Harry Potter - party, knitting, book, film, and no spoilers

Hello, everybodeee! We've had a total Harry weekend here.


Friday evening we went down to the base for the big ole party at the bookstore. Lily's "His-mione" costume was first place for her age group, and David's Stan Shunpike won him first place for his as well! Lily had an advantage as she was the ONLY 0-6 year-old in costume. As you can see from the pictures, late night parties aren't really her thing, although she did appreciate the highly frosted cupcakes.













David enjoyed everything from the cupcakes to butterbeer punch to wandmaking, rune reading, crystal ball fortunes, and tarot card readers. He was quite the showman, wandering around saying "Tickets, please" and showing off his moakskin farebox (moakskin contracts and only the owner can open a bag made from it, for all you Muggles out there...). The bookstore went all out, and they did a super job putting together a fun event.




The kids' prizes were free copies of the book. As we didn't need two copies, we decided to give one away to a deserving person. The girl who was wandering around playing Harry's theme on her recorder was our choice - I had a nice chat with her mom, who had been planning to buy three copies of the book to accommodate all the HP fans in their house. So, our extra free copy went to a good home. Besides, Lily thought her little bag of sweets WAS her prize. No harm, no foul...



Friday afternoon I started the Horcrux socks to keep me busy while DH got first dibs on the book. Finished sock number 1 before the party even started. Started sock 2 after we picked up the book, knit on during the waiting/previews at the movie next day, and I finished sock 2 as DH finished the book - perfect timing! Loved, loved this pattern.. Easy, interesting, and fast. Thank you to Susan Pierce Lawrence, who wrote it up. Here's my sweetie with the book, and sock, in hand at 12:30 that night.


Saturday, while he was reading away, I took David to see Order of the Phoenix. We both enjoyed it very much; as the movies go, it's right up there with the best. However, we hope that nothing they left out for time constraints will be too difficult to explain away in the last two movies. I'm just saying...

Am I the only one wondering whether the movie actors have all grabbed a copy of the Deathly Hallows to read, to find out their characters' fates?

David, David and I have now finished the book; small D. wrote a fan letter to Ms. Rowling already. Now, it's back to normal life, including all the laundry I ignored, a little vacuuming, a little grocery shopping...and the MS3 of course!!

Whooo. Barely made it.

Wow. Just in time for the release of Clue 4, I've finished Clue 3 on the first MS3. I decided to finish Clue 1 on my "can't stand the waiting" second MS3 before starting Clue 3 on the first one, so that took a little time. Actually, I must admit that I took more time to re-read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

So. Here we have Stole 1 through Clue 3. Not stretched out at all, and very ramen-esque. I'm still loving it, despite its untidy look right now.















And here's a shot of Stole 2 through Clue 1. If you click on this one, the sparkle of the yarn shows quite a bit better than it did the other day.














Now, to get in the mood for the book release party tomorrow evening. There seem to be no in-store parties where we are in the UK, just queue parties where you are entertained in the street waiting for a midnight opening. Therefore, we are going to the in-store party down at the base where David works. Small David decided last week that he wanted to dress as Stan Shunpike (the Knight Bus conductor). I rounded up some various items, and his costume is going to knock 'em dead! My mom would be proud. Lily wants to be "His-mione" as she calls Hermione, so we've got school skirt, her Gryffindor sweater, and the black velvet cloak Mom made for David when he was 4. He won a costume contest as young one in that one.

Stay tuned for pictures of the costumed ones after tomorrow's festivities.

In honor of Mr. Potter and the final chapter in the tale, I plan to work on some Horcrux socks. I fell in love with these when I saw a striped version on
Tabitha Knits' blog. She can knit an awesome sock, that lady!

Crazy-tastic Waiting Fun

Waiting for MS3 clue number 3. Still waiting.....Must. Keep. Knitting. MS3.

I know - so many people seem to be making two stoles...why not cast on a darker version? Call me crazy but I'm flowing with it. Stash-diving produced a charcoal grey fingering weight yarn in the right amounts. This is a Mystery Yarn itself, from a charity shop. All acrylic, charcoal grey with silvery flash in it that the camera does not capture. The actual color is somewhere between the two shots below, and the shimmer is very groovy. Needles - US size 4 (3.5 mm). I'm knitting this one with no beads because they'd be lost in the shine of the yarn, unless I used fluorescent yellow or something. I think not.

I think I am becoming Lace Literate because Chart A (first 50 rows of the stole) took me only 1.5 hours. I am using several of the tricks I have seen on the message boards, including covering the rows above where I am in the chart and "reading" the knitting. With the bigger 2-part charts, I have found that it goes faster if I look at each chart alone, without taping them together. In other words, I knit the right half chart, then pick up the left chart and do that. My eyes don't boggle quite as much this way.

Noodles, Anyone?

Someone on the MS3 message board on Yahoo referred to unblocked lace as looking like ramen noodles. Sure does look like ramen to me. Fuzzy, beaded ramen, but ramen no less for all that.

Pleased to have finished Clue 2 before the release of Clue 3 tomorrow. It's keeping my brain occupied, which is always a good thing.

Mystery Stole 3

Well, I was away from the blog for a while. We traveled home to see family and have my mother's memorial. We've been back in England a week now - it was a wonderful visit to home, and a really great memorial for my mom, but I really can't talk about it coherently. Perhaps I can in time. Just know, my family and friends reading this, I am so grateful you're in my life. It was so healing to spend time with all of you, and I am so very thankful to Sheila for opening her home and heart for us.

Trying now to fill my mind with things that don't make me sad, and this Mystery Stole 3 project fits that bill. The should-be-famous (is she?) Melanie (see Pink Lemon Twist) has designed and hosted a mystery knit-along for 3 years now, releasing one clue at a time with the end result being a fabulous, themed lace stole.

Here's a shot of my materials before starting. I am using the handspun Swaledale wool from my stash (same stuff I used for the Snowdrop shawl; what a great charity shop score that was) and 6/0 (4 mm) gold glass beads, and knitting on old size 4 (US) Susan Bates needles.


I knitted Snowdrop on size 5s and decided to drop down one size for this, as the Snowdrop is really, really airy after blocking. The wool is a little hairy, but I like it.








Here you can see the texture of the yarn, and also have a better look at the beads. I like the gold color against the natural wool. I tried some greens, blues, lavender and clear beads, but the warmer color just clicked for me.

















Here's a shot of the first clue, knitted up and stretched out a tiny bit. Still looks like spaghetti, but it's going to be glorious when it's blocked. I think the stole width will be more than 20 inches for me, but I'm OK with that...

Back from Germany; Life and Knitting Update

We are back from Germany. Having David back is sanity-saving, and also makes me very happy. It's also very nice to be back home. We had a nice time in Germany, although the rain made it a little stir-crazy the first week when David had his surgery and we all were trapped in our rooms for a few days.

I posted a picture of me in Germany on KnitFarmHealthSpa (check link at the left) and I may put up some more touristy pictures on our family blog page. Or I may not. I'm doing OK mentally - except when I let myself think about things for any period of time. Denial is fine as a grief coping mechanism for the short term, but I think I need to talk with someone in the long term.

Here's what I did in Germany - I ended up ripping the mohair version of Branching Out after the first repeat and going with this wool that I brought along. I call the finished scarf Landstuhl Leaves after the military base where the hospital is located. The color is totally wrong but you can see the detail. This was a stash wool - two 50-gram skeins of Irish tweed in a deep greeny turquoise. Not blocked at all yet.

The unfinished scarf is my Argosy, which I love more with every repeat. This picture is blurry as all get out, but the color is true. When it is stretched to blocking size, it is absolutely lovely.

Snowdrop and Suitcases

These are the pictures of Snowdrop, blocked, that we took way back. It is truly, truly lovely. I wrapped it around my mom when we went to see her, so it is the last thing to touch her. That comforts me when I have the shawl around my own shoulders now. I'm so very sad she didn't see it; I think she would have been quite impressed, since the last time she saw the shawl it was only about 5 repeats along.


I have been working, when I do feel like knitting, on Argosy, which is another intriguing pattern from Vyvyan . I'm using a German sockweight yarn in soft seablues and gray/brown. When I get in the rhythm, I can do several repeats pretty quickly, but it's getting down to it that is the problem.


I also started fiddling with Branching Out, another lace scarf pattern, in some cream mohair, but I am only a short way in, and I think the mohair might be TOO hairy for this one. We'll see.

Now I'm making a packing list to get ready for our Germany expedition. Don't want to forget the passports and all that. Or the knitting. Or the kids!

Berit 1936-2007

I don't know where to start. I don't know how to go on.

My mother died 29 March - she was coming to stay for a visit and had a massive heart attack in the car bringing her here from Heathrow. It happened while she was still near the airport. I take some small comfort in the fact that the coroner said she died very very quickly. I take no comfort in the fact that she is gone, that we weren't there, and that she was alone. I still can't process it.

We traveled to London to see her, so I could say goodbye, and to make some arrangements. David handled absolutely everything and I am so very grateful. I can't really talk about it or think about it.

My sister and her family had also been planning to visit while mom was here. Anne was able to come quicker than planned and arrived with Harriss (their younger daughter) on Easter. I was so glad to see her, and to be together with her here when mom's ashes arrived. Sometime I will write about that day, and how it was really wonderful instead of the horror I dreaded.

Steve and Clarke came as scheduled on the 19th. David had to leave for Germany for 6 weeks the week after Anne arrived. Having the family here kept me going and kept me from drowning, and even made me laugh fairly often. We kept very busy while they were all here. Now that they are back home I am really floundering.

We leave to join David in Germany for a couple of weeks this Wednesday. Then we are home for a week or so before heading to the states for mom's memorial and to sort through things there, etc. Anne and family took mom's ashes home when they left, for the memorial.

The memorial will be a wonderful thing, I know. It will be in Pennsylvania, at our beloved Sheila's. Sheila and mom have been friends since the 50s, and she is like another mother to us. Mom stayed with Sheila in this past year and a half when she wasn't in England with us.

I don't believe that she's not here, and I'm not dealing with it so very well. Everything I see and do reminds me of her, and that hurts so much right now. When my family was here I felt rather overwhelmed by all the touring and things we were doing, although I know this may be the only trip to England they make. But keeping busy as we did kept me from feeling awful - and I am sure it did the same thing for them.

I wish I could take a magic pill and feel better, but I can't bring her back, and I can't imagine feeling better. I get through the days OK, although I would rather just sleep. It seems like it's been raining here for the past month, too. The house is a tip, relatively speaking. The laundry is piled up. Sometimes the kids don't get a real meal for dinner but they will survive on string cheese and cherry tomatoes and pretzels for a time.

Mom

My mother died very suddenly last week. I can't blog right now. When I'm better I will be back.

The Last Gasp of the Camera...

With its dying breath, my 4-year-old digital camera took this oddly blurry picture just for you, Gentle Reader. Of course, it ate six other pictures that it was showing had been taken, so I'm not TERRIBLY grateful. Will have David look at it, but I sense it's time for a new camera...

Blurry, and uncontrasted against off-white carpet, I present....Snowdrop Blocking! The dresser behind it is shown for scale. I promise an outdoors picture with human wearer once it's dry.

Hmmm...What could this be?

Anyone know what this picture could be? Anyone? Could it be a Snowdrop Shawl (unblocked) wrapped around two little girls?

Why, yes. Yes, it could be. And it is! Having our friends visit this week, I had some nice sit-and-knit time, and I bound off the top edge of the shawl on Friday. Slightly stretched on the floor, I can tell that it is going to be HUGE, so I am definitely taking the easy out and not adding the edging. Should I do the shawl again, I'll use smaller needles if I want to add the edging.

Sometime this week, I should get some pins so I can do a spot of blocking. Stay tuned for that!After Snowdrop is finished, I'll be back to the Ivy for a while, methinks...

Hello from a Nice Weekend

Greetings, everyone! David and I attended the squadron's Dining Out on Friday. A formal affair (with elements of The Crazy as well), and occasion for the Sunday best...I like this picture. Thanks to picture-taker Samantha for making us so photogenic!

Check out www.honsinger.net and www.knitfarmhealthspa.blogspot.com for even more picturey goodness...

Checking In

Sorry no scintillating posts, or even progress on Ivy, to report.

Sick kids, depressed me, Life Happening. Sometimes it's not even worth posting about. Kids still sick, me not so down, weather getting better. If only we can finish with the horrendous coughing and the albuterol, things should get back to normal.

Yellow Submarine

I had forgotten how VERY surreal this cartoon is. Lily and I are watching it as I type, and it's terrific, but makes me feel like I should be taking some mind-altering substance. Or be 3 years old. I'll go with the 3 years old, and a diet Dr. Pepper.

Got to hang out with some friends and knit a little yesterday - thanks so much, Jeanna! I admired their scrapbooking efforts, and got a bit more inspiration to get mine going again. Amazing, creative pages - I love looking at scrapbooks. We had a little Chinese food for dinner, and I made it home in time to see the lunar eclipse with the Davids (Lily had long since been put to bed).

Ivy's Coming Along...

I just finished the first sleeve of Ivy tonight. I decided to do the sleeves first since I didn't really trust my gauge swatch, and a sleeve is a lot less to rip out than a sweater back...guess what? I don't think I'll be ripping anything out tonight!


Unblocked, but stretched, the sleeve is exactly as per pattern. It also is fitting into my "template sweater" measurements nicely, as you can see from the pic below. (The Ivy sleeve is stretched on one side, but rolled under at top, which is why it looks too skinny.) That black sweater is my favorite and best-fitting fine gauge sweater, and the sleeve cap is almost identical in size. The wrist length on Ivy is longer, but that's the bell sleeve and hitting below my watch, as opposed to above the watch. It may be a tad long, but I think it's about perfect.


One sleeve took just over two balls of Highland Silk. I'm a leeetle worried that I may not have enough to do the whole sweater (I have 15 balls) even though I have the amount I am supposed to have. But I'm only a bit worried, not angsty.

Just Funny, Not Knitting

It's Chad! He's back with Episode 6 and life is good. Ahh, I do love this saga...

A Short History of Susie Knitting

I was musing about all the different things one can knit, and the different styles of knitting, and I realized something interesting. I'm not a prolific knitter by any means, but I've taken a stab at all kinds of different knitting in my day.

I taught myself to knit from a book at 16, my mom showed me Continental knitting, or as I call it, FAST knitting, and I never looked back. The first thing I remember making was leg warmers, in bright pink acrylic. This WAS the 80s, you know. I wore them often during figure skating lessons at school. No pattern, just...hmm, ribbing....hmmm, maybe I should make them smaller here, and there you are. Perfectly fine leg warmers. Last year my sister, now living in Florida, sent me a pair of leg warmers I made for her, near the same time, although these were wool. A little felted, but I was impressed with myself - they looked good for over 20 years old!

The next project I tackled was a sweater. Fair Isle, knit in the round, seamless. I had no idea it was supposed to be hard! Thank you for Elizabeth Zimmerman, and her seminal book Knitting Without Tears. If I were on a desert island and could have only one knitting book, that would be the one. The sweater was made in a foggy blue lopi sort of wool, with brown and green and cream patterns, and it was lovely. I remember buying the wool with my Mom at a yarn shop long since closed on Calvert Street in Baltimore, MD.

The sweater? Wonderful! I still find it hard to believe I knit something to fit myself so quickly out of the knitting gate. I wish I had a picture of me in it, but it's long gone now. Sadly, my young knitting self couldn't be trusted to care for woolen garments and I shrank it pretty severely when I left home and did my own laundry.

After that, I didn't knit myself another sweater for ages, until I made a boxy but good rollneck in the mid-90s. No more sweaters for me; I didn't grasp the idea that fitted garments make you look less like a fireplug, so the huge or bulky sweaters I did start were less than successful. I did tackle socks, Turkish socks, color-patterned fair isle hats, cabling, and socks knit within socks. And of course scarves. A wonderful Aran vest that I never wore because of the above Bulky Issue. And the odd mitten. I made a few lovely, lacy baby sweaters and two baby blankets in complicated stitch patterns.

Despite all those pretty nifty achievements, I lost confidence in my Mad Knitting Skillz somewhere along the way. Then I had kids and lost my ability to carve out free time. In the past year, my wish to knit and time to knit have somehow met up again, and we're glad to be back in business.

Things I have found out: I knit VERY loosely and it's a challenge making socks that aren't floppy. A small project can teach you as much as a huge project, and you might actually finish it! Lace is tough. Until you can read a chart. Then it's just time- and attention-consuming. Fitting a sweater to your own personal measurements means you just might WANT to wear the sweater when you're done.

It's not rocket science, but it's knitting. And it makes me happy.

Three Guesses

Here's what I spent my knitting hours on this weekend.

I'll give you three guesses as to what this is.


Give up? See this post for details.

Wedgie Complete!!

One Wedgie, size 5 (US) needles, two and a half balls of Noro Kureyon, and total scarf happiness!! I decided not to do the differently-shaped final wedge and just cast off, but now I'm second-guessing my second guess. I think Vyvyan's scarf pictures show that the funny little last wedge is really THE way to go. I may spit-splice and add that wedge, or I may just live with my pointy one.


I really really like this scarf - I think it's a great way to show off Kureyon color shifts and it's skinny enough to wrap around while still being snuggly. GREAT pattern. I have some tan alpaca that would be really nice in this, but I think I am going to try Vyvyan's Argosy pattern for that. Am I ready for the challenge? We'll see! That is one chic scarf.

Some Knitting and Way Too Much Whining.

Hey, all you Gentle Readers! All three of ya :) I apologize for the lack of posts lately. Been feeling a little overwhelmed by life and underwhelmed by dealing with it. Plus DH had my laptop in his custody for a couple of days, studying for his promotion test.

Our promised "several inches of snow" fizzled out today, much to the disgust of young David, who says "I hate global warming."

In knitting, I picked up my lovely Wedgie a couple of evenings ago and am now into skein three of the Noro. I contemplated stopping at two skeins, which Vyvyan suggests, but I like to wrap a scarf around my neck a la Tom Baker's Doctor Who, so I'm going for crazy-long. It's looking great and I promise a pic on me soon. Camera is batteryless, and David has his camera at Cub Scouts tonight to photograph the small David's investiture (?). After Wedgie, I am going back to my Snowdrop Shawl to make a little progress, I think. So ends the knitting update. If you don't need to read a truckload of whining about how to make my child happy again, stop now!

Small David is ... not great. He's feeling angst-y, irritable, and gets upset very easily, and it seems to be a combination of all kinds of things.

Here's what I hate - when your kids are too old for you to be able to solve all their problems. Sigh. We've made some progress getting him to talk about his feelings, at least. All kinds of things are getting to him, and he's just not ever...happy. Not really for a couple of months now. I'm getting more and more concerned.

Tae Kwon Do was stressful - we found out that it is because he's gone up a belt and has a much more complex pattern that he can't memorize yet. Dadster talked to the instructor and he had a helper do lots more one-to-one work with him to get the pattern and moves down. I think that's going to be OK now.

Cubs has just started to become a "thing," too. David loved Beavers and the kids/leaders there. He's just moved up to the Cub pack and, frankly, it's more than a little Lord of the Flies. The leader is a very old woman, who's been doing it since her son, now in his forties, was a Cub Scout. She, and the other leaders, have no idea how to command the attention and respect of a group of little boys, and the kids in general make me REALLY happy David doesn't go to the school most of them attend. I attended a couple of sessions and found myself speaking up to say "Oi. Listen to the leader." DH is there tonight and will be watching, and talking to the District head who will be there, but I think the solution is to look for a better-run pack. There's only one little boy that David has bonded with there, anyhow, so we might be able to switch to a pack a bit further away if they have space. The other pack is more likely to have kids from David's school anyway, but they were oversubscribed when he joined Beavers last year.

School is now boring and a waste of time - he can't really articulate that one, but hasn't tried when he's not in the middle of being upset in the morning when it's time to get ready for school, so we'll have to chat again soon. I talked to his teachers this week to let them know he's feeling bored and frustrated and that I would try and find out more. They are watching him more closely. Because the classwork is too easy, he's not getting anything out of the day except his socializing, especially with his tablemate and buddy Sam, who is another really bright kid in his year.

However, I don't know what to suggest to enrich the work and add some interest to the topics. He likes the arty projects best. Those of you who know David have some idea just how bright he is, and his main teacher certainly knows his has stellar test scores, reads off the charts, and has an incredible vocabulary. However, he does what is expected of him and not more in school, and she doesn't push for anything different, since he was the youngest child in the room last year. The classroom is a combined Year 3/Year 4 room, with about 20 kids. That equates to second and third grades in the US. This year, at 8, he is in the middle of the age range so he's fitting in socially really well with both years. His slow and not-very-neat writing is the thing holding him back from really ripping with story writing, etc., and I keep trying to point this out to the teacher, but she's pleased enough with his writing in class, and I've seen samples. It's creative and funny, and very polished for a 7-8-year-old, etc., but he struggles to get it out on paper in time. Mathwise he does really well but if it were somehow more interesting, I think he'd leap far ahead. So school. That's an issue. I don't want to take him out and homeschool him, because he likes the kids so much and it's a great little school. But we need to find ways to challenge him within school before he hates it. I think homeschooling right here, right now, would be very isolating for him. But some days I wonder. 90% of what he knows he's taught himself through books, etc. That's what happens when you learn to read at 3. I'm struggling.

He doesn't like bedtime at all. We've tried several different ways of easing the transition or lengthening the awake time. In a nutshell, he doesn't like being alone in his room. It's a huge room, 15 by 15 feet, and he has a loft bed, and I think he feels lost and lonely in there. DH and I have been tossing around a couple of ideas to make the room more warm and fuzzy, among them turning the loft bed into a low bed (it's a bed that has three height settings; used to be highest height when he shared a bedroom with Lily in Nebraska, now it's middle height, and at low height you could put curtains or something around the bedposts and make it a hidey place.) The other idea is to swap rooms and put him in the Grandma room (guest room) which is much smaller, but there's really not room for all his bookshelves and toy shelves in there.

See? A very boring post, but it's all that's in my head right now. That, and all the stuff I need to do for Lily's preschool. Feeling overwhelmed by my To Do list, which I wouldn't be feeling if I weren't overwhelmed by David's general unhappiness.

Suggestions? Advice? Two cents' worth? Anyone?