Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Where Is Spring?

Hi again. I feel the need to introduce myself. Hi. I'm Jen and I knit. Sometimes. Lately, not so much. And because I'm not too big on complaining publicly, and lately I've had not much nice to say, I've resorted to...well, not saying much. Which is probably not the right thing to do because I think about blogging quite a bit.

Just do it, right?

Genuine tagged me on her blog and even said I'm "very inventive" so I guess I need to follow through with that or lose her respect forever. This is a six-word memoir and it can include an illustration. Mine will not.

Reads, knits, writes; usually plays nicely.

Boring? Well, tough. In truth I would have liked to write something like "Writer saves humanity with poignant prose." But I have neither the ego nor the crystal ball to say that. So I'll stick to the here and now.

T&A
In other news, our daughter sailed through her tonsillectomy & adenoidectomy last week, but not through her recovery. It has been a tough, long slog. Two days after the surgery, she came down with croup and a nasty cold. Which meant she didn't want to eat. At all. Not even ice cream, popsicles or pudding could entice her. So it has been rough, but we're managing. She's almost 3, so she's got that 2/3 thing going on, too.

I was able to finish another diaper cover (before the surgery)! This is another soaker for Sam. It's from 100purewool's 3ply; the color is Brown Lilac and I just love it.
Curly Purly Diaper Cover for Sam

I also finished the second sock in a pair (after the surgery). This pair is made with Duet from A Swell Yarn Shop. I had traded for it on Ravelry a little while ago. I have to say while I adore the colors (cream, tan, pinks) I'm not in love with the yarn base. I found it splitty and squeaky. I think I've decided I'll mostly stick with wool/nylon blends for socks after this one. Superwash 100% wool just rubs me the wrong way. It feels too much like acrylic to me.

Duet Spring Socks

Even though they are heavy wool socks, there's something about them that says "spring" isn't there? (Despite the fact that we're supposed to get two more inches of snow tomorrow. On top of our 100+ inches for the season--we passed by our previous record of 76 inches awhile ago. Oh the humanity!)

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

No New Knits

Blog posts are daunting when you have no new knitting to show. But there has been stash acquisition and other fun things, so I'll go ahead anyway.

This past weekend the knitting guild in my city hosted a Knit-In and I came away with quite a few items:

Skacel Preludio
Tribbles. More specifically, 12 Tribbles for free.
Won as a door prize.

Blue buttons
Blue buttons from Jennie The Potter
I couldn't resist!

Pink button for Imogen
Pink Button for Imogen from Jennie The Potter
oooooooooo.

Mountain Colors bearfoot
MC Bearfoot for Periwinkle Beret
to match my brown winter coat

Aussi Sock
Aussi Sock in Faded Valentine

I also may or may not have purchased 8 skeins of Black Water Abbey 2-ply in Ocean. She didn't have them on hand, so I don't have them in hand, but I think they are making their way to my house as I type. Or perhaps that was allllll a dream.

I do know one thing. This week is "Kids Week" at the local children's hospital and because we were there today for a pre-operative appointment, we got two "doctor bags".

Is there a doctor in the house?

Surgical masks turn out to be a really handy plaything when your 5 year old has a low fever. Can I just point out that...shouldn't every week be "Kids Week" at a children's hospital?

Miss M is scheduled for her tonsillectomy/adenoidectomy March 19. Yes, we'd like a matched pair, please. No seriously, I know this looks and sounds ridiculous. But rest assured that we are not operating on our children willy-nilly. Our ENT is a very conservative guy and we all agree it's time to take hers out, too. Even the nurse practitioner who saw her today commented on the size of M's tonsils.

Ah life. It just keeps doling out the sweet and the not-so-much sweet.

Sunday, March 02, 2008

Back to Reality

The lull experienced on this blog was actually a refreshing vacation in Jamaica. For six days we frolicked on the beach, soaked in the sun and ate delicious, authentic Jamaican food. Truthfully, I had low expectations for this trip. Let's face it: I am the mother of a 5 year old and a 2 year old. I know that vacation can have it's trials for little children. Especially an overseas vacation. But it was seriously very fun. We kept the activities to a minimum so as not to wear out the children (and thus ourselves) and we happened to get really lucky when we booked our stay at The Blue House near Ocho Rios. What an amazing place. They call it a B&B but it's more like a boutique, luxury hotel. We stayed in the cottage behind the house and there was so much privacy and the food was amazing.

Reggae Beach

There was even time to knit. I started and almost finished another Koolhaas Hat. I didn't bring dpns with me, so I had to wait until we got home to finish it. I'm calling it my "Rum Cream Koolhaas" because the colors remind me of Jamaica Rum Cream, the most delicious drink on ice that I've ever tasted. It's rather like Irish Cream, but so much better.

Sangster's Jamaica Rum Cream
We brought a few bottles back.

Rum Cream Koolhaas

Project: Koolhaas Hat by Jared Flood of brooklyntweed
Yarn: 100purewool.com 3-ply merino in "Tostado" colorway
Mods: none (4 repeats, not 5)

You know, for all the complaining I've been doing about this winter, I was so happy to come back to 30-degree temps. Today it's 41 and the snow and ice is melting. Much of the week it's going to be in the 30s. That's all a girl can ask for--it's my 36th birthday tomorrow and I'm just glad it's not supposed to snow.

ETA: *sob* it snowed last night. I guess there are worse things, right?