Mid Month Report

How is it the middle of October already? And why does it feel more like the middle of November weather-wise?

Last week was rainy and chilly, this week it's been rainy and cold. There's a difference. How can you tell the difference? This week, the fire got turned on. That's the difference. Last Friday was was chilly and rainy, so what better to do than go apple picking?
Miss Kaylee is an excellent apple picker - I really wish I had taken video so that you could hear her, "I can twist and pull! I did it! I put it in your bag Aunt Annie!"
She also picked a lovely pumpkin. Can you tell that she's a bit of a ham? Perfectly posing herself for the camera.

Last Saturday was homecoming, and... first football win! Boys soccer also won that morning, as well. Football plays again tonight - in Ashtabula. Might be a bit rough. My best two linemen are injured. One isn't playing at all, and the other one is going to try - he's promised to take himself out if his elbow (which requires micro-fracture surgery, that he's putting off until after basketball season) hurts too much. Which we all know won't happen, so if he reverts to his, I'm-not-moving-my-arm-while-playing pose, I'll sit him. All 6'7" of him. Good times. Did I mention that there's a chance for rain/snow mix tonight? Can't wait!

But having the game tonight means that I've got tomorrow to myself for knitting and college football! Good games tomorrow - Texas/Oklahoma and then the big one, ND/USC. Fingers crossed. Before football though, I'm supposed to go apple picking again, with my nephews - keep your fingers crossed that the weather permits the outing. I'm hoping to up the adorable pictures with some in the pumpkin patch...

Speaking of pumpkins, I finished the first Kleine Kurbisse sock.
Here's the stitch pattern unstretched - doesn't look like much right?
But when you stretch it out, you really see the pumpkins. I love it.
I also finished up a pair of slippers for Aubrey - why is it that anything knit in baby sizes is automatically cuter?
They are to match the slippers I'm making for Peggy (her birthday present, as requested) which are currently in progress:
I've started the second one, hoping to go to Ellie's sometime this weekend or maybe Monday to felt them so I can finish them.
That picture was just for scale, the mama slippers are seriously ginormous. I got an order in from Webs yesterday, which means that after the second slipper is done, I can start another project, which is (hopefully) going to be awesome. In my head it is awesome, which sometimes worries me, other people tend to give me the "crazy look" when I think a project is this awesome.
Very excited about that pattern booklet too, it's awesome as well. Especially for this sweater - can't wait to make one. That photo, btw, gives no hint to the awesome project. You'll have to wait on that one.

The last project I though was particularly awesome - still to be featured on the blog, it hasn't been gifted yet - earned me a prize on the Harry Potter Rav group, which arrived in the mail yesterday (it was a good mail day!)
Stitch markers that are inspired by Professor Trelawney (crazy Divination teacher from the books) and are themed on tea leaf readings. Very cool.

I've been slowly adding to my Tapestry Cowl this week. It's such a time suck, just to get the 3 rounds a day. It doesn't help that I'm easily distracted while knitting it. Need to not watch anything interesting on tv while knitting on it.
But it's really pretty, and so soft, I'll be happy to wear it when it's done. I need to get going on some spinning this weekend as well.
Pretty Fire fiber. Hoping for a 2-ply DK to worsted weight yarn out of this. We'll see how it goes. This is the order that the fiber will be spun, attempting to spin the 2 halves in the same order, so there's another four bits that look just like this.
Going to be really cool, and very season appropriate. Good for football watching - because Sunday is Browns/Steelers, followed by Halloween card crafting with Meagan - it's going to be a good weekend! Hope everyone else has a good one too - especially the Jersey folks, Mom is visiting this weekend for Miss Sarah's birthday party! So jealous!

Holiday

I love holiday weekends. Especially when the holiday happens to get nice weather. I was busy this weekend - Saturday spent with Meagan (getting very little knitting done), Sunday was family day - Ellie has much better pics (I only managed to get a few of Aubrey - who is getting big, by the way), and then Monday I went to the South Euclid parade with Kaylee and company.
Kaylee is also getting big, as you can see. It was a very nice little parade - only one marching band, which I thought odd. But there were plenty of lollipops - and that was all that mattered.


After the parade, I spent the rest of the day with Meagan, crocheting furiously on what is the last project for the month of May in the HC. Sunday I was finally inspired for Herbology. It's going quickly, which is good, but mostly due to the fact that I didn't do much else but work on it on Monday. This will actually end up pulling triple duty - HC, baby blanket contest at KotS, and actually be done way ahead of time since the recipient isn't due to enter this world until December or January. But this way I'm not slogging along on it when I'm busy with Christmas knitting. I finished up the other projects for the HC this weekend too.
The book scarf. In all of it's double knitted coolness. Even if you think I live in a realm beyond Dorkdom, you need to see the coolness in this technique. Both sides get knit at the same time, on the same needle, no sewing the 2 pieces together. Seriously cool. And if you don't think so, please don't leave a comment telling me so - I'm enjoying my new trick. I didn't manage to get a decent picture of the hat I finished. I'll do that some other time.
But that's it for now. Gotta go get ready for work, hopefully there won't be any impromptu add ons to the schedule today - track is at regionals and baseball plays tomorrow so we should be good to just get paperwork done.

Christmas is coming....

Ever notice that time flies when you need it not to? Only 3 days til Christmas. Yikes. Glad to report that all but one knitting gift is done. That's right, I'm good to go, except for the Mittens of Doom. But now I can't put off working on them any longer. Wish me luck.

So onto things I can show you. Here is the Christmas tree decorating sequence.
Just the tree, all plain looking.
Jazzed up with some lights.

Ornaments too.

Some felt that I needed to be decorated as well.
All sparkly and done.
Fun huh? In that last photo, I hope you all noticed the mandatory lean, and that the tiny star is touching the ceiling - even though more than a foot and half was trimmed off before it was put up.

Other stuff I can show... ooohh, my Christmas cards! They've been mailed, probably not yet received, but I'll show them anyway.
I think they came out very nice. But I might be a bit biased.

Yarn acquisitions. Last week at Knit Night, we had the gift swap. I got this from Maggie:
It's a cotton bamboo blend, very cool and I love the colorway, haven't seen anything like it before, and I've seen my share of hand dyed yarn.

And this is a photo of the two Amazing Race presents I've gotten so far. The green is some fabulous alpaca silk from Blue Sky Alpacas, and the pink is some suede yarn that came with a pattern for a little bag. Yay fun!
Yesterday I got to baby sit for Miss Kaylee, first time in ages. I can't believe how big she's getting. She graciously allowed me to stage some photos. Even smiled, what a well behaved 2 year old!
She's starting to talk more and more, and not just talk, she first attempts to spell out new words before she will say them. That's right, my 2 year old god daughter spells more than she talks. for instance, "Kaylee, can you say balloon?" She responds "B-A-L-L-L-O-O-N" (She tends to add extra L's). Seriously. "Kaylee, who's that? (me pointing at dog Seamus)" She responds "D-O-G, dog" Crazy.

I'll leave you with the fun photo mistake, this is what happens when Annie plays with her camera attempting to take a pretty pic of the tree and accidentally puts on a timer.
Merry Christmas if I don't get to post again before then!

Too Cute

My weekend was full of cuteness. Saturday evening I got to hang out with the Perry nephews.
Didn't take too many photos, but it's quality that counts. Elliott was attempting to play with Maddie who most definitely did not appreciate the small human invading her "I'm invisible to world" space. And Mason just cools out as always, content to watch the doings of his big brother.

Then on Sunday, Peggy and the boys came out with me to meet Bridget and Kaylee at a Pumpkin Festival. And can you get cuter than kids and pumpkins? (if you disagree after looking at my photos, I direct you to my sister's blog for the pics of the Jersey kids).Granted, there wasn't too much to do with pumpkins at this fest, but who cares?
There was bouncing! And to a two year old, I think this is the highlight of their week.
Some history added in for good measure. It was hard to convince Kaylee that she should not, in fact, wrap her fingers around the Civil War era sword, that did not have a dull edge.
And an antique fire engine. Equipped with real life fire dog Dalmatian, blaring dulcimer hammer music.


The petting zoo and pony rides were obviously the best part of the day. Once again, Mason opted to just chill out.
Elliott was unimpressed by the camel attempting to share his pretzel rod.
The caramel apples were excellent. As was the lesson in sharing.

Mason had a good time. As did everyone, he just expressed it best. So like I said, no pumpkins, but lots of fun.

Back with the regularly scheduled knitting content later.

Let the madness begin

Greetings from Slap-Happy World! Well, ok, not this morning anyway. But the last few days I've been wandering around that strange wonderful for nearly all of my waking hours. That's right, it's football season again! Modified two-a-days started at 8 am on Thursday. So it's been a few long hot days in the life of Annie. I'm not complaining, I'm really happy to be back in my little world of high school sports, just trying to convey the full experience for all of you.

So, in the celebration of my life getting back to it's normal, crazy state, let me show you my training room. My training room in it's "this is as perfect and clean and wonderful as I'm going to be, so you better take a picture before the children come through and ruin it" state.

And this is from the other direction, just to give the full effect.

And the glorious-ness that is a fully stocked and organized training room. Oh tape, how the kids will try to steal you.

Seriously, that's 1280 rolls of pristine 1.5" tape, and though you can only see the one large box in the bottom right corner, there's 20,000 8 oz Gatorade cups crammed into my tiny office. What's sad, is that I'll probably run out of cups before the school year is over, and the tape will hopefully just get me through. Which is why, to the bewilderment of the athletes, I hoard them.

And a nice stocked and organized field kit before I destroy its beauty by having to rifle through it to find a particular size band aid in the 2.2. seconds before the bleeding kid has to be back on the field for the next play. sigh

And on an icky note, this is the stack of medical forms that I spent several hours inputting into the computer, sorting, alphabetizing and filing.

The icky part? This probably isn't even half of them. The really icky part, those are all the ones that I've received to this point. Which means that I will have to tell kids that they can't practice on Monday because I don't have their forms. The really really icky part, that's not supposed to be my job, it's supposed to be up to the AD to do this because it's a matter of eligibility, not medical reasons, that we have to have them.

So, as you can see, my job isn't glamorous all the time, in fact, it rarely is. I so happen to have an amazing training room. Seriously, I've worked out of broom closets before (literally) and been at colleges that hadn't updated the training room since the 50's. Maybe I'll take some pictures of the other training room I have, once I get it cleared out of all the junk that has been dumped in it over the summer. You'll see the difference.

Moving on, I've spent some good quality time with Kaylee this week, which has only added to my adventures in Slap-Happy world. BFF Bridget's mom has been in the hospital since last Thursday night with some issues that are related to the uterine cancer they diagnosed since she's been in the hospital. So, I've been trying to help out with Kaylee duty as much as possible for Bridget to be able to spend some time with Mama Fox. Yogurt popsicles make for excellent blog fodder.

The illness of Mama Fox leads me into my new knitting project. A comfort shawl for her.

It's the Tri-Aran-Angle from Knitty. For those not acquainted with the concept, a comfort or prayer shawl is knit to give comfort in a time of need, to be knit with prayer and love in every row and every stitch, nothing but good thoughts for the recipient.

Something that non-knitters usually don't realize, is that in knitting something like this, we knitters also take comfort. It gives us something to do in a situation where we feel helpless. It goes down to the reason that we knit. It allows us to put all the love we feel for the people we knit for into what we're knitting, so that we know, even if the recipient doesn't, that every time they happen to wear that knitted item, they are surrounded by that love, those good thoughts and well wishes and prayers. So to all you non-knitters out there, remember that the next time you receive a hand knitted item. That in all those hours that it took to make, the knitter was thinking of you, loving you, wishing you nothing but happiness.

Alright, I think that's enough of Mushyville in the land of Slap-Happy. Let's see if we can find something a little less emotional. How about a dishcloth?

My first attempt at anything resembling entrelac. It's the Garterlac Dishcloth. Out of some self striping kitchen cotton. Love it, as much as I can love a dishcloth anyway. Made me feel very clever. And here's a shot of where I'm at on the Spring Forward sock.

Close to the end of the leg. I'm hopeful that my motivation to knit will return after the insan- I mean two-a-days, have ended. The real fun starts tomorrow, when all the rest of the sports show up. Can I get a woot?!?