The End of Summer

The end of summer is near. Things are about to change in the Lounsberry house. I've taken a full time position at the hospital. Meet your new surgery scheduler. I'll be working 10am-6:30pm M-F. Everyone will be in school all day and then go to the after-school care until Dave picks them up at 5pm. I'm excited to do something new and to have evenings and weekends off.

Soccer is going full steam ahead. Evan is playing on 2 teams. Cece and Will each play and Dave is the coach of Cece's team. We're going to be busy and I'm going to knit a lot. The knitting keeps me from being a complete freak during the soccer games - screaming and yelling needs to be kept to a minimum and knitting helps.

Okay, here's what I've completed since the last post. A February Baby Sweater by Elizabeth Zimmerman. You might remember my previous post about how much trouble I was having. Well, it's done and damn cute too! I made a pair of Saartje's Booties to match. They're cute too. Hopefully, the sweater will fit a baby (yes, again, I knit with not recipient in mind) at the same time the booties will. Judging only with my mother experience, the sweater seems small and the booties big. Here comes my mantra. . . "Oh, Well."




I also finished Cece's room. It was the one thing, other than knitting, that I wanted to accomplish before school started again in the fall. Check these photos out. The handles on the dresser have since been repainted a chocolate brown - it's all complete now. The circles are so cool - they're static decals from Lowe's, 5 for $10. Quite the eye catching detail.





The ISU sweater count is a a mere 2 1/2. I've got to get going on those. That's what I'm going to concentrate on. Never mind all the other things I want to make...

Let's get down to some serious bloggin'

This blog had to be interrupted as Will just got stung by a bee TWICE! . . .




I've just come off of working 10 days in a row - 24hrs this past weekend alone. It may not seem like much for those of you that work 5 days/week, but for this part-timer it's a lot. Just prior to this stretch I was lucky enough to squeeze two vacations in. The first to California (thank you Jane & Pat), and then a family trip to the Black Hills and Mt. Rushmore.

I've managed to get a little knitting done and a lot of yarn buying in. I've won a contest or two, purchased a few books, and signed up for a knitting class at the LYS. I've completed a few projects and started a few too. I've also got a project in the 'basket' that needs to be started and I haven't touched it! Yes, that would be the ISU sweaters (24?). Anyway, you get the picture.

Here's some more exciting news to those of you that knit. My brother made me a pair of sock blockers. He's amazing, he made them the very day that he got the pattern, AND he made 2 pair. Well, you know that gets a girl's mind spinnin', we've got to sell'em I told him, as I dropped an overstuffed envelope full of patterns in the mailbox. Can't wait to see what he comes up with. He's every bit as talented with a saw as I am with a pair of DPNs. In return I've got a pair of socks in mind for him.

So on with the photos...

This is a captain's hat made with Kool Wool from the stash. It was easy and turned out cute - it's also up for grabs, not spoken for yet.

These socks were part of the car knitting on the way to the Black Hills. They were made with a generic pattern and a 3x1 ribbing. They're heading to Grimes, after they get photogaphed in those new blockers that is.

This was made for my mom. A July 4th gift? Fashioned from self-striping kitchen cotton.

This is the before photo of the Christmas stockings that I made for Claire and Joe. And then the after . . .

This was the Snow Boarder hat for Sarah's birthday - it was a little big and this picture makes it look a little like Pippi Longstocking's hair. The photo doesn't do it justice. At least it will be warm. It's made from Kool Wool (again), and also from the stash closet (which is becoming seriously over-stuffed).

Some of you may recognize this - as the February Sweater from Elizabeth Zimmerman. I'm back at it. AGAIN. It's been only slightly less of a pain in the butt. I started it while working overnight. I had to do plenty of frogging. I can't for the life of me figure out why this pattern pushes my knitting abilities so. I think it's in the way the pattern, 'pithy' as it my seem, is written. I'm going to finish this little one and show the end product soon. It seems to be quite small - all this trouble for a tiny baby sweater with no recipient in mind. Oh, for the love of the craft.

Here's the LA group. What a great trip. There are far too many highlights to mention, but let me just say . . . a short walk to target, Amy's already at the car, 2215 AAAAAlllma, beautiful wedding, great party, and THANK YOU.

one for for susan b anderson

cool huh?

again

i'm so enthralled with this. you can input a data source, say amyknit40, the blogsite and the wordle will create it's own group of words based on how many times each word is used in the text provided.

SOOO FREAKIN' COOL.

VACATION

this is the coolest thing ever check it out at wordle.net

it took me only about 6hrs to figure out how to get it to the blogsite - finally got it

more later

Misc FOs

Here's a quickie - a bunch of photos of finished objects.
This is Daisy, a cotton ease sweater - I love it. It was fast and turned out very cute. I made it for a nurse at work to give to her new granddaughter.

(sorry for the blur in the photo - must have had a smeared lens)
These are ballband dishcloths - made for another co-worker. Her kitchen is red, white and blue. They constitute mindless knitting and they turned out nicely.


Here's Cece's new anklets - they were made during the first 3 days of swimming lessons. They're cute but they don't stretch much.


Next up - a book that I won on a fellow knitters blog. I won by guessing the amount of change in a dish - I guessed $54.20. I'm reading it now. Sorry, too lazy to go back and rotate the photo - I'm sure you get the picture. I think Biddy and I met this author in MPLS at the Knit-Out.


I've been on quite a yarn buying spree lately - I can't even begin to count how much cotton ease I've bought. (Something like 42 skeins - wow - when you put a number to it . . .) ANYWAY, I bought some and it arrived vacuum sealed. Here it is without air.


And with air.



This is the beginning of a Christmas stocking. It's only one of four skeins to knit to complete it. I'm done with it now and have yet to felt it. I've started on the other one, I'm about 1/2 way done with it. I'll felt them at the same time and show photos on the next blog.



I'm ending with my favorite photo (supplied by another baseball parent) of Evan. His Farm 8 team, the Black Sox are headed into the tournament as the number one seed - for the second year in a row I might add. He's quite the utility player, even got to pitch to 3 batters, struck 2 out and threw a home run ball. Not bad. Notice that crazy hair - it's since been cut (thank you Pauly).

Where are you comin' from...

Here it is, Will's Spiderman blanket. It was a challenging knit and I'm glad that I stuck it out (numerous emails to the designer, corrections to the pattern, ordering more yarn, using multiple circulars) and completed it. It's a nice blanket, even if it is all bunched up under Will's bed.

The photo is on our mauve carpet so the colors are off just a bit. It was made from cotton ease and the black is something else from my stash (purchased in NYC=Gotham City). I really thought that this project would help deplete the stash - nope I have more now than ever with 21 new skeins of CE on the way! God help me.

Okay, I finished the dishcloths too! Here's a photo - bad one. Cece helped in the picture taking. They turned out nicely too. I just got some self-stripping cotton for a few more.

There are 27 of those babies - each one different (for the most part - I got kind of lazy at the end).

I've completed the little Daisy sweater - working on the buttons now. It's soooo cute! I've also completed 4 of the 25 ISU sweaters and I've picked Kristin's pumpkin sweater back up and I'm hoping to have it done so that I can give it to her this Friday. We're making a trip to Adel, IA for some sort of fiber fest. Spinners, dyers, and SELLERS of indie yarn. Lord help Biddy.
I almost forgot to post a photo of Erin's Math Hat. If you can't tell it has the Pi symbol and it's never repeating 3.141517 (or something like that). It's red with pink numbers but the pink is very light and looks like white. Again, I give it the knitter's "Oh well". Hope she likes it anyway. I actually made it twice. I finished the entire hat, then took off the ribbing, redid it, took off the top and redid it. I like it much better on the second go-round. I'm going to mail it tomorrow.

Evan is the model. He was thrilled.