so many things, so little time...and a bit of rain, too

It has only been a month since I posted last, but it seems like forever. We have been so busy here, with monster birthday party for the smallest, where I packed my house out with small children and there parents, and the course I am running at the local Home-Educators group.
My knitting has not progressed as far I as I would have desired in this past month, with the boring part of my Gothic Leaves shawl being completed, but the lace edge being too intimidating to carry on. There is a couple of designs on there way into the public domain though, so keep watching! A chunky weight semi-fitted cardi for the Ladeez and a Dragon Hoodie for the smalls, both in the test knitting stage, but feeling very proud of both!!
The course I am doing for the older Home-edders is fantastic, at least for me! I am putting together 6+ sessions covering different aspects of outdoors adventuring skills, and then plan to go on various rambles with them, great fun! Lots of games in the mix, lots of energetic minds to brainstorm with. only problem is it takes a lot of research, as it has been like, 5 years since I seriously did anything like this myself, but it is great to go over the basics, and question how I used to do stuff in the past.
This past weeks session I decided to look at food and nutrition. When I had previously been on walking camps, our diet consisted mainly of Porridge, Hot chocolate, bourbon buiscuts, pasta with scrambled sosmix & peanut butter and chocolate spread sandwiches. I generally got home with a cold or 'flu after that for a week!
So after reading a sports nutrition book that came highly recommended(just kidding-it was the only one I could get my hands on the night before the session!) I put together a session for the young people to help them look at how they eat, how they could eat better, and how they could put together appropriate menus for camps, taking the nutrition and space/cooking/preservation issues into account. 3 hours work. the next day, went to the group and was faced with apathy towards joining in on nearly all sided, so I didn't bother. We played games in the rain, the few of us who where up for it, and my paper-work has gone in the folder for another day. Damn autonomy!

Dying in your sleep is not safe....get out of bed first!

so, I started this blog at a time when I was literally, dying in my sleep. I was seeing colours in everything. I think I had just dyed up a load of BFL Top for the Small Girls jumper, and I called the yarn Snowsuit. It was winter, and the view at the bottom of my garden at about 3:30, kinda just before sunset, was soooo rich, that I wanted to dye it, to keep forever. So I did. stove top on BFL top, with a solid green and semi-solid brown/orange and a blue/white. Now I have finished spinning it up, and Small Boy has decreed it good enough for his next hand knit sweater, though I'm not sure there is enough.

I'll do another top-down raglan design, but perhaps open all the way up the front, so if I run out of this handspun, it will look fine "topped up" with something different. Also i found with the last one it was great for random yarn, as I could write the pattern to the gauge of the yarn. this time though I will not cut corners by knitting straight off the bobbin. oh, no. the last one bloomed an ass-load. I have learned from my mistake>:P
Any hoo, good job I did dye it up, as the council are trying to build bungalows back there now, and that lovely backdrop of sycamore trees will be chopped down to make way for more ill-planned housing, sigh. the yarn is very satisfying though.

Me time!

even with the pc back, and gardening in full swing, i still have found knitting time this past month. i had forced it upon myself, as at the beginning of april i was supposed to be having a stall at the local Independant Arts Centre, but the organizer was super-slack, and didn't get back to me, over 2 weeks of attempted communication. so now i have a pile of baby booties, and know i can fit in 3 hours of knitting a day, if i really don't want to see another human-being, or cook. so now i have been jaded by this lack of response & warmer weather, i got out something for ME. thats right. put aside the mummy Material and got started on my Sherbet cardi, from Yarn Forward magazine. nice lace-ish pattern, I will feel so chuffed when it is done, knowing I did it all.

It is good to remember you are allowed your own time when you are a parent, to be unproductive or frivalous with your time. the Man goes into his workshop and does random things like turning fire extinguishers into hard-core Super-Soakers, and I am knitting thinnish guage sox or cardis for myself. sometimes I read, but that is dangerous (I finished the twilight series, with only one more up-all-night session. close call!). if you pretend it is "work(like the booties)", it seems to be easier to get childcare, but deep down, it doesn't count.
anyway, the pattern is mostly well-written, and the pics on ravelry are great for helping through the less-clear measurements on the yoke.

time stood still. i wish...

Yeah... so started a blog, then killed the PC. Took 3 months to get back up and running, but we are there, minus ALL our software. I still have the sims2 saves though, the photos and music. just a lot of work, which I don't generally have with the two kids.
So anyhoo, back in the present and will hopefully be posting better and more fully, like, with pics 'n' stuff.
It left a lot of time for real life, having no PC. I got to see my partner, I got to knit. I redescovered "Books", and stayed up all night reading Twilight, by Stephanie Meyer. that is something i do not recommend. the book is great, not too yikky and romantic, or endless details of what hair-do and clothes the main character happened to spend all morning deciding on like SOME teen novels, but light-hearted enough for me not to have bad dreams. probably because I was sleep deprived really.
I will not be watching the movies though. I am one of those souls that can't abide a good book being ripped to shreds on screen. and it would mess with the whole "hot vampire" pic I have got going on in my head, too...
It is quite interesting(to me at least, and perhaps some of you), as a teenager I was heavily against age-related prohibitions, (as a concept, not just because I was on the wrong side of it!), but as a parent and spending more time around young teens too I am more aware of the subtleties of limitation to stimulation that young people experience. Not age restrictive, but maturity and ability restrictive, and just how careful these limitations need to be put across. I wish I had more guidance in my stimuli as a young/pre-teen, as I have a suspicion I would have a lot less "stuff" now, in terms of relationship expectations, if I had been kept away from teen novels and chick-flicks!
Anyway, that delve into deep and meaningful land brings me back to Twilight. doesn't seem that bad, would let my little sister read it.

socks and shoes-backdated!!

So, on the 17th i gave up on the xmas knitting, cos it was me birthday, yippie!
i do wonder when you grow out of a birthday being sooo exiting, but maybe that i will never grow up that much. i hope.
any-hoo, I cast on some frivalous, super-nice, just for me knitting, kai-mei by Cookie A, from her book Sock Innovation. this is going a treat, I have almost reached the toe decrease, but stumbled across two issues, both self created.
Number one- the sock foot has a lace panel that travels across the foot from one gusset to the toe on the other side. the set-up row before creating the gusset involves place 4(ish) markers in the round. i took these out when i had finished gusseting, as i thought i would go that bit faster without slipping them all every round, as the stitches told me how to proceed. problem was, when checking out how far to knit the foot, (when i had done 5") i noticed a referral to said markers, and i can't get my head around where they where. bum.
so to try and get around this, I am looking up other projects on ravelry to see how far over that pesky lace panel travels, before the toe starts.
I will smile again when I have caught up wth my ripped-knitting. unfortunatly that was about 2 days worth, and I had hoped to cast on number two on new years eve.

Number two-while looking at said project pics on ravelry, it came to my attention I still have no sock shoes! this is a dilemma I have been facing for a while, that I wear trainer-type footwear for the most, so I can cycle in them, and I have wider that femaley average feet, so low cut shoes are usually too narrow. this pattern all the detail is on the foot, so it will be hidden most of the time! I think there is an extensive (child-free) shopping trip on the horizon......

in the beginning there was a word...

HI