Christmas Stockings Finished!

It's only taken me a year.

All three stockings are finished! The one on the far left, with "Katy" on it, is the one my Mom made in 1975. The others are the ones I've made in the last year. I couldn't find the same green locally, so we went with the darker green. I'm pretty happy with them! I didn't have a pattern (heck, it's been 30 years since my Mom made mine!!) and each stocking is different, but I like them that way. My sister's and mine are different, too. :-)

Rori finished her second Market Bag, this one done in the round. We'll get a picture of the felted bag soon, but here it is pre-felting:

And here's one with my boy for scale:

We're making more progress on the bathroom. We put up the medicine cabinet on Tuesday night, and today I'm hanging the towel bars now that I finally managed to get some wall anchors. Pictures later. :-)

WE HAVE A BATHROOM!

We have had a major event in this house this evening: THE MASTER BATHROOM IS USABLE!!

Today we painted (although we have a few touch-ups to do), and about a half-an-hour ago Greg put the toilet in!!! This is truly cause for celebration in our house.

I don't usually let Ryan run around in just his diaper, but he'd gotten some paint on the back of his shirt so I stripped it off him and tried to get it out as quickly as possible. I'm not sure when the pants came off, but I'm going to throw them in the tub in a few minutes anyway.

The children are fascinated with the toilet seat. We got one of the ones that has a slow-closing, self-closing lid. Hopefully the obsession will wear off quickly. At least I know that it's clean at this point.

The previous toilet (which wasn't the original) had a 12" rough-in, which meant the tank was resting in the wall. Not against the wall, but pushed into it. When we pulled it out the wall behind it, which hadn't been painted, was mildewed. Ick!!! This is an older house and it's plumbed for a 10" rough-in, which was the standard 30 years ago. When we went to Home Depot to look at toilets we discovered this one, which is a Niagara. The tank doesn't sweat at all because the water stays in this upper chamber until it's flushed. It's pretty cool!!

The paint color didn't turn out quite as I'd planned, but it's all right the way it is. I can always repaint with the technique I'd planned originally, but the colors I chose when I bought the paint didn't have enough contrast for that.

It is one fabulous bathroom!!!

Painting with the Kids, Mud, and Knitting

Greg has been working on the bathroom, and we're finally nearing the end of this project. Today he got the texture done on the walls and ceiling, which means that tomorrow I should be able to PAINT!! He also picked up a toilet, so we may actually have a working bathroom by the end of the weekend!! Mere words cannot describe my excitement. I've really missed my bathroom, much more than I thought I would. Having only one toilet among four people (not that Ryan is using the toilet yet) is NOT fun. I can't imagine what it would've been like for my mom growing up, with eight people sharing ONE bathroom (six kids and two adults).

Here's what he looked like before lunch, after he was finished spraying and texturing:

While Greg was working in the bathroom, the kids wanted to paint so we dragged out the tole painting supplies. I've been accumulating wooden shapes and the kids have used almost all of them. Some of them I've had for a long time, so it's great to see them painted up. This was Ryan's first real painting session--he's daubed paint on things before, but he's never really stuck with it long enough to coat an entire piece of wood with paint. He did great mixing colors and putting the paint on the wood. He held the brush like his sister, and they both did a fabulous job!

For the knitting segment of this post, here's a hat I finished. It's from Red Heart yarn and while I'm not really fond of the scratchy feel before washing, I love the strip effect. It washed up nicely, and is softer, but it's still no where near as soft as Caron Simply Soft. I think this one might get donated to a homeless shelter instead of Caps with a Conscience, since I think it's a little too scratchy for a bare scalp.



Gillian is my model, as usual. It's a bit big on her but then she's five and the hat is for an adult.

Hat Pattern Up

I've formatted the pattern for the Diagonal Rib Hat and posted it on my site.
Just as a refresher, here's a picture:

DD looked at this picture of herself and said "I look like a MOVIE STAR!" LOL! It's a little big on her, of couse, since she's five and the hat is for an adult.

Here's the link to the page with my free stuff:
http://www.piecefulstitches.com/FreeStuff.html

And if you want to go directly to the pattern, it's here:
http://www.piecefulstitches.com/files/DiagonalRibAdultHat.pdf

I'll also put a link in the side bar.

This hat is the one shown in a previous post in the variegated yarn, as well as in the orange yarn (although the yarn was really a DK weight instead of worsted, so it's much smaller).

I really am an airhead lately

I was just looking over my previous posts and realizing that I hadn't included some of the recent happenings. (Pictures toward the bottom.) Refill your coffee mug before you read this 'cause it's a really long post.

I did end up getting all of the ribbons on my fair items, which is great! At the October K.N.I.T. Guild meeting I was recognized as the Best of Show winner for knitting, which is cool. The president cracks me up--she's queen of backhanded compliments. She congratulated me and then went on to say something along the lines of "but it's not hard to enter, and you can win with just about anything." ROFL!! Some of the people there told me later that they were rather taken aback, but I think it's funny. I don't think she means it in a mean way, she's just not really thinking about what she's saying.

My birthday was one week ago and it was by far the worst I've ever had. Except for my wonderful husband taking me out to dinner--that part was wonderful! The truck died again, with the same exact thing as the week before. Turns out, $650 later (plus the $160 the previous trip that didn't' solve the problem), that a chip in the steering column was dying and wouldn't recognize any key, so it would shut off the gas. Until this time around it was only doing it intermittently so it didn't strand me. So not only was the truck dead, but Gillian was very late to school since we had to walk and were already running late. That was probably the fastest I've ever walked that .65 mile and I was "glowing" by the time we got to the principal's office. I will never own another American car. That brings us to $2,000+ this month on repairs for that truck. And it's a 1999. Enough about car trouble!!

I did get some wonderful birthday wishes from my sister and many internet friends, and my parents sent me some money (which I'll be spending on YARN of course) as well as serenading me with the traditional trombone rendition of "Happy Birthday" which I love. My aunt Melanie sent a wonderful hand-made card which I always enjoy. I also got a phone call from my friend Heather, which was really nice. Rori emailed me a big happy birthday wish, and Tracy, with whom I spoke at least twice that day, totally forgot but called me the next day, embarrassed. (*snicker* Hi, Tracy! LOL!) I hope I didn't forget to mention anyone.

On the knitting front, I got four hats finished to send for Caps for a Cure although I haven't gotten them sent out yet. Gillian was graciously consented to having her picture taken as long as I didn't interrupt her game. She had 10 minutes until bedtime and she wanted to squeeze the most out of every second before bedtime while playing computer games.

This first hat is for a young child. My children both have big heads so it's small on her. The yarn is Bernat's Satin yarn in the color "Sunset." I got the yarn, a pair of needles, and a DVD on knitting from Leisure Arts through this link, and it was supposed to be made into a hat for the "Caps with a Conscience" campaign. Since the hat came out too small for an adult I'm going to send it with my Caps for a Cure hats and make a truly adult-sized hat for the "Caps with a Conscience" campaign.

The white hat is from Caron Simply Soft yarn and the pattern is here. It's big on Gillian, but then she's five. It's actually a touch small on me but most hats are.

This hat is Odessa from Grumperina and it was a fun knit even without the beads. The yarn is also Simply Soft. I'm having a terrible time finding nice machine-washable yarn that's not too expensive and available locally so a lot of my charity knitting is from this yarn.

And my final finished hat is made from Caron's Simply Soft Shadows. I really like this yarn! It's a bit heavier than the standard Simply Soft, more like a true worsted than the almost DK-weight of the regular yarn. It was a REALLY bad picture of me, taken by holding out the camera, so I cut out everything but the hat.

And now for the main distraction in my/our life/lives, the shower remodel!

Greg and I actually used this shower this evening and it was wonderful. The rest of the bathroom looks like hell, but the shower looks great!

It looks wonky in the picture but that's because I couldn't get a good camera angle in that little room. It took Greg a while to get the back panel in since the framing isn't square anymore (the house is 30+ years old) and then we had to struggle a little with installing the control and handle, but we got it! We're debating on whether or not to put in a shower door and/or to replace the tile on the floor and the toilet. The toilet keeps leaking from one of the bolts. This project could keep growing, though, and I'm so ready to have it done.

Here's a closer-up of the fixtures we chose:

Tomorrow evening after Greg gets home from work he'll finish putting up the drywall. I still need to scrape down the high spots on the burgundy wall so that we can texture all the walls the same. Here's the challenge I'm facing with that part, where we took down a cabinet. Still not sure what we're going to do about that... We need storage but what was there was pretty bad.

The color balance is off but the large white-and-tan area is where the cabinet was, and the splotchy area below it is where I've scraped off some of the very irregular texture. Lots more to go....

And if you've made it all the way to the end of this extremely long post, congratulations!!