conversations with invisible pigs and sheep

I’m working on a new baby project, and remembered I hadn’t put up pics of my last (made for Don’s office mate):

This is the second time I’ve made the “Made with Love” baby cardigan. This is in Cascade 220 Superwash, and is in the 6-12 month size. Brown because when I started, they weren’t sure what they were having. I got the buttons when they found out they were having a girl. Since I had one extra button, I thought it would be cute on the hat, for more of the matchy-matchy.

Jim had the day off after the race, and had earlier decided he wanted to “go to the city”. We played tourist on Wednesday…

We had an ambitious plan. Patco train into the city (adding at least a half hour to the trip, but money-saving, and a bonus for Colin). Liberty Bell and then Independence Hall. In between these we had to stop and get tickets for the Independence Hall tour. The boys got Junior Park Ranger badges, and we got souveniors for the family. And before the tour we got pretzels. I wanted to get a bunch from a real pretzel store, but there weren’t any to be found in the area, so we got them from a cart. Still goooood, though.

The boys were decent for the tour, which lasted about 45 minutes. After, we had pizza at the Bourse and then started our walking tour. Chinatown, the Domino (and other toy) sculptures, and Love Park. We missed the Phillies rally, but saw everyone leaving it. Walked by my old office (a Jim request), stopped at Walgreens to see if we could print some of our pictures (we couldn’t) and ended up getting Wall-E toothbrushes to keep the boys entertained for the rest of the day. Until Jim tried to clean some brick (UGG!) with his.

Then Mommy’s part of the trip — yarn store! On the way, we walked through Rittenhouse Square. Colin had fallen asleep in the stroller. There was a bunch of guys, street musicians, with bongos, and trumpet, etc., and a young kid was dancing. Well, Jim went up and joined him (fear of strangers, not!). It was the best part of the day. Jim had such a great time, and the other guy got a kick out of him. Very, very cute.

Colin stayed asleep through the yarn store. Got stuff that I’d been wanting for a while but needed to see/touch, and got supplies for school presents.

Lastly was the train ride home again, back in time for dinner.!

First stop, the Liberty Bell

Next, Independence Hall

Colin enjoys his pretzel

William Penn (City Hall)

Jim at Love Park (fountain water dyed red for the Phillies)

Jim in Rittenhouse Square

Well, it seemed like it up to today. I started making warm hats for the boys. This pumpkin hat pattern has been in my files since Jim was Colin’s age, and the leaf part always seemed daunting. Then I thought Jim would be too old for it. I even had the yarn for it. But Colin is the perfect age, and in the end, it took me less than a week to finish. I need easy knits for sitting at karate. So next up is a striped hat for Jim. I picked up coats for him and Colin over the summer, and Jim’s is orange with blue and white trim, so a blue hat with white stripes it is. And Colin will probably get green with blue stripes.

I actually have a lot of knitting projects “open” right now, including a shawl I’m hoping to finish by the end of the month for our church auction, and Nana’s Christmas present.

Otherwise, dad is sick, I’m finally not sick, and Colin seems to be getting sick again. Jim is currently medication-free, and doing excellently.

I’m trying to figure out when I’m going to get to work on their halloween costumes.

Our first Lenten season. We’re giving up the video games. It hasn’t been hard — there’s been reading and knitting to fill me time. Jim asks every day if he can watch us play Pokemon, or if we caught any Pokemon while we were sleeping, and we remind him that we aren’t playing them.

In cleaning out the pantry to make room for the “diet” foods (Dad’s joining my lowfat campaign), I got two bags of food for the church’s food pantry. We dropped it off at the rectory on Wednesday, and were going to kill time at Home Depot before the service started at the big church, but as I pulled up to the main street, I saw that the big church’s lot was filling up. Turns out I had the service time wrong, and we would have missed it if we hadn’t dropped off the food.

I’m working on a knitted blanket for charity, using up the bunches of Dale of Norway baby wool that I have. It’s too small a gauge for me to complete anything before it’s outgrown, but held double, it makes about worsted weight, and the blanket is nice and soft and sproingy. And it’s machine washable, so, there’s that too. I’ve also decided that most of my knitting will be done out of my stash from now on, until I can get the stash down to one tub.

This less than one skein wonder is the Knot Cap by Knitty Keen in white cashmerino aran (Debble Bliss). It’s the 0-6 month size, with two mods. Instead of knotting the “stem”, I sewed the end down to make a loop. I also made the ribbing much longer and folded it up. I made this same cap for Colin before his was born out of remnants of the same yarn, and wish I had been able to make the brim longer, and I wasn’t happy with the knot in his cap either.

This was a gift for a young woman in our RCIA class who’s due at the end of February.

So, last week I found out I have inherited my family’s tendency towards high cholesterol. There’s that tendency, plus the list of foods the doctor told me to cut down on? Well, that’s been the makeup of my pregnancy/post-pregnancy/feed the kids diet for the past three years: eggs, cheese, red meat, fried food.

So, it’s high, and my LDL is also high, but the doctor thinks we can change it with diet. Since this is the family of the future, I downloaded some software to track my intake of fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol, and found out what my intake of these should be, to reduce my cholesterol numbers.

So, of course I have put in in my height and weight into the software to calculate my caloric intake, and I’m told that I need to lose weight (duh?). So this is a new diet on many levels. Family now have an added challenge of either offering a low-fat option for me along with what the family eats or sometimes having a new low-fat meal. So for Colin’s birthday dinner, I made chicken cacciatore (not an authentic recipe, for sure) to go along with the lasagne that everyone else got to eat. Last night it was chicken stir-fry, and the night before was pot roast, but I only had one piece of roast. The good thing is that with all this cooking, there’s leftovers for lunch.

It’s kind of like being on Weight Watchers, but less strict. I’m not limiting my calories as much as if I were trying to “diet”, because I’m still nursing. But I also think that I’ll be able to cut down on calories as my appetite decreases. I’m already having an easier time today.

In the the “nothing much but” category… With all the cooking, there’s more veggie preparation too. Last night I cut my finger making the veggies for the stir fry. It hurts like crazy, and the cut is right where I rest the needle on my finger when knitting. So, I have to stop knitting on Jim’s sweater for now. Which bugs me because it’s so close to being done — just the neckline and seaming.

So, with no knitting, I picked up a sewing project. Which means cleaning up my office first. I got that done (amazingly), and I’m working on some aprons for two little girlfriends of Jim’s, and maybe one for me, too.

I just spent an hour or so working with all the video I imported into iMovie. I should work in smaller pieces, because it got overwhelming and I had to stop.

So here’s something more familiar:

It’s a new sweater for Colin, can’t remember when I started it, but I finished it New Year’s Day. It’s supposed to big 12-18 months, but he’s swimming in it. I have to take more pictures — Eeyore is on the buttons. I’ve coveted this sweater ever since I saw the pattern, and it came out fantastic. Something with which I’m very happy.

Colin eats spaghetti

Colin is smitten with Elmo

jim in hoodie

my sunshine

nana’s flower basket shawl

Every day Jim wants me to buy him toys. Taking him along Christmas shopping is trying because of this.

I finished my big Christmas knitting project Saturday afternoon, leaving myself just about 20 hours for it to block and dry. I think the house is so dry that it was done by the time we got home from dinner Saturday night. It was a shawl for the boys’ Nana (Dad’s grandmother, the kids’ great-grandmother). I took some pictures in the terrible light we had Sunday morning — it was raining. But I still need to get Photoshop on the new computer before I can post them.

I still have shopping to do, and I’m trying to churn out two presents for Jim’s two teachers. I’m making less complicated fingerless mitts than I made last year, and I’ve got one done and another started. I picked up black and white cashmerino, but I think I’m going to just make two black pairs. His one teacher wears black most of the time, and the other seems to wear bright colors, so black should match with most anything.

Oh, and I also have shepherd costume to make, for Jim’s play on Friday morning.

I just took off my shoes and discovered that I quickly sprouted a hole in each of my socks. And this is my last pair of handknitted socks (and the first I knit!). I’ve only made four pairs — one as a gift, one pair that I felted in the dryer, this pair, and another that sprouted a hole in the leg area after washing. I think if I can track them down, I have a good chance of frogging it down to the hole and reknitting it, as a quick relief for warm socks.

With no showings, we had a busy weekend. While Dad worked from home Saturday, the boys and I visited some of Mom’s extended family. Jim loves visiting his Poppy, and we got to go swimming — plus Jim got to play with some dogs, big and little.

Today I finished a knitting project, took pictures of the new house, and tried to rest — my back is bothering me terribly. Probably a physical manifestation of the stress of trying to sell the house, but it really hurts.

The house pictures are in the album. Here’s a peek at the knitting:

And, because this was so darn cute… Jim getting ready for school tomorrow:

Colin does sleep. At least, he naps…

The AC was finally fixed yesterday, although it took a long time. But we’re cool now. We had a relaxing day after going to the hardware and grocery stores. Jim was tremendously well-behaved — making it to the top of his rewards chart before dinner.

I’ve finally got the length of the back of Jim’s sweater done, and just have the shoulder shaping to do.

Mostly, I’ve been working on photos all afternoon and evening. So, the August, September, and New House/Construction albums have been updated.

Tomorrow — preschool orientation!

because it’s one thing I can do without breaking a sweat. No AC today, and now we don’t know when it will be fixed.

I got a chance to measure Jim’s sweater, and I’m getting 4.5 stitches/inch instead of 5 or 5.5, so I’m about 1.25 inches off. Which pushes the width of the sweater into the next size range (5-6 years). So, I plan to knit the lengths for that size, and I’ll have the right sized sweater with some room to grow.