Better to have a birthday than not!

Something is really crazy with the formatting, so I apologize!  It won't let me left justify!

Look at how cute those flowers are! Well done. I like the tiny people for the pencil cases also, and how satisfying to find the missing book.

 I can't believe October ends today! Where did the month go? 

I made a mistake in reading the pattern of the vest, so I had to rip back several inches. Alas. I have been working on socks instead, but I need to go back to the vest so that it will get done. 

 I have been slow to finish this post!

I like your fancy lady!

We are in the midst of preparing an NSF proposal, and I have another irritating professor to work with. He is the one I complained to you about - he is too important to be responsible. I think now he might just be too busy to be responsible, but he also tends to walk through the world creating fires that he has other people put out. He is exceptionally smart, and can be exceptionally irritating. To his credit, he does thank me and has expressed his desire to hire me away from Rice, or clone me because I am good at resolving issues. So now there's the Man-Baby, and this guy. Sigh. 

 I still need to come and visit soon. Maybe early in December? We submit the grant Nov 21, and then it's Thanksgiving, so I will be free after that. My college roommate, Tina, has invited me to come stay with her when she goes to their place in Winter Park in February, and I am thinking I will do that, so I will definitely stop in and say hello then! 

 What else... We cleared out The Boy's storage unit. That's $134/month that he won't be paying anymore. Very satisfying. I sold several things for cheap, and then we donated the bed frame, mattress, and a loveseat. Good to get rid of it all. The only thing left is a microwave, and I think I have someone picking that up tonight. Now it's time to start cleaning the house in prep for Thanksgiving, and for checking on the vegan recipes I have to plan for Middle's SO joining us. 

 Jeff is redoing the tile around our fireplace. He has discovered that it is not square, and it is causing much agitation. I am glad that he is in charge of that. 

 Oh! Smallest dropped her Physics class and has found a local tutor for Calculus. Things were not going well. I had suggested that she drop them both, but she had to get permission to take Calculus again (this is her third time?) so she really didn't want to drop it. I am really glad she's found a local tutor. 

 Both of the classes were online, and they weren't live lectures, and she couldn't attend the tutorial sessions because of time conflicts, so they were really hard to begin with. I can't imagine taking 95% of my classes online. Barf-rageous! Middle took some of their classes online during Covid and that was awful. Some of Smallest's HS classes were online, but she got to go back in person in the fall of 2020, so it wasn't so bad for her. 

 Anyhow, I'm glad she got the tutor and we will all be happy if she passes the class. She thinks that it is possible so I am hopeful. She is very determined. 

 I am still working on the socks and the vest. I'm on the foot of the second sock now, so the end is in sight. I did discover a big mistake in the first sock. It would require re-knitting the whole sock to correct, so I think I'll just leave it. It's a feature, not a bug, right? Here is a silly for you!

Lady in green

I finished the fancy lady and started the Loch Ness monsters! I think the monster on the left looks like it has a little sweater on. I hope the other one doesn’t get jealous!

- Catherine 

Flowers finito!

Well, as I suspected, I finished the flowers on the flights to my destination. However, they did take longer than expected - many hours yet to finish the last two blocks, so I'm glad I took it. See? Now I just need to clean it and take it to be framed. 

I had also taken a few smaller designs that I wanted to start, and was able to nearly finish 4 of them! I could have finished them all except there was some white thread that I thought wouldn't show up well on white fabric, and I knew I had a sparkly thread at home that would be a good complement (a byproduct of the bugs for John, actually). So I finished those in the first meeting where I didn't have to be on camera. Ta da!

Now I am working on a girl in a green dress, of similar size, and have several others lined up behind. My goal is to make more pencil cases for Christmas presents, as well as some embroidered handkerchiefs. I also ordered more silly fabric for my team at work, to give them new little bags (and, for the guy who started in May, his first). 

The last fun thing is that I found a book of cross-stitch patterns that I had been looking for without success, yay! There were two people that I had picked a little pattern for but I wasn't really satisfied with those choices - hopefully this book will help me find something more appropriate.  

The last not fun thing is that I somehow hurt my hand this morning trying to open a jam jar. What the heck?? I do not love this middle age thing. :P

- Catherine

Packing puzzles

I am packing for a big trip and trying to decide what to take for projects. Due to my pencil case plans, I have a lot of smaller designs I want to make, which is fun, but also means there are many books and pieces of fabric and colors of thread to deal with. Probably too much to carry? Perhaps I will see how much space all my clothes and such take up, and maybe that will help me control myself.

I am also debating whether to take the flowers - the extra motivation definitely helped, such that I am nearly done (see? Only the top left and big red flower leaves in the top row are left). But now I'm so close to done that it feels stupid to take it. However, I'm probably also underestimating how much more work is needed to finish. Argh.

I'm also a little grumpy because I had wanted to cut out white hexagons before this trip so I could spend time sewing those, but didn't make it happen. Blah.

Happy birthday to Jeff. :) I'm glad he ended the day on a less grumpy note. It would be nice if we just stopped getting older! 

- Catherine

Birthdays

Well, yesterday was Jeff's 60th birthday. He has been grumpy about his birthday all year. When I suggested that we see if his daughters could come in, he didn't want to do that. When I offered to organize a get-together with his high school friends, he didn't want to do that. If sitting alone in a dark room was an option, I think he would have enjoyed that. Instead, we skipped church and went for a walk in a different neighborhood than ours. Then we went to look for tile for a fireplace project, and that was fun. After that, we dorked around at home and his younger brother called to invite us out for dinner, so we went to dinner with them and that was great fun. They brought cake as well, and he was much less grumpy. Both of his girls called, and my kids texted, and there were limited presents, which he wanted, and I think the day ended on a better note than it started.

It was great to talk with you both last night also, and fun to hear that I'm not the only one that thinks I am younger than I am. It was wild to talk about The Boy turning 27 this year, and other kids in the family getting older. Jeff's older daughter is 28 and her husband (I think) is 30. How is it possible? Here is The Boy when he was smaller, which is clearly how old he really should be!

We haven't been watching a lot of TV lately, but I have managed to get a couple of rows in on the vest. I really need to start riding the bus so I can knit during my commute. Here's the update:

Other than that, things are good. The front stair project is never-ending. We need some different side rails, and the place that makes them is relocating next month, so it might be two months before the product would be available. Do we wait that long? Hard to say. Maybe we can put up something temporary over the open gap on the side while we wait. On the plus side, they have pretty lights? I did cut quilt pieces yesterday, and I do think I'll have enough to make two quilts. Ginny did not approve. Now the question is, do I make one for Smallest as well as the baby, or do I make one for another baby coming this fall? I do have another quilt top waiting to be finished, so that one could be for the second baby. Smallest might like a lap quilt? Maybe I'll piece it and then ask her.

Give Nairo lots of love before you have to leave again! Margie

This seems familiar?

 So I've been working away on the vest for Smallest.  I had a bout of insomnia this weekend and decided to spend the awake time knitting. I was checking the pattern to see when I should start decreases for the shaping and discovered that I was supposed to cast on 131 stitches, not 119.  Oops!  I know there's an old post about knitting, unknitting, and re-knitting, and I was thinking about that as I undid the meager progress I had made.  I think I was only about four repeats in, so it wasn't a terrible loss, and much better to find out earlier than later!  Here's where I was before, and here's where I am now.

It's a seminar day today, so I sit in my office and monitor the Zoom (because part of our Center is in Boston) and get to do whatever I want for an hour.  Sometimes I am productive and send emails and do worky things, but to day I think it's a knitting day!

My foot is feeling much better, so I think it was just a deep bruise.

I started cutting the fabric for the quilt.  I actually read the directions and there's an easier way to make the "geese" than cutting lots of triangles!  You piece them as rectangles and then trim them afterwards.  Who knew!  I've gone through the blue and yellow fabrics, I did decided to omit two gingham fabrics because they were really thin and easy to see through.

Ginny is helping me keep track of how much to cut.

Sunday is Jeff's 60th birthday.  He is very grumpy about it.  I don't recall if I've mentioned that before or not.  We're having dinner with friends on Saturday night, Sunday will be just us at home.  

I don't know a lot more?  I forgot that I had this fun pattern that I wanted to make for Middle.  Maybe I'll make it after Christmas.  Speaking of Christmas and Grumpy Jeff, he's taking time off this fall, and I think he's got the week between Christmas and New Year's off!  This is exciting for me because I get that week off every year and it's always a bummer that he has to go work.  This year should be lots of fun!  I suspect there may be children home as well to play with that week.  Very exciting.

This is the Hoodola - doesn't it look great for the cold? (not a picture of Middle)

Seminar is over!  I did two patter repeats on the vest.  I have a meeting tonight at 6:30, so I'll have some time between work and the meeting to work some more.

Margie

Sweaterfest!!

I am delighted thinking of your sweaterfest (even more so in the fact that it will end with me having a fabulous homemade sweater). It sounds like it should become an annual gathering of some kind.

I hope your foot is ok!! That is no fun. Stop getting injured, please.

I have more progress to report!

1) I had some time to stitch this past weekend while visiting friends (and traveling to/from) and made some good progress on the flowers - see? The blue and yellow flowers in the top row are now totally done, and the remaining square in the middle row has many leaves! The last three have leaves that use two different colors of green, and for some reason the difference between the colors is not as striking as what's on the cover image for this design, which annoys me. So that's probably why I'm ignoring them. :)

Even better: The friend I was visiting and her family went crazy over the flowers, and said they would be so happy to have them! So now I will be extra motivated to finish since I know someone wants it. :D

2) I finished the peacock!! See? It's so dense that I feel like I could use it as a frisbee. I am excited to make it into a pencil case for myself. 

3) I have decided that I like making pencil cases so much that I will make some more for Christmas presents. I like having a little stitched panel, and I have found several smaller designs that will be fun (I hope) for various people; I've started pulling thread colors for those, and will report back!

4) I finished the quilt grid, see? I need to put some edging on the top and assemble the bottom (i.e., one or two big seams), but we're getting close. I also reached out to a long-arm person and she was terrific helping me think about possible designs - can't wait to see how this experiment goes!

- Catherine