One Crazy Fiber Lady

Despite the well wishes and prayers from you, thank you all, the little monkey girl was feeling pretty low.  By the time I got home from work on Tuesday night, she was downright miserable and running a 103F fever.  Eyes were gunky, nose sniffly and a cough had developed as well.  I gave her some tylenol for the fever and a cough/decongestant for the rest and the warm humidifier let her sleep pretty well.  My generous monkey girl shared this nice illness with monkey boy and her mama.  By Wednesday night I was running 103F.  Alex never got that high but he was pretty darn miserable as well.  Add to that some really cruddy sleeping, well not sleeping and crying habits that had started and we were all pretty miserable.  I can’t say that I enjoyed dealing with two screaming babies at 1AM while I ran 103F. We’re all pretty much better now, but there is a touch of congestion lasting about. 

Now of course I have much catching up to do.  I can’t believe its been a week since my last post, not to mention how many posts from others I have to read…my bloglines is reading 203.  Ugh.  I’m never going to catch up.

Since so many have commented about the bamboo yarn, I’m going to give a quick review.  Nancy was right, it is more like knitting with cotton than with wool.  There is no give, no stretch in the yarn so it is a bit harder on the hands than a good wool.  In that respect it is definitely closer to its plant fiber cotton buddy.  Unlike cotton though it has marvellous drape and gorgeous sheen that really reminds me of a good silk.  It is far lighter in weight than cotton too. 

See, I finally got a good closeup picture of the yarn!  Curious how I managed that? Well, the frustration I was having with my digital camera, a nice functional Sony DSC-P72 that I bought shortly before landing in the hospital for my extended bedrest, finally got the better of me.  I spent some time comparing the available digital cameras, consulted with a few folk and wound up buying this on Wednesday.  It’s a Canon PowerShot SD400 Digital Elph.  Nice little camera that in its macro mode can focus down to 2cm.  Oh boy.  5 megapixels so it can handle taking nice scenary shots and fast enough that I can catch the fast moving twins.  I’m very content with it and the beautiful photos it took.  I used the new camera to take a nice closeup of the sock that I was knitting for it while lying on the couch on Thursday feeling very miserable.  I borrowed an iPod pattern, some of the leftover Happy Trails sock yarn, and just made it a bit smaller for Elphie.  It really is the perfect camera for a dedicated blogger   It fits so nicely in my bag, even my quickie outting purse, that I have little excuse for not having it.  I have oodles of photos that are jockeying right now for posting position.

I did do some knitting, other than Elphie’s sock, and worked on Birch a little on Thursday after my doctor’s appointment.  (Yes I was feeling bad enough to go to the doctor.)  After getting to the third repeat, I realized it wasn’t the needles or my technique that was causing my Birch to not look like the others out there.  It was the fact that I was doing the garter based version, while I’m guessing most others worked the stockinette version.  See I chose the garter because of my goofy knitting technique which mounts the stitches backwards on the needle.  While for a straight stockinette that doesn’t pose much of a problem.  I’ve just adjusted my way of thinking about knits and purls to approach them from the leading edge of the stitch rather than through the front/back/etc.  Now it does pose a problem with lace and where a K2Tog is different from a SSK.  SSK is easy for me as I don’t have to slip anything.  The stitches are already aligned properly for that.  Its the K2Tog that I have to slip slip and then k2tog.  The pattern in Birch has a k2tog and a k2togTBL, both of which would have had me slipping stitches all over the place and I really didn’t want to do that so I jumped on the whole garter thing.  I really didn’t like how it was coming out though.  I pulled the needles out and took that picture.  The Kidsilk Haze was a bit of a pain to frog, but as you can see, I did manage it.  I was hesitant to do this as I was really loathe to cast on 299 stitches again.  I sucked it up though and while the weekend is a big haze as to when I did what, I’m pretty sure I cast on Friday night while sitting with my rented dvds and went to it.  I saw Open Water and Bridget Jones:  Edge of Reason on Friday.  The first wasn’t really a good lace knitting movie as much of it was visual, they were both very good in totally different ways.  Birch has once again taken up residence in my purse as I picked up a size 7 Clover circular needle this weekend.  What am I doing differently with this attempt?  I’m knitting right handed English so my stitches are correct and I don’t have to slip all over.  I fought to develop the right handed knitting last year so that I could make this, pretty much for the same reason.  While my right handed speed is no where near my left handed version, it does work and I’m through one repeat of the pattern now.  Surprisingly there are no pictures of the second go ’round yet.

While I didn’t knit a stitch Sunday and Monday, I was certainly not idle.  No way a mom with twin toddlers could be idle, eh?   The weather was spectacular this weekend, and because I had had a change of plans after releasing the mother’s helper, I took the twins to the pool singlehanded.  While scary much in the same way as going to Maryland was scary, we came through it with flyer colors.  Here are a few shots of the pool, the twins, the twins and the pool…

I think the monkeys enjoyed it.  I know I did.  Once we got past the velcro stage where Kat had to maintain full body contact and cried "mama" the whol time.  Thankfully she did disengage and let herself have some fun.  You can see the nicely fenced off baby section of the pool.  Even at its deepest it is still perfect for the twins as it is about their waist.  I also introduced them to the joys of a Good Humor Ice Cream Sandwich when the snack bar near the baby area opened.  No pictures as I was busy enough trying to juggle twins, sandwiches and money.  We did have a scary moment when Alex didn’t realize there was no back to the picnic bench and nearly went over head first.  No harm no foul.

Craft on!