This is getting silly...

Honestly - I should rename this blog 'the monthly excuse'.
I was all geared up to post on the 14th of July - because I finished a sleeveless pullover the day before (having started it on the 4th of July - ooooh - just occurred to me that it was knitted between American Independence Day and Bastille Day, and since it was done on circulars it should really be called the Revolutionary Pullover. He he he. Jeez that was bad - forgive me: I'm very tired!)
Where was I? Oh yes - so there was I all set to post, having wrested control of the computer from the children, when Jess announced she'd put a bead up her nose. She didn't, of course, announce this to me - she waited until I let her have five minutes on the phone to my sister, and then told her. So we dropped the phone, grabbed the keys and hot-footed it down to the local emergency clinic, where a very nice doctor removed a shiny pink bead from her left nostril. I gave her a good telling off - no so much about the bead per se, but about being so unoriginal - a three year old sticking a bead up her nose is such a cliche!
And since then I've either been too tired, too busy or too far down the queue to be able to get on the computer and post. Jess has discovered the joys of the computer, and if she's not fighting Katie for a turn, they're both fighting their father for a go. And I get to sit and knit, which is nice.
So the pullover...
First the good stuff: I adore adore adore the wool I used - Cleckheaton Vintage Hues (which I vaguely recall raving about the last time I used it [yes I did - here].) And the colours are fabulous - all 1970s oranges and yellows and greens. And I'm ever so proud of myself, because it's the first garment I've knitted entirely on circular needles, the first V-neck I've ever done, and I didn't have a pattern.
The bad news is that I got the tension wrong and it's wider than it was supposed to be - so it sort of sits out around the hips. And then of course the biggie - variegated wool knitted in the round makes stripes and when you divide at the armholes the stripes get wider. I knew that, really. But when I first put it on I was a little taken aback at quite how desperately unflattering it is. The combination of wide horizontal stripes, bulky wool, and one narrow stripe that somehow appeared right in the middle makes my bosom look huger and droopier than ever. So attractive.
Good job really that I don't much care! It's lovely and cosy and warm and I've been wearing it quite happily - I just avoid mirrors while I've got it on.

In other knitting news I started a cardigan for Jess on Monday and finished it today - six days! Yay for huge needles! I say finished, although it hasn't yet got buttons, but I don't have any buttons to sew on and I figure since I still haven't done the buttons on the Sunrise thing...

It's based on Elizabeth Zimmerman's seamless yoke sweater - and it fits beautifully. And I'm three quarters of the way through a jumper for Katie (again EZ's seamless sweater) but that's on 4mm needles so it'll take a little longer.
And now I'm off to bed... Back in September I guess! :)

Winter woes

Boy am I glad June is over! We had the most phenomenal summer here, the kind of summer that you remember from childhood, and that never seems to happen when you're an adult: endless warm, sunny days, month after month. But now winter has kicked in with a vengeance; it's freezing cold and we're having a series of incredible hail storms that are so heavy it looks like it's been snowing in the back garden.

And of course, with the onset of winter, came the onset of winter chills and ills. The very best week went something like this:

Date: Monday

To: absences@katiesschool.co.nz

From: rachelc@home

Subject: Katie, Room 17

Katie will be away from school today due to an ear infection.

Date: Tuesday
To: absences@katiesschool.co.nz
From: rachelc@home
Subject: Katie, Room 17
Katie will be away from school today due to an ear infection and an eye infection.

Date: Wednesday
To: absences@katiesschool.co.nz
From: rachelc@home
Subject: Katie, Room 17
Katie will be away from school today due to an ear infection, an eye infection and a chest infection.

Date: Thursday
To: absences@katiesschool.co.nz
From: rachelc@home
Subject: Katie, Room 17
Katie will be away from school today due to an ear infection, an eye infection, a chest infection and chicken pox.

Now, touch wood, we all seem better.

It didn't help that I had more travel than usual in June - I called it my knit-around-the-North-Island month. I knitted in Northland (where people are apparently not used to seeing knitters in pubs - I think Eclair needs to do some work here!), I knitted in Matakana (where I have inspired a lapsed knitter to pick up the needles), I knitted in Gisborne and I knitted in Rotorua (and I stopped in Te Kauwhata on the way to Rotorua to cast on a sock for my aunt). And yet I don't seem to have terribly much to show for it...

I have finally finished (well, almost) the Sunrise Circle Jacket - I just have to sew the buttons on. Photos as soon as I do!

I made a pinwheel cardigan for Jess. That began as an exercise to see if I could do a pinwheel using the magic loop method (I can). Then it was going to be a blanket. Then I found a fabulous pattern for a cardigan so that's where it wound up. It has the niftiest edging - little loops of I-cord running right around...

And I knitted some little hats which are intended for charity but seem to have been appropriated for the dolls by my uncharitable children.

I'm not sure what I'm knitting now... I seem to still have seventeen things on the go but I'm not sure if any of them will actually evolve into finished objects. Time will tell...

Time keeps on slipping

So yet again it's a month between posts - but my blog is not the only thing that makes me feel like life is rushing by too fast.

My teeny tiny baby girl is three years old today and I have no idea where that time went.

One minute I've got this tiny newborn and the next I've got this super-assertive and independent grown-up girl (although she insists she's a boy; something that I originally thought was just a cute phase but it's been more than six months now and I'm thinking we may need to start saving for gender realignment surgery...)

So I'm not going to write a long post now - I have to go stare at my girl (or boy, whatever) and try to catch her being three, because it feels like tomorrow she'll be a teenager and then she'll be gone.

And another month goes by...

Golly - I hadn't realised it was over a month since I blogged AGAIN. Where did April go? When I began this blog I was a stay at home full time mother, and despite the demands of playgroup, kindergarten, housework and children I had so much free time on my hands. Two of my friends who are stay at home mothers have recently started blogs and I think it's an interesting way of staying sane when your most of your daily conversations tend to only be with people under four foot high.

Now, of course, I'm working full time, and blogging slides down the list of things to do. Add to which, my darling Katie has discovered the fine art of emotional blackmail: she stands in front of me with her five year old fists on her hips and says "What's more important? Your girls or your [knitting, computer, book, bath, etc]?" She's good! It works every time.

Despite that I have been knitting (mostly in the car when I should be working). But I have no finished objects to show because I'm just playing - having finally conquered the evil dpns, I decided that I was brave enough to have a go at magic loop knitting.

Well, for heaven's sake. Why did no-one ever tell me how easy and fun this was? All those YEARS I wasted coming to terms with dpns (okay, maybe not years but it sure felt like it) and I needn't have bothered. So I've been starting socks with different cast-ons and whizzing through a few rounds and then frogging them and starting again with a different cast-on, and so on and so on. Just because it's such fun!

So far I have two odd socks finished (both toe-up) and half a mitten (cuff down) and I'm planning another sock. I realise I should be doing the second socks but what the hell... life's too short and I'm thinking of this as a learning exercise rather than a serious sock production line.

In between the magic looping, I'm very slowly working on a lace shawl in that bamboo that's been lurking around for a while now. It's slow because I daren't take it to work with me (my car is such a tip that my knitting tends to get tangled around the junk) and I can't do it when the girls are awake because I wind up going "Shut up shut up shut up shut up I'm counting" which is not great attentive parenting, and leads to the whole hands on hips thing.

I do have one finished object - belatedly. Turns out that the baby's name is James (glad I hadn't totally lost my mind - did I mention that I'd had a serious moment of panic and decided he might be called something else?) and it fits (more or less). I rushed the seaming and it's pretty dodgy but I figure it's not an heirloom - it's a jumper that'll be worn and sicked on and dribbled on and have playdough rubbed into (you all know) so what the hell.. (Also, and this probably doesn't need reiterating, I'm very lazy.)



Now I have to go and prepare for a day of being the willing slave to my two bossy britches - I'm hanging onto the thought that you don't get strong, assertive, confident young women by having quiet, obedient, docile children - and I do want stroppy young women!