Yet Another Knitting Post

I finished these headbands tonight.  The knitting had been done for a couple of days, and the girls wouldn't be put off any longer, so I finally got around to assembling them.

I think they turned out really cute.  Now we'll see if the girls can be convinced to keep them on for more than 2 seconds...  The pattern is by Alana Dakos of Never Not Knitting.  I got the pattern at Stitches West back in February.  The yarn is Knit Picks Palette.

It's really hard not to imagine all sorts of other versions of this idea:  A red headband with blue and white stars for Independence Day, spring headbands with flowers, a stripey Easter egg headband...

That's all for tonight.  Otherwhere on the web, I'm trying to get a little more up-to-date with some newer photos of what we've been up to recently.

Stunning Realization

I was retrieving my reusable grocery bags from the trunk before heading to Trader Joe's this afternoon, and I realized that I hadn't actually hauled the stroller out and used it for over a week.  That's unheard of!

I have no intention of attempting to reclaim my trunk space for other purposes; we still need the stroller quite frequently, but that's still a milestone of sorts.

This Is Not a Knitting Blog

...No, really.

Except that a couple of days ago I started a project that I must wax rhapsodic upon.  The yarn is "Gaia Fingering" from Becoming Art in colorway "Night Owl".  It's a 100% Merino single-ply with the most amazing color shadings and combinations.  Lots of blues, but also shots of yellow, purple, mauve, rusty browns, flashes of rose and wine.  It's hard to explain (and the photo on the website is much 'cooler' in tone than the skein I bought).  It leapt off the wall and into my hands at Stitches West a few weeks ago.

Also at Stitches West, the pattern was  brought to my attention:  A helpful woman at the Miss Babs booth mentioned the "Hitchhiker" shawlette  by Martina Behm as a great way to use variegated yarns.  It's garter stitch, with a sawtooth detail on one of the edges.  Beautiful.  And I have a *very* soft spot for anything at all related to Douglas Adams's works.

And the needles are Knit Picks Harmony interchangeables.  To get the drape I wanted, I used the size 4 tips.  They are gorgeous to look at, and so smooth, without being too slick.

The combination is magic.  Sensual.  Buttery.  The springiness of the yarn, the smoothness of the needles.  The sunlit luster and colors of the fiber slipping through my fingers.  I think my favorite bits are the streaks of yolky yellow, and how they make the colors near them glow.  I don't think I've ever had a yarn project quite like this in terms of overall level of delight in the process.  If the finished product spontaneously combusted in my hands as I cast it off, I think I'd still be satisfied.

Toddler Fashion Advice

B followed me into the bathroom this morning and spotted the dish I keep on the counter to corral any jewelry I take off as I go to bed.  "Want Mommy to put something ON," she said, pointing at the bowl.

I took out the gold earrings I usually wear and put them on.  B kept pointing, "AND a necklace!"

So, I spent today much better accessorized than I otherwise would have!

House Diet

Hooray!  3 more bags of stuff gone today. 

I Freecycled some cloth diapers that D was tired of futzing with.  The velcro was starting to go, and while I would have used them to the bitter end, he is actually the one who does a lot of the diaper changes, so I smiled and replaced them.  They still had enough life in them that I felt guilty throwing them out.  One quick note on Freecycle with my best attempt at an accurate report of their condition, and 24 hours later they are gone!  I hope that the person who picked them up is happy and gets lots of use out of them.

One bag of clothing donated to our MOMS Club Clothing swap.  This one doesn't really count volume-wise, because tomorrow I will attend the swap and look out some bigger summer clothes for the girls.  The clothing swap is a nifty fundraiser in so many ways.  I get a tax deduction for the FMV of the stuff I donate to it; I get the opportunity to buy items for the girls at $1.00 each; and all those $1.00s from all the moms in the club add up to a nice amount of money which the club donates to a local charity.

One more bag of the girls' outgrown clothing to a friend with twins almost exactly one year younger than B&C.  I still have one more bag of outgrown clothes for another friend with a younger daughter, and one bag of assorted stuff for Goodwill.  I'm also collecting a box of stuff for the MOMS Club's garage sale fundraiser, which can't come soon enough!  Oh, and Santa Clara's Annual Clean Up Campaign is coming up soon, too.  We'll be able to get rid of some e-waste there.

Meanwhile, I've bought a fair amount of yarn recently.  Tuesday Morning got a new shipment with some nice organic cottons, so I grabbed a bunch of that, thinking of some spring shrugs or cardis for the girls.  And Bobbin's Nest Studio (my totally awesome Local Yarn Shop) was having a Mardi Gras sale today, so I got some navy blue wool to make a hat for D.  It's like there's some vacuum that wants the space to be filled.  I think I'm still at a net reduction in volume, though!

I haven't managed to work on Girl Friday the last couple of days.  It's been dishcloths and a garter stitch swatch for a scarf/shawlette I want to start soon.  And, having recently broken my crochet drought, I started a sunhat for one of the girls out of some yarn I had leftover from an afghan I crocheted a couple of years ago.  The pattern looks super-cute; I hope my efforts look half as good when I'm done.  I'm hoping to also use some other scraps of yarn to crochet flowers to trim the hats with.  Since the base yarn will be the same for both hats, I want to put different colored flowers on them.

See, I was just going to type a couple sentences, and here we are.  Now, I'm going to go put a couple of rows into Girl Friday.  The real problem there is that I'm near a decision point about how long I want the sweater to be.  I hate making decisions!

Relative Value

I am just back from Half-Price Books, looking at the shelves that I thought I had been relatively ruthless about, and having seller's remorse!  I wish I had gotten rid of more!  More!

The mere presence of really-truly-useless-shouldn't-be-here crap seems to cloud my brain.  "Well, Y is more valuable to me / I am more likely to want to read Y than X, and X is still here, so obviously I shouldn't get rid of Y"  Funny how once X is gone, and Y sits there exposed on the very bottom of the utility scale, I wonder why I wanted to keep Y around at all!

All of which is to say that it's a process.  Always a process.  And I am not a patient person, particularly with myself.

We got rid of about 4 decent-sized boxes of books, though.  And I have free shelf space!  Not much, but it's a start.  And we had a pretty nice family outing.  And I got Rubio's fish tacos out of the deal. 

I am also going through the girls' clothes for our MOMS Club clothing swap this coming week.  That's hard too, especially since we're teetering between being able to wear last summer's sizes (especially if we're out of diapers soon) and needing the next size up...

No great insights, nothing pithy.  Hope you had a great weekend!

Adventures in Spit-Splicing

It's been a few days.  I'm still working on Girl Friday.  I try to knit 4 or 5 rows every day, just to keep some sort of momentum going on it.  I'm really enjoying knitting it right now.  I love the color of the wool, and I love the feel of it.  It's not the softest yarn I've ever knit with, but it's making this wonderfully squooshy fabric that feels so nice coming off the needles.  I stop to pet it quite frequently.

Today's new knitting experience was actually spit-splicing the ends of the first and second balls of yarn together.  I've really not knit much with yarn that can be felted to itself like this to join ends.  It's great because it means I won't have to carefully weave in those yarn ends later!  A responsible blogger would probably either describe the entire process, or provide a link to a good tutorial.  Perhaps I'll come back later and do that...or maybe even add a picture of the progress I've made on the sweater...

...and, in fact, a lot of other "Responsible Bloggers" have already documented the joys of spit-splicing, so I shall not.  In general, I love Knitting Help (www.knittinghelp.com) for excellent videos of many knitting techniques.

Otherwise, it's been a somewhat trying week or so.  C came down with a stomach bug on Friday night.  Of course this was the weekend that D had to be at work quite a bit for some data center upgrades.  We survived, though the washing machine is probably still begging for mercy in some alternate universe where machines can talk.  Then we had a great day Monday, with a productive morning running errands and a fun afternoon at the "Train Park" with friends.  Then Monday night, I got the stomach bug.  No.  Fun.

Fortunately, D had already planned on taking Tuesday off work as his comp day for being on pager duty the previous week, so I got to invalid it up, which was a HUGE help.  Today?  Today was OK.  We survived, which is a very good thing.  :-)