Has it really been a week since my last post? That oh so very rarely happens. I’ve been busy busy busy and sadly blogging took the back seat. Now to catch up:
Thursday, the twins and I moved back to our home after 2 weeks living with my folks. I was nervous to say the least. Compounding the problem, Alexander came home early from daycare running a fever. No other symptoms. Just the 101F or so fever. He can be pretty icky when he’s sick so I wasn’t relishing having him on my own. While he didn’t sleep so very well, he did when I took him into bed with me. Naturally, he woke up just as I was finally falling asleep at just shy of 2AM. As Laurie pointed out, walking oddly has a mixed bag effect on one’s sleeping. Thursday was one of the insomnia variety nights. It did give me some bonus knitting time as I know enough to not fight the insomnia for more than 30 minutes without getting out of bed and trying again later. I watched Crimson Tide on cable and finished the heel/gusset on the second sock. Cuddling with mama, Alex was able to sleep through the rest of the night. Oh yeah, I got some sleep too.
Because of the all night fever, Alex could not go to daycare on Friday. While Kat could have gone, she’s weird without her brother. The last time she was there without him, she would be fine for a bit, then look around and cry. Okay so that was a year ago, but her keeping an eye on her brother hasn’t changed. Since Alex was staying home, so was Kat. Mama got to work from home for a change. The twins nicely cooperated, taking blissfully long naps so I was able to get plenty accomplished and met my deadline. By Saturday, the boy was better and the fever was gone.
Did I do any knitting. You betcha! I knitted my little heart out on the Super Secret Baby gift. Since it is short people friendly knitting, I opted to really pour it on for the home stretch. It turned into my commuting knitting, as well as the on the couch before bed knitting. I finished the last bit of knitting on it last night. By my estimation, I have another 6 hours of work to go towards piecing and end hiding. I’m pleased with how it is turning out and hope she’ll be happy with it. I also think that this will become my standard baby gift as I really do like the project on the whole (except that 6 hours to finish business). Once done and given, I’ll finally post some pictures and details. I’ll go so far to say now that it was a cotton/acrylic blend yarn that I knit it out of so it will be wash friendly for the new mom.
Having spent so much time now with cotton, my next project will definitely be WOOL. It will be one of the two projects I’ve been buying yarn for for a long time now: Rogue or Clapotis. I did pull out the newest yarn acquired for Rogue last night and started to swatch for it. Umm, never did blog this acquisition.. or maybe I did. It was the Araucania Natural Wool in shade 17. I think the info for this yarn is just wrong. I swatched on a size 6US needle and came out with 5st/in. Now Rogue needs 4.5 and the 4.5 in the yarn description is why I bought the stuff. Could I up the needle size to get the requisite 4.5? Sure. But I think the fabric would be far too loose, especially for what looks like a substantial sweater with cables. I’m not convinced that this is the right yarn for the job. It might work nicely for Jenna’s new sweater, but I do so want Rogue first. I pulled out the skeins of Wool of the Andes in that brick red that I bought and will swatch that tonight. If that still doesn’t work, I have the blue Jaeger Shetland Aran that I used to make the sweater for Alex. If memory serves, I bought two packs of the blue for the very purpose of using the second for Rogue. I checked the gauge on Alex’s hoodie last night and I did indeed get a 4.5 st/in on that.
The sock made a reappearance during this morning’s commute. This morning I returned to the train for my ride in. I wanted to see how the ankle (which is improving very nicely thank you!) would hold up to the 2 block walk from the PATH station to the office. It did beautifully. Nary a twinge. Yesterday’s busing was a bit less than enjoyable. On the trip in I got to share my seat with a rather large woman who took the bit of seat I wasn’t using. Oh yeah, she had excessive amounts of perfume on as well. Ugh. The ride home, while spacious, was HOT. It was 90+F yesterday and the bus had NO AIR CONDITIONING. Add to that I didn’t get my favorite seat where i could see out the windshield. I got stuck behind the driver. There’s this huge solid shield behind the driver. Gave me some serious claustrophobia on top of the queasy carsick feeling. Blech. Driver didn’t quite hear my "Stop Requested" ding and overshot my stop. Oh well. Less knitting time, but I’ll have no queasy and other cars to choose if there’s no AC. The sock? I’m an inch short of starting to reduce for the toe. I’ll have to go back to Birchington, but I so wanted to feel the stretch of wool. Ahhhhh. Like coming home. Yup, wool snob I am.
I finally unpacked my new dual ratio Hitchhiker and did a smidge of spinning. Nice to have a left footed wheel to use while the right ankle heels. I do so like the wheel and look forward to really getting to play with it some more. The twins actually took a serious fascination in it and so seriously tried to treadle it. Some fits were had as I tried to put it away. Maybe when the baby gift is done, I can get some decent spinning time again. Poor neglected hobby. Up there with my started and ignored X-Stitch, eh? 
A
s I have no pictures of knitting to show (and the photos I took of the twins at the park were so poorly lit), I leave you with my two four legged boys enjoying a late afternoon sunspot on Saturday. This is the kind of relationship I was hoping for when I got Baron.
Craft on.
