Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Of finished things, cakes, and civil war

First off, Maggie's twilight socks are done and she is proudly wearing them. When I had first finished them I had seriously considered not giving them to her for a few days/weeks, but figured she would catch on sooner rather then later when I was working on something else during knit night.


The pattern is a simple knit 4 rows, knit1 purl3 for 2 rows, repeat. And the cuff is knit1 purl3 for about 2". Totally simple and would have been rather boring otherwise but the yarn was pooling so nicely. There are even some sports were it was doing this cool zigzag effect. I should have my sister pick yarn more often.

On Friday we went to her annual school carnival. It was fun as always. Although this year it was even better for her since she was able to go into the dunk tank, now that she is a 5th grader. Mom and I got bored standing around to wait her turn so we played the silly little games they had for kids (I won a magnifying glass, a whale, a pink fuzzy pen, and a sticky hand) and even got our faces painted to kill some time.

This time I even got to see the "please bring us cakes" flier the school hands out every year so there are enough cakes and other goodies available for the cake walk (like musical chairs but when the music stops and you're on the numbered square they call out you get a ticket to pick a cake or cupcakes, etc.). It made no sense to me and my sister however since not 3 weeks prior to the carnival they had to cancel their bake sale in fear of children getting the swine flu from the home make goodies. So we thought it would be hilarious to make a piggy cake with buggers coming out of it's nose, bags under its eyes and a tissue by its side. We had the cake all backed up and were ready to frost when our mother told us that wouldn't be such a good idea since some people wouldn't find it as funny. So instead we made this.


I would have still preferred the sick piggy.










We also managed to go to the civil war re-enactment that was going on in our park on the weekend. Having never seen on before I was rather surprised that the people go into such depth with the whole thing. There were camps set up with people walking around in period clothing (I loved the dresses the woman were wearing), making fires, yelling orders at under ranking "soldiers" and answering any questions that you could throw at them. I was a little surprised that there were so many knitters among the women there and even two spinners.
Although they were all totally cheating by using pretty non-period yarns; I'm sure getting your hands on aqua colored silk was pretty damn hard in 1861.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

It's a sock!!

I just finished weaving in the last end of the first of the twilight socks, and you know what? It FITS PERFECTLY!! It's my first ever, perfectly fitting, amazing looking, totally awesome sock. And I have to give it away once it's twin is made. *sighs* Go figure.

Pictures to follow soon.

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Lakeside Knit

On Sunday it was such a nice day that my sister and I decided to go to the park and sit at our favorite spot by the lake; the concrete shell of a old water drain...or so I think. It's nice and closer to the water and most people don't go there, opting instead for one of the benched areas.

We ate lunch there and fed the geese which turned out to be so much more assertive then the ducks, coming right up to us and staring us down for pieces of our bread. We took a ton of geese pictures (for absolutely no reason) and even two videos (again for no reason). I even got some sock time in.

Friday, May 1, 2009

A frog I didn't mind

The Kermit the frog socks I've been making for Will are finally done. It only took me forever and a day. I call them Kermit socks because when he first saw me knitting the pair previously shown he said, "I want a pair of socks too. A bright green pair." "What, like Kermit the frog?" I asked. "Yeah, like that."

They don't look very green but that's because of the horrible light, and the crappy camera on my phone (the only one at hand for the moment), and I know they look kinda big, but they are on my hubbies feet which are a size or two smaller then Wills.

On the needles right now are socks for my sister Maggie, inspired by her love for the Twilight book series. It's the Twilight sock pattern from 2-at-a-time socks. This is actually the fourth time I'm attempting to make these socks. The first time they laddered horribly, the second time I made them on one circular needle at one time and couldn't find instructions on what to do after the leg, the third time I was doing them both on a really long needle, ended up dropping like 10 stitches and really couldn't be bothered to pick them all up when I knew it was just going to get worst if I tried. So here we are...at try number 4. Hopefully this will be the one that actually goes somewhere.












After that I'm not sure what I'll work on. Maybe that orange scarf for Chama-chan. Or maybe I'll go find that pattern for the little red cardigan that is floating around here somewhere and I'll finally knit something for myself that isn't a hat...or scarf. OH! I still have to work on my mothers Christmas present. Damn...