Fair-isle Fingerless Mitts Get Fingers

I mentioned earlier in the week that I have been working on a fair isle project.

It is a project for a gift that was completely finished in June 2011. I followed the pattern exactly.
Heather's Mitts by Spilly Jane


 (There are three because of a gauge error.  The first one was practice)
The pattern is great but my friend here has small hands and they trumpet out. Plus she mentioned that it would be great if they had convertible mitten tops.  So, I stole them back, frogged out the top, re-knit the ribbing and then picked up the stitches on the back and knit up the top.





Then I will do the second. It is lots of fun because I had to make my own choices on lots of it. No pattern to follow. :-)

Computer stuff

I have been taking computer training this week for work. It has been very interesting at times and at times it has almost put me to sleep.  I did learn Binary, which is so much easier then people make it out to be.  It is simple addition.  If you can add 128 & 64, you can do Binary. Why do people act like it is this big secret?

On another note, my knitting widget (in the right corner) is lying.  I have not knit only 127 yards since Jan 1st.  I just normally don't put in my totals for knitting until I finish a project. I will soon have more when I weave in the ends of my socks. Then I will only have two projects on the needles.  Time to cast on a whole bunch of stuff and get overwhelmed.

Regress

When my mother stays overnight with me, no matter if it is one night or many, I start to revert to my teenage ways of sitting and watching her work. She does the dishes, laundry and seems to have a blast doing it. 

Her favorite part seems to be reading bedtime stories to the boys.  It is the one thing I am happy to take over after she goes home.  Harold and the purple crayon, Good Night Moon, Llama Llama, I could read children's books out loud for hours.  My real favorite is The Long Long Letter by Elizabeth Spurr. It sees to be out of print but I got a second copy on Paperbackswap because we have loved our first copy to death.

Do you have a favorite children's book that isn't well known? Please share it in the comments. We are always looking for new books.

Easily Amused

I want to training today. I got to drive a work car with work gas and a work toll pass down the toll road (which is normally way too expensive to drive) to a training place that had free parking.  Then their kitchen had free bagels, donuts, soda, filtered water and TWO Kureg coffee machines with tons of different flavors of tea, coffee and hot chocolate. Then they gave a voucher for $5 off to go out to lunch and my work paid for the rest of lunch.  Plus there is the whole thing of getting paid to be trained and work paying for the training.

My friend said I need to get out more.

Check, Check, Check, Check, Check

Today I slept in, fed my one kid, did 3 loads (so far) of laundry, knitting on my fair isle mittens and washed the socks that still need the ends woven in along with 1/2 a week of wool socks and under garments.

Katniss Socks

Then we went to the pool where we met up with my Dad and Bugs. We had tons of fun and I ended up walking 5 laps in the pool with 35 lbs riding piggy back. Now I am working on my blog (including posting yesterday's entry.) If you read Friday's post you will know that I have worked on all 5 of my goals for the day. Woo Hoo. Now to go to a Super Bowl party. TTFN!

Knitting in public

Bugs, my 7 year old son, went off to Grandpa's house today and left me home with just Boo, 4 year old son.  I asked Boo what he would like to do and he said Monkey Joe's. Imagine a warehouse with 10 big moon bounces plus video games and party rooms and you have the basic idea. Imagine also that it is 14 degrees outside on a Saturday and you can guess that most of Winchester with small children was there.

Boo ran around getting on all the moon bounces and I congratulated myself on dressing the child in brown/orange/blue and white stripe shirt.  It stood way out so I could see him from where I was sitting.  I still worried as I sat knitting, with him in eye sight.  Lots of parents were following their children around, huddled in front entrance of each moon bounce for their child to get back out.  I didn't want to do that because I hate standing in crowds but did that make me less of a parent?  Would he be safer if I followed him around?  Then my brain caught up with this train of thought.  I am a great parent and if he gets hurt, it will not matter if I am 1' away or 10' away, he will still be hurt.

Sometimes I would lose sight of him and I would worry that he was hurt or that someone was going to take him (kinda hard to do with the security system MJ's has in place but my anxiety has little to do with reality.) When this happened, I would take a deep breath and tell myself I had to finish a row before I went looking for him. Only once did he not show up before the end of the row and it turned out he was talking to a pretty female employee on his way up a slide.

So, knitting in public keeps me sane. It calms me down and it prevents me from acting before I think.

He fell asleep on the way home and I got to listen to NPR. Win-Win.

PS. I was knitting on my SKYP in the Woods socks.

Fair Isle/ Finish up/ Focus February

So, for the month of February, I am going to focus on things that have gone by the wayside.  Like my blog, my work out routine, my laundry, the fair isle fingerless mittens that need mitten tops, the pair of boot socks that just need the ends woven in. So, I am going to do a little of each every day. So, talk to you tomorrow. :-)