my apologies. the peanut is going through another growth spurt, i think. i swear that she looks bigger today than she did yesterday! she's been sleeping really crappy lately. a lot of late night screaming. yesterday, i was so bleary eyed and exhausted that i literally passed out when she took her nap. people, i do not nap. at least, i don't do it well. 9 times out of 10 i lay down to nap and my mind is buzzing and i can't fall asleep. so yeah, i'm pretty tired. last night she awoke again around 1:45AM and i had to go in and flip her on her back and go back to bed while listening to her cry. she was ok, just a little freaked out. if i had stayed with her, she would have cried for longer. yikes, i'm tired!
in my tiredness haze, i'm thinking about abandoning my gleek.net gallery. good or bad idea? i'll leave it there but i'm thinking about using flickr now as my primary place for images. i figure that if flickr ever gets bought out and defunct, i can always go back to my gallery because i keep everything saved on my hard drive. thoughts? i really want to use the flickr community more and uploading to two destinations is getting tiresome.
so anyway, speaking of flickr, i uploaded some pics of the spiders annual eat, knit, and be merry party at marie's that we had last weekend. we did a one sock swap and i gave my nutkin to its recipient, katie.
katie shows off my nutkin i made for her
i also made that cute bag too but didn't get a pic of it. you can see it on katie's site. i LOVED knitting the nutkin. it's cabling without cables. brilliant no? here's another pic of it.
love that toe
i did a short row toe for the first time. it was very easy and wow, i love how this one is finished. a little 3-needle bind-off right where the toe meets the foot of the sock. cute cute.
we are some serious knitters
i love how everyone in this picture is knitting. believe it or not, this party was a blast as are all of the spiders parties!
mmmm, so happy
here is the lovely sock that nancy made for me!! (ravelry) I LOVE IT SO! i can't wait to cast on for the second one... and i think that everyone is just as happy with theirs!
hahaha, couldn't resist
couldn't resist a group shot! anyway, it was a successful swap and party. full set on flickr.
i've got some videos to show you and other things to talk about but it'll have to wait till next time!
don't tell anyone.. but i'm knitting this sock for the spiders one-sock swap. no details as i don't really want to give away who it's for! all i can say is: koigu and nutkin (ravelry). i think that i've said too much already!
spiders one-sock swap (say that ten times fast)
so anyway, when i picked up the needles to cast-on for this project, KP cleared his throat and reminded me that i still had to knit him a companion sock to the first one i had completed. i think that i had to stop my head from spinning around and fire shooting from my eyes. after taking a good look at ravelry the other day, i realized that it's been 10 months since i've knit something for myself. at this rate, it may be a whole frackin' year until i do! no wonder the knitting mojo is so low. lovely virginia asked me if i would be casting on something for myself soon. god, i hope so! i'm hoping that this sock swap will give me an FO fast! like before the peanut turns one would be nice.
speaking of the nut, it's been a banner week here. i feel like whenever she gets her immunizations she gets smarter. some big milestone always occurs right after. this week, she spontaneously started clapping. before the nap, she had no idea what clapping was. after? she was clapping. amazing. i've been trying to get her to clap since she was 6 months old. really, it takes forever for the smallest thing with babies! i also introduced her to some new foods this week and... a FORK! my god, TOOLS!
look at that coordination!
now she no longer has to pick up the cold and wet cheese with her fingers (god forbid.) she loves it. i, of course, have to put the cheese on the fork for her, but she does put it in her mouth. she also, this week, started holding her own bottle. the first night she did it, she laughed like a crazy person after she was done. so proud she was. wow. by the way, this is so much more interesting than going to an office everyday. just sayin'.
and because i spend a lot of time on the internet, i'm introducing a new gleek.net feature.
p.s. i've decided to end all pretense of me using proper english. i generally do and i'm a pretty good speller as well, but my speech patterns are a helluva lot more conversational than the way that i write here on the blog. i'm changing that now. you may find that i sound a lot like dooce. thanks for the compliment. when i read her blog, i feel like i'm talking to my alter-speech ego. anyway, it's a new year! time to be more like myself.
hope your holiday went well whichever holiday you celebrate! i'm going to try something new here and schedule a few posts to go live over the next week. first we'll talk about christmas and some spiders, then peanut, then knitting and the 2007 round-up. this first one's gonna be long but there'll be plenty of pics.
a few weeks ago was the spiders holiday party. i've neglected my camera recently and left all of the photos just sitting on the card since then. sorry! it was such a great time! knitters really know how to party, believe it or not. this year, instead of the white elephant i'm-gonna-steal-your-gift exchange we used a great online tool called elfster to do a secret santa swap. i gave a great vogue knitting accessories book to julia and kaitlyn gave me some great stuff!
my haul
here we have a pompom maker and the itty bitty hats book which i requested on my amazon wishlist. such cute hats in that book i couldn't resist! she also made me a keyboard dust cover for my powerbook.
i had to give it back to her though because she wants to do a decorative stitch around the outside. thanks kaitlyn!
half naked cake
i really enjoyed baking for the spiders party. i made a gingerbread cake (recipe from the better homes and gardens cook book) with lemon yogurt frosting. it was a hit although my kitchen sure did take a beating. molasses is messy stuff.
you can see all the photos i took at the party in the gallery.
so, yesterday was christmas and we decided not to travel anywhere. the peanut has proven to be a horrible traveler and we just can't stomach the hours of unhappiness that it means if we have to go somewhere. we invited my side of the family to come over and i baked again. i made these awesome vegan cinnamon rolls and the no-knead bread again.
delightful
i also whipped up some brownies from the sinfully vegan cook book but they were only so-so (not photo worthy). vegan brownies are tough. i really love the gooey regular brownies you can get at the bakery and i have yet to find a recipe without dairy that competes with them. and sorry, tofu in brownies is just wrong. i've tried it and i can always taste the tofu which totally disgusts me.
me and the nut
grandma and peanut
christmas was really nice! i enjoyed staying at home for the day and we enjoyed some sparkling wine from mumm's that we bought last year in napa.
the really good news is that i got a new camera for christmas! actually i got the same camera twice! my parents bought me it off my wishlist and so did KP. i'm returning one of them to buy some accessories like a tripod and battery charger. i love this camera. it has all the advantages of an SLR plus a video camera. it's perfect for me. i couldn't have asked for a better present, huzzah!
i took the new camera out for a test drive and took some pictures of the one christmas gift that i did craft: a needle case for my mom. she uses straight needles almost exclusively so i whipped this up for her from my fabric stash.
needle roll
pockets
i included a set of bamboo needles and some sock yarn as well. the button band is made from an old bra strap. that's my favorite part.
closure
i used this tutorial which was very easy. note that if you make it, the directions don't tell you that you have to cut a 15"x15" inner lining. don't forget!
in the meantime, i have a lot to learn with the new camera. the manual is thick and i want to master it all! i hope to put up more posts next year with more photos and less words, maybe even figure out how to blog from flickr. who knows?! there's lots to accomplish and i have time in which to figure it all out.
things are going much better at the gleek homestead lately. in fact, i'm blogging while the peanut is napping. she now goes down for regular naps every three hours during the day! it's quite refreshing. and last night, she slept really well so i feel like a new person, a well rested one. i don't expect this feeling to last, of course, but i'm happy that today will be a day when i don't think about how tired i am. she's not napping in her crib yet... she sleeps in her bouncy chair almost all the time so that she can be somewhat upright. poor thing has acid reflux. hopefully that'll go away soon.
besides watching a lot of the 4400 while i'm feeding the peanut, i've been playing around in ravelry. i know that you've all heard about it so i won't begin to tell you how awesome it is. i'm looking forward to when it's open to the general public so that we can see what you're all making. how cool will that be? thanks goes to jess and casey for kicking major butt on this one. eventually, i'll have all of my projects in there and will ditch backpack for cataloging my knitting. backpack is still a great tool and i'll use it for other things, but ravelry is key to keeping everything straight now. i especially love the fact that i can favorite other people's projects or patterns. now i'll have lots of inspiration at my fingertips!
ok, it's a short post today because i have to upload photos and video from my camera for the next post (yes, i promise i'm going to start posting more often now that the peanut is on a schedule!) so that i can show you what little knitting i have done. in the meantime, here are a few videos i've uploaded to youtube! (click through from the RSS feed to see the videos.. still need to figure out how to get them in the feed.)
the peanut enjoys some time on the boppy video taken: april 21, 2007
more of the peanut on the boppy ... you can hear daddy in the background on this one. video taken: april 21, 2007
here's the quick and dirty update about everything that's going on.
my hands are swollen and they hurt like hell. it's even tough just typing this much less programming all day long or knitting. so everything that i love doing has really slowed down. i can barely wear my rings and i'm not sleeping well at night. we're at week 37 though, so not much more to go!
my parents came this past weekend and brought the crib, a rocking chair, and some hand-me-down clothes and stuffed animals. they took away a bunch of stuff too so now the apartment is actually starting to feel more spacious. i spent all day on monday breaking down boxes, getting recycling together, and cleaning the place up. i finally feel more in control of things.
now, on to the fun stuff! there'll now be a lot of pictures and not as much text so be sure to check out the extended entry for more.
ok ok! i'll do some colorwork. sheesh. who knew it was so popular? some of you admitted that you always wanted to make something stranded but didn't have the time or the gumption to start, and some of you wrote to say how much you love it and that i should try it too. so i am.
it seems that my mom took an interest in yesterday's post and asked for IOUs for hats and mittens for both her and my father for christmas and i'm happy to oblige. now i must sit and think about what patterns and yarn to use. i think that i'll give the hello yarn pirates hat and mittens a go for my father and then switch it up to some elizabeth zimmerman for my mom. (of course when i mentioned buying more yarn to my mom she said, "don't you have enough yarn?" little does she know!) or maybe she would like a hat and mittens in noro since she hinted that she liked that yarn so much. hmmmm, decisions decisions. either way, i'll begin these in january along with the baby knitting. thankfully, these are all small projects.
but right now i'm concentrating on some christmas knitting which is almost done. i've finished two hats and the third (and last) is almost complete.
christmas knitting almost complete
more details when all is said and done. the noro 3-hole shawl is slowly coming along but i have no photos. just imagine it bigger than before.
this past saturday was the spiders holiday party! we had such a great time together! i got a chance to dress up and even managed to get my hair cut and blown straight that morning (it had been months since getting my hair cut! it's getting long!) the majority of our NYC spiders were there and we ate good food and knit and generally had a blast. the white elephant gift exchange this year was a lot of fun but poor cathy got her gift stolen numerous times (this happened to sarah last year!) i got a set of beautiful wood DPNs from veronique.
blue sky alpaca DPNs US1
the needles AND the case are just lovely. i wish i had more pictures of the actual party but i was too pooped to do much. i sat on the couch and tried to get as involved as possible but i'm getting big. getting up and down from the sitting position is starting to be tough!
the mondays after a five day weekend? mmm, not so much. nor tuesdays for that matter. especially when other coworkers are still on vacation and i have to cover for them. i've been so busy these past two days, i'm surprised i'm still alive! and you all have been updating your blogs and making it even harder for me to get around to updating mine. shame on you! no really, thanks. you saved me from having to commit seppuku at my desk and ending it all.
ok, enough with the sarcasm as i have a long post for you. it's mostly photos, you lucky people. first, let me showcase one of my two latest FOs (and possibly the last one you'll see for about a month).
me, the bump, and some legwarmers
yarn: one strand of silver sport weight alpaca from a touch of twist and one strand of grey munsell merino 150 rainbow color no. 136 leftover from the somewhat cowl needles: US8 denise interchangables magic loop pattern: cast on 48 stitches and do 1x1 rib
yep, i was at rhinebeck. i was there almost all of saturday but missed the crucial first 40 minutes of the day when the entire selection of socks that rock sold out at the fold. by the time we got there, their booth was an empty shell and i couldn't bring myself to buy anything else from them. FORTY MINUTES PEOPLE! that's just ridiculous. i'm thinking about boycotting the yarn just on principle alone (not really, but since i don't own any now and may never again, this might be something that i can easily accomplish.)
so, i'll try to keep this post rather short since you've seen a lot of rhinebeck by this point today. i drove up a spidery contingent (veronique, lisa, jessica, and abby) in my trusty ford taurus rental car. the ride up was fairly non-eventful. i managed to navigate both manhattan and new jersey without a problem, and without even planning on it, we met up with the other car of spiders (carrie, jessica, marie, and virginia) at both a rest stop AND the parking lot. good planning. we even managed to bump into more spiders there: amanda, katie, blogless nancy, iraida, sarah scissorina, and julsey.
i have to say that this saturday was CRAZY with people! the place was crowded and swarming with knitbloggers. i was in a total daze so i'm sorry if i walked right past you and didn't say hi. a few of the bloggers i remember meeting: carrieoke, anne marie, big geek beth, januaryone cara, cari and cassie (though i see them randomly in NYC every now and again) and mama-E. big thanks goes out to all the people that walked up to me and introduced themselves. you rock!
here are some pictures of animals:
fluffy bunny!
puppy!
this sheep had a lot to say
aren't they precious!? i just love farm animals. and so do the spiders...
smile jess!
having a great time
i wish i had taken more pictures but i was just too tired to break out my camera at every opportunity and there was a point where some animal fluff flew into my eye and gave me an allergic reaction. it made it hard to actually SEE where i was going! the pregnancy made me especially tired this year but i did really well considering that i drove home and didn't arrive at my apartment until close to midnight! yikes!
for more rhinebeck pictures, check in to the gallery.
now for the yarn haul. i did pretty good this year. i stuck to my "socks and shawls' yarn only" mantra. click on the thumbnails to get more info on each in the gallery.
some closer shots of these yarns are also in the gallery.
so, that's it! we had a good time. i'm still recovering and now there's more yarn than ever to knit with. still to come: some videos i took of the sheep. i have to figure out how to get them on youtube and then i'll post them!
yes, i'm going to rhinebeck with the majority of spiders tomorrow. i will be wearing kyoto so if you see me before i see you, please introduce yourself! be warned that i am HORRIBLE with names but much better with faces :)
i decided to upgrade and actually use my flickr account. i'm only keeping photos there of completed projects, some yarn p0rn, and my favorite non-craft photos (mainly from around town and on vacation.) i hope that this will encourage you all to make me your contact! flickr is such a fun and amazing site that i can't not participate. the tagging schemes and flickr pools are enough to warant the pro upgrade, but this is what really got me going. i'll be buying mine next week, i think!
just so you know, though, all photos on this blog and MORE will always be available in my gallery.
aaahhhhhh.. having a full week off from work is such a major luxury nowadays. the bosses always tell you take the time off before the year is over but it's not easy when there's only ONE other person to cover for you. in this case, the week off was well deserved and over way too quickly.
sunset in cape cod
so last weekend, KP and i played it cool and went to LI to visit friends and generally hang out around the house enjoying our time off. on monday, we took to our rental car and drove up to cape cod to visit with our friends lee and jackie in lee's mom's house. lee and jackie also brought along their three vivacious girls just to show us what life is like with three children all under the age of 5. needless to say, it's fun and hectic at the same time.
this post is severely lacking in progress or pictures, sorry to say. i actually broke down over the weekend and started working on the second sock for KP. he's been so patient waiting for these socks that i feel i should just knit on them and FINISH THEM ALREADY! i've been working on them far too long and i feel guilty when i glance over at my WIP bag and see them languishing with the clapotis. so since the last massive update i've done one more repeat on clapotis, 4" of the second kyoto sleeve, and a few inches on the second sock for KP.
on saturday, KP and i rented a car and drove up to connecticut to visit our family for the day. while he played frisbee with his brother, i knit on one of the lounge chairs and chatted with my father and mother in law. i got a little flack from one of the guests but i think that he just wanted to know more about what i was doing so after a few jabs in the ribs, he was asking about how i learned to knit and everything was ok after that. the problem with driving to any destination, though, is that i'm always the navigator and have to give directions and watch for signs AND i get car sick easily so i can't knit in the car. saturday was pretty shot knitting-wise.
sunday, i got a chance to see lisa and veronique's new, cute apartment before lisa and i headed over to jess's place for some world cup action. i must say that i'm pretty happy with my world cup participation this time around. KP and i watched almost every single game (except for that one that KP accidentally deleted from the DVR! oh well) at home after work. we managed to avoid most spoilers during the day so it was as if we were watching them live with everyone else. the univision coverage was SO much better than ABC. yeah, i don't understand a lick of spanish but at least i don't have to listen to american color commentary which is repetitious at best. i watched the last game at jess's in english and was surprised at just how bad it is! ugh. jess and her lovely husband put out a great spread of cheese, crackers, chips, dip, fruit, wine, and beer. they were great hosts and all their friends were nice to hang out with.. though i found myself surrounded by france supporters and i was rooting for italy.
anyway, i'm very VERY happy that italy won! i love italy. our trip there was probably one of the best trips we have ever taken. the people we met there were warm and welcoming, the food and wine amazing, and my maternal grandfather is italian as well. i have much to love about italy. the more i think about it though, they got really lucky at the end. if zidane hadn't flipped out and headbutted materazzi (i love the announcer in this clip.. "POUR QUOI? POUR QUOI?" jeez, what does it look like?), the french team may have been able to pull through in the penalty kicks. from what i've seen online today, zidane flipped out because the italian player was talking smack at him? give me a break! this is a professional sport filled with testosterone. if you can't take the trash talking, you might as well not play. you have to be able to turn away or tell the other player his mother is a goat. anything but give in and resort to hitting or striking another player on the field. materazzi may have insulted him but zidane should learn to control his temper.
anyway, i have a full work week ahead of me but next week, KP and i are off! we're going to visit friends and family around the tri-state area and make a trip to cape cod! i can't wait. i really need a vacation and some extended knitting time.
before i get into all the great stuff that happened this weekend (renegade craft fair and a new FO, notwithstanding) i have to introduce you to a dessert that has changed the face of all desserts for the rest of my life. seriously, i don't think that i will ever look at a brownie or a piece of cake ever again without thinking how it pales in comparison to this monstrosity of calories and carbohydrates that is.. the pretzel pizza.
mmmmm, pretzel pizza
brought to you by the bold chocolatier in valley stream, long island, new york. it's a layer of caramel on the bottom, then they put all these pretzels on there, toppings like peanut butter chips, M&Ms, oreos, and gobs of milk chocolate and white chocolate on top. my lovely MIL, karen, bought one of these for her father for father's day and he graciously shared with the rest of us. i don't think that i'll ever be the same again. oh, and they ship them, people! look em up on google because you know you want one for your next diet break (and you better pick up some insulin too while you're at it.)
ok, on to the crafty fun! i left KP in the sweltering apartment on saturday to meet kaitlyn at the subway so that i could help her carry MJ's stroller down the stairs (thank god i lift weights every week!) then we met up with lisa and were on our way to the renegade craft fair in williamsburg. i have to say that i have non-buyer's remorse. i regret not buying a few items that i saw and really wanted especially since most of the vendors were selling items at less than retail price. it's PROBABLY a good thing that i didn't go whole hog and spend the $200 cash i had on me but still, i really wanted that bag made of recycled sails. oh well, next year.
so, early last week when my friend jen wrote me to see if i was available over the weekend to hang out if she flew to NYC, i said, sure! i've got no plans this weekend. which was true. i looked at the calendar and it was the only weekend without family gatherings or a birthday or craft fair. i went from having no plans to having so many plans in the space of a heartbeat that my head is still swimming!
let's start off with friday. around christmas time, the lovely spiders gave me a $75 gift certificate to school products for being their webmistress (i'm such a lucky girl) and i held on to it in the hopes that i would be inspired to by a pattern or two to buy yarn for. i met up with sarah and lisa around 3:30PM at school products to do some shopping.
after much hemming and hawing, i decided to buy a multitude of colors in lamb's pride worsted so that i could make a bunch of stuffed animals for all the little babies out there popping into my life. i have the jess hutch book that she has (sadly) stopped offering so i'm thinking about a bear and a snake from there. the black in the pile below is especially for embroidering faces on the animals. i can't wait to make a few! then i also sprung for two skeins of laceweight merino (405yds per hank) and one skein of soft chenille for a new sleepy eye mask. guess what? i spent a total of $77 on all of it! only had to fork over $2 in addition to the gift certificate. i'm amazed at my restraint.
from school products, we went to the point to meet up with everyone else.
this weekend, i played catch up. mainly i caught up on my sleep, laundry, cleaning, organizing, tv watching, and knitting but i'm sure there are a few other things that i caught up on as well. like socializing. i certainly haven't done as much socializing this winter as i hoped i would. last winter was particularly bad. KP and i spent loads of time hanging out at home and enjoying the fireplace but then all the rest of our social life suffered so we're making a concerted effort this year to get out more.
a couple of weeks ago, we attended a birthday party at my friend danielle's. i took a few pictures but mainly spent the party talking to people i hadn't seen in a very long time. i owe danielle though. she made this beautiful, absolutely stunning appetizer tray and i promised to put a picture up here and hadn't gotten around to it.
mmmmm, doesn't that look yummy?
isn't it gorgeous, ladies and gentlemen? danielle went out of her way to make sure there were plenty of vegetarian and vegan goods on hand to keep people satiated. she did a bang up job. party at danielle's next time!
the spread
it was great hanging out at her place and seeing all of our friends despite the total of 5 hours of sleep i was running on. this weekend, KP and i got to see everyone again at a baby shower (a baby shower with a keg even!) where i was admonished for not posting the above pictures. i'm a bad blogger.
ok, now it's time for an olympic update!!! the events are progressing quite smoothly around gleek's olympic village.
ok, let's get the obligatory snow pictures out of the way. yes, we have had the blizzard of '06 and it looks a little something like this...
snow on my temp gauge
i'm just excited that i didn't have to go out in it. i'm not a snow person despite growing up in michigan (or maybe because.. hmmm..)
snow on the cars
anyway, before the big blizzard hit, friday evening was my usual spiders night at the point where i got a chance to cast on for my new knitting olympics project.
sorry for the lack of updates around here. you're all probably wondering how my boiler saga ended. it ended peacefully although it required plenty of late nights at chez gleek. the plumbers were especially nice, helpful, and hard working. they almost never took breaks or even sat down. they came on sunday to rip the old boiler out and installed the new one on monday and tuesday (both days they did not leave our house till late at night). but now we have heat and hot water.. and what's really cool about it is that my landlord had an on-demand system installed. this means that the water is heated fast as it's needed and there's no tank either. this cuts down on the gas bill because it doesn't have to keep a tank warm at all times. let me tell you, it's pretty sweet. we have a large jacuzzi tub in our bathroom and i've always wanted to fill it up and take a hot bath but i would always run out of hot water before i could fill it up. no more!
so, now that that problem is over and done with, let's move on to the more important stuff in my life. last friday was joy's going away party at dragonfly. let me just say that it was sad and happy all at once. we're really going to miss you joy! but heck, you've moved to hawaii! i'm so jealous.
if you know a spider or are a spider and would like to support our team in the knitting olympics, i have made two buttons (same style, different sizes) for you to download and post to your site. you can find them here:
"so much has happened today! just think that four hours ago, amanda was stuck in the bathroom." poor amanda. everyone is going to write about this on their blog and you will get absolutely no reprieve from it. if only i had stopped dyeing my yarn sooner and come to your rescue before letting you sit in the bathroom for over 30 minutes. i was just glad that i got there when i did.
yep, the spiders had another party and this one was a doozy. i don't think that any of us ever believed that we would be at marie's house for 9 hours but the majority of us were and damn did we have a good time (but everyone please remind me next time that i'm allergic to cats and it will cause me a great deal of stress to be around them.) in the end, i was able to test out two of my three signature colorways for the bokufishhot studs™ collection. say hello to jack and apollo.
