The New Year

So, I did finish the girls stockings.  I was up until 1:30 on Christmas Eve/Christmas morning.  And I didn't line them.  But the knitting is done.  And they turned out pretty nice from the front.  They may not look it from this shot, but they are the same size.  I am going to line them - or they will stretch to four feet long.  

I'm not pleased with the pattern.  I'm not a huge fan of knitting in the round anyway.  I tried two different methods in the "back" at the "seam".  On the first one I cut the yarn each time; leaving myself with a million ends to work in.  But the seam does look far more invisible.  For the second one I carried the yarn up the back.  I used the "jogless-jog" on all the stripes longer than one round for both stockings.  The second one looks much worse as a seam, but was finished when the knitting was done.  Except for the lining of course.  I do have some vintage style red-work cotton that I'm going to use to line them with.  I have several fat-quarters, so I'm going to make four inch squares into a random patchwork and use that.  No one will ever see it I suppose, but I like the idea.  

I frogged the tan-green and the blue-white stockings.  I'm going to knit them flat and seam them.  Since I have a great love of hand sewing - seaming doesn't bother me at all.  

Nine Months Old

Emma is nine months old today.  She weighs nearly 20 pounds, is 72 cm and fits the 75% profile perfectly.  All healthy and normal growth.  Except for the two ear infections that is.  No wonder she's needed to be held, been sleepy and generally a bit grumpy for the last week.  Poor thing.  I am not a mother who runs to the doctor at the first sniffle.  But I'm glad she was seen today.  This is the third (and fourth?) ear infection.  Poor thing just has a stuffy system.  At least her little gut it working.  That was giving her trouble from day one.  But it is finally settling out.  This picture is a few weeks old, but basically that's just what she looks like.  

I've started in on Ari's stocking.  And I'm putting together a "spring line".  In other words, things I'd like to put up on etsy at the end of February (through say April) including some things for Easter.   I'm going to have to get started of course if I want anything to be ready by then.  But I'm going to begin with some crocheted hats and things that I already have the yarn for and go from there.  Aloha Knits carries some of the big name "eco" lines, so I'll be able to work from there for the beginning of it.  And hopefully be able to work in new yarns.  I know that I previously said I needed a business plan etc - but I'm going to see how things go for the next three to four weeks.  If I cannot get work done, then I will put this line off until next year and have the planning parts done.  

Christmas Blues

I finished the first of the girl's stockings and woke up to the fact that Christmas is next Thursday.  Sigh.  And I don't have enough white to finish and had to order more.  So now I'm frantically knitting on the second stocking.  If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out.  But I'm going to try.  Now that I've done the pattern once, this second one should go faster.  And I found a circ to work well with the pattern, so no more partial rounds and fitting needles.  That should help too.  I'll get a picture up here soon of the one I finished.  

Emma got what Ari had, so she's not her normal happy self.  That's not helping anything either. 

But then the whole world looks bleak, as an old friend used to say, when you haven't had lunch.  Time to go and eat. 

Sickos

Oh boy.  We're all sick here at our house.  That doesn't count my husband because he's not really at the house.  His day always begins at five when he gets up and out of the house in about 10 minutes.  Last night he got home around eight.  Tonight he'll be on duty - meaning he won't be home at all.  And tomorrow night is turning into another "late" night, meaning seven or eight.  Emma is usually in bed by then (or should be) and Ari just starting her nighttime routine.  Jase usually gives her her bath, which is at eight, so if he makes it he does that.  But all this gone time does mean that he's not exposed to the germs around here nearly as much.  Last night he came home, did the bath, had some dinner and sacked out on the couch.  Not much time to contaminate.  

Ari woke up with a fever of 101.7.  Poor baby.  She's got a runny nose too.  That's it.  As long as I keep her in tylenol she does alright.  Emma's had cold for two days.  Runny nose, cough etc.  No fever.  But she can't sleep much without someone holding her and helping her when she coughs.  So guess who's not gotten much sleep either.  Tonight I'm just going to admit I'm going to spend the night in the chair and set myself up to get as much sleep there as possible.  My throat issue is back as a result of the lack of sleep and I've got at least two open sores in there right now.  I can feel exactly where they are.  My wonderful neighbor Michele is going to come over and be with the girls a bit tonight so I can go and get more meds up a Long's for all of us.  This Saturday we're holding a block party here at our house for all the kids to decorate cookies, so we'd better all be mostly well by then.  

I have been knitting some.  I've got the stocking mostly done for Emma.  I'm working in the ends and I need to do the heel.  I found it difficult to work on the heel without the ends worked in.  Then I have to line the thing with fabric.  That's a whole nother project in itself really. 

I also started my Master Knitters program finally, beginning with the first swatch.  I had a long talk with Jason the other night about being my own worst enemy in holding myself back from my potential so I thought I'd better fight this and get to it.  In other news I've decided to stay 200 lbs. for the rest of my life.  We all got sick when I got sick trying to go back to the gym.  

Running Late

I'm sorry to have missed the last few days.  Suddenly I'm up to my ears in things that need to get done.  Christmas does that.  For all week it was: get up, get out of the house, drop Ari at daycare, put Emma in the car and go.  Don't come home until 2:30 or 3 - rest a few minutes then get Ari and think of dinner.  Shopping, the gym (finally!), doctor's appointments.  The works.  Now that I seem to have finally kicked that weird virus (won't go away, extreme fatigue, open sores in the my throat but not technically mono) I can start working out again.  Of course, two short days of doing half the routine and I'm already starting to feel sick again.  Sigh.  More sleep I guess. 

I gave in finally and started on the girl's stockings.  You can follow in on ravelry.  www.ravelry.com/projects/bluefox  I did decide to use one circ and that's working out fairly well.  It's turning out pepperminty, which is what I wanted, and large.  Which should be interesting to fill.  But they will look very pretty.  At the very least I want to finish one for Emma.  I do have a stocking for Ari from previous years.  But it would be fun to finish them both.  On the other hand, I do need to finish the shawl for my mother before Christmas - right around Christmas anyway.  It should be sent out by the 26th in order to get to her on her birthday on the 1st. 

Today we hit three parties.  One for the children on Jason's ship, which was a lot of fun.  The usual Hawaiian BBQ.  A bouncy, food, games.  There were give aways for all the children - bags with toys and candy that were pretty cool.  Santa showed up for a while and took orders.  Ariana loved it.  She sat on Santa's lap and asked for stickers and was very disappointed when she didn't get any.  I explained she was asking for things for her stocking and I think she understood that.   Guess I'd better get my hands on some stickers.  

Then we went to tailgater for the UH game with the wardroom.  That was a good time too.  Then off to a fight party for the boxing match this evening - also including folks from the ship and other friends of the host.  After hot dogs all day it was WONDERFUL Filipino food for dinner.  Gotta love it.  Now, back to knitting. 

On Stores and My Pain

At three o'clock this morning, when I couldn't sleep after feeding the baby, I went onto Ravelry and started reading forums about green knitting.  Sigh.  Turns out I'm not nearly serious enough about this if I want to find the niche market that's out there.  What I should really be using is local, small scale, eco-friendly products that I can really track.  Carbon footprints, sheep raising practices, chemical dips, processing, dyeing, chemical output, shipping distance.  Sigh.  So, I suppose I should do this right.  These things are much more expensive.  And I won't be buying anything real "local" here in Hawaii.  I know there are actually a few sheep living north shore at the UH Ag project, but I doubt they are producing eco-friendly knitable wools just yet.  What I will need to do is make a business plan, work out how much yarn I'm going to need to sustain myself on a basic level for a year, determine project inputs (time, yarn, needles, notions etc.), make a budget and work through what this will really take.  As I said, sigh.  In the meantime I'm going to keep working with my commercially produced "organic" yarns and keep the thing alive.  I'll take myself down to 2-3 projects a month and spend the rest of the time on the business plan.  Oh yeah, better figure in how much time I need in a week.  I'd like to break even, please God, that's all I'm asking for.  For now.  

In other news, I frogged back to my "split" on the stocking and starting working in the round again.  I've just got to finish the thing.   There is that other one in blue, white and grey too . . . 

More water

I spent some time on the other project I have going yesterday.  One of the other ones anyway.  This is for my etsy store - atbluefox.etsy.com - which sells eco friendly kids creations.  I'm knitting up the same striped stocking already mentioned.  This time it is in green, tan, cream and a little brown.  These are organic cotton (with a little milk fiber thrown in - no I don't know what that is).  It's supposed to be knit in the round.  And while I know how to do that and it turns out alright when I do, I'm not a huge fan.  I'm not a huge fan no matter what I use, one circ, two circ, or four/five dpns.  I've tried them all and they all drive me nuts.  On the other hand I love to sew by hand and I don't mind sewing up knitting seams.  The result is that I would much rather put a seam in something.  So halfway through this stocking I got the brilliant idea to take it from dpns to straight stitches and see if I couldn't finish it up faster.  

There are some problems here I didn't think through though.  For one thing picking a spot to just open up in-the-round knitting does not give you the kind of flexibility to just add one straight needle that you might think it would.   So I had to use four needles to knit in a straight line.  I'm still not quite through that stage.  Then, late last night at some point, it occurred to me that up until this time there were no stitches added to make a selvage.  But now I will be needing a selvage to be able to sew these two seams together.  So I finally faced the inevitable conclusion that I would have to tear something out.  Either I tear out the "straight" stitches I've already done and go back to knitting in the round or I tear out the whole thing and knit it with a selvage.  

So today I started a totally new stocking in different colors.  

Today we got up and eventually headed out to the water park here on Oahu.  For those of you who think it's crazy to have a water park here where the beaches are fantastic, I'm in total agreement.  However, us locals do get bored of the beach.  There's all that sand to track around, inside the suit, in the car, in the house, in the shower.  Besides, where else can you surf the perfect standing wave that never varies or ride the lazy river around in shaded circles to your hearts content?  All those press photos of people standing around under waterfalls and enjoying sand covered bums are totally PR.  My baby's sand covered bum just means four days of trying to get it out of her diaper.  

We did have a phenomenal day.  And when we got home, after the bedtime mayhem, I started an entirely new stocking.  This one I'm going to trying knitting in the straight and see what happens.  Again I'm using organic cottons so I can sell this one.  Provided it turns out better than the last one.  This one is in blue, gray and white.  

You have to understand, I made a pledge with myself to finish and upload one project a week to my etsy site.  So far that hasn't happened.  But I'm getting a lot of knitting done.  It's mostly the taking pictures and uploading them that drives me nuts.  Anyway, back to my multiple stockings.  I figure by the time this is over, the girl's stockings should look great.