what a square!

I have not yet been able to deliver the pajamas to SPR, and in fact am still stewing about them. I don't like the buttonholes/waistband holes, and want to replace them. Also, I'm thinking about cleaning up some of the seams. But, I'll get to that shortly. 

In the meantime, I needed to find some new things to work on. I've decided it's time for the quilt. I bought this fabric back when I was in Philly, more than 4 years ago. One side is going to be this lovely orange embroidered flowery thing, and the other side is going to be white/yellow/orange/green (and maybe a little pink) log cabin squares. I had to wash all the squares of fabric and figure out what the right pattern was, but I think according to our system that doesn't count. I also probably need to think about what the overall look is going to be (do I want some squares to be all dark shades, and some all lighter shades, or to weave between them, how much green vs. orange, etc. etc.). But, I decided I also wanted to just try making one square. So, I dove in! Here's the result. According to my measurements (wanting to make a quilt for a double bed), I need 144 of these blocks. Hmm...

I also am going to be on the subway a lot this week (two dress rehearsals for my upcoming choir concert! Yippee!), so I wanted to start a project that I could take with me easily. My aunt has this lovely knitted blanket that's kind of a quilt - lots of little blocks of knitting, so I'm going to give that a try. I've started the first block, but it's much bigger than I expected (I underestimated how different the casting on was from the regular knitting). I'll have to ponder whether it's worth ripping out and starting again. I also might need to ponder whether I should buy some smaller knitting needles. Hmm...

Even with all that blabbing, I only got in an hour of 'work' (40 minutes on the square, 20 minutes on the knitting). So I'm at 102.

Catherine

Mindless Knitting Done

I finished my project, but I won't post a picture because it's a present for my seester (surprise!) so I'll let her receive it first. Depending on Canada Post, that could take a week, as a letter goes, or it could take up to a month, like some packages from the states.

I will say that it's made from some cool yarn I found when we were in Vancouver last year. I thought it was very pretty and that it would be perfect to use to make something for Catherine because her hair is more red than mine. And due to the coolness of the yarn, I wasn't able to do any pretty stitches, so it is completely simple and functional, but still pretty.

1 hour Saturday, 101.5 total.

Cheering for Canada in the Men's Gold Medal Hockey game today!!

Eh, Oh! Canada Go!!

Margie

Chomp on this!

It's hard to believe, but the shark pajamas are complete (pending approval from shark pajama recipient, to be known henceforth as SPR). This picture is of me wearing them, so it's good that they are too long. I'm slightly scared that they aren't even longer, in fact, and I hope I haven't made them too short (since, really, that was the whole point of making them in the first place). There is lots of fabric left to extend them, but still... it would be annoying.

I decided it was high time to finish them in part because Margie swooped in and got ahead of me and in part because I wanted to be the first one to get to 100 hours. But instead I'll just bask in the sisterly glow of knowing we did it... together. Smiles all around. Oh, and I also worked on them because the choir program is slightly stalled while I wait for feedback from someone who strangely doesn't seem to check their email at 10:30 pm. What a weirdo!!

Anyway, with hemming one leg, sewing the top red band together, and hand-stitching some openings for the drawstring (and then threading the string, which is actually some lovely bias tape), I got in 2 hours, so I'm at 101.

Yippee!

Catherine

Miles at Starbucks!

Who knew! Miles Davis, my favorite jazz musician, was the pick of the week at Starbucks! If you want a cool tune, go to the iTunes.ca store, click on "redeem" under quick links and the code is 44n65jh33y9l. Enjoy!

Only an hour knitting tonight at choir. I had to pick up crickets during practice so we could feed the Boy's fire-bellied toads.

The Boy has been moaning about these wimpy book reports that he's put off until the last minute. Everything is so easy for him at school that when he gets something that he can't do it two seconds, it's impossibly hard and results in more procrastination and whining. I don't like whining. Oh well.

Time to clean the kitchen and go to bed.

1 hour tonight, 100.5 hours total (woo-hoo! I broke 100!)

Go Canada!

Margie

Quick Note

An hour for me last night. I would like to think I could finish the cross stitch by Sunday night, but considering all the backstitch, not sure it will happen. I'll be close though.

1 hour Wednesday, 99.5 hours total.

Margie

Little #@%$&* Birdie!

Here's a picture from the Birthday cross stitch from the 21st. The post from Jan. 31st has the beginning of the squirrels, so you can see the progress. Jemima is missing her beak and feet here, and the turtle and frog are missing.

I did some stitching in the morning, then knitting while watching the Ladies' Skating on the Olympics. I like the Korean, Una someone, she reminds me of Michelle Kwan, but with more of a nasty streak. I love Michelle Kwan, but sometimes she was just too nice.

Anyhow, after I stopped, I decided to finish the turtle before I went to bed. After finishing the turtle, I spread it out to admire my handiwork and gloat in the finishing of all the animals when I realize that there's a stupid little bird sitting on top of the sign. Grrr. I had to do the bird before I went to bed, because I wanted to be finished with all the animals last night! It's probably only twenty stitches, and yet there are six colors in that darned bird. So it was later than I wanted it to be.

After that, I was admiring my handiwork again when I realized that the shadowy bits on the picture are light green, and the shadowy bits I've put in are an orangey color. After a bit of detective work, I realized that there's a typo in the directions. The light green and the orangey color are next to each other in the code, so someone put the symbol in the wrong place. Sigh. At least I don't have that much to undo.

Now that Catherine has finished her knitting and crocheting projects, I'm hoping she'll be idle for a while before figuring out what to work on next! Then I can sneak the lead! Only a month and four days to go!

3 hours yesterday, 98.5 total.

Margie

Scarf mastah!

More end-tucking to report. I am on a roll!

I have been dreading how this scarf would turn out. It's for my coworker's daughter, Katie, and I had high hopes for putting her name into the pattern. Surprisingly, after an hour of weaving yarn together, the letters are actually kind of legible (the white ones are harder to see in the photo than real life, but not by much). Yay, scarf! As she's 3.75, hopefully she will find it entertaining. This is the problem with presents, I guess. You never know what people will think.

99 hours for me.

Catherine 

Duck Mastah!

With 30 minutes yesterday morning, I finished the duck, and then with an extra hour, I finished the frog (Jeremy Fisher?) as well. I'm working on the turtle now.

1.5 hours yesterday, 95.5 hours total.

I'll have to take advantage of that program-making time!

Margie

Babies everywhere, rejoice!

Baby blanket 1 has fallen victim to the same fate as BB2: the ends are tucked in, and it is ready for baby action! This one is nearly perfect, except for a slight shortage in the light green which had to become medium green briefly (at the top, near the middle). This one is super fun because two of the blue stripes (4th from left; 3rd from right) are made with very soft and fuzzy yarn. Hopefully baby James will find it fun to play with. Or drool on, whatevs.

1.5 hours to add to the pot, so I'm at 98. I've got to make the choir program this week, Margie, so it should be a good opportunity for you and your waterfowl to take the lead.

Catherine

The Duck is Goin' Down!

Two hours stitching and all that's left of Jemima Puddleduck is her beak, her feet and some shadowing on her tail.

Two characters, the backstitching (ugh!) and the ground bits to go. I need to finish in the next week or two so I can get it framed and back in time for Middle's birthday. I think I've mentioned that before.

2 hours today, 94 hours total.

Margie

Impulse Power, Mr. Sulu

Well, not the day I was hoping for. Not a warp speed day, only pokey impulse power for me. Just bits and pieces here and there until after bedtime, and the Olympics made for a late bedtime. Sigh.

I did finish another character on the cross stitch and am mostly done with Jemima Puddleduck's shawl, so then it's her feet and head and on to the last two. That's progress.

I did take The Boy for a haircut and he looks much better now. Then Middle had her dance class at 2 and then Smallest and I went out later to get birthday presents for two upcoming parties, one tomorrow and one next week. We also made a quick run to the grocery and to the pet store to get crickets for The Boy's toads.

I'm wondering if it would be inappropriate to stitch in church tomorrow...

4.25 hours today, 92 hours total.

Margie

BB2 bows to my skillz

Inspired (or scared??) by Margie's amazing comeback in progress, I thought I would work a bit this morning though I had planned to have a real life today.

So, I finished crocheting 'BB2: Dawn of the octopus' last night while watching some Olympics recaps, and then tucked in all the ends this morning. The color blocks are larger in this one than in the first, so there are less ends. Somehow that was less daunting than BB1.

Anyway, here's a picture. You can also see some tiny little blobs in the middle, perhaps? Those are all that remains of the white and green yarn, so I was very successful (read: lucky) in my planning. Actually, the one thing I did plan was that I could tell I didn't have enough green to make the pattern symmetric, so I flipped the white and green at the end. I like it! Hopefully Pete (the baby in question) will too. :D

2.5 hours on that; 96.5 total.

Catherine

But Wait, There's More!

So I knit this morning while having coffee with my friends/neighbor's, then I worked on the cross stitch in the afternoon and did indeed knit while watching the Olympics. Not as long as I thought initially, but still a fair bit for the day.

Maybe you can teach octopi to crochet seaweed for camouflage. That would get PBS all interested. They could use the coconut shells to make hooks!

6.75 hours today, 87.75 hours total.

Oh Yeah?

Well, I did 4.5 hours of work yesterday, so there!

And I'm gonna go right now and get my cross stitch out and work for two hours, then pick up my kids and work until I have to take The Boy to soccer pictures. And then I'm gonna work until I fall asleep watching non-stop Olympic coverage on one of our three channels of coverage!

Pppbbbt!

4.5 hours yesterday, 81 hours total.

(and I already did an hour of knitting this morning!)

Growing my lead...

After catching up on my normal chores yesterday, I had time to do two hours of crocheting tonight. I definitely don't think I have an insurmountable lead, so I have to keep plugging away. Mmmm... salsa...

I am now only 3.5 rows away from finishing BB#2, which should be just over an hour's worth of work. Then I'm back to tucking in ends...

I've had the blanket spread out on my lap while I was working on it, and the funny stripe pattern is growing on me. It kind of reminds me of a weird sea creature or something. Maybe I can get PBS to do a documentary?

94 hours and counting.

Catherine

Six Weeks Remaining...

And does Catherine have an insurmountable lead?

Could be.

I've been dealing with some stuff, so I haven't been as productive as I was in January. However, on the various post-its around the house with my tallies, I came up with more time than I was expecting. A good thing.

Other good things:

After a long and unpleasant battle with our former Houston neighbor, we have come to a settlement that will require her to remove her carport from our property within 10 days and to relinquish any further claim on our property. Now we can FINALLY sell our house, just as we're moving back. She was a lovely neighbor while we lived there, but once she realized that our house was going to be bought, knocked down and replaced with a mammoth thing, she has been much less pleasant. Much.

After only about 10 years of paperwork and filing (all done by the lovely lawyers at the University of Delaware), on March 10th, my professor from grad school, his wife (also a prof) a fellow grad student and myself will become official U.S. Patent holders. Cool. I'm sure the money will be rolling in any second now...

Back to The Project. I did start the knitting project. It's all just knitting, no fancy stitches, not even purling, so it's perfect for TV watching time.

I'm getting really close on the Birthday Countdown. Only four characters left, then little bits of grass here and there and the backstitching!

I've been working on the evil dollhouse rug and have perhaps a third of the background filled in. It's some serious progress! The end is in sight there too. Fun.

Haven't done anything with the tree skirt lately. I need to find my transfer paper for sewing so I can trace the location of all the decorations.

I'll post pictures soon.

Anyhow, my random tally of hours was 14.5, to give 76.5 hours total. Only 15.5 hours behind.

Oh, and I did finally go cross country skiing at one of the golf courses here and it was great!

Margie

Then shalt thou count to three.

Fortunately my little finger is nearly all better (plus it was President's day = holiday), so I got in some stitching after all...

Even though I had very good intentions of finishing the 3 things that were nearly done, I have instead been working on baby blanket #2. Crochet is very soothing, I have to say. And/or, tucking in ends is very dull. Since I used up a lot of odds and ends (in terms of blue and green bits of yarn) in BB#1, this one is only three different colors. Which could be okay, but I am kind of frustrated with the way the stripes turned out and that I didn't use the third color more (I was worried it would run out and give an uneven pattern). Sadly, I only figured that out at the end of the day today, and it would undo many hours of work to fix it. Sigh. I'm hoping the baby recipient won't care too much. I may also thread the third color in a little bit just to keep things interesting.

I showed the blankets to Margie over iChat tonight and she thinks they are boring stitchwise (though she said so in a nicer way). To be fair, this is true. But, it is what it is. Maybe with my remaining pink yarn I'll try something fancier.

In other news, we're expecting a fair bit of snow tomorrow, and for it to start early in the day. It is always nice to wake up and have it be snowing, so I'm looking forward to that. 

Ok, so the tally is: 1.25 hours Saturday; 4.5 hours Sunday, 8.25 hours today. So I'm at 92 hours.

Catherine

Your move

Sad news - I totally sliced my pinky finger open when I broke a glass in the sink. So, sewing plans are temporarily on hold, unless I decide to stitch up myself...

Maybe I was just subconsciously feeling bad about how much I'm crushing you?? Nah...

Catherine

Homeland is secure

I have been traveling and am pleased to report that no one cares in the slightest if you bring giant metal spikes on a plane, as long as they are in the form of hobbies. In particular, I took a pair of ~12 inch knitting needles and a ~9 inch crochet hook in my carry on baggage. Seriously, that is a major loophole! (though one I appreciate...) A friend of mine (male) thought that was a sexist regulation, but I think it's only sexist if you can demonstrate that women get through with knitting needles but men get stopped. I suggested that he volunteer to test it out, but for some reason he didn't go for it. Anybody else want to give it a go??

Anyway, I had a lot of time on planes and in airports and during other down time over the weekend to work on the scarf for the coworker's daughter and Baby Blanket 2: Babies take Manhattan. The scarf is done, pending much weaving in of loose ends, and baby blanket is nearly halfway done. It helps that I'm using a slightly larger hook and also thicker yarn. In regards to my ongoing psychology experiment, I had a surprising number of people talk to me in the airport about the scarf - apparently airports are a less scary place for people to knit than on the subway. Or, there are more people there. But, no conversations about the crochet. Hmm...

Well, not much else to report. I've had to do a lot of estimating for time this weekend, but: there was >3 hours on Thursday, 1.5 hours Friday, and 22 rows for Saturday through today. I did a calibration curve (doing a row with no interruptions) and it took 20 minutes. So, the overall time for the weekend (adding 10 minutes tonight rolling a ball of yarn) is 12 hours. The plan for the rest of the week is to suspend time on BB2 while I finish the three projects that are nearly *nearly* done. Then, looking forward, I'm hoping that one of the two remaining people I know that are pregnant are having girls, as I still have a lot of pink yarn.

78 hours so far. 

Catherine 

Temptation...

I'm really wanting to start a new knitting project, but I am resisting until I finish the other three in rotation currently.

Worked on Grandmommy's tree skirt yesterday and today. We had the Science Fair to go and see last night, and choir tonight (I didn't do anything at choir tonight...), so not a ton of time, but a bit. I'll post the tree skirt picture tomorrow. Catherine, while you're there with Nina you can tell her that I'm fixing the skirt. She's the one that passed it along.

I'm hoping to actually get out of the house and do some cross country skiing tomorrow morning, which will take some of my sewing time, but skiing is better for me, in all kinds of ways!

3 hours, 62 hours total.

Margie

Depressed a la dePaola

The bad thing about yarn is that it never ends. I feel like I'm pulling from Strega Nona's pasta pot. 

I spent 2.5 hours yesterday and 30 minutes today working on this little pink scarf. It would be done by now, except that I tried out putting the name in by altering knits and purls, and it ended up as a big curly mess. So, I pulled out an hour's worth of stitching. :( 

Hopefully I'll finish up some of these silly things over the weekend. Or, I'll just start more and more projects. Bwa ha ha ha!

66 hours for me.

Catherine

And Another One's Gone...

Finished the Fat Quarter Skirt for my niece's Xmas present. A little behind. Oh well.

It's been a slow couple of days here. Lost some momentum while dealing with a work crisis with Darling.

I think next will be restoring our Grandmother's Christmas tree skirt. I'll post a before picture later.

2.5 hours on the skirt, 59 hours total.

Margie

Tucked in for the night

Baby blanket has cut it's ties. I need to tuck in all the ends - will put up a picture when it's all pretty.

Also, I was lamenting my extra pink yarn, and my coworker suggested that her daughter (nearly 4) would LOVE a little pink scarf. So, that is my subway project for the time being. I am debating whether I should knit her name into the pattern - would be super cute, but I am lazy.

I had plans to take either knitting or crochet on my trip this week, but am worried they won't let the needles through airport security. I may have to come up with another plan, or face falling far behind...

4.5 hours today; 63 hours total.

Catherine

All squared up

Sorry for the long silence! I have been working, but have not had a lot to say, so have just been keeping notes. Here's a sum up of the last 4 days. 

I am nearly finished with the baby blanket - I've got 9 rows to go. I briefly considered stopping when the blanket was a 3' square, but a text to Margie suggested larger would be a bit better. I'll take her word on it, as she has many more babies than me (3/0 = infinity). I have used up a bunch of yarn, which is great, but I've still got tons left. More brainstorming... 

I am also nearly finished with the shark pajamas. I did get my friend to model them, and we agreed on the waistband and the hems. I had to shorten the legs, as I had overestimated, and then I've got one more hem to put in. I also need to attach the waistband and I'm tempted to put a pocket on the back. But, as my friend originally asked, why do you need pockets in pajamas? I want to finish those tomorrow.

When not stitching this weekend, I was helping a friend go through some math problems in preparation for the GRE (though I don't know how much I really helped - she is full of smartness on her own). I forget that math is fun. I was trying to explain how I think about squaring numbers (she had to compare the square of 117 vs. 118 for some reason), and that you can just add one of each of the numbers to get to the next squared value, and I realized I probably sounded just like my brother. He also has a lot of interesting ways to think about math and numbers, although his ideas are normally a lot more sophisticated than any math I'm thinking about. Anyway, she took a practice test tonight and got a 680 on the math part, so she's feeling good.

So, 2.5 hours Thursday, 2.25 hours Friday, 1.25 hours Saturday, and 5.5 hours today gets me up to 58.5 hours total. I've got the lead, for a brief shining moment anyway...

Catherine