I have a confession to make…

I’ve been knitting. And I think I like it.

Allow me to tell you the tale of my descent into this madness…it all began at Christmastime, when we took a lengthy trip back to visit our families. We stayed for several weeks with my husband’s family at the Farm, on which lived his mother in one house, his grandparents in another house, and us - my husband, my son and I, who stayed in the guest cabin. All three structures are almost as close as houses in the suburbs. (It didn’t make sense to me, either. They have hundreds of acres.) At any rate, it so happened that my husband had daily business to complete in the City, about half an hour away (he was assisting his old USAF recruiter). My darling husband’s mother worked, grandpa worked out on the farm, and that left me with a five month old over at grandma’s almost constantly for two weeks, as (despite honest efforts) there was not the best heating, no food, and no television over in the cabin.

And so it was that I spent my days sitting a little awkwardly on Grandma’s sofa, watching satellite TV, taking care of my baby. Boredom was inevitable. Grandma is a cheerful, crafty sort, and sometimes I’d go into her sewing room with her and watch her go about her various projects. At one point, it came up that she used to knit, something I’d never learned to do.

So she taught me.

Six months later, I had accomplished no more knitting than what I had done over Christmas, and I didn’t really think much of it until my hubby was talking on the phone to dear Grandma and she asked how I was doing with my knitting. She seemed a little disappointed to hear from my not-the-best-at-taking-hints-while-on-the-phone husband that I hadn’t done any at all…

So, to assuage my guilty conscience and to improve my rudimentary skills (I may as well, after all) I’m creating a scarf for her as a Christmas present for this year. And you know what, I think I like it. I really do. I quit the last time because the (very easy) pattern I was working on was ugly and difficult to keep track of, but I’m designing this scarf myself, and it’s still very easy, and it’s ribbed, and I may add smocked or cross-stitched accents, and it’s really quite attractive even while I’m working on it.

But the real reason I began a brand new project? It’s because I have others I’m supposed to be working on…

Check out my new sidebar addition!

I’ve added a ‘portrait’ doll of myself to the sidebar - I feel like it makes it a little more friendly in here. This is actually part of what I’ve been doing with myself over the past week and a half - my doll is heavily altered. I got the idea while I was reading Natalie’s blog, HookStars. As you can see if you’ve been there, she has an awesome doll, toting some yarn, a project, and a crochet hook. I thought it would be fun to make a doll of myself.
It was, it was a lot of fun - I took it pretty far, aside from giving her a crochet hook and some yarn, I added more of a bosom and some ‘ba-boom’ in the thighs, because if there’s one thing I’m not, it’s stick-thin. She looks a lot like me now, for a cartoonish little pixel doll.

Still no teeth in sight, and he’s not fussing over it, anymore. Sometimes I wonder if he’ll ever get teeth!

I’m lazy and attention-span deprived…

I’m so…spastic. I haven’t worked on the bloody giraffe for my son, I haven’t bought more cotton yarn for my swim skirt, I haven’t posted in almost a week…bleh. However, I did rearrange the living room today, I cleaned the bathroom yesterday and the kitchen the day before that. Not much fun in that, but a sense of satisfaction, I suppose. Bleh. Bleh, bleh, bleh.

I have discovered that I live within five miles of four public libraries, which was surprising to say the least - I love libraries! I may take a day trip with my son to one of the nearest tomorrow. I checked the online catalog, and they have several recent crochet books as well as what seems to be a good collection of Mercedes Lackey novels. I love Mercedes Lackey. Yep.

But nevertheless, it is late, and I am tired. I think my son has a tooth coming in, and he’s been terribly grumpy all day, very fussy. Of course, we’ve thought that he might be teething more than once over the past few months (he’s ten and a half months old and hasn’t got any teeth in yet, which is unusual) but I think he might actually pull it off this time…I certainly hope so. People are beginning to give him odd looks when they find out his age. We have dinner at a friend’s house every Sunday, and one of our friends has a six month old who looks like he could beat up our child. He could certainly win a biting match, as he’s got four teeth. My poor baby. He has to gum all of his food, still…

Good night!

Yet another bump in the road…

So I ran out of cotton yarn. Again. Bleh. Apparently it takes more to cover my butt than I had thought. Although, as you can see from this (rather awful) photo

I’ve gone quite a ways with it. And I think it’ll come out nicely - once I buy another ball of yarn for it. Ah, well.

But, perhaps this is a positive thing - now I’m free to work on something else. Like, ohhhh, I don’t know - maybe my son’s birthday present? That giraffe isn’t going to crochet itself…

Check this out!

Heeheeheeheeeeee…I didn’t even cheat!

You are a GRAMMAR GOD!

Congratulations! If your mission in life
is not already to preserve the English tongue,
it should be. You can smell a grammatical
inaccuracy from fifty yards. Your speech is
revered by the underlings, though some may
blaspheme and call you a snob. They’re just
jealous. Go out there and change the world.

How grammatically correct are you? (Revised with answer key)
brought to you by Quizilla

I just don’t get some people.

I was watching Dr. Phil last week (I like Dr. Phil. So shoot me.) and they were talking about ‘real-life’ deseperate housewives who each had a secret that was consuming their lives. For almost all of them, it seemed this was some kind of addictive behavior that they just kept repeating, even though they knew it was destructive. One was an alcoholic, one was bullimic, one was addicted to pain pills, one was a compulsive shoplifter - you get the picture.
How can people let things get so out of balance in their life? I mean, you know when things start to get bad, you can’t help noticing that - for example - you’ve had fourteen teeth rot because you’re throwing up all the time. How do you let it get so out of control?
My husband had nightmares last night that I wanted a divorce because (we have decided) he found out yesterday that two of his friends that he plays games with online are getting divorced. We have also decided that for at least one of them, his 75-hour-a-week Counterstrike habit probably contributed to it. But I doubt, if you had asked him last week, that he would have said that Counterstrike was more important to him than his wife and child - but that is where he was spending his time and energy, and it’s no wonder, after all, that his ’sniper’ skills are more finely honed than his family skills.
I don’t know. I like my life to be balanced, at peace. I can always tell when something starts to overwhelm everything else, and I get stressed, and work for balance again. I mean, some weeks I crochet a lot in between diaper changes, but I mix it up with my other hobbies - reading, writing stuff, hours on the computer, artwork, baking, housework…heehee…sorry, couldn’t pull that one off with a straight face. Housework is definitely not one of my hobbies.

Ribbit, ribbit…

So, I frogged the swim-skirt back to its component parts…no, no, I haven’t given up on it, I just needed to make it better. I calculated the multiplier for the pattern stitch so that I didn’t have an extra tab sticking out on the ‘waistband,’ I made it wider so that it would sit more on my hips than my waist, and now I’m almost back to where I was the last time I talked about it. This time, though I have (hopefully) all the yarn I’ll need for it, so I won’t have to stop till it’s done!

Hi, I’m Melissa, and I’m a Yarn Addict.

I’ve joined the Yarn Addicts webring, and I thought it would be appropriate to show you guys my stash…

stash.jpg

Keep in mind that it’s just beginning, I’ve only been working on it in earnest for about two and a half years - not more than five skeins came with me from my parent’s house. And sure, not all of that is yarn, but lemme tell you - a big chunk of it is.

I think it’s getting to be pretty respectable, yes?

Meandering Along

So I got more yarn for my swim-skirt thingie. Yay! Now I just need to get to it, which is easier said than done. I’m finishing up a project to submit to Crochetme for the next issue, and it’s almost done. I just need to type it up and coordinate the instructional photos with the directions. I’m keeping it under wraps until it is published/rejected, but you can be sure that if it’s not accepted you’ll see it here - it’s the first pattern I’ve ever written.

So, until I’ve got more - that’s it!

Gahhh! Crochetme jumped my gun…

Apparently Emily Nelson and I are sharing a brain. Sort of. The new issue of Crochetme! came out today (hurrah!) and imagine my shock to see a swim skirt/coverup - using basically the same material as mine! - in an issue that was supposed to be about home decorating! If you have no idea what I’m talking about, go here.
I started mine about two or three weeks ago, and things went pretty quickly - until I hit the end of my ball of yarn! See?

(It’s actually bright white cotton yarn, not ivory, there’s just poor lighting in this shot.) I bought the cotton worsted weight as an experiment, as I’ve never worked with it before, and apparently 2.5 oz won’t get you too far. So now my design is on hold until I get out and buy some more.
Which could easily turn into weeks or months. Bleh.

Personally, I think my design will turn out prettier see the flowers? I actually got the petal pattern stitch from this beautifully designed poncho pattern here which I made last fall. I love it!

And hey, I’ll probably post the pattern when I’ve done with it, though I’ve never written up a pattern before. I guess we’ll see…