Knitting Zeal

An afternoon swim, with an unexpected visitor

Yesterday afternoon was beautiful outside.  Hot but not humid.  After Andrew's very long nap, he was rewarded with a dip in his baby pool.  Chris captured it on video, and I managed to snap this cute photo of him chewing on a mini shovel.  It was a nice and quiet afternoon.  We have a fairly private yard and can sometimes hear our neighbors, but not see them.  I suddenly heard a man talking in our next door neighbor's yard.  I thought it was maybe the guy who lives across the street, for his accent was definitely Philly style and not our neighbor, who speaks with a heavy European accent (maybe Russian, not sure.)  Suddenly there is a huge German Shepherd in our yard on a long leash.  (There is a break in our fence where a panel was broken in a storm and we have yet to replace it since it means replacing the entire fence.)  Attached to the other end of the leash was a local police officer, who was talking into his shoulder.  He did not see us, even though we were sitting on our patio and quite obvious.  I startled him by saying hello.  Apparently I watch too much crime investigation tv, for if we were criminals or dangerous in any way, he would have been done for, in my opinion.  Aren't police officers supposed to always be aware of their surroundings?  Even the dog didn't notice us.  Turns out he was searching for a man and woman who were seen running up our street (we live on a very steep hilly street) who had been involved in a stabbing in a nearby park.  He was trying to get the dog to pick up their scent, but I am sure they didn't enter our yard, since access from the street is limited.  (Although apparently access from the neighbor's yard is easy!  We better look into that fence soon.)  Nothing ever happens in our little suburb of Philadelphia.  The biggest crime is usually DUIs, shoplifting, or zoning violations.  I guess the UM police department were in full action yesterday.  I didn't see the crime mentioned on last night's news, and I hope who ever was the victim is ok.  It certainly made Andrew's first dip in the pool a memorable event!

I posted seedlings a while ago that I was trying to grow indoors.  Let's just say most of them did not make it.  I'm not sure why, but this sunflower is the only one that survived. Two zinnias also made it, but haven't bloomed yet, and I think I still have some small rosemary plants that are growing.  I ended up purchasing basil and a grape tomato plant, all which are doing well.  I have to pick up pesto ingredients today so that I can use the basil that needs harvesting. 

Brangelina apparently gave birth to her twins last night.  My sister is still holding out, despite wishing that her babies would evacuate thier current location immediately.  She sent them an eviction notice, but they can't read yet, so they haven't responded.  Let's hope they arrive soon!!

I joined two online social/networking groups recently, mostly out of boredom and curiosity.  Facebook is not as interesting as I expected, but there certainly are a lot of people using it.  There are some fun applications to use and I have connected with a handful of people (mostly knitters!!)  Goodreads has turned out to be very useful.  I received an invite from someone I don't know, but I think is friends with someone I do, to join.  It is a great way to keep track of books and find new titles to read.  I keep discovering books I read a while ago and forgot about. 

Happy Sunday!

a day at the zoo

Late last week Andrew visited the Philadelphia Zoo for the first time.  We went with his future prom date and her mommy and had the most perfect weather.  I'm not sure how much he got out of it, as viewing animals from a stroller is a bit challenging.  I held him as we walked through the big cats exhibit, so he could see better there.  The giraffes were not outside that day, as they had a new male giraffe added and they were all spending time together to get to know each other.  Maybe there will be little giraffes next year!  (Sadly, Twigga, the oldest giraffe at the zoo, passed away last week from old age.) Eventually Andrew fell asleep for a nice nap.  Not knowing about Twigga's upcoming demise, I bought Andrew a really sweet looking stuffed giraffe as a souvenir, along with some new board books on monkeys.  It was a great day!

Last night I got to go out with just adults and see the Sex in the City movie and have dinner cooked by someone else.  Fun!  The movie was better than I expected.  It was a nice night out.  I came home energized, so I worked on figuring out more baby gates and cleaned the bathroom before finishing a really great novel, Pomegranate Soup.  I think sUsAn had read it and posted about it a year or more ago.  I had written down the name of the book at work and found it on a piece of paper when I moved out of my office.  It was a good story and relaxing read.

I knit another hat for Andrew last week.  Details are here.

Happy Monday!

black outs and thunder storms

Last night we had a terrible thunder storm here with lots of close hitting lightening and winds upwards of 70 miles an hour.  We are surrounded by lots of very large, very old trees, and were fortunate to not have any damage.  Our neighbor's tree split and part of it landed on their shed, but it seems that no structural damage was done.  The thunder and lightening were very loud and one particular strike was immediately followed by an explosive sound.  Within a minute, we had no power.  It was still really hot and humid and was not comfortable sleeping weather for me.  I stayed downstairs in the living room and read by book light for a while and also made a plan for what I would do with the contents of my fridge/freezer if the power did not return by morning.  (Our power company suggested it may take days to return to full power.)  Just as I started to doze, power was restored and I was startled by the sound of the dishwasher resuming it's cycle and the lights coming on where we forgot to turn them off.  It was a nice reminder of how much energy we use and are dependent upon daily.  The house was so quiet without the buzz of electricity running all of the various appliances we keep plugged in.  Except for the humidity and temperature, it was a nice calm. 

Amazingly, Andrew slept through the whole thing.  He was still a bit of a sleepyhead today and even fell asleep while I was preparing his lunch.  Napping has always been an issue with him.  He fights falling asleep frequently and often will only sleep on me for a nap.  It is frustrating at times, but then also nice, as I know he won't always want to cuddle with his mom.  Today I put him in his crib to play while I got dressed.  He protested loudly for a few minutes, but then started his sleep song.  (He sings himself to sleep almost always.  It is rather cute.)  Before I knew it he was asleep and gave me time to put away laundry and dry my hair.  It only lasted about 30 minutes, but it was good enough for me.  Then later this afternoon, when I thought he would sleep after his bottle, he just cried and cried, despite having the sleepiest eyes ever.  In desperation, I put him down in his crib with his nighttime music playing.  After about ten minutes of protest, he started his sleep singing and was out.  He slept for an hour and a half!  It was amazing!  I was able to get so much done.  I made stitch markers for a friend and got dinner started.  He woke up looking much better.  I'm not sure if he went to bed nicely, as I was out tonight and daddy-o got to put him to bed, but I am hoping we are starting a trend for him. 

I recently finished a great book called Garden Spells--a great story that was well written.  My book list is growing a mile long lately.  I am trying to just borrow library books so as to not add to the stacks here already.  We are short on storage space. 

Andrew is loving his new talent of speeding around the rooms by crawling.  His poor little knees are so red!  He has knocked into the coffee table twice already, resulting in some tears, but not too much damage.  He is starting to pull himself up and loves it when I hold his hands and let him "walk" across the room.  He just wants to be mobile so much!  I took this photo of him kneeling the other day--it was too cute, to me.  I love his feet! 

Seven months, five teeth

So my little baby is actually seven months old now and celebrated yesterday with the arrival of his fifth tooth--the top left front tooth.  For a while I was concerned because he had a vampire grin, with two top teeth, but not the front ones.  It was looking funny!  This arrival explains the increased drool and sleeplessness of recent days.  We have been trying to teach the vampire baby how to brush his teeth with his chunky blue baby tooth brush.  He likes to chew on it, as it must feel good on those sore gummies.

In my need for solitude I spent an hour alone at the local bookstore on Sunday while the boys bonded.  I had two gift cards that were burning a hole in my wallet that I had to use.  I have been very frustrated with knitting lately.  Besides my hands hurting, the acrylic baby yarn eating up my already dry skin, and not having the time or concentration available to complete anything, I just keep looking at the piles of started projects with disgust.  I found two books that may help cure my malaise.  Stitch Graffiti is an updated cross stitch pattern book--not the traditional type.  It has a number of great patterns, many smaller, that I want to try. In checking for it on amazon.com, I realize it would have been much cheaper there than Barnes and Noble, but I did have gift cards.  I also picked up the Sublime Stitching Craft pad, which has many iron on transfer patterns for embroidery.  I have always enjoyed needlework and find it much quicker to finish than knitting, so hopefully a few imediate gratification projects will help my knitting frustrations!

Gotta make dinner for the vampire.  I hope he likes avocado and sweet potatoes!

Friday favorites

• Andrew has been sporting a new hat this week.  Details here on Ravelry. He seems to like this one a lot!  It was a very easy and quick knit.  I enjoyed the K3P1 ribbing.  It made a nice stretchy fabric that should still fit next year.
• Story time at the library was fun this week.  Afterwards we borrowed a new book, Llama Llama, Mad at Mamma.  It is a great little rhyme that makes me laugh, even if it is over Andrew's head.
• Cupcakes!  I have been searching for some good cupcake recipes to make for Easter day.  I think I've settled on chocolate peanut butter and coconut ones. I bought this book a while ago, and am anxious to try it out.  The recipes make just 12 cupcakes, so there won't be too many leftovers.
• Giant Supermarket: a new market opened up in my neighborhood this week and is apparently the largest market in the area.  It is huge!  It looked all pretty and clean, with everything in perfect order.  There is a cafe there with a fireplace.  My knitting group is meeting there now, since we were sort of booted out of Barnes and Noble.  (Bad and mean book managers, they are!)
• Socks!  I started a new pair of socks this week using Socks that Rock yarn from a kit from last years club.  I didn't like the pattern that came with this yarn, so I am using the Monkey pattern from Knitty.  I haven't gotten far, but so far I am enjoying the pattern.
• In my quest to try a new recipe each week, I used Good Morning America's mac and cheese winning recipe yesterday.  It is not healthy at all, but was tasty! I made a few changes, but nothing significant.  If I make it again, I will be making a lower fat version!!  This one had way too much butter in it!

The baby is awake and kicking/screaming.  Happy weekend!

Friday Favorites

This week flew by fast!  I guess having Chris home on Monday helped make it seem shorter.  We always like having Daddy around to help entertain baby Andrew. 

Things I am into this week:

PomPoms!  I found this cool pom pom maker at AC Moore this week and used my 40% off coupon to buy it.  I recall seeing it on Julie's blog a while back and thought it would be fun.  I always loved making pom poms as a kid, but then I wrapped the yarn around my hand.  I was always trying to make the perfectly groomed pom pom.  So with my new tool, I whipped together 25 pom poms in pink and white and created the pom pom boa from One Skein.  This will be gifted to a certain little girl who is turning five soon. 

Farmer Brown Shears His Sheep:  This is such a cute book about how yarn is made.  I read it to Andrew last night, although he is clueless.  I am surprised to see it is unavailable on Amazon!

Oatmeal:  I've been on an oatmeal kick lately.  I love the homemade kind with lots of raisins and brown sugar.  It takes too long to make most days with an inpatient infant, so the instant kind works too.  I just found a new type at Wegmans: Quaker Simple Harvest.  It has much more texture to it than the regular mushy instant.  If you click the link, there is a place to request a sample. 

Kraft Food and Family Magazine:  It is really a big ad for their products, but this free quarterly magazine has some great easy recipes.  Tonight we are having slow cooker BBQ and orange pulled pork.  Hopefully it will be tasty, even if I didn't use their brand of BBQ sauce!

Slow Cooker plastic liners: My friend Teresa turned me on to these and what a time saver they are!  They really make clean up easy, especially with sticky sauces.

I am almost finished Andrew's Baby Surprise Jacket.  I have about three rows left.  I need to find good buttons for it.  I found some leather covered ones that I loved, but they cannot be washed easily, which sort of puts a damper on my goal of having a simple, easy to care for, baby sweater.  The search will continue!  

Happy Friday! 

Baby, it's cold outside!

It has been really feeling like winter lately.  Andrew got to wear his hand knitted earflap hat today for our shopping trip.  Let's just say he was less than thrilled to be wearing a hat! He was nice and warm with his wooly fleece lined car seat!

I have continued to work on the BSJ for Andrew and am almost up to the button band.  I am also working on two other projects--I seem to have a project for each room.  The bedroom project is a baby blanket and the family room project is something I am designing as I go.  It is a bag for Andrew's stroller knit out of banana fiber yarn.  My knitterly friend Denise gifted me three skeins of this silky soft yarn last year and I have been trying to figure out how best to use it.  I was shopping at Kohl's over the holidays with Andrew in his stroller and used one of the store's shopping bags to tote items around.  The bag had short straps that connected to the stroller hooks perfectly.  I decided that it would be great to have a nice reusable bag for the stroller for all places.  I liked some of the market bags I found patterns for online, but I wanted to figure out a pattern design on my own, so I am working on this bag.  The yarn is very slippery to knit and knits up fairly quickly.  So far I have the bottom third of the bag complete.

I have been trying to get back into reading again, since Andrew is now sleeping in his crib I can curl up with a book before bed.  Most nights I get through a single page before falling asleep!  I used to read in the bathtub, but lately that doesn't work either.  Apparently I am more tired than I think.  I finished Jonathan Kellerman's Obsession last night.  I always enjoy his Alex Delaware stories.  Next to read is the Friday Night Knitting Club, although I started this and it didn't seem that exciting yet.

I have been having fun photographing Andrew for a crafty idea I have in the works.  I used cd flickr tools to create some cute mosaic photos.  If my craft ideas become a reality, I'll post photos of the final products later!

HP mania

Harry is coming to my mailbox tomorrow and I can't wait!  I ordered my book from Barnes and Noble, because I did not want to deal with going to the store to buy it amonst the crowds.  On the news tonight they showed an aerial view of my local BN store with a crowd of people waiting in line until the book is released at midnight.  I have been tracking the progress of my book via UPS tracking.  Today when I checked, it stated that it had been delivered!  There is no book waiting for me here, so I called UPS and learned that the books are not allowed to be delivered today as per instructions from the publisher, so the customer service rep did a bit of investigating and found out my book was delivered to my local post office.  Apparently UPS made an agreement with the post office to deliver all the HP books on Saturday.  So, the postal worker better have my book with him tomorrow! 

This week was busy.  Last Saturday we spent the day in Ocean City, NJ visiting with Chris' family. The weather was great and I enjoyed shopping on the boardwalk.

I planted one tomato plant this year, since lately I crave red fruits.  It has started to produce fruit this week and I have been enjoying my little harvest.    I planted some basil with it and am at the point where I have enough to make a batch of basil this weekend. 

I finished a baby blanket last night and still need to photograph it.  I made up the pattern and am pleased with it.  I have enough yarn left over for a matching hat, so I need to dig out a pattern for that.  I did spend some time casting on for another baby sweater, a pattern I picked up at the Tangled Web a month or so ago.

At work this week I helped with a trip to the Liberty Museum in Philadelphia.  We had a small group of young teens who were incredibly well behaved.  They were really interested in a particular glass and iron sculpture called the Peace Portal.  It is a canopy with a glass roof that has many hidden images in it.  The teens sat underneath it and identified the different things they saw and analyzed why they thougth it was called the Peace Portal.  The were very thoughtful and insightful--it was a great experience.  The glass used is absolutely beautiful.  I tried to photograph it, but it was hard to capture it appropriately.