Good Knit

It’s been a whole week plus a day since I posted. This is not good. I guess I’ve been pretty busy getting everything together for little A’s 3rd birthday. Her party was a hit and everyone enjoyed themselves. We’re all quite tired now and the girls and daddy are playing a Dora game with bought for little A while I catch up on blogging and email.

Last blog entry I mentioned we had a babysitter and we were going to the movies. Well Murphy’s law felt otherwise. Big P ended up working until 3 a.m.! It sucked big time. We are re-scheduling our date for next Friday.

I don’t know about you, but I’m a big Halloween lover. We’re going to have a party again this year. I’ve decided to go as a pirate. I started looking around for costume ideas (I like putting something together on my own rather then buying a pre-made one) and found the majority of women’s pirate costumes to be of the slut variety. This would have been fine if I was still 25 yrs. old and hadn’t been through three pregnancies over a period of 3 years. Bare midrifts just don’t work for me.

After some looking I found these costumes which I’m going to try to loosely re-create.

The second one is a bit more covered up in the cleavage area then the first. I don’t have a problem with cleavage (one thing actually improved by having babies). The trickest thing is the corset part. See I knit but I don’t even own a sewing machine. So it’ll be interesting to see how I solve this problem.

Speaking of knitting I’m almost done the sleeves. Finally no more mind numbing double-rib. Just a little sewing up and rib for the neck and I’m done. I hope to get it done by the end of the week. I want to be able to wear it when I go on my little trip in October for my 5th wedding anniversary. We’re going up north to stay in a little cabin at a resort. I can’t wait. I haven’t been away on a romantic get away since my first anniversary. We’re staying at the Shamrock Lodge in the Court House.

I don’t think I’ll be posting any progress pictures on my Celtic sweater this weekend. It’s slow going as I’m still working the 25 inches of double rib of both sleeves. The sleeves are so long because they go all the way to the neck edge and I have long arms. It’s slow and boring and now I’m increasing the width as I go too. They are getting wider and longer.

I’m off for the day on Saturday to visit some friends and tonight I’m going to see The Illusionist. It is a great freedom to have a babysitter again. We had a lovely sitter in the city we lived before, but she’s too far away to make it worth the trip to babysit for a few hours. I hope the girls will adjust okay to a sitter. They haven’t had much exposure to being babysat before. They behaved well for their grandparents a few weekends ago though.

It’s little G I’m most concerned about. She doesn’t always want to stay in bed at night. She’s been really good for the last month or so, but a change could be enough to cause trouble. And by trouble I mean running around the room yelling, slamming the closet doors, pulling all the books off the book shelf and dumping every blessed peice of clothing she owns on the floor. Okay so the kid’s not even quite two yet and I can cut her a break. I got spoilt with little A who is so well behaved it’s a miracle. She’ll probably get me back as a rebellious teenager.

This is invitation I sent out for little A’s birthday next weekend. It was one of the rare days she let me put her hair up in a pony tail. She looks so grown up.

This is little A only a few hours old. She was born along with her twin sister, Samantha, 13 weeks premature (in the 6 month of the pregnancy). It was a tough struggle which sadly her sister didn’t survive but happly little A did. My little girl is a big miracle.

This is were I’m at with the sleeves to my celtic ribbed sweater – not as far as I’d hoped. They look really narrow, but it’s only because of the ribbing, plus they are supposed to be pretty fitted. They fit around my arm just fine – although I have thin wrists so the 7 inches for the cuff would probably be a bit snug for some people. I just love the way this cotton is knitting up.

I bought this cotton at Camilla Valley Farms in Orangeville, Ontario. I haven’t ever been there in person yet, but I hope to make a trip there with my mom this Fall. I love, love, love their cotton. Did I mention that before? Anyway I may try picking up weaving again. My mom has a small floor loom and said I could have it. Just to find a place for it.

Is anyone else getting excited by the fact that Fall is coming? It’s my favorite time of year, I love the holidays of Thanksgiving and Halloween. The crisp air, cool evenings, beautiful colours and the smells of the whole season. I used to dread the Winter that followed, but I’m starting to appreicate the frozen season.

This is the needle case my mom gave me last weekend. It comes from the Netherlands and mom thinks it belonged to my great grandma who gave it to my grandma.

Notice the very long, thin dpns for knitting lace? Well I think I’m actually going to use those babies to make something. Maybe a lace shawl to go with the dress I’m wearing to my husband’s company Christmas party.

It’s funny how we miss people so much after they are gone. I can only dream of the wonderful conversations I could have with my Grandma about knitting and life. We ended up having so much in common after she was diagnosed with Alhemizers disease. Our children are only a year apart, our passion for knitting, running a house without a driver’s license, just to name a few things. I miss her dearly and will always remember her great love for her family.

I want to post so much today, but I’m just too tired. I was up until 2 a.m. setting up WordPress (mostly figuring out how to change colours etc.). Big mistake as the girls were up around 8 a.m. and although my husband kindly let me sleep until 9 a.m. it just wasn’t enough zzz’s.

My mom gave me a wonderful gift on the weekend (several actually, but this is the best by far). It’s a needle holder carved from a single piece of wood that came possibly from my Great Grandma from the Netherlands. It was my Grandma’s and my Grandpa gave it to my mom after she passed away. My mom decided to pass along to me. It even has some very long and fine dpn’s for knitting lace in it. I hope to get enough sunlight tomorrow to take a picture of it to post.

Okay now I’m off to play a bit more with the girls before bath time and bed time. It’s going to be an early night for me.

As you can see I’ve started anew. I lost my archives and I DON’T want to talk about it. I apologize, but it’ll probably take some time to get things similar to the way they were. I hope to make some improvements and revisions.

I had a great long weekend and I’ve been inspired to do some art again. I hope to share my sucesses and failures with you all along with my knitting projects of course. If you are looking for my free patterns page click here. If you want my tips page you can either follow the link off of my free patterns page or click here. I will have permenant links to these pages once I have the site the way I want it.

I am happy to have a means to blog again!!!

Here’s a reminder of what I’m working on these days. The sleeves are going to be a long, mind-numbing journey of double knitted rib, but it’ll be worth it.