A Happy Ending

So I finished the thing.

Look how much yarn I had left at the end.

The two skeins were supposed to have identical yardage, but there was so much more left over of the black/grey yarn.  And I cast on and cast off with the black/grey yarn.  I only vaguely had enough of the rainbow yarn to weave in.

Weird.

I took the path of least resistance and just kept knitting with what I had.  I didn't alter the cast on number.  I didn't buy more skeins.

When all was said and done...

it was just over 53 inches.  Which is on the short side for an adult scarf. 

But it's just fine for a child scarf.

And I just so happen to have a house full of children who would love a stripey rainbow scarf.  It turns out I didn't really want to own a stripey rainbow scarf.  I just really wanted to knit a stripey rainbow scarf.

So I took a few pictures

I rolled it up into a sushi roll

And I set it on the piano.

And I waited.

It wasn't long before Pork Chop asked "whose scarf is this?"

I told her it could be hers if she wanted.

She grinned ear to ear as she wrapped it around her neck saying "this is the nicest thing that has happened to me all day."

And seeing her smile was the nicest thing that happened to me all day.

The End.

No Self Control

So I did a thing.

Yup.

I cast on for a Noro Scarf with the Landscapes yarn.

Just look at those stripes

Who can resist knitting stripe after stripe of glorious rainbow colors?

Obviously not me.

But now I have a dilemma.

I have one skein of each color.  Ravelry projects say this can be knit with two skeins.  But most of those projects cast on for fewer stitches than the pattern suggest.  I cast the 39 stitches the original scarf called for and my scarf is a little over six inches wide.  While I love the wider scarf I fear I'm sacrificing length for width and I will end up with a scarf that is too short.

So I frog it all and reknit with a more slender cast on?

Or do I turn a stash busting project into a yarn acquisition project and attempt to track down a few more skeins of Landscape?  The nature of this project allows for different dye lots or even different color schemes.

Decisions.  Decisions.

I should probably go back to knitting my big mammoth cocoon while I mull over my choices in my head.

Project Monogamy is Hard

Friday marked the triumphant return to Preschool and Therapy for the Queen.

And we all breathed a sigh of relief.

Friday afternoon I found myself happily alone in a waiting room casting on for a second sock

Unfortunately shortly after cast on someone entered the waiting room reeking of cigarette smoke causing an instant migraine.  So this is all the further I got.  I'm starting to see why it took over a year to finish the first sock.  Good thing this isn't a race.

So..... I did a thing.

I cast on for the cocoon sweater in black mohair.

 It is a monstrosity.

So far I've knit 26 inches.  It will be 44 inches long when finished.  It's supposed to be a big huge square of stockinette stitch that will be folded origami style then stitched into place to become a cardigan.

I still can't decide if this is ...

A)  going to be the most wonderful slouchy warm fuzzy black cardigan ever that will elevate my slumming it at home in my comfy clothes game.

Or

B)  going to be a disaster of epic proportions that makes me look like a ginormous fuzzy black bear, or possibly a lumpy moldy potato.

Or

C)  it could possibly be both.  I'm going to have to solider on and knit the remaining 18 inches to find out.

But it's hard.  I don't wanna knit it anymore.  It's getting huge and unwieldy and I don't wanna deal with it right now.  I wanna cast on for something new!

Someone gifted me with these skein yesterday

So pretty right!  At first glance they don't seem like they would go together in the same project.

Look at those stormy greys!  Look at that rainbow!

How would you even use these two very different color schemes in the same project?

But I think they would be perfect together in a Brooklyn Tweed Noro Scarf kind of project and oh.my.goodness.I.WANNA.KNIT.IT.NOW!  It is taking all my self control not to cast on, and I think my self control is running out.  I don't want to be a grown up in my hobbies.  I want to run wild and fill all 27 of my random size bags with 27 random size projects in 27 random stages of completing.  I want to cast on ALL.THE.THINGS!

And in the midst of all this I found myself knitting a swatch for a new Knit Picks test knit.

Evidently project monogamy is just not a concept that is going to work out for me.

Oh Pretty

Somehow talking about how well the Queen was doing at therapy put a jinx on us.  We were immediately striken with the plague. 

First the Queen.

And then me.

(and Sweet Pea and Bird to a lesser degree, but mostly me).

We have not left the house in ten days.  We have not been to a single therapy session.  The Queen has not attended a second of preschool.  She hasn't even asked to go to preschool, which is saying something.  That morning I was supposed to take all five kids to the dentist?  I totally bailed on that (which I hate to do, it is a lot of appointments to cancel at once, but they did not want us breathing their air).  All activities of life have been cancelled.

So no progress on the therapy socks. 

I did knit two projects for Knit Picks.  But no pictures allowed until they publish.  Although I don't see the harm in sharing a swatch photo.

The Queen thought the swatches made really nice tiny blankets.  I've tried to explain to her that she wouldn't need tiny blankets if she would wear clothes, but she is four and going through her nudist period.  It is not unusual for her to leave a room wearing pajamas and return fully nude.  For a child who is unable to dress herself I am a little baffled by how she manages to undress herself.  I'm grateful for every minute she consents to keeping her diaper on.

So since there is a distinct lack of knitting to show I'm going in a different direction with some good old fashioned yarn p*rn.

I was gifted some lovely yarn from a dear friend.

Blue with sparkles.  Was there ever a more perfect sock yarn for me?

And this riot of rainbow just makes me happy.  I can't wait to make some happy stripey socks!  There are people I know who make my life brighter just by existing.  My friend is one of them.  Thank you dear friend.

But that was not the only beautiful yarny goodness that holidays blessed me with.

My little brother braved a yarn store and bought me a gorgeous skein of the good stuff.  He called me asking how to tell what was good stuff.  I told him he was in an actual yarn store, not the yarn section of Hobby Lobby or Jo-Anns, it's all good stuff.  He put me on the phone with the store owner who asked me a few questions about what I like to knit and she helped him choose something perfect.  I love that my brother told her "My sister knows what she's doing.  She blocks stuff!" 

Look at those colors and that beautiful twist.  Big shout out to Country Yarns in Wallingford, Connecticut.  In a perfect world they would be local to me.

And of course this orphan wandered in off the street to help me take pictures

If only someone loved her enough to brush her hair and put some weather appropriate clothes on her.  Poor unloved orphan girl. 

At least she has a diaper on.

I find myself in need of a project.  An easy no math no brain project.  I've got a bunch of black mohair I'm thinking of making into a cocoon sweater type thingie (I'm pretty sure that's the official term.)  Just miles and miles of stockinette.  It's either going to be the most awesome item in my wardrobe or a monstrosity that I will quietly donate to Goodwill. 

May the odds be ever in my favor.

Sweet Sweet Therapy

Today saw the triumphant return of the Therapy Socks!

These aren't socks that I am knitting as therapy (although I can not deny that knitting them is therapeutic).

Rather, these are sock that I knit while I am in the waiting room of the pediatric therapy center while the Queen Bean is in one of her various therapy sessions.

These socks were set aside in August.  The Queen had been receiving services at the same therapy center since she was two months old.  Despite being an hours drive from our home we considered this center to be a bit of a second home.  The staff there was family.  We were devoted to our center despite the long drive we made twice a week.

Think about that for a second.

An hour's drive each way. 

Twice a week.

For three and a half years.

We were devoted.

But over the summer things changed at the therapy center.  I'm not going to speculate on the cause.  But something made the staff very unhappy.  And they left.  And the new therapists who were hired to replace them didn't stay for more than a few weeks at a time.  Rather than the consistency of therapists we had enjoyed for the first three year we had a steady stream of every changing therapists. 

Which doesn't work for the Queen.

So we left.

And it took four months to get in with a new therapy center.  We had to be evaluated.  And approved by insurance.  And fit into the schedule.  The process was ridiculously slow.  Especially the approved by insurance part.

Unfortunately the new center doesn't have any openings that allow us to double up two therapies on the same day.

So we now drive 20 minutes three times a week to reach the new center.  Fifteen minutes if traffic is cooperative.  I'm really appreciating staying on my side of the valley. 

We've been at the new center for six weeks.  And in that time I've sat in on all the Queen's sessions.  It has been a difficult transition as the Queen got back into the routine of therapy with new therapists who have different rules and preferences.  But I feel really good about the work that they are doing.  As much as I loved our old therapists sometimes change is good.

This week I was finally able to bow out of the sessions and allow the therapists to do their job solo. When I am in the room the Queen looks to me as the ultimate authority who can overrule the therapist, and who she can run to for comfort when she does not want to participate in the exercises.  Despite my efforts to redirect her back to the therapist I was still a distraction. 

But since we took the time for the Queen to get comfortable with the therapists she happily walks back with the therapists.  She did cry for fifteen minutes the first day, which was hard, but then she did more work for her physical therapist in one session than she had done in the entire previous five weeks.  She followed that up by making noise for the speech therapist and saying "baby".  And today while I sat and knit she actually drew horizontal lines as requested by her occupational therapist and she made great strides in her hand strength working with, well I don't know what it is, but if you put a ball in its mouth and squeeze its stomach the ball pops out.  Earlier this summer she couldn't squeeze it by herself.  But she did today.

And while she did that I knit a toe

I was super helpful to myself back in August when I abandoned this project.  I left no notes regarding what pattern row I was on when I put the sock in a temporary time out.

I like to set myself up for failure.

It took an embarrassing amount of time to figure it out.  But as it turns out I was much closer to finishing the first sock than I remembered (maybe House Gnomes took pity on it and knit a few rows here and there so it wouldn't be lonely?)

Sock one of the Therapy Socks is completed.

Ravelry tells me I started these socks on October 11th, 2016.

That's right.

2016.

I wonder how long it will take me to complete the second sock.

Maybe the House Gnomes do me a solid and help me out with some of the knitting.

The First FO of 2018

So the only upside to my pounding headache, if there is an upside, is it hurts to much too move so I spent a rather large chunk of time sitting in the same spot and I knit.

The downside of this is I can't knit anything too complicated.  Too many of my brain cells are occupied with the constant throbbing dance they are performing against my forehead.  There are very few brain cells left over to use for things like concentration.

I'm dying to finish my pink socks

But all those tiny crossing cables.

Nope.  Not today Satan.

Instead I settled for a gentler cable pattern.  So subtle it almost isn't a cable pattern.

Sidenote, as I knit my nails were not matching, but coordinating in the same tone as my yarn.

And it made me very happy.

My finished socks also make me very happy.

Pattern:  Oscillatory Socks

Yarn:  Pattons Kroy Socks in Turquoise Stripes, 2 skeins

Needles:  1.5 32 inch circular needles

Modifications:  I knit a longer heel gusset.  The pattern only called for 24 rows, and I knit 32 rows.  And then I picked up extra stitches on the side of the heel gusset but decreased to the recommended 64 stitches for the foot.

I think the mod worked out well for me.

I love how the stripe pattern lined up, but the colors are slightly different on each foot.  They are brothers not twin socks, and I'm not mad.

Kroy isn't the softest or snuggliest sock yarn but the colors called to me.  And the socks should wear like iron.

Not a bad way to start the knitting year.

New Year, New Me!

Just Kidding.

New Year, Same old Me.

I've spent the past three days looking like this.

So far I'm three days into the new year and I'm three for three with migraines.

It's all good.  I've decided to get all my migraines for the year out of the way now then I can be done with them for the rest of the year.

It totally works like that right?

A girl can dream.

December was a BIG month for us.

We had a birthday.

And a 20th wedding anniversary.

And my Brother came to visit.

And there was Christmas.

And another birthday.

All good things. 

And I'm hoping 2018 is full of good things too.

Just as soon as I get done having my entire year's worth of migraines in a week.