!) some orange. mostly on the bottom where i (luckily) can't really see it.the second one is more true to the pattern with more seams, and that slipper is not quite as sloppy. but they're for the house anyway, so who cares. right?

and that's today's half hour break. *sigh* back to the blur.

time is relative

right now we're in this transitional period where light equals daytime and dark equals night. it's kind of a weird sensation really. i'm so ready for spring, even though i have no idea how march is already over. since the new year i've been in this time blur, where one day feels like forever, but then the endless days blur into one and seem to have gone by fast. terry pratchett said something like that once.......i may have to look it up.

but anyway. somehow march has whizzed by and i still have pictures from the beginning of february that i haven't posted yet. ajajaj.

there was the ice park, which was held a couple weeks early. the temps were in the 40s for a whole week, so they panicked and moved the contest up. a bunch of sculptures ended up classical styledue to bits and pieces melting off. we went with our 3 stepbrats (and a dad but he's not in any pics)

the 18month old decided halfway through that it was way past his bedtime, he was bored, and maybe if he screamed *nonstop* he would get to bed faster. he did. so we didn't really get to see the multiple block sculptures, and only got a few pictures.

a chameleon and a very odd abstract couple.

and my favorites: a different kind of seafood dinner, and a teardrop. i love how the carvers can make such realistic drops of water.

the two older stepbrats stayed the night. i read them a grimm's faery tale for bed, which they repeated almost verbatim to their dad when he picked them up the next day *raised eyebrows*. since it was warm out, we went outside for a bit. their dad was literally throwing them around.

they crunched into the snow and disappeared from view. they seemed to like it thoughafter (finally) finishing the snowflake headband, i jumped right on another quick fix, the army helmet hat. that went so fast it didn't even make it up on the sidebar. the fit is a bit snug, right on the line between just right and a little too short. the pattern picture only shows the side view, but i noticed on ravelry that the hat looked a bit small on almost everyone, so i wasn't that surprised. the applied i-cord in front was kind of fun and really topped off the helmet look. i love the yarn, but noticed it has very little twist, so it might pill. that's the sort of thing i've been noticing more about yarn, how it's spun, but alas not until after i've got it home. so far no problems though. i may frog the top and add a couple rows before the decreases, just for a little more height. some day. right now i'm just happy it's done and cozy to wear.

and speaking of being done, i even picked up the FFF shawl this week. knit night at my house, and i figured the pleasure of company would dull the irritation of the shawl. and i finished it this weekend. off the needles. whoo-hoo!!! technically i still have to weave in the ends, but as far as i'm concerned it's done. thank goodness.

limited knitting time has forced me to focus on one thing at a time, which inwardly makes me horribly twitchy, but does get results. i also finished a sleeve for chuck's sweater he says it looks like a sting ray. i could see that i guess. i even cast on the second sleeve yesterday.

a couple weeks ago now, i gave a presentation at chuck's rotary group about alaskan archaeology. it went pretty well despite my swedish computer refusing to play nice with the projector (after a week or so getting it all together *sigh*). the group was small enough that they could still kind of see the powerpoint slides on my laptop. i think the problem may have been the screen resolution, so i'll have to figure out how to change that.

still, everything seemed to flow really well, and nobody got the glazed-over look of too much detail. archaeology is very fun, just in very short bursts. i was glad i could explain what field work really is like yet still keep everyone's interest. they even said i could come back in the summer and do it again! so it was fun, and i was flattered.

another compliment i got recently was at the doctor's office. i was waiting for chuck and knitting (on the snowflake headband i think) and some guy walking by thanked me for keeping a tradition alive. he said it's lots of work and most people don't bother anymore. so even though it was totally random, it was kind of cool to get a sincere compliment for doing something i love.

reflections on the black hole that was february

today's temperature of 40F was a pleasant reflection of the -40F weather we had about a month ago. comparison does make all the difference - those 80 degrees makes +40F feel like short weather.

february was a long, busy, boring month that somehow went by really fast in retrospect. i stayed home a couple days when the temp hit -47F (it sounds impressive but after -20F you can't feel the changes in the cold except by noticing how fast you lose feeling in the extremities), and even got a bunch of knitting in and took pictures of it.

although somehow actually getting the pictures up never happened. *sigh*

remember the 3F shawl? that i ran out of yarn on? at the end of 3 skeins it was still just an inch or two shy of elbow length. arg. and then i went for more yarn, and they actually were sold out of that color. is that allowed? so they put it on order for me. the break was probably a good thing, cuz the shawl and me were getting tired of each other.

while i was at the store, i wandered around a bit (of course). the owner must have had an epiphany because there was all kinds of new yarns in there. louet gems, koigu, noro, more solid color sock yarn (yay!), and mirasol, the very yarn i was drooling over in anchorage a while ago. there's a hat i've been wanting to make, and chuck said i could get some mirasol sulka for it. so i was just waiting and waiting for that baby ull to come in. which it did last week.and that's the hat yarn. black, with some blue highlights, and super soft. hopefully it doesn't pill awfully. amazingly enough, the baby ull colors are a perfect match again. i can't believe i'm on my third dye lot and there's no color change line in the shawl. although i didn't actually start working on the shawl again yet, so i might still be surprised. but so far i've got to say that baby ull is the yarn to run out of.

some other things have been distracting me. lots of frogging, a couple (relatively) quick projects, and life.

i frogged the anastacia sock i had started. then the wound was too fresh to cast on right away, so i started an irish moss sleeve instead. sleeve rows go way faster than front and back rows. although i haven't worked on it for a couple weeks now, so who knows if chuck's sweater will be done before the snow melts. luckily here i've still got till april. maybe may.

the half clessidra i had got frogged too. the pattern got too fiddly with the yarn i substituted, but i will try again sometime with normal sock yarn (and thus no fiddliness). and i've been pondering the silk cami tent i made last summer with knitpicks shine. . . . .lovely yarn, nice drape. . . .i think it would make awesome curtains :)

there's a candlelight lace pattern in barbara walker i've been wanting to try, which would be a good match with the yarn for our bedroom windows. i'm not totally decided yet, but chuck won't let us go curtainless in the bedroom cuz he can't sleep in the summer for the light. but all we've got are the super-fugly 70s curtains we inherited with the house. if i gotta have curtains, i might as well have fun with it.

one of the life distractions was the yearly Air Force awards dinner, a banker affair. i don't mind the banker affairs so much except for dressing up. but even with a skirt on i was underdressed there - the people not in uniform were decked out in prom dresses. so everyone's all fancy fancy, and then they start calling out the award winners.

suddenly i was re-living a high school assembly. the cheers were an odd contrast to the otherwise high tone of the evening. my very favorite moment was when both of the two MCs used the phrase "best of the best." MIB anyone? i would have laughed out loud except everyone was so serious so serious for that part. i love how will smith mocks the military guy at the beginning of men in black, i would watch the whole movie just for that one scene.

speaking of watching movies for one little thing, we went and watched national treasure 2 just so i could see riley. darned if i know the actor-dude's name, but i love his character. he makes watching nicolas cage bearable. he's smart, hot, and funny - if i wasn't married to chuck i'd go hunt him down and marry him. just like that. seriously.

and (spoiler) why oh why did they have mayan gold in the dakotas? the mayans didn't even get into texas. my archaeology self wouldn't let me enjoy the end of the movie with the ridiculous hordes of clearly mayan artifacts thousands of miles away from their natural habitat. at least in the first national treasure they explained how the templar treasure made its way to america. ajajaj. it was too implausible, even for the movies. lesson: you just can't trust hollywood.

between work (very busy and very dull, but still not as bad as subbing) and life i really haven't got much knitting time in. it's a horrible bummer, my fingers itch to do it and it just seems wrong not to knit in the dead of winter (february always feels like the dead of winter). while i added an inch here and an inch there, i was dreaming of the next project. awful, isn't it?

tahoe is already up next for sweater project, once chuck's sweater is done (and i finish that turtleneck, but i always manage to gloss over that bit when i dream). my delaying strategy is wearing thin though. the yarn is all picked out for it, the persian violet incense at elann.com. i was waiting for the checkbook to say i could buy it, but chuck got our tax return done already, so the checkbook's given the go-ahead. i'm trying to hold off, cuz once the yarn is in the house it'll be much harder to resisit casting on. if all my knit thoughts added inches, all sorts of things would be done already.

one project that's made it through the black knitting hole of february was the dark mark scarf for sara (the second project is blocking as we speak). it's been so long since i made a scarf, i forgot how fast they go.first time illusion knitting, and i love it. way easy, even with following charts, and i love seeing the pattern emerge. i almost wish i wore scarves, i'd keep this one for myself. but sara will give it more love than me, so it'll be heading off to her this week. the back is almost as cool as the fronti (accidentally) knit an extra inch between charts, and left off the fringe, with very little yarn left over. the pattern almost exactly uses both skeins, especially if you have fringe, and still makes a decent length scarf.doesn't chuck look cute in it? i call that his scary joker face.

and as long as we're on harry potter topics, if you're not sure which camp to join, why not this one?not sure if it's pointed at a specific candidate, but it made me laugh. why can't i ever find the stores that are selling these things???

quick n dirty

over two weeks have gone by since we got back from MA, and you'd think all those vacation knitting photos would be up and blogged already. but no. i've been working at NLUR (an archaeology company) since i got back, doing (horribly boring) office organization tasks, and something about an actual 8 hour job is throwing off my blogging mojo. the first week we were back was really busy somehow, and at the end of it i finally put away my clothes that i had unpacked but left on the piano bench. this last week i finally sorted through all the mail and accumulated trip junk and cleaned my kitchen counter off.

with that mess at home, i suppose it's no great surprise that the blog is a bit behind too. if i had nothing to say, that wouldn't be a problem. but of course, the whole catch-22 thing is that when things are happening, they take up the time you would have blogged about them. and when nothing's happening, you have plenty of time, but not so much to say.

so i figured the only way i could finally get through this was to throw pictures and thoughts at you quick and dirty, like, just to get them out of my head (and shorten my drafts list). not that i'm particularly good at quick and dirty, but i'll do my best. it may still be a mother of a post, just so you're forewarned.

while i was home, i got some pics of those handknits i gave away (to post on ravelry, of course). some of those are unreachable (some wristwarmers, hats, the first pair of socks i knitted, potholders), given to people i'm not in touch with anymore. but i tried to get at least one picture of each item. some of them aren't very good pictures, and i meant to get re-takes and close-ups of a couple. of course i forgot. at least i've got the one!

my mom had a few potholders (all crocheted). the first two used up random swedish cotton,

and then i had to make up for the randomness with a proper set. a couple of scarves. the first is the obligatory learning to knit scarf. i actually wanted it at the time, but of course never wore it - i'm just not a scarf gal, so i gave it to my sister, who is. the second one's hers, using the saxon braid from a barbara walker treasury, in some wool-acrylic blend. it's from back in the day when i thought ribbing was queen and hadn't met seed stitch yet, so the edges roll a bit.

speaking of rolling edges, here's a shawl i made for my mom. threw together a bunch of stitch patterns and didn't swatch them together before starting. after a few rows i realized it would flow better if i changed a few details (like the ribbing on the edges, the switch from purl to stockinette background) but i was too lazy to rip it out. my mom still wears it, and that speck to the right is this awesome celtic brooch i got to go with it. alas, the close up of it is one of the pictures never taken, along with a non-blurry close-up of the braid.and, let's see, a couple hats. the first (mine) is crocheted and very warm, although i should have made the ties longer and still think about it but never do. the second is sara's (modelled much more amusingly by my mother) in some weird sparkly yarn she picked up. it's a bit heavy so she doesn't wear the hat much.

and plain socks for my mom
last, but not least, is the first sweater i knitted. (another one i should have got a better shot of) the sleeves were even, the front and back matched up - i may have been a little paranoid about that with all the horror stories of ill-fitting hand knit sweaters. the seams i crocheted together cuz the mattress stitch looked way too intimidating, and they came out lovely. i was quite proud of it.except for one thing (you knew there had to be something, right?). the ease. i made it to fit, and it did, except it should have been a loose fit. so for the style, it doesn't look quite right. i had given it to sara, cuz style-wise it fit her better. but she likes a closer fit, so i took it back. good thing too, cuz where ever she had it, the moths found it. now i can protect it and look at it from time to time and feel like i can knit well.

whew. now that we got the ghosts of knitting past exorcised, we can move on to the present. ish.

for the whole first week in MA, knitting time was lost in the shuffle. after that i made an effort to get in at least a half hour a day, and that really took effort. the hederas i had expected to finish fairly quickly, but that sure didn't happen. i took a shot of chuck's sweater, with 9 of 11 pattern repeats done on the back. since arkansas, the end has been so close i could almost (literally) touch it. but it was at the horror movie stage, where you knit and knit and knit without gaining an inch. finally on sunday the 13th i broke out of it, finished, and put the stitches on hold.

new year's day, chuck and i went to lucy's, to paw through her stash and pick out my prize. which she very kindly offered to spin and ship later, if a fiber rather than a yarn jumped out at me. she had so many different rovings and yarns, it was almost hard to pick. but as soon as i saw this, i wanted it.
ooooooooooo. as far as colors go, i tend towards dark colors. in my family, any color is good as long as it's black. maroon, forest greens, royal purple, and charcoal grey are my favs, with a horrible weakness for sky blue. lately a deep, mellow yellow has been creeping up on me (which i blame solely on sweden - their flag and tendency to have blue/yellow combos). this fiber just grabbed me with the deep blue and lighter sky blue highlights. i think it was goat angora, so silky soft. lucy spun up a little baby hank for me then and there (with a drop spindle - oh so tempting to try! but i resisted) and that's what you see.

the question that rolls around my head now is, what pattern to show it off in. . . . ironically most of my first projects i designed myself, with the help of a stitch dictionary, figuring out the math and what not. but now most of my projects are from patterns. there's just so so many cool patterns out there, and somehow it's like reading a library book versus one i own. mine are going to be here forever (or at least as long as i am) so there's no press to read them, but the library books have to go back, so they always jump to the front of the line. i've looked through my ravelry queue, but nothing seems special enough for this yarn-to-be. luckily i've got time to think on it.

our visit with lucy was actually one of the highlights of our trip. maybe just cuz it was towards the end, and the never-ending bustle of my mom's house was starting to wear, but we stayed a good 2 hours, enjoying the peace. lucy's 2 children were all but invisible (thanks in part to her husband, but still) we definitely hadn't planned on staying so long, but we really appreciated the peacefulness. more than just the quiet, we felt our souls relax. thank you lucy!

the FFF shawl has been misbehaving itself (increasing my desire to call it the F-ing shawl, but i digress), misbehaving horribly. according to my schedule, it ought to have been done by the end of christmas vacation. ought. but i ran out of yarn on the flights to MA. the 2 original skeins ought to have been enough for the summer shawlette i originally planned to make, and i was just hoping beyond hope that they would be enough for the feather and fan shawl too. i knit furiously the week before leaving, hoping to determine if i needed more, and i had this sinking sort of feeling that i ought to buy another skein, Just To Be Safe. but that week was busy too, and on the way to the airport, i sunk a little more, realizing i hadn't bought more yarn. gulp.

so of course i ran out, meaning i had to carry a project i couldn't work on for 2 1/2 weeks. *sigh* once i was back, i got yarn, hoping for the same dye lot (it's a small store, i didn't think it was an impossible hope). apparently hope and the FFF shawl do not go together. i got a different dye lot, which i can't tell apart form the original. shrug. i won't turn my nose up at a bit of luck.

especially since, with this pattern, i'm needing lots of it. lace has not been a problem for me. keeping track of the pattern reps and increases and whatnot has been a piece o' cake. until this shawl. i don't know how many times i've ripped back rows because i got off somwhere. the feather and fan increases by one stitch in each pattern row, so it's never the same twice. after joining the new skein, i discovered the count was off and ignored it for a good week. take that. seeing as it's so far off my internal You Should Be Done By Now scale, i picked it up again. and ripped back about half of it. to pattern repeat 5. *sigh* i'm back up to 9 again, and so far it seems to be behaving much better. i can almost join that last skein again.

there was a question about how our luggage fared. we wondered that too, all day saturday as we magically went from one flight to another.

we did ask the seattle supervisor, who didn't know how to check, if our luggage made it home, but didn't have time to ask anyone else until we got to fairbanks. where we discovered our bags were only checked through seattle (way to go american airlines. again.) so i guess we could have got a change of clothes, if we had only known. luckily our bags got on the next flight to fairbanks and we had them sunday night. my books didn't fare quite as well as they normally do, but everything was there and not broken.

in our first busy week back home, we babysat seth who's walking as long as he doesn't want to get somewhere in a hurry. then he just says screw it, and crawls.

and the knitting group got together. 2 new people showed up - and none of the others. one was a new learner, and the other was looking for inspiration. hehehe. i introduced her to ravelry. she won't ever lack for inspiration again.