The things kids do and say make me shake my head

Sometimes I just don't understand my 3 year old. Sometimes I think she's crazy. Or possessed. Today she was hitting something with a toy, so I turned around to see what she was hitting, and it was our 8 year old golden retriever. The dog (who is a bit too passive agressive if you ask me!) was just laying there letting her. I freaked out, gave my daughter a spanking and sent her to her room until dinner is ready. Considering it hasn't even been started yet, that will be a while. She kept asking me if she could come out and I told her no the first couple times, then just started ignoring her. So she switched tactics and tried asking her older brother to ask me if she could come out. He replied "Brendan is not here right now. Please leave a message after the beep. BEEP!"



He is a hoot and a half I tell you. This morning I was driving him to school and he asked me to look at him. I said "I'm sorry sweetie, I can't right now. I'm driving." and he said "But Momma, I thought you said you have eyes in the back of your head!" Damn, he caught me! I stammered "Uh, well, I need all my eyes to drive." Nice save, huh?

So anyway, back to knitting.  Here's some recent projects of mine.  I'm making it my goal this year to get through as much of my sock yarn as possible.  So far I'm making good headway, and since my LYS hasn't gotten in any new sock yarn (that I didn't already have!) lately, I've been using up more than I've added, so that's good.

These are the Pyroclastic socks from the latest issue of knitty.  Very pretty pattern, but pretty difficult IMO.  I usually do two at a time on magic loop, had to do these on 2 circs then had to switch to one at a time once I started the decreases on the feet because I couldn't move the stitches between needles very easily.  I was a little unhappy with the final result too.  The cables for some reason made the pattern look slanted (they don't go straight up the socks without some tugging, they go off at an angle), if I did this pattern over I would do an inch of 1x1 ribbing at the top because the ribbing they use isn't tight enough, and the arch shaping doesn't fit my foot very well.  They ended up pretty, but very snug so I sent them to my Grandma as a late Christmas gift.  I think she'll like them.  I used Pagewood Farms Chugiak (sp?) in Plum.  Nice yarn, nice to work with, VERY soft after washing, but the colors bled like crazy so be careful the first couple times you wash them.

Here is what the arch shaping looks like. It is pretty, it just is too snug for my chubby feet :-)

This is the top of the foot.  I also would start the chart one stitch over so the pattern is more centered.  Right now it has 2 purls on the right side and none on the left.  But all in all, very pretty.  It is a little more purple than the photo shows.

I finished these up Wednesday night at my knitting group.  Panda Silk, I don't remember the colorway but it is LOVELY.  The yarn is soooooo soft.  Works up like a dream, and isn't too terribly hot on my feet.  This is an easy slip stitch pattern, I used these as an inspiration: http://knittingsuna.blogspot.com/2009/09/pretty-slip-stitch-socks.html

That is my friend Suna's blog, and those are some of her lovely socks.  I did a different heel, my favorite standard gusset/heel flap on a toe up sock. 

As I was getting close to finishing these up I started planning my next project, and got thinking about how this pattern worked up.  I have 2 balls of U of Michigan sock yarn left, waiting for a pattern that wouldn't make me dizzy knitting them.  The stripes are very short on that yarn, so the color changes from blue to gold each row. With this pattern, the slip stitches are every other row. . do you see where i'm going with this?  Well, I changed up the pattern a bit, did knit stitches instead of purls so that it worked better with the color changes of the U of M yarn, and did 60 sts instead of 66 since they aren't ribbed.  Then I put the starting slip knot halfway thru a blue stripe on one sock and a yellow on the other sock so that I ended up with one sock with blue vertical stripes and one with yellow.  Amazingly enough, it WORKED!

See, don't these look fun?? And no, I don't knit while driving, I was waiting to pick up my son at school :-)  These are moving pretty fast so I'm hoping to have them done in a couple weeks.

Just a random knitwear pic, my youngest wearing hand knit sweater (made my the aforementioned Suna) Meg (the insane 3 year old) wearing a chevron scarf made from sock yarn, a Windy City hat made from some random worsted I had in my stash, and my wristwarmers.  The only good thing about chilly weather is that I can enjoy dressing my family in knitwear!  I have a pair of mittens almost finished for my 3 year old, but I'm still annoyed at her so I think tonight I will work on my socks instead of her mittens.  :-)  Take that!  LOL

And these are the socks I finished for my hubby before CHristmas.  Can't remember if I shared pics of these or not and i'm too lazy to go back and look right now, so disregard these photos if you've already seen 'em!

I would have made them longer but he said he liked them this length.  I think he was just anxious to wear them, he said his feet were cold LOL.

OK, dinner is ready.  Off to deal with my crazy child and then (hopefully) enjoy a peaceful family dinner.  HA!  Like that will ever happen. . .