Busy, busy

I know I said I wanted to blog every day (or very nearly), but somehow that just isn't panning out right now. Hopefully I'll get back into the swing of things, but for right now, I refuse to stress out over it. As I'm typing, Annabelle is dancing around in her crib. I don't mean gentle swaying, I mean the child has turned her bed into a moon bounce, moving in circles the way her big brothers do at every street carnival we attend. I would be more concerned if she were taller, but she's still small enough to stay contained and slow enough to avoid any serious whacks to the head.

Just as I was trying to figure out why she won't settle down and take her overdue nap, I heard a rousing chorus of "A,B,C,D,E,F,B..." wafting up the stairs... along with the gleeful pronouncement that, "there's two B's in there," followed by hysterical giggling. Looks like Annabelle's not the only one overdue for a nap. The crooner will be four on Tuesday and is vehemently opposed to the very idea of napping... until he passes out right in the middle of playing.

Said nearly-four-year old has been wanting a pirate party for a couple months now complete with pirate ship cake. It's all he's talked about for the last couple weeks... until he had to get new shoes. The ones that were in his size and happened to be on sale were Spiderman. I'm sure you can guess what happened next. The last week and a half has been filled with excitement over all things Spiderman; videos, shoes, toys, puzzles, party favors... Looks like now we are going to have a Spiderman pirate party. He wants Spidey party favors and a Spidey pinata with a pirate ship cake. It's a cake I made for his brother's third and ninth birthdays, and now Edison wants one of his own. Hopefully his will turn out better than Iain's last one. It arrived at his party looking like it had been under attack. Oh well. I don't have to worry about it until Saturday.

For Tuesday, he has a couple April Fools' Day birthday surprises in store for his preschool friends and Iain's Cub Scout pack. For preschool he is taking in a Grilled Cheese Cake. He's excited about it and I'm hoping it will go over well with the Under-Four demographic. For Scouts he wants to take in little shamburgers. My boys love peppermint patties and are halfway hoping the others won't like them much so the leftovers can come home. I've got to have some way to take pictures by then, so I'm either going to get a couple disposable cameras and have the pics put on disc, or I'm going to have to pony up to send the pics via phone. I like my phone, but the camera is just not that great and it's a quarter a shot for so-so pictures. Oh well, I'm still searching for my digital camera, so perhaps it will surface in the next couple days. Looks like I have a little more shopping to do and then I can finish my chemo-cap (very,nearly done) and start on a couple other gifts.

Warm Up Winchester

As I have mentioned before, I am becoming a bit more involved with some local charities. I think it's important to be involved in doing something for other people. I mean, doing things for those you love is certainly important, but doing your part to help out in the community at large, people you may or may not know, is different. I think it helps keep you connected to the larger group and helps pull you out of yourself. It makes you more aware of what's really going on around you.

I spend a little time most days on Ravelry. Today while on one of the local groups, I discovered Warm Up Winchester. They have a Yahoo group and the Ravelry group can be found here. I enjoy making hats and I'm wanting to learn mittens and gloves. It's nice to know that I can crank out as many as I want and there will be somewhere good for them to go. Well, I'm off to listen to Fibber McGee and Molly while I finish up the chemo cap and start on a gift for the babysitter and some projects for Warm Up Winchester.

One birthday gift done... on time!

Well, the camera is still out in the Great Unknown somewhere, so I'm digging through pictures to see if anything strikes me. I was hoping the camera would turn up by now, though.

I finished Edison's birthday gift. He asked me to make him a blue dinosaur with a long neck. After much digging I settled on the Bronty pattern I found on Ravelry. I showed him the pattern and he gave an enthusiastic thumbs-up. I used slightly less than one skein of Plymouth Jelli Beenz in colorway 0133 (it's a deep royal blue plied with one strand of a rainbow variegated yarn.) The variegated strand looked really prominent when I was working, but it knits up as flecks of color, very nice.

I tweaked the pattern just a little, I changed the first decrease on the tail each time to look smoother and I moved the eyes a little further back on the head. The yarn I chose kind of hid the eyes, so at 3:30 in the morning, I was learning how to make a French Knot. If I had discovered this earlier, I could have had Mom teach me, but I didn't think she'd appreciate my waking her up in this case. Thank goodness for the internet. All in all, the pattern was very nice. It was easy to follow and the dino was simple to assemble, a little fiddly getting the legs on, but I think that was a user issue. I'm not a big fan of seaming and sewing up, but since I want to eventually make a sweater, I guess I'd better suck it up and deal with it. In the meantime, I have to figure out just how to wrap this little guy for my little guy...

In Search of...

You know, I used to love watching that show, "In Search Of". It was so neat with Leonard Nimoy hosting (sorry, always Mr. Spock to me) as they searched for evidence of the mysteries of life, UFO's, poltergeists, Bigfoot. That show may have been singularly responsible for my closet light staying on all night on a regular basis! Anyway, I'm on a search of my own. I'm still in search of my camera. I've hunted through the cars and bags and am in the process of turning the house upside down. There is a slim chance it was lefet behind at the derby, so I'm putting a couple calls in tomorrow to see if anyone turned it in. I'm counting on the general goodness of folks and the Universe to help me out here. In the meantime, I can't stand having a photoless blog, so I'll just have to post about things for which I already have shots.

My eldest really enjoys knitting. He's currently working on a scarf, two inches down, twenty-eight more to go! We had gone out to dinner and everyone but the husband and the baby had knitting to keep us occupied. Turned out to be a good choice. We went to Outback and got there in the middle of the dinner rush.


As you can see, he is definitely my child. He carries his knitting everywhere. It gives him something to do on road trips and we never ask him to turn its volume down. Knitting- 2, Gameboy- 0.

Location, location, location...

You know they really are right (whoever they are) location truly is the key. I have discovered location is much more important than I thought. Take, for example, the location of my digital camera. Doesn't seem like a huge thing, but I couldn't tell you where the heck the blooming thing is right now. I figured I would give myself a simple task before heading off to my next location; I would see if there was enough juice left in the camera batteries to download the most recent set of pictures. The battery capability was questionable because I previously was unsure of the location of the charger. I took approximately a gazillion shots of our Pinewood Derby on Saturday and the little warning light came on (the one in the camera, not the one in my brain. I've come to believe the cranial one has suffered a severe malfunction.)

I rose to the challenge of discovering the location of the USB cable and the location of the ever-wandering charger only to find that the present location of the camera itself eludes me. I have become an adult version of Nancy Drew or the favorite young sleuth of my childhood, Trixie Belden or perhaps more appropriately I have turned into a younger version of Dame Agatha's tricoteuse, Miss Marple. I have questioned all the usual suspects and of course, no-one claims any knowledge of the camera's whereabouts. For a split second, I thought I had found it in the diaper bag, then I recalled the bag had been nowhere near me at all the last time I took pictures. (Turns out that my Canon Elph feels remarkably similar to an Altoids mints tin when located in the bottom of a diaper bag pocket.)

Oh well, the game is afoot and the search will continue. As soon as I find it, I will post pictures of the chemo cap in progress. Until then it's back to p1, k2, p1, k2 ...

With love...

Ever have one of those times when things seem to really jump out at you? You know, when everything you see seems to be related? Maybe it's coincidence, perhaps serndipity, possibly something else entirely. Whatever it is, I've learned (finally) to pay attention. Too many time I've brushed these instances off only to smack myself later and wonder what in the world I was thinking. (much like the old V-8 juice commercials).

Most recently it's been charity knitting, more specifically chemo caps. The lady organising a local knitting group mentioned she wanted to do some knitting/crocheting for charity. That got me thinking. I had lots of fun making the Binary Cable Hat from Ravelry and had been wanting to make another one. I actually cast it on a few times, but it just wasn't right somehow. I couldn't get in the groove for some reason. I thought I might try a different hat or even a different project all together so I started to poke around on the site. I had a few ideas but on a whim I started to look for a group for chemo caps. I found one I really liked and through them discovered some neat blogs with nice patterns and plenty of info about chemo caps.

I decided to make a cap, but I had to find just the right yarn. The sites I had been checking out mentioned using a really soft acryllic for caps. I generally prefer knitting with wools, but there can be an issue with sensitivities and allergies from the chemo. I wasn't sure what I was going to use and them I remembered a scarf that I started quite a while back. I wasn't happy with it. It was a pattern I had heavily modified and it had issues. It was too wide. I always seem to forget when I am casting on that the item will grow exponentially once I get started knitting a few rows. It was my first attempt at holding three strands together. I was running a strand of worsted weight with two strands of eyelash yarn and in more than one place I dropped a strand. Due to the nature of the resulting fabric, I didn't notice the error until several rows later. Have you ever tried to frog eyelash and worsted fabric? I've had an easier time getting the 14 month-old to relinquish her blankie! Frankly it just wasn't worth the trouble... until now. I untangled the whole thing and started the cap.

Then I got an e-mail from the knit group commenting on knitting for charity. The organizer has set up a box at our library for afghan squares, which I think is a great idea. When I mentioned that I would be glad to assist once I finish the chemo-cap, she mentioned that she too had lost someone to cancer and wanted more info about the caps. A little while later I was on Ravelry again and a new thread popped up in an unrelated forum asking about... chemo caps. I recently posted about my friend Earl who passed away from liver cancer, but I had another friend slip away last year after battling cancer as well. She was born a year before I was and she and Earl have been on my mind a lot recently as has a cousin who died from a rare form of cancer a couple years ago. Maybe it's serndipity, perhaps it's coincidence, but I prefer to believe it's a message, a reminder to send out some comfort to other people who may be going through a dark time... some good vibes in memory of those who have been there. So I'm going to be sending out caps, with extra love from Earl, Kathleen and Craig.