We Have a Swatch, Some Knitting & Need Some of Your Wisdom

Ok folks if you don't want to see or hear anything about the February STR kit this year it is time to move on. I'll wait.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

Since you are this far now I am guessing you want to see the pictures that I have for you.

First is my swatch. It seemed like it took forever to get gauge. From the bottom to the top is 0, 1, 2 and 3. It was rather odd that I seemed to get the same gauge with my 0 and 1. I did end up getting gauge finally with the 2, but I just wanted to make sure that was ok so I went ahead and tried the 3 just to make sure. It amazes me how much a needle size can change the patterning of the yarn.

I took all of the pictures outside on a nice bright and sunny day. =)


So I knit the toe with a size 2 and decided to use a 0 for the foot. The pattern calls for a nice tight fit for the foot so I figured that the 0's would be my best bet. I am really liking the way that they are knitting up. The yarn is so yummy and I just love the colors. As so many people have said, it isn't a color that I would have picked for myself, but I love it.


It isn't as obvious here, but the sock looks like a ummm......... uhhhhhh......... mushroom, yeah that's it, a mushroom. I have actually gotten a few odd looks from people. LOL I think it is pretty funny. Kevin was wondering what the heck I was knitting. ;)


Here I am almost to the heel. It felt like it took forever to get this far. I am guessing that it is the size 0 needles. My hands and fingers are hurting as well from it. I am excited though to get them done even though it might be too warm to wear them.

It was 81 F here today!! I about fell over. Needless to say all the windows were opened and James spent most of the day outside.


I did turn the heel with my size 2's and started on the leg. The sock fit before starting the leg. I decided to use the size 2's for the leg as well. I was all the way up the leg and had cast off, but hadn't tried it on in fear of snapping my DP needles and I was being too lazy to put them on circs. to try them on.

Well as my S-I-L always says, "Whad' ya learn?" I learned that I should have tried the dang thing on. I could get my foot in the leg with no problem, but where the turn begins to go down to the foot is where I got stuck. I am guessing high arch?

I have went up to a 4 and don't think I like the way it is knitting up. This is my first pair of toe up and I have no clue what to do to solve this problem. Any of you knit toe up sock have any info. or suggestions that you could pass my way? I am stuck staring at my sock really wanting to finish it. I don't want to go any farther for fear that I will have to rip it out again.

Thanks for any help or suggestions that you might have on the sock. Have a great day.

Since I am on the Topic of Socks.....

I have decided to tackle socks for Kevin. Wish me luck in this adventure.

I am in no way brave enough to use a fingering weight or sport weight for him yet. He has a size 17 foot for cripes sake! So the poor guy has to settle with a pair of Malabrigo socks.

I am knitting them in a generic stockinette with a K1, P1 rib at the top. It is knitting up faster than I expected it to, but I guess that is what happens when you use a worsted weight yarn opposed to a fingering weight. Plus I am using a size 5 needle instead of the normal size 1 that I am used to using.

I hope that when they are done he will like them. They are so soft and squishy. I think I might just have to make a pair for myself. I have plenty of it to go around. Wouldn't it be cute to have a pair for James too? They could be our family socks. =)

IT"S HERE!!!!!!!!!!

I would have never guessed that it was here. I looked out the front door and nothing, the back door and nothing. I know that we have a large mail box, but knew that it wouldn't fit in there. So I figured that I would have to wait another day. I went out to collect my bills and what was waiting for me????!!!! Yep my first STR Sock Club Package!!!!

I am soooooooooo freaking excited! I can't wait to get started.

From here on out are going to be spoilers of the package contents and pictures so if you don't want to know or see anything about it now is your time to move on.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Ok so if you are this far either you want to see the pictures or to read what I have to say about it. :)


First I have a picture of the package. See in the upper left hand corner? Yep that says Blue Moon!! (as always click on any picture to make it bigger). I was skipping back to the house with my package. Our dog was looking through the door at me like I had lost my mind.


Next we have the folder, and contents. The yarn is called Monsoon and is soooooo lovely! Do they know how to pick them or what! There is a flyer for Camp, discount card, emergency yarn key chain, button, bumper sticker, beautiful yarn, Dyer's Notes, Foot Notes, hints and tips on making socks to fit friends and family and the pattern called "Inside Out"

What a wonderful first package. This is my first time being in any sock club and I am already having a blast.


I have glanced over the pattern and it a toe up pattern with ribs and cables. I have never done a toe up or cabled pattern on a sock before. So there are going to be many new things that I will get to learn. Not only does the sock look so cool and pretty it can also be worn inside out! How freaking ingenious is that?!


I will leave you with one last picture. A closer picture of the yarn. It is actually a little lighter in color than this picture, but it is very close considering I took it inside with a flash and no natural sun light. I have it all packed and ready to go with me to knitting tonight. I hope that the other ladies at my FNSLYS got theirs today too.

Waiting, Waiting and Still Waiting

STR

I am one of the ones that are still waiting for their Rockin Sock Club Package. I want it so bad I can taste it. They have a blog set up for all the members and yesterday just about put me over the edge. There were people posting right and left that they got their package. My mail man had come and gone yesterday and today leaving me with nothing but bills. So I am stuck here waiting for Monday in hopes that it will come, but I am not holding my breath. I feel like a child at on Christmas Eve. This is so crazy. :) This was all that I asked Kevin to get me for my Birthday. It is a great gift that keeps on giving through the year.


ADS

Some of you might have noticed on left hand side that I now have ads and a search section. There are so many things that need to be done and taken care of that I was hoping to make a little money that way. If you don't know already, I am a stay at home mom and sadly I don't make any money at doing that. I feel that my contribution to the family is less than what it should be. I have an Etsy store set up that I was told I should do from friends and family, but it isn't going well either. I sold 1 knitted hat around Christmas and that is it. I don't know where I am going wrong. I was hoping that with the adds and the search section I might be able to make a little to help out. We are currently having to get our kitten spayed, looking at a $400 + propane bill whenever they decide to come out and fill the tank again, we have to get the breaks fixed on my vehicle, Kevin needs to have work done on his beater truck that he drives to work, he needs to get to a hearing specialist too and quite a few other things. Sadly you have to have money to do all those things and they always seem to happen all at the same time. Ugh.

If you could just click on one or more of the adds when you visit I would greatly appreciate it. It is quick and painless. If you have them on your site I will do the same for you. Thanks!


KNITTING

I have no pictures to show you of my knitting progress this time. Sorry. I am working on a pair of socks for my cousin though. I am using Trekking XXL Color 102. This is the first socks that I have made with it and I am loving how the colors are coming together. I am not going to want to give them away when they are done I know it. At least I am enjoying knitting them and it is something that is keeping me somewhat sane while I am waiting for my STR package.


PICTURE

I will leave you today with a picture of James playing in the tent that I made him with his table and chairs. He had a great time.

Moving Along

We all survived the power outage without too much incident.

Our phone is still screwed up. It rings funky when it decides to ring. Then it will some times connect then some times not. If you are lucky enough to get through to the voice mail you might, just might be able to leave a message. The phone company is working on it, but I don't know when it will be fixed. It is quite annoying.

Last Monday was the day from hell. If it could go wrong it did. The top 2 things on my list that went wrong was 1) the computer and 2) the vehicle.

First was the computer. I got up that morning and went to check my email. It came up to a black screen with something claiming a disk error. I freaked. I shut down the computer and tried again. Nothing changed. I freaked again. Kevin told me that it was fine when he was on it that morning. Ok so this is the 2nd computer that has worked fine the last time he was on it. What the man does to computers I have no idea, but they just don't seem to like him. I call a local computer repair and they tell me to bring it in. It doesn't look good they tell me. It seems to be the hard drive! Ummmm it CAN'T!!! I still have loads of James' pictures that I haven't gotten off of it!! That was one of my goals that morning. Computer guy tries a few things and shakes his head. I am then told that it doesn't look good and I probably have lost ALL data! Not an option in my mind. James' 2nd birthday, Christmas, etc, etc are all on it. That is something that I can't get back. So I leave and cry all the way home. I cry for the rest of the night at the thought of not having any of those pictures. I am a horrid mother for loosing them!

We will move on to the 2nd thing. The Yukon. This happened before I took the computer down to the repair store. I used the remote starter to start and warm it up before I left to drop off the computer and head out for an evening of knitting. The remote start failed to start it. It tried multiple times and nothing. I went out to try and it would just go urururur. So it wasn't the battery and it was trying to start. So I waited until Kevin got home. He got it started and took it down into town to have it hooked to a code reader. It said that there was a misfire in the #2 cylinder. So when he gets back I grab my knitting and the computer and head into town.

By the time I got finished at the computer repair shop I had no nerves left. It was an hour drive to my NSLYS and by the time I would have got there it would have been time to head back home. So I decided that I would just go home. I don't think I would have made good company anyway and I know that I wouldn't have been able to hold back my tears.

So not only did I have a broken computer I also had a broken vehicle. I was afraid to drive it anywhere in fear that it might not start back up. So I stayed home and tried not to think about the computer. That was a hard task. Then on top it it the phone was and is still on the fritz. I swear that I was having some sort of nervous break down. I was mentally and physically exhausted.

I guess you all have figured out that the computer is back now. Since I am blogging and all. If you made it this far I am sure that you are wondering what happened with the hard drive. The wonderful guys at Aurora Computer Center replaced my hard drive then took the bad one put it into an enclosure and ran a program on it through another computer. They recovered ALL the pictures and from what I can see all my documents, spread sheets etc. I am amazed! The price was more than reasonable as well. If you have a computer problem and are in the area I would highly recommend them. Not only do they have good prices, but they are very nice and seem to really care about their customers. They go above and beyond to make you happy and to do whatever that they can to get you back up and running.

The car is fixed as well. It needed a new distributor and rotor button, but the main problem was a vacuum line had cracked and was leaking. Kevin fixed it and it is up and running again. Granted it needs plugs, but he cleaned and re-gaped them and it is doing fine.

Time to look on the sunnier side of things and hope that things get better from here on out.

If you got this far I have to share a few pictures with you of James at his Grandma's and Grandpa's. He had a great time with all the balloons.

When Without Power....

As some of you know if we didn't have bad luck we would have no luck at all.



It all started with the lovely ice storm that we had then the snow on top of that. We had trees down that fell across some power lines up the street and they had to cut the electricity our direction to fix it. So at 7 pm we had no power.



Kevin and I took shifts staying up to make sure that things were ok, the house wasn't getting too cold and that the candles didn't start some sort of fire. I took the first shift of staying up while he went in and slept. By 3 am I couldn't hold my eyes open any longer and went in to tag out. The electric came on at about 4:30 just to go out again. It came back on again about 8 am and we ran around doing as much as we could before it decided to go back out, which it did at about 11 am. We then had no phone either and the cell phones didn't want to work. So we were without all technology for a while.



Since I had to do something to keep myself awake I knit by candle light. It wasn't as bad as I thought that it would be. The candles threw quite a bit of light and I used a light colored yarn against dark needles for contrast. Where are the lighted needles when I needed them?.































This is a dark picture of my knitting. I decided to knit a wash cloth. I figured that it was easy and if it went horribly wrong I wouldn't be weeping while ripping it back out.



We got power back on around 3 pm and of course, then we went through the taunting of the power coming on and off. Poor James was so confused by the entire thing.


All in all we were without power for over 20 hours. It sounds like quite a bit especially having a 2 year old and trying to figure out what to fix him to eat when we had no power. I can't complain too much about it though. There were people who were without power for 5 days or more.

I have much more to tell you all about what has gone on since last week. I will tell you more in posts to come.

Hope everyone is staying warm and Have a Great Weekend!

I will leave you with a pretty picture of a tree in our front yard.
(click for larger picture - there is a pretty bright red male cardinal in the tree)

Yarn Stash Mess

Our poor extra bedroom. It has been designated for all the yarn and it currently is a complete mess. Yarn is all over on the floor, on top of dressers, in boxes, in bags and piled in the closet. This is not going to be fun to organize. Where do I even start? The room is going to have a single bed, a dresser, a corner shelf and a cedar chest so I have to get it organized enough to get all that in there too.

Ok so I never realized how much yarn that I have. WOW I have a lot. Granted I do have quite a bit of sock yarn and that is always ok, right? Then there is at least 3 sweaters that I haven't gotten a chance to make for myself, so once I get busting on that the stash should go down quite a bit.

Ok so this picture doesn't look too bad, but just wait it gets worse, much worse.



This is 1 corner of the room. See the basket? Yes it is over flowing with yarn and there is even more behind it that you can't see.



Here we have one of the longer walls in the room. There is yarn crammed in everything except for the Central box (that has computer wires and other computer related stuff in it). As you can see I couldn't get it all in. The yarn is spilling over to the left of the picture.



Here we have more on the floor. There are many layers to this, so it isn't just one layer on the floor. There are probably 3 layers of bags toward the back. Is it bad to have this much yarn? But wait there is more!


See the white boxes on the left and right? Yep you guessed it, all full of yet even more yarn. Do you see a pattern here? LOL


I think this is the saddest picture ever. It is even more yarn in the bottom of the closet. All just thrown there until I can get to it. It looks so unloved, but believe me I love each and every skein, hank, ball, cake or what ever form it might be in. Since this truly doesn't show how much is here I will tell you that the top bag is at least at the 4 ft high level! Yes that is all yarn in there. Some is in bags, some in totes, some in baskets while others are free ranging and roaming on their own.


As I said before where do I start? Well here of course. My dear friend Sara left this shelving when she moved. So I now have a place to put the yarn. Thank You Sara.

Now comes the fun part of taking all the yarn our of the closet, all of the bags, baskets, containers etc. and figuring out where I want it all to go on the shelving. I foresee this being a long, long, long project.

I will take some after pictures once I get it some what arranged. I hope that it will all fit. LOL

The Time Has Come

The time has come that I need to release some of my stash. It has taken over an entire closet plus. I have listed a few things on the Destash blog. Come over and take a look. I will be listing more soon. Click on the picture on my side bar or the one below to get you there. My items are the ones "Posted by: Tonia". There are many other good deals there as well. So stop by and take a look around. Hope that you find something that you can't live without.