sorry for the week long blog absence. i really want to be good about posting while i can (before the peanut arrives and sucks away all my spare time!) but last week was incredibly busy as was this past weekend. the week that we all return to work after an extended vacation always seems hectic. yeah, i was at work between christmas and new year's but not many other people were so getting back in the swing of things was tough on tuesday and wednesday. then the rest of the week flew by in a big blur! i didn't get to do as much knitting as i had hoped but this weekend was full of progress at chez gleek.

without even a prompting from me, KP got going on house clearing and storage early on saturday morning. i was surprised and very grateful! we both worked on going through our massive library of books and sorted out the crap from keepable. about twenty books ended up on the curb (but they didn't stay there long thanks to the wonderful weather and abundant street traffic in the slope) and half of our collection ended up in the storage space in the basement. we ordered huge plastic storage containers last week for this very purpose. needless to say, it was very cleansing to me. i love a good purge of household items.

from there we cleaned and rearranged furniture in anticipation of moving items out of our second bedroom (formerly know as "the office") to make room for the peanut. i was exhausted by the end of the day but managed to knit a little and cut out some fabric.

on sunday, after a trip to babies "r" us with kaitlyn, i spent some time in front of the sewing machine and whipped up these two drawstring bags.

i got the formula for making these from jess. her instructions were quite clear up to the point of "sew the squares on the bottom of the long rectangle" at which point my pregnant brain completely checked out. for about an hour, i just couldn't figure it out! i tried pinning the square along the bottom but the darn things never matched up. i was beginning to get frustrated when i decided to go at them in reverse order and it worked! sorry this description is so vague but it's her pattern and i don't want to give away all the secrets in case she wants to make a tutorial. if she doesn't, maybe i'll do one. we'll see.

anyway, the bags are reversible. i picked some fabric for the insides and will still probably never turn them inside out.

inside out? maybe not

i really want to buy a fat quarter collection or two and make more! these were so easy once i got the hang of it.

in knitting news, i finally started some fair isle, though i'm beginning to wonder at the practicality of making winter items with the climate being all crazy lately. dude, it was close to 70 degrees here on saturday! beautiful but freaky.

aaarrrrr!!!

here be pirates!! my very first fair isle, and though it's a lot of work, it's fun and i am enjoying it. i've made it totally through the first repeat of the pattern and am now working on the second one. it's slow going but getting faster as i get used to knitting with two hands and keeping my floats loose. i can't wait to see it all done!

when i was just too tired to concentrate on the pirates hat (like after all that moving work on saturday), i worked on the 3-hole shawl which is now one more hole closer to done.

2 holes down, 1 to go

originally i bought one bag of silk garden (10 balls) on ebay to make this. then after working through the first 3 balls, i did some calculations and thought that i would need 11 balls so i bought one more ball on ebay. now, alas, i think that i'm going to need 12 to finish this sucker. either the yardage is just not consistent in silk garden or i've lost my brain and ability to do math. considering that i'm 30 weeks pregnant, i'm going to go with reason #2. looks like i'm going to have purchase another ball on ebay soon (which is the only place that i can find this particular colorway.) oh well, it's in the rules of KFYS2007 that i can do this, thankfully!

some of you are probably wondering about my stupid sock creatures. i hit a snafu last week with my first one being that i sorta sewed the tail on the wrong side of the body and it became not so much a tail anymore. use your imagination. it may be salvageable. we'll see. the second one is still in pieces because i need a lot of patience to sew such tiny things together. patience is something that i lack lately.

later this week, i hope to cast on for a knit for the peanut! i'm planning on making the baby sweater from elizabeth zimmerman's knitters almanac. see this lovely one that carrie made? i'm making mine with some RYC cashsoft DK. it looks like a quick knit so i hope it'll be done soon (look at me hoping for something to be done before i've even started it! i've clearly lost it) then it's on to more peanut knits! she is due on march 15th and i'd like her to be decked out in some of my handmade goods.

###

with only a few more hours to go in 2006, i'm here to reflect on all that's happened this year. it was quite a roller coaster ride!

early in 2006, my work life was turned upside down when my boss decided to quit so that he could travel the world (can't really blame him) and then one of my coworkers in my small department left to move to seattle. bummer. that left only me and one other coworker to do the work of four people (really five, we were always short staffed). working for the man is tough enough but doing work for others for the man is even worse. i had to cut back on all of my vacation time and burn myself to the quick in order to make things passable at my job. that was probably one of the toughest things i have ever done, and it went on for over four months while management tried to find replacements.

while dealing with work issues, i also helped put on two plays this year with madair. they were both a lot of fun to work on but very time consuming. it was a good thing that i refused to do freelance web work this year! i'm not really sure where i would have found the time. i did do a few jobs here and there for friends, but in the end, it was nothing compared with having a paying client who demands fast work for almost nothing.

then came the pregnancy, right at the tail end of summer. i'm glad that i got a chance to live it up a bit before heading into the first trimester of hell. i was so sick and i thought, "what happens if i'm like this the entire time?!" thankfully, around 15 weeks i stopped feeling ill, and around 20 weeks i got my regular appetite back. i've been able to go to the gym 2 or 3 times per week since the end of my first trimester and that's helped a lot. the gym is my saviour. i couldn't live without it.

speaking of which, my hubby, KP and i, also have had a chance to learn from each other and support each other this year. he is my rock and my love, and i couldn't live without him. kisses!

in non-personal matters, 2006 was not so bad! i got to spend lots of good times with the spiders. the spiders grew considerably this year and each week at the point got a little more busy and crowded. we supported each other through crises and laughed at each other's jokes. i could not do without those girls. i love them all!

they also helped me through plenty of knitting projects! let's take a look back at my goals for 2006. (i promise there will be pictures in this post.. hang with me!)

continue reading -»