i hope you like the pictures because i lost about 10 pounds sweating my ass off while getting them. that and the peanut kept attacking the camera on the tripod. i nearly knocked her over trying to get the camera from her when she grabbed it. she wasn’t happy about that but i saved the moment with some goldfish as any good mommy would.

anyway, sorry for the long silence! i’ve been all-popknits-all-the-time with a little knitting and TV. i’ve been updating regularly on flickr and twitter though if you’re wondering what i’m up to in between posts!

all done!

so here they are! (on ravelry) to recap, one sock was made for me by nancy for the spiders one-sock swap we had back in february. she did an excellent job with picking this pattern for me. it’s my first toe-up sock and i loved it and the construction of it. it had a tubular BO which i had never done, and just enough lace to keep things interesting.

everything was going great until the end. i tried the tubular BO that techknitter recommends, and through no fault of techknitter’s, it sucked. my grafting is crap and way too tight which is why i never use it. i suppose i should practice and make it better but who has time for that?

so i picked out the tubular BO and tried a new one that also didn’t work. i ended up using this BO that grumperina explains on her blog. it took me more than 4 hours to bind off!!! cripes!

anyway, they are done and that’s all that matters. on to new knits!

i hope to come back with something new to show you next week. we’ll see.

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here’s my only real knitting-in-progress:

took it to the park today

one: i forgot how much i love knitting socks!

two: i forgot that my casio point-and-shoot is not such a bad camera to have on hand at all times. it really does take decent pictures.

i refer you to ravelry for details. i’ll talk more about what i did differently based on nancy’s notes when it’s all said and done.

what’s next? still sewing on the snaps to flair (only two halves of two snaps left to go!) then i’ll do a damp blocking of the bottom that i reknit and we’ll be done. finished a second swiffer cover and would like one more. working on a kinda-secret knit for sharon. gotta swatch for the frock camisole! it’s a summer of selfish knitting methinks.

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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!

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when you have a baby, all you can think about sometimes is milestones. when will she smile? when will she eat solid food happily? crawl? walk? be potty-trained? with those milestones comes disruption, though, as we’re finding out here at casa gleek. little peanut is going to crawl.. soon. she’s obsessively getting on her stomach and thrusting her hips into the air. she’s so obsessive about it that it’s stopping her from sleeping well, and quite frankly, stopping everyone within two blocks of sleeping well! with age, the crying gets louder, unfortunately. so i’m a little worn out and i think that this post will be heavy on the pictures.

here, here are some happy peanut pics.

what’s this?

happiness!

she loves those flowers sooooo much (thanks kate!) KP does a little puppet show with them and they make her giggle.

stop moving!

the eating part of lunchtime may not bring on the smiles, but funny faces from mom do.

in the box, yes, she still loves the box

cheerios make her happy too. especially the big yellow box.

standing!

and something that makes me happy: baby butt and legs.

know what else makes me happy? new things on the needles!

love yarn in little cakes

yep, i got busy on saturday night, winding up some yarn. then i cast on for gretel (ravelry)! finally something for myself. let’s hope that it stays relatively cool outside so that i can wear it when i’m done with it.

and i also cast on for KP’s second sock. he’s not allowed to talk or ask about it again till it’s done.

them’s the rules. so i’m wrapping up this post so that i can watch project runway!

p.s. nutkin is pretty much done too. i just have to bind off the toe but i’m not going to do that until saturday when i present it to my secret pal. i’m SO nervous it’s not going to fit. i’ve never knit for someone who has smaller feet than myself. i have confidence, but i’m not taking a chance by binding it off and weaving in the ends. i want her to love it and wear it!

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kaitlyn and i had a wee discussion on the way home from BG the other day about whether we were process knitters or not. she seems to think that she is and i’m not sure about myself. you know, i really love the process of putting together a garment. i even think that seaming is not so bad. i look at a lot of new patterns that hit the interwebs and i think, “that’s the same pattern as such and such with just a different cable or stitch pattern” ALL THE TIME. i can’t help but immediately break it apart and find the common elements with something else. so i guess i AM a process knitter, huh?

i do like having finished garments to wear, though, and i do knit things up quick for functional purposes (ala peanut legwarmers.) so that really takes me to somewhere in between the two extremes (process vs. product.) over the past few months i’ve seen a lot of reviews for the new cat bordhi book and i thought i would give it a go. i feel like socks are old to me now. i really like making them but there are very few tricks about them that i don’t understand. i have yet to do toe-up but i’m not mystified by it. the new pathways for sock knitters, on the other hand, really gets my brain churning. i’m dying to cast-on for a pair from this book RIGHT NOW.

what am i doing instead? knitting on two other projects. sigh. i’m not making a whole lotta progress towards knitting for myself, am i?

past the heel

anyway, i’m past the heel on this sock and since the recipient has a smaller foot than i do i’m sure it’ll be finished in no time. i’m giving it a break for another day because my fingers were starting to hurt. it looks really small in the picture but once it’s blocked, it’ll look awesome.

toasty!

this is a toasty topper (ravelry) in the same cashmerino aran that i made the miss dashwood out of. needless to say, i have a lot of this yarn. i’m double stranding it like the pattern says and it’s pretty dense. i’m sure it’ll be extremely warm.

so what to make for myself? i’ll be done with the nutkin and toasty topper soon and then i should finish up KP’s socks and start something new. it’s been pretty cold outside. should i cast-on for gretel with that cashmere i bought? not sure.

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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.

randomness

- did you know that the US is due to run out of helium? strange. i had no idea that it was so hard to come by.

- if you think that inhaling helium and talking like a chipmunk is funny, then this is even funnier.

- why i would never look good in a sweater dress.

- people tetris (love the “music”.)

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.

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