Wow its been a while....

So I had my baby girl, Evelyn Marie, on May 8th. She is beautiful and wonderful and also the main reason I haven't been on here in forever. I haven't accomplished as much knitting as I usually do since she's been born.

Currently I am finishing up a baby blanket for my friend who celebrated her baby shower yesterday. Yeah blanket not done but I have time, the baby hasn't arrived yet! ;) I am on the border so I am really close to finishing, yay! I love the way its coming out and will post pics as soon as she receives it because I don't want her to see it before it comes. :) I also have 3 pairs of lingering socks on the needles (yikes) and a sweater that I started way back when that really needs to be finished. Of course I have received the newest Interweave Knits in the mail and OF COURSE it would have a cardigan I REALLY want to make. I also have another cardigan from twist collective that I REALLY want to make. Alas they will have to wait as I practice self control so some other projects can get off the needles...like the cardigan I forgot to mention that I started last year....stupid startitis.... I'm afraid to look in my yarn basket I know there are other unfinished projects lingering...begging to be finished and in some cases even frogged....

Anyway aside from knitting or attempting too I am also getting back to my workout routine. Evie and I go to the gym everyday of the week. She hangs out with the child watch people and I workout trying to get back to my regular body. I think it would be going better if I could get my eating habits under control....lol. Oh well. I am hoping to at least be in better shape than I am for my level 3 yoga training at the end of august which is coming much faster than I anticipated. Oh well we will see what happens. Hopefully the training goes well and they let me pump while I'm there because I am still breastfeeding and hope to continue until she is 6 months. Its a lot of work but I think its worth it. I wouldn't trade that time for anything. :)

Wednesday we go to a dog training class. Bob is a good dog and listens pretty well but its always good to do something with him since we are so busy with the baby and its also good to keep training him. So Wednesday is the orientation where my friend Rick who runs the dog training place meets with the owners to see how they are (train the owners and then the dog, lol). Some of my yogi friends are going to be there so it will be lots of fun. So we are going to have our first baby sitter, our good friend Auntie Elyse is going to come and watch Evie. Depending on how it goes we may ask her to watch her for the duration of the class which I believe is 8 weeks. This will depend on Evie's cooperation. If Elyse is willing to keep watching her (ie. Evie didn't make her run screaming) it will make everything easier.

Well thats my boring update for now. Pictures to follow in my next blog. Knitting, baby etc. :)

Sock Madness Socks!

So I made it through round one of sock madness. We had to knit socks with an interesting construction. Pictured below the Simple Side to Side socks are knit flat and then grafted together. Then you need to pick up stitches for the cuff, heel and toe. The pattern was simple enough and created some really cool looking socks. The main issue is the lack of stretch. They will stretch in length but not in width. So of course they didn't work for my feet so my mother is acquiring a new pair of socks....again. If you hate grafting and picking up stitches these socks aren't for you. They are pretty fun to make if you have never knit socks in this style and they are great for all that wild yarn you have sitting in your stash though. The designer is working on updating the pattern to work with the fitting issues. So hopefully when its released to the general public people will have an easier time with fit. This is a competition though so socks aren't knit to necessarily fit everyone. I managed to make it to round 2 (at a much slower pace than I would have liked) but life gets in the way, travel, death and funerals. I'm just glad I finished them in time to move on.

Simple Side to Side Socks by Deborah Swift

Yarn: Yarn Love, Juliet in Robin Hood colorway

Needles: US Size 1 Circulars

This brings us to the round 2 socks which actually did fit. Cool Beans is a pretty colorwork pattern that drove everyone crazy, lol. I love how they look and I think its really cool we knit a pattern based on coffeebeans. The biggest complaint I heard was the gusset decrease went on forever, which I kind of agree but once I stopped looking at the gusset decreases and focused on the beans it went a lot faster, IMHO. It was a learning experience for most because many people had never done colorwork. I like colorwork, I haven't done many colorwork patterns but I do love colorwork. Once the errata came out for the heel and the toe problems were worked out it made the pattern a lot easier for people. Thankfully there were several finishers before me who figured out the pattern problems and posted fixes for them. I finished before the toe info came out but I'm sure its helped a lot of people. This pattern is the first time I have ever been asked to share my picture as one of the model pics for a pattern which is a huge honor, so thank you yarnyenta, you are awesome.

Pattern: Cool Beans By: Yarnyenta

Yarn: Knitpicks bare merino natural and zauberball (don't know the color)

Needles: US2 brittany dpns

I can't wait to see what they have in store for us for pattern three. I managed to make it to round three btw. So hopefully everyone knits their socks quickly so we can move on. I'm anxious to start especially with the baby's due date closing in. I want to see how far I can get. :)

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. :)