Mittenpalooza

As promised, I present to you the finished socks, originally started as a test knit, but paused because you can't see the cute pattern.  

   

    

Ta-da!  Socks!

After those were done, I made some mittens for Middle, because Chicago is cold forever.  These were made holding two yarns together, the bright green and maybe a zauberball?  I'll have to see if I can remember what I did.  At any rate, they're nice and squishy and warm and dense.  Warm hands for the win!  The yarn is the Seersucker mitten pattern.  It's super easy and the mittens are great.

I knit these mittens at the finals for a ballet competition (ADC/IBC) for which Smallest qualified for back in January.  This was in late March.  At the competition, Smallest auditioned for ballet companies and was offered some trainee positions.  After MUCH debate, she deferred her college acceptance for a year and took an offer from Sarasota Ballet.  She is very, very happy with her decision, and we are hoping that they love her as much as she loves them, and will offer her a second year in the spring.

This is the hat and mittens that I made for Smallest.  We bought the yarn in New York (Knitty City?) when we were there for a college audition in January or February?  I knit the hat first, I think.  I suspect it's also the Bankhead pattern - so simple and easy! - and then I got more yarn to make the mittens.  

Too much is never enough!  We went to visit Jeff's older daughter in NYC over President's Weekend in February and it was still cold, so I asked her if she would like mittens?  Of course she would!  We went to another NYC yarn shop and Sarah picked out this beautiful smoky purple colored yarn (Malabrigo, I think?).  I ended up getting a second skein so I could hold it double to knit the mittens.  They are still nice and toasty, so success!

This is our remaining cat, Ginny McSqueakins, sleeping on the shawl I recently finished.  It was still in progress here, but she loves wool anything and needed to have a snuggle on it when I had to get up.

Here's the finished shawl, I took a nicer picture of it in my office last week.  I like the colors a lot.

Smallest has asked for more socks for Christmas, so here is a Daisy sock prior to finishing the toe.  I've adopted the Finchley graft to close up the toes and love it so much!  It's easy to remember and easy to execute.  This is the same yarn that I used to knit the sample sock shown at the top of the page.  It showed the stitches nicely, but I wanted it to be something else.  I'm not crazy about this pattern with the yarn, but Smallest approves, and the socks are for her, so there we go.

Oh! I also made a small sock for the cat that belongs to Smallest's roommate.  Apparently the kitten really likes her knit socks.  I would rather the cat, Cannoli, not play with the socks, so I made one just for the her!  She likes it, so I'll make another.  It was super fast.  Here she is playing with the sock.

So now I'm working on Sock #2, and then it will be hat time for Sarah and her husband.  Middle would also like hats for themselves and their boyfriend, but we haven't selected patterns or yarn yet.

Thinking about Halloween and holidays.  I'll be visiting Smallest in just a couple of weeks, and then there are holidays, another Florida visit to see Smallest and Lauren, and holidays, and seeing kids.  It should be nice and busy!

Margie

 

Worst post-er ever!

 How can it be that the last post was in January?!  I thought for sure I'd posted since then.

Alas.

Okay, so projects mentioned in the January post.  I don't have a picture of the socks for Middle.  I don't even know which socks they were! (looking back, I see they were the tiger striped socks, no finished pictures of those)

Lauren's hat

The Hue Blanket!

Awakening of Flora

Skirt

Bodice

On the dancer!

I did finish the Almina shawl, but I didn't take any pictures, so I'll get one of that.  I do have a picture of the socks mentioned.  They were from a test knit.  I didn't think they would show the pattern well, so I paused to knit the test sock in another color which worked better.  I have since finished the pair and they are nice!  I need to see if I have a sweater picture from Smallest's sweater as well.

In the past nine months, Jeff's mother has passed away, and our grey fluffy cat, Gandalf, died as well.  Smallest has left for a ballet trainee-ship and is having a wonderful time.  Middle is still in Chicago, and The Boy has moved back home.  He's in a program that trains kids to design video games.  The initial evaluation period was not awesome, but he made it through to the regular classes and seems quite excited (for him) so that seems to be going well.  

My shoulder is all better, and I'm working with a trainer once a week to do things with weights to help my body.  I work out 2ish times a week on my own and that's good for me.  I've been diagnosed with anemia, which has been around for at least a couple of years now, but I've finally found an iron pill that works better with my stomach than others, so hopefully in a couple of months I'll be doing better.  

I've finished another shawl and some happy yellow socks.  There was also a lot of hat/mitten knitting this spring.  I'll post those soon.  Right now I'm working on a summer top for me, and starting Xmas knitting.  I have hat and sock requests so far.  Always good to have projects.

Catherine and Darren went camping in Big Bend National Park in Texas last week.  I haven't checked in to see if it was fun, but I suspect it was.

Which hat? That hat?

Well, Christmas has passed.  I didn't finish the sweater for Smallest, but I did have to undo it and start over because I wasn't following the directions.  Sigh.

I still need to sew up the toes of the socks for Middle.  They go back to Chicago on Sunday, so time is short.  Today is Wednesday.  Oh! I do have a sock picture to share.  I knit these back in... 2014? They're matching socks for Middle and Smallest - toes and heel yarn are swapped with the main yarn between the socks.

Over the holiday, Lauren asked for a hat with a larger brim than her current hat.  I thought that I had made her a Bankhead hat, but alas, I was just looking back through the blog to remember what the yarn was and I made her a Turn A Square hat!  I have completed about six inches of 1x1 ribbing at this point, so I think I'm just going to stick with the Bankhead.  Hopefully I'll have enough yarn.

I bought some nice tweedy olive yarn to make an Almina shawl, so I think that will come next after the sweater, hat, and socks are finally finished.  I did also discover a 3/4 finished sock while looking for something else, so I have that to finish too.  

I've started on the last row of the Hue blanket, so that's exciting.  Hopefully I can finish it this year.  Goals!

I'm making a new ballet costume for Smallest also.  This year it's the Awakening of Flora, so it's a romantic (long & droopy) tutu with an overskirt and a bodice.  Much less challenging than last year, and I'm behind on getting it done.  She needs it for the 23rd of the month.  I've got the mock-up of the bodice done, and made the skirt (and screwed it up) so we'll see if I can get my act together.

Happy New Year!

Margie

Ah, Kitchener, we meet again...

 I have finished the socks for Middle.  One might be a row or two longer in the leg than the other, but that's not such a big deal.  It is not entirely true to say that I have finished.  I have 24 stitches left on both socks that I must sew together using the Kitchener stitch.  This is a fancy way of sewing the stitches closed in a way that looks like they were knitted together.  It's a grafting stitch.  Sometimes I do it well and the toes look beautiful, sometimes it looks really horrendous.  There are a billion online resources to use, so I'll find one and get it done.

In the meantime, I have picked up the sweater for Smallest.  I was working on it while we were watching Shang-Chi and the Ten Rings last night and now I have to un-knit three rows to figure out what I screwed up.  Alas.  At least it's a smaller sweater.  

We are preparing for Thanksgiving also.  It will be the first holiday without my Father-in-law.  I know that my Mother-in-law was in a memory care place last year for the holiday, but Jeff is adamant that she was with us for the holidays last year, and I don't think that's the case, because the facility was highly restrictive about visitors.  At any rate, she doesn't remember last year, so it doesn't really matter.  We'll be gathering at Jeff's brother's house, which will accommodate her wheelchair, except for the bathroom.  I'm learning more and more about handicapped bathrooms and am thinking I need to rate the Houston area bathrooms by how easy they are to use.

At any rate, it should be a nice holiday, and we'll have tasty food, and be with good people.  

I'll see if I can remember to snap a picture of the sweater to share soon.

I should be going to France in a couple of weeks.  I don't know if I want to take the sweater, or start on a shawl to work on while I'm there.  I finished my Sunwalker shawl at the last in-person meeting (July, 2019) and knit some socks at the previous overseas meeting (Paris, 2017).  I was swatching for a Good Vibes, but have set that aside.  Maybe I can work that in while working on the sweater...

Margie

Road Trip!

 This weekend, I drove with Smallest up to Memphis so that she could audition for the ballet program at the University of Utah.  We left after a school program on Saturday morning and arrived in Memphis around 10:30ish?  It was an uneventful drive up, which is always good.  The perk was that it was Daylight Saving Ends weekend, so clocks went back, the audition was at 2:00, and we could sleep in!  

Much sleep was had, then we had a tasty breakfast at Bryant's Breakfast, which was very tasty.  I had a bacon biscuit with egg and cheese, and Smallest had the Nutella Supreme pancakes.  We were pleased with our decision.  Here are the pancakes:

After breakfast, it was back to the hotel to relax a bit and then get ready for the audition.  We left around 1:15 for a quick drive to the studio, where registration was to begin at 1:30.  The studio was a brand new place and is really stunning.  There were about 20 other girls there and one boy.  They all got to go in and warm up after checking in, and overall things went pretty well.

At the end of the program, we were the last to leave because Smallest was waiting to change clothes.  The professor who lead the audition complimented her, and we discovered he knew several of her ballet teachers in Houston, which was cool.  Smallest said the teacher had a lot of Russian-training tendencies in his dancing, so she was very happy to have had the experience with the Bolshoi program this past summer.  At least something good came out of all that!

We left around 5:00 to drive back to Houston.  We got dinner at a sketchy Subway at a gas station, which was amusing, and had a smooth trip back home.  Smallest slept the last couple of hours, so hopefully she won't be tooo tired today.  We arrived around 1:30 in the morning.  We enjoyed some really beautiful sunsets, and laughed a lot about how Smallest has picked up a lot of my habits, for which I apologized profusely.

That's about it.  I'm thinking about a short nap here before lunch.  Maybe... I do have a library book to pick up.  I could walk and get it on the way home...

That's what I know.  Now we wait to hear from Utah about scholarships and admission, and wait to hear from the other schools about auditions.  Lots of waiting.

Margie

Upping the frequency

 If I post more frequently to a blog that no one reads, does it really matter?

I will feel better about it at any rate.

The water hyacinth continues to bloom and is entirely pleasing.  I am still taking pictures of the flowers, but not as frequently.  I had been thinking that it had plenty of water with all the rain we've had recently.  However, when I was out back to check some breakers, I noticed that the water was pretty low.  It's been filled up now and I know to check it every so often.

Other excitement... Smallest finished the college applications that were due for Nov 1.  This involved filming dance videos and then editing them into longer videos and videos of different combinations.  She had to do some of this for an application due Oct 15 and had a terrible time with editing software while at her dad's house.  Luckily for her, this time she was at our house.  I helped her with the filming and once she selected the videos she liked, I did all the editing.  iMovie for the win!  There were some short sleep nights, as the musical was still going on, but she's been a trooper.  The Oct 15 deadline school has invited her for an audition, and one of the other schools has admitted her but she's waiting to hear about a dance audition.  There are some reach schools in NYC that I'm sure she's anxious to hear from too.  One of the other schools has a regional audition this coming Sunday, so we are driving up to Memphis for some dance fun!  Paar-taay!  I am glad we are close enough to drive.  Flying seems so crazy these days with flights getting canceled all over the place.  There weren't any flights back to Houston Sunday afternoon, so we decided to drive.  It should be fun.  Only about 8 hours.

I've started on some Xmas knitting.  Socks for Middle.  They mentioned that they liked tiger stripes last year at some point and about a week after that, this yarn appeared in an email newsletter so it seemed like destiny to me!  I'm knitting Vanilla is the New Black because the heel is cool and something I haven't done before.  After those are done, I've started a sweater for Smallest.

We've made progress with my in-law's house.  We've removed everything that's going, except for some furniture for Jeff's brother.  Now it's time to get the estate sale moving!  There was a lot of stuff.  Oof.  There's been a lot dealing with Jeff's mom and her insurance.  Medicare is complicated!  I think we have everything sorted now.  We will see.  I did take her to the dentist this week.  Turns out she hadn't been in four years, so it was good that we took her.  Apparently she doesn't really like going to the dentist.  However, she _does_ like going on outings, so that was more important than where she was going.  We got tacos for lunch afterwards and that was a nice perk too.  She is starting to lose more of her words though, which is sad.  

That's about it for now.  I made a top for Smallest last night.  I'll see if I can get her to send me pictures of her in it at a party tonight and then I'll relate the story soon.  Off to Memphis tomorrow.

Margie

Forbidden

 Oh my, it's been a while!  Shame on me.

We are back from Spain, stepdaughter has gotten married and started law school.  Sadly, while we were in Spain, initial tests suggested that Jeff's dad had some sort of abdominal cancer.  It turned out to be pancreatic cancer, and he passed away just a month after those initial tests. We have been trying to catch up on everything since then.  We also had to put our dog to sleep the week before my father-in-law's memorial service.  It's been non-stop fun over here.

As we've been cleaning out their house, preparing it for whatever we decide in the future, I was able to acquire something that I've admired for many years.  Jeff's mom is/was an avid gardener, and has many wonderful plants.  We re-homed her ginormous fiddle leaf fig tree to a friend's office, other plants have gone to be with other family members, but the one I wanted is apparently highly illegal.

Here we have water hyacinth.  It is highly invasive, will spread to cover the surface of any water supply it is exposed to, and has truly lovely blooms.  It's happily sitting in a plastic container on our back porch now, and with replenished water rewarded me with a bloom two days ago.  It survived our freeze back in February, and it will remind me of my mother-in-law every time I see it.  

In other news, I had a EMG test to determine what was going on with my neck/shoulder pain and it looks like it's a pinched nerve.  I get to have an MRI to see what's going on in there, and I'm continuing with physical therapy.  The PT has been so helpful in increasing my range of motion.  Good stuff.

I'm also back to knitting, as of yesterday.  I've been doing some cross stitch in between.  The test ruled out carpal tunnel, which I had secretly worried about, so I figure it's time to knit again!  I have a sweater to make for Smallest, and some socks for Middle.  The Boy doesn't seem concerned about knitted things, so I'm not too worried about him.  He also tends to run hot, so he might not need anything either.

Perhaps I should set a regular posting day...

Margie