Patrick’s 6th birthday party

Patrick’s 6th birthday party, originally uploaded by YarnDork.

Thought that this would be a cute picture, since it’s been forever since I remembered to post a picture. This was Saturday. What the picture doesn’t show is the other 7 kids on the other side of the table.

Thank you Hy Vee for the wonderful Diego cake, and thank you Heather for having the paper plates that I forgot the 3 times I went to the store last week and that Daddy also forgot when he picked up the cake.

Finished the bamboo socks this morning. Yay! Picture will be tomorrow.

Where did the week go?

Well, that was fast.  Let’s see, where to start?

The first full week of soccer practices are under out belts.  The first games will be this Saturday, the same day I was supposed to spend all day at the Knitting in the Heartland shopping.  Depending on the game schedule, which we’ll probably get Friday night, I may go Saturday or I may have to wait and go Sunday after church.  I didn’t want to do that, as Sunday is pretty much the one day I’m almost guaranteed a nap.  But, if it’s all I’ve got, then that’s the way it is.

David is doing really a lot better at his soccer skills.  The coach, Tim, is really quite astounding.  He coaches around 4 or 5 teams each season, and he combines their practices.  David, for instance, is currently practicing with at least 3 teams, from what we can gather just from counting the # of kids there.  So, as of yet, he has no idea who’s exactly on his team.  Kind of neat, if you ask me.

Patrick is also doing better.  He has the same coach as last year too, Mike, who is amazingly awesome.  He’s so sweet and really loves the kids.  He’s had them working on some new skill drills and I’m really seeing an improvement in Patrick.  Plus, he simply loves it.

Russell, on the other hand, like most things, is a completely different story.  He has been pestering us since last spring to let him play soccer too.  The league here in town has a U5 team, for under 5, and according to the rules, it’s for 3 and 4 year olds.  But, as Russ was only 3, and way more inclined to tackle anyone, we thought that maybe that was not the right time for soccer.  Wrestling, football, ice hockey…sure, but not soccer.  So, we made him wait.  Then, last fall, he suddenly grew out of the tackling stuff, and starting playing with the ball, kicking it around, throwing it up in the air so he could hit it with his head on the way back down.  We thought, Hmmm.  So, we tested out theory.  For his birthday in December, the brothers bought him his very own soccer set.  It was his favorite color, yellow, and came with a cute little gym bag, a soccer ball, a couple of cones, shin guards, and a water bottle.  He was thrilled and wanted to play in the house.  So, we thought, we’ll sign him up for spring soccer.  Which we did.  He’s had 2 practices.  The first one he spent on the playground and the swings.  When Coach Daddy changed the practice field to a different location due to huge holes in the ground, he spent the second practice crying until I let him get in the minivan.  This is not going well.

Let’s see, what else, oh yeah, Patrick’s birthday party was Saturday.  It went really quite well.  I didn’t even have to get a beer.  Almost everyone came, and we played in the back yard for a while, then I had them go around front to draw chalk pictures in the driveway while David and a neighbor boy Garrett hid the eggs in the back yard.  Patrick wanted to have an easter egg hunt for his party.  I said sure.  In the morning before the party, I gave them a bag of m & m’s and a bag of raisinettes and a several bouncy balls, and let them fill up the eggs.  We ended up with 88 eggs and 8 kids at the party, so everyone got 11.  Worked out pretty well.  He loved the scooter we got for him, and really got a lot of neat presents.  This week, we have to work on thank you cards.

On the knitting front, I’m almost done with those bamboo socks.  I really need to finish them today to qualify for the March Socktopia thing.  I only have around 15 or so rows of ribbing, then I’m done, so it really shouldn’t be a problem.  I also started the fingerless mitts that David wanted when he saw mine.  Got one done in just a couple of days, but somehow, on the back and forth rows, I managed to get one side of the mitt to have 2 more rows than the back side.  Luckily, the longer side is the one that would be on the top of the hand, so it works out, but now that I’m on the other mitt, I keep wanted to get all anal and make the second one the same.  But, I can’t figure out how, since I have no idea how I did the first one.  I’m talking about the 2 extra rows, not the instructions in general.  I did write those down, so when I finish them I’ll post a picture and the instructions for anyone who’s interested.

I think that’s about it for now.  Today’s garbage day.  Yay.

I’m alive

Wow, this bronchitis thing sucks.

I do think I’ll live though,although with a nagging side effect.  I sometimes have these coughing fits where I can hardly catch my breath, and during the fits, well, let’s just say that I’m going to have to stock up on those bladder control pad things.  Doesn’t matter if I just left the bathroom or if it’s been hours and I just drank 64 oz of water.  The coughing starts, and oops, there’s a little pee.  The best ones are at night, I think.  There’s something about laying there that makes those little tickly things just go hog-wild.  Last night, it was hubby’s turn.  Mine was about 6 am.

But, I think mine was caused partially by the fact that I had an upset tummy last night and around 3 am finally gave up and took a tums, but woke up around 6 with a good sized chunk of it still stuck to the roof of my mouth.  Stupid thing was, I was awake enough to realize that it was there, and that it was making me cough, but not awake enough to do anything about it at that time.  It took until about 6:30 for me to spit it out.

Patrick’s birthday and party will be Saturday.  That ought to be interesting.  The big “6″.  He picked out a Diego cake at the store yesterday.  Russ and I spent almost an hour in Toys R Us yesterday to have him pick out his present for his brother.  He finally decided on a $5 robot clincher arm thing.  I was steering him towards the $20 bug things and games and stuff, but he was stuck on that arm thing.

Oh yes, and all the boys have started soccer.  We’re letting Russ play this year too.  So, David’s practices are Monday(6-7) and Wednesday(6-7).  Patrick’s are Monday(6-7) and Thursday(6-7).  Russell’s are Tuesday(6-7) and Thursday(5-6).  Oh, and Steve is coaching Russ, and co-coaching David’s.   So, there will be a lot of crockpot meals in our future.  The first games will be April 5th, and after that, Russ at least will go down to 1 practice a week.  I really don’t like spring.

Not much knitting lately, except those bamboo socks which I’m trying to finish for the March Socktopia thing.  And sometimes I do a few rows of the angora, just to take the edge off the day.   You know.

Bronchitis anyone?

At least that’s what I think I have.  It hurts to breathe, it hurts so bad to cough, it feels like I have a small child sitting on my chest, I’m coughing up phlegm, my back aches, I’m not sleeping well, I have no appetite at all, I can hardly get out of bed to fix my kids anything to eat, and to add insult to injury, forgive me, but I can’t spell the “d” word, I have the runs.  How is that possible when I’ve ingested nothing but water, Diet Dr. Pepper, and hot tea for like the past 5 days?

One good news though, well, actually 2.  First off, MY SOCKS WON THE SOCK YARN PRIZE!!!!!  Thank you to all who voted for them.  I can hardly wait to see that orange and purple yarn.  Secondly, I drug myself to WW last night, and low and behold, I lost 7 lbs!

Hmmm.  Is that from the runs or the not eating?

I feel so crappy I can’t even play with yarn.  Hubby said last night, or maybe the night before, “Now I know you’re sick, because you’re just laying there and not knitting at all.”

This sucks bad.  Happy spring break kids.

Double Dang it

I got the cold or whatever it is now.  I feel like a small child is sitting on my chest, and it hurts to breathe and even more to cough.

Friday, when Steve was still sick and I wasn’t and the kids were all taking a nap (or so I thought), I decided to sneak out of the house to go run a few errands.  I had to see my neighbor Cindy’s new baby, who is completely adorable, and due to the fact that she pushed him out with 2 pushes during one contraction, had absolutely a perfect complection and no cone head.  I mean, considering the problems during, which I won’t go into details here, that’s the least the little bugger could do.  He’s perfectly healthy and just simply beautiful and makes me totally want #4 too.  The other errands I had to do included mailing up my sister’s birthday present, since her birthday was the 12th, and getting some groceries.

I got back home and started unloading the car and heard the tv on downstairs, so I said, “Who’s up?” David and Patrick answered, and I asked where Russell was, and they said he was still sleeping.  They come outside to play while I unloaded and here comes a police car!  He got out and asked if I had a son named Russell.  I said yes.  He asked if I knew where he was.  I said I had just gotten home, but that I had thought he was upstairs sleeping.  The officer said I might want to check on that.  I asked where he was.

Turns out, after talking with Steve, and the boys, and Russ, here’s what happened (forgive the Monk-ness)…Russ woke up and went into his brothers’ room.  They weren’t in there and he looked out their window, which overlooks about 8 or so neighbors’ back yards.  He saw Daddy out there playing ball with his brothers and so, wanting to play too, went downstairs, put on his shoes,opened the garage and took off down the sidewalk around the block to hunt them down.  Now, obviously, Daddy was sick in bed and the brothers were downstairs, but seriously, what do we do here?  He’s 4 years old and thinks he can just go wandering off to hunt someone down?  Aside from tieing him to the bed or installing one of those electric fences, what am I supposed to do!  I waited until he was asleep to leave, and I times my errands to be home before they should have woken up. I’m just glad the neighbor who found him was nice.  I mean, if I think about what could have happened, well, I don’t want to go there.  I have always been extremely paranoid about someone kidnapping my kids, and even David who’s 10, I only let him go around the block by himself a couple of times.  Aside from never leaving his side, what do I do?

Daddy had a talk with him after the police officer left and told Russ that he got Mommy and Daddy in a lot of trouble and if he did that again, we might have to go to jail and then he and his brothers would have to go somewhere else to live.  I think that might have scared some sense into him, because he woke up in the night crying and came in to snuggle.

Scary thing is, Steve used to wander off as a kid ALL the time.  Does this stuff get transferred in the genes?

Dang it.

Now hubby’s sick.  I really shouldn’t complain.  He did have the decency to wait until David and Russell and Gunther were all better.  So, for a few days there, I didn’t have anyone to take care of. He probably felt sorry for me.  I’m one of those people who likes to feel needed, then when I feel too needed, I get sort of pissy.  Like “why can’t you people do this yourself why do you always have to ask me everything don’t you realize you have another parent?” etc etc.

I skipped last week’s knitting night because Russ had been sick the night before and I was so tired I went to bed around 9.  I usually stay up until at least 12.  Now, this morning or last night, I don’t remember, I posted on Ravelry to the Kansas City knitter’s forum about if anyone wanted to get together Friday because I was having withdrawal.  Now, I may have to back out again.  I can’t leave Steve here with the 3 boys if he’s sick.

Did I mention it’s the start of Spring Break?  Yay.  Happy spring break, kids, you have 2 days of rain to start you off.  We’ll be baking some banana oatmeal chocolate chip cookies that we’ll be sharing with my neighbor Cindy who’d being induced today to have her baby.  The one I made the shower stuff for (see previous posts about Cindy and baby stuff).  The lady who organized the shower did some pretty amazing things.  She had a box of envelopes and asked all of us to put our addresses on them so when Cindy did the thank you cards, she wouldn’t have to address all of them.  How cool is that?  Then she also had a box of paper, and since we all agreed that, having 3 boys already, Cindy probably didn’t need too much advice, she had us write down words of encouragement or promises of helping or cooking or laundry or whatever.  I offered to bake cookies, and yesterday she mentioned them and my bananas are getting brown, so voila!  She should be back home tomorrow night, so I’ll try to take them over to her maybe Saturday morning.

Then I think we’re not dying Easter eggs this year.  Sometimes we don’t.  What we do instead is, I think, way more fun and easier and WAY easier to clean up.  We make cookies.  The kind you mix up and roll out and get flour all over the floor and use cookie cutters on.  A few years ago, I couldn’t find an egg shaped cutter, so I bought a circle one, with no handle or anything, just an open cutter.  Then I bent it in the shape of an egg, with one end more pointy like and one end more rounded.   After we get them all cut out, I use a couple of yolks (no whites, yolks only) and mix in a few tsp of water, then divide this up between several little bowls.  It goes farther than you’d think.  Then add food coloring to each bowl and give your kids a paintbrush and a bowl of water.  We paint the cookies before we bake them!  The baking process of course cooks the yolk and it’s safe to eat and all, and it makes the painted surface quite shiny.  And it’s way easier for me at least then the whole frosting and knives and sprinkles.  I’ll try to get up some pictures of during and after.  If I think about it.

Oh well, I’m off to go play with yarn now.  I was reading The Heathen Housewife (www.shellykang.com) today and she has a yarn closet.  She actually talked about it.  She had taken a picture of one of her girls who was sitting on the shelf part of “my yarn closet”.  How cool is that?  I want to be her when I grow up.

Oh, a little gentle reminder, if I’m not being too pushy…could you please go here and vote for my sock…

http://www.ravelry.com/discuss/socktopia/91712/101-125#101

Please??????

Please oh please oh please?

…could you vote for me?

http://www.ravelry.com/discuss/socktopia/91712/101-125

Actually, for my socks. I really really want to win that orange and purple sock yarn and see the look on my sister’s face when I present her with socks made from her favorite colors from when she was a kid.

Voting ends Sunday the 16th at midnight.  Thank you in advance. Did I mention please?

Easter Egg Hunt weekend

Well, I’m glad that’s over. Our church had their Spring Fest on Saturday, and Steve went to Colorado for one of his sisters’ birthdays. Coincidence? Hmmmm.

I had asked my neighbor to come along, and she brought her son who’s about Patrick’s age, and they all had fun. It was supposed to be at this great park, which last year was a big mudpit because it had rained ALL the previous week, and then was sunny and in the high 60’s to low 70’s on Saturday. The kids were all slopping around in their sandals and got absolutely filthy. This year, the weather also did not cooperate. The high that day was around 30. At the time of the big shin-dig it was windy and 25. Luckily, the smart people at the church decided to not have it at the park and got all the stuff in the church. Looking back, I don’t know how they did it. They had all these blow up things, like slides and the bouncy things with nets around them so the kids won’t fall out and one game that was pretty cute. It was for 2 kids at once, and they were attached to each other back to back with a harness thing and a bungee cord. They had to try to throw balls into the hoop on their side. So, if one kid pulled towards his hoop, it drug the other kid back toward the middle. It was pretty funny. They had a couple of fun fair games too, the fishing one and a bean bag toss. The kids all had so much fun, and I’m so glad Russell had rested all up on Friday to feel well enough to go. Still, we went and afterwards had lunch at Noodles at the kids’ request and went home and ALL of us passed out. I fixed sloppy joe’s for supper.

Sunday dawned way to early…I really dislike the whole hour time change thing. When I’m retired like my dad, I’m not going to follow it either. He hasn’t changed his clocks in years. Just keeps it on railroad times. I had already sort of decided maybe we wouldn’t go to church because I was feeling lazy and didn’t want to get everybody ready all by myself like I usually do because Steve usually has something going on at church that he has to be there early for. Then when I became lucid around 10 am, that sort of settled it. Turned out Sunday was gorgeous weather. I fixed the kids the first official picnic of 2008 and they ate on a towel on the driveway. Gunther came out and wandered around for a while. The other cats started making fun of his shaved parts though, so I let him back inside. The kids played outside the entire rest of the day. David came in around 5 I think, saying his feet were tired. Yeah, mine would be too.

Steve’s plane got in around 11:40, and he called me on landing and said he’d call me again when he got to the car.  So, I waited a little over an hour (ok, so I completely lost track of time because I had the ANGORA out and was K2 P2-ing away) and called him back, thinking that he should be almost home.  He wasn’t.  The office had called him and something wasn’t working right on the computers and he was there at the airport trying to dial in and fix it.  Poor thing.  He finally got home around 1:30, I think, and I remember looking at the clock a little after 2 and telling him I needed to get some sleep.  I really don’t remember much between that.  I was so tired that I took a nap today and slept through the DirecTV guy who was supposed to install our tivo thing through our satellite.  Oops.  He’s coming back on Friday.  I totally didn’t hear anyone knocking or anything.  I must have really passed out.  All I can think of is good thing I thought to set my alarm for a little after 3 or I would have been late to pick up David from school!

Oh, did you hear that?  Wait a minute.  I can’t tell; I’ll have to go and check.  It’s calling my name, but I can’t tell if it’s the angora again or the alpaca sock yarn that I just got done turning the heel on Sunday afternoon.

Memorial Socks – toe-up mods for Uzume

Memorial Socks finished, originally uploaded by YarnDork.

OK, for those of you who wanted this, here’s how I adapted MommaMonkey’s Uzume pattern to do a toe-up sock. I used Knitpicks Essentials Meteor Twist and size 2 bamboo needles. Metrically, I think they are 2.75 mm. I used a B crochet hook and some waste yarn to crochet a chain of 30.

Pick up a loop in the back of each ch and purl across the first row. Begin short rows on the first knit row. I use Ann Budd’s Better Than Booties baby sock short row instructions in which she says to turn and YO instead of wrap and turn. I find this way MUCH easier, but feel free to do the toes and heels in whatever way you like best. I short rowed down to 8 st between pairs and then started back up again. When ready, undo the chain and pick up those loops and knit in the round for 2 rounds. I began the pattern stitching on the 3rd row. I worked the pattern on the top 30 stitches and did plain stockinette on the bottom 30. I started the heel on row 56. My short row heel seem to be rather on the short side, meaning that I have found that if I begin the pattern stitch on the row following the end of the short rows, the back of my shoe hides or rubs against the first few rows of the pattern. I usually wait several rows before beginning the pattern stitches on the back of the sock. For this pattern, I waited 2 full pattern repeats after the heel to begin the pattern on the back 30. Then I did a total of 5 pattern repeats after that, plus 1 more row of knitting across before beginning the ribbing. I did 11 rows of K2P2 ribbing and bound off on row 12. I used a size 4 needle for the bind off, and bound off in ribbing.

Side note…if you have the time and inclination, could you please, if you’re a member of Ravelry, go onto the Socktopia forum and the February Theme thread and vote for my socks? The prize is a hank of orange and purple sock yarn, and those are my sister’s favorite colors. See, when we were kids, neither of us could choose just one favorite color. It was like we didn’t want it to be lonely or something. So, we both picked 2, and wore them together as often as we could. My grandpa, Grandpa 60 of the hats and slippers fame, accomidated us by making us a pair of slipeprs one year for Christmas in our favorite colors. I got one green slipper with a red pompom and one red slipper with a green pompom. My sister got one orange slipper with a purple pompom and one purple slipper with an orange pompom. I know, my eyes hurt just remembering it. But, we loved those slippers.  Dang, I miss those.  But, if I win that sock yarn, I am so knitting my sister a pair of socks in secret and suprising her.  Thank you in advance for voting for me.

This is really pretty amazing, if I do say so myself

Memorial Socks and leftover yarn, originally uploaded by YarnDork.

Do you see those little scraps? That’s what I have left after finishing up the Memorial Socks. Check out the Socktopia group on ravelry for more details. I really have to pat myself on the back for this one. See you have to remember that I’m the cheapest person in the world. I get sock yarn, and when I’m ready to knit it, I divide it in half. I clear off the bed, and start at one side and unwind the entire thing onto my bed. Lately, while hoping the cat or the kids don’t jump up. I then take both ends and holding them together, string them through my hand into a huge pile. When I get to the middle, I tie a little slip knot, then separate out the 2 sides into 2 piles, then grab the 2 ends and do it all again, just to make sure I got pretty close to the middle the first time. I guess the reason I do it twice is that no matter how carefully I unwind the ball, I usually get a tangle or twist or 2, and I think that may affect the yardage. So, after unwinding into 2 piles, I get the ends and make another pile holding the 2 together. I usually get pretty close to the original middle, then I snip. I undo the pile again, separating the yarn out and wind up each pile into 2 little balls. That way, when I start a sock, I know I have that entire ball for that one sock. I do toe-up’s usually, and go until a have a small wad left and then start the ribbing. Or sometimes, I save a little and use that for the toes on another pair of socks. But, something said that this yarn wouldn’t really coordinate with too many other colors. Plus, I think they’re about the perfect height. For those of you interested, the pattern is Uzume, which is a really great pattern, I think. Google the name, and one of the answers is some Japanese goddess, I think, and it has to do with twisting in the wind. The way she wrote the pattern, the stitches follow a twisting pattern up the sock, separated out by some stockinette. You can’t really tell from this picture, but they’re actually fairly lacey. I’m going to be putting up some toe-up modifications either here or on Ravelry, as soon as I hear from the right people about where they want it written down. Overall, this was a really fun knit, and I’ll do it again. But, these off the needles means I got to cast on with my alpaca sock yarn last night. Yum, I think I’m in love again.