31 October, 2006

Socks and Costumes and Candy, Oh My!

First things first - the finished Lily Socks. You can see that they are a bit wonky in the toe grafting. I don't think I pulled the yarn quite tight enough, and also usually I take it down to 8 stitches and graft sideways. This time, I stopped at 12 stitches and grafted front to back and it looks a little awkard to me. Lily likes them, however!
















After photographing the socks and doing the school run, I retired from the scene and spent some hours in the knitting house with my coffee and a complex (to me, at least) pattern. Details on that tomorrow...

Next on the agenda was Halloween. David was Doctor Who and Lily finally decided on Pink Fairy, after adding in Hedgehog and Leaf as options during the morning. She was a toasty warm, if rather bulky, Pink Fairy, with 3 layers of tops and bottoms under the costume. David had long underwear under his Doctor Who kit. They had a great time going around the military housing area we went to (here in our own village of about 250, there are perhaps a dozen kids, so ... it's not the best Halloween turf).

Check out the costumey goodness - Lily's courtesy of Woolworth's and David's courtesy of mommy and grandma B.







David looked extremely Doctor Who-like, and several people really "got" the costume (we did put a name tag on it, in case).







When we got home, Lily was asleep and David kindly let us sort out all the peanut candy for grownup consumption. Now I am drinking hot tea and coughing and ready for bed myself. Got to get some rest before NaBloPoMo begins tomorrow!

30 October, 2006

Bob the Viking says...


...it's NaBloPoMo!! That's right, National Blog Posting Month. Check out Fussy's NaBloPoMo page. What a great idea - a post every day for the entire month of November. I'm in; are you? You have until the end of November 1 to sign up, my friends. Remember, Bob the Viking wants YOU to blog every day.

(Really, Bob the Viking is a random viking dude from the Jorvik centre in York, but I couldn't resist.)



Knitting update - Lily's stripey socks are thisclose to being done. I have to decrease toes tonight, and also graft the other toe. Couldn't do it on the road, because I need a visual guide to graft, and didn't have a knitting book or the laptop along. Good thing they're almost done, because tomorrow is the last day for October Socks!

Trip update - York was keen, as always, although we only had a day there and it was raining AWFULLY hard. Carlisle is unexpectedly interesting as a city. Pretty castle, cool museum (Tullie House) that's entertaining for both kids and adults. Hadrian's Wall country looked just as mom and I have always pictured it, and the fort we visited (Birdoswald) was a nifty excavation. Both kids did well on the trip, thanks to several side excursions to playplaces, etc. And everyone was bloody happy to get home.

Everything else update - no yarny souvenirs from the trip. Sigh. There is a nice knit shop in the Shambles in York, but it's heavy on Rowan yarns, and frankly I wanted some sort of local wool, knowhaddimean? Reading Catch-22 again, for the first time since a looooooong time ago, and it's just as good, but better, this time around.

Halloween costumes are the other craft of the month, and David will be a wickedly good Tenth Doctor from Doctor Who. Mom and I found the bits and pieces for the costume over this month, and have hemmed sleeves, etc. There WILL be pictures. Lily was going to be the Doctor's Companion, Rose, and we have all the kit for that as well. But she's vaccillating between Rose or a Pink Fairy. I am not worried, since the Pink Fairy happens to be a dress-up costume we have already :) I am sure she'll reach a decision by the time we head out the door tomorrow night.

I am catching David the Elder's oddball cold - he had a cold for week, then was fine for week, then came down with extreme layrngitis this past week. Made for some interesting times on our trip. His voice is mostly back now, to his great relief. He's off for 2 more weeks before heading back to work, which is fabulous!!

24 October, 2006

Quickie Post

It's been a LOVELY weekend - David came home Saturday morning bright and early! So....not a lot of knitting, all in all. Which is not a problem, believe me. But I am making progress on the October Socks.

This pair are for Lily, and I cast on 36 stitches to start. WAY too tight. Went up to 40 and I was a bit worried that they would be too tight but they are perfect! The yarn is Fortissima Socka Colori - stash that's about 10 years old, I think. I have a memory of buying it in Frederick, Maryland, BEFORE we were married there in 1996. Size 1 needles again...sensing a trend here.

Started (the color is very washed out here...thank you, Flash):
















Look! One sock 98% done and it even fits!!

15 October, 2006

Four things

What did we do this weekend? We went to the beach. Now, in Norfolk in October, that does not mean swimming or sunbathing. We packed up the buckets and spades, put on our sweaters and jackets, and went off to dig in the sand...there were tons of other people there, walking around the boardwalk or walking on the beach, but not one swimmer. My mom and I had coffees and looked for interesting rocks and the kids made sand castles and other sandy goodness for hours. It was a wonderful day.

I forgot the camera, but we were in Hunstanton - here's the cute town sign.



















Because this was a non-knit sort of weekend, but I still feel like posting, I'm chiming in with the Four Things meme Crazy Aunt Purl posted.

- - -
Four jobs I’ve had:
* Traffic analyst/linguist
* Nanny
* Copy editor for a scientific journal
* (Briefly, one summer) Encyclopedia salesperson


Four movies I can watch over and over:
* Office Space (this is not fiction, this is real cubicle LIFE!)
* A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (stoopid, and wonderful)
* Volunteers (ditto)
* Real Genius (ditto)
I guess you could say I lean toward comedy, eh?

Four places I have lived:
* New York City, New York
* Monterey, California
* Baltimore, Maryland
* Here in lovely rural Norfolk, England

Four television shows I love to watch:
* Doctor Who
* House of Tiny Tearaways, in which Doctor Tanya puts three families with terrifying toddler behavior issues in one house for a week, and cures EVERYONE (She rocks.)
* Little Britain (veddy politically incorrect. VEDDY funny!)
* Spooks

Four places I have been on vacation:
* London, England
* San Francisco, California
* Hong Kong, China
* Cancun, Mexico

Four of my favorite dishes:
* Chicken tikka masala
* Enchiladas
* Sushi
* My mother's lasagna

Four websites I visit daily:
* www.cnn.com
* www.nytimes.com
* www.bbc.co.uk
* www.google.com (Google is a verb in this house)
I'm a bit of a news junkie and I don't watch TV news or listen in the car because I don't like the kids hearing the really rotten bad news.

Four places I would rather be right now:
* Here, but with my darling David home too
* Back at Louisa's Place on the Ku'Damm in Berlin, again with David, reliving our great trip this summer
* Monterey, California, just hanging out there and in surrounding towns
* Home in NY state with David and kiddoes, visiting friends and family

Four bloggers I am tagging:
* You - are there four readers TO tag?? Hehehehehe. If you read this, consider yourself tagged!

10 October, 2006

Fuzzy and blue...

Just like Grover and Cookie Monster of Sesame Street, I'm feeling fuzzy and blue.

Fuzzy because I'm unmotivated. Blue because I am really, really missing David, and it seems these last couple of weeks waiting for him to come home from deployment are the longest year of my life. Just like the last week of my 42-week pregnancy with small David was the longest year of my life.

Time is crawling, the usual diversions don't appeal to me, and I'm just cranky and taking it out of the kids and my mom. Just to add a little spice to it all, the cold bug has hopped from David in the desert here to David and mom...sigh. I hope everyone feels better really soon, and I hope I feel more chipper as well. At least Lily is relatively perky.

Hurry home, my sweetness:

09 October, 2006

No knitting THIS weekend















As I rather suspected, I got no knitting at all accomplished. With ambitious plans, I did put the wristwarmer-in-progress in my bag, but I was mostly sleeping, or having a Lilybean sleep on me, during the bus ride.

Here are a couple of scenic shots to make up for it :) The photo of me and the kidlets is not the most flattering picture, but it proves we were there.

Back to normal today: cleaning out the old coal shed for storage and moving outdoor plants to indoors. Mom pruned some of the big potted plants, I heaved them up, and they now grace the knitting house windowsills. I'll take a picture soon.


06 October, 2006

Knitting Spots; Miscellany

I see Crazy Aunt Purl has posted some awesome knitting spots on her page - I have to peer into some of these! The knitting goes slowly here, mixed in with a trip to London last weekend, plus lots of commuting to doctor's and eye doctor's - small David has joined the near-sighted club. Welcome to the family, son!

Working on a square for Grandmother Purl, and the wrist warmers for my mom out of Baby Cashmere. I think my October socks will be for Lily, out of the supergaudy orange/pink/green yarn I got at Woolworth in Berlin. (I got it to test knitting socks on two circulars...have to say, I get the technique, but I am slower with it than with 4 or 5 needles. I did like the not-slippiness of it, though. That could grow on me!)

What I really want to do is start on Ivy from Knitty. I have the yarn ready, waiting, crying out in fact...but I must do the wrist warmers at least, first. And then there's the pair of socks for my friend Jill that are languishing with only one cuff done so far....

There won't be a lot of knitting this weekend, I think. Took D. to see the Basil Brush live show tonight in Peterborough, which was a surprisingly not-bad drive. Basil Brush is a fox puppet who has a comedy show on the kids' BBC channel. Very fun time had by both of us...

Tomorrow Lily and I are visiting a friend who's hosting a stamping? scrapbooking? get-together. And then Sunday is our expedition to Stonehenge. I will photograph SOME knitting there :) Maybe I'll even get some done on the bus ride. However, I rather suspect I will be entertaining Lily instead...