Wallaby progress

Yesterday (Friday) I finished the knitting on my Spiral Doily, hooray! Now I just need to block it. Pictures when it looks like more than a tangled pile of yarn. Hopefully tomorrow.

As soon as I finished the doily, I told myself it was all right if I cast on for Ryan's Wallaby. Part of the reason for that was because I managed to talk Tracy out of making this pattern (the one on the front cover) and instead, to join me in making a Wallaby. After much arm twisting she decided to cast on with me for a Wallaby, but using the stripe sequence and yarn from the sweater she was going to make before without sleeves, the curved hem, or fringe of the inspiration pattern.

She's making tremendous progress, especially considering that this will be (basically) her first non-scarf project. Both Rori and Tracy catch on extremely quickly. Well, either they act like they understand what I'm telling them and then go home and look it up and pretend that I taught them, or they're just smart women. I think it's the latter.

So I decided that for my Wallaby I wanted to put a train on the pocket. My boy LOVES trains (or anything with wheels, really) so I thought he'd get a kick out of it. I managed to design a motif from scratch which I'm quite proud of (and will probably post to share later). Pride goeth before a fall, as I used some bastardized combination of fair aisle and intarsia that created quite the smorgasbord of ends. Witness the horror:


But man, the front looks great!! It doesn't really lean like that in real life--I managed to smooth it crooked I guess. Really. I think it's darn cute.

As I was about halfway done with the train motif Ryan came up and looked at the chart and yelled "train, Mom!!" And I said "yep, I'm putting a train on your sweater! See?" and held it up. His face was totally blank. Then he said "no Mom, train here!" and pointed to the chart. He fell asleep before I finished it, so maybe he'll see a train on his sweater in the morning.

The knitting goal for tomorrow is to get the body of the sweater knitted up to the point when I can "fuse" the pocket and body together.

I am really proud of that silly train motif. It's recognizable as a train! Woo hoo!

Wallaby Swatchiness

Last night I decided to swatch for the Wallaby I'm going to make for my boy. It's probably going to be huge on him since he's 2 and the next size up is a 4, but I'd rather make it too big and have him grow into it than make it too small and not have him be able to use it.

It was 97 degrees outside and I'm going to cast on for a sweater. I think there's something wrong with this picture. Thank goodness for air conditioning!!!

No, there's not something funky going on in the rows on the right. Well, actually there is, but it's intentional. I've put in purl bumps to indicate my needle size--US5 for the bottom part, and US4 for the top part. I always think "oh, I'll remember what needle size I was using on that!" and of course I never do.

So I balled it up in my hand, mashed it into some warm water, scrubbed, squeezed, and otherwise abused it washed the swatch to test for color fastness. It wasn't anywhere near as bad as it could have been with the way cotton dyes tend to never exhaust. And just for you, Lisa, here's my paper towel, on which the swatch rested while it dried overnight:

Really, not too bad for the yarn being 80% cotton and such a rich color. I'm not too worried about it bleeding onto the white yarn that I haven't decided how to incorporate (yet). Thanks for the heads-up, Lisa!

I'm ordering some needles from KnitPicks to make this sweater, so I'm going to put the project aside while I study the pattern and get a few other projects out of the way. I'm almost finished with the Spiral Doily, just need to do the crocheted bind off. Maybe tomorrow. I want to have it finished (and blocked!!) by the next knitting guild meeting, since I started it at the last guild meeting.

And now I've got to get to bed. Why do I always end up posting at midnight?? Oh yeah, housework and two little kids, the lights of my life, who need my attention during the day. :-) Totally worth it. Well, the kids and hubby are, any way. LOL!!

After-Vacation Update

I'm tired!

Our vacation was absolutely fabulous, but I'm tired today. Really really tired. More tired than I've been for a while. This morning both DH and I had dentist appointments so we're both feeling whiny this evening. I didn't sleep well knowing that I was going to have to get up kind of early. Whine whine whine.

Remember the whole "Color me Beautiful" craze? I decided that I'd like to figure out what "season" my colors are, and I'm still confused. I did find a quiz, though, and my results are that I'm a "spring-autumn." I didn't think that was possible, since one is cool and the other is warm.
I think I'll have to do more research. All I know is I'm really light-skinned, like CLEAR, with really red cheeks. And whenever I do a reddish colorwash in my hair, everyone thinks I dye it mousy blond (which is actually my natural color).

The book says that the colors you're naturally attracted to are usually ones that look good on you. Turns out "my" colors are the ones I'm NOT attracted to. I love jewel tones and clear, strong colors. That's not the "Spring" color range. Oh well. One of these days I'll figure it out.

On the knitting front, I've got 8 more rounds to go on the spiral Doily! I'm eager to get it off the needles and blocked to see how big it'll be. From my earlier row gauge estimate I'm guessing it'll be around 40", but of course I'm hoping it'll be bigger so that I can wear it as a shawl instead of using it as a small tablecloth. Well, a girl can dream, can't she?

I need to get back to my Hanging Garden Stole. I'm altering it (of course) so that it'll have fewer repeats across. I'll probably make it the full 14 repeats (I think--from memory) and then do some other stuff around the border incorporating beads and another border.

One of the things I bought in Idaho was the pattern for the Wonderful Wallaby sweater. I also got some yarn for it, Cotton Fleece. I'm way excited about it! Gillian's sweater cost about $15 for the materials, and Ryan's sweater is going to end up being like $40, but I got the yarn for Gillian's for $1 a ball. I figure it'll all even out. I need to swatch for that sweater, and design a motif for the pocket. I got three skeins of dark blue and a skein of off white to do a motif, so now I just need to figure out what I'm going to do. I'm tempted to put waves around the "waist" running behind the pocket with a boat on the front, but he really doesn't have much interest in boats. Now anything with wheels is a different story....

Big Springs and Yellowstone

We had a wonderful (but exhausting!!) day at Yellowstone yesterday, day five of our Idaho vacation. We stopped at Big Springs on our way to Yellowstone, which is always a huge hit with everyone. The fish are humongeous and beautiful. This picture really doesn't do them justice. The larger ones are more than a foot long, probably closer to 18" and just beautiful. There's no fishing at this bridge and people bring bread to feed the fish (and muskrats, and unfortunately the seagulls have driven off the ducks that are usually hanging around) so these are big, calm fish.

And there's a resident muskrat family that is quite charming. This is one of the parents. The seagulls didn't even try to mess with him. What good swimmers these animals are! It was fascinating to watch them.

Ryan and Gillian (and the grandparents) had a great time. Ryan looked so cute in this hat--it's my Mom's, but we were able to cinch it down to fit his rather large head. He was so good about wearing it, which is what amazed me.


I took a large number of photos (like 145) and I won't post most of them here. (Aren't you happy I'm not going to? )

One of the things I really wanted to do on this trip to Yellowstone was to go to Mammoth. I'm not sure how long it's been since I've bene there but it's been a long time. It was smaller than I remembered (and I'm a lot bigger/taller now) but still very impressive!

This is a shot looking almost straight down at one of the many tiers at one of the terraces at Mammoth.

And a shot from farther away:

One of the things I miss about the West is the LIGHT. It's totally different in Oklahoma, and every time I come back to the West it just blows me away.

In this picture Ryan has just finished a chocolate-covered chocolate bar (also known as Dips, granola bars with chocolate on the outside) and is wearing it on his face and hands. Gillian is trying to get away from him as he's pretending to wipe his hands on her. They may be young but they're already good at tormenting each other. In actuality, they were having a great time.

And a family shot. This was actually before Ryan got to the end of his chocolate bar--you can see just a bit of it on his chin.


These nice red marks are my souvenirs from Saturday's visit to the campsite up near Spencer, Idaho. I have no idea what bit me but it's been itchy for days and now they just look terrible. Thank goodness they don't itch any more!! Hopefully they won't scar. Some of the other people who were there also have bites, but I get the award for the worst looking ones. This picture was taken five days after I got bitten.


After Mammoth we sprinted (figuratively) down to Old Faithful and got there in time to have dinner at "the Ham Store," which is what my parents have always called the Hamilton Store, which has a neat "knotty porch." I didn't get a picture, but it's not something that you'd be able to build today.

And of course here's the requisite picture of Old Faithful:

That's all the pics I'll bore you with today. :-)

Tomorrow is our last day since we'll have to leave early Saturday morning to make it to Salt Lake to catch our flight home. I'll be glad to be home, but I've had such a great time I'm not ready for tomorrow to be the last day!

On the knitting front, I got no knitting done yesterday and about three rounds finished on my spiral doily today. Silly me, I actually thought I might have it finished and blocking by now. Hahahahahaha!!!

I got to meet LisaK!

This evening I got to meet, face to face, an internet friend! LisaK belongs to a "studio" group to which my Mom also belongs, and they met this evening. It was really fun! Lisa is very nice and very talented. I'm covetous of the beautiful sock she was working on, not to mention the yarn she was spindling.

I'm still working away on my doily project that I'd hoped would be a shawl, but I really don't think it's going to end up being big enough. Measuring my row gauge and then figuring 200 rows (100 rounds) it's probably only going to be around 40" wide. Not quite what I was going for, but it's been a fun knit anyway. The pattern is from Nurhanne's site, the Doily with Spiral.

Tomorrow we're headed to Big Springs to feed some VERY large fish, then on to Yellowstone. I don't know if we'll be back tomorrow night or stay there and come back Thursday. We're playing it by ear (which is essential with young kids, as I well know but of which I am occasionally forcibly reminded).

Earlier today my wonderful DH and I had a date!!! That makes the third one for the year, I think. We went out to lunch at Johnny Carino's (I think that's the name) and had a very pleasant time and excellent food, then wandered around Target (nothing like shopping at a chain store that you have at home--it's all just slightly different!) and got some sunglesses since mine are AWOL, and then went to see Pirates of the Carribean. Some parents who should be clapped in irons actually brought their young children to that movie. Now I really enjoyed it, but my kids stayed at home with Grandma. These kids were way too young to be there--like 2, maybe 3 years old, and around 4 years old. They were very well behaved but there are multiple scenes that I DO NOT EVER want my young children to be exposed to. When they're young teens (like 12 or 13) that's different, but those kids are going to have nightmares. I just hope those kids didn't understand what was happening, but I doubt it.

So it's been a fantastic day and I'm looking forward to going to Yellowstone tomorrow. Speaking of which, I really should be in bed so that I'm not too tired to enjoy it! :-)