Went well

I volunteered in Sierra’s class today and it went pretty well.  The teacher did kind of get on me for not helping a kid write his “a.”  He wasn’t writing it correctly and I was waiting for him to finish the letter he was working on when the teacher thought I should grab his hand and do it for him.  They are sitting on the floor and with my bad back I just had a hard time with that.  I even mentioned to the teacher when she assigned me to that station that I couldn’t do a lot on the floor with the kids because of my back.

The kid who was having a problem with the letter “a.”  Doesn’t speak English, either.  He speaks Assryian and so that made it really difficult to try to communicate.  I know some Spanish, but that really didn’t help me in this situation.

I tried to keep an open mind and stay positive.  The teachers did get in a bit of a misunderstanding in the beginning of the class.  I couldn’t be there the whole day, only 2 hours.  I am going to try and go every Thursday.

Even though I am pointing out the negative here, I wasn’t really trying to watch for it.  I was just trying to get a feel for the class as a whole and I think that the teacher did a fine job.

So, what Tony had told me from his experience and what I observed were completely different, from black to white.  Odd, huh?

Another interesting thing is that one of the little girls asked me not to leave.  She told me I was the class helper, their friend and that I had to stay.  I told her I would come back to help next week.

Soy Wool = yummy

I should be in bed so I can get up early for school. I still have the anxiety that I will sabotage myself and sleep through the class. I only have 3 alarms set, is that enough or should I get another one? I think Tony’s cellphone has an alarm I can set. On Sunday night I slept with my cellphone in my hand, it has an alarm and vibrates (yeah, don’t go there…you bad people.)

Look, here is Patons SWS (Soy Wool Stripes.) It is 70% wool and 30% soy and it is very soft. The colors stripe and sort of remind me of Noro.

This would kill some people (Deneen) to know I casted on another project, oh when I have a million and one things I am still working on. The colors aren’t exact because of lighting issues. Did I mention how soft this is?

I am going to present this at my job interview as a possible project to teach.

edited to add:  I know I said I wasn’t going to start any new projects…however, it isn’t September yet.  hee hee…

Finished Hat and Sock Progress

I finished another hat. This one turned out wonderful. I am going to mail this to Cordelia. Maybe she won’t read this? I actually did this a week ago or maybe more and hesitated if I should post it on my blog. I have been very lazy with my mailings. Send positive thoughts her way today.

The hat is crocheted from a pattern about 10 posts before this one, too tired to look right now.  It is in Plymouth Wildflower DK yarn, color green (or whatever fancy name they have for green.)

With the hat is the “dreaded” second sock. It is a jaywalker sock. I am working on this at a snail’s pace.

What have I been doing? Well, since you asked (okay, you really didn’t but humor me…) I have been setting up the new bulletin board Fiber Freaks. I have told you about it, right? It is an online community where knitters AND crocheters can talk about both with each other. We are breaking down the walls here. Knitters and crocheters can socialize. Good stuff!

Actually, it was my discovery at a crochet only board that there were “closet knitters.” They showed there crochet on the bulletin board and their knitting on their blogs. We all know that knitting and crochet have their place and there is a lot of grey (as well as a multitude of other colors) that overlap so it just isn’t all black and white. Okay, you get the point and I am tired and my eyes are blurring…

Tomorrow I am going to go to my yarn activity group with a local club so I should have some progress to show you tomorrow on something! (promise…yeah, yeah…you have heard that before…)

First Day of Kindergarten

Sierra could not wait for this day to come.  She loves school so much it is hard to contain her enthusiasm.  She didn’t cry and almost laughed when I asked her if she was going to.  She was confident, got her name tag from the teacher and was probably the happiest kid in her class.  School went fine for her, her biggest problem was that she apparantly locked herself in the bathroom, but was later saved by a big kid, you know a “six of seven year old.”  When I picked her up from school she accused me of being late when I was right on time, they were all early.  The nice thing about her school is I can volunteer their whenever I want to and it is only a block from my house.

I have a story to tell about a local park I went to today, but will have to tell it later.

Jaywalkers finished

Pattern: Jaywalker, largest size
Needles: size 2

Yarn: Claudia’s Handpainted yarn, color purple haze (which does not photography well.)

The color of these socks are an electric purple and a reddish/orange. There is black in there too and really these socks remind me of lava. I absolutely love this yarn and will be buying more of it one day in the future when I have money again.

I have organized my crafting space and am very happy about it. I put my ball winder to good use and I wound up lots of remnant balls of yarn. I am amazed on how much yarn I have that isn’t a full ball of yarn. These are all from projects that I have finished which didn’t require the whole ball of yarn. I need to think of creative ways to use up this yarn. Maybe I need to try intarsia or something that incorporates various colors of yarn. Also, I have been winding up projects that I started that I won’t finish. Some of these are knitting projects that when I started them I was inexperienced or lacked the right tools so just tried something that I thought would work but didn’t. It is a learning process and I am comfortable with reclaiming the yarn and using it for a project that I am happy with. Also it makes my WIP’s much smaller.
I am not done with my crafting area as I really could use a couple of shelves, but it is a start. My goal right now for this blog and for my knitting/crocheting is to have one finished project per week.

I know some people have more but I think this is something I can manage.

Current WIP:

Clapotis w/ sari silk yarn. (I looked at this and I wound the sari silk into balls and man it is dirty. I am not ready to start working on this. This could be something I don’t look at until after the first of the year, I don’t know.)

Socks – basic ribbed sock pattern

Sweat Pea Shawl – crochet project, near complete but am blah about the yarn choice. It isn’t yarn for me, but maybe someone else will like it.

Angelica Tunic – I have one sleeve to complete and then I need to pull out the bind off of the body and add a few more inches as I think it is too short and needs a longer body for my body type. I have kind of stalled on this as I realized that varigated yarn does not look good on a big body. I should have chosen a color that was a solid color. I plan on finishing this within the next few weeks, whether I like it or not.

Sierra is sick, cough, sore throat, 101 fever. It sucks and has kind of messed up my day today. I know that is selfish but in the past year I have had to cancel more stuff because of her or Madeleine getting sick. It is frusterating. Building better immune systems, right? I think I need to make her wash her hands more often.

The story of a Bag

This is a little story about a bag, a version of Dawn's Well Traveled bag.  First, I crocheted the bag using Dawn's pattern, however I did it all in HDC.  The reason is because I was crocheting the bag in one single color, so I did not need a thin stripe and since I was felting it I knew it wouldn't matter if it was single or half double.  

So, I finished crocheting it with the yarn that Deneen gave me and that I had dyed with Kool-Aid and food coloring.  I got this lovely colored bag.  I absolutely loved the colors.  
Then, came a HUGE PROBLEM!  I felted the bag and the colors faded to pastels, and icky pastels.  I couldn't handle it.  I stared at the bag and just could not deal.  So, in a fit of rage I got out the dye pot and threw the bag in there with the only dye I had, red colored Kool-Aid.  This happened so quickly, I did not take a picture, but I guarantee it was a fugly sight.

Out of the dye pot came this pukey raspberrry colored thing.  You could still see the icky throwup orange underneath the red color.  It sickened me.  No other colors.  I had no other dyes.  What was I going to do?

Then, my head thought of that purple color, you know, that color that stains everything when your child has thrush.  Gentian Violet.  Now, I have wondered in the back of my head if you could dye yarn with it.  This isn't a new thought for me, and I was desperate.  

So, I took the raspberry fug and put it back into the pot with the hotest tap water I could get (enough to cover the bag) and added way too much Gentian Violet that I had mixed with another packet of strawberry Kool-Aid.  My though was the KA had the citric acid.  I was out of vinegar.  

One thing about Gentian violet is that it is alcohol based.  So, I was kind of afraid of heating my dye pot.  My fear was too much heat could cause a fire, yet I really do not know this for sure.  Knowing my luck it would happen and then Raspberry fug would be scorched. 
I let it sit in the dye for about 30 minutes, it got kind of milky, but it never exhausted.  I have a few theories why it didn't exhaust.  The first is that I didn't have the stove turned on.  The second is that I think I used way too much Gentian Violet.  I think it doesn't take very much to get a nice rich purple.  The third is maybe I didn't wait long enough.  I don't know.  

I rinsed the bag in the sink with dish soap and hot water.  I then threw the bag in the washing machine on hot water and added some synthrapol.  

Here is the final results of dyeing the bag.  I am very happy with the purple that I got.  You can still see some undertones of the red color, but I think that is a nice part of the bag.  Pardon the lint on the bag, it isn't a finished product as I need to clean the lint off, line it, add purse clasps, add grommet holes, and add a purple leather strap.  All of that dyeing and washing really felted the bag.  The dimensions of the pattern after felting is  7”x9”x4”.  My bag's dimensions are 7"x7"x4".  At one time the bag was longer and I think it was 9".  Oops…

This purse will be auctioned off at my mother's club, to raise money for the local children's crisis center.   (Thanks Dawn for giving me permission to use your pattern for this.)

To Washington

We are leaving to Washington, although we will probably stay in Portland tonight at Tony's sister's house. Tuesday we will be off to Washington. We plan to stay there until Friday or Saturday and then drive on back and hopefully spend the weekend at home sleeping.

If you live in Washington and want to meet up (Kel?) Send me an email with your details, like phone number.

For those in the loop, my mom is doing good. She is home now and that is wonderful news and is what is making my trip to Washington possible. I wouldn't be going if I thought for one moment that she needed me or wasn't okay.

Well, got to go packing the car before Tony crabs at me and we argue…not a cool way to start off a vacation. (ps…he slept and I didn't…wah!) (I get to sleep in the car…wah….so more…) (I don't even own sunglasses…) Who thinks the trip North in the car with a 5 year old and 2 year old is going to be pure torture? (raises hand…) Yikes!

Okay, so that is enough complaining I just had to get it out of my system. (For all of you who go to Hawaii for vacations without the kids, I envy you.)

Summer school blah…

I started Summer school. It was 5 hours per day/4 days a week/for 7 weeks. Today was the 4th day and after realizing I could not memorize bone anatomy, skull anatomy, and spine anatomy in one day I quit it. The teacher said it would be 5 hours of class per day with 3 hours of homework at night. I tried it and decided I would rather take my time in this course and learn the stuff and get an A, then just rush through it, do it half-assed and then get a C. The way my gpa is, it is important that I learn the stuff and that I do exceptionally well.

The good news is I will get to go on vacation at the end of the month with my husband to Washington for a longer period of time than we originally expected. The bad news about this is that it will put applying to nursing school further out. However, I did pick up 2 other courses and so am hoping it will help boost my gpa so when I do apply for nursing school I will have a better chance at getting accepted.

Also, the good news for me and for all of you is that my other classes don’t start until next month, so I get a whole month of free time, crafting, hanging out, relaxing, chill’n….etc.

This brings me to my next point is that I have been having some minor problems with my health and I need to relax and not stress my body and everything out right now. I need to take it easy and take care of myself. Hopefully my minor problem is a big fat nothing and everything will be hunky/dory in my crazy crafting world. Apparantly it takes a week for insurance stuff to be verified to even get an appointment to see the almighty-know-it-alls and get tests done. I have been a little anxious.

For my birthday my husband bought me a swift and a ball winder. So, when I do get anxious, I have found winding yarn into balls to be quite relaxing. Tony thought it will be pretty funny if I start buying yarn just to wind it into balls. I love it when he gives me crazy ideas and excuses to buy more yarn, ha ha. I wish I had the time to use all of the yarn I have. I have a lot of WIP’s. I think I am going to spend the next few weeks finishing those. I might even get the “dusty” sari silk clapotis out and finish that. I have some socks almost done. I have the angelica tunic almost done. I just need some finishing time.

Happy Birthday “Bay-Bah”

My Madeleine turned 2 today.

Yep, that is a “poor man’s candle,” aka match. Aunt Diane gave Madeleine, a little party with her cousin Brooke and sister, Sierra. We had a lot of fun.

My little 12 pound baby is growing up.
This is how I remember Madeleine when she was born…

12 pounds…3 ozs.

eta: Yes, she was born via C-section. I wanted to have a VBAC, but the hospital wouldn’t let me. Thank goodness I didn’t try for a vaginal birth. I do believe I had gestational diabetes that wasn’t diagnosed during my pregnancy. At 3 weeks after she was born her weight dropped down to 10 lbs 3 0zs. Then she started gaining. Her growth chart was pretty funny. Some babies go from a low weight on the growth chart and then steadily climb. Madeleine’s line decreased. When she was a year old she was only 50% for weight and height with a 30% head.

Happy Birthday to me!

Today was a great day. Thank you for all of your birthday wishes. I wore my birthday tie-dye, which is a bright tank top that I wear every year on my birthday. Tony made me an awesome dinner and a cake. Look at this cake! This is the first time he ever baked a cake.

Sierra helped with some of the decorations. I don’t know about you, but my first cake looked nothing like this. This is the first time in the 8 years that we have been together that he baked me a birthday cake. He really made today a special day for me.

I finished crocheting a bag. This time I got the straps on in the right spot. I really like the shape of this bag. 

Here it is fulled. I couldn’t get it to felt anymore and the strap is a little too long. I will try to felt it one more time. I made this for a friend, so am hoping that if she doesn’t like the strap she can cut it and then sew it back on so it is a good length for her. It is a belated baby gift and I thought would be a nice diaper bag…or in her case…carry her yarn and some diapers bag. Either way, I hope she likes it. It is from the yarn Deneen sent me and was dyed with easter egg dye. I noticed in the felting process the colors became lighter. This is the first time I have had that happen, but most of my dyeing has been with Kool-Aid, not food coloring. I still like the results.