be impressed by this

I know no one wants to hear any more about my dumb phone and how I ruined it (and cost myself a bunch of money in the process) anymore, so instead I'm going to blog about a recent success that should impress the pants off you, imaginary readers.  For the sake of others, please don't read this in public.  I don't want to be responsible for your pants flying off and freaking anyone out.

I had to put my plarn mat project on hold recently to take care of a more time-sensitive crafty project.  My friend Mo is having a baby sometime soon and the Peeps threw her a baby shower last weekend.  Here's how cute it was:

There were some good eats too, and pregnant Mo is fairly precious (but her baby bump and the cheesy bacon bites are not the impressive thing).  Peep Amy made the perfect, perfect cake.

Peep Amy has a cake-decorating blog that she updates very sporadically.  Apparently working full-time and raising two of the sweetest boys in the world and creating the most amazing cakes doesn't leave her much time to write about them.  I'll forgive her if she'll continue to make me cakes occasionally.  The cake, while magnificent, is not the titular impressive thing.

 Here are the peep girls at the shower with Luke hiding his face but no Calla because she was having kind of a hard life right then.  This cute but poorly lit picture doesn't really have anything to do with the thing that's going to impress you, but I like us and we're cute, so I wanted to include it.

Technically these next few photos aren't the thing that's going to impress you either, but I do think these two delights are impressively cute.  I love them.

 I know it looks like she's just about to stand up and take off, but this is actually her method of not crawling.  She gets up like this and plants her bottom in whatever new direction she's trying to move.  It's awkward but effective.

I took roughly four thousand pictures of the tweeps on this afternoon, but in a surprising number of them, the more mobile Calla is blocking Luke. 

This face is hilarious.  She has a very skeptical brow sometimes.  And has been previously discussed on the blog, the Clintster would make a pretty, pretty girl.

So we're getting to the impressive thing just any second now:  My brilliant bit of creativity factors into the shower in the gift-opening.  Back in the fall, I made the tweeps wee striped hats since they were going to be cold-weather babies.  This baby is due in late-May and won't be requiring much in the way of warm head coverings, so I had sort of written off the idea of a knitted gift, until this book came into my life:

I was charmed by all the cuteness but intimidated by the intricacies of the patterns.  But since there were several animal projects that fit right into Mo's decorative scheme, and because I occasionally get confident (over-confident?) in my own ability to accomplish things, I ultimately decided to tackle a project for a lion that reverses to an elephant.  (Spoiler alert:  I don't think this is the last we'll see of projects from this adorable book.)

Like the irresponsible blogger/crafter I am, I didn't take pictures documenting the project, but here's what the finished project looks like:

 the lion side

 the elephant side

 the back views

 I know it's not polite, but if you look up the elephant's skirt, here's what you see:  a wadded-up lion.

 And if you look up the lion's skirt, the scrunched elephant.

 The bottoms of the heads are stitched together for some stability, so it can't be a two-headed beast, so this is the only way you can see both animals at once.

So that's how my most recent knitting turned out.  I'm just the tiniest bit proud of it, but since I learned this week not to have so much pride in my own accomplishments, I'm not going to make any promises that the little liophant won't fall apart tomorrow, but I do hope that it'll last for the next four weeks or so until the Raspberry is born.

because i'm tired of having posts that are almost ready

I always seem to be waiting around on something in order to post the millions of things I want to show you or talk about.  Most often it's a matter of not having pictures taken or transferred or whatnot.  (Well, truthfully, it's most often still being ridiculous behind on the Bible reading, but I can't even hold my head up under all that non-reading guilt.)

So even though it's midnight and what I'm about to show you is only half-finished, here's a look at my knitting progress.  When last we met in knitting discussion, I had finished a badly photographed baby hat.  The next project I began was a scarf with some yarn I stole from my moma.  For most of the winter and spring I worked on it, though really only on Wednesday nights.  I started using knitting as my fidget-buster in Wednesday night class, but I didn't make much time for it otherwise.  Recently I decided that the scarf was hideous and going nowhere, so I went in search of a better project.  Since the first baby hat was so successful and I know lots o' babies, I decided to stick with hats of various sorts.  Thanks to that center of democracy, the public library, I accessed several delightful baby knitting books and then stocked up on soft, kiddo-appropriate yarn. 

******Frugal, library-affiliated blogger's note:  You should never buy knitting or crochet books, especially since most of the books I've seen/used have only a couple of patterns I'd ever make and a dozen I wouldn't.  And once you've made something, how likely are you to make the same pattern again?  If you're the sort of person who has to write on a pattern, you probably make copies anyway.  (Not that I just advocated making photocopies of copyrighted works, though I think making a copy for the purpose keeping one's place in a pattern probably falls under acceptable use.  But don't quote me on any of that rubbish.)  But do quote me on that bit about not buying knitting books.******

My first project comes from this book:

And here's what I've got so far:

The colors might be a bit off, but the bottom of the ribbing is purple, a fairly appealing purple, if you ask me.  The pink is sweet in real life.  

It doesn't look like much yet, but I think it's going to work out.

Here's one of those world-famous live action, self-timer shots.  Pay no attention to the hideous orange shirt in the background.  Make no mistake, it's cuter in real life.

Also please notice my cute new double-point needles.  They're not as delightful to use as my bamboo ones, but I needed a smaller size.

If I were better at this whole live action shooting thing, you could see how I don't hold things correctly to be a right-handed knitter--at least that's what my moma says.  The job gets done either way.

So that's what I'm up to, knitting-wise.  I probably won't be posting a photo of the finished product for a while.  It is going to be a gift for some lucky baby I know, after all. And I have no proof to indicate that some of my imaginary readers aren't infants.  But once all my little hat projects are gifted, I'll do a recap of them all.  

Unless I forget.

******Lamely obsessed blogger's note:  It is supremely difficult to craft a decent sentence while watching NCIS episodes, especially now that I'm the proud borrower of season 1 on dvd since there are no commercial breaks.  It's amazing I finished at all.******

a bit of a ramble

It's been an odd week around here.  Snow derailed my Monday and Tuesday plans, resulting in some winners and some losers.  Two days off work with no house-cleaning guilt.  Big winner.  I didn't make it to Coldstone Creamery to cash in on my free birthday ice cream before the coupon expired (sign up for their birthday club, no unwanted emails and free ice cream once a year).  Loser.  I had time to finish a book, blog it and do a significant amount of work on a knitting project, decide it wasn't good enough, take it all out and start again.  The situation is a winner, even if I'm a loser.  The dryer repair dude couldn't come out and possibly fix my dryer because of the roads.  Loser.  But I didn't have to do any laundry during those two days off.  Winner-ish.  I saved loads of gas by not driving anywhere from Sunday night until Wednesday morning.  Frugal Ellen wins again. 

The dryer dude rescheduled for Wednesday, and our arrangement was that he would call thirty minutes before showing up.  So I decided to go to work.  Because the weather mandated a late opening, I didn't have to be at work until 11:30, so it was a bit inconvenient that I got the dryer call just before noon.  Dryer dude and I didn't hit it off immediately, as he was only about ten minutes away when he called.  I'll spare you the details of my not-so-pleasant phone demeanor because I was probably an over-reacting jerk.  So after being at work about 45 minutes, I left again.  In the first five minutes of my dryer's exam, I got great news that the problem was in the outlet, so I could have the apartment folks fix it, and I'd be back in business.  Then he took that back and decided that the real problem was in the timer switch, which is apparently as expensive to replace as a whole new dryer.  So my streak of things needing replacement in February continues.  At least it wasn't a car this time.
Since I was already home from work on a school day, I decided to go ahead and find that new dryer, in hopes of having it delivered sooner rather than later.  After doing very little research and choosing not to drive to North Little Rock or Bryant, so that I could focus on spending tons and tons of time reading labels and standing around waiting to ask questions of sales folk.  I will say that I encountered the nicest sales folk ever at both Best Buy and Home Depot.  I will also say that February is a great time to buy new appliances because everyone is running sales to cash in on all that tax refund action.  So I ended up buying the cheapest thing I could find because that's how I make decisions.  This uninspiring photo is my new Admiral (made by Maytag) dryer.  I can't show you what it looks like in my house yet because it won't be delivered until Saturday.

I'm sorry.  That was an awful lot of information about household appliances.  Sorry.

So here's something a bit more interesting (I hope).  Last winter weather incident I started knitting a scarf for someone, probably not me.  I put that on hold last week to start on a more time-sensitive baby knitting project.  I did my first project in the round and once again took no in-progress photos.  Blogging fail.  And after two false starts on circular needles (left), one too tightly cast on and another too loosely, I had to switch to double-point needles (right), which seemed like the scariest, most complicated thing ever.

As you can see from this delightful diagram lifted off the internet,  you have to put a third of your stitches on each needle and then use a fourth empty needle to knit onto.  Then once you knit all the stitches off a needle, you use that needle as the empty one.   I'm confusing myself with this.  But once you get started, it's not as bad as you might think.

And here are the results:

Here's an almost blurry flat view.  Also the colors are off in some of these.  It's a sweet little pastel variegated cotton yarn.

 

With a head inside it, it won't be so oddly shaped.  See what I mean about the colors.  I need to find some better lighting in my house.

Here's a a view of the top.  I'm fairly pleased with the decreases, especially for a first attempt.  

Most of the hat is done with a seed stitch, which is precious.

See what I mean about the colors and the lighting and whatnot?

All that knitting talk got me off track from the how I spent my week thing I was doing--maybe you didn't realize there was a purpose here.  Sorry.  Thursday I didn't go to work at all because I woke up feeling the cruddiest of cruds.  I am as certain I can be without owning a thermometer that I was running a fever, which is exhausting and ick.  But being sick is boring, so no more talk of that.

After listening to everyone in my life assure me that Lost got good again after I quit it at the end of season 4, I am considering giving it another shot.  I started watching season 1 on hulu yesterday afternoon.  I thought I might as well start with the part I definitely like before working my way back into the terrible, stupid season 4.  So I'm enjoying reliving the glory days.  We'll see how it progresses.

There was a rumor of more weather coming our way tonight/tomorrow, but something tells me I've used up my allotment of snow days for the year, so I won't be waiting around on that call tomorrow.  

The indecisive weather did have a role in canceling my planned weekend trip home to hang with my moma and the Popster, but the Saturday dryer delivery put the final nail in the that coffin.  Good news is that they're coming here next weekend.  My grams has been in Arkansas since Sunday, but dumb weather has kept me from seeing her.  Boo on that.

And surely that's enough random for one night.

hobbies, revisited

A few weeks ago, I told you, imaginary readers, about my friend Philip of a thousand hobbies and how I'm envious of his varied interests and skills. 
Today let me tell you more about my moma and her varied interests and skills.  My moma can sew, smock, embroider, knit, cross-stitch, and she's a crocheting demon.  Her cooking is something spectacular as well.  I admire all of these qualities and skills, but I have not necessarily followed in her footsteps.  I can cross-stitch and sew on the occasional button, and I'm not a bad cook, but I've got nothing on my moma.
Crochet is her big thing these days, especially since the grandgirls have outgrown the sweet, little girl styles at which she excels.  She crochets beautifully and can whip out an afghan in no time.  Eleven or twelve years ago, I got her to teach me how.  I'm sure crochet is like many other skills in that one improves with practice and careful attention.  But patience, then and now, is not in my skill set, so I soon gave up on ever figuring out how to keep even tension.  My moma, wise woman that she is, suggested that I might have more luck, tension-wise, with knitting, so she taught me that too.
Because I dream big, I chose as my first project to make an afghan in a sort of ripple pattern for my future sister-in-law (well, she was future at that time but has now been my sister-in-law for over ten years).  I progressed quite steadily at it for quite some time, but at some point in moving back and forth between college and summers at home or with classes and work and being an irresponsible college student, the knitting project fell by the wayside, and eventually the knitting bag full of a half-finished project and skeins of unused yarn stopped making moves with me.  I'd like to tell you that I was careful to return my moma's circular knitting needles to her when I finally stopped living the lie that I was going to finish the project, but I'm not even sure that I did.

Yes, I feel shame.
 Fast forward to this past fall, when the knitting bug bit and bit hard in my department at work.  Suddenly, knitting was the hot topic, and a couple of my coworkers learned to knit, taught and encouraged by the couple of coworkers who could already knit.  I stayed off that bandwagon for a while, but my desire to be more accomplished and my budding interest in our Tuesday library lunch programs brought knitting back into my life.  So when I was home week before last, I had my moma show me how to knit again.  Older and wiser, once my initial practicing was done, I started on a small project:  a dishcloth.  I started it on Friday and finished it on Monday, and the sense of accomplishment was completely disproportionate to the achievement.  But it is an awfully nice dishcloth.

My new camera and I are still getting used to each other, so I did a whole little photo-shoot for the little dishcloth that could.  The yarn is Peaches & Creme 100% cotton worsted weight.  I don't even know what worsted means.  But I have washed dishes with it already, and it works. The colors are showing fairly accurately on my monitor, so you should be able to appreciate the crazy brightness of it.  And I would like to mention that it's not quite as trapezoidal in shape as this photo suggests.  I just don't know how to use a camera.  And it was still damp from the dishwashing, which had it stretched out funny.

Yeah, that's my story . . . it was damp.  But it looks so nice in this artistic drape.  Don't you think?

This edge is my favorite part, but this picture doesn't capture the texture of what the pattern is doing there.  Also it's as crooked as a dog's hind leg, but it's the damp.

I took about a million close-ups, but I really liked them.  So you have to keep looking--and say something nice at the end.

Seriously, aren't you impressed by this?  This one might be my favorite.

There are at least four more decent close-ups of this thing that I am making myself remove before publishing.  You're welcome.  Or perhaps I'm sorry.  They are really nice photos.

I felt like an inadequate reporter for not documenting the entire process, so I got out my most purple needles and cast on a new project so I could photograph it for you.  Here's a partially knitted first row.  That orange yarn is the same kind that my dishcloth was made from, so I may make another one before venturing into larger projects. 

Then because my commitment to your thirst for knowledge is limitless, I acquainted myself with the self-timer on my camera and caught a couple of action shots.  So full of action . . . can't you feel it?  Also, it's weird to see my hands in photos. 

This one must be an action shot--look how my fingers are blurry.  Probably because I was going so fast.  That's how I roll, er knit.
It's definitely not because I can't operate a camera.  Definitely.

 Now that I'm officially a knitter (and have "borrowed" anything I thought was interesting supply-wise from my moma), you can expect semi-regular updates on my various knitting projects.  Don't however expect to see that orange piece I started tonight.  After finishing the first row, I saw that I had done something weird in the middle, and I pulled it all out again.  But the yarn will rise again.