Kiss My Knits!

No school today, so it’s me and the Boo. Hubby went to work late, since he had to go to the doctor again. His bandage is much smaller, so his finger is less protected, and apparently he banged the bejeebers out of it on the steering wheel this morning.

Worked on the doll some more. The button to the right is the button that my daughter chose as a belly button. I actually stayed up rather late working on this, because I decided the head was way too flat on the top, probably because I revised the pattern and… uh… apparently viewed the neck portion as the crown portion and therefore closed it off. Honestly, the pattern wasn’t very clear on what was what. Anyway, since Emily had already seen the head fully knitted, I decided I’d rather stay up late re-knitting it than have her come in in the morning to an unravelled head. I paid for that decision this morning, when my husband couldn’t find his antibiotics and got me up earlier than I would have liked to see if I’d done anything with them. We won’t go into the antics that ensued, but suffice to say that I’d just dug through the outside garbage when he discovered that they were in his jacket pocket. It’s funnier now than it was through my sleep haze.

I’ve been working on the second sock on and off. It’s been so cold I’ve thought of putting it aside to work on gloves instead. Somewhere, I managed to lose another #1 DPN. Hopefully no one will find it by sitting on it. Ouch.

Otherwise, it’s been a slow day. Ran out of ink and paper, had to run to Office Depot for more, as I’ve got more kits to go out and I’m guessing it would be good to, you know, include a pattern. We’re going to speech therapy later today, so we’ll hit the post office before that.

Hats up next for: TX, IA, and WA.

Definitely early to sleep for me tonight.

Well, the day took a bit of a turn, and hopefully anyone whose hat or kit was supposed to go out today will understand the shipping delay. The hubby had an infected hangnail a couple of days ago that turned into paronychia, and it got worse. And worse. He finally made a doctor’s appointment yesterday for Monday (quite an admission of pain for him), but by last night the infection was progressing so quickly that he was in agony and clearly couldn’t make it that long. After consulting our insurance’s nurse hotline (wanted to be covered in case there were questions later) we decided to go to an urgent care facility today. My mom watched Emily since we didn’t know how long we’d be. (Thanks, Mom!)

By this morning, the hubby’s finger looked positively medieval, like something described in a historical medical document, right between “boils” and “buboes.” He had it seen to, and says that that process was the worst pain he’s ever experienced. The doctor did admit that his finger looked pretty far gone. The hubby said that had he known ahead of time it was going to be that bad, he would have asked to be knocked out. He had the good grace to volunteer that it wasn’t like bearing our child, but was still awful. Having seen it, I believe him.

With the pain relieved, he took great delight in showing it to me, with the other fingers folded down of course. As he says, “I’m Italian! I need this finger!” His mother chimes in with “You live in Charlotte, you’ll need that finger to drive.” After dropping him off at home, I picked our daughter up and we ran bunches of errands that were just as much about keeping her away from him and his poor beleaguered finger as they were about getting things we needed. While out, we picked up the Nightlife expansion pack for Sims 2 so that she’d have a computer game to keep her occupied. She really didn’t need it, but I didn’t want her diving into Daddy’s arms, and having a new toy which had to be played in another room worked out just fine.

Speaking of new toys, you may recall that my daughter asked me to knit her a Bratz doll a while back, which, NO. In my personal opinion, those dolls are too made up, too scantily dressed, and too adult for her. I did offer to knit her a doll, although it wouldn’t be a Bratz doll. She was totally on board. She decided it should have black hair and blue eyes, and a red shirt and green skirt. So that’s what I’m making for her. This is based on a pattern in Tracy Chapman’s “Toys to Knit.”

Emily saw the individual pieces yesterday and got very excited, running to her table to get her crayons. Here’s her artist’s rendering of what the finished product will look like.

I make no promises, but I’ll do my best!

And now, to bed. We have to visit the doctor again tomorrow morning. Whee!

Red Scarf
Yarn: Lamb’s Pride Burly Spun in Strawberry Patch
Needles: Size 13
Pattern: brioche rib over 12 stitches for approx 68 inches
Notes: I could have widened this to 15 stitches or lengthened it considerably and still had yarn left over.

This was for the Red Scarf project, so it needed to be fairly gender neutral since I don’t know who the recipient will be. My husband thinks it looks a bit more masculine than strictly neutral. I’d wear it, but then, I’m not known for my strong feminine streak. I got the yarn at a half-off bulky yarn sale at Knit One, Stitch Too in Huntersville, NC. It’s been in my stash since last summer, so I’m glad to have the chance to put it to good use.

Ever since I made a hat in brioche stitch, I’ve wanted to use it again, so this was a good opportunity. It’s thick and reversible, two good qualities in a warm scarf.


I made a little video of myself knitting one row so that people can see the motions. It’s very easy to do, but when I first read the instructions, it took me a bit to get the gist of what the author was saying, so maybe this will help someone who’s a visual learner. Brioche rib is a good choice to help reduce pooling in space-dyed yarns. (Forgive the site name super on the video, you never know what a Browncoat might stumble across. Visibility, you know!)

I’ll enjoy thinking of this scarf around the neck of a college student somewhere. I hope it keeps them warm, in many senses of the word.

Or unfinished objects, for those non-knitters.

Yarn! At left is 350 yards of hand-dyed goodness from Yarns Forever in Greenville, SC. She sells her stuff online at Creatively Dyed Yarn. I didn’t realize when I bought it that it was self-striping, but I’m actually pleased to know that. I’m anxious to see how this will knit up.

After realizing the other day that I only had the mittens at right, this will likely become gloves for me. The mittens are in a single fromSerendipity in South America. It’s absolutely butter soft, but pills like crazy. The same mittens, one year on and they weren’t worn that much over the year.

Made some progress on the second Crusoe sock. I’ve turned the heel and am working on the gusset. It reminds me of a mouth ready to gobble something up. A bit creepy, really. I’m enjoying these, but my next pair will definitely be out of something less explosively bright.


I had a hank of Lamb’s Pride Burly Spun in Strawberry Patch, so I decided to cast on for an offering for the Red Scarf project, run by the Orphan Foundation of America. LJ buddy has been championing this cause.

This is a batch of scarves sent out in January to kids in college who have aged out of the foster care system. These kids have beaten nearly insurmountable obstacles to actually make it to college, and just having a little care package to say “someone out there is thinking of you, keep it up!” can make a big difference. I’m doing a chunky scarf which would work for a guy or a gal. It’s in brioche stitch, which is a good choice to prevent pooling in a space-dyed yarn like this. I’m a bit worried that it’s too thick and will be too rigid to flop nicely around the neck, so I’m trying to decide whether to go up to size 15 needles instead of the 13s I’m using. It looks like there’ll be plenty left over, so maybe I’ll pair the remainder up with some black I’ve got left over from this hat for another bulky project.


Time to do another load of laundry, then off to the great outdoors. Sorry, Midwest, but it’s 69 degrees and absolutely gorgeous out, and I’m taking my daughter somewhere to play if it kills us both. It’s just too beautiful a day to spend in front of the computer!

In which I go to my first ‘meet the author’ at my local comic book store.

Office Depot had a sale on packing tape – buy two, get one free – so I actually got excited about buying tape. That’s sad enough on its own, but I sprung for a cheap tape gun from the savings. Only it turned out to be not only a really cheap tape gun, but also a really bad tape gun. All the boxes going out today and tomorrow look like they were packed by a poorly trained chimp.

Well, they’re Jayne hats. Maybe I can pass it off as the work of space monkeys.

Next up: TX, OH, and AZ

After the meeting, the mother of the most talkative girl came up to me and kind of smilingly half-apologized for how talkative her daughter was. The mother of the least talkative did the same, for her daughter being so quiet. But both of their daughters were charming and well-behaved.

I’ve been guilty of this too. When my daughter goes around to everybody in the yarn shop and introduces herself and asks what folks’ names are, I’m going to stop with the slightly nervous laughter. She knows not to bother someone when they’re on the phone, and I’m working on teaching her to not bother them in the middle of transactions or conversations, although that’s trickier to figure out. So I’ll keep working with her on that. But overall, she’s fine, and I need to lighten up.

So I’ve resolved to stop being so self-conscious about how my child behaves in public. Apparently it’s like our own bodies, or accents, or anything else we have that’s slightly out of the norm. We’re hyper-sensitive, but nobody else cares, so we all might as well lighten up.

if I hadn’t already known Emily had issues, I never would have known from that Brownie meeting.

There were girls who wanted to talk and talk and talk, girls who raised their hand at any opportunity – tellingly, these were the girls who joined us from the other troop – and there were girls who didn’t ever volunteer, but whom I called on anyway and who had good answers when asked. Emily fell at that end of the spectrum. She didn’t speak up, but when asked, she had good, relevant answers. Like “What can you do to help stop germs?” “Well, washing your hands is good for not having germs.” The answer was well within the range of normal answers from the troop. And she stayed at the table or in the circle or wherever the other girls were, and participated well.

I was really afraid it was going to be heartbreaking to do this, to see what the other girls were doing that Emily wasn’t. But she fit right in, and nobody said anything or, I think, thought anything about it.

And you know what? For the whole meeting, I didn’t notice or think about it either. Amazing.

Well, there’s a shocker.

Your results:
You are Superman

Superman 85% Spider-Man 80% Robin 70% Supergirl 63% Iron Man 60% Green Lantern 60% Wonder Woman 53% The Flash 45% Hulk 35% Catwoman 30% Batman 30%

You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

…went very well. The girls are sharp as tacks and blew threw our main activity and our backup activity, leaving us with 30 minutes to fill. Which we did, by talking about toothbrushing, calcium, sleep, doctor visits, and hearing from two moms who were there who were nurses. So a badge we thought would take two sessions to earn is done. They picked “Manners” as their next badge to work on.

Our cookie mom (not me!) has whipped into action and we’re getting a booth to sell at our local ginormous Harris Teeter.

I suggested that our cookie mom work with us on the cookie badge, and she will, so I’m off the hook for that meeting. Yay!

Still to be resolved: dues. Badges cost $1.25 each and come out of troop funds. Current troop funds=0.

More later – my daughter is singing Agalina Hagalina, the same song she’s been singing nonstop all day, and I’m too tired to tune it out properly and focus on writing.