It's lucky for her she's so cute

Okay, I'm speaking to the baby again. Yes, she frogged the third neckwarmer, the baby thingy and the stole I'd started for my mother-in-law. But she was was so proud of herself, and so pleased to show me what she'd done that I couldn't get truly cross. Although there was a moment there when I wondered if the recent banning of smacking in New Zealand also applied to stabbing your child with a knitting needle.

Anyway... Since I had nothing else to do I've started the second sock. The test now will be to try and get a pair since I didn't bother making any notes about how many rounds I knitted at any point - I never actually believed I'd finish up with a sock until I got to the grafting.

House guest at the door!

Anyone have a bell, book and candle?

I have no WIPs.

Jess has a pile of wool and a collection of needles under her bed.

Olive Cake

Another recipe I don't want to lose! This one came from my sister's sister-in-law in France, and it's divine...

100 grams flour (add a little more if the mixture is too wet)
150 grams grated cheese (preferably gruyere)
4 eggs
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 small glass of white wine
2 teaspoons baking powder
200 grams pitted green olives, sliced (nice with pimento stuffed olives)

Mix all together and bake in a greased 22 inch ring tin (or any suitable pan) for about 40 mins at 200 C.

Smug mode on

So Monday morning I was a little bored and I picked up the cursed double point needles and figured I'd give it yet another try. And voila...

My first ever sock! It's not a great sock - in fact it's a lumpy, bumpy, and very stumpy sock, but it's a sock! I had to do a little sock achievement dance with the girls, and we all sang 'Mummy can knit socks'. Well, Jess just shouted 'Mama! Sock!' but the thought was there. My partner pointed out that, strictly speaking, I can knit sock and until I do another I can't have that final 's'. Of course, he's right, but I'm not sure that this poor sock will ever get a mate. I figured there was no point in spending hours knitting the leg until I knew whether or not the whole heel thing would work - which is why it's so short. And do I really want a pair of stumpy socks? I may just keep this one as the Lone Sock and start a proper pair. Of course the girls are demanding socks of their own now, so it may be a while before I get to knit some for me.

I finished the neckwarmer (photo eventually - Jess took it away somewhere) and liked it so much that I knit another...

This one is in Cleckheaton's Vintage Hues which is my new favourite wool - I just love the colours. And I love the whole concept of neckwarmers I have to say. Way faster than a scarf, so I don't get bored, way less wool than a scarf, so I can afford to knit with nicer stuff than I would usually. And this one I liked so much I even blocked it! Wonders will never cease! I'm knitting a third one now - not in feather and fan this time - in some fluffy stuff I found on top of the bookshelf. I'm not sure what it is, but I have a feeling there's another ball in my glovebox which might have the band still on it. (Hey, I have small children - I stash my wool anywhere they can't get it!)

The baby thing is proceeding sloooooowly - I'm not sure if I like it or not so I'm not putting much effort in because it may yet get unravelled and changed into something else.

And now it's time to face the laundry mountain... We have a friend arriving to stay on Tuesday and I'm not even sure that there is a bed in the spare room because the laundry may well have eaten it!

Goodbye to all that

So it’s goodbye to the green jersey, which is finally finished; goodbye to university, because the exam and semester are now over; and, it seems, goodbye to my beloved sofa. That’s right – I’m heading back out into the big, wide, working world.
The woman who took over from me at my old job is leaving and they called me to see if I was interested in filling in for three months. So we’ve been negotiating for a couple of weeks. I’m good at negotiating:
Me: Three months is too short to make it worth giving up a semester at university, it’d have to be six months at least.
Them: No, that won’t work.
Me: OK, three months it is.
It’s quite flattering that someone thinks I am still motivated, professional and awake enough to trust with a company car, a company credit card, and the company’s reputation. Mind you, they don’t know that I am the woman who has been known to leap up, get the kids washed, dressed and fed, load them into the car, and drive off to playgroup, only to realise on arriving that I am still in my pyjamas! Okay, it only happened once, but still…
Also, I keep thinking, ‘Hey, isn’t this the job that you left because you found it so hard when you had one child?’ It is.
Anyway, we’ve worked out this incredible schedule for the kids involving kindergarten, daycare, granny, kindy friends’ parents and one lovely university student. So provided no-one gets sick we should be able to manage it - and why would pre-schoolers get sick in winter when they’re at kindy and daycare surrounded by thousands of runny noses and hacking coughs? Oh boy.

On the knitting front the green jersey is finally done – and it fits (more or less). The lacey bits would look better if I’d blocked it but you know, it’s for a 2 year old who is going to spill porridge down the front any morning now, and also I just couldn’t be bothered. (Great attitude to take to work hey!)

I tried to get a nice photo of Jess wearing it, but first she did this:

Then she insisted we take a photo of her tummy (‘Pic tummy NOW!!’)

Then she grabbed Katie so she could be in the picture too.

So here is an empty jersey… and a close up-ish shot of the lace and cables.

At some point in the last manic week, while studying for the exam and 'negotiating' about this job, I started a scarfish kind of thing but forgot to mention it. It's from the book Knit 2 Together by Tracy Ullman and Mel Clark. They call it a neckwarmer, and I've seen similar things called cowls, so who knows. It's like a scarf but it's a big loop you sling over your head. Theirs is done on circular needles, which makes sense, but I tried, I really did, and then I threw the circular needle across the dining room (causing my partner to be extra nice to me because he figured he'd done something wrong - he he he). So mine is being done on straight needles, and in a different yarn (the green one), and I changed it from a 12 stitch repeat of feather and fan to an eighteen stitch repeat. Apart from that it's exactly the same.

The book is one that came home with me from the library while I was 'studying' for my exam. Kept happening, no idea how. I'd head off to the library prepared to settle down with an analysis of the postcolonial discourse utilised in Waitangi tribunal narratives, and their use of heuristic tropes and other such exciting stuff, and I'd come home with a bag full of knitting books. Very strange. Won't it be interesting to see what kind of mark I get?

I've also started something that I'm hoping will grow into a sleeping bag crossed with a cardigan for my friends Grant and Kate's baby, which is due in October. We will see.

There's a new little doodad at the right there, which is from the Aussie and NZ knitters webring - go check them out. There are more and more of us NZ knitting bloggers and I have a great plan. Together we can all write the knitting book that I want to buy, but which doesn't yet exist!

I want (oh how I want) a New Zealand knitting book with NZ inspired designs and motifs - NO INTARSIA KIWIS - classy, subtle things. Like koru cables (I've tried, I can't figure it out), and lace based on silver ferns or kowhai. I thought I might knit a 'brick and tile' sweater with some kind of brick-like pattern on the body, and scallop stitch for the sleeves and yoke. All in one colour - not to look like a house, but vaguely inspired by our vernacular architecture. I know James at Fibre Alive has done some nice stuff with koru motifs - what else is out there? Actually I'm looking at this feather and fan, and thinking if you knit four or five repeats in red, and knitted in gold beads in the fan sections... pohutukawa! It would be a great book, and I'd buy a copy...

What a long post... now I have to go and panic some more about working!

On Socks and Strange Brains

Here's a little conversation I had with Katie this morning...

Me: Why don’t you want to go to your friend’s house?
Katie: It’s not me that doesn’t want to go – it’s my brain. My brain doesn’t like playing so it’s decided not to go.
Me: You are a very strange little girl
Katie: It’s not me that’s strange – it’s my brain. My brain is very, very, strange.

No kidding...

Then I'm scrabbling through the laundry mountain looking for socks and wondering how it is possible to have twenty-seven single kids' socks and not one pair, when Jess wanders pasts wearing four mismatched socks - two on her feet and two on her hands.

I'm sure other people's children are not this weird!

There is no knitting happening here - I have an exam tomorrow. The green jersey will return on the weekend.

Technobabies

One of the (many) reasons I blog so erratically is that when I find myself with some spare time to write, I have to fight a four year old for the computer. Katie is amazingly quick at picking things up on the computer which is fascinating, if a little scary. More than once I've been in the middle of something, like an essay, and I get up to grab a coffee, or go to the loo, or whatever, and come back to find she's switched user, logged on to the net, gone to one of her favourite sites, adjusted the volume, and won't shift!

So for anyone else with techno literate pre-schoolers, here is Katie's Top 5 Websites for Small People:

• Ceebeebies - the BBC's website for kids, with games, stories, e-cards etc
• Starfall - a great phonics-based learn to read site
• Sesame Street - needs no explanation
• Playhouse Disney - has some good games and stories based on disney characters
• Nick Jr - home of Dora, Blues Clues, Miss Spider, etc. Good problem-solving games.

Now I'm being kicked off again, so it's back to the knitting!

My doppelganger

Too weird….

I’ve been reading back through Mad Hair Day and growing increasingly weirded out by the things I have in common with the writer…

• We are both in New Zealand (ok, not so weird – with 4 million people and 40 million sheep you expect a few knitters)
• We are both 38
• Her birthday is 13 December; mine is 30 December
• We are both once divorced
• We have both been with our current partners for ten years
• We both have two young daughters
• We both have one brother, and two sisters (OK, I’m guessing – she may have more than two)
• We both went to school in Hong Kong
• We are both unabashed feminists
• We seem to have read many of the same books (I got the quote from Swallows and Amazons) – ok, not weird, but nice – I like it when people read the same stuff I do.
  

Oooh! Spooky huh!

Of course there are probably an equal number of things we don’t have in common – not least of which is that she is a superwoman who works full-time while being a mother to three children and she spins, weaves, knits and cooks, and she can do the whole dpn thing and make socks; while I am a full-time stay at home mum who can’t work up the energy to get off the sofa and do housework ever, and I still believe dpns are the devil’s work. It’ll probably turn out that we sat next to each other in upper 5 at Glenealy Primary School… (We didn’t did we?)

Okay, now I promise I won't even mention her blog again for at least a month, because, you know, I don't want to come across like some kind of obsessive stalker and scare the poor woman to pieces!

On the knitting front... I finished the front and back of the green jersey for the little one, and I've done one sleeve. And I now have SO MUCH RESPECT for people who write knitting patterns - I've been trying to type it all nicely as I go along and it's a chore people. I've written the whole front, and I thought I'd written the back, and then I realised I'd written half of it backwards (or something) and I need to sit down and look at it compared to the actual back. I started writing the sleeve pattern, and then changed my mind about what I was doing, and now I feel like writing: 'it's a sleeve for god's sake - just knit the damn thing so it looks like this one'. I don't know that this is quite what people expect in a pattern though. And boy, do I understand the whole 'work increases while keeping the pattern consistent' thing - if I ever do write the sleeve up that's the cop out I'm going to use!

I did some other knitting in between but I just frogged the whole lot and it's too depressing to write about. I'll try, try and try again :-)

And tell me, is it actually illegal to sell your children on trademe or ebay? Or is it just frowned upon?

When children meet lip gloss

Aren't they just...

I don't even wear makeup (apart from concealer generously applied to the full set of matched luggage that turns up under my eyes many many mornings) and yet Katie has developed an obsession with lipgloss and nail polish and who knows what else. I think she gets it from other kids at kindy.
A while ago - back when K was only three - our teenaged next-door-neighbour gave me a bag of lip gloss, stick on tattoos, eye shadow etc for Katie. I said thank you nicely and hid it at the back of a drawer and went and had a quiet rant about the premature sexualisation of girls, the anti-feminist marketing practices of cosmetic companies - the usual stuff, I'm betting I even threw in the word patriarchy - and then I forgot about it. Well look who found it! And I have to say it made me giggle a lot - but oh what this society does to little girls. So long as they keep thinking that the nose is a great place for lip gloss I'm not going to get my knickers in a twist though!

On a completely unrelated topic... I finally found the blog of the one and only person who ever commented here and I think I'm in love - go read Mad Hair Day because I said so (it's the mother in me - I can't help it). On one of her wonderful posts she wrote:

I write a post for this blog every day, you know. In my head while I'm in the shower I compose great reams of waffle and you can all be awfully glad that I am blessed with an appalling memory and absolutely no free time in which to write it all down.

Which is exactly what I do. Only I do it on the bus and sometimes it doesn't stay just in my head and people look at me strangely...

Why a Chocolate Cake Recipe?

Amy's Great Chocolate Cake

Sift together:

1 ½ cups flour
1 ¼ cups sugar
¾ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ cup cocoa

Beat in:

½ cup vegetable oil

until mixture is consistency of bread crumbs.

Add:

2 beaten eggs
1 cup hot water
1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Beat by hand for one minute.

Pour into greased cake tin or cupcake cases.
Bake at 180 C (350 F) for 20 – 25 minutes (cake) or 12 – 15 minutes (cupcakes)


Why am I posting a chocolate cake recipe? Because it's the recipe I always use for every occassion - it's quick, easy, and tastes delicious - and because when I went to make cupcakes and a birthday cake for Jess's birthday this week I COULD NOT FIND IT. I have made this recipe forty seven thousand times so I figured I'd be able to remember it, but could I? I made three batches of cupcakes, varying the recipe slightly each time and while they were all edible (thanks to the girls for being guinea pigs) none was quite right.

Luckily it turned up in time for me to make Jessie's cake but I started panicking about losing it again. I have written it into a recipe book, but what if I lose the book? I have stored it in the computer, but our computer... well, let me show you our computer...

Who needs an internal fan?

So then I realised that if I posted the recipe here, then when the computer dies (and it's definitely when not if) I'll still have the recipe safe and sound. Plus, since people are apparently visiting this blog (still freaked by that!) someone else may need a good cake recipe :) The recipe is Amy's Great Chocolate Cake Recipe because that's what it's always been called in our family. Amy was the woman who gave this recipe to my mother in the late 60s or early 70s - may her name be honoured forever!

And if anyone else has a child having a birthday, you must read this, which is just the loveliest thing ever, thank you Stephanie.

Aaaaaaaaaaagh

It's been one of those weeks where I am constantly asking myself why I decided to have children (and I did decide, it was just the timing that came down to my really poor grasp of basic maths! You know, 'oh, it's twenty-eight days, d'oh!'). Anyway, I keep asking myself why, and some evil mean nasty part of my brain keeps answering 'it was a HUGE mistake. Kill them now!'.

On Tuesday the little darlings (including one extra 4 year old):

• Got the collage material box off the shelf I thought they couldn't reach and made a 'magic garden' of sequins, glitter, felt shapes, etc, all over the dining room floor. Easy to sweep up but they...
• Poured water all over the 'magic garden' TM so that they could play mermaids. Then while I was cleaning that up they
• Crumbled a polystyrene box (also from a shelf I thought they couldn't reach) all over their bedroom carpet to make snow (as you do), and while I was cleaning that up they
• Got the rack of cooling cupcakes intended for Jess's birthday off the bench and covered the kitchen floor in crumbs and cupcake wrappers, and while I was cleaning that up, they
• Found a pot of barrier cream and painted Jessie head to toe. You know that stuff really is water resistant.

Jess on her own, and all on the same day mind you:

• Pulled out the kitchen drawers and climbed up them until she could stand on the kitchen bench and reach the really high shelf where we keep all the fun poisonous and deadly things, then proceeded to spray Katie in the face with shower cleaner (first time it's been used this year)
• Spent a lovely quiet (always a danger sign) quarter of an hour in the bathroom, dunking toilet paper in the toilet and eating it (I swear she's not mine!)
• Emptied every plant pot on the back deck onto the back deck, then made mud pies with potting mix and bubble mixture (and probably shower cleaner and toilet paper for all I know).

And all of this happened while I was trying to get the house looking nice for Jess's birthday tea on Wednesday.

Anyway, I didn't kill them, which is probably a good thing, and Jess had a very nice birthday, and no-one was rude enough to point out the sequins I'd missed or the fact that Jess still had barrier cream in her hair.

Not a lot of knitting has been done.

Ooooh, but I'm all excited... look to the right and you'll see a nifty little percent bar that shows how far I've got on the green lacy jersey (which I've called Spring Leaf because I am tired and uninspired and totally devoid of creative or original thought). Isn't it cool! God I love doodads and nicknackery like that :) It's from Yarn Tomato and it was really easy! Go get one!

And... I thought I'd freaked out badly when someone left a comment a while ago (Who are you? Why did you do that? Why are you reading this? Go away and read Yarn Harlot or Crazy Aunt Laurie or any real blog!) but I just discovered that Andi at Knitstant Gratification has put a link to here on her blog (which is a wonderful blog - go read it). You know, I have started diaries thirty seven million times in my life, and never lasted more than a week or two. The only thing that keeps you writing a blog is the thought that someone might be reading it - but when you realise that someone is reading it it's very disconcerting. In a good way. Possibly. All very strange, and I have more sequins to chase...