Spoiled :)

First off some cute baby stuff from a wonderful friend. Baby Gap has some of the cutest outfits. I love them and she even bought a swimsuit. J and I were just talking about teaching the baby how to swim after she is born. Yay! Now I just have to cross my fingers that there were no mistakes made and we are actually having a girl because there are so many cute girl outfits now. She also got us The Giving Tree. I love this book, its so sweet and wonderful. I am so grateful I love all of it. :)

On to my next spoiling. This is from my coffee and yarn swap. I love it. She got me coffee from a local roaster, 2 skeins of lornas laces daffodil yarn, handmade magnetic chart keepers (so needed these), a little bag from the loopy ewe (awesome), a needle size measurer, stitch markers, homemade soap (it smells awesome), coffee toffee chocolate and a baby rattle for the baby. I love it all and can't wait to start using everything. The coffee smells amazing as does the soap and I can hear the chocolate calling my name. The yarn is awesome especially now that I am in the Sock Madness competition. I am going to need all the sock yarn I can get. :) Thank you so much for being so awesome.

Next post will be on sock madness, fun knitting stuff. :)

And then the olympics happened...

I was going to blog more and then the Olympics happened. So instead of sitting at my computer not blogging I was sitting in front of my t.v. trying to knit. I accomplished a lot less knitting than I had hoped. I managed to finish one pair of socks which I had to knit for my Sock Wars target. I sent those socks out and made my kill but the Baby Surprise Jacket was started but not finished. I had dreams of Olympic glory by finishing some WIP's but that also did not happen. I did manage to start a cross stitch blanket which I don't have any pictures of now but I will eventually. Its a cute little Winnie the Pooh design which may or may not be for my future child. Lets be honest here I am not so consistent with finishing cross stitch projects...or knitting projects....or projects in general but I try. I got a message from my Sock Wars assassin. She has mailed out my socks so my time is limited. I am hoping to get my SIP's in the mail before my death socks so I can at least work on them even if I don't get to finish them. I am waiting for Sock Madness to begin but in the meantime maybe I can get some of these WIP's out of the way. Too many lingering projects OTN.

I leave for home in about 2 weeks! Yay! The baby shower should be fun. I have another appt. before I leave so hopefully things are continuing on as they are and we are both healthy. :) The rest of this month will probably be dedicated to baby classes to prep for the little ones arrival. The baby room should get a coat of paint this weekend. The walls are all prepped they just need some paint. I think that about covers this update. Below are some visual goodies, enjoy.

My third and probably final kill for sock wars. The socks were soft but I had to start them from the beginning because no one had even made the skeins into balls.

My first start on the baby surprise jacket. I managed to lose my place in the knitting and had to start again. I just love the colors and am hopeful there will be enough yarn to finish it.

So much to post about

So today I signed up for Sock Madness 4. I'm pretty excited because I have never done it before and it looks a lot more intense than Sock Wars. Speaking of sock wars, I made my second kill on Saturday! Yay! My target has already sent her socks on to her target though, so somewhere along the line are my SIP's waiting to find their new owner, me. I might be able to get one more shot fired off before my assassin gets to me first. She is in Canada waiting to receive my socks so she can work on them. Hopefully Canada post works in my favor and take forever to deliver them, like they are known to do. :)

(socks I am working on until the new SIP's arrive)

(Second pair of death socks I sent to my second target, she liked them)

In other news, J and I went to Jacksonville, Fl on a little vacation. Well it was a little vacation for me, he was there for work. He had to present a paper he wrote so I tagged along and visited a friend in the area. She too is preggers but she is much closer to her due date than I am. She took me around and showed me some sites during the day and then at night J and I would hang out and eat dinner. It was fun and a nice break from the everyday but I did miss my pets and being in my regular routine. So it was good to get home. Our friends who watched Bob and Ziggy spoiled them rotten. We are fortunate to have people willing to love our pets as much as we do. :)

(one shot of our view from the hotel)

(another angle from our hotel room)

This weekend we tried a new restaurant out here called Five Guys. The food was good, it reminded me a little of a burger version of Penn Station back home. In other news we got some snow but not a lot and the rain melted a lot of it. Supposedly we are getting more this week..boo. I was ready for it to be spring because we weren't having any inclement weather out here but of course the second you resign yourself to a short season it inevitably lengthens.

We had some friends over for the super bowl on sunday. No one was really into a team in particular but we all had a great time. Eating and just hanging out talking. Lily came over to play with Bob and they had fun until Bob got cranky and didn't want to play anymore. He's such an old man. Ziggy wanted nothing to do with the new puppy in the house so we went off to nap on our bed.

Overall it was a great weekend. Tomorrow I have my next baby appt. Hopefully its routine and quick. Then the rest of this week I have a lot of yoga to teach because one of the teachers is out for the week. Most of it is gentle yoga though so thats good. Anyway I am off to get some stuff done. :)

SIP's!!!!

These are my socks in progress for sock wars 5. My target sent them out and I just got them in the mail today. I am soooo excited to work on them. Last sock wars I was taken out after one kill. I am hoping to possibly make two kills this time around. If not I'm going to get as far as I can with these socks. This is an accomplishment for me, living long enough to get SIP's. Yay! So I thought I would take a break from knitting for a minute to photograph them and update the blog.

This picture is my progress so far today. When I got the socks only the cuff was really done so I had to work from there and I am about 4" in. I have to make it to 7.5" by bedtime in order to start the heel flap tomorrow. :) You can kind of see in the edge of this picture the amount that was done on the sock when I received it.
Picture number two is of both skeins and my targets progress/my progress. She was probably doing two at a time on circulars but I don't know how to do that and I don't have size 1 circulars (shocking I know). So I am using my trusty dpns making one sock at a time.

The yarn is Regia Flusi Sock in colorway #1802. It's really pretty. The needles are brittany us1 dpns and the pattern is Jeckyll and Hyde.

I have updated so now I must return to my knitting. On to victory! :)

Updates and HOPEFULLY more posting

So I have been really bad about updating my blog. I want to try and update it more with knitting content and soon there will be baby content as well. I am about 6 months along now and can't wait for the baby to get here! :) I can wait I guess because we have stuff to finish up before it happens but I'm still excited for everything to unfold.

I don't have a new years resolution this year, not that I ever really set one. I like to try and better myself throughout the year rather than waiting for a magical time to start, Jan. 1st. I understand this works for people and gives them a jump start which is fine it just doesn't really work for me. Anyway I want to start using up my stash more instead of buying new yarn all the time. I have a bunch of idle projects sitting in my basket waiting to be finished and more yarn that fits in my basket. This is nice but it kind of drives me crazy because the organized side of my brain can't stand to see all the clutter. So I really want to work on that and maybe destash some yarns I am not using or that I don't think I will use.

As far as knitting goes. I am in Sock Wars 5. It's a sock knitting competition. You have a target and you are trying to knit them a pair of socks before your assassin knits you and pair and sends them out to you. I have managed to take out my target, yay, now I am just waiting for SIP's from her. I get her targets socks to finish and then send out. I feel a little bad taking her out because she was the youngest player in the competition, 9yrs old, and the usual age range is 20s and up. Her mom said she was ready to be done knitting the socks for her target though. So I sent her some yarn and her death socks so she could still knit socks but maybe in a pattern that was a little more interesting to her. Now I sit here waiting...please come soon SIP's I am so excited to work on a second pair. I only got to make 1 kill last year, I am shooting for 2 this time around. Ironically enough the woman I took out last year is my assassin this year, lol. Its an entertaining twist. She has known since the beginning of the war that I was her target but I just found out recently so we both had a good laugh about it. It was completely unintentional, pairing us up.

I am also doing ravelympics this year. So Feb 12th I get to cast on my baby surprise jacket and finish up a pair of socks during the Olympics. I hope I win a medal, lol! I might even work on a sweater I have OTN. My next major cast ons will probably be the sleeping monkeys blanket and vivian which is a gorgeous cabled cardigan that won't fit until the baby is out and I have lost some baby weight. Not looking forward to getting rid of baby weight but thats ok I'm sure if I keep up with yoga all will go back eventually, fingers crossed.

I am also hoping to make some progress on my spinning. I bought the book Respect the Spindle by Abby Franquemont. It's been really informative so far. So I am pretty excited to try and use the techniques to improve my spindle skills.

I'm off for now. I might come back and edit in some pictures of knitting content. The sun has come out, it has stopped raining and I might actually get to take the dog to the park. :)

I've been spoiled!

Ooo a package for me! I love mail!

The first picture is of all the knitted items. She made me a cute hat and fingerless mitts that everyone loves. She also made me a cup cozy and a stuffed elephant for the baby. The dog has already tried to steal the elephant...this does not bode well for future stuffed toys, lol.

This is the goodies section. Yummy chocolate which is all gone unfortunately.... A travel mug, hot chocolate and peppermint tea, yum!

This is my sock kit which I am sooo excited about. I love Cookie A patterns and Django is one that I have been wanting. Some pretty blue sock yarn, dpns, a tape measure with a pin on the back so I can never lose it (how did you know I always lose it?), a thimble and a needle point cover.

This is the whole kit in all of its glory. Thank you Pandora I love it. It was very sweet and you did a marvelous job following my wish list. Sorry it took me so long to post the pictures. Hopefully my kit is well received. I sent it out today. :)

Busy Busy Busy

Well our trip home was a lot of fun. We took both the dog and the cat back home with us. Eleven hours in the car with two animals is interesting to say the least. I almost killed the cat on the way home. He meowed for about an hour and a half straight at the beginning of the trip. Finally he calmed down and slept. The dog was in a similar boat and paced around the back seat of the car for about an hour. Thats how long it takes him to realize we are not going to the dogpark. The cat really enjoyed my in laws place, one small dog and no cats. He wasn't so thrilled about my moms house, six cats and one big dog. The dog he could handle but the other cats were another story. So I think this next trip we are leaving him at the vet instead of bringing him. There will be less stress on both sides.

Other than that I've been pretty busy since we got home. I have so many projects on my plate and things are getting interesting at work, lots of yoga classes not enough teachers. My house is sort of clean but not really so I need to work on that especially since there are fleas and we just can't seem to get rid of them. I was hoping they would all die while we were out of town. I had sprayed everything down, washed everything and vacuumed but it doesn't seem to have done the trick. So I think we are just going to have to vacuum everyday for at least a week and try it that way. Maybe it will help, fingers crossed. As far as projects go I have been knitting when I can to finish these socks for my spoilee. I am really hoping to have them done soon. I may even be able to send out by saturday. They are coming along but not as quickly as I would like. I also have a cross stitch stocking for my step dad that I have been working on for over a year, maybe even two now, that I would like to give to him this year. I am trying to finish my Diana Gabaldon book, An Echo in the Bone, before its due back to the library (tomorrow) but I know that is not even close to happening, oh well. I guess I will have to buy it and finish when I have time, which at this rate may be never. I would really like to start a new knitting project as well. I have the new interweave knits and I love the Icelandic Star cardigan. I bought some yarn from knit picks which has already arrived but I can't start it until I at least finish these socks. I might even have to put if off a little longer because the grey yarn I chose is not really the shade I wanted and they have a lighter shade coming out this month, so I may have to wait for that. Oh well. I still have another sweater OTNs which would be good to finish. Either way I'm not sure it will matter. By the time I finish said sweater and cardigan I will probably be too round to wear them, lol. Ah the joys of pregnancy. On the plus side people keep telling me how thin I look, I'm not sure if I care if they are lying at this point, its just nice to hear, lol. As far as work goes I already have my plate full with classes and I am loath to take on more because I know come May I will have to give up all of my classes for at least a month anyway and I won't be able to start teaching again until the baby is at least 6 weeks because that is the youngest they take in the daycare. It sucks because all of these classes are opening up and my boss wants to start more next year. Then next year one of the best teachers will be leaving because her husband is military so they will be relocating. This will leave two classes open, one of them being a more challenging class and I am probably the only one currently qualified to teach it after her...yikes. So much to think about, oh well what can you do. We also spend every major holiday out of state so that is just more classes to find subs for, yay. Oh well it will all work out some how. They are trying to hire on more subs, heres hoping.

Tomorrow J and I are going to buy our tree and decorate the house while listening to Christmas music. I am sooooo excited. I love all the glitz of the season. All of the warm happy family moments and and beauty of it. I really hope it snows this year. We can build a snowman then! We probably won't get any snow here and if we do it will most definitely not be enough or the type to make snowmen from but we are headed north for Christmas, fingers crossed. Now I just have to figure out what I want for Christmas, always a challenging task, and buy all the gifts. I'm so excited! :)